THE STORY OF CHEVALI

A novelette

PRFACE

This novelette arose the following way: readers liked the story “Cool Game”, and many of them persistently asked me about the further fate of its main character, a bully guy named Chevali from a princely family exterminated by the Revolution and Soviet authority.

Then I decided to share those meager information, which I knew about Chevali, combining several short stories about familiar inhabitants of our city and our house, where I moved with my parents just before entering the elementary school, into one larger story, which I called “The Story of Chevali.”

NEW APARTMENT

Needless to say, it really was a surprise, even for a seasoned sea dog like me. Parents have been saving money for a long time to add the lump sum to our small apartment in exchange for a bigger one. Now, finally, they were able to trade our old one-room apartment (studio) without amenities for a two-room apartment (two and one hundred square feet), alas, also without amenities. Of course, the adjectives “old” and “new” did not refer to the age of houses and apartments, but to the time of our residence in them.

The old woman, who lived in the two-room apartment and had a meager pension, after burying her mother, chose to move into our old studio-apartment. It was smaller than hers, but she got money as a compensation. I note that our new house was, in fact, very old and was located in the old part of the city, where there were no new houses at all. Before the revolution, the house belonged to a wealthy merchant and represented two floors of enfilades along the streets, intersecting at an acute angle. After the onset of public happiness, enfilades of the house were divided into communal apartments, and the repressed people were moved into the basements.

As a result of the exchange of apartments, we ended up as if on the territory of an almshouse: three families shared a communal kitchen, a toilet and a balcony. First family consisted of two old women from a small one hundred square feet room. Second family was two old women from a large two hundred square feet room. The third family was also presented by two old women from a “giant” two-room apartment, into which eventually father, mother and I moved in.

Behind the wall, though on another balcony, in a completely inhuman triangular room, more like a death cell, where only a camp bed, a table and a stool fit, lived Liza, a devout old Jewish woman. I think that the state of continuous calls to God would be natural for any old, weak, lonely person who received four (!) rubles a month from the State, regardless of religion confession, including even atheists. I don’t know how such poverty was possible in the Soviet country, proclaimed Brotherhood and Equality. But if not for the synagogue feeding Liza, her soul much earlier would have freed a miserable room, which is a sin to call living space, in favor of the neighbors from the balcony.

But later, reading Daniel Kharms’ stories like “Falling out Old Ladies” or “The Old Woman”, I perfectly imagined whom he copied his characters from.

I think it’s worth telling stories about many people who lived in our house.

The third floor was dominated by a WW2 hero, the former head of an armored train, who had taken the composition of requisitioned (read – looted) valuables from occupied Germany. He was a popular face at all sorts of local congresses, rallies and other patriotic events, where he liked to talk about the modesty of true communists. With his only son Radik, a good student, I had little contact during my school years, he was five years older than me, but I remember one story about him.

He fell in love with Lena – his classmate, the daughter of my father’s school friend Rima and my father’s friend – a military surgeon. He began to pester Lena and her family with endless phone calls, and when he was rebuffed, he became embittered and decided to “teach them a lesson”. So, he called and, since Lena was not allowed to pick up the phone, turned to Rima,

“You are being warned about the repair of pipes in the house. Please measure the distance from the kitchen to the toilet.”

Rima honestly ran and measured.

“How many did you get?”

“Two meters,” she reported.

“Great! Shove it up your ass!”

After that, he waited five–ten minutes and called back,

“This is from the police,” Radik said, “Have you been called by hooligans recently?”

“Yes, yes! Such a disgrace!”

“What did they ask? Measure the distance from the kitchen to the toilet?”

“Yes, yes. Quite right. And I measured it like a fool.”

“And how many meters did you get?”

“Two meters.”

“Wow! That’s a lot. But I’m sorry, it’s necessary for the record. What exactly did they require you to do?”

“They were talking all sorts of nasty things.”

“Of course they don’t say otherwise, but we need to know the exact words in each case.”

“I feel uncomfortable.”

“Of course. Who would be comfortable with that? They said…”

“Well, shove…”

“Bastards! Put two meters in… But where?”

“In the anus!”

“Did they say that? That doesn’t sound like bully talk! Maybe the call was from the plumbers?”

“No. Bully! I’m using a cultural expression.”

“But I have a protocol. You cannot change the words of the accused.”

“They told me to shove two meters up my ass!”

“Great! Go ahead, do it!”

The husband intervened. He called the prosecutor’s office, they put the phone on tap and wrote down the next wishes, and the subscriber’s number. In a word, the scandal was barely able to be extinguished through the council of war veterans, to which both fathers belonged. Radik was then punished…

In addition to the war hero, a policeman lived on the third floor with his wife and two children, whom I considered decent guys until they grew up and broke bad. A couple of old women adopted a girl from the Baltics, who… also did not justify their hopes…

On our floor, there lived a large Armenian family and a small Georgian one. In Armenian family, sons got married, started families, moved, then others got married and started… In a word, they worked like in an incubator. In Georgian family, they passed away. But in this family there was a beautiful girl of my age, Iya. She became my best friend in our house. Even then, we sat on the steps of the stairs, and weaving our thighs (oh, this soft flesh I loved so much!) we shared our children’s secrets.

As I mentioned, in addition to these families, a bunch of old women lived on our floor. Of these, my attention attracted Maria Georgievna, an honored teacher, who was awarded the Order of Lenin. I investigated her “sclerosis”, as Alzheimer’s was then called. Within thirty seconds, she lost the thread of the conversation, and after a minute or two she completely forgot everything that we discussed. I was bringing my classmates and girls from the neighborhood to watch my talk show.

“Maria Georgievna, you know, in Siberia scientists caught a mouse the size of a tiger,” I reported for starters.

“What are you saying?” the old teacher was surprised, “There are no such mice.”

“But this one was found. She bit the tiger to death!”

“Who killed whom?” Maria Georgievna asked.

“A huge mouse killed the tiger.”

“How is this possible?” The woman was genuinely surprised.

“She did it. She rushed and began to tear him to shreds with her claws and teeth.”

“Who to tear?”

“Well, the tiger.”

“Did the tiger sheered tears?”

“No. A huge mouse killed the tiger.”

“Where do these mice were found?”

“In Siberia. But they are not found. Only one has been detected so far. She was caught in the taiga.”

“Who got caught?” quite calmly, attentively listening to the interlocutor, Maria Georgievna asked again.

It seemed that she strings, leads you by the nose, dispassionately and skillfully plays.

“In Siberia, scientists caught a mouse the size of a tiger,” I completed the first round.

The game could be continued indefinitely until the audience’s patience ran out.

