The Teacher Wife and the PE Teacher. Parts 1-2

The Teacher Wife and the PE Teacher. Parts 1-2

Every year, just before the first of September, I feel unwell. Perhaps it is depression; my mind keeps reminding me of a horror I once lived through. My name is Sergey, and I want to tell you the story of my failed, almost-marriage—after which I began to look at women, and at relationships, differently.

It was 2002. When I remember it, it feels like another world. I was a young man who had just finished teacher training, a mathematician by training. My fiancée, Irina, a teacher of Russian language, was already looking for work and wanted us to work together.

I will describe myself a little. A thin, lanky guy—the kind people call a stick, or a beanpole. They did not take me into the army because of flat feet and poor eyesight. I wore glasses with thick lenses; without them I could see almost nothing. The world dissolved into a murky blot the moment I took those glasses off, and perhaps that is why I failed for so long to notice what was obvious. My fiancée Irina was a striking brunette, a hundred and seventy centimeters tall, with brown eyes. She always wore short skirts, saying her legs were a work of art and that people ought to admire them.

Yes, even then I should have thought twice. But I was completely green, and when a beauty like that walked beside me, everyone envied me. I caught those looks—envious from the men, appraising from the women—and my back straightened of its own accord, my chin lifted higher. I felt like a winner, though in truth I was only the temporary holder of someone else’s treasure.

We loved each other very much. I had watched her for three years and never dared approach. Then one day I found the courage—or rather, I drank for courage—and laid everything out as it was: that I loved her, that I did not want to live without her. And I recited a poem I had written myself. The verse was clumsy, with limping rhymes and banal metaphors, but I put my whole soul into it, all the longing that had gathered in me for three years. Later Irina would say that among all her suitors—the ones who dreamed of becoming gangsters and listened to Krug—I had been like a revelation to her. She adored poetry, and when I read her my piece, her heart melted.

We started seeing each other, and a year later, with the dean’s approval, we were given a room in the dormitory. The room was tiny, with peeling walls and linoleum worn through to holes, but for us it was a palace. We pasted posters on the walls, laid down a little rug bought with our stipend, and we were happy.

Our neighbors from the next room—two young women already of age, finishing the same institute—always looked at us with a smile. Our stormy life seemed to them something incredible, adult, and forbidden. Irina was unstoppable when it came to sex. We fucked constantly, the moment we were left alone. Irina was very temperamental and passionate; it was never enough for her. She came quickly and demanded more.

I could still keep up then, but even then it seemed like a lot to me. My cock always ached, rubbed raw against her crotch; especially under the head there was irritation. I smeared cream on it, but the next time we had sex it flared up again. Irina paid no attention to my pain or to the fact that it was unpleasant for me. She would mount my cock after wetting it with saliva and start fucking me. In bed she was in charge; she began and she finished. I was an instrument for her pleasure, and at the time that did not trouble me—it even pleased me. I thought I was as passionate as she was, that we were a perfect match.

I am trying to convey to you how much she loved that business. And then I was glad of her appetite. I believed I was the one who awakened desire in her, and I grew more and more certain that she was my fate. So I proposed to her, down on one knee on the torn linoleum, against the backdrop of the dilapidated walls. In my hand was a ring I had bought with money I had saved for three months, denying myself the new boots I needed. The ring was thin, with a tiny stone, but for me it was the symbol of my love, of my readiness to give everything for her.

Irina looked at me, at the ring, at me again, and in her eyes I saw not only joy but something else, something I could not then recognize. Now I know it was disappointment. She had expected more. Even so, she did not refuse.

“Seryozha, this is so sweet. I accept—but let’s wait a little on the wedding. You can see how we live. I want a proper wedding, a restaurant, lots of guests. Let’s finish our studies, start working, save money for the wedding, and then get married. I don’t want to celebrate the way Tamarka did, in the village, with a crate of vodka.”

