The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life)

In the staircase, there was, naturally, no light, and I walked first, groping for the steps with my feet, and did not even hold onto the railing, like the brave tin soldier or the one-eyed leader in the gang of the blind from the "Eulenspiegel" movie, because in the pitch dark I had Eera's hand on my shoulder, and Lyalka was holding on hers. So we descended…

At that Eera's visit, we spent the night at Skully's, who had already become an Adoptee and lived in a fairly big khutta where two "Jawa" bikes stood in the garage – one for him and the other for his wife's younger brother.

Eera and I were left in a separate bedroom and, going out, Skully and his wife significantly hung a terry towel on the back of the bed… When we lay down and from the "Spidola" receiver there sounded the introduction to my favorite "Since I'm loving you" by Led Zeppelin, I realized that nothing better could be provided even by Las Vegas…

On another occasion, we even visited Decemberists 13, in the daytime, naturally, when there was no one there. After champagne and a joint, we got in a deeply playful mood so that auntie Zina in her part of the khutta panicked, ran to our front door, and kicked up alarmed drumming at it. Probably, the echoes of our frolics passed thru the partition wall making her think of bloody murder in the canonical traditions of the post-war bandit period in the history of the city because it’s highly unlikely that the old innocent lady had any notion of hardcore scenes and stuff…

So, Eera met my brother and sister at the Loony dances, and she knew Lenochka unilaterally from the pictures shot at the photo session around Rabentus' dovecot, which I later pasted on the wallpaper over my bed in the Hosty…

Apart from Eera coming to Konotop to meet my parents, Slavic also was taken along. He and my sister measured each other with guarded looks but skipped sniffing. And that was correct because I brought Slavic for another purpose – I needed him to be put on the alert.

(…"the most powerful force is the force of habit" or something like that was said by V. I. Lenin in one of his works from the 58-volume collection, and, quoting the colonel of counter-revolutionary Whites from the movie "Chapaev":

"Yes, it’s where the Bolshevik leader is right."…)

Consider me, for instance. I have an ample plantation of cannabis to keep me lavishly up to the following season, even with generous largesses to those two tail-clinging bros – Slavic and Twoic. On the other hand, I am in the habit of plundering other folks' plantations. Who'll bite the dust – sound reason or deep-rooted habit? Make your bets, gentlemen!

(…it's sometimes hard to refute the truth in Leninist theses…)

And what else, apart from the habit, smashes up all of the chop-logic reasoning? What drives us on and further on? What pushes to the new, the unknown?

Hope – what if the luck would have it?.

Faith – but there should be, there is somewhere!.

And Love, of course, the love to knowledge and change…

All that summer whenever riding a streetcar along May Day Street, I watchfully kept track of the cannabis growth stages in the Buttuke's khutta yard, and I dreamed of, wished and hoped for it's being of some nonpareil quality, as heavy-duty stuff as was the kif shared by Rabentus for the deeper comprehension of that unforgettable lecture by Scnar.

Once upon a time, Buttuke was the legend and role model for the youth not only in the Settlement but all over the city. Everyone knew Buttuke who did not care a damn for the traffic-officers from State Auto Inspection, aka GAI, and all the militia in the bargain. They just couldn't catch up with him to fine for riding his bike without a helmet, wearing only his long windblown hair.

What? Drunken driving? You have to catch up and prove it, first!. Two patrols ambushed him at night in Zelenchuk Area but he made his "Jawa" leap between the poplars and shoot away along a gleaming railhead in the streetcar tracks. The word "biker" plodded to Konotop much later – we had Buttuke…

And suddenly thundered the news that shook the guys like the Tower of Babel – Buttuke died!

"Bullshit! Alive, but in the reanimation ward."

And the speed was a mere 60 kph, well, plus that of the counter-moving bus whose radiator Buttuke rammed with his head that chanced to have a helmet at the moment.

"See, dudes? The helmet is a good idea, so they do not need to scratch your brains off the asphalt, the shit stays in the helmet neat and tidy."

Buttuke survived, only his mug remained patch-checkered after the restoration. They took the motorcycle from him together with the license, and never gave back. To demonstrate his indignant protest, he became bald and got some loader job. In short, Buttuke was no legend anymore.

However, he bought a scooter and made an eye candy of it – the windshield, rear-view mirrors, as well as all kinds of pendants dangling all around. The saddle was covered with fleece, long and white. And (what was characteristic) he never rode his scooter without a helmet on his head. A regular biker helmet, and also white to match the fleece under his ass…

And now let's reflect on a natural situation – I go to bomb his grass and he suddenly pops out: how could I possibly guess what was still lingering under that white helmet of his? So I brought Slavic too since there was enough of living space…

When it got dark the 2 of us went out.

"Once we went to do our job, me and Rabinovich…"

The moment we were leaving, Eera got very nervous and asked to lock her up in the summer room.

"What's the problem? Lock the door from inside."

"No! You do it."

Well, I locked the door from outside and gave the key back thru the window because I did not know when we were going to return.

