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

The Kandeebynno, according to his instruction, was all too easy to find. When going towards City along Peace Avenue, you pass under the bridge in the railway embankment, so take the first right turn which you couldn't miss because it’s where started the road to Romny, and follow it to the intersection by which take another right turn and go on until you see the railway barrier, cross the railway, turn to the left and—here you are!—that’s the Kandeebynno for you…

The twins, sure enough, pressed for going along with me. We took an old bed cover to spread and lie upon when sunbathing, put it into a mesh-bag, added a bottle of water and went to the Under-Overpass where Peace Avenue started. Up to the railway embankment, the road was familiar after the May Day demonstration. We went under the bridge and saw it at once – the road running to the right along the base of the elevated railway. True enough, it didn’t look a highway because of no asphalt in it, yet being as wide as any other road, it was the first one to the right after the bridge. So, we turned and followed the road along the base of the tall steep embankment.

However, the farther we went, the narrower the road became transforming into a wide trail, then into a footpath tread which soon just vanished. We had no choice but to climb the steep grass-overgrown embankment, shake the sand out from our sandals and march on stepping on the concrete crossties or along the endless narrow railheads. Natasha was the first to notice the trains catching up from behind, and we stepped down onto the uneven gravel in the ballast shoulder, giving way for the rumbling, wind-whipping cars to shoot past us.

When we reached the next bridge, there was no avenue or a street under it, just other railway tracks. Our embankment turned right and started to gradually go down joining the tracks in their flow towards the distant Railway Station. It became clear, that we were going in the opposite direction and not to any lakes at all.

We did not have time to get disappointed though, because far below we marked a small field at the base of another embankment, beneath the bridge in ours. Two groups of tiny, at that distance, guys in light summer clothes, and with the mesh-bags like ours, walked towards a copse of green trees, and they had even a ball among them. Where else could they go if not to a beach?!.

We climbed down two steep embankments and went along the same path in the field as the previous guys who were gone out of sight long ago. Then we walked thru the Aspen grove along a lonely railway track with soft soil instead of crushed stone ballast between its wooden ties until we reached a highway that crossed the track beneath two raised barriers. We passed over the highway and followed a wide, at times boggy, path among the tall growth of bright green grass. The chest straightened out with cautiously expectant exaltation, “Aha, Kandeebynno! You won’t flee now!”

Groups of people were walking the same path in both directions, but those going there more numerous than back-comers. The path led to a wide canal of dark water between the shore and the opposite dam of the fish lakes and continued along the canal. We followed it on and on, among green trees, under white cumuli in the azure-blue summer sky. The straight rows of fruit-trees in a neglected no man’s orchard went up over the smooth slant to the right of the path. Then the canal on the left widened into a lake with a white sand beach. The expanse of sand was bound by the grass between the tall Currant bushes in the forlorn garden.

We chose a free streak of grass for our bed cover, hastily undressed, and ran over the unbearably heated sand to the water flying from each direction into any other, splashed up and sent over in strangling sprays to faces of dozens of folks eagerly screaming, yelling, and laughing in the water which seethed from their merry frolics.

Summer!. Ah, Summer!.

As it turned out later, Uncle Tolik didn’t even know of that vanishing road along the embankment base, because when his motorbike at a roaring speed shot from under the bridge in Peace Avenue, he in two seconds flat was on the Romny highway, while going on foot you reached it after some generous hundred meters of stomping…

In the list of movies for July, there stood “The Sons of Big Bear”, so Skully and I agreed not to miss it because Goiko Mitich starred in the film as one of her sons. That Yugoslavian actor was mostly engaged as a hero red-skin in this or that of GDR Westerns and, as long as he was in, you could safely expect it'd be a decent movie. Sure enough, the list did not report all those details or anything at all except for the movie's title and the date of show. However, the films arrived to the Plant Club no sooner than a couple of months after their run for a week at the Peace Movie Theater and one more week at the Vorontsov Movie Theater on Square of the Konotop Divisions that’s why, with the little help of our friends, we could always make an informed decision. And we weren't especially keen on watching movies at the mentioned theaters not because of trust in the unmistakable flair of our friends, no, their leads well sucked at times, but for the much simpler motivation – a ticket at the Peace Movie Theater was 50 kopecks, watching the same film a week later at the Vorontsov set you back for five-and-thirty, whereas, after practicing your patience for a month plus, you enjoyed it at Club paying reasonable 20 kopecks…

On that Sunday the 3 of us—Kuba, Skully, and I—went to the Kandeebynno by bikes. We swam and dived, in turn, off the self-made launch-pad when 2 of us, chest-deep in the water, clasped our hands for the third to climb upon and take a dive from. And, of course, we played “spots”, though you couldn’t catch up Kuba underwater.

