"OK! Conference continues! The nervous people are not invited to watch!"
"The steam-engine had cried in full voice, and the train started off, taking Father Feodor far away with itself aiming some mysterious matter which, however, was promising, by the way, a great profit."
here and far quotations out : I.Il'f, E.Petrov "Dvenadcat' stul'ev".
..........................PART 1. ..........................
The clock on the train station was showing the time at about midnight. The September night was still warm, without any wind and full of various scents as it is
accustomed in the South. My eyes were nipping and my throat was choking from the very idea that there would be no way back here, forever. Sixteen years of my life
were left in Kishinev, i.e. love, career, proximity to Odessa and the sea, family. Yes, from this moment everything was in the past. My son Dmitry stood depressed nearby
and even though he was 12, already seemed to be ready to cry.
Everything started after my first divorce. I was 28 and my wife’s adultery had caught me by surprise, but in a half of a year I was already urgently looking for a bride,
aiming to leave abroad. I wanted to immigrate. Taking into account the fact that I lived in the city for only four years and also the fact that Jewish society was accepting
Russians with reluctance, my searching attempts were restricted by my job-mate and by two or three recommendations of my recent Jewish friends. My colleague gave
her consent. Then another marriageable lady appeared, but something stopped me. Some feeling of freedom cropped up overshadowed by the thought that my son was
left with my ex-wife and if I would leave he would never get a chance to change his life in a cardinal way.
Though it may be that I decided to flee earlier in a Siberian town Omsk, while staying in the “barracks” (14KB) of the air -technical school, where my company-mates, so-called
“comrades” had hung a sign across my bad with funny picture and a word “foreigner”, for I was not alike all the others and did not even try to hide it. The differences
were small as the military uniform and “normal” Soviet childhood were leveling almost everything.
I was a fan of “the Beatles” though I did not know the English language and did not understand the lyrics of the songs. I also liked Vysotsky too. I was one of the first
who had bought a potable tape-recorder ”Orbita”, and took it with me when I went to the granting leaves of absence and “samovolki” (unwarranted absences). I wanted
to be myself. Perhaps it was my first conflict with the society. In 1968 I was extremely proud that Yury Gagarin was from the Soviet Union, but in 1968 I was passionately
desiring that our Soviet team lost at the World Hockey Championship, but alas, the society won.
The year 1968 was passing: the student riots in Paris and tanks in Prague. Did I catch the meaning of the things happening around? Likely, no. I had not been informed
enough yet. Thus the faith in the perspectives was still there.
When I went to work to, Magadan in 1970 my friend told me: ”It’ll be very hard for you to live with your faith (he meant faith in communism). Your discouragement will
be bitter.” As for himself he was a pragmatic. He died as a drunker in 1984 in Magadan.
Maybe I should better begin from the very childhood: 1954, after my numerous pneumonia, my father followed the doctors advises and had to ask for transfer from Brest(46KB) ,
where he worked at the Criminal Investigation Department, to the place with the more stale climate for me. My mother had graduated from the Meat and Milk Industry
Collage and worked right in the building of the Brest Fortress. In accordance with M. Khruschov’s order there had been arranged the Belgorod region in 1954. This is
why my father was given a new assignment to Belgorod. For the first time we were residing at a “private” apartment. “Apartment” is a too loud word to describe that
small room in a private house. My junior brother Alexander was born in a year (48KB) . My mother was really happy. I remember the hill nearby, from which the host’s son was
flinging a kite. I was standing near him passing the cardboard rings to him. Peter was fixing them on the rope and then they were going higher and higher until they
reached the hand-made kite.
Two years had passed and my father got a room in a common flat were another two families lived. Once the sewerage system had been obstructed with fecal masses and
all that shit spread along the corridor. The adults woke up because of the smell and the noise the running water made. And there began “much ado about nothing.”
Than my father left for Moscow to study at the Higher Militia School. He was coming back only on vacations.
The war. The war-games. We were usually playing only those military games and hockey. For ”war”, I had a rusty (but real) barrel of a German gun. It was a carabine. All
the boys were parted to “our guys” and “Germans” and they scattered off the environs. Once in the neighborly yard we found some kind of the test tubes that were as
thick as a hand. Shouting patriotically I ran on the street and threw one of those tubes before the guy on the motorcycle who was passing by. Even till today I can
remember this terrifying episode with horror. And what can I say about the driver’s feelings?
As a rule I was constantly trying to prove my own bravery to the other people and myself. Maybe because I was not physically strong and courageous?
