Labyrinth

Labyrinth. Right away I want to explain why I chose such a title—Labyrinth! Actually, the full title should sound like this: The Labyrinth of My Memory! Memory is an interesting thing. There you are, lying down and remembering something. At first, everything seems to go normally, one thing follows another, and then, suddenly, you notice that events you had no intention of recalling begin to emerge and overlap in your brain, popping up in your consciousness for some reason and leading you away from your main thought. You try to remember what you wanted to remember (pardon the pun), you want to return to the necessary topic, but you can't remember which one it was, you continue to recall something else completely unrelated to it, and again it's a dead end. That is the "Labyrinth of Memory" through which I am beginning my journey. I lie down more comfortably, close my eyes... and.. off we go....

Do you remember, my potential reader, the trustee of the school district, the monarchist Fyodor Nikitich Khvorobyov, a character in the famous book by Ilf and Petrov, "The Golden Calf"? He really disliked the Soviet regime and very much hoped to escape reality in his dreams. I have no complaints about the Soviet regime, especially since, fortunately, it no longer exists, but the present day doesn't bring me much joy either. On television, there are those sickening talk shows, where infuriated TV hosts and the exact same so-called experts foam at the mouth trying to prove to us that everyone in the world is a scumbag and an idiot, and that Western enemies want to destroy the great, "fluffy and innocent" Russia, and eradicate the people to the root. Well, how much longer can we listen to this, gentlemen? I'm tired of it!!! Therefore, like Khvorobyov, I want something pacifying, something soothing. But unlike the school district trustee, I don't dream of seeing the extreme right-wing deputy of the State Duma, Mr. Purishkevich, in my sleep (I get enough of seeing our contemporary "monarchist" Mr. Zhirinovsky and his ilk in real life), or the Tsar's exit from the Assumption Cathedral (whom the communists executed without a second thought). However, I cannot order dreams like movies on a computer, so all that remains is to indulge in memories of the past, to rummage through the dark corners of my "senile" memory, which is exactly what I do before surrendering myself to the power of Morpheus. Ah, how poetic, isn't it? Well, let us begin, however!

To be honest, I myself don't know why I started writing and, most importantly, I have no idea what I want to remember or what I want to talk about. At first, I planned to tell the story of "my beloved self," but then I realized that besides myself, this wouldn't be interesting to anyone. I am not a world-renowned scientist, nor a genius mathematician, not even an actor, and by and large, the story of my life wouldn't interest anyone. Therefore, I decided that I should describe the historical period in which I lived (and continue to live!), and which is, one way or another, connected with my unremarkable life.

And so, let us begin rummaging through the corners of my memory. I suppose I will start with the intrauterine period of my existence. It happened at the very beginning of 1953 when I, as an embryo, was serenely developing in my mother's womb, so in "my memories" of this period, I will rely exclusively on the stories of my father, Leon Ezrovich Lebelzon, who worked as a surgeon in the hospital of the village of Zgurita in the Moldavian SSR, where my family lived.

During that "bright" period, the "righteous anger of the Soviet people against the Zionist doctor-poisoners" was raging in the USSR, and my dad, by both his nationality and profession, fell exactly under this "anger." Well, things like that happen. And as luck would have it, the wife of the district military commissar got a stomachache and, naturally, she turned to the local hospital for medical help. It was evening, and after examining the patient, my father informed the husband that his wife had appendicitis and needed to be operated on. The furious military commissar did not believe the surgeon; bringing down all his "righteous anger" upon my dad's head, he accused him of Zionism and a desire to harm the wife of a responsible party and military figure of the district, demanding that a surgeon be called from the nearest city of Soroca, located 30 km from our village. My father did not resist, he called the city hospital and requested a consultant. A few hours later, the surgeon arrived. It turned out to be an old friend of his, a man named Rothshuld, with whom he had studied at the medical university in the Romanian city of Iasi. After examining the patient, he asked in bewilderment:

— Leon, what the hell? Why did you call me at night for a banal appendicitis?
Upon receiving the explanation, he shook his head.

— No, Lonchu! Considering my "proletarian" origins, just like yours, I will not operate on the military commissar's wife either. We need to call a surgeon from the capital.
Having informed the husband of their decision, they called Kishinev and requested a specialist. It was winter, with snowdrifts and impassable roads, and the distance was substantial, so the capital's consultant only arrived in the morning. By the will of fate, it turned out to be their mutual friend, a man named Jacobson, with whom they had graduated from the aforementioned university. The military commissar went mad. Not only were the doctors Jewish by nationality, with surnames he couldn't even repeat, and against whom the entire country was fighting, but they had also studied abroad! And they were supposed to operate on his wife? Never! But there was nowhere else to call consultants from. The friends held a council of war.

— Guys! — Rothshuld said, — the patient already has signs of peritonitis and we have no time. Who is going to operate?

— I have two children, — Jacobson firmly stated, — I don't intend to risk it.
And then my dad made a "Solomonic" decision.

— Gentlemen, — he whispered, — in the neighboring Drochia (a town 10 km away) there is a young doctor, a Moldovan. Let him operate on the commissar's wife. He has little experience, but he is a compatriot.
And so they decided.

— Are you crazy? — the voice of the young surgeon who arrived from the district was trembling, — I've only been working for a month and have never operated on my own. I can't do it, — he said, looking pleadingly at his senior comrades.

