It all started at the Pioneer Palace. In Almaty, this is an actual palace and there are still Pioneers there. Just kidding, they’re only highly motivated schoolkids. I can’t say if our beloved oceanography club still exists. Second floor, up one of the two staircases to the balustrade, past the rock-climbing wall, and along the administrative offices to a small corridor and there’s the door. Even though the building is constructed of pink limestone, it projects marble monumentality, coldly contemptuous toward the uninitiated. That’s why, often enough, new students tried to join our group of ten but, just as fast, they dropped out. Some went off swimming instead, some to play chess, and some to the dacha. Around the oval table in our enormous classroom, twenty students could easily have fit. There were high ceilings, cabinets full of books about fish, large and small, two aquariums, and weird little arrowslit windows. Apparently, the architects were planning for the Pioneers’ defense against the scouts, their eternal rivals. The windows’ aluminum frames made them so small that even in the daytime we had to turn on the lights. 

          Sitting nonchalantly, we brought our sessions to order like some kind of royal geographical society. But before each session, in order to gain admittance, we had to perform the ritual of feeding the fish. It was pitch-dark in the adjacent room, but we felt our way to one of the two fridges for the feeder worms that were the texture of a drowned man’s hair. In the light from the fridge, the place was like a dark room: a sink for rinsing the worms, a strainer, metal containers, and a fine mesh sieve. Everything was worm-related in this room, except for a stuffed blowfish dangling from one of the refrigerator doors. It looked like the dough ball Kolobok killed mid-kiss. 

          We’d rinse the worms until they were pale pink, divide the globs between three containers, and feed the aquariums in the classroom and in the hall. The fish were all freshwater and low-maintenance. Lucky fellows who ate exclusively live food. Not every Pioneer in our club could afford this kind of nutrition for their fish at home. Irina Yurievna, our club’s advisor, tactfully glossed over this fact. I have to say, I liked her patronymic. 

          Our lofty name—The Oceanography Club—connected us to the sea by way of books, whose illustrations we looked at as we waited for our teacher: starfish, sandfish, pearl divers. I don’t remember any photographs—I think there were only illustrations. Running off into the depths of the white pages, those underwater landscapes gave rein to my imagination. Then Irina Yurievna would come in, and we’d study one sea species in depth for the next forty minutes. Once it was the goby and Lermontov’s “The Lonely Sail is Flashing White” came to my mind. Irina Yurievna would ask us to open our books to a page that somehow we’d never seen before, and the article there would turn out to be surprisingly entertaining! 

          I joined the club in the fall, right after I gave up swimming and then boxing in quick succession. I got my own aquarium and stared at it the way people nowadays stare at the TV. All evening long. 

          A month later, I brought a friend of mine to the club—my classmate Seryoga. He also had an aquarium. On Sundays we went to the live fish market. Seryoga lived three blocks closer to the market. No one sold saltwater fish there, of course. But the quantity and variety of freshwater fish was staggering. 

          Then the rumors started—the club was planning an oceanographic expedition. A month later these rumors were completely dispelled by Irina Yurievna. Instead, we’d be going in July to a camp by the river for one week. Of course, one could call this a trip. But then that’s all it would have been, not the expedition I remember in detail to this very day. 

          It’s true, I don’t remember how we managed to fill the whole tour bus, or how we got to the place, or even its name. I’ve tried to find it several times since, but with no results. And yet everything I’ll recount about our expedition really happened. Pioneer’s honor.

          The bus arrived at a three-story concrete building buried in wild grapes. We didn’t see any river there. For many of us twelve- or thirteen-year-olds, this was our first trip without parents. It would also be our first cup of tea poured in a tent on the shore under the assault of mosquitoes; the first time running free along the shore; the first time dreaming in the four-bed rooms of a sanatorium; the first walk down its corridors at night. 

          The next morning we woke up in paradise. A concrete path led from our building to the shore. It didn’t lead to the river itself, the Ili—a rather imposing and slow brown serpent—but to the bank of a stream separated from the main channel by an island. The island looked mysterious, full of pirates. You could reach it on a raft, pulling yourself by a rope attached to the opposite shore that splashed in the water like a snake. It took three people five minutes to get across and we weren’t allowed to go alone. Plus, it was a little creepy there, among the dense thickets, and some creature’s burrows by the path along the shore, beside a miniature desert with dunes of the finest sand, a cliff overlooking the river, and an indignant choir of birds. 

