Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTY – PHYSFAC. THIRD YEAR. EVENTS
The third course began with a joke for all of us; Viktor Zamorsky set a republican record – two meters in high jump. But no one congratulated him in the classroom, physicists listened to lectures as usual. One student, a girl, decided to support a friend. She went to the blackboard during recess, asked for attention and said,
“I’m proud of our friend Victor! Hey dude, congrad you with two meters!”
The Champion became crimson from such ambiguous praise, and his words of thanks have drowned in peals of Homeric laughter from the audience.
At home, the amazing news awaited me – my dad returned! I will not describe here our meeting again. I already did it, and… I, alas, imagined it very differently. And this discrepancy between the expected, repeatedly played in the imagination and what is happening in reality saddened me the most.
Do you remember, how my dad communicate with a cheese seller with gestures and the seller decided that dad is mute? At that little age I decided that the seller had considered Dad as “not ours”.
Now it already me and not the cheese seller thought that dad was some kind of “not ours”, as if we lived without him and did not correspond with him of our own free will, and not according to his own instructions. The only hope was that over time everything will be normalized. I have already described how we carried food boxes to prison and subsequently went to the camp for visitations. And now there were trips to court and hearings, which did not bring anything pleasant. The case gradually rolled to the bad end.
I discussed very little of these with close friends. None of them had such an experience, they only could sigh, having learned some grain of news, and clapped me on the shoulder,
“Hold on old man!”
And I held on. In addition to my studies, I launched an increased activity to find students – the family needed to increase its income, because there were more of us now. I promised to find a student in mathematics to a colleagues-tutors in exchange for each student in physics, and brought gifts to some teachers. And it worked. But I will tell about my students in a separate chapter, if I scrape together a sufficient number of interesting and funny cases in my memory.
Sasha reprimanded me,
“You are too busy with your business, Nick. We need to devote more time to science, then the income will appear on its own.”
Of course, he was right, with a caveat – in standard family conditions. And I must say that he was lucky with these conditions. But more importantly, he had talent. During the two years in university, he excelled in modern algebra and found interesting equations that allowed him to optimize the calculation of complex systems with a large number of connections. It was interesting to try to put them into practice. And such practice was found. Sasha created a project at the Institute of Applied Mathematics, where his dad’s friend “Uncle Izya Khodash” worked.
Uncle Izya was an amazing person and a bright personality. In his youth, he was a child prodigy and a mathematical genius who graduated from school very early and entered the Math Department at University. At the age of seventeen, he was already writing a dissertation in mathematics, but the war broke out, and he did not hesitate to drop everything and enlisted to army to fight the Nazis. And he fought so bravely that he was among the first to cross the Dnieper. He was presented to the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. But – it didn’t happen. In a group of happy and drunk warriors, Izya asked the clerk girl, in what list his name was on. And he heard in response,
“Wow, you are in the list of heroes! Kikes made their way in even here!”
Anger and alcohol hit Izya in the head. He pulled out a revolver and shot at the offender. But the same anger and alcohol saved him from the terrible end. He missed the aim. The fast tribunal decided to deprive the hero of the reward for crossing the Dnieper.
Izya returned home with his “whole” body, although he had lost his brilliant mathematical abilities after the shell shock. But the rest was more than enough for a decent life. He married, gave birth to three children, defended his PhD and eventually got the position of head of a department at the Institute of Applied Mathematics in Georgia.
So, it was Uncle Izya who helped Sasha turn the idea into a commercial contract. That is, together they created, in modern terms, a small business, under the auspices of the Izya’s department at the Mathematical Institute. The group suggested that radio factories create optimal circuits in an incredibly short time by one or two people, and not by a whole factory calculating bureau.
Everything was going great, customers were happy to pay money for an efficiency unprecedented in their work. And the proceeds went to the treasury of the department of the institute of Mathematics and made it possible to accept in the economic contract subject (that is, in business) not only people needed for this work, but also relatives of useful for the project people – director, rector etc.
