Memoir of a Russian Punk

8

Kadik has to go. Although Eddie-baby thinks it's still too early for him to leave, that Slavka the Gypsy is getting on his nerves.

"So long, Eddie-baby," Kadik says. "Be sure to go to Victory tomorrow and recite, all right? If you want, I'll drop by for you around six?"

"Why don't you," Eddie agrees. "I'm not sure I'll read my poems for the goat herd, but at least we can get drunk. And my mother will shut up after she talks to you. She likes you."

Kadik leaves, striking his metal-tipped shoes hard on the asphalt. He has the same kind of shoes that Eddie-baby has, or rather, the same kind of huge, almost horseshoelike strips are screwed into his soles. It's their own invention. The strips are made out of an especially hard steel. Poor Edka Dodonov broke several tungsten carbide drill bits putting three holes in each strip for screws. But it was worth it. Kadik and Eddie-baby get to flaunt their metal strips, and thanks to them are able to recognize each other in the dark, since if you lightly drag your heels on the asphalt as you walk, you can produce an arc of reddish yellow sparks in your wake. You look, and if you see sparks on the other side of dark Saltov Road, then it means that Kadik's coming and nobody else.

Slavka the Gypsy and Eddie-baby smoke for a while, looking around. Noticing that Kolka Varzhainov has joined Vitka Golovashov and Lyonka Korovin, Eddie-baby goes over to them, since he needs to say a few words to Kolka. The Gypsy trails after him. Eddie-baby, of course, could tell the Gypsy to fuck off, but it's hard for him to do that. Even though the Gypsy is as much of a pest as any moocher, he's an old guy and there's not too goddamn much you can do with him.

The kids all greet each other, and Kolka Varzhainov takes off his glove.

"Have a swig, Ed," Lyonka says to him. Lyonka was the smallest in their class until last summer, when he suddenly turned into a giant. Since he's still not used to his height and doesn't know what to do with his body, he stoops a little. Lyonka holds out a bottle of biomitsin to Eddie. Eddie-baby takes a swig and senses nearby the intense energy of the Gypsy, who is ready to take the bottle the very instant Eddie removes it from his lips.

So be it, there's enough. Another time they would have calmly told him to fuck off, but today's a holiday, everybody has money, and everybody's generous.

"Oh, that's good!" says the Gypsy, half emptying the bottle. "Thank you, old buddies, for humoring an old man down on his luck. Next time the bottle's on me."

Everybody knows that Slavka will never have any money, so how could there be a next time?

Eddie-baby takes Kolka Varzhainov off to the side.

"Did you get it?" he asks quietly.

"Not until Monday, Ed," Kolka says guiltily. "Everybody's celebrating," he adds by way of justification.

In appearance Kolka is a typical representative of the goat herd – a worker youth, a lathe operator. On his head he wears a silly white cap of the sort that the majority of normal people no longer wear, and his inevitable gray Muscovite jacket is belted with the same kind of silly belt. On his feet are bright ocher, almost orange shoes. Kolka has a certain passion for footware of that color. Eddie-baby remembers the no less orange handmade artificial-rubber half-galoshes, half-boots that Kolka had on when he turned up for the first time in the second-year B class at Secondary School No.8 several years ago. Kolka finished his seven years and then, like a lot of other kids, left school to work as a lathe operator at the factory. He's no Sashka Plotnikov; he doesn't need the university.

"It's unlikely, however, that Kolka will stay at his factory," Eddie-baby thinks. Behind his innocuous exterior, freckled little Russian mug, and small nose is hidden a clever and far from stupid "businessman," as Kadik calls such people – an altogether different Kolka, in other words. He deals in many things, including something very rare, very rare even here among the Saltovka punks. You can buy a pistol from him. Eddie-baby and Kostya already bought a TT from him for their work, and now Eddie-baby needs another one. Kolka probably gets them from soldiers who simply steal the weapons from the officers in their units.

Kolka Varzhainov has a lot of respect for Eddie. It began in the second-year B class. Somebody told him that Eddie-baby's father was a general, although then as now Eddie-baby's father was merely a first lieutenant. The aura of generalship eventually detached itself from Veniamin Ivanovich and from Eddie-baby, but the respect of the son of a village seasonal worker for the son of a "general" remained.

"Look here," Eddie-baby says to Kolka, "Kostya asked you to hurry. We're going to need the cannon very soon."

"I'll have it on Monday for sure. Tell Cat not to worry."

Kostya Bondarenko, or Cat (a different Cat, not Cat the weight lifter), is Eddie-baby's best friend. He and Kadik are rivals. Or rather, Kostya was Eddie-baby's friend for a long time, and then Kadik turned up. Kostya and Eddie-baby are in the same gang. Kadik guesses that they have a gang, but he doesn't know for sure. Kostya is the leader, the "hetman," and he decides who will do what and he picks the jobs. Grishka and Lyonka Tarasyuk are in their gang too, and from time to time Kostya brings in other kids, but they aren't permanent, and after helping to burgle a store, they generally disappear. Once Garik the Morphine Addict even participated in a burglary with them. The main members of the gang, however, are Kostya and Eddie-baby and Grishka.