Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 12)

It's a completely different story on the Settlement small tramcars. The door is like a folding screen on hinges, made of plywood. You arrive at your stop, walk up to the door, and pull the middle handle so the screen folds slightly and allows you to push it to the side, opening the step for climbing down.

The closing procedure is practically the same: pull and push. You just have to start with the outer handle. There are only two on the screen: the outer one and the middle one.

Yeah, right, I'm kidding. Who needs all this algorithmic brain-fumbling? That's why trams in the KeLCeaRP Settlement rode with their doors wide open until the frost bit down real hard…

And so that tramcars could give way to each other, two stops in the Settlement had double-track stretches, about ten meters each: one at School No. 13 stop, and the other at a stop in the middle of May Day Street…

~ ~ ~ the servant of Melpomene

The restroom in the KeLCeaRP Plant Club was on the first floor, at the end of a very long corridor that began at the library door and stretched between walls that were not only blank but also cramped. With your arms outstretched, you could reach both at once. It wasn't a corridor, but a narrow mine gallery, with lampshades on the ceiling.

Occasionally, doors with signs appeared in the dark green paint of the walls: 'Children's Sector', 'Variety Orchestra', 'Dress Room', and, just before reaching the restroom, 'Gym'. Blending their dark gray color with the tunnel walls, the doors became part of them, mere inclusions, preserving the same profound, deafening silence. Only through the gym’s door could one occasionally hear the celluloid click of a ping-pong ball or the clank of weights, still, like any other, it remained incorruptibly locked…

But then one day, the sounds of music echoed through the door of the Children's Sector. The despondency of being alone and hopelessly confined lurked in the plaintive keys of the 'Red October' piano. I couldn’t stand it and gave a knock. A cry from inside, 'Come on in!', swept the las doubts off and I stepped inside.

A small, dark-skinned woman with bobbed black hair and wide yet perfectly slit nostrils sat at the piano beneath the right wall of solid mirrored squares. And light streamed straight in through the Gothic windows raised above the floor in front of me, its radiance masking the ribbed heating pipe which ran under the ballet handrail along the entire wall.

The left side of the room was concealed behind a tall puppet theater screen, and in front of it, an unusually long and narrow table, like one in a refectory, gleamed with the tight linoleum in its top.

And then I said I wanted to enroll in the Children's Sector.

'Very well, let's get acquainted. I'm Raisa Grigoryevna, and who are you and where are you from?'

She told me that the former actors had either grown too old or moved to other cities, and for revival of the Children's Sector, I needed to bring my friends from school.

I launched a vigorous canvassing in the class. Skully and Kuba seemed a bit hesitant, like, but what’s the point? But giving it another thought, after I explained that a long table was perfectly suitable for table tennis, notwithstanding its narrowness, they agreed.

And a couple of girls came as well, out of curiosity. Raisa Grigoryevna gave everyone a rapturous welcome, and we began rehearsing a puppet theater production of 'Kolobok,' based on the fairy tale of the same name.

Our mentor taught us the art of glove puppeteering, so that the puppets wouldn't dive below the screen, thereby disappearing from the audience's view.

We met in the Children's Sector twice a week. But sometimes Raisa missed rehearsals or was late, and for such occasions, the key was kept on the windowsill in the artists' room, where they created, day after day, a monthly list of films for the lobby.

They loved freedom and never locked themselves in; their door stood wide open, always welcoming visitors from the local loyal admirers of their talent… A stray art lovers were always welcome there, too…

The key turned eagerly in the Children's Sector door lock, and we spent hours playing tennis on the long table.

True, our ball was a tennis ball. We played without even rackets; school textbooks served as substitutes. As long as it’s not too thick, and has a hard cover.

Lined books served the table net—a row of 4 books spine-side up, the covers slightly spread apart for stability. Yes, particularly sharp ink strokes knocked them off, but such a net could be repaired in a flash.

. .. .

The work of a puppeteer is difficult and grueling, both mentally (you have to rewrite your character's lines and memorize them) and physically (hold, hold, hold—the raised hand with the puppet shod onto three fingers).

