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

(…it's only now I realize that she was crying about herself, about her life flashed by in a flick. Just so recently she was scampering to the ballet school with her girlfriends and—here you are!—a man in the parade-crap in front of her, like, the son came back from the army. When?..)

My mother looked back at the small frightened girl standing by the kitchen table and, finishing the last sob, she said, "What do you fear, silly? It's your dad who's come."

Then she again turned to me, "How that you did not meet Olga? She went to the third shift, working at the brick factory."

…service done…

~

~

My Universities: Part Two

That was exactly the moment which I never allowed myself to dream of in those 2 years when in the morning I woke up not from the bellow of an on-duty jerk but because of a female embrace, that of Olga. She came home from work, lay atop of me, hugged thru the blanket, and I awakened to answer her kiss. Our talk somehow did not come out well, if an exchange of one-word clues could be called a talk at all. And we looked at each other in such a manner that my mother, who was on her vacation, promptly took our daughter Lenochka and went to Bazaar…

Everything in life is surely repeating itself. What was, will be there again. The difference, if any, is slightly made by circumstantial details… For instance, that my mother returned from Bazaar (and not from a store) without oranges, and that nothing restrained me this time… As for the hieroglyphics left on my wrist by the claws of that hotel sadist, Olga, sure enough, marked them well, studied attentively and read their message, but not out loud. Actually, I did not insist on her sharing the obtained information.

(…there’s no substance more flexible than time. The current year lasts elastically and shows no wish for termination, while a year lived thru shrinks into a mere point of time.

A point has no length whatsoever, it ends at its own start. So, tell me any good reason to consider shorter stretches than a year as having even a point's worth. Really, what can you say about the last month? That it had several Fridays and there was thirteenth among its dates. Right. And about the last hour? Oh, yes! It had sixty minutes… Empty term-juggling, jejune re-shuffle of numbers.

A decade, when lived thru, turns into a same-size point. After that point idled at school, a person begins to grow bristles. Another such point spent at Zona brings about aching joints (especially in the right shoulder), yet it still is just a point…)

A week after the demobilization, the two-year eternity at the construction battalion becomes tattered scraps of memories pinned onto a point in the past. The flow of ever-moving life carries all those points off, to hell or whatever other destination, and it does not matter where exactly, because you don't have time to ponder on such matters but have a more urgent task – to get along the streaming flow of life….

When bathing, there are two ways of entering the water. Following the first, you go into it step by step, your shoulders pulled up, rising on the tiptoes as the bottom grows deeper. The other way is to enter until the water is knee-deep and with a shriek (the element’s not vital and might be left out) plunge headlong forward… It was time for me to dip into civilian life…

Overseer Borya Sakoon died neglecting his promise to retire in 4 years.

The Arkhipenkos moved to the Kamchatka Peninsular, which, reportedly, was Fishermen Paradise where fish jumps into your skiff of their free will.

My brother and sister graduated the Railway Transportation School and were sent to work off for their diplomas by exploration and construction of railways somewhere in the Urals between Ufa and Orenburg.

Vladya and Chuba returned from the army half-year before me and had time enough to acquire streamlined conformity to the concurrent life-flow. Skully had developed a solid bold patch over his head and looked for becoming 27, which age ended draft liability of a USSR citizen. He was exempted from the army as the only breadwinner for his single mother with her single mother, God save them both until his coming of the right age!

I was not much amused at my re-appearance in the Konotop polite society. We gathered at the Vadya's, I stuffed a joint, yet my friends did but a couple of drags each, just for civility's sake… From Vadya's khutta we ventured to the Loony park where The Spitzes were playing dances. When passing Deli 6, Vladya farted at a lighted match held by Skully close to his ass. The emitted ammonia flared up in a blue bunch of flame. It did not delight me though, having seen all sorts of suchlike tricks in the construction battalion, I did not care for the commemorative improvising.

In general, my way of getting on high wasn't fine with them, and theirs didn't turn me on. We remained friends but in the course of our subsequent lives, we flowed, basically, in separate parts of the stream…

I borrowed The Adventures of Captain Blood from the Club library but couldn't read even a half of the rubbish which once upon a time was my regular thrill…

"What do you keep in the newspaper atop the wardrobe?" asked Olga.

