Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 15)

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If the Director was absent from his office, I had to buy a ticket like a mere mortal, at the box office window—the left corner, after the list of films and the locked door of the Director's office. Once in a while anyone’s luck gets drawsy…

On one such occasion, I entered the general auditorium and sat down in the row ahead of a couple of girls—Larisa and Tanya, who were in the same class as me. Even though the ticket clerk scribbled down the showtime and seat assignments on the ticket, who’d looked at those marks except Aunt Shura at the entrance check?

I'd once secretly liked Tanya, but she seemed too unattainable with her too haughty countenance. So I eased off the gas, braked, and switched to Larisa.

After school, I tried to catch up with her on Nezhin Street, where she walked. However, Tanya always paced beside her, like a watchful, close friend; they were neighbors, after all. And when Larisa was participating in the Children's Sector, I even once walked her down Profession Street to the corner of Gogol Street, but she wouldn't let me go any further…

During that period, Tanya also came to the Children’s Sector, so it was basically just the three of us walking along Profession Street. Tanya kept urging Larisa to walk faster, but then she got angry and went ahead alone.

The two of us walked together and split ways at the aforementioned corner, from where I began to soar excitedly along Gogola Street. Larisa's sweet girlish laughter in response to my empty chatter still rang in my ears.

However, as I approached the icy water pump under the lamppost on the corner of Nezhin Street, I couldn't maintain this elation any longer, due to a pair of figures, stark black against the white snow.

When they called out to me to come closer,

I recognized them both. The shorter one was a guy from a parallel class, and the other was a tenth-grader named Kolesnikov from our school. They both lived somewhere on Maruta Street.

In a confidential, threatening tone, Kolesnikov began to explain to me that if I even approached Larisa once, and if he ever heard of me or was told I'd done something of that kind, then, in short, I understood what he would do to me, huh?

And he repeated these generalities over and over, slightly changing the order, while I was crushed by an intense fear, like a misbehaving fifth-grader being yelled at by his teacher who orders to bring his parents to school tomorrow.

And it was at that moment that I felt something grab my calf and tug at it. Looking around, I expected to see a stray dog, but there was a completely empty snowdrift there, and nothing else. That's when the meaning of the expression 'shaking in the knees' got completely clear to me.

He asked again if I understood him, and I mumbled that I did. Then he asked again if I understood everything he said, and I mumbled, 'Yes, everything.'

But I didn't look them in the face, instead thinking to myself: I wish Uncle Tolik, the former regional welterweight champion, would come now with pails for water…

No, he never showed up. I'd brought home a sufficient supply that day…

And now, in a public place, in front of a rather crowded hall, I sat down next to a couple of girls who were my classmates, and I'd been warned about one of them. Sternly.

However, fully aware of the imprudence of my behavior, for some reason I couldn't act otherwise. It just happened.

Defiantly, openly, I turned to them, trying to strike up a conversation over the back of my seat, through the din and pre-show hubbub in the auditorium.

But Larisa maintained a stubborn silence and looked away. Only Tanya answered me, rather monosyllabically, like an indifferent wall around the palace of the princess Nosmile.

And suddenly Larisa addressed me directly: 'Stop running after me, the guys nag me on your account!'

I couldn't think of anything to say, just stood up in silence, stunned…

They wandered aimlessly, my legs, along the cramped space between the rows…

Ahead, there was the wall in the passageway under the balcony, so what next?…

Thoughtlessly, they turned right, stomping toward the exit, carrying the burden of a broken heart in my chest.

And when we all together—me, a pair of legs, and the shards of heart filling my chest—reached the very last rows, my black sadness turned to final darkness—the lights in the hall dimmed for the beginning of the show.

To give my eyes a chance to adjust to the darkness, and to avoid stumbling around like a blind puppy, I sat down at the edge chair in a row, and—forgot to suffer any longer…

The bright red credits of the Hollywood western 'Winnitu, Chieftain of the Apaches' scrolled across the screen!

