Memoir of a Russian Punk

27

An hour later the Tyurenka gang, now swollen into a vast multitude, is surging along Voroshilov Avenue. The punks are on their way home from the Victory. Tuzik is grotesquely drunk. He walks leaning on Dymok and Eddie-baby and from time to time suddenly yells, "Am I really not going to kill anybody today?" He hangs heavily on the two minors. His famous bayonet is stuck in his belt under his white shirt and jacket. "How does he keep from sticking himself in the stomach?" Eddie wonders. "He's used to it probably."

Eddie is drunk too, although not of course in the same way that Tuzik is. He could have detached himself from the gang a long time ago, but for some reason, vanity probably, he's walking along holding up the hetman of the Tyurenka punks and following the trolley line on Voroshilov Avenue, which goes past the tight-shut gates of the one- and even two-story private dwellings that face the street there. The people who live on Voroshilov Avenue are well-to-do; everywhere German shepherds – or kabyzdokhi, as they're called in Tyurenka, from the expression kaby sdokh, which means "drop dead" in Ukrainian – are growling and struggling against their chains.

"Well, am I really not going to kill anybody today?" Tuzik howls again, wrapping his arms around the minors' necks. His shirt has come out of his pants and is sticking out from under his jacket. He has an insanely sinister look. Eddie wouldn't want to run into him as an enemy.

Any chance pedestrians, hearing the racket and rumble and noise made by the gang (from an excess of youthful strength, several of the kids have been ripping boards off fences and throwing cobblestones at the kabyzdokhi or at windows that have foolishly been left unshuttered), have obviously gone into hiding, perhaps turning quickly into one of the little alleys that lead off of Voroshilov Avenue. At least, the kids haven't run into anybody so far.

"Tuz, Tuz!" Kolya the Gypsy runs up to Tuzik. "There's some dressed-up dude up there with two girls. What the fuck does he need two of them for, eh, Tuz? Let's take one of them for ourselves!"

"All right, let's," Tuzik drunkenly agrees. "Dymok!" he yells, although Dymok is right next to him. "Dymok, go over and politely ask that dude to give us one."

Dymok slips out from under the hetman's arm and runs off with Kolya the Gypsy.

Kolya the Gypsy has been Eddie-baby's enemy for a long time. Several summers ago, when Eddie was swimming in Tyurenka Pond, Kolya grabbed Eddie's new navy blue T-shirt, put it on, and never gave it back. Even though Eddie by that time was hardly an exemplary boy anymore, he was still afraid to demand his T-shirt back. But now Kolya the Gypsy is acting like he's Eddie-baby's best friend. The hetman doesn't entrust himself to just anyone, and he doesn't put his arm around just anybody's shoulder. Despite the drunken apprehension the intuitive Eddie is feeling, he has to admit to himself that he likes playing the role of the hetman's friend, his pal, and enjoys walking along with him at the head of a multitude of cutthroats, at least half of whom are prepared to follow Tuzik through fire and water. Eddie looks back. Armed with whatever they've happened to pick up, the gang surges along… "Now, that's power!" Eddie thinks delightedly.

At that moment Tuzik lurches forward and just about falls over Eddie and himself.

Ahead of them, by the gate of one of the houses, Dymok and Kolya the Gypsy are talking to a man and two girls. Not shouting. Just quietly talking.

"Am I really not going to kill anybody today?" Tuzik groans in an intentionally loud voice as they walk over to the group.

"He doesn't want to give one of them to us, Tuz. He says he needs them both. He says one of them's his sister…," Kolya the Gypsy affectionately informs Tuzik, and then comments almost indifferently, "He's lying, of course."

Tuzik frees himself from Eddie's support and seems to sober up some. "You don't want to give us one?" he asks the man.

The man doesn't say anything.

Walking up behind Tuzik to the group, Eddie finally takes a good look at the man and the girls. The man is large, large and adult, which is why he didn't hide in an alley like a normal pedestrian – he was relying on his strength. He's about thirty years old, and judging from his clothes, he has just come from downtown. He's wearing a short beige cloth coat, he has dark hair, and he's bareheaded. He's standing there with a blank look on his face as the approaching punks gradually close him in tighter and tighter.

The girls are huddled next to the fence in terror. They're adults too. Probably they live in a Saltovka dormitory. Girlfriends. And as usually happens in such cases, one of them is ugly and fat, while the other you might even call pretty. She is, in any case, tall, and her blond hair is brushed up off her temples, and you can see traces of violet lipstick on her lips. The man probably met them at the Victory and is walking them home. "Asshole," thinks Eddie contemptuously. "What would it have cost him to hide in an alley and wait for the gang to pass by? No, the fucker decided to play the hero for the girls. And now he'll pay for it… The idiot!"

Tuzik suddenly smiles in a friendly way. "Scared?" he asks the man.

"I'm not scared, not of you jackals!" the man snarls. "Why should I be?"

