Preemptive warning: I’m just a casual traveler. It’s simply by the way that I traveled to this town. I write about what is on the surface, thing that can be clearly seen. I’m not going to stop here and explore. I just drove, like in the summer, thousands of people do, it was amateurishly, carelessly and hastily. I did not even make acquaintance with its inhabitants. I did not have time enough. Just the whole town appeared to me as a single person. I saw him coming. He surprised me. And so I admired his gait, silhouette, gestures, until he flashed behind me and disappeared turning round the bend of the Danube.
   And so this story began.
   We sailed with a fishing seiner upstream of the Danube. These are swift waters. Nearby a small boat floated. You know, for a small boat it is very difficult, to overcome current, wielding the oars. And if these are two old men sitting in a boat, gray-haired and bronze-faced, men aged together, maybe of one hundred seventy years, overcoming the current becomes hundred times harder. But we coasted with the seiner. And its machine was running smoothly. Large fisherman’s vessel near the fragile boat, a large ship, hurrying to the pier after two months of sailing the open sea, such picture that you should imagine!
   And then one of the old men shouted something to us, standing up in the boat. And immediately the seiner Master gave a command through intercom handset, and the machine stopped, so the seiner wallowed on the wave. Still it was in a hurry!
   And then I saw an old man, just like an antique youngster deftly and accurately hurling (not throwing but hurling) a line to the seiner, where sailor quickly secured that line. And machine restarted, the seiner retook its course, with the small boat in tow, a boat, were two grey-haired gods with bronzy faces continued their deliberate conversation. The seiner took a low speed otherwise the boat would be flooded. The speed was low, and in fact every of seiner fishermen was hurried to the pier, going home!
   Do you understand what does it mean, a fisherman rushing to the shore? The more especially when the weather is fine, and the Danube is friendly, and the old men could get to shore by they own means …
   And then in the sight of village appeared, the lines cast off, the elderly stand upright and bared their heads, decently and nobly following with the eyes the seiner moving away.
   Vilkovo is a very small one-storey fishermen’s town at the mouth of the Danube. It is usually called the Soviet Venice. Indeed, it is thoroughly cut-to-ribbons with Danube waterways, narrow shallow channels. Imagine a shallow channel instead of street’s pavement, the channel with a quiet green opaque water; boats going along this river street are similar some to the Venetian gondolas, and some to the Indian pirogues, boats sailing with elderly, youngsters, women, men. These boats do carry everything that in every usual villages and towns is transported on carts and horse vehicles. Along shallow channels there are boardwalks built on stilts, such a kind of pedestrian ways, and the channels are crossed with light humped walkways; and behind sidewalks you see fences, gardens and white houses in the dense shade of trees. I do not know the detailed circumstances of Vilkovo origins, but I am sure that none of its founders did never get mission to Venice, for familiarization with the principles of the famous Italian city construction, and no one did never exported from Venice either from America gondolas’ and pirogues’ drawings. So decided the Danube, this main waterway to which is perpendicular a part of shallow channels, the “Blue Danube”, whose water is opaque and yellowish silt.
   I have not seen any illuminated boats or masquerades. The Vilkovians have fun in somewhat different way, there are rowing boats and boats equipped with small motors, they work all day, transporting people and goods. These are a sort of carts. Well, have you somewhere illuminated carts?
   But that’s not the key point.
   It is known that the Earth stands on three pillars. And the Vilkovo also has its own two ones. The first is fishery, and the second it is the Danubian dark silt. They also do fishing on Danube, but mostly the Vilkovo fishermen go into the Black Sea for a month, two, three months… And the beautiful Danube viscous oily silt serves to making bricks, after the bricks are stacked into houses afterwards whitewashed and covered with tiles. The river gives a lot of mud. After water recession the townies take out silt from the banks of the Danube, from the bottom of shallow channels. It is also used to reinforce the shallow channels coast and approaches to houses. The whole town just as a fabulous miracle emerged from this sludge, took tint and the “usual of earth” appearance.
   And I went through the streets, following its shallow channels, to familiarize closer this town, as much closer as time allows. It is very clear, this town, it is clean to think that at night an army of janitors sweeps and washes it, and it is accurate and precise just as a skilled pharmacist. Its main street is lined with large flat stones, the sidewalks are made of red brick, polished by time; the main street houses are all the same, built of silt, one-story, they are white to cause pain in the eyes, and have obligatory red or blue border at the bottom, that makes them resembling the ship’s keel. That seeing, it seems the town was originated here just this morning, so clean and fresh it is. The sidewalks are lined with trees, whose trunks half-height are whited with lime, and the electrical line poles’ row, also along the street, too are covered with lime; every five to ten steps you see monumental white trash-bins, and a bit less often there are tin canisters, in which someone invisible collects fallen leaves. A puddle, it’s incredible! That can never be here. Just like occurrence of bugs and cockroaches appearance at the Vilkovians, houses.    The brevity of my stay in Vilkovo did not let me to establish accurate date on which last bedbugs and cockroach were buried. However, possibly, they did never existed here at all.
