Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE – PHYSFAC. FIRST YEAR. SRORIES ABOUT OLEG
I don’t remember when I met Oleg. Most likely at the Olympiad in Physics. In post-pioneer age, and especially when our class became mathematical, I was very fond of various sciences and went on Sundays to all conceivable Olympiads. Of course, Olympiad in Physics too. There I met Oleg, who in my eyes was the “first physicist” among the schoolboys. But first, while still in the pioneer camp, I became friends with his main rival, Felix from the mathematical school, Sasha’s classmate, the one who unsuccessfully slaughtered a chicken for an old woman in Manglisi.
Their personal rivalry was expressed in who solve all the problems at the Olympics first and jump out the door before the other one. This sometimes resulted in sloppy notes and illegible drawings. But, nevertheless, they both participated the All-Union Olympics, and both of them were not taken to the International Olympiad because of the fifth paragraph in the passport, namely ethnicity.
I think this affected both: Felix changed his surname and ethnicity in his passport from Jewish to Russian. Some people stopped saying hello to him for this. However he was accepted into the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (analog of MIT). Oleg, out of stubbornness, did not do this, although he had real reasons (his mother was not Jewish), and… he was not accepted even with higher scores than Felix.
But, as usual, there is no single right path in life: gradually, the MIPT HR sorted out everything and, finding fault with nonsense, expelled Felix, after which he successfully graduated from another Moscow college.
Oleg, as well as “my Sasha”, after Moscow attempt, successfully entered our University, where we finally became friends. I always wondered that despite his obvious abilities, he managed to stay for the second year, arguing and fighting with the lady-teacher in quantum mechanics. A rather strange story, because she was not a bitch at all, had a young boyfriend and was friendly with senior students. Most likely, the fault was youthful maximalism and some phrase like,
“I understand the Heisenberg equation better than you!”
And she did everything she could to prove otherwise.
I can’t say that an extra year at the University had any significant impact on Oleg. In the new group, he met wonderful guys who became his best friends for life. I knew them well: Misha from the pioneer camp, where I staged a fight between two gladiators, and Valya Shumeridze from the Mathematical Olympiad in Kyiv, where he set off fireworks with an explosion in the toilet.
Everyone was connected to each other with many childhood, school and youth connections.
With Valya, we not only gnawed at the same problems at the Olympics, we poured ourselves with butter from Kyiv-cutlets (chicken-Kyiv or cutlet de Volaille), blew up “grenades” in the toilet, ran away at night to St. Vladimir’s Cathedral for the Easter procession and hurried to meet the girls on the Hill of St. Andrew.
Misha and I grew up in a pioneer camp, loved to play gladiators, lived next door, and I ran to make calls from them, and his dad, who worked in military intelligence, was surprised that it was impossible to guess what I was talking about on the phone.
“In which intelligence school did you study conspiracy?” he often joked.
“Self-education,” I joked back, referring to the home school of secrecy caused by my father’s all-Union wanted list.
But I was not a good scout: Misha’s friend Asya seemed to me his sympathy, and I never even made an attempt to walk her home, which we once regretted in adulthood.
Oleg and I became really friends at the University. In middle school, he was a classmate of the philosophically calm Boris Bichikashvili, the rambunctious Kesha and the fat Gavrik. And then he moved to a mathematical boarding school; Gavrik, like my Sasha, to a mathematical school; and Borya and Kesha – to our math class.
Following the example of Felix, Oleg got himself a passion. I have no stories about their school and student adventures. I only remember how Felix bothered one girl from the pioneer camp, and she often complained to her friends (I don’t know how sincere she was), that she couldn’t get rid of him. But when Felix entered the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, their “bonds” faded on their own. And Oleg, on the contrary, only became heat up at the end of the university. It was then that the novel of his life broke out. He met a pretty girl, Ida, who graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages and began working in the translation department of the Institute of Automation. She, like him, was an extraordinary person, and sometimes acted and thought outside the box, which fascinated Oleg, who was prone to the unusual.
