The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов

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just out of teachers’ inertia.

      In the school public life, I played the role of a horse in the performance staged by the pioneers of our school. The role was assigned to me because Dad made a big horse head from cardboard and on stage I represented the horse’s head and forelegs. My arms and shoulders were hidden under a large colorful shawl, which also covered one more boy who crouched behind me gripping my belt because he played the role of hinder-parts.

      The horse did not say anything on stage and appeared there only as the nightmare to scare an idler in his sleep and make him reform and study well. We performed in the school gym, and in the Regiment Club, and even went on a tour out of Zona—to the club of Pistovo village. Everywhere, the appearance of the horse sparked vivacity among the audience…

      Besides the movies at the Regiment Club, I sometimes went to the House of Officers, asking the ticket money from my parents. It was there that I watched the French adaptation of The Three Musketeers for the first time.

      Before the show, ominous rumors circulated in the thick confluence filling the foyer hall, people murmured that they failed to bring the film and would show some other flicks instead, so as to keep money for the sold tickets. I draw aside from the crowd ruminating the ugly hearsay and, to kick devastatingly grim contemplation, I…

      (…being that I, the one from that period, I knew no Eddy Murphy yet and believed, in earnest, that we single-handedly defeated Germany in WWII because our Soviet people are always ready to die for out Soviet Motherland at a moment’s notice and without any second thought whatsoever…)

      … sought shelter in the concentrated consideration of the huge portrait of Marshal Malinovsky screening half the foyer side wall by all the screwed, and pinned, and dangling items in the exhibition of his orders and medals. The collection was really enormous leaving no vacant spot on his ceremonial tunic where the medals of lesser denomination were hanging below the waist, from the groins, a kinda over-all coat of mail.

      And I swore to the chain-mailed marshal, I wouldn’t watch anything else even if they did not give the money back. But it turned a false alarm and the happiness, lavishly spiced by the sound of ringing swords, lasted the whole 2 sequels, and in color too!.

      The exploration of the Detachment’s Library was regularly bringing new achievements. Not only that I had long ceased to be frightened by the pictures in the wide anteroom, but I also became a seasoned shelf-hanger.

      As the shelving of books crowded quite close to each other, I got the hang of climbing right up to the ceiling for which purpose the shelves both sides of the narrow passages became, like, convenient ladder-rungs. I wouldn’t say that on the previously unreachable shelves there were some special books, not at all, however, the acquired skills at mountaineering increased my self-esteem like after that occasion when Natasha called me from my sofa-readings because there was an owl in the basement of the corner building.

      Of course, I immediately ran after her. The basement corridor was illuminated by a single bulb that somehow managed to survive the harsh times of the crook wars. At the end of the corridor under the opening to the outside pit, there sat a large bird on the floor, much bigger than an owl. Some real eagle owl it was who angrily shook his eared head with the crooked nose, no wonder that the kids did not dare approach.

      My reaction was surprisingly deft, without a moment’s hesitation, as if handling maverick eagle owls was my daily routine, I took my shirt off and threw it over the bird’s head. Then, grabbing at the clawed legs, I lifted the bird from the floor. The owl didn’t resist under the cover of my tartan shirt. Where to now? Of course, I took it home, especially since I was not fully clad.

      Mom didn’t agree to keep such a big monster at home although our neighbors, the Savkins, had a hefty crow in their apartment. Mom answered that Grandmother Savkin’s main job was wiping up the crow guano all over their apartment all day long, and who would do it in ours with all of us at work and school?

      Reluctantly, I promised to take the eagle owl to Living Nature Room at school next morning because there already lived a squirrel and a hedgehog in their cages. Till then, he was allowed to sit in the bathroom. For the eagle owl’s refreshment, I took a slice of bread to the bathroom and a saucer full of milk. He gravely sat in the corner and did not even look at the food on the floor tiles. Going out, I turned the light off, in the hope that, being a night predator, he’d find it even in the dark.

      First thing in the morning, I checked and saw that the eagle owl hadn’t pecked a crumble of his supper. He also partook none of it while I had breakfast though the light in the bathroom was left on for the purpose. So, I clutched his bare legs and carried him to school.

      Probably, owls do not like hanging upside down because that eagle owl constantly tried to bend his head up as far as his neck let it go. At times, I gave my schoolbag to my brother and carried the bird with both hands in the normal position. When from the hillock top opened the distant view of school, the owl’s head dropped and I realized that he was dead. I felt even relieved that he wouldn’t have to live in the captivity of the smelly Living Nature Room.

      I veered from the path and hid him in a shrub because once I saw a hawk hanged from a thick bough in the old tree atop the Bugorok-Knoll. I didn’t want them to feather or somehow mutilate my owl, even though dead as he was…

      Later, Mom said that the bird died, probably, of old age that’s why he sought refuge in the basement.

      (…but I think all that happened so that we would meet each other. He was a messenger to me, it's only that I haven’t understood the message yet… Birds are not just birds and ancient augurs knew that well…

      My house in Stepanakert is located on the slope of a deep ravine behind the Maternity Hospital. It’s the last house in a dead-end, a very quiet place indeed.

      Once, coming home, I saw a small bird, the size of a sparrow, in the withered late-autumn grass by the footpath. In fumbling unsteady steps, it trailed thru the brittle grass as if severely wounded, dragging the wings in its wake.

      I gave it a passing look and went on, burdened by too many problems of my own… The next day I learned that right about that moment a young man was butchered a little deeper in the ravine in a brawl of junkie bros.

      That small bird was the soul of the murdered and there’s no chance to make me step back from this belief…)

      ~ ~ ~

      In the autumn following the separately spent summer vacations, the senior part of our family became fans of mushroom harvesting.

      Of course, the mushrooms at the Object were always there, just take a couple of steps to any side away from the trodden school path and there’s russula growth for you, or solid portabella, long-legged enoki, or oily agarics, it’s only that too busy passers-by had no time for mushrooms… But when they give you the permit paper to get out the Zona for a whole Sunday and also provide a truck to take the mushroom-pickers to the out-of-Zona woodland, the “noiseless hunting” takes on much more attractive looks. Probably, all those conveniences were always there for the Object dwellers, only my parents did not use them until they needed a firmer reconciliation after the split-up summer.

      (…though I did not think about such things at that time and was just all too happy to go with my parents to the forest for mushroom harvesting which term is more correct than “looking for”. However hard you look for, there’s no way you’ll find it, even before your very nose, until it calls you. Without the call you pass not seeing – it waits for someone else. It took me a life to understand it’s not about mushrooms only but any not-living (Ha!) inorganic thing…)

      Especially for those Sundays, Dad made three pails of sturdy cardboard, lightweight and capacious. In the forest, the mushroom-pickers from the Zona parted and wandered everyone by themselves at times exchanging distant echoes of “ahoy!” by which you couldn’t guess who it was.

      I liked alerted roaming in the silent autumn forest wet from the drizzle and fog. Of course, we didn’t pick too brittle russulas, but portabella or agarics were a good find. Dad made a small knife for each of us, so as not to spoil the mycelium, besides, on the cut, it’s seen at once whether

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