Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)
~ ~ ~ The Postscripts
The decision to part with Konotop became irreversible when I saw that everything was repeating itself… Over again I walked along a tunnel cut thru the stratum of night darkness with batteries of floodlights on the pylons in the classification yard over my usual short-cut marked by the dim glitter of railheads in the dampish rows of tired tracks.
The tunnel was higher and wider than the galleries in the mine "Dophinovka" and, unlike to the scanty pair of narrow gauge rails, the mighty tracks were bifurcating, multiplying, flowing alongside each other crammed with freight cars, cisterns, platforms with all sorts piled up, covered and uncovered, overall and small, cinched and loosely poured, stuff. Clanging at the railway points, the rolling cars rolled down the hump in strings, in pairs, singly, to find their way in the bowl and, with the pitched screech of wheel chocks, come to a halt at their destinations. The classification yard has no weekend breaks. On and on sounded the round-the-clock rumbling, clanging, screeching, shouts from the loudspeakers reporting about the numbered tracks and marshaled trains. Yet, all that went on in a tunnel, in one huge tunnel. Would the roof withstand the weight of the night?
In that autumnal, like in lots of other nights, darkness I crossed the railways following the all-too-well-learned network of service paths, bypassing the maze of the stilled trains and dodging the cars rolling down the hump across my route to the ever open wide breach in the wall around PMS-119. I cringed in anticipating disgust at the mud and puddles lurking in that hole which was already at a stone throw because I now walked already alongside the meter-tall letters in the inscription on the concrete wall. Made with ever-black tar over the light gray concrete of fencing by the assured strokes of a brush in the hand of master, it advised the passengers on trains that passed by in the daylight: "Konotop – the city of nondrinkers!"
The floodlights from behind transfixed my moving shadow over the calligraphic graffiti. The closer to the hole, the smaller the size of the silhouette with swaying hat brims until all of it got swallowed by the pitch-black darkness in the breach… The time machine is a nice invention, yet if you can't afford it try traveling the time on foot. Now, following my disappeared shadow, I'll get in such medieval swamps and darkness that…
"Sophocles! Aeschylus!"
Hell! Seems like I’ve taken a too wide stride and glided by down to the antiquity, ain't I?
"Aeschylus!"
A black shadow about 20 meters from the breach roared hoarsely in the muddy darkness of the PMS backyards. Mine? No, this one shorter and plumper. And in a leather cap, the coat's also of leather. "Why pulled up? Who called you? As if you may have the slightest notion of Sophocles."
"Right you are. I never went deeper than Aristophanes."
He hiccupped and, slightly rolling but resolutely, stepped in my way. "Who are you?" demanded he with the hooch on his breath.
"A passer-by. And what brought you here?"
He seemed to miss my question. "Sophocles… Aeschylus.." he kept echoing softly. "Yes, yes… Aeschylus… Aristophanes! And who else?!"
"Well, there also is some Euripides."
"Right! Euripides!" cried he out with tears in his voice and then again devotedly groaned out, "Sopho-ocles!"
We stood to face each other like Sancho Panza and Don Quixote meeting after the separation. Sancho gave out a despondent sob and dropped his head. The peak of the leather cap pecked me in the bridge of the nose. Damn it, Sancho! Look out! My visor’s up…
"I'm an artist," he plaintively imparted, raising his head. "They gave me 2 months here…" Another nod with the pesky peak…
I see, 2 months from Narco-2 for eradication of all alcoholic inclinations. And now I also knew whose masterpiece in tar was out there. Eh, Sancho, Sancho!. Anyone would turn a drunk if there's no one to talk to of Sophocles!. Armfuls of pearls and no one to scatter them before… No, no, no! I do have to leave…
…to go there, beyond the horizon, to the faraway—as childhood—seashore by the smooth azure waters, and a mighty sacred Oak tree with its hollow for whispering into it the quotations hardly needed by anyone along with the names of sages forgotten ages ago…
The plan was perfect. But what about the details? For instance, where to? Well, firstly, it should be some warm place, enough of frostbites for me, and secondly, it has to be provided with the sea and mountains. The Crimea, whose mountains are not that tall, does not fit, besides, it's taken up by Olga, maybe…
The finger slides over to the next sea on the map… Yeah? Okay, to Baku then. What’s the difference?.
