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

on the form of the splash made by a stone hurled into the water. If the splash rose up like a stick, that was counted “a key”, while a wider, bush-like, splash went for “lock”. In controversy cases, the last word remained by the boy who played football better, or whose pebble did more leaps at “baking pancakes” over the water surface… Soon I began to go to the Rechka alone or with just one partner, yet on the river bank we parted because our main concern was fishing.

All the tackle consisted of a fishing pole—a cut-down willow whip—with a length of line tied to the thinner end. The line was threaded thru the float and ended with the hook, accompanied by a tiny lead sinker. The float could be made of a brownish wine cork, a match stuck into the same hole by side the threaded line fixed its length from the hook, or you could use a float bought from the Sports Goods store—a plucked and pared goose feather painted red-and-white with 2 tiny rubber rings to keep it fixed on the line—they both popped equally well on the rushing ripples of rapid current, or turned thoughtfully still in a small backwater pockets behind the bigger boulders…

Fishing is something personal. One boy pins his hopes on that quiet inlet, the other prefers to have his float hopping on the rapids. That’s why companions get parted on the river bank. Fishing is a rocket-fast surge of excitement at the slightest start of the float. Hush! Striking!. The line does not yield, it jibs, bends the pole end, cuts the water in zigzags, then suddenly gives up, jumps out and, in a fleeting arch over your head, carries to you the sparkling flutter of the caught fish! Then, of course, it turns to be not a fish but a small fry. Never mind! The next catch will be tha-a-at big!.

More often than anything else there was one of the “miserables” on the hook. I never learned their scientific name. Those fools got caught even on a bare hook, without any bait at all. And they could be hooked at any part of them—at the tail, or the belly, or an eye. Who would bother classifying such a moron minnow?

Back from fishing, I usually brought half-dozen of small fry sleeping in a milk-can, and Paulyna Zimin’s cat devoured them with greedy purr-and-snap from a saucer tap-tapping at the landing tiles….

That day I started fishing from the bridge between the Pumping Station and Checkpoint on the road out from the Zona. As usual, I walked after the current, refreshing the bait, adjusting the depth of the hook immersion. Being a steadfast fisherman, I only once allowed myself get distracted from bobs and jerks of the float in the current. It happened on the sandy spit nearby the green bush, where I carried out some restoration work mending the sand sculpture of a woman stretched on her back.

The masterpiece was created a couple of days before by 2 soldiers. You could guess at a glance that they were soldiers because of their black underpants and black high boots. Who else would wear such boots in summer?. So I increased the sagging breasts and slightly rounded the hips of the sculpture. They seemed wider than necessary but I did not correct it.

Why did I do it at all? Very clear, it’s not right to let the work of art disappear in the rest of the sand with all the soldiers’ labor gone to ashes…

(…or was I hooked by the opportunity to spank a female bust and thighs even if just made of sand?

Eew! To hell with Freud and other miserables from psychoanalytic schools!

Let’s go back fishing, it’s much more fun…)

…and I did not roll on top of her like one of the soldiers two days before, but just returned to fishing.

The current carried the float to the broken dam below the stadium, where ages ago I stumbled off the insidious slab. The point marked half of the Rechka having been passed already and after the other half it would run beyond the Zona, away from the barbed wire over 2 parallel rows of poles, breaking out thru the strip of loosened ground in between the wire-walls for catching the footprints of NATO spies. Half of the walk along the river was over and the three-liter milk-can contained just a couple of “miserables”. The neighbor’s cat would be disappointed.

When down the stream there loomed the second (and also last) bridge in the Zona, I decided not to go any farther but try my luck at the sharp bend of the current under the precipitous drop-off in the bank. And right there happened that after what folks go fishing at all. The float did not twitch or flinch but went under the surface deep and slowly. I pulled back and the vibrating pole in my hands responded with the strangely unyielding resistance. No fish jumped from the water wiggling in its flight over the air. I had to pull the tight line all the way closer and closer and finally drag it onto the dry land… The fish twisted and arched and beat the sand, scaring me by its might and size, never had I seen the like of that dark blue piece of alive thick hose.

I threw the “miserables” back to the river, filled the can with water, and lowered the pray into it but the fish had to stand there upright—its length did not allow for tumbling in the can. 2 boys came from the bridge, they had already finished fishing and were on their way home. They asked me about the catch and I showed them the fish. “Burbot!” without a sec of hesitation identified one of them.

When they left, I realized that I couldn’t catch anything better, that it was time to cut the line and go home… I walked ascending the Gorka and the glory ran before me—a couple of boys jogged