Tamara was her friend who had studied with her. Then her boyfriend came back from the army, took her back to the village; they scraped together money for a crate of vodka and celebrated there. Tamara stayed. We never heard of them again. Sometimes I thought about Tamara, about how her life had turned out in that village among chickens and kitchen gardens, with a husband who perhaps did not even love her, but simply did not want to be alone.

I agreed to her terms and began looking for ways to earn. A loader at the freight yard, a night watchman at a kindergarten—I tried every way I could to make money for the wedding. But every ruble we saved quickly found a use.

“Seryozh, you don’t mind if I take a little money? Verka is selling Turkish clothes. The quality is fire.” Irina dressed beautifully, and now fashionably as well. I could no longer remember the last time I had bought myself clothes. I did not even think about it. I worked and put aside every kopeck. My boots were falling apart completely; the sole was coming off, and I tied it on with string so it would not slap when I walked. Irina pretended not to notice. She was generally good at not noticing what she did not like.

Do not think my Ira was a bad person. No. I loved her truly. It is simply that at that young age you live one day at a time and do not think about the future. So my Ira tried to take pleasure from every day she lived. She lived like a butterfly, flitting from flower to flower, never thinking of winter. And I was the flower that was supposed to give her nectar and ask for nothing in return.

Graduation came, and we began looking for work. In those days it was harder to find a post; there was no shortage of teachers the way there is now. As with everything else in that time, it happened that one of Ira’s relatives worked in the regional ministry of education and helped us get placed in a very good school in the city. I as a mathematics teacher, Ira as a teacher of Russian language and literature.

I remember it as if it were now: the thirty-first of August. Ira and I prepared for the next day with enormous excitement. Ira ironed her blouse—that white one with the lace collar—and repeated the plan of the first lesson under her breath. I checked my notes.

The school met us coldly. The teachers were all older and seemed to hold a grudge against us for our youth. Any initiative on our part was met with laughter and remarks about how young we were. I heard them whispering behind my back: “Young and green—we’ll see how they sing in a month.” Irina heard the same things, but she knew how to pay no attention; I took everything to heart.

At the teachers’ meeting I saw that among the people of pre-retirement age there were also younger ones. Two sturdy men sat opposite Irina and me, and their eyes were directed under our table. There Irina was struggling to keep her legs together in her usual short skirt. I noticed how she tugged at the hem, but it still rode up, exposing her thighs.

Only later did I learn that these were the shop teacher and the physical-education teacher. The shop teacher was Valentin Pavlovich, a man of thirty-five, a very sturdy fellow of short stature. He had broad shoulders, large hands with work-worn palms, and a perpetual smile on his face. The PE teacher was Semyon Petrovich, very much like a typical gangster of that time: shaved head, a pumped-up body. You could see he spent a lot of time in the gym, and later I heard that he had once had some dealings with actual criminals. But he had returned from the capital in time, when the crackdowns on men like him began. He hid well: remembering his old education, he took a PE teacher’s post through connections, hiding from the police and from other gangsters.

Semyon was about the same age as Valentin. They had already been working there about two years, and I decided I could make friends with them. I needed someone to talk to who would not look at me as an outsider, someone who could tell me how things were arranged here.

“Hey, guys! I’m Sergey, the new math teacher. My fiancée and I have come to work at your school.”

I held out my hand in greeting, but the two of them were in no hurry to shake it. They exchanged a glance, and I saw in their eyes a mockery they did not even try to hide.

“Hey, Seryoga. Doesn’t look like much. Going to stand a round?”

In those days people drank vodka by the bucket, if you only gave them a reason. And judging by their faces, these two liked a drink as well. I had heard stories of how, after lessons, gatherings were arranged in the teachers’ rooms that lasted long past midnight. Then it seemed normal. Everyone lived that way.

“I was thinking tomorrow. Tomorrow’s a holiday. After lessons, as is proper.”

“Well, excellent.”

