Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
That is to say, that I did not need that meeting with Eera and I waited for another 20 minutes before I left the Old Building.
"Sehryozha!" She still waited between the massive columns on the high porch.
Well, what can I do if she's so beautiful? If I have to keep in check my breath, hold my heart back from leaping out?. We walked round the corner bypassing the marble plaque "Here N. V. Gogol studied in…", and stopped beneath one of the tall XIX-century windows overhead. I was appalled by the wanness of her face, not sickly pallid though but like the pure white of exquisite, almost transparent, porcelain. And I couldn’t tell what clamped my heart in a mightier grip – her beauty or my pity for her.
What a witless brute I’ve been, torturing both her and myself for so long, and so savagely! At last, I am embracing her again. She both laughs and cries in my chest. O, how I love her!.
That cursed month she was coming home and just lay down prostrate overwhelmed by the pain felt verbatim physically, and nothing mattered, absolutely nothing. Mommy did not know what to do, "What's wrong with you, Eera?"
"Nothing."
Stupid beast! Bastard! How pale she is! How desperately beautiful. "Come on to the Hosty. The room is vacant."
She happily hurried home to change and tell her mother that she was celebrating and staying overnight at a girlfriend's.
(…most of all in the Soviet holidays I liked the calm condensing after demonstrations… The streets got void of traffic and pedestrians; people retired to their homes, start celebrating…)
The hostel was also empty. Except for Room 72 on the third floor. That was our room, our hostel, our celebration. The Feast of Reconciliation…
Sveta might nigh spoil the feast… Taking advantage of the vacuum in the silent corridor of locked doors, I ventured to the toilet in my underpants and on the way back I dropped into the washroom. It was there that Sveta screwed me over, "What's that!"
And she began to talk my ear off that she'd never put up with any personnel extension without preliminary coordination. She was forgiving me Eera, forgiving Maria, but who was that new slut in my room?
"Are you crazy? That's Eera!"
Well, she had just peeped in and there was someone standing by the window. Where could Eera possibly get such a cute nightie from?
As if I knew; I saw it for the first time too…
On the second day, I left the Hosty in the morning. The big deli in the main square was stormed by the crowd after a rare deficit: white-and-blue cans of condensed milk.
Proud of my hunting skills, I returned to Room 72 and Eera greeted me from the bed by the window, "Wow! You brought condensed milk?" I was f-f.. well, I mean, flabbergasted. "You… what the… er… that is, how?"
"You had such a swagging nose, anyone could read it."
And possessing such skills to write counterfeit letters? There was something, not that there… In short, I surrendered, and we started to live on together as one tightly united family. In learned books, they call such life-style polygamy in which I was the joining link, sort of.
(…the joining link should master and keep to one golden rule – no names. "Darling" is the very thing, it sounds pleasant and causes no misunderstandings.
Maybe someone would pull for "kitty" or "bunny", which is a matter of taste, but, in my humble opinion, why to start up a superfluous menagerie?
"Yes, darling…"
"Come on, darling…")
Sveta did not kick up unneeded dust anymore. She clearly knew her exact place – after Eera, before Maria. Officially, the girls were not introduced but knew about the existence of the rest. Eera and Sveta, for sure, and Maria, most likely, as well.
Talking to the darlings, I was not especially keen on that topic – who knows what about who, but Nezhyn was a provincial town where everyone knew everything about everyone else… When in the third year, I had a pedagogical practice at School 2 and once at the break a teacher of theirs started divulging a kinda disparaging information about Maria. When at it, she carefully kept her eyes off me addressing exclusively my course-mate who also practiced at that school.
That tootsy of my course-mate was a very studious student, and she took lots of pains when preparing for her first lesson at that practice. At home, she collected all her dolls and puppets and arranged them in a row seated upon the piano lid, so as to get properly prepared, "Good morning, children! Who is on duty today?."
(…infantilism is a lethal weapon for me, more dreadful than a machine gun. I mean, it makes me wanna puke…)
But the newlywed couple on our floor in the Hosty were well matured. After their marriage, they got a whole room for themselves. The students living there before were moved to other rooms, only the furniture remained.
