Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE – PHYSFAC. FOURTH YEAR. EVENTS
Gold autumn. Again – “Physicist Day”. As always, we took our guests to Mtskheta, the ancient capital of Georgia. The guide was sick, and the tour was conducted by a monk from the Svetitskhoveli cathedral.
“Jews used to live on this site, and they founded the first church,” he said.
Komsomol secretary Gogi decided to give a battle to religion, so he objected:
“How could the Christian cathedral arise from a Jewish church?”
The monk answered with no signs of confusion:
“Exactly the same way as CPSU arose from a small Jewish cell of Social Democrats!”
At a symposium of physicists-humorists I reported on “The Model of a military department teacher with a retractable pointer.” The audience laughed again.
Theater of miniatures. “From the life of the famous Japanese intelligence Mata Hari: “A close-up of Mata’s hari (which mean muzzle in Russian) is on the screen.”
Lana was right, as I grew older I appreciated the play on words.
At the concert I read my new monologue “At the Station”. It consisted of many situations at the train station and started with a following one:
(Voice from loudspeaker):
“The express train Tbilisi-Moscow leaves from the first track in ten minutes.”
(Drunk on the platform):
“Go repeat, you bitch!”
(Voice from loudspeaker):
“Repeating! The express train Tbilisi-Moscow leaves from the first track in ten minutes.”
How could I find time to study? Apparently, inspiration helped – I became an excellent student and received an increased scholarship.
And I decided to send the monologue, which caused volleys of laughter to the All-Union Radio so that, well, let’s say, Khazanov would read it.
Mom advised me:
“You know how they treat Jewish surnames there. Take some simple penname.”
I argued for a long time, I didn’t want to be an apostate, but in the end I listened to my mother’s advice and took the name – Nikolai Sergeev. I took the typical faceless surname, which prominent political scientists from the State Security Committee usually used in newspapers.
A week later I received a thick envelope from All-Union Radio. The stack of papers began with a letter.
“Dear author, Nikolai Sergeev. You managed to create a first-class humorous story, or rather a monologue, which is ideal for the all-Union program “Good Morning”. We will be pleased to include you among our humor writers. To do this, fill out the attached forms and send them to the satire and humor department of the All-Union Radio.
Best regards, Deputy Editor.”
Last name like Trifonov and the signature.
I rejoiced! However, the attached questionnaires quickly spoiled my mood. Instead of the usual full name, year of birth and nationality, it was necessary to clarify: last name, first name, patronymic and nationality at birth, at the time of receiving the passport and at the present time. It’s strange how they missed the year of birth in this list? Well, it would sound well: year of birth at birth, at the time of receiving the passport and at the present time. Like a bomb that fell in zone B. So mother’s tricks to protect her child were a fiasco. I honestly filled out all the fields. I called everything by its proper names, including nationality, and sent the letter.
This time the answer did not return for a long time. I don’t know what they were thinking about there. I was pleased to think that the members of the editorial board were honest and decent people who fought with their HR department like a tiger-mother for her cub, but… failed. The new letter read:
“Dear Nikolai Neiman! As you know (I didn’t know anything!) stories by young writers go through several readings before they are accepted into the program. Repeated reading revealed a number of serious shortcomings in the story that need to be eliminated by reworking all the material. Perhaps the edit will not be the last, but will require several revisions. We wish you good luck in your hard work.
Best regards, Deputy Editor Sergeev”
And the initial B.
“What a B…!” I thought. “And he is my pseudonymous namesake!”
Of course, I didn’t correct anything and neither sent an answer.
Eli came to me and asked for something to drink. It was still warm, almost hot.
“Can you bring me something cold to drink?”
“Of course! What do you want to have?”
“Doesn’t matter. Either mineral or tap water.”
I went to the kitchen and poured cold water from the tap. It was easier. But the water flowed under pressure, and air bubbles swirled in the glass. Apparently, Eli mistook it for the mineral water with gas. He took a sip and grimaced:
“Oh, what disgusting – the old mineral water without gas! Give me better some tap water.”
I jumped out of the room, waited a few seconds outside the door and returned with the same glass in my hands.
Eli finished almost all the water and noted with pleasure:
“Here you go! It’s a completely different matter!”
When the intense warmth of September began to give way to moderate warmth in October, my course mates, Denis and Grisha, and I went to Lake Bazaleti to catch crayfish. Borya Bichikashvili encouraged me to go on this trip, because he missed Leningrad crayfish and beer. He had already visited the lake, caught a bunch of crayfish and enjoyed a good time having them with beer.
“The main problem at night is not the lack of crayfish, but the lack of firewood,” he shared with me. “You need to take wood for the fire with you. You will arrive in the evening, just when the crayfish have already gone out for a walk. You need to light a fire and boil water. While it boils, you catch crayfish, cook them, bake potatoes and drink until you fall asleep.”