A similar test was arranged for Maria Georgievna by her hundred-year-old mother. On a holiday, she sent Maria to the store for a bottle of wine. Of course, the daughter either forgot the name of the wine, or she forgot which pocket the note with the name of the wine was in, or the very fact that she had a note and a task to buy wine. When her mother died, the daughter lived alone for some time. She was fed by Armenian neighbors from our floor, hoping to get her small ten square meter room. Well, one day their hopes came true: on a warm spring day, Maria Georgievna left the yard, got lost and did not return home. The nights were still cold, and her frozen, twisted body was found on the road outside the city, in the area of ​​rich summer cottages…

There lived one Jewish family, one childless Armenian family and mixed Kurdish family in the courtyard. Dad in a Kurdish family was a postman and in his spare time – a plasterer. Once he returned from a plaster work in a rich house and yelled at the whole yard,

“You won’t believe what I saw today! Come listen!”

Neighbors looked out of the apartments, went out onto the balconies.

“These people had two toilet bowls in their bathroom!”

“To sit together?”

“I thought so at first, but then I realized – this was a pussy-washer!”

I burst out laughing (Then I was already a University student).

“Tell us Nick, you are a learned man, what was it?”

“It was a bidet.”

“Here it is! They told me so too. Well, I thought – okay. Bidet, so let it be bidet. And then I took a closer look and realized – that was a pussy-washer!”

Very poor people lived in the cellars.

One family was the descendants of the princes Orbeliani. They returned after Siberian exile. Their grandmother silently sat on a bench in the yard, all in black, and smoked cheap “Prima” cigarettes through a mouthpiece. The children were afraid of her because of her witchy appearance and a large hairy wart on her tongue. Her son was a worker and a bitter drunkard. The grandson was a bully prone to theft. They called him by the strange name of Chevali.

The other family is a laundress with two children. The eldest, Misha, was a thief and a drug addict. They called him a scary word “morphinist”, but he treated his neighbors with respect. Nobody saw his dad, but everyone knew the well-born family in which mom washed clothes. The younger, Kotik, the son of a German prisoner of war, grew up as a hooligan and a very bad pupil, but after serving in the army he improved, married at his place of service and brought a wife from Russia, who slept with anybody who came along, while the guy became a drank himself in a haze.

I remember a story about Kotik and Chevali. Once, in the fourth or fifth grade, I noticed that if the word ‘lots’ is repeated long and fast, then a completely different word clearly appears. I thought about this phenomenon and realized that when repeating, the beginning and the end of the word are lost, that is, the letters in it seem to change places. To test the theory, I decided to take some curse (worst one!) and change the order of the letters in it. I got ‘kfa’. I needed to try the phenomenon on a volunteer.

I looked out and noticed Kotik in the yard. He stretched the nipple from the baby food with a jet of water from the tap.

“Do you want me to show you a trick?” I asked.

“Go ahead!” he agreed.

“If you quickly repeat one word, you can hear another,” I said.

“How is that?” Kotik didn’t understand.

“Very simple. Repeat ‘kfa’ quickly and you’ll hear something familiar.”

“It can’t be like that,” Kotik said, “kfa, kfa, kfa! So what?”

“Don’t you hear? So it’s not enough. Come on and listen!”

Kotik, apparently impatient to hear something special, and he began to shout out with all his might and in every way,

“Kfa, kfa, kfa, kfa!”

“Are you drunk Kotik?” asked a woman neighbor from the third floor.

“Kfa, kfa, kfa, kfa!” was the answer to her.

When Chevali entered the courtyard and, amazed by the pensive face of Kotik and how he was cursing heartrendingly, he asked what the matter was. Kotik explained that he was trying to understand the meaning of these strange words.

“Don’t you know what ‘fuck’ is?” Chevali was surprised.

And only then Kotik had heard what Andrei Kruchenykh called a shift in poetry. Crimson with shame, he rushed to the offender, but I was already gone. Kotik and Chevali waited for me all day, having inflated to the size of melons their rubber feeding nipples with cold water. In the evening they cooled down from their just anger.

Another couple from the basements were workers in an asbestos factory. The husband was as strong as Samson, and Kotik and Chevali often told how he brutally bangs his Delilah at night. Their children were good athletes, strong like their father and slender like their mother. The girl died in her teenage years from leukemia, and her father died from a lung tumor. It is now anyone, who watches TV, would easily diagnose him with mesothelioma. And then there were even no TVs. Mother and son received as a compensation an apartment in a new building and disappeared from the horizon of our yard.

THE COOL GAME

1

It was autumn-cold in the city, although many schoolboys hadn’t yet pulled on their pea coats or jackets over their gray school uniforms, steadfast waiting for a real drop of the temperature.

“Start doing your homework right after school,” mother said strictly, “otherwise, I’ll complain to your father and he prescribes you a belt treatment.”

Chevali looked frowningly at his always-tired mother.

“She can do this. And father surely can do his part. He just gets his belt and leather my butt. And what for? He himself never studied neither algebra, nor grammar. Not even tried. He just bits me because of blues. What does he have in his life? Scarce salary? Two tiny half-basement rooms for four of us including the grandma? He even does not have friends – they are gone after Siberian exile.”

Chevali’s father was son of the enemy of the people, Prince Irakli Orbeliani, who was shot during sad-known nineteen thirty-seven.  He never recalled how he lived with his mother in exile in Kazakhstan, how he married there, had a son born and named him home name Chevali in honor of child’s grandfather. Only grandmother could know the origins of this name, but after her interrogation she, alas, remembered nothing out of her unhappy life, not mention her husband’s childhood years.

But isn’t it a blessing to forgot all the bad? In fair days she warmed up under sun rays, sitting on the yard’s bench in the incense of her forgetfulness, smoking cheap cigarettes “Prima” for 14 kopeks a box through the long handmade mouthpiece, crafted at the metal workshop of prisoners’ camp.

How could she remember that the name Chevaly is a corrupted word ‘Chevalier’, which fell into the possession of Orbeliani family after King Louis XIV of France initiated the ancestor-diplomate into Knight’s Order.  

And Chevali’s father didn’t know anything at all, except hard work at the factory, evening chacha – grape moonshine bought from the neighbor, an illegal distiller Gogi living at the floor two, and bed’s squeaks and dumped night moans, which he and his wife exchanged like convicts from their single chambers.  

Before Kotik, a son of the laundry woman and an enemy POW enlighted Chevali, he wondered what all these sounds may mean. When Chevali was ten, he asked older Kotik, “Why she is making all these moans?”

“Well, how to say? … Well, he is poking her.”

A lamenting face of Chevali slowly switched to mischievous one.

“What did you think that he strangled her?” a neighbor cheered him up and winked friendly, “Do not upset about it. They feel pleasure. They are lucky having it at least.”

All basement dwellers lived their tough soviet life, although most people on the floor two and three had not had much better life. However, everybody had to attend either work or school. In this way, all were equal.  

“All right, Mom,” nodded Chevali. “I know it myself – to homework!”

