With his arrival, the affairs of the engineers quickly got on the mend. Their movements became purposeful and their nasty comments withered away. I got out the folder with my current assignments and was about to go to work, when Stellotchka, that very sweet, gray-eyed, and retrousse-nosed undergraduate witch in Vibegallo’s lab, came in and invited me to join her in the composition of the Institute gazette.
Stella and I were on the editorial staff, and we wrote satirical verses, fables, and captions for the illustrations. In addition to all this, I also drew clever pictures of a mailbox for notices, with winged letters converging on it from all sides. In general, the gazette artist was my namesake, Alexander Ivanovich Drozd, cinephotographer, who had successfully infiltrated the Institute.