That’s what we did. We took a canvas tent for two, a plastic barrel of beer and three bundles of firewood. We went by train according to Borya’s plan, so that we could reach the top of the mountain, where the lake was located, before complete darkness. But our plan encountered a problem: the bus did not go to the lake! Fortunately, we were picked up by a truck hauling a fuel tank.
“One – in the cabin, and two – on top of the tank!” the driver commanded.
So we sat on, as if on a donkey. It was good, even though we were driving slowly.
It was completely dark on the lake. We somehow pitched the tent and, remembering the instructions, lit a fire nearby. We wanted to eat, but we still had to catch the prey. It must be said that the crayfish really came out to the smell of raw, slightly rotten meat. But while we caught them, the fire devoured two of our three bundles. It was starting to get cold, but we had neither warm clothes nor blankets. There wasn’t even vodka – just a keg of cool beer, which we drank in the hope of warming up. Nonsense! When the coals remained from the fire, we threw potatoes there and hid in the tent. We decided to keep each other warm and lay down in a triangle, but, alas, the beer we drank made everyone run out of the tent to the displeasure of the others. In the morning we discovered that we had pitched a tent not far from a corn field and from construction site – there was a ton of boards and sticks there. Then we re-lit the fire, warmed ourselves up and had breakfast of potatoes and fried corn. The sun warmed the air and the lake so that we were still able to swim. The adventure was a success!
“Hungry but happy, we returned home…”
While we were going to the lake, a group of our acquaintance artists went to Dagestan, wandering through the mountains and, on occasion, buying ancient art objects on the cheap from uneducated population. They climbed somewhere very high and came to a small mountain village. They started asking if anyone was selling silver and gold? The local children said that at the very top of the mountain lives an old teacher who dug up a treasure of yellow coins with a portrait of a bearded Russian. But he doesn’t sell.
The guys quickened their pace. This was very interesting information. The portrait could be Tsar Nicholas II, and the coins could be royal gold Chevrolets (ten rubles).
The old teacher greeted the guests warmly and offered tea.
“Yes,” he said, “it’s true.” I found coins, but I think they are fake. They’re worthless.
The guys began to ask to see the find. Tsar Nicholas II looked at them from the gold coins. Then they asked how much the owner was selling the coins.
“I’m not going to sell this nonsense,” he replied. “I’ll take it to Makhachkala, to the museum, and let them sort it out.”
Then the guys looked at each other and began to persuade the old man. The stubborn devil long refused, until he finally gave in.
“Since you are so impatient, the price will be high – ten rubles apiece, as it is written on them.”
The guys kicked each other under the table, Nikolas tens cost at least a hundred rubles then. In a word, they bought the entire treasure from the old man for almost a thousand rubles, and brought them home happy. At home they took one coin to a reliable jeweler, which they knew, to evaluate.
“Beautiful fake!” he said. “I’ll take it for a ruble. Is there some more?”
Interesting events happened in the spring: we received invitations to student holidays in other cities – Baku and Odessa.
The whole crowd went to Baku (close and cheap). On the first day, the guests took us to a traditional teahouse. Once upon a time I went with my grandfather to the same type teahouse in our city. This happened after the visiting sulfur baths, in which Pushkin enjoyed sulfur water, steam and massage hundred-thirty years ago. The tea was strong and tasty; we drank it from small pear-shaped glasses that retained heat. They were called armuds or armudics. Baku residents explained that the cups and other attributes of the tea ceremony serve as signs of a secret code: a closed lid on the teapot – I drink tea, an inverted lid on the teapot – I need a refill, an inverted armudik – you can clean the table, a saucer on top of the teapot – you need a girl, an armudik on top of the teapot on a saucer – you need… a boy.
Denis listened and listened, eyes wide open, and then assembled a pyramid: a teapot without a lid, a saucer, an armudik on top, a saucer upside down on top of it, a new armudik upside down on top, and a lid from the teapot on top of it. Everyone burst out laughing. And suddenly the owner, typical Turkish, wearing a fez, with gold teeth, came up to our table and, smiling carnivorously, asked,
“Ara, what do you want? I don’t understand!”
Denis was confused.
“We’re just playing around.”
“You’re flirting, right?”
But then our guides switched to Azerbaijani and settled the situation, which was beginning to get out of control.
The invitation to Odessa caused a great stir. Gogi told me,
“We’ll officially send three students. You’ll be the leader of the delegation – no one knows this cuisine better than you. Choose two more who you want, but remember – there must be at least one Georgian and at least one girl in the official delegation.”
“Why a girl?”
“You know, in Russia they don’t understand national characteristics. From the Caucasus? Are there any girls? If not it would mean they’re lovers of men asses! Don’t even argue!”
