Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
~ ~ ~ The Solitary Barge Hauler
My cheeky snubs to the judge at the people's court arched my chest, but not for long. All slipped back into the same ineluctable rut: "O! Woe to me! What for? I loved so much! I was doing my best! Why me?" The unanswerable questions swapped for sticky, meek, and fond dream that one of these days Eera would come and everything would be fine again… The fact, that by the divorce Eera had, with straightforward logic, cleared her way to further life without me around, did not diminish the longing for the unreachable, neither shooed off the hope that everything will, somehow, turn fine all the same…
However, uninterrupted suffering is a rather tiresome occupation and, gradually, I formed a firm opinion that the divorce had to be, after all, celebrated. But in what way? I knew no rituals for the occasion and could only improvise. One thing was clear though, I needed a day not like all other days. And it was for such a day that I went to Kiev.
The Indian summer that year transgressed all the limits of common sense and, even though it was the first week in November, I ventured there in my jacket. Taking into account the fall's depth as reached in the calendar, the dark gray waistcoat went along with the jacket. It did not belong to any three-piece suit but was sewn back in my school years by that same sharp-nosed tailor in her shop next to the bus station… Such was my rig (plus a shirt and pants) when I emerged from the metro station on Khreshchatyk Street and moved slowly along its wide sidewalks grown with gorgeous Chestnuts.
I went down to Red Army Street cobbled with polished flagstones, and walked farther down its slope to the Foreign Book store to make myself the event-marking present, which caught my eye pretty long ago, during the last year's business trip to the dairy reconstruction. On the way, I had to keep in check a nagging worry: what if they had already sold it? However, I was almost sure and I didn't get much surprised making out the bright red jacket of Chamber's 20th Century Dictionary on the same very shelf.
The salesman, observing my festive outfit—from under the waistcoat, there also peeped the open collar of my faded red shirt—asked politely if I indeed would want that particular book.
(…I was not surprised by his doubt – in that year of the then-current 20th century, not every fella could afford a book for 31 rubles 60 kopecks. Except, of course, for a bricklayer celebrating their divorce…)
I left the store with the thick volume tightly wrapped in their special lavender-colored packing paper. It had to be left in an automatic storage cell at the station. Yet, how to get there? On the subway again? No, it was another kind of day. And I approached the curb with flocks of taxis shooting by… From the station, I also dropped to "The Hunter" store, at the address given me by Grynya, who wanted some special fishing rod from there.
After the shopping spree and the subsequent storing of goods, there started the cultural part in the program. That evening The House of Organ Music was filled with the sun shimmer over the sea waves in the pieces by Debussy. Bright sparkling notes in the ripples and splashes of waves dancing happily… As I was a child, my father told me that at listening to such music people were supposed to draw some mental pictures to fit it. I never could follow his advice, the sounds overpowered all clever intentions leaving no space for anything else…
In the post-concert twilight on the sidewalk outside The House of Organ Music, the mid-autumn chill stirred up my hunger. A taxi took me to the restaurant of the Golden Wheat Shoot hotel. At first, I tried to rent a room there for a sleepover, but the receptionist assessed my rig, incongruent with the requirements of calendar, as well as the absence of any luggage, and cut me off with their usual question below the belt: if I had booked a room. They knew very well how to set back vagrant freelancers.
In the restaurant, to orient myself, I ordered a bottle of wine for a starter, and a geezer in a beret on his head immediately landed on the chair opposite me.
(…when there is a beret, but no briefcase by the man, then you are dealing with an electrician…)
We did not have time to drink even a glass when a young blonde bozo got anchored by the third side of the table. For some unspecified reason, he began to bend his fingers into the composition "I'll take your eyes out!" The electrician grew mum under his beret… My holiday program did not foresee any gladiatorial amusements, so I got up on my feet: "All right, young man. I leave this feast to you. Enjoy!"
