The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)

Then Dad left the Hospital and we started to live on further…

~ ~ ~

At school, our sixth grade was moved back onto the second floor in the main building. Because of uninterrupted book-reading and watching the television I had no time for home assignments but still remained a “good learner” just out of teachers’ inertia.

In the school public life, I played the role of a horse in the performance staged by the pioneers of our school. The role was assigned to me because Dad made a big horse head from cardboard and on stage I represented the horse’s head and forelegs. My arms and shoulders were hidden under a large colorful shawl, which also covered one more boy who crouched behind me gripping my belt because he played the role of hinder-parts.

The horse did not say anything on stage and appeared there only as the nightmare to scare an idler in his sleep and make him reform and study well. We performed in the school gym, and in the Regiment Club, and even went on a tour out of Zona—to the club of Pistovo village. Everywhere, the appearance of the horse sparked vivacity among the audience…

Besides the movies at the Regiment Club, I sometimes went to the House of Officers, asking the ticket money from my parents. It was there that I watched the French adaptation of The Three Musketeers for the first time.

Before the show, ominous rumors circulated in the thick confluence filling the foyer hall, people murmured that they failed to bring the film and would show some other flicks instead, so as to keep money for the sold tickets. I draw aside from the crowd ruminating the ugly hearsay and, to kick devastatingly grim contemplation, I…

(…being that I, the one from that period, I knew no Eddy Murphy yet and believed, in earnest, that we single-handedly defeated Germany in WWII because our Soviet people are always ready to die for out Soviet Motherland at a moment’s notice and without any second thought whatsoever…)

… sought shelter in the concentrated consideration of the huge portrait of Marshal Malinovsky screening half the foyer side wall by all the screwed, and pinned, and dangling items in the exhibition of his orders and medals. The collection was really enormous leaving no vacant spot on his ceremonial tunic where the medals of lesser denomination were hanging below the waist, from the groins, a kinda over-all coat of mail.

And I swore to the chain-mailed marshal, I wouldn’t watch anything else even if they did not give the money back. But it turned a false alarm and the happiness, lavishly spiced by the sound of ringing swords, lasted the whole 2 sequels, and in color too!.

The exploration of the Detachment’s Library was regularly bringing new achievements. Not only that I had long ceased to be frightened by the pictures in the wide anteroom, but I also became a seasoned shelf-hanger.

As the shelving of books crowded quite close to each other, I got the hang of climbing right up to the ceiling for which purpose the shelves both sides of the narrow passages became, like, convenient ladder-rungs. I wouldn’t say that on the previously unreachable shelves there were some special books, not at all, however, the acquired skills at mountaineering increased my self-esteem like after that occasion when Natasha called me from my sofa-readings because there was an owl in the basement of the corner building.

Of course, I immediately ran after her. The basement corridor was illuminated by a single bulb that somehow managed to survive the harsh times of the crook wars. At the end of the corridor under the opening to the outside pit, there sat a large bird on the floor, much bigger than an owl. Some real eagle owl it was who angrily shook his eared head with the crooked nose, no wonder that the kids did not dare approach.

My reaction was surprisingly deft, without a moment’s hesitation, as if handling maverick eagle owls was my daily routine, I took my shirt off and threw it over the bird’s head. Then, grabbing at the clawed legs, I lifted the bird from the floor. The owl didn’t resist under the cover of my tartan shirt. Where to now? Of course, I took it home, especially since I was not fully clad.

Mom didn’t agree to keep such a big monster at home although our neighbors, the Savkins, had a hefty crow in their apartment. Mom answered that Grandmother Savkin’s main job was wiping up the crow guano all over their apartment all day long, and who would do it in ours with all of us at work and school?

Reluctantly, I promised to take the eagle owl to Living Nature Room at school next morning because there already lived a squirrel and a hedgehog in their cages. Till then, he was allowed to sit in the bathroom. For the eagle owl’s refreshment, I took a slice of bread to the bathroom and a saucer full of milk. He gravely sat in the corner and did not even look at the food on the floor tiles. Going out, I turned the light off, in the hope that, being a night predator, he’d find it even in the dark.

