To you, from afar | Joseph Descamps

1

It was early in the morning on the first day of school when the students, in their new compositions, gathered in the inner courtyard of Voltaire Lyceum. The list of classmates had already been announced, and Joseph Descamps, unburdened by excessive curiosity, only accidentally learned from some friends that their class was expecting four girls out of twelve newcomers in the entire lyceum, which for the first time declared mixed education in the new year.

Returning from the traditional family vacation in Britain, the young man, out of old habit, met with his constant schoolmates — Dupin and Vergoux, and the trio began smoking, sitting on a bench in the very center of the inner school courtyard. From there, they could calmly observe the boys, already old acquaintances, entering the lyceum territory, as well as unfamiliar girls, timidly stepping into the yard for the first time, surrounded by dozens of curious, and even ignorant glances. Some silently scrutinized the female figures, some made sardonic comments, and criticism of the school's decision to admit girls to joint education with boys was heard very rarely. Descamps was not among the skeptics, and he never stayed aside from teasing: even the eternal victim of their trio's ridicule, the chubby and shy Henri Pichon, didn't escape.

"Piggy-Pichon, won't you greet your friends?" Descamps called out mockingly, his sudden enthusiasm to tease his classmate reflected in a funny swaying of his leg; his two friends picked up the enthusiasm and threw jokes at the passing lad.

To Joseph's surprise, Henri didn't linger long by his friends — whom he considered to be just as much nerds — and headed towards the stand with ready class lists, formed before the new school year. There stood two girls, a blonde slouching with tension and a short-haired brunette of medium height.

"It's hard to believe," Jean Dupin remarked, with surprise directed towards the stand, "Pichon is the first one to strike up a conversation with the girls..."

"Don't worry," Joseph nonchalantly shook his head and glanced from under his round glasses in another direction. "He's nothing..."

The youth was interrupted by a sudden sight unfolding before him — a proud, straight-walking blonde, objectively beautiful, curvy, and much more mature compared to the other girls. Was she a student or a young teacher? It seemed like everyone in the schoolyard who dared to openly stare at her pondered this question. Nevertheless, the girl calmly walked past everyone, stoically enduring the indecent looks and smirks of the young men. However, another girl who entered slowly behind her evoked slightly different feelings and quickly diverted attention from the beauty to herself. 

Long black braids, not conforming to the French fashion for beautiful hairstyles or hairdos, a tall slender figure, and distinctly non-European eye features — these traits undoubtedly stood out, especially for a resident of the French province where such individuals typically don't reside. What further distinguished the girl was a strange, even sorrowful quality, eliciting pity and detachment from those around her. Admiring glances turned into curious ones, bold ones into sympathetic ones. Every gaze shifted towards the rather conspicuous object in the modestly and slowly walking girl's hand, disregarding the ethics of this overt interest.

Despite her impeccably straight posture, the brunette limped heavily and relied on a cane as she walked.

Was Joseph anyone special among all these boys, who had yet to interact with the female gender, apart from the teachers, within the walls of the educational institution? No, he certainly wasn't special. He wasn't a shy bookworm like Pichon, nor was he a reserved gentleman like Magnan from the senior classes. He was Joseph Descamps — a bully and a hooligan, a complete idiot, who in one moment decided to make this unfortunate crippled girl one of his targets for teasing and mockery.

At that moment, he wasn't concerned about the obvious trauma of the girl, nor the slightly intimidated puppy-like gaze brought on by the new environment, nor even their, ironically, adjacency, brought to mind by a sudden fact in Joseph's head. Her grandmother, to whom the girl bore no resemblance in her exotic asian appearance, Madame Belikova, had migrated from the Soviet Union, according to Joseph's mother, somewhere during the Second World War and had lived two houses down from the Descamps family even back when he was just learning to talk. She represented a typical russian aristocracy, much talked about in world history textbooks, but never particularly interesting to Joseph personally. Nadezhda Belikova, who conversed with his mother in a neighborly manner, was a widow, and she never spoke about any of her relatives other than her son, who remained in Soviet territory.