"A spike condom. Wanna try?"

"Nah!"

I was sure though she had checked it before asking, or did I overestimate her?.

At our having a walk, she introduced me to an unknown squirt in the running by civvy commonality—her co-worker from the brick factory who we met near Deli 1. A mujik over 30 said his name, I answered with mine, and we immediately forgot the just heard sounds. I did not like his smile that bared the over-worn gums receding to the teeth roots. Besides, some uneasiness about him made it clear that the meeting and new acquaintance was no good news to him, I regretted we had come up to him at all…

And on the other side of the Under-Overpass, near Deli 5, it was already we to be approached by a half-acquaintance Halimonenko, handled Halimon, who demanded of Olga a private talk. She asked me to wait and walked with him 4 meters aside on the same two-step porch in front of Deli 5. Some scraps of words in their conference: "militia", "get not a little" were reaching me. It was unpleasant to stand pushed aside that way, but so I’d been asked.

(…another of my pesky traits is doing what they've asked me without giving it a thought and starting to think when it's too late…)

Their conversation ended and she returned to me followed by his owner-like "I told you!". Olga explained that someone attempted at stealing Halimon's motorcycle from his khutta's shed and he mistakenly concluded she had anything to do with all that.

(…myths are different. There are useful ones, like the myths of ancient Greece, and useless as, for instance, that the army turns young men into manly men.

Bullshit! Were it so, I'd say to Halimon, "This is my woman, talk to me!" It's not that I was afraid of him, it simply never occurred to me to say so. The army hadn't made a man of me…)

Olga suggested going to the Plant Park on Saturday, where the dances were played by The Pesnedary, a group from Bakhmuch. Their native town was the fourth stop of a local train in the Konotop-Kiev route, so it took just a half-hour ride to get there. What kind of group could be from such a backwater? Yet, Olga said they still played well, besides, at the dances, she'd introduce me to Valentin Batrak, handled Lyalka, the brother of Vitya Batrak, handled Slave.

The lahboohs from Bakhmuch sounded very good thanks to their keyboard player – a long guy sporting the hairstyle of Angela Davis. They quite decently performed "Smoke on the Water" of The Deep Purple, as well as "Mexico" of The Chicago band. Then we were approached by Lyalka and Olga introduced us to each other.

Tall and skinny, with the long fair hair slightly cocked up at his pate, he had a same-colored nail-beard ? la Cardinal Richelieu. A single look at each other's enlightened eyes prompted us that we needed a more secluded place than the dance-floor. Such a place was found and there we exchanged the credentials and reached consensus in the estimation of the sampled weed's quality, which contributed to establishing relations of friendly cooperation in the years to come…

~ ~ ~

My father disclosed his strategic plans how to implement the skills acquired by me in the army. His project called for adding one more room as well as the veranda to the recently bought half-khutta, and also paneling its walls from outside with brick and, since we're at it, construction of a brick shed in the yard, of two sections, one to keep firewood and coal for winter, and the other residential, kinda summer room.

I felt reluctant to clarify that all the training got at the military service made me a qualified trencher well versed in application of shovel and breaker, without further building skills. Not that I was ashamed of the fact, but because he was so happy at the prospect of realization of his fondly mapped designs. I couldn't tell him that "bricklayer" standing in my military ID was a standard bullshit. So I said, yes, of course, no problems…

A truckload of bricks was bought at the brick factory, followed by a truckload of sand, a half-ton of cement and – off went the construction works of the century! The water source, regrettably, was farther away from the khutta than once in Nezhyn Street, besides, the running water system hadn't reached the outskirts of the Settlement and you had to turn the crank, round and round, above a hell-deep well, spooling the multi-meter iron chain onto the windlass barrel to bring to the daylight a pailful of water.

That summer was really hot, both in weather and zest of the labor efforts that turned my father's plans into the tangible reality. As for the quality…Well, the seams in the masonry were thicker than ideal, but the plumb-line test of jambs and corners won’t make me blush till now….

