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

(…I never knew how to fight, neither do I now.

Most likely, I just called him “fool!” and ran away into the forest—back home…)

In the forest, I took my jacket off… Instead of the shoulder straps, there only remained a dashed, serrated, frame-like paper-strip under the tight close stitches by a doubled black thread.

I plucked the paper scraps out and scattered over the fallen foliage. Maybe, I even cried full of resentment at being killed so unruly, prematurely, before the start of combat actions, shattering my eager dreams to capture the adversary headquarters…

For some period, my favorite pastime at classes became producing blueprint drawings of my secret shelter located in a cave inside a mighty impenetrable cliff like that one lived by people in The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. Yet, unlike their case, you could get to my cave only by the underground passage which began far from the cliff, in the depths of the surrounding forest. Well, and the cave itself had an additional passage upward, into a smaller cavity equipped with narrow crevices in the wall to peek out and see what’s going on around…

A grim mask alike to those stone idols in the Easter Island decorated the butt-end of the pencil which I drew my designs with… The skill of pencil carving was also obtained at school, it’s as easy as pie and all you needed was a razor blade.

At the pencil’s butt-end, scrape 2 lengthwise parallel grooves, about 1 centimeter long, 3 mm wide and 2 mm apart to produce the ridge of the would-be nose. Connect the grooves with a deep cross cut to mark off the nose tip.

Now, from about a centimeter down the nose start a wider scrape towards the cross-cut, it makes the nose stick out and also becomes the lower part of the face. The notch across that wider scrape passes for a thin-lipped mouth, and two short slits, one in each of the long grooves on both sides of the nose, are the idol’s eyes.

Just be careful about the razor blade, it’s horribly sharp and would cut your finger pads at once if wielded inattentively… The instrument for carving was picked up, as needed, from the tiny blue-paper pack of razors kept by Dad in the bathroom. The blue top bore the brand-name “Neva” and the neat drawing of a black sailboat above it. Each razor in the pack was wrapped in a separate blue envelope embellished with the same sailboat and inscription…

When the winter sat in, the skin on my hands began to peel off. At first, there formed some small spots of dry skin and, when rubbed and pulled at, it would go off in patches. I didn’t tell anyone about it and in a week took off all of the skin there, like a pair of tattered gloves, up to the wrists. Only the palms’ skin remained in place. And beneath the peeled off patches, there was new skin already…

(…I have no idea if there is some scientific explanation for such a case, yet, in my humble opinion, the phenomenon was caused by the book which I met on the shelves of the Detachment’s Library titled The Man Is Changing His Skin. I never borrowed nor skimmed it but the title was remembered and, being an impressionable child, I checked the possibility of the announced change…)

Both naivety and impressionability were my innate Achilles’ heels… Impressed by a record on a 33 RPM disc, I felt a naive desire to write down the lyrics of the song, although it was in a foreign language.

My attempt at copying never went further than the first line of which result I also had rather grave doubts. Played once, the line distinctly sounded as “azza latsmaderi”, yet at the following audition it somehow turned into “esso dazmaderi” and no matter how long I listened to the record those variants elusively substituted each other impeding a clear-cut decision. But it’s not possible for a recorded disc to swap the words on the fly! Anyway, the project was derailed.

(…many years later I heard the song again and readily recognized when Louis Armstrong sang up from a laser disk:

“ Yes, sir, that’s my lady…)

The skating rink across the road was from the very start meant for playing hockey. Over time, it got bounded with compact plank fencing, and two hockey goals popped up at the field’s opposite ends.

After snowfalls, the boys cleared the field with a pair of wide metal sheets resembling the bulldozer blade. Each shield had a long horizontal handle above it and no less than two or three boys were needed to push the contraption.

The snow was moved to the fence opposite the locker-room shed and shoved out of the field with large snow shovels of plywood. That’s why behind that fence there accumulated a tall snow ridge all along the ice rink. Those artificial hills of snow were burrowed by boys and became an ever-growing system of tunnels with ramifications, dead ends and stuff as if following the blueprint drawings of my secret shelter.

In the evenings, we played Hide-and-seek in those tunnels full of the ink-black darkness because the lamp posts were only put along the fence on the locker-room side of the ice rink. But when you switched a flashlight inside a burrow there jumped up white glacial walls holding numberless sparks in their murky depth…

~ ~ ~

The year was ending. In the tear-off calendar on the kitchen wall by the window, there remained but a few palm-sized pages. Such tear-off calendars contained as many pages as there were days in their year and initially the thick mass of hundreds of pages squeezed by its glistening tin spine had a look of solid importance. Each page bore its unique date in bold and, in regular type-set, it informed of the exact time both sunrise and sunset on that particular day as well as symbols and numbers showing the current phase of the moon, and all that compactly printed wealth of information was meant to be torn off and thrown away to keep pace with the time flow. To make the loss still bitter, together with the information the page’s visual design was also condemned to annihilation. The data on the movements of celestial bodies were placed at the page bottom keeping its center for the portrait of one or another Member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union who was born on that day, and if all Members missed being born on that day, there was a portrait of this or that hero of the Civil War or of the Great Patriotic War. On the reverse side, you could read their biography, but briefly because of the petit page size. Once in 2 months, you could come across a crossword in the calendar (yes, cues on their back), besides, there were four dates printed in red because they were holidays: the New Year, May Day, the Great October Revolution Day, and the Constitution Day.

However, later Mom started to buy tear-off calendars for women, where instead of Members’ portraits there were pictures of Birch-trees upfront and the sewing patterns on the page back, or recipes for pies, and other useful tips.