I went to the waiters, paid for the wine and left. The blonde rushed after me to the lobby, but of the three glazed entrance vestibules, only one was opened to the porch, seeing me thru lots of glass doors he, immersed in heated agitation, missed choosing the right one. I waved my hand for a goodbye and walked away…
Sleeping in a waiting hall at the station would hardly add festiveness for the day. Another taxi took me to the hotel Old Prague, which was the driver's choice. The young receptionist there had also picked up the muchly chewed rag of beforehand reservations, yet suddenly turned merciful and found a room for me. She warned though it was more expensive, which was understandable because on getting up there I found that, besides the room, there was also a hallway with a hatch in it.
When in the suite, I decided that it was enough for trying fate’s benevolence by my attire, and used the phone to order dinner to the room – fish with potatoes and wine, let it be white, please…
Waking up late in the morning, I checked out and went for a walk about the city… When I was bypassing the ancient Golden Gate, a blond young man ran, panting, by, apparently a part to the monad of the yesterday's boob, who got stuck in the labyrinth of glass vestibules at the Golden Wheat Shoot. Seems like their whole monad are going to have their hands full to sweat out the streak of bad karma because of the feast generously thrown to them by me. But the fool ran into it himself, look before you jump, jock…
On the descent to the Bessarabian Market, I decided it was time for a lunch, and turned into the restaurant "Leningrad". In front of me, a group of Negroes entered the same place, however, I was anything but a racist and followed them. Still, I did not like the over-fat scruff of the concluding guy in their file, some piece of obese Africa. In the afternoon gloom of the restaurant, I could not see in what woodwork they managed to blend leaving me the only guest in the room.
I ordered something "in the pot", so it was named on the menu. They brought potatoes mixed with meat and brown souse, but all that in a ceramic pot, as promised. Eating from the pot was very uncomfortable and also too hot. But I guessed to pour a part of the steaming stuff into a plate on the table, and then was gradually adding to it from the pot.
Before going out, I visited the empty quiet toilet by the restaurant and left it a completely different person to that I who had been entering "Leningrad". The lines by Ivan Franko were slowly swirling in the head:
"One by one get severed the hobbles,
Which kept tied us to the life of the past…"
And not only that. The main difference between me getting in and me leaving the restaurant was the absence of the jacket, which I intentionally left in the toilet hanging on a stall's door. It was the wedding jacket in which I was registered as Eera's husband in the ZAGS of Nezhyn. Besides, it was the same one that survived my premature attempt at leaving it in the toilet of the restaurant "Bratislava" in Odessa. Perhaps, the time then was not ripe yet. Was the act on the celebration program list? No, it was sooner an impromptu inspiration, but I liked it.
Eased and relieved, I lightly walked up Khreshchatyk undergoing its preparation for the demonstration on the 7th of November. The troops of the Kiev garrison were a-drilling their parade step to the gleeful marches by a brass band.
Along the sidewalk, they had put endless board stands for spectators, just 3 steps but very wide indeed, so that the happy crowd would watch the demonstration and wave their hands in the show of approbation and jubilant joy. Before the pending event, there remained 2 more days and the steps were still empty. I walked along the middle one, clapping my heels against its thick planks, a man in his prime, in a red shirt under a gray waistcoat, and the sun rays vibrated thru the branches of mighty Chestnuts.
I walked to the metro station and was ready again to face trenches, walls, and partitions. People do need holidays and brass bands so as to live on further…
~ ~ ~
When Panchenko—without even peeping out to check if it might crush someone’s unaware scull—hurled a pig-iron four-section heating radiator from a window on the fourth floor, as if just having nothing better for a pastime, his quirk, in fact, had a quite sound underlying reason. With that hand-made bolt out of the blue, he signaled to all who might be concerned, that the veteran jailbird's balls were still unshaven, and under his eight-wedge cap (the vogue sported by toughs in the fifties) he still was quite a crazy machine. The signal was addressed, first of all, to his superintendent in charge of drawing work orders that determined Panchenko's monthly payment, and to the chief mechanic in whose division he turned a fresh leaf to start a new, honest, life. And it was high time already for a mujik in his mid-fifties. Of course, it did not bother him in any way, that after the second time in Romny I had not the slimmest chance of keeping the position of the trade-union's visitor at SMP-615.
That, at first somewhat chaotic, position I did manage to bring to the impeccable state-of-the-art perfection. Forgotten were the times when someone from the jacks or carpenters returning to work after a couple of days in the railway hospital grumbled disparaging complains about being neglected and not visited by me in the infirmary, whereas no bricklayer on my team was ever ignored. But how could I know? Their foremen did not report to me!
