Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 5)

And since School No. 13 was the second-to-last school in the city, by the time we, mixed in with the galloping herd of School No. 14, passed the red stand, the loudspeakers were shouting from above: 'The Konotop Railway Technical School column is entering the Square! Hurrah, comrades!'—and we had to hoot, not to ourselves.

After Peace Square, the Avenue with the last of its strength to the entrance to the City Recreation Park. At the very next turn right, a slope began toward Lenin Street, though we didn't go so down.

In the nearest alley, we dumped the Political Bureaucratic Members and bundles of red banners into the back of a truck, which would take them to the Settlement. To dump and lock in the School Caretaker's room.

A six-month sentence—until the next demonstration.

And we, too, set off back, walking, skirting Peace Square, as the passages between the buildings along its perimeter were blocked by empty buses. Stilled head to head. Through the gaps between the buses, one could see the vast deserted area around the fountain pit, ringed by dry granite, and the lazily wandering figures of lone cops… And yet it was a celebration, because before going out to the demonstration, Mother meted us fifty kopecks each, which even left over change.

A mini-brick of Plombir in a thin paper wrapper cost 18 kopecks, and the Creamy flavor cost a mere 13.

Women in white coats sold ice cream, standing over plywood boxes with double bottoms and walls, at every intersection on Peace Avenue, which was free of all forms of traffic.

. .. .

When I returned home, streams of tweens in white shirts and scarlet ties of Leninist Pioneers were still marching along Nezhin Street, spilling out across the Settlement from the demonstration.

And then I committed the first vile act of my life. The very first.

I went out into the street and fired my U-shot pistol at the innocent white back of a Pioneer walking past. He chased after me, but I ran into the yard, to Zhulka's kennel.

The guy didn’t have the nerve to follow, only barked curses at the open gate. In response, Zhulka tugged at his chain like crazy, barking furiously.

~ ~ ~

Closer to summer, the parents bought a goat at the Bazaar. When Father got his first payment at the factory and brought home 74 rubles, Mother looked at the bills in his hands in confusion and said, 'What? Is that all?'

The animal was supposed to make life easier, but in reality, the goat only made it more complicated. Now I had to walk the horned cattle on a rope, to Forge Lane or Foundry Lane, or to 2nd Lane on Kotsyubinsky Street, where the goat gnawed the dusty grass at the foot of weather-worn fences.

I flatly refused to drink goat's milk, despite Mother's gentle persuasion that it was the healthiest drink of all.

After a short while, the goat was slaughtered and ground into cutlets. I didn't even taste them.

. .. .

Sometimes Grandma Katya's son, Uncle Vadya, would come to our house from his lunch break at the Factory, wearing his work overalls, to chisel moonshine from his mother, because the boys were waiting in the shop.

But she knew how to meekly send one off with a flea in their ear.

Uncle Vadya had black hair slicked back, and a brush mustache, also black, fitting his olive complexion, like by Arthur in Lilian Voynich's novel 'The Gadfly.' He was missing a finger on his right hand, which he'd lost early in his working career.

'I didn't get it at first. Okay, so there's my finger dropped on the tool, but where is the water coming from? Holy cow! These are tears from my eyes: drip-drip smack bang on it!'

That's how he recalled the incident.

The doctors stitched up the stump very well—smoothly, without scars—so that when he rolled out the fig, there were two. A double-barreled (2 in 1) gun. It looked terribly funny, and no one about to pull off the trick even remotely.

Uncle Vadya lived in his mother-in-law's house, near the bus station. In Ukrainian, a person living in the wife's parents' house is called a 'primak,' from the word 'adopted'.

O, bitter is the fate of a primak! Uncle Vadya explained that a primak must keep a low profile, address his mother-in-law only with 'Mama,' and give way to the chickens she keeps in the yard. And never miss washing the hens' feet when they go to perch for the night.

We all loved Uncle Vadya because he was always so funny and kind, smiling all the time. He even greeted us like no one else: 'Well, how are you, my golden kids?'

