von Yevhen Bruslynowsky (Copyright)

AT THE STREET WATER FOUNTAIN
I already live alone 2 months in a big town. I have no relatives here only a few acquaintances of mine and I have not found special places where I could go to spend my free time. That’s why I thought up an amusement for myself: every Saturday I go to a tram stop. It is just opposite a street water fountain. I take my seat on a bench and begin to observe the live around me.
This time I see two little ones – a brother and sister – coming to the water fountain. The boy has two empty plastic containers in his hands and the girl is carrying an empty sprite bottle. The boy is walking like a solid man but the girl is moving energetically in rhythmical dancing steps so her short plaits are bobbing up and down. They stop at the water fountain. The boy turns the tap on, fills the bottle at first, gives it to his sister for her to have a drink, then rinses the cement base of the water fountain and puts his containers under the stream of water, fills one of them, moves it aside, fills another one; after that he fills the bottle, twirls it and hands the bottle to his sister. After that he takes his containers and they go away. The girl isn’t moving so energetically now. Carrying the bottle in both hands in front of herself she is walking solidly like her brother.
I keep observing. A tram pulls in and stops. A girl of about 15 years old with long fair hair gets off the tram. She puts the strap of her bag on the shoulder, comes up to the water fountain, turns the tap on. Having quenched her thirst she wipes her mount with her hand and goes back to the stop. Another tram pulls in. The girl takes the tram.
It is not difficult for me to imagine a traveller in the steppe who, having noticed a well, turns his horse towards it to quench his thirst. But it was wonderfully to see how a young Kyivite got off the tram only to drink some water from a street water fountain. Not the sterile water from a tap at one’s own place but the water from a street water fountain, that is – pure water from an artesian well.
I couldn’t but taste the water from this fountain myself. Nothing special. Water like water. Althoung, telling the truth, without the smell of chlorine. I can’t say it migh have been called ”crystal” water – it smelled of silf a little bit and of water – pipe rust. But there was something in it that attracted people.
Two families return home from a picnic somewhere near a lake. The grown-ups are a bit tipsy, the little ones are tired, the men have bags in their hands, the women carry clothes, the children have rush ”bunches” – everyone is tired. The company stops at the water fountain. One of the men turned the tap on, a strong stream hit against the cement foundation… What a noise has arisen! At first the little ones began to splash water on one another. Immediately all their clothes – shorts, skirts, sport shirts became wet, their hair too, – screams of laughter, running about… The parents joined their successors. The bags fall down, the men jump, the woman laugh, the little ones run about; splashes here and there – fiesta, nothing else but fiesta! Tiredness has gone away! Drunkenness has disappeared! Ingenuousness and sincerity of the fiesta cheered up the people around. They looked at one another, smiled, nodded their heads and but for the tram that pulled in from behind the corner – they would join the merry company.
THE WELL IN THE VILLAGE
I remember wells in the village. Late in the evening when most of the people are not busy about the household any more, woman got together at the well. Some men joined them too. And it didn’t matter what the talk was about – about the head of the collective farm who got into trouble again because he had stolen some grain or about the clothes this or that woman had bought for her children on the eve of the school year, or about their hard life. All those things did not matter. The matter was in being together at that place, at the well from which theit parents and grandparents used to take water and their children would take water too. A well in the village is not just a source of water but a source of energy containing eternal power of the earth. And that power charged them, their soals found a rest there, they summoned up fresh energy and health there.

THE TOWN KITCHEN CHATS
Where can one find such a place in the megalopolis of many millions completely asphalted, rammed and concreted? At the water tap in the kitchen with its water that had been filtered through hundreds of filters, disinfected by tons of chloride and in addition lost its strength while running through kilometres of rusty pipes and has become the liquid which inhabitants of megalopolis called water? May be. In the long run there exists such a conception as ”the kitchen chat”. One way or another but the liquid from a tap in the kitchen cannot be equal to genuine water from a well (read – a source). That is why some inhabitants of monster – megalopolises go to the suburbs in hope of finding a well with genuine water somewhere in a lane or a quiet little street. And street water fountains that are built from time to time here and there become the wells – sources that attract people.

OTHER SCENES AT THE WATER FOUNTAIN
I keep sitting on my bench and observing the behavior of the people around. Two homeless men came dragging themselves along. They drank some water. Then one of them, after a long searsh of something in his pocket, took something wrapped in paper out. It was a bar of cheap soap. The homeless filled their 2 litre bottle with water, moved aside from the fountain and then in turn washed their hands and faces with the soap. I would not have been surprised if they had taken out raisors and shaved their two – week bristle. But they did not shave themselves. But even without it one could notice that their faces had brightened up.
I sat there about 2 hours. The day was drawing to a close. But the life near the fountain was going on. An old woman of about 70 with a walking-stick in her hand and a soldier’s water-bottle came to the fountain. Obviously she was a person with religious faith. But I couldn’t guess which faith she belonged to. Befote filling her water-bottle she crossed herself, took a handfull of water, washed her face and whispered a centain prayer. Only after that the wonam filled her bottle. She wasn’t in a hurry to leave. She stood at the fountain for a while, looked around, put her bottle on the water fountain, bent down and began to gather the rubbish: ice-cream wrappers, cigarette-ends, dry leaves and took everything to the refuse bin. After cleaning the place she washed her hands and straightened herself. Then she whispered her prayer again, crossed herself, took the water bottle and helping herself with her walking-stick, slowly left the place.
A HAPPENING IN THE VILLAGE
Last winter, while visiting my relatives in the village, I became a witness of an unusual happening: a collective farm nightman Mykola, known in the neighbourhood as an expert well-digger, may be after drinking too much alcohol or from malice came to the square right in the centre of the village and began to dig a well. A crowd of people immediately gathered around him. The well-digger, paying no attention to the spectators, put his special instruments – stakes, pieces of wire, strings on the tramped snow, took off his ”kuffayka” – a quilted jacket (usually worn by convicts, collective farmers, unskilled workers etc) – and threw it down on the snow. Turning around on his left foot he traced a circle around himself with his right foot, put his warm winter hat on one side, spit on his palms, took his sharp spade and began to dig the frozen ground. But he didn’t manage to work for long. An ambulance (called by the head of the village) came and took the drunk well-digger avay. But the people didn’t leave the square. They were looking at the clods of frozen ground and the spade left by Mykola. Then someone said: ”Nobody has dug a well in the course of the last 5 years in our village”. Another one added: ”It there’s no well in the yard of a household – it has not a master”. Someone else said: ”Who needs wells after the construction of the water – supply system?”. And little by little, with sighs of sadness and regret the people began to leave the square. A very small boy came back and took the spade. It was too heavy for him to put it on his shoulder so he dragged it on the snow…

