Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE – FIRST ADULT RELATIONSHIP
The next episode that comes to my mind was a trip to the sea. Probably, if I were writing a script for a film, the transition from the previous episode to a holiday at sea would look like this: I plunge into the darkness of space (everything calms down) and suddenly (with noise and splashing) emerge from the depths, somewhere on the Black Sea.
This transition was not accidental. Just in these years my friends and I discussed the idea of a film. The process was like window shopping – without any opportunity or intention to make a movie. But it was nice to dream. The idea was also about dreams.
I’ll tell you about it.
A young journalist spends the day filming rallies at factories in support of the own government. He returns to a modest two-room apartment, where he lives with his old mother. Mom feeds him soup. On TV – the same rallies at the same factories. The hero wishes his mother good night, opens the door to his room, and a sea wave hits him. He enjoys Hawaii, the Caribbean, Monte Carlo, mixed in our minds into a single image of a beautiful foreign life.
The next morning, the journalist wakes up in his simple and faded room. He does exercises to the sounds of the march, goes to work and films the festive demonstration all day. In the evening – the same picture: a weak mother, tasteless food, on TV – a demonstration that makes him sick, and a door leading to… the Amazon jungle.
On the third day again – exercises, work, filming everyday work, mom, soup, footage – on TV, a retrieving to his room. But it is nothing there! Still the same dull, dreary life…
The summer vacation of a Soviet person was akin to a magical room that everyone wanted to get into. Although it was not life abroad, it either was not every day work, but romance and adventure.
All the guys have left for vacations. Sasha already had a son, and Sonya was vacationing with him somewhere in the village – Tskneti or Manglisi. And I started looking for my magic room. And it opened up to me as if by accident.
One of my friends, Tyoma Rybakov, who had a military father, suggested, “If my dad gets two vouchers to a military tourist resort in Kobuleti, will you go with me?”
No question! Certainly! Tyoma was a good guy, but unfortunately, his family moved to Tbilisi not long ago. He did not know thoroughly our local rules of behaving and customs and sometimes got into trouble. Therefore, he sometimes behaved shyly and modestly, and sometimes his businesslike behavior could bring the wrong results. For example, when composing his autobiography, he emphasized his father’s virtues like a many people in Russia would do. “I am Artyom Rybakov, the son of Colonel Rybakov, a communist, awarded with orders…” he started and then continued with an extra page about his father. Our guys were dying of laughter. In a word, in my opinion, friendly advice and support were quite necessary for Tyoma.
And so, we went with him to the city tourist office of Transcaucasian Military District. Its director was a colonel Simon Malkin, a Jewish, a popular man among many Jews. In his youth, he was a climber and, on Stalin’s orders, during the war he and his team climbed Elbrus to throw down the fascist banner with a swastika, installed there by German rangers. This assignment subsequently brought him a good position and the opportunity to help the Jewish civilian population purchase vouchers to better quality tourist centers of the Ministry of Defense.
But in this case, the source of the vouchers was completely different. In the end, a lot of military sought to help the civilian population, of course, for money or through acquaintance. Therefore, we, two young reserve officers, came for two vouchers. Perhaps they were written out for Tyoma’s parents. It didn’t matter.
The stern major glanced sideways at the two guys without any hint of military bearing.
“Where do you serve?” he asked.
“I am Artyom Rybakov, the son of Colonel Rybakov, a communist awarded with orders…” Tyoma had drummed out as usual.
For this office such a text was very appropriate.
“Everything is clear with you,” the major noted, extending the privileges of a father to an adult son.
“And you?” he turned to me.
“I am Lieutenant Neiman,” I simply said my rank, honestly earned last summer, omitting the word “reserve.”
The major smiled joyfully. Finally he saw an ordinary lieutenant. But Tyoma decided to clarify,
“He is a lieutenant of reserve. Same as I am,” he said.
Before I had time to mentally call him a foreign asshole, the frowning major squealed, “Not allowed!” and put one voucher aside.
“Not only is he creating problems for himself with Colonel Rybakov, but also with Colonel Malkin,” I thought angrily, but turned and silently walked out, amid Tyoma’s groans:
“Oh, sorry, I said the wrong thing. I’ll call my dad now…”
I went home. I was sure that everything would be sorted out, if not by one, then by another colonel. And sure enough, a couple of hours later Tyoma brought me home a ticket to a tourist resort in Kobuleti, where we were to rest for twenty days.
