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

Later, when wandering in the forest, I never missed to check the shed, but nobody was there, and a big padlock hung on its door. The autumn came, a stack of hay appeared next to the shed, and a team of chicken migrated to it thru the square hen-way, sawed out in the bottom of the door. The Headquarters were obviously canceled…

~ ~ ~

Dad had a hair cutting machine— a nickel-plated critter with two horns or, rather, they were two slender handles. Dad grabbed them both by one hand and put the machine in motion by squeezing and loosening his grip on the handles.

On the haircut day, my brother and I were seated, in turn, in the middle of the kitchen on a stool placed upon a chair, so that we would sit higher and Dad wouldn’t have to stoop down to us.

Mom tightly wound a white bedsheet around the neck of her son—whose turn it was—and fixed it with a clothespin. Then she held a large square mirror in front of the brothers, in turn, while sharing her advice to Dad, who waved her words off with only his nose because his right hand was grabbing the machine while his left hand held the customer’s head and steered it from side to side, from down to back. And even his jaw was busily moving from side to side repeating the movements of the machine’s cutting part.

At times the machine did not cut the hair but pulled at it and that hurt. When that happened, Dad gave out an angry snort and vigorously blew into the machine's underbelly before going on with his work.

Once, the blowing didn’t restrain the critter, it still pulled at the hair and Sasha started to cry. Since that day, we visited the hairdresser salon not only before school was starting after the vacations, but whenever Mom decided that we already got too shaggy….

Photography Dad learned himself from a thick book. His FED-2 camera was fixed inside its brown leather case with a narrow shoulder strap, also of leather. For shooting, you had to unbutton the case from behind, drop the case’s pug-nosed face to dangle under the camera, take pictures and buckle it back.

Unscrewing and taking the camera out of the case was done after its counter indicated 36 clicks which meant there remained no space for another frame and it’s time to replace the film cassette.

The film from the used cassette should be rewound with proper precautions ensuring complete darkness, onto a loose spool in a small round cistern of black plastic with the tightly fitting lid, in which container the film was treated with the developer solution poured inside thru the light-proof hole in the spool’s knob which stuck out thru the lid.

After rotating the spool with the loosely wound film on it for five minutes, the solution was poured out of the cistern, the film washed with freshwater and then treated with rotation in the fixing solution followed by one more washing out. For drying, the film was pinned on a rope just like a usual laundry. But if before the final washing, the film got awkwardly exposed to the tiniest beam of light, it got spoiled and instead of frames, you’d have just a glittering black ribbon of a film, a throwaway.

When there collected several developed films, Dad arranged a photo lab in the bathroom. He covered the bath with two deal shields made for the purpose. They served as the desktop upon which he put the photo-projector with its downward-looking lens. In the photo lab, Dad used a special red lamp, because of photo paper’s exceeding sensitivity, and only the red light didn’t damage it.

The projector was also equipped with a movable light filter of red glass, right beneath the lens, so that light-sensitive photo paper would not become a throwaway while you’re adjusting the image sharpness with the lens.

All frames in the film were negative—black faces with white lips and eye sockets, and the hair whiter than snow. After adjusting the sharpness, the red filter was turned aside so that the crude light from the projector would pour thru the film frame onto the paper, while Dad counted down the seconds needed for exposure and then returned the filter back into its place.

Then the completely white sheet of photo paper was taken from under the projector and put into a small rectangular basin filled with the developer solution, which sat next to the red light lamp whose glowing couldn’t disperse black darkness in the room and only turned it into a sorcerer’s chamber. Under the dim light of the red lantern, commenced the magic in the plastic basin and, on a clean white sheet, there gradually appeared clothes, hair, facial features.

Yet, pictures should not stay in the developer for too long, or their paper would turn into black wet squares. The rightly developed pictures were taken out with the pincers, rinsed in freshwater, and placed in the next small basin with the fixer, otherwise, they would blacken all the same; then, after five to ten minutes, the ready pictures were transferred into a large enamel washing tub filled with water.

When the printing was over, Dad turned on the light in the bathroom, the charmer’s chamber disappeared, giving way to a small workshop. Dad took the wet pictures from the basin, put them face down on Plexiglas sheets and ran rubber roller over their backs so that they stuck well.

Those glasses he leaned against the wall in the parents’ room, and the following day the dried-up photos fell off the glass to strew the floor, like the leaves from the trees in autumn only white-backed, smooth, and glossy.

…here am I with round eyes and the neck bandaged because of a sore throat …

…brother Sasha looking so credulously into the camera …

…Mom alone, or with her friends, or with the neighbors …

…and that is