The Exchange Student. Dedicated to Rotary International

Michael

I had lots of friends in my neighborhood and some were really weird. Michael was one of them. Our guys called him “the intelligent”. He was very kind to everybody, although I noticed that he behaved strangely, when he was close to animals. One day, I saw a huge stain of blood on his shirt. I couldn’t help but wonder where he had got that stain.

He said, “Oh, that’s because of the experiment that I recently conducted. You see, I was always wondering whether the organs of different breeds of cats look the same, so I merely caught a couple, cut them open with my axe and checked.”

“Isn’t that a little crazy??” I asked.

“Not at all,” he said. “It’s mere science. I have also found out how many lives a cat has!”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I caught a cat, which was lying on the corner of a street, got to the roof of a 9-storey building and dropped it on the ground. It was pretty cool! I realized that the fact that cats have 9 lives is a myth! Isn’t that awesome?”

He spoke with such excitement, that I thought that he could easily conduct such experiments on people.

Everyone from my neighborhood knew that he had mental disorders because of the constant scandals between his parents. That’s why everybody tried to be more polite and delicate with him, we tried not to annoy him. Looking at his appearance, he seemed to be a normal teenager. He wore glasses and looked like a smart person. But it was only his appearance. From the inside he was totally different. When he was eighteen years old, he was sentenced to 6 years in prison! I still don’t understand why he got to prison, but I think, definitely not because of experiments on cats, there must be something more than cats, something serious.

The Phantom

If you go inside of any house entrance in my neighborhood, you can immediately feel the strong smell of different food that comes from flats, especially, when someone cooks fish. Such smell is much stronger than other ones. In each stairwell there is a garbage chute, which is often clogged up and the stench spread all over the floors. Every single day, when I got back home, I could see dirty walls and broken windows. Barely working elevators made horrible sounds, it was impossible to use them because of the awful smell of dog’s urine. Almost all the buttons were burned and you had to use some force to push the button to the floor you needed.

The elevators in these houses got stuck quite often and I was once in a situation like that. I had to sit for three hours in the cab without any light until the lift operator came and opened the doors. If the elevator was out of order, you had to walk the stairs. Going upstairs, you immediately heard a crunchy sound of seed shells being broken under your feet. A large number of smoked cigarettes and beer bottles under the stairs didn’t surprise anyone. Occasionally, some tenants got tired of this garbage and cleaned the whole staircase. There was twice much dirt in the stairs when winter came. In many entrances there was no glass in the windows and the temperature was pretty much the same as in the street, -30 degrees Celsius or even lower. But in some of the stairwells all the windows were saved. In such staircases it was much warmer than in the others, but there was twice as much trash as in the cold ones, because when winter came, all the young people went inside of the warm buildings. We sat on the stairs between the first and the second floors, because the heating radiators were there. We drank beer and smoked there. When we were smoking, the floors got immediately covered in a fog of tobacco smoke. The tenants, entering the house and knowing that the first and the second floors were filled with young people smoking and drinking, covered their mouth with scarves and mittens and waited impatiently for the elevator, in which it was also hard to breathe.

It was always dark in the staircase of my building. When I was ten years old, I went for a walk and came home late quite often, when it was already dark. I was always scared to go into the building. It was too dark and the staircase reminded me of an ominous cave. In winter, the entrance door was always covered in snow, and clouds of steam were pouring out of the building to the street. I didn’t know what would happen to me on my way to the fourth floor where I lived.

I always waited for someone who would accompany me to my apartment. But sometimes no one appeared and I had to go there myself. With my heart beating fast, I jumped into this cloud and ran up to the fourth floor as fast as I could. I was really scared, because at the age of ten, I knew that there were people who caught children in the dark hallways and kidnapped them, then rape them or sell into slavery.

But there was one scary thing than every other: there was a drug addict, who lived directly opposite our door.

I was afraid of him, but I was always polite to him said hello, “Hi, Yasha, how are you?”

He barely moved his lips, pronouncing, “H-e-ll-o…”

His eyes were like glass and it was scary to me than ever. In 20—30 seconds my mother opened the door and I quickly ran inside, locking all the door locks.

The Funeral March

There was a tradition in our neighborhood. When someone died, the funeral began with the bringing of the coffin in the staircase, where the dead person lived. His family gathered around the coffin and mourned the loss of him. I saw this ceremony every single time when somebody died.

The invited musicians always played the funeral march. I could see all this from my window. It was hard for me to see the dead and the weeping people near the coffin. When his relatives and friends went away to the cemetery, they always left a lot of flowers lying in the yard. Those flowers lay for weeks in our neighborhood roads. They didn’t allow everyone to forget the funerals of people, who most of the tenants didn’t know. I still can’t understand why the relatives of the deceased could not start and finish the funerals in special places in the cemetery. But this tradition was accepted in our society.

