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Everyone knew who was cooking what, who ate how much, who hated whom, who was pining for whom, and even who was sleeping with whom. All this was known because of the thin, non-load-bearing partitions between the room-apartments, which were so acoustically porous that they blocked out nothing except, perhaps, gestures. Every neighbor knew (if one knew, everyone knew) not only everyone’s temperament — judged by the duration, frequency, and tempo of sex — but also their intimate nicknames. Some even managed to use a glass against the wall to determine the moment of orgasm, though almost all the women automatically covered their mouths with their hands, as they themselves were guilty of “using the glass.”
This female “Kitchen Babylon” lived by special laws of collective coexistence, quite different from those of small communal apartments where people usually hated each other openly and as a family unit, communicating only about kitchen or toilet issues or the schedule for changing shared lightbulbs.
Here, the atmosphere was “chameleonic,” changing instantly with the change of characters.
Ladies who were particularly “well-loved” by their husbands would emerge for the morning kitchen “runway” looking sleepy, with their heads and lower backs wrapped in scarves, always resting a hand against their waist. The poor soul would show with her entire being — to the envy of her neighbors — how exhausted she was from her husband’s excessive “attention.” She wouldn’t forget to sigh languidly, recalling the night’s excesses, and cast glances at the divorced or unmarried women! The latter, once the woman vanished behind her door (knowing her ear was likely at the keyhole), would silently use facial expressions, gestures, and poses to show how things really went down.
One could tell from the morning curlers that someone was planning an evening outing — or perhaps a “visitor.” Many knew not only the love affairs of their neighbors but even their lovers, including those from among the neighbors themselves; however, this topic was taboo, for who is without sin?
Once the husbands and children were packed off to work and school, the housewives’ bacchanalia began! The washing of others’ dirty laundry, discussions of other husbands’ virtues and their wives’ flaws… Verbal battles rarely turned physical, but you could expect any kind of mischief afterward — from small “kitchen” thefts to kerosene in the soup. Each such kitchen skirmish was vividly recounted at home in the evening. Everything was presented as a clear and unconditional victory, with the other side’s mandatory capitulation in the form of numerous apologies and the wiping away of repentant tears. Well, and some morning female disputes were settled in the evening by their husbands.
I remember once witnessing an argument between my grandmother and a neighbor. It was a long, endless monologue from the neighbor, after which Grandmother went inside and cried for a while. In the evening, however, she told Grandfather how she had “told that woman off” and how “that one” would now think twice before crossing her. The only thing that stopped her from ripping out a clump of the neighbor’s hair, she claimed, was my presence! Of course, I supported Grandmother, adding that I had been very scared for the neighbor because Grandmother looked so enraged — for which I was rewarded with a look of pure love and adoration.
During the day, the corridors seemed to fall into a slumber — some were at work, some shopping, some resting before the evening. In the evening, everything sprang into motion, and the corridors turned back into anthills. People scurried both horizontally and vertically. An indescribable scent hung everywhere — a mixture of food, “Red Moscow” perfume, laundry soap, kerosene, and everything that drained into the buckets under the washstands. This smell was “the standard” for the residents, but for guests, it sometimes hit like a physical blow, enough to make them faint!
The fifty-meter corridor was like a catwalk where the ladies demonstrated new outfits. Some would sashay in them toward the toilet; others would stand by the kerosene stove, conjuring dinner in crumpled, greasy robes and worn-out slippers with a big toe peeking out — but wearing a new hat, with painted lips and lined eyes. Someone would walk down the hall loudly asking to borrow a can opener to open a tin of red caviar, claiming their own had gone missing.
On our floor lived a prostitute named Ketino, about twenty-five years old. There was no “kitchen” at the entrance to her room — why would there be? She never quarreled with anyone; she was the loveliest woman, always smelling amazing, and she was unnervingly slender and beautiful. The neighbors left her alone, as she had not only a sharp tongue but could easily start seducing their husbands — and her “rear guard” was as numerous as it was high-ranking! she never brought men to her room, so she didn’t cook, and she always looked respectable — a sort of “Western thing.”
