Evgeny Berezin, Ekaterina Serikova
*The text contains quotes from Dmitry Khaustov’s book “Burroughs, Who Exploded. Beat generation, postmodernism, cyberpunk and other fragments.”
The Ocean Children’s Health Complex, located in The Resort district of Saint Petersburg, was founded in 1969 as a Pioneer camp for the children of employees of Northern Dockyard, one of Leningrad’s largest shipbuilding enterprises. Eight two-story dormitory buildings were constructed, with rooms accommodating six to eight children, along with a dining hall, a club with a stage, a stadium, and a full-sized 25-meter indoor swimming pool with three lanes. The camp was designed to accommodate 450–500 children per session.
The first thing the children saw through the columns of ship pines were these strange triangular houses. They seemed less like dwellings than landing capsules for astronauts who had just touched down on the sandy dunes of the Karelian Isthmus. Inside the buildings, the air smelled of resin, plywood heated by the day’s sun, and fresh bed linen. A wall-sized window opened directly onto the sky, making it seem as though you were sleeping not in a room but in a tent perched at the top of a pine tree.
The day at Ocean began at seven in the morning. Boys in blue shorts ran along the concrete paths to morning exercises, racing one another.
Breakfast was served in one of the strangely shaped triangular buildings. It was a concrete structure with enormous stained-glass windows depicting apple orchards and portraits of young people with determined faces. Sunlight passed through the entire building. The boys sat at long tables, their faceted glasses of hot tea ringing softly, while beyond the walls the Gulf of Finland roared. Seagulls perched on the terrace railings, making it seem as though the dining hall itself were floating on the waves.
‘’This is the Guardian’s purpose: to nurture hybrids and mutants in the fragile stage of their infancy.”*
“The kitchen smells of all countries hang over the City; the smoke of opium, the burning of hashish, the resinous red smoke of the kitchen smell of the jungle, and salt, and the rotting river, and dried excrement, sweat and genitals. Mountain pipes, jazz and bebop, single-stringed Mongolian instruments, Gypsy xylophones and Arabic bagpipes. “…” Adherents of unimaginably outdated crafts, chatting in Etruscan; addicts of not yet synthesized drugs; Tithonic longevity serum; speculators from the black market of the Third World War; street vendors pushing drugs for radiation sickness; researchers of violations exposed by polite paranoid chess players; handlers of incoherent warrants written in hebephrenic shorthand and prescribing ineffable mutations of the spirit; bureaucrats of ghost departments; officials of unconstitutional police states; sellers of orgone tanks and relaxing machines, merchants of refined dreams and memories, tested on hypersensitive cells of junk disease and bartered for raw resources of will; doctors who are adept at treating hidden diseases that lie dormant in the black dust of destroyed cities; ocean floor and stratospheric ailments, laboratory diseases and atomic warfare, amputee telepathic sensitivity, osteopaths of the spirit.”*
During the day, the camp turned into an anthill. On the riverbank, teenagers learned to tie real maritime knots. Their hands smelled of foam and seaweed. Sitting on the warm sand of the dunes, they built castles out of sand – with bastions, moats into which they channeled water from the Gulf, and flags made from pine bark.
A war for territory began in the sand. Towers instantly collapsed and were washed away by streams of water sent by the enemy. Pinecone bullets flew through the air; shells embedded in the walls of the sand fortifications held back the enemy’s advance. Again and again, new castles were built.
‘’Before my eyes, like a bad dream, pictures of the Wild West, the First World War and the colonial wars. Audrey finds herself surrounded by boys, half-naked and armed.
Boys fill the arcades and halls with movie screens, disperse at the fair. The male viewers look at the on-screen boys – Indian boys in the scenery of the Mayan civilization, with pyramids, surrounded by carnivorous plants – plants with huge phalluses, plants with wide anuses.
People fuck trees, trees fuck people, and boys collect the seed in between because it costs a lot of money.
The wild boys declare war on Control.
The Wild Boys are an axis of evil that must be defeated. The army is coming. “I drink to the glorious victory of our brave American allies over little boys armed with slingshots and Scout knives.’’*
‘’But the boys lure the soldiers into an ambush, with unprecedented viruses and barbaric cunning on their side. A massacre. The soldiers are running. The boys are playing football with the colonel’s head. They cut off the scrotums of corpses and make elegant hashish bags out of them. “It’s over in a few seconds. Not a single person from the regiment was left alive.”
Wild boys appeared in the mountains of Mexico, the jungles of South America and Southeast Asia. Bandit countries, guerrilla countries – this is the territory of wild boys.” They’re everywhere. They can’t be stopped. This threat is reported to the president.”*
In the evening, as the sun slowly sank into the Gulf, turning the water orange, everyone gathered around the fire bowl. Huge sparks flew upward, becoming entangled in the pine crowns and the fading sky. The children sang to the guitar about distant ports and brigantines, their faces glowing orange in the darkness.
Then they returned to their triangular houses. The counselor switched off the lights, leaving only a single yellow lantern burning outside. And then the wooden walls began to “move”- quietly cracking as they cooled after the heat of the day. The children fell asleep to this dry wooden rustling and the deep, steady sound of the Baltic Sea.
“After the inauguration, President Roosevelt goes out on the balcony of the White House in the purple toga of the Roman emperor and announces the first appointments: Secretary of Finance – “Mike Pantopon, an old junkie”, Attorney General – “a character known as a “Girl”: a pusher of used motherfuckers and a small scammer”, Minister of Agriculture – “Luke Striped Catfish, a drunkard from Pizdville, Alabama.” Next, all the appointees must copulate with the purple-assed baboon. Only the strongest–or the most resilient-will survive. After the ceremony, Roosevelt disperses Congress and the Senate, his methods are very extravagant.”*