LITMIR.BIZ

      We noticed puffs of black smoke on the way home from school. They were pouring out from where building number fourteen, next to ours, was under construction. Kolya Kulikov and I exchanged glances. Everything was clear without words – they were smoking tar for the roof. We’ll have something to play with today.

      Classes at school were over at two in the afternoon. At that time, the school looked like a crowded bazaar right before closing time, or the schoolyard before classes and during the main recess. Boys and girls who walked home from school the same way would get together at the school fence near the road. The events of the day, any interesting incidents, were passionately discussed. Teachers were still of great interest to us first graders.

      “My teacher is very strict, awfully strict,” Vitya Smirnov complained.

      “Do you mean Maria Grigoryevna?” Vitya Shalgin was surprised. “She’s not strict at all. I know her better; we’re neighbors. You should have mine. No one can even budge in class.”

      “And my teacher, Yekaterina Ivanovna, is kind,” I bragged.

      “Do you mean the Fat Lady?” Zhenya Zhiltsov, who lived in the military housing, asked.

      It had only been a few weeks since school started but we already knew or had thought up nicknames for our teachers. The stout physics teacher was Molecule, the slightly bald drawing teacher was the Immortal Kashey (a folk character who has the secret to eternal life), the slow, plump auto class teacher was Zaporozhets (a car model). Yekaterina Ivanovna had two nicknames, Fat Lady and Kolobok (a fairytale character who is a little roll), because when she walked around the classroom, she waddled like Kolobok rolling down a forest path. Was it the need to embellish our humdrum school existence that aroused our imagination? That way, we spent part of the school day in some sort of fairytale, the characters of which we often made up ourselves.

      We walked home chattering and laughing. Of course, we didn’t walk down the asphalt road like everybody else. “Like everybody else” was not for us. We walked across the dusty field, across the abandoned vegetable garden, diagonally, to shorten the distance between school and home.

      We didn’t think about why we did it. We were drawn to playing, and the most important thing in our games was overcoming. Each of us felt that everything was in his power. There were no obstacles. And it was absolutely not important that we were the only ones who knew about it.

      Here came Vitya Smirnov, a future test pilot. Clear skies, fast plane and altitude were on his mind… and Sasha was a future builder. “I’ll erect a building all the way up to the clouds,” he used to say. We were not so sure, “There are no cranes that tall.” Sasha only chuckled, “I won’t need cranes. What are helicopters for?”

      And I dreamed of becoming an archeologist, and a paleontologist at the same time, and digging out the skeleton of the biggest dinosaur somewhere in Africa.

      My colleagues and I will dig in the sands of the Sahara for many months, excavating that monster, bone by bone. I will grow dark skinned like a Papuan. I will put the dinosaur together and bring it to Chirchik. I’ll ride in a huge truck through the main streets of our town to the sound of fanfares. My dinosaur will be on the bed of the truck, and I will stand next to it. The city council will declare that the dinosaur will remain in town for good. It will naturally be installed on the playground near my building. Oh, how boys from neighboring buildings will envy me!

      The boys, one after another, said good-bye as they reached their buildings. Kolya and I arrived at ours.

      “Come out by five,” he reminded me. I nodded.

      It seemed that they had decided to construct Building #14 especially for us. We could see something amazingly interesting there at any moment. Here came a dump truck loaded with slabs of reinforced concrete. And right after that, a crane rolled up to it along the rail. It picked up a slab with its mighty claw, lifted it to the floor under construction and tossed it onto that floor effortlessly. Up there, they were waiting for it; they were ready. With our faces raised, we watched how a slab, as if all by itself, without any assistance from the people whose movements seemed so easy, ended up in its place.

      Vitya Smirnov watched the operator manipulating the boom of the crane with envy.

      “Ah,” he sighed, “if I were him, I would lift the whole dump truck.”

      “Are you serious? A crane couldn’t hold such a load. It would topple over.”

      An argument ensued. Each of us defended his opinion because we all dreamed of becoming an operator and testing the power of that machine. Of course, we wanted to do it immediately, but if worse came to worst, we planned to enter the special technical school we knew of where they taught that profession, after we finished eighth grade. Meanwhile, each of us pretended to be the master of the crane, capable of moving all those wonderful levers, pushing buttons, switching lights on and off. Just move the lever and the hook would turn. Press the pedal, and the giant would smoothly glide down the rails. Push a button and a load would be lifted. And you just sat in that tower enjoying your omnipotence. You were up there all alone, with just the blue sky and the birds around you. Down below, people wearing helmets scurried back and forth like ants in search of food. Here, they surrounded that crawling caterpillar, the dump truck. They swarmed around it, waiting. Who were they waiting for? Of course, they were waiting for you. You sailed up to them in your enormous crane and attacked that caterpillar…

      “It will turn over!” “No, it won’t!” That was us with our hearts in our throats from the fear and ecstasy of watching the team that worked all the way up there, a construction worker who made himself comfortable on the edge of the wall to smoke his cigarette. What could he see from there? Wasn’t he scared?

      It was hard to say what was more interesting – observing the frenetic life of the construction site during the day or sneaking to the site after five in the afternoon, when the workday was over.

      It only seemed to the builders that the construction site was resting without them. In fact, it was living a secret life from five in the afternoon till late at night. Boys came running like cockroaches from all over the neighborhood. It was dark. Without watchmen and guard dogs, we were the masters with absolute power there.

      The construction site was covered with pebbles. We used them as hand grenades. We used tar as camouflage paint, piles of sand became shelters and the cabin of the crane an observation deck. It goes without saying that real “war games” took place right there. Though we sometimes thought up other games or simply wandered around, taking pleasure in our secret ownership of that wonderful place.

      Later in the evening when it was pitch dark, high school students often went there. We could hear their voices and see the flickering lights of their cigarettes.

      That night, our group crowded around the big blocks of tar. The sun had softened them during the day, and we hurried to tear off large pieces for chewing. We didn’t have any special recipe for doing this. We would just chew pieces of tar, and soon they’d became really soft and elastic in our mouths. It’s true that some experts and gourmets would add paraffin, and that chewing gum was undoubtedly softer and

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