It was nothing to argue about, both perfectly knew that Chevali is lying; he will not do any homework, but will again go with Kotik to the street to smoke stolen from grandma “Prima” and to play street games.

But Mom didn’t know that a new secret game came in sight of her son. Nobody knew about it yet, even Kotik, a closest confidant of Chevali’s youth secrets.   

2

The game was originated accidentally, but immediately evolved from a harmless competition into a wicked passion. That how it happened.

Once, Chevali ascended to the second floor returning to the neighbors a hot sauce, borrowed by his parents. It was a common practice in the yard to share salt, sugar and spices with neighbors. Who runs to a store in case your salt supplies is suddenly finished or you need a tablespoon of hot sauce for you dinner?

Some neighbors pour off a little in your plate or cup, others gave you the whole jar or bottle: “Bring it back later.” So was this time. Hearty moonshiner Gogi from the second floor lent his neighbors the whole bottle of Sacibeli – tomato sauce with hot pepper and garlic, and now Chevali brought it back. The twelve years old girl, Ia was alone at home.

“Here is your sauce. A tasty one!” praised it Chevali returning the bottle.

Ia opened it, poured a little on her palm and licked it.

“True. Very tasty! Do you want some?”

“OK!” agreed Chevali, planned to put his hand under the bottleneck, but Ia at once stretched her palm with a red spot of the sauce on it towards him.

“Have it, eat!” she said. 

Unexpectedly for himself, Chevali took her hand and started licking out hot sauce, spreading it all over her palm. Some sort of strange filling embraced him. If Ia was his classmate with overt curves, which boys love touching as if by accident, then he understood everything. Now he well comprehend in men-women relationships, and he feels funny that a few years later he was afraid that his father tortured his mother, until Kotik explained him what is what. However, Ia was a slim slender girl with two plaits: no scent of sex was even present here. 

Nevertheless, some strange inexplicable feelings dragged Chevali towards a little coquette. Though perhaps quite normal and understandable. He already felt how unknown forces grow in his scuffed school trousers. So, he decided to give the girl a farewell kiss and to round up with this strange game.

Chevali pulled slightly her hand towards himself while trying to embrace her skinny shoulder with the other hand. But, Ia twitched backwards, both lost their balance and fell on a coach: Chevali on top of Ia.

Even if she had a breast, it was little, barely formed under brown school dress and a wool black apron. And her cheeks were delicate and hot. But the heat came out not from them. The boy did not know what furnace his beastie poke into, but it begun to pound as if it got into a trap.

Chevali stood up and headed for the door, coursing hot sauce and his foolish condition, frightening that his trousers now get wet, and everybody will see his shame.

“Bye!” he said. “I got to go.” 

“Come again!” invited him Ia. “We’ll wrest more. I should won!” 

Since then their secret game has started.

Chevali with a book in his hands never walked up the yard spiral staircase in plain sight of the neighbors. He always exited the street through the yard gate, went along the facade until the house front door and went up wide wooden stairs. Ia always opened him the front door, they passed to her room where their contest started.

Chevali, as a strong and noble chevalier, gave to the “lady” a bonus: he sat at the edge of a sofa while Ia moved to the door from where she had a running start and then pushed him in a chest with both hands. He started to keep balance and resist her pushes, but soon understood that loosing is even more pleasant thing. He allowed Ia to pressure with all her body in attempt to pin down his back to the coach as to a wrestling rug. And he pocked into her abdomen and groin, holding her from behind with his both hands. They rolled and roared until his panty got wet. He kissed Ia tenderly on the cheek and quickly withdrew. He had to wash and steam his school trousers not to let mother to dawn upon anything.

“Did you steamed your trousers?” asked she once with surprise, touching his pants hanged over the chair.

“Yes. We have a school day concert,” lied Chevali.

His concert was in a totally different place.

3

One day a surprise was waiting for Chevali. Ia had a guest, her relative Tamuna. Ia introduced her friend to her:

“This is my neighbor, Chevali. We wrestle with him.”

Tamuna being only two years older than Ia looked rather like Chevali’s classmate. She was tall, developed girl, and her breasts captivated attention of seniors in the school.

“How do you play? Teach me. I want also to play wrestle,” she was rejoice to unusual entertainment.

“Watch, that’s how we do it.”

Ia thrown herself at the opponent and they snuffled on the coach.

At this time, a new rivalry and wrestling with her occupied thoughts of Chevali. He withstood first round of Ia’s attacks, and yield to her in second one and lost the game.

“I won!” bowled out the girl and sitting over Chevali glued in a kiss to him.

“Is it also your game?” Tamuna asked watching everything taking place with a great interest.

“Yes. A winner kisses a looser, not to let him feeling too offended.”

“So both are kissing at the end? Clear! Well I want also to play. Do you mind, Chevali?”

His voice got stock in his throat, dried out of excitement. The youth nodded his head and next moment strong hit in his chest overturned him on a coach. Chevali had no slight knowledge of physics, but from personal experience knew that the push result depends of the weight of a fighter, and now it was proved once again. Tamuna pushed in Chevali’s chest and he pushed back against two elastic pillows under her uniform. What a wonderful game! Does any girl in the school could stand such an impudent behavior? But the guest wanted in all means to win. Chevali hold with his hands Tamuna’s round buttocks, while she in unison squeezed up against his standing hill-like combative school trousers and pushed, pushed until he slumped back in an exhaustion.

“It’s my victory!” announced turned-red Tamuna and prized Chevali with a juicy adult deeply kiss.

“Yak! You kissed him in the mouth!” exclaimed Ia. “That is why you aspire a victory so much! But such kisses are out of rules!”

“I do not mind,” grinned the youth, but I had to go… to do my homework.”

And he run away, pressed his book to the abdomen.  

4

Since then, wrestling became a more popular game. Almost every day Ia stepped out at the balcony to hang wet laundry and it became a signal for Chevali, that the adults weren’t in the apartment, and it’s free to enter. He grabbed his book and using circuitous way, throughout the front entrance headed to the second floor, which became for him as a new level of his half-basement life. Already twice, he run into neighbors at the main staircase, who asked him where he is going? Chevali threw them abruptly on the run,

“In training!”

Then he ascended to the third floor and run to the yard by inner spiral staircase only for in a minute to repeat his attempt.

Wrestling with Ia now seemed him a childish fuss. His new competitor occupied all his thoughts and even dreams. But, despite daytime reveries, Chevali started to read more. He was ashamed to show his ignorance. What interesting he can tell the girls? Indecent verses, which boys learned from each other,

“It’s not your business stupid blunt!

Nor the burden of your c**t!

Nor your as, your tits, or skin!

Whom I want, I let him in.”

