Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER ELEVEN – THE CLASSMATES
Our class consisted not of randomly selected kids, but children, chosen from either highly educated families, or families, which had a position in society or families, being ready to financially support the school for the best education of their children. One way or another, our class was under the tutelage of the school for the whole ten years. Firstly, we had the best teacher of primary education. Secondly, we got protection from bad students and hooligans, who were left to repeat the school year for the second or third time. And finally, starting from high school, our class was transformed into the strongest math class in the school and in the neighborhood. Everyone who did not want intensive workloads, moved to other classes. In return, we received some infusion of fresh blood means good students from other classes and schools, and… We continued to move forward with full speed!
All ten school years we have been taught by the best teachers in the school. We joked, that we are “a physics/math class with a chemistry/biology inclination, history/literature profile and vocational/labor education.” But it was all rather true. We were taught absolutely not in the Soviet way and manner, and even now I remember the years of study at school with gratitude. During high school years, my friend from the City Math School, Sasha, repeatedly lured me to transfer to his school and his class, “It won’t be necessary to spend much time for subjects besides physics and math. The grades for not important subjects will be granted with full understanding,” he said. I understood he’s right, but I couldn’t leave the friends from my class, to whom I had lyceum ties of brotherhood for many years.
I must admit that before school I had one friend, Ed, the son of my parents’ friends. We played with him on the weekends, then started the same class, but suddenly, he disappeared after a couple of years in school. It turned out that his family moved to Moscow, where his father began working for Tupolev, and I was upset that my friend did not say goodbye, did not leave his address, and did not write a letter. My dad was pushing me to renew relations with Ed, when I got to the capital already in my adulthood years, but I was not eager, as well former friend didn’t invited me. Then once, we met in America, in a restaurant at somebody’s anniversary, but… we didn’t have a spark between us. To my great regret, I learned that his father, an aircraft designer, did not find his destiny in the new country and committed suicide…
My best friend was Eli, with whom we became friends during the first lesson of the first day in school, but the beauty of the school was in the friendship by a large company, almost the whole class. Who were our friends?
Kolya or Nick was my namesake. I don’t remember him very well in elementary grades, he jumped around the desks and did not stand out for his intellect. But bad thing happened – he fell ill with osteomyelitis and spent several years in a cast. During this time we became very good friends, I regularly wrote letters to him to strengthen his spirit. Later, his mother repeatedly quoted them, but I don’t remember the content. Nick himself answered briefly, regretting his disgusting handwriting he had developed from writing on his side. Teachers went to his house and worked with a sick child. Nick’s dad was a reserved man, with badly dyed hair and a culinary hobby. Mom and grandmother constantly talked about family friends – John Reed (an American journalist who wrote “Ten Days That Shook the World”) and the pilot Kokkinaki (soviet test pilot, hero of the USSR), everyone’s ears buzzed. And Nick read and read. And he turned into a thinking, developed young man who did not lag behind, but returned back to our class after a few years. His younger brother was an unremarkable business-minded tomboy. He stole and sold at first bunch of my tin soldiers, and then our (two Nicks’) collection of boxes out of imported cigarettes. This is all that remained in my memory of the childhood years of this brother.
Two boys, each named Vovka or Vova (diminutive of Vladimir), mobile, athletic, lovers to play tag. The tall Vova’s parents were actors and traveled around the country with concerts, and as a result of this, they divorced. The family lived modestly, and Vova always took care of his younger brother who had some medical problem. Short Vova and his two brothers studied at our school. He drew very well and, along with Eli and me, was listed as a candidate for the drawing section.
This section was led by a very smart, intelligent and modest woman, an honored artist of our republic. Her father was a famous pediatrician in Odessa, as well as the editor of the first translations and editions of Freud in Russia. The family moved to Georgia, as the new republic searched and invited highly qualified specialists-Georgians. There he founded and headed the Faculty of Children’s Diseases in the Medical School. And his daughter became an artist and taught us how to draw. But the most valuable, of course, were her conversations with children. The section brought up many good artists, and I hope, people.
Short Vova, Eli and I were looking forward to be accepted into this section after finishing drawing classes in the sixth grade, and we finally will try to paint with oil on canvas. But it so happened that school building’s repair began, and the drawing section lost its premises for two or three years, and when a new one was allocated, bright and large, we had already grown, and we found other interests. But never in my life had I ever tried how it’s feel to paint with oil on canvas.