— Alright, — my dad drew the line, — here is what we'll do...

— Comrade military commissar! — Jacobson said firmly, — the medical concilium has decided that your wife has appendicitis. She needs surgery, and for this purpose, we have called in a specialist... who will perform this operation. Do you agree?

— I permit it, let him do it, — the military commissar said importantly, though he didn't understand exactly in what field this surgeon was a specialist, but his surname reassured him, and breathing a sigh of relief, he added, — one of our own!
My father operated on the patient, Jacobson assisted. The "appendectomy specialist" stood nearby and watched the course of the operation with interest. In the protocol, he was recorded as the operating surgeon, which was reported to the waiting husband. "Look what specialists we are raising! Eagles! Otherwise, all sorts of poisoners and 'foreign specialists' with unpronounceable names have multiplied around here, and they all want to eradicate us, the Soviet party leaders and our family members. We know their 'operations'! It's alright, we'll deal with it later. We'll expose these 'saboteurs'!"
The patient was sent to the ward, and the operation protocol was drawn up "as required."

— Oh well, — Rothshuld raised his glass of cognac, — at least we got to see each other. When else would we have gathered together?
The friends clinked glasses, drank to their meeting, then to their relatives, and who knows what else old "poisoner-friends" might drink to? They even drank to me, not yet born.
And I was born, as said in the eponymous movie, during the "cold summer of 1953." But my parents took care of my health, so they dressed me warmly and, as I recall, I didn't suffer from the cold.

In general, 1953 was a very significant year. Three months before my birth, Stalin died, and twenty days after I came into the world, Beria was arrested and later shot. So, I was born between these "cheerful" fateful events. But this bothered me little. The main thing was that with Stalin's death, the persecution of the "enemies in white coats," these "Zionist poisoners," was stopped, so doctors of Jewish nationality could live and work normally. I wonder what our brave military commissar thought about this?

By the way, do you know, reader, what the hardest part of writing a literary work is? As a "professional writer," almost a "classic," I can say—it's remembering and managing to write it down fast enough. And I write while lying down, before going to sleep. By the way, it's very comfortable. True, I'm not Balzac, and when I write, I don't stick my feet in a basin of cold water with a fur hat pulled over my head, and I don't sleep sitting up like Gogol, and I'm not a "chosen one of the birds" like Kuindzhi, who, for inspiration, sat on the roof of his house and "talked to the feathered ones." I just lie there with my "iPad" and press the buttons. No drafts for you, everything straight to the final copy. Awesome!
Although, on the other hand, drafts represent the flight of an author's thoughts, showing what and how he thought before correcting the text, what words he initially chose, and what he later changed himself. Drafts can tell a lot of interesting things about an author. And there are plenty of examples of this. We all know perfectly well how much the drafts of famous writers, composers, and other geniuses who lived many centuries ago are worth and how they are valued, and how important the traces they left on parchment, and subsequently on paper, are for descendants. How art historians examine every written word or a brushstroke painted over by an artist on a canvas. And how upset the Chinese inventor Cai Lun, who created paper in 105 AD, would be if he found out that instead of his brilliant creation, everyone is increasingly using a computer today. And what will remain after us? Whose drafts, centuries from now, will be worth their "weight in gold"? Who writes by hand today? A rare few! The last one, as far as I know, was the great Mikhail Zhvanetsky with his papers and famous briefcase. But mostly, it's faceless computer letters. What a pity!

And so, I was born! Everything was like everyone else. Diapers, undershirts, well, etc. My parents: dad a surgeon, mom an operating room nurse, worked together and worked a lot. There were no nannies, my mom bravely breastfed her son, so I was always taken to work with them so that she could give me the coveted breast between operations. You could say that I absorbed the spirit of the operating room with my mother's milk, as I constantly lived in the hospital.
On one of those days, when I was about a month old, having fed me before the next operation, my mom placed her beloved offspring on a table by an open window in the preoperative room, where I happily slept under the blessed summer sun.. The hospital was a one-story building, lindens and other flora bloomed under the windows. Well, a perfect picture, why shouldn't a well-fed baby get some sleep? Near our village, every year in the summer, there were fairs, to which people from neighboring regions came with their goods. And during this time, gypsies always stopped with their camp and actively participated in the fair. And so, one of the gypsy women, walking past the hospital, saw a wonderful dark-haired, swarthy child (I am talking about myself), serenely sleeping by the open window. Perhaps, seeing a future Gypsy Baron in the charming (without false modesty!) infant, she grabbed me without a second thought and ran toward her camp (probably they had a low birth rate). My aunt, my beloved Aunt Dusya, who lived in the neighboring house and worked as a nurse in the hospital, was on her way to work and, witnessing the kidnapping of her nephew, raised a terrible scream and dashed after the gypsy. The kidnapper was detained, and despite her sworn assurances that this was her child (saying, look how much he resembles me, just as swarthy, curly-haired, etc.), I was taken away and returned to my happy parents. Dad barely managed to save her from a righteous "lynch mob," which the concerned villagers wanted to carry out. Sigh, maybe I really would have eventually become a Gypsy Baron, walked around with gold teeth, and been a respected man among the Romani? Who knows, who knows? In short, they didn't ask me, and I stayed with my family.

