Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE – PHYSFAC. SECOND YEAR. SUMMER WORK: GREAT HIKE DAY and THE FATE
Another romantic episode fell to my lot in the second month of summer work. Apparently, my soul was waiting for love and was tuned in to kindness and beauty, although I did not undertake any searches or active actions. I named the story…
GREAT HIKE DAY
Here is how it was. The camp set out on the Great Hike to Stone Bride. It was called great, because all the detachments together, except for the smallest kids, went to the mountains for the whole day, in contrast to small group trips to the river and into the forest. Eli and I ended up in different support groups. He went by truck to the final destination to prepare a big fire, dinner, games and entertainment. The column of pioneers with all the teachers slowly marched out of the camp, and I, as a connoisseur of places and paths, together with two pioneer leaders, led at a fast speed a detachment of pioneers, which for various reasons were delayed with the exit. Everything went well, we had to catch up with the main column on the Algeti-river. In order to speed things up, we switched to trotting along the slope of the rocky mountains. And, unfortunately, Natasha, a girl from the senior detachment, sprained her foot.
Her short scream stopped us at once. Fortunately, her bones were intact, and perhaps there was no sprain, but we should forget about of any speed. Also after Algeti, a rather steep ascent began, my least favorite part of the route. In a word, we consulted and decided that I would take Natasha back to the camp by a long, but gentler path.
Those who already imagine erotic scenes in a pine forest can drink cold water. As we did, drinking the delicious spring water flowing from a crevice in the rock.
I led Natasha by the hand, and gradually stopped dragging, but simply held her tender hand in mine, and we slowly wandered along the forest pass. Have you ever walked in the Manglisi forest? The mountain air is clean and cool even on hot days. The smell of needles and resin fills all the surroundings. Breathing is unusually easy. And at the same time, the sky turns blue, a dozen birds sing, and the sun seems gentle and kind. And we, having nothing to do, begin to tell each other about ourselves, about our tastes, habits, hobbies. And the further into the forest we go, the more similarities we find. We like the same books, we both play the guitar and compose songs, and we even read Boccaccio’s Decameron for the first time at school keeping the book under our desks. And at the same time, “my girlfriend” is amazingly beautiful.
“How did I not notice her in the camp before?” I think, “I wonder what kind of surname it is, Slavskaya? Russian, Polish or Jewish? A person should not care. But the coincidence of views – this does not happen often. I wonder what if I make friendship with her, we will meet and go to theaters, opera? She will grow up before my eyes… An interesting experiment.”
And suddenly Natasha asks:
“Comrade Nick… do you… Nick, do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, Natasha, I do not.”
“Great! Do you want me… to be your girlfriend?”
A lump rises in my throat,
“I really want it.”
There are tears in her eyes.
We very slowly bring our heads together and barely touch each other’s lips. It is like an exchange of credentials by the ambassadors of two powers, like an oath not spoken aloud, but given in the heart.
“What’s your last name, Nick?”
“Neiman.”
“And what kind of surname is this: Russian or German?”
“Jewish.”
“How could it be Jewish? You are not a Jew!”
“No, Natasha, I am a Jew.”
“This cannot be true! They are different.”
“In which way they are different?”
“Well, bad, not ours, traitors.”
“Where did you get all this nonsense from?”
“It can’t be nonsense, that’s what my dad says.”
“And who is your dad?”
“He is the head of the political department of Transcaucasian Military District.”
I immediately recalling the story, how the poor young man is looking for a good, but inexpensive gift for his new girlfriend from a rich family. The owner of a thrift store offers him fragments of a valuable vase cheaply. “You just have to trip as you enter and drop the package on the floor.” And so it happens. The guy stumbles, the package flies to the floor: a roar, a ringing…
Servants unfold the package, and there are a hundred fragments of an expensive vase, each wrapped individually…
My vase shatters instantly, although the pieces are wrapped in a beautiful shell.
“Farewell, Natasha, it was a bitter lesson,” I say mentally, but out loud, “If dad is right, then I’m not who I say I am, and you can’t be that guy’s girlfriend.”
“This is wrong!” Natasha screams, “I see what you are, and I want to love such a person.”
“But then papa is wrong, and he is not who he claims to be.”
“What should I do, Nick?” Natasha sobs.
“I don’t know. Watch, think, understand. In any case, we are not giving up on our fathers!”
“Who is your father, Nick?”
I say aloud,
“A counterintelligence. He is absent from the country for many years.”