At times, to relax after intense mental work in their educational process, they arranged "races" on Saturdays. A couple of other students from the floor were invited then for the overnight stay, and after the dinner they started the "race" heats with the change of partners. I do not know the details though, I did not participate in those races, Vitya Kononevich was the principal jockey there…
(…honestly, if you ask me, having a sex is something just for two. It is of so intimate a nature that even a condom doesn't fit well in between the lovers.
No arguing, I'm fairly old-fashioned on this point but there's nothing doing about it, that is my innate quality…)
~ ~ ~
In summer, I was passing my pioneer practice at the camp "The Young Construction Worker" near the town of Sednev. At the times of Chernigov Princedom there stood a mighty fortress for defense from Tatars, Lithuanians, or Novgorodians – whoever would come to plunder. And now of all the fortress there remained just one tower. From the tower, a steep winding descent led down to the bridge connecting the sandy banks of the Snov river. After the bridge, you got into a small pinewood with two pioneer camps, side by side: "The Young Construction Worker" and "The Young Chemist", and then followed the boundless vistas of wheat fields…
My trainee position at the camp was that of a substitute caretaker. That meant that when the caretaker of some platoon went to Chernigov, I was to oversee the on-duty kids from her platoon laying tables in the canteen for breakfast, midday meal, tea, and supper, and if on that day the camp was taken out to the river, I had to watch that the platoon's pioneers did not splash outside the iron grating but only within the fenced part of the calm flow.
Going to Chernigov was not so easy because of transportation problems, and caretakers seldom went there. So, my remaining job was to switch on the music in the radio-unit room broadcasting thru the camp loudspeakers, and also to announce on the microphone the "dead-hour" and "lights-out". I don't know why, but those announcements I gave out with the feline drawl of a fag, "Attayntion! Leets-ouwt for thee camp!."
The radio-unit was installed in the room of the senior pioneer leader, partitioned from a small gymnasium whose only equipment was one bed on which I slept. The door in the far wall of the gym opened onto the stage of a small open-air auditorium bounded by Pine trees.
I was kicking back, and reading what would turn up in the camp library, and growing my beard because after the camp I was going to work with the student construction platoon of the NGPI. In short, I was wallowing in the life of reprobate unshaven renegade…
The position of senior pioneer leader was filled with my course-mate, Irina from Bakhmuch. I somehow did not immediately realize that she was courting me, until her invitation to the ancient tower of Sednev with its tiny built-in romantic restaurant.
The loopholes in the thick (of about a meter-and-a-half) walls opened to the fleeing shadows from summer clouds racing by, over the plain far below, like a horde of raiding robbers… She treated me to the blackberry liqueur, yet I did not like that over-sweetened cloying swill.
After two years of studying at the pedagogical institute, Irina obviously re-evaluated the standpoints and priorities entertained by her during the night which we spend together when being first-year students. However, I couldn't respond to her advances in a natural way. Not because of being a vengeful jackass, "aha! you didn't give it then, so go without now!" No, it's not like me. The reason was my dutiful submissiveness to the received instructions. When said "no", I retreat obediently, but in order for me to get at it again, there should be an explicit invitation "come on, let’s do it". She pinned her hopes on the liqueur alone which was not straightforward enough…
And I also couldn't concentrate on the other trainee, one more Irina, but already from Nezhyn, the daughter of Pro-Rector Budowski. Firstly, I disliked both his bald head and his moral character in general, and secondly, she was an unmistakable virgin.
Consequently, the champion laurels in the contest, quite predictably and inevitably, went to the blonde sports trainer, again Irina, from the adjacent "The Young Chemist" camp. At first, we had dates on the riverbank in the company of her "Spidola" receiver, but in my gym, it was much warmer…
Once I entertained a group of visitors comprising Slavic, Twoic, and Petyunya for playing Preferans, and Sveta for everything else.
After the game, the boys started racing around the gym after the hedgehog brought to me by pioneer kids earlier on that day. I asked them to stop molesting the poor creature, and they switched over to voyeuristic eavesdropping to the erotic arias sounding from the partition to the radio-unit room, where Irina from Bakhmuch entertained a guest who visited her on the same day, also a Bakhmuch guy.
