Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
About 5 minutes later, Alimosha knocked on the door and asked an on-duty dipper if the stars was still around.
Nah, gone to the Stuff barrack.
Then Alimosha took a bottle of wine from the sleeve in his pea-jacket and ordered to take it to Vitya Novikov in First Company because the buddies there were already waiting for it. The on-duty dipper locked us again to run the errand.
Then Alimosha took the second bottle from the second sleeve losing so hard and shapely biceps, after which, falling into the classic groove:
"The warriors remembered the days of their youth,
The battles they fought in by each other's side…"
In the morning all three of us were, of course, released so that not to reduce the workforce called to fulfill the current five-year plan drawn by the Communist Party and the Government of the Soviet Union… As for the Caucasian with his threats of killing himself after a spree of murders in his native Dagestan, he was transferred to Separate Company…
~ ~ ~
I had already seen that Uzbek in the Canteen and remembered, for it was because of him that I came across the idea that you might get stoned even without any weed but by simply hitching your wagon to the wake wave of some other buddy’s drag… That time we went to the Canteen after the lights-out where the youngs doing their fatigues "on the floors" were already washing the hall.
We chose the table in the corner and landed there to be out of the way, they still had wide swaths to clear before reaching that area. The joint was circulating our chosen company in a reciprocally attentive manner and the drift took a ho-ho bent – we looked at each other's mugs and were wetting our pants with laughter.
And that Uzbek was dragging his soaked rag, to-and-fro, at about five-seven meters off us when he suddenly joined the crowd with his snicker… In short, witnessing our good-humored recreation, he got recharged and dragged the same way – in our wake, without any weed.
We called him to approach and offered the heel which he rejected. Well, it's clear too, the roughed young feared that the on-duty piece of shit from his company would drop in to see what's how around there…
And then I saw the same Uzbek again among the MCU squad-team of youngs, he was riding the same truck-back with me. And at times, when on the road, he sang songs in the mother tongue attuned to their Central Asian modal-tonal harmony. Not much of like the Italian opera stuff but, on the whole, listenable, sort of Jimmy Hendrix when without his guitar. The other Uzbeks got perked up and the road ended more quickly. Good fellow "aqyn", or maybe "ashoogh"? Well, in short – lahbooh…
Sergeant Misha Khmelnytsky couldn't pronounce his name in any way, and, in the end, he said, "Okay! You will be Vasya!" So, one time as we were riding home, Khmel commanded: "Vasya! Sing up!"
I marked that the Uzbek was in no mood, sad and reluctant, but Khmel did not shut up, "What? Can't get it, salabon? The command was ‘sing up!’"
Well, the lahbooh started a song… The rest of the Uzbeks looked at him like angry dogs and scolded in their dark language, muttering, “You bitch, are you a canary for this motherfucker?” Of course, I did not know their language, but certain utterances need no translation.
Now, the lahbooh gave out one verse and steered to coda, but Khmel demanded more, "Sing, Vasya, sing!" So the soldier started again on high notes. And I saw how cleared up the Uzbeks' faces, they even laughed at one point.
Well, also quite understandable, the singer on the fly adopted his number to the situation:
"Vai, Sergeant, vai, I have fucked your Mom!."
But Khmel didn't get it at all, "That's it! Well done! More!"
And he got what he was asking for:
emphasis>"Vai, Sergeant, vai, I have fucked your fucking mouth!."
The Uzbeks were rocking with laughter and the Sergeant liked it too, "Very well, Vasya!"
Here, the truck pulled up at the traffic lights and I, without a superfluous goodbye to the nice company of music lovers, slipped over the tailgate and down the short ladder… That time I slipped away to see Quiet Mouse.
Actually, her name was Tanya and she did not know that, to myself, I was calling her "Quiet Mouse" because when I first approached her in a trolleybus she was answering so quietly. And could I possibly not approach? Several times I saw her on the trolleybus when going from the ring road to the MCU.
