Сергей Огольцов – Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub (страница 12)

He pushes the board aside, squeezes through, and—not here anymore!

Outside, the kid, puffing and grunting, storms the pile of sand dumped for the construction of a neighboring house.

The summit is reached, and the climber—plop! He slid down through the sand, wet from the rain! And he laughs, so pleased. How could you keep clean that kind of a rascal?

While Mom was donning the next set of clothes on me, Dad went out into the yard with a hammer and nailed down the loose board. Then he came back and, along with Mom, began to watch furtively: well, well, now what?

The little boy approached the usual spot and pushed the familiar board. It didn't budge. And neither did its neighbors.

The child walked along the fence, tugging at every bar. To the end and back, twice, each time to no avail. Then stopped and cried desperately and bitterly…

I don't remember the wooden house, nor the yard, but my parents' story smarted my eyes from sympathy for the child's hurt.

For what?!…

From the next legend, a weird paw touched the hair at the back of my neck, gently ruffling it before sinking its needle-thin claws of horror into the nape…

Because Mom suddenly became alarmed that I hadn't been seen anywhere for a long time, and sent Dad to go see where I was.

He examined the yard and went out the gate. And everything was empty; the neighbors knew nothing, and it was already getting dark.

Dad walked along the street again, from one end to the other, and then suddenly put his mind to the loud roar of water. He hurried to the steep, almost sheer precipice, beneath which the river rolled, angrily swollen from the freshet. And there, far below, he made out his son.

Run, Daddy! Run!

A torrent of murky, rising water covered the narrow strip of bank beneath the high clay cliff. He had to run knee-deep in water.

The boy lay, pressed against the wet clay of the slope, a stray blade of grass in his fist, the seething current splashing over his feet. He didn't even cry, just whimpered softly: "Hee ehee, ehee… "

Dad wrapped him in his jacket and with difficulty found a place where he could climb up without grabbing for any support…

. .. .

But how proudly fluttered my nostrils to the news it was me, not anyone else, to give names to my sister and brother!

Because I had the name of my father's brother, for the twins were readied already the names of my mother's sister and brother. At the maternity hospital, they were even addressed as Vadik and Lyudochka.

However, when the babies were brought home and my parents asked me what we should name them, I directly declared, ‘Sasya-Tatasya!’

And no amount of fast-talk ever budged my stance an inch.

That's why my brother's name is Alexander, and my sister is named Natalya.

~ ~ ~ The Shrubs of Eden

Sooner or later everything meets its end, and the first furrow of the summing-up line under my legendary past was drawn by the unbearably harsh sunrays.

From now on, you are to see after your database of recollections (so dictated the furrow), and keep it in order by yourself. That's what you’re equipped with memory for: to retain the facts about you on your own, your Dad and Mom has enough problems besides feeding your narcissism.

Of course, from the soundless ploughshares creaking I couldn’t yet get it in full what I had run into. In response, I squinted, bent the brow, averted my face from the sun in displeasure, standing upon the green carpet under my feet resting on the pedestal.

It was Mom who pulled me by the hand up a small hillock overgrown with fresh, young grass.

And there we stood, palm in palm, above the heads of the black moving crowd that filled the entire road along which Mom had just led me to kindergarten. Their marching mass shouted cheerful greetings at me. However, my upraised hand didn't wave back, not used yet to properly motivate crowds. Besides, Mom was squeezing it too tightly.

But still, I felt big and very important—look at how many grown-up ZK-convicts shout my name!

My scarce familiarity with the facts of life didn’t let me grasp at that moment that the column's enthusiasm had been caused by the presence of so a beautiful young mother…

. .. .

The ZK-convicts were building two blocks of two-story houses at the top of the Gorka Hill, and when they finished the first, our 5-person family moved into a two-room apartment on the uppermost, second floor of an eight-apartment building.

The entire block consisted of six houses, enclosing the rectangular perimeter of the huge courtyard.