Icy Roads

Siberia is known for its severe winters and every single year there is a lot of snow on the roads. At that time there were pretty much no services to clean it, so eventually all this snow turned into ice. All the guys from my neighborhood took that opportunity to go sledding.

We often raced on our sleds with each other, not being afraid that there was a risk of being hit by a car. The main thing was to reach the finish line first at the end of road, which was in the form of a long ice hill. When I was 10, I got a cool sled, which was really fast and I won the races quite often. Before the start of our race, we waited until there would be no cars on the road. We sped up our sleds, jumped on them and flew on the road. Sometimes there were cars that appeared on our way. So, we had to react quickly and turn away from cars to avoid getting hit. After such dangerous and cold competitions my hands and feet were totally frozen. My eyes often got stuck together because of the ice on my eyelashes. On my returning home, my arms and legs began to warm up causing pain and tears. It was a wonderful time of the year, but it was insanely cold.

The Hairdresser

I decided to have my hair cut. I took my father’s car and drove to the barber shop nearby. The hairdresser who invited me to the chair was very tall and was always smiling. He put an apron on me and asked what kind of haircut I wanted. I said that I didn’t want a short haircut. The barber, shaking his head said, “Okay.” Could you please wait a minute? I’ll be back shortly”.

I thought to myself, “Well, I can wait for a minute, there is no problem.” The barber went somewhere. I waited for five minutes. Then another five minutes passed, and I started thinking, “It’s Okay, maybe the guy is sick.” Even fifteen minutes later my hairdresser did not show up.

So, here I was, sitting on the chair with an apron tied around my neck. I continued waiting for my barber, looking at myself in the mirror like a complete idiot. Half an hour had already passed when I began to get angry. I asked myself. “Maybe it’s a TV joke and I am being taped on a candid camera that had been put directly in the mirror, which I look at for thirty minutes. Maybe they were checking my patience, watching and laughing at me behind the door with that hairdresser?” But, finally, my hairdresser got back. I looked at him and said, “Oh, you’re quick!”

And he asked me quietly, “What kind of haircut would you like?”

I answered, “Oh, you have already forgotten what kind of haircut I want after you hung out somewhere for 30 minutes, haven’t you?”

He did not respond to my rudeness, as if he had not gone out. I immediately noticed that his movements were not adequate. His eyes were big and shiny. So, I thought that he was drunk, although I did not smell the alcohol.

The barber took the electric cutting machine and started trying to plug it in. It was unforgettably spectacular. His moves were really funny and, as I learned later, all that time he spent outside he was taking drugs! After about a minute he finally managed to plug the machine in. His coordination was horrible and, consequently, he almost entirely shaved the right side of my head.

After that, I exploded with anger. I stood up, pulled off the apron and screamed on every single person in that barber shop and went away smashing the door behind me. I got into the car with my half cut head and went to a different hairdresser’s.

When I walked into the new salon, all the girls looked at me and laughed loud, then asked, “Oh, my god?! Who ate the half of your hair?”

I told them what had just happened to me. They laughed and listened to my story till the very end. They felt sorry for me and fixed my haircut. While they were working, they told me that the guy who wanted to shave me was a drug addict and that the barber shop where he worked, belonged to his mother.

The School

My school was quite usual. Some people called it “The Prison” or the “Jail”. There were criminal leaders all over the school and we lived by criminal rules. Even some schoolboys were friends with criminals and ex-prisoners. Because of my illness, I missed a year of school. So, I had lessons at home. Then, when I came back to school, I got into correctional class for weak students. That year was the most vivid and unforgettable for me. There were bullies, smokers, drunkards in my new class. I can remember one of my Physics classes. That day we had a new physics teacher, who was 70 years old. She could difficulty seeing and hearing. I was sitting in the middle of the class, and at the back of the class I could see the guys smoking something, apparently it was marijuana. They slightly opened the window, crawled under the desk and started smoking the cigarette. The whole class realized what was going on there except for our new teacher. At the end of the lesson she asked, “Who was playing with matches the whole lesson?”

The bell rang and our “stars” got out of the class laughing a lot.

One day there was a new student in our class. His name was Kostya. Unfortunately, our “stars” hated him from the very first minute. Every day they beat Kostya so much, that sometimes he could not even get up on his feet and he was always late for lessons. I was very sorry for Kostya, but I couldn’t do anything to help him.

Soon, Kostya couldn’t bear such beatings he called his dad for help.

