THE SMOKERS CLUB (1934 Approximately)

The cough was etched permanently in my memory. It stayed alive ready to be relived in slow motion any time I choose. The smoke hardly got past my throat, when suddenly all hell broke loose. My mouth opened full throttle . My jaws dropped to the chest. At the very same time every channel from there to the panicking life inside, shut tight instantaneously. Nothing could get through. Not even a hint of air to breathe. I felt my face bulging, getting ready to explode. Muscles pushed with overpowering force against the skin that was getting ready to burst. The impact was so intense and sudden, I was hit by a hammer from some secret place inside. I don't know exactly where, but the result was a curling up into a slouched position, and suddenly my chest exploded.

Keep it down in your lungs, they said. Lungs? The expulsion was driven by a hammer from the lowest reaches of the bowels. My chest was torn apart, exploding into smithereens. The tightly clenched lips, mighty defenders of the borders against foreign invasions; the lips that look so deceptively like soft pillows, yet rule in total control of what goes into the mouth, suddenly reduced to quivering helplessness. My mouth blasted wide open, smoke gushing out like steam from a volcano. Stopped in my tracks. Ridiculously, yet fiercely, I found myself hopping from foot to foot, stomping with all of my might. Every ounce of strength in my tightened, bent over body, instantly mobilized to expel the poisonous foreign invasion. I thought I would die.

All this was over very quickly. The first thing that I saw as soon as I was able to breathe again, were my gloating buddies all around me, hovering too close. Whichever way I turned, there were strangely lit up eyes shining in my face, like detectives' flashlights mercilessly seeking for clues of something wrong. The cigarette, crumpled and bent, was locked in my curled fingers like in a vise of steel. My mind befuddled, unable to formulate a thought, let alone make plans. As if by remote control, my whole being became resolute. No doubts whatsoever. No hesitation at all. I was ready for the next hit.

If I didn't want to flunk the test, this is what I had to do next. Exhale in a thin slow trickle blown away from the front of the face with enough force to keep an unwavering stream of smoke moving ahead in a straight line, angled to the side and reaching way above the head before disappearing. The mark of masterful nonchalance. That was the poise of a grown up who knows what he is doing, how to make powerful forces behave. There was so much to learn.

Over the years I have tried and tried to place that big, ominous, event in my life in its exact time frame, but I can't. What happened before? After? What other things were going on in my life around that time? It all dissolved in a hazy fog. Like a raft lit up by a spotlight in a vast ocean, the memory bobs along in the middle of nowhere, an isolated drama, detached from any context, surrounded by fog. Just like a stage play, it has separate acts, shifting sets, actors and props, and it is completely separated from anything else. Nothing else that happened around that time can be seen floating on the surface anywhere nearby.

I can turn on that movie in my head any time I choose. I have played it over and over again in the last decades of my life. It always starts in the classroom with Berke, just two rows away from where I was sitting, in the end of the middle row, next to the window that was lit up that day by a bright sun. Shadows were dancing eerily on the desk tops. He was wearing a faded gray shirt and his hair was closely cropped. He had his hand raised when Mr. Shub, our teacher, motioned acknowledgment to him. Berke stood up. Very matter of factly, without showing any sign of unease or anything resembling emotion, he recited several names, my own included, and continued that the named students "............ have been smoking cigarettes".

He sat down. Just like that. Out of the blue. I was stunned. Berke was a pretty regular kid. He always seemed a decent guy. There was never any hint that he might be angry with any of us. We kind of admired him secretly until that time, because he seemed more grown up than the rest of us. He was physically the strongest kid in class. We thought that that might have been due to the fact that he was helping his father, a blacksmith, put horseshoes on the horses. I would watch him with admiration some times, hands, face and clothing black with soot from turning horseshoes on the hot coals where he would work the bellows that kept the fires going. Pretty grown up action for a kid only as old as I was.

I didn't know much more about him. He was not one to join the crowd in games, and did not partake in our smoking sessions, but he never was unfriendly, never acted in any way like a bully. What in the world made him do that? The scene is frozen in my mind as if there might be a clue there to this mystifying betrayal. The question has been bothering me the rest of my life. I am still trying to solve that puzzle. What makes a Judas? How can you tell one? What in the world possessed him ? I am also puzzled by the fact that I never found out anything about it. It is as if Berke was erased from my life after that, and I don't recall anything about him after that day.

The consequence of that announcement to the teacher were severe. The school called our parents and they had to come to take us home. My parents reaction was devastation. I betrayed the good name of our entire family. I was put on my uncle's knees. Mother, uncles, aunts, grandparents, they were all standing around with fallen faces, as if there was a death in the family. They looked on as if in mourning.

I had never been spanked before. The biggest misdeed that I recall was putting a thumbtack on the teacher's seat once, before he arrived to start class. I did it to show off to my classmates mostly. It was by far not an original idea. I don't recall how he found out who done it that time. I might have even confessed in response to threats at collective punishment. I was made to stand in the corner for that hour.