The older boys used to play with carbide. They were throwing the gray pieces of stuff in the water and watchingthe reaction. The process was accompanied by
secretion of gas that could be set on fire. One day I found two of the boys busy playing some strange game: they were throwing burning matches on the turned-over
can. There was a tiny little hole made in the bottom. I decided that the were too faint-hearted and squatted at the can bringing burning match again and again until the
accumulated gases threw the can up in the air. The only barrier on its way was my right palm. The following week I was able neither to write nor eat. Luckily the can
didn’t hit me in the face. My nose got hit much more later.
We were the first ones who got a TV and our neighbors often came to watch the program.
In summer of 1960 (88KB) our whole family went to vacations to Sochi. It was an unforgettable, lifetime impression. I brought a cypress cone from there and was trying to
cultivate it at home. I really liked those slander and "taken care of " Southern trees, but my home-method did not work out. But right now there are two cypress trees no
my balcony are growing without any special care. Their seeds were brought with the wind.
Since that very year I began to spend every summer at a pioneer camp staying there for two or even three shifts. I met a new friend there and he taught me to take
pictures. Starting the eleven I had already been taking pictures, developing and printing them on my own. Starting the age six my brother started to go to the same
pioneer camp. He used to go with us to the walking trips with our detachment and I had to bring him on my shoulder blades at the end on our way back. But anyway it
was a lot of fun and he was tolerating all the burdens very courageously and he didn’t languish. Do you remember it Alexander?
Now he has his own child. Forty years ago I was going to take him from the kinder-garden and we were walking home all the way through the town. I was singing “The
Moscow Windows” and my heart was light and cherishing. Even now though so many had passed I can remember that inexpressible feeling of happiness and joy of life.
My soul was singing and the belief in lucky future was alive, and if my heart let me down, they surely will invent all the things till the year 2000.
Once during the summer my brother was riding a small three-wheel bike and suddenly he disappeared from our yard. All the family and neighborhood were looking for
him everywhere. In the evening he was found quite far from the house he was sitting on the porch of the food-store and was not paying any attention to the people. He
also was chewing a bun that someone gave him.
For his birthday my friend Vovka Guzeyev got a present-so called “vozdushka”, i.e. a Czech pneumatic rifle. Their financial status was much better than ours was and
they had separate apartment. We decided. We decided to try a rifle from the roof of our house. In the beginning we were taking turns shooting sparrows and than our
“trial” moved into shooting the lags of women who were passing by. Perhaps it wasn’t pure cruelty, but only the heritage of the last war.
Finally, in 1962 my father got a separate apartment of 28.5 square meters with two adjacent rooms at the last 4-th floor. That was for four people. In the winter snow was
blowing in to the garret, so the ceiling was getting wet and I had to throw the snow back on the roof through the greet window for several winters. In other respects it
was already a separate flat. We had reconstructed it taking the pantry away so we could get the third room. Both my brother and I got the room in the middle. Its window
was facing the butt-end of the building next to ours. That house was made of the red bricks as ours was and it was overshadowing all the view. But strange a sit may
seem; it helped me to learn seeing things through, using my own knowledge and imagination.
In the fifth form we gained not only new disciplines, but also two pupils failing to get their remove. One of them had a nickname Sasa and was constantly chewing
sausage during the lessons. He used to eat half of it, playing with the other half fixing it to his dick. It was great fun for him. The other boy was tall and gloomy. Both
refused to study flatly. As they appeared, there was obscene lexicon established in our grade. The brother-twins Kapustin quickly imitated the new style. All the others
were keeping up. I was one of the last ones.
In our class the girl by the name Lyusya was the subtlest creature. Everyone was trying to attract her attention by turns. Once, during the collection of scrap metal I
decided to show off and to lift a big thing of metal alone, but it was finished by the discomfiture: For strain I “cut the cheese.”(I think this extract is the best for
criticasters and the title ”How he cut the cheese in Internet” is rather suitable.)
During the summer when I was not in the camp I was usually sitting on fences, so I could have a farther view. From one fence it was a stone’s throw to the town’s
prison, and though I was trying to see the people there, it never worked out. From the other fence I was climbing over to the tree and was stealing cherries. My parents
often got the messages that their ”Valerka” had been seen on the fence again. Once, climbing over a low cast-iron fence I squatted for a moment. I got to my senses not
because of pain, but because of the sticky stuff pouring along of my left thigh. It occurred that I was hung on the pivot as if it was a barbecue stick. The other time I
deeply injured my belly. These childhood signs remained with me for the rest of my life.
Next comming soon.
Copyright © 1998-1999 Valerij Sologubenko