monument of rebar rods coated with silver paint. Two men grabbed onto the rods from both sides to keep their balance over the open coffin at their feet with the deceased laid on display. A hesitant nondescript crowd concluded the slow procession.
I did not dare to go out into the street, although Mom and Aunt Lyoudmilla were there standing at the gate as well as the neighbors with their children by the wickets of their khuttas. However, driven by curiosity, I still climbed the gate from inside to peek over it. The lead-colored nose stuck from the pallid dead face looked so horrible that I flew back to the kennel of black-and-white Zhoolka, who also was ill at ease and whining to back up the trumpets….
Grandma Katya knew the way of tying a usual handkerchief into a fatty mouse with ears and a tail, which she put onto her palm to pet the white head with a finger of her other hand. All of a sudden the mouse would leap in a desperate escape attempt, but Grandma Katya caught it on the fly, put back and went on petting, under our eager laughter. Of course, I realized that it was her who pushed the mouse, but following the trick, as closely as possible, I could never crack how she did that.
Each evening she hauled out the pail of sourly smelling slop with peelings, scraps, and offals to her section in the mutual shed, where pig Masha greeted her by upbeat impatient grunting. There Grandma Katya would stand over slurping Masha accusing her of one or other act of blatant misbehavior.
She showed us which of the vegetable beds and trees in the garden were hers so that we did not play around with the neighbors’ because there was no fencing to split the plots. However, the apples were not ripe yet and I climbed the tree of White Mulberry, though Grandma Katya warned that I was too heavy for such a young tree. And indeed, one day it broke under me in two. I dreaded the pending punishment, but Dad did not beat me. He pressed the halves of the split tree back to each other wrapping tight with a length of some sheer yellowish cable. And Grandma Katya never said a scathing word.
That evening she shared that the pig refused to eat anything at all and knocked the pail over because the animal was too clever and felt that the next day they would slaughter her. In the morning, when the butcher came, Grandma Katya left her khutta, and only after that they pulled frantically screaming Masha out of her enclosure, chased about the yard and slaughtered with a long knife to pierce the pig’s heart and her high-pitched squeal turned into wheezy snorts growing shorter and shorter. Throughout that time, Mom kept us, her children, in the khutta, and she allowed me to go out only when they were scorching the motionless it by the buzzing flame of blowtorch.
At Aunt Lyoudmilla’s wedding, plates with sliced lard and fried cutlets, and dishes of chilled-out pork jelly cluttered the long table in the yard. One of the guests volunteered to teach the bride how to stuff a home-made sausage, but she refused and the merry guests laughed out loud….
In general, I liked Konotop although I felt sorry for Masha and ashamed of splitting the Mulberry tree. For some reason, I even found likable the taste of the cornbread. Everyone was cursing it but still buying because Nikita Khrushchev declared Corn the Queen of the fields and at shops they sold only bread made of cornflower…
Back to the Object we also were coming by train but the road seemed so much longer. I felt sick and dizzy until eventually there was found a window in the car where you could stick your head out into the wind. Clinging to that window, I watched as the green string of cars in our train, keeping a constant bent about its middle, rolled around the green field. It was easy to figure out that our journey became so endless because the train was describing one huge circle in one and the same field with random copses added here and there. At one of the stops, Dad left the car and did not come back at the departure. I was scared that we would remain without our Dad, and started to whine pitifully. But a few minutes later, he appeared along the car aisle, carrying ice-cream because of which he lingered on the platform and jumped into another car of the departing train…
~ ~ ~
That year my younger sister and brother also went to school and at the end of August, Dad, angrily red-faced, was taking Grandma Martha to the station of Bologoye to help her change trains to Ryazan.
When saying “goodbye”, she sobbed a little until Dad snarled: “Again? Started again!.”
Then she kissed all of us, her grandkids, and was gone from my life…
Across the road opposite the corner buildings of our Block, there was a grocery store and, after Grandma Martha had left, Mom was sending me there for small purchases, like, bread, matches, salt or vegetable oil. More important products she bought herself—meat, potatoes, sore cream or chocolate butter. For holiday celebrations, large-beaded red or smaller-beaded black caviar was also bought because the Object was well catered for. And only ice-cream appeared at the store no sooner than once a month and was immediately sold out. As for the tasty cornbread, I never saw it on sale there.
To the right from the store, near the bend in the road around the blocks, the wall of the forest was slightly cleft by a narrow glade, where the car repair ramp constructed of sturdy logs provided another gathering place for children to play.
“To the ramp!” called a familiar boy running by. “They’ve caught a hedgehog there!”
All the hedgehogs seen by me up to that moment were only met in the pictures, so I also hurried