The first day brought amazing impressions! Tyoma and I ended up in different rooms. He was assigned a bed in a room for two, with a balcony, designed for colonels and members of their families, and I was put in a room with five beds, for five lieutenants. But my bed was by the window. This place was considered cooler, since the window could be opened at night. This suited me very well, because air conditioners were still a novelty in the country, and I could not stand the heat.
On the very first night, I had a nightmare – I was drowning in the sea. I woke up, immersed in liquid, choking and spitting from a powerful stream that whipped into my face. I screamed and jumped out of my bed. Someone turned on the light, and I was horrified to discover that my bed was flooded with fragrant rose wine – “Isabella” (Concord). It turned out that my neighbors, preparing to leave home in the morning, properly celebrated this event and also bought a forty-liter bottle of wine. Drunk, they decided to climb into the room through my window and had put a heavy vessel on its side on the window. The homemade plug popped out and wine poured into my bed like from a fire hose.
The next morning, a housekeeper, who was changing the mattress and linen, remarked, shaking her head,
“Wow, what a disgusting thing to get that drunk and completely wet out the mattress with the puke! And this is on the first day of arrival! What then will happen next?”
But then the plan was like this. In the first half of the term, get to know our group and make two trips – a daily trip to the river and a five-day trip to the mountains. In the second half, relax on the seashore for ten days. Getting to know each other meant making friends, and most importantly, a girlfriend!
The acquaintance began around the fire on the very first evening. This system of campfire brotherhood was close to me from the experience of the military headquarters pioneer camp in Manglisi. Here, at the Kobuleti camp resort site, everyone took turns talking about themselves. The stories were similar.
“I was born there, studied at such and such a military school, I serve in the N-unit, with such and such a rank.”
One vacationer, a thin man wearing dark glasses, which he did not take off even at night by the fire, briefly introduced himself,
“Vitaly Sergeevich, an intelligence officer.”
I realized that he wanted to impress the girls, and like an old CFI (“Club of the Funny and Inventive people”) player, I decided to beat him.
“I was born in such and such year in the village with my grandmother, while my parents were carrying out the task of the Motherland. After finishing the eighth grade of the KGB school, I switched to the side of science and entered the university. Well, I recently defended my thesis on the topic “DNA-dependent RNA-polymerase C from animal tissue” and received a vacation for the first time in five years.”
“Why from an animal?” asked Vitaly Sergeevich.
“Experiments on humans are temporarily prohibited,” I answered, lowering my voice and looking at the KGB officer with significance, as my grandfather, my mother’s father, once looked at me.
“I would like to ask you something,” said the security officer, “Let’s say, tomorrow, on the way to the river.”
“Of course,” I agreed, “unless it’s the Black River. Otherwise, like the poet Pushkin, I’m always hitting the ten.”
My tactics turned out to be very effective. Several girls flocked like moths to the fire with which I was playing…
Among them was Lena. She was nice and I liked her straight away. She graduated Leningrad University with the major of Russian Literature, was well-read and dressed with a good stile. But not only me, but all the men-tourists in our group liked her. Ha-ha! We do not choose easy paths.
But fortunately for me, our instructor, a local Georgian guy, Givi, who worked as a seasonal guide to the mountains, had his eye on Lena. He was a very strong and muscular athlete of about twenty-five to twenty-seven. After the fire, he called all the men from our group aside and said,
“Tomorrow I will show you a trick. Whoever manages to repeat it will receive special rights from me, but in the meantime, know – whoever pesters Lena will not return home alive; sometimes accidents happen both in the mountains and at sea…”
His short speech made a strong impression on the Russian guys.
“These mountain people are so determined! It costs them nothing to kill a person. It’s really better not to approach to Lena.”
But the threats seemed like a bluff to me. “We need to ask Givi directly what he meant,” I decided and called the instructor aside.
“Are you out of your mind?” I asked Givi in Georgian, “Your game may have a bad end. Someone will snitch to the director or to your wife.”
Givi was stunned.
“What? Are you a Georgian? And you are in the army?” he asked.
“No, I am a Jew, grew up in Tbilisi and speak Georgian. And I’m not in the army.”
“How did you know that I’m married?”
“I saw how you said goodbye to a pregnant woman, and she told you not to look at the visiting girls.”
