woke up because someone was shaking me by my shoulder. “Wake up, sleepyhead, we’re almost there,” Tatyana said.
At the next stop, we limbered up our numb legs. The air smelt of sea and freshness. While Andrew, Victor, and Volodya tried to repair the pinging engine of the Zaporozhets, we had a snack in the nearest outdoor cafe.
In half an hour, our motorcade was at the resort area, where people with beautiful chocolate color bodies lounged around in a carefree way in their bathing suits. Sensei's car headed our column. Andrew could not concentrate on the road as he was trying to look around but not break any traffic laws.
Passing by one of boarding houses, Eugene pointed out to us a billboard he saw from the window. There was written in huge, bold type, “A well-known sensitive of international class, chiropractor, fortune teller, magician, and wizard Vitaliy Yakovlevich… carries out medical and recovery sessions. Sessions beginning at 20.00 daily.”
“Who is he?” Tatyana and I asked the guys. “I don’t know,” Kostya shrugged his shoulders. “Look, isn't it that the "Neanderthal man," the one who
hung spoons on himself? Do you remember?!” “Yeh, that odd fellow?! Maybe. If I'm not mistaken he
was also Vitaliy Yakovlevich. What did he call himself… the
Pantocrator of Space and the whole Earth…”
The guys began to noisy recall that case, laughing at
the tricks of this ‘deity-tramp.’
Meanwhile having crossed the resort area, we drove to
a peninsula that measured about 12 kilometers. It was
necessary here to have a car in order to get to a secluded
place and camp as we wanted. It seemed the local authorities didn’t want any more adventurers in the neighborhood, as a huge pipe was laid across the only road. Right
there in the bushes, though, the guys found two extremely wide boards, which were left by caring drivers. After
placing the boards on the pipe, our drivers rolled the cars
to the closed side of the road like professional stuntmen.
Only Nikolai Andreevich's trailer made them sweat. Having reached one of the most beautiful nooks of
nature, we chose a place that was not too spoilt by
campers. Having collected all the garbage left by careless
tourists, we burnt it and began to set up camp. Sensei
again appeared to be a talented and skilled leader. He took
into consideration all trifles of camp arrangement, even a
possible storm. All the guys were busy and enthusiastically helped Sensei and each other. All Kostya's things turned
out to be really useful, having transformed our camp into
a cozy, comfortable mini-town. Kostya did not miss any
opportunity to emphasize this fact, reminding us that
Andrew was a sadist and tortured him the whole way in
the electric chair. Tatyana and I arranged a kitchen. The
guys put up a special tent for food and gave us a kerosene
camp stove for cooking.
Life in our camp started at full speed. After lunch, we
bathed in the sea like dolphins and warmed our bones on
hot sand with great pleasure. The senior guys floated in
the sea in an inflatable rubber dinghy. Nikolai Andreevich
read a book and Sensei dozed in the shadow of an umbrella, having covered himself with a towel. We decided to
play cards. Kostya tried to count cards, but it was practically impossible as there were too many of us and we played with two stacks of cards. At his next failure, Kostya started to count card combinations in his head according to his special arithmetic system. While doing one of these odd calculations, he raised his eyebrows as if surprised and asked, “Sensei, what is the largest prime number you can think of?”
Sensei answered without opening his eyes, “In short or in full?”
“In short, of course.”
“2 to the 13,466,917th minus 1,” Sensei said simply, as though the question was about a usual multiplication table. “This number can be divided only by 1 or itself. I think that is the largest prime number that I am capable of counting in my head.”
Kostya turned to his side in surprise. Then he started to calculate something energetically again. Sensei, having opened his eyes, added, “If you want to calculate my IQ, you are wasting your time; it is much lower than yours.” After saying these words, Sensei turned to the other side and plunged into somnolence again. Kostya was slightly shocked, “Say! Sensei is cool! How did he know about IQ? I just thought it.”
“Yeah,” said Andrew, “this question remained a sweet dream in his memory until it turned into a rotten one waiting for the answer.”
The guys laughed, having won again.
In the evening, Sensei failed to meet our expectations that he would tell us something unforgettable, sitting at the fire beneath the stars. Right after dinner, Sensei went to sleep, probably because his accumulated weariness had affected him. And we sat at the fire for a long time, laughing light-heartedly and telling each other different stories from our lives.
