Yuri Druzhnikov
Passport to Yesterday
Chapter 10. Up and Down
"I'm ter-r-ribly sorry, but is this rock vacant?"
Oleg nodded his head and waved him down beside him.
The heavy-set young man in very dark glasses waved his hand to two pretty girls waiting for him up the hill. They walked down, carelessly nodding their heads to Oleg, stripping off their teeshirts, and their billboard-beauty-buxom bodies in their bright swimsuits—with cutouts in front all the way down to their belly-buttons, and cutouts up the side all the way from their hips to their armpits—really did bring something to their secluded beach. The girls put their things in the shade of the huge rock and parked themselves on top of it.
"We're something like half-acquainted already," the young man spoke up, stowing his swim-fins and transistor radio in the shade, out of which poured some rhythmic melody. "Half, or a quarter. This is just a trifle. We probably met in some post office or café. As I recall it now, you were with some interesting woman of a very imported-looking appearance, just old enough, which really suited her—don't deny it!"
"That's my wife," he babbled.
"Right. Then you've made out all right in life. But where is she now?"
"She got a bit sunburned and stayed behind at the hostel. My name is Oleg, Oleg Nemets."
"Nemets—The German! Wonderful! But the way you talk doesn't sound German, it sounds American," the young man chuckled. "Right to a T, just like my Aunt Musya, who came back last week from Brighton Beach. Am I right?"
"It's possible," Oleg grinned. "I live in San Francisco."
"There you go!" said the newcomer, satisfied with his acumen. "And I'm Borya, Borya from Odessa. I'm finishing up at the foreign languages department, and I can smell a foreign accent a mile away, even though I haven't yet made it to any promised land. I'm Borya, and these girls are seriously in love with me. They've been in love with me the whole week already."
The girls barely perceptibly smiled. Evidently they had gotten used to Borya's garrulity over the week.
"What do you do, Oleg, if it's not a secret? Big business?"
"Not quite. I saw away at the fiddle."
"Wow! A soloist, or …"
"No, no, I just play in the orchestra …"
"Have you come here for long?"
"For five days following our tour: my wife got overcome by nostalgia. She used to come here with her parents for holidays as a child. And I was here as a little guy myself once … Now here I am, warming my stiff back, since I haven't got anything else to do."
Now they were lying flat, although on different rocks, the four of them face to face, forming sort of a crooked cross. These hot rocks were in the Crimea, at Snake Bay, not very far from Koktebel village, situated according to the great writers Ilf and Petrov on the shores of the Eks Sea. From time to time, Oleg would chuck pebbles into the water, without looking. Borya set a package of plums down in front of himself.
"Eat some, Oleg, don't be shy. They've been thoroughly washed, and they'll slake your thirst …"
If you didn't know it already, it's a particular crowd that sunbathes and swims at Snake Bay, to this very day. You have to swim into it, or, if the sea is calm, clamber around to it on ledges in water up to your knees, feeling your way over the stones with your bare feet. Entrance into it, a nature reserve, was forbidden. But there weren't any watchmen there, and if any appeared, you'd just have to slip a certain amount of money, entirely modest, into their palm, and the forbidden would become the permissible.
There isn't any kind of attraction at Snake Bay, if you don't take into account hunting for pretty stones—chalcedony and cornelian. They have almost all been found and sold, however. Among its pleasures remain plums and, for some people, deep-cut swimsuits. In this quiet, miniature harbor, fenced off from the world by its perpendicular cliffs and the sea, it is pleasant to experience a temporary independence from the rest of mankind, spitting out plum seeds.
It wasn't boring around Borya. A vivacious energy spilled out of his tanned, stocky figure, with its evident excess of cholesterol. He acted like he was indifferent to everything, as if he'd already gotten what he wanted out of life. But he did it in a jolly sort of way. He joked breezily, without either descending too deeply into vulgarity or rising to any subject that was too lofty. The number of Odessa jokes in his repertoire was inexhaustible. When it got unbearably hot he would put on his swim fins, plop into the water, and lazily swim in a rather fine breast-stroke, overtaking his girlfriends without any difficulty. Their squeals were enough to bring patriarchal thoughts to mind, making Borya feel magnanimous. Then he would once more stretch out like a seal on the rocks, and if he felt like saying something, would completely by accident touch one of the girls lightly on the neck or arm.