Later, my family—my parents and I, along with my older sister Nelya—moved to Drochia, an urban-type settlement. I, like all Soviet children, went to kindergarten. Several photographs from that period have survived. Oh, those photographs from the 50s of the last century! Not a single picture with smiling children, let alone adults. Getting photographed in those years was treated very seriously, because cameras were a great rarity, and Soviet citizens perceived this act with great caution, with a certain mistrust and fear. Everyday photo sessions were very rare, and usually, "professional" photographers were invited for them, but mostly, pictures were taken either when filing a criminal case at the police station, or in a photo studio for an official document, like a passport or a factory pass, so smiling during such shoots was forbidden, and everyone looked at the photographer very seriously. Probably, it wasn't for nothing that cameras of that time were named "FED," in honor of our main renowned Chekist F.E. Dzerzhinsky (he certainly knew what pictures of the "enemies of the people" were needed for). Everyone tensely waited for the birdie promised by the photographer to fly out, and moreover, this applied not only to children but also to adults. But I stood out from this rule with my originality, because my parents had a camera and being photographed was a familiar act for me, and I knew for sure that it was a trick and there would be no birdie, or perhaps because my mom often braided a bow into my curls and I began to look like a girl, which insulted me. Why she did that, I don't know, but in a group photo with my frightened, "snotty brethren" from kindergarten, surrounded by gloomy nannies, I proudly looked up at the sky, watching the birds in free flight. By the way, as a student, I made good money offering my classmates to find me in the photo. For the price of 1 ruble, I generously gave my opponents 10 attempts and never lost, because the bow on my curly head confused everyone.

Then I went to school, but I don't have any particular memories from that period. The arrival of my grandfather. My dad's father immigrated from Romania and lived with us. I wrote about this in my story "The Story of One Emigration," so I won't dwell on it now. Then our move to Tiraspol, where for the first year we lived in a rented apartment. We had one room—a large one, admittedly—where our furniture, brought with us, stood, and the five of us slept there. In the next room lived the landlady (I don't remember her name) with her "fiery red" son Kostya. He was a couple of years older than me, and all I remember is his constant phrase, which he uttered returning from school:

— Mom, fry me some fried potatoes!
Every day the same thing, and what's more, I couldn't understand how you could fry already fried potatoes? But he said it exactly like that, and I don't know if this "gastronomic gourmet" ate anything else besides this dish. Therefore, our room constantly smelled of fried potatoes with onions.

A year later, my parents built a cooperative apartment. It was a standard two-room "Khrushchevka" of 28 square meters on the 3rd floor of a typical 5-story building. But, on the other hand, we had a so-called "sanitary room"—with a toilet, a wood-fired water heater, and a bathtub, which particularly amazed my friends, who couldn't even dream of such luxury. In their opinion, we lived like "bourgeois," because washing at home was not "proletarian."

A little about my new school friends. The school where I had the chance to study from the 6th to the 10th grade was old and relatively small. Mostly, it was attended by children of military reenlistees, sergeants, and warrant officers serving at the military airfield, while their mothers worked at the Tkachenko canning factory. All the families lived in appalling housing conditions, with an outhouse in the yard in the form of a stone building with two "holes." A typical "apartment" consisted of: a hallway-kitchen of 2 sq.m., a small corridor of 2-3 sq.m., and one room of 7-8 sq.m., where the inhabitants of these "mansions" slept, regardless of the number of residents. And of course, once every 1-2 weeks, the whole family would go to the city bathhouse. Therefore, our two-room separate apartment with a toilet and a bathtub looked like an unforgivable luxury, and the only excuse for me was that my father was a well-known doctor in the city. But it was fun living in these courtyards. Service at the military airfield was not easy, but it had its advantages—the availability of alcohol in unlimited quantities, used (according to regulations) as an anti-icing agent for planes in flight and for wiping instruments, and chocolate in unwrapped bars (as high-calorie nutrition for pilots). The fathers honestly brought the chocolate home for their wives and children, and consumed the alcohol themselves, justly considering that the frosts in Moldavia weren't so severe as to waste such a precious liquid on treating fighter jets. In the evenings, the men would sit in the yard playing dominoes, fiercely slamming the "bones" on the table, periodically "taking on the chest" the anti-icing agent, and having gained "altitude" instead of the planes, the sergeants and warrant officers would begin a "debriefing" with their wives, which often forced the latter to "eject" from the "family hangar" to more sober neighbors. Thus, neighborly, the women would spend the night at each other's places. However, by morning they would all habitually make peace, and in the evening everything would repeat again, and so on in a circle. But don't think that the women were completely defenseless and meek. Do not forget that they also had a "proletarian bone," and working at the canning factory among loaders and warehouse managers tempered them no worse than the steel of fighter hulls. Therefore, periodically, they also took the "anti-icing fluid" on their female chests, and uniting into groups, chased their husbands, forcing them now to seek shelter with the neighbors. But this happened less often.