First thing in the morning, I checked and saw that the eagle owl hadn’t pecked a crumble of his supper. He also partook none of it while I had breakfast though the light in the bathroom was left on for the purpose. So, I clutched his bare legs and carried him to school.

Probably, owls do not like hanging upside down because that eagle owl constantly tried to bend his head up as far as his neck let it go. At times, I gave my schoolbag to my brother and carried the bird with both hands in the normal position. When from the hillock top opened the distant view of school, the owl’s head dropped and I realized that he was dead. I felt even relieved that he wouldn’t have to live in the captivity of the smelly Living Nature Room.

I veered from the path and hid him in a shrub because once I saw a hawk hanged from a thick bough in the old tree atop the Bugorok-Knoll. I didn’t want them to feather or somehow mutilate my owl, even though dead as he was…

Later, Mom said that the bird died, probably, of old age that’s why he sought refuge in the basement.

(…but I think all that happened so that we would meet each other. He was a messenger to me, it's only that I haven’t understood the message yet… Birds are not just birds and ancient augurs knew that well…

My house in Stepanakert is located on the slope of a deep ravine behind the Maternity Hospital. It’s the last house in a dead-end, a very quiet place indeed.

Once, coming home, I saw a small bird, the size of a sparrow, in the withered late-autumn grass by the footpath. In fumbling unsteady steps, it trailed thru the brittle grass as if severely wounded, dragging the wings in its wake.

I gave it a passing look and went on, burdened by too many problems of my own… The next day I learned that right about that moment a young man was butchered a little deeper in the ravine in a brawl of junkie bros.

That small bird was the soul of the murdered and there’s no chance to make me step back from this belief…)

~ ~ ~

In the autumn following the separately spent summer vacations, the senior part of our family became fans of mushroom harvesting.

Of course, the mushrooms at the Object were always there, just take a couple of steps to any side away from the trodden school path and there’s russula growth for you, or solid portabella, long-legged enoki, or oily agarics, it’s only that too busy passers-by had no time for mushrooms… But when they give you the permit paper to get out the Zona for a whole Sunday and also provide a truck to take the mushroom-pickers to the out-of-Zona woodland, the “noiseless hunting” takes on much more attractive looks. Probably, all those conveniences were always there for the Object dwellers, only my parents did not use them until they needed a firmer reconciliation after the split-up summer.

(…though I did not think about such things at that time and was just all too happy to go with my parents to the forest for mushroom harvesting which term is more correct than “looking for”. However hard you look for, there’s no way you’ll find it, even before your very nose, until it calls you. Without the call you pass not seeing – it waits for someone else. It took me a life to understand it’s not about mushrooms only but any not-living (Ha!) inorganic thing…)

Especially for those Sundays, Dad made three pails of sturdy cardboard, lightweight and capacious. In the forest, the mushroom-pickers from the Zona parted and wandered everyone by themselves at times exchanging distant echoes of “ahoy!” by which you couldn’t guess who it was.

I liked alerted roaming in the silent autumn forest wet from the drizzle and fog. Of course, we didn’t pick too brittle russulas, but portabella or agarics were a good find. Dad made a small knife for each of us, so as not to spoil the mycelium, besides, on the cut, it’s seen at once whether the mushroom had worms.

The best sort of the mushrooms were “the whites”, or porcini, but I never came across any of them. The unfamiliar ones I took to Dad, and he explained that those were shiitake, or morels or simply poisonous throwaways.

At home, the mushrooms were poured from the pails into a big washing basin and kept overnight in the water, then Mom cooked or marinated them. All that was delicious, no doubt, but hunting them in the woods gave more delights…

One Sunday when the parents went on a visit somewhere, the three of us started chasing each other all over the apartment, just for fun. The merrymaking was cut short by a sharp knock at the door. On the landing, there stood the new neighbor from the first floor who said that our parents’ absence was not a reason to kick up such a bedlam and, when back, they’d be informed we couldn’t behave if left alone.

Later in the evening, Natasha ran in from the landing with the alert alarm: the parents were coming home already but stopped on the first floor by the neighbors from the apartment under ours. Oh-oh, we’re going to get hell!

