Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN – SUMMER TIME IN TSKNETI PIONEER CAMP
All subsequent school years were accompanied by summer recreation in pioneer camps. Now, I understand that apart from a cheap summer and a company of peers, they are unremarkable. But an optimist will find pluses even in this.
The summer after the fourth grade, passed in the city camp. That was the only time in my childhood I did not go anywhere for summer vacation. Every day I went to the park, not far from my school, where they organized entertainment for the city children. It was actually quite a dull place, so no worthwhile memory about it comes to my mind. I only remember that the youngest daughter of our neighbors from the yard worked there as a pioneer leader. She was a foreign language student, and she needed a summer teaching practice. In the morning we went with her to the camp, and in the evening we returned home.
Once she said that they were selling vouchers to the famous international pioneer camp “Artek” in the Crimea. Oh, how I wanted to get there, to the best camp in the country, on the best Black Sea! But my mother’s verdict was inexorable: no money – no entertainment. It was clear – no dad, no work and no pleasure. Of course, I tried to find some way out, but the voucher was expensive, and I was already old enough to understand the prices.
An early lesson in economics was given me by a salesman in the basement, where we took empty glass bottles and glass jars to return. Ordinary empty lemonade and mineral water half-liter bottles’ price was twelve kopecks each, but they were taken back for ten. The difference of two kopecks went to the income of the seller and his superiors. It was a standard “legal” underpayment. Of course, in the newspapers and from the stands, the phenomenon was condemned, but in reality everything and everyone was corrupt.
Once I brought five empty bottles to return, for which the seller put fifty kopecks on the counter. Without touching the coins, I immediately protested:
“I already know how to count! There should be not fifty, but sixty kopecks. These are not your ten kopecks, but mine.”
“You know how to count, but you still don’t understand anything in life. I have a family and children. They need to be fed. What will I buy them if everyone takes their ten kopecks?
“And what will I buy if everybody take my money?” I asked hotly.
My perseverance made an impression. The man added ten kopecks to the coins on the counter.
“It is a last time when I am paying you twelve kopeks for a bottle,” he said. Look for another place for twelve. This is my business. You cannot destroy it. You must find your own business and earn money there, and not to rob other people.
I left saddened. Something in his words was true, and I did not want to rob his children. I had to find my own business. And I must say, it itself found me.
Next summer I went to a new camp. It was the pioneer camp in Tskneti belonged to the Transcaucasian Railway. Mom finally found a job in her specialty at the design institute of this organization, and “we became railway employees.” This meant that all sorts of railroad discounts and privileges now applied to our family. Therefore, voucher to the camp of railway employees for my mother was much cheaper than to other camps. And as a result, they took an experiment on me. I say this because the unsuitability of this camp was revealed in the very first week, but I stayed there for two whole summers. I had raised my status there as best as I could, but anyway I “did my time.”
Firstly, the food in the camp was very poor. Secondly, children were beaten and punished. And thirdly, they were not involved in activities. If you don’t create of something to do, you’ll be bored. Let me tell you in more details and in order.
Every product that was possible to steal was stolen. From children! Every morning there was a standard breakfast. Semolina porridge, which I could not stand and did not eat, unsweetened nasty tea and (hooray!) fresh bread (without anything). I had to fill my hungry belly with bread and stash a couple of fresh loaf crusts in my pockets. Later they could be rubbed with garlic and eaten. The whole camp had stank of garlic, but the directorate didn’t care – at least some sterilization!
For lunch they gave soup from cabbage or potatoes and onion and something fishy and tasteless. For dinner were macaroni and cheese. There were very few changes in this diet, except for lunch on the weekend (then it was only Sunday), when parents visited and could look into the dining room (rarely anyone did it). Most of the children went with parents into the forest for the whole day and were not interested in lunch. Also a couple of times a month, when the camp was shown to foreign tourists, lunch was quite good…
But the children did not complain to their parents.
The more affluent left food for their children, which they kept in a storage room and gradually ate up. Here I first saw porous chocolate, which a boy named Zura used to hide in his suitcase. It was not an ordinary bar, but a huge, the size of two bricks piece. The boy dived into the suitcase, and from there came gnawing and chomping sounds. Periodically, he stuck his head out and looked around in a panic in anticipation of hungry avengers. One day he spotted me, an innocuous and harmless pioneer, dived in again and crawled out of his chocolate hole with a piece of chocolate for me that looked like a chipped volcanic stone.
“That’s a lot, don’t…” I said.
“Don’t be shy, eat. This is quite a bit, chocolate is not ordinary, but porous. My aunt carries buckets of it out of the factory,” he boasted.
I recollected how my mother taught me, “If you are offered to taste a meal, do not refuse, do not offend people.” Also, I was curious to try something unusual. And I didn’t do it in vain! I haven’t eaten such delicious chocolate since my childhood chocolate kopecks. But it was also light and airy. Alas, I did not get another chance to taste this chocolate in the camp. On the same evening, while we were watching a movie, someone hungry or curious broke open Zura’s suitcase and stole a porous miracle.
