Only the day before, I had held the undisputed rank of star student, quite a distance ahead of the next boy. Even Mayer had never so much as suspected me. To-day I lay prostrate on the ground, and Danilov, who was known for his laziness and naughtiness, was reviling me in front of the entire class and the authorities of the school. What had happened? Had I come too rashly to the aid of an injured boy who was not my friend and for whom otherwise I had no feeling of sympathy? Or had I placed too much confidence in the united support of the class? I was in no mood for these generalizations, how ever, while I was returning to the Pokrovsky Alley Office Chair.

With a distorted face and beating heart, in a flood of words and tears, I related what happened. My guardians tried to console me as best they could, though they themselves were greatly perturbed. Fanny Solomonovna went to see the head master, the inspector Krizhanovsky, and Yurchenko, trying to explain, to persuade, and quoting her own experience as a teacher. All this was being done without my knowledge. I sat in my room, with my kit unopened on the table, and moped. Days passed. How would it end? The head master said: “A meeting of the teachers’ council will be called to consider the question in its entirety.” This sounded awe-inspiring.

The meeting took place. Moissey Filippovich went to hear the decision. I waited for his return with greater excitement than I did in later years for the sentence of the Czar’s court.

resounded with the familiar bang, familiar footsteps mounted the iron staircase, the dining-room door opened, and simultaneously from another room appeared Fanny Solomonovna. Gently I lifted my curtain. “Expelled,” said Moissey Filippovich in a voice that betrayed fatigue. “Expelled?” asked Fanny Solomonovna, catching her breath. “Expelled,” repeated Moissey Filippovich in a still lower tone. I said nothing, only glanced at Moissey Filippovich and Fanny Solomonovna, and withdrew behind my curtain. During the summer vacation, on a visit to Yanovka, Fanny Solomonovna described the scene: “When this word was uttered he turned all green, so that I became very alarmed about him.” I did not cry. I merely pined.

At the teachers’ council, three degrees of expulsion were debated: without the right of joining any school; without the right of re-entering the St. Paul realschule; and finally, with the right of re-entering the latter. The last and most lenient form was selected. I shuddered at the thought of the effect that breaking the news would have on my parents. My guardians did everything in their power to soften the blow. Fanny Solomonovna wrote a long letter to my elder sister, with instructions as to how the news should be broken. I stayed on in Odessa until the end of the school year, and went home for the vacation as usual. During the long evenings, when my father and mother were already asleep, I would relate to my sister and oldest brother how it all happened, impersonating the teachers and the boys laser facial.

The memory of their own school life was still fresh with my sister and brother. At the same time they regarded themselves as my superiors. Now they shook their heads, and then they burst out laughing over my story. From laughter my sister went on to tears and cried copiously, with her head resting on the table. It was decided then that I was to go on a visit somewhere for a week or two, and while I was away my sister would tell Father everything. She herself was rather frightened by her commission. After the academic failure of my oldest brother, my father’s ambition had centred in me. The first years seemed to bear out his hopes, and then suddenly all had gone down with a crash.