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

~ ~ ~

In summer, I was passing my pioneer practice at the camp "The Young Construction Worker" near the town of Sednev. At the times of Chernigov Princedom there stood a mighty fortress for defense from Tatars, Lithuanians, or Novgorodians – whoever would come to plunder. And now of all the fortress there remained just one tower. From the tower, a steep winding descent led down to the bridge connecting the sandy banks of the Snov river. After the bridge, you got into a small pinewood with two pioneer camps, side by side: "The Young Construction Worker" and "The Young Chemist", and then followed the boundless vistas of wheat fields…

My trainee position at the camp was that of a substitute caretaker. That meant that when the caretaker of some platoon went to Chernigov, I was to oversee the on-duty kids from her platoon laying tables in the canteen for breakfast, midday meal, tea, and supper, and if on that day the camp was taken out to the river, I had to watch that the platoon's pioneers did not splash outside the iron grating but only within the fenced part of the calm flow.

Going to Chernigov was not so easy because of transportation problems, and caretakers seldom went there. So, my remaining job was to switch on the music in the radio-unit room broadcasting thru the camp loudspeakers, and also to announce on the microphone the "dead-hour" and "lights-out". I don't know why, but those announcements I gave out with the feline drawl of a fag, "Attayntion! Leets-ouwt for thee camp!."

The radio-unit was installed in the room of the senior pioneer leader, partitioned from a small gymnasium whose only equipment was one bed on which I slept. The door in the far wall of the gym opened onto the stage of a small open-air auditorium bounded by Pine trees.

I was kicking back, and reading what would turn up in the camp library, and growing my beard because after the camp I was going to work with the student construction platoon of the NGPI. In short, I was wallowing in the life of reprobate unshaven renegade…

The position of senior pioneer leader was filled with my course-mate, Irina from Bakhmuch. I somehow did not immediately realize that she was courting me, until her invitation to the ancient tower of Sednev with its tiny built-in romantic restaurant.

The loopholes in the thick (of about a meter-and-a-half) walls opened to the fleeing shadows from summer clouds racing by, over the plain far below, like a horde of raiding robbers… She treated me to the blackberry liqueur, yet I did not like that over-sweetened cloying swill.

After two years of studying at the pedagogical institute, Irina obviously re-evaluated the standpoints and priorities entertained by her during the night which we spend together when being first-year students. However, I couldn't respond to her advances in a natural way. Not because of being a vengeful jackass, "aha! you didn't give it then, so go without now!" No, it's not like me. The reason was my dutiful submissiveness to the received instructions. When said "no", I retreat obediently, but in order for me to get at it again, there should be an explicit invitation "come on, let’s do it". She pinned her hopes on the liqueur alone which was not straightforward enough…

And I also couldn't concentrate on the other trainee, one more Irina, but already from Nezhyn, the daughter of Pro-Rector Budowski. Firstly, I disliked both his bald head and his moral character in general, and secondly, she was an unmistakable virgin.

Consequently, the champion laurels in the contest, quite predictably and inevitably, went to the blonde sports trainer, again Irina, from the adjacent "The Young Chemist" camp. At first, we had dates on the riverbank in the company of her "Spidola" receiver, but in my gym, it was much warmer…

Once I entertained a group of visitors comprising Slavic, Twoic, and Petyunya for playing Preferans, and Sveta for everything else.

After the game, the boys started racing around the gym after the hedgehog brought to me by pioneer kids earlier on that day. I asked them to stop molesting the poor creature, and they switched over to voyeuristic eavesdropping to the erotic arias sounding from the partition to the radio-unit room, where Irina from Bakhmuch entertained a guest who visited her on the same day, also a Bakhmuch guy.