They shook my hand, and each handshake was firm—too firm. Valentin squeezed so hard my knuckles cracked, and Semyon looked me straight in the eye without blinking, his palm like a vise. I understood it was a test, and I seemed to have passed it, because both of them smiled and clapped me on the shoulder.

The school assigned us a room in the hostel, and once again we moved into a small, grim space. The room was even worse than the one we had had at university, with a cracked ceiling and a window that would not open. But we both understood this was only the beginning, the start of a new path, and soon everything would settle: we would find our groove and be able to save for a place of our own.

Irina, looking at those stripped walls, suddenly began to cry. I put my arms around her, pressed her to me, and whispered that everything would be all right, that this was temporary, that we would certainly get out of here. She nodded, her face buried in my chest, and I felt her tears soaking into my shirt.

I think everyone understands perfectly what day that is—the first of September. After all the assemblies and first lessons I walked along with a bag in which three bottles of vodka clinked. I had bought the cheapest I could afford, but I tried not to take the most poisonous stuff. Ira was already setting the table in the shop classroom. Valentin and Semyon had brought in several desks, and the other teachers who had chosen to stay sat telling how and by whom the parents had congratulated them.

There were six of us in all: Valentin, Semyon, Galina Ivanovna, the music teacher, and her friend Tanya the school nurse—and Irina and me. The rest of the teachers were elderly and had declined the invitation, saying it was for the young. I watched them disperse after the assembly, tired, with bouquets of flowers, and thought that someday I too would become like that, worn out by work and by life.

We began to drink and to eat. Valentin told us how lucky we were to have landed at this school, and Semyon never took his eyes off Ira—or rather, off her legs. This time Ira had put on a skirt a little longer, but still well above the knee, and she sat again with her legs pressed together. I saw how nervous she was, how her fingers kept worrying the edge of the tablecloth, but I put it down to excitement before a new staff.

After an hour Tanya and Galina Ivanovna began to get ready; their bus left in half an hour, and they still had an hour’s ride home. They lived next to each other in neighboring houses; that was how they had become friends, always meeting on the bus. Tanya told the story funnily: Galina Ivanovna had come to ask for an injection and had spent a long time trying to remember where she had seen Tanya. And Tanya likewise could not place a face that was painfully familiar, and in the evening, riding the bus, it dawned on both of them.

The four of us were left. I was not much of a drinker and quickly reached my stage. The alcohol hit me in the head, the world swam, and I caught myself smiling stupidly, not understanding half the jokes. Semyon and Valentin, already well along, began talking to my Ira on various dubious subjects. Their questions sounded like jokes—you know, the way men talk when they have had a drink. But with each question the topic grew ruder and ruder. Then came dirty jokes and stories about women of easy virtue. I sat and smiled, thinking this was just their sense of humor. Irina bantered back; she was a little drunk too, her cheeks flushed, her eyes shining.

“Semyon, show them your form. He’s just like Schwarzenegger.”

The name, mispronounced, sounded funny. Semyon began to refuse, but suddenly Irina started encouraging him as well, asking him to show them.

“Semyon even competed. Come on, show them.”

“Well, all right.”

And then happened what still stands before my eyes. He pulled off his sweater and the T-shirt underneath, showing us a truly excellently trained body. Muscles rolled under the skin like cables, and I felt myself even thinner and more absurd than usual. Irina and I clapped, and I noticed how Irina bit her lip, studying his torso.

“No, show them the full thing, the way you do at competitions.”

Valentin would not let up, and Semyon took off his trousers. His underwear was not like mine—not loose briefs, but small and tight. In them you could see the outline of a large cock, and one ball, finding no room, had slipped a little outward. Semyon paid no attention and began demonstrating various poses. He tensed his muscles, turned, and every gesture was filled with a kind of animal strength. I saw how Ira could not take her eyes off his cock and his ball. There really was something to look at.

“Oh, look, your ball’s about to fall out.”

