Chapter Two

Fima almost ended up being late for his Gorky School on Shchemevsky Val. He didn't live that far away, of course, in an old one-story house on the corner of Obraztsova Street and Institutsky Lane; it took literally fifteen or twenty minutes to get there, but he had left a bit late, having been playing with the puppy and packing his schoolbag with textbooks that suddenly seemed unfamiliar and half-forgotten, as if he hadn't just been looking through them yesterday, but about forty-five years ago. Although, perhaps that was indeed the case? Finally, he got himself ready, put on his school uniform, went outside, and headed along the also half-forgotten route which he had to re-learn anew. He was practically running to school. Finally, a vaguely familiar, grey, plastered building appeared.

Not really sure how to behave, he assumed that he had most likely completely forgotten the entire school curriculum, all his classmates, and teachers. But on the other hand, he knew much more than the schoolchildren or even the teachers, and most importantly, he could do more. For example, he could give a public speech on any topic off the cuff, demonstrating or feigning deep knowledge of the subject.

Just in case, he decided not to stand out and to keep quiet at first, but he almost collided in the doorway among the other students with a pretty girl, in whom he instantly recognized Natasha Smorodina, his classmate. He immediately forgot about being cautious and, unexpectedly even to himself, greeted her with a grin from ear to ear:

"Hi, Natasha," – his plans for a quiet and unobtrusive immersion into the new-to-him subject of school, teachers, and friends crumbled to dust.

She was a rather tall girl with a long, light-brown braid down to her waist, and she reacted to his sincere smile somehow strangely, just grunted, didn't say anything in return, and glided past him further into the depths of their temple of science.

Efim, having matured, had dealt a lot with these kinds of long-legged blonde models; as a rule, he really liked them. It seemed rather strange to him, personally, that he had ended up settling on not very tall, albeit slender, mixed-race Sophie. Although, where was that Sophie now, and here was Natasha, walking along, swaying her hips.

For some reason, he wanted to understand what was wrong with her, or what was wrong with him, although it could be that forty-four years ago they had, for example, quarreled? Or maybe they weren't even friends, didn't talk? That had completely faded from memory, pushed out by the whirlwind of faces and events. He remembered Natasha herself more or less, or rather, he remembered her upon seeing her – he recognized her immediately – but couldn't recall any circumstances associated with her.

At first he thought he might need to get on her case about anti-Semitism, like, "What's this, Natasha, you don't respect me as a Jew? How bad is that, what kind of Komsomol member are you after this? In our country, everyone is equal, Jews and Chukchi!" But then he decided that probably wasn't a good idea, since according to his passport, he was Russian; his mother had been registered as Jewish since his childhood, and his father turned out to be German, not of Aryan appearance, mind you.

So he decided to approach from the angle of studies:

"Natasha, how did you prepare for the test?" he asked in a concerned tone.

"Oh, Hoffman, don't remind me," the young maiden waved her hand at him and wrinkled her pretty face without a gram of makeup.

"Sorry, Natashenka," Fima rattled off, finally remembering that at school they often called each other by their last names. "I came in myself, you know, and only just remembered that we're supposed to have a Russian language test, curse it."

Natasha, intrigued by his expressiveness, or his affectionate address to her – not just Natasha, but Natashenka – finally deigned to look down at him. In the lower grades, she had started off quite small and, gradually growing, had moved further and further to the right in the line for PE and assembly every year, and finally towered as the very first. What could you do, children grow unevenly; one girl in their class was the largest in first grade, but by seventh, she was practically a dwarf.

"You come to school, and it immediately becomes clear that Russian is too difficult even for Pushkin, the sun of Russian poetry," Fima continued, almost on autopilot, charming the young beauty. "Alexander Sergeich himself admitted that. And we're still children, so what are you and I supposed to do... Natasha?"

He almost addressed her affectionately again, adding "my dear," or "sunshine," but stopped himself just in time, just looking at her with his big black eyes surrounded by equally black, thick, curved eyelashes and naively blinking them a couple of times.

"Well, we're not really children anymore, actually," Natasha replied, looking at him somewhat uncertainly, and adjusted a strand of thick, soft hair that had slipped onto her rosy cheek. Then she sniffed with her pretty nose and looked around:

"Don't you smell something?" she asked him.

