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

The realization of my non-American origin and whereabouts cut postal expenses for envelopes and registered letters. Sending such a letter was not big deal though, about 50 kopecks, the equivalent of 2 "Belomor-Canal" cigarette packs and 6 boxes of matches because the cost of living in the Soviet Union was fairly reasonable, and treatment of askew illusions, practically, free of charge…

~ ~ ~

In summer, you came to Konotop again, yet without any carriage already. Our team was working at the 50-apartment block near the Under-Overpass, and one of the riggers, Katerina it was, shouted from the ground that I had visitors. I went downstairs and to the sidewalk outside the gate.

You stood next to Eera who was wearing a red sarafan with white Mongolian patterns. I don't remember what you had on, but I do remember how lovely you were smiling… I carefully lowered my plastic helmet onto your straight fair hair, and its visor slid down to touch your nose but it failed to put out your happy smile… I remember that smile from under my helmet.

In a couple of minutes, you both went on down the sidewalk and I watched, and the riggers, Katerina and Vera Sharapova, they also watched from behind the gate, suddenly so silent and pensive, because such beauty was going away – a woman in red, hand in hand with a child of fair straight hair.

You had just turned 3 years old, and I decided that the best gift for you would be a familiar face among the strangers at 13 Decemberists. I went to Nezhyn and, despite my tongue-tied speaking manner, did manage to convince Tonya to let her son go with me to your birthday in Konotop, provided that my father-in-law would arrive the following day and take him back. Tonya was a really brave woman, she was not afraid of my reputation, drenched beyond any hope for restoration after Romny.

The local train was overcrowded and for about an hour we had to stand in the aisle, vacant seats appeared only about the station of Bakhmuch. But how happy you and Igor turned when I brought him to 13 Decemberists! A fountain of joyful squeals!.

The following week my vacation began and 4 of us—you, Eera, I and Lenochka—went to the Seim with a permit to the RepBase recreation camp procured by my parents for us. It was a wide grounds whose low plank fence enclosed a few large Pines and several wooden cabins with 4 beds in each and windows on all the sides, like a veranda. When we first went to the river beach, everyone there got just stupefied, they never saw a Greek goddess go, moreover with so snow-white a skin as Eera's.

Another day the 4 of us went hunting mushrooms in the forest plantation nearby the village of Khutor Taransky. Halfway there, we met a pair of horses, but I worried only about Eera, she always was afraid of those animals.

The forest planting was of young Pines lined up in parallel ranks. Long spider webs stretching across the passages between the lined trees made the plantation almost impassable, but there were suillus under the Pine needles layer on the ground. We were combing thru the corridors walled with the Pine trunks, forth and back. You grew thirsty and I asked Lenochka to take you to the camp—the path was wide and it was no more than just 300 meters—because I wanted Eera all too madly.

For a long time you did not want to go with your sister before, finally, you agreed, but a moment later your loud crying rang along the Pine corridor, and Lenochka explained that you did not listen to her at all, although there were no horses anymore.

In the evening, there was a thunderstorm and downpour, but you were not afraid and only laughed because I was lying on my bed and you were stomping on my stomach. Someone's joy might hurt someone else – at your 3 years you were a weighty kid, but Eera cried out to be patient with my own child. I endured a little more and then I hardly managed to persuade you that's enough, please.

It was a good summer…

On the day of your departure, you squared up with the clothesline tied from the wicket to the porch, which certainly was not the right place for it. You took a mop and started knocking it at the half-dried laundry hung over the rope. My mother yelled at you and darkened in the face, but you already were too big to lose your footing, and only the mop was snatched from your hands.

It was time to start for the streetcar terminal, Lenochka volunteered to take you there on the trunk of her bicycle. Eera agreed though I was against the idea. My misgivings increased when I noticed the glances exchanged by my mother and Lenochka. The most frightening about it was that they did not look at each other, but into the ground at each other's feet, while their averted eyes kept a mute dialogue:

"Sure?"

"Yes, do it!"

I do not invent, neither distort reality by wacky fantasies, which is proved by what followed the unspoken dialogue overheard by me with I don't know what.

You left, sitting on the trunk behind Lenochka. Yet, Eera and my mother were ping-ponging empty clues for one minute more, before we left going out into the street. With the bags in my hands, I hurried along leaving Eera behind.

There stayed about a hundred meters to the street corner, when I knew that I was right being so hasty because I heard your shrill scream. You stood by the fence and kept screaming. Lenochka, holding her bicycle, tried to persuade you not to cry, but you did not listen to her and just screamed on and on. The rusty iron pipe stuck up from under the ground in between you 2. The only iron pipe in the