the most final
concluding work

Eleonora Nikolayevna, the nominal Head of Children Sector, went along with us, as the official head of our Youth Ensemble, in one of her blouses of starched immaculateness and a cameo brooch under the collar. The long earring, no doubt, dangled in place…

We went to Sumy by the morning diesel train. While waiting for it, I was strangely struck by the sight of our three guitars leaning onto each other, like a stack of rifles on the snow-clad Platform 1. Some piercing nudity…

The Regional Palace of Culture buzzed like a beehive, crammed up with young talents who arrived to show themselves in the Review. We were auditioned in a separate room by a couple of people with block-notes and they tick-marked us for participation in the gala concert at five in the afternoon. All the neighboring rooms were also filled with auditions and rehearsals in full swing. In one of them for the first time in my life, I heard and was stopped in my tracks by the mesmerizing caterwauling of a live electric guitar. Wow! The whole room drowned in the swaying vibrato sounds…

We went out for a midday meal in a nearby canteen, where I fell under the spell of Sveta Vasilenko, one of the chorus girls from School 12. Coming back to the Regional Palace of Culture, I walked by her vacant side like a dog on the lead because her other side was escorted by her lanky girlfriend holding her by the arm. My schoolmates, following closely behind, kicked up a hailstorm of stupid giggling and heying addressed to no one in particular, which did not sober me in the least.

During the final rehearsal, Sveta won me over to the hilt. From the compact line of young chorines in white blouses and strict black skirts, she kept casting at me flip glances of her black glittering eyes just to drop them modestly down, or direct at the ceiling above… In more than one book, I happened to read that beauties knew how to shoot with their glances, but never could I imagine that those shots could fell you on the spot.

After the rehearsal was over, there remained two hours of waiting before the gala concert, so I approached her and invited to the cinema. She was not sure about it and hesitated, even though her girlfriend, who turned out not so lanky, after all, but quite a nice individual, backed up my proposal persuading Sveta to go with me, and why not, eh? Our united efforts failed to overcome Sveta's uncertainty, however, I still managed to get her flat refusal and left carrying away my shot-thru heart.

I was at the doorsill of death all the way to the movie theater where I plunged into the magical world of the seventeenth century France, with Gerard Fillip and Gina Lollobrigida in the "Fanfan the Tulip". They reanimated me.

How was our performance at the gala concert? With my defective musical ear, I'm not the right guy for making judgments. However, when three guitars strum the same chords in unison, there's not a fat chance of guessing whose one is out of tune. The electrical tape on the Elman's maimed fingers remarkably softened down the dubbing of the double bass. Skully’s drum was not too acute because instead of sticks he used jazz drumming brushes. Valentina's accordion, rolling over her energetic body, kept covering all er-harmonic inaccuracies and chance falling out of key. I believe that, on the whole, all that sounded fresh, and torrid, and full of both youthful zeal and (most importantly!) eager patriotism.

After the concert, a bus from the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant, waiting for us by the Regional Palace of Culture, fully justified Eleonora Nikolayevna’s presence at the Review of Young Talents.

On the bus ride home, everyone was giving meaningful looks at both me and Sveta though we did not sit next to each other. The chorus girls kept singing all kinds of songs about the eyes that drive us mad, and "Sveta's shining, Sveta's dazzling…" substituting her name for "the moon" in the well-known folk song. Sveta was snapping back at them, but me all their hints left undisturbed, I just did not care.

The following day at school, Volodya Gourevitch kept stupidly cuckooing about our competitors from the School 12 CJR team having turned me into their agent, each repetition of the jest was concluded by his protracted laughter. And at a break between the classes, Tolik Sudak from our grade, for no reason whatsoever, started sharing in a group of guys that Sveta Vasilenko was a daughter to Head of Militia Station and once she came to school in a skirt with jism splotches.

If anyone allows themselves so offensive allusions about your beloved, you have to demand satisfaction at a duel. However, at PE classes Tolik stood the first in the line. He was a hefty guy from Podlipnoye and always knew everything, probably, because his mother taught Math at our school. That's why I just stood by as if all that had nothing to do with me, and silently hated the blond curls and drowsy stare of Tolik Sudak's pale-blue eyes.

Soon after, the combined Youth Ensemble participated in a Club concert but when it was over I did not try to see Sveta home. What killed my love? The monotonous joke and loud laughter of Volodya Gourevitch? Or, maybe, Tolik Sudak's disparagement of the stained skirt?

Frankly, the heaviest blow was dealt with by the fact of her residence in Depot Street which was another unfavorable neighborhood for those in love. Vadik Glushchenko, aka Glushcha, escorting a girl to her khutta in Depot Street and was stopped there by a gang of 10 who knocked him down and kicked from all the sides. "The main thing is to cover your head with your arms, then you got woozy and the kicks grew dull," so he later shared his enlightening experience…

~ ~ ~

The end of winter was postponed because of so huge a snowfall that Nezhyn Street had to be cleared by a bulldozer pushing mounds of snow off the road.

On my way back from school, instead of walking along the cleared way I chose to leap along the ridge of snow heaps moved aside towards the fences. The fun was cut off by a sharp pain in my groin, so the remaining way to our khutta I followed the prints of the bulldozer tracks.

In the evening, Mother, worried by my moans, demanded to demonstrate what was the matter there. After my refusal, Father said, "Show to me, then, I'm also a man." The scrotum, swollen up to the size of a teacup, felt hard to the touch. Father frowned and when Mother asked from the kitchen, "So, what's there?" He said I had to see a doctor… It was an awful night – the agony of panic and despair…

In the morning, walking with painfully shortened steps, I came with Mother to the Railway Polyclinic nearby the Station. In the reception, they gave me a slip of paper with my number in the queue to the doctor. We got seated on the chairs next to the specialist’s office in the hollow reverberating corridor. When it was my turn to enter the white door, I, averting my eyes, told Mother that if needed I agree to be operated on, let only everything be normal.

The doctor was a woman, but either her white robe gave her the status of man, or the fear to lose something beyond my current ken, erased my shyness. The doctor said it was a sprain and all I needed were spirits compresses. Two days later, the scrotum returned to its usual shape and I forgot my agonizing fears…

On the seventh of March, Vladya brought to school a miniature bottle of cognac. We shared the booze between 3 of us, sipping from the tiny bottle's neck. Some warm glowing filled my mouth, and we laughed louder and oftener than usual, but there was nothing like the bliss from the wine at Vladya's birthday.

We were dismissed early because it was the eve of Women Day, and when I got home the influence completely disappeared except for the heaviness in my head. I climbed onto the khutta's roof, because already for a week Father chewed my ear to dump the snow from up there.

The tips of four brick chimneys, barely protruding from the snowdrifts, helped to outline our part in the roof. It was rather steep, and in the final stretch my felt boots slipped and I fell into the narrow back garden. The landing was successful – on both legs and into a deep snow, however, when I saw the cusps of the low palisade between the back garden and the yard of the Turkovs, stuck up from the snow an inch off my thigh, my feet grew cold with horror.

End March a team of doctors came to our class to have the physical examination of the dudes to register us as future conscripts.

While the girls were taken to another room for some special lecture, the physicians told us to undress and demonstrate them our backs and sit on a chair for them to knock a rubber hammer beneath our knees, besides the height-measuring and cock inspection.

In my draftee card, the line for "sexual development" was marked with ‘N’. When the commission left, Tolik Sudak explained that "N" stood for "normal" and all the dudes got that mark except for Sasha Shwedov, and the girls, who returned after we got dressed, somehow found it out and that's why now they were whispering to each other and exchanging informed giggles…

~ ~ ~