Everything Begins In Childhood

We heard muted submachinegun shots… then single pistol shots…

“That was a Kalashnikov… Now it’s tracer bullets…” it was Kolya Kulikov explaining what was going on as he sat with his eyes closed. He was a real expert. Kolya rocked to the rhythm of the shooting, hugging his knees and straining his hearing till he had a sharp pain in his ears. It was as if he were sitting somewhere in a concert hall, enjoying classical music… “Three… four… five…” he counted. “They’ll be done shortly.”

A sixth revolver shot rang out, and a short period of silence fell, both on the training ground and on the roof, but the events continued unfolding in our imagination. Here was an officer lying in a trench. He was wounded, and he was outnumbered. He had no more bullets in his pistol. They were surrounding him… and…

“That’s the end,” Kolya exhaled. He wasn’t rocking any longer. There was suffering in his eyes. “That’s the end. He’s been killed.”

But still we were listening, waiting… what if…

There it was! Bang-bang-bang – single shots were heard.

“No, he hasn’t been killed,” Vitya declared triumphantly. “He was changing the cartridge clip. Kolya, you always panic.”

Yes, of course, we were representatives of General Headquarters on the hill. But we’d rather have been down there, on the battlefield, dashing forward in pursuit of the enemy, or seated at the levers of military vehicles. Forward, always forward!

Sweet dreams…

Many boys in our town dreamed of becoming military men. They were a special caste in Chirchik, held high in our esteem. They were full of merit, both inner and outer. They knew how to show off their bearing. An officer would walk, clad in his impeccably ironed tunic with stars sparkling on the epaulets, his shoulders thrown back, his chest well-developed, his feet moving springily and rhythmically as if he were marching in formation. He certainly knew that children’s shiny eyes, and perhaps girls’ eyes too, followed him closely. But his strict gaze was fixed on the distance. He absolutely did not notice anyone. Of course, he noticed those of senior rank, and he saluted them precisely and handsomely.

It would be nice to befriend a military man’s son. Such a boy’s life was far more interesting that ours. Now and then, his father would take him along to a military school where he could get close enough to tanks to touch them, or he might even get to hold a submachinegun in his hands.

The exercise came to an end. The tanks, one by one, turned their turrets toward the hills and headed back to their encampments. We were also about to disperse.

The roof of our building was flat with a slight incline. It had no railing around its perimeter. Only a few brave boys dared to approach the very edge. They knew how to adjust a television cable or knock down icicles that were a danger to pedestrians. My knees would begin to tremble at the very thought of going near the edge of the roof.

We were about to leave the roof when the Oparin brothers came through the door leading to the stairs – Vova, who was my age, and Gennady, who was older. Their father was a military man, and Gennady had already decided he would enter military school after he graduated.

“What are you doing here?” he asked angrily, in surprise. “Get out of here!”

“The leaves have already dried!” Zhenya Andreyev shouted and was the first to dart to the door.

The roof was an observation post for us, but it served as a kind of production area for older boys. Hand-made cigarettes rolled from cherry tree leaves would be hung from the antennas to dry. Hemp, secretly grown behind the garage, was often dried on a secluded corner of the roof. Was it possible that Gennady thought that we, the younger boys, didn’t know about it? And why did they, the older boys, skip watching the exercises, those fascinating spectacles? We discussed this for a long time before we split up to go home.

Father was sitting on the bed, breathing hoarsely. He had once again suffered a severe asthma attack. He was so weak that he couldn’t leave “the concrete coffin” – as he called our apartment – to sit on the bench near the entrance. He called to me in a barely audible voice.

“Do you remember where the hospital is? Go there and get some oxygen…” and he gave me the oxygen pillow with its breathing tube. “I called them… The doctor is expecting you.”

One could get to the hospital by bus, but I decided it would be faster to walk. As I was walking, I remembered with annoyance that the entrance to the hospital grounds was at the far end of the fence. That meant that it would take me at least half an hour to get there. At last, I arrived. I found the doctor on duty and held the pillow out to him. The doctor looked at me over his glasses, with an expression of great surprise.

“Who are you with?” he asked. “Where did you get this pillow?”

“My papa gave it to me for you to fill …”

“What papa?”

“From Yubilayny settlement,” I answered, scared now.

