Empty Eyes and Magic Eyes
VIGDOROVA, FRIDA
MEMOIR OF A SOVIET SCHOOLTEACHER Empty Eyes & Magic Eyes By Frida Vigdorova Coming out onto the square by the railroad station in Serpukhov, I looked for the bus to Tarusa. Outside, there...
...A little girl with a thickly plaited braid dipped a brush into yellow paint, and first thing drew a big round sun...
...they'll grow up, come to their senses, and stop it...
...Once, when I came to the home museum of Polenov, the artist's daughter, Ol'ga Vasil'evna, said to me: "When children come to the museum on an excursion, I understand from the first glance what sort of teacher they have...
...There it says: At present, a group of dandies is hanging around in literature...
...it rained on the first of May...
...On the contrary, the empty eyes never make you a gift of a burning word...
...Don't you remember yourself when you were little...
...For instance, when I spilled a can of sunflower oil...
...It's a composition...
...Sometimes they come happy and heated and in their eyes is curiosity: 'And now show us what you have here!' But sometimes they come . . . well, how to tell you...
...They spoke badly...
...In this, they are most attractive of all...
...They're bored...
...Children like that walk after me lazily, sluggishly...
...A machine, what's that...
...One thing is impossible to understand: If the writer does not see how downy the snow is on Nikitsky Boulevard, then what kind of a writer is he...
...These words were sprinkled on as the ashes of other words, not their own, others...
...In the blue sky we heard the roar of airplanes...
...No, such legalized untruth is encountered often...
...Well, you judge...
...And it was true...
...all the tints of white whirl in it: a cream-white tablecloth, yellow-white milk, a white blouse diffuses blue, a blue-white picture, a white ray of sun on the samovar, a white plate on a blue cloth, a white highlight on the side of a wooden chair, a white cap, a white bow in the hair...
...The workers went to the demonstration in orderly lines...
...The white is strict...
...Sit down and write a composition with everyone else on 'How I Went to the May Day Demonstration.' " The little girl obediently took her pen, and bending over her copybook, she rather quickly wrote this: "The morning was sunny...
...Rain drizzled down, the wind was cold, the bus didn't come and didn't come...
...The pages of the drawing books began to rustle...
...I understand by those empty eyes that their teacher, too, is empty-eyed...
...It was very solemn...
...When children swear like troopers," she said suddenly, "That's very bad...
...And they themselves ask about nothing, and they answer my questions yawning...
...And think...
...These eyes have not lost the ability to see, and, for that reason, words were found which are not empty...
...Here they sprinkle words on a paper and read them...
...Everyone was absorbed in how to crawl into the bus as quickly as possible...
...You live in a refined family, and it's not possible that they didn't take you to the demonstration...
...A girl of 13 came out on the stage and said: "The exposition here is somewhat drawn out . . . The climax is artificially sustained . . . The urbanistic motifs which permeate the play seem to me not to be justified . . ." On one side of me sat the president of one of the Moscow city councils...
...On the eighth of March, the sixth grade was given the composition topic, "My Mama...
...evidently there had been no bus for a long time...
...He's sorry...
...One takes out a piece of paper and reads: 'We congratulate a defender of our Native Land, we wish him success in a peaceful life and in his labor activities,' and then they left...
...The people carried posters, slogans, and portraits...
...Let the words be solemn, I don't object...
...Her high, calf-length black rubber boots were also clean and nice...
...Kolya raised his eyes to him and said: "I thought up a picture: it's snowing, and it's night in the forest...
...Under the scribble of the teacher, there was a D. All the same, I think that in this duel, Borya remained the victor...
...He ought to be sorry about us, not the transportation...
...I know 1 did wrong, but I couldn't do a thing with myself...
...Her neighbor, with a decisive sweep of a green pencil, depicted something that, without especial difficulty, could have been taken for a fir tree...
...I know by their eyes...
...And why...
...I hadn't been in Tarusa long, but they found out that I'd been at the front, and they came to congratulate me...
...The beginnings were made...
...Don't you have a dress suit...
...A good many people had collected...
...In a wheel...
...She said this approvingly, and explained: "He's sorry, you understand, sorry about the transportation...
