Pioneer camp Laspi. Participants in the story: I am a seasoned camp counselor, which means I have developed a certain level of indifference, and there are two slackers, Denis and Lesha. Lesha and Denis are responsible for doing nothing and diligently avoiding any kind of work. Sometimes they are still forced to carry the speakers to the disco and bring them back afterward. Denis and Lesha are university students, identical in every way except for the year they are in. Denis is in his third year, while Lesha is in his second. Later on, Denis became a history teacher at a school, and Lesha taught at a pedagogical institute.
It so happened that I became friends with them (or they accepted me into their close-knit group), and we decided to go to the cliffs together to collect mussels and fry them up. I took a day off and we headed to Batiliman, which is five kilometers from the camp, because Denis had spotted a buoy washed ashore by the storm that was so cleverly mangled it resembled a stove with a hearth inside, a cooking surface outside, and even a chimney at the mouth of the conical buoy.
It’s worth mentioning that Lesha had a remarkable nickname: Lesha the Tampon. This was because he always seemed to show up in the right place at the wrong time. The nickname stuck from the days when we used to go to Gorbachev’s dacha, and he managed to trip the alarm that was set up in the grass. The whole story you are reading is, in fact, just another confirmation of the accuracy of his nickname.
We divided the roles like this: Denis went up to gather firewood. I headed into the sea for mussels, while Lesha decided to sunbathe. To avoid trudging through the small stones, I jumped into the water from a high rock. Lesha settled on the same rock, occasionally giving me valuable advice. It’s worth noting that I swam and dove very well and with pleasure. That’s precisely why I didn’t go for firewood. So, Lesha’s advice came off as, at the very least, comical.
On my next attempt, I climbed up a rock and saw below, along the shore, a nudist on a raft with his daughter. I should mention that on the opposite side of the bay, where we had settled, there were two important landmarks: 1. A nudist camp along with a gathering of water-birthing mothers, and 2. A mussel farm. The raft was actually made from white floats from the mussel farm. Instead of a paddle, there was a large stick. The nudist father stood at the front of the raft, legs spread wide, rhythmically paddling on either side. His 5- or 6-year-old daughter sat behind him, watching intently, tracking the rhythm with her eyes, particularly fascinated by the most dynamically swaying part of the process, showing the kind of curiosity that only kittens display when something dangling is being waved in front of them.
I couldn’t help but shout a comment from the cliff: “Wind in your… back!” emphasizing with a pause which part of the back I was referring to. The nudist couldn’t swim by silently after that and decided to take a jab at me ideologically: “Aren’t you hot in those swim trunks?” To which I replied that I was more concerned about not smashing what he was flailing around against the water when I jumped.
After exchanging pleasantries, Alex and I watched the nudist and his daughter leave, and then Alex declared, having succumbed to the nudist’s ideological influence, that he would also sunbathe in the nude so that “his body could breathe.” I looked at Alex skeptically and jumped into the water for another dose of mussels.
I don’t remember after which trip it was, but I unloaded a bag of mussels onto the buoy, saw that the firewood was already partially gathered, and decided to call Lesha to start the fire—he had to help us with something, right? I looked at the rock, but Lesha wasn’t there. A second later, I heard a desperate scream: “De-e-ny!!!” It was Lesha shouting. I replied, “What’s wrong?” Again, the scream: “De-e-e-ny!!!”
I’m trying to get in touch again, noticing that Denis is missing. There’s no effect. The desperate screams continue. So, I walk over the small rocks towards the sea to see what happened and I see that Lesha is standing behind one of the stones, visible only up to his belly button, and is screaming incoherently. I say, “Lesha, what happened?” He replies, “Dima is gone; he went to get firewood.”
— Don’t come any closer, Roma, only Denis can help me!
— What do you have over there?
— Hey!!! Here comes Denis rolling down the hill — no wonder, with that kind of shout, and through his heavy breathing, he asks, “Lesha, what’s going on over there?” Lesha, unsure whether to fill me in on the details of the problem, thinks Denis is one of us. He glances at me but decides there’s no turning back now and steps out from behind the rock, holding all his most valuable belongings in his hands.
“What’s going on?” we ask in unison.
“Did you hit the water?” I asked.
“Why aren’t you wearing swim trunks?” Dima asked.
— Worse! — replies Lesha, sobbing, — A jellyfish!
— Which one?
“Just like this!” Alex exclaims with a hint of desperation, spreading his arms to show the size of the jellyfish and letting his belongings drop, which thud against his legs. He lets out a whine and gathers everything back up again. “You won’t believe it, it chased me!” Alex complained.
Denis and I don’t know how to react. On one hand, it’s funny, but on the other hand, we can imagine how terrible it must be when something so sensitive happens to you… Asking to see the “wound” feels like a violation. In any case, we feel sorry for Lesha, we approach him, help him out of the water, and he doesn’t let go of anything in his hands. We pour him some port wine and make him comfortable. Once Lesha calmed down, he started asking us, “Guys, please don’t tell anyone.” Of course, we said, and thought, “Sure.”
Later, when all this was over, an old lady, a sweet old thing, came up to me. She was the keeper of the storage room, which was located behind the scenes of the Green Theater, which, in turn, was on the outskirts of the camp. Before the movie started, she pointed at Lesha and asked, “Roma, tell me, did that jellyfish sting him?” How did she know?! It’s unclear. She only sees people once a week.
And the story continued the next day. In the morning, Lesha came up to me and whispered:
— Rom, I have a serious problem! — I have to say, I come across as a smart guy, and Lesha just couldn’t think of anyone else to turn to.
— Which one, Lesh? — I asked in a whisper as well.
— I didn’t have a morning erection today. I don’t know what to do! — Lesha didn’t say “hard-on,” he didn’t say anything crude. He used a scientific term, and that showed that he was in a panic. It was important to support that panic, so I replied to him very seriously:
— Lesha, what are you doing! Have you already been to the medical station?
— No, why?
— Hurry up and run there. Maybe,it’s not too late yetJust make sure to take your passport right away, so you don’t have to run back and forth if needed!
“Yeah.” Lesha said and ran to get his passport. I, on the other hand, rushed to the girls in the medical station to warn them that a victim of the prank would be coming their way. When, a couple of hours later, I found Lesha in the cafeteria, sitting over an untouched meal and staring into his soup with glassy eyes, I asked him what the medical staff had said to him. He replied that only amputation could save him. I said to him:
— No way! Where have you ever seen that!
— No, Rom, they let me go for lunch, and then they’ll be cutting.
— Where, here, in the camp? They take the same ones to Sevastopol! There are no conditions here!
— That’s the thing, they decided to operate here. They called the city — and they gave the green light. They’re afraid they won’t make it in time. Look! You’re seeing this for the last time! — And he, pulling down the waistband of his pants, showed me the fully prepared “operating field,” carefully shaved and smeared with green antiseptic in a “checkered” pattern. The girls played their part perfectly. And I won’t even go into detail about how Lesha could barely sit for a couple of weeks because everything there got burned by the sun.