"Just your perfume?" Fima admitted.

"They're actually my mom's," Natasha corrected, "but don't tell anyone, in case the homeroom teacher finds out... It smells like smoke."

Fima did indeed smell something burning. He looked around and spotted a light haze at the end of the school corridor.

However, they obediently went up to the second floor to their classroom. Natasha went in and sat down at a desk, but Fima, as luck would have it, forgot where he usually sat and started looking around, pretending everything was fine and he just needed to inspect everything for some reason.

"Fimka!" some boy called out to him.

Visual memory was very important, after all. In this kid, Efim immediately recognized Antosha Pavlenko, his best buddy and, like him, an avid coin collector. Anton collected stamps, too.

Walking over to him, he placed his bag on a chair somewhat uncertainly, and it dawned on him a little belatedly – he remembered this day with the canceled Russian test. They had been sent home then because something caught fire in the workshop, or rather started smoking; there was no real fire, but just in case, the students were sent home.

Back then, living through this day for the first time, which had now become a kind of déjà vu, he had come to school feeling doomed, and suddenly – bam – he saw this same smoke in the corridor. And after a while, they announced there would be no classes. How could he have possibly forgotten that!

"Bet there won't be any classes," he suggested to Antoshka.

"What makes you say that?" he didn't understand.

"I bet your Australian dollar," Fima offered, whose first coin collection, which he had started gathering, was themed around colonies and occupations, because when someone occupied someone else, colonial coins were usually issued in those territories. So numismatists could collect them, buy them, trade them.

"And what will you put up?" Anton asked.

"A two-lira coin," Fima offered. He knew Antoshka would like to have that coin; he had admitted it to him. He just really liked it.

His friend thought about it; the stakes seemed interesting to him – trading a cheap, fairly common aluminum coin for a rarer and more valuable silver one.

"Deal," he extended his hand to shake on it. "Hey, who'll referee for us?"

One of the classmates, a shaggy-haired guy with a checked shirt peeking out from under his grey school jacket, quickly hopped over and happily acted as referee, asking:

"What did you bet on?"

"Fimka said there won't be any lessons," Anton explained.

"What makes you think that?" the boy wondered.

Efim just spread his hands, shrugged, while another girl sitting in front of him turned to look at him. This one, unlike Natasha, was dark-haired with a short haircut, and her name was Marina, he thought.

His own gaze drifted towards the window, where, on the other side of Shchemevsky Val, lay the Miusskoye Cemetery; behind the trees, the cemetery church was visible. Efim started to remember: Had he known about it? His childhood memories held nothing about this detail.

He was about to sit down at his desk when their homeroom teacher entered the classroom and said in a concerned voice:

"Attention, there will be no lessons today. Come on, calmly, in an orderly fashion, one by one, go out into the yard."

"What happened, Alevtina Alexandrovna?" asked the inquisitive Marina.

"I'll explain everything to you downstairs; most likely there will be no lessons today," she replied.

"Hurray!" burst out a second later, when the meaning of her words sank in for the students.

Fima looked at Anton, whose face displayed a whole range of emotions – on one hand, he was glad there would be no lessons, but on the other, he was sorry about losing the coin from his collection.

He held out his hand to his friend, palm up, and his friend reluctantly slapped it from above, as if confirming the deal.

"Wanna come over to my place today?" Anton asked.

"Let's go," Fima agreed without much enthusiasm. On one hand, the puppy was waiting for him at home and shouldn't be left alone; on the other, why did he make that bet then – he needed to collect his winnings.

The class trooped downstairs together into the schoolyard; there was no more smoke in the corridors, but if the homeroom teacher said to go down and head home, why not take advantage of a free day? They could go to the movies or just hang out, eat ice cream, and drink syrup water from the machine.

"Happiness, this is real happiness," Marina said, her eyes shining joyfully.

When they were outside the slightly smoky building, Alevtina Alexandrovna explained everything:

"Classes were canceled because something caught fire in the workshop. There's absolutely no danger; they just decided to cancel classes today just in case."

This day was unlike any other. They could let loose completely. The girls whispered and smiled.