Getting my vacation from the Construction Workshop Floor at the "Motordetail" plant, I also applied for dismissal. Yet, before moving away I still had one unfinished business on my hands. It was my promise to the 3 strangers at the station restaurant to visit the city of Lvov…
The closer to Lvov the slower the train traveled along the slopes of the Carpathian Mountains with dark tall Fir trees, yet in the late evening it still arrived at its destination… In the automatic storage cell, I left my briefcase in which, besides the hygienic necessities, there also lurked a gray cap of thick woolen fabric, so that to travel thru the city lightly and in my inseparable secret agent's hat.
Lvov always was a beautiful city with lots of monuments and landmarks of ancient architecture on streets with cobblestone pavement. No wonder that the 4-sequel Soviet adaptation of "The Three Musketeers" was shot in that city. They only needed to keep the camera away from the streetcar rails in the road.
I did not use any kind of transportation in Lvov but walked. Where to? To the Opera House, of course. My promise was fulfilled, I did come to Lvov, but I had no intention to run about its streets demanding of the passers-by, "Were you, by any chance, in Konotop 2 years ago, after you served your time in Zone?" No, I am from a different category, and I strolled in a well-bred manner to have a good time because the train to Kiev was leaving exactly at midnight…
The Opera House in Lvov was a magnificent sight, simply a palace; well done the Poles who built it. However, as for having a good time my guess was premature. There was an opera on, a creation by a local classical composer about the peasant unrest in the 16th century. A piece of trash in the style of "they'll lap it up!" Anyway, if a job is once begun, never leave it till it's done, and I sat tight thru all of it to the final bell which set me free…
By midnight, I was back to the station, unlocked the automatic storage cell and opened my briefcase. I doffed my hat and put it inside the cell, then clapped the gray cap from the briefcase onto my head. After those manipulations, I gently closed the door and even chortled softly imagining the goggled eyes of the next user of the same cell. You open the door and see a solitary hat sitting there without a head inside. Go and think of what to think…
On return to Konotop, I started the farewell visits. To my brother Sasha on Sosnowska Street. To my sister Natasha in the 9-story block in At-Seven-Winds… I did not go to Decemberists 13 though, I was a stupid jackass.
Natasha gave me a rich present of a winter coat of gray cloth with karakul fur collar. Apparently, the size did not fit her husband Guena, I was the coat size.
And I also went to ZAGS to get the stamp in my passport on divorce with Eera. Yet, they sent me to Nezhyn ZAGS, the place of marriage registration. However, at Nezhyn ZAGS they demanded a reference from Konotop People's Court that our marriage was terminated.
“Look," said I, "you made the record of our divorce when she was getting her stamp, give me my stamp on that ground and that's it."
"There is no such record. She never came to us."
That how they stroke me dumb. I had to go to Konotop, to get the reference at the People's Court and take it back to Nezhyn. Shuttling in local trains hither-thither, I thought whether the mileage I had ridden on trains would equal the Equator. And I also thought: why did Eera, in so many years, not get her passport stamped to certify our divorce? Probably, to sprinkle a pinch of spice to her lays, sort of adding fresh twigs to the antler of her absent husband, the cuckold of a geologist.
And then I realized why I always liked the scene of D'Artagnan farewell to Rochefort in the Dumas novel Twenty Years Later.
"Go your way, old devil," D'Artagnan said with a sad smile, still looking after the departed Rochefort. "Go. Makes no difference. No Constance is there anymore…"
I realized, that Constance was Eera and me, only not separately, but together. Constance was us in those silly times when we were still tormenting each other with our love…
Then I went to the city of Sumy. There I took Lenochka to the cinema. The "Fanfan the Tulip" movie it was, yet already with Alain Delon starring in it.
After the cinema we fed the swans in the park, dropping from the arched bridge crumbs of cabbage piroshki, and then we went to a restaurant. Everything there was a discovery for her…
She saw me off at the station and burst into tears for a farewell. She looked beautiful, like her mother, and only the hair she took after me.