After some time, Sasha began to express dissatisfaction with such a policy to me. He understood Uncle Ezya’s actions, but believed that since both the equations and the project were created by him, then, according to the laws of free business, this should give him more rights to manage resources. Apparently, I was not the only one to whom Sasha expressed his views, and above all to Uncle Izya, and I think he grumbled at the “politically immature shmak”. Sooner or later, these conversations reached Uncle Izya’s sister, our neighbor, who did not fail to express her opinion to me in a rude Shtetl form,
“Your friend Sasha is such a mamzer (Yiddish – bastard)! Izya tries for him harder than for his own son, and this ungrateful one wants to get his hands on money, hire and fire employees, as if he were the project manager! If this macher (Yiddish – deals, and especially dirty deals maker) does not stop his tricks, Izya will fire him himself!”
Wow! It was terrible! Storm clouds were gathering over my best friend’s head. Something had to be done. I didn’t even imagine that I could object to my neighbor or her brother – “Uncle Izya”. Both were adults, respected and not close enough to me to deal with them. Izya – the hero of the war – In my eyes had an inaccessible magnitude. I didn’t have a dad-advisor, and I decided to discuss the situation with Sasha. I believed, he could solve with his boss a “misunderstanding” much easier. Or maybe he couldn’t – whatever you say, we were still young boys.
Sasha acted simply. Similarly to me, he shared this with his dad. And his dad directly asked his friend Izya, what kind of nonsense his sister was talking about?
Izya was somewhat embarrassed and said,
“What are we – not men? We are not to discuss women and children. This Nick is a big gossip. I didn’t say anything like that to my sister!”
Then I didn’t know any of this, Sasha might not know the details either. His dad assured him that the incident was over, he was not in danger, and asked him not to get into organizational issues deeply. And Sasha concluded that it is necessary to leave the system, where every little screw in business can depend on you, and by documents you are the actual little screw, that depends on everyone.
This story could have ended, but it had its tracks. The fact is that Izya’s youngest daughter, Asya, and I sympathized with each other. She rarely visited our area – came at her aunt or to our mutual friend Misha, remember him, a candidate for the role of a gladiator in the camp? I thought that Misha was courting Asya, and I did not want to interfere. Actually, I liked her older sister appearance even more. But she was too old and too sarcastic – such bitchiness was not for me. But after some time I noticed a strange change in Asya’s behavior. In private, she was nice to me, and in the company she became the spitting image of a sister. And we somehow gradually moved apart. And later, in fifteen years, when both already had daughters of the same age, we became friends again – the girls studied English together. And the details of the old story were revealed to me. It turns out that in the Khodash family I became, if not a persona non grata, then I lost the status of most favored. Asya admitted that in public she tried to somehow hurt me, but in private…
“Well, didn’t you understand the hints?”
I said that I was not sure. I always thought that since Misha escorts her home, then…
“God!” Asya sighed. “He was my “girlfriend”, not a boyfriend. You sure didn’t understand a thing! Well, okay, but what about my aunt’s words cannot be trusted? That she is just the youngest capricious child in our family? Did you even know that?
“Where from? For me, all the adults in this story were like parents – trusted and respected people.”
It was one of the early cases that showed me – not everybody, not always and not in everything…
“And you yourself was good – went to gossip to Solomon!”
“Solomon? I? You lost your mind! I just told Sasha what I heard from your aunt. Why shouldn’t I share what I heard with a friend, if he could be in trouble?”
“Physicist Day” again sparkled in our firmament as a phenomenon. Again we performed, composed and sang songs, made friends with students from universities of different cities. This year I became a senior in the Student Organizing Committee. But it wasn’t difficult. I knew all the organizational techniques, the humorous wall newspaper became mine, and I only regretted that I did not have writers to help. Only Eli always helped, especially in design matters.
