“When all the songs will cease”
originally written in russian, first published in “Yunost'” literature magazine, 2021/7
“Nah, you’re Bill, and I’m Joe! Got your brains all-baked up, old man?”
The sun was hanging still at its highest point – an indifferent watchman, bored by his duty. Keeping his ear pressed against the cracked ground, Bill winced and threw his hand up in an unambiguous: “Would ya please be so kind to hold yer mouth shut for a second, kid?” – then in one spurt he got up, brushed the dust off his knees with a slouch hat, wiped up sweat from his forehead with a sleeve, and put the hat back on.
“There,” he waved his hand toward terracotta rocks on the other side of the canyon.
“How do you know?” leaning against what remained of the wagon, Joe was studying a map with the most independent look.
Bill grinned crookedly with a corner of his thin lips: slightly slanted, his eyes narrowed, and a far glint of Navajo blood flashed through this sight with its distinctive arrogance. Silently he began to unharness the horse.
“What the hell are you doing?” Joe twitched.
“Well, whaddaya think it looks like?” Bill unattached the saddle and put it on his shoulder “That train’s gonna be there in the evening, kid, so we’d better get moving, if only ya don’t want to spend a merry night with yer new friends here.”
He picked up the cow skull with a toe of his boot; a snake crawled out of its empty eyehole.
“Ya’ve served us great, gal,” Bill slapped the horse’s croup and walked vigorously toward the gorge.
***
Rattling at every step with all the random, unknown stuff in the pockets and with the whole multi-layered, from hat to spurs, outfit of his, Joe caught up with him only by the hanging bridge. Out of breath, he stopped at the edge, watched after the spittle he sent down with the long look, then lifted his eyes up to the broad back of his partner, who was moving forward tranquilly, just like he was strolling down some familiar street.
“Talking with horses, old man?” Joe stepped on the first plank cautiously, as if testing the water, and shivered: among the heat around, it blew unpleasantly with cold from the bottom.
“Usually we understand each other without it,” Bill responded, not looking back “You could also use a bit of paying more attention to…”
“To what?” Joe interrupted him, trying not to look down, and seeking for the next step by touch “To this never-ending damn bump, which they call road here?”
Bill kept on walking silently, with one hand behind him and holding the saddle on the shoulder with another, as if he was not noticing the chasm underneath at all.
“Whatever,” Joe continued, hardly moving his jelly feet “How could I know that the old nag would rush on like that all of a sudden? And anyway, why the hell did you leave her there?”
“Gawd-damn it, son!” Bill turned around rapidly, and the whole bridge started to shake, as he walked toward him “Fat Lady might have rolled that wagon for us till the very Oregon and even further, if only someone would not have begun to show off with reins that much!”
Joe clutched the rope handrails, and was looking around feverishly, dangling up and down together with the bridge after Bill’s steps.
“Now ya tell me,” Bill continued, treading upon him viciously “Tell me, could she cross over here? Or maybe we had to drag ourselves to bypass it afoot without the wagon, which by yer fault shattered into pieces all over half the state, huh? Tell me whaddaya think!”
Joe backed away, stumbled, and with a short dry crack his leg fell through a gap in board’s place. He all shrank, and with a stopped heart was staring after the flight of the wretched plank, which was spinning limply on its way down the murky emptiness. A strong hand grabbed his shoulder and pulled it up.
“Alright, kid,” Bill fixed Joe’s hat and straightened his coat up “This happens even to best of us!”
***
The oven-hot calm left the forlorn landscape completely motionless, so it looked almost like a scuffed tintype, and only by the very horizon either mountains or clouds were trembling in the distant haze. Joe lost the track of time – he couldn’t tell with certainty, for how long he had been kicking this cobble, while the ruthless sun seemingly was not willing to give up even an inch.
As soon as Bill has stopped by the foot of a sheer cliff, eagerly did Joe crash down in its blissful shadow.
“Halt,” Bill announced belatedly, throwing the saddle off his shoulder.
Sitting right in the off-white road dust, Joe took the flask somewhere out of his clothing, gulped greedily and сhocked:
“Shit, it’s boiling! The goddam heat would spoil anything, goddamit,” he passed the flask to Bill and laid back “Guess I had just scalded all my guts.”
“Tough swill,” Bill nodded after a sip and continued to sort through his saddle bag.
