The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - стр. 166
Peace Square in front of the same-named movie theater was bounded by long five-story parallelepipeds of apartment blocks. The shallow round pit in its enclosure of gray granite ring located centrally contained the large fountain which was turned on no sooner than once in a couple of years to shoot up a high white jet of water for an hour or two. The asphalt walks, lined with beautiful chestnut trees, rayed off from the wide stone steps of the movie theater porch to the opposite square corners alongside the crosswise road of Peace Avenue. The lawns beneath the chestnuts were improved by a couple of well-trodden short-cuts not provided by the original layout. Each of the tree-shaded ray-alleys was equipped with a couple of lengthy timber benches in the dark green coat of paint and two more of their breed stood openly on the asphalt nearby the fountain.
In the warm evenings, the square turned into the so-called “whore-parade” grounds for dense waves of loungers walking leisurely the alleys, they didn't leave the square and just repeated their promenade circles, again and again, scanning the faces and clothes worn by the public in the counter-directed circulation, as well as by those seated on the benches. In their evenly flowing motion, they all shuffled thru the soft dark layer, which got denser in front of the benches because both the walkers and the sitters were engaged in ceaseless persistently purposeful chewing of sunflower seeds and spitting the black inedible husk out…
Sometimes after a movie show, I also went along with the lazy stream when making for the streetcar stop around the corner. It happened not too often though because from one sequel of “Fantômas” to another you had to wait for at least six months.
In the daytime, the benches were mostly empty, though Kuba and I once happened to be called from a bench seated by a pair of young grown-up idlers who demanded kopecks. Kuba fired up trustworthy oaths that we had no money whatsoever, but I suggested to the louts, “Catch all that falls out!” With those words, I snatched the left pocket bag of my pants inside-out and expressively dusted it with my palm. I did not bother with the right pocket though, because it held ten kopecks for a streetcar fee.
The slob in sunglasses looked around and threatened with a beating, yet he didn’t leave the bench. We took it for being dismissed and went on, while Kuba kept bitterly upbraiding me for such a stupid impudence which could quite easily end in a good scrub for my silly mug, and justly too. Probably, he was right, and I had missed to figure out such an outcome, carried away with the idea of making a fine gesture – to pull an empty pocket out.
What saved me? The rogue might have decided that I was under the protection of some guy with a pull among the thieves, how, otherwise, to explain such reckless arrogance?.
“Enters Sehrguey Ogoltsoff from Konotop!” announced Raissa, when I and Skully appeared in the Children Sector room. Marking that I couldn’t catch up with that particular piece of humor, she handed me The Pioneer magazine opened at a story, under which at the page bottom it stood in black on white: “Sehrguey Ogoltsoff, the city of Konotop”.
I had completely forgotten about those couple sheets from a school notebook reporting on my chat with the dwarf a-straddle a pen on my desk, sent half a year before to the contest of fantasy stories announced by the magazine. The talkative dwarf chattered then of this and that making me more and more sleepy. And now, all of a sudden – wake up!