Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT – PHYSFAC. SECOND YEAR. SUMMER WORK: INTRODUCTION and TO SEE THE LIGHT
INTRODUCTION
The second summer of our student life has come. I had to find some work for this time. Although I had tutored pupils in math, it was not yet possible to raise enough money. It went to the family’s current expenses, and I did not think about a good vacation in some city or at the sea side. So I decided to take a summer job as an accordionist at my favorite pioneer camp in Manglisi, keeping in mind that in addition to money, it would be possible to get a free voucher for my “child”. This child, as you remember, was my little sister. But in order not to be bored all summer without my friends, I invited a few of my course mates to keep me company. Eli agreed. I think that for the same financial reasons as mine.
The staff for the camp was no longer recruited by my old friend “Chapay”. But the gates to the camp were wide open for its former camper. An accordionist in the state of employees is always needed – the place was still vacant, but the pioneer leaders for groups have already been recruited, so Eli got the position of an entertainer for pioneers, which he was quite happy with. He had not required to run along with the pioneers for the morning exercises.
All one-story long buildings of the camp had rooms for teachers and counselors at both ends. Here in such a room for two, in the building farthest from the center, we were settled with Eli. It was like an outpost of camp life. Although I don’t remember a single fight or quarrel with Manglisi local boys, the pioneers, as it were, were taught to be divided everybody into ours (from the camp) and aliens (local Manglisi) boys. Groups of “pioneer guards” were assigned to guard the fence and gates, and adults were resettled with the calculation of protecting children. Perhaps this was the main reason – romantic pioneers often sought to escape into the wild, behind the fence, sometimes even at night. I myself remember well how on moonless nights I lay wrapped in a prickly woolen blanket on the grass wet from the night dew and admired the fabulous mountain sky strewn with myriads of stars. This abyss evoked two desires – to learn more about the stars and not to remain alone in the universe. I remember both of them. I studied the atlas of the sky, and kissed with Mila! And no counselor could hold us back, especially in the dead of night, when they themselves dreamed of something wonderful from their young life.
Every morning I started with a workout – jogging with an accordion from the farthest building to the stadium, where pioneers from different detachments flocked. Then – a pioneer line, that is, a gathering and lining up in columns of pioneers of all detachments with their reports, news, raising the flag on a flag post. After a breakfast – work in detachments – learning songs, preparing for concerts, competitions, amateur evenings.
I must say it was fun. Eli and I made friends with young people – counselors. They mostly were students of the Pedagogical Institute. Sometimes we also had free time, especially during the day, before and after the daytime pioneer rest. We walked to the Manglisi shopping center or to the post office, to call our mothers. There was no city telephone in the camp in those days, there was only a military turntable in the director’s office, but Eli and I did not use it, we went to the post office. On the way, I told him stories from my pioneer life: how we roasted frogs, went on hikes to the Stone Bride, dammed the Algeti-river, hide the pot with cake cream, helped the old woman slaughter the chicken and other funny stories.
And after lights out, it was our time. We went to visit counselors, sang songs with a guitar, and sometimes even had parties, although the director did not encourage this.
We haven’t met any love in our camp. The beautiful counselor turned out to be, of course, married, the rest did not captivate me. Eli, however, talked only about his bride, who lived in Switzerland, and talked in such details, as if he himself was her guardian and teacher.
But still, I experienced a couple of romantic episodes. The first one I’ll call…
TO SEE THE LIGHT
Once the pioneer leader Alyona, a modest but businesslike girl, confessed to me:,
“My little sister is going to go to the forest at night, look at the stars, and you know who she wants to invite? You! What can I do with her?”
Oh, how I knew this night starry romance!
“Don’t do anything. Let her go.”
“With you?”
“Yes. It’s even safer with me. What will I do to her? Hold her hand?”
“Well, you never know what. She has things what you can hold on to.”
I must say that Alyona’s fourteen-year-old sister Nika was overdeveloped for her age, beautiful and very tall girl, of course, with children’s brains, so Alyona had something to be afraid of.
