In short, it was really time for the young atheist to plop into the inescapable tide of compulsory school education…)
The never-ending summer of the pivotal year pitied, at last, the little ignoramus and handed me over to September when, dressed in a bluish suit with shiny pewter buttons, my forelock trimmed in the real hair salon for grown-up men, where Mom took me the day before, clutching in my right hand the stalks in the newspaper-wrapped bunch of Dahlias brought the previous night from the small front garden of Dad’s friend Zatseppin who had a black motorcycle with a sidecar—I went for the first time to the first grade, escorted by Mom. I cannot remember whether she was holding my hand or I succeeded at my claim of being big enough to carry both the flowers and the schoolbag of dark brown leatherette.
We walked down the same road from which since long had disappeared the black columns of zeks though the sun shined as brightly as in their days. On that sunny morning, the road was walked by other than me first-graders with their parents and brand-new leatherette schoolbags, as well as by older, differently aged, schoolchildren, marching both separately and in groups. However, down the tilt, we did not turn to the all too familiar trail towards kindergarten but went straight ahead to the wide-open gate of the Recruit Depot Barracks. We crossed their empty yard and left it thru the side gate, and walked uphill along another, yet unknown, trail between the tall grayish trunks of Aspen.
From the pass, there started again a protracted tilt downward thru the leafy forest with a swamp on the right, after which a short, yet steep, climb led up to the road entering the open gate of the school grounds encircled by the openwork timber fence.
Inside the wide enclosure, the road ended by the short flight of concrete steps ascending to a concrete walk to the entrance of the two-story school building with 2 rows of wide frequent windows.
We did not enter but stopped outside the school and stood there for a long time, while bigger schoolchildren kept running roundabout and were yelled at by adults.
Then we, the first-graders, were lined to face the school. Our parents stayed behind us but still there, the runners ceased their scamper while we stood clutching our flower bunches and new schoolbags until told to form pairs and follow an elderly woman heading inside. And we awkwardly moved forward. One girl in our column burst into tears, her mother ran up to silence her sobs and urge her to keep walking.