   Yes, Vilkovo is very clean and very neat town. But its accuracy contains nothing from the surprising monotony of some modern new small towns, neat and sadly artificial, and nothing from their notorious cleanliness the locals are forced to “fight” for maintaining it. In Vilkovo nobody fights for the clean life, they just do live in cleanliness. I have not seen on the streets battalions of birds and poultry, nor fun dirty pigs, “rush driven” in full view of people passing-by, neither stray dogs, begging for alms, but I have seen other things. First of all, I saw true public consciousness manifested in the activities of people, even in every little thing. I saw how, such unimportant at first glance the cult of flowers fosters appreciation. I saw numerous small things in whole shaping the face of a family, a street, whole town and the people.
   Just imagine the shallow channel I have already spoken about. This is a kind of bridge, a path, a road. So, it is a public road. The road must be kept in order. The shallow channel should be cleaned of silt, or how shall people go with visits, how shall they transport goods or take water for watering gardens?
   This public road needs attention, just similarly to an usual way in conventional residential areas.
   And while the men are busy with their difficult job far on the sea, women and children, taking advantage of the water decline, put in order the public road on the site, in front of their houses, trying to make it as good as possible, and this competition continues from generation to generation, from family to family.
   Ten year old boy came home from school, took off his white shirt and red tie, took a shovel and went to the shallow. He undertook long and skillful efforts to clean it of silt. Nobody assigned him the job, and it was serving duties that he did, and his mother returning home did not thank him, nor praised; as that was so usual routine, to clean up the common property.
   And in the local cinema named after A.M.Gorky the painted floors do shine, crossed with new carpet runners, and the lobby furniture suggests to take a rest, the atmosphere is fresh and quiet. In other large regional cities’ cines and theaters I have never met such a comfort, such attention to the visitor. Another worth to mention thing: absence of the controller. In Vilkovo they well do just without such employee.
You should have seen how lovingly and carefully decorated are stands in a small local pharmacy where all the new medicines supplied in the last days are exhibited under glass. Each preparation is accompanied by a brief summary.
   – Why do not you close the pharmacy? It is Saturday today, your open hours elapsed at three o’clock. And now it is now five …
   – How can we close: the patients are still going with their prescriptions.
   And, sure, the flowers. They are numerous. Various. Here they do love flowers. They know a lot about them. If you walk along the Danubian street sideways, you’ll be immediately struck with a house, a typical white four-windows house, the house with bindweed creeping the walls carrying huge blue flowers. From a distance, it seems like a blue fire, a blue explosion, or blue cloud covering part of the white wall. In general, anything you like. The next house inhabitants do prefer pink color, the third one’s like the red …. What peonies! What roses! .. Houses are surrounded by flowers, colors gayness, flavor … Does it not need time, energy, thoughts? And the good vilkoviane old women in white headscarves, they act just in wonderful beauty science professors, creating and preserving this splendor.
   As early as at five a.m. on the square in front of stage the drum tatting sounds together with the concertina playing. We looked out of the window, and that’s what a picture stood before us: a hundred people, old women in white headscarves, old men, wearing their festive dresses, young women, boys, children, putting their hands on each other’s shoulders, managed into a huge round-dance. The drum beat was rapid so its rhythm sounds something very similar to the Moldovan “Joc”. A giant live wheel rotates in one direction and then in another, everybody keeping bouquets of flowers. The faces bear a concentered expression. Newly arriving people do immediately join the circle. Feet step clearly and rhythmically. And the drum beat “boom, boom-boom-boom-boom … boom, boom-boom-boom-boom …”. There is something resembling to the Georgian militant “Khorumi” in this round dance. And in the circle’s middle stays a shaved guy, criss-crossed with embroidered towels. And the large circle transforms, there is a smaller one rotating inside, and the third circle rotates and in it.
   They celebrate the young’s departure to the military service. Off to the side his suitcase waits for time. Nearby there are large pots with a young wine. When the dance stops everyone can drink a glass. And the boat that will take the recruit to the district center Kylia is already rocking at berth. It’s time.
   The barrier pier is stuck with farewellers. Two hundred hands stretched to the boat, where the guy lined with towels stands. He is standing knee-deep in flowers … It’s really the time. The boat starts to move. And then bouquets of flowers fly from the shore to the boat and the guy hastily throws flowers scattered on the deck back in the crowd. Now the boat is close to disappear from the view. Here the point it disappeared … And the flowers continue to float in Danubian water: red, blue, white they go along yellow leisured waves. And to throw correctly a farewell flower it is also an art, and one needs to learn.
   Such was the Vilkovo that flashed before me. Of course, one can tell a lot about the fish factory, about fishermen’s severe labor, about the courage, the struggle for a plan and that called everyday work and production routine. But let somebody other lucky to live long enough in this town do it. Me, I saw just the “little things”. “Trivial matters”, that should remind those who due to circumstances were not learned to, or, never happy to hold a flower, in the hand, felt no need for cleanliness, beauty, festivity of such everyday life.
   Vilkovo,
   Kylia district.

“Literaturnaya Gazeta», №122 of 11.10.1962,

Bulat Okudzhava