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

Uncle Tolik preferred a spinner to a fishing rod and, with a sharp whipping thrust, he could send the lure to a splashdown almost halfway to the opposite bank of the wide river and then started to spin the reel on the tackle handle zig-zag pulling the flip-flap flash of the lure back. Predatory fish, like pine or bass, chased it and swallowed the triple hook in the tail of the lure, if the fisherman luck would have it.

So, by noon we moved to another place with a wooden bridge across the river and Uncle Tolik walked over to the opposite, steep, bank to go along and throw the lure here and there. I remained alone and watched the floats of the two fishing rods stuck in the sand by the current and then stretched out in the nearby grass…

When Uncle Tolik walked the opposite bank coming back to the bridge, I didn’t raise my head above the grass about me and watched him struggling thru the jungle of knotgrass and other weeds I lay in. In the movie-making business they call this trick “forced perspective” by use of which he acted a Lilliputian for me. Up to the very bridge…

Once Aunt Lyouda asked if I had ever seen her husband entering some khutta during our fishing trips. It gave me no qualms to give an absolutely honest direct answer that, no, I hadn’t. As for that one time in the Popovka village, when he suddenly remembered that we had set off without any bait and dumped me in an empty village street to wait while he would quickly ride to someplace—not too far off—to dig up worms and be straight back, all what I saw around was the soft deep sand in the road between the towering walls of nettles and the blackened straw in the roof of the barn by whose side I was dropped off but no entering, nor any khuttas whatsoever. That’s why I safely could say “no” to my inquisitive Aunt…

There happened falls, yet just a couple of times. The first one while riding over the field along the path on top of a meter high embankment with the tall grass flying by on both sides from the bike. I guessed it was an embankment because the tall grass was lower than our wheels, but what purpose could it serve for among the fields? The question remained unanswered because the embankment broke off suddenly among the tall grass concealing the pit into which “Jawa” nosedived after a long jump thru the air, and the hard landing threw us both far ahead over the bike.

The other time we had hardly started along Nezhyn Street when the motorbike got tripped by a piece of iron pipe piled nearby someone’s khutta's foundation so that vehicles would not go too close by and splash at it the dirt and water from the puddles developed in the road…

However, both times we got no injuries except for bumps because on our heads there were white plastic helmets. It’s only that after the fall in Nezhyn Street, the ride had to be canceled because “Jawa's” absorber started to leak oil and needed an urgent repair…

~ ~ ~

Square of the Konotop Divisions, was called so to commemorate the Soviet Army units that liberated the city in the Great Patriotic War, aka WWII, and were honored for that deed by the city’s name in their respective denominations.

For me, it, at first, seemed the end of world because it took eight streetcar stops to get there from the Station. Square of the Konotop Divisions was as wide as three roads put side by side, and it had a slight south-west slant along all of its considerable length.

At the Square’s upper right corner, there stood a metal openwork tower like the famous one in Paris, yet more useful because the Konotop tower held a huge water tank on its top adorned with “I love you, Olya!” in jerky splotches of paint brush strokes over its rust-smeared side overlooking Square of the Konotop Divisions. Beneath the tower, behind the high wall carrying neat dense rows of barbered wire along its top, was the city prison.

In the upper left corner, opposite the tower, the tall gate opened to the City Kolkhoz Market which, technically, was outside it and in Square itself the gate served the starting point for the line of small stores going down the gradual slant – “Furniture”, “Clothes”, “Shoes”…

At its right lower end, Square was delimited by a tall two-story building with more windows than walls—the Konotop Sewing Factory—followed by a squat house with more walls than windows— the City Sober-up Station, yet the facility stood already in the out-flowing street which led to the dangerous outskirt neighborhood of Zagrebelya. Its hazardous nature was established by nasty scumbags who intercepted guys from other city neighborhoods, brave enough to see girls of Zagrebelya home. The valiant were made perform their version of rooster cry, or measure with a match the length of the bridge to Zagrebelya or just got a vanilla beating from the villains…

Square of the Konotop Divisions was crossed, bend-sinister, by the tram-track which entered it on the left below the long blind wall with three exit doors from the Vorontsov Movie Theater, whose entrance was from Lenin Street.

