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

In the Ballet Studio by Nina Alexandrovna, he was a leading dancer, such a tall brunette. When performing the Moldovan Jock he jumped higher than others with his legs wide apart in the air to spank the ballet boots by his palms. And the Moldovan waistcoat of black silk with sparkling sequins suited so well his crispy dancing hair…

The newcomers who bought Pilluta's half-khutta had been recruited to Siberia neither from Konotop nor even from Ukraine. They spoke Russian and did not understand many local words. There were 4 of them, 2 childless couples, who split the half-khutta in further even halves. The somewhat older pair dwelt in the khutta next to ours, and the younger ones got the part with 2 additional windows looking into the street. Maybe, that's why they were a little more cheerful than the older pair. Although, in contrast to demised Pillutikha, the elders looked quite friendly too.

Our immediate neighbor, the husband in the senior couple, began to overhaul the brick stove in their kitchen and found a treasure hidden in the chimney. To Sasha and Natasha, as well as to the children from the neighboring khutta of the Turkovs, he distributed the bills of banknotes from his find. Those amazed me by their unheard-of face value. Earlier, the 25-ruble note, with the gypsum bust of Lenin turned in profile, was, in my opinion, the biggest piece of money imaginable, but no! The Turkovs kids played with one-hundred and even five-hundred-ruble banknotes, the size of a handkerchief each, illustrated with antique sculptures and royal portraits in oval frames plus the vignette-like signature of the Finance Minister of the Russian Empire. The currency issued by the Ukrainian Central Rada in the Civil War times was also played, not as picturesque though, but the curls in the signature of Lebid-Yurchik were not inferior to those by the Czarist minister.

By the way, there was a guy in my class whose last name was also Yurchik and by his first one – Sehrguey, like me, only he was taller and when our class lined-up for a PE lesson he stood the second in the rank. Yet, he hardly could be Minister Yurchik’s relative because he lived in Podlipnoye, most likely they were just namesakes…

When Father came from work, the neighbor called him over to demonstrate the box which he found the treasure in, as well as the hollow place inside the chimney where it was hidden. Then Father returned home and standing in the middle of the kitchen mused, "Seems, it was not only funny money there." He once again observed the stack of banknotes on the table and started recollections about his village relative on the maternal side.

Living under the Czarist regime, that fella mastered the skill of printing paper money for which purpose he had a special machine-tool. Life smiled on him until his business failed because of thoughtless impatience. It happened when entertaining his brother on a visit from the city, he bought vodka from their village store. The salesman noticed that the five-ruble note he got for the commodity was leaving blue marks on his fingers – the brothers were so eagerly impatient to celebrate their meeting that the money paint was not allowed to dry up properly.

In short, the printer man got exiled to Siberia and all his property confiscated. And his wife followed him, like those wives to revolutionary Decemberists doing their terms over there.

"That's what love is" said Mother in an attempt at sprinkling a pinch of sentimental spice into the all too earthy story.

"Bullshit!" burst Father. "The smart bitch got it that by the side of so qualified a diddler she even in Siberia would be much better off than home."

He gave out a content chuckle, and I also felt pleased that in my family tree there someplace was sitting a cunning counterfeiter. The fact of all that taking place long ago did not really tell on the satisfaction even though anything from before the Revolution seemed as distant as the harsh old times of epic heroes. But, of course, in the days of Gorynich the Dragon they did not print paper money.

A week later, Father's assumption got confirmed in a roundabout way by the husband in the younger couple (not as cheerful already as before). He shared the news that his friend disappeared in an unknown direction. After quietly quitting the job (his spouse followed the pattern), the older pair left without a goodbye to their neighbor-friends. Friendship is a smashing good thing, but hands off my tobacco, partner!

Soon the younger, noticeably depressed, couple left too. The Pilluta's part of the khutta emptied again and for long…

(…those acquainted with the Soviet legislation wouldn't judge the runaways too harshly, any treasure found in the USSR became the state property minus 25% of its value to the lucky finder. No John Silver would sail near such a close-shaving wind…)

~ ~ ~

Because of getting trained at the regional camp for Komsomol activists, I was elected Head of Komsomol Committee, aka Komsorg, of School 13 and for several days next week I was free from classes. In the commission of 5 other Komsorgs, I had to attend the reporting sessions of Komsomol Committees in the city schools, under the supervision of the Second Secretary of the City Komsomol Committee. Besides me, among the commission members, there were 2 more trainees from the Sumy camp: the guitar player and one of the girls.

The reporting sessions were killing by their boredom because at every school the very same things were said the very same way in the very same words. After which the Second Secretary invariably demanded from us, the commission members, to take the floor with our critical remarks… The guitar player was good at those stodgy pieces, being used to strum the only two chords he knew…

"Ever keeping aloft and honored their glorious pioneer traditions, the School 13 Komsomol members did their best to contribute their weighty share in the Annual All-School Collecting of Scrap Metal…"

Each autumn, half of the long rectangular schoolyard was divided into the sectors starting from the two-story "Cherevko's school" at the gate up to the workshop building. The sectors were assigned to different classes so that they knew where to dump the scrap metal collected by them.