Then I gave the boys a bundle of camp cloth blankets to soften their sleep on the bare floorboards and turned off the light. Sveta, who had the legitimate right to a part of my bed, performed from that elevation before the 3, frozen in awe and admiration, music lovers on the floor, a concert for a flute without an orchestra…
Another time I went to Nezhyn, sort of a day off, but there I behaved like a disgusting swine. I swallowed too much of pills, and dining in the canteen room at the station I almost dozed off over the bowl of borshch, as if it was a kinda pillow. Naturally, Eera got outraged and left. Slavic, who was also going to Chernigov, had to drag me, like a vegetable, into the diesel train. Because the branch line to Chernigov was not electrified… Traveling by the diesel train, I slept off but still remained bored utterly because everything was so dull…
I felt like that for the most time of that practice. So dull and unnecessary was my lie to a mujik in the fields, who asked which camp I belonged to. Why did I say I was from "The Chemist"?
And it was dull when a pack of youngsters from Chernigov came to the Pine forest by the daddy's Volga of some of them. They kicked up thief-swaggering and one of them pulled out a big handsome dagger, I looked around for a stick, although he obviously wanted to get relieved of the weapon. A split-second of delay, the moment was lost and the trophy went to the chauffeur of the camp. Well done, mujik!
And because of being bored and off-hand, when diving in the river from the bluff I, like, dislocated something in my back and a couple of days was turning to the sides with my whole body.
Taking a swim at night was dull as well, even after some car drove on the bank flashing the headlights at the girls, who had already changed their mind to enter the river, and I had to get out of the water in the altogether, just as I had come to this world, armed only with a distorted expression of the unshaven face. It’s hard to say what aboriginal mask my mug looked like at that moment, but they switched off the headlights. The next day Irina from Bakhmuch was making sport of my cock size not living up visually to her expectations. It did not hurt my feelings though because everything was so dull and boring…
"A vain present, a chance present,
Why are you given to me, Life?."
Yet, when on Poseidon Day the pioneers of both camps united in catching and dragging me along to drop into a pond by the river, it was not boring, it was right. At first, I felt offended and wet, but then like laughing. Well done, kids! Serves good the bastard!.
The last night at the camp, Irina the trainer and I once again sat on the river bank. There were so many stars that you could hardly see the sky behind them, and I had blues that everything was somehow flowing away and getting lost. She, for some reason, did not want to have a sex, and we just sat leaning our backs against each other. The stars were glittering both from below—reflected in the silent flow of the Snov—and also from above. They crowded everywhere and would always be and still it was impossible to keep them. Everything flows away…
Probably, I had blues because of the "Spidola" was babbling a sermon in English. I did not understand at all what all that was about, because it was not the English Department Language Laboratory texts about the family of Parkers, but you could guess that it was a sermon.
Then I escorted Irina to "The Young Chemist". She went in and locked the gate, but I called her again. We climbed the grating of the gate from both sides and had the final kiss, a camp kiss atop of the grates. Forgive me and goodbye, my loss…
~ ~ ~
I knew the city of Pryluky for a long time, yet in absentia. The cigarette packs of Prima acquainted me with the city's name printed on their back, "cigarette factory m. Pryluky." During the years of German occupation, the city of Pryluky was drastically rebuilt, so the streets in it became strictly parallel and methodically perpendicular to each other. Except for the outskirts where the bus station was built later…
Commander of the student construction platoon was Vladimir Maiba, from the Physics and Mathematics Department. The platoon's Commissar was Igor, a Ukrainian nationalist, who suspected Maiba of being a secret collaborator with the KGB and, therefore, was constantly jeering at him and discrediting his authority in every possible way. And I was Leading Specialist, sort of, because in my military ID they advertised me as a "bricklayer".
Besides the mentioned commanding staff, there were 2 girls and 15 guys in the platoon. In the city we stayed at a hostel of "chemists" but just for one night and the next morning, we had to leave for Auto-Depot 4 located by the nearby highway between the Ivkovtsy village and the town of Ladan.