She told me later, "I noticed you still in February, at the very frosts, your pea-jacket collar was wide open with the whole your neck sticking out." So motherly attentive. She was 2 years older than me.
is>"… we always choose those very women,
who have already chosen us …"
In the morning, when she agreed to a date after the working day by that same ring road, I was not alone going to the MCU by a trolley. From our stop, we had to march yet along a lane, and there I said to that Moldovan, "Rahroo! Would you bet I doff now?" In general, there was snow all around, although it was March already, and I stripped to the waist strolling along in just high boots and the canvas pants with Rahroo carrying all other items of my outfit behind. Because I had got filled with so irresistible delight; but that was before her telling me about my bare neck…
Most likely, my topless folly walking resulted also from the meeting that god's fool… Back in February, I was for about a week hanging out at the 50-apartment block – that same that we had started with rebar-rod breakers, now it was already nearing its delivery.
So, buddies from a squad-team there told me about some old man walking barefoot in one of the nearby lanes. And I went there twice, on purpose, before I met him… It was a bearded old man, his beard was white and slightly yellowish, and apart from it, the man had also a hat and an overcoat on. His pants were rolled up leaving his legs bare down the knees; he swept a path in the snowdrifts with a besom. Though long and skinny, he hardly was a junkie because he had a drift of his own.
The snow was falling in big rare flakes, and he walked barefoot and swept an empty path in the empty street. I stood by for a while watching him, and he gave me a sidelong glance or 2 while busy with his business. We both kept silent, and then I left.
(…everyone believes that they are right and that their way of believing is the rightest one.
In Stavropol mujiks, the faith, for some reason, has a firm connection to their feet. Already in the third millennium, on TV they showed a man who had crawled on his knees from Stavropol to Moscow. To withstand the trying deed, he fixed pieces of automobile tires onto his knees and scrambled on along the highways roadsides, replacing the tires as needed. For the revival of faith in the Christ-loving people of Russia and to bring God's blessing to them…
Well, I, personally, don't mind. My present confession is that of Tolerant Non-Believing. I entertain a strong conviction that true tolerance could happen exclusively among the unbelievers. All the rest are only pretending it while, in fact, they want to convert everyone else into a follower of their faith. Even the atheists are a confession like others, all too happy to bring you to their flock of believers in the absence of any god.
An unbeliever is the one who has nothing to believe with, because of the absence of corresponding organ, responsible for believing functions.
"… the doctor said, 'we'll just remove the odd appendix'…"
yet, being overly-blind, he chopped off the thing producing fluids of crucial importance for believing…
So now, crawl as far as you please, sit in full lotus until you bloom, knead the floor with your forehead—whatever!—if not in my kitchen garden, of course. Don't put to try my tolerance, please…)
But at the construction battalion that spring I did not care a damn about any theology when awaiting Trolley 5 by the Ring Road stop… Several of that number passed by before she arrived.
We quietly walked along the sidewalk by the host of five-story blocks laid of white silicate brick in the Lipetsk masonry fashion. Then we entered one of the staircase-entrances in one of the five-story blocks.
We embraced warmly and quietly, standing by the heating battery on the first floor, at the bottom of the staircase. Still standing, we quietly copulated.
Then we went out again to the endless sidewalk and I saw her to another entrance in another five-story block…
And for a long time after, it was not possible to repeat the warmly quiet pleasure; the staircase-entrances, for some reason, became too crowded… A couple of times we went to the movies for daytime shows but there were too many kids around.
One time Captain Pissak spotted me leaving a cinema with her. He called me aside and demanded to immediately cut all sorts of relations with her, although he could not present any sound foundation for his insistence. And that was most annoying – okay, suppose, you're Captain Pissak, then go and command in your First Company, why meddling if I had Tughrik to report to?.
But then I finally visit her at home. As it turned out, her staircase-entrance was different from where I escorted her on our first date, and the building itself was half-block farther along the endless sidewalk.
When I took my high boots off in the hallway and stuck the footcloths into them as deep as I could, so that they wouldn't propagate their smell too freely, it turned out that I was barefoot and even slippers did not hide that fact – like a god's fool only without a besom… At home, she happened to have her mother and a daughter of 3 years old.
Then her mother took her daughter for a walk to a store and we got seated on the carpet where she brought and opened her album with photos. Both in the pictures and on the carpet, she looked real cute that quiet mouse blonde Tanya.
All there was to do for having a sex on the carpet next to the spread album was just to reach out and put my hand on her shoulder skin inside her gown, but something hampered the most natural move. I do not know what exactly stopped me. What did I wait for?
