Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 2)
Among the old-timers of this part of town, the educational institution was nicknamed 'Cherevko's School'. The reason for this was a wealthy man from the nearby village of Podlipnoye, named Cherevko, who, back in the tsarist era, built a two-story brick public house on this site.
However, the Tsarist authorities did not allow him to open a barroom establishment so close to the town's only factory, which was still called the Mechanical Workshops. This mogul's plans clearly threatened to turn the entire working class of Konotop into alcoholics. En masse, all three hundred workers of the former Workshops.
Cherevko realized that, due to the incorruptibility of the authorities, he wouldn't be able to remodel the workers into drunks (it would have been easier to build something three-story with the amount of the demanded bribe), and he donated the finished building to the city to house an elementary school…
Under Soviet rule, the worldview of the working masses had grown so much that today's boozers moved three times closer to the same production center. Vain temptation! After their shifts, the workers dispersed to their homes, and the boozers (there were three of them during the period described) were completely ignored by men making for their family hearths.
Unswerving worldview—that's where our strength and power lies in, dear comrades!
Remaining a detached house, the 'Cherevko School' was supplemented by a long building in the one-story barrack style of the first five-year plans. Also made of brick. The architectural addition stretched away from the cobblestone road, along a quiet lane sloping toward the Swamp, which some call the Grove—whichever you prefer—separates the village of Podlipnoye from Konotop, although it's possible it's the other way around.
. .. .
On my way to school for the first time, I couldn't quite figure out the meaning of the tiny canvas bags, carried by almost every student, who trudged outskirting the April puddles in the same direction I was—toward the exit from Nezhin Street.
The bags hung on cords like those used for body cross, but dangled way lower, fixed at the schoolbag handles. Those who showed off with a dapper leather-look folder (which later gets worn through to the cardboard base) had to hold the cord with their free hand, but even the show-offs had that fist-sized bag (not a crucifix) on the tout loop of cord.
I couldn't help but ask, and my jaw dropped as they explained to the illiterate me that people carry their inkwells in those little bags.
Ahhhh… yep, I was pretty stunned.
What a regression! Everybody at the Object has their own personal fountain pen! Once a week, they suck in some ink from a bottle into the ampoule, and that's it! It could last a whole month until the next refill, if you don't scribble with that pen all day long.
And here – whizz! It's like you've stepped out of the era of internal combustion engines straight into the era of stagecoaches and postal troikas! From orbital stations and—hello, Leo Tolstoy, we've landed here on your estate border!…
However, the very next morning, those same little bags seemed like a perfectly ordinary detail of the landscape…
. .. .
The shrill, drawn-out ringing of a huge, half-meter-diameter electric bell on the corridor wall in the barrack-like building filled all of it, then, through the entrance door and porch, inundated the courtyard of the Cherevko School and spilled out onto three adjacent streets.
When the bell signaled recess, students descended the two-meter-high, yet narrow, porch into the wide schoolyard, with a mighty Elm tree in the center. Behind its whitewashed trunk lurked a squat building housing the Pioneer Room and the school libraryimbedded in it; a room for Labor lessons; and a windowless 'candeika' with an iron door. Skis were stored there, stacked against the wall, until the next winter season.
To the left of the porch, a wooden gate and the failed boozer screened Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street, but they couldn't hide the giant Poplar trees across the cobblestone road.
To the right, the gymnasium, its windows barred from the inside to protect them from the ball at Physical Education classes, adjoined the far end of the brick barracks at the right angle.
Opposite the blank wall of the gymnasium end stood a secluded restroom building, made of whitewashed brick, with two entrances: 'M' and 'F.'
Throughout recess, a lively swarm of students hung out on and around the steep porch of the school entrance. The older boys perched cleverly on the side railings of the porch landing. Only the occasional shriek from a passing teacher could dislodge them. Out of envy, of course, that he couldn't squeeze between them on that iron pipe.
