to Uncle Vadya’s… I was the very first guest there.
Before that summer day, I always wrinkled my nose at lard, and Mother would usually say, “Maybe, you’d like marzipan on a silver platter, sir?!” And ever after, I knew there’s nothing tastier than a slice of lard on a piece of rye bread.
(…not kosher for someone? Good news! The bigger my share…)
In July, the 3 of us, my sister-'n'-brother and I, went to the military-patriotic camp in the town of Shchors. The cards of admission were offered at our school, almost for free. So I had to put a pioneer necktie on again.
Shchors stood aside from the major railway lines and it took about four hours to get there by a diesel train. There we fell into the rut of usual pioneer camp routine with its “stiff hour” after the midday meal, occasional walks thru the small town for bathing in the narrow river under the railway bridge. Well, at least there was a library there…
Once, there happened an unusual day though. After getting up in the morning, only guys came to the camp canteen, where Senior Pioneer Leader announced that our girls had been kidnapped and, after breakfast, we would go to the rescue.
Wow! The old good game for kids, Cossack-Robbers, revised and bettered pursue following the arrows drawn on the sandy forest paths.
When the forest was over and replaced by the lined-up rows of a Pine plantation, we came up to a crossroads and split into small search parties, that scattered in different directions.
In the company of 2 guys, I went to the right. The road returned to the forest edge and eventually led to a lonely hut enclosed within a knee-tall palisade. Probably, the Forester’s dwelling.
Not a single breathing creature in the whole yard, not even a dog. Overpowering silence surrounded a readied coffin put on the ground with its lid leaning against the tree by the low plank-fence.
Now, you don’t seem to have much of a choice after Grandma Martha’s regular reading of The Russian Epic Tales to you, right? Of course, I stretched inside the coffin and asked the guys to cover me with the lid, just as hero Svyatogor asked his younger partner, hero Ilya of Murom, and they concurred.
I lay for a while in the narrow darkness not scary at all, filled with the pleasant smell of fresh shavings. Then I wanted to move the lid off, but it did not yield to my pushes, supposedly, fixed by the weight of the guys who sat upon it restraining their happy giggles.
I did not scream nor knocked against the lid. Familiar with the proceedings, I knew that any scream or shriek would only ring the coffin with an additional iron hoop, just like the Ilya’s smiting sword was adding them around the box which trapped Svyatogor. Silently, I waited in the darkness and then without any effort moved the lid aside into the desolate quietude of the deserted yard. No wonder the brace of those nincompoops felt spooky straddling the ominously silent coffin and fled…
When I returned to the crossroads, everyone was already there and the kidnapped girls too, because it was time to go back to the camp for the midday meal…
I did not stay there until the end of camp shift though because Senior Pioneer Leader got a telephone call from the Konotop City Komsomol Committee informing her that I had to go to the Camp for the Komsomol Activists Training in the regional center, the city of Sumy.
On the last night before my departure, some local Shchorsian guys came to the camp to give me a beating. They even showed up in the bedroom ward windows to clarify with their gestures that I was a dead man already. Probably, I had flashed with an arrogant retort to one of them when bathing in the river under the bridge, or else some of the local girls, who also enjoyed the camp shift, had complained to them of my being too snobbish. The guys did not climb in though because of Senior Pioneer Leader’s presence. Later, she escorted me to the barrack of the platoon with my sister and brother to say goodbye before leaving early the next morning…
~ ~ ~
At the training camp for Komsomol activists in Sumy, we, 4 guys from Konotop, lived in a tent with 4 iron beds on the sand floor, and 2 of our compatriot-girls shared one of the bedrooms in the long barrack-like building nearby.
Besides that building, there was also a separate canteen and an open stage in front of rows of benches bounded by immature but already half-dead, cob-webbed Pine trees.
Each morning we sat on those benches, taking notes of the lectures read to us – I am damned if I remember what about. And in the afternoon we idly lay upon the cloth blankets over our beds in the tent, which was just a tent with no shows of the magic shadow theater on any of its walls.
(…we do loose worlds when growing up…)
I was the youngest in the Konotop group and just listened when the elder guys gave out their chin music about in what way the latest make of Volga was better than the out-modish Pobeda, and how to rightly break a motorcycle in, as well as about a guy in their neighborhood who got married at the age of 18. Imagine that moron! Married, when he still should be playing football with the guys in the yard…
Stretched on my bed, I had nothing to add to their confident discussions and just watched the Baturin highway dashing under by my “Jawa” taken there for the maiden ride or saw the grassy field by the garbage enclosure at the Object and us, ball-chasing kids, with our vain shrieks, “Here! Pass to me!” And I inwardly scoffed, recollecting ludicrous childish tales we told, in turn, each other about a hero footballer and the red band on his right knee because he was forbidden to