From one of those tips, I learned how to wean your husband from his propensity for spirits:

“Pour a quantity of pulverized burnt cork into a glass of wine and treat your husband to it before the guests’ arrival. When all got together, the burnt cork will demonstrate its impact making the carouser unable to restrain the pressure of gases in his stomach and he’ll start to fart and feel ashamed before the guests which embarrassment will make him abandon the disgraceful habit.”

I shared the method to Mom because at times she scolded Dad for his propensity. However, Mom was reluctant to use the advice.

(..I couldn’t understand her then – why to complain if you don’t want to eliminate the cause of discomfort?

Coming of age I understood my Mom, but now I cannot understand those who could print such idiocy.

See? My comprehension works like that crane from a fable wallowing in a marsh mire who pulls his neck out free, but a wing gets bogged down, the wing is out—oops!—a leg got stuck.

Or is it about my comprehension only?..)

A week before the winter holidays Class Mistress announced that at the school New Year Eve Party would also be the contest for the best fancy dress so our class should do our best to win it. I was thrilled by the task at hand and right away conceived the idea of an unbeatable carnival dress – no bears or robots anymore, I’d dress up like a gypsy girl! Mom laughed when I shared my plan, yet promised to help because she had connections at the Dancing Amateur Activities…

At my cautious inquiries in the class—what disguise did they intend for the contest?—the boys invariably answered that no one cared about making any fancy dress and they would attend the party in their casual wear. The dismal prospect distressed me not a little because at a New Year party everything should be as in the movie “The Carnival Night” with streamers flying crisscross thru the snowfall of confetti… I sought consolation in a soothing thought that it was silly panicking just like before “The Three Musketeers” which show did take place, after all. Well, and if the boys had no intention of wearing fancy dresses, then there remained other guys especially from the senior classes who you could rely on…

Mom made me a mask like that of Mr. X in the movie “Mr. X”, also of black velvet only she added black gauze strip hung down over the lips. Now, no one would recognize me because from the Dancing Amateur Activities Mom brought a real wig with a long black braid reaching to the waist, a red skirt, a fine blouse and a black shawl with big red flowers.

After I changed into all those things, Mom and her new woman-friend who moved into the Zimins’ rooms laughed themselves to tears. Then they said, what if someone invited me to dance? I had to have some practice beforehand. On their advice, I picked up a chair and slowly span keeping it hugged under a waltz record. They laughed even more and said I needed female shoes, my boots did not suit the red skirt. The shoes were also found but they had high heels because you couldn’t wear sandals in winter. Walking on high heels was more than uncomfortable but Mom said, “Practice your patience, Cossack, and get trained while the time allows”.

One hour before the New Year party, my carnival costume was packed in a large bag, and off I went to school thru the dark night forest.

At school, I sneaked up to the second floor, where even the light was not turned on, and in one of the dark classrooms, I changed into my fancy dress. Descending to the first floor, I held onto the railing because walking in high-heel shoes was no better than having skates on your feet.

Both the vestibule and the first-floor corridors were lighted rather scantily, yet there was enough illumination to see that everyone, including the guys from senior classes, wore, albeit not the school uniform, yet nothing like carnival costumes.

They all stood in small groups or ran back and forth and fell silent when I clap-clapped the shoe heels past them over the parquet flooring, then over the tiles of the vestibule and the following parquet in the next corridor. And where was the celebration then? Where were the streamers and confetti?.

A couple of senior boys talked in a whisper to each other and approached me, “Could you tell the future, gypsy girl?”

At that moment School Pioneer Leader appeared and took me with her to the gym. The hall was crowded with rows of seats up to the New Year Tree and farther back on both sides of it to accommodate the audience for the performance of a prepared play. So, all my waltzing that chair at home was just useless, the school New Year party program foresaw no dancing whatsoever.

School Pioneer Leader seated me in the first row facing the still closed blue curtains. Then she left briefly and brought a masked girl in a Harlequin suit—another stupid fool like me. The girl was placed in the chair next to me, and we were the only mummers in the gym.

The curtain fell open and the ninth-graders presented their production of Cinderella. They had good costumes though, I especially liked the tartan cap of the Jester… The performance ended, everyone started to clap and I realized that now even the Jester would change into his pants and jacket.

I left the gym and went upstairs to the dark classroom, where I had left my clothes, and changed back. What a bliss it was to get rid of the hatefully painful high-heel shoes and get into my long-longed-for felt boots!

Exiting the school, I met my Mom and Natasha who came to admire my masquerade triumph. I shortly warned them that there was no carnival, and we went home thru the same night forest.

(…the trick for being happy all the time is pretty simple: avoid looking back and let the memory do its job quickly – it will forget and erase your blunders, sorrows, and pains. Just keep looking forward to pleasures, successes, and holidays…)

~ ~ ~

Though the New Year celebration party fell so flat, ahead still was the long winter vacations with seventeen TV sequels of “Captain Tankesh” where he’d ride his swift horse, and swash his saber, and make fools of the Austrian occupants of his Hungarian Motherland.

In the parents’ room, as always, the Christmas Tree was touching the ceiling with the ruby star on its top, and among the shiny decorations there also hung chocolate candies “Batons” and “Bear Cub in the Forest”. After the lead-balloon carnival, life smiled again…

On the New Year Eve, Dad worked the night shift so that the garland lights would not fade in the Christmas trees in homes at the Object. And on the first morning of the New Year, Mom left for her work so that water would flow steadily from the kitchen taps…

That morning I woke late when Dad was already home from work. He asked who visited the previous night, and I answered that Mom’s new woman-friend from the former Zimins’ rooms came for quite a minute.

Then I read, went to the rink, played hockey in felt boots and came back again to the books on the big sofa… I was watching the concert of Maya Kristalinskaya on the TV in the usual wide kerchief around her neck—to hide the traces of her personal life drama—when Mom came from work. I ran from the parents’ room to the hallway, and Dad was already there from the kitchen.