Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 13)

The popular blonde Zhanna Parasyuk—also, by the by, a graduate of our school—performed a couple of current hits accompanied by the Variety Orchestra, and the concert ended with a standing ovation and thunderous cries of 'Encore!'

The hall at the grand concerts was invariably packed. No less so than for some Indian 'Zita and Gita' of two episodes. The stage was drowned in the light from stage floor boxes, at its very edge, and pouring from the spotlights suspended above it. Besides, the floodlights from the Martian combat tripods contributed their merciless share, towering above the stucco work on the balcony walls.

In the shadows of the passageway along the wall under the right balcony, the Ballet Studio dancers trotted to Aunt Tanya's Dress Room on the first floor to change for the next numbers. From there, they returned in their new costumes.

For the heroic performances, Raisa taught us the correct way to appear from the wings and then exit backstage, without turning our backs to the audience. She also revealed the secret of looking into the audience—not at anyone in particular, but generally at the fifth or sixth row. Although, in the harsh beam of the spotlight aimed in my face, even the front rows blended in…

So the Club became a part of my life, and if I didn't show up home after school for a while, no one there cared—I'd hang out, as always, at the Club…

~ ~ ~

In the thick darkness of winter evenings, a trio of frost-hardy musketeers would converge at the tram stop for a pastime that had become fashionable in de Treville's company: riding the 'sausage' of the tram.

Technically, this tasty nickname referred to a small lattice of pipes suspended under the driver's cab. After making a flanking maneuver, we would move around to the rear of an arriving car, and when it departed, we would jump onto the 'sausage,' grabbing hold of a small ledge under the window of the empty driver's cab. The ledge was as smooth as the glass binding the cabin's emptiness, which gloomily stared down at us, and left no chance for a stable clutch. I had to frequently shift my grip and strain my fingers against the streamlined hyperthermia-swept surface.

The tram rushed along, rumbling and bucking on the rail joints, the 'sausage' vibrating underfoot with its springy bounces—wow! Awesome!

The fastest stretch was between the Bazaar and our school. It was there that the trams would go crazy, as if they were Formula 1 racers: ta-dah! ta-dah! And there, too, my frozen fingers once began to slip off the slippery ledge, but Skully shouted, 'Hold on!' and pinned them down with his palm.

And then Kuba yelled, 'Fuck!' because his fingers had slipped, and he had to jump off the 'sausage' hurtling ahead at the first cosmic speed.

Luckily, he didn't hit any of the Poplars whizzing by, and ran out of the darkness to meet us when Skully and I rushed back from the stop to scrape the remains of the Cuban-musketeer from a wide tree trunk or the concrete of a support pillar.

Luckily, the tram didn't have time to leave, waiting for an oncoming one from the Village. We caught up with it without losses, and went on the fun as a whole…

This thrilling ride wasn't the private amusement of our limitedly responsible trio, but the inalienable property of the Settle lads. Sometimes, under the combined weight of the hanging gang of riders, the 'sausage' would scrape its grating against the rail heads in protest. At the stops for meeting oncoming cars, the conductors would descend from the tram to chase us off the tram.

We would dissolve into the darkness of the frosty night. The tram would start to go on, and before the public transportation means had even reached cruising speed, the 'sausage' would once again sag under the feet of passengers who hadn't paid their fare…

~ ~ ~

That day, after our second lesson, our 7B class went on a tour of the KeLCeaRP Plant.

First, we were taken to the Fire Brigade, just a stone's throw from the Main Checkpoint. We admired a pair of 'fire trucks' languishing in confinement, prisoners of a cramped, windowless, doorless space. There was only a gate, but it also locked forever. Out of boredom, the firefighters used up an entire fire extinguisher, demonstrating how far its foam could reach.

From there, we visited the workshop where they fill tall iron cylinders with oxygen, for distribution in workshops where gas welders and cutters worked.

In Forge, you couldn't give or listen to explanations; was full of fans bombination, the roar of fire in the brick furnaces. Workers in black overalls used enormous tongs to haul white-hot billet out of the furnaces, to further transfer by a small crane to an anvil beneath one of the hydraulic hammers.

