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

During the rehearsals, Chuba kept frowning at my third in the chorus backup, and in the knock-up chant before going on stage in the Central Park's Summer Cinema he just grabbed his head in despair. So at the moment when we had to yell together into a single microphone, "Yellow River! Yellow River!" I only opened my mouth without producing any sound at all. It was the same trick as singing "The Internationale" at the All-School Komsomol meetings or in the make-believe performing of "Jericho" at a CJR game.

Chuba made round eyes on the other side of the mike because I left him without the third, to no avail though. The Orpheuses convincingly carried the day but on my vocal career, there was put the final cross. Still and all, we did it!.

~ ~ ~

You strain yourself, you pine away in exhausting efforts to reach your goal and after you've done it triumphantly all there remains for you is just living on… Probably, that’s the hardest part.

"Where to sail?" poetically described such situation Pushkin, and Chernishevsky paraphrased the question in the artless prose, "What’s to be done?"

"That is all,
Say "bye!" to dreams
Live your life
the way it seems
Right to you.
Find your answers,
Find your ways,
Find your path to happiness.
Do it, do!"

    (music by V. Sakoon, lyrics by S. Ogoltsoff)
I ventured to look for happiness at the Kiev State University named after T. Shevchenko, taking my school certificate to the Department of English Language there. Unlimited arrogance it was, considering the extent of my knowledge which encompassed a couple of grammar tables memorized from the English textbook for the 8th grade. However, audacity calls for reward and all the ride from Konotop to Kiev (4 hours by a local train) I spent on a seat next to Irina Kondratenko, the most good-looking girl among my ex-classmates. The gorgeous black eyes and long black hair made her so beautiful that I would never dare approach the girl, what’s the use to be unreasonable? And suddenly—lo!—4 hours of riding side by side filled with an eager conversation.

Irina also was going to Kiev to become a student somewhere while living at some relatives of hers and, being already acquainted with the city, she advised me by which streetcar to go from the station square to the University… The ceilings at the University were unusually high to drive it home to the folks it was the right place for getting higher education. At the dean's office, I swapped my certificate of secondary education and the reference about my excellent state of health for the address of a student hostel in about one hour's ride by a trolleybus.

The hostel manager, or maybe she was just a dormitory attendant in charge of forking out the bed linen in exchange for my passport, turned out an unmistakable racist and didn’t care about hiding her ugly inclinations. I deducted it when 2 young Vietnamese entered her office (or the stockroom), immediately following me and asked her for an oilcloth to cover the table in their room. Her crisp retort was, "No oidcloth for you! You're an oidcloth yourself! Get out of here!"

They timidly left, sad and puny against the background of that robust Ukrainian racist. I wondered silently if she was able to pronounce "oilcloth" in Vietnamese.

However, jumping to conclusions when unaware of all the concurrent circumstances might result in faulty evaluation. That whole scene could very easily have nothing to do with racism. There was no 100 percent guarantee that them those bitchy Vietnamese were not asking for the fifth oilcloth on the same day, or else that it wasn't the fifth pair of Vietnamese demanding an oilcloth from the overworked Ukrainian woman utterly tired of their looking so much alike…

One of my roommates also was an applicant for the English Department, only he had already served in the army. The next day, we went to the University together to attend a pre-examination lecture where he chattered with the lecturer so fluently that I felt myself like at that Regional Physics Olympiad, where all of them understood each other and only I was cutting an odd dolt around.

After the lecture, I went to the dean's office and took back my matriculation papers. I do not remember what exactly lie I told them because it was not easy to confess that I freaked out and surrendered without even trying. On the way to the hostel to collect my passport, there gushed such a rain that at times the trolley had to swim from one stop to another. The rain to wash away the slightest traces… The four-hour trip by the local train to Konotop was spent in desolate silence… No cute chat-companions for scurvy cowards…

In Konotop, any knotty question gets resolved on the fly. Whereto? Of course, same place with the rest of your gaggle. Join the crowd, mate.

Skully was already a third-year student at the Railway Transportation College, above the Under-Overpass tunnel. Vladya and Chuba had submitted their papers for admittance to the same institution. So the question "whereto?" was solved before me, I could only matriculate to the Konotop Railway Transportation College. Even Anatoly Melai was there embracing some vague position of a laboratory assistant, but with the academic year not started yet he was just walking the corridors in blue overalls engaged in wiring, when not busy singing.

As it turned out, Anatoly was an avid fan of The Pesnyary VIA who had recently performed "The Dark Night" in the Kremlin Hall. Imagine the picture, eh? All the top geezers from the Political Bureau of the Central Committee in the first row – Brezhnev, Suslov…er…who else?…Podgorny…And the dudes spread it out in full with the unleashed guitar reverberation!… Plus the vocals, of course! All their numbers are in no less than four-part harmony:

"The dark night's between
Me and you, my beloved one…"

And Anatoly, throwing up his face in the pockmarks left by gone acne, filled the empty corridor with echoes of one or another from those harmony parts. And why not? It's summer and no classes around, even the admittance exams hadn't started yet and, the main factor, he's in his overalls.

"When I go to date you
My bast-shoes keep creaking!."