Father had told me, “The doctor is expecting you,” but this one didn’t expect me at all. What if he was the wrong doctor and wouldn’t fill the pillow?

“It must have been your father who called an hour ago,” the doctor figured out at last. “Yes, he said ‘My son will come over.’ But I thought his son was an adult… How old are you, kid?”

“Six,” I answered, with no inkling that we were practically reenacting the dialogue from a famous poem by Nekrasov.

The doctor was silent. Then he cleared his throat.

“Your mama must be at work now, right? And your papa… You see I don’t have a car at the moment… Nurse!” he suddenly shouted, “Fill it quickly, but not quite all the way.”

Oxygen began hissing into the tube. The doctor squatted and gave me the pillow.

“Here it is… You don’t smoke, right?” he stroked my hair. “Carry it carefully. Remember – it’s a gulp of life for your papa.”

I grabbed the pillow and rushed home as fast as I could.

Chapter 18. With a Forelock

Our class was discussing the terrible news. Renat Khabiyev had injured his hand. Three fingers had been blown off. The two remaining ones had been disfigured.

Yesterday, after classes, Renat and a few high school students had made their way to the training ground. There was no need to explain that they had gone there to collect cartridge cases. Renat was lucky – he had found an unexploded military cartridge. It was a very valuable find because you could remove the capsule from a cartridge, and a capsule was… Well, you know what I mean. When he returned to the yard, he got down to business. Of course, he couldn’t do it at home.

“He was separating the capsule from the cartridge,” Zhenya Zhiltsov was telling his agitated listeners, “when it exploded… right in his hand!”

Tall Zhenya always hung out near the fifth graders, and he always knew all the news.

The boys were silent. Obviously, almost every one of them tried to imagine what horrible pain Renat had felt. Expressions of suffering appeared on many faces. Timur Timirshayev stared at his palm and pressed three fingers to it, wincing.

“At least it’s his left hand,” Sergey Bulgakov broke the silence.

He belonged to the same group as Zhiltsov. They were not known for outstanding academic achievement. They were useful when it came to either beating someone up or “giving a warning.” As for Renat, he wasn’t a mischief-maker, and he had gotten into that group accidentally. Renat belonged to a poor Uzbek family with many children. They didn’t live in one of the new buildings but rather in a clay house in the settlement. He sat quietly at the last desk in class. He wasn’t among those who always raised their hands, eager to demonstrate their superior knowledge at the blackboard.

Yekaterina Ivanovna entered the classroom. We rushed to our seats.

After laying her briefcase on her desk, she paced the room for a long time. She was silent and didn’t look at us. She didn’t have the usual smile on her round, good-natured face. She had such a sad expression that all of us grew even more ill at ease.

“Well, first graders of Class B,” she said as she stopped walking. “Have you at last excelled? Who was with Renat at the training ground yesterday?”

Naturally, the class was silent. Even if someone had been at the training ground, was he foolish enough to inform her about it? And if anyone knew with whom Renat had gone to the training ground, they would never betray their friends. That was for sure.

Yekaterina Ivanovna directed her stern looks at Zhiltsov, Bulgakov and Gaag. They were silent like everyone else.

“How can they allow such naughty children to join the ranks of Young Octobrists?” Yekaterina Ivanovna reproached us.

It was true that we had been wearing the pins for two weeks, the little stars of the Octobrists, and we were very proud of it. But was it against the Octobrists’ rules to play war games and stock cartridges for combat operations? Of course, Renat’s misfortune scared everybody, but at the same time, he was considered a war hero, injured in combat.

No, Yekaterina Ivanovna’s reproaches didn’t arouse our remorse. The class was silent…

After scolding us a bit more, Yekaterina Ivanovna at last told us something worthwhile.

“Tomorrow after classes, we’ll go to the hospital to visit Renat. Who can come?”

So many hands were raised that they formed a dense forest. The class began to buzz, completely forgetting its recent inability to speak.

As always, a few of us walked home together. Khobeyev’s name was on everyone’s lips, and, yes, we felt sorry for him. But we cast glances in the direction of the training ground without a sense of fear. The training ground became even more desirable.

Here we were near building #14, in other words, near the former construction site. Oh, how we missed that construction site! We felt as if something had been taken from us, a thing that had been the principal delight of our lives. How many adventures we had had there! As for the new building… Well, what about it? It looked like a big freshly painted poster – meticulously cleaned glass sparkled in white window frames, the freshly painted dark red entrance door shined. The stairways smelled nicely of whitewash. Joyful new tenants stomped up the steps carrying their baggage.

