Part One – There
(Eastern Hemisphere)
CHAPTER FORTY SIX – OUR COMPANY. PROFESSIONALS
This is how we lived: we worked, played, composed songs and humorous stories, and traveled. But sometimes adventures happened in our life.
Once I planned a grand vacation for myself: in August – to Leningrad for a whole month, and then – to Odessa for a couple of weeks. We planned to go to Leningrad with Denis. I have never been to the most beautiful Soviet city, the former northern capital of Imperial Russia, ever since our places in the delegation for the pioneer rally went to “national cadres” – Georgian boys and girls. Sasha had traveled there, but I haven’t had the chance yet, and I wanted to compensate for my lateness by thoroughly getting to know the city.
We didn’t rent a hotel, but a room in the private sector – it was much cheaper, especially in the working-class outskirts. And then we began to explore palaces and museums.
Leningrad opened up to us with its historical beauty. In addition to daily walks, we shot glances at the girls, although room in the apartment with a family was not conducive to intimacy. I was not interested in prostitutes – you can’t even flirt with them! In the garden in front of the Kazan Cathedral there were more than enough of them – the girls resting on the benches had numbers written with chalk on the soles of their sandals – the price in rubles. But we had acquaintances in the city, two sisters, friends of my cousin, and we hoped that they, in turn, would have nice girlfriends…
The eldest, Mila, was an athlete, a gymnast, very pretty and exactly for the height of Denis, who avoided tall girls. But her words about the beauty of Georgia, where she would move without hesitation if she got married, alarmed Denis more than he should have…
The younger sister, Sasha, was beautiful, tall – I loved those, but had a distinct drawback – a groom, and although the experience of the Sverdlovsk train station suggested that a groom is not an absolute category, I categorically did not want to get involved in someone else’s relationship.
One day Denis and I went to visit Mila and Sasha. In order not to have to travel home from the city to change clothes in the evening, we decided to play “lords” and from the very morning we put on suits and ties, grabbed a couple of bottles of delicious Georgian wine for the visit and started with the museums. Just on this day, according to our plan, we were visiting the Kazan Cathedral.
An experienced grandmother-ticketer (usher) suddenly pulled the bag that I had in my hands. The bottles clinked characteristically, to which the grandmother said,
“O my God! They look decently, but indeed are the same shit! I won’t let you drink alcohol in the halls of museum!”
And I realized that Zhvanetsky’s famous miniature “In the Greek Hall,” performed by standup comedian Arcady Raikin, is not fiction, but reality. There was no way to convince the usher that we are not going to drink vine in the museum, but “we are going to visit in the evening…” Unfortunately the coatroom did not work. Denis and I had to look for a “luggage storage facility” in nearby cafes. We found it, but it turned out that the cloakroom attendant would only accept our bag if we ordered something in the cafe. That’s what we did, as we still hadn’t eaten since the morning. But the table at which we were seated was not yet free: the married couple fought to the death with the waiter to count the slices of bread they had eaten from the common bread bin. The waiter believed that the couple ate two slices but didn’t pay four kopecks. The couple, foaming at the mouth, rejected the accusations, claiming that they had not eaten bread at all since the blockade of Leningrad, although, judging by their size, this was a legend.
“Let the clients go!” Denis said, “We are in a hurry and will pay in advance for both our lunch and the entire bread box (as much as thirty kopecks). Can’t you see that these people are on a diet?”
The waiter only now took a look at our outfits and realized that it’s his luck. In one minute he finished the pay off with the spouses, changed the tablecloth and the bread box with the remains of the slices. A couple of minutes later he served the appetizer and ordered hot food. And then it dawned on him that money could also be cut from prostitutes for good clients. Soon he brought two beauties to our table and tearfully asked to seat them in the empty seats. Despite the strange logic (the hall was full of empty seats in the morning), we saw through the situation and decided to play. Both girls were good. One – with a short haircut, fashionably dressed, the other – with a thick braid, completely without makeup, dressed in a national embroidered shirt, like a beauty from Russian fairy tales. The girls momentarily started working and asked,
“Please tell us about yourself. We can’t understand where you are from. Are you Soviet or foreign? You are dressed richly, and your cigarettes are foreign.”