He promised to put in a word for The Orpheuses applicants, however, only one-third of us was admitted—Chuba and Vladya fell thru and went to work at the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant…

Mid-August we made a proposal to the Club Director, Pavel Mitrofanovich, which he could not refuse—we would play dances in the Plant Park. For free.

Each of the three parks in the city of Konotop—the Central, the Loony, and the Plant Park—was furnished with a dance-floor. Those dance-floors presented complete replicas of each other: the spherical concha over the band stage abutted the wide circle of concrete guarded by the two-meter tall grating of iron pipes which enclosure had the narrow entrance gate (diametrically opposite the stage) made of the same pipes. Even the paint coat of the gratings was the same gray silver. The only difference was that the paint on the pipes in the Central Park of Recreation had not peeled off so dismally as by two others.

Mother remembered that as a young girl, she attended the Plant Park dance-floor because in summertime there played a brass band. Later, everything ground to a halt and, in the warm season, the young Konotopers began to walk in circles (instead of waltzing) along the alleys in Peace Square shuffling thru the layers of spat out black seeds husk. A circle after a circle…

But then there came that fateful August Sunday to wake the Plant Park’s dance-floor up from the benumbed dormancy. With a clang, collapsed the fetters secured by the rusty iron padlock, and on we hauled across the concrete circle the rubber-wheeled handcart towards the concha-roofed stage.

Normally, that handcart was used by the projectionists for transportation of the cylindrical tin boxes with film reels from Club to the open-air cinema in the Plant Park. However, on that historic Sunday, it bore the tall pile of the cuboid boxes of amps and loudspeakers, like, angular haystack propped by upholding hands.

We started to install and assemble the equipment, switching on, plugging in, checking the guitars with a bang of a chord or 2, picking popular riff over the strings.

A crisp echo bounced back from the squalid two-story apartment block right outside the meter-tall park fence. Along with the echo, there came racing a brood of local small kids and, not daring enter the open gate, bunched up in the alley beyond the palisade of iron pipes.

Now Skully, pompous and self-important, puts his drum-set "kitchen" up, dubs the kick drum with the pedal beater, chinks the hat, clangs the crash.

The ultimate check of the microphone, "One… One-two… One…"

With the dry clicking of sticks against each other, Skully sets the tempo.

One, two. One-two-three-four! Off we go!!

That's how the change of epochs was coming to pass in a singled-out Konotop park…

With the narrow gate unguarded for so long, the kids began to cautiously penetrate into the concrete circle of the dance-floor, yet keeping, just in case, close to the grating except for a couple of neglected toddlers cut loose to frisk happily hither-thither.

Three girls walked in to get seated in a short line on a backless bench by the fence… A young pair entered slowly, seems, belated to occupy the special bench in the grotto of bushes… Another hesitant couple… Welcome, there are lots of benches here…

The groundbreaking night saw no dancing; we, like, played to please ourselves. Then we shipped the equipment and instruments to the summer cinema ticket office on the first floor in the projectionist's booth.

Everything repeated itself on Wednesday. Yes! On Wednesday! We scheduled dances thrice a week: Sunday, Wednesday, and Saturday.

On Saturday, a half-hour before we started, some unusual stir in the air was felt in the Plant Park alleys suddenly filled by too many people sauntering along, to and fro. We decided to wait no longer and climbed on the stage when Vitya Batrak, handled Slave, entered the wide circle of the dance-floor followed by his retinue from Peace Square guys.

The abundant curls of chestnut color poured over the shoulders of his long-sleeved silk shirt the color of the Jolly Roger. The collar, following the suit of the unbuttoned, loosely sweeping cuffs, disclosed his chest in a generous cleavage down to the solar plexus.

When in the center of the dance-floor, Slave kicked up a picturesque discussion with his followers about the wristwatch he wore. The wide strap of artificial leather got unfastened, the watch tossed up in the air, high and fair, to clatter back against the concrete floor. The disputants encircled and craned over —ticking or what?

Meanwhile, a stream of young people of both sexes began to flow in bypassing the pack of clockwork experts. That's it! The city believed that in the Plant Park they did play dances!

On Sunday everyone danced. In circles, of course. A circle of ten to fifteen dancers sprang up around two or three satchels placed on the concrete floor. Each circle danced in the endemic style of their own… The band stage served a good viewing point. In the circle on the left, they were busily twisting while in the one closer to the concha, the dancers imitated speed skating contest by shuffling their feet in gradual circles over the cemented floor with their hands clasped on their backs. And over there, near the gate, the guys were still happy with the ol’ good "seb’n-forty". At times, from one or another dancing circle there sounded a probing, on-the-sly scream…

Next Saturday, auntie Shura, the Controller in her eternal helmet-kerchief, pops up at the entrance to the dance-floor directing all who approached the gate after tickets, 50 kopecks apiece.

Vladya and I come up to auntie Shura, we burn with rightful rage. What the heck! These dances for free! Free dances!

Auntie Shura remains indifferently calm, she has Director's order.

Vladya, glowing in the twilight with his white short-sleeved turtleneck, yells to the nearing folks not to listen to her and come in because the dances for free! Free dances!