Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWELVE – THE STORIES OF THE PIONEER AGE
Perhaps I will describe a couple of stories about myself at the pioneer (Boy Scout’s) age. In the school year, I mainly did lessons and music, helped my mother, played with my sister and read. And all sorts of adventures happened to me usually in the summertime, in the camp, and much more often than during school time. Here are my memories of these adventures.
As I already told you, we talked candidly and a lot about sex with kids in our class and sometimes even looked at photographs or pictures in medical books. Once I decided: why do I need photos, which other children brought, when I draw well myself? Without thinking twice, I depicted on several sheets of drawing paper the most famous poses and methods from the Kama Sutra. I don’t remember what my mother needed in my school bag, but all my art was suddenly in her hands.
“What is this?” Mom asked in horror.
“Nothing, just pictures,” I tried to let it go at a discount.
“It’s pornography!” Mom objected. “Do you know what this leads to?”
“No. What it leads to?”
“A person becomes a cynic and ends up in a bad and even criminal environment.”
“Came on, Mom! Criminal environment! What artists who painted naked bodies became a criminal?”
Of course, at that age I could not even imagine what the artists depicted on their canvases. Moreover, even my mother could not have imagined that, because such albums were not published in the USSR! And in general, nothing but the classics and The Wanderers (Russian artists-realists protested against alchemical painting) was published.
“Mom, there is nothing o argue about! I drew them on the run.”
“Lord,” said my mother. “One is on the run, now the other is on the run too! One is enough! Nick, destroy them!”
Of course, we argued for some time, defending our positions, but at the end I admitted that I absolutely did not need the pictures, they were of no value to me and were to be destroyed.
“That’s good,” Mom said. “Dad wouldn’t have like these drawings.”
I said nothing. Firstly, because silence is golden, and secondly, I remembered how in the bathhouse rooms, together with my dad, I peeped through the holes in the wall into the next room where a woman and a girl of my age were bathing. Dad, standing on a bench, drove me away with his bare foot from the lower hole at the level of the keyhole, through which it was so convenient to look at the apricot of a bare daughter. Dad himself was very interested in looking through the upper hole at mum’s pendulous breasts and black shaggy washcloth. But despite of our similar actions, the generational difference affected our views, and we both sincerely expressed them to each other: “I didn’t understand what you found interesting in this?”
At a slightly older age than when we were pioneers, our interest in sex began to take on humorous forms. I remember in our class there was such a prank. It began with the fact that an inquisitive schoolboy (I don’t even remember who he was) noticed a metal shutter door on the wall of a mad house – a psychiatric hospital not far from our school. Like any curious youth, he decided to look into the hidden hole, but he could not hold the flap, which hit him painfully on the head. In order to somehow compensate for his damage, he decided to bring a friend and lied to him that patients were being raped in the basement of the mad house. The friend, having received a hit with the metal flap on his head, immediately became a supporter of the theory of rape. Since then, every day the club of pathfinders, under the gong of the flap on the next head, has increased by one person. One day I was also accepted and “baptized”. Of course, I have not seen anything, but I clearly heard sighs and groans. Or maybe my head was buzzing from the heavy cover?
“Well, did you see naked people?” the guys laughed.
I developed the theoretical approach:
“It’s hard to see, you have to stick your head deeper into the hatch,” I said, “but the sounds are undeniable!”
The test subject the next day was Garik-jan, who decided to take pictures and took a camera with him. Alas, he did not succeed, because the ventilation inlet was not direct. But when the manhole cover hit Garik on the head, the camera slipped into the hatch and would have been lost forever, if not for the long strap I managed to grab onto. To the howling sounds from the basement, we picked up our schoolbags and run away from the mysterious and terrible place. But this is not the end!
