Yasha was the first to go out to the yard. When I showed up, he was carefully tying the end of a long piece of twine around a big potato, repeating, “It’ll go off all right.”
Well-armed, we ran to Kafanov Street. We didn’t know a thing about the revolutionary combat glory of that street. However, we were about to make our own contribution to it. We chose a secluded place behind a big tree at the edge of the sidewalk. After waiting till there were neither pedestrians nor cars in sight, Yasha handed me the end of the cord, ran to the middle of the street, put the potato on a spot where traces of tires cold be seen and came back. Almost immediately after that, the noise of a vehicle was heard, and a truck appeared. Yasha had placed the potato very well. A loud shmya-k-k could be heard.
“The test was successful,” Yasha said, giggling. He pulled the cord with the remains of the crushed potato to the sidewalk, took a piece of metal with the end folded over out of his pocket and replaced the shell, so to speak.
The next project was to hunt a bigger beast than a truck – a trolley bus. Yasha ran to the roadway and placed the metal “shell” under the trolley wires.
I considered Yasha a great expert on the subject of trolley buses. He recognized their arrival at a stop by the slightest stirring of the wires. I had noticed it two years before when we were standing at a trolley stop. No trolley was yet in sight when Yasha said, “It’s coming.” I was surprised. He raised his hand and pointed at the wires. I didn’t see right away that they were stirring. And indeed, a trolley arrived shortly.
At that time of day, there wasn’t much traffic on Kafanov Street. Vehicles passed by at long intervals, and it was possible to guess by the sound of their tires what vehicle was coming. Cars emitted a light sound – vsh-shik, and the car was gone. A big clumsy trolley bus was a different story. When it was still far away, a crescendo of sound similar to wailing could already be heard. As it drew nearer, a sound made by the electrical contacts could be heard from the driver’s cabin, and sometimes sparks flew from the wires.
A big, heavy trolley bus that looked like a beast, ready to carry along everything in its path, was coming our way. Here it was, almost upon us. The front wheel missed the metal “shell.” Yasha managed to pull the twine quickly to move the “shell,” and… Crack… the shell flew off the rear wheel, hit the bottom of the trolley, ricocheted against the asphalt, and crashed into the side of the trolley. Yasha immediately pulled the cord back.
We were both ecstatic. Even Yasha hadn’t expected such success. But our ecstasy was immediately replaced by fear – the brakes went on, and the trolley slowed down and stopped. Fortunately, we were behind the bushes. The door opened, the driver got out of the trolley, walked around it, and shrugged his shoulders…
It worked out. He was gone. But we decided not to continue that dangerous kind of hunt today. Another type of hunt, no less fascinating, awaited us.
One of the advantages of Yasha’s lane was the street water spigot. The small metal column to which the spigot was attached rested on a cement stand. Water from the spigot dripped onto the stand, overflowing it. Not far from it, there was a perfect puddle in a depression at the edge of the sidewalk. The shade of the adjoining trees kept it from drying out. Besides, it was constantly being filled with water. So that puddle and the spigot were the principal delight of that lane. There, we turned into water gunners and hunted insects.
What insects? Can you imagine a big Asian city, a southern city, with its fruit gardens, bazaars where they sell fruits, meat, fish from outdoor counters, where there is no trace of refrigerators, with its garbage pails at the gates, its toilets lacking proper conveniences? Imagine all that and you’ll understand why the life of any boy in Asia takes place from early spring to late autumn amid crawling and flying insects, mostly flies of different types and sizes: houseflies, meat flies, tiny fruit flies. There were plenty of wasps, which didn’t shrink from any food. We could also play with Maybugs, rhinoceros beetles, long green mantises, grasshoppers, goggle-eyed dragonflies –all of which could be caught and tortured.
Certainly, many insects annoyed us, but we got used to them as an inevitable evil, like flies, for instance. But I and many boys I knew harbored special hatred toward wasps. It was clear why – their bites were very painful; I knew from experience. Once, Grandma Lisa was cooking dinner, and she asked me to bring potatoes from the cellar. On my way back, I noticed an almost rotten squashed apricot on the path and kicked it with my foot, but there was a wasp on the apricot. The wasp replied in kind. I heard vzh-zhik, something flashed before my eyes, and I felt a sharp burning sting on the top of my head. The pain was so sharp that I wailed, dropped the potatoes and rushed to Grandma, yelling, “A wasp stung me!” Grandma grabbed me by the arm, took me to the fridge and applied a cut tomato to the top of my head.
“Hold it, rub it in,” she said calmly. Obviously, this was not the first time she had had to deal with a wasp sting. “Where are the potatoes? Go bring them.”
My hatred of wasps was boundless after that. Just the sight of a little yellow body with black stripes called forth a shudder of disgust. I craved revenge. And the best place for revenge was the puddle at the water spigot at Kafanov Lane 5. Insects and birds flew to the puddle, as to a watering hole, starting early in the morning. Stray dogs and alley cats came running to drink the fresh water. Water spiders ran across the water, and small circles formed on the surface from their tiny feet. In a word, it was a wonderful puddle.
It was interesting that visitors to this watering hole didn’t use it all at once. It seemed that they observed a certain order. Wasps came flying in during the morning hours.
After flying in circles above the water, a wasp would find a little stone or twig, alight on it and begin to drink. Its mouth couldn’t be seen but it moved its antennae above the water and its little bottom trembled with pleasure.
“Drown, you scoundrel!” I pressed the water gun and a strong spurt knocked the wasp into the center of the puddle. At first, it moved its wings and thrashed around helplessly. After watching its agony with pleasure, I would shoot another spurt from my water gun, and the movement subsided.
“Served it right!” Yasha said. He also hated wasps, but he hated bumblebees even more. It was bumblebees he wanted to settle scores with. Yasha had a swollen eye for a long time after a bumblebee sting.
After we emptied our water guns, we ran to the spigot and filled them again. Today, we water gunners – that’s what we called ourselves – had a wonderful day. It was hard to count how many wasps we had destroyed, along with some other creatures.
Our water guns were empty one-liter shampoo bottles. We made holes in their lids, wider ones than on the sprinklers we used in our usual games when we fought with each other, so a spurt from the water gun was much stronger. Yasha and I became quite proficient at the use of this weapon. We were no worse than the heroes of the sea stories by Jack London who, I assume, could do nothing but shoot accurately. We also shot without missing.
“Greetings to the fighting men! Another children’s game?” Kirill, Yasha’s neighbor, who was the same age as Yasha, said, grinning. “I’ve been at the construction site. Guess what they’ve delivered there. Huge rolls of fiberglass. It’s so soft, jumping on them is like jumping on a trampoline. Up, and you feel like you’re flying… It’s really great.”
And after holding up his thumb to illustrate his words, Kirill walked away, limping slightly.
We exchanged glances.