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

still peeping here and there. In one of such spots, there occurred a shallow, yet lengthy pit full of live fish. We were picking them out with bare hands; not very large fish though, about twenty centimeters or so. Skully did not miss bringing a mesh-bag by him, but I had to take off my tank top and tie its tail into a knot to make a sack for the catch.

At home, they fried the fish which was enough for both families and even Zhoolka had his share. Aunt Lyouda teased Uncle Tolik that he had never ever brought such a catch from his fishing tours…

~ ~ ~

Summer’s the rightest time for overhaul and reconstruction works. Father cut a hole in the dead wall of the kerogas section on the veranda and inserted a hinged glazed frame. The daylight came to the section and made it more comfortable canceling the need to switch the bulb every time when dropping in to have some water.

Then came the kitchen’s turn. One Sunday, everything was taken out of it into the yard, except for the too heavy refrigerator by the door. On the same day, Mother and Aunt Lyouda whitewashed all the walls, ceiling and the brick stove. They worked until finished and it was too late for bringing things in, they just washed the floor in the kitchen and everyone had to spend the night in our room.

Natasha gave up her folding bed to Irochka and Valerik, returning to her old place across the end of the folding couch-bed shared by us, her brothers. The spring mattress from the bed of the Arkhipenkos parents was put in the center of the room and there practically remained no place – you had to watch where to squeeze your step.

Sasha and I had also to go to bed, not bending as of yet our legs up to make room for our sister because Aunt Lyouda decided to take a dip in the kitchen while everyone else was watching TV.

From the things left out in the yard, she brought the mirror in the old wooden frame and returned it to its legitimate place on the wall above the fridge. Then she poured hot water into a big tin basin for washing and pulled together the striped curtains hanging in the doorway between the kitchen and the room. The light in the room was switched off so as to better see the TV screen, and the volume decreased but I still grumbled that I could not sleep with the sound on. The response, as always, was both disinterested and practical, “You don’t have to be listening. Pull the blanket over your head and sleep.”

Aunt Lyouda was splashing in the kitchen, then she called Uncle Tolik to rub her back. When he returned and sat, as before, upon the folding-bed filled with his children, I noticed a narrow gap left between the curtains with a glimpse of the mirror above the refrigerator containing a distanced reflection of the floorboards, half of the tin basin, and the back of Aunt Lyouda in it. And then I did what I had been told to, and pulled the blanket over my head, yet the good advice was followed no further. Instead of sleeping, I placed the blanket on the wooden armrest of the folding couch-bed and wrinkled it up into a rigid standing ripple so as to watch from under it the sight in the faraway mirror on the opposite wall of the kitchen.

Actually, there was not much to watch – suds splotches in the wet floorboards and a slightly moving shoulder blade with the wet lock of black hair stuck to it. Then there remained only the floor and the empty half-basin left by Aunt Lyouda.

Yet, very soon she appeared again in the mirror frame—much closer and clearer—because she’d come up to it with a towel wrapped about her waist below the naked tits. She smiled a little cunning smile, licked her lips and looked straight into my eyes all the way thru my blanket periscope. I shut the eyes firmly and didn’t open them anymore, while she was wiping the floor in the kitchen and coming over to the room…

Then everyone got to their beds, the TV and light were turned off. Only then I, at last, removed the hot blanket from over my head. The room was pitch dark. Soon after, various snuffling from all the sides mixed with the darkness, and from the spot where the Arkhipenkos’ spring mattress was placed on the floor, there came some cautiously low crunch as if a bale of straw was getting squeezed then let go in slow rhythmic repetition.

I did not turn my head. Firstly, what the use amid such darkness? And then, after the tons of books read by me, I could tell even not seeing that they were making love down there…

Six months later, on a dark winter evening when I and Skully went to take a shower in the Plant, he called me to watch thru the windows of the female section in Plant Bath House shedding a warm yellow light on the snowdrifts in bluish darkness. I did not follow. Was I shy to do it in his presence? I don’t know. But even when going alone for a shower, I never watched thru those windows…

And that same summer Raissa asked us to tour, for the old good times' sake, the city kindergartens with a puppet show. In less than a week we gave ten performances. In the morning, we came to a kindergarten indicated by her the day before, installed in their dining room the screen brought by a Plant truck, hung the backdrop, set up tripods with the hut and a forest tree, performed the show before the much-respected toddler public, and moved to the next kindergarten – the scenery on the same truck, and the actors by a streetcar.

Kuba grumbled that we were slaving at the conveyor belt for just a “thank