Spring came and filled a great foundation pit with slush water, so that this formed a small lake. The boys sailed on the lake on rafts, pushing them forward with the help of long poles. Roll also played there by the lake.

Once, as he sailed on the lake, Roll lost his pole, which got stuck in the soft clay of the lake’s bottom. This was presently sticking out from the water looking like the mast of a sunken ship, whilst Roll’s raft was helplessly swirling around the pit, quite far both from the pole and the bank, and deep enough in it so that to get out of the water, he would have had to get thoroughly wet.

Roll cried out to the other boys to help him, but they began to shoot half-bricks and big stones in his direction instead. Cold splashes wet him all over. Shivering cold, Roll begged the boys to stop, but these got even madder and began to throw stones not only near the raft, but at him. Roll could not calm them down. He felt helpless and became quite desperate.  He looked at the bank to see if anyone would be willing to give him a hand. At that time he already had realised that the world could be cruel although he did not agree with it: his mother's stories about good and justice were still too strong in his mind.

All of a sudden he noticed Marianna on the bank. She was standing with her head proudly raised, looking at him with merciless, cold eyes. Her look was neither in favour nor against him, her eyes were simply watching him as if he were just a spider or a cockroach trying to go beyond boundaries or running about with a pin jabbed into his back.

However, strange it may be, her firm and detached look influenced him in a magic way. He suddenly looked at himself differently, as if seeing himself from Marianna’s eyes, from his queen’s eyes. For the first time he felt the borders existing between a witness and a victim, both a spirit and a piece of flesh. Helplessly tumbling on the raft, he suddenly became cold-blooded and determined. He got rid of all thoughts of self-pity, and imagined that he was a cat. He then understood what his cat Murka had been teaching him for a long time. Now the raft had slowly approached the bank and he, as a wild beast, jumped and ended up hanging down as a cat. The boys were greatly surprised by his readiness and waited to see his next move.

In the pit there was a fence whose ends were both on the bank. Roll started to crawl on the fence as a bug, trying not to fall into water, well aware of the evil iron pins sticking out of it. When Roll approached the bank he finally jumped on it and at last felt safe.

The shown came to an end and, although Marianna indifferently turned away and left this ill-fated place, Roll kept on looking at her. He understood that it was precisely because of her uncommitted presence that he had come to realise how the Spirit silently delivers the Truth to us.

Back home he felt for a long time that he was not just a physical body with emotions and mind, but that he was a Spirit that witnessed their functioning.

He recollected that he had always been Spirit.

Although from the very moment of his birth his body had grown up and his thoughts and emotions had changed, he had the perception that <I am> had always existed, even during sleeping. Whatever and whoever he was, this would be just a simple shape, a night dream. Everywhere else he was just Spirit-witness. Soon he fell asleep and, identifying himself with his own body and thoughts, forgot that he was a Spirit: once again he became a toy I the hands of momentary emotions and images.

The next morning Roll hurried to school splashing his way through the mud and pools in his warn out boots. He came to a great dirty pit, which could be crossed with the help of a board. He had just started to climb over the pit, when Bulja appeared on the other bank.

“Hey you, you think it's all right to crawl before your superiors?” he shouted angrily pushing Roll in the dirt. The other boys, who happened to be nearby, laughed nastily.

“A piece of shit fell on top of the rest of the shit!” commented Bulja.

Zhmych, another hooligan, looked at Roll who, crawling out of a dirty pool, was coming closer, and asked him mockingly:

“Tell me, do mud baths help to heal lumbago?”

“I don't know” murmured Roll trying to brush away the dirt and turning round to go home.

“Where are you going?” cried Bulja madly. “March off to school, get going with your studies!”

“But I am so filthy now!” Roll defended himself, showing his dirty clothes.

“It's nothing! Don't you remember what the great Lenin told us: study, study and, once again, study!” said Bulja playing the teacher and pushing him to school, whilst Zhmych joined Bulja in kicking the poor Roll. In the meanwhile, the other boys, seeing Roll’s sorrow had began to laugh.

Bulja hiding a cigarette in his fist, started to smoke and, pointing at Roll as if he were a good joke, blew the smoke directly onto Roll’s face.

The boy's eyes started to become sore because of the smoke and he started to cough accompanied by a storm of laughter, and everyone, whilst waiting for class to start, carried on laughing merrily.

Roll had become scared and tense: he had no idea of what else would come to him and when this would all end; his chest was paralyzed with fright and discomfort.

It was as if he had suddenly woken up. He thought:

“What’s going on with me? This situation is quite demoralising yet nothing serious has happened: my hands and feet are not armed. I have to try to be calm down and be joyful. I have to free myself from this unpleasant feeling of fright and discomfort that take me over when I other people’s eyes are all turned on me".

Then Roll imagined: “What would a cat, a tree or a stone do, would they be thrown into the dirt? Surely, they wouldn't give a toss about other people's opinion, they would think these opinions totally absurd" - thought Roll and began to breath deeply to relax a little.

“Why are you snuffling so?” asked Bulja sneeringly. “From now on you'll be our ashtray”.

And he put the cigarette butt into his collar and pressed it onto the skin till it burned. Roll cried out in pain.

“Why are you squeaking”? asked Bulja “Be patient, or else you'll never be a good warrior.”

The other boys had also begun to shovel cigarette butts into Roll’s pockets, into his clothes and all over him, and then they all went straight to the class room.  Roll convulsively was jumping about in the attempt of shaking off his pockets and shirt the burning cigarette butts. Roll went home to change his clothes and then struggled back to school. Only at this point he could collect himself.  "What on earth am I doing? Have I forgotten that I shouldn't be identified and allow this rubbish and nonsense cause me pain?"

Entering the class, he sat next to Marianna and told her what he had experienced. She laughed merrily hearing how Bulja had mocked him.

“I am only coming to school to please my mum” said Roll.

“This is how both she and this damned society turned me into a fool who, now has to go to school and suffer”

“This is nothing! The most important thing is that your pain helps you to develop and you can get great and useful outcome from it” answered she.  “Try to make use of everything in life, otherwise life will use you as toilet paper and will wipe you out and that‘ll be the end of it.  As for your mother, you are right. Look here, the lifeline on the palm of your hand starts off as a chain, but it then it goes on smoothly. This indicates a hard childhood and also that, some day you will take life in your hands and will direct it as you like. Everything is going to be fine!”

 “Say that the opposite happened?” Roll pressed.

“Then, you’d become a sissy, you’d loose your way as an adult, and you would end up in a scrap heap.”

“Does it mean that my future is already known?” asked the surprised Roll

“You are the one who does not know it yet” laughed Marianna “Although your hands, feet and face have known about you for a long time”

“Is it really so predetermined is it s that nothing can be changed? asked Roll.

“Yes, it could be changed , but not everybody can do it” answered Marianna with a cunning smile.

“First of all you should know what in a general sense can be changed. I am not referring to you buying a car rather than a summerhouse or whichever silly thing; I am referring to inner change.  One has to make a great effort to get there. As for you, you cannot even make yourself do the morning exercises every day” laughed the girl.

“So, what am I supposed to do?” the boy anxiously asked.

“You have either to train your willpower or to give yourself up to the one who can change it. You are weak-willed. Will you give yourself up to my hands?” asked she.

“Who, me?” murmured Roll “I ‘d like to try”. He had not properly understood what she had meant.

“I'll test you!” the girl said with a nice smile.

In this way Roll got his first teacher, Marianna, whom he was to remember for long years afterwards.