“Valery, the glads have blossomed!”
That was Mama. She stood at the open veranda window.
The gladioluses in our garden grew along the wooden fence. They had just begun to blossom – their lower buds had opened. Their leaves and stems were covered with sparkling drops of dew.
The first stem crunched as the knife cut through it; transparent juice seeped from the cut. I immediately began to cut a second one. They would continue blossoming in Flura Merziyevna’s vase.
Then Edem and Rustem, Kolya and Sasha came out into the yard. They giggled when they saw me holding flowers, “Who are you going to give them to, Romeo?” When I told them that the flowers were for Flura Merziyevna from my mama, they grew silent. We all knew that the head teacher of our class would not return to school the next year. She would leave Chirchik for Kazan. She would go there not because Kazan was her hometown. Flura Merziyevna had been driven out of our school. Why? She was nice and kind. Was it because of Drunk Hedgehog? We couldn’t understand it.
But it was impossible to be sad for long on such a morning. We joined the stream of white and blue shirts that billowed in the wind. Red ties could be heard flapping loudly. It became noisy and merry. We forgot about Flura Merziyevna, and we decided that we would go hiking in the hills tomorrow, our day off. Kolya reminded us that shooting had recently been heard from there, so there should be lots of loot after the maneuvers.
First, we walked across the abandoned land. That was what we called the dreary space that stretched for about a kilometer between the settlement and the hills. There were shrubs and even a small grove of trees there. The land was dotted with pebbles through which grass was forcing its way. Obviously, when the new settlement was under construction, there was an area where construction equipment and various trucks were parked at its edge.
Soon, more delightful places came into view. We reached a little winding river whose source was high in the mountains, and we took a path running along it. Its banks were made of clay, which was why the water was murky. Then the river ran to the right, and we crossed a bridge and found ourselves right near the hills.
The hills stretched to the horizon like a big herd of prehistoric animals. We now walked among them close to the base, then ran up the slopes. We looked down from their high crests. Every time we did so, our neighborhood, our buildings, and the entire town grew smaller and smaller, its outline blurred.
It was nice and not difficult to walk and even climb the steep slopes. Green grass, thick and soft, like the fur of an animal, stretched under our feet. Yellow dandelions and scarlet wild poppies looked especially bright and beautiful. Now and then, a tumbleweed rushed by, now rolling along the grass, now flying up with the wind.
We climbed one of the highest hills, then stopped. We talked endlessly as we were climbing up the hill but fell silent at its top.
We were in the middle of a rippling green ocean. The warm wind pounced on us in gusts. It enveloped us and immediately raced down the hill like a skier dragging a wide invisible net behind him. From the foot of the hill, the skier went up to the next crest without stopping to catch his breath. Where he passed, the grass bent for a moment under the weight of the net.
And the wind continued to blow. A skier with a net raced down every hill. There were dozens of them, hundreds. They went up hills, one after another, and the green ocean swayed and swayed, and my head was spinning.
At last we reached the top, where Kolya looked around and said:
“The embrasure should be over there,” and he pointed at the slope of a hill that was higher than the others.
No matter how hard we peered at it, we failed to see anything. And only when we reached the foot of that hill did we notice a spot that was darker than the grass around it. That was the embrasure of a pillbox covered with a layer of turf.
Our experts, Vitya and Sasha, explained that the pillbox was very old, a few decades old. They took us to the beginning of an open trench that started on the other side of the hill.
I don’t know about the rest of the boys, but I was somewhat scared when, following the trench, we reached the underground entrance to the pillbox. After watching movies and reading books about the war, I imagined quite vividly how we would enter the pillbox and find the skeleton of a dead soldier. But it was nothing like that in the pillbox. It was a dark damp concrete space. It was so small that we barely fit into it. A narrow ray of light illuminated the earthen floor through a crack in the embrasure. The slope of the neighboring hill appeared to be a narrow green vertical tunnel when we looked at it through the crack. I bet it wasn’t easy to sit here hugging a machinegun, even during maneuvers, to say nothing of a real war.
But we were here together. After we got used to the dark and crowded conditions, we began pretending that we were soldiers. Edem began to imitate shooting a machinegun quite skillfully. As he was doing it, he chuckled to let us know that he was joking, for we were already past the age when kids imitated the sounds of shooting as they played. But, obviously, Edem couldn’t refrain from doing so. Kolya also got carried away and exclaimed that one could remain on the defensive as long as necessary, and the assailants wouldn’t even be able to get close. Sasha Parkhomenko stated with authority that that was nonsense: they would surround the pillbox and then shower it with grenades. And if they couldn’t surround the pillbox, we should remember the war hero Alexander Matrosov who covered the embrasure with his body.
We didn’t find anything in the pillbox but intense impressions. There were only pieces of rusty metal on the floor, no cartridges or cartridge cases.
“Let’s get out of here!” Vitya Yarosh said and headed for the exit. “I just remembered that there’s a training ground not far from here.”
We went around a couple of hills and spied the training ground. The hills had fallen away here, giving way to a valley. It was quite wide and so long that the end of it disappeared around the bend and was hidden by distant hills. It was covered with furrows made by the caterpillar tracks of tanks.
That was quite a training ground, with recently made furrows of caterpillar tracks and embrasures on the hills. The only things missing to complete the picture, were moving and stationary targets, which were placed in the valley and on the slopes during training. They had been removed, but there was plenty of shrapnel and cartridges where they had stood.
We pounced on the spoils like a group of mushroom pickers who had come across a clearing studded with mushrooms. The quiet valley resounded with our triumphant shouts.
“Tracer bullet shell!” I yelled, picking up an oblong shell.
“A TT pistol shell! Another one!” Yarosh shouted. He lay on the ground and groped around with both hands.
Kolya informed us that he had found cartridge cases… and more of them… still more…
The tank school cadets carried out their exercises far from the residential area, away from town. The training ground was prepped and cordoned off during big exercises. Information was sent to schools, and teachers warned students every time, reminding them of the dangers and emphasizing the possible consequences. But still someone managed to sneak into the area of exercises now and then. Naturally, those who were caught had a hard time at school and at home.
This place was extremely attractive for us adventurers. It seemed that the spirit of battle still hovered over it. And, of course, we had our loot. The hunt for ammunition had turned us into participants in a battle. Our pockets were stuffed; there was no room for more trophies. We were tired. We climbed the nearest hill and lay down in the grass. Some of us scrutinized and sorted the spoils. The others, like me, lay looking up at the sky. And I suddenly saw that it was bottomless. I had read in books that in ancient times people thought the sky was solid. It was bottomless, blue… Where does this blue color come from? Yes, we were told about the composition of air in class. But there were so many different hues! At times it was a milky blue, as if enameled, or it might be glowing, like today, or perhaps a dark, almost navy blue so that it seemed thick, or maybe cold and greenish, almost clear.