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

"Do you remember those two sta-a-rs?!
That disappeared from the sky?!.."

A third-year student, Vitya Kononevich, played the rhythm guitar and sang along, backing with a third; and on the drums some, well, Lyosha, it seems, also from that course, a local guy he was.

After the concert, Maria and I had a walk. She led me to a friend of hers. The woman brought a mug of medicinal alcohol out to the staircase landing, and a piece of fish for a snack. It was 96 percent medicinal alcohol because my tongue at once stuck to the palate. But since then our go-rounds with Maria in their duration were not inferior to the acts in Shakespeare’s plays…

She had a son, sixth-grader, who I never met in her one-room apartment. Apart from the sofa, there was a double bed and a radio receiver on the nightstand next to it. All night long it was playing softly to itself in the middle waves ranges, glowing with its small yellow eyelet.

And she cum in really grand style, "More! More! A! I wanna.. Mo-o-ore! A!." Maybe it was her worked out coda, but still a cool one. She didn’t condone the semen smell and asked me to go to the bathroom right away. I did not mind, she was worth it. For my willingness, she rewarded me with a massage, so was her profession. I couldn't get it why they were so crazy about it. Oh, massage!. But I did not contradict even on that point…

Sometimes, even way too late at night, the doorbell rang. She rose from the bed, threw on her long gown and went out to the landing to have a word with the untimely visitor. I was not quibbling, I understood that a nurse, even a masseuse, had somehow to survive in this world. She had a beautiful body, like in black-and-white pics of Soviet amateur pornography against the backdrop of filled up ash-trays and empty bottles on the kitchen windowsill, and she herself was good-looking too, in that Transcarpathian style. But she seldom took off her nightgown in bed, if at all, she said there was a breast problem, mastitis, or something.

And after ramming into way too many "eager-top-unsurrenderable-downs" that felt even refreshing for a change. More so because she knew how to use her lower parts. "And may I do it that way?" And she would get unleashed in such a "way" which I never imagined possible, and had not even dreamed of. Yes, you may and welcome all the way!

When dropping to Room 72, she skillfully used the scanty furniture set there… In between having a sex we were on genuinely friendly terms. She shared her plans for buying me a pair of slippers, and promised to cure would I catch a venereal disease. She told me…

Well, it doesn't matter though, or else I will never finish, like after a mug of medicinal alcohol, sort of. In a word, I wanna say, Balzac was not a fool, albeit a Frenchman…

~ ~ ~

At the May Day demonstration, willing or not, you had to carry the portrait of one or another member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the privilege rooted in your being one of just 4 boys at your course. After airing the member over the main square in the institute's columns, it still had to be taken to the Old Building and handed over to House Manager.

When I was leaving the House Manager storeroom, Slavic warned me that he saw Eera in front of the Old Building, and she asked him where I was. Slavic knew that I had broken up with her for over a month already, that's why he warned.

The separation was painful for me. The evenings stretched endlessly long without her voice over the telephone. And I was missing her German-like gait from afar… Seeing her occasionally in the institute corridors, I got it over and over again that there was no one as beautiful as her, and my heart tightened bitterly. But still and all I had to be firm and put the final period, after all…

So, to avoid an unbearably painful encounter, I decided to sit tight in the Old Building until she left. Moreover, the day before while on a country outing, Maria and I arranged to spend May Day at her place…

For the outing, we went to the station, and, in the bright rays of the sunset, walked along the path by the tracks to the forest on the outskirts. On the way, we met a couple of workmen. One of them started to yap, but I just ignored the bumpkin – anyone would envy when you walk so a juicy beauty to the wood, while the nightingales around tear themselves apart in so vigorous trills that stand upright like one solid wall of sound…

We found a clearing among the trees, and in the gathering darkness, I built a fire. It was very warm, she even took off her cloak. We did not have glasses for the wine brought along… "More! A! More!.."

The bonfire was already burnt out, and screening for a sec the iridescent glow from its coals, some dark shadow rushed across the clearing. A homeless dog. How he scared her!

There is nothing more appealing than a freaked out woman, and you, a kinda epic knight, protectively embrace her shoulders. And your stud feels like a ride… "More! Mo-ore!. A!."

We were returning already in the middle of night and had to wait for long at the stop for the last bus carrying workers from the defense plant Progress after their second shift. Or rather, female workers, there were only women on the bus giving Maria way too hostile looks. Like, we were slaving like damned, while that slut horsed around with her cuntfucker. In spring even females grow intolerant and bitchy…

That is to say, that I did not need that meeting with Eera and I waited for another 20 minutes before I left the Old Building.

