"Idiots!" Eddie thinks. If somebody's different from the rest of Saltovka society, from all these Auntie Marusyas and Uncle Sashas, then he's immediately declared a madman or a sectarian. But Eddie knows that Borka's not a sectarian – he's a yogi; he has no stomach at all, and he can pull his stomach back to his spine. Borka is a yogi, and Eddie has read about yogis.
7
Eddie-baby leaps from Borka to his own personality. After putting away his trousers, he gets a jar of potato salad out of the large net bag hanging from the transom window in the cool November air – a Saltovkan refrigerator, 1958 model – and not bothering to put it on a plate, starts eating the salad directly from the jar, that being faster.
Everybody thinks that he, Eddie, isn't normal either, as Asya has told him. "Everybody" doesn't mean Kadik or Asya or Borka Churilov, but it does mean Red Sanya, since he's also of the opinion that Eddie-baby isn't normal. "Why not?" Eddie wonders.
Well, in the first place, Eddie writes poetry, and Red Sanya says that he's a second Yesenin. Several girls in Secondary School No.8 also write poetry, but Eddie writes the kind of poetry that people remember and enjoy. Last summer he recited his poetry to a crowd at the beach, and they greeted it with delight. After his recitation a bearded man in red trunks came up to him and asked if he might talk to him for a moment.
Sitting with Eddie in the shade under an umbrella and treating him to some wine from a flask – it was a dry wine of good quality, like the wine at Asya's house – the bearded man said that Eddie was a talented fellow and ought to study. The man provided Eddie with the address of a Kharkov poet named Revolt Bunchukov and told Eddie not to fail to go to Bunchukov's poetry workshop, since they could teach him a lot there.
"Hey, Ed! Ed!" Sanya started yelling.
The Saltovka punks always come to the beach in groups of no less than fifty, just in case there's an attack by the Zhuravlyovka punks. At the time in question, they were all spread out under the bushes swilling vodka. Sanya, of course, was ensconced in state, a looming Goering-like presence sitting in the shade with his towel wrapped around his head turban-style, since he's sensitive to the sun. That's because he's got the boiled-lobster skin of a German.
"Hey, Ed!" all the kids started shouting now.
"You seem to be a popular figure with them," grinned the bearded man. "Their own poet. Go, go," he said, "I wouldn't think of keeping you from them. But all the same, drop by and see Bunchukov. You need to develop, you need new, more intellectual friends. With these" – and the bearded man tipped his head in the direction of the Saltovka punks – "you won't get very far."
Eddie left him, putting the piece of paper with Bunchukov's address on it in the pocket of his trunks, but in his mind condemning the bearded man and taking offense on behalf of the Saltovka kids. "That bearded asshole. The Saltovka kids are good kids – friendly, and a lot more interesting than anybody from Tyurenka."
Eddie eats the potato salad – he likes any food containing meat, and it has meat in it – and thinks, "How come they've all started saying, 'You're not that kind, you're different'? First the bearded guy last summer, and then Asya, and Slavka the Gypsy, and Borka Churilov, and…" The most ridiculous part of all is that even Captain Zilberman told him he was special, that he wasn't like the other kids.
"Eduard," the captain tried to convince him the last time Eddie was in his office, "stop hanging out with the punks; they're all on their way to the same place – prison. And I'll admit I'm not the least bit sorry for them," Zilberman said seriously and decisively, "but you, Eduard, will ruin yourself if you don't stop. Give up the thieving – I know you and Kostya Bondarenko have a gang!" Zilberman suddenly announced, looking at Eddie with one of his penetrating gazes, or at least with a gaze he thought was penetrating, since in fact all he did was to widen his brown eyes in a ridiculous way.
Eddie-baby didn't answer him. Let Zilberman say whatever he wants.
"After all, you're an intelligent fellow, Eduard. Stop before it's too late," the captain continued. "Your mother says you want to quit school. Don't do it, it would be the stupidest thing you could do, with consequences that would last your whole life. Finish school and you can go to the Gorky Institute in Moscow and become a professional poet. You have the ability; all you need to do is study."
Eddie didn't say anything. He was watching a fly try to fuck another fly, although the second obviously didn't want to be fucked by the first and kept flying away with an annoyed buzzing.
Following Eddie-baby's gaze with his own, Zilberman shook his head and went on.
"Look at me!" Zilberman said, putting his little foot in its high militia officer's boot on the chair and rocking it.
Eddie-baby looked at the diminutive Zilberman with a smile.
"I'm already an old man," Zilberman continued, "and even so I keep working to improve myself," and he pointed to a bundle of magazines on his desk. "I read Polish magazines. And why? Because I am interested in life and in culture…"
8
"Yes," Eddie thinks, "there isn't that much in common between Captain Zilberman and the moocher Slavka the Gypsy, but they say the same thing, word for word." It seems to Eddie-baby too that he's a little different from the other Saltovka kids, or rather it seems to him that until his fight with Yurka Obeyuk he was very unlike, very different from the other kids. He's still different, but not so much now.
Of course, Eddie reasons, the fact that he sees the madwoman Tonka naked in his dreams is substantial proof in favor of his being crazy. Very, very substantial proof. And you wouldn't call the fact that he masturbates all the time a normal phenomenon either. Eddie-baby is ashamed to recall his private secrets, to recall the stuck-together yellowed sheets of calendar paper. But besides that, there's another thing that inclines Eddie in favor of the conclusion that he's abnormal and a freak. And that is that Eddie-baby has never in his life gotten laid. He's not a man but a boy.
Naturally, none of the kids know that he's never been laid, or else they'd laugh at him. To hear them talk, all the Saltovka kids have been laid, but sometimes it seems to Eddie-baby that Vitka Golovashov, for example, has never been laid either and is just too embarrassed to admit it. The one in their class who has been laid the most is Borka Khrushkov, but then he's two years older than the other kids and has been shaving for some time. Borka is a swimmer and a regional champion – if he weren't, he would have been kicked out of school a long time ago, since he's such a lousy student. The girls, however, like Borka because he's famous: his picture is in the regional newspapers year-round, and once it was even published in Kiev in Ukrainian Pravda.
Having eaten the salad, Eddie returns to the balcony for his shoes and his yellow jacket. As he gets dressed, he sadly ponders the fact that all the kids think that he and Svetka are fucking each other, whereas in fact they aren't. All they do is kiss and feel each other up. Eddie has tried several times to take Svetka's panties off, but she won't let him – she's scared. Svetka tells Eddie-baby that she's never been laid, and Eddie hides from Svetka the fact that he's still not a man. Actually, fat Adam from Svetka's building maintains that Svetka has been getting laid for a long time now, and that the fool Eddie just doesn't realize it. But Eddie doesn't believe Adam, since Adam used to go with Svetka until she broke up with him because he was so boring.
Once Eddie got Svetka drunk on purpose in order to "hump" her, as the kids say. The very drunk Svetka almost threw up all over the bed at Sashka Tishchenko's parents' house, where they had gone for a party. Eddie-baby just managed to push her head off the bed in the direction of the floor so she wouldn't vomit all over Sashka's parents' bed. When Svetka finished throwing up, Eddie-baby had to bring a basin of water into the bedroom to clean up the floor, since Svetka had vomited all over it. She couldn't even get up to help him and only moaned whenever Eddie-baby started swearing at her.