“You think they’ve got ginger ale there?” Joe stretched out, put his hands under the head and swallowed wistfully “Ice-cold ginger ale, fizziest, with a slice of a lemon or lime, in a misty glass – yessir, gonna guzzle all of it up in the first saloon, will drink till it pours outta my ear, well perhaps I might leave a glass or two for you, old man, if you behave yourself… Hey!”
Displeased he peeked from under the hat, which he had pulled over his eyes – Bill hurled a pouch of hardtacks at him. Joe rose up a bit, leaning on the elbow; he was going to say something else, but his stomach rumbled persistently, and so he just lashed up on this plain provision with the long humming – the hardtacks proved to be more edible than they looked and almost didn’t smack of the cardboard.
“Guess that’s what it means when they say hunger is the best sauce,” Bill chuckled.
“I wouldn’t mind some ketchup though,” Joe mumbled sarcastically through the full mouth.
“Well, we ain’t got any. Bet it’s not worse than yer mom’s homemade meatloaf anyway!”
“My home,” Joe pulled off his boots a little “is wherever I lay my hat!”
Bill raised his eyebrow sneeringly:
“Yessir,” Joe continued, munching on a straw “Why sit on your ass, when the whole world lies afore you, when the new frontiers are calling away from the misery of a settled life, into the yet uncharted wild yonder? Born like that, always on the road.”
“Hold on a second, kid. Explain me only one thing: how come ya’re always on the road, if everywhere is yer home?”
Joe hesitated. Bill settled by his side, leaning on the saddle.
“I tell ya what, son” he turned away, peering into the distance “If someone claims the whole world to be his home, then he’s the most homeless of all – not only because he doesn’t have one, but just because he has no idea of what he’s talking about at all, which also means that the poor guy knows less about travel than I do ‘bout chess.”
“Uh-huh,” Joe grunted “So, some old fart in a rocking chair on a porch of his ranch supposed to be nothing short of the real discoverer.”
“Sure thing he is! Every time he goes to the town or just brings the cattle over his fence, he sets off for the greater adventure than any of us could ever imagine. Only at the road you’ve taken before will you notice something new each time – a puddle, a stone, a leaf. An unfound door will open for those who would first trample all around it, and it takes helluva muscle to climb such a porch. There is a secret wisdom of a rocking chair: when everything is holy, every step becomes a pilgrimage. And while you’re losing time, fussing from one place to another, they’re all just merging together, making it not much of a journey anymore, but just a bunch of miles you’ve walked.”
“What a lousy Columbus you’d be, old man! If it was up to you, we’d all be still stuck on the other side of the ocean, looking for the promised land of America at our backyards.”
“Well lemme remind ya,” Bill retorted “that he wasn’t looking for no America, but just for a shortcut to something long known. But even when he finally got there, he couldn’t discern one from the other, so he never really grasped his own discovery. You dig?”
But Joe was no longer listening to him. With one hand in the vest pocket, he touched his partner’s shoulder blindly with another, nodding at the stunted bushes couple of yards afore. The thorny branches had wiggled – with his eyes fixed on it, the same moment Joe was on his feet.
“Ah yeah,” Bill responded boresomely, standing up “I’ve noticed it by the very canyon already. Now ya put this gun down, Joe.”
With his chin high up, Joe was aiming the compact “Iver-Johnson” right between heedful yellow eyes of a coyote.
“Oh yeah?” Joe cocked the trigger and licked his parched lips “And why would I do that, Bill?”
“Bad luck,” Bill scowled “That’s very bad luck.”
“Your damn superstitions, again? I’m fed up with this horseshit, old man!”
The stagnant air has swayed subtly, and the tumbleweed rolled by as if by itself. Joe shook his head:
“Wait, what did you say? From the very canyon?” he glanced at Bill indignantly “So you mean this sonuvabitch has been chasing after us all along?”
“Yup,” Bill shrugged “Or guiding, if you prefer.”
“The hell it was!” Joe rolled his eyes “Did it tell you that by itself?”
“Everything has its voice, if you listen closely enough, kid.”
“Well I’m all ears then! What else does it say?”
Bill squinted at the coyote – the animal seemed to lose any interest to what was going on around it, and was sitting with its sharp-nosed muzzle turned up to the sun, squeezing its eyes shut because of the bright light.
“He asks,” Bill turned back to Joe “He asks: ‘Why does the youngster need this peashooter?’”
