I heard – Dora, our neighbor had spoken about it – that the Greeks appeared in our parts in the fifties, after the military junta staged a coup in Greece and the “Regime of the Colonels” dictatorship was established. Democrats and especially communists were persecuted, and many of them emigrated. Some of those Greeks found refuge in Central Asia. “We have a wonderful country,” I thought proudly when I learned about it. “We give refuge to the persecuted. The Koreans also settled here.”
But lately, different thoughts, strange and uneasy, had cropped up. This was the second year that Greeks had begun to leave their homes of many years and return to their homeland. Our Dora, for example, had left. My schoolmates, including Dima, also spoke about it. I wanted very much to ask, why? What made them leave for a capitalist country? It was so good in our country. Besides, they had been born here, they had become Soviet children.
But even more surprising was that the Greeks were allowed to leave. They made preparations for their departure without concealing it, telling everybody about it. And people didn’t become indignant about it; they sympathized with them. But why did people look maliciously at the Jews who wanted to leave? Friends shunned those who wanted to leave. Acquaintances stopped visiting them. Someone might call them traitors, Zionists. My relatives uttered the word “Israel” only in a whisper, and if they planned to leave, they kept it secret. Yura’s grandfather Gavriel had left recently. Only a very small group of people had known about it up until the day of his departure.
I myself thought it was a shame to leave, but Greek boys weren’t at all ashamed of it. Why?
I certainly didn’t ask any questions, I was embarrassed, but it was a pity that such nice, cheerful boys might leave our class.
So, it was Dima Malatos, the nice cheerful boy, who agreed to carry out the “experiment.” It didn’t cross our minds that it was cruel and dangerous.
One of us had filled caramels in his briefcase. They were given to Dima, along with the white pills, and he went to the restroom to replace the filling. Then our gang burst into the classroom. The bell rang, but Margarita Vasilyevna hadn’t yet shown up. There was, as always before a class started, a noisy crush in the classroom, and no one paid attention to our gang. At last, Dima appeared, ambling slowly. He had a small paper bag in his hands, and he was sucking on a caramel. He took his seat at the back of the classroom, not far from Irena Umerova, threw his briefcase on the desk and smiled broadly at Irena.
“Do you want a candy? Help yourself.”
Irena Umerova. There wasn’t a single boy, and not only in our class, who didn’t follow Irena with his eyes when she walked down the corridor. Some gazes were delighted, some simply hungry, undressing her. Irena knew that perfectly well. She was pretty, really pretty, and not vulgar. She had a wonderful figure with all the feminine attributes, and she refused to conceal it. If not for the school rules, Irena would have come to school in a bathing suit. But her dress was very much like a bathing suit – short and hugging her fantastic round breasts. We had already become experts: we scrutinized any pictures with images of naked women – either clipping them from foreign magazines secretly passed around or studying reproductions of paintings by great artists. But even Raphael hadn’t managed to portray breasts like Irena’s. Understandably, Irena had always had admirers, often in abundance. Timirshayev and Shalighin once got into a fight over her. Neither of them was in our class any longer, but Irena didn’t grieve – others turned up.
Irena smiled at jolly Dima, said “thank you” and picked out a couple of caramels. Our second “star,” bespectacled Larisa Kadushkina, was also treated to candies, as well as Natasha Kistanova and someone else.
Margarita Vasilyevna began the lesson with an explanation of the new material. She ran the pointer over a large sheet of paper attached to the blackboard depicting a liver as she spoke about it. I didn’t attempt to hear exactly what she was saying, like all the participants in the experiment. Liver was the last thing on our minds. We were watching our “guinea pigs.”
The first evidence of the effect of the drug manifested itself by the middle of the class. Irena became anxious. She fidgeted in her seat, changed position, rubbed one knee against the other. Finally, she raised her hand:
“Margarita Vasilyevna, may I go out?”
Margarita Vasilyevna shook her head – “Wait a bit, I’m still explaining.” Only a minute passed before Irena rushed out of the classroom.
Natasha Kistanova raised her hand a bit later.
Now, the most difficult thing was to keep from laughing. Dima Malatos couldn’t stand it any long – he leaned heavily on his desk and buried his face in the crook of his arm.
Zulya was the third to raise her hand. Her face was red, and she looked scared.
“Are you trying to disrupt my class?” Margarita Vasilyevna asked in surprise.
The girls hadn’t returned to the classroom by the time class was over.
We later learned that, fortunately, none of them had gotten sick: they just had a minor allergic reaction.
Now, I am trying to understand: am I ashamed to remember that? I am, a bit, but, for some reason, not much. That was the way we were. Nothing could be done about it.
I remember one thing very welclass="underline" when Dima was giving away caramels, I suddenly panicked – what if Larisa took one? “I won’t allow it,” I thought. “If she does, I’ll take it away from her.”
Chapter 55. “Child in Time” and Children of Our Time
The drums and bass guitar were the first to begin. They slowly sketched out the sad tune of a song, along with the organ. The organ was electric, attaching significance and depth to the tune.
More electric instruments used in rock music had appeared in recent years. Their new timbres and unusual sounds captivated us. And synthesizers! It was amazing what they combined into a common sound stream – voices, laughter, dogs barking, the hum of a flying helicopter. All that was interwoven into a tune and was punctuated by a rhythm – and the music gained new charm.
The tune flew and expanded. Here the voice of a singer became a part of it. What was he pleading for? What was he longing for? What was he complaining about? It really touched our hearts.
We were listening to the English rock band Deep Purple. We knew the title of the song, but we weren’t sure how to translate it into Russian: was it “Child in Time” or “The Child of Time?” We didn’t understand the meaning of the expression at that time. We had never heard it before, which was why it seemed mysterious, mystical. However, the more mysterious it was, the more interesting.
We were listening to Deep Purple at Andrey Baidibekov’s house, at his birthday party. We were five, not counting Andrey. He had appeared in our class this school year and very soon became everybody’s favorite. He wasn’t tall, rather thickset, with narrow eyes in a round face. I liked him a lot.
When Baidibekov listened to someone or simply looked over something, squinting his eyes, he looked very profound and serious. But he had only to laugh, and the narrow slits turned into wide-open hazel eyes, his eyebrows flew up to touch his black hair, thick, elastic and stiff, and his whole face became wonderfully artless and merry.
I felt very calm and safe next to Andrey. It seemed to me that our personalities had much in common. In a word, we became friends right away.