My eight triangles had been a present from my uncle; it was an old hat and I liked it for that very reason.
The eight triangles was such an important hat that it generated stories and idioms. In criminal slang the phrase ‘to wear eight triangles’ means to commit a crime or to participate in the organizing of criminal activities. The phrase ‘to keep eight triangles up’ means to be on the alert, to be worried about some danger. ‘To put eight triangles on the back of your head’ means to behave aggressively, to prepare for an attack. ‘To wear eight triangles askew’ means to show calm, relaxed behaviour. ‘To tip eight triangles over your eyes’ means to announce the need to disappear, to hide. ‘To fill eight triangles’ means to take something in abundance.
Often I really did fill my hat, for example when we boys went to see Aunt Marta, a woman who lived alone on the river bank and was famous for her jams. We used to take her the apples we had stolen from the collective farms on the other side of the river, and help her peel them, so she could make the jam. She would bake the pirozhki, little biscuits she filled with jam. We would all sit in a circle on little stools in the yard in front of her house, with the kitchen door wide open, through which we could always see something boiling on the fire; we would fish the apples out of the bags, peel them with our knives and then throw them into a big pot with water in it. When it was full, we would carry it into the house, using two long planks of wood which we hooked onto the pot like handles. Aunt Marta was very fond of us. She gave us plenty to eat – we would always go home with full stomachs and with pirozhki in our hands. I used to put mine in my hat and eat them as I walked.
The eight-gored hat is the subject of many proverbs, poems and songs of the criminal tradition. Since I used to spend a lot of time with the old criminals, listening to them sing or recite poems, I knew many of them by heart. One song, my favourite, went like this:
The eight triangles was at the centre of everything: it was constantly being mentioned, and people would bet on it in various situations. Often in conversations between criminals, both children and adults, you would hear the phrase: ‘May my eight-gored hat catch fire on my head if what I say is not true’, or ‘May my hat fly off my head’, or the more gruesome variant, ‘May my hat choke me to death’.
In our society swearing oaths was forbidden; it was considered a kind of weakness, an insult to yourself, because a person who swears implies that what he is saying is not true. But among us boys, when we talked, oaths would often slip out, and we would swear by our hats. You could never swear by your mother, your parents or relatives in general, by God or by the saints. Nor by your health, or even worse by your soul, for that was considered to be ‘damaging God’s property’. So the only thing left to take it out on was your hat.
Once my friend Mel swore by his hat that he would ‘stuff his eight triangles up Amur’s arse’ (Amur was a dog that belonged to Uncle Plague, a neighbour of ours) if he didn’t jump clean over the school gate from a standing position.
Even thinking about it today I’ve no idea how Mel thought he could jump over a gate over four metres high. But what worried me more at the time was how he would carry out the operation if he lost the bet, since Amur was the biggest and nastiest dog in our area. I was petrified by that monster; once I had seen him swim across the river and kill a goat, tearing it apart as if it were made of rags. He was a cross between a German shepherd and the breed which in our homeland, Siberia, is called Alabay, ‘wolfcrusher’. Usually Amur roamed quietly around his owner’s yard, but sometimes he became uncontrollable, especially if he heard the sound of a whistle. He had already been shot on two occasions, after attacking someone, but had survived because, as my father used to say, ‘the more you shoot that dog, the stronger it gets’.
Well, Mel’s idea seemed to me more than stupid. But once spoken, his word couldn’t be taken back, and it only remained to witness that insane show, in which Mel, through his own pure idiocy, was both stage manager and actor.
So we headed for the school gate.
Mel made one attempt; he jumped half a metre, hitting his nose against the gate. Then, sitting on the ground, he drew his conclusions:
‘Shit, it’s really high! I’ll never make it…’
I looked at him and couldn’t believe how he could be so naive. Trying to save the situation, I said it had all been great fun and now we might as well go home. But Mel astounded me with his stupidity, saying that as a question of honour he had to keep his oath.
I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. But my other two friends, Besa and Gigit, were enthusiastic, and were already imagining all the ways in which Mel could most effectively creep up to the dog and carry out his devilish plan.
When we reached Plague’s house, Mel climbed up onto the fence and jumped down into the yard. Plague wasn’t at home; he had gone fishing – the net that was usually hung along the fence wasn’t there.
Amur was lying by the gate with a slightly ironic expression on his horrendously ugly face.
Mel had brought a rope to tie the dog up, and he also had a tube of Vaseline which some friends had got from Aunt Natalia, the nurse. Mel approached him and Amur didn’t move a muscle – he gazed at him with bored and indifferent eyes, as if he were looking straight through him. With every step Mel gained more courage until, when there were no more than a couple of metres between Mel and Amur, Gigit stuck two fingers in his mouth and gave a loud whistle, making such a piercing sound that it even startled me. A few seconds later I saw Mel fly magically over the fence, pass above my head and land on the pavement, hitting his forehead on the sun-softened asphalt. Immediately afterwards the gate jerked under the weight of Amur, who threw himself into it, with a strange noise that I had never before heard from any living creature. It was a kind of human cry mingled with a desperate and angry chorus of animal voices. As if an elephant, a lion, a wolf, a bear and a horse were competing at who could make the loudest noise. If someone had asked me at that moment what the voice of the devil might sound like, I would have said like Amur.
The seat of Mel’s pants was torn, and underneath you could see some bloody red weals, left by a blow from Amur’s paw. Mel was terrified and still couldn’t understand what had happened. Gigit and Besa were rolling about with laughter and kept whistling, to increase the fury of the dog, which from the other side of the gate kept spitting froth and uttering the sounds of his animal wrath.