the most final
concluding work

Unpredictable is the inception of friendship. You go home after school, and there Vitya Cherevko, your new classmate from the former parallel, also walks along Nezhyn Street.

"Oh! How come you're here?"

"Just goin' to Vladya's. He lives in Forge Street."

"Hmm. I'm with you."

Since that day I had two classmate-friends: Chuba, aka Vitya Cherevko, and Vladya, aka Volodya Sakoon…

Vladya hid his acned forehead under the long forelock of brown greasy hair that streamed down from the parting above his right ear. 2 or 3 half-ripe pimples on his cheeks were absolved by the beauty of his gorgeous large eyes sufficient to give heartburn to any cutie.

Chuba's black crispy hair had no parting, and his eyes were pale blue. He had a healthy blush in his cheeks and a finicky sprinkle of freckles over his neat nose.

For hanging out, we gathered on the porch way to Vladya's khutta where he lived with his mother, Galina Petrovna. In fact, it was half-of-khutta comprising a room and a kitchen. A box-table, an iron bed, and the brick stove filled the kitchen to the utmost, nothing else could ever be squeezed in, except for the hooks on the wall by the door to hang coats. In the equally narrow room there stood a wardrobe, a bit wider bed, a table with three chairs pushed under it (otherwise you couldn't pass by) and an up-stand shelf topped with a TV. Both the kitchen and the room had a window in ages long need of paint. The blind wall opposite the windows separated their home from the neighbors' half-khutta.

Galina Petrovna had the job of a nurse at the Plant Kindergarten concealed in the bush between the Plant Park and the road diving into the tunnel of the Under-Overpass. At times, she was paid visits by her cousin. She called him Pencil or Pencilletto, depending on her current mood which, in its turn, depended on whether or not the cousin popped up with a bottle of wine on him. The honorific ‘Pencil’ was saved for officially dry visitations. I wouldn’t hastily rule out his kinship because Vladya’s and his eyes had something common in their look. Vladya's two elder brothers, who looked different from each other, and from Vladya as well, were separately traveling about the Soviet Union in their chase after the long ruble…

Among the guys from both Forge and Smithy Streets Vladya enjoyed well-deserved popularity. And it was not merely for the fact that his two elder brothers had managed to gain proper respect and unquestionable recognition in the eyes of the entire Settlement before they launched on their ‘chase’, and even though certain gleam of their reputation touched Vladya, yet, apart from all that, he had merits of his own. He could drive a fool like no other guy in the neighborhood.

In the Settlement parlance "fool driver" was someone up to fool you by their jive for one or another private purpose, yet mostly for mirthful entertainment. The subjects for such recreational fool-driving could vary widely. Here, for instance, he drove a fool about blocks in Scotland throwing logs in competition, which he told on behalf one of those kilted sportsmen:

"Well, that guy did not get it that I had already made my throw and he caught it square on the pate. That’s when he kicked the bucket. What else would you do under such a predicament, eh?" And Vladya closed one eye while drowsily rolling the other one up under the still half-open eyelid.

Or he shared local news how Kolyan Pevriy, thoroughly well-oiled, took a lamppost for a passer-by. He bullied it for a starter, then went over to extorting a cigarette, but since the held-up lamppost neither talked nor showed proper respect, Kolyan began to kick the shit outta him in earnest…couldn't fell, though…

And one evening, our company on the porch was joined by a guitar borrowed from Vasya Markov, and Vladya sang the song about Count and his daughter Valentina, who fell in love with the page playing the violin so well. That's when and where I got into servile bondage and begged Vladya to teach me too. He replied that he also was learning from Quak to who I'd better turn directly, yet what the use when I did not have a guitar, and he couldn't give me the one he played because it was Vasya's who did not allow to farm it out or let be strummed by anyone except for Vladya…

If you dearly want something, the dream would come true in seconds, plus or minus a day or 2. There appeared a guitar! Vadik Glushchenko, handled Glushcha, from that same Forge Street, sold me his. And with no ripping off at the transaction, down the soundhole, you could read in the sticker inside: "7 rubles 50 kopecks. The Leningrad Factory of Musical Instruments."

The needed sum was almost immediately procured by Mother. True enough, the plastic handle on the third-string peghead was missing, but later Father took off the tuning machine, smuggled it to his work and welded a neat iron rivet in place of the lost one.

Quak gave me a crumpled sheet from a copybook with the invaluable, exhaustive, list and tablature of all the guitar chords in existence: "the small starlet", "the big starlet", "the poker", and "the barre". Just a little more and I would start singing about the Count’s beloved daughter!. But no, I was not allowed that tiny stretch of time. Vladya's brother, Yura, on his way from Syktywkar to Zabaykalsk (or maybe vice versa), brought him a brand new six-string guitar, and I again remained hopelessly behind because on the six-stringed, aka Spanish, guitar there were neither "pokers" nor "starlets". And so I had to cut notches in the nut of my guitar for the six-stringed layout instead of the seven-stringed, aka Russian, one.