That punishment was effective. I remember standing there, embarrassed, while nobody seemed to show much sympathy. I don't remember whether I had to wear the dunce cap, but I sure felt like one. True, that was a great moment, when our all powerful and heartless ruler jumped up from his seat, with his hand grabbing his behind in shock, but it definitely was not worth it. I even began to feel a little sorry for him as well as for myself. But my parents didn't seem to be too upset by that one.

Until that moment I had warm respect for the adults in my family. They were kind. They were loving. It seemed like they would understand anything. Now I was told that I was bad, really bad. Beyond speaking bad. No longer capable of reasoning and explaining. My world collapsed when I was forcibly grabbed, turned over, laid over a knee, in a ritual watched by everybody in the family. I don't remember if the belt really hurt or not. That didn't seem to even matter. Not compared to the fact that suddenly all the warm happy feelings of being a human child were destroyed. I was only an animal raised by animal trainers. That betrayal was worse than that of Berke. Why would they even want to make me feel that worthless? What was that bad about what we did?

When the spanking was over they told me that it was the fault of the company I kept, and I was forbidden to have anything to do with the other kids involved. They were bad, they were misleading me, they would make me do bad things again. My friends! I wouldn't dream of renouncing my friends. In my mind my parents were totally wrong, and I will not allow them to defeat us. I resolved then and there as I cried bitter tears and ran to hide as soon as the spanking was over, just as soon as I could, I would secretly meet with my friends and we would regroup and renew our adventures.

Those were the thoughts, the resolutions and the plans that brought me out of the pits of unspeakable despair. Here was a new challenge. We are going to build our world of fun and exciting adventure, free of the stupid prejudices of our elders, and furthermore they won't stop us. I had a reaction to equal the action my parents took, but in the opposite direction. New plans were hatched. .

Looking back, I am surprised that I reacted so strongly. Shouldn't I have expected parents to act like that? But I definitely did not. I felt totally humiliated, wronged, misjudged and mistreated. I was wrong all this time before. The grownups, my loving family, were really a bunch of bullies, using their physical strength to enforce their ignorant, stupid, wrong opinions about me and about my good friends. I could not see any reason at all to feel ashamed. Health damage was not yet known to us. It was not a factor in smoking at that time. Smoking was something adults did for their pleasure, but children were forbidden to do. And it didn't even involve intimate parts of our bodies, or playing around with sacred seeds that create children! The smokers' club was founded right then and there.

From its humble beginnings of something a few of us tried to do, smoking became a big thing. Smoking became what was really happening. The fun that adults want to keep for themselves only. They want us to wait till we are grown-ups. Huh. That's a grown-ups move. Waiting was not our game. We are ready. Chomping at the bit. Unless of course, you are chicken. Chicken to do what? Chicken to join us, of course. You could become part of the shared adventure. You could prove yourself. Do you dare walk down the street, in the heart of town, in the busiest section of town, one full block from corner to corner after the sun goes down, smoking a cigarette? You will be followed from a safe distance by two initiated veterans to attest to the fact that the inhalations and blowing out of the smoke took place throughout the stroll through the full length of the block. If by the end your cigarette was not extinguished, you passed the test. If you passed the test you qualified for membership in the group of pioneers, the brave warriors who defied the dragons of the past and blew them away in a cloud of smoke.

That block on Vilniaus Gatve became a monument to battle and victory, a scene of heroic deed. It put a new smirk on our faces, a touch of swagger in our strides. My lips still break out in involuntary smiles when I recall the panic of nearly choking; the overwhelming bitter taste of the tobacco; the fits of coughing, doubling up, out of control jumping up and down, the bilious clouds of smoke that revolting lungs expelled in forceful salvos, the subdued near panicked fear that a fire would start inside the cuff of the shirt sleeve, where the lit cigarette was held to hide it from passers-by between inhalations. And then there was the incredible exultation of having passed the test. These dumb, stupid adults who passed by and didn't see a thing! Bring on the world full of dangers and threats, we were rushing toward our futures with courage, open arms and steaming breath.

For several weeks our group was all the rage. We were not caught or betrayed again. I don't remember what the next fad was, or what circumstances led to its fading away. I did keep though another resolution made at that dark moment. Just as soon as I was old enough, I was going to light up a cigarette right in front of my tormentors. That moment came when I was fourteen years old. By that time the adults in my family had regained their positions of respect and love. I will never forget the satisfaction that I felt nevertheless, even if not a word was spoken about it, when I did light up in front of them. I had my first part-time job, and that, in my eyes as well as in theirs apparently, gave me the privilege of adulthood in the town of Siauliai, Lithuania, the right to smoke tobacco.

I was helping to clean out a construction sight, and when lunch-time arrived the workers sat down on a pile of lumber to eat. After finishing my sandwich I pulled out my pack of cigarettes, and like the rest of us, started puffing away. No one said anything about it. What once was a calamity, now did not even rate attention. Much of my satisfaction in the beginning was just the feeling of final victory. I did not stop smoking for thirty years. I stopped when I found out that I was going to become a parent. I was very lucky that my health did not seem to be visibly affected. sometimes I wonder if I would have smoked at all if I had not received that humiliating spanking that was designed to ensure that it didn't happen again.