For the Good of the Cause by Alexander Solzhenitsyn Page B

sweeping gesture of a professional guide, the lab assistant pointed to the shelves and said:
    “ This belongs to the TV lab. This to the electricity lab. And this is the radio lab’s.”
    Instruments with dials, and black, brown, and yellow boxes cluttered the shelves.
    “And what’s that doing there?” the Comrade from the Ministry asked, pointing to something.
    He had noticed that the assistant had managed to keep a little wall space free of instruments, and to this he had affixed a colored pinup—the head and shoulders of a young woman. Without seeing the caption you couldn’t tell whether she had been cut out of a Soviet or foreign magazine. But there she was—a beautiful, auburn-haired woman wearing a blouse with red embroidery. With her chin resting on her bare arms and her head tilted to one side, she eyed the young lab assistant and the more worldly-wise Comrade from the Ministry with a look that was anything but a call to duty.
    “Well! You say you have no space,” the Comrade sputtered, struggling around to get out again, “but just look at the sort of stuff you hang up around the place!”
    And, with another quick glance at the lovely creature out of the corner of his eye, he walked away.
    The news that some awful commission was around had already spread throughout the school. People kept peering out of doorways and poking their heads into the halls.
    Lidia, walking along one of the corridors, bumped into the commission. She stood aside, flattened herself against the wall, and studied them anxiously. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could tell from the look on the principal’s face that something was wrong.
    Fyodor took the Supervisor from the District Committee by the arm and, holding him back a little, asked quietly:
    “Tell me, who actually sent this commission? Why is nobody from the Economic Council with you?”
    “Knorozov just told me to come along. I don’t know what’s going on myself.”
    Khabalygin, standing on the upper landing, cleared his throat, which made the rolls of sallow fat on his neck shake again, and lit a cigarette.
    “That’s that. I suppose the rest is much the same.”
    The Comrade from the Department looked at his watch and said: “It all seems pretty clear-cut.”
    The electronics expert stroked his mustache with two fingers and said nothing.
    The Comrade from the Ministry asked: “How many other buildings are there beside this one?”
    “Two, but …”
    “Really?”
    “Yes, but they are quite terrible. Only one story and thoroughly inconvenient. And they’re so far apart from each other. Let’s go and look at them.”
    “And there are workshops in them too?”
    “But listen, you’re aware of the son of conditions we’re working in, aren’t you?” Fyodor threw off the restraint imposed on him by the demands of hospitality and by the exalted position of his visitors. He really was worried now: “For one thing, we’ve got no dormitory. That’s what we were going to use this building for. The young people have to live in private rooms all over town where there’s sometimes foul language and drunkenness. All our efforts to build their characters are defeated. Where can we do it, on the staircase here?”
    “Oh, come now, come now,” the members of the commission protested.
    “Character-building depends on you, not on the premises,” the young man from the Department said sternly.
    “You can’t blame anyone else for that,” the District Committee Supervisor added.
    “Yes, you really have no excuse,” Khabalygin said, spreading his short arms.
    Fyodor turned his head sharply and shrugged his shoulders, perhaps in response to this attack on him from all sides, or perhaps to put an end to this relentless interrogation. He could see that if he didn’t ask directly he was never going to find out what this was all about. He knitted his bushy, fair brows.
    “I’m sorry, but I’d very much like to know on whose authority you are