Protracted deafening ding-and-dong of the huge electric bell filled the long corridor in the one-story building, plus all the yard of the “Cherevko’s school”, and 3 adjoining streets in the vicinity. If it signaled a break, everyone went out into the wide schoolyard with an ancient tree in its center and the low building behind it, which comprised the Pioneer Room, the workshop for Handicraft classes, the school library and, as I was too late to learn at the moment, the ski storage room.
The gym, with its windows grated from inside to prevent smashing the panes by ball hits at PE classes, abutted the far end of the barrack-like building at the right angle. Opposite the blind end wall of the gym, there stood a detached hut of toilets of whitewashed brick.
All the break long, a swarm of students hung out at the high stoop of three stairs by the entrance door. The horizontal handrails in the stoop’s landing were congested by perched boys until a maverick teacher would shoo them off and they reluctantly comply only to again light up the moment the teacher’s back vanished in the doorway.
A lively trickle of students kept flowing to and from the toilets in the yard corner, yet the majority of boys (and boys only!) veered before reaching the toilets hut and turned round the gym corner. There, in the narrow passage between the gym and the tall fence of the neighboring garden, life ran high in a brisk cash game for ready money, the game of Bitok at the school Las Vegas grounds, where the average stake was about pyatak, 5 copper kopecks, and no less than 2. If you had nickels, say, 10, 15, 20 or even fifty-kopeck in one piece, it’d be exchanged before you say “knife”.
The stakes stacked on the ground in a tiny neat tower—one atop the other, each coin heads up—the bitok comes into play.
What’s a bitok? It’s hard to say, every player had his favorite hunk of iron—a bolt, a railroad spike, a polished ball from a huge bearing—no limits in the game, you could use whatever you wanted, be it even a stone. And even the absence of any gear was no problem—anyone would readily lend you his bitok for hitting.
Hitting what? That stack of kopecks, silly!. Any coin turned over by your hit and showing their tails is now yours. Collect them into your pocket and hit the remaining stubborn heads, one by one. When no coin turns over, the next player starts his tries.
And who is to open the game? Quite logically, the one who enters the biggest share of kopecks the stack…
At times, the warning cry of “shuba!” from the gym corner signaled the approach of some male teacher. The money vanished right away from upon the ground into the pockets, cigarettes hid inside the capped palms. However, the alarm was always false – the teachers turned to the toilet where beside the row of common holes in the floor there was the boarded cabin for Director and the teaching staff.
In just three games, I lost fifteen kopecks, that Mother gave me for a cabbage piroshki from the school canteen. This was no wonder though because the bitok virtuosos were training their hands at home with their favorite bitok pieces while I had to hit with a borrowed one. Maybe, that was even for the better, leaving no time for me to get addicted…
(…the Konotopian “shuba!” takes roots from thief slang “shukher!” that takes roots from Yiddish “zukher!” each of which means “cheese it!”. The school slang “atas!” at the Object meant exactly the same yet derived from the French ”l’atantion!”. Traditionally, Russian gentry were taught the French…)
~ ~ ~
On my first day at school, Class Mistress, Albina Grigoryevna, planted me next to a skinny red-haired girl, Zoya Yemets. I never used Zoya’s inkwell, yet Sasha Dryga, a grown-up double repeater with a greasy forelock down to his eyes, resented my presence at her desk and, after the classes, he didn't omit informing me of the fact…
And on the way home I made friends with my classmate Vitya. His last name sounded a bit scary, yet it’s a fairly trite one among the Ukrainian family names – Skull. Our on-the-fly friendship had sound foundation though because we both were walking along one and the same Nezhyn Street, and he also lived on it, only farther, next to the Nezhyn Store which was halfway from any of the street’s ends. The following day I asked Albina Grigoryevna for moving me to the last desk in the left row, to be seated next to Skull, because we were neighbors and could help each other with home assignments. She respected so weighty reasons and I left Zoya’s side.
The desk in front of me and Vitya was seated singly by Vadya Kubarev, which situation immediately gave rise to our triple friendship.
The last names at school were, naturally, used by only teachers, while among the students Skull would surely turn Skully, Kubarev become Kuba and so forth. What handle did I get? Goltz or Ogle? Neither. If your name happened to be “Sehrguey”, they did not bother about vivisecting the last name and everyone started to call you “Gray” by default…
Friendship is power. When the 3 of us were together, even Sasha Dryga refrained from bullying… Friendship is knowledge. I shared the pieces of poetry never included in school curriculum but firmly memorized by all the boys at the Object, such as “To get insured from the cold…”, and “The light was burning in the pub…”, and “Vaniyka-Halooy went to the fair…” as well as other short but flowery instances of rhymed folklore. And in the context of cultural and philological exchange, my friends explained to me the meaning of popular Konotopian expressions like “Have you fled from Romny?” or “It’s time to pack you off to Romny.” As it turned out, the town of Romny, about seventy kilometers from Konotop, was the seat of Regional Psychiatric Hospital for nuts…
~ ~ ~
That morning the gambling bouts at Bitok ran low behind the gym. On that clear April morning, the lads stood arguing and waiting for the confirmation of so welcome rumors that the Central TV news program “Time” was grossly mistaken the previous night. Because some guy heard from guys from School 10 that last night some man landed by parachute in the Sarnavsky forest near the Konotop outskirts. And now Sasha Rodionenko would arrive from City, his family had recently moved over there but he still attended our school, just let's wait him come, he should know for sure, he would confirm…
I remembered the flight of Gagarin and as soon after him Guerman Titov was orbiting all day long to say in the evening, “Bye, for now, I’m going to bed.” And Dad chuckled with delight and replied to the radio on the wall, “That’s a good one!”
Our cosmonauts were always the first and we, elementary school pupils, were arguing who of us was the first to hear the radio announcement about the flight of Popovich or Nikolayev, or the first cosmonautess Tereshkova…
Sasha Rodionenko came but he didn’t confirm anything. So the Central TV news program “Time” was not mistaken. And the sun faded in grief…
Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov…In the landing module…
Entering the dense layers of the earth’s atmosphere…
Perished…
Then Father came and he was followed a week later by the railway container with our things from the Object that arrived at the Freight Station and moved from there on a platform truck to 19 Nezhyn Street, both the wardrobe with the mirror on its door and the folding couch-bed, and the two armchairs with wooden armrests, and the TV set, and all the other implement-utensils. Even the old-fashioned leatherette sofa arrived for which there was no room in the khutta.
(…now I can feel nothing but horror at the thought: how could 10 people—2 families and their mutual Grandma Katya—to fit into and live in 1 room and 1 kitchen?
But at that time I didn’t think of such things at all because since it was our home and we lived there the way we lived, then it couldn’t be somehow different, everything was as it should be and I just lived on along and that’s it..)
