Сергей Огольцов – The Sweets At Dawn (страница 9)

However, both times, we weren't injured, except for bumps, because both our heads wore white plastic helmets. Always.

However, after the fall on Nezhin Street, we had to cancel our fishing trip because the Jawa's shock absorber started leaking oil and needed urgent repairs that day.

~ ~ ~

Konotop Divisions Square is named after the Red Army units that liberated the city during the Great Patriotic War, also known as World War II.

As a form of gratitude, the divisions inscribed 'Konotopskaya' on their correlative banners.

At first, this square seemed like the end of the world to me, because it's a whopping eight tram stops from the train station.

Konotop Divisions Square is as wide as three roads combined. And its length corresponds to the dimension, gently sloping southwest.

The openwork metal tower (in the upper right corner of the square), unlike its Parisian counterpart, served a practical purpose, holding a rather sizable water tank.

The inscription, painted in a sweeping, broad brush on the rusty side of the tank, silently appealed to Konotop Divisions Square: 'Olya, I love you!'

A high red brick wall at the foot of the tower protected the city prison from prying eyes with dense rows of barbed wire along the wall ridge.

Opposite the tower (in the upper left corner), the gates of the City Kolkhoz Market gaped openly, inviting.

Strictly speaking, the Market itself was located outside Konotop Divisions Square, with the exception of its gates, which also served as the starting point for a row of small shops descending smoothly—'Furniture', 'Clothing', 'Shoes'…

The lower left corner of the Square abutted a two-story building made up more of windows than walls—the Konotop Sewing Factory. Adjacent to it was a shorter building, which, by contrast, had more walls than windows—the City Sobering-Up Center. However, this establishment was already beyond the pale, standing on a street that, having deprived the Square of its lower right corner, recklessly headed straight for the bridge into the dangerous outskirts named Zagrebelye.

The danger of the area lay in the Zagrebel hoods, who, when they catch a guy who isn't from their neighborhood but still is determined to see a Zagrebel girl home, make him crow like a rooster, measure the length of the bridge with a match, or beat him up on the spot, without preamble…

The tram line crossed Konotop Divisions Square, both transversely and diagonally, gravitating upward, all of which heraldry calls with one word ‘bend’..

Trams, with a warning clang-and-jingle, rushed into the Square from around the corner of a long, blank wall, with three locked doors leading from the Vorontsov Cinema, which had an entrance around the corner, on Lenin Street.

When the traveling menagerie arrived in town, they lined up their trailers with cages in a large square between the tram tracks and the Sewing Factory. The corral on wheels resembled the defensive camp of Czech Taborites, depicted in the chapter on Hussite Wars of the textbook 'History of the Middle Ages'.

But departing from the Czechs, they built a couple of additional rows of cages in the middle of the perimeter, back to back, so that on Sundays, a dense crowd of Konotop residents, along with visitors from nearby villages, would walk around them, as well as along the cages in the encampment wall.

Square signs on the bars announced the name and age of the prisoner, and the unceasing tumult of the onlookers crowd, pierced by the howls and roars of the captive animals, hung over Konotop Division Square. But this happened once every three years…

And the Steep Wall Racers visited Konotop Divisions Square a couple of times. A tall canvas tent was erected in front of the gates of the City Kolkhoz Market, and a ring of five-meter-high wooden walls was erected inside.

Twice a day, spectators were allowed under the canvas. They climbed the steep external staircase to hang their faces over the top of the wooden wall and watch the two motorcyclists from there. After circling the arena briefly to gain enough speed to enter the ring wall up the ramp, they—without slowing down—raced horizontally along it, and, to the deafening roar of their engines, presented a side view of themselves to the faces hanging over the brink…

. .. .

Leaving Konotop Divisions Square along Lenin Street, a pedestrian passed the façade of the Vorontsov Cinema on the left. And ahead, the three-story cube of the House of Everyday Life loomed, housing all manner of ateliers and Repair Workshops, not to mention hairdressers.