They were standing at the main entrance of our school. Kostya’s father wanted to give a lesson to my classmates, who had beaten his son. When the bell rang, our class went out of the school. I was behind everyone, shaking hands and saying goodbye to classmates. At the main entrance, I noticed Kostya and his father saying bad words to our guys. The classmates didn’t like it and reacted very quickly. They came down to Kostya’s father and started beating him. When he fell down, they turned their attention to Kostya and beat him up too. Seeing that the father and the son were lying on the ground, they stopped kicking them and went home.

All that happened right in front of the windows of the principal’s office. The very next day, Kostya took the documents and moved to a different school, and I never saw him again.

Our teachers were not very kind either. It was Geography, and the teacher got angry at the student, who did not know something; she came up to him and hit his head with a wooden school pointer, so that it turned into chips. He stood up, yelled at the teacher and smashed the door behind him. We gave him a nickname “The Priest”. I remember that he loved eclairs.

One day we were sitting at class, and the teacher went to have lunch. The Priest made a bet that he would break the desk with his head. If he won, he would get two eclairs. Everybody, who was in the class, stopped and watched the show. The first hit on the desk did not give the wanted result. The second one was a little more powerful and the desk cracked slightly. The third hit was the most powerful and he finally broke that desk and won his bet. Everyone applauded him. They shouted.

“Hey Priest! You’re the desk breaker! Good for you!”

Three minutes later the teacher came back, and immediately paid attention to the bruises on the priest’s forehead and then to the broken desk. She asked, “What happened?”

The whole class was silent, some people were giggling. The Priest thought for a little bit and replied,

“I was running and accidentally hit the door in the cafeteria!”

“And how many times did you hit the door?”

Everybody started laughing.

“Okay, now what happened to your desk?”

“That had been broken before we got to class!”

Everybody started nodding to convince the teacher that the desk had already been broken.

“You’re savages!” the teacher concluded.

It was impossible to go to school toilet. There were clouds of tobacco smoke. Because it was winter, the students did not want to run outside to smoke in -30C. So, everybody smoked in school toilets.

The School Break

I was a first-grader when that happened. The kids were playing catchup. I was sitting on a branch and saw my friend Sergey run into another boy’s head. The hit was really bad and Sergey’s tooth got stuck in the forehead of the other boy. They both fell and started crying. The teachers called the ambulance.

The School Dentist

One day, I had a toothache and went to the dentist’s, who worked in my school. The dentist’s office was located on the third floor. I knocked on the door and entered the room. Once I got inside, the doctor told me to sit on the chair to be examined. When she found the bad tooth, she said, “Unfortunately, we’ll have to remove the nerve.”

It was the first time I had ever gone to the dentist’s. I was very nervous, but my tooth hurt very much and I was tired of the pain. “Will it be painful?” I asked.

“It’ll be pretty painful. Unfortunately, I don’t have any anesthetization, so, you’ll have to bear the pain or I will have to remove the tooth later.”

I nodded and the doctor began.

It was unforgettably painful! Doctor started winding the nerve on the needle. The pain was pretty bad, but I didn’t know what was going to happen next. Suddenly she pulled out the nerve so hard, that I hardly managed to stay on the chair! Just imagine how horrible and painful it is to pull out a nerve without any anesthetization! After that sweat appeared on my face. Every time the doctor pulled the nerve, my hands clutched to the handles of the chair, and I prayed for it to be done as soon as possible. This terrible process last for about an hour! At the end I almost lost my consciousness. I felt relieved when the “surgery” was finished, but my tooth was bleeding for two days! I can still remember the doctor’s face and her dreadful instruments that caused so much pain!

The Stolen Blood

At the age of ten I was going to a medical checkup at the hospital, which looked much like a post-war military hospital. There I could see spring beds in my room, dilapidated walls, creaking doors and people were coughing everywhere. The food over there was disgusting. It was absolutely forbidden to go out of this terrible place. So, I had to spend two weeks there like a prisoner.

My room was on the third floor, and mentally ill people were placed one floor higher. Almost every night, I could hear horrible screams from the upstairs and I couldn’t sleep.

I had a lot of different health tests and treatments. That day they tested my blood. I came into the doctor’s office; she put the needle into my vein and began to pull out the blood. For such analysis doctors usually take no more than one full test-tube of blood from the patient. I didn’t know that, so when I saw the doctor take out the full box of these test-tubes (about 12 of them in the box) I wasn’t surprised, I thought it was supposed to be done like that. So, the doctor filled up the second, the third and fourth one and so on. When she was filling up the seventh one she asked me, “How are you feeling, my dear?”

“Dizzy pretty much.”