The entrances of all the buildings faced Courtyard, each aimed at the identical entrance in the identical building on the opposite side of the rectangle. Four buildings at the Courtyard corners were bent in half at ninety degrees. Those had three entrances, while the remaining two had only one. But in absence of this pair of shorties, Courtyard wouldn’t qualify for rectangle, remaining a petty square.

A solid concrete road encircled our Block, as well as its mirror image—its unfinished twin. The road both united and separated the blocks like loops in a figure 8 or in the ∞ sign. Although, of course, not quite as curved. I simply couldn’t find neither angular 8 nor ∞ configured samely for any closer to real life representation of the road loops.

When let out for a walk, I hastily escaped the playmateless deserted grounds of Courtyard and ran across the road to the neighboring block under construction. The ZK-convicts working there didn't drive me off, and when their lunch was brought to them, they shared their thin gruel with me…

The amazingly rapid growth of my stock of spicy interjections in my then-infantile babble bluntly disclosed to my parents the kind of social circle their child was in touch with, where "again, fucking cabbage swill good only for dick rinsing!" was served for lunch, and they promptly landed me to kindergarten.

Gorka Hill, the highest part of the secret territory, shared its name with the two blocks atop it. Forest grew on all sides of the road that encircled them, but not a single tree managed to cross its pavement of concrete slabs…

When the second of Gorka's blocks was completed, ZK-convicts disappeared for good. Later, construction work at the "object" (for some reason, the residents of the "mailbox" preferred to call their place of residence by this name) was carried out by only soldiers with black shoulder boards in their uniform, also known as "blackboarders" personnel.

Besides, there were also "redboarders" at the Object, but their purpose there remains a mystery for me up to this day.

~ ~ ~

The path to the kindergarten began around the corner from our house.

You had to cross the concrete surfaced road and trudge down a gentle, lengthy tilt along an earth road. It led to a gate in the barbed-wire fence surrounding the Recruit Training Center barracks.

However, we hardly reached it, turning right onto a trail through a pine grove, bypassing the Training Center and its barbed wire. The black pond left at large between the trail and wire was lined with tall trees, but these were broad-leaf ones.

Then the trail dived steeply through the dense thicket of young spruce trees. After the dive, a wide clearing opened up in the forest, entirely surrounded by a fence with gaps between the pointed boards, keeping the trees out. However, the shrubs managed to make their way to a two-story building, caught in a network of narrow paths branching off into playgrounds with sandboxes, playhouses, and see-saws.

Parked very close to the building was even a real bus, short but with a big nose. It was parked on its belly due to the lack of wheels. And now it became easy to step into, right from the ground. But it still had the steering wheel and seats, just where they used to be, when it was still running…

When entering the kindergarten, firstly, you have to take off your coat and shoes and leave them waiting for you in a tall, narrow locker.

There are many like that around, but only one has a pair of cheerful cherries on the door. Right behind it, down below, are the slippers, which you have to put on and only then climb the steps to the second floor, where there are three large rooms for different groups. And one more, even larger one, where all kindergarten kids eat together at conveniently small tables…

. .. .

My kindergarten life was made up of all sorts of feelings and sensations.

The delight of a proud winner in the middle of a noisy locker room, where parents had crowded in to collect their children, and where (at Mom's prompting: "You can do it! Just try and see!") I discovered my ability to tie the strings of my shoes into a bow, without any help at all…

The crushing humiliation of defeat when those same strings (only dirty and wet) were tied into tight, nasty knots, and Mom had to untangle them, even though she was already late for work…

At kindergarten, you never know what might happen to you during the day, before Mom, and sometimes Dad, or the woman next door from Gorka, come to pick you up…

Because while you're there, for no apparent reason, they might shove a shiny tube on a thin rubber hose deep up your nose. Then they'll spray trough it a prickly, foul-tasting powder that you can't sneeze out. Or they'll force you to drink a whole tablespoon of that sticky, disgusting fish oil: ‘Come on, come on! Do you know how good it is?’