WHAT ATTRACTS PEOPLE TO WELLS
I was going to leave my place at the tram stop and go home when, all of a sudden, I saw those little ones – the brother and sister – with plastic containers and a sprite bottle again. It was already 8 p.m. To my mind it was too late for such little children to leave their home. But may be their parents decided to suppliment their reserves of water before the days off and the children agreed to go to the water fountain again because they liked going there.
I have doubts as to seeing people standing in line for water at street water fountains but it’s an irrefutable fact that more and more town – dwellers give preference to natural water and don’t drink the water running from taps in their houses. And who used to get together at street water fountains and pump-rooms some time ago? Adherents of Porfyr Ivanov, the man who had worked out his own system of healthy way of life ”Be closer to Nature!”. Those were the people who suffered from certain diseases or prefered, so to say, natural beginnings. There was something ritual in their gatherings – they were the people belonging to ”one’s own company”, they got to know one another, had common problems to be discussed, exchanged specific information. At present ”street water fountains” became, if it is possible to say so, more democratic. Who goes to water fountains now? – Common people who are very remotely connected with any theories or sanitary and recovery measures. Now people simply thirst for normal natural water and no half-artificial half-sterilized bonanzas, fantas or colas are able to substitute natural water. (To say nothing of the liquid running from our kitchen taps).
IN MY NATIVE TOWN
Of course, everyone ought to have his own well. Everyone out of 50 million inhabitants of my country. To our regret there is a decrease in the number of wells for some past time: that well has dried out, that one has silted… That is why people are wondering in search of ”one’s own” source. The water from town’s water supply systems does not enjoy people’s trust in its natural strength. What unexpected surprises – from banal dysentary to typhoid fever – it brings! Newspaper write about such cases practically avery day. And a deep well dugged by an expert master in a good place and taken a good care of by its master won’t bring any unexpected surprises. In those towns which are supplied with drinking water from artesian wells, water is not dangerous either. I take, for example my native town- Kaniv. The town’s dwellers not only drink artesian water but use it as technical one for washing clothes and in water-closets. Of course, it is a sin to waste such water for such purposes (to say the least of it) – the town stands on the river Dnipro but until now we have no system for taking water from it. At the same time the existing state of things has its advantages – in the course of the last 30 years we had not even a single case of illness caused by water taken from the town’s water supply system. It the long run, the aura of the town itself, in spite of the total unemployment and poverty, remains bright, powerful, it keeps people in their native place and the majority of them does not not leave it, does not go to other places and countries in search of a better lot. To a considerable extent it is no concern of the inhabitants of the greater part of small and big towns of such Ukraine’s regions as Chernihiv, Lviv and Ternopil where people mainly use water from artesian wells.
It is evident that there’s the inverse relation – people give strength to water too. Everyone knows such a concept as ”the memory of water”. Scientists state – if you pour 100 grammes of alcohol into, for example, the Geneva Lake, – in a considerably short period of time analysis will indicate the presence of the alcohol in the water of the lake near the other bank of it which is some dozen miles away. Taking the water from his well, drinking it, taking care of his well, cleaning it the user also ”tames” the water, attaches it to himself, encodes it, even – makes it love its master, who, in his turn, expects mutual respect and love on the part of the water from his well.
In general, what’s the difference – whether it is a spring, a well, a street water fountain or a pump-room? The main thing for each person is to have one’s own source. Our water will fix us in its memory and give us its strength in the course of all our life. And in spite of the fact that our water sources are not taken appropriate care of (somewhere they are unattractive and miserable, the territory around them is untidy) and water is not pumped from the best strata – such things are of no importance. The time will come and we shall learn to dig fine wells again: genuine deep wells with cold crystal water. Not without reason that small village boy took the well-digger’s spade home, not without reason one of the best occupations of town’s little ones, including the brother and sister I spoke about, is to go to a street water fountain for water.

AS USUAL…
…I woke up late at night because I saw a dream: a bucket slid off the well’s adge, tore the chain it was fixed to and, with a terrible noise, beating against the walls of the well, was falling down into its depth. I rubbed my eyes and listened to the noise. Being only half-awake, barefooted I went to the kitchen and stroke the tap with my hand. The tap stopped making the noise. I took a glass out of the cupboard. Turned the tap on. Not a single drop. I put my finger into the tap. I heard indistinct mumbling in the depth of the water pipe. Then it disappeared. I turned the tap off. As usually I had to satisfy my thirst by as warm as compote water from the kettle.