The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
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Like almost all the children, I had a short square pennant in my hands, on a thin—like a pencil, only a tad bit longer—rod. In the red pennant, the yellow circle crisscrossed with yellow grid stood for the globe, and a yellow dove soared above it, yet not as high as the capture of yellow letters: “Peace be to the World!” Of course, I couldn’t read at that time but those pennants remained unchangeable year after year for decades, they abode for latecomers and slow learners as well.
And while we all walked on, in the distance ahead of us, there emerged music. The nearer the louder it sounded and made us walk quicker and drop idle talks, and then we passed by 2 rows of soldier-musicians with shining trumpets and booming drum, and past a tall red balcony with people standing still upon it in their forage caps but, strangely, that balcony had no house behind it…
After one of the May Days, I felt like drawing a holiday so Grandma gave me a sheet of ruled paper and a pencil… In the center of the sheet, I drew a large balloon on a string going down to the bottom edge of the sheet. It looked good, so big and festive. However, I wanted more than that, I wanted the holiday be all over the world and, to the right from the balloon, I drew a stretch of blind wood fencing behind which there lived not ours but Germans and other enemies from the newsreels in the House of Officers, only all of them invisible, of course, because of the fencing.
Okay, Germans, let it be a holiday even for you! And I drew another balloon on the string rising from behind the fence. Lastly, to make it clear who is who and who is celebrating where, I added a fat cross in the enemies’ balloon.
The masterpiece accomplished, I briefly admired my work of art and then ran to share it, for a starter, with Grandma… At first, she couldn’t figure out what is what, and I had to explain to her the picture. But when I got to the point that let even Germans have a holiday—we are not meanies, right?—she stopped me sharply and vented severe criticism. I should have learned since long, said she, that because of my those cross-adorned balloons the “black raven” vehicle would stop by our house and take my Dad away arrested, and she asked if that was what I wanted.
I felt sorry for Dad and terrified by the prospect to stay without him. Bursting in sobs, I crushed the ill-fated drawing and ran to the bathroom to thrust the crumpled paper ball behind the pig-iron door of the water boiler Titan where they lighted fire when heating water for bathing…
~ ~ ~
The hardest thing in the morning is getting out of bed. It seems you'd give anything at all for another couple of minutes lying undisturbed by their yells it’s time to go to kindergarten.
On one of such mornings, the pillow under my head felt softer than a fleecy white cloud in the sky, and in the mattress yielding under me there developed such an exact mold absorbing my body in its gentle embrace that a mere thought of tearing myself away from that pleasure and warmth accumulated overnight under the blanket was simply unthinkable. So I went on lying until there popped up the frightening knowledge – if I would not shed off that blissful boggy drowsiness right away, then never would I come to kindergarten that morning, and never ever come to anywhere else because it would be a languor death in sleep.
Of course, so macabre words were beyond my ken then, I didn’t need them though nor other whimsy turns of phrase of that kind because my thoughts were coming mostly in the form of feeling, so I just felt freaked out, got up into the chilly room and started to dress. On Sundays, it was possible to lie as long as you wanted but never again the bed acquired such a pleasing shape…
One Sunday I woke up alone in the room and heard Sasha-’n’-Natasha’s merry screams from somewhere outside. I donned and hurried out into the corridor. They were not there nor in the kitchen, where only Grandma was clinking the pots’ lids. Aha! In the parents’ room! I ran in there at the height of fun – my brother-’n’-sister, and Mom was laughing together at a white shapeless lump standing in the corner on their bare feet. Of course, it’s Dad! He’s thrown over himself the thick blanket from the parents’ bed and now looms there bulkily next to the wardrobe.
And all at once those legs started to jump jointly under the fat fluttering folds. The horrible white bare-legged creature blocked the way towards the corridor herding Mom and all three of us to the balcony door. Oh, how we laughed! And clung to Mom more and more convulsively.
Then one of us began to cry and Mom said, “There-there, this is Dad, silly!” But Sasha did not stop (or, maybe, Natasha but not me though my laughter sounded more and more hysterical) and Mom said, “Well, enough, Kolya!” And the blanket straightened up and fell off revealing laughing face of Dad in his underpants and tank top, and we all together started to comfort Sasha sitting high in Mom’s arms and incredulously trying to laugh thru tears.
(…laughter and fear go hand in hand and there is nothing more frightening than something you can’t make out what…)
And on Monday morning I went to the parents’ room to admit that at night I again peed in bed. They were already dressed, and Dad said, “Gak! Such a big boy!” And Mom ordered me to peel off my underpants and get into their bed. From a shelf in the wardrobe, she fetched dry underpants for me and followed Dad into the kitchen.
I was lying under the blanket still warm with their warmth. Even the sheet was so soft, caressing. Full of pleasure I stretched out as much as I could, both legs and arms. My right hand got under the pillow and pulled out an ungraspable coarsened rag. I could not guess its purpose in their bed but I felt that I had touched something shameful and shouldn’t ask anyone about it…
~ ~ ~
It’s hard to say what was more delicious: Mom’s pastry or Grandma’s buns both baked for holidays in the blue electric oven “Kharkov”.
Grandma Martha spent her days in the kitchen cooking and washing up, and in the children’s room sitting on her bed not to be in the way of our playing.
In the evenings, she read us The Russian Epic Tales, a book about hero warriors who fought countless hordes of invaders or the Dragon Gorynich, and for the rest and recreation after the battles, they visited Prince Vladimir the Red Sun in the city of Kiev. That’s when the iron bed had to bear the additional weight of the three of us seated around Grandma Martha to listen about the exploits of Alesha Popovich or Dobrinya Nikitich.
When the heroes had their moments of sadness, they remembered their mothers, each one his own, but to their different, absent, mothers they all addressed one and the same reproach: why those mothers weren’t smart enough to wrap the future heroes into a piece of white cloth while they were still just silly babies and drop them into the fast running River-Mommy?
Only Ilya of Murom and Warrior Svyatogor, who grew so mighty that even the Earth Mother could bear him no more and only mountain rocks still somehow withstood his movements, they never raised that mutual lamentation, not even when having the bluest blues…