When a mobile menagerie arrived in the city, they would arrange their trailers and cages into a big square camp in the sector between the streetcar track and the Sewing Factory. The temporary enclosure looked like the Czech Taborites defense camp from the Hussite wars in The Medieval History textbook. Yet, inside their corral of wagons, they placed two additional rows of cages, back to back, for the thick crowd of Konotopers and folks from the nearby villages to walk around them as well as along the cages in the inner side of the mobile perimeter wall.

Square legends in the cage gratings announced the name and age of the inmate, and the surf-like hum from the throng of on-lookers hung over Square of the Konotop Divisions, interspersed with wild shrieks and wailing of the caged animals. That happened once every three years….

And a couple of times the Wall of Death riders also visited Square of the Konotop Divisions. In front of the gate to the City Kolkhoz Market, they erected a high tarpaulin tent with a five-meter-tall ring-wall of planks inside.

Two times a day, they let the on-lookers to climb in from outside under the tent roof and crane their on-looking faces over the wall top and watch how the riders circled arena on two motorcycles to gain the speed sufficient for getting over the ramp onto the ring-wall, and bucket along it in a horizontal plane with the deafening rumble of their motors…

Leaving Square of the Konotop Divisions by Lenin Street, you passed the Vorontsov Movie Theater on the left followed by the three-story cube of House of Householding with all kinds of repair workshops and ateliers. By the fence between the 2 landmarks and parallel to it was placed a tall stand of iron pipes and sheets. The catching legend “DO NOT PASS BY!” crowned the sturdy construction used for hanging black-and-white photos of people taken to the Sober-up Station, a paper slip beneath each glazed frame reported their name and what organizations they worked at. Some ripper creepy pictures they were, the close-ups of faces as if got skinned, or something. I felt a kinda pity for the alcoholics hanged there. Probably, because of that another, far away stand at the Object which I abhorred so much. The two stands established sort of affinity between me and, well… at least, their kids… No, I don’t think I exercised in any psycho-analytical speculations then, yet how come whenever passing that particular segment of Lenin Street I always found something else to look at beyond the ugly stand?

Farther on along Lenin Street, past the first crossing, the House of Culture of the Red Metallurgist Plant stood a little way back, moved off the road by the tiny square of its own. Both sides of that square were bound by the stands planted for merrier ends, presenting glue-mounted pages from satirical magazines – the Russian “Crocodile” on the left, and the Ukrainian “Pepper” on the right.

Between the road and each of the stands, there was a tin-and-glass stall facing its symmetric twin across the square. The one by the “Crocodile” was selling ice-cream and lemonade, while all sorts of nick-knackery were the merchandise at that by the “Pepper”. There, among the motley keep-sake ceramic trifles, plastic necklaces, paper decks of cards, I spotted sets of matchbox stickers and, starting for my next trip to City, I asked for extra kopecks and bought one, with the pictures of animals. However, when I brought the purchase home to enhance the collection brought from the Object, I realized it wouldn’t be right. The older stickers, peeled off their matchboxes, bore the small-printed address of the match manufacturing factory, as well as “the price – 1 kopeck”, while the set bought from the stall was just a pack of sticker-sized pictures. Since then I had lost all interest in the collection, and passed it to my friend Skully…

Skully lived by the Nezhyn Store with his mother, and grandmother, and the dog named Pirate, although the last dwelt outside the puny house of so small a kitchen and bedroom that both would fit into the only room of our khutta, however, theirs was a detached property.

Next to their khutta there stood an adobe-plastered shed which, apart from usual household tools and the coal stored for winter, sheltered a handcart – an elongated box of deals fixed upon the axis of 2 iron wheels the length of iron pipe that jutted from under the box bottom ended with a crossbar for steering the juggernaut when you pushed it or pulled along.

Between the khutta and the wicket to the street, there stretched a long garden enclosed from both sides by the neighbors’ fences which, all in all, was bigger than those two or three vegetable beds of ours. In autumn and spring, I came to help Skully at the seasonal turning of dirt in their garden. Deeply stabbing the soil with our bayonet spades, we gave out the fashionable Settlement byword, “No Easter cake for you, buddy! Grab a piroshki and off to work, the beds wait for digging!” And red Pirate, cut loose, frisked and galloped about the old cherry trees bounding the narrow path to the rickety wicket…

When we moved to Konotop, my first and foremost responsibility became fetching water for our khutta. Daily supply averaged 50 liters. A pair of enamel pails full of water stood in the dark nook of the tiny veranda, on two stools next to the kerosene stove. From a nail in the plank wall above the pails, there hung a dipper for drinking or filling a cooking pan. But first, the pails were used to fill up the tank of the washstand in the kitchen that held exactly two pailfuls.

