Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 8)

The store manager eats separately, in her office, but keeps the door wide open, and when the phone rings on her desk, she picks it up, 'Yeah? Who are you talking to?' and then shouts across the hallway so they can hear in the locker room.

Well, the one wanted on the phone dashes to the office, then back… But still, the last of her tasty treat is already at the bottom.

Better a lick than a hundred looks, right?

But they have one there, what a cunning bitch! The store manager yells 'Get on the phone!' and the bitch slowly gets up, gurgles her throat and spits into her jar, ('Ugh!') and—off she goes, without even looking back.

And even if she talks on the phone for half an hour, no one even glances at her lunch. Yeah!

. .. .

My mother also found work in retail, as a cashier at the large food store No. 6 nearby the train station. But after two months, she ran into a large shortage.

She got upset awfully and kept repeating that it’s impossible for her to have mistaken so grossly. Someone at the store must have rung up a large receipt while she went to the restroom forgetting to lock the cash register.

Father's coat had to be sold, a pure leather, one bought back when he was at the Object.

After that, Mother worked alone, in retail outlets where there were no suspicious colleages, just herself—at the kiosks in the City Recreation Park, near Peace Square, where they sell wine, cookies, cigarettes, draft beer…

~ ~ ~

At the end of the summer, another row broke out in the khata, this time it wasn't a showdown between the sisters though, but between husband and wife. And it happened because of the mushrooms Uncle Tolik had brought from the forest, wrapped in a newspaper. Not too much, though enough for soup.

Uncle Tolik carefully tied up this package of discord and placed it in a net so he could hang it on a handlebar of his Jawa and not lose it along the way.

But at home, instead of gratitude, Aunt Lyuda gave him a hard time when she saw the newspaper was tied with a bra strap.

In vain did Uncle Tolik insist that he'd picked up this 'goddamn string' in the forest. Aunt Lyuda kept declaring, louder and louder, that she wasn't born yesterday, and let them show her the forest where bras grow on the shrubs, and there's no point in making a fool out of her…

Grandma Katya no longer tried to calm the debate between the two sides and only looked around with sad eyes.

(… and this became a 2 in 1 lesson for both of us—Uncle Tolik never brought home any mushrooms again, and I learned the meaning of 'bra strap'…).

But Aunt Lyuda, seizing the opportunity, even tried to cancel Uncle Tolik's fishing trips altogether. And then he started raising his voice until a compromise was reached—he could go on with his fishing passion, but only on the condition that he take me along.

So, for the next two or three years, from spring to late fall, every weekend, with a couple of fishing rods and a spinning rod strapped to the trunk of his Jawa, we'd go fishing.

. .. .

The main theater of fishing activity on our forays was concentrated on the Seim River. Each time, a new spot along its invariably picturesque shores.

There were also raids on the distant Desna River, but that was at least 70 km one way, and we had to leave in the dark…

Outpacing the roar of its own engine, the Jawa raced through the city, peacefully snoring in a serene sleep. Everyone, without exception, was in the arms of Morpheus; the traffic cops were dreaming of the chase, but they, too, stubbornly snuffled on…

After overcoming 30 km of the chutes and potholes of the Baturin Highway, we burst onto the Moscow Highway, where Uncle Tolik sometimes squeezed 120 km/h out of the Czechoslovakian engine…

When we turned onto dirt roads, the Jawa slowed down and dawn began to overtake it. I sat behind him, clasping Uncle Tolik's sides with my hands, tucked into the pockets of his faux-leather motorcycle jacket, to keep them from freezing in the headwind.

The night around us was gradually turning to twilight, the edges of the forest belts between the fields now outlined in distinct black clumps.

The sky was brightening, and wisps of clouds were beginning to appear. Their shivery pallor took on a shy pink under the brazen paws of the rays stretching across the sky. They had seized the moment when their effrontery was overlooked by the sun lingering behind the horizon…

These changes also stirred the spirit of the breathtaking views, a thrill no less intense than that of a high-speed ride…

. .. .

Our usual bait were worms dug up from the garden beds, but one day, some seasoned fishing veterans advised Uncle Tolik to try dragonfly larvae.