Misha was the only kid in our class, whose father was a professor. He was a handsome and well-educated boy, slightly boasting of his family’s wealth. His dad was a gynecologist who married late to his young and pretty student. Subsequently, she also reached gynecological heights, but even in elementary grades, Misha’s dad looked like the boy’s grandfather. But we did have two or three more such aged dads…
Little Misha liked to stand on the desk and treat the children to American mint chewing gum, placing fragrant sticks of the gum in their mouths. Many willingly lined up for feeding. I was among those who weren’t sold themselves for food. Once in the pioneer years, we went on trip, and Misha was filming an armature movie with his movie camera. After developing the movie, Misha showed it to the class, and everybody saw a brand new Volga car and a Misha’s multi room apartment with a cake on the dining table in the final shots of the movie.
Intern-teacher of history, Alek, laughed. “It’s all clear,” he said, “we drive Volga and eat cake.”
“You said it out of envy!” Misha was offended.
Maybe both of them were right…
When students skipped school, they brought either letters from their parents or certificates from doctors. Once Vera Aramovna, our home room teacher, said,
“Misha, I understand that your parents are doctors, but since when is a sore throat treated in a gynecological outpatient clinic?”
Misha often brought his parents’ professional books to school, so we were quite well versed in the fallopian tubes for the kids of pioneer (scout) age. The competing firm turned out to be Jean, the investigator’s son. He dragged piles of photographs of sexual acts from criminal cases into the classroom. It could hardly be called pornography. It looked like during the intimate meeting, somebody unexpectedly photographed the partners. In the pictures, almost fully dressed, tired, middle-aged people in fear tried to cover their faces, or the source of their shame.
But neither books nor photographs could replace the living word.
“Do you know what the clitoris is needed for?” asked Tanya, the new girl in our class, the daughter of a KGB general, who had returned from Germany. “If you touch it, the woman agrees to everything,” she explained to everyone.
Well, such interesting information was the sure way to quickly become a popular person in a new class.
I also recalling one episode about Jean in elementary grades. His mother died, he became a very poor student, and once “San Geevna” showed us a blotting paper from his notebook. It contained an inscription, scribbled crookedly, “Children, do not offend your mothers. They may die.” I always felt sorry for him, although he was a little rascal. He always strove to knock over on the ground a bag of roasted sunflower seeds to an old saleswoman. (Selling seeds privately was illegal and they could not complain to police, also old ladies didn’t have power to run after Jean.)
In the third grade, he turned to the short, plump, bald-headed Georgian language teacher, “How will be in Georgian the ‘king’s sister’?”
Teacher was very pleased with the activity of the student, suspecting no trap.
“A king is ‘mepe’, a sister is ‘da’, and together ‘mepis da’.” (Me means I in Georgian and pisda sounds in Russian like a pizda = cunt).
“Me-pisda, that is, shen-pisda?” Jean asked, implying that ‘me’ – in Georgian is I, ‘shen’ – in Georgian is you, and the rest is already clear to everyone except Timur Alania. (Whom you met in Chapter 3).
“Ah-wooo!” howled the teacher, jumping up and down the desks, trying to chase Jean, to the Homeric laughter of the whole class.
Garik was the favorite of the class children. Zhorik said about him: “There are no brains, but the heart is golden!” Garik was the son of a war invalid, who had his toes, frostbitten in the trenches, amputated and who owned an illegal private taxi all his life. Parents trembled overprotecting their only son. Followed them no one called him otherwise than Garik-jan (dear). Naturally, he was placed in the best class in the school. I testify that this brought Garik great benefits in education. They had a movie projector at home and they often showed old comedies. We loved to be in their kind and hospitable family; aunt Lyusik, Garik’s mother, went out of her way to make her son have friends from intelligent families.
Zhorik, like Garik, was from an Armenian family, but from the opposite social pole. His father was an otolaryngologist with extensive practice and relatives in France and America. He was much older than the young and beautiful mother of Zhorik, with black velvet eyes that the children inherited. One summer, we met daily with him and Kolya, went to parks and cinemas and treated ourselves to plombir ice cream in a cafe, washing it down with a distinguished lemon soda.