Mounted above the tin sink, the tank had a hinged lid and a tap jutting from its bottom. It was one of those spring-pin taps installed in the toilets of cars in a passenger train, so to make water run you pressed the pin from underneath. From the sink, the soapsuds dripped into the cabinet under it where stood the slop bucket which needed control checks to avoid brimming over and flooding the kitchen floor. The discharge was taken out and poured into the spill pit next to the outhouse in the garden.

The water came from the pump on the corner of Nezhyn and Gogol Streets, some forty meters from our wicket. The meter-tall pig-iron stub of a pump had the nose of the same material enclosing the waterpipe, you hung your pail over the nose and gave a big push-down to the iron handle behind the stub for the vigorous jet to bang into the pail, brim and go splashing over onto the road if not watched closely. 2 daily water-walks–4 pails, all in all–were enough for our khutta, if, of course, there was no washing that day, however, the water for Aunt Lyouda’s washing was fetched by Uncle Tolik…

When the rains set in, the water-walks became a little longer—you had to navigate bypassing the wide puddles in the road. In winter the pump got surrounded by a small, ripping slippery, skating rink of its own from thanks to the water spillage by the pump users, the smooth ice had to be walked in careful step-shuffles. The dark winter nights made you appreciate the perfect positioning of the log lamppost next to the pump…

And also on me was the fuel delivery for the kerogas that looked like a small gas stove of 2 burners and had 2 cups on its backside to fill them with kerosene that soaked, thru 2 thin tubes, 2 circular wicks of asbestos in the burners which were lit when cooking dinner, heating water for tea or imminent washing on the smelly yellow flames edged by jagged jerky tips of oily soot.

After kerosene, I went to Bazaar with a twenty-liter tin canister… Fairly aside from the Bazaar counters, stood the huge cubic tank of rusty sheet iron. The sale day was announced in the chalk note over the tank side – "kerosene will be …" and there followed the date when they were to bring it. However, so too many dates had changed each other—wiped and written over and over again—that no figures could be read within the thick chalk smudge, that’s why they just dropped writing and the tank side greeted you with the perpetually optimistic line, "kerosene will be …!”

A shallow brick-faced trench under the tank side accommodated the short length of pipe from its bottom ending with a tap blocked by a padlock. On the proclaimed day, a saleswoman in a blue satin smock descended into the trench and sat by the tap on a small stool ferried along. She also brought a multi-liter aluminum cauldron, and put it under the tap, took the padlock away and filled the vessel, up to three-quarters, with the foamy yellowish jet of kerosene.

The queue started moving to her with their bottles, canisters, and cans which she filled with a dipper thru a tin funnel, collecting the pay into her blue pocket. When the dipper began to dub the cauldron bottom, she turned the tap on to restore the fluid level.

In fact, they didn't need at all to bother about writing the sale date, because each morning Grandma Katya visited Bazaar and two days ahead brought the news when "kerosene will be …!" indeed. So, on the kerosene sale day after coming from school, I took the canister and went to spend a couple of hours in the line to the trench under the tank. Sometimes, they were also selling it in the Nezhyn Store backyard equipped with the same facility, but that happened not as often and the line was no shorter…

~ ~ ~

Soon after the summer vacations, I was elected Chairman of the Pioneer Platoon Council of our 7th "B" grade because the former Chairman (the red-haired skinny Yemets) moved to some other city together with her parents.

At the Pioneer Platoon meeting, two of the nominees announced self-withdrawal without giving any particular reasons for their refusal, and the Senior Pioneer Leader of our school pushed forward my candidature.

Following the trend, I also started sluggish excuses, which he rebuffed with energetic clarification that all that was not for long because we all were soon to become members of the Leninist Young Communist League, aka Komsomol.

(…the structure of the pioneer organizations in the Soviet Union presented an awesome example of organization based on precise and well-thought-out organizational principles for organizing any workable organization.