The problem was solved radically – at the end of every working day, I called the hospital registry office to ask if they had admitted for a treatment any employee of SMP-615 and they informed me even of abortions which could be safely counted out because the patient went home on the same day.
Then there arose the question of justifying the use of the 3 rubles, which the trade-union allocated for visiting a hospitalized co-worker. How to spend the sum, so that each sufferer received the equal amount of consolation, regardless of their age, gender, and other inclinations?
Not at once, but that issue also found the proper and—without indulging in false modesty—superbly clear-cut solution. One ruble was spent on drinks – the invariable three bottles: one of beer, one of lemonade, one of kefir. Cakes, marshmallows and/or other sweets were bought for the second ruble. For spending the final, third one, I went to the railway station to chose from the wide counter of the news stall, next to the restaurant entrance, the always popular cartoon magazine Perets, the Konotop city newspaper The Soviet Banner—which my father affectionately called "our little liar mutt"—and a couple of the central periodicals for the kopecks of change. From the station, with the fully readied visiting package, I walked to the hospital…
Frictions arose later when I was handing in the report for the spent 3 rubles to get reimbursement from the trade-union. "Boss" Slaushevsky rigorously protested mentioning the bottle of beer in the report. (Trade-unions and beer are two things completely incompatible, mutually exclusive, so to say.) Then, as a compromise, I suggested he write the reports himself and I would sign anything.
And now that, brought to the perfect equilibrium, shebang had to live no longer than until the November report-election trade-union meeting of SMP-615. Still and all, I did manage to feed waffles to Panchenko…
Hearing on the telephone the registry's report, that they had a certain Panchenko from SMP-615, I realized there was no time to lose, I did not want to run the risk of an abortive discharge.
First of all, I bought waffles for him. Then again waffles. And once more – waffles, for the entire ruble, all in different wrappers and from different shops…
With a short glance back over my shoulder at the fuzzy reflection of the 2 of us in the grate-less window with the black winter dark outside, I complimented the interior of the hospital hall. The cellophane packet in my hand issued a soft luring tinkle when I stretched it out to the patient. He could not refuse, as any other employee at SMP-615, he perfectly knew there was beer as well…
Why was I so uncontrollably laughing in backstreet short-cuts from shop to shop to collect waffles of hodgepodge hues? It's hard to explain, but I laughed splitting my sides, laughed till tears streamed down my cheeks…
A couple of days later, Lydda, a bricklayer from our team, asked me, confidentially, in the trailer, "Visited Panchenko?"
"Sure."
"With cakes?"
"No. To him – only waffles."
She knew that I never lied, for the principle's sake. I fell silent and tense because once again I had to restrain a surge of irrelevant laughter.
In a moment, Panchenko entered the trailer for some reason. Carefully, weighing each of her words, Lydda asked if I had visited him.
"Yes."
"With the package?"
"Well, there were some newspapers. I did not even read them."
No more words were said. The rest she poured out at home to her husband Mykola. That he was already a family man for whom it was a crying shame to look up to that wafflister Panchenko…
~ ~ ~
I did not immediately understand why my divorce proceedings left me a vague impression of some incompleteness. Something felt oddly amiss.
(…the trademark of my mental retardancy is that in the end, I get it plus stuff which, at first, I did not even guess to think of…)
Of course! That people's judge had completely forgotten to mention alimony! As if I was childless… The task of correcting the judicial error lay on my shoulders.
Since December, I started sending monthly 30 rubles to Red Partisans for which transaction, on the payday, I visited the post-office opposite the bus station. And, as you were not my only child, I sent the same amount to 13 Decemberists as well. For several years "30 to Nezhyn, 30 to Konotop" became my financial way of life, and the most recursive line in the pocket notebook. Why just that sum? I don't know. In total, that made up half of my earnings. For the second half, apart from my hygiene-bath-laundry expenses, I sometimes bought books, and every day had a midday havvage at canteens.