Now about my house. As I already mentioned, we lived on the 3rd floor of a 5-story typical building, the so-called "Khrushchevka." Our neighborhood was a complex of such identical houses, built in an irregular circle with a huge courtyard in the middle, which featured several broken benches, with "bad words" scratched onto the surviving wooden boards with nails, a broken ping-pong table made of iron sheets, also without a net (instead of it, a board was placed crosswise during the game), one basketball backboard with a slanted hoop, naturally also without a net, and the remains of a volleyball court (two posts on which the "legendary" net was supposed to be attached). In short, nets were a myth! In the center of the sand "playground" stood a standard stone house with mangled iron doors and a classic drawing on them—a skull with crossbones and the equally classic inscription: Do not enter, will kill! High voltage! The courtyard was framed by bushes and grass with bald spots, on which stray cats constantly rested and multiplied. Along the perimeter, near the houses, there were sidewalks covered with broken asphalt, along which trees grew. The courtyard was a place for communication among the numerous neighbors and was always full of children, mothers with strollers, and on weekends, men gambling at dominoes and cards (not entirely sober, of course).
At the end of one of the buildings, right next to ours, was a men's barbershop, where we all got the same "half-box" haircut from two barbers, and next to it were sewing and cobbler's workshops. During the warm season, the cobblers in leather aprons, exuding an exciting "cocktail" of the smell of leather, shoe polish, tobacco smoke, and wine fumes, worked outside, and having placed the footwear to be repaired onto iron "crutches," they furiously nailed on torn soles (managing to take a small glass of Moldovan wine between 3-4 hammer blows), hammered in metal "heel taps," and sewed up torn boots using an awl and wax-end thread. How I loved this, and watching them, I dreamed of becoming a real cobbler. Footwear, like clothing, was in terrible shortage in those years, so the services of cobblers and tailors were highly demanded, well paid, and getting this "prestigious" job was very difficult. The thing is, the main orders were fulfilled unofficially, at the master's home, so the teaching of the profession took place within the family and was passed down by inheritance, and the official job was only a cover. And since from time immemorial the profession of a cobbler and tailor was exclusively the prerogative of people of Jewish nationality, the employees of our workshops were no exception.
The only worker in our sewing workshop who was not Jewish was a Bulgarian, with the funny surname: Deli-Ivanov. Moreover, no one knew his first name, they just called him: Deli-Ivanov. How he squeezed into a tight-knit Jewish collective was a mystery. He was an interesting man. Despite his Bulgarian origin, it would be hard to meet a bigger "Jew" than Deli-Ivanov. A huge nose with a hump, oily black eyes, characteristic bald patches, a non-Russian accent, and finally, excellent Yiddish, made him one of their own in the homogeneous Jewish collective. But he had one problem - radiculitis! He constantly suffered from back pain and constantly treated it, moreover, with an unusual method - bees. You had to see it! Right in front of our house was a flowerbed where bees constantly swarmed. Deli-Ivanov carefully picked up a bee with a half-closed hand and placed it into an empty matchbox. Interestingly, the bees didn't touch him, while others (myself included), trying to repeat this act, were mercilessly stung. How did he manage it? Then, when he gathered 5-6 of them, he applied the open box to his lower back and carefully tapped it with a finger. The angry bees bit their tormentor, he grunted and, slightly closing his oily Bulgarian-Jewish eyes, courageously endured.

— Apitherapy! — he told the spectators the mysterious word, and raising a finger, explained, — bee treatment. It helps a lot.
No one understood the clever word, but they sincerely pitied him and gave him various pieces of advice. True, few believed in the success of his method, preferring the old reliable remedy - a dog hair belt. Madame Zeltser gave particularly "smart" advice. More about her.
Another hero, or rather heroine, of that time, at least for me, was Madame Zeltser. She was a real "Old Woman Shapoklyak." I am sure that my namesake Uspensky, who created his immortal work "Cheburashka and Crocodile Gena" precisely in those years, had her in mind. And although the author claimed that he based this character on his wife, I am sure he was being insincere and the prototype was my neighbor Madame Zeltser. Why she was nicknamed "Madame," no one knew, but everyone called her that, behind her back, of course. There was no nastier old woman in nature. At least, that's what I thought. She lived, along with her little dog, in a small one-room apartment in our entryway on the first floor. Therefore, everything that happened on the bench at the entrance to the building was under her vigilant eye and ended with obligatory scandals, supposedly, it prevented her and the dog from living in peace. Arguing with her was useless, and any conflict ended with a glass of water poured by her onto the heads of her opponents through the window. The only one who threw a tacit challenge at her was me. A brilliant idea came to my mind (or so I thought!). Flowers! Yes, yes, I will drive her crazy with flowers! And I partly succeeded. Every day, walking past her door, I inserted a thin stem with a flower picked from our flowerbed into the slot of the door lock. And that's it! This drove her to hysterics.

— They want to ruin me with flowers, — she complained to all the neighbors, — enemies everywhere! Someone is trying to pick the keys to my lock using flowers!
But no one believed her, as they couldn't understand how one could ruin a person with flowers, and they didn't pity her. I won't say that this fixed her quarrelsome character, but I ruined plenty of her nerves, which I was deservedly proud of. And so no one ever found out who courageously fought with "Madame." True heroes remain unknown!