Then I gave the boys a bundle of camp cloth blankets to soften their sleep on the bare floorboards and turned off the light. Sveta, who had the legitimate right to a part of my bed, performed from that elevation before the 3, frozen in awe and admiration, music lovers on the floor, a concert for a flute without an orchestra…

Another time I went to Nezhyn, sort of a day off, but there I behaved like a disgusting swine. I swallowed too much of pills, and dining in the canteen room at the station I almost dozed off over the bowl of borshch, as if it was a kinda pillow. Naturally, Eera got outraged and left. Slavic, who was also going to Chernigov, had to drag me, like a vegetable, into the diesel train. Because the branch line to Chernigov was not electrified… Traveling by the diesel train, I slept off but still remained bored utterly because everything was so dull…

I felt like that for the most time of that practice. So dull and unnecessary was my lie to a mujik in the fields, who asked which camp I belonged to. Why did I say I was from "The Chemist"?

And it was dull when a pack of youngsters from Chernigov came to the Pine forest by the daddy's Volga of some of them. They kicked up thief-swaggering and one of them pulled out a big handsome dagger, I looked around for a stick, although he obviously wanted to get relieved of the weapon. A split-second of delay, the moment was lost and the trophy went to the chauffeur of the camp. Well done, mujik!

And because of being bored and off-hand, when diving in the river from the bluff I, like, dislocated something in my back and a couple of days was turning to the sides with my whole body.

Taking a swim at night was dull as well, even after some car drove on the bank flashing the headlights at the girls, who had already changed their mind to enter the river, and I had to get out of the water in the altogether, just as I had come to this world, armed only with a distorted expression of the unshaven face. It’s hard to say what aboriginal mask my mug looked like at that moment, but they switched off the headlights. The next day Irina from Bakhmuch was making sport of my cock size not living up visually to her expectations. It did not hurt my feelings though because everything was so dull and boring…

"A vain present, a chance present,
Why are you given to me, Life?."

Yet, when on Poseidon Day the pioneers of both camps united in catching and dragging me along to drop into a pond by the river, it was not boring, it was right. At first, I felt offended and wet, but then like laughing. Well done, kids! Serves good the bastard!.

The last night at the camp, Irina the trainer and I once again sat on the river bank. There were so many stars that you could hardly see the sky behind them, and I had blues that everything was somehow flowing away and getting lost. She, for some reason, did not want to have a sex, and we just sat leaning our backs against each other. The stars were glittering both from below—reflected in the silent flow of the Snov—and also from above. They crowded everywhere and would always be and still it was impossible to keep them. Everything flows away…

Probably, I had blues because of the "Spidola" was babbling a sermon in English. I did not understand at all what all that was about, because it was not the English Department Language Laboratory texts about the family of Parkers, but you could guess that it was a sermon.

Then I escorted Irina to "The Young Chemist". She went in and locked the gate, but I called her again. We climbed the grating of the gate from both sides and had the final kiss, a camp kiss atop of the grates. Forgive me and goodbye, my loss…

~ ~ ~

I knew the city of Pryluky for a long time, yet in absentia. The cigarette packs of Prima acquainted me with the city's name printed on their back, "cigarette factory m. Pryluky." During the years of German occupation, the city of Pryluky was drastically rebuilt, so the streets in it became strictly parallel and methodically perpendicular to each other. Except for the outskirts where the bus station was built later…

Commander of the student construction platoon was Vladimir Maiba, from the Physics and Mathematics Department. The platoon's Commissar was Igor, a Ukrainian nationalist, who suspected Maiba of being a secret collaborator with the KGB and, therefore, was constantly jeering at him and discrediting his authority in every possible way. And I was Leading Specialist, sort of, because in my military ID they advertised me as a "bricklayer".

Besides the mentioned commanding staff, there were 2 girls and 15 guys in the platoon. In the city we stayed at a hostel of "chemists" but just for one night and the next morning, we had to leave for Auto-Depot 4 located by the nearby highway between the Ivkovtsy village and the town of Ladan.

"Chemists" was the general term for convicts who, because of their supposedly good behavior, were paroled from Zona to finish off their time "at the chemistry". Any plant or a factory with production lines hazardous to health, or a mine, or a construction site usually served "the chemistry" grounds for paroled zeks. The regulations for "chemists" were pretty strict. They should be present in the hostel no later than the hour specified, never get drunk, nor bring whores and abide by many other restrictions. However, they were not locked and controlled by the turnkeys and did not sleep in the common dormitory. They even got some payment though decimated by their curator militiaman who decided whether they remain on parole or get remanded back to Zona…

After the shower, I and Igor, who, regardless of his being a Ukrainian nationalist, spoke a very good Russian and dreamed of moving to St. Petersburg, the cultural capital, went out to check the geometrical correctness of Pryluky.