And he decided to find himself a teacher. Where he could find money for that? But the life itself pointed towards a solution: on the second floor, next to Ia’s apartment lived a boy, by name Nick. He was four years younger Chevali, same age as Ia, outstanding student and book lover. To him, indeed, Chevali decided to apply for help, as if he anticipated that in a few years Nick will truly become a tutor and will financially support his family. But until now, their training has been a type of Boy Scout help to the underachievers. In response, Chevali tried to teach Nick Street fighting, but soon he dropped this wain training and promised to break the nose to anybody, who attempts to offend Nick or take his money. But students with lowest grades and bullies did not offend Nick. He did not have pocket money and they did not want to spit in a dwell from where they could drew a homework and a problem solution on a test.

Kotik from the yard just amazed, what happened with Chevali. Instead of hanging around, play a soccer ball between running cars and smoke stolen from grandma cigarettes, Chevali sat days with books, scribbled somehow his homework and hanged with underage Nick. Moreover prompted by his volunteer tutor, he even went to History museum to see the portrait of his great grandfather, Prince Georgy Orbeliani, a hero of a Russian-Turkish war of 1877-78. 

But the secret affair with Tamuna continued to develop. Found that he bearing very prestigious Nobel family name, she invited him at home. Of course she did not even suspect how revolution and time severely dealt with his family. Mother often told Tamuna to make friendship with boys from noble families, so she decided that pretty and strong Chevali Orbeliani is quite good for friendship and invited him to their place. No, not to meet with her parents, but to play in their bellowed wrestling without Ia, her sharp remarks and reserved role, which she always assigned to Tamuna.

It was the cold autumn day. Dank rain was drizzled, and Chevali for a long time cleaned his boots against the mat in front of a nice oak door. Eventually he made a decision and called. Tamuna opened the door, blushed out of happiness and confusion.

“Hi!” he said, “What’s up?”

“Just… waiting for you,” answered girl, and everything inside him broke off, as if he had dived of the cliff like a swallow.

“Let’s play?” asked he overcoming cramps in his throat.

“Yep!” nodded Tamuna and led the guest to her room.

The coach hospitable welcomed their young bodies. It was their usual game. But not – unusual! They kissed as crazy, as if waiting for separation, misery and death. They caress each other as experienced and shameless lovers. She herself unbuttoned his ironed school trousers; he pulled down her green pantyhose and white briefs. Short “No!” she exhaled into Chevali’s mouth, when a short pain impaled her, and then she had drowned in a sharp pleasure.

5

Two weeks in a row, Chevali was skipping studies with Nick and then called him to talk.

“Do you have problem? At school? At home?” asked Nick. “Do you need help?”

Chevali just nodded.

“Not at school and not at home, but problems may appear there too. I even do not know how to tell you things and whether I should tell you them at all. You are still a little boy, how will you help me? But, I can’t keep silent and to tell nobody. It’s too little use of Kotik either. He can help in a street fight. Well … in stealing something too.”

“As you wish. But if you share with me, I promise to keep secret.” 

Chevali thought silently for a while, scaling the words of a neighbor boy. He probably desperately needed somebody’s advice, or he just wanted to ease his soul.

“My girlfriend got pregnant!” he said eventually.

Stunned with news Nick opened his mouth, kept opened, not knowing what exactly people say in this situation, and closed it again.

“You’re like Romeo and Juliette! You’ll have a baby! Congratulations!” flushed in his head. But, would he said something similar, he would have easily receive a punch in the teeth from a gloomy candidate into fathers.

“And what kind of a help do you need?”

“I need to find an obstetrician and I need money for Tamuna’s abortion.”

“I cannot help you with money, but I know a midwife.”

“You?” Chevali jumped at the spot. Where from?”

“She is my grandmother. Well, my grandfather’s sister. She is a famous midwife.”

“Can she perform an abortion?”

“I doubt that. She is old and haven’t been working for a long time, but she knows everybody and will advise something.”

Next day after school Chevali and Nick went by tram to the Central Market, where in a small apartment lived two spinsters, sisters of Nick’s grandfather, Golda and Bertha. Oldest one, eighty years old Golda was very experienced midwife and before retiring worked in the special hospital for the members of Government. There she delivered babies of party and minister’s wives and their closest ones. But, life is more complex then work, therefore during long years of work, Golda met complicated situations in which people wanted not the best care and delivery, but best relieve from them.   

Chevali initially stayed at the street and Nick went to visit his grandmothers. They didn’t open a door to him for a long time. Eventually chain has clanked and gray hairs and wrinkled face of old Golda, attentively studied a visitor, appeared in the door slit.

“Oh, who came to us!” she rejoice at seeing the boy. “Nick! Sorry that we did not opened at once. Bertha is out and I am alone at home.”

“Even better, grandma Golda,” said Nick, “I need to consult you face to face.”

“What’s the matter?” Golda got anxious.

“One girl got pregnant and needs an abortion!” fired Nick in one exhale.

“It’s nonsense! You aren’t a father! She is lying!”

“Do not worry Golda! It’s not me. She is not lying!”

And Nick told her Chevali’s history. “A tragedy will happen, if not to help them. Tamuna’s parents will expel her from home, and will sue him for the rape. But it will not end with a verdict, because boy’s father is a former prisoner, he’ll kill his son and go to prison himself!”

Golda immediately believed in Nick’s story.

“I need to talk to Tamuna,” said wise old woman, “Therefore, initially let’s meet Chevali.”

And the business started… Chevali talked with Golda, then brought Tamuna to her, then they went to suburbs to meet one former nurse, and then, when everything had left behind, they decided to celebrate happy end.

6

To celebrate something meant to drink alcohol at those times. Probably, it was and it will be in all times, but in that country ant that time, there just did not exist a place for the youth to celebrate anything. They didn’t have money for a restaurant, also they may not let youth alone inside, and is it a celebration to go and eat pizza?

Therefore, they generated very simple but not honest idea – to ask Ia to steal some Chacha from her father’s supplies. Tamuna took this part of operation upon herself. She came to Ia, who already stopped wrestling tournaments – inviting bras and briefs on a laundry rope Chevali ignored. But, girls did nor brake their friendship, they just meet now less often. 

“I need to find a hundred – hundred fifty cc of Chacha to remove some notes in my daily marks and assignment book,” explained Tamuna her need in alcohol. “Could you pour out such amount from ankle Gogi supplies?”

“Sure, I can,” said Ia. “Dad has tremendous amount of different alcohols. But you poorly orientate in chemicals. Chacha spoils your book badly, that you’ll have a lot of troubles. I’ll give you some alcohol. It is stronger and makes work better. And if you need vodka, you mix it half and half with water.”

“Thank you Ia. You are a real friend,” wished good-buy happy Tamuna.

Chevali waited her at the street behind the corner of the house. Lately he was lucky in everything. It was time to restart his studying with Nick, to enter the technical evening school, get a worker’s specialty and start working. Who knows, maybe they will be able to live together with Tamuna and even have children.

