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

My father never knew if the cripple did keep his promise because he (my father) was drafted into the Red Army. Or rather, in his case, it was the Navy but Red all the same…

~ ~ ~

The WWII was burning out but pigged up the cannon fodder as voraciously as always. Kolya, a youth from a Ryazan village, and lots of other youths from other places got outfitted in the striped Navy vests, black pants, black shirts under black pea-jackets and for a couple of months kept at a recruit depot to drill them military basics and know “Attention!” from “Dismissed!” They also were taught to tell between the bayonet and trigger before, finally, loaded, in their anti-khaki uniform on high-speed cutters for a landing operation somewhere up the Danube river in Austria.

But, for all the speed of the landing operation cutters, they didn’t get there in time because the fascist Germany had just capitulated and there was no one to attack.

(…long ago I secretly regretted at this point: eew! they left no time for my Dad to become a hero! Now, on the contrary, I'm glad that he never shot and killed anyone, not even accidentally…

Still, he was considered a vet of the Great Patriotic War and on special anniversaries, like 20 or 25 and so on Jubilees of the Great Victory they always awarded him commemorative medals which he stored in the sideboard drawer but never wore like those vets dangling their collections on their civvy jackets to mark another Victory Day…)

Then his detail were guarding for a couple of months the empty Serpent Island off the coast of Bulgaria, or maybe Romania, from where they transferred him to a minesweeper, a minuscule Naval trawler manned by a tiny crew.

My Dad’s seafaring career began with the passage from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk over the ruff Black Sea; it was not a full-blown storm but the sea was pretty choppy… Riding a swing in the park is fun but if you go on enjoying it for a couple of hours the stomach will throw up anything stuck in it from the day before yesterday’s breakfast. That sea crossing continued much longer…

When Red Navy man Ogoltsoff came ashore at the port of destination, even the land itself kept swaying under his feet. He tried to puke between the tall timber-stacks lined along the pier, but to no avail. The young sailor sat on the ground just where he stood and, watching the towering rows of timber that kept swaying up and down, decided that he'd inescapably die in that naval service…

(…you may easily figure it out that was a wrong assumption as long as he had not yet met your grandmother, nor persuaded her to go with him to ZAGS. And your grandmother hadn’t yet born three children without becoming a single mother, which constitutes an unprecedented instance in this story under way…)

So, seasickness did not kill my father. He learned to endure the pitching and tossing. He tattooed a blue anchor on the back of his left hand, and on his right arm a swift outline of a swallow in the flight—from the elbow to the wrist—pinching in his beak a tiny letter envelope (“fly with greetings…”); and he furrowed on his bitty minesweeper the vast expanses of the Black Sea, clearing it from the minefields which, actually, is what minesweepers are designed for.

The main difference of naval mines with their land counterparts is that the sea species must be tethered or else they would scatter drifting astray to destroy any ship met on the way without checking whether she was “theirs” or “ours”. That’s why a cocked up sea mine is fixed with a steel cable to an anchor that grabs at the seabed. The mines—iron balloons filled with air and TNT—soar up in the water not reaching the surface though restricted by the cable length correlated to the depth on the sea route dealt with. And there the naval mines hover, a couple of meters below the surface, waiting for a passing ship to hit any of its spike-like detonators poked out the mine-shell in different directions like in a babyish sketch of the sun.

Thanks to its shallow immersion, the Navy minesweeper passes over the minefield clear of being caught by detonator spikes. In its wake, the boat drags the long loop of thick steel cable over the bottom so as to cut the mines anchorage at the seabed and destroy the loose mines popping up to the surface. For that end a manned rowboat leaves the minesweeper heading towards the mine. The team's task is to fix a dynamite cartridge with the Bickford fuse onto the huge iron ball of the mine. (Which is performed not in a placid park pond but midst unsteady waves in the open sea with the mine's spherical skull heaving up above the rowboat and then falling under it, striving to ram with the horn of a detonator.)

The final step is done by the boatswain from the stern board, a lit cigarette in the firm bite of his disclosed teeth not as a means to show off his daredevilry, it’s as a tool readied to set the fuse off. Now it’s caught fire and – Hup! Hup! Ho! Everyone pulls on with might and main, no shirkers at the oars. Away as far as possible from the hiss of the fuse dwindling to the final “BOOM!”—the TNT charge in a naval mine is meant to tear up the hulls of line battleships…

When broken down into constituent elements, romantic heroism just melts away and maritime mine clearance starts to resemble the prosaic job of a tractor bumbling in a kolkhoz field. The minesweeper gets to the assigned water area and furrows it all day long, back and forth, with the cable released behind the stern; and on the following day – to the next area. On the whole, the minesweeper crew’s heroism consists in being a good team, and the fact that my father stayed alive resulted from their forthright cooperation.

