Memoir of a Russian Punk

15

Eddie-baby went to Vitka's for Easter. He even wore his only sports jacket and one of his father's white shirts with the collar buttoned, and he put a bow tie – a gift from another Vitka, Vitka Golovashov – in his pocket, just in case.

Tyurenka was even more beautiful by Easter, since the fruit trees in the little Tyurenka gardens had all finally started to bloom. The big old apple tree in front of Vitka's house was completely filled with huge flowers and gave off a wonderful fragrance. They had driven their big shepherd dog with its heavy paws and impressive muzzle behind the house and tied it up in the garden, but it could still hear everything from there, and when Eddie walked up to the gate, it started barking.

From inside the house came laughter and the clatter of dishes and the smell of cooking food, along with a hint of strong cigarette smoke. Opening the gate, Eddie went past the apple tree, and Vitka came out of the house to greet him dressed in black shoes and a light blue shirt that was the same color as his eyes. His short blond curls were carefully trimmed, and he smelled of cologne.

"Carmen," thought Eddie, who is good at distinguishing odors. "Carmen. He borrowed it from his grandmother probably."

"Welcome!" Vitka said. "Christ is risen!" And then he added, "Let's kiss each other!" and reached out for Eddie.

Eddie had heard about this custom and had seen the peasant men kissing each other by the beer stand the Easter before, but Eddie is shy about kissing and only feels like doing it with Svetka. It's even been a long time since he allowed his mother to kiss him. But there was nothing he could do now. He gingerly kissed Vitka. Nothing particular happened as a result. They just bumped together with their lips and noses and then went into the house.

Awaiting Eddie inside were at least several dozen more exchanges of triple Easter kisses, since there was an unexpectedly large number of guests already sitting on a wooden bench at the table in the main room. Some of the exchanges were not entirely unpleasant for Eddie – for example, the one with a large, beautiful girl named Lyuda. Lyuda's lips were soft. By the time he had gone around to everyone sitting at the table, Eddie was a professional kisser.

After that Vitka took him to see the barrel of homemade beer in the vestibule. The beer was already standing in bottles on the table, but Vitka wanted to show Eddie the barrel. He took the top off and pulled back the cheesecloth covering the beer, and Eddie smelled the fresh, intoxicating, sourish smell. The barrel was filled with a brown liquid.

Using a wooden ladle, Vitka scooped up some of the liquid and poured it into faceted glasses. After clinking their glasses, they drank.

"Look," said Vitka, "I know you're an experienced drinker, but Grandma's home brew is worse than vodka – it's sneaky. You drink it as if it's nothing, not strong at all, but it'll make you pretty drunk. It can knock a good-sized man off his feet."

They went back to the main room, where the other guests crowded together a little to make room for them on the bench so they could sit down at the table. As the host, Vitka looked after Eddie and served him some of his grandmother's homemade meat in aspic, and along with that a bit of grated horseradish, which for some reason was bright red.

"It goes really well with the home brew," Vitka said. "Grandma made it herself."

Just as they do in the country, they cook a lot in Tyurenka and make a lot of their own things. Many people in Tyurenka have their own hogs, and several times a year on holidays they slaughter them and make sausage. Nothing could be more delicious than homemade Ukrainian sausage brought straight from the cellar to the table, cold and hardened in lard… People in Tyurenka also sell their own fruits and vegetables at the markets, and they live a lot better than the people of Saltovka do, which is why the indigent Saltovka proletarians call them kurkuli. The people in Tyurenka are all local people, and their houses are very, very old, having once been the homes of their grandfathers and grandmothers. They're settled people. The Saltovka poor, on the other hand, come from all over to work in the factories, even from the villages outside the city. Eddie-baby realized that day in Tyurenka just what their classroom teacher Yasha meant when he said that Eddie's family lacks roots, that it's synthetic.

Vitka Nemchenko's roots – his grandfather and grandmother, that is – turned out to be very nice and still young. Vitka's grandfather was a sort of replica of Vitka, with the same blue eyes and the same lank, bony frame, only about forty years older and even taller. It seemed to Eddie that if Vitka were to grow some more (Eddie himself plans to add some height), then he would be just like his grandfather. Vitka's grandfather, however, was shy; it was his grandmother who was the main person in their family.

And what a woman she was! Toward the end of the evening, excited by the folk dancing and a little drunk, even Eddie-baby danced with Vitka's grandmother, although he had never done that kind of dancing before and had no idea how. Vitka's little grandmother lifted Eddie up off the bench by force and dragged him into the circle, where to his own amazement he started dancing!

At the end of the evening, however, Vitka's grandmother disappeared into the bedroom for a while after whispering something to Vitka, who was the center of attention that evening, since he was tirelessly banging on his mother-of-pearl accordion. In Tyurenka, just as in the country, the accordion player is at the center of things. When his grandmother returned, Vitka suddenly burst forth with "Gentlewoman." His grandmother was now dressed in a cap, a checkered shirt, and fashionably narrow Chinese pants tucked in below and stretched tight across her bottom – pants of the kind that had recently appeared in the stores and that probably belonged to Vitka. Vitka's small, round, boisterous grandmother danced to "Gentlewoman" like a first-rate professional, cutting such capers that Uncle Volodya Zhitkov, who had jumped up to dance with her, simply threw up his hands in amazement and remained standing where he was.

"Now, that's a grandmother!" Eddie thought with delight and in envy of Vitka. Eddie still had a grandmother – his grandmother Vera – in the town of Liski in the Voronezh region, but he never saw her. That evening Eddie felt an urge to see his own grandmother; maybe she was like that too.

By the end of the evening, Eddie was having fun and feeling good, and was once again kissing all the guests, including the warm Lyuda, who turned out to be a neighbor of Vitka's grandfather and grandmother. He went out into the garden with Lyuda to kiss under the big apple tree, and either because of the home brew or because of Lyuda herself, it seemed to Eddie-baby, now wearing his bow tie, which had emerged during the second half of the evening, that the apple tree smelled wonderfully of Carmen.