(…in those irrevocably faraway times—past any reach, recall, redress—I hadn't realized yet that all my grieves and joys and stuff sprang from that rascal in the unfathomably distant future who’s now composing this letter to you stretched on my back inside this here one-person tent surrounded by a dark forest in the middle of nowhere and the never subsiding whoosh of the river currently named Varanda…)
Then her mother returned from the store bringing back Tanya’s daughter and a mesh-bag bulging with bright oranges…
Our following meetings took place outside her apartment, and she began to show interest in studying my military ID. The balls about my ID locked up in the safe at the Commander’s office did not roll far with her – she was two years older or have I told so already?
Then there cropped up some nagging predicaments and confusions in the otherwise peaceful flow of my service. I got in a scrape or two, and we lost sight of each other. Already before the demobilization, I went to visit her again, but her mother said Tanya was not home.
I waited for her at the staircase-entrance and, when she eventually appeared, we went out to a wide night courtyard between the five-story apartment-blocks and she succumbed both readily and quietly on a table in the playgrounds. However, I cum too soon, much faster than in that staircase-entrance which outcome I did not like at all and broke off our relationship, in conformance with the demand of Captain Pissak, Commander of First Company. Because, as it stands in the Statute of the Internal Military Service, "an order of the commander is the law for a lower-ranked serviceman"…
~ ~ ~
The closer the demobilization, the shorter is your sleep. Where have you retired, O, the euphoric times when I, still a salaga, was falling asleep the moment my head touched the pillow? An enviable bliss.. And now, the evening roll-call over, the long aimless visit to the Club paid, again I'm plodding back to the barrack without any hope to get a wink of sleep… So, we get together, the nighthawks of the same feather, an upscale insomniac detail of buddies from undercover Royal Troops infiltrating the SA,
stretched upon bunk beds in one or another koobrik. We gossip of this, we gossip of that, or just drive a fool.
(…many years later I learned from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago that it was an old traditional pastime among zeks, inherited from the Czarist times when someone in the cell retold some novel by some Dickens with adaptations and retouch of the details to bring them closer to the everyday contemporary life. Only instead of "driving a fool" zeks called it "stamping a novel"…)
When it was my turn, I stamped a novel of revenge about two young lovers and a cruel baron from the castle on the hill. That heinous brute of a baron imprisoned the young man in the dark dungeon cell illuminated only when he brought in a couple of torches along with his beloved to use her as a sex slave right in front of the poor guy. A month later, the prisoner tore out the peg that fixed his chain to the wall and paid the bills for lodging and warm hospitality.
(…the plot had nothing to do with Dickens or any particular literary work because when driving that fool I, with my closed eyes, watched the gossamer blouse of Michelle Mercier presenting her nipples in the first sequel of "Angelica". However, here arises the question: if I have farmed out my Michelle to the baron applying her (one whole month!) to tickle his senile fantasies, taking turns with his wolfhound and various objects of medieval utensils and implements, then (even though jerking at the peg in the futile attempts to pull it from the wall, but still collaboratively keeping time with the concurrent porno scenes) may it be I'm a pervert?
Of course, the question was forwarded not by the listeners but by myself, and much later too, but still and all…)
During the epilogue centered on the methodical dismantling of the baron into the constituent parts performed in monstrously graphical manner, Khmel suddenly wailed, "Hey, on-duty!"
From the cabinet-box by the faraway barrack entrance, the on-duty came and Khmel told him, "He had fucking fucked already with his snoring, dome the fucker, let him RIP."
"Who?"
"In the koobrik over two passages."
The on-duty bent over the peace disturber and listened to the sleepy breathing, "No, not this one."
Lyolik joined in the conversation, "Who the fuck cares? Dome the fucker all the same!"
(…the depth of philosophical wisdom of the utterance still brings the tears of tender delight to my eyes.
"Who the fuck cares? Dome the fucker all the same!."
Here! Here it is – the quintessence of statuary and other service relations, the pledge of having a well-trained army, marked with combat zeal and readiness…
I’d be happy to add of the "Soviet army", the one that's plopped into oblivion… but who nowadays believes in Father Christmas?..)
A soldier-dembel pines away under incessant tension. A state of incomprehensible, groundless anxiety deprives him of sleep, appetite, and the ability to assess and conform his actions to the requirements of elementary logic and common sense… Every morning, the buddies from your draft get lined up in groups facing the ranks of the Morning Dispensing and, after a brief farewell from Zampolit, or Chief of Staff, they march to the gate by the checkpoint, they go home. And when would my turn come?!.
