the most final
concluding work

The second lying-in of Galina Ogoltsova occurred again outside the new “box”, in the nearest, not secret district center.

On arrival to the maternity hospital out there, she was denied admittance because they took her for a Gypsy on account of her black hair and the dressing gown of large printed flowers. Suspiciously flashy, too red. Yet escorting her her husband emphatically condemned so erroneous assumption, his zealous attestation brought about change in the attitude of the segregationist nurses and they let her in for the labors at hand. An hour and a half later my father was told that his wife had born a girl, and five minutes later they heralded arrival of a boy baby. The news triggered a blissful yell by our father, “Switch off the lamp in the deliv'ry room! It’s to the light them babies scramble!.”

~ ~ ~

History, be it of a private person, or a developed nation, boils down to just two parts of which the first comes history immemorial, presented in loose legends, hazy myths, and dubious traditions; the latter, on the contrary, embraces stark facts caught, tagged, logged, and anchored to a certain calendar, preserved in the public chronicles of some kind, or in the personal memory, in case of a separate individual…

All the children of my parents were fascinated when Mom and Dad got into the mood for sharing the family lore about the deeds and adventures of the eager listeners at the times beyond their infant memories.

About how the first-born started toddling, for example, at the railway station on departure from the Carpathians to the Valdai. At the following train stops my father took me out onto the station platforms to consolidate my skills in feeble walking because the wobbly floor of the rolling car did not favor such hoopla…

At the new place, the family was allocated a timber house where they let me go for independent walks in the yard bounded by a fence of slender planks. My mother was greatly perplexed at my looks, mired as a piglet, on my returns from the yard. Where could I possibly find any dirt in so tiny and orderly corral? Changing me into clean once again, she asked my father to crack the enigma. So what he sees keeping the door open for a tiny crack to peek after the mud-lover? No idle roaming nor hesitation, the kid at once takes a beeline route to the fence plank in the corner fixed by just one—upper—nail, pushes the deal aside and off he goes! In the street, the boy busily scrambles atop the hillock of sand dumped for the construction of another house. Up there he plops on his tummy and slides down the sand slant drenched by the recent rains. A merry-go-happy laughter joins the ride. Could you manage washing things for that cheeky villain?.

While my mother was changing me over again, my father took a hammer, stepped out and nailed the dangling plank in place. Then he came back and together with my mother watched: now what?

The kid walked to the usual place and pushed the plank. It didn’t stir. Neither did the planks on both sides from it. The railed in child went along the fence, twice, checking each of the planks then he stood still and burst into tears…. My memory retained neither timber house nor its yard, but at this point in the parents’ narration, I felt the emphatic tears welling up in my eyes. Oboy, poor captive!.

And from another legend, the paw of horror ran up my bristled hair before to pierce the back of my neck by the grasp of its point-sharp talons because my mother grew suddenly anxious that I was nowhere around and for quite a stretch too, so she sent my father to look for me. He went into the yard then in the street—not a sight of me anywhere and no neighbor had seen me at all but it was getting dark already.

Dad walked the street again, from one end to the other, and then he paid attention to the rumbling noise of the river. He hurried to the steep, almost vertical, slope under which the river, swollen after the rains, rolled angrily on. And there, far down, he made out his son. Run, Daddy, run!.

The torrent of muddy water had engulfed the narrow strip of the bank under the cliff-like drop-off. He had to race knee-deep in the water.

The boy in a tight clench to the wall of clay, a tuft of withered grass in his pinch, his feet under the rushing torrent. He does not even cry already and only whimpers, “uhu-uhu..”

Dad wrapped him in his jacket and hardly managed to find a spot he could climb out without helping himself with his both hands…

And how proudly fluttered the wings of my nose at the story that it was me christened my brother and sister!

Since I was named after my father’s brother, the names of my mother’s siblings were readied for the twins that came next. In the maternity hospital, they were addressed just so—Vadik and Lyoudochka. However, when the babies were brought home and the parents asked me what we would call them, my immediate response was, “Sassa-’n’-Tattassa.” And no fast-talk could convince me to change my mind.

That’s how my brother became Alexander and my sister was called Natalia.

^~~^~~^~