Children from poor families tolerated starvation rations more easily or did not want to upset their parents – what would they bring them? Mom usually brought me some fruit that didn’t even make it to the middle of the week. And on the day of arrival, I received a small jar of peeled strawberries with sugar.
I have been looking forward to my mother’s visit since morning. After breakfast, I usually climbed a tall tree near the camp fence and watched the bus stop. Not that I was sad, but there were very little interesting to do in the camp – it was more pleasant to watch the cycle of buses and people from this mast of my forest ship. Mom and I approached the gates of the camp from two sides at the same time, and my mother was surprised how it always turns out like this.
“I just feel that you are coming closer to the camp,” I lied.
I had enough brain not to tell Mom about the tree and not to get a scolding for a security breach.
Then my mother and I walked through the forest, where under each tree a family of some pioneer had a picnic on the grass. They enjoyed fried chicken, hard-boiled eggs, fresh tomatoes and watermelon, and I thought why couldn’t my mother feed me like everyone else? I remembered what banquets she threw, what wonderful dishes she cooked. But then I felt ashamed of my own thoughts – well, who else gets strawberries, peeled and sweetened? We sat in the clearing, my mother stroked my hair and fed me the whole jar, refusing to have some. She probably wanted to feast on strawberry, but preferred to save vitamins for her children. Well, of course, she ate one strawberry so as not to offend me…
In the afternoon we said goodbye; Mom had to catch a 4:00 PM bus. Household chores and a child were waiting for her at home. True, there was also the last 5:00 PM bus, but they stuffed into it like herring in a barrel. And I should not be late for a Sunday lunch in a half-empty canteen to grab an extra food, which today was more than enough.
In the evening, the all-clear signal sounded on the radio, and the pioneers went to bed. Usually by night the children quickly fell asleep, they did not need to be guarded for a long time as during the day. Those who were bolder and were not afraid of punishment, made their way to the dining hall and peeped throughout the window at how counselors and teachers led by the director were feasting there. These were daily banquets made out of the pioneer’s rich diet, generously dispensed by railroad employees to their children, but disappearing into other people’s stomachs. Moreover, “others” here does not just sound like “others”, but rather, like “aliens”. It is hard to imagine that in a country where already the second generation was brought up on bright ideals, these ideals were trampled on so massively. The same chef who fed us dull plain food, cooked excellent kebabs and prepared various holiday dishes. The same simple dining room, but illuminated by garlands of multi-colored light bulbs, the same plastic tables lined up, but covered with white tablecloths, the same people behind them, but slipped away from the world of politics, speeches and lies into the world of a fabulous ball, flushed from spicy food and wine, laughed, joked and enjoyed their life.
“I would fry them all myself,” said Ashot. “Did you see how this executioner (he meant the director) pawed Inga? One hundred percent he then sleeps with her.”
“Probably this is how revolutions begin – with envy,” I thought, listening to Ashot and looking at someone else’s feast from the surrounding darkness.
But today, on Sunday, we had something to chew on before going to bed. The cold night air was blowing into our rooms. We wrapped ourselves in woolen blankets and fell asleep soundly after a long summer day. The forest all around us rustled with leaves.
Cheerful sounds of the march awakened us at 8:00 AM. Morning exercises was not always the case. It depended on the leader of a detachment. When Rashid, demobilized after three years of military service, was our leader, we practiced physical education almost daily. But environment “sucked” Rashid: late night gatherings, perhaps, not only sittings, did not contribute to the early morning getting up and running, as in the army. Sometimes, left to ourselves, we lazily washed our faces and dragged ourselves to the dining room for breakfast. Since breakfast was a weak spot for me, I thought about how to strengthen it and decided to… marinate the mushrooms. Thanks to the efforts of Princess Trubetskaya, who served as a cleaner in the run-down Kiketi sanatorium, I was well versed in the mushrooms that grow in abundance in the local forests.
The guys and I collected a mountain of mushrooms, I selected the best ones, washed them thoroughly, put in the glass jar, add garlic, dill and mint, plucked directly from the beds, poured cold water and put them in a secluded place. We could not endure for a long time and after a few days we ate our treasures. Nothing happened, but my mother was terrified when I told her about my gastronomic exploits. She was afraid of mass botulism and mushroom poisoning, and was imagined all sorts of horrors. To reassure my mother, I promised to stop pickling mushrooms and, having made friendship with the stoker, I began to fry mushrooms in the furnace, and then followed potatoes and onions. Since then, grilled food has been my favorite.
I was going to talk more about punishments. It was not some kind of plague, but only in this camp I met such an unusual attitude towards children. Staff had beat children. Not terribly, but sensitively. Physical assault was approved by director and flourished among the “capable” counselors. Rashid in this regard was a “stupid” – he did not beat anyone. The children said about him, “Rashid is good, he doesn’t beat.”