“No, I won’t touch her, I promise.”
After dinner, Nika came up to me and looking straight into my eyes, (and we were the same height), said,
“They say that you know the stars well, and the company and I would like to invite you to watch them at night. Will you come with us? And not give us out?”
So that’s why they needed me for! The more reasons to go with them. I really knew a lot about the stars.
“Don’t be afraid, Nika, I won’t betray you, we’re namesakes. And in order not to wake everyone up, let’s do this: I’ll tie a rope to my leg and throw the end out of my window. When you pull it, I’ll wake up and go out, all this without a sound.”
In matters of silence, I was an ace. It was just that my grandmother slept in a small walk-through room, and I studied at night in the kitchenette. Then I had to pass by and enter the large room where my mother and my sister Maya were sleeping, and not wake anyone up. I knew where the floorboards creaked, what turns the doorknobs could withstand without a squeak, and what weight the springs of my folding bed could withstand without squeaking. I moved silently like a big black cat and retracted my blade-claws, twisting the old bronze handles of the doors.
Nika blossomed with pleasure. What a wonderful game!
The rope in the camp was found easily. Eli looked at my preparations with surprise.
“I think you’re playing with fire, old man.”
“So far, only with a rope…”
“Be careful it doesn’t get wrapped around your neck!”
“It is always there! It just slipped from my neck to my leg today.”
At night, I woke up from a strange feeling in my foot, and immediately realized what was pulling in it. It was cold outside; according to old memories, I wrapped myself in a scratchy woolen blanket and left the building. There, a group of pioneers wrapped in the same blankets was already waiting for me. Nika, a basketball player, taller than all of them, looked like their counselor. We retreated to the very fence of the camp, behind which a pine grove began, and lay down on the edge of the clearing.
“Tell us, Comrade Nick,” the pioneers asked.
And I began my story from the mythology of Perseus and Andromeda, gradually moved on to the stars, constellations and how to find them on a sky, and suddenly I heard deep even breathing – the pioneers were sleeping. Someone crawled up to me. It was Nika.
“The kids seem to be asleep,” she said, “It’s time for parents,” and she gave me a real adult kiss.
If I hadn’t been lying down, my knees would have buckled. Memory immediately brought me back to the recent past, where, under approximately the same pines, I got acquainted with the taste of girlish lips. Then it was a frantic impulse, a surge of feelings. And now it was an illusion of love. Very natural, but an illusion. I stroked Nika’s high forehead, fluffy strands of hair and said,
“You are a wonderful girl, and I am already a student, we are in different age groups, although in three or four years we will be in the same one.”
“Silly one,” my young lady said in an adult way, “I won’t endure until that time. Some people don’t understand this. Alyona, herself does not need anything, and she imagines the others are the same. Sometimes I feel like I’m her older sister…”
“And who helps whom to solve math problems?”
We laughed; someone woke up… It was time to return to our buildings to catch a sleep…
This story had no continuation. Nika soon finished her one month voucher and left the camp. Alena still worked for the second month. Once she said me,
“My sister talked so much about your stellar lecture that I myself decided to go look at the stars. Can’t you borrow me your atlas?”
“Yes, of course,” I said, “Take it! It helps a lot to see the light.”
And I met Nica once after seven years. Denis, my former differential equation sparring-partner and I, worked at the Department of Physics at the Polytechnic Institute. One day, leaving work, we saw how a beautiful giantess was walking towards us, towards the columns of the entrance, waving her bag on a long strap.
“Nika!” I screamed and ran towards her.
Not tall Denis suddenly disappeared. Nika, who was already a whole head taller than me, bent down and kissed me on the forehead.
“It’s hard to bend, I’m expecting twins.”
We chatted a bit, and when Nika entered the building, Denis appeared from behind the column.
“Were you hiding?”
“You know, I imagined how you introduce us to each other with enthusiasm and felt weak in the knees.”
“I know,” I said, remembering the camp, “It happens to everyone…”
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