Mid-October, the weather was still soft and Galina Petrovna arranged Vladya's birthday party in their khutta’s yard for her son to invite and entertain his classmates in the open air.

The table from the room was taken out into the front garden strip and, with the protective oilcloth stripped off, it turned to be a varnished sliding table long enough to span the stretch between the khutta and the wooden shed with latticed, veranda-like, panes, which in summertime served both a kitchenette and a bedroom.

It was at that celebration table that for the first time in my life I drank wine. What a stunner feeling! The world around got wrapped within the thinnest lacework of translucent—like dragonfly wings—pattern of floral petals passed thru with sheer tiny veins… Beautiful friends sat around me—the best of the best in the worlds—we were engaged in the wittiest conversation and Vladya's mother’s laughter ringed so melodiously while the soft shadow beneath the bush of red currant grew darker, blurrier, and deeper…

With the onset of winter, another of my classmates, Lyouba Serduke, also had a birthday, and those who handed in two rubles to our Class Monitor, Tanya Krasnozhon, came to the khutta of the birthday girl.

Until then, all kinds of bigger parties were arranged exclusively at school, under the supervision of Class Mistress, Albina Grigoryevna. We gathered there in the evening, drank lemonade brought to the classroom by a couple of mothers, then they left and all the desks were moved into one corner to make room for playing Brook, and the guys from higher grades opened the door and peeped in, but Albina would drive them away with her pedagogic yells.

In the large living-room of Lyouba's khutta on the floor in the fresh paint-coat of red, there stood a long table under a spiffy white tablecloth cluttered with all kinds of salads, pork jelly, sweetmeat, and lemonade.

When all participants to the celebration gathered, Tanya the Monitor handed the birthday girl the present bought for the collected rubles, Lyouba' parents put their coats on and went to some neighbors to let us have unrestrained fun.

The dudes began iterating to the wide veranda with the glazed lattice to sip on sly the hooch smuggled in by someone of them.

In a small bedroom next to the living room, a cozy disco was started up where the dimly lighted panel of the record player twirling the LP disk of instrumental numbers by The Singing Guitars served the only illumination for the whole room, if not to count the sliver of light that made its way from the corridor thru the gap between the curtains in the doorway pulled closely together.

From time to time, Lyouba' brother, a blockhead seventh-grader, thrust from the corridor his arm to click the switch on the wall behind a curtain and the bulb under the bedroom ceiling flashed up with dazzling crude light. The dancers would coil back from each other, their eyes in a tight squint, and yell at the darn moron, who’d laugh his stupid horse laughter and race back to the hooch sipping group in the veranda. And then the dude from the pair closest to the curtains would kill the light off again…

I did not go to the veranda but tarried at the table stowing away my favorite Olivier Salad. When I switched over to the lemonade, not so favorite as it used to be but still tasty, at the table, in fact, remained a company of two.

Tanya Krutas from the former parallel grade sat at the opposite side without eating or drinking anything because her arms were crossed on the chest beneath the mien of unconcealed displeasure in her countenance. I plucked up my courage, went around the table and stood next to her, saying, "Would you dance, please?"

She did not even look at me but, putting on an even more rejecting air, pursed her lips, rose and, with a slithering roll to her steps made for the disco bedroom.

They did not swap the partners there and, in the hissing intervals between the numbers, the pairs did not split and only waited for the start of the next one to wrap their arms around their partner, and press themselves back to the hugged torso… Tanya's thin waist slightly swaying in between my palms laid upon her hips made me feel drunk without any wine. My ears were filled with some pulsating rumble which did not tell though on the utmost alertness of my every muscle ready to immediately respond to the least movement of her hands resting on my shoulders. And I was not angry with the moron clicking the switch but, recoiling under the bright bulb, I gazed at her profile with the clear pale skin and the eye sternly staring down, I mutely adored the tiny bob of her hair stringed below the back of her head. Her breasts were sooner circles than hemispheres, but even that what was there plunged me into the ecstatic trance of Corybants.

Yes, I was on top of bliss, it was incurable, inevitable, love forever… After school, I waited for her going home just to walk by her side to the gate of our khutta because most of the School 13 students scattered over the Settlement thru Nezhyn Street. And I even went to School 5 to support our girls when they lost in the Volleyball Championship of the city schools. She also was on the team.

Their loss almost did not disappoint me, I was too busy falling deeper and deeper in love with her high cheekbones. And I forgave her her slight bowleggedness which, after all, was a characteristic feature by Amazons, the fearless and beautiful she-warrior riders. But how devastatingly nice she looked in her white sportswear shirt!.

However, with all my constant and admired being there I never managed to dissolve the incomprehensible displeasure always present by her. At the breaks between classes, as soon as I bobbed up by her side, she beckoned to one or another of her girlfriends. She even changed her route of coming back home from school and bypassed Nezhyn Street thru May Day Street.

Thus, all I could do was to just wither off…The ruins forlorn of the love unaccepted got lost in the tall listless snowdrifts piled up by the winter storms to bury the ashes of fire killed tracelessly off…

~ ~ ~