"Chemists" was the general term for convicts who, because of their supposedly good behavior, were paroled from Zona to finish off their time "at the chemistry". Any plant or a factory with production lines hazardous to health, or a mine, or a construction site usually served "the chemistry" grounds for paroled zeks. The regulations for "chemists" were pretty strict. They should be present in the hostel no later than the hour specified, never get drunk, nor bring whores and abide by many other restrictions. However, they were not locked and controlled by the turnkeys and did not sleep in the common dormitory. They even got some payment though decimated by their curator militiaman who decided whether they remain on parole or get remanded back to Zona…
After the shower, I and Igor, who, regardless of his being a Ukrainian nationalist, spoke a very good Russian and dreamed of moving to St. Petersburg, the cultural capital, went out to check the geometrical correctness of Pryluky.
"Katranikha! I am damned! Is that you?"
"Don't shout! Some of my students may be around. I'm a teacher here."
Well, of course, sorry, how could I forget myself. For one year already she was disseminating there the seeds of the wisdom, of kindness, and values eternal…
Auto-Depot 4 was all by itself, neither in a village nor in a town, just behind the trees in windbreak belt along the highway roadside. First, there stood an old two-story building. On the first floor it had some locked warehouses, and on the second floor, there was a spacious hall with beds for students of the construction platoon plus a small room for the 2 girls by it. Then there followed a one-story stoker-house and, still farther, the vast grounds of Auto-Depot 4 behind the tall red-brick wall surrounding a dozen of garages, a canteen, and many other buildings, some of which still under construction, and in the middle of the grounds, there stretched the wide and deep foundation pit. Lots of steel wires crisscrossed the air above the pit. Plumb under the intersections of the spanned wires, our platoon had to assemble formworks and fill them with concrete to produce the "cups" for the insertion of support columns. But all that was to be done later and for the start, there were shovels to exercise "dig-dump”. Everything was so nostalgic familiar, and only the uniform was different.
After a working day, the stoker-"chemists", Yura and Tomato, opened the respective valve inside their stoker-house and from an outside pipe, sticking out high up on the wall, there gushed a broad horizontal jet of water falling to the ground about 20 meters off the wall. You could stand there and take a shower, pretty chilly, sure thing, but it was summertime around, right?.
A week later Commander of the platoon called a general meeting. The agenda of one issue – feeding the platoon contingent, because the food in the canteen was just a…
(…well, I don't know, that same havvage as anywhere else…)
The meeting approved – to cook food of our own resources procured for money borrowed by Commander from the Auto-Depot foreman in advance, on account of our future labor achievements. From now on the girls' position was not only that of paramedics but cooks as well…
Each evening, as it got dark, in twos or threes, we went on a raid to the potato field of the nearby collective farm. Sweeping along the way whatever looking good enough.
"A fiery construction platoon
Hot as the steppe fire!."
The students paid compliments to the cooking skills of the Phys-Math girls. Well, I don't know, yes, on the whole, it was hotter than in the canteen, but otherwise the same havvage as anywhere else…
A couple of times we went to dances in the village of Ivkovtsy by the water-tanker truck, manned by a young driver. The girls were traveling in the cab, the rest of us wherever they could grab hold at the iron cistern of the truck… We danced to the hits of Leshchenko:
"From the fields, the sadness flees away,
The anxiety also hits the road,
And the vistas wide unfold ahead…"
After the dances, we whizzed back thru the breeze and the darkness, everyone hugging closely his piece of the steely cistern…
Once for the midday break and meal, we visited the nearby city of Ladan. When translated into English, "ladan" becomes "incense" with all connotations to it. But I also presented the view of manifold meaning with that curly beard and hair hanging to the shoulders from under the twisted gauze bandage the color of earth to keep it from falling into the eyes. You couldn’t make it out at a glance who was that – an excommunicated priest or Rambo from black-and-white photos. However, when Rambo in the central nosh-bar of Ladan demanded a bottle of white to be served in a half-liter beer glass in one go, everything fell in place – a drunk from Auto-Depot 4!
I come back from Ladan with a pleasantly slackened thirst only to find Sasha Chalov, a third-year student from the English Department, in our dorm, who arrived from Pryluky, his native city, together with a friend of his and a briefcase bulging with ammo.