Valentin roared with laughter, and we backed him up. I laughed louder than anyone, trying to hide my embarrassment and that unpleasant feeling that had settled in my chest.

We got home an hour later. Inside me there was a strange feeling. Semyon had gone on showing his muscles for a long time, letting Ira touch his abs. At first Ira was embarrassed, but then her look changed to interest. I was not jealous, but the fact that she had liked touching another man would not let me settle. At home, the moment I shut the door, she fell on me. She kissed me with such passion that I understood: the PE teacher’s striptease had excited her greatly. She was burning down there. She laid me on the bed again and began to caress my body. She ran her hands over my stomach, and I tried to tense it so as not to seem much weaker than Semyon. Her hands reached my cock, and she began to give me a blowjob. And the most surprising and pleasant thing was that she started kissing my balls and sucking them into her mouth. Anyone who has had his balls sucked knows what that is like. I nearly came at that moment. Before my eyes, for some reason, stood Semyon’s figure and his escaped ball. The thought that he had awakened desire in her, and that she had taken my balls in her mouth for the first time after seeing Semyon’s, would not leave me alone. Meanwhile Ira had already climbed on top of me, and I closed my eyes, trying to drive those thoughts away.

Irina and I liked working at the school. We managed to get along with the staff and with the parents. On the whole it seemed to us that everything was going very well. The staff accepted us, and soon we no longer stood out against the rest. Except for Irina. Her habit of wearing short skirts had gone nowhere. I heard many jokes on that subject from the men in the staff room. Valentin in particular never missed a chance to remark that a woman like that was wasted on a mathematician. I paid no attention, or pretended not to, understanding that this was only the usual locker-room talk of grown men who had nothing better to do.

What worried me was Semyon’s frequent contact with my fiancée. He found pretexts to be alone with her: questions about discipline, about the proper arrangement of the gym. And Irina did not object. I saw them chatting pleasantly in the cafeteria, then in her classroom. Anxiety grew inside me, but nothing bad was happening. And I calmed down again, sinking once more into the teaching routine.

All kinds of rumors circulated among the staff. One day I badly needed to go, and instead of running to the distant toilet on the far wing I decided to use the teachers’ lavatory by the workshops. Valentin had recently installed new latches there, and I knew I could do my business without damaging my reputation. But as soon as I had sat down and the first portion of shit had left me, two voices came in—Valentin and the school watchman, Petrovich. They had come to smoke.

“Hear what happened this morning with the Russian teacher and the PE guy?”

“No, what?”

“I went to the gym after first period to take the inventory list. The door to his office was shut. I knocked, nobody answered, I pushed—the door opens inward—and there the PE teacher is fucking the Russian teacher on the chair, can you believe it.”

“What, for real?”

“Yeah. He told me to keep my mouth shut if I wanted to keep my job. Don’t you go repeating it either.”

“Damn. I’d heard they were thick as thieves, but that…”

“She wasn’t even undressed. He hiked up her short skirt and was fucking her from behind. His tool, of course, is huge.”

I sat in shock at what I had heard. Maybe he had simply invented the story on the spot. How, then, did he know that Semyon had a big cock? I could not believe it. Irina could not cheat on me that easily. I wiped myself and came out, but there was already no one there. A fog of tobacco smoke hung near the ceiling.

I had to see for myself that it was true, but I was afraid to ask Irina about such a thing to her face. After all, I believed these were only rumors that idle men invent about a pretty colleague.

At home Irina behaved as usual. Checking homework and doing household chores hurried the time along, and soon we were going to bed. She bent over the exercise books, muttering something about careless work, about mixed-up cases, and that voice of hers—so familiar, so dear—suddenly seemed foreign to me. I lay on our creaking bed and looked at the ceiling, where a yellow stain had spread from an old leak. In my head those same words from the lavatory kept turning. They sounded like a worn-out record, like an obsessive tune you cannot get rid of. I tried to drive them away, but they came back again and again, growing new details, drawing pictures I did not want to see.