Happily, they moved along the former Tsar Nikolay’s street towards Tamuna’s house at the German Square. At the tramline crossing with the Theatric slope, across from Russian church there were a bakery and a cafe, where one may bought fresh pastries, tea, coffee and lemonade.

Chevali ordered two eclairs, two coffees and a bottle of lemonade – to have a feast! He secretly poured alcohol from the small bottle into glasses with the lemonade – slightly more to himself, less to Tamuna. It could cover three toasts: for themselves, for good friends and for the bright future. But bright future, alas did not happened – Tamuna’s mother passed by the café and spotted her daughter.

Drilled the pretty boy with her eyes, Tamuna’s mother at once recognized signs of his proletarian origin by his frugal dress and rough boots. She asked,

“What are you doing here, sweetheart? Who are you with?”

“It’s not your business stupid blunt! Nor the burden of your c**t!” flushed well-known lines in boy’s memory.

“This is my friend Chevali,” answered Tamuna.

“Nice meeting you,” said Mother. “You have a rare name. Unfortunately, I have to still my daughter from you now. Tamuna do not even try to object me!”

“That’s OK, Tamuna. We’ll meet tomorrow,” promised Chevali.

“Come to us after school,” girl invited her friend unexpectedly brave for herself. “You do not mind, right Mom? His last name is Orbeliani.”

Mom casted up her eyebrows in surprise. How could she made a mistake in his origin? She did not have time for analyzing an issue. No problem, will find out later,

“Please, come by. We’ll talk, drink a cup of tea. Let me assure you, cream in the pastry will be much better than this one, god knows when made.”

“Thank you. Good buy,” took farewell Chevali.

He wanted to stand up from the chair, but suddenly felt vertigo and left seated, not to lose his balance and not to reveal his light drunkenness.

7.

Tamuna with her mother exited the café, sailed passed the window glasses and turned behind the corner. Then Chevali killed his glass of lemonade with the alcohol and then – Tamuna’s one.  After all not to spoil the goods. He did not want to eat their pastries. He fell nauseous. Is it really Tamuna’s mom is right, and cream in eclairs is bad? But how come he get drunk so quick? Not big deal hundred cc of vodka. All right, less than one hundred fifty. It became dark in his eyes. Head was split with the pain. Chevali jumped out of the café and bent at the tree on a curb. He threw up vigorously.

“I should take a tram and go home,” he thought, but could not cross the street to catch the tram’s stop. Pavement, curb, buildings – everything deformed and waved, traffic light at the streets crossing blinked with three purple lights. It appeared to him, that people around blamed him in killing the baby, threaten with fists, and Tamuna’s mother stretching her red lacquering nails to his throat.    

Eventually, he pulled himself together and under car’s sirens and driver’s coursing, he crossed the street to the tram’s stop. Climbing the streetcar was also hard task, he did not have enough power, but Chevali overcame this obstacle too and placed himself at corner of the last seat.

“Getting off on the second stop!” brought he to his own recollection and fell into sleep it the tram, going through out the whole city to Naftlugi Jewish cemetery.

Tamuna arm-in-arm with her Mom reached her home and threw up there.

“What did I told you!” declared Mom. “A doubtful company! Real Orbeliani say farewell standing and do not eat cheap cream. Good we have enough mineral water “Borjomi”. Drink and throw until you get rid of all contamination.”

All the rest of the evening they deal with stomach wash up, and Mom weighted what is more useful: to make a scandal in the café, where they sell pastry with bad cream or to her silly daughter, who is buying this crap.

And in the Chevali’s yard, his parents agitated discussed with the neighbors, why their son did not returned home. Only Kotik saw his friend at the way to school. He was in white shirt, probably for the school day concert. But anybody heard anything not about day concert, nor evening parties.

In the morning local police officer reported to parents and neighbors that Chevali lost his consciousness in the streetcar, but fortunately, passengers found it, just when the tram was passing by a city hospital # 1, called among people Aramyantz hospital, after rich Armenian industrialist of the beginning of XX century, who paid off most part of its creation.

Good Samaritans on their hands brought the lad into the Emergency room, and doctors instantly started treatment of methyl alcohol poisoning. This saved Chevali’s life. He survived but for a long time had very bad vision and could not distinguish colors. He stopped his studies with Nick and moved to the foster home for blind and poorly seeing people.

Gradually Chevali and Tamuna stopped communicating, their ways diverged. Kotik dropped the school and in the spring, he had been taken to army for three years. Ia slightly add weight, became even prettier and again started to hang her underwear at the laundry rope.

Once she noted that Nick was watching her at this activity. She confused, smiled at him and friendly proposed,

“Are you busy now? Come in, I’ll teach you one cool game!”

SPORT THEORETICIAN

Actually, it’s hard to call me an athlete. As I remember, all my conscious, yet irresponsible years of life I would love to participate in some kind of sport, but… just discussed different games. So perhaps the appropriate term for me would be “a sport theoretician”.

In my childhood, my father had not have enough time to teach me how to swim, ride a big bike and play chess. I always lacked only a little bit.

I had already begun to swim without a life ring during sea vacation, as we left for home, and I have not seen the sea again soon.

I learned to ride a bicycle myself and even once tried to steer the “Eaglet” of a neighbor’s boy, but it ended with a wheel injury and weaning from someone else’s bike.

Dad never had the patience for chess, roller skates broke my arm and disappeared out of sight as a sinful object, and the ball, quietly bought by me to improve my modest football skills, was discovered and exchanged for a sports uniform.

What I could not be saved from was the hiking on mountain routes in the camp.

One way or another, I didn’t go in for any sports, I always had a weight, a little more than necessary, according to the tables and norms, but I read a lot and solved all sorts of difficult problems well. Boys never laughed at me, perhaps because they always found a fatter object for ridicule. I didn’t have to fight, and lifting dumbbells and kettlebells was boring.

So I safely lived up to high school, when other boys are already giving up their sport, and I have not even started it yet.

And then unexpectedly I’ve got an enemy next door. It’s funny to say, some cocky guy named Ed, from a neighboring house. I don’t even know how it happened that he hooked me. But, most importantly, I didn’t have the habit of punching the offender in the mouth, because firstly I didn’t have any offenders, and secondly his nit-picking was somehow not malicious and not exciting enough. Perhaps he just wanted to test his own courage, but he did not dare to strike first, and even more so I. In a word, it was not a typical hooligan, who robbed the kids and the weak, but just a bully boy from a neighboring yard. And we had a lot of mutual acquaintances…

In short, I decided to prepare for a slowly brewing fight. But it matured so slowly that I managed to finish school and enter the university. And there, in addition to the usual classes of general health-improving physical education, there were sections. And I decided to train my strength. When I asked my fellow student, strongman and athlete Victor, what is the most suitable sport to fight enemies, he convinced me in one minute that wrestling is the best. And I signed in for it. Not classical wrestling, but “sambo” – a self-defense without weapons.

