- Does anybody know where Leva Pontryagin is? - Elena Petrovna asked, having looked around the class. The boy gave good hopes in mathematics and had never missed a class without any reason before.
- No," the students' confused voices answered, and Leva's roommate, Alyosha, said:
- He hasn't walked for two weeks, Elena Petrovna.
- Alyosha, you are friends with Leva, aren't you? - his teacher turned to him.
- Yes. And I even know where he lives," Alyosha answered Elena Petrovna's next question.
- That's very good," smiled the teacher. - Maybe you guys should go see him, huh, guys? After class?
- We will go! - Alyosha answered for everyone, and the rest of the students agreed with him in silence.
After the lessons, a few guys and Alyosha went to the house where Leva Pontryagin lived. Like many people at the time, he didn't have a phone in his house, so nobody knew what had happened to him that he started skipping classes.
Knocking was the first thing Alyosha decided to do. Levina's mother, Tatiana Andreyevna, opened the door to the guys. Her face was very sad, and it smelled like grief and sadness from the apartment.
- Hello, Tatyana Andreyevna," Alyosha said with shyness and lingerie. He knew Levina's mother as a cheerful, intelligent and unconventional woman, and now her sad appearance caused anxiety. - We wanted to ask why Leva didn't go to school.
- He won't be studying with you anymore," Tatiana Andreevna said with pain in her voice. - He had surgery. It was unsuccessful. Leva is blind and cannot walk by herself...
It happened two weeks ago. Leva, as always, returned home and found a note on the table from Mom, where she asked him not to wait for them and Dad, but to warm up the dinner itself.
Levina's mom used to do that all the time. Although their family wasn't living poor, she and Leva's father stayed up late at work all the time.
Leva went into the kitchen, where there was a primus and dinner in a small pot. There was no electric stove, though they dreamed of it, but they never bought it, but the boy was able to use the primus. Having twisted the nozzle, he lit a match and brought it to the device... At the same moment, the primus exploded. Grabbing a burnt and injured face, Leva jumped out of the kitchen first, and then out of the apartment on the street, where he was unconscious, lying on the porch, found a janitor, who, not thinking for long, called an ambulance.
For several hours surgeons were fighting for the boy's life, in a hurry and desperate desire to save her without noticing that the flame of the explosion touched the Lion's eyes. When the operation was running out and Leva was breathing, one of the surgeons noticed a regrettable mistake, but it was already too late - an attempt to return the vision of the next surgery caused severe inflammation of the eyes and led to complete blindness ...
The guys were silent, stunned, and then Alyosha suggested it:
- And we will take him to school one by one.
- And then we'll take him home.
- And we will help to do the lessons - interrupting each other, classmates were twittering.
Levina's mother had tears in her eyes...
She put her friends in the room. A little later, feeling the way with her hand, Leva came out to them with a blindfold. The guys froze. Only now they really understood what a disaster had happened to their friend. Leva barely said:
- Hello.
And then it fell from all sides:
- I'll pick you up tomorrow and take you to school.
- And I will tell you that we were going through algebra.
- And I'll tell you about the history.
Leva did not know who to listen to and only nodded at random. My mother's face was hailing with tears. After leaving, the guys made a plan - who came in, who explained what subjects, who would walk with Leva and take him to school. At school, a boy who was sitting at the same desk with Leva quietly told him what the teacher wrote on the blackboard during the lesson. And how the class stopped when Leova was answering!
How happy everyone was with his fives, even more than they were with their own! Leva studied well. The whole class was better off learning. To explain the lesson to a friend in trouble, you need to know yourself. And the guys tried. Not only that, in winter they started taking him to the rink. Leva loved classical music very much, and his classmates went to symphonic concerts with him...
He graduated from Leva School with a gold medal and then entered the institute. And there were friends who became his eyes. After the Leva Institute, he continued his studies and eventually became a world-famous mathematician, academician Pontryagin.