entrance, under a bench, or in a dry arik that seemed a particularly cozy place to catch up on one’s sleep.
“Vasilyich drank himself into a fog again,” a woman informed her neighbors. “He thrashed poor Veronica again.”
“She’s such a foolish thing. She should have called the police long ago. He hasn’t been to the sobering-up station for a long time.”
In fact, there was nothing more they could add to that conversation for it had all been discussed more than once.
Scandals and fights – much more exciting events – attracted the attention of the entire building. They happened quite often and invariably evoked interest. The news would spread immediately and be the topic of heated discussion near every entrance.
“Ester! Shura!” Fat Dora waved her hand urging my mama and her factory friend to join her. “Have you heard about it? You mean you haven’t heard?” and she would inform them, accompanied by the whirring of her coffee grinder. “Vova Oparin broke Vasilyev’s window. It was such an awful fight!… No, between the fathers! They bloodied each other’s faces!”
It was worth watching Dora when she reported an incident. Her pupils, magnified by the thick lenses of her eyeglasses, would widen to supernatural size. Her eyes seemed about to pop out of their sockets and run to the scene of the fight. She would forget to blink; it almost seemed as if she would forget to breathe. Her big body seemed to inflate like an oxygen pillow. She didn’t want to waste precious time inhaling and exhaling but instead used it to speak non-stop.
Someone’s death was a much more significant event that brought together the residents of neighboring buildings and the whole mahalla.
Funerals took place quite often in the Yubileiny settlement. They always ended up with a procession on the street that was sometimes silent, other times resounding with the wails of women mourning the loss of the deceased. No matter how sad it was in itself, for us boys, a funeral was an important diversion – a lot to see and hear. And, in general, where else, apart from parades, could you see such a gathering of people?
It was strange that the death of Bogeyman, a person who had perhaps less claim to respect than anyone else in the mahalla, was the cause of the deepest sorrow, mixed with remorse, that my friends and I experienced.
Bogeyman – his nickname was uttered much more often than his name, Anatoly – had been a man of about forty-five who lived in one of the buildings nearby. He was a degenerate drunk whom we hardly ever saw sober. It was true that, unlike other drunks, Bogeyman didn’t run wild and didn’t curse. He used to zigzag unsteadily down our street, and when he had no more energy to walk, he would lie down on one of the benches near our entrance and take a peaceful nap. With his cheek on his hands and his knees bent, he would snore softly as if in a comfortable bed.
Perhaps, no one would have bothered him, but… he gave off an appalling stench.
“Hey, Bogeyman, get out of here!” enraged tenants, tired of his odor, would shout from their verandas. “Hey, Bogeyman, get lost!”
“A cannon ball wouldn’t wake him up!” someone echoed from another veranda.
“He’s quarreled with his wife again!” Dora would add. She always had the latest news.
“Anyone would drink living with such a bitch; even a dog wouldn’t want to live with her,” was another neighbor’s brief yet accurate opinion about Bogeyman’s wife Marya, as loud as the whole bazaar. “Leave the poor thing to his nap, we can put up with it.”
The “hero of the occasion” would smile in his dreams and sniffle peacefully as he lay on the bench. Perhaps, among his sleepy drunken thoughts was the following one: “I have wonderful understanding neighbors who pity me, an unfortunate man.”
Alas, Uncle Anatoly – that’s how we sometimes called him – would forget that “understanding” neighbors had children who were not at all wonderful or understanding. On the contrary, they were capable of carrying out cruel and unpredictable pranks.
That was what happened once when Bogeyman was unfortunate enough to fall asleep on the bench near the entrance of the building where the Oparins lived. Around that time, the Oparin brothers walked out of their building as a group of kids, including Rustem and me, were passing by. Naturally, we all surrounded the bench on which Bogeyman was snoring softly. After all, he was something to look at, if we could ignore the stench.
“He couldn’t find a better place to stink?” Gennady asked angrily. He never missed a chance to demonstrate his valor and other qualities of a future officer. “Just you wait, you’ll be hopping around soon. Guys, let’s make a ‘bicycle’ for him. Who has paper? Run! Get some paper!” he commanded, pulling some matches out of his pocket.
His younger brother was gentler and more compassionate, either because of his age or his disposition. He tried to prevent the inevitable.
“Hey, get up! Please, get up!” he pleaded in his thin voice, shaking the unfortunate drunk and pulling at his sleeve.
“Get out of here, what are you? The Red Cross?” Gennady pushed his little brother away. “You shouldn’t feel sorry for this piece of rotten carrion…” and he quickly got down to business, with all the experience he had.
After checking whether anyone could see him through the windows or from the street, Gennady took Bogeyman’s shoes off. Naturally, he wasn’t wearing socks. His dirty, swollen toes were exposed. One of the boys tore the newspaper into long strips and twisted them into braids. Gennady inserted the braids between Boogeyman’s stained toes. Now, the soles of his feet looked like two tattered brooms made of twigs. A match was struck, and the brooms turned into candles with little purplish crowns of flame, pale in the daylight.
I watched what happened next from the entrance hall of our building where we were hiding. I had retired there before anyone else, for I hadn’t the heart to stay through to the end. Poor Bogeyman woke up from the pain and rolled off the bench with a moan… Now he’ll run, we thought, watching him in horror and excitement, through the crack. He would run and, since he was half awake, he wouldn’t understand what had happened to him and why his toes were on fire. His feet would look like the violently spinning wheels of a bicycle with burning spokes, since he would be running in a state of panic. That was why the boys called this operation “bicycle.”
Yes, we had practiced the operation, and we are very ashamed to admit it, on unfortunate cats. But Bogeyman was more quick-witted than the cats. He bent over and pulled the burning “bicycle spokes” from between his toes, shook his burned fingers and, after looking around, stared at the entrance. His fiery red cheeks and crimson nose, along with his wide red eyes, were such a scary sight that we couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Take off!” tall Gennady was the first to yell, and we dashed out of the entrance with the speed of a bullet. We heard “Take off!” after we had already done so, for fear is a great motivator. It can turn a lame person into a sprinter.
I was running toward the garbage bins. I wasn’t running, I was flying. I could hear his tramping and heavy breathing behind me… He could catch up with me… So what if I hadn’t taken part in the evil prank but had only watched and giggled? He didn’t know that.
“I’ll never do it again… I won’t…” I repeated to myself, since I felt just as guilty as Gennady Oparin.
That was how I made it to the garbage bins. I looked over my shoulder and didn’t see anyone. What I heard must have been my own stomping and heavy breathing.
My