They allowed you in sections without a single question. No previous merit was required. If you want to do it, come and do it. And I came.

The sport club consisted of two halls, a locker room and a shower room. The section was attended by a couple of dozen guys, of completely different levels, from champions to such bumpkins as me.

Each workout, and there were three of them a week, began with running in circles, exercises, somersaults and generally warming up. Then everyone studied the wrestling techniques, practiced them on sparring partners, sometimes trained on dummies, learned how to deliver single and serial blows, and finally, they wrestled.

The coach worked only with champions, they trained strong guys who had not yet earned qualifications, and those, in turn, worked with weaklings like me. During the wrestling, the situation slightly changed; sometimes you had to fight with stronger guys, but corresponding to your weight.

The best thing was that no strong guys, even the champions, did not scoff at the weak. Everyone here knew that weakness was a temporary state, and they supported the persistent in every possible way.

From the first day, I had confidence in myself, and I began to train with enthusiasm. My muscles developed a little more, I lost weight and stopped losing in every single fight. Perhaps I would have achieved even greater success, but then the cold set in, the hot water in the showers turned cold, and then disappeared altogether, and I felt disgusted, wet with sweat, pulling on my clothes and dragging home. As a result, I started skipping classes and abandoned them altogether by the winter exams.

And when it got warmer and everyone came out onto the streets, I again ran into Ed, my bully neighbor.

“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said, and narrowed his eyes, “It’s very tempting to kick your ass.”

“Good idea,” I said, “I didn’t break anyone’s bones all winter.”

“Oh, oh! I’m shaking all over!” said Ed.

My opponent, of course, was not afraid of me, but, however, he was afraid to start a fight, knowing my new hobby from mutual acquaintances. Or maybe he didn’t have a formal reason to start it either, and he was looking for how to get me to make the first move – to strike, insult, etc.

And then a thin neighbor youth, Mishka, intervened in the conversation,

“Why do you guys always squabble and never compete? Do you want to box? Relatives just presented me with a second pair of gloves.”

We nodded without saying a word. Everyone was eager to hit the opponent, but it never came to war and a fight, and now we had the opportunity of an honest sports competition.

And so, we pulled on boxing gloves, and referee Mishka waved a kitchen towel. I immediately understood what our champions meant when they taught us not to let the enemy use his techniques in hand-to-hand combat, especially the techniques of another sport. And for sure, boxing was not what I studied in the fall, although I could already somehow hit after training on mannequins.

So, I stroke, but he stroke too. I must say that the muzzles of both of us were red and slightly swollen at the end of the duel. But not a single black-and-blue mark decorated them. I think that we were both pleased with the outcome of the fight, but at the same time, each colorfully painted out how the next time he would decorate the opponent, or send him into a knockout.

Before saying bye at the entrance of Mishka’s house, Ed threatened me,

“Well, you are finished man! I’ll paint your face, wait!”

“Bang!” A lightning strike to the face threw Ed to the ground. His eye immediately swelled up, blood streamed from his nose. It had nothing to do with me. A passerby man in a black coat, black cap and black glasses bent over Ed.

“That’s a lesson for you, snot!” If you touch Nick with your finger, you are a corpse, and your cut off eggs – in your mouth. Understood? Well, then get the fuck out of here!”

When Ed’s trail got cold, the man in black turned his unshaven face towards me, and I hardly recognized my former neighbor Shevali.

“So you still didn’t learn how to fight?” he asked me, “Just don’t be afraid to make pain to the enemy. Better yet severe pain. How are things in general? Have you screwed Ia?”

We had chatted about this and that. He said that his sight gradually returned. From the treatment with hormones, he grew up and became very strong. Grandmother died, father is ill. I said that I entered the university, the Department of Physics, and I am engaged in “sambo”, a self-defense without a weapon.

“Good,” he said, “Although sambo is not your thing. You are whack the problems much better. Like I do people.”

I never met him again, and if I did, I didn’t recognize him. Ed avoided me for three months, and after graduating from high school he left for Russia and entered a military school. And I remained a theoretician of sport, which I love to this day.

RARE LUCK

I always communicated with decent girls, but at the same time I passionately wished that they would behave much more freely in the area of ​​feelings and relationships. These dreams in that place of the Earth were somewhat ahead of their time, and in most cases I found joy only “beyond the ridge,” that is, beyond the Caucasus Mountains – in the fraternal republics. However, I have never used the services of women of questionable behavior.

Despite the terrible shortage of love relationships in my city, one day a story happened to me, which I will tell you now. We had one friend, Vic Abakansky, a graduate of the theater institute – a great original. According to him, he was born in a prison camp in Abakan, and thus acquired his surname. He lived with his wife and children in a communal apartment in the very center of the city – on Rustaveli Avenue. However, despite his family, Vic led a bachelor’s lifestyle. At home, in the large room, there was a passage yard. There, like in a club, familiar and unfamiliar people came day and night to socialize, chat, and drink (rarely just tea). They sat right on the floor. They ate what they brought – Vic had no supplies.

The owner of this club was a colorful personality. He knew a lot, talked, invited interlocutors to discussions, had a good sense of humor, and joked. He looked in the hippie style: huge hair, periodically a beard like Tolstoy or a mustache like Dali; he dressed very simply, sometimes even poorly, but cleanly, thanks to the efforts of his invisible wife. Vic could often be found on the avenue, walking and looking at passers-by with marine binoculars. It was all kitsch, but he was a kind and talented guy.

So, once in the summer, I stopped by Vic’s house to talk and to listen. As always, the room was filled with guests, and I sat down on the floor against the wall, next to a stranger, a girl of about twenty-five with a beautiful pale face and fluffy brown hair; her name was Mzia. We met, but spoke little, mostly listening to the debates of those present about modern trends in philosophy. I sipped tea, Mzia sipped wine.

Different speakers defended different positions, and everyone challenged everyone. In general, it was ordinary intellectual chatter. But among the debaters a new guest appeared who said,

“I will try to show with examples that existentialism reflects the loneliness of its fans, who at the time of their fascination with this theory did not have enough feminine warmth and love. But if the lady of my heart does not support my performance, I myself will jump into this company of masturbators.”

Mzia leaned towards me and whispered,

“This asshole is going to try to get attached to me now. I’m so tired of him! Listen, Nick, you seem like a decent guy, can you get me out of here without being noticed?”

“I’ll try,” I said, “I’ll distract this philosopher for a while, and you go out into the corridor, walk along the balcony to the right to the stairs to the courtyard and start going down. There I will catch up with you and lead you through the courtyards to a side street.”

That’s what we did.

The avenue was crowded, townspeople and visitors strolled after sunset, when the heat began to subside.

“Thank you,” said Mzia, “I am now your debtor. You can’t even imagine what a good deed we did by sneaking out of there. One might say – divine.”