"What are you talking about?" Tuzik says, playfully surprised. "What's wrong with you, my dear fellow?" he adds in a still friendlier tone, and even puts his arm around the man's shoulders.

Eddie-baby knows this dirty Asian Tyurenkan trick – pretend to be friendly, get the victim on your side, and when he's completely convinced of your good intentions, hit him all of a sudden with a knife, or a crowbar to the head, or a chain. Kolya the Gypsy, for example, wears a chain on his pants instead of a belt…

The man tries to break free, but Tuzik's no weakling, even when he's drunk. He pulls the man close and, leading him slightly away from the girls, whispers, "My friend! Let's be friends! Why should we fight, eh?…"

The man doesn't trust Tuzik, but he's alone in a crowd of drunken punks and he doesn't have much of a chance. The only possibility would be if five militia cars immediately came rushing in (just one wouldn't be enough), but that's pretty much out of the question. And so the man goes with Tuzik, who has his arm around him and is continuing to whisper something to him affectionately – Eddie can't hear what anymore, since they're now twenty or more meters away.

"Guys, let the girls go!" Tuzik's calm voice suddenly rings out.

It's a signal. Dymok whistles deafeningly and hurls himself under the legs of the blonde.

"Don't," she screams. "Boys! Don't!"

Kolya the Gypsy flings open her coat and grabs at her breasts. Tearing off the buttons, he rips open her blouse and with one movement pulls off her bra…

"O-o-oh!" the mob roars in delight at her now exposed breasts. Lower down, Dymok is at work under her skirt. You can hear material being ripped as the blonde wails, "Boys, dear boys, don't! Oh!…" She falls onto Dymok. Dymok always grabs girls by the twat, so that it's pointless for them to struggle. Kolya the Gypsy and Dymok are professionals.

The other girl is also being attacked, and the first thing they tear off is her watch. "Gold," rings out a satisfied voice. Dozens of hands grab at the two girls and rip off their clothes. Within a few minutes several minors are hanging on the fat ugly girl all at once. They removed her coat long ago, and tore the sleeves and the whole front of her blouse, so that her large breasts with their dark brown nipples are helplessly swinging from side to side. The girl is using her hands to defend the most important thing – her twat. She's forgotten about her breasts. Everything that's taken place so far is a lot like the "feeling up" that Eddie and his friends used to engage in at school (Eddie has outgrown that now, and the boys in his year have even become a little shy around the girls), although it's much more serious and rough.

To one side, closer to the trolley line, you can hear thuds and screams. Obviously Tuzik and the other kids are beating the man up.

"A-a-a-ah!" A piercing howl of pain suddenly rings out. And once more blows and swearing. "Take that, you whore! Take that! You wanted it?! Now you're going to get it! You wanted it?! How about this!"

"Are they using a knife on him, or what?" Eddie wonders, not understanding. All the older punks have disappeared somewhere. The only kids around Eddie now are younger punks. "Where did the others go?" Eddie wonders.

One of the younger punks suddenly hits the fat girl in the mouth with all his strength. "You bitch!" he screams. "She bit me!"

Blood is flowing from the fat girl's smashed lips and nose, and it gradually spatters her huge, ugly cabbagelike breasts.

The young kids have completely stripped the fat one. Only a few shreds of her dress are still hanging from her waist. Looking at her big belly, which she is still trying to hide with her hands, Eddie suddenly wants very much to grab it. He has seen that kind of belly, soft and protruding, so many times in his sleep. Right now is the most appropriate time to find out just what kind of belly they have anyway. "When if not now?" Eddie thinks. "Anyway, no one will ever find out. There are so many kids, they can't possibly arrest them all," Eddie convinces himself, still wavering. "No one will ever find out," he repeats cravenly to himself, and then finally making up his mind, he leaps at the girl.

The girl's belly turns out to be warm. The girl is no longer resisting. She has closed her eyes and is slowly sinking down. If it weren't for Timur holding her from behind, the girl would have tumbled onto the cold November asphalt long ago. The other members of the gang are grabbing her thighs, laughing as they squeeze and pinch them like pieces of meat and, stick their hands in her twat from time to time. Breathing heavily, Eddie too drops to his knees and, still holding the girl's belly with one hand, puts the other into her pubic hair, which is stiff like wire, and when one of the gang members takes his hand out of her twat, pinching her with all his might as he does so, which makes her moan in pain – "O-o-o-oh!" – Eddie sticks his own hand into that female orifice concealed by hair. It's wet and cold in the girl even though it's supposed to be warm. Eddie pulls back his hand and looks at it. There's mucus and blood on it.

The blood from the girl's twat for some reason sobers Eddie up, and he suddenly hears everything around him. Groans are coming from somewhere nearby. "Oh-ah-oh," the other girl is rhythmically groaning. "Oh-ah-oh…"

At the moment when Eddie was investigating the fat girl, he was deaf, so to speak, but now all the sounds have returned. Laughing and baring their teeth, the younger kids push the fat girl under the fence. Eddie walks away from them in the direction of the groans…

It turns out that they're fucking the blonde on her coat in the alley. Now Eddie understands where all the older kids have gone. They're all here. Somebody still has a bottle, and they're joking and taking swigs from it while waiting their turn in line.