In every Soviet school, each class of students on reaching the proper age automatically became a Platoon of Young Pioneers of 4 or 5 Pioneer Rings. Ring Leaders together with Platoon Chairman formed the Council of the Pioneer Platoon. Chairmen of the Pioneer Platoons made up the Council of the School Pioneer Company. Then there came District or City Pioneer Organizations converging into Republican ones (15 of them) which, in their turn, composed the All-Union Pioneer Organization.

Such a crystal-wise-structured pyramid for convenient handling… That is why the heroes of Komsomol resistance underground during the German occupation of Krasnodon City did not have to reinvent the wheel. They used the all too familiar structure after renaming "rings" into "cells"…

If, of course, we take for granted the attestation found in The Young Guard, the novel written by A. Fadeyev. He composed his work on the basis of information provided by the relatives of Oleg Koshevoy. In the resulting literary work, Oleg became the underground leader while Victor Tretyakevich, who, actually, accepted Oleg to the resistance organization, was depicted there as the mean traitor under the fictional name of Stakhevich.

Fourteen years after the book publication, Tretyakevich was rehabilitated and awarded an order posthumously because he did not die during interrogations at organs of the Soviet NKVD but was executed by the fascist invaders when they busted the Krasnodon underground.

In the early sixties, a few other secondary traitors from the book, whose names the writer did not bother to disguise, had served from ten to fifteen years in the NKVD camps and got rehabilitated as well. By that moment, the writer himself had time enough to put a bullet thru his head in May 1956, shortly after his participation in the meeting of Nikita Khrushchev, the then leader of the USSR, with the survived young guardsmen of Krasnodon.

At the mentioned meeting, Fadeyev grew inadequately nervous and yelled at Khrushchev in front of all the present, calling him names considered especially defamatory at that period, and two days later he committed suicide. Or else, they committed his suicide though, of course, such an expression—"they committed his suicide"—is unacceptable by the language norms.

Hence the moral – even the cleverest structure cannot guarantee from a collapse if your pyramid is not made of at least 16-ton stone blocks…)

Late September, Chairman of our School Pioneer Company fell ill and, in his stead, I was delegated to the City Pioneer Organization Account Meeting of the Chairmen of the Councils of City School Pioneer Companies. The Meeting was held at the Konotop House of Pioneers in a pleasantly secluded location behind the Monument to Fallen Heroes on the rise above Lenin Street.

By the organization regulations, an Account Meeting should elect its Chairman and Secretary. The Meeting Chairman’s job consisted of announcements whose turn it was to account while Secretary would take notes of how much waste paper and scrap metal was collected by the pioneers of the reporting Chairman’s school during the specified period, which cultural events were organized, and what places were taken by their pioneers in the city-wide contests and competitions.

The Senior Pioneer Leader of our school had supplied me with a sheet of paper to be read at the Account Meeting but, in the House of Pioneers, they charged me with the additional responsibility of the appointed Chairman of the Meeting. I was assured that presiding an Account Meeting was as easy as pie. All you had to do was to declare, “And now the floor for the account report is given to Chairman of the Pioneer Company Council from School number such-and-such!” after which the such-and-such Chairman would march to the rostrum on stage with their sheet of report. The paper read up, the accounting Chairman leaves the sheet to Secretary of the Meeting, because what’s the point in sticking all those figures down on the fly if they are written already, right?.

At first, everything went without a hitch. I and Secretary of Account Meeting, a girl in her ceremonial white shirt and the scarlet pioneer necktie, as anyone else around, were sitting next to each other behind the small desk under a dark red cloth on a small stage in a small hall, where Chairmen of the City Pioneer Companies were seated in rows waiting for their turn to read their accounts. Back in the last row, Second Secretary of the City Komsomol Committee—responsible for the work with the pioneers—sat in her red pioneer necktie.

The Chairmen in a well-oiled manner followed each other, read from their sheets, piled them by Secretary of Account Meeting, and returned to the audience. I also did my part as instructed but after the fourth announcement, something suddenly came over me or rather flooded over me. My mouth got full of overflowing saliva, I barely had time to gulp it before the salivary glands fountained out a new excessive portion to fill me with shame before Secretary of Account Meeting seated near me who had to surely be perplexed by my obvious hurried gulping. A spell of ease came when she went to account for School 10, yet, with her return, the disgraceful torture went on. What’s wrong with me, after all?!.