No one had noticed where the two puny boys of around fourteen had come from to get to the beach. They appeared alongside and stealthily looked at the girls, who weren't any less than three years older than they were. As was said already, that was indeed something to look at. The boys exchanged a word or two from time to time, but then suddenly started arguing. Slapping each other on the back, they both jumped up.
Now the two gamecocks would start fighting, thought Oleg. But one of them turned back, passing very close to the girls, staring right where he shouldn't, then flattened himself against the wall of the cliff looming over the beach, not five paces from Oleg, and started feeling around for a handhold. Then he grabbed on to a ledge, hauled himself over it, and started clambering up the cliff.
Borya and the girls had meanwhile crawled down from their rocks into the blue water, since it had gotten unbearably hot. They splashed around a bit in the caressing waves in the shallows, playing with the seaweed, swam around for a while, and came back, sprinkling Oleg with cool drops of water. The girls lay down on their stones, and Borya looked them over like a bull seal surveying his harem.
Afraid of getting too hot, Oleg went for a swim as well, and coming ashore, lay down in his old place to get dry. He turned his head, and his eyes ran up the cliff, measuring its height. The boy had gotten to nearly fifteen meters from the ground. This was getting the attention of everyone in tiny Snake Bay. Everyone, nothing else to do, was looking at the figure clambering up the vertical cliff.
Rummaging his hand around in his bag, Oleg pulled out a bottle of mineral water, some paper cups, gum, and cookies in a pretty package—everything that his wife had packed him—and offered them to his neighbors. The girls interestedly turned the packages over in front of their eyes, but drank only the water. Oleg chewed on a plum, spat the seed out into the surf. Everyone kept their eyes on the boy. He was speedily and confidently clambering up the slope, latching on to ledges and bushes invisible from the ground, step by step getting higher and higher. It wasn't that difficult to climb upwards, thought Oleg. Your feet found their footholds by themselves. When you're climbing up, you can see the bottomless sky in front of you, and it's pleasant to overcome earthly gravity.
"Hey, look, look!" the girls gasped with delight when the boy suddenly hung by his hands alone, shifting from one ledge to another.
It was obvious that it was for the sake of that exclamation, and not at all because of the bet with his friend, that the kid was climbing the cliff.
Oleg stood up, formed his hands into a megaphone, and shouted:
"Hey!"
"Hey!" it echoed from higher up, in the ravine.
"Maybe you should quit before it's too late?"
"Late!" answered the echo.
The boy stubbornly shook his head and continued to look only upward.
"Wow, he's really hanging ten!" Borya commented. "He wants to show you, ladies and gentlemen, how purposeful a real superman has to be. But he isn't a superman. He's an ordinary guy … Personally, I'm heading off for another swim, it's getting way too hot. And how he's frying himself up on those scorching rocks doesn't even bear thinking about."
Soon Borya came back out of the water, pulled off his fins, and flopped back down again on his hot-as-a-skillet rock.
Now it was a 20-meter drop from the boy to the ground. How many feet would that be, Oleg stirred his brains with difficulty. He had gotten used to a lot of things in America, but not to their measurements. The 20 meters separating the boy from the ground were nothing in comparison with the hundreds of meters of cliff looming over the sea, but 20 meters below you, coming down, with only rocks beneath you, and the cliff a vertical drop, is altogether too much.
Having reached a little ledge where a half-dried yellow flower was growing, the boy's pride was evidently satisfied. He tore out the flower and threw it down to the girls.
"A cheap trick," Borya commented. "It's not even Women's Day today."
One of the girls picked the flower up and sniffed it.
"There's no smell," she said. "Just dust and nothing else."
"Blow him a kiss," Borya went on. "I just hope he doesn't get it into his head to parachute down from there with some kind of branch in his hand. I'll refrain from any further comment for now."
Only now, after throwing down the flower, did the boy glance downwards to see the result. And when he did, he shrank into himself. He suddenly looked wretched. All his motions came to a halt, and only his eyes looked around, as he clutched tensely with his hands and pressed his stomach against the steep wall; then he suddenly discovered a tiny platform to his left. Scraping slowly along against the cliff, he got to it and sat down sideways, bracing his feet against the narrow cornice.