After idling around to 3 o'clock at the location of VSO-11, I got in the cabin of UAZ-66 truck used for fetching bread to the Canteen from Stavropol. Under the canvas top of the truck back, climbed Lyolik and some of his buddies, also going to AWOL.
The truck left thru the gate and sped to the city along the asphalt road wet after the recent thunderstorm. The asphalt closer to the roadsides was all ruts and holes full of rain water so the white car that jumped out of the road turn was darting along the middle. The UAZ driver dodged, leaping with the right wheels of the truck onto the muddy roadside. The turn was rushing at him, he braked and slewed left. The truck jumped back onto the asphalt and skidded along in a free-style gliding.
The driver, next to me, was frantically spinning the wheel hither-thither and back again. The truck kept speedily crabbing along, changing the sides at her will, paying no attention to whatever the driver was doing to the wheel. In the end, we were turned in the opposite direction and, after traveling backward for some time, the truck capsized… The embankment was not too high—about two meters—so we reeled just a couple of times.
Tumbling under the slope inside the cab of a truck, you live thru a strange sensation as if you were a fish in a bowl. Probably, that is weightlessness. The driver, the wheel, the cab door, and once again the hovering driver are slowly floating past you… I landed on him when the motion died leaving the truck on her side. Yet, the driver was the first to climb out thru the window overhead. I followed him.
The buddies from the truck back were already standing by the driver. Lucky fellas… On the road, the Battalion Commander's "goat"-Willys squeaked its brakes. To simplify the assessment of the situation, I merged with the green foliage of the forest edge.
"Who else was that?"
"I dunno, some soldier from Separate Company asked to take him along…"
After two kilometers, the forest was over, and so was the tense tremor in my hands, when I entered the city. I went to a cinema to take off the adrenaline rush. It was "How to Steal a Million" with Peter O'Toole. Or was it "The Remarriage" with Belmondo?
Nah! After Belmondo, I met Nadya, a student of something there. We walked for a long time, hugging here and there, but when I went over to kisses, she bit my tongue. "I know what you're hinting at!"
Stuff it! What hints were there? It hurt so, I could hardly speak seeing her to the one-story house where she rented a room.
She dropped in and brought out a can of condensed milk, kinda emolument to the wrongly wounded warrior. I hugged her for goodbye but shunt kissing. When she left, I looked at the can in my hand then at the wall of the house. No stray nails… So I placed the can on the railing and went away bypassing the pleasure for my bitten tongue…
Just only four dembels still stuck around in the construction battalion – I, Gray, Red from Dnepropetrovsk, and Alexander Roodko. I had already got myself a parade-crap, borrowing it from a pheasant in Third Company. Because of transference after one year of service to Fourth Company as a stoker, I missed then getting a parade-crap both at First and Fourth Companies…
Before the Morning Dispensing, there started up a round-dance by the sorteer. The eager on-lookers jogging to watch the entertainment informed hastily, that the night before Gray made a young truck-crane driver take him from a site to the battalion and, when they reached Separate Company, he got to the wheel himself and crashed into a pole. Nothing terrible happened, the dented truck crane did not really need a repair. However, Chief of Staff, when they reported to him on his arrival, went amok and wanted to kick Gray’s ass personally.
"YOU FUCKER!"
What a mighty hook! The major put every kilo of his stout body into the ramming wallop and!. Whoops!. Gray dodged. Hmm…boo, Major!..and I had always thought you were a boxer…
The soldiers helped Chief of Staff to get back on his feet. The on-duties convoyed beltless Gray to the clink…
At the Morning Dispensing that followed, Zampolit announced that Red was going to the demobilization, and the next day Roodko and I as well. I approached him in the Staff half-barrack.
"Comrade Zampolit, I need a testimonial."
"What testimonial?"
"For admission to the institute."
"You are an absolute son of a bitch, Ogoltsoff!”, blurted Zampolit out, “ Are you fucking sane? An alky, junky, gangsta! I'll give you such a fucking testimonial that no Zona will accept you other than the jug for lifers! Fuck! It's our oversight that you get out of here at all. But you wait! The society will deal with you, they’ll crush you yet and grind down to the finest powder!"