The next day, Garik brought the developed film to the class. The last frame showed off a bare butt and someone’s hand. It was phenomenal! We never found out whether it really was a photo from the basement, or whether Garik outplayed us all. Our next trip to the shutter door was the last. Instead a flap door, a barrier with slots was tightly screwed to the wall, like a radiator from a car, protecting the mysterious world of crazy images from uninvited guests…
A few words about sport. I have never been an athlete. I didn’t know how to swim at school age, I didn’t run and didn’t fight. Moreover, there was nobody to fight. I remember that once I hit in the nose a classmate who was molesting me, so that he filled all his clothes with blood. All day later he wrote me threatening notes, but we never went to fight in a secluded place after school, despite the instigation of our hooligan repeaters and school fights lovers.
I told him that I had no malice towards him and broke his nose by accident, but his choice: if he want, I will fight but will not spare his sore spot. As a result, we did not fight, hugged and never fought again. I suspect that this minor episode somewhat raised my status among the boys and those who liked to take money from weaklings at school. But in fact, there was nothing to take away from me, and all the losers knew that they didn’t spit into the well from which one could draw not only homework, but also problem solving on the tests. Also, I loved to play football. I never pretended to be a striker, but in defense I played stubbornly and not so badly at the level of the yard team.
“You won’t get past Neiman!” my supporters shouted, and I tried to do my best.
To improve my soccer ability, I decided to train more, play with the boys on the street and in the nearby park. The sign-in to a sports section did not even cross my mind. In the Soviet Union they accepted kids only with good inclinations to the sport sections.
But for the game you needed a soccer ball. Real ball. And the one who owned the football – owned the initiative. So I decided to request a ball for my birthday. Mom was not a right choice. Firstly, we were tight with money, and secondly, my mother would be categorically against communicating with street boys, and even with the risk of falling under the wheels of a car. I might try to address my grandfather. And I did.
“Could you get me a ball for my birthday Grandpa?” I asked.
“What ball?” he wondered. “Haven’t you grown out of that age yet?”
“No, I’m just reaching this age,” I replied. “It’s a real soccer ball with a camera and laces. Not a child’s toy.”
“And how much does it cost?” an experienced economist-rater approached the case.
Fortunately, I already went to a sport store and understood the issue.
“Everything that is cheaper than ten rubles, a fake, either not made of leather, or without lacing, and so on. Real ball cost is ten to fifteen rubles and more.
“All right,” said the grandfather. “Since you are a beginner, ten rubles is enough, everything else is excess. Here’s a ten, choose the right ball and enjoy.”
And he handed me a folded ten-rubble note.
I even blushed with pleasure. This seemingly difficult question was solved so simply! And in a businesslike way, without the typical excuses of adults, like, “it won’t disappear after me.” I knew very well, when they pronounced so – that’s “finish”! The gift had already gone.
The next day, after school, I resolutely went alone to a sports store and bought a ball. I did not want to take my classmates-athletes with me, knowing that they would take the process into their own hands. Eli was no good either, he could laugh at my idea: “Did you decide to quit books and become a dumb athlete? Be an adult!”
As a reward for my determination, I received not only the ball, but also instructions on how to care for it, inflate the camera and lace up the leather shell with a special hook. I received it not just in words, but I did all this myself in the store. Great! I just grew up in my own eyes. But it would be unfair to play before my birthday, so I hid the ball in the bottom of the wardrobe.
“What is this?” Mom asked with a grimace of disgust, holding the ball in outstretched hands, like a head of rotten cabbage.
“This is my new football, a gift from my grandfather,” I said, anticipating something bad. My expectations were justified.
“It was a mistake to buy the ball without consulting me. You know, I’m not against sports, but not games on the street in bad company and under the wheels of cars.”
I knew my Mom was right about a lot of things. Our courtyards Kotik and Shivali always played in the street, and they were up to their necks in trouble with the police. In addition, Kotik on a bicycle was somehow hit by a car, and he was treated for a broken leg in the hospital for a long time.
“We will do this. I will exchange the ball in the store for new keds, sports pants and a T-shirt. This is enough for you for a year. Thank your grandfather and be a grown man.”
Eli would have appreciated my mother’s speech. And I never became the owner of a real soccer ball, which opens up difficult paths to the boyish world of sport.