          We were, however, allowed to swim in the stream-cum-creek with warm transparent water, or walk around the sanatorium grounds and observe the antlions. Each of us had our own oceanographic mission. Spoiler: I succeeded in gathering a collection of insects that lived in the river, on the river, and above the river. I’m talking about water skaters, obviously. Antlions were outside my purview, but I dug up a few. They looked exposed and pathetic.

          Slava was good at drawing, kept to himself, and stood a head taller than most of us boys. In other words, he had the requisite qualities to lure any and all girls at once despite his young age. He seemed to make no effort whatsoever; he only had to go down after breakfast to the river and start painting another one of his plein-air landscapes, and only boys would remain in the canteen. The two girls who stayed behind—both dawdlers and pastry lovers—don’t count. 

          We were left to play soccer on the beach, go swimming before lunch, when the sun dispersed the mosquitoes, and explore our island in small groups with one of the Pioneer leaders. Of these leaders, we only knew Irina Yurievna, who was in charge of housekeeping and had almost no time for us. The other three, two women and a man in a denim suit, all in their mid-twenties, were driven by their own enthusiasm. On the fifth day of the expedition, they were already planning a disco party for us. Slava made his pick, and the lucky girl turned out to be Marina, silent just like him, whom I, too, had a little crush on. The stars aligned for this perfect couple, and the rest of us mere mortals were left to arrange our own destinies. 

          Even before our idyll was disturbed by junkies, something else happened that is worth mentioning. I could have collected dragonflies by the shore, but I was constantly distracted by the huge fancy-colored ones circling the lily pads ten meters off, near the middle of the stream. 

          I confess, it wasn’t my idea. It was Seryoga who caught sight of the soapdish and offered to help me. “The soapdish” was our name for the low-sided plastic boat: soft green on the outside and grey inside. You couldn’t call it anything else. Its bottom was flat, and I’m not even sure that it was a boat, it might just have been a large, imported wash basin. 

          We used our flip-flops to row. The two of us barely fit and the boat dipped perilously, but we didn’t give it much thought. Our hunt for dragonflies would take no longer than ten minutes. We quickly reached the lilies, where the water was cooler and had the disturbing odor of fish. I was having trouble catching the dragonflies, afraid to move with the water spilling over the sides, but a few powerful coordinated strokes and we did it. Stiff, wiry stalks scraped against the bottom of the boat. We got to the middle of the lily pads, which now held us steady. The two dragonflies we caught that day sat on pins in my childhood room for many years after, until their wings crumbled, reminding us of the two lives that were miraculously saved. Trying to free the soapdish from its prison of lily pads, we nearly flipped over. We lost a flip-flop (not mine), and finally broke free, almost completely exhausted. But that wasn’t the end of it. The current picked up and swept the soapdish out to sea. It was only when we passed the tent on shore that we got a grip. Some boy came out of it with a mug in one hand and a cookie in the other and shouted, “Row to shore, morons!” 

          We tried to save ourselves by using our hands and flip-flops. But escaping from the lily pads had cost us all our strength! There was nothing left to do but call for help. And our calls were heard. We caught sight of a long dead tree that stuck out from the island right at the mouth of the stream. Grabbing for it, we felt the current pulling the soapdish under the dead wood, to the bottom. But the water wasn’t deep and later, at dusk, we were able to return the soapdish to its spot. It seemed that our absence had gone unnoticed. And nothing binds a male friendship better than a secret. 

          Everyone was getting ready for the disco. Especially Valentin, the Pioneer leader in the denim suit. It turned out that he was also a DJ—we’d gotten lucky. The girls, too, had been looking forward to it: they’d locked themselves in their rooms, trying on outfits, and whispering. The boys were taken on a fishing trip that day. If you crossed the island’s dunes to a cliff, you could, it turned out, catch very big fish. I don’t like to brag, but I surprised everybody (myself most of all) when I caught a large bream with a spoon lure. It rotted later in the shade of a tree, from improper salting and homesickness for its river. 