For example, at the end of a typical working day, Nikolai Ogoltsoff watched over the stern winch when he noticed a mine approaching the boat because its anchorage line got entangled with the minesweeper’s loop cable when it crawled over the sea bottom. Now it was being reeled back to the windlass drum. Too late to switch off the winch which would spin on by inertia for a short, yet sufficient, time to drag and slap the mine against the boat. Dad’s shirt stood off away from his body like the hide of a beast at the moment of utmost danger, and his roar, “Full Ahead!”, was full of such animal force that Captain on the bridge lightning-haste duplicated his order on E. O. T. sending the bell signal to the engine room, the mechanic, Dad’s shift-man, did his job promptly, the boat propeller churned up the wave whose pressure pushed the nearing mine off. So the team saved each other…

Five years later there remained no unswept areas in the sea routes and my father was transferred from the minesweeper to a coastguard ship, again in charge of the diesel engine. The following year saw the end of his second term in the Navy service (because of the heavy losses in WWII, before new generations of draftees cropped up, the service term in the Soviet Army was doubled: 6 years in the Army, 8 in the Navy—yes, 2 years more and the only consolation that no other servicemen sport so spiffy breathtaking uniform, golden anchors and stuff) and they offered my father a job in a “mailbox”.

~ ~ ~

At those times the USSR had lots of secret institutions, secret factories, and even secret cities, none of which had an ordinary postal address so as to fool enemy spies and leave them clueless about all those secret objects location. As a result, the addressee stopped living in any street or city, he lived in no region neither district and he was referred to in a pretty short way: “N. Ogoltsoff, Mail Box №***.”

Since on his last furlough before the demobilization Red Navy man Ogoltsoff N. M. registered his marriage with Citizen Vakimova G. J., she landed up at the same “mailbox” in the Carpathian mountains.

The “box” was not fixed up with a maternity hospital and for bringing me forth my mother had to visit the town of Nadveerna, thirty kilometers from the regional center, the city of Stanislavl (later renamed into Ivano-Frankivsk after the end-of-the-century Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko). Going out the "box" gave her the frightful jitters because vehicles on the roads were often shot at by the Bandera men.

(…for a long time I considered the Bandera men bloody bandits and Nazi accomplices. What else to think of them if a full-scale military division named “Galichina” was manned by Western Ukrainians to fight against the Red Army? Then, gradually, it dawned on me that two years before the German invasion it was the Red Army who occupied Western Ukraine and assisted the Soviet secret police, aka NKVD, in executions and deportation of potential opponents to the Soviet system. Killed just in case, as a preventive measure, in thousands.

Besides, what is a division when compared to an army? Among the German Wehrmacht’s comrades-in-arms, there also was the Russian Liberation Army (RLA) of almost one million servicemen fighting against the USSR.

And last but not least, the rank-and-file Red Army men, participants in the events of that period, let me know that the Bandera men fought fiercely against both Soviet and German troops. They were Carpathian guerrillas defending their land against successive liberators, aka enslavers.

Still, my parents all their life long considered the Bandera men savage bandits…)

And even two years later, when my mother again was in need of the help by maternity hospital, the dogged machine-gun rounds still rumbled on the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains, but she could not hear them anymore because her husband had been transferred from one “mailbox” to another and left the Transcarpathia for the Valdai Upland…

The change in the life circumstances of my parents resulted from a snitch-on letter sent to the Special Division of the previous “mailbox” from Konotop. It was composed by the people living in the same house with Galina Vakimova before her marriage.

The house (in Konotop parlance “khutta”) of 12 by 12 meters was a divided property, half of which belonged to citizen Ignat Pilluta. The other half was equally divided between citizen Katerinna Vakimova with her children and citizens Duzenko with their daughter, so each of the two mentioned families owned an entrance hall, a kitchen, and a room.

The daughter of citizens Duzenko married citizen Starikov who moved into her father’s part of the khutta. Seems, one kitchen and one room were not enough for all: both the young family and the in-laws. In order to increase their living space, Duzenko and Starikov learned the number of the mailbox where the demobilized Mariner took their former neighbor to and they composed their snitch-on letter for the box’s Special Division, whose foremost duty was catching spies, to inform SD that the father of Galina Vakimova (presently Ogoltsova) was arrested by the NKVD as people’s enemy but just before the war he somehow managed to return to Ukraine. Besides, during the years of German occupation, his house served the headquarters of the German troops. (Which was true in part, a Wehrmacht company headquarters was stationed in the Pilluta’s half of the khutta.) And with the approach of the Soviet Army, Joseph Vakimov fled together with the retreating fascists.

Special Divisions at “mailboxes” were notoriously vigilant and merciless, so the relatives of Joseph, who disappeared in so treacherous anti-Soviet way, would certainly be arrested and—the informers were quite sure—at least, deported. Too bad, in their logical calculations or, sooner, aping a commonplace trick of the period, they neglected the time factor. By that moment Great Leader and Teacher of Peoples, Comrade Stalin, rested in peace already. The nuts tightened under his rule to the utmost started to gradually let up.

