to him, laughing and keeping up this fun.
“No, well, don’t trouble yourself!” satisfied Eugene started to treat me with kind gloves. “We are gentlemen. Let’s not go beyond the camp chaos.” And he added at once, “However, if madam has a desire, she can not only clean the dust from rush. She can wipe that small puddle.”
Eugene pointed out to the sea and everybody burst out laughing again. This way we were going to the shelters all the time exchanging ‘mutual compliments and concessions’ with him under the roar of other guys.
4
Already from afar we have seen that our camp looked somehow unusual, as if it were covered with a white moving spot. Of course, we tried to keep order but everything was too white… Coming closer we have observed the true ‘banquet’ of seagulls. Our sudden appearance scared these thieves and they were in panic. Breaking away from their rich meal, they flew up as if on command and so to say made sail leaving us piles of leftovers. Our group was in stupor from such a barefaced impudence.
You should have seen this scene. Everywhere lay about in disorder plastic torn paper bags with cereals, macaroni, what is more, thoroughly mixed with the sand. So to say, sand-cereals-macaroni foundament mixed with droppings of birds, with small hills of poured out flour, salt, sugar. And all this morning disaster was supplemented by open work tissue papers whirling by the wind, like in a play, on the whole shore. And if to take into account our previous bet, my person for example lost its wits and I, so to say, ‘lost heart’.
In a minute of deathly silence during which some with surprise and others with fear were observing this nice landscape named a ‘landfill’, Eugene scratched his head and threw to Andrew with triumph, “Well, well. Is it called ‘not a living soul’?!”
Andrew hurried on to counter, “Right, but for your lonely maniac!”
“The fact is that he was not lonely,” Victor remarked in jest examining the multiple remnants of the devastation. “And judging by traces left this ‘leader’ was more likely a representative of the local fauna and had four paws and even maybe a tail. Obviously he was the first in our food shelter.”
“Right,” Eugene stood up for the unknown animal. “He ate too much there. He was bored and invited all he could to this party.”
“Nice party,” Stas hemmed. “Who will clean up all of this for them?”
“Make a guess with one try,” Eugene proposed to him with a smile and looked satisfied towards me.
Then as if it suddenly came to his mind he started to look actively for our improvised broom made from branches bound together. It happened to be ‘half-dug’ in the sand. Eugene raised it, shook it down, pretended having blown away the last specks of dust and handed it over to me with an open hand.
“Take it, Cinderella! Today you will forget about the rest on the sea shore. A bet is a bet.”
I took up the broom because I understood that we should bring our camp to order anyway. And I began to plan in my mind where to start the big cleaning of the territorium from. Meanwhile Sensei took away the broom from my hands and addressed to Eugene, “But she didn’t lose the bet yet.”
“But she is unlikely to win it,” the smiling guy uttered with self-confident expression on his face.
“I would propose the following,” Sensei said. “If it turns like this, let’s complicate the task…”
“Noway! A bet is a bet, as agreed upon,” Eugene started to protest as he thought that Sensei would propose now something extraordinary for his person.
“But you will benefit from it!”
Eugene calmed down looking with suspicion at Sensei and trying to figure out where was the dirty trick. Meanwhile Sensei went on, “Take an assistant. Your total time under water will be summed. That is, the time you both stay under water against her one diving.”
Eugene hasn’t found out anything onerous for himself and immediately agreed fearing that Sensei would change his mind.
“Alright, alright!” and he added toadily, “Sensei, I have always known that you are the most fair judge in the world. However, who knows,” he pointed out to me with a cunning smile, “Maybe she grew gills instead of lungs on the way.”
Everybody laughed and I pretended laughing, too. However, a rapid wave of doubts that it was just a joke rose in me. If they didn’t joke, then it meant a real disaster for my person. I didn’t know how to dive at all, not speaking about long breath-holding. And this bet is against two well-trained guys! “I got into a mess,” my person thought scared.
“Well,” Eugene rubbed his hands anticipating his victory after he chose his partner. As I assumed, it was Stas, “Let’s not lose time and go to the sea!”
He made an inviting gesture to all our group suggesting to witness this event. The people eagerly agreed on the proposal of our comic fellow and followed him leaving the things. Lighting a cigarette Sensei remained behind, together with Nikolai Andreevich. I and Tatyana also stayed there as we used to pack up the left things in one heap. Meanwhile Nikolai Andreevich said in low voice adressing to Sensei, “Eugene is so sly. As soon as condition of the deal became favourable, he immediately changed his attitude to the situation. However, many people do like him. This is a typical example of egocentrism.”
“What can we do,” Sensei shrugged his shoulders and answered in the same low voice. “Man seeks a better fate like fish seeks deeper water,” and he added with a smile, “How can he deprive himself the dearest? Indeed, this egocentrism is an automatical habit of people. How can we talk about the love for one’s neighbor if they don’t even want to understand each other?”
“It’s the most sad thing about all of it.”
Meanwhile I and Tatyana have already finished our work. I came with doubts to Sensei hoping to solve a dispute before starting to realize its conditions.
“Well, I…”
Sensei didn’t let me finish the phrase and express all my numerous doubts. He said in a kindly manner, “Go and get ready. Get used to the water.”
His soft confident tone calmed me a bit. Still hoping that it was just a joke I went to the sea together with Tatyana. There was already a ‘support team’ presented by Kostya, Andrew and Slava. I should mention that our big group has divided itself to two parts: those ones who ‘supported’ Stas and Eugene and those ones who ‘sympathized’ with me.
Unlike the senior guys who ran to the water with much noise like torpedoes and dove deep at once in order to cool off their bodies warmed-up by sun, I and Tatyana tried to get used to the water as usually, step-by-step. However, the guys who so to say ‘supported’ us decided to speed up this process and started to sprinkle us from all sides pretending to help us intensively to get used to the water. As they were intentionally attacking us from shallow water, I and Tatyana had to run away to the depth, of course, with a following submergence.
Having seen enough of Eugene and Stas breath training before diving Kostya put up the ‘crown of the winner’ from twisted algae on his head and began to play the role of my mentor in ‘diving in shallow water’. All this process was accompanied by killing jokes of the guys. But despite the philosophical teachings of Kostya I wasn’t able to hold breath under water for long. Kostya even tried to slightly hold me in place under water fixing my shoulders and mumbling from the surface his ‘instructions’. However, all of that just scared me even more as sooner or later my instinct of self-preservation prevailed and I managed to ‘scramble out’ to the surface with amazing quickness sometimes even drowning my ‘mentor’ at panic. After several unvoluntary submersions Kostya exploded with even more ‘innovative proposals’ on improving the diving method, for example by making my body heavier in the water with a ‘necklace of bricks’, ‘beton handcuffs’ etc.
“Finally, what task do you have?” Kostya said in jest shaking out water from his ear and adjusting a hanging algea which fell down after his another submersion to water by his ‘bad disciple’. “You need to submerge under