“Frieda Emmanuelovna’s Doberman has twisted bowels. They’re operating at this exact moment,” continued Galina Valerevna. “But I have good news for you. I do not remember which thinker said it, but let’s not lose in vain a breath of our precious life. The girls will tear off the wallpaper in the cloakroom of the old sports hall, and the boys will throw the old linoleum on the scrap heap! And a last announcement. Who thinks that he can manage much more important and interesting work?” Borya Grelkin raised his hand. Methodius, sitting at the same desk with him and having heard the principal’s question, also raised his hand, simply for company. No more hands went up. “Wonderful, Grelkin and Buslaev! The school and our native land are proud of you! You will transfer twelve stumps from the basement into the assembly hall – decoration for the play Yaroslav the Wise,” said Galina Valerevna.

Along the way, half of the people sent to tear off wallpaper and to take out linoleum disappeared somewhere. These were the smarter ones, who believed that nevertheless no one would make a note of their absence. But then Grelkin and Buslaev were not going to vanish anyhow. No one called off the stumps, and responsibility was personal.

In the basement, where they were steered, Methodius dourly examined the stumps for a long time. They turned out to be genuine and very heavy. In time immemorial, some fool had sufficient mind to saw a log, and then even cover all the sawn parts with paint… under the wood. Probably, so that the wood would be a little less like itself.

“Why did you raise your hand?” Methodius attacked Grelkin.

“Huh?” Grelkin was astonished.

“Your hand, I say, why did you raise it?” Methodius almost began to howl.

“Who, me? I didn’t!”

“What? You didn’t? Then who did?” Methodius roared, without noticing how the paint on the end stump was beginning to melt under his gaze.

“Really, didn’t you raise your hand first? My ears are stuffed up from a head cold,” sniffing suspiciously, Grelkin whined.

“Idiot!” Methodius growled. He had already calmed down. It was indeed not possible to be angry with Grelkin – that would be like being offended by a penguin.

Borya carefully sat down on one of the stumps and slowly began to eat a banana taken out of his bag. Grelkin was a sad chubby silent type. He usually inhabited the last desk, yearning sadly, and with incomprehensible significance cast looks at the window, where stood a pot with a withering violet as cheerful as him. Borya answered the majority of questions monosyllabically: “Well?” “A!” “Ne-a!” Teachers neither praised nor berated him. They even rarely called him to the board, simply preferring to forget about him. In a word, Borya Grelkin was one of those, whose presence classmates did not notice even with the largest magnifier.

“Do you intend to drag the stumps or what?” having calmed down finally, Methodius asked him after about five minutes. He remembered to try to talk softly to Borya if possible so that he would not die of horror.

Grelkin pensively looked at his stomach and shook crumbs off it. “I can’t lift anything. I had a hernia last year,” he informed despondently.

“Then why did you not tell the principal?”

“But she didn’t ask.”

Methodius blinked, finished counting mentally to ten in order not to break Borya into ten small idiots, and began to move the stumps by his lonesome. The stumps were quite heavy, and it was necessary to roll them to the stairs, storming each step. He had had such a hard time with the first stump already that, after rolling it into the assembly hall, he got back down barely alive.

When he again tumbled into the basement, Borya Grelkin had finished pensively licking his fingers. “You know, it’s a somewhat strange taste! But on the whole, generally speaking, trash!” Grelkin uttered a phrase of a length simply phenomenal for him.

“What’s ‘it’?”

“The prune!”

“What prune?” Methodius did not understand.

“There, lying in your knapsack. Your knapsack dropped with a crash from the stump, I began to gather your textbooks, and there – pop! – a prune. I gobbled it. You don’t mind?”

Methodius pondered slowly. What prune! He had already leaned over in order to take the next stump, when suddenly he froze in the stupid pose. The fruit from the charismatic tree, it was in the box! In the morning before school, he hid the box with the stone among old notebooks, and the fruit for some reason slipped into the knapsack. And now it was safely resting in Borya Gelkin’s stomach. Methodius stared narrowly at his classmate. No special changes had taken place in Borya Grelkin. Outwardly he was still the same amusing penguin, but already slightly more talkative and with a smile. Probably, basic magical changes were still ahead. Methodius wanted to deal a blow to Borya Grelkin, but this was so not possible, like kicking a chow-chow puppy. Borya emitted such geniality. Methodius spat and rolled from the basement the stump next in line…

Borya Grelkin stroked his own tummy with his hand and uttered several grating phrases, inspirational for the task. His usual caked dirty-white aura rapidly thickened and was saturated with colours, involuntarily attracting and charging those, whose energy outlines were weaker. But Methodius was indifferent to it. His energy outlines were strong, and in his immediate plan, eleven more stumps still loomed.

The day and the evening passed dully, this was, however, completely in the spirit of their family. Eddy Khavron hung out at home and, panting, was lifting weights, not forgetting while pausing to call Methodius a wimp and a sap. The very strong sweaty body of Eddy Khavron smelled of a stable. “At your age… huuu… I was unlike those, who… in short, you’re a fool!” he summed it up, lowering the weights so decisively that his sweat pants began to crack.

His sister Zozo Buslaeva had locked herself in the bathroom, turned on the water, and was talking on the phone. Once in a while Methodius heard how his mother laughed loudly and provocatively, even muffling the water. This laughter indicated only one thing: Zozo was concocting for herself a date with the next-in-line example with no understanding of women. Even now, Methodius, in advance, was ready to swear that this was some mothball dolt poured into another mould. He determined this by Zozo’s strained laughter, which was heard twice more often than normal. A feeling suggested to Methodius that the collocutor bored mother stiff and she had already mentally written him down as surplus.

Methodius usually endured Eddy’s laughter and commentaries. His patience was wasted if and only if Khavron blurted out, “Listen, I understand that you’re doing homework! But could you not write smaller so that the ink in the pen isn’t used up so fast?”

“Fine!” Methodius said obediently and thirty times finely wrote on the last page of the notebook: Eddy is a fat hippo, squared! “Like this?” he asked, showing the notebook.

“Smart kid! Excellent!” Eddy said with approval. Methodius understood that he read nothing and in general was already distracted from his economic daydreams.

“Ha-ha-ha! You’re such a dear! It seems I’ve known you for a hundred years! No, two hundred years! Ha-ha! Certainly, I don’t have in mind that you’re so old! For a man the main thing is the soul… What you did say, pardon me, is the main thing? Ah, what a comedian you are! Simply Petrosyan Khazanovich Zadornov!” Zozo trilled from the bathroom and shouted with suffering laughter.

Methodius drew a long thick line and shoved the notebook into the drawer. He was fed up with this delirious pair. He felt that he was ready to throw open the window and take a step directly from the windowsill to the clouds. At this moment he understood that today, he would definitely draw on the carpet that same rune from the bottom of the box. Come what may, but he simply could not remain here any longer. Methodius recollected about the three scoops of ashes, which would be left of him, if he incorrectly drew the rune, but even this suddenly seemed unimportant. Either he would become a wizard and flee from here, or let them gather him from the carpet.