Сергей Огольцов – Rascally Romance. The Vagabond Cherub (страница 6)

Well, and now he's living it up, the kingpin, yes… the monarch of a major industrial kingdom. But is he happy? Doubt crept in, looking closely at Herr Herzog's frayed expression, in the middle of his well-groomed, paid-for-by-the-pains-of-ancestors-and-personal-merits park…

Okay, let's leave all these royals to royals, but what about me?

Am I happy, stretching out my legs in the welcoming shade of a leafy canopy, being fanned by a breeze, savoring the bliss of the sweet coolness… have I omitted anything?… and then, probably, about the strings of streams babbling… but that's not the point, the main thing is—wow! What a fucking estate! Just look at that stunning field, with waist-high grass, and it's full of hefty, fist-sized, thorny balls of a pretty bluish tint, spiky like maces, and that Camelot-like postament over the mountain stream, as tall as the high-rise buildings that grow along the highway from Kyiv to Boryspil Airport…

What more do you need to be happy, huh?

The question is certainly interesting if you think about it closely… It's a pity my backpack doesn't have a door with a mirror, otherwise I'd be diagnosing myself based on the expression of this here smug mug.

~ ~ ~

This heaven on earth came my way six years ago, when the Ministry of Education of the Mountainous Karabakh Republic—a newly independent, self-proclaimed, but never recognized state—

(… yes! I don't argue! A couple of mayors from distant hemispheres responded, their political underweight excusing their irresponsible behavior. Wise powers don't look for trouble: "You, my dear, are right on all counts: legal, moral-ethical, ethnographic, seismic-futurological, but you don't have a single drop of oil in your territories, so go away, my dear, we're busy…")

–set up a sort of pioneer tent camp at this spot for schoolchildren from Stepanakert.

Satenik worked there for two camp shifts. Back-to-back. I made an attempt (beforehand and rather timidly) to suggest leaving our dearest children under my paternal supervision, including free guardianship…

Predictably, the initiative was met with the appropriate snort… I wouldn't say I was particularly insistent, but it was still a pretty clear demonstration of goodwill on my part, wouldn't you say?

As a result, Ashot and Emma had to spend almost the entire summer under their mother's wing: two camp shifts—from bell to bell—in groups appropriate to their age and gender.

And the eldest child in the family, Ruzanna, a day or two after the camp opened, passed her second-year exams at the local State University and went to join them, taking on the position of self-proclaimed Pioneer Leader.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this position was long gone, and Pioneers were no longer to be found except in the imperishable masterpieces of Soviet cinema… However, I am always ready to offer my condolences to the immediate families of any force majeure that inadvertently cropped up in the way Ruzanna's moving along toward her chosen goal…

So, for the entire camp, she became the Pioneer leader. The deceased position, of course, wasn't listed on the payroll, but Ruzanna didn't care; the important thing was that it worked out according to her wishes…

Left alone at home, after only a couple of weeks of single life, I was dead tired of the unusually dense silence on all sides.

What happened next happened spontaneously, unplanned, without seeing to proper preparation…

Late one evening, leaving my place of residence, I headed towards the village of Sarushen. On the way out of town, I bought a pack of cookies and loose candy (200 grams) from a small shop-or, sooner, a booth near the Truck-Maz bridge.

(… at that stage of my personality growth, I had already reached the level of realization that the joy of meeting a dad should be reinforced: the sweeter, the better…)

On foot, and hitchhiking, I managed to cover the twenty-odd kilometers to the village. But I couldn't make it before dark, which it was when I arrived at the camp.

Right on this very spot where I'm lying now stood the camp Director, Shavarsh's folding stool with a canvas seat, on which no one but himself dared sit—the monarch's throne isn't meant for just anyone’s ass.

