Besides the Zimins, the tenants from the apartment beneath us left also. Their grown-up daughter Julia presented us, 3 children from the upper floor, with her album of matchbox stickers collection.
At those times matchboxes were made not of cardboard with printed pictures on it, but of very thin, one-layer, plywood blanketed by taut blue tissue upon which there was mounted one or another sticker portraying the famous ballet dancer Ulanova or some sea animal, or a hero astronaut in it. People collected matchbox stickers just like the post-stamp hobbyists only, first, you had to peel them off a box soaked in water and then, of course, to dry up.
Julia’s collection was split into different sections: sports, aviation, Hero Cities, and so on. Surely, all 3 of us were delighted with so generous a gift and we stepped in her shoes at keeping the picturesque hobbyhorse…
In place of Yura Zimin, another Yura became my friend who had a different family name, yet, like the previous Yura, Yura Nikolayenko was also a neighbor, more distant though, who lived not on the same landing but in the same Block.
As the snow filled the forest, we ventured out there in search of foxholes or, at least, to catch an odd hare. We had pretty good chances of success because we were joined by a Lowlander-boy who brought a dog living in the yard of their wooden house. Only he was too greedy to share the linen rope tied to the dog’s collar and yanked at it himself. In the forest though, the dog began to drag him forward and backward over the snowdrifts with lots of hare footprints. Yura and I were running behind not to miss out on the moment of catching a hare.
Then we noticed that the dog was paying no attention to the hare footprints but constantly sniffing for something else. Finally, he started to excitedly dig into a tall snowdrift. Anticipating that the dog would dig out a fox burrow whose scent he nosed thru the snow, we armed ourselves with sticks to meet the beast. However, from under the snow, the dog pulled out a big old bone, and we stopped hunting…
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On the winter vacations, many children of my age were invited to a neighboring corner house in the Courtyard, where some newly arrived tenants celebrated the birthday of their daughter, my future classmate. She looked like Malvina from The Golden Key tale, only her hair was neither blue nor curly, but straight.
After the guests finished all of the lemonade on the big table, the beautiful girl shared her memories of the place she lived before, where she was, like, Queen of the Courtyard and the boys living there were her pages, sort of…