          On the morning of that same day, a policeman came to our sanatorium after breakfast. Actually, there were two of them. One stayed in the UAZ vehicle by the main entrance to the sanatorium. The sun was already beating down, and the second policeman was sweating as he talked to Irina Yurievna on the concrete path. He held a brown leather folder and, as he talked, he alternated between addressing it, and addressing Irina Yurievna. We were brought to the canteen and counted. Valentin was bewildered. Irina Yurievna asked us not to leave the building except for lunch and dinner. 

          Suddenly Valentin stepped forward and, after whispering “there’ll be rumors, anyway,” to Irina Yurievna, told us that the police were looking for some junkies near the sanatorium. “The disco isn’t canceled, just postponed,” he said. 

          There was a weird sense of collective anxiety and disappointment. We looked at each other and watched respectfully as the policeman calmly ate a large plate of porridge and drank tea. We worried, not for ourselves, but for Irina Yurievna. Honestly, she’d never looked like a real oceanologist or expedition leader. She was just an elementary school teacher, and now, for some reason, this was very obvious.

          After all, we were almost grown up and could even help the police. The policeman and his partner took turns eating lunch, probably so one could keep watch. Everyone stayed inside until evening, not knowing what to do. The rooms were as stuffy as the corridor, and we didn’t feel like reading or talking. We waited, imagining the junkies surrounding the sanatorium, as they crawled quietly through the bushes and parted the dry branches. Looking down from the second floor, I thought that if the policeman gave me a gun, I would have a good shot from there. A childish thought, of course. They visited me from time to time back then. To be honest, they still do, and this makes me happy.  

          The sun on the Ili begins to set at seven in July. With the light goes the warmth. The mosquitoes, who fear neither junkies nor policemen, know this very well. 

          The junkies were caught at six thirty. Valentin had gathered branches for a big fire that afternoon, and we were all allowed to gather around it. As the fire grew and the sun set, another UAZ truck pulled up. The junkies, it turned out, were just a couple of frightened teenagers. They sat down beside the fire: one’s sleeve was torn, and the other’s face was covered in soot. They had no belongings, no bags, nothing. I got the impression they were happy to be caught. At least it was over. One of the policemen sat next to them, staring into the fire. Waiting for witnesses or someone else important to arrive. When his walkie-talkie chirped, the policeman nodded at the junkies, and they silently got up and walked out through the building. We heard the cars start and drive away. 

          Valentin picked up a dry branch, looked at it, and recited “Fly, fly petal, to the east through the west,” and threw it into the fire. Slava repeated the beloved lines after him, throwing the tip of a reed into the fire. I got my chance, and then Sergey silently threw something into the fire. The last to throw, of course, was Irina Yurievna. 

          The disco took place the next night. Though it almost got scrapped again. When Valentin, having fiddled with the speakers for a long time, finally got them connected, all the lights in the building went out. The girls shrieked but continued to gather in the darkened rooms. We stood in the hallway with our armpits covered in scented antiperspirant. The janitor suggested we use the spare generator, despite the protests of the head of the sanatorium. Valentin looked at her pleadingly. Then he went away and brought a generator on wheels: a dirty, complicated piece of machinery with a long, unusually thick cord. Everything was finally plugged in. The whirring of the generator sometimes drowned out the music, but only inside. We danced under the light in the yard, with mosquitoes dancing above our heads, as Irina Yurievna and the other Pioneer leaders watched us from benches. I don’t remember the songs except for “Casanova”—it was my first time hearing Nautilus Pompilius—and “Belyi, belyi ostrov” by the band “Kombinatsiya.” I remember because I slow-danced to it with a girl whose name I don’t remember. Her neck smelled wonderful. At the end, Valentin and Irina Yurievna danced with us. I can’t remember what the song was. 

          Because of the junkies, I wasn’t able to tell you about the real zoologists who came to visit us. There was even a lady-entomologist among them! At night, they went out to the dunes with a flashlight, and within an hour, our Lenka had torn the tail off a lizard trying to take it from a table set up with boxes for sand fauna. And all this happened after eleven, way past our official bedtime.  

          I also didn’t tell you about the time I came across a mole cricket while digging for worms. If you’ve never seen one, don’t go looking. It was a scary creature: piercing black, beady eyes, shaggy forelimbs that were more like claws, and a shell with joints like  a medieval knight’s armor. It was in no hurry to scram. It was unafraid. It just waited to see what would happen next, and then, realizing that I was merely an observer, it left with dignity, climbing the scree without looking back, while tiny boulders the size of an antlion rolled from under its feet.