Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE – PHYSFAC. FOURTH YEAR. 50 DAYS IN LINE (ENDING)
A couple of weeks later, when many people’s nerves became quite tense, an incident occurred. Two guys had a fight over a place in the truck. One of them, the tall, big and strong guy Zurab from the Georgian class, insisted that Merab, a Georgian Jew from the Russian class, impudently climbed into the car in the place allocated for him. Merab denied it, claiming that he was given this place because he had recently undergone surgery on his tailbone. Eventually, Zurab grabbed Merab by the tunic and promised to throw him to the ground from the truck so his tailbone would definitely have a hard time. Merab, apparently frightened, grabbed a crowbar and promised to break Zurab’s skull before his tailbone touched the ground. Now Zurab got cold feet and fell behind, but harbored a grudge and promised to take revenge.
Zurab was apparently a vindictive guy, and from that moment tension began to grow in the company. Whenever possible, in front of everyone, he threatened Merab with severe torture and challenged him to a “fair” fight. It was hard to call the fight fair, comparing the muscles of both. But Merab boastfully replied that he would smear the enemy against the wall, but he couldn’t because of the operation on his tailbone, as if he had to fight with his ass. Zurab teased him calling him a woman and kicked him on the sly: either he pulled his hair, or with a fist in the ribs, or with a boot on his ass. He wanted Merab to rush at him, but this did not happen. Merab portrayed inhuman physical and mental torture; he begged to protect him from injustice all his friends, all students of the Russian class and the strongest person on the course and a real expert in martial arts, Victor. But Victor did not like Merab, did not believe his version and stayed away from the squabble. And many of the guys were worried, apparently putting themselves in Merab’s place. Eli said,
“This is disgraceful! This is impossible to tolerate!”
“So why does Merab threaten to smear Zurab against the wall, but not fight?”
“With such a strong guy? Would you fight?”
“Well, just because of rubbish – no, but to stop the bullying – yes!”
“Then why don’t you fight instead of Merab? He can’t do it himself after the recent operation”
“And you were at that operation? Why do you believe him? And he is not my close friend after all. I would go to fight for you, but I don’t like Merab’s behavior.”
“But he’s still a Jew.”
“Is the national question involved in the conflict? No! Do we want to add it?”
A few days later, when everyone was tired of the showdowns and conversations, a secret council took place. At night I was woken up and called for a discussion. A group of guys from the Georgian and Russian classes were deciding what to do.
“Let’s listen to Nick’s opinion. He’s friends with everyone, likes to joke, has no enemies, doesn’t lick anyone’s ass, and speaks Georgian, even though he’s a Russian Jew.”
“Wow!” I thought, “This is not a Komsomol recommendation…” and said,
“It is obvious that reconciliation is impossible.”
Everyone nodded approvingly.
“All that remains is a fair fight until first blood. No use of any objects, no hit a man lying down, and no hits at a tailbone either! The place is a washbasin. The time is tomorrow morning. After the fight – peace and no revenge!”
“Hooray! Hammer! Briefly and clearly!”
Everyone were hitting me on the shoulder, remaining bruises there.
But I felt morally relieved. Quickly, to sleep!
The next morning the fighters met in a washroom on the third floor. More precisely, they didn’t come together, but stood in opposite corners. The referee, Victor, recalled the simple conditions of the fight.
“I will punish the violator,” he said, and everyone understood that punishment could be much worse than the fight.
“Forward!”
“A-ah-ah!” the rivals shouted and rushed at each other.
Merab knew that he needed to stay away from Zurab’s hefty fists, that is, closer to his body, and as for the first blood, he outlined how to cause it. He grabbed Zurab’s shoulders with his nails and pulled with all his might. Blood gushed from under the torn skin, Zurab roared in pain and butted Merab in the forehead. From the collision, both their vision blurred, and blood flowed in a stream from both noses.
“The fight is over, shake hands!” Victor announced.
Both sides were unhappy, but the squabbles in the unit have stopped.
And I found pleasure in everything I could: in reading Updike, in the series “Seventeen Moments of Spring,” which first appeared on television that summer, in recording facts and impressions of them. I even perceived the difficulties of the service with optimism: they made us raced at the stadium – I’ll become stronger; I ate little – I’ll lose weight; I got my leave from the unit not having civil cloth – I’ll enjoy a walk in Yerevan in military uniform or go to the bathhouse!
A trip to the bathhouse, ending with bitter black coffee and ice cream, was an undoubted pleasure in the 104 degree F heat. But it was tolerated more easily in the dry climate of Yerevan than 86 degrees F in Tbilisi with one hundred percent humidity.