The classes competed, the piles of rusty stuff grew, the augmentations checked, weighed and registered until one day the schoolyard was entered by a dump truck to move the collection away, usually in a couple of goes. The class winner was awarded the Honor Certificate handed to them at the nearest ceremonial school line-up.

Of course, we hardly ever cared for those certificates. What attracted us was getting together with all of your class and… well, not exactly all of your class, yet at least those who could or were willing to turn up and… A-and with a pair of handcarts rattling their iron wheels against the ragged cobblestones in Bogdan Khmelnytsky Street, or creaking wearily along the rest—dust'n'dirt-paved—streets, we ventured into the Settlement in search of scrap metal. Where exactly were we looking for it? It depended. Sometimes a classmate reported a neighbor willing to get rid of a heap of perennial metal layers in the corner of their yard. “God bless you, kids! Drive your handcart in, take all of that away!”

Yet, rusty basins, folding coach-bed springs, and bent nails were a too lightweight stuff to add much of respectability to your grade's scrap heap. Besides, champions for environmental purity were not an ofttimes species in the neighborhood. “So, what's wrong about that trash behind the shed? Rusty thru and thru? But you never know. One of these days it might come handy. A length of wire would nicely fix a fence plank so rotten that nails crash it to pieces. Get along, kids. Go! Go!”

That’s why the newly amalgamated collective of our ninth grade moved for a free search dollying their handcarts along the Plant wall in Professions Street… Like vultures circling in the westerns to locate a prey… At the far end of Plant, where the tracks of the marshaling yard multiplied innumerably, we wheeled around an obviously no man's wheel pair from a railway car. Yet, you couldn't load the multi-ton wheels on a pair of handcarts, otherwise, we'd win at the scrap metal competition in just one go.

On we soared seeking along the railway tracks, to no avail though. But then the guys peeked into a concrete tube section lost in the tall grass alongside the railway to discover a watermelon and a box of grapes.

"Clear as daylight, the station loaders lifted the fruits from some car in a freight train and stashed away for a while." supposed Volodya Sakoon from the former parallel.

We looked around more attentively at the rows of freight trains stilled silently in their tracks, immersed in the torpor of waiting…

Some dude from our party took out a knife to cut the watermelon from the find. Yet, it did not open even when gashed all the way about its equator because of being too big for the knife length. Only when hit against the concrete tube, the watermelon broke up in two, but its core, the so-called "soul", remained in one of the halves. Moistly red, and sugary, stitched with dark brown seeds… Soul… With swiftness never expected from myself, I dealt the sweeping "falcon strike" and by both hands claw-snatched the watermelon's soul. Stunned by my so completely out of the blue deftness, I magnanimously refrained from partaking in the remaining halves. The guys sliced them into handy pieces, while I enjoyed the rindless juice-dripping ball of watermelon flesh from out of my capped palms.

Even the girls couldn’t say “no” to grapes, yet about half of the box we left for the absent loaders who stole them so that they did not feel offended…

An hour later, following the lead from a stray acquaintance, we stroke it real rich on a scrap metal deposit, although at an entirely different spot… In the fence of iron pipes separating Bazaar from the Seminary, aka Vocational School 4, there was a hole thru which we dragged out lots of iron pipe offcuts, long and numerous enough to make a good load for both handcarts.

Next day the House Manager of the Seminary came to our school, identified their pipes in the scrap metal heap collected by our grade, and took them away by a dump truck. He asserted they served as the material for training seminarians in the turners group. However, our Principal, Pyotr Ivanovich, did not even scold us. But then what for? How could you guess the purpose of material dumped into the thicket of nettle? Nonetheless, when giving it a careful thought, you'd always find a good underlying reason for anything. And only my violently swift seizure of the watermelon's soul remained completely inexplicable for me… but it was groovy.

(…in those irrevocably faraway times—past any reach, recall, redress—I hadn't realized yet that all my grieves and joys, ups, and downs, all my silly mistakes, and breathtaking insights sprang from that rascal in the unfathomably distant future who’s now composing this letter to you stretched on my back inside this here one-person tent surrounded by a dark forest in the middle of nowhere and the never subsiding whoosh of the river currently named Varanda…)

~ ~ ~

Unpredictable is the inception of friendship. You go home after school, and there Vitya Cherevko, your new classmate from the former parallel, also walks along Nezhyn Street.

"Oh! How come you're here?"

"Just goin' to Vladya's. He lives in Forge Street."

"Hmm. I'm with you."

Since that day I had two classmate-friends: Chuba, aka Vitya Cherevko, and Vladya, aka Volodya Sakoon…

Vladya hid his acned forehead under the long forelock of brown greasy hair that streamed down from the parting above his right ear. 2 or 3 half-ripe pimples on his cheeks were absolved by the beauty of his gorgeous large eyes sufficient to give heartburn to any cutie.