When my mother and the twins went to his birthday party, he gave them a box of dominoes. Ivory colored, both the box and the dominoes. Such an exquisite yellowish hue.

Unfortunately, one domino was missing. Maybe on their way back. 'None-to-three'. Otherwise, everything was in place.

In short, it works. We tested it. True, not for very long. If you know about the shortage, it's not really worth playing. But still, the game itself sat in a drawer somewhere for a long time. For several years. A neat little box with the thin plastic inscription 'Dominoes'. And such an elegant color… ivory-like.

And Uncle Vadya's son had different-colored eyes—one blue, the other green…

At the age of ten, when the German company headquarters was literally quartered next door—in the Pilyuta’s half of the house—young Vadik Vakimov selflessly climbed the fence, next to the Elm Tree behind the house, and tried to cut the telephone cable that connected the occupiers' headquarters.

The Germans yelled at him, but didn't shoot and killed, as was the custom with all the Germans in war movies.

When I asked him how he'd gotten so brave, Uncle Vadya replied that he couldn't remember.

However, he hardly dreamed of becoming a young pioneer partisan, a posthumous Hero of the Soviet Union. More likely, he was lured by the thin, multicolored wires that make up telephone cables. And most importantly, they're used plaiting various crafts: colorful trinkets of all sorts, or finger rings…

. .. .

On the way to the Nezhin Store, a couple of people on the same bike overtook me. First they passed me, and then the one who was sitting on the rack backwards with his legs spread apart, jumped to the ground and slapped me.

Even a simple slap is an unimaginable insult to honor, and he smacked thoroughly… and besides, he was half a head shorter than me…

However, I refrained from scrapping because the other one had already dismounted. A real big bull.

'I told you'd get it,' the pip-squeak announced, and they rode off.

Then it dawned on me whose back I'd shot at.

~ ~ ~ reality of illusions

Showtimes at the Club began at six and eight in the evening. With a ticket purchased through the tin-clad door on the first floor, moviegoers climbed to the second, stepping on thick planks of two straight flights covered with a generous layer of bright red floor paint.

The small ceramic tiles on the second-floor landing were covered with twilight. Constantly.

It was unclear where it came from, given the pair of tall windows in the wall opposite the top of the steps. But it dwelled there, despite the mentioned windows and three doors about the landing.

A door to the right opened into a small lounge with a television on a shelf mounted to the wall. The height from the floor to the television provided anyone of average height with a comfortable opportunity to flick the box on and tweak the controls.

But it hopelessly wasted its time, staring blankly with its dead screen at a dozen short rows of eternally empty seats. No one was willing to turn it on.

Behind the absent audience, the black-painted metal of the rebar rods rose in a steep stairway to the iron door of the projection booth.

The hall was a walk-through hall—in its corners, in the same wall as the comatose television, two large doors opened onto the same, vast Ballet Studio hall.

However, with a show ticket in your pocket, there's practically nothing to do there. So—back into the gloom on the landing, enveloping a pair of as-yet-unexplored doors.

The first door on the left of those same massive red steps never opened, being the door to the balcony of the Club Hall. While the next door, the final one in the landing trinity, stood invitingly open, but under the guard and watchful eye of the eternally sullen Aunt Shura.

With her dark-checkered headscarf, standing (invariably!) erect, she resembled a knight on patrol, his head covered by a cone helmet. His headgear forged of iron, as required by medieval safety regulations. Prince Vladimir the Red Sun had placed her there to tear off the tip of your ticket before letting you in.

The floor of the vast hall tilted gently, carrying dense rows of darkened wood seats at an inconspicuous angle toward the wide white screen stretching from wall to wall.

A large stage with a couple of porches and entrance doors, next to each side wall, securely concealed behind the screen. However, for concerts and puppet theater performances, the screen slid to the left, as far as it would go, and its whiteness was replaced by the dark blue velvet of the stage curtain.

The open balcony surrounding the auditorium's patio was adorned with clusters of alabaster moldings, running along its entire length along the side walls.