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

"Listen, Kiddy," said I because we, my brother and me, and our friends, and all ours rarely called her by name but only "Kiddy", or "Red-Haired" by default. "Wanna me teach you a trick that any dude would be yours in no time?."

"O, really?" my sister said in answer, "Is that what you're talking about?" And she half-turned to me while we walked on touching her breast to my forearm.

What an arrogant innocence! Such a naive arrogance! How could I—for a split second—imagine there was something I would ever be able to learn before my younger sister? I had to apologize, and all the remaining leg to Club we laughed like mad at what a self-confident patsy I was.

But no happiness goes on forever… At one of the evening going-outs with Natalie, some dude came up to us between the Under-Overpass and Bazaar and we stopped for a talk nearby the closed already Deli 1. Or rather they talked because of being from the same school, and I just stood there like an odd lamppost.

He had a cool shirt on, I had not seen anything like that before—red and green stripes as wide as in pajamas. Not that I had ever had pajamas, but they could sometimes be seen in movies… He rhapsodized which of the Moscow universities he would enter because his uncle was a diplomat and knew everyone there. And he, the uncle, invited him to go to the Black Sea after the entrance exams by his, uncle's, Volga so that the attractive nephew would serve a bait to lime the girlies.

Then they see-youed each other and we parted, but the chat had obviously put Natalie out of humor. Already at her khutta gate, she told me that she had already been dating a guy and once late in the evening they were going on an empty bus and he looked back at the conductor in her seat by the door, and said, "Conductor is not a human," and kissed Natalie.

And then I also felt down in the dumps, because it was clear that they were kissing without conductors as well. And I thought that it was, probably, that same red-green yakker but I didn't ask questions. That evening all the way from Suvorov to Nezhyn Street I walked forever crushed by grief…

In those times to gauge a Konotoper's level of prosperity was a trivial task – you just inquired if they had a hut at the Seim river.

Upstream from the Bay Beach, about half-kilometer closer to the railway bridge, the Willow thicket on the bank was gashed by a long gully. At the end of that inlet, amid abundant growth of pliant Willows, there stood some four to five dozen huts of the Partnership "Priseimovye".

True, it called for a certain stretch of liberality to use the name of “huts” for those thrown together booths with deal-walls under the roofs of tin. They were small in size – for a couple or three iron beds on the floor of sand. No window was needed; on their arrival to relax in nature’s lap, the hut owner kept its door open all day long.

But if they were a fisherman, they would lock the door and go down to the gully, where a row of long narrow flat-bottom skiffs stood afloat, chained and padlocked to the pales in the sandy bank. Putting the tackle on the bottom of their boat, they would unlock the weighty padlock, get seated in the narrow stern and paddle with a single oar to come out of the gully to the expanse of the Seim river, and then proceed to their favorite fishing place, the spot where they kept chumming fish with caked chaff.

Having a hut was of great convenience – you could go swimming to the Bay Beach (directly two hundred meters thru the Willow thicket), come back and cook your meal on the Primus stove, blazing its blue flame on the table dug into the sand next to your hut.

Many people went to their huts by the local train on Friday evening and returned by the last one on Sunday. While having no hut on the Seim, you could go there only Saturdays and Sundays; in the morning – there, and by 17.24 or 19.07 – back to Konotop.

When Kuba arrived in the summer after his first year at the Odessa Sea School, we, sure thing, decided to rush to the Seim. Only we had to wait for the weekend because of my job at the Vegetable Base, besides, it was on weekends only that the ORS booth trucks came to the Bay Beach to sell ice-cream.

"Skully says, Grigorenchikha's become your squeeze, eh?"

"Tell Skully her name is 'Natalie'."

"Okay, whatever. Then invite her too."

Natalie agreed quite easily and we went all together: Kuba, Skully, I and Natalie. When we got off the train and were discussing where to—the Bay Beach or the Lake at the Pine grove?—Natalie suggested crossing the Seim, over there'd be not as much of a madhouse as on the Bay Beach.

On the other riverbank, there also were huts whose owners, if arrived on Friday, the next morning were meeting theirs from the Saturday train to take them over the river. One of those could ferry us just for asking… And it happened the way she predicted, probably, because it was her to ask the skiff guy for a ride.

It was an excellent day. We found a sandy glade in the Willow thicket quite close to the river, at some hundred meters from the huts. On the soft white sand, we spread the only bed cover we had, because no one except Natalie was clever enough to bring it along. When she changed into her two-piece swimsuit, she overshadowed the entire Film a Divadlo because along with her lush breasts and plum bottom there also was such a slender waist.

For bathing, we went to the small beach by the huts with the skiffs tied to the bank. Natalie preferred sitting in one of them but Kuba, Skully and I got as furious as in good old days on the Kandeebynno.

Then we ate sandwiches, drank lemonade and switched over to sunbathing. The bedspread on the sand had room only for two: for Natalie, as it was she who brought it, and for me, because it was I, who she was going out with.

She was lying on her back wearing wide black sunglasses, I stretched by her side on my stomach, being embarrassed with my trunks sticking out because of the boner. My sidekicks lay on the hot sand (also on their stomachs) fitting their imprudent heads onto the bedspread corners at our feet… And – all-embracing, sultry, tense, silence…

Of course, the next weekend only two of us went to that place… And again we lay side by side on the bedspread amid the silent heat. Mute and motionless hung the long leaves of the pliant young Willows around the oval glade, and we 2 as silent as them and the soundless sand, and the sun stilled in crouching over us from the sky.