~ ~ ~

At No. 19 Nezhin Street, old Duzenko was no longer there; his one-quarter of the house were now inhabited by two old women—his widow and her sister, who had come from a village. And in Ignat Pilyuta's half-house, only his widow, Pilyutikha, remained.

She hadn't even shown her face from her lair. The shutters of the windows facing Nezhin Street stayed not open for weeks. Of course, she probably went to the Bazaar and the Nezhin Store on occasion, but her paths and mine never crossed…

In February, Grandma Katya was suddenly taken to the hospital. Perhaps only for me, whose life was torn between school, the Club, books, and TV, did it happen suddenly. When you're trying to be everywhere, you don't notice what's going on right under your nose.

Coming home from school, I jingled the wrought-iron latch on the gate and, passing by Pilyutikha's window, ran up the two of steps in our porch.

She remained behind her window panes rooted to the spot, in profile, the long ends of her shawl thrown loosely over her hair hung like a black hood over the rest of her black outfit. A hand raised threateningly toward the wall separating it from our kitchen… One of Shadr's sketches while working on 'Cobblestone—the Weapon of the Proletariat'.

At home I dropped the folder with a couple of textbooks and school notebooks into the crack between our (brother and me) fold-out sofa and the TV stand. Then I return to the kitchen to have lunch with the twins, if they haven't eaten yet.

Mother and Aunt Lyuda cooked separately for their families, and Grandma Katya ate what her youngest daughter cooked, sitting at the single kitchen table with her two youngest grandkids, Irochka and Valerik, under the wall between our part of the house and Duzenko's.

During the day, the only show on TV was a splash screen with a picturesque frozen circle and squares—you could adjust the image by turning tiny knobs on the back of the TV. If the circle wasn't round, the announcer's face would flatten, like after ‘watching Moscow’ squeezed at their ears for too long, or, conversely, as if an elephant had stepped on their dome. So, until the All-Union Central Television started broadcasting (5:00 PM), the TV was useless, and dinner was swallowed to the inarticulate recitative of Pilyutikha behind the wall. In particularly dramatic moments, the mumbling broke loose into shouts—still impossible to get it what about.

Then I'd go to the Club and, returning, I'd see Pilyutikha again, this time illuminated by a distant lightbulb from the room, since she never turned on the kitchen light. Perhaps the darkness abetted her in her struggle with that damned wall. Hateful to the core.

When all four parents returned from work, Pilyutikha would increase the volume, to make Father wince and say, 'Again that Goebbels starts up her hurdy-gurdy!'

One day, Uncle Tolik placed a large teacup against the wall to hear what her croaking was about. I pressed my ear to the bottom once, too. The mumbling came closer and was no longer coming from behind the wall, but from inside the white cup, but it was still beyond the grasp.

Mother urged us to ignore the crazy old woman, but Aunt Lyuda explained that she was cursing us all through the wall. Aunt Lyuda turned to the same wall and, from our side, articulated clearly, 'May all say—go to your bosom!'

I don't know if Pilyutikha was truly crazy. Somehow she managed to live alone.

At the end of the war, her daughter left Konotop forever, just to avoid getting caught for free-style games with the officers of the German company headquarters when they were billeted in her parents' house. Pilyutikha's son, Grigory, got ten years for some murder. Her husband died, and no television in her emptied khata. Maybe that's why she had to curse, to keep from turning nuts…

Grandma Katya never said anything about Pilyutikha, and only smiled guiltily. There were days when she moaned, but no louder than Goebbels's speeches, muffled by the wall…

And then suddenly an ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital.

Two days later, Grandma Katya was brought back and laid on a leatherette-covered spring couch that Father had assembled from the remains of the big davenport that had arrived from the Object. It fit perfectly under the kitchen window, opposite the stove.

Granny Katya didn't recognize anyone and didn't speak to anyone, only moaned loudly and endlessly. That evening, our two families gathered in front of the television and closed the kitchen door to block out her moans and the heavy smell. The Arkhipenkos moved their beddings into our room, turning it into a bedroom for nine.