The Sun in the Tumbler
Gee!. The ours did learn, after all, turning out poetic stickers for ornery swill!. Adding that Sun on top of the prosaic berry&fruit from Ladan necessitated catching a breath. I was preparing for a peaceful repose among the bushes of the windbreak belt, but would those so-called bros allow you to breathe? Sasha and his chum tore me away from our mutual Earth-Mommy, dragged to the second floor and dropped onto the bed there. Some fucking lot of comradely solicitude it was! I had to throw up and out from the second-floor window like that jet from the wall in the stoker-house…
In fact, they came in need of a bass guitarist for "playing trash" at weddings in the city of Pryluky. So, the following two weekends we serviced two nuptials, yet both for free because the newlyweds were lucky enough to be relatives of that Sasha's chum, so it turned just toiling for grub.
Getting wiser, for the second wedding I brought 3 students from the Physics and Mathematics Department along with me, like, indispensable sound engineers…
~ ~ ~
The handle "Tomato" suited the stoker-"chemist" perfectly because his face had red skin and his hair was of natural orange color. He was the most joyful "chemist" in the world. Having his skills at sharping cards, I'd also walk my life shedding benevolent blessing smile on all four. After shuffling the deck, he dealt hands with eight tricks in hearts for himself. Though fully aware that he was stacking the deck, you could not follow how…
In the excavated foundation pit we worked incompetently but with enthusiasm until, at the end of the month, the foreman presented the work orders for our labor. By his calculations, after deduction of the paid advance, our payment per worker equaled to the student monthly scholarship of 45 rubles. At that moment Auto-Depot 4 ran out of nails, and we had nothing to assemble the formworks with any more. The enthusiasm dried up completely because of the grim prospect of sitting idly for the final 10 days doing no job, during which period our food expenses would eat away the pittance we had earned.
The student construction platoon sent a negotiating team for talks with Director of Auto-Depot 4. The delegation consisted of me and one of the two paramedic-cook girls who did not understand a fig either in construction works or nails for carpentering, but she was a blonde, which quality imparts the right angle to the process of any negotiations… The chief engineer we met at the management office disclosed that Director was not around, harvesting crops in the fields of the patronized collective farm. Good news that a truck with spare parts was leaving soon for the patronizers' field camp, which could also take us along. If there were no blondes in the delegation, he hardly would mention the truck which he himself was driving with the blonde seated in the cab, between him and me…
I was surprised by his knack at recognizing the Auto-Depot 4 vehicles on the highway long before their number plates became discernible. The chief engineer explained that he saw them by their horns, and asked if I knew Tshombe.
Of course, I knew Tshombe who machine-gunned Patrice Lumumba when I was still a pioneer. However, I could not figure out any connection between the trucks rushing in the opposite direction along the sunlit highway and the dictator from I could not recollect which African country, because I was still a pioneer then. So, I denied any acquaintance and said, no, I did not know him.
The chief engineer explained that Tshombe was Auto-Depot 4 Director to whom we were riding now. This Tshombe of a director ordered the radiators of all the vehicles in Auto-Depot 4 to be marked with white paint to produce a large Roman digit V. The marks were visible from afar and, in the opinion of the drivers, resembled horns. The drivers cursed Tshombe's meanness because such marks added complexity to going on their contingent runs. However, Director himself was Tshombe even before the Depot vehicles acquired the horns…
Director was not in the field camp made up of four big trailers; they said he was reaping another field. The chief engineer with the brought spare parts and the blonde stayed by the trailers, and I went to Tshombe. The brand new water tanker of the UAZ-66 make was driven by a ten-year boy, the Director’s son…
Wrapped in the thick cloud of dust, a brown harvester with the white inscription "Niva" on its side was circling about a yellow sun-smitten field. I went to meet it but the harvester rumbled by, and I had to run after, and jump onto the short ladder that led to the inclined cab of the machine. The harvester roared and pounded on in its ride thru the dust. For the first time in my life I had climbed aboard such a juggernaut, but everything went on intuitively – here’s the ladder, that's the door…
In the narrow cabin, a man in a workman cap sat with his back to me and watched thru the glass of the tilted windshield how his combine fell and drew in jagged portions of the cut-down wheat shoots. I slammed the door, cutting off the knock in the bunker behind my back, and joined staring at the shags of ears crawling-up the harvester conveyor belt, while reporting to the top of his cap that our platoon sat jobless, nails were over and we wouldn't earn a kopeck. The engine rumbled, the cut shoots twitched, collapsed onto the wide rotating shaft and flowed, in rared bunches, up the belt. Director never turned around but answered that he would see what could be done, and let the chief engineer come to see him.