Now, a little about tailors. In those days, it was a very "deficit" and incredibly profitable profession, and good specialists were real "stars." In a mid-sized city, you could count them on the fingers of one hand. Teachers, "various-caliber" researchers, or, God forbid, some engineers, stood on the lowest rung of the "pyramid of professional prestige" and the "food chain" tied to it (in the sense that one needs to eat), while good tailors sat firmly in armchairs on the top, yielding only to merchandisers and warehouse managers. Slightly lower settled manicurists, ladies' hairdressers, perfume department salespeople, and, of course, butchers. After 51 years, I remember the surname of the tailor who sewed me a jacket for my school prom - Tsatskin! And a few years later, for me, a medical student in the capital city of Kishinev, a suit was tailored by Dats himself! Rather, he didn't sew, but only took measurements and cut. Others sewed, still unknown apprentices. You had to see it. By special arrangement, through trusted people, we timidly entered the atelier. We were led into a separate room, where an imposing silver-haired man did not walk in, but "floated" in. After listening to us, he unhurriedly took my measurements. Graciously accepting the envelope with the pre-agreed sum, he majestically nodded his head and appointed the fitting day. Any potential dissatisfaction from the customer was out of the question. A suit from Dats - that's a "brand," it's a guarantee of success! One word - Celestials!!

In general, it's a remarkable thing. Socialism, unlike capitalism, made a person free. In the sense of being free from studying and knowledge. Under their terrible capitalist system, if a person wanted to achieve material and social success, he had to study long and boringly, but in our progressive socialist society, everything was the opposite. You simply needed to find a good spot, and success was guaranteed to you. A job as an engineer for 100 rubles a month, with his higher education, could be found in a couple of minutes, but try getting a job as a glass container receiver, or a siphon filler (remember those?), or (oh God!) a seller of draft street beer!!! A dream!!! No, judge for yourself. These "half-witted" engineers and mathematicians, with their integrals and differentials, sit and wear out their trousers in their design bureaus. What do they do there, I ask you? And turn on your brains and understand that one piece of laundry soap, cut into a triangle and inserted into the base of a keg tap, gives such a stable beer foam that it doesn't settle at all, and you can only blow it off. Therefore, the glass is filled with beer to 70%, and the rest is foam. And since there are few glasses and many thirsty people, the "lucky" client has no time to think. Drink, give back the glass and step aside, let someone else enjoy! Thus, one barrel of beer per shift gives the seller the same 100 rubles that an engineer received for a month! What education? What higher mathematics with incomprehensible integrals? Bah, it only gets in the way! Yes, how many wonderful professions there were, how many opportunities! And waiters in restaurants, and hairdressers, you'd get tired of listing them, and in general, the entire "service sector"? Elite!! Sigh, sigh! Where is all this now, I ask you? Where are the beer barrels, the tailors? Where is the desperately deficit "service sector"? It's sad and boring, girls!

Well, here I fell asleep again, and once more, embracing Morpheus, I was carried through the tangled labyrinth of my memory. A bit of "homegrown philosophy." The eternal question - what is happiness? Every person has their own understanding, but I personally don't know how to answer this rather banal question. I think that the FEELING of happiness among modern youth differs from ours in its long-term nature. I'll explain my thought now. Just a few days ago, my son bought a new TV. It's a miracle of modern technology, not only is it almost a "cinema" in size, but its capabilities are practically unlimited. My son's joy from the purchased item lasted a couple of days, after which he stopped noticing this "miracle" and treated it completely calmly, as a given. That is, the feeling, not even of happiness, but of joy, lasted no more than two days!
And now let's take the example of his father, that is, me. For my 16th birthday, my parents gave me, I am not afraid to say, a "royal" gift—a portable tape recorder "Vesna-2". How and where they managed to "get" it, I don't know to this day (it's a pity that I can no longer ask). In those years, it was impossible to buy such a "miracle" in a store, it could only be "gotten" under the counter. We only heard about tape recorders, but no one had seen them "live", and here was a portable one too!!! I will describe this "marvel of technology". A metal box on a strap, weighing 5.5 kg, two "reels" with 100 meters of magnetic tape, which gave about 18 minutes of continuous recording, and, included in the set, an external plastic microphone. It was powered by 10 large cylindrical batteries, which provided approximately 5 hours of operation. When I showed my "Vesna" to my friends, they refused to believe that "THIS" would reproduce sounds. I had to demonstrate. I brought the microphone to my friend's mouth, pressed the "Record" key, and asked him to say something.

— Why me? — Sashka asked fearfully, — let Pykhan (a nickname) say it.
— You were told to, so you speak, — Pykhan retorted and moved away.
I smiled condescendingly and pressed the "Playback" key. When the tape recorder repeated their conversation, there was silence.

— Well, how is it? — I triumphed, — a good machine?
— Can it, — Stopik (a friend's nickname) snapped out of shock, — record everything, or only conversation? It probably can't do music, — he confidently added, — it definitely can't!
I had to prove it. At the time described, a concert by the Polish singer Jerzy Polomski was supposed to take place in our Tiraspol. The performance was to be held in our city theater. At my earnest request, my dad, with difficulty, got two tickets. One, naturally, for me, and the other we raffled among five of my friends. And so, we are sitting in the hall. I am holding the precious tape recorder on my knees, and when the artist started singing, I turned on "Record" and raised my hand with the microphone.

— Boys, what are you doing? — a guy sitting behind us stuck his head between us, — what is this crap?
— A tape recorder, — Stopik answered solidly, — we are recording this Jerzy for our friends. There weren't enough tickets for everyone, so they are waiting for us outside. Later, we will turn on the recording and they'll listen, as if they were at the concert.
— Ahhh, — mumbled the guy, although it was clear he didn't understand a thing. Very soon the tape ended and I had to turn off the device.