I remember how once we bought tickets for the film “Galapagos Islands”, the name of which impressed us very much. Let me explain: one of the most beautiful girls in our class had the surname Pogosian and “Gala” (pronounced “golo”) – means naked. Therefore, naturally, we perceived the islands as Golo-Pogosians, something like Elysium for boys. There was plenty of time before the show began, and we went into a large church near the cinema. This event would have remained unremarkable for us if we had not met our former classmate Jean. Of course, he did some kind of nasty thing – he showed the horns to the old woman and named her a whore, but the bearded man stood up for her. Anticipating something bad, the guys rushed outside, and I, confident in my own sinlessness, hesitated. A good slap added speed to me, but, I’m afraid, not the mind. Faith in justice often let me down in life…
Edik, Vera Aramovna’s nephew, joined our class in the third grade. At first it was a thin little boy in ironed clothes, who was even offended by school punks. But over the course of three or four years, he became very strong and picked up street manners. Now it didn’t even occur to any hooligan guys to gain with spare change at his expense. He had no physical and mathematical or literary and artistic talents, but he was always a good friend. At home, he had interesting toys, thanks to relatives in Italy and a wealthy elderly dad – the owner of a small glass factory.
Anatoly, a boy from a Greek family, also studied in our class. His parents were tall, good-looking and educated people, but they were not lucky with the child, in terms of health. Tolya was very thin, studied with difficulty and fell asleep in class. For this, he was nicknamed “sleepy fly”, and San Geevna called his handwriting “like a chicken writes with its paw.” I don’t know if years in a strong class gave him something, but it became more and more difficult for him, and he moved to another class, where he was not asked strictly.
The girls were the pure beauty of our youth! And in the first grade and, especially, in the senior classes, when they blossomed for real. The most popular among the boys was Tina Pogosian. We were in love with her not one by one, but by the whole crowd. The most daring, not knowing how to write properly in the first grade, scratched their confessions. I also did not escape this epidemic and once even ate dried worms for fish in an aquarium to hit the “lady of my heart.” Tina’s position was shaken with the arrival of Tanya in the five grade. Neither living in Germany nor chewing gum could surprise us, but a pretty face with a slightly snub nose and the openness with which Tanya discussed any physiology won her success. Tina was worried, also because her peach skin hadn’t gone through the teenage transition period very smoothly. After the seven grade, she left us for a music school, and we already have had sick and now recovered from a childhood infectious love.
Interestingly, it is not enough to have a beautiful face to captivate the boys. Perhaps even the opposite. Zhanna Yablonskaya studied with us for ten years, she had a very beautiful and regular face, but she never controlled the minds of our boys. Maybe sometimes, maybe of someone. And that’s it. As a child, she looked like an angel (or Lenin from the October star) with her golden curls, gray eyes and cherry lips. But at the same time, the little angel could easily get scared or burst into tears. She squealed at the sight of butterflies and beetles. In some very junior class, she burst into tears at the sight of a child’s pistol. In a word, she cried often and for various reasons. Zhanna was a very neat girl, and when she sat down, she tossed up her skirt so as not to sit on it and wrinkle it. Sometimes at the same time one could see a rounded behind in pink panties. Naturally, the boys around did their best to force her to get up and sit down again. When Zhanna found out the reason why textbooks and notebooks around her were constantly falling to the floor, she burst into tears. We were very ashamed and embarrassed. Everyone began to ask her to stop, but persuasion did not work until someone promised never to look at her ass. And it helped! Zhanna burst out laughing and said that it was wrong, it was necessary to look, but forcing a person to show his behind is low. Who was sincere, who was pretended, but everyone have agreed with her.
In the fifth grade, Tereshkova’s pennant, which had been with her in space, was brought to our school. Now it was worn from one advanced school to another like a sacred banner, or a passing pennant. Actually, we were handed three things: the pennant, a gift and an album. The gift remained at the school, but the pennant along with the album, where we had to add the achievements of our school and with a new gift from our school, should have go to the next school indicated from above, that is, by the city communist party committee. We were lined up on the stairs, and so happened that the closest pioneers to the guests were Zhanna, Tina, and myself. The guests handed us the three indicated things and, satisfied that everything was over, rushed home to watch TV or indulge in other childish pleasures. It was Saturday. And the three of us found out that we have become delegates and must tomorrow take the relics not just to another school, but also to another Republic, since our school was the last one in the list of awardees in Georgia.
For the night, the circle artists had drew and wrote the exploits of our school in a rolling album, the mothers had ironed white shirts, red ties and gold-embroidered shoulder-belts of the delegates for us. But, in the district committee they made a mistake, because the Georgian delegation turned out to be politically incorrect: Yablonskaya, Poghosyian and Neiman. Ah, screw your internationalism! But the gap was patched up: a boy and a girl from a Georgian school were added to our delegation, in order to “strengthen friendship not only between the republics, but also between fraternal peoples.” The whole laugh was that neither the children from the Georgian school, nor the children from the Armenian advanced rural school of Noyemberyan could not strengthen the friendship. They didn’t have a common language to communicate. Both groups could not communicate not just with each other, but also with us, who speak Russian. Only Tina, who was fluent in three languages, could really strengthen friendship between peoples!
