Memoir of a Russian Punk

17

After the incident in the girls' lavatory, Eddie-baby earned Prikhodko's patronizing approval along with his unconcealed admiration. It was then too that Eddie-baby began his friendship with the Plague – Vovka Chumakov – and in March ran off with him to Brazil.

Thanks to a combination of circumstances, the escape to Brazil became widely known throughout Secondary School No.8. Before running off, Eddie-baby and the Plague had hidden their bookbags under some pieces of rusty iron in the basement of the Plague's building – since what need would a person have for a bookbag in Brazil? It's unclear why they took the trouble to hide the bookbags instead of simply throwing them away. They had no intention of ever coming back to Kharkov from Brazil.

Whatever the reason, the bookbags were found by some electricians who had gone down to the basement to repair the building's electrical system. The electricians solemnly brought the bookbags to the school, where they were turned over to Rachel, the boys' classroom teacher. By then a search was already under way for Eddie-baby and the Plague.

Remembering his escape to Brazil, today's Eddie-baby smiles condescendingly. The first naive attempts. Even Eddie doesn't understand anymore what it was that possessed them to try to go to Brazil on foot and by compass. Whatever it was, he and the Plague went south. Naturally, it didn't take them very long to get lost, and instead of finding Brazil, they found themselves ten kilometers out of town in the city dump, where bums and cripples robbed them of the whole sum – 135 rubles and 90 kopecks – they had saved for their escape, leaving them with nothing but a couple of geography books that Eddie-baby had brought along to bolster his own and the Plague's resolve through examination of the photographs and drawings of tropical animals and birds and the sultry landscapes of Amazonia that the books contained. One of the books was called A Journey Through South America.

It was the end of March and still very cold, even though all the snow had melted during the February thaw. Without money they'd never reach Brazil, as the Plague, the son of a laundrywoman and the more practical of the two, quite sensibly explained to the stubbornly romantic Eddie-baby as they sat next to a fire burning in an old steel barrel. They wouldn't even get as far as the Crimea, where Eddie-baby had proposed waiting until it got really warm before moving westward by compass in the direction of Odessa, where they would stow away on a ship going to Brazil. "Let's go home," the Plague had said.

Eddie-baby didn't want to go home; he was ashamed to. Eddie-baby was a lot more stubborn than the Plague. The Plague set off without compass in search of a bus stop, while Eddie-baby stayed behind and spent the night stripped down to his undershirt beside a steaming boiler in the boiler room of a large apartment building. Mice or rats were rustling in the corners, and Eddie-baby stayed up all night. The next morning, as he was trying to steal a loaf of bread from a bakery, he was apprehended by the salesgirls and turned over to the militia.