On his arrival home, a dembel had to report to the Military Commissariat and get registered there, spiffed for the occasion in his parade-crap. After those proceedings, I sent the parcel with the uniform to its owner at the military detachment 41769, after thrusting a three-ruble banknote into the jacket's inner pocket. Had the money reached the buddy? My mother told me she also had been putting a three-ruble bill along with each of her letters to me. Stuff it! Why did she never mention it at least a single time?! I would forbid so senseless practices because all that reached me were just vanilla letters. Well, they also were my relief, of course…

Soon after, I received a letter from Stavropol sent by the soldier-clerk at the Staff barrack of the VSO-11. He did not write a single line but, as arranged between us, enclosed a blank sheet of paper stamped with the Construction Battalion seal. It only remained to fill the page with the testimonial for admission to an institute.

I banged out a text to stuff the page up to an appropriate measure depicting myself rather positively, as a determined soldier at both military and political training, an eager participant in the amateur art activities of the battalion, a reliable comrade, an experienced warrior of the Soviet armed forces in general and the military construction troops in particular… Because not only zampolits could do the job, after all.

Then I asked my father to re-write the composition into the sheet with the stamp since his handwriting looked more like that of an inveterate army officer. He copied the list of my virtues, but somewhat hesitated when it came to signing the testimonial, "What if they catch you?"

I had to assure him that our Battalion Commander had no chances to disown his signature which he had to re-invent for every paper to be signed because of his chronic memory leakage. Grateful for my valiant labor that summer, my father scribbled a signature (any colonel would be proud of such a one) next to the seal stamp of the military detachment 41769…

I did not go to Kiev but, on the advice of my mother, I took my papers to the Nezhyn State Pedagogical Institute which also had the English Language Department. It took only a 2-hour ride by a local train to get to Nezhyn, twice shorter than to Kiev, and I did not care for the institution’s pedagogical quirk, most importantly, I would be able to read in English…

For the period of the entrance examinations I, as an applicant, was allocated a bed in the hostel by the main square of the Nezhyn city, opposite the Lenin statue and the massive building of the City Party Committee and District Party Committee (2 in 1) behind his white back. It took a bus ride for just one stop to get from the square to the institute, yet on foot you got there much sooner.

The English Department was located on the third floor of the Old Building, erected in the times of Decemberists by Count Razumovsky, and in those times of yore, it served already as the educational institution for nondescript students along with Gogol, the great Russian writer. For that fact, the institution had nailed down to its denomination the name of N. V. Gogol and planted 3 monuments of him around the edifice.

I liked the black-and-white alley of giant Birch-trees by the foot of the steep porch in the Old Building, and the white unembraceable columns carrying the classical pediment, and the Firs tall enough to peek even into the echoing corridors in the third floor paved with parquet, and the high-ceiling auditorium rooms.

And I liked Dean of the English Department, named Antonyouk. The sympathy was based on his not picking holes in my lame knowledge of English. I do not think though that he would be as lenient if knowing that my grandfather's name was Joseph, and my father-in-law was Abram. Dean Antonyouk belonged to the militant anti-Semite type. In the gloom of late evenings, Antonyouk sneaked to the time-table of the English Department to cross with his wrathful pencil the names of Jewish teachers out, and in the same manner, purged he the faculty wall-newspaper hanging by. Like a youth from an underground resistance cell struggling gegen Befehle issued by the occupant authorities of the Third Reich. However, Alexander Bliznuke, one of those Jewish instructors, as alert as Gestapo, tracked Antonyouk down and caught him red-handed for which the latter lost his position. Yet, all that happened later…

At the written examination on Russian, I turned out a composition, graded 4, which, actually, was an untraceable plagiarism – an adaptation of the memorable message-statement that Zoya Ilynichna, the teacher of Russian language and literature at the Konotop School 13, rolled out in red ink under my subversive babbling about meditations by the window. And at the oral examination, I was in luck to pull the ticket asking to describe the character of Prince Andrey from the War and Peace by Tolstoy. However, the bitchy examiner still tried to set me back by an additional question, "Could you recite some poem of a Soviet poet, anyone of your choice?"