She brought the cotton wool soaked in ammonia to my nose and asked me to smell it. By that time I almost lost my consciousness, but after that I felt a little better and she continued stealing my blood. Finally, she managed to take twelve test-tubes of my blood.

I was returning back to my room like a drunkard and immediately fell asleep. The very next day my room neighbor had to go through that blood test. Before went to the doctor, he said, “I’m a little worried.

How did that procedure go? How did you feel at the end?” I explained him what had happened to me in that room. He got scared, but he had no choice and left the room. I decided to wait for him. One hour had passed, but my room neighbor still didn’t show up. Then I thought to myself, “How much blood they have taken from him after such a long period of time? It’s been two hours and he still hasn’t returned from that terrible procedure!” Finally, I saw the doctor, who was checking the medical condition of all the patients and asked her, “Did you see my friend Alex? He went to the blood test two hours ago and still hasn’t come back.”

The doctor answered, “Your neighbor lost his consciousness during the test. He is lying on the first floor and we are waiting for him to come round.”

Then I thought that they must have stolen Alex’s blood too!

The Robbery of the School Cafeteria

One day, my crazy classmates got a “brilliant” idea: to rob our school cafeteria. They broke the windows and entered the building at night: it was as simple as that! They started looking for money, but didn’t find any. Although they did find something: it was just a bag of flour! So, our “heroes” decided to take it home to make some pancakes. They dragged the bag all the way to their house, but they didn’t realize that there was quite a big hole in it and the flour was pouring out of the bag, indicating their direction.

The school security guard noticed the broken window and immediately called the police. They arrived soon and found the trail of white flour.

The policemen followed it and found where the robbers lived. Then police entered the apartment of my classmates.

At the end of the ninth grade, the half of my classmates had already been convicted of various crimes. I tried my best not to be like them. Sometimes it worked, but I immediately began to feel that I was falling into contempt from all the people in my neighborhood. So, I had to become just like my friends again: I had to dress like them, speak with swear words and break school windows. I couldn’t change anything.

There was a special mechanism working like a watch. If something was broken, everyone noticed it immediately. The guy who did not want to live like the others was put in his place, or was thrown away as a broken detail of the watch, leaving him with no choice but to leave the group and become alone, which means putting his life at risk in those dangerous streets of Irkutsk city.

The Blood Brothers

As our life in the neighborhood went on, we were growing up fast. When that happened, we were 15 years old. It was quite a usual day: many dead drunk people were lying on the benches and fights took place in the streets of our city.

It was getting dark and my mom and I were drinking tea on the balcony of our apartment, when we saw a very frightening “show”: a burglar professionally climbed to the balcony on the 4th floor of the opposite building and got inside the apartment! “The acrobat” was doing that at an altitude of approximately 17 meters!

My mom said, “I’m calling the police!”

“Hey, why don’t we wait for a little bit and see what will happen next?” But, in spite of my suggestions, she still did what she wanted.

While they were coming, we watched him commit the crime. The very next minute the burglar opened the window and pulled out the bag of stolen things, tied it to the rope and lowered it to the ground. Suddenly we heard the police siren, so the thief was in haste.

The very next second the rope snapped, and the heavy bag fell on the ground, breaking stolen equipment and expensive things. He must have been very upset by that fact, because he immediately started swearing loudly. A few minutes later the thief got out of the building, took the bag and ran out of there as fast as he could.

The police was late, as usual.

The next day I wanted to spend some time with my friends Kostya and Gleb and tell them about the acrobatic thief. When I walked into the apartment building, I heard them speaking very loudly, which was quite unusual. So, I was pretty intrigued. But what I saw next was a shock to me. The guys were discussing something and I noticed a big kitchen knife in Kostya’s hand! They did not pay any attention to me. I waited for a minute and asked, “Hey guys… What you’re up to? Kostya, why are you holding a knife?”

“Hmmm, you’ll see. Well, we are going to have a blood relationship!” They answered.

I wondered how they were going to do that and they showed me the whole process.

Firstly, they swore, that they would never leave each other in any trouble. Then, to prove the oath, Kostya cut his palm with the knife.

The wound was pretty deep, so the blood appeared immediately and started dripping on the floor. After that, Gleb took the knife and did the same thing!

I quietly watched that show.

Kostya put his palm into his friend’s palm, cut to cut, so that Gleb’s blood got through the wound into Kostya’s blood and mix. That way they became the blood brothers.

As a result of this ritual, the whole floor was covered in their blood. Then the problem appeared: they couldn’t stop the blood! The wounds were too deep! I ran down to the first floor and asked people for help. We found some bandages and used them.

They were satisfied with the ritual being finished; they thanked for helping them and went home.