I didn’t argue. The Communist Party is both our helmsman and the helmsmen of our asses. It knows better! I only negotiated three social help benefits for my friends. But we had to choose the official team as good as we can, and we began to choose.
The Georgian delegate was our student, a member of the society of book lovers – Vakhtang Tsereteli, nephew of the director of the city winery, who donated two forty-liter barrels of wine for the trip. I immediately went to the main post office and sent a telegram to the physics department of Odessa,
“Loading wine barrels comma wait for the holiday period.”
The second discovery was Anya Gverdtsiteli, a beauty with aristocratic features, golden hair and blue eyes. She was such a modest and homely girl that we had to persuade her parents to let Anya go on a business trip. It must be said that several Odessa physic students immediately fell in love with the Georgian “princess”, and even came to Tbilisi to court her.
In Odessa, Anya found herself in a funny situation. Vakhtang and two of his friends lived in a hotel. Four biophysicists and Anya lived in the university hostel. More precisely, one of the four, Anton Stoev, spent nights at his own grandmother’s appartment; Eli, Denis and I were given a free room, and Anya was placed with local girls.
On weekend morning, Anya knocks on our door and sheepishly asks:
“I was told to find out something from you.”
“Sure.”
“In the morning, a boyfriend of one of our girls visited her and said: “Let’s fry some potatoes, Masha.” She agrees: “Let’s do it!”
Then the girls begin to pack their things and leave, and I offer,
“I’ll help you peel the potatoes.”
The girls laughed and said, “They can handle it without you, don’t interfere.”
I object, “I’m not going to interfere with them, maybe…”
The guy laughs, “What, Masha, maybe…?”
Then the girls sent me to you, “It’s better to go to your boys, they will explain you what’s what.”
We had to explain, but we laughed to our hearts’ and even temporarily included this euphemism in our speech.
In Odessa, we made friends with a large company from the physics department, with which we still maintain contact. This is not difficult, since the majority emigrated from there too. I wonder who is left…
My first acquaintance and first Odessa girl whom I liked was Murochka Voronenkova, a very pretty, albeit snub-nosed girl. We somehow immediately liked each other. In Tbilisi style, I gladly went to her home in an old communal apartment with many neighbors. Mura’s mother, it turned out, was named Sarah Veniaminovna, and she asked me right away,
“Nick, are you a Georgian?”
“No, a Jew,” I said joyfully.
“Quiet, quiet, for our neighbors this is a bad word.”
I was again convinced that life in Georgia was indeed very different…
A strange episode occurred shortly before the end of the fourth year. Once our group of eight biophysicists had a biology classes in a small auditorium with old school-type desks with flip-up lids. I don’t know how it happened, but my hand got into the crack of the desk, and Eli, my neighbor, pressed the lid just at that moment. I roared slightly, Eli squealed, everyone was alarmed, but nothing serious happened – there was only an abrasion on my hand and a bruise was forming. But Eli was simply demoralized by this random act of cruelty. Tears flowed from his eyes.
“Sorry, sorry!” he repeated.
“Don’t worry, it’s okay! It will heal!” I really wasn’t angry with my friend.
But he, full of pity for the innocent victim, grabbed my hand, pressed to him and showered it with kisses. I was amazed by this unusual display of compassion. I was even angry with Eli, it seemed to me that he was humiliating himself by this. For what? Well, there was trouble, well, he apologized. Happens. Does he really not believe in my sincere friendship to him?
Of course, in my young years I could not even imagine that any other relationship with a comrade was possible other than male friendship and loyalty. Everything else, even excessive sensitivity, was called “What are you, a girl?”
And in the summer, we went to military training in Yerevan, to receive an officer rank and become “real men”. This summer was etched in my memory for a long time with the pictures I saw and the life experiences I gained.
We were traveling by train, probably not in a sleeping car – it had polished wooden shelves, but no mattresses or bedding. But when you’re young, everything has simple solution. We laughed, chatted, played until late at night, and only fell asleep for an hour or two in the morning. And at dawn our train had already arrived at its destination. We were met by three army trucks, on which the students were taken to the communication regiment, on the outskirts of Yerevan, Kanaker, where we were to spend fifty days of camps. But, starting from the very first day, we encountered so many uncommon and unusual things that the researcher experience simply screamed,
“Fix the data, process them and think them over later!”
And I recorded them. By the end of the term, they had filled the whole general notebook, which in treacherous hands could easily become a source of problems and put me and my comrades behind bars, because it contained such incriminating evidence on the country of the Soviets. But I think this is only for young people, like me, the notebook brought revelations. Notes didn’t see readers at home; there was no point in taking them to the United States at all. So the notebook disappeared along with the whole country. And now this notebook would be useful. And the summer recordings were called…
(See the next chapter, 32)
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