Then 3 of us were paid money at the Staff's accountancy. Wow! So I even had some earnings! 120 rubles for two years of honest work…
Roodko and I went to see Red off and to equip ourselves at the same go. When in the city, Roodko bought a sports-bag for his journey home, and I chose a "diplomat" briefcase, they were just getting in vogue then. The inside between the gleaming plastic walls got filled with dembel stuff: cellophane-wrapped pantyhose for Olga, a bottle of vodka for me and my father, and a crimson silk tablecloth with a fringe, for 7 rubles 50 kopecks, which Red bought for his mother and asked me to keep in the "diplomat" while we were sprinkling down the dust on the way home that he started. Besides, I loaded in the kicks bought by me – light and practical footwear with black corduroy tops for just six-fifty, because in the battalion I couldn't find high shoes for the borrowed parade-crap and went shopping in the pair borrowed from the Third Company on-duty Sergeant for just a day.
After the Red's way was sprinkled properly and our clamorous goodbyes were nearing the bus stop for him to set off to the railway station, I was not drunk and clearly remembered that crimson silk tablecloth inside my "diplomat". I did not remind Red of the gift he had bought for his mother. I stole it.
To give me one last chance, he sobered up, for just a second but completely, checking if I would tell him. His eyes met mine. The Red’s attempt at the last minute rescuing ran into my snooty poker face. In drunken submission to the inevitable, his head dropped onto his chest and he staggered on never looking back anymore. I watched the distance growing between us in the sunlit sidewalk – 10 meters, 20… But I never called out, "Hey, Red! You forgot it, buddy!"
(…and no prissy bitch on the Varanda river banks could ever bring about redemption for this my dirt…)
Next morning, Roodko and I stood facing the ranks of VSO-11 and Chief of Staff announced that we were going to the demobilization. We both made the "to left!" Clutching the black plastic handle of my black "diplomat", I followed Roodko’s back and his blue sports bag, no thoughts, no joy, some odd emptiness. Just 2 dembels walking away, leaving behind 2 years amputated from their lives.
After a couple of steps we did, Battalion Commander spotted the corduroy kicks heading past him to the gate behind which the society lurked in ambush making ready to grind me down to powder at the nearest convenient moment. Battalion Commander made the last, desperate, attempt at saving the doomed, "What the fuck?! Watch the motherfucker in the fucking dancing pumps!" However, Chief of Staff cut short his fatherly protective impulse, "Let the fucker get the fuck out!” said he, "The motherfucker’s fucking motherfucked already all and every fucking one here!"
Good-bye and you, Fathers-Commanders…
~ ~ ~
But even 24 hours later I was still in Stavropol, at the city airport of plain rustic looks. Just having served "two winters and two summers" was not enough, you still had to reach home.
I had a flight ticket to Kiev bought from the city Aeroflot office, but when I arrived at the kolkhoz field of an airport, the flight was delayed for an hour, then for another hour and only by noon the piston-plane AN-24 ran along the takeoff strip, and beneath the wing of the aircraft, thru the muffled hum of motors, floated rarefied clouds over topographic landscapes. The construction battalion stayed in the past, but it still hanged about and I was thinking of the First Company Master Sergeant who stuck to me on a city bus last week.
And it was so stupid, did he really need it when clad in his civvy outfit? Because he was drunk, he wanted to show off what an important piece of shit he was, that's why.
"What are you doing here? Back to barracks! I'll report to Battalion Commander at the Morning Dispensing!"
"And I'll say you were drunk as a swine."
None was said by neither one to nobody…
And that major also was in his civvy, so how could I know?
"I'm a Major!" shrieked he, "How dare you?"
Who'd guess you were a Major when you have civilian rags on? Look at me – all's in full view; the black shoulder-strap clear of any yellow crap means clear conscience – a rank-and-file construction battalion!
It's because of that barmaid in the café that we came to grips. She was a juice sort and, at first, it was me who she addressed the purposeful swing of her ample breasts to, before he flashed his rank trump, or was he bluffing? Nah, you can't dupe such a woman…
I still belong to the Construction Battalion. Forever. Some part of it stuck in me. To the very end….
But I did not think of anything like that then, I was just a dembel flying home. Not home meaning "barracks", but home meaning "home". Although my mother wrote in her letter that they had sold their quarter-khutta in Nezhyn Street, and bought half-khutta someplace deeper in the Settlement. No fear, I got the address, I would find it.
