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

Then, for a couple of days, we watched the repaired TV because its screen was wider than that of ours until the owner came to take back home the box he’d almost crossed out from his life. So, it’s not in vain that Father made the filings of those The Radio magazines…

Mother also wanted to change her job but couldn’t find any. It was Father who helped her to get a job at KEMZ. He repaired the TV of Personnel Manager there, and when asked about the charge, Father answered he did not want money, let his wife be given a job at the plant. Personnel Manager replied, “No problem, bring her.”

At first, Mother could not believe it, because six months before that same Personal Manager flatly turned her down saying there were no prospects of any jobs there.

When the parents came together, Personal Manager suggested Mother apply for a presser at Pressing Shop Floor. Though they worked in shifts there, the salary depended on the production output, and no one took home less than a hundred rubles. While Mother went to his secretary to fill the application form, Personal Manager laughed and told Father that he remembered her, but the previous time he thought she was pregnant. Women in a family way were not supposed to be given a job, after a month of working they'd get a year of paid maternity leave. Personal Manager wouldn’t be petted for admitting the pregnant but, as it turned out, so was her bodily structure.

That way Mother became a presser at KEMZ. Her job there was filling all kinds of molds with special powders for melting by the heating press to transform them into this or that spare part of plastic. She worked two shifts—a week from eight to five, the following one from five to half to twelve, because of the shortened break for meal.

In summer the press radiated infernal heat, and the molds were awfully heavy all year round, replacing them on the press was a strenuous job. Late at night, the Konotop streetcars ran all too rarely, it took long waits to get from KEMZ to the Under-Overpass after the evening shift. But worse of all was pressing things of the glass wool. The fine glass dust made its way thru the protective robe giving unbearable itch all over the body and even the after-shift shower did not really help.

Yet, as a silver lining to that cloud, both in our khutta and in the yard there appeared a whole bunch of different boxes and thingamabobs made of plastic of different colors because Mother brought home the defectively pressed spare parts or those dented at pulling out from their molds. So what if that one had a chink in the corner? Look, what a classy modern ashtray it makes!. Even Zhoolka got a nice ribbed basin for drinking water… All that because “The Red Metallurgist” production was supposed for all kinds of units and safety systems in the mining industry.

“Mom,” asked I, seemingly under the impression from some of the nihilist-authors, “What’s the meaning in your life? Why do you live at all?”

“Why?” answered Mother, “To see how you grow up and become happy.”

And I shut up because at times I had brains enough not to be too clever…

~ ~ ~

The changes were taking place not only in our part of the khutta. One of the grannies-sisters from the Duzenko’s part returned to her village, and the other moved to her daughter’s, somewhere in the five-story blocks of the Zelenchuk neighborhood, so that they could rent her khutta. A single mother, Anna Sayenko, together with her daughter Valentina moved in as the lodgers.

Valentina was a year older than me but didn’t look that because of being short, red-haired, and skinny. Her nose was pretty long though. In the evenings, she came out to play cards with the 3 of us, the younger and me, on the wide bench under the window overlooking the 2 stairs of their porch way. A very comfortable bench it was, you could safely lean your back against the adobe-plastered wall of the khutta coated with ancient whitewash which left no traces.

During the game, taking advantage of the gathering twilight, I touched Valentina’s shoulder with mine. So soft it was… And everything began to swim… She mostly withdrew, but sometimes not immediately which made my pulse throb quicker, louder, and hotter. But then she stopped coming out for the game. Probably, because of my pressurizing her shoulder too tight…

From the Duzenko’s son-in-law, Father bought the smaller of the 2 sections left by the geezer in the common shed. It was the lean-to on the left, next to the Turkov's fence. Once upon a time, they kept a pig there and, to make it warmer, plastered its outside walls with cob.

Father replaced the Ruberoid roofing felt with a tin roof, though not of new tin, of course. Watching how dexterously he knocked his mallet interlocking the panels of tin, I was amazed at how many skills he had, and also tools for each particular job. Take those tin-cutting scissors, for example, nothing of the kind you could find at stores. No wonder that Skully, whenever in need of a tool, popped up in our khutta, “Uncle Kolya, gimme the hand-drill.” “Uncle Kolya, may I borrow a needle file for a while?”

In the wall opposite the entrance to the acquired section, Father inserted a hinged glazed frame like that in the veranda. The electric wiring was run from our part in the shed, which was the section next to it.