Once, when I was about 12 or 13, she asked me to fix an outlet. She settled into an armchair with her legs up and got lost in a newspaper. I spent over an hour fixing that outlet, and in that time, I appreciated not only her stunning legs but everything else visible under her half-open robe, right up to her neck, because Ketino pretended to have fallen asleep, covering her face with the newspaper. Oh, how I was tempted to touch her firm breast, but I was afraid to wake her. For about a week afterward, I constantly hung around the corridor, hoping Ketino would need something else fixed, but she would pass by as if not noticing me. Only once did she smile and ask quietly: — Did you like my body when I was “asleep”? If you want, stop by; I won’t tell your grandmother.
These words somehow insulted me, and I tried to avoid her after that. A couple of years later, she moved away to a private apartment.
The male half of the building took no part in this “clucking hen-house.” The older generation, split by interests, sat like moles in their rooms with beer and dried fish, chess, checkers, backgammon, or in front of the magnifying lenses of “Rekord” TV sets. The middle, “mature” generation gathered in the yard at a large wooden table polished by elbows, where the spicy details of “personal victories” were discussed before a game of Preference “charged up” until late at night. The younger, “immature” crowd sat nearby in silence, proud of their involvement. As for the little kids — they just fooled around, racing like mad across the large yard or quietly hanging out behind the sheds, of which there were also sixty-two — one for every family.
Friends
What could be better than sliding down the stairs like a whirlwind, casting aside all conventions, obligations, and the moralizing guardianship of adults, to find yourself on the street? There, among those just like you — so identical yet so different. The imagination of a childhood pack, huddled together, sometimes takes on such bizarre shapes as no single child could ever conceive!
There were five of us, all the same age. A Georgian, an Armenian, a Ukrainian, and two Russians — but who noticed? Who even cared? It made no difference who was who.
Boris lived with his mother; he was large, a head taller than the rest of us, level-headed, slow, and a bit haughty. His mother worked and wasn’t afraid to leave him home alone. His father — a Candidate of Sciences — lived in Moscow, though with another family.
Yura was “crushed” by the weight of the piano and violin. He hated the ticking of the metronome more than anything and burst out onto the street with such desperation, as if it were his last time. His father was a military musician, a trombonist, who summoned Yura home for his violin-and-piano “Golgotha” with the loud blasts of a bugle. His mother — a petite, blue-eyed, plump nurse with a fine figure — was a charming “kitty” whom any representative of the building’s male population was happy to ask for help on any pretext. And she certainly knew how to “help” like no one else.
Avto was a good-natured, crafty, and desperately mischievous son of the Georgian people, usually seen in a short-sleeved jersey and “Chinetsky” (Chinese) sneakers. His father was also a military musician — the marching trumpet. But how different these fathers were — just like the instruments they played and resembled. His mother — a tall, thin Mingrelian woman — was a literal devil in a skirt. She would chase her prankster son around the yard with a mop, screaming things in Georgian that… (I dare not translate into Russian; in any country, she’d be stripped of her parental rights on the spot). Yet, she would instantly turn from rage to mercy the moment she received her son’s vow that it would never happen again.
Gagik, who left us too early (a heart attack at 40), was proud, intelligent, and even talented — a sort of Armenian Kulibin. He was the only one from my childhood to whose intellect I “tipped my hat,” despite not considering myself a fool. His temperament often ran ahead of the cart; reckless in his actions, he never fully realized his potential, wasting his life on trifles.
And then there was me — independent as a cat, quick as mercury, a ringleader and a dreamer. I was always rushing about with some idea or prank, loving the street to the point of self-oblivion and forgetting everything else while there.
I won’t bore the patient reader with tales of standard courtyard pastimes — of lapta, Cossacks and Robbers, pulling girls’ hair, or strutting around the yard with enormous cheese sandwiches like a messiah, letting each of my buddies take a bite. Many had that to some degree. Instead, I’ll tell you about the things not everyone experienced — things that played a significant role in my later life and forged the character I have today.
