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

      On my way to the Nezhyn Store, I was intercepted by a pair of guys riding one bike. First, they overtook me, then the one sitting on the bike rack jumped off to the ground and smacked me in the face. Of course, it was a revolting dishonor, however, though he was half-head shorter than me, I didn’t fight back in fear of his companion who also got off the bike, some brawny tall oaf.

      “I told you’ll catch hell!” said the offender and they left. I realized whose back I had shot at with a crook…

      The movie shows at Club started at six and eight in the evening. With the tickets bought in the lobby, the film-goer had to climb the straight flight of wide red-painted thick-board steps to the second floor. The tiled landing up there somehow managed to always have kinda murky air despite the two high windows and three doors.

      The door to the right opened a small hall with a switched off TV set in front of a dozen short rows of seats, always vacant, and the handrailed flight of steep openwork iron stairs up to the projectionist booth. On both sides of the dead TV, two more big doors led to the huge gym of the Ballet Studio which is not what you need with the cinema tickets in your pocket. So, back again to the tiled landing with two more still unexplored doors.

      The first door on the left was always locked because it led to the balcony in the auditorium. And the next, invitingly open door was controlled by everlastingly grim auntie Shura, who stood by in her helmet-like head kerchief, a kinda somber sentry in charge of tearing off the check part in your ticket before letting you in.

      The floor inside the vast auditorium had a slight slant towards the wide white screen behind which there was a big stage with two porches and doors by the side walls. For concerts or performances by puppet theater, the cinema screen was drawn to the left wall disclosing the dark-blue plushy velvet of the stage curtains. The open balconies adorned with alabaster swag ran along the sidewalls, yet stopped before reaching the stage. By the rear wall, the balconies sloped steeply from both sides, so as not to block the loopholes of the projectionist booth from where the flicking widening beam streamed to the screen to deliver a movie.

      In the lobby on the first floor, next to the windowed door of the ticket office, there hung the list of movies for the current month brush-written in the canvas stretched over a sizable wooden frame. Films changed every day except for Monday when there was no cinema at all. So you could make your choice in advance and know when to ask from Mother twenty kopecks for the show… Summertime annulled the cinema expenses totally because the Plant Park, hidden behind the long dilapidated two-story apartment block that stood above the tilt to the Under-Overpass tunnel, was a great money-saver. In the Park, apart from its three alleys, a locked dance-floor, and the large gazebo of beer pavilion, there also was the open-air cinema behind a pretty tall plank fence with conveniently located gaps and holes in its rear part.

      The show began after nine when twilight showed signs of getting denser and, more importantly, if the ticket office on the first floor of the projectionists’ booth managed to sell at least four tickets because the new generation preferred watching films from outside the cinema. However, standing on foot by a hole for an hour and a half, with your nose buried in planks roughed by merciless time and calamitous weather, was not exactly what you’d call a pleasurable recreation. That’s why the film-going guys took advantageous seats in the old apple trees grown by the brick structure of the projectionist booth. If your fork in the tree was too narrow or the bough too bumpy for comfortable sitting, next time you’d be smarter to come earlier and have a better choice from the vacant tree-seats…

      The film went on, the warm summer darkness thickened around two or three dim lamps in the Plant Park alleys and the stars peeped from the night sky thru the gaps in the apple tree foliage. On the silver screen, the black-and-white “The Jolly Fellows” with Leonid Utesov kept slapping each other with drums and double basses and at less breathtaking moments you could stretch your hand out and grope among the apple-tree twigs to find, somewhere between the Cassiopeia and Andromeda constellations, a small inedible crab-apple for biting tiny bitter bits off its stone-hard side.

      After a good film, like that one starring Rodion Nakhapetov where there were no fights, neither wars, but just scenes about life, about death, and beautiful motorcycle riding thru shallow waters, the spectators walked out of the Park gate and headed to the cobbled Budyonny Street without the usual bandit whistles or cat-yells. The sparse crowd of people became somehow quietened and united, sort of related by the mutually watched film, and kept peaceful walking thru the darkness of a warm night, dwindling at the invisible crossroads, on their way to the lonely lamppost at the junction of Bogdan Khmelnytsky and Professions Streets next to Bazaar….

      But the main thing because of which the guys were waiting for the summer was, of course, bathing. The start of the swimming season took place late May at the Kandeebynno and marked the summer’s coming into its own. The Kandeebynno was several lakes used for breeding the mirror carp, and it also was the springhead of the Yezooch river. At times along the lakes-splitting dams, there rode a solitary bicycler-overseer, so that guys wouldn’t poach too cheekily with their fishing poles. Yet, in one of those lakes they didn’t breed the carp, it was left for bathing of beach-goers…

      However, to go for a swim at the Kandeebynno, you had to know how to get there. Mother said that although having had visited the spot she couldn’t explain the way and it was better to ask Uncle Tolik, who both to work and back, and, in fact, everywhere went by his motorbike “Jawa”, so he, of course, should know.

      The Kandeebynno, according to his instruction, was all too easy to find. When going towards City along Peace Avenue, you pass under the bridge in the railway embankment, so take the first right turn which you couldn't miss because it’s where started the road to Romny, and follow it to the intersection by which take another right turn and go on until you see the railway barrier, cross the railway, turn to the left and—here you are!—that’s the Kandeebynno for you…

      The twins, sure enough, pressed for going along with me. We took an old bed cover to spread and lie upon when sunbathing, put it into a mesh-bag, added a bottle of water and went to the Under-Overpass where Peace Avenue started. Up to the railway embankment, the road was familiar after the May Day demonstration. We went under the bridge and saw it at once – the road running to the right along the base of the elevated railway. True enough, it didn’t look a highway because of no asphalt in it, yet being as wide as any other road, it was the first one to the right after the bridge. So, we turned and followed the road along the base of the tall steep embankment.

      However, the farther we went, the narrower the road became transforming into a wide trail, then into a footpath tread which soon just vanished. We had no choice but to climb the steep grass-overgrown embankment, shake the sand out from our sandals and march on stepping on the concrete crossties or along the endless narrow railheads. Natasha was the first to notice the trains catching up from behind, and we stepped down onto the uneven gravel in the ballast shoulder, giving way for the rumbling, wind-whipping cars to shoot past us.

      When we reached the next bridge, there was no avenue or a street under it, just other railway tracks. Our embankment turned right and started to gradually go down joining the tracks in their flow towards the distant Railway Station. It became clear, that we were going in the opposite direction and not to any lakes at all.

      We did not have time to get disappointed though,