...If you don't know what this is all about, you can neither quarrel nor agree about whether the writers which the article concerns are correctly called dandies...
...You know that's not true...
...The unusual word, the fresh insight, the unexpected turn of thought are inimical to it, always, constantly, everywhere...
...Defender of our Native Land...
...She smiled as she spoke, the faded blue eyes watched good-naturedly, and the little turned-up nose lent something childish to her face...
...Why did you lie...
...Sort of like balls—they hit and bounce off, hit and bounce off...
...he appreciated Volodya's restraint and did not give him a D. There are many good compositions in the Tarusa school...
...Let him try to understand that there is something behind it...
...Something foolish is always getting into his head...
...You did the same things and worse.' " The teacher wrote in the margin, "You didn't describe your mother's qualities of character, such as industry and principles...
...Or simply to conceal them...
...There's one here who never takes everybody...
...But let them be . . . well, alive, sort of...
...There, you see, is a table, at which people are sitting in Korovin's picture, square...
...She is happy and good and never scolds...
...Her essay is adapted from a chapter in Pages from Tarusa, an anthology of Soviet prose and poetry edited by Andrew Field to be published next month by Little, Brown...
...A particular case...
...What are you upset for...
...they twitter, and go out with their twittering onto the stages of "creative evenings...
...The driver was the same one who was sorry about the transportation, but this time he took everyone...
...Korovin's picture is a festivity in white...
...His dark face with its large forehead and his button nose were sprinkled with brown freckles...
...It's like the mange, there's no way you can get rid of it...
...I'm watching to see which driver comes...
...But here, you know, there aren't solemn words, but wooden words, understand...
...He sighed and laid his pencil to one side...
...I tied on a good one...
...You understand: not getting accustomed...
...And the main thing was that there was no assurance that you would get on it...
...her family asked her at home...
...The morning was sunny...
...the machine certainly would not take everyone...
...All of this was untruth...
...Cultured . . . She's well-read . . ." he kept repeating...
...the bus was coming up to the stop...
...But look, they spoke from the heart...
...But it's not so terrible...
...asked one little girl...
...Why did he say "in a wheel...
...And here the words were dress, for a solemn occasion...
...My wife says to me, 'Kolya, some pioneers to see you.' Well, I put on my dignity, invite them in, ask them to have a seat...
...Everything is black—the sky and everything, you know...
...You know, they scatter their words, 'progress in labor,' 'labor activity,' they poke their flowers at you, and go out...
...Three little girls come in...
...Everything for the first time...
...But he said it exactly as he saw it: in a wheel...
...I wish," Ol'ga Vasil'evna once said to me, "that people would always have magic eyes...
...They wanted to make you happy...
...I went with Mama and held a little red flag...
...Now here are a few lines from the composition, "My Character": "I sometimes tell lies...
...But on the holiday you most likely dressed up, right...
...So if I had a sheet of black paper, I'd draw—is that all right...
...Outside, there was a line...
...said a grey little old man who had gotten next in line...
...Then, looking aslant, he glanced at the drawing of the little girl who was sitting close by and added a yellow sun next to a little fir tree...
...They are not words, but masks...
...And the teacher, walking past the young journalist who was present at the lesson, bent down and said to him: "That's a very backward boy...
...Because he saw it all: the blindingly black sky, and the blindingly white snowy haze, the white earth in the black night...
...And the teacher's red pencil did not underline the words "fumble along," did not find them unliterary or out of place...
...The bus wasn't fast, but it stubbornly conquered the road, jumping on the pits and bumps...
...And right straight through...
...I understand...
...Only the transportation, too . . ." "It's coming," someone said...
...He was shorter than the rest of the third graders, and very thin...
...said his interlocutor...
...they take the applause of girls with average education as a sign of universal recognition, and, drunk with cheap success, they become farther and farther removed from the great life of the people...
...Sighing deeply, Kolya answered: "If I had a sheet of black paper . . ." "Black...
...Here is one, "The First Snow": "The first cold weather began...
...Sit down...
...You will understand this well if you look at children's drawings...