At first, my mother tried to convince me that the Konotop's "30" could be brought home and past from hand to hand, although she did not even need that money; my argument for the refusal was that doing it that way was more convenient for me.
My status of an alimony-payer was not a secret in our team, given my principle of answering direct questions directly, it was enough for them to ask why each payday I trotted to the post-office from our Seagull. And some women bricklayers also asked that question: why 30 rubles exactly?
Fighting back a wave of anger welling up in me from I didn't know where, I answered no more was necessary and were I even paid 3,000 rubles a month, the monthly "30" to Nezhyn and Konotop would remain just "30".
There were times when I was not able to send out the alimony, and then the line "30 to Nezhyn, 30 to Konotop" had to wait until the required sum was scratched up and, after sending it, a crude tick popped next to the line…
At certain periods, I sent only 15 rubles each way. One such period happened after I accidentally overheard a talk between my mother and my sister Natasha. They were discussing Eera's having sold my sheepskin coat, and keeping all the money to herself. I did note the disappearance of the sheepskin coat, but I had no idea where it was gone, neither how, nor why.
Now, to restore the reputation of Caesar's wife, I had to lower the alimony rate to 15 rubles, until the sum of 90 rubles was collected… I took the money to Nezhyn and, in the post-office on Red Partisans Street, I asked an occasional visitor to fill out the money order address as I dictated. In the space reserved for a personal note, I wrote, in a clumsy left slant, "for the sheepskin coat."
Why 90 rubles? Well, the market price of a new sheepskin coat with longer skirts amounted to 120 rubles. Mine was short and way back from the Object – the rest was pure Arithmetic.
On receiving so large remittance, my mother wanted to ask me about something, but at that time I was not on speaking terms with my parents, so there was no point in asking the deaf and dumb fool of me about "for the sheepskin coat."
(…here, it is worth to note, that the wisdom of outsiders cannot make us smarter. In one of his stories, telling about a young man who stopped communicating with his parents, Maugham remarks that in this harsh and hostile world people will always find a way to make their situation even worse.
I accepted the wisdom of the maxim, but I did not use it. It took 10 years of separation—4 of which were spent in a full-scale war—so that when arrived on a visit in Konotop, I started again to talk with my parents.
And it was pleasant to pronounce the words "Mom", “Dad". It’s only that the pleasure was as if wrapped in felt sheath preventing real feel and it somehow felt as if I was addressing not my parents, or it was not exactly I talking to them. Probably, the habit was lost or, maybe, because all of us, by that time, had already changed so much…)
As expected, trade-union positions were shut off for me airtight, but no one could ever violate my right to carry out my public duty. I mean the monthly watches in the ranks of the volunteer public order squad.
By seven o'clock in the evening, the SMP-615 male employees gathered in a long room of "The stronghold of the public order squad" whose entrance was in the blind butt wall of the endless five-story block by the Under-Overpass. That same building where there was the workmen canteen number 3, at the opposite end.
First to come was usually the auto-crane operator Kot which was not his handle nor code name of any kind but a quite innocent Ukrainian last name. He took a seat at the wall-butting desk with a load of old papers, pulled his headgear of cheap yet elegant rabbit fur, and started flipping thru the news accumulated from the month past since our previous vigil.
Then, one by one, we popped up too and started our discussion, full of decent virility, of this topic or that, to which Kot, still submerged into his perusal, would blear out from under the black fur of perished animal, that were our wise talk commenced even from as high as the orbital Salyut space station it would inevitably land onto the cunt of Alla Pugacheva or some more available, local slut. And, as a rule, he never mistook because of those coming late enough to miss his arrogant but accurate prediction.
At about 10 past 7, there came a militia officer—ranking from lieutenant to captain—contributed to the mujiks' gossip before pulling a drawer in his desk and handing out the red armbands with the black inscription "public order squad".
Grouped in threes, we left the stronghold to patrol the late evening sidewalks in vigil beats – to the station, to Depot Street, to the Loony and along Peace Avenue, but no farther than the bridge in the railway embankment. The round took about 45 minutes after which stretch we returned to the stronghold—some of the threes tired and emotional—and after a more enliven yackety session, set off for the final watch, so that by 10 o'clock we would go home until our next duty turn a month later…
A couple of times, KGB officers appeared at our late-hour matinees to share their instructions. The first time it happened on the occasion of the upcoming Holiday of the Great October Revolution, and we were instructed to be especially vigilant not to allow provocative pranks. When the KGBist left, a belated militia officer appeared to scoff at his predecessor, already absent, by asking us if now we knew it well that on seeing a spy we should immediately grab him by the collar.
