Fazil Iskander Forbidden Fruit and Other Stories Translated by Robert Daglish Progress Publishers Moscow Lyrical and humorous, deeply national but concerned with the human condition at large, often about children but mainly for adults, Fazil Iskander's writing abounds, like his native Abkhazia, in colour and contrasts. It is merriment and toil that make the earth beautiful, Iskander writes in one of his stories. These qualities are also typical of his characters, most of them drawn from his fellow countrymen, ever a mixture of gallantry and guile, humour and hard work. R.Daglish. Fazil Iskander Forbidden Fruit and Other Stories Something About Myself Let's just talk. Let's talk about things we don't have to talk about, pleasant things. Let's talk about some of the amusing sides of human nature, as embodied in people we know. There is nothing more enjoyable than discussing certain odd habits of our acquaintances. Because, you see, talking about them makes us aware of our own healthy normality. It implies that we, too, could indulge in such idiosyncrasies if we liked, but we don't like because we have no use for them. Or have we? One of the rather amusing features of human nature is that each of us tries to live up to an image imposed upon him by other people. Now here is an example from my own experience. When I was at school the whole class was one day given the task of turning a patch of seaside wasteland into a place of cultured rest and recreation. Strange though it may seem, we actually succeeded. We planted out the patch with eucalyptus seedlings, using the cluster method, which was an advanced method for those times. Admittedly, when there were not many seedlings and too much wasteland left, we began to put only one seedling in each hole, thus giving the new, progressive method and the old method the chance to show their worth in free competition. In a few years a beautiful grove of eucalyptus trees grew up on that wasteland and it was quite impossible to tell where the clusters and where the single seedlings had been. Then it was said that the single seedlings, being in direct proximity to the clusters and envying them with a thoroughly good sort of envy, had made an effort and caught up. Be that as it may, when I come back to my hometown nowadays, I sometimes take it easy in the shade of those now enormous trees and feel like a sentimental patriarch. Eucalyptus grows very fast, so anyone who wants to feel like a sentimental patriarch can plant a eucalyptus tree and live to see its crown towering high above him, its leaves tinkling in the breeze like the toys on a New Year tree. But that's not the point. The point is that on that far-off day when we were reclaiming the wasteland one of the boys drew attention to the way I held the hand barrow we were using for carrying soil. The P. T. instructor in charge of us also noticed the way I held the stretcher. Everyone noticed the way I held the stretcher. Some pretext for amusement had to be found and found it was. It turned out that I was holding the stretcher like an Inveterate Idler. This was the first crystal to form and it started a vigourous process of crystallisation which I did all I could to assist, so as to become finally crystallised in the preordained direction. Now everything contributed to the building of my image. If I sat through a mathematics test not troubling anyone and calmly waiting for my neighbour to solve the problem everyone attributed this not to my stupidity but to sheer idleness. Naturally I made no attempt to disillusion them. When for Russian composition I would write something straight out of my head without looking anything up in textbooks and cribs, this was taken as even more convincing proof of my incorrigible idleness. In order to preserve my image I deliberately neglected my duties as monitor. Everyone soon became so used to this that when any other member of the form forgot to perform his monitorial duties, the teacher, with the whole form voicing its approval in the background, would make me wipe the blackboard or carry the physics apparatus into the room. Further development of my image compelled me to give up homework. But to maintain the suspense of the situation I had to show reasonable results in my schoolwork. So every day, as soon as instruction in the humanitarian subjects began, I would lean forward on my desk and pretend to be dozing. If the teacher protested, I would say I was ill but did not want to miss the lesson, so as not to get left behind. In this reclining attitude I would listen attentively to what the teacher was saying without being diverted by any of the usual pranks, and try to remember everything he told us. After a lesson on any new material, if there was still some time left, I would volunteer to answer questions in advance for the next lesson. The teachers liked this because it flattered their pedagogical vanity. It meant that they could explain their subject so well and so clearly that the pupils were able to take it all in without even referring to the textbooks. The teacher would put down a good mark for me in the register, the bell would ring and everyone would be satisfied. And nobody but I ever realised that the information I had just memorised was about to romp out of my head just as the bar romps out of the hands of the weight lifter the moment he hears the umpire's approving "Up!" To be perfectly accurate, I had better add that sometimes, when reclining on my desk pretending to doze, I would actually fall into a doze, though I could still hear the voice of the teacher. Much later on I discovered that some people use the same, or almost the same, method for learning languages. I believe it would not appear too immodest if I were to say that I am the inventor of this method. I make no mention of the occasions when I actually fell asleep because they were rare. After a while rumours concerning this Inveterate Idler reached the ears of our headmaster and for some reason he decided that it was I who had taken the telescope that had disappeared six months ago from the geography room. I don't know why he drew this conclusion. Possibly he reasoned that the very idea of even a visual reduction of distance would appeal most of all to a victim of sloth. I cannot think of any other explanation. Luckily, the telescope was recovered soon afterwards, but from then on people kept an eye on me, as if I might get up to some trick at any moment. It soon turned out, however, that I had no such intentions, and that, on the contrary, I was a very obedient and conscientious slacker. What was more, slacker though I was, I seemed to be getting quite decent results. Then they decided to apply to me a method of concentrated education that was fashionable in those years. The essence of this method was that all the teachers in the school would suddenly concentrate on one backward pupil and, taking advantage of his confusion, turn him into a shining example of scholastic attainment. It was assumed that other backward pupils, envying him with a thoroughly Good Envy, would make an effort to rise to his level. Just like the singly planted eucalyptus seedlings. The effect of the method depended on the suddenness of the mass attack. Otherwise the pupil might succeed in slipping out of range or actually discredit the method itself. As a rule the experiment achieved its purpose. Before the hurly-burly caused by the mass attack could disperse, the reformed pupil would take his place with the best in the class, impudently wearing the smile of a despoiled virgin. When this happened, the teachers, envying one another with perhaps not quite such a Good Envy, would zealously follow his progress in their markbook, and, of course, each teacher would try to ensure that the victorious upward curve of scholastic attainment was not broken within the limits of his subject. Well, either they piled into me too enthusiastically, or else they forgot what my own fairly respectable level had been before they started but when they began to analyse the results of their experiment it turned out that they had trained me up to the level of a potential medal-winner. "You could pull off a silver," my class-mistress announced rather dazedly. The potential medal-winners were a small ambitious caste of untouchables. Even the teachers were somewhat afraid of them. It would be their duty to defend the honour of the school, and to damage the reputation of a potential medal-winner was equivalent to threatening the honour of the school. Every potential medal-winner had at some time by his own efforts achieved distinction in one of the basic subjects and had then been coached to the necessary degree of perfection in all the rest. So, with my school diploma sewn into my jacket pocket together with my money I got into a train and set off for Moscow. At that time the train journey from Abkhazia to Moscow took three days. I had plenty of time to think things over, and of all the possible variants for my future education I chose the philosophical faculty of the university.