(…there's still a lot of things that I will never understand…)

When we returned, Eera checked the loot.

No! She did not even smoke cigarettes but could determine weed quality by simply sniffing at it. With the accuracy of up to 80 percent… In general, the spoils from Buttuke were from the remaining 20 percent, I wouldn't grow such crap on my plantation…

Later in Nezhyn, Slavic sniffed out one more cannabis growing spot next to the bridge across the Oster, near the Bazaar square. He brought me to the location and showed the lush beauties as if decorated with ostrich feathers of green. However, the property was surrounded by a tall fence.

I also do not like monotony, yet once again we went out in the dark because a habit is the most irresistible force… So, I climbed over the fence and with the ghostly gait of a sneaking redskin approached the one-summer-old trees. The khutta stood aside and was not in the way with the light in only one window. Well, let the man watch his TV program, I don't mind.

No sooner I gently rustled the magnificent beauties than the ground started to quake in a pulsating seismic tremor accompanied by a thunder-like clatter from the khutta direction, and the light from the window was eclipsed by the black silhouette of that galloping Dog of Baskervilles.

It took a split-sec for all that happened then and, actually, without my participation. The instinct, laid in our spinal cord by countless generations of gnawed to death and shredded ancestors, did the trick. I could only watch how the fence jumped to meet me, and my right pedal extremity kicked its top rail.

Somewhere unbelievably far below, by the narrow vein of the Oster river, shimmering in the dark of the Ukrainian night, the already indistinguishable fence shook and vibrated from the ramming push of the wolfhound… I left the upper layers of the stratosphere but, halfway to the moon, it occurred to me that there was not enough air in my lungs for the return to my native planet. That's how I forsook becoming "Apollo 14"…

Slavic was saved only by his desperate spurt from the spot of my landing. Because among the ancestors, that mutually formed our spinal cord, lots of wretches got squashed flat too…

~ ~ ~

The fourth course was not sent to a collective farm with patronage assistance, we had a month of school practice but this time in village schools. Another difference to the school practice at the third course—finalized with the written comment from the respective city school teacher bubbling of what incredibly wonderful teachers we, the students she had been in charge of, were going to become in future—was that each group of trainees had an overseer from the English Department to assess our professional skills by the practice results. An eye for an eye, so to speak, because we also evaluated them in the years of our study…

When we, the first-year students, were split into 4 study groups, Lydia Panova became the curator of mine. She was a spinster and in unrequited love with Deputy Dean of the English Department, Alexander Bliznuke, who, in his turn, was in unrequited love with his young beautiful wife. Taking advantage of his official position, Bliznuke employed his wife as a teacher at the English Department as soon as she graduated the Nezhyn institute, but the ungrateful one soon jilted him and fled to someone else in Kiev.

Lydia Panova, with her hormonal mustache, thick glasses and the equally thick mask of makeup on her face, had no chances to lasso Bliznuke, although the girls of my group were pulling for her. She lived in the five-story block for the institute teachers by the sports grounds in the Count's Park and whenever Bliznuke had an imprudence of walking under her balcony, she started talking to him in English, and the following day she was teaching us more enthusiastically.

The second group's curator was Nona Panchenko (not a relative to the famous boxer), she also was unmarried and wore glasses, but no cosmetic plaster, and looked much younger than Panova. Once at some kind of voluntary Saturday work, Veerich wanted to treat her to a glass of wine. I played the errand-boy and approached her with it, like, would you have a sip of lemonade to quench the labor thirst? She smiled at me with a pleasant smile and refused. Nona smiled pleasantly at everyone but wasn't lassoing anybody.

The curator of the third group wore glasses (again!) was a blonde and a perfect fool (yes, monotony). She mastered English within the limits of the textbook by Galperin for the first-year students and unconsciously loved Sasha Bryounchooguin, the only boy in the group under her curatorship. To that conclusion, I was led by her habit to take the floor at every general meeting of the English Department with a harangue in his address, like that Roman senator with his constant call to destroy Carthage.

A local boy from a well-to-do family, polite and ever-smiling, he 2 times a month attended classes. Who would ask for more? But she had been crushing on him non-stop for 4 years. She literally f-f..er..I mean, filled everyone’s ears with her crying in the wilderness.

As we, already as the fourth-year students, were at a meeting in the big Auditorium 4, she again took the floor to chew the same rag, "Admire, please! Bryounchooguin's skipping even the general meeting!"

And then even the wind outside couldn't stand it anymore and slammed the tall windows, open on the occasion of spring and good weather. The panes got nearly smashed out.

She ducked and lost what there was further to proclaim in her perennial hit clue about Carthage…

And at last, the curator without glasses, the curator of non-feminine gender, the curator of the fourth group was Roma Gourevitch. He was also a Jew, as any of all other Gourevitches I've ever met, or as that same Bliznuke, only older and balder. And he was constantly busy with debating or talking to some or another one, completely involved and steaming with enthusiasm…