The second and last time, a KGB officer, already another, disseminated confidential information in order to facilitate the capture, ASAP, of a former KGB worker who had disappeared in an unknown direction. She could have changed her hairstyle and color of her hair, explained the KGB officer showing us her black-and-white portrait, yet she got a special sign simplifying identification – a contraceptive coil of Dutch production inserted in her vagina… Our mujiks did not immediately get it what all that was about, but in a moment poured so suggestive questions that the KGBist preferred to leave in an accelerated fashion. After all, he only executed his orders and was not responsible for the stupidity thereof…
In one of the vigil rounds, the men from my "trinity" gave me a slip. Walking in a group of 3 red-armband ornamented volunteers, seemed more or less sane, but seeing that among the passers-by along the sidewalk of the tightly trampled snow under the windows of Deli 6, you were the only one who sported a red rag on your arm, made you feel as if you were not all there.
Keeping a brazen mug, to demonstrate that I did not care a fig, I went on to the station square. However, carpenter Mykola and driver Ivan was not to be made out from among the hasty silhouettes of passers-by. Some of the younger folks looked back at a strange phenomenon – a saucy solo public order trooper. It did not take being a genius to figure out that my co-volunteers peeled off their armbands, bought a bottle of "mutterer" in some grocery store and now, in a secluded spot, were gurgling in turn from the neck to tone up and feel warmer. Where? That was the question.
Most likely, in the quiet mess of short lanes and dead ends between Deli 6 and the high first platform of the station. In that jumbled warren of warehouses, venereal dispensary, a couple of private khuttas without kitchen gardens, and other lumber structures. There I turned not that I had any chance or desire to partake in that bottle but surprising 2 evasive Smart Alecs by the efficiency of the deductive method allowing you to detect them in a quiet nook under a lamppost would only serve good both SOBs.
However, instead of the driver and the carpenter, in the cone of yellow light from the bulb up the post, I ran into a genre scene. A romantic couple—a girl walking with a boyfriend—were intercepted by their mutual acquaintance, a burly lovebuster, who started sorting it out.
The appearance of the fourth superfluous with a red armband slowed down the action but only for a moment. Realizing that no more vigilantes were to pop up, the tough started kicking the shit out of his smaller, but luckier in the romantic matters, opponent. The bantam fell on 1 knee, threw his jacket of "fish-fur" fabric off onto the nearby snowdrift, next to his hat that rolled there a minute earlier, and rushed into a retaliatory attack.
I stayed a non-interfering on-looker with a red rag on my arm. The girl picked up the jacket with the hat and held them, as Eera once was holding my rabbit fur hat in the main square of the Nezhyn city. With the odds being too long, the lightweight got felled in the snow, the girl placed his clothes down under the lamppost, took the conqueror by the arm, and walked with him away, into the labyrinth of the tangled snow-clad alleys.
The defeated rose and, seeing that I was still there, shot off an ardent confused oration to sing the strength of spirit, before which physical strength was nothing because only the spirit had power. In Konotop, every other passer-by is a born lord-speaker.
To morally support defeated Demosthenes, I noted that during the fight the girl held exactly his things but not the fur "potty" hat of his opponent, which also had been knocked off in the snow. Hearing the words of consolation, he shut up and hastily checked the pockets in his jacket because, with all his innate love for oratorical art, the common sense is a more prominent feature in a Konotoper…
And no one could ever forbid me seeing to it that women of our team each year on March 8 received flowers—callas—one flower for each female bricklayer because I was not a millionaire and the mujiks on our team not every year guessed to ask how much it cost and collect a ruble off a man. However, the reimbursement for the expenses did not bother me much. I discovered that I liked giving presents much more than getting them myself.
