Papa came home from duty very late. I rarely fell asleep before he arrived. I waited for him… that is where “owls” come from. From childhood! I was a typical owl. Mama could not take it — she went to bed before me. The thing is that I did not go to kindergarten, so I had a free schedule. I could not “settle in.” In the morning Mama would take me there all starched and ironed, and in the evening she would pick me up with a high temperature.

At home she would put me to bed and say: “When Papa comes from work, don’t tell him you were at kindergarten.” And I wait for Papa, I don’t sleep, even though I am ill! Papa comes, looks into my honest little eyes and asks: “Well, did you go to kindergarten today?” I am silent, look at Mama, and he: “Don’t take her there! If she starts getting ill — we’ll never hear the end of it!” Naturally Mama could not work, “abandon me.” That is how she put it: “I could not abandon you!”

Now, about my sleep, an interesting moment! I remember Papa smoked Belomor-Kanal cigarettes, and before sleep he would smoke one cigarette, sitting on a stool in the corridor. What did I do? Of course I sat next to him! And if Mama grumbled that it was time to sleep, I had an excuse: “Pap, let’s go have a smoke!” And the letter “r” sounded very soft. The acrid smoke of Papa’s cigarettes for life “killed” my desire to smoke. Believe what is written! I have never smoked and never tried. But to sit next to Papa in silence, when the whole “corridor” was already asleep…. “…for that one could give everything…”

That was the free time Papa had for the family. Yes! He served honestly for 25 calendar years! There was a time when he wore only field uniform (it comes from the word “field”). “Winter and summer — the same colour”! What is that? Right, in my text it is she — field uniform: chrome boots (soldiers wore kirza boots; I remember they were coarser in quality than the officers’), a gymnastyorka (remember the soloist of the group Lyube in a gymnastyorka?), to the stand-up collar a white “podvorotnichok” was sewn. Every military man knew how to sew on a collar lining. It had to be always clean! Necks were washed thoroughly!

Boots were cleaned with boot polish and rubbed to a shine with “barkhatka,” a special little cloth. I had a dream of having a little velvet dress like that wonderful cloth! Readers! Have I worn you out with details? A little more… Buttons were rubbed with solidol, to a shine! The peaked cap. And so in this well-fitted uniform, with a sword belt, in riding breeches, they walked in summer, in thirty-degree heat!!! Buttoned up to the last button! Summer in Kiev was hot…

Now I know for certain that I was very proud of my papa! And his generation did not choose a profession for themselves. You could put it this way: the war of 1941–1945 decided everything — who would be what, and how to go on surviving, if you remained alive. Conditionally, I would divide postwar society into military, workers and peasants. Of course, the intelligentsia! — “the brains of Soviet society.”

I think Papa was not a military man by vocation; he was a military man by order. And the working people were more “free.” What am I “leading up to”? In the settlement there existed a certain division and alienation between military families and civilians. The workers envied the military: the “soldiers” arrived to “everything ready,” and on top of that got three times the pay, and their women were “prettier”! Well yes! I remembered just now a saying I heard from Mama when I was grown: “the other fellow’s ram always has bigger balls!” And so it is! Never, to no one, do I feel envy.

….and to be continued