These little critters live underwater, in clumps of clay washed up by the current from steep banks, and the fish engage in no-holds-barred fights for the right to personally swallow the hook with the larval bait. Well, something like that…

We pulled ashore in the pre-dawn twilight. The Jawa cleared its throat and fell silent. The river sloshed sleepily, giving out translucent, patchy wisps of mist floating above the water.

Uncle Tolik quietly explained that the plan called for me to be the one to pull out those clumps of clay.

The mere thought of diving into the dark water, shrouded in the gloom of the night yet to pass, sent a chill down my trembling, frightened skin. Brrr!

But if you love to ride, you must also love to get the larvae. I undressed and, on the advice of the elder, dove straight under.

Wow! As it turned out it's much warmer in the water than in the damp, chilly morning on the shore. I dragged slippery lumps from the river, and Uncle Tolik broke them apart at the water's edge, digging the larvae out of the tunnels they'd bored in the clay to live there. When he said it was enough, I was terribly reluctant to leave the slowly flowing warmth…

But still, the undeniable fact of flagrant exploitation of underage labor was clear, and the exploiter suffered his well-deserved retribution that very day. Some outrageous acts simply cannot be let off the hook…

Of all the tackle, Uncle Tolik chose the spinning rod as his preferred method. With a sharp swing, he sent the spoon splashing at least halfway across the river, then began to whirr the reel, twitch the rod, and change the zigzag course of the swirling lure as it tumbled underwater.

Burn with excitement, the hungry predator—a pike or a perch, for instance—rushed to catch the brazenly mischievous fish and swallowed the treble hook, invisible in the glitter of the spinning lure. If only the fisherman cast in the right place at the right moment…

Around midday, we changed our location to an unfamiliar wooden bridge across the river, and Uncle Tolik crossed to the opposite high bank, spinning here and there.

Left alone, I diligently kept an eye on the floats of a couple of rods stuck in the sand next to the slow current. Then I was tempted to move to a more advantageous position, a little higher up, where I lay in a strip of coastal grass. But the floats remained clearly visible.

When Uncle Tolik turned back, walking along the far bank, I didn't lift my head from the grass, but instead watched with glee as he made his way through the jungle of blades of grass growing at eye level. It's an old movie trick used in trick photography. So I turned him into a midget and kept him in a bug-like state until he reached the bridge. Yes, harsh, but fair…

~ ~ ~

One day, Aunt Lyuda asked me, face to face, if I'd ever seen her husband enter any khata during our fishing trips.

I didn't have to lie, and without a shred of dissembling, I answered that no. I'd never seen anything like it. Not even once. And I was always sitting behind him.

Well, we were driving through Popovka one day, and he suddenly remembered that we'd gone fishing without bait. So, he dropped me off on an empty village lane while he’d whizz to a certain spot he knew—not far away—dig up some bait and be right back. However, during the protracted wait, all I saw was the deep sand in the road and impenetrable walls of nettles, high and dense, on either side of the sand. And also the blackened straw-roof of the barn under which he dropped me. But no entry, no entry into any khata I saw then… I could swear on anything.

Looking frankly into the searching eyes opposite me, I confessed to the inquisitive woman:

'No, Aunt Lyuda, in all our driving, I've never seen him enter anything.'

There were falls, too. Once or twice… Yes, definitely twice.

The very first time, we were driving across a field along a path that ran over a meter-high embankment, with weeds on either side. Thanks to them, I guessed it was an embankment—that high they only leveled with half Jawa’s wheel. The only thing I don't understand is: why is there an embankment in a field?

I couldn't think of an answer—the trail suddenly ended, and so did the embankment, the Jawa went into a prolonged dive until it landed head-on… and we flew on, over the handlebars and gas tank…

Along the way, I also flew over Uncle Tolik.

Another time, we didn't even have time to leave Nezhin Street when the motorcycle caught on a piece of iron thoughtfully dug in front of someone's house foundation to prevent the vehicle from scratching their private property. Just to keep off the traffic navigating around puddles in the road created by the rain.