Then I add mentally,
“In any case, the all-Union search yielded nothing.”
We slowly make our way back to the camp. I still hold Natasha’s hand, but this is more of a senior’s duty than a sensual act. At first we are silent, but both have enough intelligence and endurance to gradually move on to topics that are close and pleasant to us: for her – the Literature Olympiad, for me – “Physicist Day”. We peacefully reach the camp and there, first of all, we go to the medical unit, where Dr. Feygin is already waiting for Natasha.
“Don’t be afraid, she is a very good doctor,” I whisper in the girl’s ear, “knowledgeable and kind… A real doctor,” I add after a pause and leave.
It turns out – forever.
Fifteen minutes later, Natasha was picked up from the camp by “her mother in a black luxury car with security”. So, in any case, we were told by the guards. I mean, the pioneers who were on duty at the camp gates during the Great Hike Day.
THE FATE
Alas, in addition to bright memories, I also have not so pleasant ones in my memory. One of them was remembered for its unusualness and sadness.
One evening, after lights out, I came to the radio room to visit a soldier-radio operator. His radio cabin was located in the sacristy of the former church, which served as a camp club for the pioneers. It was so easy to whirl in a waltz on the hospitable marble floor…
It was especially pleasant to sleep in a room with a high vault and a marble floor, in the hot summer of this year. Right in the club there were two folding beds, where the camp’s physical instructor and radio operator spent the night. For many, many years, Uncle Tolya, as everyone called him, worked as a physical education teacher in the camp, the smiling and friendly man from the same school where “Chapay” taught history. But this or last summer another group came to “power”. The director looked like an old revolutionary in a military jacket, and the physical education teacher looked like a Minotaur, but for some reason with narrow pig eyes. The employees of the kitchen and the dining room gossiped that “the old revolutionary and the Minotaur” were drinking cognac in the evenings, but we, the youth, were of little concern and interest of that.
So, I came to the radio operator to discuss with him the music for the holiday – what is on the records, and what should I play on the accordion. We sat up, chatted, he told me terrible stories of army life and hazing, and I, imagining these horrors, dozed off, sitting on the bed of a physical education teacher, carefully covered with an ordinary prickly blanket. I remember that I heard the roar of an angry Minotaur, driving me from his bed, but consciousness had not yet fully returned. I was shot, my head was blown off by a tank lid, I was burned with a flamethrower – and I only whispered, “Now, now, one minute,” continuing to dream.
I don’t know what finally sobered me up – the resulting slap in the face or “flying in a dream and in reality” with a landing on a not-so-hospitable marble floor. I got up. It was pointless to fight, the forces were too unequal. But it was impossible to leave the insult unwashed away.
“Well, that’s it, you’re finished,” I said in a terrible voice of a theatrical villain, “You condemned yourself!”
“What are you saying? What does that mean, boy?!” – shouted the sport teacher after me, but I did not answer his roar, barely restraining myself so as not to run away. For the second time in my life I got punched in the face in church, and again I refused to run.
“What, is he farting? What does it mean?” was heard from afar, and I imagined how the radio operator repeated to him terrible stories about soldiers brought to extremes, who mowed down from Kalashnikov both tormentors and innocent people, “Same shit-t-t-t-t-t-t!”
Then I calmed down, eventually forgave my offender and forgot what had happened. There were much more injustices in the surrounding life. But this story had an ending, and a rather sad one.
Ten years later I changed my specialty – I studied at the medical school and worked as a nurse in the intensive care unit, gaining skills in critical cases and procedures. Then we met again.
I entered the evening shift, and together with the doctor began the round our twelve beds, getting to know the patients. On one of the beds lay a pale, limp and aged Minotaur.
“Heart attack, severe heart failure. Let’s try to put a Swan-Ganz catheter in him and measure the pressure in the right ventricle of the heart. A procedure like inserting a catheter into a subclavian vein. Do you want to try?” the doctor asked.
“Sure, I would love to!”
“Then get ready.”
Five or ten minutes later we were standing at the head of the bed, armed with syringes. I had a special huge needle in my hands.
Suddenly the patient opened his eyes and saw this frightening sight.
“No, no!” he said.
Blood rushed to his face, the veins in his neck bulged. He tried to lift his head off the pillow, but his strength failed him.
“This is fate,” he whispered and died.
I realized that the sport teacher recognized me and regretted his bitter end. Although, who knows if the end might be different?
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