One day we met in the city an acquaintance from “Physicist Day”, a student at Yerevan University, Ashot. His parents were away, and he invited us to his home, saying “only without any ceremony.” Do you know what we immediately asked for? The permission to take a shower!
A friend, Nina, came to visit him and set the table in the living room. Everything is in the best Caucasian traditions, while we were bathing, combing our hair, ironing our military tunics in the kitchen, so not to lose face. And then Ashot comes to us and says,
“Guys, I just have one request for you. You swear terribly, like prisoners. Nina is very shy.”
“We are swearing? Can’t be.”
“Believe me, Nick, I’m not lying. What did you just say to Gurami?”
“I said, why are you putting the comb on the table?”
“You apparently thought so, but you said out loud: what the fuck are you putting a fucking comb on the table? Nina just jumped up! ”
It turns out that we stopped noticing swearing in our speech. From that day on, we began to monitor this and eradicate swearing in order to return home in our original state. In the barracks we even introduced a fine – a ruble for a bad word.
On weekends, many received official leave and went for walks in groups. Those who kept civilian clothes for money from nearby residents often escaped into the city in the evening. These were rich guys who took taxis to go to restaurants and returned at night. But I had little interest in eating and drinking. When the Georgian boys received packages from their villages – huge trunks with fried chicken, khachapuri (pastry with cheese), vegetables and fruits, bottles of homemade wine, the whole barracks instantly went crazy. Dozens of hands reached out to the mountains of food, the trunks were often torn to shreds, followed by chickens, khachapuri and everything else. In half an hour, all the food was destroyed, like it would be done by a swarm of locusts. Leftovers and skins were lying all over the barracks, and the owner of the feast and his friends usually got drunk, if not with wine, then with the moonshine they had bought in addition.
The devil knows, apparently my pride, which did not allow me at Primary school to have an American chewing gum from someone else’s hands into my mouth like a dog having a treat, forbade me to take part in these bacchanalias. Only once, when a guy, whom I knew well from the Georgian class invited me to a banquet. I happily sat at the table of a mixed Georgian-Russian group and appreciated wonderful and testy home-cooked food.
Many people were hiding the civil cloth for free in Lenin’s room. But this was for the time being. When they in the unit noticed that the students were changing clothes and running away, Captain Kruglevsky came with the soldiers to the barracks and offered to hand over their things voluntarily. The guys denied that they had civil clothes. Then the captain ordered the foam ceiling in Lenin’s room to be dismantled. The clothes and shoes that had fallen from the ceiling were put into bags. Then he walked up to the huge bust of Lenin and tapped its head. The sound was dull, without resonance. The captain ordered,
“Turn Lenin doggy style!”
The soldiers instantly turned over the colossal bust and took out several bags of clothes from it.
“Your clothes may be infested with parasites and insects, so they will be chemically treated and transferred to a storage room.”
Students had nothing to respond. But some of them bought new things and hid them again. In all cases, trips to the city, both in uniform and without it, continued.
I remember how my friends and I decided to celebrate Eli’s birthday and went to a “mind reading” session by Tofik Dadashev, who showed tricks like Wolf Messing. I loved such sessions, but I always wanted to demonstrate that there is no real mind reading, that the artist’s skill is based on superhuman attentiveness to the ideomotor movements of the viewer. One has only to blindfold… not the performer, but the viewer – the “source” of thoughts, and the experiment will fail. Telepathize as much as you want, you will not be able to correct the actions of the recipient, since you do not see them.
Of course, all the artists knew this and therefore never agreed to a test with a blindfolded spectator. But still, it was fun.
After the session, we went to a small restaurant and ordered kebabs and lamajos – pancakes with meat. The waiter asked how it happened that the soldiers wandered into their place; this doesn’t happen often. We told him that it was our friend’s birthday, and we were all far from home and wanted to throw him a small celebration. Imagine our surprise when the waiter brought a carafe of tan milk drink to our table and said that this, along with the food, was at the expense of the chef, whose son is in the army, and today is his birthday too, and she hopes that the people will treat him well there, where he serves.
We raised a toast to the health of newborns. We hoped for best too.
The day of the shooting range arrived. In the morning we were sent to the training ground on a forced march of seven or ten kilometers. We trudged through the heat with ammunition and machine guns slowly and only by lunchtime we reached some pastures where the targets stood. Here we had to try out machine guns and pistols. Our officers were very worried, God forbid there would be any injury or a wound! But everything went smoothly, except for the unexpected appearance of a shepherd.
“Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!” he shouted, “One sheep has already fallen!”
Either the stupid sheep themselves wandered into the training ground, or the cunning shepherd deliberately grazed them on someone else’s land, but one way or another, one sheep came under fire and fell victim.
“What will I say on the collective farm?” the shepherd lamented.
Lieutenant-Colonel Kunin behaved like a father to the soldiers. He offered,
“Either you insist then we declare that you were illegally grazing sheep on the territory of the army, or you roast a sheep, treat the soldiers, and we testify that a single sheep wandered into the training ground on its own.”
“Yeah!” I supported the teacher, “We all saw how she crawled on her belly under the barbed wire.
The shepherd promised to think about it and he chose the third solution – not to make a fuss, but also not to feed the meat to the students, but to lead the herd away and carry away the valuable cargo.
And we continued shooting. The most precise shooter was rewarded with a return to the unit by a military car. Unexpectedly, this winner turned out to be… me. The Makarov pistol was loaded with only three cartridges. One of mine was in the nine and two other in the ten – one in the other. This had nothing to do with any precision because of my nearsightedness. But it had direct connection with my bruised and steamed shins in my high boots: I didn’t have to walk back.
In the unit I took off my boots – oh, horror! Legs up to the knees were covered with a red rash. I went to the medical unit. There was no doctor, the paramedic looked b”
“Come in the morning, if it doesn’t go away, I’ll lubricate it with brilliant green.”
In the morning the redness slightly subsided, but I had to try to get permission for a relief from the boots. I went to the medical unit, where they smeared my shins with iodine, brilliant green, and Vaseline. Great! When I showed the legs to Lieutenant Leshchenko, Ensign Asratyan and Lieutenant-Colonel Kunin, they almost vomited at the sight of “pus” flowing down the brownish-greenish, almost cadaverous, flesh.
“Of course, of course, a week without boots! It wasn’t enough for your legs to be amputated,” the good-natured Leshchenko sympathized.
It’s good that everyone believed in the image of gangrene. No one else examined me, and only when they saw a soldier in breeches and keds in the ranks they shook their heads disapprovingly, but from my proposal, “Whanna see it?” they resolutely refused.
The longer we stayed in the army, the more we got used to the routine and found ways to a quiet life. Well, for example, there was once a problem – a dark toilet with rats. How was it solved? The action of the stomach was adjusted during the daytime, and they urinated directly into the washbasin on the third floor. Everybody used the sink at the very end, behind the door. It was a secluded place, but the faucet did not work, the water did not flow, and gradually the sink smelled of with urine. This was discovered by Ensign Asratyan, an expert in army violations. He sniffed the sink, turned the idle faucet and understood everything. Then he went to Lieutenant-Colonel Kunin and, saluting bravely, reported,
“Allow me to report, your students out of desperation piss in the washbasins!”
Kunin got scared. He understood that there was a trial in the washbasin, even worse, a lynching. Only this twist he didn’t have yet!
“What had happened, a trial?”
“It’s not a trial, it’s a piss,” explained Asratyan.
But this explanation didn’t reach Kunin.
“I don’t understand you, Comrade Ensign, how is this?”
“Like that!” said the ensign, “They take out dicks and piss,” and he pantomimed the process.
“Aren’t you ashamed, Comrade Ensign to use gestures instead of facts?”
“Do not mix with word fuck!”
“I never said the word fuck!”
“Oh, you didn’t even know it! Your students made dirt and unsanitary everywhere. They keep food scraps, books, notebooks in their nightstands. Rats are crawling in, a soldier from the second floor has already been bitten by one. If it were up to me, I would drown everything from their nightstands in shit.”
“So. Leave it alone!” ordered Kunin, “Do you Comrade Ensign know Einstein?”
“I know all the students personally, there is no such thing among them.”
“Of course not. This is a genius. They read his works!”
“So they learned from Einstein to piss in washbasins?!”
“Stop mix facts!”
“Again fuck?”
“Don’t distort, I said there’s nothing to talk about, fucking… and damn it! OK. You are free Comrade Ensign. Thank you for reporting. I will resolve this issue with them, don’t piss!”
And indeed, he solved the problem. He called deputies of commanders of platoons, three of our students, and explained that since we are afraid of rats, then, firstly, all the food from the nightstands is out, the soldier from the second floor has already been bitten! And since we urinate in the sink, then only in the one with running water so that there are no odors!
“And be patient – there’s not much left!”
So then we all realized that we’ll passed the exams, everything would be fine.