~ ~ ~
Next day I went to 25, Gogol Street and left by Sasha Plaksin my black dembel "diplomat" case loaded with dictionaries and a couple of books. We arranged he would send it to me when I settle down somewhere and let him know my address… Konotop saw me off with angry cold and wind, but the coat from Natasha kept me warm, and I went to Nezhyn to return the book of stories by Salinger borrowed from Zhomnir. I locked the sports-bag with clothes and other things into an automatic storage cell at the station and with just my briefcase went to Shevchenko Street.
When the bell rang, the door did not open, probably, Zhomnir and Maria Antonovna walked out somewhere to visit. I went to the city center, to the new "Kosmos" cinema opposite the department store. There was some garbage produced by "Uzbek-film" about Sindbad the Seaman, but I just needed to kill the time.
I sat down and planted the briefcase under the seat. The place on the left was taken by a woman of my age. In the tilted passage on the right, a girl about four was running up and down. Her mother, sitting in the front rows, called for her to come back, but the kid did not listen. She kept capering there, and at each of male spectators entering the hall she yelled, "Daddy!" But he was not among them… A couple of rows higher, to seven o'clock, there were seated 2 military pilots in officer jackets. One of then began to greet my neighbor on the left, but somehow with the owner's air and in a certain double bottom way.
The movie started, and Sindbad switched from the sea to a cave, to fencing a saber next to the ruins of the ancient walls of Samarkand against the background of a high-voltage power line… Finally, that all was over, I lifted my cap from my knees and clapped it on my head. The neighbor on the left dropped her thin gloves into the lap of my coat.
"Take it," she said softly. "Escort me." I angled my briefcase from under the seat and began to squeeze after her thru the crowd.
In a rather dense stream of moviegoers, we descended the high exit stairs outside. The officers-pilots were waiting down in their forage caps. As we were passing by, they did not even dare to peep. Did not get the nerve to. Meaningful dress code works like a charm in the aware milieu. First, the karakul collar, to which they would hardly grow, in the Soviet army such collars were prerogative of Colonels and higher ranked Commanders. Secondly, my gray, brand new, cap in the style favored by zeks after their second term in Zone. Not to mention the equally new briefcase…
She invited me to tea. It was not far, in the five-story block on the slope from the main square. I walked and the location was getting more and more familiar to me. Really? It cannot be…Exactly! She opened with her key the apartment where once the black-haired KGBist arranged a meeting for me and his boss in the stylish gray hair haircut above his tanned face. But now the apartment was furnished and lived in.
We took our coats in the hallway and went over to the living room. On the coffee table in front of the folding coach-bed, instead of tea, she served a bottle of wine, sliced sausage, and chocolate sweets. I drank wine, snacked chocolate and remembered the crane operator Vitalya.
We did not ask each other's names. For what we were there "you" was enough. True, she couldn't resist boasting about having a position at the prosecutor's office. Without specifying my profession, I assured her they wouldn't run me down in her beat.
Then she went into the bedroom and came back in a long unbuttoned dressing gown. She sat next to me on the folding coach-bed again. I hugged her, ran my hand under the gown collar around her neck until reached and unfastened the bra on her blades. Her face flashed up with joy. We went over to the bedroom…
What followed might be compared to the demonstration performances of champions in figure skating, the simile to match her graceful physique. Like well-trained partners, we accurately and precisely entered all those supports, triple two-loops, and other program elements. Of all the program, that two-loops element was especially advantageous for outlining the shapely curves in her slender body. We moved from figure to figure with fancy changes of tempo and on-the-fly improvisation in combinations, and continued to conquer the hearts of absent spectators with the outstanding degree of perfection in our inimitable performance.