On this trip, we learned something else, not at all childish. Our pioneer leader, comrade Manana, went with us. Usually, young teachers who could not get a job in their specialty worked as pioneer leaders in schools. In anticipation of a vacancy, they were engaged in political work with youth, that is, they became district party committee “persons on the errand”. Manana was a pretty, slender woman who was willing to work for the party. The secretary of the district committee of Noyemberyan quickly figured out whose, in fact, comrade was comrade Manana. And, with the frankness of a true communist, he offered her to sleep with him over for being transferred from school to the district committee of the party as the “tenth assistant”. He made this proposal in Russian, which we knew and distinguished perfectly well despite the buzz of Armenian speech around. We were returning home on our bus at night, after a generous treat. Comrade Manana lingered in fraternal Noyemberyan. The girls, thinking that I was sleeping, discussed in a whisper whether the Pioneer leader should be considered a prostitute or not. Unable to find an answer, they vowed not to tell anyone about the overheard conversation. I don’t know if they kept their word, but I’ve been silent all these years. Well, should I still keep a secret about a party member or about a party and a member that no longer exist?
Anya was my neighbor. She lived several houses away from me until she moved with her parents to a new house far away. As children, we often returned home from school together, she was an attentive listener to my stories. Anya was a very diligent and neat girl and studied perfectly well, but she blushed very easily and strongly, and it cost nothing to bring her into such a state. In the lower grades, the most harmless words were suitable for this. Eli, who went to the same kindergarten with her, recalled that she blushed at the word potty. And I joked that Eli and Anya got into our class from the same potty.
Maya Dzhibladze studied with me from the first grade to the nine grade. Too much mathematics and physics was not for her, and she successfully moved to another class, but we always felt some kind of connection with her. My dad was once a pioneer leader for Maya’s mother, nee Kessler, a famous knitwear designer in the city. Maya was a tall, pretty girl who was courted by students. Unfortunately, she picked up pseudo-social mannerisms, like a person who is said to have “even dental crowns from denim.” She married a businessman much older than her and lost him early. Her sons moved to Chicago, where she periodically visits.
Svetlana Petrova studied with us for ten years. A very good girl and whole nature. It was she who arranged my farewell at her home, organizing what is now called a surprise party for me. All her life she met with one guy, whose mother was categorically against his son marrying a Russian girl, although Sveta only had a Russian father, a retired military officer, while her mother was Georgian. In the end, they still got married, twenty-five years later. Eli saw Sveta when she gave birth to her first child at the age of fifty and claimed that nobody would not give her more than thirty. Sveta always studied well, did not crammed, but understood, and also graduated with honors. She knew both languages perfectly and often helped wimps like me to compose a retellings how the Iranian shahs ravaged Georgia.
I must say that the teaching of Georgian was very bad. No comparison with English! Each new lesson consisted exclusively of new words, as if you were learning a new language. Where did the words from the last lesson disappear, why they couldn’t be connected with a fresh portion of words and fixed all together? I’ll never know. As if on purpose, so that strangers could not learn and remember. Even English textbooks, not real English or American, but made in Russia, were incomparably better than Georgian ones. I said this being angry to myself, for not having learned a second language well enough. I even had a test: if the taxi driver did not expose my non-Georgian origin in ten minutes of chatter (during this time I managed to make mistakes in cases and tenses), then it was safe to expose his non-Georgian origin.
Yulia Polyakova also started the first grade with us and finished the tenth. She studied very well, participated in amateur performances and circles. Her parents were nice people: her mother taught literature at school, and her father was in charge of some engineering or cybernetic. The best part was that they were very cultured people with a good sense of humor. Anyway, I appreciated it. Yulia was once my neighbor in the old apartment, then they moved to a new area, but her grandmother remained. Sometimes Julia visited her after school, and we went home together. As usual I shared with her, as with other girls, her my stories, seasoned with intimacy. Julia listened attentively, but then usually declared out of spite: “I already knew everything even without your story!” Well, apparently, not to let me conceited.
