short of money, I pointed at the cheapest— for 7 rubles, but Dad did not accept and bought an expensive wristwatch— for 25….
In the village of Kanino, we lived in the log hut of Grandma Martha, made up of one large room with 2 windows opposite the wide-and-tall Russian stove.
Behind the hut, there was a lean-to of logs attached to it. The windowless lean-to was empty, strewn with stray wisps of old hay, and smelled of dust. There I found three books: a historical novel about the general Bagration in the war of 1812 against Napoleonic invasion, a long story of how they established the Soviet rule among the Indians in the Chukchi Peninsula chasing the Whites in dog sleds, and The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
Once, my Dad’s brother and sister came to visit, they both lived in the same village but were too busy at the collective farm, kolkhoz. Grandma Martha cooked a round yellow omelet for the occasion; I don’t remember the meals on other days…
The village of Kanino was divided into two parts by the hollow holding a slowly rolling, broad and noiseless, creek. Its both banks were solid walls of an uninterrupted willow thicket at some places closing overhead. And the stream was pretty shallow—a little bit above the knees, with a pleasant sandy bottom. I liked to wander in its slow current.
One day Dad took me to the Mostya river. It was a very long walk but in the end, there turned up enough of a river to swim from one grassy bank to the other. There were many people on both banks too, probably, from other villages. On our way back we came across a combine harvesting wheat in the field. We stopped at the edge of the field to watch and when the harvester drove past to the other edge, Dad spat and angrily said, “Phui, hooey!”
As it turned out, the combine driver was mowing the shoots at their tops, so as to finish his job quicker, but when he saw a stranger in a white tank top together with a boy of urban appearance, he decided my Dad was some big wheel from the district administration on a recreation visit and, driving past us, he mowed the shoots close to the ground…
Near Grandma Martha’s lean-to, there appeared a large haystack and when Dad together with his brother began some repair work inside her log hut, for which period Grandma Martha moved to spend nights in the lean-to, and the bed for me and Dad was made atop the haystack. Sleeping up there was convenient and pleasant because of the smell of withering grass, but a bit unusual and even scary for all the stars above watching you all the time. Besides, the roosters started crying before each dawn and then you just had to lie in the twilight before dropping off again…
One day I went up the creek, as far as another village, there was an earthen dam built by that village boys to make a pond for swimming. But after that, I fell ill and was taken to the same upstream village because only there was infirmary of 3 beds.
On one of those 3 beds, I was ill almost a whole week reading The Standard Bearers by Gonchar and eating the strawberry jam brought by Dad’s sister, Aunt Sasha, or maybe it was his brother’s wife, Aunt Anna, because they came together to see me.
So we spent Dad’s vacations and returned to the Object…
~ ~ ~
Soon after our return, Mom took Sasha and Natasha with her and went on her vacations to Konotop. Again, Dad and I kept each other manly company of 2. He cooked tasty pasta soup the Navy way and explained me things about the seamen's life. For instance, on ships many commands are given by the bugle calls and those signals are not just “du-du-du-du du-du-du-du” as bleated by a pioneer bugler, when marching behind the drummer after the Pioneer Company Banner at some ceremonial line-up. The ship bugle plays a different melody for each occasion. At midday meal time the bugle sings, “Take your spoon, and your mess-tin, quickly run to the half-deck”.
The mess-tin is a pot with a lid which they fill for a sailor with his grub to eat, and the half-deck is that place on the ship where the cook ladles that grub out.
Dad taught me some sea words too. “Topmast” means the highest point on a boat. When they want to play a trick on a young sailor, they usually give him a teapot and send to fetch tea from the topmast. The greenhorn unaware, of course, where it was, walks about the boat asking how to get there. The seasoned sailors direct him from one place to another or to the engine room, just for fun…
And Dad also told that some zeks, who spent too many years in Zona, could no longer live in freedom. Because of that one recidivist, who served his term, was pleading his Zona Chief not to let him loose but go on keeping locked up. But his Zona Chief replied, “The law is the law! Get lost!”
In the evening, the kicked-out recidivist was brought back to Zona because he killed a man in a nearby village. And the murderer was yelling, “I told you, Chief! Because of you I had to take an innocent’s life!”
By those words, Dad’s eyes looked sideways and up, and even the sound of his voice changed strangely…
Some books I re-read more than once, not immediately, of course, but after some time. That day I was re-reading the book of stories about revolutionary Babushkin, which I was awarded at school for assiduous studying and active participation in the public life of school. He was a common laborer and worked for rich plant owners before becoming a revolutionary…
When Dad called me for midday meal, I went to the kitchen, got seated at the table and, eating the pasta soup, shared, “And did you know, that before the October Revolution the workers at the Putilov factory once were forced to work for 40 hours at a stretch?”
To which Dad replied, “Did you know that your Mom went to Konotop with another man?”
I raised my head up from the plate. Dad was sitting in front of untouched soup and looking at the kitchen window blinds.
I got scared, cried, and shouted, “I’ll kill him!”
But Dad, still looking at the blinds, answered, “No, Sehryozha, we don’t need no killing.”
His voice sounded a little nasal as that of the recidivist murderer who wanted to stay in Zona.
Then Dad got to the Detachment’s Hospital and for two days the neighbor woman, who had moved in the rooms of the redundant Zimins, was coming to our kitchen to cook meals for me. On the third day, Mom came back together with my sister-’n’-brother…
Mom went to see Dad at the Detachment’s Hospital and took me with her. Dad came out to the yard in the pajamas to which they change all the patients there. The parents sat on a bench and told me to go and play somewhere. I walked away but not too far, and I heard as Mom was quickly telling something to Dad in a low voice.
He looked straight in front of himself and repeated the same words, “The kids will understand when they grow up.”
(…when I grew up, I understood that some informer had sent a letter from Konotop, only that time directly to my Dad instead of the Special Department.
What for? By telling on my Mom, the rat was gaining no improvement in the housing conditions nor other amelioration in their day-to-day life. Or maybe, just out of habit? Or maybe, that was not a neighbor at all?
Some people, when not happy with their lives, think it will help if someone else does badly. I do not think it works, but I know that there are such thinkers.
And I never asked my brother or sister about the man who went with them to Konotop that summer. Nonetheless, now I know that so it was.
Mom built her defense on Dad’s frivolous behavior during his vacation the previous year, when he went alone to a Crimean sanatorium