Uncle Tolik applied at his workplace for waste crates, in which chopper spare parts were brought to the RepBase. Those crates were remodeled into the flooring shields. Thus, the lean-to became Father’s workshop equipped with a workbench and vice and everything needed. And the space by the wall, where the sloped roof did not allow standing at your full height, became the stable for Uncle Tolik’s “Jawa”.

With the motorbike moved from our old section in the shed, it grew roomier, even though the remaining crate planks were stacked under its gable-roof.

As usual in summertime, the leaves of the door between the kitchen and the room were taken out of the khutta because shutting the door in hot season left there no air for breathing, and those leaves were placed upon the planks beneath the shed roof.

A heap of insignificant, unnecessary details, eh? Yet, all those moves had a tremendous effect because when giving it a proper thought, you’ll find a way for cardinal improvements… And now, with a mattress placed upon the door leaves, the shed section became my summer dacha.

The bed-upon-the-door was about at the same level as the upper sleeping bunk in a train car compartment, yet wider. On the nearby wall, Father fixed a sliding lamp with a tin shade, and I could read at night as long as I chose. Besides, I equipped my dacha with a small radio receiver “Meridian” presented to Father by a customer delighted by the resurrection of his TV. The generous gift, of course, was not working, yet in a couple of weeks, Father found the necessary spare parts and my place became the second to none. You could read whenever you wanted and, for a change, listen to the radio. And, most importantly, no one around to start carping, “When will you turn off this light already?!” or, “Enough of that hurdy-gurdy!”

So, in that elevated position, all alone, was lying I next to the cone of the light shed over the pages in an open book till midnight and past it in the serenity of summer night. The dog barking in the yards of khuttas on the nearby streets did not count because it was just part of it.

One of them would start for another to snap up, and then still another continued the chain reaction of barking that floated far and wide over the Settlement. Only our Zhoolka hardly ever took part in their concerts, having grown too old and lazy. And—just a thought—what if you put together all the dog barking, adding even that beyond your hearing, eh? I mean, now the Settlement dogs had calmed down for a stretch, yet the dogs in Podlipnoye kicked up a fit of barking rising and flowing on the night air and so on and on, over into the next regions, countries, and continents. It turns out then that, as a whole, dog barking would, probably, never subside on the Earth, right?. And that’s what they call the Planet of Humans!.

The best time for turning the receiver on was past midnight. Firstly, it’s when they broadcast “The Concert After Midnight” in which there was not only aria's by Georg Ots but Din Reed's hits too. The concert was followed by another one – “For Those in the Sea”—from 1 till 2 o’clock—meant for the sailors of merchant ships and fishing trawlers. That’s when they put real rock’n’roll on air. This was understandable though because round the clock transmission of Russian songs sung by Lyoudmilla Zykina and Josef Kobson were not enough to make happy the sailors who had seen the life overseas. And from about 4 till almost 6, there was jazz. Just two-three musicians: a piano, a double bass, and a drummer, but what music they made! “And now listen to the number called ‘The Spring Mood’, please…”, and there followed such a number – wow! Best of the best… Well, and 6 o’clock was signaled by the anthem of the Soviet Union after which the everyday “Mayak The All-Union Radio Station” poured out its everyday hurdy-gurdy till next midnight…

Once I did not sleep all night long, because at dawn I had to raid the outskirts by the Swamp foraging for our 2 rabbits and bring as much hay as my bike could carry from those stacks along the Grove edge. The rabbits were given by Skully, who kept a lot of them in 4 or 5 cages, and Father told me to procure food for the presented pair.

And, after the raid, I thought that the day had already begun, and why not to find out for how long I could go without sleep and somewhere around noon, when I was playing chess with Sehryoga Chun on the porch of their khutta, next to the water pump, I felt that the sounds of talking came to me as if from afar or, like thru some woolen wall, and that I couldn’t follow what exactly they were telling me. However, I still managed to somehow find my dacha…compartment up…sleeping bunk in…section the…

When I got up it was daylight around—already or still? I went to the kitchen in our khutta. The cuckoo clock on the wall wagged the pendulum and showed half-past five and in the tear-off calendar was the new day date. So, my sleep lasted longer than 24-hours?!.