They simply did not recognize the white and gold packs of Georgian cigarettes “Colchis” lying on the table with the Georgian font facing up.
“We are from a friendly country,” I said, “We are engaged in science and business, and are passing through Leningrad.”
In a sense, all this was true; such a legend should have been ideal for the situation of fooling two oafs.
“It must be hard for you,” complained the girl with the scythe, “You’re getting tired.”
“But there is an opportunity to catch up on vacation!” her friend supported her.
“Of course, and in good company!” we agreed.
The company seemed to have already formed, and the girls devoured our snacks without hesitation, sweeping away fresh bread from the bread bin. Just then the waiter brought us something hot (omelet and potatoes), and seeing that the friendship had worked out, he briefly shook his head to the girls – “Get out!” Obviously, this was a hint of gratitude for the bait, and our neighbors, apologizing for leaving us for a couple of minutes, went to “make a business call.”
“What do we do?” Denis asked, “Maybe we can pick them up?”
“Don’t you comprehend, the old man? These are professionals. That’s for sure, you can only pick up gonorrhea. And we still don’t have our own apartment.”
“Yes, you’re right, we shouldn’t go to them.”
We both remembered the story of a course mate who went to visit a prostitute in Moscow, where he was robbed – his Seiko watch and all his money were taken away, along with his jeans and shorts. Five minutes of pleasure turned into the loss of a thousand rubles, watches and embarrassment with his bare ass, which he covered with God knows what rags from a half-empty apartment. It’s a good thing he didn’t end up in the police yet.
“How can we get rid of them?” Denis sighed.
“Well, we’ll come up with something. Do you want, like in the joke, to get the KGB colonel involved?”
We laughed out. There was such an anecdote: two respectable passengers were traveling in a prestigious two-bed coupe of an international train car to a resort.
One says, “I have cognac and I know a lot of jokes, but I snore a lot.”
The second decides to get rid of such a travel companion and sleep peacefully at night. He starts from afar,
“Isn’t it dangerous to tell jokes in the compartment?”
“These are not Stalin’s times!” the first one objects.
“Indeed!” the second one insists, “Now everything is being monitored. Do you want me to prove it? In a minute. I’ll just go to the toilet first.”
He goes out into the passage, goes to the car attendant, gives him a good tip and orders two glasses of strong tea to be brought into their compartment in exactly thirty minutes with the words, “The Colonel wishes you good night.” Then he returns, they begin to drink and snack, as was customary in the trains, and tell all the jokes, leaning towards the night light, as if there was a microphone hidden in it. Exactly twenty-nine minutes later the joker says,
“Colonel, please send the car attendant with tea to our compartment!”
Just at this moment the door opens and the attendant brings in tea with the words,
“The Colonel wishes you good night.”
The first passenger, horrified that all conversations were overheard, immediately begins to pack his things and gets off at the nearest station.
The second passenger is looking forward to sleep peacefully alone. The conductor comes in, makes the bed and says,
“The colonel really liked your joke. He asked me to tell you good night!”
We decided to do something similar. We already had our own person in the wardrobe, who accepted our bag of bottles for storage for a fee. Taking advantage of the absence of our girlfriends, I went up to the cloakroom attendant and for three rubles he agreed in fifteen minutes to come to our table and say,
“The Colonel ordered to move to the Kazan Cathedral.”
Then I returned and we continued our breakfast.
The girls soon came back too.
“We have good news,” said the fashionable one, “A friend’s apartment suddenly became available, and we can go there to have some fun.”
“I think that entertainment in life is the main thing,” the modest one supported her.
“Actually, the most important thing in life is health,” Denis noted.
“And freedom,” I added.
At this time, a cloakroom attendant in a service cap and jacket with military type golden insignia approached our table and announced,
“The Colonel ordered to move to the Kazan Cathedral!”
“Yes sir!” we answered in one voice and began to get ready.
The girls’ faces changed.
“I told you that they are at work!” the fashionable woman said in her hearts.
“Aren’t you angry with us?” the modest one asked cautiously.
We assured them no. It was time to move to the Kazan Cathedral.
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