The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - стр. 161

~ ~ ~

At 19 Nezhyn Street, the old man Duzenko was no more and that part of the khutta was dwelt already by two old women: Duzenko’s widow and her sister who moved in from her village.

And in the half-khutta belonging to Ignat Pilluta there remained only his widow, Pillutikha. She never stuck her nose outside her den, keeping the window shutters in Nezhyn Street closed for weeks on end. Sure enough, she had to visit Bazaar or the Nezhyn Store but my treads never crossed hers…

In February Grandma Katya all of a sudden was taken to the hospital. Probably, only for me, with my life split between school, Club, books, and the TV it happened suddenly. Trying to get everywhere leaves no time to see things right by your side.

Coming from school, I clinked the latch-hook in the wicket, trotted to and up our two-step porch past Pillutikha’s window with a profile glimpse of her standing figure cloaked in a black shawl hung loosely from her head, her hand menacingly aloft against the wall between her and our kitchens.

At home, I dropped the folder with school notebooks into the crevice between the folding couch-bed and the cabinet under the TV and went back to the kitchen to have a midday meal with my sister-'n'-brother, if they hadn’t had it yet. Mother and Aunt Lyouda cooked separately for their families, and Grandma Katya ate the meals by her youngest daughter, together with her younger grandkids, Irochka and Valerik, at the common kitchen table by the wall between our and Duzenko’s parts of the khutta.

In the daytime, there was nothing on television but the frozen circle and squares for adjusting image by small knobs at the back of the TV box, if the circle was uneven then the announcers’ faces would be flattened or overly long. That’s why until the All-Union Television started to broadcast at 5 o’clock the TV was turned off and the midday meal was eaten under the muffled drum-roll-like chant from behind the wall to the Pillutikha’s, whose blather at times peaked up into piercing but indistinct shrieks.

Then I went to Club and, coming back, again saw Pillutikha, back-lit by a distant bulb in the room, she never turned on the light in the kitchen where she stood up against the hateful wall. After all the 4 parents of our khutta returned from work, Pillutikha would increase her volume to which the usual comment from Father was, “Ew! Again that Goebbels at her hurdy-gurdy!”

Once Uncle Tolik put a large teacup to the wall to hear what she was croaking about. I also pressed my ear to the cup bottom, the gabble got nearer and sounded already not from behind the wall but inside the white teacup, yet remained as thick as before. Mother advised not to pay attention to the half-witted old woman, and Aunt Lyouda explained that Pillutikha was putting curses on all of us thru the wall. She turned to that same wall and pronounced with perfect poise, “Be all of that back to your bosom!”

I don’t know whether Pillutikha was crazy indeed. She managed to live alone, after all. By the end of the war, her daughter left Konotop for the safety’s sake, to avoid troubles for her cheerful behavior with the officers at the German Company Headquarters lodging in her parents’ khutta. Pillutikha’s son Grisha was doing his ten-year stretch in prison for some murder. Her husband died; no TV by her side. Maybe, she kept cursing so as not to go nuts, who knows…