After a good film, like that one starring Rodion Nakhapetov where there were no fights, neither wars, but just scenes about life, about death, and beautiful motorcycle riding thru shallow waters, the spectators walked out of the Park gate and headed to the cobbled Budyonny Street without the usual bandit whistles or cat-yells. The sparse crowd of people became somehow quietened and united, sort of related by the mutually watched film, and kept peaceful walking thru the darkness of a warm night, dwindling at the invisible crossroads, on their way to the lonely lamppost at the junction of Bogdan Khmelnytsky and Professions Streets next to Bazaar….
But the main thing because of which the guys were waiting for the summer was, of course, bathing. The start of the swimming season took place late May at the Kandeebynno and marked the summer’s coming into its own. The Kandeebynno was several lakes used for breeding the mirror carp, and it also was the springhead of the Yezooch river. At times along the lakes-splitting dams, there rode a solitary bicycler-overseer, so that guys wouldn’t poach too cheekily with their fishing poles. Yet, in one of those lakes they didn’t breed the carp, it was left for bathing of beach-goers…
However, to go for a swim at the Kandeebynno, you had to know how to get there. Mother said that although having had visited the spot she couldn’t explain the way and it was better to ask Uncle Tolik, who both to work and back, and, in fact, everywhere went by his motorbike “Jawa”, so he, of course, should know.
The Kandeebynno, according to his instruction, was all too easy to find. When going towards City along Peace Avenue, you pass under the bridge in the railway embankment, so take the first right turn which you couldn't miss because it’s where started the road to Romny, and follow it to the intersection by which take another right turn and go on until you see the railway barrier, cross the railway, turn to the left and—here you are!—that’s the Kandeebynno for you…
The twins, sure enough, pressed for going along with me. We took an old bed cover to spread and lie upon when sunbathing, put it into a mesh-bag, added a bottle of water and went to the Under-Overpass where Peace Avenue started. Up to the railway embankment, the road was familiar after the May Day demonstration. We went under the bridge and saw it at once – the road running to the right along the base of the elevated railway. True enough, it didn’t look a highway because of no asphalt in it, yet being as wide as any other road, it was the first one to the right after the bridge. So, we turned and followed the road along the base of the tall steep embankment.
However, the farther we went, the narrower the road became transforming into a wide trail, then into a footpath tread which soon just vanished. We had no choice but to climb the steep grass-overgrown embankment, shake the sand out from our sandals and march on stepping on the concrete crossties or along the endless narrow railheads. Natasha was the first to notice the trains catching up from behind, and we stepped down onto the uneven gravel in the ballast shoulder, giving way for the rumbling, wind-whipping cars to shoot past us.
When we reached the next bridge, there was no avenue or a street under it, just other railway tracks. Our embankment turned right and started to gradually go down joining the tracks in their flow towards the distant Railway Station. It became clear, that we were going in the opposite direction and not to any lakes at all.
We did not have time to get disappointed though, because far below we marked a small field at the base of another embankment, beneath the bridge in ours. Two groups of tiny, at that distance, guys in light summer clothes, and with the mesh-bags like ours, walked towards a copse of green trees, and they had even a ball among them. Where else could they go if not to a beach?!.
We climbed down two steep embankments and went along the same path in the field as the previous guys who were gone out of sight long ago. Then we walked thru the Aspen grove along a lonely railway track with soft soil instead of crushed stone ballast between its wooden ties until we reached a highway that crossed the track beneath two raised barriers. We passed over the highway and followed a wide, at times boggy, path among the tall growth of bright green grass. The chest straightened out with cautiously expectant exaltation, “Aha, Kandeebynno! You won’t flee now!”
Groups of people were walking the same path in both directions, but those going there more numerous than back-comers. The path led to a wide canal of dark water between the shore and the opposite dam of the fish lakes and continued along the canal. We followed it on and on, among green trees, under white cumuli in the azure-blue summer sky. The straight rows of fruit-trees in a neglected no man’s orchard went up over the smooth slant to the right of the path. Then the canal on the left widened into a lake with a white sand beach. The expanse of sand was bound by the grass between the tall Currant bushes in the forlorn garden.
We chose a free streak of grass for our bed cover, hastily undressed, and ran over the unbearably heated sand to the water flying from each direction into any other, splashed up and sent over in strangling sprays to faces of dozens of folks eagerly screaming, yelling, and laughing in the water which seethed from their merry frolics.
Summer!. Ah, Summer!.
As it turned out later, Uncle Tolik didn’t even know of that vanishing road along the embankment base, because when his motorbike at a roaring speed shot from under the bridge in Peace Avenue, he in two seconds flat was on the Romny highway, while going on foot you reached it after some generous hundred meters of stomping…
In the list of movies for July, there stood “The Sons of Big Bear”, so Skully and I agreed not to miss it because Goiko Mitich starred in the film as one of her sons. That Yugoslavian actor was mostly engaged as a hero red-skin in this or that of GDR Westerns and, as long as he was in, you could safely expect it'd be a decent movie. Sure enough, the list did not report all those details or anything at all except for the movie's title and the date of show. However, the films arrived to the Plant Club no sooner than a couple of months after their run for a week at the Peace Movie Theater and one more week at the Vorontsov Movie Theater on Square of the Konotop Divisions that’s why, with the little help of our friends, we could always make an informed decision. And we weren't especially keen on watching movies at the mentioned theaters not because of trust in the unmistakable flair of our friends, no, their leads well sucked at times, but for the much simpler motivation – a ticket at the Peace Movie Theater was 50 kopecks, watching the same film a week later at the Vorontsov set you back for five-and-thirty, whereas, after practicing your patience for a month plus, you enjoyed it at Club paying reasonable 20 kopecks…
On that Sunday the 3 of us—Kuba, Skully, and I—went to the Kandeebynno by bikes. We swam and dived, in turn, off the self-made launch-pad when 2 of us, chest-deep in the water, clasped our hands for the third to climb upon and take a dive from. And, of course, we played “spots”, though you couldn’t catch up Kuba underwater.
Then he and Skully got lost somewhere in the bathing crowd. In vain looked I for the friends midst the splashes and squeals, they were nowhere around. Just in case, I even swam to the opposite shore which was the dam of the fish lakes. A couple of guys were fishing there, with their eye alert for an opportunity to angle in the mirror carp paradise over the dam. And I swam back so as not to scare off their fish, which was striking even in the lake for swimmers. Then I once again scanned the crowd in the water, to no avail, and decided it was enough.
Chilled thru and thru, I stepped out onto the scorching sand of the beach when the lost friends came running from among the bushes of Currant with the hair on their heads almost dry already, “W-where the h-hell were you?”
“We’re getting in again. Let’s go!”