Borya off-handedly chewed on plums, spitting the seeds as far as possible, in an effort to prove to the girls that the boy hadn't accomplished anything significant. The girls had been snatching the half-dried flower away from each other, then holding it listlessly for a while. Now they began to get nervous. They pressed their slim white fingers with their clumsily-applied nail polish to their breasts and, stretching out their necks, looked up at the cliff, their moist lips half-open. Borya didn't like it that the girls were getting too serious and forgetting about him.
"Behold the courageous hero, dear ones!" Borya intoned this in the accents of a rest-camp counselor, in order to allay the tension, and spit out yet another seed. "Look upon this with the eyes of someone who will be proud of this youthful enthusiast for the rest of your lives. He is following in the footsteps of our Soviet hero-fathers, who never gave heed to anything they did. The child in question also thought with hindquarter-sight, which propelled him up the cliff. Now he has to think with forethought about getting down somehow. Now we'll find out if he has as much before as behind."
The girls wouldn't smile. They seemed not to hear him. They continued to look upwards. Oleg refrained from any comment. He and Borya exchanged glances. What Borya had said was a bit hard, like any other honest truth. But Borya was older and more experienced, to say nothing of Oleg. Borya fell silent, while Oleg was thinking the same thing: he had already burned himself on the fires of this petty ambition, and the kid that was hanging there hadn't, yet.
Everyone who had ever climbed the mountains here, at least even once, knew the tricks that Kara Dag—the Black Mountain—could play on you. The vertical cliffs of the long-extinct volcano disappear into the sea, where they are covered over with seaweed and shellfish. The paths among the heaps of gigantic stones are few, and well marked. It is preferable to go through these passages in a close-knit bunch, since the paths are also at times tracks of human wisdom: wherever there are no paths, you'd better not try clambering about, unless, of course, you have no intention of returning.
The cliffs of Kara-Dag seem unshakeable, almost eternal. But if you grab on to them hard, they sheer off in your hand. If, in an unlucky moment, a piece of stone that you have latched on to in some dangerous place comes away in your hand, you will turn into inert matter of the kind that forms the mountains, the dessicated trees, and the dolphins cast up on the shore. Sometimes you have time to be sorry, and sometimes you don't.
Every year, eight to ten such pseudo-alpinists and want-to-be rock-climbers set off for home in soldered zinc coffins. This is called statistics. The youth in question, ascending to his shining summit, was destined to be among the statistics, most likely. In America, thought Oleg, there was a special rescue service for accidents like this. But what did they have here?
Some people have been lifted to safety by border police helicopters, but that is a long story, especially now, in this slovenly and therefore lazy time for the border service, now that they haven't even got money for vodka, let alone aviation fuel. Besides, they try to lift off the ones who have already made it to the top. Helicopters don't rescue people from the sides of cliffs: they might smash a rotor-blade, and a helicopter without a rotor blade flies like a toilet bowl. So he would have to hang on the cliff for a half-day or even more, until the local authorities could find some rock-climbers. But even this prospect would take some time to realize. They would have to be talked into making a climb when it wasn't sure who was even going to pay for it. It would take hours while they hammered in their pitons, risking themselves in their effort to lower down the aforementioned amateur on a cable. Besides, were any rock-climbers at all to be found? They were probably all off trying to conquer Everest.
Oleg felt that the boy there above had already chased these thoughts around in his head. Most likely he had long since felt like striking no such poses any more. When absolutely nothing pleasant awaits you down below, you just don't feel like throwing shapes. He had calculated the value of the flower torn up and thrown down, and it remained only to regret bitterly what was done and gone. Of course he knew—he couldn't have avoided hearing those stories about people who had perished on Kara-Dag, but theory was conjoining with practice on a level too high above the world's sea level.
The boy was paralyzed, his feet jammed into a small crevice. For some reason, Oleg could feel that the fellow's heels, jammed against the cornice, were starting to sweat. The boy was looking down, not knowing what to do. Whatever he did would turn out badly.
"It's a pity the boy doesn't have wings," said Borya gloomily, tired of keeping quiet. "Too bad he's not a Daedalus, or an Icarus, at least. A set of wings right now would be just the thing for him. But, girls, maybe he is an angel, and he's going to grow some wings?"
Oleg felt out of sorts. It was an ugly state to be in, when, as when you're small, you cover your eyes with your hands, hunker down, and whisper: "I'm not here …"
He had been in a position like that once in his life. More than that, it seemed to Oleg that he had already been in the boy's place, had experienced that state. But, first of all, it had been a long time before, and, secondly, it wasn't quite true.