"Sehryozha!" She still waited between the massive columns on the high porch.

Well, what can I do if she's so beautiful? If I have to keep in check my breath, hold my heart back from leaping out?. We walked round the corner bypassing the marble plaque "Here N. V. Gogol studied in…", and stopped beneath one of the tall XIX-century windows overhead. I was appalled by the wanness of her face, not sickly pallid though but like the pure white of exquisite, almost transparent, porcelain. And I couldn’t tell what clamped my heart in a mightier grip – her beauty or my pity for her.

What a witless brute I’ve been, torturing both her and myself for so long, and so savagely! At last, I am embracing her again. She both laughs and cries in my chest. O, how I love her!.

That cursed month she was coming home and just lay down prostrate overwhelmed by the pain felt verbatim physically, and nothing mattered, absolutely nothing. Mommy did not know what to do, "What's wrong with you, Eera?"

"Nothing."

Stupid beast! Bastard! How pale she is! How desperately beautiful. "Come on to the Hosty. The room is vacant."

She happily hurried home to change and tell her mother that she was celebrating and staying overnight at a girlfriend's.

(…most of all in the Soviet holidays I liked the calm condensing after demonstrations… The streets got void of traffic and pedestrians; people retired to their homes, start celebrating…)

The hostel was also empty. Except for Room 72 on the third floor. That was our room, our hostel, our celebration. The Feast of Reconciliation…

Sveta might nigh spoil the feast… Taking advantage of the vacuum in the silent corridor of locked doors, I ventured to the toilet in my underpants and on the way back I dropped into the washroom. It was there that Sveta screwed me over, "What's that!"

And she began to talk my ear off that she'd never put up with any personnel extension without preliminary coordination. She was forgiving me Eera, forgiving Maria, but who was that new slut in my room?

"Are you crazy? That's Eera!"

Well, she had just peeped in and there was someone standing by the window. Where could Eera possibly get such a cute nightie from?

As if I knew; I saw it for the first time too…

On the second day, I left the Hosty in the morning. The big deli in the main square was stormed by the crowd after a rare deficit: white-and-blue cans of condensed milk.

Proud of my hunting skills, I returned to Room 72 and Eera greeted me from the bed by the window, "Wow! You brought condensed milk?" I was f-f.. well, I mean, flabbergasted. "You… what the… er… that is, how?"

"You had such a swagging nose, anyone could read it."

And possessing such skills to write counterfeit letters? There was something, not that there… In short, I surrendered, and we started to live on together as one tightly united family. In learned books, they call such life-style polygamy in which I was the joining link, sort of.

(…the joining link should master and keep to one golden rule – no names. "Darling" is the very thing, it sounds pleasant and causes no misunderstandings.

Maybe someone would pull for "kitty" or "bunny", which is a matter of taste, but, in my humble opinion, why to start up a superfluous menagerie?

"Yes, darling…"

"Come on, darling…")

Sveta did not kick up unneeded dust anymore. She clearly knew her exact place – after Eera, before Maria. Officially, the girls were not introduced but knew about the existence of the rest. Eera and Sveta, for sure, and Maria, most likely, as well.

Talking to the darlings, I was not especially keen on that topic – who knows what about who, but Nezhyn was a provincial town where everyone knew everything about everyone else… When in the third year, I had a pedagogical practice at School 2 and once at the break a teacher of theirs started divulging a kinda disparaging information about Maria. When at it, she carefully kept her eyes off me addressing exclusively my course-mate who also practiced at that school.

That tootsy of my course-mate was a very studious student, and she took lots of pains when preparing for her first lesson at that practice. At home, she collected all her dolls and puppets and arranged them in a row seated upon the piano lid, so as to get properly prepared, "Good morning, children! Who is on duty today?."

(…infantilism is a lethal weapon for me, more dreadful than a machine gun. I mean, it makes me wanna puke…)

But the newlywed couple on our floor in the Hosty were well matured. After their marriage, they got a whole room for themselves. The students living there before were moved to other rooms, only the furniture remained.

At times, to relax after intense mental work in their educational process, they arranged "races" on Saturdays. A couple of other students from the floor were invited then for the overnight stay, and after the dinner they started the "race" heats with the change of partners. I do not know the details though, I did not participate in those races, Vitya Kononevich was the principal jockey there…

(…honestly, if you ask me, having a sex is something just for two. It is of so intimate a nature that even a condom doesn't fit well in between the lovers.

No arguing, I'm fairly old-fashioned on this point but there's nothing doing about it, that is my innate quality…)