The students reluctantly complied, but immediately fluttered back onto the perch as soon as the sermonizer’s back got swallowed by the front door.
A steady stream of pedestrians flowed toward the 'M' and 'F' toilets in the corner of the courtyard, and back.
However, most of the boy students (yes, boys only!) turned around the corner of the gymnasium before reaching the secluded building for intimate needs.
Here, in the narrow passage between the gymnasium wall and the high fence of the neighboring house, life was in full swing in a lively game of hard cash.
Here, in the school's Las Vegas, the excitement of a Bittok competition raged, where the stake (on average) was a 'pyatak' (a solid copper coin worth 5 kopecks).
Slightly lower bets were also accepted, but no less than a 'dvooshka' (2 kopecks in one coin) or a pair of 1 kopeck pieces.
But if you have a white coin, say, a 'desyulik' (10 kopecks), a 'pyatnashka' (15 kopecks), a 'dvatsulik' (20 kopecks), or even a 'poltysh' (50 kopecks), they'll change them for you before you know it.
The kopecks are staked literally—in a neat tower-like pile on the ground (coin on top of coin, all tails facing up, strict samely). And—the Bittok starts dancing!
What is a 'Bittok'? It's hard to say; every player has their own favorite piece of iron: a bolt, a piece of a spike for nailing down rails, a shiny ball from a large-size ball bearing. There are no limits—you can even hit it with a pebble. And even the lack of equipment won't be a problem—everyone here is willing to lend you their personal Bittok, just hit it.
What's there to hit?
That very stack of coins, you naive idiot! Any coin that lands heads up is yours. Grab it quickly, and then hit the others until they flip, and if not, the next player steps in to score some heads themselves.
And who starts? Well, it's all logical: whose share of the total stake is higher gets to start hammering away stacked up sum…
Occasionally, a cry of 'shoobba!' from the corner of the gym signaled the approach of one of the male teachers.
Money from the ground dissolved into pockets, smoking cigarettes housed into tubularly cupped hands.
However, the alarm always proved false—the passing teacher invariably headed for the restroom. Besides the row of common holes in the floor under the wall, there was a plank-walled stall with a door, harboring, a general-purpose hole in the floor. This was meant for the Director and members of the teaching staff admittable under the 'M' heading.
Well, the game rolled on…
In just three goes, I lost fifteen kopecks that Mother had given me for a cabbage pie from the school canteen.
But then—what could be expected? The Bittok virtuosos practiced at home, spending hours to come on terms with their favorite implement, but I had to use a borrowed one.
Maybe it's for the best—I didn't have time to get addicted…
(… The Konotop 'shoobba!' has its roots in the thieves' 'shukher!', which comes from the Hebrew 'tsukher!' and both mean the same thing—'watch out!' The school slang 'atas!', from the Object, has the same meaning, but comes from the French '
~ ~ ~
On my first day of school, my homeroom teacher, Albina Grigoryevna, seated me at the front desk, next to skinny redhead Zoya Yemets.
I never dipped anything in Zoya's inkwell, but Sasha Dryga, a repeater-veteran of many years, who sat in the back desk in the middle row, was very displeased with my landing under Zoya's skinny side. He warned me about this after class, as he glared at me through his greasy forelock.
And on the way home, I met and struck up a friendship with my classmate Vitya.
To the untrained ear, suffering from an hyperactive imagination, his last name might sound a little creepy (though such names are not uncommon in Ukrainian tradition) – Skull.
Our immediate friendship was born from the fact that we both walked along Nezhin Street, where he also lived. True, his house was a little further away, near the Nezhin Street store, equidistant from both ends of the avenue.
The next day, I asked Albina Grigoryevna to move me to the last desk in the left row, next to Skull. We were neighbors and could help each other with our homework.
The homeroom teacher honored such a compelling reason, and I was freed from the proximity of red-haired Zoya, which didn't bode well for me.