Mischief is an innocent act as long as it doesn’t strike the nervous systems of those around them or throw them out of balance. But the pranks Avto and I pulled could drive anyone mad. Those stunts, of course, were only possible in our communal house.
I’ll describe a few. They often had “code names” and were repeated periodically, which didn’t just rattle the residents but sometimes led to the police being called.
For instance, “The Knots.” The name of this outrage sounds harmless, but the consequences for some were serious. As I wrote before, the house had a corridor system with doors opening inward. By agreement, at a pre-set early hour, we would slip out of our rooms — the excuse was simple: going to the toilet. We’d head to the top floor and, using thick clotheslines we’d prepared in advance, tie the handles of opposing doors together. Having tied them all, we’d instantly dash back.
Imagine the indignant cries of the residents when they couldn’t leave their rooms to wash up or cook breakfast — not to mention getting to work. And it wasn’t just one apartment; it was all fifteen (the last one was tied to the toilet door). After much cursing — both in chorus and solo — and threats and pleas to be let out, they had to call for help from the neighbors living below. Through windows and balconies, they’d try to explain the idiocy of the situation. The neighbors below, of course, couldn’t even fathom the cause of this “collective madness” on the top floor. Some advised them not to go to work; others laughed hysterically at the sheer comedy of it.
We caught hell for it — I, more than the others. Of course, the punishment wasn’t distributed equally. While Avto would never, under any circumstances, admit to anything, I was accustomed to telling the truth and knew I had to answer for my actions. I stoically endured punishments that were far from humane.
There were many such pranks. “Fishing” — sitting on the sheds, we competed to see who could catch more of the chickens running around the yard. We used a large hook and a “snagging” technique when they pecked at the grain bait. “The Castling” — when we swapped pots of simmering dinner with a neighbor’s pot from… a different floor. The results were completely unpredictable, ranging from laughter and tears to… physical altercations. And the small things: pouring water into matchboxes or adding… kerosene to the washbasins.
As they say, a drop of water hollows a stone. When we caught about ten cats, tied tin cans with smoke bombs inside to their tails, and released them into the corridor, the patience of the house finally snapped. Maddened by the clattering cans and the thick, acrid smoke, the cats tore through the hall like possessed demons, shrieking heart-wrenchingly, knocking over everything in their path, and scratching the petrified housewives who hadn’t managed to dodge them.
At an emergency meeting of the residents with a representative from the local police, “the defense” was denied a voice for their permissiveness and unsatisfactory upbringing. It was decreed: send the hooligans to BOARDING SCHOOL! And so, they sent us! Avto went to a Georgian one located just behind our courtyard fence (now the Institute of Foreign Languages), and I was sent to a Russian one — Boarding School No. 4, which later became the Komarov Physics and Mathematics School.
The Boarding School
To know what Hell is, one must go there; but having arrived, it is impossible to speak of it, for no one returns from there. The difference between Hell and a boarding school or orphanage is that from the latter, there is a literal “path to the temple” back. And while from a boarding school that path physically exists, for an orphanage, much depends on the State and on people.
The traumatic and deforming effect of a boarding school on a child’s psyche can hardly be overstated. Even an orphanage — with rare exceptions — does not exert such an oppressive, depressive influence as a boarding school. Within its walls, a child’s mind is thrust into two completely opposite states. One moment, you feel the essential sense of security, the closeness of loved ones, the familiar surroundings, the feeling of belonging — if not total adoration, then at least being needed. When you lie in your “own” bed on weekends, your whole being feels the peace emanating from the parental aura. The next moment, you are thrown into an agonizing psychic pain, a state of prostration where a child’s unformed psyche is mangled by a sense of being unwanted, by detachment, by a cold, almost surreal herd mentality, by a lack of understanding, and sometimes by sheer cruelty from both peers and adults. You live with an all-consuming yearning for the weekend, your eyes constantly fixed on the road leading either to heaven or out of hell, where those long-awaited, familiar faces might appear at any moment.