Of course, I couldn’t understand what was so divine about Mzia getting away from the guy who wanted to flirt with her. I also might want to. Only now did I get a better look at my companion. Her figure was excellent, her hands were beautiful, and her facial features were regular and attractive.

“Your acquaintance is not such a fool, in any case, I share his choice,” I mentioned and Mzia smiled.

“The difference is that he pesters, gets into trouble, and you want to push him away, but you behave modestly and with dignity, so that I…” here she lowered her gaze and paused… “Want to hug you.”

Everything went cold inside me. Our women didn’t say that to men. It was a challenge. And I accepted it immediately.

“I would really like to hug you too,” I said, anticipating that we would go to the park by the river, we would kissing, and I would have a girl from an unusual circle, but beautiful, brave and frank.

“Do you have an apartment where we can stay together tonight?”

I almost fell. What a fool I am! I dream about the park and kisses! All this was very unusual, but I felt like a hero-lover, whose conquered beauties throw themselves on his neck.

“I have to call,” I said, remembering that Denis’s parents had gone on vacation.

A minute later I was already passionately persuading my friend to give us his bedroom for the night, and to move into the free parent’s room. Finally, I managed to break his indecisive resistance, and Mzia and I rushed towards adventure.

Hospitable Denis put on the table tea with sea buckthorn jam from Orenburg, from his grandmother.

“Tea… Jam… It’s like I am now in childhood, in the village,” Mzia admitted, “Is there anything strong to drink?”

“I have nothing,” Denis was embarrassed. “But my father’s vintage cognac is in the sideboard, but the bottle is sealed.”

“Great! The cognac is quite good,” Mzia said, “Go ahead, and unseal it.”

Denis blushed, but he took out the bottle, waved his hand, meaning, “No matter how many indictment counts you have – the trial is one”, and opened it. In a word, we killed the bottle and during this time we somehow befriended. Denis pulled out a guitar, we played, sang, Mzia ordered Yesenin’s poems and even shed a few tears couple of times.

“Okay, guys, I’m going to bed,” Denis said eventually and went to his parents’ bedroom.

And we went to his room, where I had already laid out fresh linen.

“How great and unusual everything was,” said Mzia and took off her dress, followed by everything else.

I was absolutely agreed with her. But for me, drinking tea, playing the guitar and singing songs was a common thing, but a girl who comes to you with the intention of spending the night together and undresses at one moment – that was unusual and incredibly exciting. I quickly took all my clothes off and as soon as I embraced Mzia, before I could begin the love pleasures, I immediately got an orgasm. The unusualness of the whole evening so exhausted my anticipation of this moment that I had no strength to restrain myself.

“Wow!” Mzia said, “So you even don’t need me for love?”

“That’s “nichurta (doesn’t count),” I justified myself, “I’ll take a ten-minute break and we’ll start all over again.”

I was calm for myself. I knew my physiology. And Mzia… well, what could she do? Just to believe. She believed me and I did not disappoint her expectations.

The next morning I insisted on taking Mzia home. She refused for a long time, but eventually gave in.

“Believe me, Nick, this is of no use. We shouldn’t be dating. And we weren’t supposed to meet yesterday. But God wanted it, and I’m grateful to him for that. And now let’s forget this meeting and let’s go our separate ways.”

I didn’t understand her well every time she mentioned God. But Mzia looked the least like a real believer or sectarian.

“Okay, so be it, I’ll allow you to accompany me, you deserve it, but don’t wag your tongue anywhere and first promise to forget everything that happened between us.”

“What are these secrets of the Madrid court?” I thought, but, reluctantly, I promised.

We arrived in a good area of the city and began to climb the streets leading up the mountain. Here, at the foot of the hills, Mzia lived in a small private house.

“Wait a minute,” she said and disappeared into the house, but indeed, soon she called me inside.

I walked in and was stunned. It was… I don’t even know what it was – housing, sacristy, brothel? Candlesticks, icons in silver frames, and crosses decorated with precious stones glowed in the twilight. The shelves were full of crystal, daggers and firearms. Apparently my look expressed bewilderment, and Mzia explained.

“I belong to someone else, along with all this wealth.” Have you ever heard of Vakhtang the Bloody?”

I did not hear.

“Otherwise you would understand that we saved this fool philosopher from torture when we escaped from his inappropriate advances at Vic’s. So don’t argue with me and forget yesterday forever. And for Yesenin’s poems – special thanks!”

“Who are you thanking?” a restrained roar was heard, and in the doorway appeared… a character from Georgian folklore – a Devi or a fairy-tale evil giant. He was a tall, powerful man dressed all in black, with a shock of black curly hair and a huge tar beard. His face reminded me of some pirate from a children’s book, but in my life I had never known such a Samson.

“This young man,” Mzia introduced me, “brought me lyric poems that I ordered from Vic Abakansky. We need to thank him, Vakhtang,” and with these words Mzia handed me a bottle of vintage cognac, just like the one we finished yesterday.

“Okay,” Vakhtang rumbled, “But it’s in vain that you order home delivery. People can get into trouble. Forget this address, dude!” he said, furiously piercing me with his gaze, and, not finding any danger for himself, added,

“If I see you here again, you’ll be in trouble!”

I realized that he told the truth, as did Mzia, who had been trying to explain it to me for a long time with her vague refusals to meet and accompany her home. Later I asked Vic who was the pretty young woman as a guest of him?

“She is just a gang member and a morphine addict. She used to be a prostitute, but a thief in law, by the way, your “Vorontsov Chevalier,” fell in love with her and pulled her out from the very bottom, or maybe, on the contrary, he dragged her in even deeper.

These words and vague suspicions made me feel somewhat uneasy.

“Well, well,” I thought, “Could hormonal treatment really change Shevali beyond recognition? And Mzia? After all, I never mess with hookers. And now, was I hooked? But she didn’t ask for anything, what kind of prostitution is this?” I convinced myself.

However, I realized that when writers claim something, it is worth taking it with a grain of disbelieve. Tell yourself, “Nichurta!” It never hurts.

THE LAST SCAM

I would never have known anything about this story if I had not ended up in the editorial office of a republican newspaper on a certain day, if my classmate with an exacerbation of ulcerative colitis had not gotten in the hospital, and if one of Secretaries of the Georgian Communist Party had not stuck in a set up scam.

One day I brought humorous stories and jokes about student life from the wall newspaper to the editorial office. Some people from the Ministry of Higher Education really liked them, and I was invited to the editorial office. There is nothing special to tell out here, except for the phone call that came during my conversation with the head of the literature department.  

Apparently, someone very influential called, because the chief of the department stood up and continued to talk standing,

“The exhibition will begin in a week. Preparations are underway at the art museum. All safety measures are taken. The French side is actively involved in this.”

He paused, listening to his interlocutor, and then answered with surprise on his face,

“Millions of dollars. Every single picture.”