“What, this one?” Joe twiddled the revolver in his hand, then shook it, brawling plangently “To rob this goddam train, of course, that’s why!”
Suddenly the coyote burst out barking shortly, widely opening its fanged jaws. Snarling and yelping, it spun around fussily after its own tail couple of times, then sat down amidst the dust cloud it whipped up and itched furiously. Joe turned to Bill quizzically:
“Now what in the hell is this supposed to mean?”
“He likes you,” Bill smirked “Says you’re funny.”
As they continued their way across the prairie, Joe was brushing off the coyote more and more lazily, while its tenacious shadow was following them a bit aside.
“Whatcha need? Get lost!” he was grumbling, when it was getting too close, and yet he was glancing around furtively, when he hadn’t seen its wiry figure in the dry chapparal shrubs for too long.
“Ya won’t get rid of him that easy now,” Bill had clarified, squeezing his sweat-soaked neckerchief on the go “He says he had chosen young Columbus as his master from now on.”
“Young Col… So, you were eavesdropping on us?” Joe looked at coyote resentfully, but came to his senses quickly, rubbed the temples and added “No, seriously, what shall I do with this pooch?”
“Well ya better git used to him, kid, cause he swore to guard ya and yer home.”
“I’m tired of telling you: this,” Joe showed at the hat which he was fanning himself with “This right here is my home!”
A guffawing bark came from somewhere out the bushes once again.
“Put the hat on till ya catch a sunstroke,” Bill said severely “It’s not the home your pet buddy is talking about. He’s wondering: ‘Whereto is the master gonna put his loot, also in the hat?’”
“I’m gonna make you stuffed with it,” Joe snapped back “Or you got a better idea?”
“He says, he knows some quiet caves in the mountains nearby,” Bill reported “‘But your home, master, is your memory.’”
At these words coyote stumbled out the rabbitbrush weeds to mark some snag on the trailside, then looked at them solemnly, sniffed the air and sneezed loudly.
“Bless you,” Joe dropped mechanically, and suddenly all the tiredness of their trek crashed down on him.
The sun has been stuck at the same point, and, like a continuous magnesium flash, was burning out everything underneath, making it kind of flat. Joe was barely keeping up the pace – a bleak sepia of an impassable space was wrapping his feet with its tight shroud, and each step was more and more of a struggle. When Bill called him out, he was already waist-deep in the quicksand.
“Easy, boy,” said Bill unwinding his lasso “This happens even to the best of us! Just don’t bustle around, and we’re gonna git ya out in no time.”
“Well that’s a heluva great advice, Bill,” Joe was floundering in the viscous goo “Just a wonderful one! No rush though, I’m a having marvelous time here.”
The coyote was scampering all around nonstop, yapping and bursting out howling, but then all of a sudden it became quiet, lifted its big ears up warily and began to step back with whining.
“Ah, for crying out loud, would you calm down, or,” Joe begged, but got cold at once as he lifted his eyes up “Holy sh…”
Something he took before for the mountains uprising in the far distance, now was approaching rapidly. Billowing to the very sky and sweeping all along its way, a vast bulk of dust and sand was crawling straight toward them as an unbelievable swell.
“Leave me,” Joe exhaled quietly, and then repeated more confidently “Leave me, old man, and save yourself!”
The lasso has soared up in the air as a graceful flourish and tightened around his waistline.
“To hell with it, kid,” Bill pulled it mightily, pressing both his feet against the huge boulder.
The rope began to squeak of strain, but Joe didn’t move even for a quarter-inch.
“Old fool!” he yelled “What’s the point if both of us will perish here?”
“Nobody’s gonna perish today,” Bill cut him off “We still have a train to catch, don’t ya remember?”
“Well, kind of,” Joe grinned bitterly “My memory is a cave, or how did you say?”
“Your memory is your home,” Bill corrected him, puffing hardly.
He looked around for the coyote – ridging its shaggy scruff and baring the fangs, it was barking madly, as if to scare away the storm.
“He says,” Bill pulled his bandana up to the very eyes because of all the dust lift up in the air, and gripped the rope firmer “He says: ‘Just like your ma does not pick a special day to stock up all the little things that she needs for the household, but simply keeps it in mind all the time, so even in the middle of summer she’ll never pass by some Christmas candlestick that caught her eye, and would also take an extra ball of a thread if the yarn is fine enough, and a pack of your favorite candies even when you’re so far away…’”
It seemed that the horizon itself reared up: the sandstorm came as close as possible, and now some separate swirls could have been discerned in it – clashing each other, wreathing, seething and rolling were they, bringing the mellow smell of a tar, a hay, of raw felt and clay with it. Joe got dizzy.
“You were a great pardner, old man,” he groaned weakly.
Ignoring his protests, Bill kept on ventriloquizing, yelling over the fierce wind:
“‘… so the same way you’d too better watch out to capture this day forevermore, and this air, and everything that breathes with it: out of a distant bird’s cry, out of a smell of a just-faded candle, out of a letter envelope yet unopened, out of the hollow fishy eyes of every random stranger, out of a drizzle and a freezer, and out of her hair, out of a long under-bridge echo, out of a last half-a-word before the road, out of the soft glimpse slipped to someone’s window while you sleep, out of doorbells, and sleigh-bells, and all the torn-off buttons, out of an emptied bench and a gutter drown by a drench, out – of – the wind – you’ll build your home, which will fit the whole of your precious train intact with all of its gold, beauties, stokers, horns, smoky chimneys –’”
A mighty squall struck with its grave tide, and flooded everything with dusk.
***
The shoreless, tangibly thick darkness was swaying gently, as Joe’s limp body was drifting through, and at times completely dissolving in it, but then again emerging with a reacquired heel or an elbow just to shudder shortly and plunge back to the sweet oblivion. The muffled sounds were flying in from afar and layering on each other with delay by the steady metronome of the familiar footsteps, which too was soon to lost in a common stomp, and a screeching, hissing, dull growing clatter. As this prolonging hum was coming closer, some voice was whining on and on: mm-mom-m-ma-mm…
“… Mm-hmm” the kid interrupted himself, straightening up on the rough wooden bench, and got embarrassed: some dandy in a top-hat and a checkered suit was staring at him from the opposite seat.
In the unfaithful light of the lamps flickering by the ceiling, the railcar was full of wild-looking trappers and grimy farm wives, sitting upon their packages, with gloomy weathered faces buried in furry collars of their greasy sheepskin coats. It was drafting from every slit, and the primus pipes under the seat were travailing with its stuffy oily heat to no avail, not even capable to deal with the muddy sleet on the floor. Jammed in a cramped corner by the very window, the kid yawned, clumsily stretching out his asleep limbs, and his steamy breath has thawed a tiny blurry patch in a frosted windowpane. The vague silhouette of the railroad slope showed through it out of the gloomy turmoil of the storm. The telegraph poles were relay-racing endlessly along it by the side of the murky pine thicket, at times leaning down toward it with ugly nests of the wires sagging between them.
The kid rubbed his sleepy eyelids – as the lamps blinked once again, his neighbor’s topper has changed to the raggedy ear-flapped hat. The rickety window sash was chattering somewhere, and the tobacco stink was coming out of the doorway – it slammed behind the back of a young hobo with a guitar. He touched the strings and started chanting with the unexpectedly pure voice:
Whe-en all the so-o-ongs will ce-ease, The o-ones I dooo not kno-ow…¹
As he walked through the rows of creaky benches, the passengers were tacking up shabby racoon tails hanging from their miscellaneous headwear. From the other end of the car a stout peddler woman was making her way through the crowd toward him, carrying a huge bag in front of herself:
“Cabbage pies, hot-dogs!” somehow they thrusted by each other in a narrow passage “Mars! Snickers!”
… In ha-arsh air will cryyy o-out The la-ast of my paper steambo-oats.
***
The sky was star-spangled as if it was shot with bullets of various calibers. With all the unspeakable majesty of an immense space it was calling out – and not just for someone, but for him exactly. And the longer the kid was gazing up, the harder it was to pull his eyes away from it, so that he was falling deeper and deeper to this sticky delusion: how did it turn out, that he is him, and not anyone else, either a barefoot Chinese fisherman, or his own cousin, or a fat lady from the church shop – in a word, any living soul? He couldn’t help thinking about that, but as soon as he felt like grasping it, the next moment it was slipping away from him – and the same way the stars were floating off every time he was struggling to take a better look at one of them in particular. Drowning in its far glisten, he was clinging to the scraps of phrases coming from somewhere right in front of him, but overlapped by some weird sound as if someone was crumpling a fistful of a corn starch.
“… so I was, ye see, strolling hither and thither by the platform for the whole evening, hither and thither, looking out for you, alright, listening if something is coming, hither-thither…”
A quick stroke of a shooting star has gleamed high above. Then another one, and before he knew it, the whole starfield started to move down on the kid – or perhaps he was passing through it, while more and more of these pale fire sparks were coming out of the pitch-dark soot toward him. He gasped and squeezed his eyes shut, when suddenly felt a soft touch of something wet and cold on his forehead. Cautiously he opened his eyes again and, blinking fast, rose up a little, stick out the tongue and caught a large snowflake with it.
“Hither-thither, it’s falling again! Well, Mary, what a weather you’ve brought, huh. Ah, look who woke up finally.”
The voice belonged to the scraggy elder native in a worn-out quilted jacket – threading his way through the snowdrifts he was pulling the sleigh, in which the kid was sitting upon a couple of bulky bags with a distrustful look.
“Now why do ya bend these brows like that? Don’t ya recognize me, hither-thither? Forgot how we were pulling those carps out the ice-hole at the frozen lake last winter?”
The kid was looking around drowsily, hanging aside on the sleigh. Mom came up from his back and leaned over to shake the snow off his hood, whispering:
“Shame on you! What are you, a duke? Get up, you have your own feet, why does uncle have to pull you after him?”
The native looked back, grinning toothlessly:
“Well why don’t ya just let ‘em enjoy his ride, nobody’s giving a hither-thither! When I’ll be really old then it will be his turn to give me a ride. Willya give a ride to uncle Al, huh, young man?” he made a serious face and playfully pushed the sleigh down the hillock in the yellowish shimmer of rare village street lamps. “Ya’ve worried the hither-thither outta us, we’ve checked the schedule over fifty times, aunt raised the high alarm I tell ya, sent me off to call the railway station – they told me there, that your transfer was cancelled, and you were long-gone. Well, phew, I mean, ya see, we didn’t know what to think, hither-thither.”
“Well there’s not much to think of! No chance I could just sit there with the kid among all these railway drunkards through the whole evening,” with her chin raised high up she was walking in a citizen manner, not looking under her feet, but moving them with a surprising agility knee-deep in the snow “They made it very clear at the information desk that there’ll be no trains till ten. So I’ve booked us two tickets, left the luggage at the buffet, and off we set for an expedition through Malaya Vishera.”
“So I bet ya’re all hither-thither frozen, huh?” the native helped the kid to get the sleigh out of the ditch by someone’s fence “Well first of all we’ll stuff ya with some of the aunt’s good fat shchi², and meanwhile I’ll hither-thither fix ya the banya³, so that soon enough ya’ll be warm up alright!”
“You’ll got us spoiled, uncle! Though that’s true, we spent almost three hours wandering round and round in the dark there, so we actually are a bit cold. At least we’ve had some hot tea in the thermos with us, and also I was prudent enough to grab a couple of pork sandwiches from home. Then eventually this pioneer had fell into some hole covered with snow, and while I was dragging him out of it, the snowstorm went raged. But the train was finally there, so thanks god we’ve crowded into it somehow and got here.”
***
It was warm inside the wigwam because of the generously burning fireplace.
“Gee the boy sprouted!” the grey-haired native’s wife was gasping, while hanging their damp clothes over the hearth, in which there was a huge sooty pot boiling “Soon enough grandpa’s trousers are gonna fit him! Mary, I’ve left some clothes in the room, pick something for him.”
The blizzard was still howling through the double windows all covered with frosted pattern – the snow level was reaching the windowsill, so the dwelling looked totally like a dugout from the outside, while in fact it was a well-built wooden lodge. Tiny kitchen’s brown log walls were all covered with shelves, chock-full with all kinds of goods, and by the very ceiling there were bundles of onions and mushrooms hung up to dry. The kid was loitering at the doorstep hesitatingly, staring down at the hole in his sock.
“Now don’t you let the warm out, shut that door,” the woman ordered “And take off these footcloths of yours too, we’ll put them to dry.”
“Sorry, auntie, he’s daydreaming a lot,” mom got back with a pair of frayed “levi’s” in hand, closed the door and fixed kid’s ruffled hair “A head with wings – guess some string might be useful to hold it to the ground.”
