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

(…it's a nice feel to hold a girl's hand in yours and pull her along thru the Brook tunnel of paired arms arched above the two of you, unless, of course, the hand you tow behind you is not moist with sweat otherwise, after you two become the concluding part to the tunnel, you’d have to wait until Vera Litviniva free you by pulling in her wake.

Vera’s flat nose is far from being lovely, still, her palms are always dry. She's a nice girl, in general, but Sasha Uniat from the tenth grade is after her in earnest. He's a good calm guy, yet you never can tell because at times even the calmest might turn jealous.

On the whole, it’s better not to look for trouble, especially since Vera’s lips are way too thin…)

In the large living-room of Lyouba's khutta on the floor in the fresh paint-coat of red, there stood a long table under a spiffy white tablecloth cluttered with all kinds of salads, pork jelly, sweetmeat, and lemonade.

When all participants to the celebration gathered, Tanya the Monitor handed the birthday girl the present bought for the collected rubles, Lyouba' parents put their coats on and went to some neighbors to let us have unrestrained fun.

The dudes began iterating to the wide veranda with the glazed lattice to sip on sly the hooch smuggled in by someone of them.

In a small bedroom next to the living room, a cozy disco was started up where the dimly lighted panel of the record player twirling the LP disk of instrumental numbers by The Singing Guitars served the only illumination for the whole room, if not to count the sliver of light that made its way from the corridor thru the gap between the curtains in the doorway pulled closely together.

From time to time, Lyouba' brother, a blockhead seventh-grader, thrust from the corridor his arm to click the switch on the wall behind a curtain and the bulb under the bedroom ceiling flashed up with dazzling crude light. The dancers would coil back from each other, their eyes in a tight squint, and yell at the darn moron, who’d laugh his stupid horse laughter and race back to the hooch sipping group in the veranda. And then the dude from the pair closest to the curtains would kill the light off again…

I did not go to the veranda but tarried at the table stowing away my favorite Olivier Salad. When I switched over to the lemonade, not so favorite as it used to be but still tasty, at the table, in fact, remained a company of two.

Tanya Krutas from the former parallel grade sat at the opposite side without eating or drinking anything because her arms were crossed on the chest beneath the mien of unconcealed displeasure in her countenance. I plucked up my courage, went around the table and stood next to her, saying, "Would you dance, please?"

She did not even look at me but, putting on an even more rejecting air, pursed her lips, rose and, with a slithering roll to her steps made for the disco bedroom.

They did not swap the partners there and, in the hissing intervals between the numbers, the pairs did not split and only waited for the start of the next one to wrap their arms around their partner, and press themselves back to the hugged torso… Tanya's thin waist slightly swaying in between my palms laid upon her hips made me feel drunk without any wine. My ears were filled with some pulsating rumble which did not tell though on the utmost alertness of my every muscle ready to immediately respond to the least movement of her hands resting on my shoulders. And I was not angry with the moron clicking the switch but, recoiling under the bright bulb, I gazed at her profile with the clear pale skin and the eye sternly staring down, I mutely adored the tiny bob of her hair stringed below the back of her head. Her breasts were sooner circles than hemispheres, but even that what was there plunged me into the ecstatic trance of Corybants.

(…frankly, I did not know so weird terms then and it is where Father would scoff again:

"Piled up a mess of arty-farty words a kinda fleasome by a scrawny cur. You, tops hopper!"…)

Yes, I was on top of bliss, it was incurable, inevitable, love forever… After school, I waited for her going home just to walk by her side to the gate of our khutta because most of the School 13 students scattered over the Settlement thru Nezhyn Street. And I even went to School 5 to support our girls when they lost in the Volleyball Championship of the city schools. She also was on the team.

Their loss almost did not disappoint me, I was too busy falling deeper and deeper in love with her high cheekbones. And I forgave her her slight bowleggedness which, after all, was a characteristic feature by Amazons, the fearless and beautiful she-warrior riders. But how devastatingly nice she looked in her white sportswear shirt!.

However, with all my constant and admired being there I never managed to dissolve the incomprehensible displeasure always present by her. At the breaks between classes, as soon as I bobbed up by her side, she beckoned to one or another of her girlfriends. She even changed her route of coming back home from school and bypassed Nezhyn Street thru May Day Street.

Thus, all I could do was to just wither off…The ruins forlorn of the love unaccepted got lost in the tall listless snowdrifts piled up by the winter storms to bury the ashes of fire killed tracelessly off…

~ ~ ~

Persistent snowfalls met the participants in the winter stage of the All-Union military-patriotic game 'Zarnitsa' arriving in Moscow, the capital of our Homeland. 6 among those participants were from Konotop, together with their skis and a middle-aged supervisor…

Confident of the rubber bands fixed by Father years ago, I threw my skis onto the