Everyone laughed and said, “Phew! That’s a champion sleeper!” Then it turned out that it was Uncle Tolik’s prank to tear off an extra page in the calendar, while I was sleeping… I mean, them those rabbits also did not stay with us for long…

~ ~ ~

On that Sunday, I once again went to the Seim by bike, but already alone. The familiar road shot past much faster under the spokes carrying nothing but my weight because Sasha and Natasha were also coming to the Bay Beach by 2:10 local train, bringing a snack for me.

How could I know that after cycling and swimming the appetite breaks fiercely loose? By noon my stomach fell in, I ground my teeth and looked away from family groups sitting on their blankets around the delicacies they brought along. How long was it to wait yet? And I pricked up my ears when from different parts of the beach different receivers tuned to the one and only “Mayak The All-Union Radio Station” announced what exact time it would be after the sixth sounding of “peee!”

At last, 2:10 to Khutor Mikhaylovsky rumbled over the bridge across the Seim. Some 10 minutes later, the first groups of the arrived folks appeared from the distant Pine grove across the field. However, neither in the first wave of newly arrived nor in the following, my sister-'n'-brother never popped up. What the heck?!. Hadn’t we arranged that I would wait for them on the beach? Oh, I’d wolf a bull down, yes, I would, right away.

Then Sasha Plaksin, who lived in Gogol Street opposite the water pump, came up to me to say that Natasha told him to tell me that they would not come because we were going to the Uncle Vadya’s to celebrate his birthday and I had to come straight there.

“Was that all? Nothing else?”

“No.”

Well, that’s also right – why stuffing up your stomach before a birthday party? And I started back to Konotop with my stomach stuck to my backbone… The familiar road no longer seemed to be short. The pedals grew heavy and I did not sprint anymore but wearily turned them under the cheerless song of robbers in the “Morozko” movie, circling creakily in my mind:

" Oh! How hungry we are!.
Oh! How awfully cold!.”

The forest was over, the path along the railway embankment also ended, and there still remained about half of the way ahead. Never before had I really realized the meaning of “I wanna eat!”.

When the big billboard “Welcome to Konotop!” appeared at the road bend, I felt that I could go no farther and turned into a grassy ditch stretching towards the nearby windbreak belt. And along the whole ditch, there was not a single blade of any edible grass, which ages ago we showed each other at the Object…nothing but sparysh and equally inedible dandelions…and those who-knows-whats, with uselessly dry shoots… I chewed the softer part pulled from inside the shoot. No, that’s not food…okay, just a little bit of rest in the ditch before the final leg to Uncle Vadya’s… I was the very first guest there.

Before that summer day, I always wrinkled my nose at lard, and Mother would usually say, “Maybe, you’d like marzipan on a silver platter, sir?!” And ever after, I knew there’s nothing tastier than a slice of lard on a piece of rye bread.

(…not kosher for someone? Good news! The bigger my share…)

In July, the 3 of us, my sister-'n'-brother and I, went to the military-patriotic camp in the town of Shchors. The cards of admission were offered at our school, almost for free. So I had to put a pioneer necktie on again.

Shchors stood aside from the major railway lines and it took about four hours to get there by a diesel train. There we fell into the rut of usual pioneer camp routine with its “stiff hour” after the midday meal, occasional walks thru the small town for bathing in the narrow river under the railway bridge. Well, at least there was a library there…

Once, there happened an unusual day though. After getting up in the morning, only guys came to the camp canteen, where Senior Pioneer Leader announced that our girls had been kidnapped and, after breakfast, we would go to the rescue.

Wow! The old good game for kids, Cossack-Robbers, revised and bettered pursue following the arrows drawn on the sandy forest paths.

When the forest was over and replaced by the lined-up rows of a Pine plantation, we came up to a crossroads and split into small search parties, that scattered in different directions.

In the company of 2 guys, I went to the right. The road returned to the forest edge and eventually led to a lonely hut enclosed within a knee-tall palisade. Probably, the Forester’s dwelling.

Not a single breathing creature in the whole yard, not even a dog. Overpowering silence surrounded a readied coffin put on the ground with its lid leaning against the tree by the low plank-fence.

Now, you don’t seem to have much of a choice after Grandma Martha’s regular reading of The Russian Epic Tales to you, right? Of course, I stretched inside the coffin and asked the guys to cover me with the lid, just as hero Svyatogor asked his younger partner, hero Ilya of Murom, and they concurred.