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

Settlement. Only our Zhoolka hardly ever took part in their concerts, having grown too old and lazy. And—just a thought—what if you put together all the dog barking, adding even that beyond your hearing, eh? I mean, now the Settlement dogs had calmed down for a stretch, yet the dogs in Podlipnoye kicked up a fit of barking rising and flowing on the night air and so on and on, over into the next regions, countries, and continents. It turns out then that, as a whole, dog barking would, probably, never subside on the Earth, right?. And that’s what they call the Planet of Humans!.

The best time for turning the receiver on was past midnight. Firstly, it’s when they broadcast “The Concert After Midnight” in which there was not only aria's by Georg Ots but Din Reed's hits too. The concert was followed by another one – “For Those in the Sea”—from 1 till 2 o’clock—meant for the sailors of merchant ships and fishing trawlers. That’s when they put real rock’n’roll on air. This was understandable though because round the clock transmission of Russian songs sung by Lyoudmilla Zykina and Josef Kobson were not enough to make happy the sailors who had seen the life overseas. And from about 4 till almost 6, there was jazz. Just two-three musicians: a piano, a double bass, and a drummer, but what music they made! “And now listen to the number called ‘The Spring Mood’, please…”, and there followed such a number – wow! Best of the best… Well, and 6 o’clock was signaled by the anthem of the Soviet Union after which the everyday “Mayak The All-Union Radio Station” poured out its everyday hurdy-gurdy till next midnight…

Once I did not sleep all night long, because at dawn I had to raid the outskirts by the Swamp foraging for our 2 rabbits and bring as much hay as my bike could carry from those stacks along the Grove edge. The rabbits were given by Skully, who kept a lot of them in 4 or 5 cages, and Father told me to procure food for the presented pair.

And, after the raid, I thought that the day had already begun, and why not to find out for how long I could go without sleep and somewhere around noon, when I was playing chess with Sehryoga Chun on the porch of their khutta, next to the water pump, I felt that the sounds of talking came to me as if from afar or, like thru some woolen wall, and that I couldn’t follow what exactly they were telling me. However, I still managed to somehow find my dacha…compartment up…sleeping bunk in…section the…

When I got up it was daylight around—already or still? I went to the kitchen in our khutta. The cuckoo clock on the wall wagged the pendulum and showed half-past five and in the tear-off calendar was the new day date. So, my sleep lasted longer than 24-hours?!.

Everyone laughed and said, “Phew! That’s a champion sleeper!” Then it turned out that it was Uncle Tolik’s prank to tear off an extra page in the calendar, while I was sleeping… I mean, them those rabbits also did not stay with us for long…

~ ~ ~

On that Sunday, I once again went to the Seim by bike, but already alone. The familiar road shot past much faster under the spokes carrying nothing but my weight because Sasha and Natasha were also coming to the Bay Beach by 2:10 local train, bringing a snack for me.

How could I know that after cycling and swimming the appetite breaks fiercely loose? By noon my stomach fell in, I ground my teeth and looked away from family groups sitting on their blankets around the delicacies they brought along. How long was it to wait yet? And I pricked up my ears when from different parts of the beach different receivers tuned to the one and only “Mayak The All-Union Radio Station” announced what exact time it would be after the sixth sounding of “peee!”

At last, 2:10 to Khutor Mikhaylovsky rumbled over the bridge across the Seim. Some 10 minutes later, the first groups of the arrived folks appeared from the distant Pine grove across the field. However, neither in the first wave of newly arrived nor in the following, my sister-'n'-brother never popped up. What the heck?!. Hadn’t we arranged that I would wait for them on the beach? Oh, I’d wolf a bull down, yes, I would, right away.

Then Sasha Plaksin, who lived in Gogol Street opposite the water pump, came up to me to say that Natasha told him to tell me that they would not come because we were going to the Uncle Vadya’s to celebrate his birthday and I had to come straight there.

“Was that all? Nothing else?”

“No.”

Well, that’s also right – why stuffing up your stomach before a birthday party? And I started back to Konotop with my stomach stuck to my backbone… The familiar road no longer seemed to be short. The pedals grew heavy and I did not sprint anymore but wearily turned them under the cheerless song of robbers in the “Morozko” movie, circling creakily in my mind:

" Oh! How hungry we are!.Oh! How awfully cold!.”

The forest was over, the path along the railway embankment also ended, and there still remained about half of the way ahead. Never before had I really realized the meaning of “I wanna eat!”.

When the big billboard “Welcome to Konotop!” appeared at the road bend, I felt that I could go no farther and turned into a grassy ditch stretching towards the nearby windbreak belt. And along the whole ditch, there was not a single blade of any edible grass, which ages ago we showed each other at the Object…nothing but sparysh and equally inedible dandelions…and those who-knows-whats, with uselessly dry shoots… I chewed the softer part pulled from inside the shoot. No, that’s not food…okay, just a little bit of rest in the ditch before the final leg