Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin

Author:Nicolai Lilin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO000000, TRU000000, TRU003000
ISBN: 9781921776281
Publisher: The Text Publishing Company
Published: 2010-05-17T04:00:00+00:00

That February day, as we entered the Railway district, I was only thinking of getting the job done quickly and not running into this fool of an enemy of mine. So as not to bother Mel with that story and not make him anxious – because it was a very serious matter to see him looking worried – I tried talking to him about the birthday party I would be having that evening, and the dishes my mother had prepared for us. He listened attentively, and from his expression it was clear that he was already there at the table, eating it all himself.

In Railway, as in our district, the boys acted as lookouts: they observed the movements of anyone who came in or left and then informed the adults. So we were immediately spotted by a little group of boys aged six or seven. We were crossing the first yard of the district and they were sitting there in a corner, a strategic point from where they had a good view of each of the two roads that ran from the park to the district. One of the boys, the smallest, received an order from another bigger boy, whereupon he got up and started running like a bullet towards us. In our district we didn’t do that: if you had to approach someone, you went in a group; you never sent just one boy, let alone the smallest. And usually you didn’t go towards anyone at all; you organized things so that the outsiders came to you, so from the outset you put yourself in a position of superiority.

The little boy looked like a little junkie. He was thin and had two blue rings round his eyes, a clear sign that he sniffed glue – a lot of kids in Railway used to get high like that. We took the piss out of them, calling them ‘boyfriends of the bag’, because they always carried a plastic bag around with them. They would put a bit of glue into it and then stick their head in the bag. A lot of them died like that, asphyxiated, because they didn’t even have the strength to take the bag off their heads; an incredible number of them were found in various little hiding places around town, in the cellars or in the central heating boiler rooms, which they turned into shelters.

Anyway, this little boy stood in front of us, wiped his snivelling nose on the sleeve of his jacket and with a voice ravaged by the residue of glue said:

‘Hey, stop! Where are you going?’

To let him know who we were, I gave him a crash course in good breeding:

‘Where have you put your manners? Have you left them in your pocket, along with your dear little bag? Has nobody ever taught you that there are places where if you don’t say hello to people you can end up as a baklan?1 Go back to your friends and tell them to come all together and to introduce themselves properly, if they want to talk.

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