“Well, what should I do if she is pregnant? And who will tell her if she doesn’t speak Russian. You?” he looked at me alarmingly.
“Who do you take me for?” I said, “I’m not Pavlik Morozov, but those who like to rat, will inform either your wife or the director.”
“No. The director will cover me; he himself goes out with unfaithful wives and sells vouchers at the resort-camp. But the main thing is that you don’t understand these vacationers. Whoever doesn’t consider us as people thinks that a highlander, Georgian or Mingrelian instructor will slaughter a man like a sheep. So let him be afraid! Look – not a single one will approach Lena. And I really wanted to hang out with her, but I see you’re interested for a reason. So take her for yourself! I have two or three of these kind in a month. I won’t lose anything.”
I felt ashamed. It turns out that Givi scared his tourists, but I scared him.
“No, I don’t agree. You attract her with what you can, I will – with what I can, and come what may.”
The next day we went by bus on an excursion to a mountain river.
“Nick, do you mind chatting?” Vitaly Sergeevich invited me.
“Certainly. Let’s have a game of questions and answers.”
I wanted to turn everything into a kind of CFI with the goal of get liked by Lena. I realized long ago that sharp jokes hit no worse than a sport well-aimed blow, throw, or goal!
“Isn’t it possible to meet face to face?” asked the officer.
“How is that? By taking off our glasses?”
Lena and a couple of passengers laughed.
“Well, I actually wanted to clarify just a couple of questions. Is your grandmother a foreign citizen?”
Wow! I liked his straight, minted thought. Since I was born in a village with my grandmother, while my parents were carrying out the task of the Motherland that meant my parents were intelligence officers, and my grandmother lives abroad, in the country of the task. Vitaly Sergeevich completely excluded humor, and he understood the “task of the Motherland” too literally. And therefore he put himself in difficult conditions. But I wasn’t going to help him.
“No,” I answered, “But “Foreigner” (the nickname of the popular literary magazine “Foreign Literature”) is her favorite magazine.”
Small beads of sweat appeared on the security officer’s forehead. It was actually quite hot.
“Well, okay, what are the eight classes of the KGB? I know the initial courses, the school too, but I’ve never heard of eight classes.”
“So what? Maybe that’s how it was intended? You haven’t been very frank with us either. And in general, talking about work on vacation is bad manners, otherwise we’ll come to the beach and there will be tanks, tanks, tanks…”
This was from a joke where a tanker seduced a prostitute on the beach, and she refused him on vacation. When he demanded an explanation, he heard in response,
“Would you like to go on vacation, come to a beach, and there – tanks, tanks, tanks!”
Everyone laughed again. Lena pressed closer to me and whispered,
“How funny you are! And brave! You’re not afraid of Sergeich at all!”
“And do I have to?”
“I don’t know, but my dad, and believe me, he has a high position in the army, prefers not to get involved with them.”
“I’m not getting involved. I’m more interested in polymerase.”
“Will you tell me about it? I had major in Russian Literature, and I don’t even know this word. Shame on me!”
“Of course I’ll tell you, but it’s better to do on the beach, because there are a lot of pebbles there, and they will be needed for illustration. And the word is scientific, not literary, so not knowing it is nothing shameful. As well as you already know it.”
I hugged Lena by the shoulders and whispered,
“Let’s talk about something more soulful.”
“Aren’t you afraid of Givi’s threats?”
“This is not serious. You see what happened to Vitaly Sergeevich when he believed every word he heard.”
“Okay, since you are so brave.”
And the rest of the way, Lena told me about her first love, how they were going to get married, and how the guy died tragically.
“We’ve arrived!” the driver announced, and the bus stopped at a steep stone bridge over a small river.
Everyone piled out of the overheated car into the hot sun.
“Hey guys, look, I’ll show you a trick,” Givi said.
He pulled off his black jeans and T-shirt and was left in blue tight swimming trunks. Then he ran up to the stone bridge, jumped onto the railing and prepared to dive into the river. The tension of the situation was that a normal person could not jump from a height of ten-fifteen meters into a river shallower than Algeti, well, at best – knee-deep. It felt like suicide. Therefore, the entire group immediately began to dissuade Givi from the fatal act.
“Watch and learn!” said Givi, “Maybe someone will have the courage to repeat it?”
