L. Kosmodemyanskaya

The Story of Zoya and Shura


“Excellent” for Chemistry

Zoya studied very well although she found some subjects difficult. Sometimes she would sit up till late at night over Mathematics and Physics, and would never let Shura help her.

Here is a familiar picture. It is evening. Shura has done his lessons long ago, but Zoya is still sitting at the table.

"What are you doing?"

"Algebra. The problem won't come out."

"Let me show you."

"No, I'll think it out myself."

Half an hour passes. And an hour.

"I'm going to bed!" says Shura angrily. "Here's the answer. Look, I've put it on the table."

Zoya does not even turn her head. Shura shrugs his shoulders and gets into bed. Zoya sits up for a long time. If sleep threatens to overcome her, she rinses her face in cold water and again sits down at the table. The answer to the problem lies beside her. She has only to put out her hand…But Zoya doesn't even look in that direction.

The next day she gets an "excellent" for Algebra, and this does not surprise anyone in her class. But Shura and I know full well what that "excellent" has cost her.

Shura, who was very capable and quick at grasping things, often prepared his lessons carelessly and came home with a "lair." And every fair mark of her brother's grieved Zoya far more than it grieved him.

"It's your work, don't you understand? You have no right to treat your work like that!"

Shura would only frown and sigh. Sometimes he would burst out, "Well, d'you think I'm not capable of understanding all this great wisdom?"

"If you are, prove it! It's not enough to just look through a book and drop it. Once you've begun something, read it to the end! Then you can speak of how capable you are. I hate people doing things just anyhow. It's disgusting!"


"Zoya, why are you so glum?"

"I got an 'excellent' for Chemistry," answers Zoya unwillingly.

My face wears such an expression of surprise that Shura cannot resist laughing loudly.

"Do you mean to say you are sorry you got an excellent mark?" I ask, unable to believe my ears.

"You see," says Shura while Zoya keeps stubbornly silent, "she thinks that she does not deserve the mark, that she doesn't know chemistry that well."

There is strong disapproval in Shura's voice.

Zoya rests her chin in her cupped hands, and looks from Shura to me with dark unhappy eyes.

"Shura's right," she says, "I did not get any joy out of that 'excellent.' I thought and thought, and at last I went to see Vera Alexandrovna and said, 'I don't know your subject excellently.' And she looks at me and answers, 'Once you talk like that it means you will soon. We shall consider that I have given you an "excellent" in advance.'

"And she probably thought you were putting it on!" Shura exclaims angrily.

"No, she didn't!" Zoya draws herself up, her cheeks burning.

"If Vera Alexandrovna is wise and just, and knows anything at all about her pupils, she won't think that of Zoya," I put in, seeing how Shura's words have stung and hurt Zoya.

That same evening, when Zoya had left the house on some errand, Shura again brought up the subject of the Chemistry mark.

"Mum, I didn't blame Zoya today for nothing," he began with unusual seriousness. He stood with his back to the window, the palms of his hands resting on the window ledge, his brows knitted. And between his eyebrows a slanting angry furrow appeared.

Somewhat surprised, I waited for what was to come.

"You see, Mum, Zoya sometimes acts in a way no one can understand. Take this mark now. Well, anyone else in our class would be glad to get an 'excellent,' and no one would even think of considering whether it was deserved or not. The Chemistry teacher gave it to you, and that's that. No, Zoya is asking too much of 'herself!

Or take what happened a day or two ago. Borya Fomenkov wrote a clever composition. He knows he makes a lot of mistakes. So he went and wrote at the end, quoting Pushkin:

"Like ruby lips that do not smile,
I do not like my native speech
Without grammatical mistakes."

"Everyone laughed but Zova blamed him. That's his work, she says, his job, and it's not something to joke about.

"What gets me," went on Shura hotly, "is that she does like jokes and does like a laugh, but no one could think that of her at school. A fellow's only got to start a rag…have a bit of fun that is," he corrected himself catching my look, "no harm in it, you know, and Zoya is down on him with a lecture straightaway. You can't imagine what a row there was in the class yesterday! There was a dictation, and one girl asks Zoya how to spell a difficult word. And just think, Zoya refused to answer her! When the bell rang the whole class divided up, half and half, and there was almost a fight: some shouted that Zoya's a bad comrade, and others that she acted on principle. . "

"And what did you shout?"

"Oh, me, I didn't shout anything. But, mind you, if I'd been in her place I'd never have refused a comrade."

"Listen, Shura," I said after a minute's silence. "When Zoya has trouble with her mathematics, and you have done yours long ago, does Zoya ask you to help her?"

"No, she doesn't."

"Remember how she sat up till four o'clock in the morning to work out that complicated algebra problem?" "Well?"

"Well, I think that someone who is so strict and exacting towards oneself, has a right to be exacting towards others. Most children, I know, hold prompting sacred. It was the law when I went to school. But it's a wicked old law. I can't respect those who live on prompting and crampapers. And I respect Zoya for having the courage of her opinions."

"Well, some of the kids said that too. They said that Zoya is straight and says what she thinks. Petya said that if there was something he didn't understand, Zoya would never refuse to explain, but during a test prompting is dishonest. But all the same.

"But all the same?"

"All the same, it's not comradely."

"If Zoya refused to help and explain, that, Shura, would be uncomradely. But to refuse to prompt someone, now that, I think, is a comradely action. A straight and honest one."

I saw that Shura was not convinced. He stood at the window for a long time, just turning over the pages of his book, and I realized that his argument with himself was still going on.


Nevertheless, Shura's story struck an alarming note. Zoya was a lively, merry girl. She loved the theatre, and if she went to a play without us, she would always describe what she had seen and heard so expressively and with such warmth that Shura and I would feel we had seen the play ourselves. Zoya's sense of humour rarely deserted her. Through her usual gravity there would burst gleams of the irrepressible humour which she had inherited from her father, and then we would laugh the whole evening, recalling various amusing incidents…Sometimes Zoya will be talking in her usual voice, and suddenly, almost imperceptibly and without the hint of a smile, she changes her tone, the expression of her face… Recognizing the person she is imitating, Shura and I laugh till the tears run down our cheeks.

I can see Zoya bending her back slightly, pursing her lips and saying sedately, between long pauses, "Don't take me amiss, my dears, but I can tell you this.

You are young, you won't believe it, but if a cat runs across the road, trouble is sure to follow. . .

And before us, large as life, appears the image of an old woman, our neighbour in the old flat. "Akulina Borisovna!" cries Shura.

Now Zoya frowns and says severely, in a jerky voice, What's all this disorder? Stop it at once! Or else I shall be obliged to take measures!"

We laugh as we recognize the school watchman in Aspen Woods.

Zoya loved visitors and felt completely at ease with grownups. When Uncle Sergei, or my sister Olga, or one of my comrades at work paid us a visit, Zoya did not know where best to put them or what good things she could treat them to. She bustled round excitedly, treated them to her own cooking, and was hurt when the visitors had no time to stay.

But at school, with children of her own age, Zoya often seemed reserved and unsociable. And that worried me.

"Why don't you have any friends?" I asked her once.

"Aren't you my friend?" Zoya retorted. "And isn't Shura a friend? And am I not friendly with Ira?" She paused and then added with a smile, "It's Shura who's Out half a classful of friends. I can't be like that."

 


Next: Alone with Oneself