the most final
concluding work

When we moved to Konotop, my first and foremost responsibility became fetching water for our khutta. Daily supply averaged 50 liters. A pair of enamel pails full of water stood in the dark nook of the tiny veranda, on two stools next to the kerosene stove. From a nail in the plank wall above the pails, there hung a dipper for drinking or filling a cooking pan. But first, the pails were used to fill up the tank of the washstand in the kitchen that held exactly two pailfuls.

Mounted above the tin sink, the tank had a hinged lid and a tap jutting from its bottom. It was one of those spring-pin taps installed in the toilets of cars in a passenger train, so to make water run you pressed the pin from underneath. From the sink, the soapsuds dripped into the cabinet under it where stood the slop bucket which needed control checks to avoid brimming over and flooding the kitchen floor. The discharge was taken out and poured into the spill pit next to the outhouse in the garden.

The water came from the pump on the corner of Nezhyn and Gogol Streets, some forty meters from our wicket. The meter-tall pig-iron stub of a pump had the nose of the same material enclosing the waterpipe, you hung your pail over the nose and gave a big push-down to the iron handle behind the stub for the vigorous jet to bang into the pail, brim and go splashing over onto the road if not watched closely. 2 daily water-walks–4 pails, all in all–were enough for our khutta, if, of course, there was no washing that day, however, the water for Aunt Lyouda’s washing was fetched by Uncle Tolik…

When the rains set in, the water-walks became a little longer—you had to navigate bypassing the wide puddles in the road. In winter the pump got surrounded by a small, ripping slippery, skating rink of its own from thanks to the water spillage by the pump users, the smooth ice had to be walked in careful step-shuffles. The dark winter nights made you appreciate the perfect positioning of the log lamppost next to the pump…

And also on me was the fuel delivery for the kerogas that looked like a small gas stove of 2 burners and had 2 cups on its backside to fill them with kerosene that soaked, thru 2 thin tubes, 2 circular wicks of asbestos in the burners which were lit when cooking dinner, heating water for tea or imminent washing on the smelly yellow flames edged by jagged jerky tips of oily soot.

After kerosene, I went to Bazaar with a twenty-liter tin canister… Fairly aside from the Bazaar counters, stood the huge cubic tank of rusty sheet iron. The sale day was announced in the chalk note over the tank side – "kerosene will be …" and there followed the date when they were to bring it. However, so too many dates had changed each other—wiped and written over and over again—that no figures could be read within the thick chalk smudge, that’s why they just dropped writing and the tank side greeted you with the perpetually optimistic line, "kerosene will be …!”

A shallow brick-faced trench under the tank side accommodated the short length of pipe from its bottom ending with a tap blocked by a padlock. On the proclaimed day, a saleswoman in a blue satin smock descended into the trench and sat by the tap on a small stool ferried along. She also brought a multi-liter aluminum cauldron, and put it under the tap, took the padlock away and filled the vessel, up to three-quarters, with the foamy yellowish jet of kerosene.

The queue started moving to her with their bottles, canisters, and cans which she filled with a dipper thru a tin funnel, collecting the pay into her blue pocket. When the dipper began to dub the cauldron bottom, she turned the tap on to restore the fluid level.

In fact, they didn't need at all to bother about writing the sale date, because each morning Grandma Katya visited Bazaar and two days ahead brought the news when "kerosene will be …!" indeed. So, on the kerosene sale day after coming from school, I took the canister and went to spend a couple of hours in the line to the trench under the tank. Sometimes, they were also selling it in the Nezhyn Store backyard equipped with the same facility, but that happened not as often and the line was no shorter…

~ ~ ~

Soon after the summer vacations, I was elected Chairman of the Pioneer Platoon Council of our 7th "B" grade because the former Chairman (the red-haired skinny Yemets) moved to some other city together with her parents.

At the Pioneer Platoon meeting, two of the nominees announced self-withdrawal without giving any particular reasons for their refusal, and the Senior Pioneer Leader of our school pushed forward my candidature.

Following the trend, I also started sluggish excuses, which he rebuffed with energetic clarification that all that was not for long because we all were soon to become members of the Leninist Young Communist League, aka Komsomol.

Late September, Chairman of our School Pioneer Company fell ill and, in his stead, I was delegated to the City Pioneer Organization Account Meeting of the Chairmen of the Councils of City School Pioneer Companies. The Meeting was held at the Konotop House of Pioneers in a pleasantly secluded location behind the Monument to Fallen Heroes on the rise above Lenin Street.

By the organization regulations, an Account Meeting should elect its Chairman and Secretary. The Meeting Chairman’s job consisted of announcements whose turn it was to account while Secretary would take notes of how much waste paper and scrap metal was collected by the pioneers of the reporting Chairman’s school during the specified period, which cultural events were organized, and what places were taken by their pioneers in the city-wide contests and competitions.

The Senior Pioneer Leader of our school had supplied me with a sheet of paper to be read at the Account Meeting but, in the House of Pioneers, they charged me with the additional responsibility of the appointed Chairman of the Meeting. I was assured that presiding an Account Meeting was as easy as pie. All you had to do was to declare, “And now the floor for the account report is given to Chairman of the Pioneer Company Council from School number such-and-such!” after which the such-and-such Chairman would march to the rostrum on stage with their sheet of report. The paper read up, the accounting Chairman leaves the sheet to Secretary of the Meeting, because what’s the point in sticking all those figures down on the fly if they are written already, right?.

At first, everything went without a hitch. I and Secretary of Account Meeting, a girl in her ceremonial white shirt and the scarlet pioneer necktie, as anyone else around, were sitting next to each other behind the small desk under a dark red cloth on a small stage in a small hall, where Chairmen of the City Pioneer Companies were seated in rows waiting for their turn to read their accounts. Back in the last row, Second Secretary of the City Komsomol Committee—responsible for the work with the pioneers—sat in her red pioneer necktie.

The Chairmen in a well-oiled manner followed each other, read from their sheets, piled them by Secretary of Account Meeting, and returned to the audience. I also did my part as instructed but after the fourth announcement, something suddenly came over me or rather flooded over me. My mouth got full of overflowing saliva, I barely had time to gulp it before the salivary glands fountained out a new excessive portion to fill me with shame before Secretary of Account Meeting seated near me who had to surely be perplexed by my obvious hurried gulping. A spell of ease came when she went to account for School 10, yet, with her return, the disgraceful torture went on. What’s wrong with me, after all?!.

Then came my turn. Walking back those 4 steps from the rostrum, I swallowed 3 times, which did not help though. Okay, let School 14 finish and…Oh, no! Second Secretary too, with her concluding speech!.