They were the days of dragonflies, crickets and willows that whispered in the breeze. They were the days of summer. Those summers used to exist in the days of socialism, the days of my childhood – before the smog of exponential economic growth blighted the insects and clouded the skies. The building my mother and I lived in was a grey edifice of an apartment block. Like thousands of other such buildings it had the obligatory tangled mass of bicycles outside its entrance and the obligatory low-wattage light bulbs in its corridors. Poorly constructed and never maintained, and yet somehow (in my mind) contained as much character and life as the baroque architecture of the ancient British university I later attended.
I retain only memories of summer from those days. More specifically: summer afternoons, spent alone in that concrete apartment peering through the iron bars of the security door into the gloomy communal corridor waiting for mum to come home. I remember one such afternoon with particular clarity. Martial law had only recently been lifted in the city and its tarmac still bore marks from tank tracks. Through the gloom I heard footsteps coming down the stairs. It was the old man from upstairs carrying something. As he was walking down the stairs the light-bulb decided to flicker. He stumbled down the stairs and ended up taking its last few steps on his backside. It turned out he was carrying a tin of red paint, whose content was now running down the steps – appearing like a viscous maroon river in the dim light. Briskly he stood up, dusted down his wiry frame and walked back up to his flat. Before he shut the door behind him I caught a glimpse of his sitting room. The sparsely furnished room had on its wall four faded portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
He was a well-respected but reticent member of the community. A retired cadre of the party, he had fought against the Japanese and later against American imperialism in Korea. I seem to remember that he had a son who was attending university. He was probably that bespectacled young man who came later that afternoon, bearing a watermelon to fulfil his filial duty. Slipping on the wet paint the watermelon flew out of his hand and smashed into hundreds of juicy pieces, adding texture to the already red staircase. He must have entered his father’s apartment (albeit empty-handed) because after I had stopped laughing the corridor was empty again.
Shortly afterwards came three portly chaps smoking cigarettes. They were dressed identically and walked with an air of lazy authority. Seeing those three slip simultaneously on the stairs and then fall again whilst trying to get up was too much for me. I fell backwards laughing, delighted by this interruption of monotony. I was still having paroxysms of giggling when they brought out the bespectacled young man in handcuffs. The four of them walked gingerly down the stairs, all sporting red patches on their clothing as evidence of a lesson learnt. The old man stood in his doorway and watched them go. ‘Go carefully comrades’ he said.
He stood there for a long time afterwards, on top of the red staircase, framed against a backdrop of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao.
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However, when I have the word 'socialist', I got not very pleasant feeling in my stomach, I must say. Nevertheless this fragment is well written and worth reading.
Now I have different surname after getting married. As a child an teenager with the first one I remember having many problems with it. 
Originally Posted by Harvey Cushing
