Siberian Education by Nicolai Lilin Read Free Book Online Page A

of time with the old criminals, listening to them sing or recite poems, I knew many of them by heart. One song, my favourite, went like this:
    I remember I wore an eight-gored hat,
Drank beer and smoked strong tobacco;
I was in love with my neighbour Nina
And together we’d go to the restaurant.
I wore a shaber 1 in my squeaking kromachy , 2
Under my shirt a telnyashka , 3
A gift from the thieves of Odessa . . .
    The eight triangles was at the centre of everything: it was constantly being mentioned, and people would bet on it in various situations. Often in conversations between criminals, both children and adults, you would hear the phrase: ‘May my eight-gored hat catch fire on my head if what I say is not true’, or ‘May my hat fly off my head’, or the more gruesome variant, ‘May my hat choke me to death’.
    In our society swearing oaths was forbidden; it was considered a kind of weakness, an insult to yourself, because a person who swears implies that what he is saying is not true. But among us boys, when we talked, oaths would often slip out, and we would swear by our hats. You could never swear by your mother, your parents or relatives in general, by God or by the saints. Nor by your health, or even worse by your soul, for that was considered to be ‘damaging God’s property’. So the only thing left to take it out on was your hat.
    Once my friend Mel swore by his hat that he would ‘stuff his eight triangles up Amur’s arse’ (Amur was a dog that belonged to Uncle Plague, a neighbour of ours) if he didn’t jump clean over the school gate from a standing position.
    Even thinking about it today I’ve no idea how Mel thought he could jump over a gate over four metres high. But what worried me more at the time was how he would carry out the operation if he lost the bet, since Amur was the biggest and nastiest dog in our area. I was petrified by that monster; once I had seen him swim across the river and kill a goat, tearing it apart as if it were made of rags. He was a cross between a German shepherd and the breed which in our homeland, Siberia, is called Alabay, ‘wolfcrusher’. Usually Amur roamed quietly around his owner’s yard, but sometimes he became uncontrollable, especially if he heard the sound of a whistle. He had already been shot on two occasions, after attacking someone, but had survived because, as my father used to say, ‘the more you shoot that dog, the stronger it gets’.
    Well, Mel’s idea seemed to me more than stupid. But once spoken, his word couldn’t be taken back, and it only remained to witness that insane show, in which Mel, through his own pure idiocy, was both stage manager and actor.
    So we headed for the school gate.
    Mel made one attempt; he jumped half a metre, hitting his nose against the gate. Then, sitting on the ground, he drew his conclusions:
    â€˜Shit, it’s really high! I’ll never make it . . .’
    I looked at him and couldn’t believe how he could be so naive. Trying to save the situation, I said it had all been great fun and now we might as well go home. But Mel astounded me with his stupidity, saying that as a question of honour he had to keep his oath.
    I felt like laughing and crying at the same time. But my other two friends, Besa and Gigit, were enthusiastic, and were already imagining all the ways in which Mel could most effectively creep up to the dog and carry out his devilish plan.
    When we reached Plague’s house, Mel climbed up onto the fence and jumped down into the yard. Plague wasn’t at home; he had gone fishing – the net that was usually hung along the fence wasn’t there.
    Amur was lying by the gate with a slightly ironic expression on his horrendously ugly face.
    Mel had brought a rope to tie the dog up, and he also had a tube of Vaseline which some friends had got from Aunt Natalia, the nurse. Mel approached him and Amur didn’t move