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

– teenager guys they mostly were, with their funerals normally attended by a huge crowd, no, I was not afraid of that because nothing of the kind could ever happen to me.

The reason was that everybody who's somebody went to the Seim on weekends – the days when Uncle Tolik and I were gone fishing. Although a couple of times we dropped over to the Bay Beach—just so along the way, the fishing rods cinched to the “Jawa” rack…

Once we even had an overnight stay not far from the Bay Beach. It happened when Uncle Tolik’s brother, Vitya, came from the regional center, the city of Sumy, to propose to Natasha from Number 15 in Nezhyn Street where the Arkhipenkos stayed while Grandma Katya was dying.

Vitya was not balding like his elder brother, Uncle Tolik, no, Vitya’s hair was all in place – light brown, combed straight back in the style sported by young blades at the late fifties’. He was already over thirty, but then auntie Natasha from Number 15 was not a young girl either. On the other hand, the whole khutta and the garden at 15, Nezhyn Street belonged to her and her two parents.

That Saturday, Uncle Tolik and I came for overnight staying with the inseparable bunch of fishing tackle to go off the next morning to fish along the Seim bank. However, at the specified meeting place, we didn’t find the Moscvitch of auntie Natasha’s father who had to bring the rest of the away-night partakers in his car.

To pass the time, Uncle Tolik and I visited the pioneer camp in the Pine forest at about half-kilometer from the Seim. And while Uncle Tolik rode away somewhere else – “one place, not too far off”, I watched a movie in the camp open-air cinema. “A Million Years B.C.” was a classy film about Tumak banished from his black-haired tribe, and another tribe, that of blonds, adopted him because he had piled a dinosaur to save a small blonde kid. When the movie ended Uncle Tolik came back from his “not too far off” and warned me to tell, if asked, that we were watching the movie together.

We returned to the appointed spot, where auntie Natasha’s father had already brought her, and Aunt Lyouda with Irochka, and auntie Natasha’s groom Vitya with his and Uncle Tolik’s third brother. They even had set up a tent already, behind which there loomed the Moscvitch in the dark, lit by a small fire built in front of the tent.

I went down to the sand spit under the steep riverbank and touched the calm flowing water, it was so warm that I couldn’t resist and entered the river. I did not dive nor swam though and only wandered, hither and thither, along the smooth sandy bottom parallel to the bank bend.

Soon Vitya and his bride came down too. He decided to take a swim, despite all her tries to sway him off the intention, and I returned to the fire to dry up, it was a full night already. Then I crawled to the edge of the high bank over the river and looked down. Against the background of the stars glinting in the river flow, two silhouettes kissed each other – so romantic… Perhaps, my head was also seen from below, against the starry sky, because Vitya cried out “bitch!” and flung his arm.

The pebble, invisible in the dark, hit me on the forehead, I shouted “Missed!” and rolled away from the edge. Of course, I lied for had it missed, it would not hurt that much.

When the romantic couple came back to the fire, Vitya asked me, “Do you know what ‘fingertips’ are?”

I said I did not and he told me to stand up and, when I did, he put his fist under my chin and chucked me flat to the ground. “That’s what the ‘fingertips’ are”, said he.

Lying prostrate next to the fire, I said, “Vitya, my friend Kuba is in the habit of saying ‘Don’t take offense when dealing with nuts’”. But I felt hurt all the same.

The women and the small Irochka slept in the car and all the rest inside the tent. In the morning, Uncle Tolik and I went to another place to fish but the catch was quite useless – not enough to feed a cat.

I didn’t see Vitya anymore because his and auntie Natasha’s wedding took place in the city of Sumy, and they stayed there for good….

In the middle of summer, in the middle of a week, and even in the middle of a working day, Uncle Tolik came suddenly home. “Fetch the fishing rods, quick!” yelled he, racing into the khutta.

Hastily cinching the tackle to the “Jawa” rack, he announced that there happened a breakage in the dam of the Kandeebynno fishery lakes and all the fish fled to the Yezooch river.

We rode across the city, shot over the bridge to Zagrebelya and only then Uncle Tolik slowed down, driving along the Yezooch in search of a vacant spot. And that was not an easy task. Along both riverbanks, the mixed crowd of boys, and youths, and grownup men were standing in almost uninterrupted line waving their fishing rods or poles towards and from the invigorated stream, jerking out empty hooks or flashing quiver of the catch.

It was a spontaneous all-out day off. It was the powerful, compelling, demonstration of angling forces of the Konotop city.

(…up till now, I am not quite certain if the breakout from the fishery lakes was in some weird way connected to the Mad Summer ‘68 in France or, after all, the revolutionary situation there was triggered off by the Kandeebynno events…

And lastly but also possibly, what if both developments had some third-party cause, not yet discovered but undeniably common…)

A few days later, Skully and I visited the Kandeebynno on foot. The fish lakes stretched like a vast field covered with the dingy crust of drying-up mud. Seldom spots of dark green algae were