I was looking for new opportunities to give weight to our holiday. Academician Lifshitz, co-author of famous Landau’s “Theoretical Physics”, agreed to come and speak. At the opening, I gave him the floor, microphone in hand, just as he reached for something behind me. The shot turned out magnificent: academician Lifshitz hugs the organizer of the student holiday Neiman! Know ours!
At the symposium of humorists, I read my report about universities. “Usually a rector stands the head of the university. The rector of the medical institute stands a trial!” Everyone perfectly understood the play of words and what exactly happened to the rector of the medical institute, imprisoned for corruption. The peals of laughter and applause still rumble in my memory.
I remember how I published a wall newspaper. At first it belonged to the seniors, and on the third year completely passed into my hands. Eli designed the newspaper, and I wrote all the stories and miniatures, except for some utter nonsense that wishing to be published graphomaniacs were brought in. It was funny to read, so stupid were their texts.
We had a censor girl that we kept in case of our obscenity beyond norms. Nellie never argued, although she often blushed. She well understood the freedom of speech and creativity, but sometimes she could not stand it and said: “Well, boys, this is too much,” and for us it was a signal that the material should be edited or removed. We were not fools, and never contradicted our voluntary censor.
One day we published a following joke in the newspaper.
“As it turns out, MIN means NO in Vietnamese.
In this regard, here are some translations:
Ministry of construction – no construction,
Ministry of food industry – no food, no industry,
Ministry of Finance – no finance,
Ministry of health – no health,
Minet (in Russian it means Fellatio) – no-no, that is, “no case, no trial”
Ho Chi Minh – no hoshi (hoshi means a desire in Georgian)
Naturally, where does it come from, if there is no food, no finances, no health?!”
Nellie calmly skipped the article. But that was not the case! The committee of Young Communists with it head Gogi did not doze off. The stand, locked with a key, was unscrewed from the wall. Then they crept up to the newspaper from behind, peeled off the article and on its place they stuck a square of paper with a crown and the stamp “Censorship of the Komsomol Committee” and returned it to its place.
Wow! There couldn’t be a better advertisement! Crowds of old and new readers stood near the newspaper from morning till evening, and those who knew told those who did not know! Therefore, freedom of speech is the best anti-advertising for everything odious or revolutionary.
The semester went relatively smoothly. But during the exam session there were adventures. The first one was an electronics. I went to the teacher for the test… may be eight times and failed miserably every time. And always it was something practical. I could not recognize at what points of the electric circuit there would be positive or negative potentials. Some lamps were locked when it seemed they should pass a current, others, on the contrary, were unlocked! Cascades, multivibrators and other dirty tricks always changed the sign of the potential.
One way or another, we already celebrated the New Year, and I was not allowed to take exams without passing the test on electronics. I passed the test on the thirteenth of January, and that’s because I pulled out a ticket without a scheme! And the mathematical transformations of signals using Fourier series were a toy for me after the Pandekov’s school of mathematical analysis.
There were two dangers of a late start of the session. First, you could not have time to pass the exams on time and therefore lose your scholarship. But the second and main danger was not to get points for distribution to the specialty (choice of your major). I tried my best, but I did not have time to pass two exams before distribution.
I must say that the most popular was biophysics, where both I and Eli applied. There was the most competition for it, and what was my surprise when I passed (all points for two and a half years were summed up) without two marks and took a place in the middle of a list of eight people.
It turned out that our group had a total score the same as that of theorists, that is, it was strong, and the specialty was popular, attracting good students. I was lucky with the exams: I passed both, albeit after distribution, but before the start of the new session and with high marks.
As usual, I didn’t go anywhere during the February holidays. I was not fond of skiing and in winter I was not drawn to the mountains. In addition to my private students with whom I continued studies, February was full of birthdays. At one such evening, at Anya’s, I met her group from the Pedagogical Institute and an interesting girl.
Nata was a year older than us, but this “flaw” was compensated by the brightness of her appearance and character. I immediately felt her mind and culture. Damn it, why did we live in a sanctimonious environment, where sex without marriage was a taboo, which cost incredible tricks to step over!