Of course, Nikolai Ogoltsoff was repeatedly called and questioned in SD of the “mailbox”. There took place an exchange of official correspondence between the box’s Special Division and the Division of Interior Affairs of the city of Konotop. However, my father was not repressed thanks to his absolutely peasant origin, as well as to the fact that diesel engines generating electricity in “mailboxes” obeyed him so willingly. Still and all, there was no way to simply blink at the informants' “signal” and, just in case, they transferred my father to another “mailbox”, located far from borders with foreign countries…

The second lying-in of Galina Ogoltsova occurred again outside the new “box”, in the nearest, not secret district center.

(…it seems that the maternity hospital or, rather, its absence was the Achilles’ heel of the then “mailboxes”…)

On arrival to the maternity hospital out there, she was denied admittance because they took her for a Gypsy on account of her black hair and the dressing gown of large printed flowers. Suspiciously flashy, too red. Yet escorting her her husband emphatically condemned so erroneous assumption, his zealous attestation brought about change in the attitude of the segregationist nurses and they let her in for the labors at hand. An hour and a half later my father was told that his wife had born a girl, and five minutes later they heralded arrival of a boy baby. The news triggered a blissful yell by our father, “Switch off the lamp in the deliv'ry room! It’s to the light them babies scramble!.”

~ ~ ~

History, be it of a private person, or a developed nation, boils down to just two parts of which the first comes history immemorial, presented in loose legends, hazy myths, and dubious traditions; the latter, on the contrary, embraces stark facts caught, tagged, logged, and anchored to a certain calendar, preserved in the public chronicles of some kind, or in the personal memory, in case of a separate individual…

All the children of my parents were fascinated when Mom and Dad got into the mood for sharing the family lore about the deeds and adventures of the eager listeners at the times beyond their infant memories.

About how the first-born started toddling, for example, at the railway station on departure from the Carpathians to the Valdai. At the following train stops my father took me out onto the station platforms to consolidate my skills in feeble walking because the wobbly floor of the rolling car did not favor such hoopla…

At the new place, the family was allocated a timber house where they let me go for independent walks in the yard bounded by a fence of slender planks. My mother was greatly perplexed at my looks, mired as a piglet, on my returns from the yard. Where could I possibly find any dirt in so tiny and orderly corral? Changing me into clean once again, she asked my father to crack the enigma. So what he sees keeping the door open for a tiny crack to peek after the mud-lover? No idle roaming nor hesitation, the kid at once takes a beeline route to the fence plank in the corner fixed by just one—upper—nail, pushes the deal aside and off he goes! In the street, the boy busily scrambles atop the hillock of sand dumped for the construction of another house. Up there he plops on his tummy and slides down the sand slant drenched by the recent rains. A merry-go-happy laughter joins the ride. Could you manage washing things for that cheeky villain?.

While my mother was changing me over again, my father took a hammer, stepped out and nailed the dangling plank in place. Then he came back and together with my mother watched: now what?

The kid walked to the usual place and pushed the plank. It didn’t stir. Neither did the planks on both sides from it. The railed in child went along the fence, twice, checking each of the planks then he stood still and burst into tears…. My memory retained neither timber house nor its yard, but at this point in the parents’ narration, I felt the emphatic tears welling up in my eyes. Oboy, poor captive!.

And from another legend, the paw of horror ran up my bristled hair before to pierce the back of my neck by the grasp of its point-sharp talons because my mother grew suddenly anxious that I was nowhere around and for quite a stretch too, so she sent my father to look for me. He went into the yard then in the street—not a sight of me anywhere and no neighbor had seen me at all but it was getting dark already.

Dad walked the street again, from one end to the other, and then he paid attention to the rumbling noise of the river. He hurried to the steep, almost vertical, slope under which the river, swollen after the rains, rolled angrily on. And there, far down, he made out his son. Run, Daddy, run!.

The torrent of muddy water had engulfed the narrow strip of the bank under the cliff-like drop-off. He had to race knee-deep in the water.

The boy in a tight clench to the wall of clay, a tuft of withered grass in his pinch, his feet under the rushing torrent. He does not even cry already and only whimpers, “uhu-uhu..”

Dad wrapped him in his jacket and hardly managed to find a spot he could climb out without helping himself with his both hands…

And how proudly fluttered the wings of my nose at the story that it was me christened my brother and sister!

Since I was named after my father’s brother, the names of my mother’s siblings were readied for the twins that came next. In the maternity hospital, they were addressed just so—Vadik and Lyoudochka. However, when the babies were brought home and the parents asked me what we would call them, my immediate response was, “Sassa-’n’-Tattassa.” And no fast-talk could convince me to change my mind.

That’s how my brother became “Alexander” and my sister was called “Natalia”.

~~~~~