Our class stood stunned. We watched as one worker, also using tongs but shorter, turned the white-hot billet back and forth on the anvil. The machine above his head puffs like a dinosaur, driving its hammer between tall, oiled beds—slamming and hammering out the right shape for a wheel rim for a heavy-duty BelAZ truck.

The hammer gasps, sending tremors across the floor. The rind peels off the workpiece like scales, and underneath, the color grows ever darker—now scarlet, then dark cherry.

But most astonishing of all is the hammer’s sensitivity. It can tap just so lightly, or stop dead in its tracks, halfway through its rush to slam down hard.

And it's operated by a woman in a headscarf, who uses just a couple of levers sticking out of the side of the enormous beast.

As we were heading for the exit, next to another, silently abandoned hydraulic hammer, I saw a scattering of metal circles, about the size of a commemorative ruble coin, but three times thicker.

I liked the color, such a beautiful purple. And besides, it would have made just the right-sized Bittok for flipping kopecks.

So I fell behind the tour. The coin-sized circles were probably just unwanted scraps, an offal dropped on the floor. And I grabbed one to drop it at once! The bastard almost burned my fingers to the bone.

And a worker walking by, laughed: 'What, too heavy?'

And in the Mechanical Workshop, I was absolutely stunned by the planing machine.

It was so small, leisurely planing a workpiece clamped in a vise. The most amazing thing about it was the cast-iron boilerplate. It read 'Manufactured in Riga, 1904.'

That was before the revolution! Holy shit! It's still working!

And a little further on, a large Soviet machine, also a planing tool. The cutter scurries back and forth, while a worker sits on a chair set aside, arms folded across his chest, watching.

Heh? So much of a job…

When I share at home my impressions of the tour, Mother said I could start taking shower in one of the Plant's workshops. Why traveling all the way to Konotop Divisions Square to get to the bathhouse.

She also asked if I knew that Vadik Kubarev's mother works at the Plant Cooling Tower, which could make access to the cooling tower's shower easier.

While discussing her idea with Skully, he told me he's been going to the Plant to wash himself his whole life on shower days. By the way, they have better showers there than the Cooling Tower.

The shower rooms generally all open until eight, but in the workshops of non-stop three shifts, they don't lock them at all.

Of course, they might not let you through at the Main Checkpoint entrance, but who needs to go through it? There, at the opposite end of the Plant, where they bring in the cars for repairs, there aren't even any gates. Besides, on Profession Street, at every turn, there are stiles built into the concrete wall, so the workers can easily carry out their 'shabashkas' after work.

(… and once again I am forced to break the sequential timeline and jump from Konotop to the Varanda River. Otherwise, how can a metropolitan woman from the third millennium understand the provincial parlance from the middle of the last century?

Sometimes even Dahl's Dictionary is of no help. Yes, it correctly notes that the word 'shabash' can serve as a signal for the end of work. However, V. Dahl didn't go any deeper than that. The Great and Mighty Russian language had to live another hundred years and adapt to the conditions of life underdeveloped socialism in a separately revolutionized country to create a 'shabashka' from 'shabash.'

A 'shabashka' is any item produced at the workplace for subsequent use at home, or, at the very least, a bundle of firewood broken from boards at work, to heat the worker's hut. Tossing the 'shabashka' over the concrete wall is, in a way, a period marking the end of the workday.

(That's why in the Settlement, walking along the Plant wall long been considered a bad omen. Especially in the afternoon.)

Well, how's that? Did you appreciate my etymological efforts? Good.

And while I'm here, it's probably time to crawl into this one-person Chinese pagoda of mine. What I like about it is its folding tent poles. The Celestials have thought it out cleverly—a dozen half-meter-long tubes fold out into a pair of flexible poles, three meters each. And there you have it, a frame for pitching a tent. And this mosquito net at the entrance works very well, too—just zipper it and not a single gnat will fly in. The bloodsuckers keep whining outside, but screw them, not in my teepee!