I got out of the cab into the cloud of dust about the bunker, climbed down the ladder and jumped off. Having seen neither the face nor the skin color of the man I had talked to, I still felt that some dictators were worthy of respect…
Back at the field camp, they called us into the trailer with a long table for the midday meal. Such a dinner does not fall under the category of havvage, it was some really cheerful chow. The cook in his camouflaged by layers of grease, but otherwise white, jacket splashed half-dipper of sore cream into a huge enamel bowl and filled it over with red steaming borshch. A big piece of boiled meat was put on top. On transferring the bowl’s content into me, I got filled to the brim.
For the second course, the cook served golden balls of fried young potatoes in the veil of dill, then poured with meat sauce. Absolutely delicious, but having no room for the additional treat, I finished it off only for principle's sake.
The compote seemed a glut excess, yet I managed to poured it, gradually, in.
With thanks for the meal, I rose and very very carefully ascended the steps in the front porch. Reaching the ground, I unbuckled my belt and walking the gait of parted dividers proceeded to the garden at the field edge. There I gradually laid me down on an armful of dry hay under an Apple tree, in the hope that maybe I still would not explode. Somehow.
And so it happened! By the time the blonde came into the garden, I felt normal. She sat under the same Apple tree, leaned her back on the trunk and smiled at me her sweet inviting smile.
I was amazed by the exact coincidence in the scenic design – a garden around her and me below the Apple tree, and only Serpent was skipping the picture. And, with warm tenderness, I began to think of Eera and pride myself for keeping staunchly truthful. Because I abstained from falling in the usual groove and going along with the flow despite all too ingratiating conditions for the purpose – the bed of hay in the Apple-tree shade in the Garden of Eden conveniently supplied by the blonde…
The next morning saw me, and the chief engineer, and a long tape measure marking out the projected walls of two inspection holes in the boxes under construction. Tshombe did find what to keep us busy with…
A couple of days before the completion of the term at the construction platoon, Sasha Chalov popped up at the Auto-Depot 4 on no particular purpose, just to drink the sun in the tumbler. Giving a tender jerk to his briefcase he, as was his custom, recited his favorite quatrain:
" One won't sound at all
And two won't jingle this way
When people of such quality
Live in the Soviet land!"
From the poetry standpoint, the piece sucked more than absolutely, yet in the same breath, conveyed an optimistic message, inspiring and bright. The stoker-"chemists” helped to sort out the contents of the portfolio, which made one bottle for a snout and soon after the consumption, Sasha Chalov left.
It was already late, so Tomato and Yura also steered to their stoker-house but, on the way, they knocked on the door of the girls' room. It happened to be locked. They knocked again and then, carried away with the recollections of their happy school days and themselves—adolescent hooligans—they started cutting capers around the locked door. Some paper slips were lit to burn and shoved in the gap under the door. The girls defended their safety pouring, from inside, water from their kettle.
In the background was I, stretched out on my bed, producing a soundtrack of hue and cry. A sudden rage against the whole female tribe flushed me, like, because of them all was so boring and awry that I myself did not know what I needed. So, I lay there yelling the most disgusting things.
Were the door open from the very beginning, the "chemists" would simply get in and out, but now they were burning with hunting ardor. Under the sword of Damocles of getting sent back to Zona, they surely had no intention to jeopardize their present conditions, they were just having fun.
However, the poor girls in the besieged room were not up to all these logical operations or seeing any fun at all, when a pair of convicts were attacking their door, under my instigating, idiotic, shrieks from the common bedroom, "Bitches! Wolf whores!" Finally, one of the guys from their Phys-Math course approached my bed and said that it was not right. I shouted to the stokers that that was enough, and Tomato with Yura faded in the woodwork right away; "chemists" have no problems concerning logic.
Next morning I knocked on the door to the girls' room. It was not locked. I entered and apologized for the previous night. "Afraid of expulsion from the institute?" asked the one with the brown hair.
Hardly would she believe that I was just ashamed. Even less, could I bring it over to her that I did not know exactly whether I was afraid or wanted to be sent down…
