French Lessons (Rasputin)
Short summary
Soviet Union, 1948. The Narrator, an 11-year-old fifth-grader, moved from his village to study in a distant town where he lived far from family and endured constant hunger. Despite difficulties, he studied diligently and excelled except in French due to his village accent.
Hunger led him to secretly gamble with local boys, winning small sums to buy food. His French teacher, Lidia Mikhailovna, noticed his condition, felt concerned, and tried to help by secretly sending him food, which he proudly rejected. She began tutoring him privately at her home, gradually earning his trust.
To help him financially without hurting his pride, Lidia Mikhailovna began secretly losing money to him through a playful gambling game. However, the school director unexpectedly discovered them in the act, accusing her strictly:
"You're playing for money with this...? Playing with a student?! Did I understand you correctly?" "Correctly." "Well, I... I'm at a loss to name your action. It's a crime. Corruption. Perversion. And more, more..."
Lidia Mikhailovna soon left town, leaving the Narrator deeply affected. Months later, he received a parcel containing macaroni and three apples, a thoughtful farewell from her native Kubań region.
Detailed summary
Division into chapters is editorial.
Introduction and the move to district school
In 1948, an eleven-year-old boy had to leave his village to continue his education in the district center fifty kilometers away. His village only had an elementary school, so to study further, he needed to move. A week before his departure, his mother arranged for him to stay with an acquaintance. At the end of August, Uncle Vanya, the driver of the collective farm's only truck, dropped him off at Podkamennaya Street where he would live, helped carry his bedding inside, and departed after an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
So, at eleven years old, my independent life began... I would hardly have dared go to school with even one lesson unprepared, so I maintained excellent grades in all subjects except French.
The boy was the first from his village to study in the district center. His mother, despite all hardships, had sent him to school, going against all the misfortunes they faced.
School life and struggle with hunger
The boy studied diligently at his new school. He maintained excellent grades in all subjects except French, which he struggled with due to pronunciation difficulties. Though he easily memorized words and phrases, his Angara origins were evident in his speech, making it impossible for him to properly pronounce French sounds.
I struggled with French because of pronunciation. I easily memorized words and phrases, translated quickly, handled spelling difficulties perfectly, but my pronunciation completely betrayed my Angara origins...
His French teacher, Lidia Mikhailovna, would wince helplessly and close her eyes when listening to him. She repeatedly demonstrated proper pronunciation of nasal sounds and vowel combinations, but his tongue would stiffen and refuse to move.
Beyond his academic struggles, the boy faced constant hunger. While Uncle Vanya delivered food from home about once a week in autumn, it was never enough. He noticed that half of his bread mysteriously disappeared, likely taken by his landlady Aunt Nadya or her children, though he never confronted them about it. He understood that his mother was sacrificing her own food and that of his siblings to send him provisions.
Hunger hadn't yet released its grip that year, and there were three of us with mother, I was the oldest. In spring, when things got especially tough, I swallowed and made my little sister swallow the eyes of sprouted potatoes and grains of oats and rye...
Discovery of the coin game
One September day, Fedka, Aunt Nadya's youngest son, asked the boy if he wanted to play a game called "chika" for money. Though the boy had no money, he agreed to go watch. Fedka led him behind some gardens to a small clearing where several boys were gathered.
The group was dominated by Vadik, a tall, strong seventh-grader with long ginger bangs. He questioned why Fedka had brought the newcomer but allowed him to stay as long as he remained quiet about their gathering place.
The boy quickly understood the game: each player contributed ten kopecks to a pot placed within a marked area. Players took turns throwing a round stone disk, trying to get it as close as possible to a line without crossing it. The player whose disk landed closest got to strike the coins first, attempting to flip them from tails to heads. Any flipped coins became that player's property. If a player's disk directly covered coins during the initial throw and any coin showed heads, they won the entire pot.
Vadik dominated the game through both skill and cheating, always going last so he could see where to throw his disk. The boy observed carefully, believing he could play well if he had money. In his village, he had played similar games requiring accuracy and had developed a good aim.
Confrontation with Vadik and its consequences
When the boy's mother sent him five rubles for milk, he decided to use the money for the coin game instead. He lost ninety kopecks the first time and sixty the second, but he felt he was getting better. He practiced in the evenings using Vadik's hidden disk, and eventually began winning consistently.
The boy developed a strategy of aiming to cover the coins directly with his throw rather than competing for the first strike. This risky approach paid off, allowing him to win enough money each day to buy milk. He would leave after winning his ruble, purchase milk at the market, and return to his studies.
Vadik soon grew irritated with the boy's success and began forcing him to play last. Despite this disadvantage, the boy continued to win. One day, after the boy made a successful throw, Vadik deliberately stepped on one of the coins that had landed heads-up and claimed it was tails. When the boy protested, Vadik's friend Ptakha kneed him from behind, and both boys attacked him.
There wasn't and couldn't have been a more miserable person in the whole wide world that day... In the morning I fearfully looked at myself in the mirror: my nose was swollen and puffy, a bruise under my left eye, and below it, on my cheek, curved a thick bloody scrape.