The world around, under, and above got wrapped with the misty veil of the delightfully sweet bliss and stuff of ashes being hauled… It’s only that concurrent with the ripples in the stream of sensuality, but absolutely discordant to the thrills of our carnal delights and skillfully adroit ecstatic raptures, there time and again splashed up both sketchy and irrelevant glimpses of a f-f..er..frisking puppy, Tuzik… full of sportive ardor, he was happily gnawing a rubber hot-water bottle in an unidentifiable nook. Which Tuzik?! What rubber bottle on Earth had anything to do with the triumphs of our vigorously deft calisthenics? All the proceedings were, in fact, a streamlined execution of the program I was fed in thru a novel by Carpentier from a recent issue of Vsesvit. There too, the protagonist, before going to Spain to fight in the ranks of the International Brigades against General Franco, was having sex with his girlfriend 3 times in their farewell night…
In the morning she, at last, made tea, and I called Zhomnir to tell that I brought his book and was on my way to his place. However, I did not go to Zhomnir at once. I returned to the Gogol Greens and entered a hairdresser's in the adjoining cobweb of old streets.
They did not expect to have so an early customer, yet one of the hairdressers agreed to shave me. That young make-believe hairdresser of a gypsy girl nicked my throat for more than once. At each scratching, she said "oh!" and rubbed the cut with pliable alum. And she even had the nerve to grab the fee after!.
I again passed the Gogol Greens and entered School 7. There were classes going on and silence reigned in the deserted corridors. In the Teachers' Room, I said to the few women present there that I wanted to see Liliana Ogoltsova from a second grade, whose dad I was.
One of the women came out into the empty corridor with me and led to the classroom in question. She went in and returned with a girl I did not know, her ashy hair in the pair of tight plaits, wearing a gray knitted blouse with thin transverse stripes in its front, who obstinately kept her eyes away.
"This is the girl," said the teacher, "but she says she does not have a dad."
"That's right," I answered fighting back the anger at I did not know what, which rolled up from nowhere. "Would you call ‘father’ the one who shows up once in 5 years just to say ‘goodbye’?" The teacher tactfully walked off to the nearby windowsill.
I opened my briefcase and went down on one knee next to you so that we were even. You did not look at me. "Liliana," I called, took out from my briefcase the folded Morning Star, and handed it to you. "Pass it to your mother, please."
You accepted the newspaper and stood on silently, staring at the floor.
"All right, Lee," said I, "Go back to your class."
You turned with relief and walked to the door of your classroom. I got up from my knee and watched as the door swallowed both you and the newspaper, where between the printed pages there was an enlarged portrait of Eera standing in the summer stream, and the sparse bunch of all the postcards I received, as well as the telegrams, about how you 2 loved me and congratulated on my birthday or the Day of the Soviet Army…
~ ~ ~
I handed Salinger to Zhomnir and, in return, I asked for James Joyce's Ulysses, 705 pages of dense text without pictures, without divisions into parts or chapters. Zhomnir himself once wanted to translate it, but Joyce turned out way too unsuitable for any conjuncture. I gave my word to return the volume in 10 years.
After a split-second hesitation, he brought the book out of his archive chamber and stretched it generously out. Now I had what with to fill the eternity ahead of me.
"Where are you going?" asked Maria Antonovna.
"To Baku."
With the usual jerk, the train pulled out of the Nezhyn railway station… Everything was behind, ahead was everything. 30 and 3 years.
"It's time for you to work miracles," said I to a saxophonist I knew, when he became 33.
"I have already done miracles," he replied, "And did my time for them as well." And how only do them folks manage to live eventful lives?
I thought that I was going to Baku to pick up a job of a bricklayer of the fourth category, and gradually translate Ulysses after work. As it turned out, I was starting to the Mountainous Karabakh with its war for independence and all the issuing details common for such cases, which I'd rather not dwell on. However, behind the windows of the local train car, there still were running familiar landscapes of 1987, the last year of peace. Before the collapse of the indestructible Union of the Free Republics, there still remained 2 years. Today, they tell me that in 1987 the smack of the new era was in the air already. Alas, I did not scent the brew.
(…what was the underlying reason for the collapse of the USSR? The Union was finished off by "The Guys on the Roadside". So was named the English TV movie of 4 sequels about the life of British unemployed.
