Director Medvedeva was a strict disciplinarian, a Party member of many years, but what she really cared about was teaching and the children. This case had ruined her term – and she knew it could ruin her life too.
At night, she couldn’t sleep. By day, she sat at her desk but she couldn’t work. The parents (had Comrade Satinov ever visited the school gates so often?) brought the children; the children attended lessons, which the teachers taught, but all were pretending. They weren’t really there. They were in the dungeons of Lubianka. If she was lucky, the children would be released quickly and the case would blow over, but she knew such crises were often exploited by busybodies with axes to grind, overweening Party-minded pedants like Rimm who could turn harmless scandals into tragedies. I must be strong, she resolved, I must be like steel.
Rimm hadn’t knocked; he had just barged in. Now she was scrutinizing his nose – it was like a duck’s beak – and his hair the colour of rusty wire.
‘I wish to call an extraordinary meeting of the School Party Committee,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘To examine if any mistakes have been made in your leadership of the school.’
Kapitolina sat back in her chair. I’m in charge here, she thought. Not him. Not the Hummer. ‘I veto that idea, Dr Rimm.’
‘You cannot do so, comrade director. I am its secretary.’
‘There are three members of the committee and I have already spoken to Comrade Noodelman, and he is against.’
Director Medvedeva could see that Rimm was prepared for this. ‘You may remember that the rules allow for me to convene an extraordinary meeting of the School Party Committee
He raised his eyebrows, and Director Medvedeva could see the gleam of victory in those watery red-rimmed eyes. ‘I shall see you there, shall I?’
The common room was full for Dr Rimm’s special meeting of the School’s Party Committee. The teachers were pale, tense, worried – and Director Medvedeva remembered the tragic meetings during the late thirties when two teachers had disappeared off the face of the earth and they had voted unanimously that ‘Enemies of the People should be shot like hyenas’.
Now only one teacher, Benya Golden, was relaxed enough to recline on one of the sofas with his legs crossed and a world-weary grin on his face.
She opened the meeting but Rimm immediately interrupted her. As secretary, it was his meeting and he moved fast to pass a series of resolutions – that the committee should examine whether the Children’s Case exposed any mistakes by the director of the school; that during this process, he, Dr Rimm, should take over the school…
Silence greeted these proposals.
‘Is this a coup d’état, Dr Rimm?’ said Benya Golden at last. ‘Do you wish to be the Napoleon of School 801?’ There was quiet laughter from somewhere, and then silence.
‘I’m surprised you joke! Your bourgeois and un-Party-minded teaching, particularly in your Pushkin lessons, has played a role in this tragic case, Teacher Golden.’
‘All right, Dr Rimm,’ Golden said, sighing and stretching. Director Medvedeva knew how hard Golden had taken the shootings and the arrests, and she sensed he had more experience of men like Rimm than she did. ‘Have your vote but I will only vote for you if you promise that your singing of “May Comrade Stalin Live Many, Many Long Years” will improve dramatically. In fact, are you singing it
A gasp of surprise and, from someone, an attempt to fight laughter greeted this, but Rimm’s officious demeanour, laced with hints of powerful connections, bewitched the frightened staff who voted for him unanimously.
Afterwards, Kapitolina Medvedeva, who felt herself growing smaller and more insignificant with each step, walked slowly back up the corridor to meet the parents at the Golden Gates. She could survive this. Such intrigues occurred all the time. But her worry about the arrested children compounded by this blow made her limbs heavy as lead. At the gates, she greeted the first parent, Dr Dorova. Demian was at her side but where was Senka? Director Medvedeva glanced at her face and the answering look of sleepless despair revealed the unthinkable. They had taken a ten-year-old! Whatever next?
She heard the ominous humming get closer, and Dr Rimm stood right in front of her, his womanly hips in his Party tunic blocking her way. ‘I’ll greet the parents and hold assembly this morning,’ he said. ‘This place is riddled with rotten elements and a fish rots from the head.’
She stepped backwards just as Dashka Dorova left and Comrade Satinov arrived.
