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

A week later two operative officers of the criminal investigation ascended the third floor in the Hosty, tracing the indications of loot from the Republican Fashion House, which the burglar tried to dispose of at the Nezhyn Bazaar. One of them took a black pistol from inside his coat and knocked on the door of Katranikha's room which the burglar had already cleared out of. He was arrested only a month later in the city of Mariupol. Anyway, that was what the operative with the black pistol told his wife, also a fourth-year student at the English Department…

Soon after, Katranikha invited me to the Leninist Komsomol Cinema, about two hundred meters from the canteen, across the road from the lake in the Count's Park. We watched "Zorro" starring Alain Delon. Well, I don’t know, but in my humble opinion, the final fencing scene in the movie was way too long and boring.

On the whole, the time she spent on me was lost in vain, I couldn't consider her for practical purposes because she was a girl of my cohabitant in the pencil-box room. To tell the truth, I always stayed somewhat old-fashioned…

Starting my student life, I never fancied any breach of my marital fidelity, it was unthinkable, for about a week or so. But then on our floor in the Hosty, there occurred a vacant room and the key incidentally got to my hands, with a chance addition of my course-mate Irina from Bakhmuch. We spent all night in that room and she proved to be an ardent adherent of strictly tactile pleasures with the firmly negative stance towards trespassing the rubber band in her panties.

Again?! What for?!. Her boobs were undeniably magnificent, with some strange nipples though, I had never come across so tiny ones, the size of a pinhead. However, keeping oneself all night long busy with only the bust is a hell of monotonous occupation.

Two days later she resolutely blocked my way in the half-dark corridor of the Hosty. "You did not say you were married!"

"You didn't ask."

(…and here, in my opinion, lies the main flaw in civilization. Take me, for instance, I have nothing but the purest and most natural inclination for a no-cheating trade after the pattern "you give me, I give you". For a fully fair trade of pleasures based on the mentioned principle, I am prepared to provide all the pleasures available from my male body—restricted in no way—in exchange for delights obtainable from her female one. But instead of a young Bacchante rocking with fiery mad ecstasy in my embrace I—for the damnteenth time!—run into the disgusting attempt at using her cunt as a trap.

Bitter are the fruits of yours, O, civilization! Toy with the boobs and piss off! Marry first, and then have it in slathers, ladle or spread it as you like, but no sooner… And no one cares a fig about your shattered self-respect. Couldn't bring to a passionate response?. Hmm…and you call yourself a man after that, eh?.

And—the most perplexing puzzle—a mere outline of the word "rape" gives me a boner, but I’ve never tried to put the term into effect in a real-life situation, not even with the recusant who lay with me of her own free will. She sez, "No, stop it…" and I begin to tame my horny ambition, whatever the cost. Probably, because I love fair deals.

Besides, I was born too late – after the origination of the family, private property, and state…)

Presently, the buses in the Nezhyn city stop next to the railway station, but in those times the highway bridge over the railway tracks was not yet in place and the bus stops were reached by the high footbridge overpass… Then you had to wait for a bus, scramble to get on board, and stand squeezed in the crowd for all the long ride to the main square. From the square there remained a short walk down to the bridge over the Oster river on whose right bank stood the Hosty, the New and the Old Buildings, as well as the other campus structures together with the Count's Park behind them holding the sky aloft upon its columns of dark ancient Elms within the bounds of a long lake of horseshoe outline…

It took me one of those prolonged bus rides from the station to the main square, to persuade Yasha Demyanko to sell me a shirt. A white shirt with the grid pattern of blue-and-yellow, thin, widely set, stripes. Coming back to Nezhyn after the weekend at his home city of Poltava, Yasha brought that shirt for selling at a negotiated price, and in the crowded bus, he opened his grip to flash the goods before me.

I fell for it immediately, but he was obstinately refusing to sell it because he had another such shirt on and both of us were from the same Department. In his opinion, it was not the right thing for 2 persons to be dressed alike when in one place… In the most solemn terms, had I to swear to never ever put it on without his expressed permission, or when his one was washed or left behind in Poltava.

(…we lived in the deficiency era, of which fact we were well aware. So, I wasn't stunned at all when a girl sitting next to me at a general lecture, flashed wide runs in her pantyhose aptly fixed with a blue electric tape high up her thigh.

So what? In upright posture her skirt hid both the tape and runs leaving just legs in the pantyhose of enviable Conte brand… yes, it was the post-mini epoch already…)

~ ~ ~

Fyodor, Yasha and I became bosom friends on the common basis of dry wine. After classes, we started to the deli located round the corner of the department store opposite the church where Bogdan Khmelnytsky centuries ago married another of his wives, to buy 4 to 5 bottles holding 0.75 liters of white dry wine each. Yasha was a firm supporter of moderation and his dose constituted just one bottle in the haul, while Fyodor and I entertained more liberal perspective.

From the deli, we proceeded past the Bazaar and the restaurant "Polissya" to the second bridge over the Oster River, from which long Red Partisans Street started and went off to finally turn right, towards the highway beyond the city. But our route was much shorter and, from the bridge, we climbed down into the tall grass on the left riverbank nearby the Catholic Chapel used as the Youth Sports School grounds, snug and cozy place to stretch out for a libation.

A finger-thick layer of sediment covered each bottle bottom, but we knew how to drink from the neck without stirring it up. The emptied bottles were thrown into the nearly motionless waters of the Oster because somewhere downstream the floodgates of the dam were shut. After a short-lived reproachful popping, the bottles froze on the water, kinda fishing rod floats with their necks in osculatory appeal to the sky.

(…environmental pollution fighters would not approve of such behavior, but young carefree students are not turned on by so minor issues.