But from the sports equipment I still had roller skates, chess and checkers. The air rifle disappeared somewhere after dad gone, apparently mom sold it. And the skates, which I did not use as a child, attracted my attention at pioneer age. I started to try them out, rode a little and gradually began to go out in them. Skates are like a bicycle: you need to feel how to keep your balance on them – and things have gone. I could not said that I have already reached this state, but I was close to it. One thing worried me, my mother did not like risky sports and was afraid that something would happen to me. And I didn’t want to disturb her and used to go out to skate furtively, so that by the time she returned from work everything was quiet and peaceful.
On that December New Year’s Eve day, I was in an excellent mood. The students were released in the noon, on the occasion of the end of the second quarter and the beginning of the winter holidays. The New Year was coming with its pleasures and treats. According to the local custom, everyone carried sweets in their pockets and exchanged them with friends. In a word, everything, except for the absence of dad, was good. And I went roller skating. I rushed down the street, and thought that times would probably change soon, dad would return, and I would again go with him, and not with grandfather or my aunt’s husband Zhorik to the bathhouse. And then we go to a small eatery to crunch with bursting hot dogs, which dad washed down with beer, blowing away foam from a high mug.
And at that moment, when I was biting off a hot dog in my thoughts, and dad was blowing off the beer foam, mom had appeared. Beautiful as Aphrodite, she appeared through the foam in my imagination, but in reality she came out of the corner, from the bus stop, with bags of holiday products. Apparently, she also was released early because of the New Year. Ups! And I’m upsetting her here… And I made a sharp U-turn to the wall of the house to take off my skates and pick up mother’s bags. Damn! Some rag rolled up under the wheel of my roller skate, and instead of jumping over the obstacle, I continued to press until I flew on the pavement. From the sharp pain that pierced my right arm, I instantly recalled the picture of my childhood – little Nick flying to the floor through a suitcase with toys, and realized that this was a fracture. Mom was already in a hurry to me.
“Don’t worry, it’s okay,” I said, “it doesn’t hurt me at all (the pain was damn strong), but I might need a cast again.”
There were tears in my mother’s eyes. She knew. She foresaw. How often did she say, “I’m like Cassandra, but people don’t believe me.”
Acting awkwardly, with the key in my left hand, I unscrewed the roller skates from the boots, and my mother and I went home to warn my grandmother and put on a coat, after all, it was winter. The coat didn’t go on the right hand, and my mom just cover my right shoulder with it. We went to the children’s hospital on Bakinskaya Street, where they fixed a fracture of the right wrist and applied a cast. I still could not put on my coat. It was snowing. It was cold. By evening we returned home and had lunch. Mom was about to cook for the New Year, I wanted to help her, but fell asleep. The temperature rose, and for part of the holidays I spent in bed sick. When I recovered, the skates were nowhere to be found, and in my childhood I never found them until my adulthood. Then I run into them littered with firewood in the back of our storage space in the yard.
And at school, after the holidays, I was released from writing assignments, and all the children were very jealous of me – the only consolation in this whole story.
In my childhood and youth, I often played with my sister Mayka. At first, I made her laugh as best as I could, played the piano, then played toys, and then games. We even managed to run and play hide and sick in our small apartment.
“Be careful, when you’re playing!” mom warned us, and of course, as always, she was right.
One day there were an interruptions in gas supply. In early 60-s there was no gas pipeline yet in the old districts of the city, and a worker brought the red gas cylinders in a truck and took the empty ones. Perhaps there was no delivery over the weekend. But compared to previous decades, this was progress, because everyone at home still had kerosene stoves, on which they used to constantly cook food in cities, abandoning the wood stove, which was convenient only in private homes, especially in villages.