But first, I had to find the city greenhouse which was as far as hell itself. You have to get off streetcar 2 one stop before the route terminal. Then take the left turn, and stomp for half-kilometer along the streets from the Civil War period. Like, Yudenich Street or, say, Denikin Street. The names though were quite Soviet, but the look and feel unmistakably White-Guardian…
When I came to the greenhouse for the first time, the manager took me into a long squat structure with its gable roof made of squares of muddy glass dripping the large rare drops of condensate. She wanted me to see for myself there were no flowers. As for the sprouts in those beds, the callas there had not yet matured, not "flared up", they were just narrow white tubes not turned into the wide-lapel muzzles.
And then, with all my tongue-tied speech problems lost and missing, I gave out a sample piece of Konotop oratory. That was to her, who every day was walking among the greenery of the greenhouse, those callas looked not ripe. But for women on our bricklayer team, who day after day saw nothing but crushed bricks, mortar and icy hillocks of dirty snow, those callas, even in that not "flared-up" form, were the most beautiful flowers…
Since then, while I was working in our team, I never was said "no" in the city greenhouse on the eve of March 8. And I proudly transported on a streetcar seat a sheaf of green-and-white callas that would appear in The Flowers store by Peace Square no sooner than in a half-month…
~ ~ ~
My decision was final and irrevocable – it's time to sum it up. The story I was translating should close the books. That was enough of Maugham for me. Even the fact that the concluding story had to be translated twice could not overturn my resolution.
I was forced to translate it for the second time because Tolik Polos path-lifted my briefcase, which, as it was, contained nothing but the copybook with the last translation, Giulia Lazzari it was, when in the morning I took it with me to go after work to Zhomnir in Nezhyn. At such an early hour in the Settlement, you hardly met any passers-by, still less along the railway tracks to the station. Approaching the concrete wall around the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant, I remembered money for the local train ticket, which I had left behind. The absent-mindedness made me go back leaving the briefcase alone to wait by the service passage for my return.
On the way back to 13 Decemberists along the Settlement streets, I met only Tolik who walked in the opposite direction. He also graduated from School 13 but 2 years after me… Grabbing the forgotten money, I came back to the path by the railway tracks. The briefcase was nowhere to see. Only Tolik and I had walked that path. Or was there some unknown third?
The answer was received a week later on streetcar 3. Tolik did not say "hello" to me, he only was making faces from his seat, in the style of Slavic Aksyanov at the "Dophinovka" mine. But—most importantly—his right hand was plastered. Who would need a straighter indication that it was he to pick up the lonely briefcase in a desolate spot? Not me.
(…at times in my life, I'm able to not only see but also read the signs…)
On the whole, the work that followed was not a re-translation, poor Giulia made to betray her lover was sitting vividly enough in my mind and, a month later, I took my last translation to Zhomnir, but already without the briefcase. So, albeit with a month's delay, my decision to part with Maugham got executed. However, it was only a part in a broader plan of action.
Like any other of my plans, it was lacking clear concrete details. My plans, as it were, could hardly be called plans at all, being, like, feelings that it was necessary to do this or that. Details to the plans came only afterward – in the course of execution. The mentioned broad plan arose because I, finally, realized that Zhomnir would do "match-making" for none of my translations. Both never, and nowhere. And it did not matter why, the main thing was that it was for sure. So what now? Very simple, the issue of publication should be solved in a do-it-yourself way.
To go that way, I had to take from Zhomnir all my translations in thin copybooks for school, of differently colored covers, piled somewhere among manifold heaps of paper on his archive chamber shelves… I arrived in Nezhyn and announced to him my intention to take back my still-not-alpha versions of Maugham in Ukrainian. Zhomnir did not object and did not ask any questions.
He arranged a feast because during these years I became sort of a distant relative in his house. A dinky needy relative of no consequence, but handy at times when, say, pasting the living-room in his apartment with the wallpaper… We sat at the square table, pushed from the wall to the center of the living room, and ate everything being brought by Maria Antonovna from the kitchen. We drank a strong village hooch. Zhomnir was enthusiastically discussing the gold pectoral of great artistic value, recently excavated from an ancient mound in the steppe. Changing the subject, he asked how my current relations with Nezhyn were, meaning Eera.