Besides, when compared to the exploits in the student life of Mikhail Lomonosov at German universities, we were a tender flock of fluffy lambs. Reading about his feats, you grow to understand: it was not for nothing that the man had walked on foot from Arkhangelsk itself to Moscow… Passion for knowledge knows where to direct you…)

And, lying in the tall grass, we carried on enlightened exchange on this and that, and other such things, interspersed by prolonged gulps before to change the subject. The chat was our snack, like chomping the well-known fact that when the Oster had still been navigable, a merchant boat full of treasures sank someplace there. And recently the Japanese came up with a proposal that they would clean up the entire riverbed of the Oster, provided that they get the treasure, but the ours responded: "Piss off, Japs! Don't be too cunning!"

Or, for a change, we were discussing Latinist Litvinov, that ruthless beast of an exact executioner.

"Read sentence 7 from Exercise 5." But how could you possibly read it when seeing for the first time in your life?

"Sentence 7 comes after Sentence 6."

"…"

"Sentence 7 comes before Sentence 8."

"…"

"Get seated, please. Your mark is two."

Wholly serene, as cool as a cucumber, with his head like a light bulb, maybe, a bit more hair on it, he turns to the next victim… Thus, the poor students did not have a choice but to dub him with the handle of "Lupus".

His beautiful wife was a fourth-year student already, and in her first year, at the winter examination session, she managed to pass the credit in Latin only at her sixth try. He entered the record into her Grade Book, and articulated coolly, "Be smart, and marry me." Figuring out that in the summer session it would be not a credit but the examination in Latin, she realized that the resistance was of no use…

After elaborate discussion of the cadre policy at the NGPI, we glided into a trifling gossip about our roommate Ostrolootsky who’s cool only at staggering but still believes—can you believe it?!—into the final victory of Communism… Innocence itself…Though you never can tell…Who knows?. After all, they still keep Lenin’s mummy in the Mausoleum… Imagine the unthinkable technologies they so possibly will have in that frigging future, eh? After so dreadfully advanced in medical science they’ll reassemble the guy from just his boot strings, you know… but what then? To storm the Winter Palace anew? It’s a museum now. And no Royal Romanov to revenge for his hanged brother…

Then and there we stipulated that after Fyodor and Yasha got their diplomas, at their farewell party I would ramble into the Oster waters with a glass of champagne aloft in my hand. Like in the movie "The Land of Sannikov" the Czarist army lieutenant enters the rolling surf after the schooner sailing away to discoveries.

"There is a point between the past and the future,
And that split second is what we call life…"

And then we, happily mushy, got up and made for the Hosty overtaking the lazy bottles still sticking from the middle of the river.

(…we lived in the era of stagnation only we did not know yet about it…)

In the blue-tiled shower on the Hosty’s first floor, I made a discovery that I had a rather resonant voice. So I brought my guitar from Konotop and sang from the window of my room on the third floor to serenade no one in particular.

Of course, Irina from Bakhmuch notified the whole pack of Artemises at the English Department that I was not a kosher game. As a result, the uniform sweet sadness in the eyes of girls gave way to the expression of alert vigilance, and my entering their rooms did not triggered an automatic invitation to have a tea-party any more. But all the same, I sang.

Sometimes students of the Music-Pedagogical Department descended from their fifth floor to knock on Room 72 door, requesting the guitar at least for one evening. Probably, they wanted to get some rest…

Moreover, end September, when our course students attended the wedding of a student mate in her native town of Borzna, I was strumming and singing there all night the numbers from the repertoire of The Orpheuses, The Orion, and Duke Ellington. And the folks danced to my music!. The slender bride in a long white dress, pressing herself to the massive figure of her groom, did not miss bestowing her grateful looks on the wedding singer. Her brother stood on guard by the record player to shoo off those who wanted to start a disk. Not every wedding could boast of having live music…

~ ~ ~

At the beginning of October, I was summoned to the personnel department of the State Pedagogical Institute. The head of the personnel department, without looking into my face, urged me to pass on into the additional room behind his office desk, but he himself remained where he was.

In the adjacent room, there also was a desk with a lanky man at it who had a shaven face of about 40 years old and pale-dark hair of indistinct length. After my entering and getting seated, he clasped the fingers of his long hands on top of the desk and introduced himself as a Captain of the Committee of State Security, aka the KGB, and went over to briefing me that to prevent the espionage activities of the CIA agents coming to our land under the disguise of news correspondents the KGB needed young people who spoke English. Such people were to get the appropriate special training and be subsequently sent to foreign countries to ensure the security of our state.

Wow! Wild dreams did come true without ever turning to the precinct militiaman Solovey! Captain of KGB was in person making me an offer that I wouldn’t even try to refuse. Not for nothing in my adolescent dreams, I was trying on the shirt of Banionis from "The Dead Season"! It only remained to discuss the details… When after the classes on my way to the hostel I see him with a newspaper in his hands, then an hour later I need to call this here number to get further instructions. And at that, we parted…

A week later, when I called him with the payphone fixed in the glass-walled cage by the second, permanently locked, entrance door to the hostel lobby, he instructed me to come to the railway station, and there proceed to the wooden house of the station militia, next to the public toilet, and enter the first door to the right in their corridor… Behind that door, under his dictation, I wrote the application to enlist me in the secret contingent of the KGB, to which end I chose the conspirative by-name "Pavel" as my operational pseudonym…

At our third meeting, Captain said that the response from the commanding staff at the military detachment of my army service indicated they were of extremely poor opinion about me. Like, I was a hopelessly lost and utterly spoiled fraction of the society dregs.

(…it seems like at the KGB everything was turned upside down – first, they recruited me as a secret agent and then waked up to collecting information if I was worth the while.

Though on the second thought, there could also be my fault, to some extent, by presenting myself so awesome good guy in the forged testimonial.