Lidia Mikhailovna discovers the gambling
The next morning, the boy tried to hide his injuries at school, but Lidia Mikhailovna noticed immediately. When she asked what happened, he claimed he had fallen. However, his classmate Tishkin blurted out that Vadik had beaten him while they were playing for money.
The boy was terrified, knowing that gambling could get him expelled from school. To his surprise, Lidia Mikhailovna calmly redirected the conversation, asking Tishkin to come to the blackboard to answer a question. She simply told the boy to stay after class.
After school, Lidia Mikhailovna questioned him about the gambling. He admitted to playing and winning money, which he used to buy milk. She was concerned about his welfare but did not report him to the principal. Instead, she gently advised him to find another way to manage without gambling.
Private French lessons and the failed food package
Lidia Mikhailovna decided to give the boy extra French lessons. At first, they met after school, but soon she invited him to her apartment in the teachers' housing near the school. The boy was extremely uncomfortable in her neat, orderly home, feeling out of place in his shabby clothes and rough manners.
Lidia Mikhailovna suddenly decided that our time at school before the second shift was too limited, and told me to come to her apartment in the evenings. She lived next to the school, in the teachers' housing. I went there as if to torture.
During these sessions, they spent less time on French than at school. Lidia Mikhailovna would often chat with him while doing household tasks, telling him about herself and playing French language records. The boy was acutely aware of the difference between their lives, from her elegant apartment with books and a radio-phonograph to her refined manners.
When Lidia Mikhailovna invited him to stay for dinner, he always refused, too embarrassed to sit at her table. Eventually, she stopped asking. One day, he was told there was a package for him at school. He found a small wooden box with his name on it, containing macaroni, sugar, and hematogen (a nutritional supplement). He immediately realized it wasn't from his mother, as such items were unavailable in his village.
The boy confronted Lidia Mikhailovna with the package, insisting she had sent it. Though initially denying it, she eventually admitted her mistake, saying she hadn't realized such foods weren't available in his village. Despite her kind intentions and pleas that he accept the gift, the boy refused and ran out, unable to accept charity.
"I buy milk." "Milk?" She sat before me neat, all intelligent and beautiful, beautiful in her clothes and in her young womanhood, which I vaguely sensed, the scent of her perfume reaching me...
The teachers unexpected coin game
The French lessons continued, with Lidia Mikhailovna now focusing more seriously on improving the boy's pronunciation. Gradually, he began to develop a taste for the language, studying independently in his free time. His relationship with Lidia Mikhailovna also evolved; he became less intimidated by her and more willing to ask questions and engage in discussions.
Two weeks after the package incident, Lidia Mikhailovna asked if he still played for money. When he explained that it was impossible in winter, she inquired about the game. After he described it, she introduced him to a similar game called "pristenok" or "zameryashki," which she had played as a child. She demonstrated by tossing a coin against the wall, explaining that the goal was to get one's coin close enough to the opponent's to reach both with one hand.
The boy was shocked that his teacher wanted to play a game with him. When he pointed out that she was a teacher, she replied that teachers were people too, sometimes needing to forget their role.
"How can I play with you?" "What's wrong?" "You're a teacher!" "So what? Being a teacher doesn't make me a different kind of person. Sometimes it gets tiresome being only a teacher, teaching and teaching endlessly."
They began playing for fun, but Lidia Mikhailovna soon suggested they play for real stakes, saying that without money, the game lacked interest. Reluctantly, the boy agreed. They moved to the hallway for more space and played enthusiastically, with Lidia Mikhailovna behaving more like a girl than a teacher.
The boy soon noticed that Lidia Mikhailovna was deliberately losing, allowing him to win by not fully extending her fingers during measurements or subtly moving coins. When he confronted her about cheating in his favor, she denied it but became more careful. Through these games, he once again had money to buy milk, though now he felt it was honestly earned through his skill at the game.
Discovery by the director and Lidia Mikhailovnas departure
One day, while they were on their knees arguing about the score, the school principal Vasily Andreevich walked in without knocking. He was shocked to find a teacher playing a money game with a student.
Lidia Mikhailovna calmly admitted they were playing "pristenok" for money. The principal was outraged, calling her actions criminal, corrupting, and unprecedented in his twenty years of school administration. Three days later, Lidia Mikhailovna left the school.
Before leaving, she met the boy after school and walked him home. She explained that she was returning to her home in the Kuban region and assured him that he wouldn't be punished for the incident, as she took full responsibility. She encouraged him to continue studying and gently patted his head before leaving. He never saw her again.
In mid-winter, after the January holidays, a package arrived for me at school... neat, tight rows of macaroni tubes lay inside. And at the bottom, in thick cotton wrapping, I found three red apples. Before that, I had only seen apples in pictures...
Strange: why do we feel guilty before our teachers, just as we do before our parents? And not at all for what happened at school—no, but for what became of us afterward.