— Let's listen, — Stopik whispered in my ear, — what if it didn't record? We need to check.
I turned on "Playback". The singer's voice from the tape recorder mixed with the live Polomski.

— I'm gonna bash your head with that machine right now, — the "inquisitive" neighbor from behind hissed, — you'll crap yourself! You parasites won't let people listen to the music properly.
We quieted down and, barely waiting for the end of the concert, went outside, where our friends who didn't get into the concert were waiting for us. We walked home. I proudly held the tape recorder on my shoulder, from which Polomski's hissing singing emanated, overlaid with all sorts of sounds made by the audience in the form of coughing, blowing noses, whispering, and, of course, our dialogues with the inquisitive neighbor. But this didn't embarrass us in the least. The main thing was that we "brought out" the Polish artist's concert to the street, and together with our friends, we could once again enjoy the singer's art. Fifty-two years have passed, and the feeling of infinite happiness and delight hasn't left me to this day. Feel the difference!

Since I've recalled that period, I'll tell you about my entry into... Adulthood! It's a good thing my parents gave me the tape recorder on the eve of my birthday. Had it been a little later... I wouldn't have seen the gift!
I started preparing for the celebration of my 16th birthday approximately half a year in advance. I denied myself everything, including school breakfasts, and for the jubilee, I managed to collect an "astronomical" sum - 3 rubles and 75 kopecks. The three of us celebrated my birthday—me, Stopik, and Pykhan. We bought a bottle of the cheapest vodka in advance and went into a tiny "cafe" on the bank of the Dniester. With the remaining money, we bought one portion of "Mititei" with peas for everyone, and a bottle of "Lemonade". Pykhan poured all the vodka into three glasses under the table, and, as the most experienced "astronaut," made a "wonderful" toast:

— Let's not dawdle! Real men drink it all at once!
We knowingly agreed. That's it! I remember nothing else! I was woken up by my friends. It was already dark, and I had no idea where we were. I was lying on the ground under some bush, and the guys were unsuccessfully trying to lift me up. Everything was spinning before my eyes, I kept throwing up endlessly. I wanted to die. My more experienced and robust friends, taking the birthday boy by the arms, dragged me home with great difficulty and, leaving me at the door of our apartment, ran away, having previously rung the doorbell. I won't describe my meeting with my parents, as that would require a separate chapter. But no matter how they interrogated me, I didn't betray my friends and honorably took the full blow upon myself. Frankly speaking, before this "party," I hadn't even tasted vodka, so you could say I went through a "baptism of fire." This was the beginning of the journey, and...

The wonderful school years ended, smoothly transitioning into.... Student life. 1970, time to grow up. As an offspring from a family of medics, I had no options for the future—of course, medicine! The nearest medical institute was in Kishinev, where my mom and I headed. We rented an apartment, and I started taking the entrance exams. A couple of words about my beloved self. If anyone remembers, two things were fashionable in those years - long hair and bell-bottom trousers. I strictly followed the fashion and considered myself an "advanced dude", so my "outfit" looked like this: shoulder-length hair, white-pink trousers from Tsatskin with an incredible flare, and the signature, shuffling walk "A la Beatles" (for some reason, experienced Tiraspol "Beatlemaniacs" were sure that the "Beatles" walked exactly like that). Added to this was a yellow T-shirt with an inset on the chest resembling a sailor's striped shirt, and a medallion on an iron chain featuring the "Madonna and Child", a work by either Leonardo da Vinci or Raphael. But for me, this was inconsequential. My "outfit" was completed by burgundy leather shoes, custom-made by one of my dad's patients, with high "cowboy" heels. I liked myself very much; my mom didn't. No matter how much she tried to persuade me to get a haircut and change my outfit, saying, "You can't go to exams looking like that, they will definitely fail you"—I wouldn't listen to her. I kissed the medallion (it was my amulet) and was as unyielding as a communist partisan facing execution. The "Madonna" convulsively pressed the "infant" to her chest, smiled sadly, and "promised to help". Strangely enough, I passed the exams and got into the coveted institute. I don't know what the decisive factor was, whether the "brilliant" knowledge of the applicant, or purely human interest on the part of the examiners who wanted to see what kind of doctor this "Macaw parrot" would turn into, or, perhaps, the "Madonna and Child" after all? Who knows, who knows!!

Processing the documents was supposed to take some time, but mom couldn't wait, as she could have problems at work. With a heavy heart, she rented another place for another week and went home, leaving her beloved son alone in a strange city. Unfortunately, there was no other way out, but I was 17 years old, I was proud of the upcoming solitude and confident in myself. The place of my temporary residence was a room in a small apartment in the old city. So old that it gave the impression that this house was older than Kishinev itself. In the varied cracks of the walls and ceiling of my room, there was an incredible number of cells where hordes of bedbugs lived. There were two beds in the room, mine and another tenant's, also named Edik. He was a student at the Polytechnic Institute, a few years older than me, and much more experienced, as his tenure in this room was a month longer. Since I had no experience interacting with arthropods, he generously shared his rich experience in fighting these critters. And so - war! Following Edik's advice, to prevent the "enemies" from jumping into bed from the floor, we placed the legs of my iron bed in jars with kerosene, and stretched a bedsheet over me from above so they wouldn't drop from the ceiling. But frankly speaking, this helped little, as these smart critters first fell onto the sheet, then crawled under it, and from there dive-bombed me. My "experienced" neighbor and I were so bitten by these bastards, and they drank so much of our blood, that I didn't rule out (as a future medic) that we had anemia. Another mystery of the "bad apartment" was the presence in our room of an old, shabby "ZIM" refrigerator, strapped across with a metal bar and a padlock.

