“It is lumber, man — all lumber!
Throw it overboard.”
Jerome K. Jerom
The next morning, I woke up feeling sick, in a bad mood, and decided to skip school. The morning was dismal, misty and dull, promising nothing but aggravation for those who suffered from a broken heart or rheumatic pains. I was deeply discouraged by my behavior the previous night. Well, it was an understatement. I felt absolutely disgruntled and pissed off. Useless, belated words swarmed in my head. The more I thought, the more complicated and pointless they seemed. I was calling myself all kinds of silly names. The amorous feeling in my chest had been replaced with a dull sensation of emptiness and remorse.
Redhead had gone home as abruptly as she had appeared. The guys obviously intended to have a good time with their girls that night, so I made my bows quite promptly too. I asked to walk Redhead home, but she politely refused my proposal. Had I offended her? Or did she just want to tease me? I had a feeling that in her eyes I was one of those glamorous guys who lived in big apartments and had all that things the casual folks didn’t have. Most likely, she didn’t want me to see how and where her family lived — in that small city, you could easily find “the March of Progress” performed by the buildings standing, in their breadth of difference, close to each other. In other words, you could observe swanky buildings standing cheek-to-jowl with the rundown Siberian version of slums.
By lunchtime, I succeeded in kicking myself out of bed and decided to pack my bag for the forthcoming trip. I still had days and days to do this, but at that particular moment, I had to occupy my mind with something important and reasonably pleasant to distract it from intrusive thoughts. “All right, all right,” I repeated for the zillionth time, “I wanted to act appropriately, like a gentleman, and show respect.” “Respect? Really? What kind of respect? Is there any regulation or unwritten law for a gentleman that prescribes him to abstain from hugging and kissing girls in the kitchen, you chicken?” And so on and so forth.
I pulled out an old-fashioned backpack, spread a rag in the middle of my room and started to put things, one by one, on the rag and then into the bag. I decided to keep the payload as low as possible, so I had to be very picky when choosing things.
First and foremost came food. I took three cans of meat (don’t ask what they cost me), about a pound each, three portions of canned fish in tomato sauce (my favorite), two loaves of fresh dark bread, about two pounds of hardtacks, some potatoes, a stick of chocolate — dark, like our fortunes — and a few handy candies — just in case I got hungry climbing the sheer rock.
I decided to take not a tent, but a square piece of canvas, a sort of tarpaulin that could serve as a rag and a cover. I took only one blanket, a strong rope, three sets of socks and underwear, three t-shirts, two sweaters and a pair of knitted gloves. I took a first-aid kit combined with a set of thread and needles, soap and a toothbrush, a small towel, a roll of toilet paper, a tiny notebook and a pencil. I added a compass, a map, and two flare torches. They could be used in emergency situations to attract attention or even for driving away wild animals… or, who knows, wild men. Those torches had been bought on the black market and had cost me a fortune. The last thing I put on the rug was a knife. The knife.
It was of the hunting type, with a wide blade, sharp pin, and carved wooden handle. I had borrowed it from a shady guy for some amount of vodka. It was packed into a thick leather sheath that smelled and felt as if it was made of the real stuff, with a chain of rivets on its belly, and looked absolutely terrific. I had an argument with myself about the practicality of that knife; it was a pretty heavy thing to carry. I could have taken an ordinary pocket knife with me; that would suffice. But then the vision of a stern guy standing at the edge of a cliff with his hand on the hilt of a real blade attached to his belt tipped the scale in favor of that heavy piece of metal. I wrapped it in my old sweater and buried it deep in my backpack.
When I had finished arranging things, the backpack was depressingly full. I lifted it from the ground, weighed it in my hand and immediately remembered the immortal scene from Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome:
“Then Harris and I, having finished up the few things left on the table, carted out our luggage on to the doorstep, and waited for a cab… It did look a lot, and Harris and I began to feel rather ashamed of it, though why we should be, I can’t see.”
I loved that book from the first line to the very last. Some people regard Jerome’s novels as easy reading, seasoned with banana skin humor and outdated jokes. In fact, he was a very perceptive writer who succeeded in creating a comprehensive picture of Victorian times and did it in a very entertaining and elegant way. As for his style…
“But the river — chill and weary, with the ceaseless rain-drops falling on its brown and sluggish waters, with a sound as of a woman, weeping low in some dark chamber; while the woods, all dark and silent, shrouded in their mists of vapor, stand like ghosts upon the margin; silent ghosts with eyes reproachful, like the ghosts of evil actions, like the ghosts of friends neglected — is a spirit-haunted water through the land of vain regrets.”
Could a clown write this?
Anyway, the backpack looked bulky but wasn’t that heavy. I was quite satisfied with my packing job and treated myself to a sandwich.
The last thing I checked after a short break was the matches. I took a few boxes and wrapped them tightly in thin plastic. It took some time and effort. I remembered the ill-fated character from Jack London’s Love for Life. That guy had worried about matches more than about his gold stash. He was right — in the northern latitudes, fire is much more important for survival than food and yellow nuggets. That’s why I packed my matches very carefully. While I was doing what I hoped was a thorough job, I thought about another of London’s stories, To Build a Fire — a gloomy tale about a man who travels alone, falls through the ice and freezes to death because he cannot build a fire. Spring was in its prime outside, and I genuinely hoped that I wouldn’t follow in the footsteps of that poor man.
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