Then he and Skully got lost somewhere in the bathing crowd. In vain looked I for the friends midst the splashes and squeals, they were nowhere around. Just in case, I even swam to the opposite shore which was the dam of the fish lakes. A couple of guys were fishing there, with their eye alert for an opportunity to angle in the mirror carp paradise over the dam. And I swam back so as not to scare off their fish, which was striking even in the lake for swimmers. Then I once again scanned the crowd in the water, to no avail, and decided it was enough.

Chilled thru and thru, I stepped out onto the scorching sand of the beach when the lost friends came running from among the bushes of Currant with the hair on their heads almost dry already, “W-where the h-hell were you?”

“We’re getting in again. Let’s go!”

“You w-wackos?! I’m-m just c-coming out!”

“So what? Let’s go!”

“Ah, damn! Off we’ll d-drive the c-city boys!.”

And whipping up foamy splashes with the three pairs of racing feet, we rushed together to deeper places to dive, and yell, and hoo-ha. Each summer was the summer then…

Kuba refused to join our going to the movie, he'd already seen that western, and Skully also changed his mind. That fact didn’t stop me, and I decided to take twenty kopecks from Mother and watch it all the same. At home, Grandma Katya told me, that my parents left two hours ago together with the twins and she didn’t know where they went. So what? There remained three more hours before the next show, enough time for them to come back…

At the end of the third hour, I was squashed by an overwhelming anxiety: where could they be? So I asked it once again, yet of Aunt Lyouda already. With complete indifference and even somewhat grouchy, she replied, “I wouldn’t even have seen you.” She always became like that when Uncle Tolik was gone fishing.

Two more hours passed, the show was missed hopelessly but, flooded by the feeling of an unavoidable and already accomplished catastrophe, I didn’t care for any cinema at all. The tide of despair dragged in some sketchy pictures of a truck jumping over to the sidewalk, vague wailing of ambulance sirens, and only one thing was clear – I no longer had any parents nor any sister-'n'-brother.

The darkness thickened. Uncle Tolik pulled up in the street on his return from fishing and rolled his “Jawa” motorbike across the yard to the shed section. He went to khutta and I, freaked out and crushed by my grief and loneliness, was sitting on the grass next to sleepy Zhoolka…

It was already quite late when the iron handle-hook in the wicket clinked. Sasha and Natasha ran into the yard followed by Mother’s cheerful voice from the street. I rushed to meet them torn apart between joy and resentment, “So, where were you lost?”

“Visiting Uncle Vadya,” said Mother. “And what’s up with you?”

I burst into tears mixed with muddled mumbling about bear’s sons and twenty kopecks because I couldn’t explain that for half of that day I was mourning the loss of them all, fighting back the prospect of life without the family.

“You could ask the money from Aunt Lyouda.”

“So? I did ask and she said she wouldn’t like to see me too.”

“What? Come on into the khutta!”

And at home, she squabbled with her sister, and Aunt Lyouda retorted it was all bullshit and she’d only said she wouldn’t see me too if I hadn’t come. But I obstinately repeated my bullshit. Mother and Aunt Lyouda screamed at each other louder and louder. Grandma Katya tried to calm them down, “Stop it! What a shame, all the neighbors would hear, and the people in the street too.”

Natasha, Sasha, Irochka, and Valerik, their eyes rounded by fright, crowded in the doorway between the kitchen and the room where Father and Uncle Tolik were sitting with their silent sullen stares stuck to the TV box…

That’s how I committed the second meanness in my life – slandered innocent Aunt by my false accusations. And though her response to my questioning I got exactly the way as related to Mother, yet after the Aunt’s interpretation, I could agree that, yes, so was her answer, however, I never admitted my base calumny.

That lying without words filled me with compunction because the quarrel in the khutta was my fault. I felt guilty before both Aunt Lyouda and her kids, and before Mother, who I belied, and before everyone because I was such a sissy dishrag, “Woe is me! I’m left alone in the whole world!” My contrition was never voiced though because we were not bred up to make apologies. True, at times they could be heard in movies, but for real life, when inadvertently you had someone pushed, run into or stuff, “Excuse me for not trying harder!” was enough.

All that annoyance about nothing triggered off a slow, inconspicuous, process of my alienation and transformation into a “cut off slice” as Father used to say. I began to live a separate life of my own although, of course, I did not realize or felt anything of the kind and just lived that way…

~ ~ ~

Mother and Aunt Lyouda made up rather soon, after Aunt Lyouda showed Mother how to correctly sing the popular at that time “Cheremshina blossoms everywhere”, besides, she was bringing from her work the chow you couldn’t buy anywhere because at any store any goods beyond the pretty niggardly scope of staples were sold exclusively under the counter to the circle of trusted people: the kindred of salespersons and those who could potentially scratch your back in answer…

Aunt Lyouda’s tales about the midday-meal break at their deli were so funny!. After they latched the shop entrance for the midday break, the saleswomen gathered in their locker room and started their show of delicatessens brought that day from home in their half-liter glass jars. They were comparing, exchanging comments and judgments, evaluating the appeal, sharing their recipes.

