Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWENTY – MY FRIEND SASHA
The following summer, after eighth grade, two things happened.
Firstly, our historical club sent stands to the all-USSR competition and… won it! And secondly, I made a very close friend. But I’ll start in order.
We, or rather, the materials that we sent to the competition, took first place. Four club members including me, who worked on the materials, had to go to a ceremony in Leningrad. We were measured, and the tailor started sewing uniforms for the rally. But we were warned that tailoring is a long business, we will be informed when we need to get together at school, but for now we can rest according to our summer vacation plans.
My plan was to go to the camp in Manglisi. And I headed there and began to tell old and new friends how soon I would leave the campers for a short time and go to the rally in Leningrad. And I will bring souvenirs to everyone from there.
Everyone was rooting for me. This trip was no joke. And in the newspaper “Pionerskaya Pravda” (“Pioneer’s Truth”), which was read only because of the fantastic novel with sequels about a flying man, they continuously counted down the days until the rally. Like before the launch into space, which the boys only raved about.
And everyone began to notice that the rally was getting closer and closer, but Nick still didn’t get called. I have already been started asking whether I lied them. What could I say?
“No!” I usually answered in one word, foreseeing the bad.
The crowd gathered in front of the newspaper stand on the opening day of the rally. I also stood there. The guys parted, allowing me to come up close and drink the cup of shame myself. I approached the newspaper to look at the photographs and…
I saw a photo of our joyful teachers – Maya and Vasya, dressed in cool beige paramilitary uniforms, all chest in badges, pennants in their hands and next to them completely strange children. The caption under the photo said, “The winners of the All-Union Gathering at the solemn parade.”
Two or three guys from my school exclaimed, “Nick is not lying! These are our teachers, but alien children!”
The crowd got excited.
“Let’s go to Chapay! He is a history teacher,” someone suggested.
“Chapay” was the nickname of the director of our pioneer camp, Vasily Ivanovich, who, like his famous namesake from the movie screen, Vasily Ivanovich Chapayev, a hero of the Russian Civil War, loved to chop the air with his palm while talking.
“And what will he say that you haven’t heard – the party is our helmsman”?
“They sent their own children, this is a clear matter,” others objected despondently.
“Come on, Nick, don’t be upset about the rally,” said the new boy in the camp, Sasha, Is history your favorite subject?”
“No, math and physics!”
“Then there’s nothing to talk about! And it is better to go to Leningrad with your family. I’ll better show you a couple of tricky problems, I bet you won’t solve them!”
It was the best way to distract me from the sad rally and the “burnt” free trip to Leningrad. I couldn’t explain that we don’t have money for trips, and now I won’t get there soon. But friendly support brought me closer to Sasha, who became one of my best friends.
The first thing that united us was the love of mathematics. Our class has already been made mathematical, and in September nine hours of math and six hours of physics a week were waiting for us. Everyone who was ready for such torment remained in our class, the rest moved to other ones. In addition, we accepted several good students from other classes and schools.
Sasha, on the other hand, went from his ordinary school to a mathematical one, the existence of which I did not even know. My world, limited by class and camp, began to expand. It turned out that there are two “science centers” in the city – the mathematical school and the mathematical boarding school. They even compete with each other, which one will provide more students for the national team of the Republic for the All-Union Mathematical Olympiad.
Sasha, unlike me, knew only these two “centers” and thought that all students who were strong in mathematics flocked there, while all the rest were weak and only knew, better or worse, how to solve simple school problems. Offering to compete, he thought to confirm his hypothesis, but exactly the opposite had happened. It turned out that I was breaking the picture of his world.
“You must join us! There is no need to waste time on all sorts of historical clubs and literary evenings,” Sasha said.
“This is not the main thing, although it is also interesting,” I objected, “The main thing is my friends. I started school with them and I will finish it with them.”
I had no idea how I would leave Eli, Kolya, Zhorik, two Vovkas, Misha, Garik, Edik, our wonderful girls and, of my own free will, go to “another family”. It’s funny, but I was even worried about them, how they would manage without me. I probably drew parallels between classmates abandoned by me and me abandoned by dad. Or simply gave myself an imaginary significance. I remember how in a similar way grandmother Sofa often asked us a rhetorical question: “How will you survive here without me? You will suffocate in the dirt and dust!”