The girl's legs are pushed up and out. One of the older punks is lying on top of her, supporting himself on his arms, with his pants pulled down around his ankles so that his ass is exposed. He first moves toward the girl and then ever so slightly moves away from her again. The girl hasn't been resisting for a long time, obviously, and her groans are calm now. "Oh-ah-oh," she moans weakly. And again, "Oh-ah-oh…"

The girl has clasped the guy's back with her arms, which look very white in the dark of the alley, and the movements of the two are accompanied by a smacking sound, as if someone were eating sloppily. "Veniamin Ivanovich doesn't like it when people eat sloppily," Eddie thinks for some reason.

Suddenly the guy starts to move really fast on the girl, and finally, writhing, he hisses, "A-a-a-ah!" and climbs off of her. He's done.

Very white in the dark and almost naked, except for her stockings, which have fallen down around her ankles and are wadded up there in awkward rolls, the girl lies in the November air and waves her legs, probably in hysterics. "Well?" she asks hoarsely. "Well, then?"

"She finally likes it now," one of the older punks says. "She's stopped making out she's a virgin."

"Would you like a new prick, you bitch?" another kid asks her spitefully, kneeling in front of her and sticking his penis into her.

"O-o-o-oh!" the girl bleats as if in pain.

"Do you like a big prick, you whore?" the punk asks again, angrily grabbing the girl by her hips and moving her on his cock.

"O-o-o-oh, yes!" the girl answers, breathing with difficulty.

"Now he's going to split her with his log," the other kids laugh drunkenly. "He'll clean out her oven. Mishka has a prick like an elephant's."

Leaning against the fence, Eddie thinks, "So that's what they call fucking. And that's what all of the men and women in Saltovka and Kharkov and the whole world do when they sleep together. And that's what Svetka is probably doing with Shurik."

Under the new punk, the girl's breathing is even louder and more labored. "U-u-u-uh!" she howls. "U-u-u-uh!" The girl emits another trilled groan and then suddenly farts. The kids laugh maliciously…

"Is that what Svetka's doing?" Eddie wonders in horror. "With Shurik? She ought to do it with me," Eddie thinks distractedly. He's starting to get scared. He suddenly understands why Svetka likes Shurik. He remembers Shurik's still sparse but real moustache, the coarse, chapped skin of his cheeks, his big, rough, clumsy seventeen-year-old hands. Svetka, like this girl and the other girl, or any girl when you get right down to it, likes it when her warm soft belly and her warm body are held by rude, rough hands. "It's the contrast," Eddie thinks. "Mushka likes it too."

For the first time in his life Eddie suddenly sees clearly that in the struggle for survival of animals of the male gender, his inborn characteristics are too pisspoor for him to stand much chance of winning. The fingers of his hands are too long, the skin on his face is too tender, and thanks to his half-Mongol mama – Eddie thinks of his mother with hostility – he hardly has any moustache or beard at all. How could Svetka, the most tender, long-legged, and defenseless creature in the world, love somebody like him? Shurik, however, can set her on his tall, hairy knees, grab her with his rough, oarlike hands, rub his razor-shaved stubble against her tender cheek, and Svetka probably feels safe…

Carefully, as if afraid that somebody will stop him, Eddie moves toward the 'source of his pain, moves in the direction of Saltovka, maneuvering among the laughing and drunkenly swearing punks. He's moving toward Svetka. He doesn't understand why, but he's drawn to Svetka.

Several kids are standing near the trolley line looking at something. Lying in the beams of their flashlights (all the Tyurenka kids carry pocket flashlights with them so they can get into their parents' wooden houses at night without turning on the light) is the beaten man. Eddie stops for a moment to look. The man is lying on his stomach with one of his arms unnaturally twisted under him and the other one out of sight. His coat is no longer beige but a dark, dirty color, from the blood it has apparently absorbed. You can't see his face, but in place of his ear and cheek there's a dirty, clotted mass. The man isn't moving.

"I think," Sashka Tishchenko whispers to Eddie, glancing around and looking absurd in this situation with his guitar on his back, "that Tuzik went ahead and hit him in the stomach with his bayonet. He decided to take him out, probably…"

After a brief pause Sashka goes on. "They beat him a long time… Because of the knife. He had a knife. He cut Valka Fitilya's hand, and the kids went crazy. They beat him with chains and a fence board. Each one took a turn. It doesn't take much…"

After another pause, Sashka sighs and says to no one in particular, or maybe to himself, "Got to get out of here… Before the trashes come. He's dead for sure, since he isn't moving." And then he turns off his flashlight. "The guy had bad luck…"