And the exams were approaching. We have already felt their exciting closeness. Something had to be done. We received out the exam questions and started writing cheat sheets on them. I have been closely involved in this issue. There were thirty tickets. There are about ninety of us. Each ticket had to be copied twice. I kept records of who wrote which ticket and who made a hand copy of it. This large number of cheat sheets was needed in case some could not be taken back or if someone’s cheat sheets would be taken away during the exam. In general, everyone was included in our coherent bootlegging, but one student waited until the last day and did not turn in the third copy of the promised ticket No11.
The day of the exam arrived. With a bag of crib sheets and a list of students, I sent a stream of papers into the classroom and accepted those taken outside the exam room. Unfortunately, the eleventh ticket was repeated twice and both times the cheat sheets remained inside.
My turn came out. Of course, I pulled out ticket No11. FU! I stood to attention.
“Allow me to answer, comrade officers?!”
“How about getting ready?”
“I’m ready!”
Lieutenant-Colonel Kunin made a triumphant gesture with his hand, saying, know ours. With military parade step, I walked up to the table, chin forward, and reported,
“Private Neiman has arrived to take the exam! Question one.”
And then I started to answer. I don’t remember what I said there. My first officer mentor, Lieutenant-Colonel Kim, who served as a military attaché in Korea, always joked,
“Neiman comes up – high score, reports – high score, answers – satisfactory, leaves – high score. A solid average good is guaranteed to him.”
But then, I learned something. And in the stations I figured out – read what operations were described on the internal panels. And I remembered radiation jokes, and Geiger counters were not a problem. The main stumbling block for me was the filthy, incomprehensible radio circuits, drawn in brown and yellow, and brought from our department. This was where my eternal question lied: how do the teaching officers themselves figure this out? They could simply know the flow of current by heart. And then I remembered Tofik Dadashev. You don’t need to know anything! You need to see how the current flows. Moreover, the diagrams always started with yellow lines, to which brown branches were later added. And I made my choice: this is the army! Brown is shitty, don’t go there, and yellow is sunny, go there!
So I did. And I passed with flying colors! Without any cheat sheet. Know ours!
The last evening in the army was like a graduation. We chipped in, set the tables in Lenin’s room, invited our officers from the University, led by Kunin, and our regimental officers, led by Kruglevsky. The ensign Asratyan ran in briefly, knocked over a shot of vodka for our successes, and ran away while everyone was sober. Then the officers dispersed, then people like me — not drinking a lot. And the drunks stayed and buzzed all night. And what?
We wake up and see scraps of white cotton all around, and torn T-shirt of everyone who was wearing them. And Vova Aboyan is running around, wrapped in a sheet and wailing,
“Why the hell did one tear my panties? Who did they bother? I don’t have any others! I washed my only panties and hung them on the headboard to dry!”
Finally, one of the drunks woke up and said that they started playing cards and one of them tore the other’s T-shirt. In response, there was nothing to tear, since the partner was sitting without a T-shirt.
“Why do you need my T-shirt? If you want to tear something, there are about fifty people sleeping next room in T-shirts. Let’s go and tear them down!”
This idea seemed very funny to them. They went to tear the T-shirts in a row for everyone who slept in them or hung them on the headboard. This is how Vovka’s panties ended their life.
In the summer, I didn’t wear T-shirts at all and laughed, of course, not at the guys, but at the situation that offended Vovka the most. But he laughed along with everyone, although Eli, Anton, Misha and many others found the story offensive.
Many people said that the entertainer should be punished, but he just snored serenely. And then they came up with the following trick. All the beds in our barracks stood on the floor, but they could be assembled into two levels. Then the bed with the sleeping person carefully, without rocking, raised by two dozen hands up and secured in the second tier. Then students began to chant,
“Gogi! Gogi! Gogi!”
Gogi woke up near the ceiling and screamed wildly. Then he looked down and screamed again. We died laughing when he climbed down from above.
“How did I get there?” he asked.
“The torn T-shirts raised you up,” the guys answered, and then Gogi began to laugh along with everyone else.
We didn’t go to breakfast anymore, we decided that we would eat in the city. Some wanted to go home as early as possible, that is, on the morning intercity bus, and they had to hurry. But Denis and I had plenty of time before the evening train left. I still had to buy nice gifts for my family in the city. Looking ahead, I’ll say that I managed to do this. The glazed painted plates and the embossed leather wallet are still kept in our family. Over the summer I spent fifty rubles. For everything! For comparison, the guys paid from five hundred to a thousand rubles just for food at the tavern. It’s good if it made them happier.