— The landlady is probably afraid for her food, — Edik surmised, — this is so we don't devour it, — he added, touching the lock.
But he was wrong, and we were convinced of this very soon. Besides us, the landlady lived in this dilapidated two-room apartment, I don't remember her name, a plump, I would say "flabby" woman, a teacher by profession. Since I, escaping from the bedbugs, walked around the city all day and explored the capital of Moldavia, I saw the landlady only a couple of times. Having completed the necessary paperwork at the institute, I was already packing to go home, when suddenly, Cholera fell on our heads! Yes, yes, a real cholera epidemic! Odessa and my native Tiraspol were tightly quarantined, I couldn't return home and was forced to stay in Kishinev for an indefinite period. I was in despair, but there was nothing to do.

One morning, I suddenly woke up with a strange feeling. Opening my eyes, I shuddered. On the chair near my bed sat a very plump guy with a strange face, staring intently at me. Edik was not in the room.

— Who are you? — licking my dry lips, I whispered, dumbfounded, — what do you want?
— I'm Misha, — he replied indifferently, — then got up, walked over to the refrigerator, tugged at the lock, and left the room.
This was our landlady's son, a mentally ill young man who periodically underwent treatment in a psychiatric hospital. At the end of a regular course, and considering he posed no danger to others, he was allowed home for some time. He was a quiet, harmless guy of about 25, very overweight and slow. He spoke with difficulty and not always clearly. One of the symptoms of his illness was extraordinary gluttony. His appetite was incredible, he ate everything in sight, so his mother was forced to seal the refrigerator with a metal bar and a padlock. Not far from their house was the "Central Market." All the vendors there knew Misha. In the morning, right after breakfast, he would go to the market, where he slowly walked through all the rows, tasting all the products one by one. Knowing about his ailment, they didn't chase him away, scold him, or offend him. The vendors only watched that he didn't take too much from one stall and would tell him: "Go, go try over there," pointing to a neighbor, "it's tasty there!" He would indifferently move away and go taste further. Towards noon, having walked the entire market, he would go home, where he had a hearty lunch and lay down to sleep. A couple of hours later he'd get up, eat, and go back to the market, where he spent all his time until it closed. And so on, every day. I was in despair. I had absolutely nothing to do in a strange city. Without family, friends, and acquaintances, plus bedbugs and Misha. And I decided to break through to my homeland.

Settling with the landlady and quickly packing my things, with a small suitcase and a bag, I arrived at the train station. There were a lot of people, everyone was fleeing the cholera. The train towards Tiraspol only went as far as the Varnitsa station, near Bendery. Beyond that, because of the quarantine, no one was allowed. But there was no turning back, and I went. The train arrived in Varnitsa around 7 PM, all passengers were dropped off, and I was left with no choice but to walk to Tiraspol, which was about 20 kilometers. The only comfort was that I was walking through historical places, past the famous Suvorov fortress. Crossing the bridge over the Dniester River, I was stopped at a military checkpoint where two soldiers with machine guns and a policeman were on duty. I was lucky that the policeman was from Tiraspol and had heard of my father.

— But you, kid, — he said doubtfully, — won't be able to get to the city. There are checkpoints everywhere. If you know the way, cut around via the village of Parcani.
And I went. I entered the village when it was already dark and... got lost. Having walked through a cemetery (I must note that this night "walk" gave me no pleasure), I finally came out onto the road and... landed right at a checkpoint. Soldiers again, and this time two policemen. There were also two bathtubs filled with water, emitting a terrible smell of chlorine. Having listened to the pitiful story of a future doctor about how I, cold and hungry, was breaking through thorns to my beloved homeland, the policeman asked briefly: "Do you want to go home?" Hearing my joyful affirmative answer, he ordered me to put all my documents on the table, after which a soldier took my suitcase, then my bag, and dropped them into the tub. I was petrified.

— Now you, — the policeman said, pointing to the other one, — close your eyes and go completely under!

— Go on, friend, — the soldier said sympathetically after my bath, pointing with his hand, — it's not far from here, only 7 km, you'll make it by morning, — and he grimaced in disgust, — go already, don't stink up the place.
When I arrived home early in the morning, my mom almost fainted. Needless to say, all my things, along with the suitcase and bag, were thrown into the trash (why did I drag all that weight with me?). No matter how hard I tried to wash off the disinfecting solution, for at least another week I exuded the "delicate" scent of bleach. But every cloud has a silver lining, all the bedbugs died.