On the wide trunk of this Walnut Tree, even then split already by a lightning strike, hung a bright single light bulb, powered by an issuing motherly, almost inaudible purr, electric generator tucked behind the tree. The dense darkness insatiably sucked away the yellow light spilled onto a pair of long tables of sheet metal. They formed a dashed line of 2 pieces to mark the edge of the field. On either side of each, narrow backless benches of the same chilly material stood, their legs dug into the ground (as those of the tables) preventing conversion of their mutual formation into a disorderly flock.

Two pyramidal, squat, pitch-black, silhouettes-of army tents (each large enough to hold a platoon of soldiers) loomed in the dark field. The girls' tent (for the tutoresses-overseers and all the other girls in the camp) stood to the right of the second, which was for the boys and the sports instructor.

A little to the side, one could make out the two-person tent of Director Shavarsh and his wife, who embraced the positions of Cook and Nurse (3 in 1).

Deeper in the field, about thirty meters from all the three tents, a little quiet fire lazily licked with short tongues of flame the end of a log thrust into it—an entire tree trunk practically with its branches roughly cut off to make it easier to propel the fuel into flames, whenever its burned end gets fallen off and turns a pile of flickering embers…

All the camp tutoresses-overseers, without exception, were recruited, naturally, from among the city school teachers, for whom the light from a single lamp (1300 candelas/35 lumens) was enough to recognize me and immediately inform Satenik of my coming. Ruzanna ran up after her. My appearance delighted both of them, although my legal life partner tensed inwardly, ready to rebuff any silly sentimentality I might offer, of those not listed as permissible (by local traditions) and instrumental in the struggle for survival for the past 2,000+ years.

It was late evening, following a workday and a long promenade, and I wasn't particularly inclined to violate or mock the fundamental values.

To remove any suspicion of unwelcome statements on my part, I only displayed humble respect and completely refrained from irrational ranting. Instead, full of restraint, decorum, and decency, I sat at the indicated end of the table.

The chilly iron under my ass and equally chilly iron under my elbows, emanating from various pieces of deeply embedded furniture, acted as if having conspired together. The evening meal of the camp's nearly-completed day was in progress at the table. Gratefully and unquestioningly, I accepted a bowl of thin porridge, apparently of some grain of indeterminate general purpose, an aluminum spoon, and a fragment of a chopper core that had once been bread.

Both visual impression and a touch revealed that this Stone Age tool had retained its original hardness, unyielding to the pressure of plastic teeth. Nevertheless, in a fit of politeness, I attempted to gnaw off a crumble.

Yes, that's right: the preliminary visual and tactile assessment was confirmed, even experimentally, 100%.

Practicing your diplomatic skills, be polite to the end; I discreetly tucked the archaeo-artifact under the aluminum rim of the plate and concentrated on the brew…

(… how did a globally unrecognized country manage to recreate a replica of a happy pioneer camp childhood from the Soviet era? A country so impoverished that its education minister, in a fit of glasnost, admitted that the ministry under his command doesn't even have the funds to buy a soccer ball for School No. 8?

Most likely, the Armenian Diaspora sent a targeted grant, and the coming fall, the benefactors will reap a report ringing with genuine glee: "Thanks to $16,000 of your generous gift, all schoolchildren from Stepanakert, the capital of the newly independent Mountainous Karabakh Republic, have had a unique opportunity…"…)

The report to hypothetical donors from grant thieves at large was cut short by a joyful squeal from Emma, snuggling up against my side.

I gently stroked her airy, fine hair and narrow, preschool-aged shoulders, asking empty questions; she answered and then asked me something back.

‘Where's Ashot? Don't you know?’

Emma pointed to the far end of the next table—in the dashed line of two. The light from the bulb was fading there in an unequal battle with the night. Ashot sat, dinner forgotten, his mouth agape in admiration at the towering senior-school kids around him, successfully imitating the incessant cackle of a bird colony on the cliffs of the northern seas and the synchronous nicker of a herd of horses…

And they didn't even hear or listen to each other! Neither the stallions nor the birds.

I took the treats out of the pocket of my summer jacket and handed them to Emma. ‘These are for you and him, go and share with.’