...He took a green pencil and drew an even row of little green fir trees...
...said the teacher...
...Why aren't you drawing...
...But "exposition" and "climax"—that's more terrible, much more terrible...
...I love her, that's all...
...Ol'ga Vasil'evna knows by their eyes what kind of a teacher children have...
...But there are . . . oh, what children there are...
...And the snow is white...
...Everyone was happy and joyful...
...Kolya Tikhomirov stood up...
...Pressing his cheeks with the palms of his hands, he pensively gazed before him...
...if the eyes wouldn't become empty, if they didn't lose this freshness, if they didn't get accustomed to spring, winter, fall, if they always saw as if for the first time...
...In the paper Literature and Life, not long ago, an article by V. Kochetov was printed under the title, "The Face of the Writer...
...Her faded blue eyes gazed without the tired sadness usual in old people...
...And my mother was lying there sick, and they didn't even look...
...And people said, 'Look, winter has come.' " Short, expressive...
...I think that it is also good to find this out by children's compositions...
...Draw a forest in winter...
...A standard commands one to go by the beaten path, and declares everything that is unusual to be incorrect and harmful...
...But why be sorry about the transportation...
...Volodya Z. wrote: "I came home and started to think...
...They teach untruths...
...Well, aren't you a defender...
...But what if I wasn't there...
...What's not to understand...
...My kin were every one of them front-line soldiers...
...Our neighbor scolds her son and calls him all kinds of things...
...It's true...
...Next to these words was written in Borya's hand, "My mama doesn't have any principles, but I love her just the same...
...Then he took a white pencil and tried to draw snow...
...But how did I lie...
...called the teacher...
...They're neatly dressed, with flowers in their hands...
...Where has the color of these words disappeared to, their incandescence, their penetration...
...Uncharacteristic...
...It fell like rain, in a slant...
...Who has established what the artist, whether writer or painter, really ought to see and what he ought not to see...
...Only there wasn't any kind of honor in it...
...But they don't sit down...
...But Mama says to her, 'Now why are you at him...
...It's true that one held back at the door, the littlest of all...
...They'll put it under a press and melt it down into something else...
...Because the appearance of inexpressive empty words is deceptive...
...She looked at my mother and said, 'Get well soon, now.' I'm not against solemn words...
...The white is cautious...
...one boy joyfully exclaimed...
...By all means, let them be solemn...
...There are better compositions, and there are worse...
...But you weren't at the demonstration...
...Tikhomirov, Kolya...
...she heard and evaluated, and was happy together with the boy...
...Not typical...
...My neighbor on the right was Aleksandra Yakovlevna Brushtein...
...it is more terrible...
...I do have a suit to go out in...
...If he does not know how to see anything interesting from the window of a bus, he is also not a writer...
...Painfully beautiful...
...It was me who brought you luck," said the old man who had just arrived...
...I don't know why I love Mama...
...She listened, putting her hearing aid to her ear, and her face expressed suffering...
...He nodded his approval and was very much satisfied with the girl's performance...
...They write about what . . . they have seen from the window of a trolleybus on the Moscow sidewalks, about how downy the snow is on Nikitsky Boulevard...
...You are too a defender...
...And this composition is convincing...
...The little girl had stayed home...
...They cost nothing, and this is why even the better of them lost their heat, their color and fragrance...
...the teacher is not expecting a standard response, and the children write what they feel like writing...
...Or not...
...Let him not establish how fixed the answer should be to the question which is put to children, because as soon as children grasp (and they think things out quickly) what is fixed and what is not fixed, then immediately a standard springs up...
...In the evening you do not go out without mittens, for the frost begins to nip at your fingers and fumble along your checks...
...And Ol'ga Vasil'evna told how she had once brought a group of third graders up to Korovin's picture, "At the Tea Table...
...He said it perfectly sincerely...
...An honor...
...I got a ticket at the window and stood last in line...
...not matured, not prompted from within...
...I only wrote a composition...
...The boy sat down and opened a box of colored pencils...
...A standard breaks one of thinking, reflecting, searching...
...Once a teacher told her students: "Now you will write a composition about the May Day demonstration...
...She knew that the apt word is not engendered in an empty place...
