The Russian Century: A Hundred Years of Russian Lives

that if one managed to shove a bed into it there would have been no room for anything else. So there was no bed, only a small desk and chair. Sometimes there was an easel and always a bookcase with the works of Aleksei K. Tolstoy, Lermontov, Pushkin, and Chekhov. These were my favorites. If you exited the room onto the landing you saw a medium-size mirror in a carved wooden frame. In the mirror there would be a reflection of a rounded, yet angular, face whose owner was quite unhappy with it, presuming that an attractive, handsome face was a guarantee of success in life just as a princely title was. But when you had neither one nor the other you were in for hard times. But, I would push out my chest, hold my head high and repeat to myself that I would be all right, I would be triumphant.

The Pushkin festivities swept through the academy. Throughout the city, in theaters and everywhere there were celebrations of the Pushkin centennial. Speeches were made and poems read at the Pushkin monument:

The poet has perished, the prisoner of honor Has fallen, calumniated by idle talk.

I could never hear these words of Lermontov, his “cry of the soul,” without exultation.

It was then that we decided to spend our Pushkin fund, about ten rubles, on a trip into the Caucasus Mountains which Pushkin had loved so well. And so we went to ancient Mtskheta where the parents of Gedevanov, our “enraged goose,” lived. We expected to come upon a “prince’s court” and “princely” hospitality, but when we saw a native house hardly different from the others, surrounded by several grazing sheep, with frightened faces of women in the semi-dark entrance, we realized our error. It was odd that Gedevanov himself was the initiator of this trip.

We quickly decided to celebrate the centennial in the lap of nature. After all Pushkin loved the grandeur of the Caucasus and he also loved its wine. He wrote about both in his “Journey to Erzerum.” We had brought a goatskin bota of wine with us. And so with a song, we celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the birth of Pushkin [June 6].

Graduation day was fast approaching. It was final exam time. We had already been to the studio of Mishchenko who traditionally photographed all the graduating classes. The postcard size photographs were pasted on illustration board that had been decorated with watercolor views of Tbilisi and our school and photographed once again. The original large illustration board with a group photograph of the whole class was traditionally hung in the common hall of the First Company, the place where the names of the honor cadets appeared in gold letters cut into marble tablets. These young men were the

46

Chapter Four

“luminaries” of whom our chaplain, Father Mantstvetov, loved to talk. Should there ever be a war and our graduates be made Cavaliers of the Order of St. George, their names would also be displayed on marble tablets. And so, as a friend and I joked, the possibility of myself being immortalized here was not yet lost.

But it was not a joking matter when a rumor flashed by that our group, the Pushkin graduates, would not have its class portrait hung in the hall because of our insolent behavior during the year. In truth, we did do some outrageous, scandalous things. Never through malevolence, but rather because of an excess of youthful energy and the urge to pull off the unprecedented and extraordinary. For instance, we took to “busting” the new and totally innocent class master. In the dining hall, each time that he would bring a spoon of soup to his mouth, the whole company would thunder “uugggh.”

Even worse, whenever some timid house master would do his rounds at bedtime or at night he would find the doors locked and barricaded. And when, with the help of the staff, he would break into our sleeping quarters, he would be met with unbelievable shouting and pillows flung in his direction. The director would come at night to chew us out. Grand Duke Constantine, the head of all military educational institutions, visited and spoke to us of the inad-missibility of such stunts. We ourselves understood that they were “inadmissible” and repugnant. But such judgments were risky. Maybe it seemed to some of us there was valor in such behavior. I can’t say. Personally I never would have begun such doings but when some of the big guys such as Begiev or Chelokaev would start, other daredevils would join in, and all hell would break loose. There was something infectious and elemental in this “restlessness among the people” that may have been generically related to what later occurred throughout Russia.