The store manager ate separately in her office and when the telephone on her desk rang, she answered the call and hollered thru the open door who was wanted. The woman in question would hurriedly travel from the locker room to the manager’s office and back but—however short and hurried the phone talk—her jar content, by her return, was heavily reduced by cluster degustation. Everyone too eager to see the taste. One lick is better than a hundred looks, right?.

Yet, there is one foxy bitch at the store. Whenever called by the manager to the phone, she calmly sets her spoon aside, deliberately clears her throat with a “khirk!”, and spits into her jar. Yahk! After the procedure, in no haste of any kind, she leaves the locker room for the pending conversation and never looks back at the rest of the saleswomen with their interest in her jar lost irreparably…

Mother also started working in the trade, she got a cashier job in the large Deli 6 near the Station. However, two months later she had a major shortage there. Mother was very worried and kept repeating she couldn’t make so vast a mistake. Someone from the deli workers should have knocked out a check for a large sum when Mother went to the toilet forgetful to lock the cash register. Selling of Father’s coat of natural leather, which he bought when working at the Object, helped out of the pickle. After that Mother worked in retail outlets manned by a single salesperson, herself, without any suspicious colleagues, at one or another stall in the Central Park of Recreation by Peace Square where they sold wine, biscuits, cigarettes and draft beer….

End summer there again was a squabble in our khutta, though this time not a sisterly quarrel but a scrap between a husband and his wife. The source for discontent became the newspaper-wrapped mushrooms which Uncle Tolik brought from a ride to the forest. Not a remarkably big harvest, they still would do for a pot of soup.

The insidious newspaper package was accurately cinched and put by unsuspecting Uncle Tolik into the mesh-bag which he hung on his motorbike steer not to scatter the mushrooms on the way. However, at home instead of grateful praise, he got a shrill tongue-lashing from Aunt Lyouda, who discovered that the string used for cinching was a brassiere shoulder strap. In vain Uncle Tolik repeatedly declared that he had just picked up “the damn scrap of a string” in the forest, Aunt Lyouda responded with louder and louder assertions that she was not born the day before and let them show her a forest where bras grew in bushes, and there's no use of trying to make a fool of her… Grandma Katya no longer tried to appease the quarrelers and only looked around with saddened eyes.

(And that became a lesson for 2 at once – Uncle Tolik learned to never bring home any mushrooms and I grasped the meaning of “bra strap”.)

But Aunt Lyouda, on the spur of the moment, let herself a try at forbidding even the Uncle Tolik’s fishing rides, at which point it was he who raise his voice until they reached a compromise: he was allowed to go fishing under the condition of my going along. So, the following 2 or 3 years from spring to autumn every weekend with a pair of fishing rods and a spinner hitched to the trunk rack of his “Jawa” we set off to fishing.

Mostly we rode to the river of Seim. At times we fished in the Desna river, but then we had to start off at dark because it was a seventy-kilometer ride there… Shooting ahead before the roar of its own engine, charged “Jawa” thru the city submerged in its night repose, the streets empty and free of anything including the State Traffic Control militia… Then, after the thirty-kilometer-long ride along Baturin highway, we got to the even asphalt of Moscow freeway where Uncle Tolik sometimes squeezed out of his made in Czech-Slovakia motorbike a hundred and twenty kilometers per hour…

When we turned off onto the field roads, the dawn was gradually catching up “Jawa”. I sat behind, grabbing Uncle Tolik by sides with my hands stuck in the pockets of his motorcyclist jacket of artificial leather so that they wouldn’t freeze away in the chilly headwind. The night around little by little transformed into twilight with the darker stretches of windbreak belts showing up about the fields, the sky grew lighter, showed ragged shreds of clouds in their transition from white to pink glad to feel the touches of sky-long sun rays sent beforehand from beyond the horizon…The breathtaking views stirred thrill intense no less than by wild-flight riding…

Our usual bait was worms dug in the kitchen garden but one time the fishermen-gurus advised Uncle Tolik to try dragonfly larvae. Those critters live underwater in clumps of clay by the higher river bank, and the fish just go crazy about them, like, snapping the larva-rigged hook from each other…

We drove up to the riverbank amid murky twilight. “Java” coughed out its last breath and stopped. The river lapped sleepily, wrapped in thin wisps of fog rising from the water. Uncle Tolik explained that it was me who had to fetch those lumps of clay onto the bank. A mere thought of entering that dark water in the dusk of still lingering night threw a shiver up the spine, but a good ride deserved a good dive. I undressed and, on the advice of the elder, took a headlong dive into the river.

Wow! As it turned out, the water was much warmer than the damp morning chill on the bank! I dragged slippery lumps out of the river and Uncle Tolik broke them ashore to pick the larvae out from the tunnels drilled by them for living in clay. When he said it was enough I even didn’t want to leave the engulfing warmth of the stream…

Still and all, it was an instance of unmasked exploitation of adolescent labor and that same day I got square with him for the molesting misuse…