During rehearsals, the actor's hand goes numb, and using the remaining hand as a prop doesn't make a difference. And then there's that annoying crick in your neck from constantly tilting your head back to control your puppet’s action…

But then, after the performance, you emerge from behind the screen to stand before it. Shoulder-to-shoulder with you, the puppet stares out at the audience from your three fingers stuck inside. Raisa announces that you played the role of the Hare. And you nod with theatrical panache, and the Hare, standing next to your shoulder, bows too, all by himself, eliciting delighted laughter and applause…

Oh, the thorns! Oh, the sweetness of glory!

. .. .

Later, many of the puppeteers dropped out, but the core of the Children's Sector—Skully, Kuba, and I—steadfastly continued to come.

Raisa began using us for short dramatizations about heroic boys and adults during the October Revolution or the Civil War.

For the performances, we wore makeup, pasted on real theatrical mustaches, donned tunics, and blew smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes. Raisa showed us the technique of twisting a newspaper into a 'goat's leg,' but we didn't inhale too deep, so as not to cough.

With reenactments of the glorious days, we toured the larger workshops of the Plant, those having a Red Corner for workshop meetings.

There, during lunch breaks, on tiny stages, our fearless heroes agitated for Soviet power and freedom from exploitation. Liberated workers in overalls chewed their dry food from 'tormozoks' packaged in newspaper.

The moment of rolling our cigarettes touched them deeply, their chewing giving way to chuckling…

~ ~ ~

Twice a year, the Club hosted a grand amateur performance, where the Club Director, Pavel Mitrofanovich, recited poems dedicated to the Party with deep emotion. After him, the best students of Anatoly Kuzko, the button accordion teacher at the KeLCeaRP Club, performed the minuets they had mastered.

However, the key ornament of the concert was, without a doubt, the Ballet Studio's dance numbers, as their choreographer, Nina Alexandrovna, enjoyed a well-deserved reputation, and young ballet dancers flocked to her even from the city beyond the Under-Overpass.

Moreover, the Club boasted a rich wardrobe, so her students danced the Moldavian dance Zhok in braided trousers, flashing the jaunty sequins of their vests, and for the Ukrainian Hopak, they appeared in trousers as wide as the Black Sea, which lapped like a vast surf on their red leather ballet boots.

Accompanying them all, including the preteen ladies in white tutus of snowflakes, was Aida, a virtuoso accordionist, hiding the graceful hump of her dynastic nose behind the wings of the stage. And next to her stood we, in our army tunics from the Dress Room, with mustaches and generous wrinkles painted on with makeup, utterly amazed by how well she wields the instrument, notwithstanding such a nose. And she needed no sheet music whatsoever!

Handsome with a manly beauty, the electrician Murashkovsky recited rhymed humoreskas and sang a duet with a bald turner from the Mechanical Workshop, 'Two Colors for Me, Two Colors' in Ukrainian.

Murashkovsky was missing three fingers on his right hand, and he filled the gap—between the thumb and little finger—with a lace handkerchief, like a crab's claw finding something to plunder from the latest of galleons sunk be Billy Bones.

A pair of elderly women sang romances, not as a duet, but taking turns. Anatoly Kuzko, with his button accordion, walked onto the stage with each of them separately.

His left eye didn't even squint; it stared fixedly at the ceiling. He's talking to you, but he's not there, he's somewhere else. It's unnerving. Although the budding button accordionists, his students, probably weren't too distracted, after all, they still have to stare at the sheet music and silently count 'one-two-three-one-two-three… '

For the final highlight and climax of the program, the plump, blond Aksyonov, Director of the Variety Orchestra, led his jazz band through the dimly lit auditorium to the brightly lit stage.

All the instrumentalists full of a pleasant, buoyant, pre-starting mood—just wait until they get to the syncopations!

The drums and double bass also anticipating lustfully backstage, where they had been dragged before the concert, to a small dressing room behind the right wing. However, Aksyonov brought his saxophone personally.