A year before the war, Oleg had swum into Snake Bay from the neighboring tiny bay, riding on his father's back. His mother had stayed behind, waiting for them on the other side of the cliff. His father was snorting like a walrus and splashing around desperately, because it was hard for him to swim with Oleg on his back, although he would never have let on that that was so. Oleg, unaware of this, spurred his father on with his heels and yelled:
"Faster! Faster!"
If any dolphins had stuck their heads above water nearby (in those days, before the war, they still were unafraid of people), Oleg's father would have tried to persuade him to transfer over to their backs, but Oleg thought that his father was serious about it and was really afraid of it happening.
Later Nemets senior lay under the sun like a fish thrown ashore, his arms flung wide. Oleg, of course, headed straight for the cliff and attempted to latch on to the treacherous rocks, these beckoning ledges, just the way the boy had.
The same way, but not exactly. Because his father had been there with him, dozing but alert. His father lay coddled by the hot sunbeams, but then had suddenly leaped up, sensing the trouble that was coming. He ran to the cliff, stretched as high as he could, and grabbed Oleg by the leg before the boy could take the very step after which climbing further up would have been easy and fast, without any way back.
The son had gotten mad at his father and sulked. The son was demonstrating heroism, and his father had jammed a stick into his spokes. His son wanted to clamber up to the shining summit in his seven-league boots, to overcome fear, to attain his goal, but his parent was cheerlessly pulling him down by his heel. Oleg lay on his rock, offended, while his father intoned:
"If you're going to risk your life, son, you'd better know what for …"
Oleg hadn't understood what his father was saying, at the time. And his father didn't bother explaining, he just flopped into the water and swam off. A year later he had gone off to the front, his life at risk, and had never returned. Well, he hadn't gone, he had been sent—after all, he hadn't had any choice in the matter, everyone was at risk in a total mobilization, so what's the difference? He wasn't any kind of hero, his father, he was a most ordinary victim of circumstance. He was shoved forward to a place from where it was obvious there would be no chance of returning. But, anyway, the wartime meat-grinder ground up people for the sake of defending others, there was no escaping that fact, so there was at least some justification for the risk.
Oleg had been half the size of the kid who was hanging on to the cliff now. What difference did that make, though? All the boys in the world are obliged to repeat all the mistakes in the world. All of them purposefully search as one for some place to commit a mistake. This has happened in all times and epochs, for all people and under all systems, and it would never change. Someone else's experience never taught anyone anything, that is the nature and doom of youth.
"An unpleasant sight," Oleg said, to no one in particular.
"Maybe we should beat it?" Borya suggested. "It's past time to get our snouts in the trough, and we still have to haul ass a long way back to town. Our comrade up there is a dead duck, they're getting his death certificate ready right now at the Registry office, but we've got to get on with it. We're a poor cushion for the guy anyway. Did you notice: his friend, the quick-witted guy, has long since dodged out of harm's way. Why? Maybe he got bored, or felt like dining? Nothing of the kind. It's so he doesn't have to be a witness. What the younger generation has learned to do well is to beat it in good time."
"Help him, guys! How long do we have to sit here and worry?" the girls turned and looked questioningly at the men.
"Hmm. Zat iz a progrezzive idea," Borya shifted to a Georgian accent, jumped up, and struck a pose like an anchorman-acrobat, and looked at Oleg: "A ztrong-man act! You, freynd, untup uff mee. Ze gorls, zey take zeir places un you. Alley-oop! Then what? There we have six meters, while it's twenty and a bit up to the kid."
He lay back down on the rock and continued:
"I've got a counter-proposition. I give up my pen-knife, and the girls cut their bathing suits into strips. They make a rope out of them. They throw him the rope so he can tie it to something and slide down on it. That will be a patriotic deed, Hollywood-style, and moreover an esthetically beautiful spectacle. Oleg, you probably have a photo-camera with you, being the only foreigner here, right?"
Oleg confessed to himself that this cute Borya from Odessa, with all his temporary cynicism, was almost right. Maybe they could struggle the five kilometers through the rocks to the village and there try to organize some help. But that would take three hours at a minimum. The kid wouldn't manage to stay on the narrow ledge that long without budging.