If there was anything that attracted us to the new building, it was the chance to make new friends. Also, a new barbershop had opened at the end of the building.

And we stopped in there today. Kolya remembered that the director of studies had reprimanded him, “Your hair is too long. You look sloppy.” Edem and I decided to keep him company.

The spacious, well-lit barber shop, which occupied one of the corners of the building, was furnished modestly: just two barber chairs and three seats for waiting customers. The fan, with its rubber blades, was buzzing, and soft music could be heard on the radio. Both barber chairs were occupied by customers. We sat down on the seats and became spectators to this most interesting show. The actors, that is the barbers, wore white gowns, like doctors. The older one, who undoubtedly played the leading role, manipulated first clippers, then scissors, skillfully. His hands flashed up and down, to the left and to the right. He spun around the barber chair like a figure skater in a rink. His fat belly didn’t allow him to get close enough to the barber chair, so he stretched out his arms in a comical way as he worked. Maybe that was why it seemed that he cut hair by touch, without looking at his customer’s head. “What if he cuts off the customer’s ear?” I thought. He could cut it off and not even notice. Then he could cut off the other ear. Then he could let the customer go, and the customer would stand up without noticing anything. After all, everything would still be symmetrical. He wouldn’t even realize that he was deaf. I thought that was what would happen if one’s ears were cut off. And he would just nod, “Thank you, it’s a very nice haircut. Nothing is sticking out.” And he would leave.

The second actor was young and not as agile. He must have been a novice. He wasn’t in a hurry and, after clicking his scissors a few times, he’d take a few steps back to examine his customer’s head.

The master was the first to finish his work. His chair was vacant. He looked at us and motioned to us invitingly, pointing to his barber chair. We looked at each other. It was scary for some reason. We grabbed hold of our chairs. We felt as if we had not been invited to sit in a barber chair but rather to climb onto an operating table. And the doctor, or rather the barber, froze while he waited for us to respond to his invitation, “Well, who’ll be the first to make up his mind?”

The first one was me, even though I didn’t want to at all. I was sitting in the middle between Kolya and Edem, and they, unexpectedly and treacherously, pushed me off the chair. I thought they were my friends. I had no choice but to go and sit in the barber chair. And while the barber was wrapping a white sheet around my shoulders, I imagined in dismay how the blood would run down it. A scared yet quite likeable little boy with a tidy hairdo, not at all shaggy, looked out at me from the mirror. His eyes were pleading: “Please, don’t do it! It’s a mistake. You have the wrong boy.”

“Which hairstyle do you prefer, young man?” the barber asked with condescending politeness. “I think you’ll go for the one with a forelock.”

I nodded without saying a word. The choice was limited to With a Forelock, Skin Fade and Youth. I wasn’t old enough for the youth style. I didn’t like the skin fade because I would look like a prematurely bald child with a fur cap on my head. With a forelock was the only option left.

The scissors began to snip, the clippers began to buzz, and I became tenser and tenser, cringing as I felt the barber’s fat belly rubbing against my arms. I wanted him to finish quickly. It was too much. I could see the famous forelock on my forehead. It looked like we were done. The barber glanced at the mirror and turned my head from side to side. Now he would set me free, but no, he grabbed the clippers again and began to expose the back of my head. V-v-zh-zh, v-vzh-zh, the clippers rumbled like a car going uphill. It seemed to me that I was about to go deaf, yet the Professor of Barber Affairs continued torturing me. He pushed the clippers hard into the back of my head as if trying to drill into it. Perhaps he had already done so, and now he was scraping it the way you scrape asphalt with a shovel.

I was covered in sweat. My cheeks and ears were on fire. I could see my friends behind me in the mirror. They were shaking with soundless laughter, grabbing the cushions of their chairs with their hands.

Suddenly, everything was quiet. I took a deep breath. I was relieved. That was it. And right away, I lurched forward, as I got a shock, an unbearable burning sensation – the master generously wiped the bare scratched-up back of my head with eau-de-cologne.

I stood up, dumbfounded, and shook my head. I saw a billiard ball rocking first to the right and then to the left in the mirror. The forelock and a small wisp of hair that looked like a little island in the ocean were glued to the top of my head. But my ears were intact, all the more noticeable since they were still on fire.