When you lie in your “school” bed at the boarding school, infinitely lonely, covering your head with the blanket, you begin to choke on tearful self-pity. In those moments, for just one touch of a warm mother’s hand, you would forgive everything in the world. As you slowly drift off, your psyche allows you to relax a little and recharge with positive emotions, for only in dreams do these daytime longings turn into the “reality” of sleep. But in the morning… it’s back to the struggle.
In our second-grade class, there were over twenty of us. Some were pure “orphanage kids” — no one picked them up on weekends. The others were “boarding kids” who went home for the weekend. Consequently, two factions formed. One was the orphanage group — tightly knit because they had known each other since infancy, cruel, embittered against the “mamma’s boys,” with a rigid hierarchy and laws resembling those of convicts. The second group consisted of the boarding kids — plucked from warm family nests and tossed into a hostile “nowhere,” fragmented, bewildered, with eyes red from frequent crying, reflecting only one question: — What for?
If during lessons things were somewhat tolerable, the real horror began in the evenings. When we were in the dormitory and the supervisors (who deserve a story of their own) were not around, the “upbringing” began — a process that I believe left a mark on many for life. The orphanage group would choose one boy from the other camp — usually the largest and strongest, so the others wouldn’t dare “act up” — and begin to “break” him. The bullying was terrifying in its cruelty and sophistication. Most importantly, it was relentless, as children possess no internal brakes.
There was a boy in our class named Tolik, whose leg had been amputated below the knee. There was also a rather large eight-year-old boarding boy whom the orphanage group chose as their target. For five nights, as soon as he fell asleep, they would wake him by thrusting Tolik’s stump into his face. After two days, he started wetting himself; on the fifth night, he had a seizure. An ambulance took him away, and we never saw him again. Remember, these were children of eight or nine! This event so demoralized the boarding kids that for a month, they were completely broken. The orphanage kids simply robbed them, and the defiant ones were beaten mercilessly — sometimes openly by the pack, sometimes at night under a blanket (the “dark treatment”). Everything was taken: from food brought from home to clothes and shoes, which the orphanage kids would wear all week, only returning them on Saturday before the boarding kid went home, so the parents wouldn’t notice.
Any flaw in appearance, behavior, health, or speech was mocked cruelly. Almost everyone had nicknames — no one knew who gave them or why, but they were almost all humiliating: “Rusty Doggy” (an orphanage boy from Ochamchira, my only close friend there, with whom I kept in touch for eight years after), “Booger-Man,” “Snot,” “Pisser,” and so on. Theft — especially of dried bread from a bedside table — was punished mercilessly, regardless of who you were!
My “Colonel’s upbringing” eventually made itself known. Over time, I rallied the boarding kids, and we put up a decent fight. The bullying stopped. A special recognition of my role in this “truce” was that neither side gave me a humiliating nickname. My “own” called me by my name, and the “others” — a title I was very proud of — called me Professor, because I often told stories at night by Edgar Allan Poe, Chesterton, and even occasionally Émile Zola, whom I read at home in secret on weekends.
I remember the mass vaccinations and the arrival of the dentists. While the former would leave you alone after the shot, the latter — arriving once a year and seemingly fulfilling a quota for teeth — wouldn’t stop at just one or two extractions. Many children walked around with numerous gaps in their mouths.
Once, my ear began to ache. The doctor looked at it and said it would pass. But the ear was throbbing mercilessly, and the pain was unbearable. I was allowed to stay in the dormitory and skip lessons. I lay there in agony for two days. The doctor never returned. Only Lyonya (“Rusty Doggy”) stayed by my side, constantly changing the cold compresses on my aching ear. On the second night, I ran away and showed up at home at five in the morning. It turned out to be middle ear inflammation; I was treated with penicillin shots every four hours and warm compresses. The inflammation was cured, but my right ear was left with permanent hearing loss.