...Everyone except a little boy who was sitting right by the window...
...Why aren't you drawing...
...It is all right...
...They teach children not to express their thoughts, but to freeze them...
...He ought to hear and see everything, both the snow on Nikitsky Boulevard and the Moscow sidewalks...
...I dumped the blame on the cat...
...Borya B. wrote: "I love my Mama very much...
...Why was that...
...How's that...
...But if it bound me under the arms, and was too tight on the shoulders, and didn't meet over the stomach, and if the collar squeezed around my neck like a buttonhole, I wouldn't wear a suit like that...
...With chalk...
...Before me stood an old woman in a tidily belted blue dress and a clean, grey, quilted jacket...
...In the blue sky we heard the roar of airplanes . . ." Frida Vigdorova is the author of several novels on Soviet life...
...They leave their true thoughts for themselves and for each other, and teachers assign "compositions...
...What can you say...
...The first day, the ninth, I was at my son's in Serpukhov, the second, at my nephew's in Tarusa, the third, back here again, just the same, at my son-in-law the soldier's...
...it always reflects thought, feeling...
...Everlasting notions...
...The bus isn't strong enough for very many people, and he's just taking care of it...
...The white is dazzling...
...I'm lucky...
...Yes, they came to me too...
...Kolya began to draw...
...Oh, look how he's put them...
...And the artist's daughter—she was leading the excursion—was not astonished...
...The teacher's voice sounded impatient...
...Once I was present at the discussion of a play which had been put on by the Moscow Children's Theater...
...Here it is the third day after Victory Day, and I keep walking and walking...
...The teacher should also hear and see...
...For 10 minutes everyone drew...
...He was wearing a short jacket, which appeared to be much used, and dark trousers, torn at the knees...
...His face was tanned even from the winter sun, his hands brown, with short thickened fingers...
...He quickened his pace, and when he caught up with the boy, he asked: "Why did you need black paper...
...No," my neighbor answered stubbornly, "people don't speak like that from the heart...
...And suddenly the first snow fell...
...There you sit now, your pants patched and your jacket not so nice and new...
...Why do words of congratulation seem empty and rounded to a man, expressing nothing...
...For the moment all conversations stopped...
...We made it, we made it," said the old woman, arranging her skirt on her knees...
...But there is no standard in these compositions...
...If he hears that a little boy needs a sheet of black paper, let him not be in a hurry to declare him mentally backward...
...If only this would remain through life...
...But once they had sat down, they immediately began to talk again...
...You're fibbing," answered the teacher...
...Oh, I can't explain...
...Some schoolboys came to give their congratulations to my son...
...And the real writer, not the emptyeyed one—in everything, always, constantly, no matter where he is —in a forest, in the Virgin Lands, by a river, in a factory, in a bus, on Gorky Street or in Bratsk, will catch sight of life, its color, its shades, its people...
...Empty-eyed, in a way...
...If it's from the heart, the words aren't that kind . . ." But where do they come from, these words not from the heart...
...After the lessons, the journalist saw Kolya go out of the school...
...Yes, a sheet of black paper would have come in handy there...
...That's how they had to," said the old man who had been walking around for three holidays...
...The people were not standing in a chain, singly, as is supposed to be the case in a line, but in twos and threes, and were conversing among themselves...
...He drew long white stripes across the green firs...
...Magic eyes see everything as if for the first time: fresh, clearcut...
...The white is radiant...
...In the Tarusa school, I also read compositions about mamas...
...School children came to me too," said my neighbor, a man of 40...
...That's how it should be...
...Please don't talk back...
...You were in the war, they say, and we are very glad that you have returned alive and unharmed...
...It's very difficult to stir up such children...
...A white brilliance, a white whirl— and the little boy saw this, felt it, and exclaimed, "In a wheel...
...The sky was covered with clouds...
...The teacher be thanked...
...wondered the old woman...
...It was raining, and my galoshes were worn through...
...The empty fish-eyes want each word to be empty as a nut: there's a shell, but no kernel...
...And they'll melt you and me down into horseradish, understand...
Vol. 47 • January 1964 • No. 1