“Do you like it?” the potbellied master asked with a kind smile. I nodded. If I’d said I didn’t, he might have dragged me back into the chair. I wanted it to stop so I could sit in peace and enjoy the show. It was my friends’ turn now.

After some slight jostling, and without any exchange of words, – Kolya nudged Edem, Edem nudged Kolya – it was Kolya who landed in the master’s chair. Edem rushed to the chair of the novice, which had just become available.

“Skin fade, please,” Kolya requested. He wasn’t amused any longer. He remembered my suffering.

“A skin fade wouldn’t be right for you,” the master answered. “You had a forelock before.”

Kolya was at a loss and, as always in such cases, he twisted his lips to the side and began to mumble something incomprehensible.

“What? A forelock?” Mr. Potbelly responded eagerly. “That’s good!” The scissors immediately began to click. Kolya didn’t even have time to shout “Ow!”

Now it was my turn to have fun. Now I was the one bursting with laughter as the destructive clipper grabbed hold of the back of Kolya’s head. It munched on his light hair like a hungry dog opening a wide path for itself. Aha! Now it was scraping like a shovel. I gazed with malicious pleasure at the back of Kolya’s head and at the mirror in which his tomato-red face was reflected. Now and then, I would cast a glance at Edem, for whom matters were no better – a forelock was already looming on his forehead.

Then three boys were walking home. As they walked, they scratched the shaven backs of their heads. They walked without talking, thinking about the same thing – how tomorrow in the yard and at school, boys would delight in thinking up nicknames for them, repeating the word “forelock” all the time and giving them flicks to their foreheads, which were known as “initiation.” Who knew what else awaited them?

One thing they knew for sure – they would never again go to the new barbershop.

Chapter 19. The Residents of Our Building Gossip, Laugh and Cry

The bench near our entrance was the setting for a kind of court that was continuously in session, where any gossip might turn into a long-running hearing.

But today, as I approached the entrance, I noticed something unusual – there were more than the customary number of adults there. None of them were sitting on the bench. Instead, they were all standing and whispering, and they all looked sad. Sasha Kulikov came out of the building.

“What’s wrong with you?” he said, seeing that I was observing the gathering with surprise. “Haven’t you heard… that Ilyas drowned?”

“Ilyas… today… no, not today. I didn’t see him at school today… I didn’t see him in the yard either.”

Ilyas lived on the fourth floor of our wing of the building. He was a fifth grader. We kids respected him very much, and not just because he was older. All the boys respected Ilyas. Hardly anyone could compete with him when he played soccer in the yard. He was skilled, fast, and frisky. He never bragged about his achievements. He never bragged about anything, and he was very fair, for which he was especially admired. He would halt arguments, even fights, and, on top of that, he would reconcile the boys so that they didn’t ruin a friendship just to nurse a grudge.

Ilyas… How did it happen?

Sasha had heard that Ilyas and his friend Petya supposedly went for a walk by the canal. Ilyas slipped and fell on the concrete edge. He must have been knocked out, slid from the edge into the water and never resurfaced.

We moved closer to listen to what the adults were saying.

The accident had happened the day before, Sunday, in the afternoon. Ilyas’s parents grew anxious when their son didn’t return home by late evening. And his friend – what a pathetic coward he was – was scared and didn’t tell anyone what had happened. Only when Ilyas’s parents called him and began to ask him questions did he break down and tell them the truth. He said he had hoped that Ilyas was playing a joke on him, that he had gotten out of the canal downstream and run home, but he was afraid to find out. Sasha and I were indignant – what a coward he was! What a scoundrel! Ilyas would never have done anything like that!

We discussed the tragic event for some time.

There was always something happening that would attract the attention of everyone in the large apartment building. Our entrance, like the whole building, the whole micro-district, like any other community, called a mahalla in Uzbek, lived from one event to another. The number of people drawn into the whirlwind of an event depended on one thing – the scale of what had happened. Heavy drinking and the escapades of drunkards were basically local events. There were so many drunkards, and their behavior, with rare exceptions, was so predictable and boring that they barely aroused any interest. At least one drunk would inevitably catch one’s eye every day – on a bus, at a movie theater, on a bench near a building 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.