But I certainly valued friendship. Perhaps even more than love. Or maybe the time of girls has not yet come…
Sasha’s family, like mine once, rented a dacha not far from the camp. Mom and the little brother had rest in Manglisi, and dad sometimes came, and in August on vacation (he taught literature) he also lived here. Once Sasha took me to meet his parents. His father’s name was Solomon Ilyich, and his mother’s name was Rena Solomonovna. The abundance of Solomons turned on something biblical in my head, and when I came to visit, I politely greeted dad, who was reclining on the couch, leaning on his elbow and deepening in reading.
“Good afternoon,” I said. – I know your name is Solomon Davidovich.
“Hi, Nick, I’ve heard about you too. Actually, my name is Solomon Ilyich, but Solomon Davidovich is also quite not bad first name. I like your associations,” he grinned, “Are you really deeply taught history and literature?”
“They teach us well,” I answered; I had nothing to compare with.
“Have you read the criticism of “Eugene Onegin” in original?”
“Of course!”
“By different critics or only…
“Only Belinsky’s, we did not study the others.
“It’s clear. Then read Pisarev for comparison, maybe someday we’ll discuss it.”
“Dad, I brought Nick here not to discuss critics with you, but to eat a watermelon!” Sasha intervened in our conversation.
“But isn’t it the same thing?” Solomon Ilyich laughed, “Then make up the table, quickly!”
Sasha laid out the plates on the table, and his dad was already cutting a huge red watermelon into large chunks. Sweet juice flowed in streams. But my Mom knowingly taught me to eat even chicken with a knife and fork.
“Can I have a fork?” I asked Solomon Ilyich, “And a knife.”
“Of course,” he agreed, “but, as my dad used to say, such a watermelon should be eaten not with what, but in what – …
“…In underpants!” Sasha finished.
So I became friends with this wonderful family.
A few days later, Sasha’s mother came to talk to my aunt Lea, an accordionist at the camp.
“We all really have Nick. I would like the boys to be friends,” she said.
“Yes. Of course,” Lea agreed.
Then she told me with a laugh about the visit of Rena Solomonovna.
“Can you imagine, Nick, she came to ask your hand!”
“I hope I get my dowry,” I quipped.
Suddenly, Lea got very angry, told me that it was my mother and grandmother who are set me against the Neimans. But only years later I found out that I accidentally hit the mark. It turns out that dad, having learned that I switched from piano to accordion, sent me a gift – a wonderful German accordion “Weltmeister”. Leah was indignant,
“To such a milk sucker?! Something cheaper will perfectly suit him.”
And she replaced the gift with a shabby instrument of the last century. How many times then did I have to patch up his leaky bellows! But in spite of everything, the accordion obeyed my fingers and… had even fed me sometimes.
The next summer, Lea didn’t go to the camp to work, and “Chapay” hired me to work for food! That is, they didn’t pay me money, but only fed me. However, on the other hand, as an employee, I had a right to the free camp voucher for my child. So I, a “proud parent”, took my sister for the first time on a summer vacation. I regularly signed some paper called “statement”. My salary, as I now understand, was pocketed by someone, but I was still proud of my position. I lived in a Finnish house, in a small room, where the second bunk was occupied by the camp radio operator. He mostly spent the night in the radio room, and my peers, senior “pioneers”, often visited me in my room for smocking.
Igor Grozdyev was a frequent guest. Although a year younger, he was a real smoker and, most interestingly, an experienced person in sex. He gained this experience in some sanatorium, where the parents sent their skinny baby, tempted by the prefix “medical” to the title of the institution. Their hopes were fully justified, the child, unlike in the camp, gained weight, but the real reason was in the personal nanny.
A lonely woman decided that a young boyfriend is better than none, and hit all the hard with Igor. At the same time, she became his second mother – she made him eat well and sleep during the day, but in the evening and in the morning – she breastfed him and ordered him to work out “motherly cares”. From all this science, Igor learned that nothing would work without food and sleep, and that it was necessary to settle down so that “the navel fell on the navel”. If only you knew how many discussions and disputes among the pioneers this controversial statement gave rise to, until life itself debunked it.
I hope that the work of an accordionist and theoretical “navel research” did not shield my family from me. My sister was under my care. Although she was not particularly shy, she did not really like detachments, the regime and collective life. I hope I brightened up her camp existence with my visits and small gifts.
All day long the pioneers learned songs and danced to my accordion. But sometimes it was replaced by a Radiola in the camp club. Once we had a dance competition. At first, everyone stomped around as best they could and earned points, but… When the waltz struck, the guys became timid – you had to be able to dance it, and not pretend that you could. I didn’t know how to dance the waltz, but I wanted to participate and invited my peer, a student of the choreographic school:
“Do you mind if I try it with you?”