My eyes firmly shut because I did not have sunglasses, but the sun, all the same, seeped in thru the blood-red fog of my dropped eyelids to turn into a black headache.

"A headache," heard I my voice, barely audible.

The red mist darkens, and I feel inexpressible delight from her palm put over my eyelids. Without opening my eyes, I find her wrist and silently pull her palm sliding over to my lips. I am so grateful to that tender soft palm that has driven away my pain and brought the inexpressible bliss. There is nothing better in the whole world.

But when she leaned on her elbow and hovered her face over mine and merged her lips with my lips, I found out that there still was something better, only that it had no name… 'Kiss'?. When you melt and dissolve in the font of the meeting lips, and you drown in their immensity but at the same time you soar… all that and a whole ocean of completely indescribable feelings… Just one syllable of four letters to pack up all that expanse wider than the limits of the world? Well, well… Anyway, the syllable was fairly employed by us that summer day.

And when we were already going to the huts for a skiff ride not to miss the local train, I stopped her amid the Willow trees to kiss once again. The parting kiss, we couldn't go on kissing farther than that. She answered the kiss with her tired lips and then, looking aside, said with a strange sadness, "Silly boy, you'll get cloyed with it."

I did not believe her…

(…a certain German smartie, by the name of Bismarck, once flashed with another of his witticisms, "Only fools learn from their personal experience, I prefer to use the experience of others for the purpose."

“I did not believe her…” But even from my personal experience, I should have learned that my sister Natasha, being younger than me for 2 years, surpassed my knowledge span and proved that repeatedly.

Yes, I'm anything but Bismarck with my distrust to others. A pinch of consolation though provides the fact that I am not a fool from his definition since I never get wiser even from my own experience.

What category then should I shove myself under?

Okay, let's not get distracted, the question is off the current topic…)

The cucumbers cloyed for good. Just out of habit and because of having nothing better to do, I would take one from the boxes, give it a couple reluctant bites, and hurl into the nearest thicket of tall grass in the grounds of the Vegetable Base.

To put it short, I also left the race and went to the ORS Office to quit and get the money I earned in that month and a half. For the first time in life, I held the sum of 50 rubles in my hands.

Was that enough for a scooter? Who should know? A talk with Mother turned those questions unnecessary:

"Sehryozha, school is starting. You need clothes. Shoes are needed both for you and your brother and sister. You know as well as I do how we're scratching along."

"Yes! I have clothes! And I told you why I was going to the Base."

"Those pants that I have painted two times? Is that your clothes? At your age, it's a shame to go about like that."

Mustang of my Dreams! Farewell! We won't rush along Peace Avenue, you and me, overtaking all those "Rigas" and "Desnas"…

No ready-made pants were bought for me. Instead, following Mother's instructions, I went to the sewing workshop near the Bus Station. The seamstress with a long pointed nose measured me and sewed trousers of dark gray broadcloth, synthetic Lavsan. A wide belt of two buttons. Wide-bottomed. Fifteen rubles.

Very soon the trousers came in handy, after Vladya brought the news that in the Central Park of Recreation they're fixin' to hold the Youth Song Contest. Those wishing to participate had to apply at the City Komsomol Committee. Yet, no one had the slightest chance because Arthur would take part in the Contest.

Arthur was a soldier Armenian from the construction battalion next to the RepBase, and Vladya was his fan. Being a right-handed guitarist, Arthur played it like a god in Vladya's estimation. He did not replace the strings, but just turned a common guitar the opposite way, with the bass strings going below and the thin ones up, and played it! In addition to that miraculous trick, Arthur also sang, no wonder Vladya idolized him and had no doubt that Arthur would win the contest. But we decided to participate, all the same. Together…Vladya and me.

As the Head of the Komsomol organization at School 13 and therefore familiar with the doors of offices in the City Komsomol Committee, I had to go there and apply for the contest as well as to know the exact time and location of the planned event. It turned out there remained just two days before the contest taking place at the Central Park dance-floor. We had no time to lose and started rehearsals…

Club Movie Projectionist, Boris Konstantinovich, switched on the light in the auditorium as well as two microphones on the stage. One of them we inserted into Vladya's guitar thru the soundhole and from the powerful loudspeakers installed on both sides of the stage, there roared such a cool sound that Boris Konstantinovich could not stand it and left. In his place, full of bubbling excitement, Glushcha scuttled in from Professions Street, where bypassing Club he got stopped in his tracks by the bewitching hubbub of that strident mayhem.

We decided to perform two numbers. First, the bass guitar part to "Chocolate Cream" from the LP disc of Polish rock-group The Chervony Guitary, to be followed then with the song from the soundtrack to "The Untraceable Avengers".

At the rehearsals everything went on in a pretty smooth way – the guitar with the mike in its body was turning out a classy rock'n'roll riff, after which the instrument was transformed into a common acoustic one to accompany Vladya's singing the song about so many a path in the field, yet the truth remained one and only. And I stood next to Vladya strumming my guitar…

Surprises cropped up at the Contest itself. In the concha of the dance-floor stage, there was just one microphone installed. One mike! Only one! So much for a starter. Besides, our duo needed to be named somehow… Another "oops". The Second Secretary of the City Komsomol Committee offered a choice: The Sun, or The Troubadours. Of the two evils, was chosen the shorter one.