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

The big sofa somehow didn’t seem appropriate for reading such an adult book, so I took it to the kitchen and spread open on the oil-clothed tabletop. The very first page, full of footnotes informing who was who in France of the XVII century, felt like pretty complicated stuff for reading. But it gradually got in the groove and by the scene of D’Artangan’s saying goodbye to his parents, I already figured out by myself the meaning of the abbreviated words “Mr.” and “Mrs.”, which were absolutely absent from The Pioneer Pravda…

Later that winter, Mom decided that I needed to get my squint corrected because it was not right to leave it as it was. Before she said so, I had never suspected I had anything of the sort.

She took me to the oculist at the Detachment’s Hospital, and he peeked into my eyes thru the narrow hole in the dazzling mirror circle that he wore raised to his white cap when not used. Then the nurse dropped some chilly drops into my eyes and told me to come next time alone because I was a big boy already and had just learned the way to their office.

Going home after the next visit, I suddenly lost the sharpness of vision—the light of bulbs on lampposts along the empty winter road turned into blurred yellow splotches and at home, when I opened a book, all the lines on the page were just unreadable dimmed strings. I got scared but Mom said it was okay only I had to wear glasses, so for a couple of following years I used some plastic-rimmed gear.

(…my eyes were straightened and made keep parallel when looking, however, the eyesight in the left one stayed unfocused. At checks by oculists, I cannot see their pointer or finger touching the check chart. Yet, as it turned out, you can live your life with just one working eye.

The squint was got rid of but ever since the expression in my eyes doesn’t match, which is easily noticeable in a photo when screening them in turn—the inquiring curiosity in the right eye gives way to a lifeless indifference of the left one.

At times I notice that same discrepancy in close-ups of some movie actors and I think to myself if they have also been treated for a squint, or possibly we all are being spied on by some unknown aliens thru our sinister eyes…)

~ ~ ~

And again came the summer but no volleyball was played anymore. In the volleyball grounds at the foot of the Bugorok-Knoll, they cemented two big squares for playing the game of gorodki. And they even organized a championship there. For two days the tin-clad wooden bats clapped and whipped against the concrete, sweeping the wooden pins of gorodki out the squares towards the barrier of the Bugorok-Knoll bluff side.

As usual, the news reached the big sofa with a snail delay, yet I still was in time for watching the final single combat of the two masters who could, even from the remote position, knock out the most complicated figure in gorodki—”the letter”—with just 3 throws of their bats and didn’t spend more than 1 bat at such figures as “the cannon” or “Anna-girl-at-the-window”.

The tournament was over, leaving behind the concrete squares where we, children, continued the game with fragments of the tin-cuffed bats and chips of the split gorodki pins. And even when the leftovers wore out of existence and the concrete squares got lost in the tall grass, the level grounds by the Bugorok-Knoll remained our favorite meeting place. If going out to the Courtyard you could see no one to play with, the next move was going over to the Bugork-Knoll to find your playmates there…

Besides playing games, we educated each other in the main things to know about the wide world around us. Like, after a nasty fall apply the underbelly of Cart Track to the bleeding scratch on your knee or elbow. And the stalks of Soldier-grass with tiny scale-like leaves were edible, as well as the sorrel but not the “horse sorrel”, of course. Or, say, those long-leaved swamp weeds were also edible when you peeled the green leaves off and got to the white core. Here you are! Just chew, you’ll see yourself!

We learned how to see flint from other stones and which of the rest to use for striking against the flint to send forth a trickle of pale sparks. Yes, the hard and smooth flint and the murky yellowish stone give out profuse sparks leaving some strange—both foul and fetching—smell of seared chicken skin.

Thus, in games and chat, we learned the world and ourselves…

“Are you in for Hide-and-seek?”

“No go. Two are too few for it.”

“There are two more. Coming back from the swamp in a minute.”

“Went to the swamp? What for?”

“Wanking.”

Soon the promised two came from the swamp, chortling between them, each one clutching a whisker of grass in his grab. I couldn’t guess the purpose of the grass bunches, neither had I any clear idea what “wanking” was about. Though from the grunts by which boys usually accompanied the word, I saw that it was something bad and wrong.

(…all my life I have been a champion for righteousness. Everything should be as right as rain. Seeing something which is not right just puts my back up. If, say, a grown-up shoat with brazen squeals sucks on a cow’s udder, I’m tempted to disperse them.

And take a look at that cow too! So resigned and obedient! As if she doesn’t know that milk is for calves and people only…)

That’s why I stood akimbo and met the comers with the reprimand in question form: “So what? Enjoyed your wanking?”

And then I learned that the righteousness supporters sometimes would better keep mum. Besides, it’s a crying shame that I could so easily be stretched on the ground at an unexpected brush….

Football was played in the grassy field between the