An oversized display stand, made of metal pipes and sheet steel, pressed its back against the fence along the sidewalk between these two architectural landmarks.

The inviting sign 'DON'T PASS BY!' crowned the sturdy structure used to hang black-and-white photographs of people shot inside the City Sobering-Up Center.

Each portrait, individually framed on the mass pillory, was accompanied by a strip of paper, typewritten with the name and place of work of the person held under the glass.

These photographs, where the skin seemed to have been flayed from people's faces, were dreadful.

Personally, this educational measure, instead of censure, filled me with pity for the hanged alcoholics. Perhaps it was because of that stand far away, at the Object, that had so horrified me, and now somehow connected me to these… or at least with their children… somehow…

At that time, I had no real grounding for psychoanalytic insights, especially since on that stretch of Lenin Street there was always a urge to take a closer look at something else, to look around anywhere, just to avoid that shamefully disgusting stand.

Further along Lenin Street, past the first intersection, stood the Red Metallist Plant's Community Center, set back slightly from the road by its own miniature square.

Its sides were also lined with stands, facing inward. However, these structures served a more cheerful purpose—pasting pages from satirical magazines: the Russian 'Krokodil (Crocodile)' on the left side of the mini-square, the Ukrainian 'Perets (Pepper)' on the right.

Between the road and each stand, there remained space for a glass and iron kiosk. While similar in appearance, the twin kiosks differed in their interiors.

The one cuddling to 'Krokodil' stand, sold ice cream and lemonade on tap, while the shelves in the kiosk next to 'Perets' were filled with a jumble of souvenirs. There, among the ceramic smokers, plastic beads, packs of playing cards, and other goods devoid of practical value, I spotted a set of matchbox stickers. On my next trip to the City, I asked for an extra 30 kopecks and bought one with pictures of animals.

However, when I brought the menagerie home to add to the collection from the Object, I realized my mistake. The stickers, peeled from their boxes, revealed in small print the address of the match factory that had produced them, as well as the price of the matches and the box—1 kopeck.

The set from the kiosk turned out to be nothing more than a stack of sticker-sized pictures. From that moment on, I lost interest in the entire collection and gave it to my friend Skully. I didn't even ask the younger ones, knowing they'd long since stopped caring about it…

. .. .

Skully lived near the Nezhin Store with his mother, grandmother, and their dog, Pirate, though the latter lived separately, in a kennel, not in their tiny, borscht-scented house, whose kitchen and bedroom would have fit into the single room of our khata. True, their house was their undivided property.

Near the hut stood a small shed, insulated from the outside with manure plaster. In it, besides the tools and a pile of coal 'seeds' for the winter, stood a cart. An oblong, shallow box made of planks, with a pair of iron wheels on the axle. A five-foot-long water pipe with a short crossbar at the end protruded from under the box, for pushing or pulling the 'wheelbarrow'.

A vegetable garden stretched from the hut to the gate leading to the street. Bordered on both sides by the neighbors' fences, the plot had a sheer latifundia looks compared to our two or three wretched beds.

In the spring and fall, I would come to Skully to help with the digging. As we dug the tips of our shovels into the earth, we would repeat the popular saying in the Settlement: 'No Easter cakes! Grab a little pie and set off to dig the gardens!'

And Pirate, unleashed, would gallop wildly around the old Cherry trees bordering the path from the tiny khata to the flimsy gate.

~ ~ ~

Upon arriving in Konotop, my first and constant responsibility became the house's water supply.

The average daily consumption was about 50 liters. Two enamel pails of water stood on two stools in the far corner of the dark veranda, to the right of the kerosene stove.

A plastic ladle hung from a nail in the wooden wall above the pails—for scooping up water for drinking or pouring into a pot or kettle. But before being placed on the stools' pedestals, the pails were used to fill the washbasin tank in the kitchen, which held exactly two pails.