But I couldn't think about Konotop for long, I got accustomed to thinking about other things and so I thought my usual thoughts… As we took the drummer from Pyatigorsk to the Military Flight School to show that he was real good.
There went 3 of us – Long, the drummer and I. We wanted the cadets from the vocal-instrumental ensemble at the Flight School saw for themselves that the drummer was a pro so that they would put a word to their zampolit to find him some position in the chmo by their School because he was to be drafted to the army. Such was the idea.
The cadets were, so too conveniently, rehearsing on the stage in the hall like a summer cinema, without the roof. They handed Long their guitar, the drummer sat behind the drums… Wow! The two dudes made a duet da bomb, a potpourri from Jimmy and Jimmy, they unleashed their souls in full letting them on a free flight… Poor fools! They sort of run a bulldozer over those rosy cadets in their blue shoulder-straps who needed a drummer of the kind that follows the pioneer banner next to the bugler with the red pennant on his horn:
du-du-du-dú! du-du-du-dú!
Not a chance they'd ever mention such a Drummer to their zampolit. So well-groomed boys, them those cadets; well-fed too…
Was it all over? No more evening roll-calls? Neither Zampolit, nor Chief of Staff, nor pieces… I was flying home; at home, everything would be nyshtyak! Not for nothing, I had been dreaming of it all those two years, or rather did not allow myself to ever think about home…
That was my first flight on an airplane; better than crawling endless 2 days by train. My wrist still hurt a bit; that fool of a bitch in the hotel the night before. She would give, only there was nowhere,” Let's go to your room,” said she. I asked the mujiks in the room, and they left.
So, while she was demonstrating her unbreakable virginity and maiming my wrist with her fingernails, they started to come back, one by one. The séance is over. But I didn't strong-arm her, she just grabbed my hand and started her claw-work. That Stavropol was just some breeding ground for sadist chicks, I swear.
Hopefully, Olga would not notice… but if she would, then what? You could get any kind of scars when doing your combat duty…
The AN-24 landed in Rostov. I went to the toilet by the takeoff field and, on the way back, a military patrol stopped me.
Right! Corduroy shoes is an utter breach of the Statute of the Internal Military Service, but I'm a demobbed dembel flying home, bros! My plane's already buzzing its propellers! They let me go.
At refueling in Kharkov I sat tight and, at last, landing in the airport Boryspol brim-filled with the summer sunlight… On that first flight, I thought it was already Kiev and, entering the bright sunny square full of all kinds of vehicles and scurrying pedestrians, I went straight to the big shield bearing huge "T" and two rows of chessboard squares, to get a taxi.
The taxi driver was a long-haired mujik about 30 in brown leather shoes with thick strings. I told him to take me to the railway station and he asked me to wait in the car while he would look for additional fellow-travelers; there still remained 48 kilometers to Kiev. He left and I remained to wait in the front passenger seat. It was hot and I took off my parade-crap jacket and, to pass the time and keep in check the growing inside tension, I stuffed and smoked a joint.
The driver came back with two more passengers to fill the backseat: a Major and a Lieutenant-Colonel, but younger than our Battalion Commander, and we started. Maybe, that driver in brown shoes scented the weed in his car and got carried away by some personal memories, but he drove like mad, and after crossing the Dnieper over the Paton Bridge, he dropped heeding the traffic lights completely… Or, maybe, the traffic lights had a day-off and it was a sunlit holiday of free driving for anyone to overtake whoever they wanted however they could…
Paying for the ride at the station, the Lieutenant-Colonel said, "Well, chief, you're flying indeed!" So, most likely, the driver got his drift on the wake…
In 1975, "diplomat" briefcases were a fairly seldom sight attracting attention by their foreign voguish looks which would be forgivable for senior officers but I, a private man, was stopped by a military patrol the moment I stepped into the central hall of the Kiev Railway Station. And the patrol, by the by, were cadets again, yet this time with red shoulder-straps. They checked my military ID and the demobilization papers, there was nothing to find fault with.
And then I made a mistake of looking at my shoes. The patrol commander followed my glance and traced back a flagrant violation of the statutory uniform. I was taken to the station military commandant office, under the magnificent stairs which led to the giant marble statue of Lenin's head, on the landing half-way to the second floor.