The first thing I did, I tried to impress Nata with my knowledge of psychoanalysis and Freud. While studying at the Library of the Science Academy, I came across “Totem and Taboo” in the catalogue. The book was very interesting, and I leafed through the catalog, to see, what books by Freud are in it? To my unspeakable surprise, there were a lot of them! And although they were not allowed to be taken home, it was possible to read them from morning until evening. I began to avidly absorb books, take notes on something (there was no talk of copiers at that time). And after a while, as a diligent student, I began to understand psychoanalysis and conduct sessions with all interested. Fortunately, there were more than enough of them. On Freud’s advice, I myself never offered to conduct a session, but only agreed to this after lengthy persuasion. Often, thoughts and desires were revealed that the subconscious hid from a person, and which he did not really want to know. I memorized a bunch of curious psychological tests, so I could entertain any company.
Nata was a grateful and understanding listener. And by the end of the evening we were kissing passionately. A couple of days later, I was invited to her party, where an intimate atmosphere reigned in a one-room apartment. Couples were dancing and kissing in every corner and in the kitchen. I noticed that the leader of their group, the tall joker Felix, disappeared with Nata’s elder sister in the bathroom. After a while, when they appeared, I took Felix to the balcony to smoke and naively asked him what he was doing with his girlfriend in the bathroom? Felix laughed and said,
“All. Everything I wanted. And you thought that we were taking a shower?”
“And how did you manage it? Did she agree?”
“Well, what do you mean agree? Since she agreed to go inside the bathroom with me, then yes. And then everything was the matter of technic.”
“But, in my opinion, she is crying now, and Nata is comforting her.”
“You are a romantic. She doesn’t cry at all. These are tears of joy. And Nata listens to her story and is envious. My advice to you Nick, take Nata to the bathroom now and – go ahead – do not pay attention to her protests. This is a typical reaction.
“Thanks,” I said, and returned to the room.
This advice was not for me. I did not want and could not use any violence. It was completely not for me. From the very beginning, I had to be sure that I was loved and wanted.
The room was dim. Music played softly. Nata’s sister was dozing on the couch.
“Let’s dance,” I invited Nata.
She pressed her wet cheek against mine.
“Why are you crying?” I asked, “Did Felix offend your sister?”
“She herself decided so. And now she repents and is afraid.”
“And you wouldn’t do that?”
“With Felix, no way!”
“What is has to do with Felix? With me, of course!”
“It has to do with the fact that he fucks any moving target. And all our girls know it. There is not an ounce of love or tenderness in it. One naked sex. And with you… to the bathroom… no… I wouldn’t go, but to stay together… I have to think it over. Like you, I want this, but there are many circumstances. I am older than you, I want to get married, I want children, and you still have to study and achieve a lot. In short, it would be very nice, but completely wrong.
I was returning home late at night, on foot, imagining how I finally live in the right country, where there are no our restrictions and conventions, but it was still far away before that.
The spring semester went by quickly and imperceptibly. In addition to physics, we studied many subjects unusual for techies: biology, biochemistry, biophysics and a lot of other “bio” subjects. Our universe has expanded. Now, an exciting biology has settled in it in addition to my favorite mathematics and beloved physics. Lectures at the university alternated with everyday teaching my private students; the sports section alternated with walks with “the child”. Sometimes I skipped my classes at the University and went to court – a bleak sight, just an opportunity to wave to my Dad from the audience. I hope this made him feel more comfortable in the businesslike atmosphere of documents and discussions with the prosecution. And I still had friends and humorous stories. Isn’t it amazing that there was enough time for all of this?
The first weddings of my friends and classmates took place in spring and summer. Many got married: philosophically calm Borya Bichikashvili; intelligent Alma, confidant of my secrets; Edik, nephew of Vera Aramovna, who smoked and often was “high”; Julia Polyakova and Masha. Sonya’s Attention Capture Headquarters has closed. Sasha has completely won both her attention and her herself. I was the witness at their wedding. A witness first time in my life.