For the first time, I think, in all our time together I felt such a strange arousal. The men’s words echoed in my head. I did not believe it and wanted to prove to myself that these were only rumors. And the first thing I did—stupid, probably, but then it seemed right to me—was to reach for her. I thought that in that way I would understand everything. I would feel whether she had been with someone else or not. The thought seemed logical to me, though now I understand how naïve it was. Through physical closeness, through what had been only ours, ours together, I wanted to understand whether it had already ceased to be only ours.

I began to make advances to Irina. My hands caressed her body; she responded, and we began to kiss. Her lips were soft, familiar, smelling of mint toothpaste, and for a moment it seemed to me that nothing had changed, that all this was only my sick invention. But somewhere in the depths, in that dark corner, I knew it was not so. Her kisses were the same, but they lacked the spark that had been there before. Or did it only seem so to me? Nothing unusual, everything as always. And for some reason I wanted, precisely today, to change our classic missionary position, or the one where she was on top. I needed something else, something that would distract me from my thoughts, something that would let me take control.

“Irina, I’d like it from behind.”

My voice sounded uncertain, and I could hear how it trembled. She was surprised by my request, but she turned over. The room was dark; I saw only a silhouette. Her body glimmered faintly white in the darkness, and I reached for her like a blind man, guided by warmth. Carefully I positioned myself behind her and began to enter. A fantasy sprang up sharply in my head.

An old office two meters by three, an old sofa brought from home that they had replaced with a new one and been sorry to throw out, a matching armchair. A dilapidated door with a magazine photo of Schwarzenegger from a film hanging on it. Behind the door the gym is empty after lessons; only the pipes tick in the radiators. Ira is on her knees in the armchair, or simply leaning on it, her short skirt hiked up, her panties pulled down. I enter her not with my own average-sized cock but with a thick hose; she gasps and pulls back a little, saying her man is not that big. I ignore her words and keep pushing my cock in. She moans and then cries out. But in reality I had only just entered her and felt—or perhaps it only seemed to me—that someone had already been there before me. There was not that familiar tightness, that wetness and heat. Everything was different. And most of all, Ira was silent; she did not make a sound. It seemed she was not aroused at all, which was astonishing for her. Not once in all our life together had she been cold. But the fantasy with Semyon was so vivid that I wanted to return to it again. Before my eyes again that office, a tea glass on the desk that had not been washed in years, the cloudy glass of the transom, the smell of dust and old sweat. Ira moans; I look down and see her wet lips stretching around the PE teacher’s cock. I came faster than I ever had, from the fantasies in my head.

Shame covered me at once, in a hot wave. I had just imagined another man having my woman, and it had given me pleasure. I felt like a traitor, but that feeling mixed with something else, something dark and forbidden, which I both liked and feared. I lay trying to catch my breath and could not understand what was happening to me. How could I have been aroused by the thought that my fiancée was cheating on me? It was wrong, it was perverted, but at the same time it was the only thing that had helped me come.

“Ira, I’m sorry—maybe I can pleasure you.”

Ira lay down silently on her back. I settled between her legs, pressed my lips to her vagina, and began to caress it like a madman. Her smell, her taste—all of it was familiar to me, but now I was searching in it for something foreign, something that might give her away. I was searching for the taste of another man, but I did not find it, or I wanted to believe I did not find it. She was no longer silent; it felt good to her. It was the first time we had had caresses like this. I was inexperienced, but my eagerness to make her feel good was greater than my lack of skill. I acted instinctively, like an animal that senses its territory is under threat and tries to mark it again. And then I decided on one more thing. I began to explore her, penetrating as deeply as I could with my tongue. I could not tell whether anyone had been there besides me. My tongue felt her from the inside, but there was no answer, only warmth and wetness. She came, pressing me with her hand to her crotch, and I felt her fingers digging into my hair.

