See? My comprehension works like that crane from a fable wallowing in a marsh mire who pulls his neck out free, but a wing gets bogged down, the wing is out—oops!—a leg got stuck.

Or is it about my comprehension only?..)

A week before the winter holidays Class Mistress announced that at the school New Year Eve Party would also be the contest for the best fancy dress so our class should do our best to win it. I was thrilled by the task at hand and right away conceived the idea of an unbeatable carnival dress – no bears or robots anymore, I’d dress up like a gypsy girl! Mom laughed when I shared my plan, yet promised to help because she had connections at the Dancing Amateur Activities…

At my cautious inquiries in the class—what disguise did they intend for the contest?—the boys invariably answered that no one cared about making any fancy dress and they would attend the party in their casual wear. The dismal prospect distressed me not a little because at a New Year party everything should be as in the movie “The Carnival Night” with streamers flying crisscross thru the snowfall of confetti… I sought consolation in a soothing thought that it was silly panicking just like before “The Three Musketeers” which show did take place, after all. Well, and if the boys had no intention of wearing fancy dresses, then there remained other guys especially from the senior classes who you could rely on…

Mom made me a mask like that of Mr. X in the movie “Mr. X”, also of black velvet only she added black gauze strip hung down over the lips. Now, no one would recognize me because from the Dancing Amateur Activities Mom brought a real wig with a long black braid reaching to the waist, a red skirt, a fine blouse and a black shawl with big red flowers.

After I changed into all those things, Mom and her new woman-friend who moved into the Zimins’ rooms laughed themselves to tears. Then they said, what if someone invited me to dance? I had to have some practice beforehand. On their advice, I picked up a chair and slowly span keeping it hugged under a waltz record. They laughed even more and said I needed female shoes, my boots did not suit the red skirt. The shoes were also found but they had high heels because you couldn’t wear sandals in winter. Walking on high heels was more than uncomfortable but Mom said, “Practice your patience, Cossack, and get trained while the time allows”.

One hour before the New Year party, my carnival costume was packed in a large bag, and off I went to school thru the dark night forest.

At school, I sneaked up to the second floor, where even the light was not turned on, and in one of the dark classrooms, I changed into my fancy dress. Descending to the first floor, I held onto the railing because walking in high-heel shoes was no better than having skates on your feet.

Both the vestibule and the first-floor corridors were lighted rather scantily, yet there was enough illumination to see that everyone, including the guys from senior classes, wore, albeit not the school uniform, yet nothing like carnival costumes.

They all stood in small groups or ran back and forth and fell silent when I clap-clapped the shoe heels past them over the parquet flooring, then over the tiles of the vestibule and the following parquet in the next corridor. And where was the celebration then? Where were the streamers and confetti?.

A couple of senior boys talked in a whisper to each other and approached me, “Could you tell the future, gypsy girl?”

At that moment School Pioneer Leader appeared and took me with her to the gym. The hall was crowded with rows of seats up to the New Year Tree and farther back on both sides of it to accommodate the audience for the performance of a prepared play. So, all my waltzing that chair at home was just useless, the school New Year party program foresaw no dancing whatsoever.

School Pioneer Leader seated me in the first row facing the still closed blue curtains. Then she left briefly and brought a masked girl in a Harlequin suit—another stupid fool like me. The girl was placed in the chair next to me, and we were the only mummers in the gym.

The curtain fell open and the ninth-graders presented their production of Cinderella. They had good costumes though, I especially liked the tartan cap of the Jester… The performance ended, everyone started to clap and I realized that now even the Jester would change into his pants and jacket.

I left the gym and went upstairs to the dark classroom, where I had left my clothes, and changed back. What a bliss it was to get rid of the hatefully painful high-heel shoes and get into my long-longed-for felt boots!

Exiting the school, I met my Mom and Natasha who came to admire my masquerade triumph. I shortly warned them that there was no carnival, and we went home thru the same night forest.

(…the trick for being happy all the time is pretty simple: avoid looking back and let the memory do its job quickly – it will forget and erase your blunders, sorrows, and pains. Just keep looking forward to pleasures, successes, and holidays…)

~ ~ ~

Though the New Year celebration party fell so flat, ahead still was the long winter vacations with seventeen TV sequels of “Captain Tankesh” where he’d ride his swift horse, and swash his saber, and make fools of the Austrian occupants of his Hungarian Motherland.

In the parents’ room, as always, the Christmas Tree was touching the ceiling with the ruby star on its top, and among the shiny decorations there also hung chocolate candies “Batons” and “Bear Cub in the Forest”. After the lead-balloon carnival, life smiled again…

On the New Year Eve, Dad worked the night shift so that the garland lights would not fade in the Christmas trees in homes at the Object. And on the first morning of the New Year, Mom left for her work so that water would flow steadily from the kitchen taps…

That morning I woke late when Dad was already home from work. He asked who visited the previous night, and I answered that Mom’s new woman-friend from the former Zimins’ rooms came for quite a minute.

Then I read, went to the rink, played hockey in felt boots and came back again to the books on the big sofa… I was watching the concert of Maya Kristalinskaya on the TV in the usual wide kerchief around her neck—to hide the traces of her personal life drama—when Mom came from work. I ran from the parents’ room to the hallway, and Dad was already there from the kitchen.

He stood in front of my Mom, who had not yet had time to take her coat off. Then, while they stood, oddly still and silent, facing each other, something ungraspable happened to Dad’s hand, which, as if the only moving part in their frozen confrontation, broke the stillness by an awkward short slap against each of Mom’s cheeks.

Mom said, “Kolya! What’s that?” and she burst into tears which I had never seen.

Dad started yelling and demonstrating a saucer with cigarette butts which he found behind the blind on the windowsill in the kitchen. Mom tried to say something about her woman-friend neighbor, but Dad rebuffed in a loud voice that Belomor-Canal cigarettes were not a women’s smoke. He flung his sheepskin overcoat on and, before getting out, yelled, “But you swore to never ever even shit within a mile off him!”

The door slammed furiously, Mom went to the kitchen and then across the landing to her new woman-friend in the former Zimins’ rooms. I put on my coat and felt boots, and went to the rink again. On my way I met my sister-’n’-brother coming back home, I did not say anything to them about what happened there.

At the rink, I was hanging around until full dark. I had no wish to play, neither wanted to go back home, so I just milled about aimlessly or sat by the stove in the shed.

Then Natasha came up to me on the ice empty of anyone already, she said that Mom and my brother were waiting for me on the road and that at home Dad dumped the Christmas Tree on the floor and kicked Sasha, and now we were going to sleepover at some acquaintances’.