Ninety-One

It’s a cold — no, positively freezing — November day. The Kaluga secondary school creaks as usual with old desks, murmurs with sleepy children’s voices, and smells of cheap chalk and wet coats. Maria Genrikhovna walks down the corridor — her heels click with metronome-like precision. She loathes disorder, and the year ’90 is pure chaos: The wild ’90s. The economy is in shambles: only gangsters and “New Russians” have money. Salaries go unpaid for months, then arrive in bundles of cash — or sometimes as barter: three boxes of pasta for a month’s work. Vouchers were supposed to save people from poverty, but instead they got traded for a bottle of vodka. Crime is at its peak — it’s the backbone of society now. Protection rackets are everywhere; every second kiosk pays “for a roof.” Gang shootouts happen on every godforsaken street corner — bodies in raspberry-colored blazers litter the alleys. “Cargo-200” keeps rolling in from the Chechen wars, along with haunting stories. Television has become a drug: police dramas like Menty, Kukly, and the lottery show Russkoe Loto blare from every other box. And, of course, the ads for Invite — the new chewing gum that every kid adores. Culture hasn’t quite hit rock bottom yet: bands like Laskovyi Mai, Moralny Kodex, and Na-Na churn out pop songs that make grandmas cry. Kino, Agata Kristi, and DDT — that’s for those “in the know.” Cassette tapes circulate endlessly, full of static and muffled re-recordings. Daily life hangs by a thread — it’s more about survival than living. Love Is… gum is school currency. A Snickers bar? The ultimate luxury. Glass-bottled Buratino soda can be returned for a few kopecks — just enough to scrape by. The payphone demands 15 kopecks, if it works at all. Politics feels like a circus: Yeltsin dances one minute and vows the next to “lie down on the rails.” Zhirinovsky bellows in the Duma and hurls oranges. Gorbachev clings to power, hated by everyone — conservatives blame him for “destroying the country,” while democrats accuse him of “dragging his feet on reforms.” Portraits of Lenin still hang in the school, though some have already been taken down. The USSR is falling apart, yet some people are having the time of their lives. Some loot the nation, others barely survive, and a few cling to faith in a bright future like it’s the last car of a departing train. Maria Genrikhovna doesn’t fit into any of those categories. She couldn’t care less about the looting — her Armenian husband’s influential position as “director of some joint venture” shields them. Survive? Easy. Arayik reliably brings home stacks of bills, which she tucks away in the sideboard beneath a pile of Soviet books — as if ashamed of them. A bright future? To hell with it — they already live in a spacious three-room apartment while others cram into dormitories. But when he leans over her at night, reeking of expensive cognac and sharp cologne, Maria holds her breath until he turns away. And the apartment has grown unbearably quiet: their two children — the son at MGIMO, the daughter at Bauman — are home only for New Year’s, and even then just briefly. They already speak with Moscow intonations and look down their noses at Kaluga. Arayik boasts about them to friends like they’re luxury watches. Maria, out of habit, tidies their rooms — but more often she just stands in the doorway, staring at their belongings frozen in perfect order. Without them, the house feels uninhabited — like a museum of her past life. She moves through the corridor of her thoughts — slow, tangled, adult. There’s nothing worth looking at anyway: peeling paint on the walls, the mosaic mural long started crumbling, and kids happily helped pry off the loose pieces. She passes the main staircase — on the wall hangs a notice: “We Accept Scrap Paper.” Maria snorts. Nobody’s going to bother. Back in the day, 20 kilos got you an adventure book; now you’d get a scrap of paper not even worth a piece of gum. Everyone knows that even if someone brings in an old newspaper, the money for it will vanish somewhere between the school and the district education office. She walks past the auditorium. Loud laughter, clapping, and quick footsteps spill out into the hall. To Maria, it’s like a red rag to a bull: schools should run with perfect discipline, not turn into a daily circus act. She flings the door open so hard it slams against the wall. Inside, two kids race across the stage, competing for a paper airplane. Teenage boys playfully scuffle — one rams his shoulder right into the other’s nose, right in front of the vice-principal. The rest of the kids, wearing clown noses, stand before their director rehearsing The Seagull — except Nina Zarechnaya, who’s oddly delivering her monologue as if strumming an invisible guitar. Tatyana Viktorovna, the leader of the school’s only — and most active — creative club, stands on a chair in harem pants and an oversized sweater, shouting: “No, Vika! You’re not a seagull—you’re a rebel!” She claps her hands as if releasing an invisible flock of birds into the hall. Tatyana Viktorovna Sirina arrived at the school in the fall of ’88 — bright, cheerful, like a magnesium flash in the gray gloom of late-Soviet corridors. Maria Genrikhovna knew at once: this woman is a disaster. They couldn’t be more different. Maria is as precise as a ruler-drawn line; Tanya is a smudge of ink. She wore ripped jeans under the guise of “theatrical style,” laughed too loudly, and called tenth graders “colleagues.” But worst of all — she looked Maria straight in the eye, as if she didn’t notice how Maria’s lips tightened into a thin thread. For three years, the vice-principal had methodically — and even with pleasure — tormented her. In her first month, Maria