How come she was at the right time in the right place? Quite easy. The landing was, like, the apartment’s extension wide for us to play balloon-volleyball, and Mom even started to use it as a gym, going out there in the evenings, when she was not at work, to jump a skipping rope. We followed her example, but I wasn’t as good at it as Natasha who practiced much oftener, and so she did at the moment of our parents’ intercepted return.

When they entered the hallway, Dad’s face was very angry. Without taking off his coat, he headed to the kitchen and brought a stool to the parents’ room, where he moved the rug aside and smashed the stool against the floor. “Keep quiet, eh?!” shouted he to the floorboards and squarely banged them once again with the stool’s seat, “Is it okay now?”

I realized that we would not be punished, but something still was somehow not right….

When leaving for school, we took along the sandwiches wrapped by Mom in newspaper sheets so that during a break we would take them out of our schoolbags and eat. For Sasha and Natasha, she put two sandwiches in one package because they studied in the same class. And before leaving for school, we also had breakfast in the kitchen.

However, on that particular Saturday, I left without my schoolbag and alone because that day the senior students were having a military game for which reason the classes for junior schoolchildren were canceled.

The game participants belonged to the competing groups of “the Blues” and “the Greens”, and for the start, they were to march into the forest in different directions. Their goal was to track down the opponent forces, surprise them, and capture their banner. Each trooper had to wear paper shoulder straps whose color indicated the group they were from. A gamester with one shoulder strap torn off became a prisoner of war while missing both meant they were "killed"…

That morning, I came to the kitchen late for breakfast because normally I got up wakened by the rise of the younger ones, but they enjoyed their day-off at the moment. Secondly, the previous night till late I kept sewing the shoulder straps onto my jacket with tiny, frequent, diligent stitches so that they would sit close to hinder tearing them off because of which military preparations I went to bed about midnight…

Now Mom was already leaving for her work and said there remained some pasta cooked for the previous day dinner or, if so be my wish, I could boil an egg for my breakfast.

I reminded her that I knew nothing about cooking eggs, but she answered it was as easy as pie: to have a soft-boiled egg you boil it for a minute and a half while three-minute boiling makes it hard-boiled. She even brought the alarm-clock from their room and put it on the windowsill next to the mushroom jar before taking a hurried leave…

Such three-liter jars were kept in almost every kitchen at the Object and they were filled with a mushroom that had nothing to do with the forest. It looked like some greenish slime upon the water in the jar and, in spite of the ugly looks, it turned the water into a tasty drink reminiscent of effervescent kvass, even though they called its producer ‘tea’-mushroom. When the jar contents neared their end with the mushroom wisps scratching the bottom, the jar was simply refilled with water and put aside for a couple of days to prepare the drink again. Women were gladly sharing pieces of the mushroom among themselves because when grown too thick it left no room for refilling the jar.

So, marking the time by the alarm clock next to the mushroom jar, I poured water into the small pan indicated by Mom before leaving, loaded it with an egg, lit the bluish springy fire in the gas stove and put the pan on it…

After exactly a minute and a half of waiting, the water around the egg did not look like being hot, so I decided, okay, let it be a hard-boiled egg. Additional one-and-a-half minutes past, some scanty vapors did start to rise from the pan, besides, the pan’s walls underwater developed lots of small bubbles, and I turned the gas off because I had exact instructions on how to cook boiled eggs…

(…the byword about the first pancake in the batch turning out a sorry lump can be safely expanded with “the first boiled egg is a slushy mess”…)

The military game participants were mostly in sportswear and noticeably reluctant to enter the school building. So all of us crowded together in the yard idling the time in small separate groups. In the one I was with, everybody appreciated the minuscule stitches that kept my shoulder straps in place. I proudly patted the one on my left shoulder—no way to grab at it, eh? Nothing like by those boys who fixed theirs by just a couple of stitches and now their shoulder straps stuck out like a cat's arced back asking to be torn off with just your pinky finger.

At that moment some unfamiliar boy, maybe from the parallel class, started a scrap. He spread me on the ground and tore my shoulder straps in tatters.