Then the snowfalls began, however, by the end of the day, the wide path thru deep snowdrifts to the school got trodden anew. The sun sparkled blindingly from both sides of that road to knowledge transformed into a trench with orange marks of urine on its snow walls. Totally obliterated by the next snowfall, they would persistently pop up again at other spots in the restored and deepened trench-trail thru the forest…

A few weeks before the New Year, our class finished studying the primer and Seraphima Sergeevna brought us to the school library, a narrow room with one window on the second floor. There she introduced us to the librarian as accomplished readers who had the right to visit her and borrow books for our personal reading at home.

That day, returning home with my first book, I stretched upon the big sofa and never left it but only turned from one side to the other, and from my tummy to my back, until finished the entire book which was a fairy-tale about the city with narrow streets walked by tall hammer-creatures who banged on the heads of shorter bell-creatures to make them ring. Just so a story by Aksakov about a music-playing snuff-box…

~ ~ ~

Winter evenings were so hasty rides, you had barely had your meal and scribbled away your calligraphy home assignment when – look! – it’s already deep dusk outside the window.

Yet, even the dark could not cancel the social life and you hurriedly put your felt boots on, and pulled warm pants over them, and got into your winter coat followed by the fur hat and – off you ran to the Gorka! How far away? Just around the corner! Because “the Gorka” indicated not only the two blocks as well as the whole upland but also that very tilt towards the Recruit Depot Barracks which we walked down on our way to school.

With its well-trodden snow, the Gorka served ideally for riding sleds. The start was taken from the concrete road surrounding the blocks. The deep rut left in the snow by tires of random cars confirmed that the road was still there and so did the bulbs shedding the light from their lamppost tops. One of those posts marked the start in the Sleigh Gorka. The cone of yellow light from its bulb drew a blurred circle—the meeting place for the sledding fans crowd.

Most of the sleds were a store purchase, you could see it by their aluminum runners and multi-colored cross-plank seats. Mine was made by Dad though. It was shorter and made of steel and much speedier than those store-bought things.

After a short run pushing the sled downhill with your hands on the backrest, you plonked with your tummy upon the seat and flew away to the foot of the hillock drowned in the dark of night pricked only by the lonely distant light above the gate of the Recruit Depot Barracks that bounced in time with the leaps and jerks of your fleeting sled. And the speed wind pressed tears out of your eyes.

When the sled came to a stop, you picked up the icy rope run thru two holes in the sled’s nose and stomped back uphill. The sled tamely ran after you, now and then knocking its muzzle against the heels of your felt boots. And with the approach of the roadside lamp, myriads of living sparks started to wink at you from the roadside snowdrifts varying their twinkle with each step.

Gee! Up there atop the Gorka, they already started to marshal a train of sleds, hitching them to each other and – hup-ho! – off the whole mass and wild screams and the frosty screech of sled runners went into the darkness…

At some point, probably, as thousands other boys both before me and after, I did something which should never be done, and we knew it all along that it was a no-no, yet the sled’s nose in the light of the bulb shimmered so beautifully with all those tiny frost-sparks that we couldn’t resist and licked it. Sure thing, as we knew beforehand, the tongue got stuck to the frost-gripped metal and we had to rip it off back with pain, and shame, and hope that no one noticed the folly inappropriate for so big a boy.

Then you plodded home, dragging your sled along with stiff hands and dropped it by the basement’s door in the staircase-entrance vestibule. You climbed upstairs to the second floor landing and knocked at your apartment door with your felt boots, and in the hallway your Mom pulled off your mittens with a bead of ice stuck to each filament of their wool, disclosing the white icicles of your hands.

She would run out into the yard to scoop up a basinful of snow and rub your senseless hands with it, and order to put them in the saucepan in the kitchen sink under the cold water running from the tap. And life would start to slowly come back to your hands. You’d whine from the piercing needles of unbearable pain in your fingers, and Mom would yell at you, “Serves you right! You, rascal roamer! You, bitter woe of mine!.”

And though still whimpering from the pain in your stiff fingers and in your tongue skinned by the savage frosty iron, you’d know for sure that everything will be fine because your Mom knew how to save you…

~ ~ ~

After the winter holidays, Seraphima Sergeevna brought to the classroom an issue of the newspaper The Pioneer Pravda and instead of the lesson she was reading aloud the news about Nikita Khrushchev’s promise that in 20 years we all would live in Communism built by that time in our state.