When Natasha passed by him, Efim politely said goodbye:

"Bye, Natasha, see you tomorrow."

The girl just grunted in response again, as if he had suggested something indecent to her or done something indecent. Although, maybe thoughts of something indecent were swirling in her pretty head; at any rate, Fima certainly had them in his.

When Marina passed by him, he just smiled at her without saying anything. Although, at first, the girl didn't seem to notice it at all, just felt something vaguely. So, already leaving, she turned around to look at him, and Fima caught her gaze, smiling broadly at her, or rather stretching his lips into a smile, at which she merely favored him with an interested look.

Anton noticed these exchanged glances at the exact moment Fima thought maybe he shouldn't be doing all this. Yeah, sure, he'd regressed to childhood. But if he had, then he needed to stay the shy kid he supposedly was back in the times he'd somehow managed to return to? His friend looked at Fima questioningly, and he just waved his hand in response, like, it's nothing, don't pay any attention.

Anton lived diagonally across from the school, which was visible from the windows of his second-floor apartment. The boys crossed the street at the crosswalk and soon went up to the second-floor apartment, which had access onto the roof of a shop; you could walk around on it.

Fima had been here before, visiting his friend, since Anton turned out to be just as passionate a numismatist as he was. Now, remembering the past, his life, he knew that Anton was a future student at the KGB higher school and the very person who stole, or rather would steal, from him that very first two-lira coin that Fima had wagered today.

Back then, upon discovering the theft, Fima didn't start a confrontation but prepared a plan for revenge. A year later, he himself invited himself over to Anton's place to steal a different coin. Even back then, in childhood, he understood that you couldn't leave anyone, even the most honest numismatist or philatelist, alone with someone else's collection; they would definitely steal something, unable to resist their collecting passion.

Fima also remembered his friend's parents perfectly. He knew that his mother had named her son Anton because, firstly, she liked the writer Anton Chekhov, and secondly, she really liked the sound of a bell. So she named her son after the sound of bell ringing. When Fima heard from Margarita Stepanovna the story of how her son's name came about, he was simply stunned – how could you name your son "dong-dong"? He himself, Fima, was named after the wonderful Soviet actor Efim Kopelyan – that was a completely different matter.

This time, too, just like before, the boys took the opportunity to go out onto the shop roof. Fima, standing there on the tarred roof, looked at the city, at the cars rushing back and forth. The wind ruffled his hair, and plans were already swirling in his head. He wasn't going to steal the coin from Anton, because now, in this reality, the other had given him his lost coin as agreed.

Anton, despite their friendship, kept his collection like the apple of his eye. He showed Fima a new coin from his collection – an "ancient thaler," most likely a cheap copy. His eyes sparkled as he told its "history." Fima listened with half an ear; his mind was occupied with something else. Anton suddenly fell silent and looked at him suspiciously:

"Why are you so pensive?" he asked, squinting.

Fima feigned surprise.

"No, no, I'm just looking, yes, it's very beautiful," he replied, trying to look as sincere as possible. "It's just that, probably, it's a fake."

"So what!" Anton muttered displeasedly.

Fima couldn't help but think about his and Anton's future. Or not about the future, but about some vague visions that had literally overwhelmed and turned him upside down? His childhood brain refused to comprehend such things. He was just an ordinary schoolboy interested in numismatics, just like Antosha. He watched him intently, trying to detect in his behavior anything that would betray his future self.

"Where do you want to go after school, Tokha?" he asked.

He hesitated a bit, then admitted:

"I'm not making plans yet. Actually, since almost first grade, I've wanted to be a pilot."

"Is he lying?" flashed through Fima's mind. "Or maybe he's not lying?"

He recalled that Anton was a very secretive kid and never shared his real thoughts with anyone.

"Why were you hitting on Marina?" his friend deflected.

"I was just joking," Fima explained. "I felt like fooling around a bit, then I felt ashamed myself."

Actually, Fima could still feel the subtle moments of their exchanged glances with Marina; he couldn't get her out of his head. He understood that his smile might have been a bit forced; most likely the girl would realize he was just fooling around and wouldn't pay any attention to what happened.

