What a vocabulary,” Stas grinned. “It seems like Ariman completely cleaned up your ground, up to the scalp foundation.”
“Right you are,” Victor nodded with a smile. “He began to sing like an important bird.”
In reply Eugene mumbled like an old man and with a creak voice of an experienced man answered, “Well, when life squeezes you, you will sing in falsetto voice! Where shall you hide from its kind pincers? However good or bad but it’s my own Fate.”
The company laughed and Stas uttered, “So you are a masochist besides all?! I didn’t know it. Only at rest-time we discover all personal features of a friend.”
“But seriously, Eugene, how do you feel?” Nikolai Andreevich asked a pragmatic question. “Do you feel a bit better after the “heavy morning”?”
“That’s all right, doc,” replied the guy. “My symptoms are already over.” And having caught skilfully a green fly circling around him he added, “just the clinical presentations left.”
While the seniour guys were joking, our young company has been talking quietly about other things. Eating food I all the time asked my friends to hand me over either a fresh tomato, or a cucumber which I couldn’t take myself as they were far from my plate. They didn’t eat practically anything and Tatyana “poured oil to the flames”, “I wish I could eat that caviar from the golden jar on the table of Ariman.”
“Or one of those salads, at least,” Kostya added dreamily.
“Or grilled shark pieces,” inserted Andrew. “Well, Ariman had a first class food, not this one.”
The guy nodded to the table with disgust.
“Don’t tell me,” backed him Tatiana and making a wry face told me, “How can you eat all of that?”
“Me?” My person got surprised. “With great appetite! Why don’t you like this food? Everything is fresh and delicious.”
“Hem, delicious,” she mimicked me and declared arrogantly in an expert tone, “You’d better try that food yesterday, when there was such a chance. Then you would understand the difference!”
“This food is also good!” I answered merrily trying to clear the air of discontent among my friends.
“This food,” hemmed Kostya and fell into memories of the day before. “Have you seen his yacht! I will also buy one day the same one.”
“Aha, just dream of it,” Slava grinned. “You know how much money you have to earn for it!”
In reply Kostya said arrogantly, “Don’t humiliate yourself to the slave’s thinking level! Believe in yourself! Then you will have good chances.”
Frankly speaking, I didn’t expect to hear it from Kostya and uttered with a smile, “You took over the Ariman’s philosophy so quickly.”
“Philosophy?” Kostya looked sulky. “That’s life, if you didn’t understand it yet! That’s the reality! And you have to use it when you are still alive. And all the rest is philosophy!”
I looked into Kostya’s eyes still hoping that he was just joking. But I met such a cold and sharp gaze that I decided not to reply. Though it was obvious that he waited for my reply probably to splash out fully his protest. But I felt that if I say a word it would lead to an empty conflict and anger. Why should I provoke him? Kostya isn’t a bad fellow. Just he didn’t grasp in full measure which trap Ariman put yesterday, and Kostya managed to be entrapped in it like a silly sparrow. Finally everybody makes his choice in this life and bears responsibility for it.
I lowered my gaze to the plate and continued my meal. After he haven’t received an answer Kostya repeated again insistently, “Yes, it’s just a philosophy!”
No objection followed his phrase. Tatiana said with a dreaming sigh, “What a cool yacht he has! And the furniture inside!”
“One gets used to the good things very quickly,” noticed Andrew.
“Don’t mention it,” nodded Tatiana. “After that luxury I can’t see this slum…”
“It’s a slum indeed,” smugly hemmed Kostya, looking contemptuously around and stopping his gaze at the table. “Let’s go swimming or what. Otherwise I will feel sick looking at this food.”
The guys nodded together agreeing with him. And they began to stand up from our improvised table.
“Are you going?” Tatiana invited me.
“No, thanks, I’d rather stay,” I uttered with a smile. “Unlike Kostya I have strong Siberian health.”
Though we had parted in a peaceful way, I had an unpleasant after-feeling. However I didn’t let me get upset because of such trifles. Having sending my bad thoughts far away, I rubbed my hands anticipating to try biscuits and sweets. And filling my plate with different sweeties in order not to stretch myself for them, I sat closer to the group of the seniour guys headed by Sensei.
Nikolai Andreevich glanced at many sweeties I brought with myself and held me up as an example, “Look how you should eat! And I hear from you just “don’t want”, “merci”, “pardon”!
“Right,” Stas agreed to him merrily. “She needs it! Otherwise she will be blown by the wind! Especially after the dolphins shook her last kilocalories.”
The guys laughed again. However Nikolai Andreevich like a careful parent went on insisting that the guys would eat something “serious”. In reply Victor responded for all of them in jest, “No, no, doctor, don’t insist, I mean, force us. We don’t want at all! Yesterday we arimaned so much that today food evokes the same response like Eugene felt in the story with crawfish.”
“What?!” Eugene roused himself and touched his back probably as he hasn’t heard well the words. That made all of us roll with laughter.
“I’m telling about the story with crawfish”, Victor repeated distinctly with a smile while explaining the guy what had just happened.
“Ah,” Eugene calmed down a bit. “And I thought you are talking about my Achilles’ heel! What a cruel fiend, I thought! It ached the whole night and now he is jeering at it with his emanations.”
While the guys were exchanging phrases, Stas told Sensei with sympathy, “Well, after yesterday sparrings… Ariman stroke him so well, now he’s got such a big bruise!..”
“You should put an ointment to it,” Nikolai Andreevich gave an advice immediately.
Eugene have seen how Stas bent towards Sensei and called him in a comic and pretension way, “Hey, you, why are you betraying all military secrets?! You are a spy!”
“Me? A spy?! You see, I try to help him, appeal to all the medic and rescue service of our good team! And he calls me a spy…”
Victor who sat near Stas, pushed him to the side with an elbow and asked with a humour, “And how come, you know about the size of his “military secret”?”
“How? I’m his friend!” Stas said. And looking at him grinning he added with a smile, shaking his finger, “Just a friend, nothing more.”
When everybody laughed enough,