Then we lay in silence, each of us thinking our own thoughts. I heard her breathing; it gradually evened out, and soon she fell asleep. And I lay with open eyes, looking into the dark, and could not sleep. It seemed to me that somewhere in the room hung the smell of another man, though I knew it was only my imagination.

The next day was no different from the others, with one exception. I went to the gym. Lessons followed their course, the bell rang, the corridors emptied and filled again, teachers drank tea in the staff room discussing yesterday’s news. But I could not concentrate on anything. I needed to see Semyon, needed to check my guess, needed to do at least something to dispel or confirm my suspicions. My brain feverishly sought a pretext and found one: a chocolate bar given to me on the first of September. An excellent reason to drop in.

There Semyon was alone, putting away the vaulting horse after the last lesson. He wiped the leather with a rag, shifted the mats, and worked without hurry, as if the gym belonged to him. Noticing me, he came over. I saw something tenting in his trousers, something large. In my head again rose that picture from my fantasy. I could not tear my eyes from that bulge, and it seemed to me he noticed my interest, because his smile grew wider and his look turned mocking.

“Oh, the mathematician. Hey. What is it? Decided to take up sport?”

“No, I was just passing, dropped in to say hello. Thought maybe we’d have tea.”

I showed the chocolate bar I had been given on the first of September, drawing a smile from Semyon.

“Well, come on then.”

His little office was just as I had imagined. Only instead of a poster there hung a calendar, and Schwarzenegger hung by the little table. I looked around, trying not to seem too inquisitive, but every detail drove itself into my memory like a shard of glass. An old sofa with worn upholstery, an armchair with sagging springs, a writing desk piled with papers, a cupboard with certificates and cups. All of it was soaked in the smell of sweat, dust, and some cheap deodorant. I sat in that very armchair where what I had heard in the lavatory might have happened. I was aroused; I was ashamed; I did not want to show it. I sat in that very place and drank tea with the very man who, perhaps, had fucked Ira right here the day before. My cock pressed against my trousers, and I tried to adjust it unnoticed, but Semyon seemed to notice and snorted.

“Well, tell me, how are things? Nobody giving you a hard time? Ha-ha-ha-ha.”

He laughed, showing his uneven teeth. I smiled silently and sipped the tea. The tea was scalding hot, but I pretended I liked it.

“No, everything’s fine. How about you—the training going well?”

And our conversation settled into talk of sport, weights, and the strange fashions of the time. We talked simply, and I felt he was being friendly. Probably if the rumors had been true he would have behaved differently. Been rude, or uncommunicative. But he was courtesy itself, and that threw me off. Maybe I had invented it all? Maybe Petrovich and Valentin had simply lied to look knowing? But then how did they know about his cock? These thoughts spun in my head like a squirrel in a wheel, finding no way out.

There was a knock at the door, and Irina came into the room. She entered quickly and did not expect to find me there.

“Sergey? You?”

Her look was very surprised. As was mine. I looked at her and felt everything inside turning over. “So it’s true,” my inner voice whispered. That voice seemed to exist separately from me; it sounded louder than all my thoughts, and I could not drown it out.

“Oh, Ira, thanks for bringing the pen. I had already lost it.”

Semyon said this and took from my future wife the pen she was holding and put it in the glass with the others. His movement was quick, confident, as if he had done it many times.

“She asked for a pen, I gave her one, and now she’s bringing it back. Right?”

He looked inquiringly at Ira. She was lost and could only repeat what he had said. Her eyes darted between me and Semyon, and I saw her trying to find a way out and not finding one.

“Well, of course I’m glad to have the whole family visiting, but I have things to finish. You can sit together, drink tea.”

Semyon went out. Ira sat in his place and tried to behave as usual. She tried, from the expression on my face, to understand whether I guessed or not. And I sat as if on a frying pan; my cock stood, but I shifted it closer to my leg so it would not show. I felt color flooding my cheeks and hoped she would take it for embarrassment at an awkward situation.

“So how are things? How are the lessons?”