And so, I am a student. What happened next?... Ah... ah.. Studying at the medical institute. Our group turned out to be wonderful. Mostly, everyone was from Kishinev, and only three of us, including me, were from out of town. We became friends instantly. However, something was surprising and a bit strange. The state "generously" allocated a 3% quota of student placements for citizens of Jewish nationality, and in our group of 14 people, there were 6 of us! Miracles, I tell you! Probably, we were grouped together intentionally, as an experiment, to make it easier to control our "academic performance." But this didn't bother us much; we were cheerful, full of new impressions, and impatiently waiting for classes to begin. Yeah, right! Literally a few days later, we were gathered up and sent to a kolkhoz to harvest grapes. We ended up in the south of Moldavia, in the village of Baurci-Moldoveni, in Gagauzia, and were distributed to live in the villagers' homes. I, along with two friends, Michael and Margo (I will use the nicknames we gave each other in my story), ended up in a house where a family lived, headed by a host about 40 years old. We were settled in an annex, the only room of which had an oven with "polati" (a kind of bed on the oven), a small window, under which there was an iron bed, a small table, and one stool. The only decoration of the room was a radiogram on legs, named "Druzhba," standing in the corner. Seemed like nothing unusual, a radiogram is just a radiogram, but what caused bewilderment was the fact that there was no electricity connected to the annex (in the evening we used a kerosene lamp)! As it turned out later, the villager had received this receiver from the kolkhoz as a bonus for valiant labor, but so that the valuable item wouldn't go to waste, he dried tobacco under the lid, in the record compartment. Very practical. We drew lots to see who would sleep where, and I got the bed, my friends got the "polati." At first, I was glad, but very soon I realized how wrong I was. My mattress was "stuffed" with corncobs, but I am far from being a masochist, and sleeping on it was completely impossible (at my request, the hostess gave me some rags, on which I later slept). Meanwhile, my friends settled in nicely on the oven. We hadn't even finished unpacking our meager belongings when the host arrived with a decanter of homemade wine and suggested we celebrate the housewarming. That was it; from that moment until the end of our "internship," we were never sober.

Early in the morning, the host would wake us up, and with the words:
— Time for work, — he would sit on our only stool, place the decanter on the table, and pour wine into glasses.
On the third day, Margo pleaded:
— You could at least let me brush my teeth in the morning!

— Again, — the host was surprised, — you brushed them yesterday.

— Well, I brush them every day, — my friend mumbled, and added, — with toothpaste.

— What for? — the host shrugged, — I don't get it! Rinse with wine and that's it.
A bit about the village. The daily routine of the rural residents did not differ in variety. They got up early, drank a glass of wine, had another at breakfast, and went to work. They had lunch with the whole brigade, chipping in with food brought from home, conventionally called "Breakfast of a gogoshar, salty homemade sheep cheese, and, obligatorily, a piece of traditional mamaliga (a thick cornmeal porridge), wrapped in cheesecloth in the form of a long 'sausage'". This was the standard food of the "forest brothers", called haiduks, who engaged in robbery in the Bessarabian lands in ancient times. During the meal, they would "knock back" a few glasses of wine, which they brought from home in bottles plugged with a corncob instead of a cork. At the end of the working day, they drank "La botul calului" ("one for the road" in Russian), and upon returning home, they had dinner, of course, with wine. They rested for an hour or two, then went to a neighbor's, or a neighbor came to them. They went into the cellar, where barrels of wine stood; various pickles, preserves, compotes, and other delicacies, fruits, and vegetables were stored. The host would pour wine from the barrel into a decanter, from it into a glass, and saying: "Hai noroc și sănătate" (Luck and health!), would drink, after which he poured into the exact same glass and handed it to the guest. In the cellars, they always drank from the same glass, regardless of the number of guests, but the host always drank first, showing, according to an ancient tradition, that the wine was not poisoned and could be drunk. And there was plenty to drink. Every self-respecting Moldovan had up to 2 tons of wine stored in their basements. This is how Moldovan villages "lived" in those years.
What's interesting! In the villages they drank a lot, starting from a very young age. Even infants, so the child wouldn't cry, instead of a traditional pacifier, were given a piece of mamaliga to suck on, wrapped in a rag soaked in wine. Of course, there were drunkards and just heavy drinkers. Moldovans drank wine instead of water, and had no respect for tea, juices, or kvass. But, as one old villager told me:

— We always drank dry homemade wine and everything was fine, but when the Russians came and brought sugar with them, the Moldovan started drinking himself into the ground.
There is some truth in this. Fortified wines, cheap swill, vodka, moonshine - these drinks were never traditional in these parts. And look what's happening now? Villages without men, who are either away working abroad somewhere, or have died from relentless drunkenness! Where are those old, prosperous Moldovan villages, the well-kept houses with the "Casa Mare" (guest house), those cellars with barrels and preserves, where is all this now?

However, I continue.... And so, after drinking wine on an empty stomach, we went to the barrack where our whole brigade gathered, received our milk breakfast, and went to the grape plantations. The milk "diet" was provided by the management so that we would harvest the grapes, rather than eat them. But we couldn't deny ourselves the tasting of the delicious berry, so.... wine + milk + grapes.... In short, we had the "runs" from both ends! But not all students worked in the field. A part of our guys worked at the local winery!! The kolkhoz management figured that, if anyone, future doctors must understand the harm of excessive alcohol consumption and would drink less than the irresponsible, poorly educated collective farmers. Yeah, right!

One day, the male part of our brigade was transferred from grapes to harvesting apples and we were taken to work in the back of a truck to another field. The driver, for some reason, stopped near further