Chuba's black crispy hair had no parting, and his eyes were pale blue. He had a healthy blush in his cheeks and a finicky sprinkle of freckles over his neat nose.

For hanging out, we gathered on the porch way to Vladya's khutta where he lived with his mother, Galina Petrovna. In fact, it was half-of-khutta comprising a room and a kitchen. A box-table, an iron bed, and the brick stove filled the kitchen to the utmost, nothing else could ever be squeezed in, except for the hooks on the wall by the door to hang coats. In the equally narrow room there stood a wardrobe, a bit wider bed, a table with three chairs pushed under it (otherwise you couldn't pass by) and an up-stand shelf topped with a TV. Both the kitchen and the room had a window in ages long need of paint. The blind wall opposite the windows separated their home from the neighbors' half-khutta.

Galina Petrovna had the job of a nurse at the Plant Kindergarten concealed in the bush between the Plant Park and the road diving into the tunnel of the Under-Overpass. At times, she was paid visits by her cousin. She called him Pencil or Pencilletto, depending on her current mood which, in its turn, depended on whether or not the cousin popped up with a bottle of wine on him. The honorific ‘Pencil’ was saved for officially dry visitations. I wouldn’t hastily rule out his kinship because Vladya’s and his eyes had something common in their look. Vladya's two elder brothers, who looked different from each other, and from Vladya as well, were separately traveling about the Soviet Union in their chase after the long ruble…

Among the guys from both Forge and Smithy Streets Vladya enjoyed well-deserved popularity. And it was not merely for the fact that his two elder brothers had managed to gain proper respect and unquestionable recognition in the eyes of the entire Settlement before they launched on their ‘chase’, and even though certain gleam of their reputation touched Vladya, yet, apart from all that, he had merits of his own. He could drive a fool like no other guy in the neighborhood.

In the Settlement parlance "fool driver" was someone up to fool you by their jive for one or another private purpose, yet mostly for mirthful entertainment. The subjects for such recreational fool-driving could vary widely. Here, for instance, he drove a fool about blocks in Scotland throwing logs in competition, which he told on behalf one of those kilted sportsmen:

"Well, that guy did not get it that I had already made my throw and he caught it square on the pate. That’s when he kicked the bucket. What else would you do under such a predicament, eh?" And Vladya closed one eye while drowsily rolling the other one up under the still half-open eyelid.

Or he shared local news how Kolyan Pevriy, thoroughly well-oiled, took a lamppost for a passer-by. He bullied it for a starter, then went over to extorting a cigarette, but since the held-up lamppost neither talked nor showed proper respect, Kolyan began to kick the shit outta him in earnest…couldn't fell, though…

And one evening, our company on the porch was joined by a guitar borrowed from Vasya Markov, and Vladya sang the song about Count and his daughter Valentina, who fell in love with the page playing the violin so well. That's when and where I got into servile bondage and begged Vladya to teach me too. He replied that he also was learning from Quak to who I'd better turn directly, yet what the use when I did not have a guitar, and he couldn't give me the one he played because it was Vasya's who did not allow to farm it out or let be strummed by anyone except for Vladya…

If you dearly want something, the dream would come true in seconds, plus or minus a day or 2. There appeared a guitar! Vadik Glushchenko, handled Glushcha, from that same Forge Street, sold me his. And with no ripping off at the transaction, down the soundhole, you could read in the sticker inside: "7 rubles 50 kopecks. The Leningrad Factory of Musical Instruments."

The needed sum was almost immediately procured by Mother. True enough, the plastic handle on the third-string peghead was missing, but later Father took off the tuning machine, smuggled it to his work and welded a neat iron rivet in place of the lost one.

Quak gave me a crumpled sheet from a copybook with the invaluable, exhaustive, list and tablature of all the guitar chords in existence: "the small starlet", "the big starlet", "the poker", and "the barre". Just a little more and I would start singing about the Count’s beloved daughter!. But no, I was not allowed that tiny stretch of time. Vladya's brother, Yura, on his way from Syktywkar to Zabaykalsk (or maybe vice versa), brought him a brand new six-string guitar, and I again remained hopelessly behind because on the six-stringed, aka Spanish, guitar there were neither "pokers" nor "starlets". And so I had to cut notches in the nut of my guitar for the six-stringed layout instead of the seven-stringed, aka Russian, one.

Mid-October, the weather was still soft and Galina Petrovna arranged Vladya's birthday party in their khutta’s yard for her son to invite and entertain his classmates in the open air.

The table from the room was taken out into the front garden strip and, with the protective oilcloth stripped off, it turned to be a varnished sliding table long enough to span the stretch between the khutta and the wooden shed with latticed, veranda-like, panes, which in summertime served both a kitchenette and a bedroom.