“Not at all! But do you know how to dance the waltz?”
“No. You will teach me now. You lead first, and I’ll repeat after you. When I get used to it, I’ll tell you, and you don’t resist after that.”
“OK. Let’s try.”
And we, at first hesitantly, and then faster and faster twirled on the marble floor of the club. Competitors surrendered one by one, until finally we were left alone, surrounded by enthusiastic spectators.
Mila was given an award, as the prima-ballerina, but I… I was awarded by the ballerina, fascinated by the unexpected metamorphosis of her partner. We kissed under the crazy Manglisi starry sky: completely velvet, strewn with thousands of stars, winking at young creatures in their cognition of the universe and themselves.
Of course, it was a completely atypical evening and competition. We usually organized a Cabaret-show alike TV one “Blue light”, where we mostly performed miniatures, sang and even drank tea with sweets than danced, so that… well, so that the high school students would not feel too grown up.
Once we, three or four friends, were allowed to go to Manglisi to order a “Napoleon” tart for such a show. To make it cheaper, we ordered several cake layers and a huge soup pot of custard. In the evening, everything will be brought to the camp by a forwarder’s car, and in the kitchen they will spread the custard and cut the cake into parts. So we did, and when we returned home, the local old woman asked us to slaughter a chicken for her.
“Can anybody of you do it for me?” she asked, and we, without saying a word, grabbed Felix from the math school by the arms and pushed him forward.
“Here he is, he can! He cuts them all his life!”
The old woman, not paying attention to the fact that Felya turned as pale as chalk, put the neck of her pied chicken in his left hand, and in his right hand – a huge cleaver, worthy of an ogre-ripper, and said,
“Good luck, son.”
What was left for him to do? Felix placed the chicken on a large boulder as if on a chopping block, closed his eyes, and struck.
A scream filled the village Manglisi. Everyone yelled – we, the old woman and the chicken itself – the soft-hearted Felya chopped off hen’s beak. In one second, the old lady snatched her cleaver from the hands of the limp Felix, and with a professional movement freed the bird from undeserved chicken torment.
“I can’t kill a healthy creature on the day of an angel, but I must save the wounded one from torment,” she explained the change in her behavior.
In the evening during the Cabaret-show we played a pantomime, “How Felix Helped a Grandmother”. The people were bursting with laughter.
And with the cake, also, the story happened. “Napoleon” came out wonderful, but the cream turned out to be too much – there was half a soup pot left. We suppose to return pastry cream to the kitchen, but we could not lose such a treasure. So we decided to bury the soup pot of pastry cream and feast on tomorrow. And we did it, since the path from the club to the dining room and kitchen lay past the ravine at the southern border of the camp.
Alas, the cold of the earth was not enough. The pastry cream turned sour, and we were left with nothing.
Unfortunately, Sasha did not participate in all these fun events. He, as he advised me, went with his family to Leningrad and Minsk, where his uncle, a war hero, lived. During WW2 the uncle was repeatedly sent into the rear of the enemy, to communicate with the underground. It was believed that a paratrooper of intelligence with a pronounced Jewish appearance would be extremely cautious and would not defect to the side of the enemy, even if he wanted to.
Sasha had been acquainting with the Hermitage and also often swam in the cold waters of Gulf of Finland. And got a furuncle in the perineum. It seems that there is nothing to remember of, but a funny story is connected with the treatment, which I heard in September from Sasha, then forgot and recollected again many years later in America, having heard it from a former nursing school student, another participant of the events.
The boil had been opened, and the patient was taken daily for dressings. Every time he had to take off his panties and get into the gynecological chair. The entire perineum and laying near organs were smeared with iodine, and then a painful gauze packing of the wound was followed.
One day, young interns from the nursing school came. One girl was instructed to smear everything with iodine. The rest surrounded the patient and frankly giggled, watching what was happening. The trainee, having dipped a forceps with a napkin in a disinfectant solution, diligently wiped the boil area and the very “near laying organs” to the patient, which, of course, made them no longer laying. This caused more laughter. And the reaction, I mean an erection, became persistent. A young girl, trying to put everything in order, lightly pressed the forceps – the penis sprung; again – sprung even more. Alarmed by the disorder, the girl was indignant,
“The patient, please stop the disgrace! Put it in place!”
Roaring laughter shook the walls. But then the surgeon came and stopped the excitation of the trainees with threats not to count the practice, and the excitation of the patient with a painful dressing.
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