So, I went to the storage room and got my crumpled civilian clothes, but in order not to stand in the line in the barracks for an iron, I decided to find it somewhere else, and I remembered the women’s battalion. I haven’t talked about it yet.
A special communications battalion was stationed on the territory of the regiment. It was called special because it was all-female. They hired girls from civilian life into it. Looks like warrant officers. In the very first days, the regimental doctor, a Georgian, introduced us to the medical regulations in the army. He said,
“Remember a few army rules.
First. If you feel bad, contact the commander. Only he decides whether a subordinate is sick or not. If he deems it necessary, he will release you to the medical center. There you will be treated and given a report for the commander, and he will decide what to do next.
Second. After using the restroom and before eating, try to wash your hands. Less chance of getting an intestinal infection.
Last thing. Don’t go to the women’s battalion! This will protect you from sexually transmitted diseases. Any civilian whore is better than an operator from a communications battalion.”
It sounded scary. At first, we didn’t believe the doctor. It was clear that he was sent in the belief that the Georgian students would trust him as a fellow countryman. But, as if on purpose, two blondes in signalmen’s uniforms walked past us.
“Look, the calves have been brought,” one said.
“There are a lot of bespectacled people, these are not soldiers,” added the second one.
We had a smoke break. A couple of brave men immediately clung to the signalwomen and went to see them off. I don’t know what the boys said to them there, but after a couple of minutes the girls drove them away, swearing with the worst words. I haven’t heard such swearing for a long time. This immediately convinced everyone that the girls were nasty, not worthy of our attention, and no one ever came close to their barracks. The communications battalion has become for us synonymous with a house of sin or debauchery.
Later, when we got accustomed to the unit, we learned that the long list of soldiers’ names and telephone numbers of their barracks and communication stations was written down at the checkpoint, at the end of the discharge log. The signal girls, returning after work in the city, excited by the harassment of staff officers, called the soldiers directly from the checkpoint. Also on the subject of connection. In any case, everyone thought so. The soldiers were sympathetic to the fate of the girls.
“In some Russian towns you can’t find a man. And in the army there are both work and every six months – a new conscription.”
So, I headed… to the communications battalion. My calculation turned out to be correct. A melodious girlish voice from behind the very first door of the hostel, where I knocked in search of an iron, invited me inside. I walked in and froze. Two girls in white bras and panties ironed their green military skirts and shirts.
“Sorry!” I said, and turned 180 degree.
“Turn around, baby,” one purred, “don’t you like beautiful female figures and lingerie?”
“I like it,” I nodded, overcoming the spasms in my throat.
“Look, Tanya, how handsome he is,” another girl smiled at me, putting on a skirt. A student?
“Yes.”
“Do you want love? Come in the evening.”
“Yes, I want to,” I said sincerely, forgetting about all my previous fears, “I really want to, but we are leaving today.”
“Why didn’t you come in earlier? Was it forbidden?”
“There was no time. And now… I’m so sorry.”
“And so do we. It’s a pity that now – no way! It’s time to report to headquarters for a duty. But we’ll have time to iron the civil clothes for you.”
And they ironed my things in five minutes. I accompanied them, or rather, they accompanied me to our barracks near the very gate to the unit.
“Goodbye, Nick,” the girls said and took turns in kissing me, and then kissed me together in front of the amazed soldiers from the checkpoint and students on the parade ground.
“Now I understand,” said Eli, “where you sometimes disappeared in the evenings.”
“You didn’t guess,” I muttered angrily, “I, asshole, masturbated in the toilet.”
“In the dark one? Smelly? With rats? Lie to someone else!”
I looked at my friend gratefully.
“You’re right, old man, I’m sorry,” I lied, “And now, I repent.”
And this, the last word, perhaps, was the honest truth.
I returned home as a reserve lieutenant, much thinner and much younger, since I had had my hair cut very short and out of fashion, but feeling like I had matured. My extremely youthful appearance apparently attracted the city punks, who extorted petty money from weaker and more modest schoolchildren. Before the start of my last year in the University, a long-forgotten scene from my school years had repeated.
On the street, on the central avenue, I caught an attention of some hooligan kid.
“Give me a ruble! Or else…”
“Who are you talking to like that, skim your Kuna and wort with pocks! Do you know who I am?!”
The guy expected anything, but not such an answer. So, apparently, he was confused and asked,
“Who are you?”
“I am an officer of the Soviet army!” I declared proudly.
“You? Oh, I can’t!”
The guy laughed so long and hard that tears rolled out of his eyes.
“Okay, you are free to go. Your joke is worth more than a ruble.”
And we parted ways. Leshchenko was right, peace-loving people lived in Georgia.
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