The food and clothing were poor, especially evident on the orphanage kids. They were constantly hungry, and many wore whatever they could find. Because of this, the retired colonel director often caught “hell” from my grandfather. My grandfather did a lot of good for the school — for example, he forced the firing of two typical sadist-supervisors who delighted in tormenting children, reveling in their own impunity. One night supervisor named Beno was particularly vicious. He always carried a cornel-wood switch, which stung worse than any whip. For the slightest infraction after lights out in the dormitory (ours was on the third floor), Beno would march all the children down to the first floor, line them up in the corridor, and make them do squats — a hundred or more, depending on the prank. Those who couldn’t do it were left with bloody welts; the skin on their thighs would burst from the switch’s blow. Beno would then “caringly” and generously smear the wounds with iodine. If a child complained to the management, Beno wasn’t fired — his meager salary was likely compensated by his sadistic pleasure — but the punishment for the child was swift: a night in the “cellar” — a damp, empty basement with no light. Admittedly, only the orphanage kids were subjected to this particular torture, as the boarding kids might tell their parents.
There were also cases of girls being raped — again, usually the orphanage girls. I only knew of this through stories; the perpetrators were both older boys and supervisors. It was never brought into the open. Strangely, the girls would sometimes boast about it, showing off their “adulthood” by sharing scandalous details.
Our favorite activity was helping to unload the bread truck, after which two or three warm, delicious-smelling loaves would go “missing.” Our interest in unloading would vanish instantly, and the pack would head to the vegetable cellar in the basement of the separate canteen building. Under a heavy, metal-clad lid was a chute where vegetables were unloaded directly from trucks. Two boys would stand watch at the corners, several others would lift the lid, and one would slide down the chute. He would return with onions tucked into his shirt. Hiding in some secluded spot, the feast would begin. To this day, I cannot eat raw onions at all!
Once, I was running down the school corridor with other children and collided with the head of studies. She was apparently in a bad mood; she caught me by the arm and — as a lesson to everyone — she took off my Pioneer tie. It was a massive blow to me. I was terribly distressed, waiting for her to call me and return it, but she simply forgot. Seeing my suffering, my grandmother offered to let me wear another one, but I told her: — You don’t understand, they TOOK it from me!
I constantly tried to cross the head of studies’ path, but she never returned it. Six months passed, the school year ended, and as we were heading home, I gathered the courage to approach her and ask for my tie. She thought about it for a long time, then went to a cupboard and pulled out my silk red tie, now covered in ink stains.
I never wore a tie again after that, and I never joined the Komsomol. Even then, in the third grade, I realized what a patriotic sham it all was.
Many things happened during those two years in the boarding school, and they had a profound influence on the formation of my character. Perhaps my ability to make independent decisions, to distinguish between good and evil, my maximalism, my ability to value friendship and hate betrayal, sycophancy, and theft — as well as my ability to live without idols and a certain recklessness — all have their roots in that boarding school.
I have had to endure much in life because of my inflexible and maximalist character, and I am still enduring it today.
School
Everything passes, and the boarding school was now behind me! Fourth grade, Secondary School No. 56. Pairs of students in the schoolyard. I was paired with Stepa Kabadzhan. Destined, perhaps! Stepa was the first person whose hand I took after the boarding school, and I was the last person who failed to realize he needed a friendly hand before his voluntary departure from this life during our fifth year of institute. That affected me so deeply that ever since, in the eyes of anyone needing help, I see Stepik.
In school, I gave him the nickname “Hurvínek.” Older people probably remember the cartoons about Hurvínek, who played the violin. Stepik played the violin too, and like Hurvínek, he had bulging eyes due to intracranial pressure that tormented him throughout his short life. We sat together at the same desk, often playing blindfolded chess during lessons. Stepik was a brilliant chess player and would whisper the positions of the pieces to me when I forgot. We even studied at the same institute, though in different groups. We met often; I wouldn’t say we were close friends — we were very different, and I don’t think Stepik had any true friends due to his somewhat strange and withdrawn nature. But our shared school years allowed us to have a wonderful time whenever student life brought us together.