So, there was temporarily no gas, and rice porridge was gurgling on a kerosene stove standing on a stool in the kitchenette. And here two little imps were running around, playing catch-up. Mayka caught me in the kitchen and now it was my turn to catch her. I rushed into a small room after my sister and the stool, one leg of which I caught on, followed me. The pot with porridge flew to the floor. It was luck that the kerosene stove with fire and fuel, dropping the porridge continued to stay on the stool! Everything happened in an instant. Maya, dressed in thick warm tights, slipped in the hot rice slurry and stretched out in it. She screamed like they cut her, the burns on both legs were extensive. Mom acted like an ambulance, she put the child in a bowl of cold water. In horror, I ran to the neighbors in the yard: “I am finished man!” I shouted, “I didn’t protect the baby!”
But as always, approaching other people helped: we returned home, replace mom in her care for Maya, and she ran out to call a doctor. After a while, the surgeon who specialized in burns came to us. He carefully cut garments off Miya and covered her blistered legs with gauze soaked in potassium permanganate.
“Keep it wet for 24 hours! Do not pop bubbles!” he ordered.
We started a round the clock watch. Manganese water was poured directly onto gauze, the child was given painkillers, watered, comforted.
The surgeon returned a day later. Mom was very worried that the skin on the girl’s legs would be disfigured with scars, but he reassured:
“If we prevent suppuration, there will be no trace left. You did the main thing – put your daughter in cold water. This saved the muscles from damage. The task of the doctor is to defeat the infection, and the new skin will grow by itself!”
When the blisters decreased, we switched the potassium permanganate to an antibiotic ointment. In a word, everything happened, as he said. And I seriously thought about how great it is to be a good doctor and help people.
When I got slightly older, I wanted to be strong and masculine, and as an attribute of this, I wanted to wear boots on thick grooved soles, with hooks for laces in the upper rows, instead of the usual holes. Such boots were popular among the geologists at my mother’s work. Apparently I often whined about this topic, because one day, perhaps on New Year’s Day, I got new shoe wear. Not ordinary black boots, made of smooth leather with a low flat sole, but foreign brown ones with uneven skin, as if it was just cut from an animal, on thick soft sole, with yellow fur inside them. To be honest, it was not quite what I dreamed of. After all, I wanted more masculinity, not comfort, but the boots, I confess, were chic.
After a couple of days, I cleaned them after a walk and put them to dry under the stove. And Mayka had conjured on the stove. She was filling the inkwell from an ink bottle. Now these words make me at least smile, if not laugh. In our time, you don’t often see an ink fountain pen, let alone a dip pen with inkwell and a bottle – a vessel and container for ink.
The inkwell stood on a folding wing, just at the junction with the body of the stove. And as it usually happens, the purple jet from the bottle went through this junction instead of an inkwell right into the new shoe. It was imperceptible through the transparent glass inkwell and soundless – it poured onto the fur. I don’t even remember if Mayka noticed her gaffe or not.
But the next day, I was blown away by the sight of my new boots: one was yellow on the inside and the other was purple. Like clown shoe wear. And I should go to school in them? To become a fun for all boys?
“Mom, I can’t go to school in these shoes,” I said. ”Everybody will laugh at me.”
“And you be higher and stronger than this. Everything in life is not always favorable. Learn to deal with difficulties.”
I feverishly thought about what to answer the guys when they ask me about two colors of fur. At first, no one noticed it, but when I had already forgotten about the problem, Zhanna suddenly exclaimed:
“Wow, look his cool boots! And you Nick are silent?”
“This is a fashion statement – multi-colored shoe trim,” Tanya said. “Mom receives magazine “Burda”, I saw this there.”
“And we are buying “America”, added Misha, “I saw they have shoelaces of different colors.”
“Relatives from America sent you these boots?” someone asked.
The short Vovka listened to them with disbelief, deeply wrinkling his left eyebrow, waiting for my answer. I took a deep breath into my chest and “dived into the abyss”:
“I knocked over a bottle of ink and dyed the fur in one shoe. At first, I was so upset… I thought, I won’t wear them. And then I decided, “What were the boots guilty of? And if someone would laugh, then rightly, so, I myself was to blame.”
“You’re a rock!” said Vovka and hit me in the shoulder.
Nobody laughed. The question resolved, and the boots really were the thing!
Nick Neim's Stories 