The censors at the Central Television in Moscow did not get it that at the end of that week an electrician at the "Motordetail" plant would say: "I have been working all my life, and so has my wife. Our son returned from the army and he also works now. We have a two-room apartment, and their unemployed live in two-story cottages! Fuck!" The magic power of art touched the living strings in the heart of a Konotop mujik, triggering the chain reaction that changed the face of the world.
Has it changed its essence, or was it just a case of plastic surgery?..)
Let some other "I", not a part to my personal monad, strain their brains about this question, because I since long dropped following the brandy lies in this world. Moreover, the predawn twilight, seeping thru the synthetic canvass of my Chinese tent, signals the end to this sleepless night and to this endless letter as well.
You will ask, how did my following life flow, behind the watershed of the Caucasian ridge? You may not even ask it, I will tell you all the same. First, do not ask about my life in the past tense, it still keeps flowing on. I rolled its way as best as I could. Because of the spiral nature of the current, we can only go thru multiple repetitions of what has been and will be.
"What has been will be again," says the new translation of the Old Testament, and Vladimir Dahl in his dictionary recorded the same saying in normal, human, language – "radish is no sweeter than a horseradish". But, if I may ask, have all those wisdom pieces helped a single anyone? And when there comes the moment to feel that I don't care a f-f..er..fleck, I let it rip and go with the flow to the ultimate end.
Life is predetermined like a winding mountain road with the drop-off on the right and the cliff-wall on the left, here you go along, repeating step by step the path passed before you, by you who was also "I". Of course, when I recognize a repetition of familiar situations, I try to avoid ugly deeds for which I'll be ashamed painfully. And up till now I, like, have managed to dodge. Or?.
Yes, like, haven't stepped… If only that bitter son of a bitch in my Chinese tent wouldn't unearth something else…
So, here we are – I and the Varanda. It goes to meet the Araks river and I am passing by and on, to the last limit beyond which there's the boundless blue sea and, probably, that, once lost, tiny sailing boat in it…
Something again carries me off to all sorts of epochs and philologies. But this is, after all, a private letter of a father to his daughter, and f-f..er..I mean, fairly didactic too, well… sort of… at certain passages… Seems like it's a high time to wind up already.
…and then the morning of the following day came, and Scheherazade was suffered to live that day also…
And about myself, dear daughter, I may report that the maxim "I know that I know nothing" is not applicable to me, though there were times when I also scattered this particular pearl. Today, however, I have serious doubts about having even so tiny scraps of knowledge. I doubt that I know anything at all, be it even nothing.
"We understand life only by looking back at the past," announced a lover of aphorisms.
Asshole! You will not understand it even when pulled out of the grave and poked into it with your noseless skull!. And no one will ever understand…
There's just one thing beyond any doubt – life is shorter than even the dash between the dates of birth and death. And I do not care that no one cares about my useless wisdom, because I know better than anyone else that after all that was there, after my stupidities and mistakes, after stepping in all sorts of shit, I am not a hair-breadth wiser, I am still the same naive sucker ready to get underway to the unseen Where-Where Mountains. And let the hull is old like hell, the mast all cracks, and this whole nutshell will not survive the nearest storm – ahead, at full tilt! And let another calypso or penelope (what's the difference?) tearing the blouse on her charms, cries out and rushes along the foamy water edge – full ahead!.
I know that the bigger part of the dash is over so, come what may, the final leg would be passed as well, perk up – we’ll prick thru for sure! Like hell will anything stop a hooey-pricker!.
Good-bye, sweetie.
My fatherly hug to you. And, since you are fond of "You" in the plural –
With love,
your daddies: Sehrguey and Nikolayevich.
(…and whichever rumors reach you, stay assured – we lived happily ever after and died on the same day…)
P. S.:
In case you will give birth to a baby-son – look out! And if you notice an excessive interest for paper, or if instead of games in the computer he starts playing with text typing, then wrap him in a white cloth and throw into the fast-running River-Mommy and he'll only say "thank you!" afterward.
P. P. S.:
I almost forgot to warn that any coincidence with the names of real persons is purely accidental and the described events – fictitious because there is no one responsible for the unpredictably weird dreams of another life-long graphomaniac—
thru the night of 20 to 21 August 2007,
on the left bank of the Varanda River…
~ ~ ~