"What am I doing wrong?" he asked himself, and imagined Marina, huddled with the other girls, animatedly discussing his behavior. On the shop roof, Fima just couldn't shake all these thoughts. He understood all too well this supposedly haughty snorting of girls who might actually just be shy. How terribly shy he himself had been until an adult guy, killed in Switzerland, got into his head.

My God, how was Sophie doing without him? And had old Simka really died?

Efim Yakovlevich, or as he was now called, simply Fima, looked curiously at his hand clutching the coin. The thin fingers of a thirteen-year-old boy seemed clumsy compared to his familiar, adult, hairy fingers. The transformation into a teenager was, to put it mildly, an unusual experience. His thoughts, measured and judicious, still belonged to a fifty-three-year-old economist, but his body categorically refused to implement them.

"Well, I should probably get going, Toshka?" Fima suggested. "There's a saying: 'Fear not the guest who sits, but...'"

"'...the guest who stands,'" Anton continued for him. "You sound just like my grandmother. What's the hurry?"

"Well, there's something I need to do," he explained vaguely, meaning Simka, whom he had left home alone.

Of course, old Simon was a truly anthropomorphic dog. Efim fully agreed with the assertion that dogs can't talk because they... stopped doing so. You don't even need to talk with them; they understand everything perfectly anyway.

They climbed back into Antoshka's apartment through the window, and Fima quietly placed his won coin on the windowsill. He didn't want to take it from a kid at all.

As he walked home, instead of business optimization plans, his mind swirled with thoughts about the algebra test at school tomorrow. His old friend – a corgi named Simka – was now a puppy.

When Fima soon returned home, he obediently met him at the door – a tiny, fluffy ball who wouldn't stop wagging his tail. The puppy, it seemed, recognized him, nuzzled his nose into his hand and purred. It was... touching. Unexpectedly touching for a man in his fifties, accustomed to strict logic and Excel spreadsheets.

Fima, or rather, Efim-in-a-teenager's-body, gently scratched him behind the ear. But Simka wasn't satisfied with that; he barked and called him somewhere. Fima followed him, and they reached the bathroom door. Here the little puppy barked again, as if inviting him into the bathroom, and when Fima went in with him, he stood on his hind legs next to the cast-iron bathtub.

"Simka, you're so clever," Fima said, and taking the puppy by his tummy, lifted him and placed him in the bathtub. Once there, he did his pee-pee.

He thought that his parents would certainly notice changes in him. Not in terms of the transformation, but in his behavior. Teenage-Fima was different, more emotional, prone to unexpected bursts of activity followed by long periods of pensiveness. They might get worried.

And then there was Marina. His classmate. A girl with bright eyes and a lively personality, with whom Fima-the-teenager, despite his forty-something years of experience, seemed to have fallen a little bit in love. Although, maybe he liked Natasha too? It was unclear which one more. However, these feelings were like brotherly or even parental ones. Or maybe it was just curiosity? Adult Efim wasn't at all sure his feelings were anything more than just a teenage crush, but how to explain that to the girls?

Because despite his youthful age, he had already experienced love, loss, disappointment. And they, at best, would just laugh at his awkward jokes, maybe blush prettily. The hardest part was finding a balance. How to preserve his adult essence without losing the joy and carefreeness of teenage life?

Although, hadn't puppy Simka explained what he wanted without being able to speak, in the language of barks and a wagging tail?

"Maybe you can also tell me how to reconcile adult Efim with the recklessness of young Fima?" he asked, quietly lifting the puppy out of the tub. He just reached his little face towards him, intending to lick him.

The answer to all these questions hung in the air like a riddle, tinged with the flavor of first love, grass, and flowers on a warm day at the end of summer, which this year fell at the beginning of the school September. Fima smiled. Life, it turned out, even in a teenager's body, was not simple. How to unravel all these mysteries. Starting with the mystery of Marina's eyes. Or Natasha's?

Thinking like this, Fima headed to his room, collapsed onto the bed, and felt terribly tired. His eyes closed by themselves, and he decided to nap for just a few minutes, although it was still only the beginning of a long day, but so much had hit him that rest didn't seem superfluous at all, and with his eyes closed, he felt everything spinning in his head and he was flying off somewhere.