With these words, he flew off the bridge like a swallow and, describing a complex S-shaped curve, almost horizontally entered the water. And disappeared. And a few seconds later he appeared on the surface, laughing and snorting. The trick was amazing! In the shallow river there was a narrow, deep backwater, which could be entered from the bridge with certain skill and jumping technique. Of course, there was no talk of any competition with a local resident. The number could easily turn out to be the last jump in a life.
“Bravo! Brilliant mastery of the body and knowledge of the river!” I sincerely admired Givi’s athleticism, “And I will offer a problem for the mind. Whoever is the first to put a small shell on a thread without damaging it will receive a bottle of Isabella wine!”
Apparently, the desired reward, simple and specific, attracted almost everyone from our group, but to my luck, no one knew this tricky task, and solving it alone was no easier than jumping from a bridge.
Givi was intrigued more than others. His trick, which so irresistibly captivated the tourists, was instantly forgotten and gave way to primacy in the discussion to some stupid, but seemingly insoluble problem.
“Can you put a shell on a thread yourself?” the instructor asked me with suspicion.
“Yes, sure. I’ll show everyone. In the meantime, let people think.”
“Nick, amazing! Can you? What kind of people live in Georgia! How interesting it is with you,” Lena hugged me.
“I would recommend you to the analytical department,” muttered Vitaly Sergeevich, “Of course, if you wish.”
What worried me most was Lena’s reaction. I “rode my bike” for her. We spent the whole day on the river, swimming, sunbathing (actually getting sunburned) and chatting, and in the evening we kissed at the dance. Rumors spread quickly – every person from our group, other groups, and from the entire camp site, came up and asked, when the sea shells would be strung on a thread. I answered to everyone that the performance would began immediately after the breakfast and end after the lunch – at the exit from the dining hall.
You probably already guessed (or Googled) how to do this, but then the Internet and even personal computers did not yet exist. I was going to repeat a task that had been known for three thousand years, or even more, although, as my experience has shown, not to everyone. Here is the history of the task.
When Daedalus, the father of the crashed Icarus, fled from Crete, he took refuge with Cocalus, the ruler of Sicily. There, in search of the fugitive, a warship arrived with the King of Crete – Minos himself. Cocalus had the reception for Minos, on which he paid tribute to the famous labyrinths of the Knossos Palace.
“Their symbol is this sea shell, inside of which there is also a labyrinth,” said Minos, “Look, it is intact, but put on a thread. Can you do this? I bet you a hundred gold that you can’t.”
Cocalus accepted the argument, because he had an adviser who put the shell on a thread for King Minos. And indeed, Daedalus revealed the secret to his new patron. He tied a thin thread to an ant and threw it into a shell. Pretty soon the ant passed the shell and dragged the thread behind itself.
All I had to do was repeat the ancient experiment, but in order not to disrupt the performance, I decided to have duplicate ants. Lena and I picked up several shells of similar size and color on the beach, caught small ants and tied to each a thin thread cut from a red silk skein from the girls’ luggage. The next morning, four understudies passed the shells, and I was no longer afraid that after lunch I would have nothing to show the audience in case of ant failure.
After breakfast, in the presence of a crowd of eyewitnesses, we tied a red thread to the ant, threw it into the maze, sealed the entrance with soft pressed bread and went to the beach. We kept the jar with the shell and its prisoner in the shade and cool. And I, as I promised Lena, told her about the structure of DNA from nucleotides and the genetic triplet code that builds proteins from amino acids. That’s when I needed colorful pebbles to illustrate the basics of molecular biology.
“I thought that the ancient problem of Daedalus was your crowning number, but it turns out that all this mechanics with molecules is simply crazy! I have never heard anything more interesting in my life!” said Lena.
After lunch, the entire dining hall (about three hundred people) was convinced that the ants were great guys! Lena and I, the shell on a red string, and the ant-hero were photographed for the history of the tourist resort-camp. Every vacationer to this day can read a note in the album of the camp, called “Daedalus’ Problem.”
Givi looked sadly at us cooing. And although he, like a true gentleman, gave up the lady to me, like a man, he had every reason to be slightly sad.
