herrings peacefully swimming inside, “my cat won’t even let me in the door”.
Volodya grinned again and looked towards the forest. Valera came out of it and walked to the camp, dragging along a dry tree trunk.
“Oh, Valera… dragging another log…”
Sensei turned round.
“Fine fellow. He is stocking firewood for tonight, in contrast to others,” he looked at Volodya unambiguously, and then uttered, “including myself”.
“I’ve proposed him to go swimming, but he keeps holding himself aloof from the group.”
“The feels shy. He’s in a new company for the first time. He knows nobody here, except you.”
“It’s true,” Volodya said in a bass voice. “By the way, I wanted to talk with you about him. He’s a good guy, although he’s got quite a hard destiny. He needs help in order not to get into trouble again… We were friends since childhood. He’s my neighbor. We used to attend gym together, and hung out in the same street company… His parents works in the North while Valera was brought up by his grandmother. She’s a really nice woman. Well, when his parents came back to live with him, Valera turned fourteen. And then his “merry life” started. His father started drinking alcohol and beating his mother. She wouldn’t wait long, divorced him and married another man. Yet, her second husband proved to be not better than Valera’s father, and brawls in the family became even more frequent and worse. Valera became very irritable, for reason or without it. For the first time he went to jail by total foolishness. He had then just turned eighteen. A month before he was supposed to go to the military service, he thrashed a man in a street fight. They imprisoned him for a year, after which he was released. He tried to find job, but no one would hire him. Moreover, his stepfather was nagging him with claims that he didn’t want to support a criminal at his expense. To cut a long story short, he had no money, but wanted to have many things like most young people. Well, as a result, he got imprisoned for another three years, this time for a robbery. When he returned from jail, the situation at home was as bad. He didn’t have any opportunity to rent an apartment, and so he got drawn into a gang again. He moved to an apartment in the neighboring district, married a nice girl, but less than in a year he got in trouble once more. They exposed him, fool, to a very serious crime, and he got into jail again... It’s good they’d condemned him to only five years. And, while he was imprisoned, his wife left him, and his parents died in a car accident. His granny was his only close relative remained, but she’s about eighty years old… He’s been released just recently and is still under criminal department control… So, he’s got a really tough life. But, in general, he’s a not a bad guy.”
“Indeed, not a bad guy… having three criminal records only,” Sensei grinned.
“You see, it’s just because he’s life turned the wrong way. I know him for so many years! I sent him letters to jail, to support him morally, so to say. We corresponded particularly frequently during the last four years. It would be good to settle him somewhere, so that he won’t break loose again… You see, he is a weak-willed, wavering guy…”
“Wavering, you say?!” Sensei grinned again and gazed at Volodya strangely.
The latter got confused.
“Well, what if he gets under somebody’s influence again or does something inappropriate…”
“All right, we’ll think something out.”
With the company’s bywords and jokes, the evening stealthily approached. Oleg and Stas started exercising. Such habit which had become a daily physiological need for many of the guys present contagiously affected the others. The guys from the special operations group practiced a slightly different training technique than Sensei’s disciples, which generated mutual interest of the two exercising parties. One word led to another, and the guys began to share their accumulated “military” and “civil” experience. Unnoticed, it came down to little sparring bouts.
Meanwhile Father John, Sensei, Volodya and Nikolai Andreevich were still trying to fish, catching some tiny ones, which could be used “at least for a smell of fish-soup” as they said, and inconsolably waiting for bells jingle on the “track” which could signal of some big bite. Should they had been very old men, they would hardly be interested in anything except the fishing-rod and the fishing process itself. However, they still had young blood running in their veins, therefore they further more often cast glances at the sparring guys. Finally, Vano couldn’t resist such temptation any more, left his rod to Volodya’s charge and walked towards the fighters.
“Oh!” Sensei grinned. “If this priest got imbued with training, it means an edifying process will start now. Let’s go and see.”
When they approached, Father John was already in his repertory. Stas had accidentally injured Eugene’s lip during the sparring bout, when they both were just trying to demonstrate an interesting clench to Volodya’s guys. Father John began to bustle about Eugene like a caring hen about her chicken, applying a cold compress made of a wet handkerchief to his lip nearly by force. Eugene was waving away in amazement first, saying there’s no problem at all, but then he surrendered to Father John’s pressure and persuasion. Such scene automatically attracted the attention of the rest of spectators.
“You see… you see… it’s always like this: if one’s mind is stupid, his body suffers,” the priest was explaining Eugene the sense of his blunder. “The God’s power must be inside you. Without it, your body is a mere dust, the infinity of suffering.”
“But, in the end, the infinity of suffering upon training leads to ‘the body position steadiness upon fighting’,” Eugene responded jestingly, attempting to stand up from the “penal and injured” beam.
However, the priest who had evidently not finished his edifying homily yet, put his hand on Eugene’s shoulder and riveted him to his previous spot. It was much more comfortable for Father John to preach from above than to “breathe in the navel” of this nearly two-meter-high giant.
“Not really, not really… God’s Spirit is the main thing in a human being. It’s exactly it, and not the transient flesh, is the real source of power. You should rely on it…”
“… but help yourself, too,” Eugene interrupted Father John friskily, making another attempt to stand up.
But Vano seated him with his “iron” hand again. The priest shook his head and looked at Sensei who had just approached them. Imitating an old-mannish voice, making his favorite accent on “o’s”, Vano quoted the poem, “Look at this modern youth! Their deeds, their words! When we very young, we were not foolish like this! Instead, we asked advice: ‘May I do this, or may I do that?’”
Sensei and Volodya smiled, looking at the priest.
“What I’m trying to explain you, little fool, is that you should rely not on your muscles, but on the God’s Spirit which is inside you,” Father John continued to preach to Eugene. “Without it, you are deprived, mere outcast of flesh!”
“Me, deprived?! Mere outcast of flesh?!” Eugene lost his temper and rose at his entire robust enormous height opposite to the skinny priest.
The funny side of the situation caused loud laughter of the group watching what was going on. Vano looked at Eugene’s mighty trunk with pumped muscles, eyed him all over contemptuously, waved his hand and said:
“Weakling! Don’t you think it’s the real power?! It’s only a swollen bag with bones inside it. Should you blow on it, it will fly. I can now show you
