The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - стр. 162

Grandma Katya never commented or said anything about Pillutikha, she only smiled a guilty smile. On some days she moaned occasionally but not louder than the muffled Goebbels’ speeches from behind the wall… And suddenly an ambulance arrived and she was taken to the hospital.

Three days later they brought Grandma Katya back and laid her on the leatherette-covered mattress-couch, constructed from the remains of the big sofa brought from the Object and put under the window in the kitchen, opposite to the brick stove. She did not recognize nor spoke to anyone, and only moaned loudly. In the evening our two families gathered in front of the TV and shut the door to the kitchen to cut off her moans and heavy smell. The Arkhipenkos moved their beds to the room and it became a bedroom for 9.

The next day the ambulance was called again, but they did not take her away and only made an injection. Grandma Katya quieted for a short time but then again began to sway from side to side on her couch, repeating the same screams, “Oh, God! Ah, probby!” A few years later I guessed that “probby” was a shortened Ukrainian “forgive me, God”.

Grandma Katya was dying for 3 days.

Our families stayed at neighboring khuttas; the Arkhipenkos at Number 15, and we at 21, in the half of Ivan Kreepak. Older neighbors were giving our parents indistinct advice about breaking out the threshold to our khutta, or some of the floorboards inside it. The most common-sense proposal made Ivan Kreepak’s wife, auntie Tamara. She said that the couch with Grandma Katya stood under the window with a half-open leaf above her head, and the fresh air flow protracted the sufferings of the poor thing.

That same evening, Mother and Aunt Lyouda dropped into our khutta to grab more blankets, then they put out the light and got out onto the porch. There Aunt Lyouda neared the kitchen window and closed the leaf tightly. Then she stealthily stepped down to Mother and me—I was holding the blankets—with a smile of a naughty girl on her face, or so it seemed in the dark moonless night.

In the morning Mother woke us, sleeping on the floor in the living-room of Kreepak’s khutta, with the news that Grandma Katya died.

The funeral was the next day. I did not want to go, but Mother said I should. I was burning with shame. It seemed to me that everyone knew that Grandma Katya was suffocated by her own daughters. That’s why I let loose the ear-flaps of my rabbit-fur hat and pulled it over my eyes. And so I went all the way from our khutta to the cemetery, keeping my guilty head low, and looking at the feet of those who walked ahead of me.

It’s possible though that no one ever guessed that such my stance was caused by shame and not because of the strong wind slapping my face with icy pellets.

At the cemetery, under the shrill crying of the three trumpets over the uneven mound of snow mixed with black earth lumps, all Grandma Katya’s children were sobbing too, both Mother, and Aunt Lyouda, and even Uncle Vadya.

The news of the Yuri Gagarin’s death shattered us, though not so tragically as the death of Vladimir Komarov eleven months before him – getting harder we had learned already that astronauts were also mortal. The TV announcer, keeping his eyes down to the sheet of text on his desk, read that in a training jet plane flight, Gagarin together with his partner-pilot Sehryogin crashed when approaching the airfield. Then he looked up thru his thick-lensed black-rimmed glasses and declared the All-Union mourning.