It took place in the summer, and the young couple flew away to rest in the Baltic States. Lanka, my friend, the daughter of my father’s last business companion also married. She has been a couple of years older than me, we were friends, and liked each other, but no more serious relationship arose. My childhood memories are connected with Lanka, when she told me adult, completely incomprehensible jokes about Pushkin (famous Russian poet loved play with words).
“Once Pushkin was dancing with a young lady named Tute and accidentally stepped on her foot. He immediately apologized,
“Sorry, Tute.”
(‘Sorry’ in Russian sounds ‘Prosti’, so…)
“Prosti Tute!” he exclaimed without embarrassment.
“And what’s so funny about that?”
“That he called her a prostitute! Understood?”
“No.”
“Well, you’re still a child!”
“It’s just not funny, better tell me another joke.”
“I think you won’t understand the other one either, but okay,” and Lana said:
“Nobles played hide and seek. Pushkin and the young lady Busya hid under the table, under the tablecloth hanging to the floor. Everyone was looking for them with no success.
“Pushkin, where are you, come out?”
“I and Busya are under the table!” the poet replied.
(Now this is explanation for those who do not know Russian:
‘I’ in Russian sounds ‘ya’, while ‘and’ sounds ‘e’. As a result, “ya e Busya”, which is ‘I and Busya” transforms into “ya ebusya”, which is “I am fucking” and then under the table).
“And that’s it?” I asked.
Lana burst into happy laughter,
“No, then he jumped out into the garden and again nobody could find him… Pushkin, where are you?”
“I’m knee-deep in moss!”
(With all shifts of sounds it comes to “Let a dick up to a knee fucks you”.)
Lana simply is choking with laughter. She leans over and kisses me on the cheek.
“Good little teddy-bear. This is a play of words.”
“These are just stupid jokes, you need a funny situation, not a game. Here for example, listen:
A man treated a chimpanzee in a zoo with cherries. The monkey took a berry and began to stick it in her ass. What a stupid monkey! What is she doing? The man asked the zookeeper.
“This is a very smart monkey. She recently swallowed a peach and suffered when the pit got stuck in her anus. Now, she checks every fruit!”
Lana laughs again.
“You’re right, it’s funny, but trust me, someday you’ll enjoy play of words too.”
She turned out to be absolutely right. Everything comes in due time.
In the summer, when I lived alone with my grandmother, we had a loss. The key to the closet, or rather its linen compartment, where the envelope with money lay, had disappeared. We ransacked the whole house – the key was nowhere to be found. After two or three days, when I had to buy food, including simple products such as bread and milk again, I borrowed money from friends. But it was inconvenient and indecent to ask for a lot, and we still hoped to find the key. Another week passed in the search, and the products ran out again. We switched to a strict economy mode, ate all the food from the refrigerator and decided to defrost and finish the contents of the freezer. When the ice melted, we saw a chicken and next to it – the ill-fated key. One of us reached into the refrigerator with the key in hand and put it in the freezer for a minute. This case illustrates well how things are lost: performing one action, you put the object away from your hands for a second in an unexpected place for it, and you lose it for a very long time.
Once, a sugar bowl with granulated sugar disappeared in our house in the same way. The search again did not lead to anything, but we found it on a shelf in the bedside table, behind a box of needles and threads. Just as in the case of the key, someone holding the sugar bowl reached for the box of thread and put the sugar bowl on the shelf for a second. When the box covered the sugar bowl, it simply disappeared for a long time. Interesting, ah?
This summer, I first encountered the army brutality. Remember Kolya, who played “White Dwarfs” in the yard? He had a neighbor – Constantin, short – Costa. Good guy of our age. But he studied weakly according to our concepts and ended up a soldier in the army. In peacetime, military service as a soldier meant poor study either at high school (did not enter the college) or at a college (expelled or transferred to the evening classes). Of our entire class, only one person went to the army – Vovka-tall, precisely because of his expulsion from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, where it was such an honor to enter. But let’s return to Costa’s story.
