Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN – KIKA AND RUDIK
“Flashes” work interestingly. Ponder about one thing, another one pops up. Let me try to think of the rare, the unusual and see what it will generate?
Kika was a city madman. The favorite of citizens, a quiet down, who was living out already his fifth decade. He was a living parody of human passions and weaknesses, a sort of kind, harmless free-roaming humanoid creature that could be safely feed, teased and incite. He lived in half a block from the city square named after Karl Marx, the former square of the governor prince Vorontsov. Not Vorontsov-Dashkov, whose son was allegedly the student of my grandfather, but Mikhail Semyonovich Vorontsov, the hero of the war of 1812 and the subject of Pushkin’s famous epigram “half-a-milord…”
By the name of the governor, the whole district was called “Vorontsov”. “We are from Vorontsov!” – the local inhabitants declared proudly, especially the punks from the streets and alleys adjacent to the square. Few people remembered that in the nineteenth century German colonists lived in these places, and even less people saw old photographs of the monument to the prince facing Mikhailovsky Avenue (future Plekhanov Ave, and then Agmashenebeli Ave) and Mushtaid Gardens.
Kika lived in the family of his elder sister, with his old mother, whom he dearly loved and whose death he bitterly experienced along with the whole region. Who could resist and not cry at the sight of the tragic grimace of the down and his clumsy words: “Mom … died.” That was real Italian neorealism!
But for the most part, Kika was an optimist. He smiled to the townspeople, every day going out to “work” – ride the city trolleybus. Everyone knew him, and not a single conductor or controller tried to charge him a fare. Passengers laughed at his eternal requests: “Let me smoke!” and “I want a wife!” It was not clear whether he understood the meaning of these words, accompanied by comical gestures. I doubt. But he understood well and was even frightened when he, naughty and splashing with saliva, was reproached and called not by Kika, but by his real name – Tengiz.
Tbilisi residents often recall how the round, bald-headed down Kika with a straw hat in his hand and the skinny bearded psych Vakhushti in a soldier’s uniform and beret were driven around the city in an open convertible, during the “historical” meeting between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro.
“Cuba is my love!” we, the Vorontsov pioneers, sang.
I don’t know why I recalled all these events and names. What secret feelings do they evoke in me: grief, sadness, fading away? Hardly. How many good deeds and warm feelings are associated with this time!
In the same yard with Kika, in the basement, my school friend Rudik lived. In the pioneer years, we sat at the same desk and often returned home from school together, we had the same route. Rudik studied poorly. I remember writing down our summer reading list. The teacher dictated:
“Lermontov’s fairy tale “Ashik-Kerib”.
Rudic had heard “Ashibki (which means mistakes in Russian) – Rib.”
“Nick, what does it mean “mistakes – rib?” Rudik whispered.
“Ashik-Kerib! It’s a name,” I said.
“She said “Mistakes – rib.” What is rib?”
The devil crept into my soul:
“Probably, it is – no!” I waved with my hand. “Mistakes – rib! No mistakes!”
“Well, you are the professor,” – my neighbor on the desk was amazed.
I was ashamed, but I could not resist the joke.
The whole next year, I solved problems for Rudik and explained the secret motives of love from “A Hero of Our Time”. I really liked Pechorin. I had a thick notebook, which I filled out, analyzing the gestures, thoughts and actions of a literary hero. Oh how I wish I could flip through it now!
And Rudik was not at all angry with me for the trick. He may not have even read that stupid tale of “Ashibke-Rib!”, but once he helped me out a lot. At the end of high school, before the departure of our weak students from the future mathematical class, we arranged a poetry matinee at school. I needed a good frock coat for the image of the poet Baratashvili, whose lyrical poems I was going to read by candlelight from the stage. Alas, in addition to the school jacket, I had only sweaters from outerwear. However, fortunately for me, Rudik’s parents presented him a stylish jacket with two slits on the back according to the latest fashion, preparing to send their son to a vocational school. And kind Rudik lent me his chic, not yet put on the new thing.
The furor was complete! Then I realized for the first time in my life that people are judged for sure by clothes. The similar feeling I had at the prom, when I received a new black suit and shoes from my parents. Then I collected a bunch of compliments from our school beauties.
This is what the “flash” turned out to be, although I started with some kind of nostalgic recollection of the clean, neat down, Kika, imploringly looking at the passengers of the Vorontsov trolleybus (“Well people, how can’t you understand?!”) and addressing them with the words of a talking parrot,
“I want a wife! I want a wife! A wife!”
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