Despite the sweetness of my conquest, the climax was still away. There was no space for it to come. This was the main problem in the city of my youth. Almost no one agreed to extramarital affairs. This was easier at the resort, but how to find a suitable place for this? At the camp site, five lieutenants lived in my room, and it was not possible to come to an agreement with all of them at once, and besides, the housekeeper could come in whenever she pleased to clean, change linen or restore order. Lena had a fashionable room for three, but her neighbor was an adult woman with a child, and negotiations were excluded. That left Tyoma and his neighbor Leny, to whom I began to cast a plan. Now, when it was not about an abstract place of solitude with a girl, but a specific meeting with a specific girl on a specific bed, the guys… balked. Leny did not even allow the thought that on his mattress (of course, I promised to bring my own linen,) would happen… well, whatever happens between a man and a woman, but he agreed not to enter the room for a while. Damn it, do you think that he was just sitting in it like a prisoner? Tyoma, after a long time of persuading (as if I was persuading him to have sex), agreed to give up his bed, but could not choose a suitable day for this. You can’t imagine how furious I was in my soul. “Tyoma, why not today? What, are you having a period?!”
We laughed, but Tyoma always found some stupid reason. In a word, for now the gist of the matter was that we were going on a big five-day hike in the mountains. Now I don’t understand why Lena and I didn’t pretend to be sick and didn’t stay at the camp site, like a third of the vacationers did. And I assure you, they did it not for my reason at all, but simply out of laziness to trudge into the mountains with a load on their shoulders, instead of sunbathing on the beach, having lunch in the dining hall and drinking delicious Georgian wine. As a rule, these were all older and more experienced people. And we, young puppies, loaded our backpacks with tin cans and climbed into the mountains, under the leadership of our instructor Givi.
The beauty, of course, was fabulous. But the climbs were not easy. At first I thought that it was so difficult for me because of my lack of athletic training, but when I saw how officers and athletes fell to the ground after the next climb, I understood why the thin and wiry “grandfather” from my mother’s work was the champion of climbs among geologists.
In the mountains, as before, there was no refuge for lovers. The not entirely moral Soviet government was very concerned about morality, so all the tents were for four and six people! To be completely honest, we refused to have sex in the bushes, although every now and then we came across piquant couples puffing away in the nearby bushes. At the end of the hike, I was extremely excited. I thought it over and decided that my guys needed to be “bribed.” I approached Tyoma and Leny and said,
“Today! Or the friendship is over! We arrive at the resort-camp site, take a shower and go to the dining hall. You are going! And you don’t come back. Then you go to the cinema. And again you don’t come back.”
“Ah…” said Tyoma.
“This is too much,” said Leny, “I don’t feel well, I have to come back… after the movie.”
“I just had a proposal: after the movie, you and Tyoma are waiting for us in a cafe with barbecue and wine. Let’s have dinner together and celebrate our return from the mountains. Here’s money for the evening. Someone close must take care of hungry friends.”
That’s how it all happened.
It turned out that no amount of physical fatigue affects potency and lust. I can’t find another word. I don’t know how I should have behaved, but I rubbed everything I could for both myself and Lena. She moaned as if in agony. There was whispering and talking behind the door – we had no time for that. The neighboring girls even knocked on our glass balcony door.
“Have mercy on us, we want it too!”
But we did not have mercy on them. The only thing that stopped us was the alarm clock set for the end of the movie. We quickly cleaned up and went to the cafe to celebrate.
“You know, before I get drunk or collapse from fatigue, I have to tell you one thing. If you are not lying that this is your first adult relationship with a woman, then you simply have no idea what kind of man you will become. Forgive me, they don’t say that, but I want to be your wife.”
I kissed her temple.
“Let’s go see the guys. There’s still a lot we haven’t talked about. But we’ll talk.”
The next day, early in the morning, we started a purely beach holiday. Sunbathe, read, swim and talk. We didn’t go to breakfast, we drank coffee and ate fruit. And later, an excited Tyoma said that Leny had gotten worse, and he was taken to the hospital in the morning.
“Let’s check on him,” I suggested to the guys.
“Maybe I shouldn’t?” Lena asked, “What if he’s angry with me?”
“Isn’t it dangerous to go to an infectious patient?” said Tyoma.
“I don’t know. In any case, they will give us masks. The doctors still are working there. I will go anyway!”
And I went to visit Leny during the afternoon rest, when most tourists went to sleep for an hour or two. This rest was called, as in a pioneer camp, “dead hour.” And only tourists from Siberia did not waste time, but again ran to the beach to sunbathe until they become completely fried.
The visit to Leny turned out to be alarming. They put a mask and robe on me and took me to the room where Leny lay, pale and weak. There were swellings on both sides of his neck. The tubes of IV system were sticking out of his arm.