“Everything’s fine. Yours?”

“Fine.”

“Well then, till evening. Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

“All right.”

I stood and went first. Waving to Semyon, I left the gym fully certain that Ira was coming after me. Turning to ask her something, I did not see her. She had stayed there. Inside, something clenched again; my throat went dry. I took a few steps down the corridor, stopped, listened. No footsteps behind me. Silence. Only the knock of my own heart, echoing in my ears. The PE teacher’s office had no proper window, only a large transom. Beside it ran a thick rusty ladder. In winter people used it to climb onto the roof to clear snow from the drainpipes. It led to the roof, and its rungs were covered in rust, bent in places. I quickly went around the school building and, clinging with my thin fingers, began to climb it. The most unpleasant thing was that the classroom windows looked onto the back courtyard and many people could have noticed me. But then that did not particularly worry me. I climbed to the necessary height and, looking down, nearly fainted. Never having climbed trees, I was for the first time so high, holding on only by my own strength. My legs shook, my hands went numb, but I kept climbing because I could not do otherwise.

I slowly looked through the unwashed glass and saw Ira sitting in the armchair sideways to me. She was looking at some old magazine; on it were naked women and men—the kind that were fashionable in their time and sold freely at kiosks. I recognized those magazines; they sold them at the station, in a stall with the sign “Press.” Irina turned the pages, and I saw how her fingers lingered on the more explicit shots.

A few seconds later the door opened and Semyon came in. He said something to my future wife; she smiled. Semyon pulled the door to and, kicking it at the bottom, shut it all the way. Ira sat motionless, her gaze fixed on him. She was saying something; I could not hear through the thick glass. Semyon took off his T-shirt, baring his naked torso. His muscles bunched with every movement, and even from that distance I saw them rolling under the skin. He came closer and dropped his trousers and underwear. Directly in front of my future wife Ira’s face hung the PE teacher’s thick cock. She did not pull away; on the contrary, reaching out her hand, she took it in her palm and began to stroke it gently, sliding the skin toward the base. The movement was so confident, so habitual, that I had no doubts left.

Semyon patted her on the head and drew her a little toward himself. The thick head touched her lips and went inside. To see your future wife secretly giving another man a blowjob is an astonishing sight. It is at once repulsive and mesmerizing. I was frozen there; my arms had gone numb, my legs too. I hung on that vertical ladder, feeling I would not last long. My fingers had gone white from the strain, but I could not tear my eyes from the window. Ira was already actively sucking the PE teacher’s cock, her eyes closed. Her head moved forward and back, and I saw her cheeks hollow. Semyon was taking his pleasure, his head thrown back, his hand pushing Ira’s head. His blissful expression made me, suddenly realize that I had never seen such an expression on Irina when she was with me.

“Hey, get down from there, quick! What do you think you’re doing, you scoundrel!”

From below came the shout of the old school watchman, Petrovich.

“Climbing on the pipes again? You wanna break your neck or something? Get off before I call the director!” I realized with horror that I had been seen. I could not give myself away. I climbed down quickly, not turning my face toward him, and ran without looking back. My heart pounded so that I thought it would leap from my chest. My legs carried me on their own; I did not watch my step, jumped some curbs, nearly ran into a tree, but kept running until I found myself at the school entrance on the other side. I sat in my classroom trying to catch my breath. I was frightened and agitated, my head full of thoughts. I had caught Ira in the act, and the watchman had nearly caught me. So the rumors had been true, and now I needed to act somehow. I decided to fight for my love. Ira could not have betrayed me so easily; I still had a chance. I did not know what to do, but I could not simply give up. I had to win her back, had to show that I was better, that I was worthy of her. Or perhaps I simply could not admit my defeat. But in that moment a resolve burned in my chest, born of despair. I repeated to myself: I will fight, I will get her back, I will prove that I am worthy of her. And with that thought I remained sitting, looking at the door beyond which life went on, now already divided into a “before” and an “after.”