Ezoosmos. Anastasia Novykh

mos

      Part I

      An Unusual Fishing

      Those were last warm days of the passing summer. Everyone used that time in one's own way appreciating such a generous benevolence of nature at its true value. Some were contented with observing sunny day views through windows, instead of rainy images that were common for this summer period. Some hastened to take the air, walking along those few islands of green that were miraculously preserved in the middle of grey asphalt-and-concrete composition of urban civilization. And the most adventurous ones longed for nature, in order to have a full-fledged vocation, gather enough strength and impressions see the coming winter out.

      Three cars, packed with those desiring to have a first light fishing, worked their way round holes and bumps along a wood road. The driver of the leading car was a fair-haired man with blond-brown moustache. He looked about 30, average height, athletic build. Friends treated him with respect and called him ‘Sensei’ as he had been heading oriental martial arts circle for many years and was famed for his skill among professionals. His primary activity, however, was medicine. Vertebrology in particular. Sensei was quite out of the ordinary, interesting man with vast mental outlook and inexhaustible sense of humor. Therefore, the number of those willing to spend time with him even at such a ‘quiet arrangement’ as fishing, turned out to be enough and to spare as usual.

      Sensei’s old Soviet car “Moscvich” blinked its stoplights twice, and the cars that followed it stopped. The driver cast a glance examining a gauge of the road, which ended at a broad clearing. And with an irony he asked a tall guy, who sprawled on the passenger chair: “Well, where have you taken us to, fatherland’s son born out of wedlock?”

      “Me, taken?!” Eugene answered with a grin, and then added mischievously: “But... Sensei, it’s you who drives. I’m merely showing the way to the radiant future!”

      Sensei smiled together with other guys. Looking about at the brake along the wood road and at the glade ahead, Eugene said in jest: “Yep! It looks like the place.”

      “It looks like, it looks like!” his friend Stas could not contain himself any longer. Stas sat in the rear seat holding a large bottle in his hands that was filled with water and bait for fish of prey – loaches. “The sun has risen already. It’s just the time of biting! And here we are in the thickets checking your fourth looks like.”

      “I told you I’d been here two years ago,” Eugene started to make excuses and added poetically, “I recall there was a forest, a clearing, a river... That was a top-class place! Oodles of fish! There were splashing ones this big!”

      At these words, trying to impress on the others, he began to stretch his hands wide to show the size of fish. But his spread was obviously limited by the inside of a car so as to illustrate more precise “parameters” of “monsters” found in the river. As people jokingly say, the longer the fisherman’s arms, the less trust there is to his stories.

      “Pull the other leg, Eugene! There’re none such in nature,” pronounced senior sempai Victor, a stocky guy who was sitting near Stas and eating a bun.

      “There are too! Sure thing, there are,” Eugene persuaded fervently. “Sensei, tell them...”

      “Well why there aren’t? Everything’s possible nowadays,” Sensei agreed with a smile. “And those, with two heads and three tails...”

      The guys laughed, while Eugene waved his hand at them with feigned offence.

      “Oh, why would I talk to you... I’ll see you boast about when you catch such a bomber.”

      With those words, he left the car in businesslike air and went ahead to examine the passage to the river as well as the surrounding country.

      “Stas, take a walk with him,” Sensei suggested, when laughter in the cabin faded more or less. “If the place’s good, we’ll stay here. Or we’ll drive about till the evening with this apology for a guide.”

      Stas nodded and carefully handed the bottle over to Victor.

      “There you go, the valuable cargo. And mind you don’t eat them, gormandizer!” he wagged his finger in jest.

      “They’re kind of languid,” Victor observed with irony examining the “field car-aquarium”.

      “What would you want? Poor things got sick of such a trip,” Stas complained in a fit of temper, who devoted the whole overnight to laborious procuring of this dainty for catfish. “It's no joke, they make this land journey for the first time, and Eugene turned out to be among the guides. Good heavens!”

      “Yeah, no luck,” Victor sympathized with laughter.

      Stas got out of the car and hastened after Eugene, who rounded the kink.

      It should be noted that there gathered quite a diverse public in the cars if judge from age and profession. For example, Victor, who rode in Sensei’s “Moscvich,” was an investigative officer. Eugene and Stas, apart from their “lifetime” pursuit of unceasing training, during their “recess,” so to say, earned their living as mechanics in auto repair shop. The fourth passenger in Sensei’s car, Ruslan, a lean medium-sized chap with slightly worked out muscles, was a common factory worker.

      The other car, called “doggy” among the folks, was driven by Volodya, a stocky man of sturdy build with determined features. He was a head of special mission unit for several years already. Near him were his colleagues and friends: Bogdan, Oleg, and Seva (or as he was called, Svat). Notable for their military bearing, they were also distinguished for their peculiar manner of communication, which develops among people who were in the services together for a long time. The fourth passenger, who sat next to Volodya, curiously enough, was of a quite different social environment. It was not for a month as Valera came out of prison, where he had served another term. He was Volodya’s friend since childhood and a neighbor. In outward appearance Valera was not much different from Seva or Oleg. An ordinary young lad, medium-sized, average built. His face, however, bore a particular imprint of life in a prison. One could read distrust in a somewhat stern look, even a hidden threat for anyone, who would dare violate his personal space.

      Behind the wheel of the third car, ‘Volga’, there was Nikolai Andreevich. His passengers were young individuals, who had just recently graduated from university Andrew, Nastya, Tatyana, and Kostya. One wouldn’t call this merry crowd a company of inveterate fishermen, excluding Nikolai Andreevich, of course. Quite the opposite. The company was so full of buoyant youthful energy that no respected fish would have approached such laugh-n-noise generators that are all about tricks and unrestrained chattering about every trifle in the world. This atmosphere could be endured, perhaps, only by a psychotherapist (not too long at that), Nikolai Andreevich being such, by the way. But everyone in the car was too anxious so as not to miss such a rare opportunity of breaking away for a holiday together with Sensei. That’s why they thrust themselves as “fishermen” in an alleged effort to improve in their piscatorial skills as well as in knowledge of the area’s flora and fauna.

      Such was the big, motley company looking forward to arrival of their walkers Eugene and Stas. In was but in ten minutes that this impressive couple went back at a jog trot with joyful news. Already from afar, they started to make signs at car drivers and their passengers that the fishing place was finally found. Eugene tried to mime that there’s a whole plenty of fish varying in size. He showed the sizes comparing them to different body parts of his companion.

      “It is there!” Stas panted out, getting into Sensei’s car together with Eugene. “First go straight, then to the right. There’s a convenient path to the river.”

      After tedious waiting and coping with the last yards towards the long-expected aim, the cars drove out at a clearing located on a bank of a small river. The place turned out to be beautiful indeed. There was a smooth wind in the river in this spot. Coniferous trees mixed with broad-leaved trees surrounded the clearing. The air was sweet with aroma of conifers. The green clearing was lit with bright sunrays that created splashes of light reflecting from diamond dewdrop placer. All this, along with the view of the far bank, created a truly enchanting picture of nature.

      A sandy slightly downgrade shore was not yet touched by a gross imprint of a boot, and that unspeakably gladdened inveterate fishermen of our big company keen to some local fauna. Content with appearance