“Good Lord, his feet are all red! Hope it’s not frostbite, but anyway we’d better rub it with something,” auntie put her hand in a gap behind the cupboard “I had a bottle hidden here somewhere.”
Uncle showed out from behind the door and beckoned the kid:
“How ‘bout this,” he passed him a folded chessboard “Still remember the tricks I’ve taught ya?”
“Now who’s fooling around with the door again?” auntie got indignant “Is that you, Al? Stop bothering the kid with your chess and let him rest for chrissake, don’t you see he’s all frozen?”
She squinted her eyes at him suspiciously:
“So you snatch that bottle, right?”
“What bottle?” uncle asked fearfully and hurried to hide behind the door “I haven’t seen any bottle, I never even touched your hither-thither cupboard.”
“Ughh, you old scoundrel,” she flung her arms up “What were you saying about banya? Go heat it then, so they could finally warm up there, since someone drank all the booze.”
“Ah, neither hither, neither thither,” came the sad voice from behind the door.
Auntie served the soup and continued to moan, using the chance to speak out:
“Wherever I hide it, he finds it! Don’t know what to do with it anymore, last week I even had to whack him,” she showed the dent on the bottom of the aluminum washbowl in which she was rinsing the dishes “He crashed moveless down the floor and was lying there, as I wept upon his sinner soul. I really thought I’ve finished him, so after I cried all the tears and was about to go confess about it, I’ve looked back for the last time and what do you think, he’s sitting right here, laughing at me with a glass of mushroom⁴. Would you like some as well, by the way?”
Leaving them no chance to answer, she just strained a glass of the muddy-brown liquid out of a three-liter glass jar covered with a gauze, under which there was layered something floating on its surface. The kid has just finished his soup, and was feeding the knight chess piece with the bread crumbs from the table. He goggled at the glass with horror, when mom leaned toward him and whispered mysteriously:
“There goes your ginger ale,” she took a sip “Mmm, a real shaman’s potion, you should try.”
Aunt poured some old tea to the same jar and put it back on the shelf.
“But he wasn’t like that when I’ve first met him,” she continued “He was an idealist in his youth, went to the komstroyka⁵ not drinking at all, but they taught him quickly there that he’s not really welcome with such name in the soviet union. I mean seriously, what else could happen to a guy named Adolf back then? Well, whatever. So what you were saying, you got stuck on the station? How did that happen?”
“Well,” mom winked to the kid “This happens even to the best of us!”
As she started the story about the cancelled train and the snowstorm once again, she sorted through her bag, took out a cookie in a bright-blue wrapping and hand it over to the kid. His eyes got round: he only saw it in a commercial before, where it didn’t fit cowboy’s mouth – as its slogan was saying, “You’ve got to grin to get the ‘wagon wheels’ in”. To check if that’s true, it meant to be eaten by one bite, but on the other side it was too much of a pity to finish it so quickly.
While he stood there, pondering this question, a fat ginger cat jumped down lazily from the redbrick chimney. Moving clumsily in his oversized jeans, the kid ran right after it straight to the room. In its dark corner there was a tube tv, gleaming and glitching with interference – mesmerized in a second under its spell, the kid forgot about his pursuit and walked toward it. He climbed a rocking chair in front of it and took the “looney tunes” plush coyote out of his knitted vest pocket.
On the convex screen there were two men talking in nasal voices, riding their brown horses leisurely by the creek on canyon’s bottom.
“… Boy’ every time I see this place again it’s like seein’ it fresh for the first time,” pronounced the first one thoughtfully “And every time that happens I keep askin’ myself the same question: how can I be so damn stupid as to keep comin’ back here?” He waved his hand to someone ahead. “What’s your idea this time?” asked his mustachioed fellow. “Bolivia” “What’s Bolivia?..”
A blue wrapping with a picture of a horse rushing in front of a covered wagon, fell down the floor.
¹ Here and further: “Good bye, America” song lyrics by Nautilus Pompilius ( https://youtu.be/-Vhz-Q887_k )
² “Shchi” – the traditional Russian cabbage soup.
³ “Banya” – a special kind of sauna, traditional for Russian countryside.
⁴ “Mushroom”, or “Tea mushroom” – another name for kombucha drink, which is in fact quite popular in Russian countryside.
⁵ “Komstroyka” – short name for “Komsomol Shock Construction Projects” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shock_construction_project )