This ended the conversation, the manager sat down, wiped his wet forehead with a handkerchief and said to me,

“Forget what you heard here, young man. Random words can bring predictable troubles to those who repeat them anywhere. Let’s better select more good humor for publication, do you agree to this compromise?”

I realized that I had unexpectedly witnessed something important, since I was offered a compromise. Of course, I wasn’t going to chat about it, but since the exhibition will be French, I really wanted to be Poirot.

First of all, I went to the Art Museum to inquire about upcoming exhibitions. But I didn’t have to ask. Posters for an exhibition of French Impressionism opening in a week were plastered on the advertising columns, walls and doors of the museum. Inside the museum, only the side halls were open; the main enfilade was closed. Preparations for the upcoming event were underway there. Everything I heard in the editorial office was of no value. Why did the head of the department advise me to keep my mouth shut?

Obviously, the main secret was his interlocutor on the other end of the line. A person who was interested in the price of impressionist paintings. And although I did not know his name, I promised not to talk about the call, that is, in fact, about the caller. This seemed suspicious to me. Whom of known to me people would think of being interested in buying a painting? That’s just funny. But suddenly it dawned on me. What if, not by buying, but by selling? So… theft and sale!

I just whistled. But a search in this direction was impossible. I had no connections either in the criminal world or in the criminal investigation department. And what kind of connections can help if the equation is full of unknowns!

This story seems completely unrelated to the first. That’s how it was in the beginning. I just promised Aunt Sveta, Boris’s mother, to introduce her to the surgeon, our distant relative, who operated on Boris. A classmate underwent surgery on his intestines, and he lay in intensive care, shrouded in oxygen tubes and systems of solutions with antibiotics.

“Dear doctor,” said Aunt Sveta, handing the surgeon an envelope with money, “This is my only son, and I will not spare anything to save him. Please write to me what foreign antibiotics are needed, and I will buy them from the Cup at any price.”

Now we need to make an explanation. A famous seller of foreign medicines worked in the city under the nickname of “The Cup” (like a cup of tea). His prices seamed unimaginable, and everyone knew about this illegal business, but the prosecutor’s office and the police believed that everyone walked under God and preferred not to touch the famous businessman. How do you know if tomorrow you yourself will need him and his goods? Moreover, The Cup was plying his trade directly opposite the district police station, which may have been covered and protected him.

And it occurred to me that such a seller could be the buyer of the painting for millions of dollars. But the hypothesis was very flimsy. You never know who else could have millions of dollars. The main thing is who could want to buy the painting, and even more important in the puzzle – who could go and rob the museum? This is not a robbing an apartment. There are security, electronics, and French specialists. I just couldn’t believe that someone from the city would be able to break through such security. What if he was not from the city? Or not even from the country? Say, a foreign guest invited for the work?

This sounded very convincing to me, but I could not test this hypothesis. This would require some pretty good connections in the KGB. But weren’t the exhibition brought by foreigners? Yes, sure. So… the robber must already be among them. Unless, of course, all this was just my fantasy.

In the evening, I went to my best friend, Sasha, to chat about this and that and… unexpectedly I received an additional piece of the mosaic that made up my story.

My friend was a very strong preference player. He was not interested in playing just like the rest of us, for a penny or even ten kopecks a whist (a point). Quite quickly he found himself a company of rich people, businessmen, and directors of enterprises who played for big. They played on the night from Saturday to Sunday, and the next day they slept out before work. Every time, returning from the game, Sasha told interesting stories from the life of the “underground kings.” This time there was a story about a very “tall” player. Not in terms of game class, but in terms of position in society. He was a member of the republic’s party elite. But even at the same time, nothing human was alien to him, and he managed to lose, not in preference, but in poker, two million… dollars. It was a common card scam – he was dealt a very rare combination of cards, and his opponent was dealt an even rarer one. The townspeople and workers of fields didn’t give a damn about this gossip, but richer people were interested, inflamed… In a word, “like Poirot” I concluded that I knew the customer, the object, and the buyer. All that remained was to wait for the development of events.

I reasoned like this: robbing an exhibition before it ends is bad manners; if the robber is French, he will do it elegantly after the end of the exhibition. But is it worth waiting until the last day and running into immediate overnight dismantling and packing work? Of course no! This means a day earlier, on the night before the last day of the exhibition. And what do you think came to my mind? To walk past the Museum of Art at midnight, to sit on a bench in a small park on the square in front of the museum near the monument to Pushkin. Of course, I wasn’t going to sit on the bench all night, but I could stand it for an hour or two – summer nights in the city are very warm.

Near the exit from the museum, I noticed two cars with their headlights off, but both with passengers. The first was a black Mercedes with four men in suits and ties. Their faces were illuminated by a neon advertisement for the Fruit and Juice Cooperative, causing them to alternately turn white, red and green. Of course, I didn’t know anyone. In the other car, a white “Volga”, I obviously didn’t know the driver, the young guy in the cap, but I had once already met the passenger in my life. It was the black-haired giant Vakhtang, nicknamed Bloody, who was involved in many raids, robberies and even murders, as rumor attributed to him. But the most interesting thing for me was that I suspected him of my former neighbor Shevali Orbeliani, whom I helped with math at school.

“I wonder what he’s doing here,” I thought.

However, the answer was found quickly,

“He considers himself the king of the night city and does not want to miss out on rich booty or a share in it.”

It looks like I was right. At twelve fifteen, the door of the museum opened slightly, and a thin man with a leather tube in which rolls of drawings are carried came out, looking around. A giant I knew came out of the “Volga” to meet him. I don’t know how they talked to each other, but Vakhtang extended his hand to the tube, the “Frenchman” pulled out a pistol and immediately took a bullet in his chest.

Before I had time to think that it was not for nothing that Vakhtang was called the Bloody, the dry clicks of a short machine gun burst sounded from the Mercedes, and the body of the robber collapsed next to his victim. A man jumped out of the limousine and rushed to the leather tube, but at that moment the doors of the museum swung open, and security poured out, including our policemen and French guards, of course, in civilian clothes.

The man from the Mercedes instantly turned around and took refuge in the car. The headlights flashed, the engine roared, and the art lovers disappeared around the corner. The “Volga” with its orphaned driver drove away in the other direction.

There was no point in staying longer. Even though Pushkin and the bushes covered my presence at the crime scene, I could have run into troubles. I moved in the direction opposite to the museum and my house. The small detour allowed me to catch my breath and calm down. Still, it’s not every day that you witness a double murder, even if in your thoughts you imagine yourself as Inspector Poirot.

There were no announcements or investigations. The next morning, the city was gossiping about the tragic death of a young woman who had fallen from a bridge into the river in a white “Volga.” The townspeople did not learn the details of the night. The stories about the giant bandit gradually faded away, the memory of Vakhtang the Bloody was erased, and the old noble family of Orbeliani ended with the boy Shevali, whom I knew in my childhood and youth.

THE END