Inga was a bitch. She walked with a hazel rod, with which she whipped our legs very painfully. She usually came to put us to sleep during the day. It was not allowed to talk and spin, this was followed by a blow to the sheet. But we, experienced campers, pulled it like an awning from head to toe, and the blow only raised a column of dust in the rays of the sun.
However, it all paled in comparison to the director’s methods. Perhaps he was once an investigator, tortured enemies of the people, but now he was a retired sadist. When the violator was called to his office, this boded ill. Usually he took the pioneer by the earlobe with two fingers and squeezed it, but not simply, but with rolling movements, as if he was trying to grind it into powder. The pain was unbearable. If the boy began to bounce and twist, the director applied the second degree – at the same time he stepped on the pioneer’s bare toes with the heel of his shoe and gradually raised the heel to its sharp edge.
I must say that I never got to be executed, perhaps partly due to the fact that I unexpectedly found my first business in the camp and, therefore, became different from everyone else.
It all happened because it was very boring in this camp, in comparison to military pioneer camp in Manglisi. You had to create an entertainment for yourself in the camp. I was tired of reading constantly, I wanted to move. There were few sports grounds there – the territory did not allowed that, and they were always occupied by good players, so a lot of pioneers were involved in handcrafts. I learned to carve patterns on walnut or dogwood sticks, make whistles and pipes, and, climbing through the forest in search of suitable raw materials, I came across an oak with acorns. I vividly imagined how you can make figures of warriors in helmets and turbans out of them and build a whole layout of the battle. My initial attempts were crowned with success, and soon the “Skilled Hands” club had started feverishly build the composition “Three hundred Aragvins deter the Persian army in the gorge”.
As I already mentioned, our camp was considered exemplary. Where it was considered so, and what was flawless in it, I do not understand. Let’s put it this way: of all the camps, this one was outwardly the most decent and closest to the capital. Therefore, once or twice a month, the camp was visited by delegations of foreign tourists. On such a day, we were fed a festive dinner, in the sense that the lunch was ordinary, but cooked tasty, home-style, with butter, meat and good vegetables. It would always be like this!
A concert was organized for tourists, everything was ready in advance. Pioneers sang songs and received gifts. As a rule, these were chewing gum and ballpoint pens. The largest number of souvenirs went to our accordionist Leon Alpert, the grandson of Aunt Pasha.
When I first learned that he was the grandson of Mayka’s nanny, I was very happy. It was like meeting a relative in a not very welcoming environment. In addition, in the absence of money in the family, I dropped my music school and began to study the accordion at home, with my aunt Leah, therefore I considered Leon a colleague of mine. But he was five years older than me, always busy playing or learning new songs, so he didn’t communicate with me much.
Once, reporters came to cover one of the meetings of foreigners with pioneers. The foreign delegation included a well-known Italian communist artist. And he suddenly liked my heroic composition made out of acorns. He suggested to exhibit it at the Palace of Pioneers. Correspondents from the editorial office of radio programs for children immediately decided to interview him and me. And it suddenly turned out that, unlike the Italian, I did not have a hoarse, smoky, but a very clear, sonorous voice. I was immediately invited to be a radio announcer in the “Pioneer Dawn” program, and I immediately agreed. But I still continued to get luck. One short female with short haircut, with a cigarette in her mouth, said to the camera-man,
“Don’t you think that this Nick has not only a good voice, but also a good speech style? Look how smoothly he answered questions without preparation and spoke smoothly. I bet on khachapuri (pastry with cheese) and coffee that he also composes stories.”
They asked me, and I admitted that I do not write anything, but I love to say stories about my friends and the events that happen to us.
“Come on, tell us what interesting things happened to you in the last days of school, and we will record your story on a tape recorder,” the woman suggested.
And I told them about one recent case.
“Just before the end of the school year, I was walking down the street and recalling a cheerful song about the captain. I didn’t mind listening to it. Suddenly, an empty car, standing by the sidewalk, turned to me in a clear female voice, “Good day!”
I was very surprised and timidly answered, “Hello.”
Of course, I understood that it was not the car speaking, but the woman inside it, but I saw perfectly well that there was no one in the car.
“Now, at your request, Lebedev-Kumach’s song from the movie “The Children of Captain Grant” will sound for you,” the same voice continued, and my favorite music burst out of the car.
Shocked by my paranormal abilities, I returned home and enthusiastically told how the machine had granted my wish. My mom called me a dreamer because everyone knows that cars don’t have radios. Mom thought the music was coming from somewhere else.”
Imagine my surprise, when the woman said, “I am the anchor and the editor of “Pioneer’s Dawn”, my name is Anna Tuff. I was the one who hosted that show. We take your story on the radio. It will sound in the next issue of “Pioneer’s Dawn” in your performance.
This is how I found my child business and at the same time secured my immunity for this and next year. Even from the director.
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