Free The Big Green Tent by Ludmila Ulitskaya

in the seventh century BC and mentions Helen. Did anyone guess that this was the same Helen who, according to legend, was the cause of the Trojan War? The speaker in that poem compares the beloved to her. Even today we come across this ‘beautiful Helen,’ wife of King Menelaus, who was abducted by Paris. In this way she migrated from the epic to the lyric—an image of a beauty who captivates mens’ hearts.
    â€œIn the depths of antiquity, when human culture was just beginning to emerge, the word was much more intimately connected to music. Verses were recited aloud, to the accompaniment of a musical instrument called the lyre. This is the origin of the term ‘lyric.’ Two and a half thousand years later, a great deal has changed: it is rare for poetry to be accompanied by music, although new genres have appeared in which music and words are intrinsic to each other. Any examples?”
    The bell rang, but none of them stirred, as though transfixed by his words. Why didn’t they slam the lids of their desks shut, tear out of their seats, and hurl themselves toward the door with leaps and wild yelps, blocking up the exit with their jostling bodies—move it! Come on, hurry up! Into the hallway, down to the coatroom, out onto the street!
    Why did they listen to him? Why did he feel it was so urgent to stuff their heads with things they didn’t need to know? And he was moved by a sense of very subtle power—they were learning to think and feel. What an oasis amid the general dull and meaningless chaos!
    Three days later, Stalin’s death was announced, and Victor Yulievich felt a small sense of satisfaction—he had predicted it before anyone else. Moreover, he belonged to the absolute minority of people who did not intend to mourn the loss. When he was growing up, his parents had sent him to Georgia for the summers. The last time they had all been to Tbilisi as a family was shortly before his father’s death, in 1933.
    He knew from his father how much his Georgian relatives all despised and feared Dzhugashvili.
    The tyrant was no more. The titan was no more. A loathsome creature that had crawled out of the underworld, ancient and tenacious, with a hundred arms and a hundred heads. And a mustache.
    *   *   *
    Classes were canceled, and the kids were rounded up for an assembly. Victor Yulievich led his sixth-graders, lined up in pairs, to the auditorium on the fourth floor. Mikha hovered around him, then thrust a piece of paper covered with large lilac handwriting into his hand. It was a poem.
    A black frame at the top enclosed the words “Stalin’s Death.”
    Weep, people, living here and yon,
    Weep, doctors, typists, workers galore.
    Our Stalin is dead, and never will one
    Such as he return. Nay, nevermore.
    Well, hello there, Catullus , Victor thought, stifling his amusement. Then he said quietly, “Well, ‘doctors’ makes sense. But why ‘typists’?”
    â€œMy aunt Genya was a typist. All right, let it be ‘typers’ then,” Mikha said on the fly. “Maybe I could recite it?”
    Nothing good could come of this ready enthusiasm.
    â€œNo, Mikha, I wouldn’t advise it. In fact, I categorically advise against it.”
    Mikha wanted to take back the paper, but the teacher folded it deftly in half, pressing it to his chest.
    â€œMay I keep it as a memento?”
    â€œSure!” Mikha said, beaming.
    The auditorium was full. Beethoven was playing on the radio. Damp-eyed teachers arranged themselves around a plaster bust. The scarlet velvet of the school banner draped its folds onto the floor. Victor Yulievich stood at the back with a grim look on his face. Borya Rakhmanov, an eighth-grader, was pinned up against a windowsill by the crowd of students. The windowsill was digging painfully into his right side, but there was no room to wriggle free from the torment. This was a light dress rehearsal for what