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

by side on the bedspread amid the silent heat. Mute and motionless hung the long leaves of the pliant young Willows around the oval glade, and we 2 as silent as them and the soundless sand, and the sun stilled in crouching over us from the sky.

My eyes firmly shut because I did not have sunglasses, but the sun, all the same, seeped in thru the blood-red fog of my dropped eyelids to turn into a black headache.

"A headache," heard I my voice, barely audible.

The red mist darkens, and I feel inexpressible delight from her palm put over my eyelids. Without opening my eyes, I find her wrist and silently pull her palm sliding over to my lips. I am so grateful to that tender soft palm that has driven away my pain and brought the inexpressible bliss. There is nothing better in the whole world.

But when she leaned on her elbow and hovered her face over mine and merged her lips with my lips, I found out that there still was something better, only that it had no name… 'Kiss'?. When you melt and dissolve in the font of the meeting lips, and you drown in their immensity but at the same time you soar… all that and a whole ocean of completely indescribable feelings… Just one syllable of four letters to pack up all that expanse wider than the limits of the world? Well, well… Anyway, the syllable was fairly employed by us that summer day.

And when we were already going to the huts for a skiff ride not to miss the local train, I stopped her amid the Willow trees to kiss once again. The parting kiss, we couldn't go on kissing farther than that. She answered the kiss with her tired lips and then, looking aside, said with a strange sadness, "Silly boy, you'll get cloyed with it."

I did not believe her…

(…a certain German smartie, by the name of Bismarck, once flashed with another of his witticisms, "Only fools learn from their personal experience, I prefer to use the experience of others for the purpose."

“I did not believe her…” But even from my personal experience, I should have learned that my sister Natasha, being younger than me for 2 years, surpassed my knowledge span and proved that repeatedly.

Yes, I'm anything but Bismarck with my distrust to others. A pinch of consolation though provides the fact that I am not a fool from his definition since I never get wiser even from my own experience.

What category then should I shove myself under?

Okay, let's not get distracted, the question is off the current topic…)

The cucumbers cloyed for good. Just out of habit and because of having nothing better to do, I would take one from the boxes, give it a couple reluctant bites, and hurl into the nearest thicket of tall grass in the grounds of the Vegetable Base.

To put it short, I also left the race and went to the ORS Office to quit and get the money I earned in that month and a half. For the first time in life, I held the sum of 50 rubles in my hands.

Was that enough for a scooter? Who should know? A talk with Mother turned those questions unnecessary:

"Sehryozha, school is starting. You need clothes. Shoes are needed both for you and your brother and sister. You know as well as I do how we're scratching along."

"Yes! I have clothes! And I told you why I was going to the Base."

"Those pants that I have painted two times? Is that your clothes? At your age, it's a shame to go about like that."

Mustang of my Dreams! Farewell! We won't rush along Peace Avenue, you and me, overtaking all those "Rigas" and "Desnas"…

No ready-made pants were bought for me. Instead, following Mother's instructions, I went to the sewing workshop near the Bus Station. The seamstress with a long pointed nose measured me and sewed trousers of dark gray broadcloth, synthetic Lavsan. A wide belt of two buttons. Wide-bottomed. Fifteen rubles.

Very soon the trousers came in handy, after Vladya brought the news that in the Central Park of Recreation they're fixin' to hold the Youth Song Contest. Those wishing to participate had to apply at the City Komsomol Committee. Yet, no one had the slightest chance because Arthur would take part in the Contest.

Arthur was a soldier Armenian from the construction battalion next to the RepBase, and Vladya was his fan. Being a right-handed guitarist, Arthur played it like a god in Vladya's estimation. He did not replace the strings, but just turned a common guitar the opposite way, with the bass strings going below and the thin ones up, and played it! In addition to that miraculous trick, Arthur also sang, no wonder Vladya idolized him and had no doubt that Arthur would win the contest. But we decided to participate, all the same. Together…Vladya and me.

As the Head of the Komsomol organization at School 13 and therefore familiar with the doors of offices in the City Komsomol Committee, I had to go there and apply for the contest as well as to know the exact time and location of the planned event. It turned out there remained just two days before the contest taking place at the Central Park dance-floor. We had no time to lose and started rehearsals…

Club Movie Projectionist, Boris Konstantinovich, switched on the light in the auditorium as well as two microphones on the stage. One of them we inserted into Vladya's guitar thru the soundhole and from the powerful loudspeakers installed on both sides of the stage, there roared such a cool sound that Boris Konstantinovich could not stand it and left. In his place, full of bubbling excitement, Glushcha scuttled in from Professions Street, where bypassing Club he got stopped in his tracks by the bewitching hubbub of that strident mayhem.

We decided to perform two numbers. First, the bass guitar part to "Chocolate Cream" from the LP disc of Polish rock-group The Chervony