"Katranikha! I am damned! Is that you?"

"Don't shout! Some of my students may be around. I'm a teacher here."

Well, of course, sorry, how could I forget myself. For one year already she was disseminating there the seeds of the wisdom, of kindness, and values eternal…

Auto-Depot 4 was all by itself, neither in a village nor in a town, just behind the trees in windbreak belt along the highway roadside. First, there stood an old two-story building. On the first floor it had some locked warehouses, and on the second floor, there was a spacious hall with beds for students of the construction platoon plus a small room for the 2 girls by it. Then there followed a one-story stoker-house and, still farther, the vast grounds of Auto-Depot 4 behind the tall red-brick wall surrounding a dozen of garages, a canteen, and many other buildings, some of which still under construction, and in the middle of the grounds, there stretched the wide and deep foundation pit. Lots of steel wires crisscrossed the air above the pit. Plumb under the intersections of the spanned wires, our platoon had to assemble formworks and fill them with concrete to produce the "cups" for the insertion of support columns. But all that was to be done later and for the start, there were shovels to exercise "dig-dump”. Everything was so nostalgic familiar, and only the uniform was different.

After a working day, the stoker-"chemists", Yura and Tomato, opened the respective valve inside their stoker-house and from an outside pipe, sticking out high up on the wall, there gushed a broad horizontal jet of water falling to the ground about 20 meters off the wall. You could stand there and take a shower, pretty chilly, sure thing, but it was summertime around, right?.

A week later Commander of the platoon called a general meeting. The agenda of one issue – feeding the platoon contingent, because the food in the canteen was just a…

(…well, I don't know, that same havvage as anywhere else…)

The meeting approved – to cook food of our own resources procured for money borrowed by Commander from the Auto-Depot foreman in advance, on account of our future labor achievements. From now on the girls' position was not only that of paramedics but cooks as well…

Each evening, as it got dark, in twos or threes, we went on a raid to the potato field of the nearby collective farm. Sweeping along the way whatever looking good enough.

"A fiery construction platoon
Hot as the steppe fire!."

The students paid compliments to the cooking skills of the Phys-Math girls. Well, I don't know, yes, on the whole, it was hotter than in the canteen, but otherwise the same havvage as anywhere else…

A couple of times we went to dances in the village of Ivkovtsy by the water-tanker truck, manned by a young driver. The girls were traveling in the cab, the rest of us wherever they could grab hold at the iron cistern of the truck… We danced to the hits of Leshchenko:

"From the fields, the sadness flees away,
The anxiety also hits the road,
And the vistas wide unfold ahead…"

After the dances, we whizzed back thru the breeze and the darkness, everyone hugging closely his piece of the steely cistern…

Once for the midday break and meal, we visited the nearby city of Ladan. When translated into English, "ladan" becomes "incense" with all connotations to it. But I also presented the view of manifold meaning with that curly beard and hair hanging to the shoulders from under the twisted gauze bandage the color of earth to keep it from falling into the eyes. You couldn’t make it out at a glance who was that – an excommunicated priest or Rambo from black-and-white photos. However, when Rambo in the central nosh-bar of Ladan demanded a bottle of white to be served in a half-liter beer glass in one go, everything fell in place – a drunk from Auto-Depot 4!

I come back from Ladan with a pleasantly slackened thirst only to find Sasha Chalov, a third-year student from the English Department, in our dorm, who arrived from Pryluky, his native city, together with a friend of his and a briefcase bulging with ammo.

The Sun in the Tumbler

Gee!. The ours did learn, after all, turning out poetic stickers for ornery swill!. Adding that Sun on top of the prosaic berry&fruit from Ladan necessitated catching a breath. I was preparing for a peaceful repose among the bushes of the windbreak belt, but would those so-called bros allow you to breathe? