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

Martha couldn’t upbraid them while standing by her bed and whispering into the upper corner, I suddenly spoke up from my folding bed, “Tell you what, Grandma? God is a jerk!”

After a moment of complete silence, she erupted in threats of hell and its laborer devils and their pending job to make me lick a red-hot frying pan in future, yet I only laughed in response and, spurred by the reverent lull upon the sofa, showed no esteem for the awaiting tortures, “Whatever! Your God’s a jerk all the same!”

The following morning Grandma Martha did not talk to me. On my return from kindergarten, Natasha briefed me that in the morning, as Dad came home after his night shift, Grandma told him everything and wept in the kitchen and the parents were presently gone to a party at someone’s but I’d be let have it, and that’s for sure!

To all of my goody-goody attempts at starting a dialogue, Grandma Martha kept aloof and silent and soon left for the kitchen… A couple of hours sweating it, then the front door slammed, the parents’ voices sounded in the hallway. They moved to the kitchen where the talk became quicker and hotter. The door in our room prevented making out the subject of the heated discussion.

The voices' volume kept growing steadily on until the door flew open by Dad’s hand. “What? Scoffing at elders, eh? I’ll show you ‘a jerk’!” His hands yanked the narrow black belt from the waist of his pants. A black snake with the square chrome-flashing head flushed up above his head. His arm swayed and a never experienced pain scorched me. Once more. And more.

Wailing and wriggling, I rolled under Grandma’s bed to escape the belt. Dad grabbed the back of the bed and by one mighty jerk threw it over to the middle of the room. The mattress and all dropped down alongside the wall. I scrambled after the bed to shelter beneath the shield of its springy mesh. Dad was yanking the bed back and forth whipping on its both sides but I, with inexplicable speed, ran on all fours under the mesh jumping overhead, and mingled my howling and wailing, “Daddy! Dear! My! Don’t beat me! I won’t! Never again!” into his, “Snooty snot!”

Mom and Grandma came running from the kitchen. Mom screamed, “Kolya! Don’t!” and stretched out her arm to catch the hissing impact of the belt. Grandma also kvetched loudly, and they took Dad out of the room.

Crestfallen, with shallow whimpers, I rubbed the welts left by the belt looking away from the younger who huddled, in petrified silence, against the back of the big sofa…

~ ~ ~

In the Courtyard, we played Classlets.

First, you need a chalk to draw a big rectangular in the concrete walk and split it into five pairs of squares, like, a two-column table of 5 rows. Then get the bitka—a can from used shoe polish filled with sand whose enclosed mass conveys your bitka the required gravity, turns it a kinda tiny discus.

Now, standing out the bottom line of the first column, you throw your bitka into one of 10 classlet-squares and then go after it hopping on one leg (up the first column and down the second, 1 leap per square) to pick it up and proceed thru the rest of the table, also in one-legged hops, to leave the table of classlets by the final bound from the bottom classlet in the second column. A parabola-shaped mission trip is over.

(While going thru the table, take care your sandal never lands near any of the chalked lines or else the other players, closely watching your progress, would raise a hell of jeering shouts insisting that you stomped on it.)

Now, safely out of the Classlets table, you have the right to throw your bitka targeting the next square in the parabola and repeat your hopping trip to carry it out. After your bitka visited, in turn, all of the classlets, you mark one of them as your “house” and further on in the game you may feel in it at home—put your other foot down and relax. Yet, if your bitka missed the proper square or landed on a line, or if you touched a line when hopping, another player starts their tries and you become a watcher…

There were ball games as well. For instance, hitting a ball non-stop against the ground, you had to accompany each strike with a separate word, “I! – know! – five! – girls’! – names!” At each subsequent hit at the ball, you called out one of 5 random names, no repetitions allowed. Then followed 5 boy’s names, 5 flowers, 5 animals, etc., etc., until the ball bounced out of reach or the player got lost in their enumerations…

Another ball game was not as intellectual. You just hit the ball against the faded-pinkish-washed plaster on the house wall (closer to the corner, safely away from the window on the first floor). Guessing the landing spot of the re-bounced ball, you jumped over it with your legs wide apart before it hit the ground.

The player behind you caught the ball to throw it back against the wall—this time for them to jump for you to catch. There could be more players in the game though, so you had to wait for your turn in the line of jumpers. I was enchanted by the game’s infinity. It was like those endless pictures on the red side of Fire Extinguisher…

We played outside the Courtyard as well, across the ever-empty road surrounding the twin blocks.

Atop the tilt towards the Recruit Depot Barracks, a tall board-fencing enclosed large garbage containers for all of our Block. Next to the fence, there stretched a level area grown with green grass except for a lonely sagging pile of sand by the enclosure, probably, a leftover from the construction times and later used like any sand by any children in any sandbox. Apart from all those uses, we played a special sand game though,