Once Oleg brought Ida to his new apartment, where there was no water in the tap, and there were no water supplies in the refrigerator. They really wanted to drink. Then Oleg offered to scoop cool water from the new toilet tank. The most surprising thing was that Ida was not embarrassed at all and together with Oleg got drunk from an unusual “spring”. Actually, I’m not really surprised at this; in the sixth or seventh grade I ate food for fishes to win the approval of a girl, and after the first University year, I drank water from a river in the city with cases of cholera for the same purpose! I think that Oleg and Ida were driven by the same “cholera” of lust. But maybe I’m wrong. Anyway, they drank water. For Oleg, this was not something new, he said that sometimes in their brand new apartment the only available water was “toilet tank’s water”.
These conversations, through intermediaries, reached the employees of the Institute of Automation, where Ida worked. Remember, I said that all the acquaintances in my youth were closely related. For example, Ida’s boss was the father of my classmate and friend, Yulia Polyakova. As for my acquaintances among employees of the Automation Institution… the place here would not be enough to write a list of them. So, someone, probably, Valya Shumeridze’s mother-in-law (she also worked there), once remarked,
“Not only does this “psych” Oleg, come to visit Valya and solve problems with him half a night, causing the jealousy of his young wife, but he also drinks water from the toilet!”
Ida was indignant and broke out,
“First of all, it’s not like that! And secondly… what a big deal? I drink it too!”
It is clear that everything ended with a wedding. As the saying goes,
“And I was there, drinking wine and water…” No, no! Please, no suggestions!
I remember another funny story of those times. Oleg loved cats. Usually he brought some homeless kitten from the street, which his mother then raised. But Oleg gave them names. The first one he named Nasser, the second one, one-eyed – Dayan. And then, he found another one, and gave it to his best friend – Valya.
Alas, the kitten did not take root in that house. The “fault” was Valya’s father, who worked as a deputy director for science at a medical research institute. At home he had a large study, in which there were shelves with old folios. The kitten really liked to climb up along the expensive gilded books’ spines to the very ceiling, and from there to jump onto the bald head of the deputy director. For some reason Valya’s father didn’t like it! And he ordered the kitten to be returned to Oleg, but initially demonstrating him kitten’s trick for persuasiveness.
As Oleg told, he was seated in the Valya father’s chair – in a very honorable and usually inaccessible place. Among other things, Oleg had a small bald spot from his very youth, which the cunning kitten chose as a familiar platform for his trick. It was as if he was specifically waiting under the ceiling for Oleg to sit in the required spot. Having waited for his finest hour, the fluffy acrobat jumped from the ceiling to Oleg’s scalp, grabbed it with sharp claws and braked sharply! It was painful! Oleg had no choice but to bring the kitten back home and hand it over to his mother.
All these details were unknown to me at that time, so imagine how amazed I was when I heard the following story from Oleg’s mother.
“Do you know, Nick, what we’ve been through lately?” Oleg’s Mom asked me during my next visit.
I did not know, and, moreover, did not even imagine what one could endure in their pleasant and cultured family.
“And what happened?” I asked carefully.
“It was all Shumeridze’s fault!” Mom said, “You have no idea what a parasite he really is!”
I was smitten, knowing Valya for many years as a very polite and well-rounded person. True, the performance of Beethoven and Chopin on the piano did not protect the Kyiv toilet from unusual fireworks, but… to call him “parasite”? It somehow did not fit with the description of our comrade.
“What did he do?” I asked even more cautiously.
“Well, first of all, he ran around the apartment like a mad creature. Then Shumeridze grabbed the curtains in the kitchen and pulled them so the curtain’s rod collapsed to the floor.”
It was amazing. I could not believe that Valya was doing this in his mind. No, no, it can’t be! Or was he drunk? Didn’t stay on his feet? I did not have time to ask, as Oleg’s mother continued,
“And Shumeridze, apparently, was frightened of what he had done, huddled under the sideboard, and we barely kicked him out of there with sticks.”
I imagined Valya, in a suit and tie, lying under the sideboard (and there was enough room to accommodate a slender young man, like Valya or Oleg) and kicking with his legs, pushing away the sticks with which they were trying to get him. The picture was terrible in its surrealism, and I asked with bated breath,
“I don’t understand, who are you talking about?”
“I am talking about our new kitten Shumeridze,” Mom explained.” And who were you thinking about?”
I was unable to answer, a fit of laughter bent me in half.
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