He served in the mountains, in some southern republic. In the part close to the border, discipline was maintained by draconian methods. One of the newly recruited soldiers could not stand the bullying, shot the offenders and went into the mountains. They started hunting him and sent soldiers in pursuit. Costa also was in that detachment. When the fugitive was discovered, they riddled him with bullets on the spot. Costa was against the lynching. He even did not pretend and shoot at the wrong target – he did not shoot at all. In the military unit, he was thrown into a soldier’s prison, into a concrete basement, and, so that life would not seem like honey to him, they poured knee-deep water there. Nights in the mountains are cold, the water froze, and Costa froze into the ice. In the morning, ice was knocked out with crowbars and unconscious Costa was sent to the hospital. He never returned to the unit, and in the army too. He was commissioned for disability for life. Alas, not for a long term…
The last vivid memory of this summer became the visit of Belka-Strelka. She was returning home from Moscow and stopped at our city to see her relatives. Belka was already divorced. It turned out that her fiancé carefully concealed his alcoholism, and after the marriage he simply began to fall unconscious and intoxicated to the ground, as soon as Belka turned away or hesitated. It sounded wild for our city, where there were few drunks. Police often put in a taxi and sent home those who had gone overboard, but remembered home address.
All day, despite the terrible heat, Alik, Sasha’s cousin, and I took Belka around the city, entertained and treated. Alik was a pianist, a great womanizer and immediately fell in love.
“Nick, Nick, don’t you see what a wonderful girl she is? Arrange a date for me, your family has left for the summer!”
The meeting place was the second most difficult problem after the one “With whom?” Mom really went to the North Caucasus on a long business trip and took Maya with her, and I stayed with my grandmother. But Belka stopped at our grandfather’s.
“Nothing will come of it, Alik,” I said. “Look for a place yourself.”
To my surprise, Belka came to my house in the early evening.
“Do you mind if I sleep at your place?”
“I’m just glad! Do you want to go somewhere or I’ll play the guitar for you?”
We stayed at home. In the evening, the disheveled grandfather came to reproach Belka.
“Aren’t you ashamed? Why didn’t you stay at my house? Whether I live in it or not, it’s still my old hospitable home!”
“No problem,” Belka said, “I just have more fun with Nick.”
And she stayed, despite the protests of our grandfather.
At night on my cot, I woke up from the wild heat. Belka was sleeping on the couch topless, just in her small panties, pulled off the sheet. Alik was right, but I, the fool, did not even tried… The next day I took Belka to the train station, she departed home.
“It’s been a great visit!” she said goodbye, “Someday I will tell you more about my impressions.”
I did not attach any importance to these words, but forty years later Belka revealed their meaning to me.
“Do you know why I didn’t stay with our grandfather in a large, cool apartment with all the amenities, but came to spend the night with you in such a heat?”
“I thought it was more fun with me.”
“Of course, it was more fun, but you would have come to your grandfather, and it would have been just as fun, but taking a shower in the summer is a big advantage.”
Right! I didn’t even think about it:
“So why not?”
“Someone sexually coerced me. Have you guessed, who?’
“Who? Was it Zhorik, Lia’s husband?”
“Not at all! The Grandfather himself!”
I was overwhelmed with internal heat. Wow! So that’s why he resorted to Belka to reproach. That’s the life force!”
“Are you scared?”
“Are you kidding? I was already a grown woman, it’s just unpleasant to look at the old body. And you were still a young man… However, I woke up from the heat at night, and your sheet was heaving like Mount Everest. I don’t know what would have happened then, but at that moment, your grandmother in a white nightgown suddenly appeared from a small room, like a ghost, and handed me a bottle of mineral water from the refrigerator.
“Drink something cold, dear Bella. This heat is brain-melting.”
As always, Grandma Sophia was the wisdom itself…
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