I remember Katya whenever I talk about Yulia – they were the closest friends at school. Katya’s dad was the head teacher’s stuff at our school, but I don’t remember him teaching anything. And Katya’s mother, Anna Borisovna, was a pediatrician in the district outpatient clinic, and many children from our class were treated or tested by her. In cardiology, Anna Borisovna was trained by Dr. Omari Mgeladze, and her nurse was Tina’s mother, Aunt Vera, attractive, like her daughter. Everything was connected in my childhood – places, people, their children, who were my friends. Katya was a very kind girl. I don’t remember a single arguing with her. As a teenager, she became very feminine, although she still wore short skirts. I often looked back to catch how she tossing backward her magnificent hair, threw one leg over the other. But Katya never got angry at me, just laughed, wondering with what body organ I felt this movements.
Alma, or as everyone called her – Palma (which in Russian means palm), came to us in the fourth grade and stayed “forever”. And not just like a classmate, but like one of my best friends. I have always appreciated her outward calmness, prudence and humor. As it turned out, she was not so calm in her own affairs, but as an adviser, it’s better not to. I confess that for many years her mother, a legal consultant by profession, was an even better adviser. Dad was also a lawyer, forensic expert, colonel Zurabov. Alma inherited from him a very dry and lean built, which is a pity. Well, it’s just my own feelings.
Two more girls Ira and Masha studied with us for ten years. Masha was a tall, cheerful girl of Cossack blood. Her mother worked in the city greenhouse and for ten years supplied all our class celebrations with luxurious flowers. Ira was always very full and somehow fell out of sight of our boys. Masha was better at mathematics than Ira, but the girls were always friends, as they were neighbors.
Dima Kogan came to our class in the eighth grade. He transferred himself from another school. As he later told us, in their class he was the only one student from a family with a higher education. And we had only Garik-jan, well, maybe also Anatoly, I didn’t know his parents well enough. Except these parents all other graduate a college. This should not play a role, but – no! Dima’s environment influenced his attitude to good imported things. We all appreciated them, but I don’t remember boasting when we had them or suffering when we didn’t. Nevertheless, we were taught of many interesting things in life, diverting attention from mercantile issues. It turned out that Dima is my neighbor, and we often began to return from school together. Once he came to my home and my grandmother did not like him very much. “You should not have brought him,” my grandmother told me after he left, “he isn’t your friend, or at least not a real friend.”
I was amazed. Why all of a sudden? What are the grounds? But Grandma stood her ground. Physiognomy? Did he remind her of someone? Imagine my surprise when my grandmother’s prediction came true.
A teacher of labor education and electrical works, a simple Russian man, a lover of openly saying truth, unexpectedly raised me in class.
“You have a bad friend, Nick,” he announced. “Yesterday Dima Kogan … Dima, please stand up … came up to me and asked: “Why do you mark Nick’s work as excellent, when he has no clue in electronics, doesn’t distinguish a resistor from a capacitor? I can assemble a radio, but in electrical works I have just a good mark!”
I became very uncomfortable. Not because I really did not know and was not interested in radio components, but because my friend turned out to be a shallow soul. Most of the guys thought I should fight him. But I didn’t want to; I was just disgusted.
Dima and I parted ways. I deleted him from the list of friends and acquaintances and did not notice him either in class or at classmates’ birthdays. Apparently he did the same. Once, many years after graduation, when my grandmother was already passed away, the case brought us together in a small male company of classmates. I don’t remember why we ended up at a table in Kolya’s new apartment, over a clay jar of wine that we were drinking. I have a feeling that we drank to Zhanna’s memory. And then Zhorik said:
“We’ve already grown up. How long can this confrontation last? I don’t even remember why you broke up. Shake hands, and forget the bad.”
Both, both already grown tall Vovkas, Kolya, Garik-jan and Edik, supported him. Dima and I shook hands. Everyone had drank a glass to friendship. I mentally apologized to my grandmother for considered myself an adult…
Since then, our slow rapprochement began. In the beginning, we just said hello when we occasionally met by chance. Then life scattered us, and then we ended up in the same country, but on the shores of different oceans. Sometimes we see each other and have a drink, sometimes we call each other. We advise each other something within the limits of our professional competence and life experience. And that is not bad.
Of course, I am not describing all my classmates, although I could quite easily list the fifty or sixty people who passed through our class during ten years of schooling. I just write as it goes, as flashes of memories appear in my memory. But at the same time, I understand how important our communication was: we shaped each other with our actions and relationships. We taught each-other good and bad – life. And I want to thank you for this, my dear, unforgettable companions of school years – classmates and teachers, pioneers and counselors, as well as many, many other people whom I will not forget until I myself get into the realm of Alzheimer’s. But by then the book will hopefully have been written.
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