“Thank you for coming,” Lenya whispered, “Can you call my parents? Tell them that my tests are bad and there are infiltrates in both lungs. It’s good if someone comes for me.”
“How long does it take to be treated in the hospital? You have another week to rest.”
“I’m afraid that I won’t have time to recover and return to the camp site. We’ll get in touch together later, in Tbilisi. Use my bunk as you please, Nick. Just be careful not to fall in love with Lena.”
“Why?” I asked, perplexed.
“She’s not your match. She’s just looking for a suitable husband. I know, I’m older then you. Has Lena already told you how her first boyfriend died tragically? This is a common trick in Russia. It sounds romantic…”
The cats scratched at my soul: I felt sorry for Leny, who was so opportunely ill; I really wanted, although I felt ashamed, to use his bed, and it was unpleasant to think that he was right about this common Russian trick.
But I overcame my shame. The last week has gone like a movie. The name “dead hour” acquired a symbolic meaning – we were having sex to death. And when Tyoma also agreed to spend the nights in my room, we died a several times a day. I managed to explain to Lena that I would not marry her because I was going to leave the country.
“Here you go, you idiot! This is exactly what we all need! Dad will be happy not only to finance our move, but also to pump out… okay, I have no right to talk about that. But for now – an apartment, a good car! Do you want a “Volga”? Enjoy life and make discoveries.
“Yeah,” I said, “That sounds great, but then… boom! Dad’s secret military work comes out, and we would be stuck for a hundred years. And I’m not alone, I have a mother and a sister. I can’t…”
Lena was not offended. Maybe she just loved me, or maybe Leny was right, and it was all a game.
As a farewell, I invited her to go to Batumi. I wanted to look at the city where I had been as a child, and since then I remembered the picture of a giant fireball descending into the sea. We drove early in the morning to avoid the heat of the transport. I showed my first woman the city of my first sea. I treated her to Georgian delicacies, we wandered the streets, tanned, in snow-white clothes, and passers-by smiled to us.
“Hello!” I suddenly heard and recognized one of my father’s many acquaintances with her daughter, Yana.
I knew the mother since my childhood, and I met the daughter earlier, as a schoolgirl, but now the girl had blossomed, became tall, slender and could be proud of her mop of curly blue-black curls. The only thing about her that was not to my taste was that her skin was too dark, but in the summer at sea everyone turned bronze-chocolate.
“Hello,” we greeted, “Are you on vacation or passing through?”
“We are going on the ship “Admiral Nakhimov” to Odessa,” Yana jabbered, looking at Lena with all her eyes, “This cruise is in honor of my entering college,” she talked and talked, devouring Lena with her eyes and, apparently, trying to understand who she is to me.
“Who is that girl?” Lena asked me when we said goodbye, “And why is she jealous of you for me?”
“Jealous for you? Where did you get this from?”
“I don’t know. An inner voice said it to me. She looks at you with adoration, and at me with irritation. She wants you, I can feel it with my skin.”
“This is closer to the truth, your skin is unusually sensitive…”
For lunch we went to the Intourist restaurant. I have always been impressed by respectable establishments. Lena enjoyed the delights of Georgian cuisine, and I felt like a hospitable host and toastmaster. But in reality it was a goodbye.
“You know,” said Lena, “If we were in a company, I would think that you were showing off by toasting to Georgia and your parents. What normal person says that?”
“Frankly?” I asked, “There, where I’m from – everybody say so!”
We returned to the resort-camp site late in the evening. To the farewell disco. Tyoma greeted me with news: Leny was discharged from the hospital and the camp site and flew with his parents to Moscow. A newcomer had already been moved in his place, so Tyoma returned there to guard and store his things. I didn’t go into the bushes… Lena and I said goodbye and exchanged addresses at the party.
Then we corresponded for some time until I received a letter describing the wedding and a photograph of the newlyweds. The groom had a pronounced Semitic appearance. This was the final touch in the story of my first adult romance. I don’t know anything else about Lena. Perhaps she and her husband live in Israel or the USA, and her dad managed to pump there out what he had planned to pump. Tyoma married Eli’s cousin, I was present at the wedding. Poor Leny died of lymphoma or leukemia, I didn’t distinguish it at that time. And I went to the Ministry of Health and started working, while continuing to teach students at home.
But more on this below.
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