filed a formal complaint about Tanya’s “immoral appearance” after she showed up to a faculty meeting wearing what looked like a blazer tossed over a Beatles T-shirt. Tanya deliberately provoked the older woman — sometimes “forgetting” to say hello, other times loudly calling her “Mary” in front of everyone, just to watch Maria flush with fury. Yet when Maria fell ill, Tanya quietly slipped a box of aspirin and a note into her desk drawer: “Don’t die on us — it’d be boring without you.” In 1989, Maria demanded her dismissal, claiming the drama club staged “ideologically dubious” performances. Tanya had adapted Woe from Wit as a satire of bureaucracy. By 1990, realizing the headmaster had no intention of shutting the club down, Maria resorted to complete indifference — answering Tanya’s schedule questions with monosyllables and turning away whenever they crossed paths in the cafeteria. She often delayed signing off on scripts, skeptically tossing the scribbled pages into the farthest corner of her office. Maria never drank tea in the staff room if Tanya was there — but once, she noticed the younger woman dropped exactly two sugar cubes into her mug. Just like Maria herself. The vice-principal sensed Tanya’s presence — even if she was at the other end of the corridor. Her back would tense as if shocked by electricity. They avoided touching at all costs, and if their hands accidentally brushed, they’d jerk away as though burned. During faculty meetings, the drama teacher doodled caricatures of Maria Genrikhovna in her notebook — only to later erase them so fiercely the paper tore through. But there was something unfair about it all. Sometimes, passing the auditorium, Maria would slow her step. Behind the door, chairs clattered, children shrieked, and Tanya’s voice rang out: “You’re free people, damn it!” — and the laughter that followed sounded as if someone had suddenly switched on the lights in the school. Maria would grimace. “Freedom” meant being thirty-five, living in a rented apartment, and treating a bunch of eccentric teenagers as your only children. Maria Genrikhovna, meanwhile, had a real family: a husband who didn’t drink, didn’t hit, didn’t vanish on business trips. And still, every evening, she scrubbed her hands with soap after he touched her shoulder. Once — last winter — Maria caught her alone. Tanya sat on the windowsill, smoking — in school! — a sacrilege! Snow drifted through the open window onto her shoulders, as if trying to smother the flame. Their eyes met. Tanya didn’t fidget, didn’t hide the cigarette — just lifted her chin. “Going to reprimand me, Maria Genrikhovna?” But Maria didn’t. She walked past. That night, however, in her bedroom smelling of lavender detergent and silent hatred for the wide double bed, she suddenly imagined herself approaching the window, snatching the cigarette from Tanya’s fingers — and saying… what? Now, standing frozen in the auditorium doorway, Maria’s voice is as icy as ever: “What is this performance?” Tanya turns, her eyes blazing like a fanatic’s at a rally. Instead of an apology, she smirks. “Oh, Maria Genrikhovna! Perfect timing — you’ll get the lead role!” The older woman scowls, glowering from under her brow, biting the inside of her cheek as if afraid she might snap. Her eye twitches; her knuckles whiten around the stack of journals in her arms. “Where’s the educational value? Where’s a proper classical production?” she hisses, glaring at the girl with open hostility. “Oh, come on — we’re studying life here! Look, Pasha’s playing Treplev, who hates routine — just like you probably did at his age,” Tanya teases. A heavy silence falls, too loud for an auditorium. Déjà vu grips Maria. Once, as a child, while breaking herself at the ballet barre, her teacher, Ekaterina Anatolyevna, had genuinely enjoyed mocking her pupils — comparing them to cartoon characters, fairy-tale figures. The method was called “Get it through your head before I scream it into you.” Little Masha had wanted to emulate that bright, elegant young woman — dreamed of learning her wit and sharpness, of becoming her friend. But Ekaterina Anatolyevna shut down every attempt at closeness, forbade “foolishness.” She was open — yet to draw near was to get burned. To Masha, she remained an unattainable dream. And Tanya… she’s the same. Even their builds seem uncannily alike. Yes — they’re practically physiognomically identical! That’s why Maria always noticed Tanya’s thin wrists, her quick yet fluid movements. That’s why she can’t stand her. She’s come from the past like karma for abandoning ballet — for choosing independence and higher education instead. Maria flinches, mutters some indistinct reproach, and storms out, slamming the door behind her. But Tanya’s laugh lingers in her mind — brazen, alive. That evening, Maria stands in the staff room, hands buried in the pockets of her cardigan, gripping sugar ration slips so tightly the paper cuts into her palms. In the corner, a television plays: Alla Pugacheva sings “A Million Scarlet Roses.” Maria’s gaze is fixed on the window. Outside, Tanya smokes with the teenagers, laughing loudly, head thrown back. Why does she laugh like that? As if she doesn’t care — about the crumbling school, these ragged kids, me… That’s real joy — not the forced smiles she wears at her husband’s banquets, where she must play “the happy wife of a successful Armenian.” Arayik called it “an investment in reputation.” But Tanya, it seemed, never played anyone’s role — not even her own. Maria remembers she forgot to check the attendance journal and steps away from the window. Tanya vanishes from her sight — but not from her thoughts. Suddenly, Maria realizes she hates that laughter. Because it’s alive. And she isn’t.