The kid up there did seem rooted to the spot, though. There he sat, biting his lips, holding on with numb fingers to the remains of roots from under which, now and again, clods of dry dirt showered down on the people lying below. Now the entire beach was silent, looking at the boy. He felt their gaze, trying to summon up his will-power, and his despairing "Why did I do it?" came across to everyone eyeing him. Oleg understood him. After all, once you've got yourself into a fix like that, you have only yourself to rely on.
Finally the kid came to a decision. Rising up slightly, he grasped the ledge with both hands, then swung out and hung by his hands, lowering himself one stage down. His foot slipped off the ledge. His fingers trembling with tension, he clung to the rock. He convulsively moved his feet blindly along the cliff, and finally felt another ledge. He didn't look down: below there was nothing cheery to look at.
The boy changed the position of his hands, took a small step, and once again hung by his hands. If the rock sheered off now, it would be the end. In this was the entire cruel kindness of the Black Mountain—Kara-Dag: the cracks in the rocks, blown by winds and washed by rains, are visible from skywards, but when you climb, they're hidden from your eyes. If the Black Mountain wants, it supports you, if it doesn't—the rock gives way.
The beach was silent. Those who had been swimming came back out of the water and quietly lay down on the hot rocks. The kid crawled slowly downwards, sinking his head into his shoulders and freezing after every step. Mortal fear numbed his muscles, wouldn't let him continue his movement. For his preceding fourteen or so years, the boy had been in the charge of many different people, and now he was isolated from all of them. Now he alone was the boss, completely in charge of his own life. Alone, with nobody else. In this rare case his death as well depended on him alone.
The girls had hunched up into little balls, and, leaning back-to-back against each other, were craning their necks upwards, two fragile figures, laughable and helpless in their compassion.
"There is no God," Borya suddenly pronounced. "If he existed, he would have swung down and saved that idiot."
His voice had stopped being ironic and was now gloomy.
The boy had crawled back down half of the way, and now the most difficult part was in store for him. The cliff cut back inwards, and to get any further he would have to overcome gravity in another fashion: with inhuman strength he'd have to get his legs up underneath the ledge. But he didn't have the strength left. From the tension, his speedos had loosened up and his privates were exposed. The girls modestly lowered their eyes, but wouldn't leave the cliffside.
Borya had stopped chewing on the plums. The young Christ who had voluntarily crucified himself on the cliff was spoiling his appetite.
"Shall we try it? Maybe we can catch him?" Oleg failed to hold back, and, forgetting that he had to take care of his hands, he marched up to the cliff.
Borya shook his head negatively. It was as if he were glued to the shore. Oleg got up on the rock, trying to reach up and support the boy's heel with his palm.
The boy was slipping, writhing like a snake, clutching on to god-knows-what, because the cliff at that spot was absolutely smooth. His panting was audible.
Everyone was trying not to look, but their heads rose when the girls gave a terrified squeal. Four meters or so were left when he slipped off after all. He fell off, slightly grazing Oleg's shoulder, and softly smacked into the sand between two sharp rocks, barely avoiding breaking his legs.
The girls ran up to him, grabbing him under his arms. He shook free and stood up by himself. He walked off to one side, lay down on a large rock, hiding his dust-covered, blood-smeared stomach. The puppy was nearly safe and sound.
Sitting on their haunches, the girls let the air out of their cushions, transforming them into bags, and, putting on their sandals, minced over to the cliff, around which they would have to wade to get out of that hellish Snake Bay. After they had disappeared from sight, Borya jumped up:
"What a bore! Well, easy does it! I'm ter-r-ibly sorry … I hope we'll see each other before you leave. I'd like to get your address: never can tell when I'll find myself in San Francisco …"
And he moved off to catch up with the girls who were in love with him. Passing the ragged rock-climber, Borya gave the individual a hefty whack on the back of the neck, and the kid raised his head in surprise. Switching on his transistor radio on the hop, Borya turned up the jazz loud enough for his mother in the city of Odessa to hear.
Nemets decided that he'd stew a little longer at the seaside. This was his last day at Koktebel.
The hero of the day was lying half-alive on his rock. Just to give him some moral support, Oleg winked at the boy, and the latter, surprised, winked back. His arms hung down from the rock like noodles. The blood had dried on his fingernails.
Translated by Thomas Moore
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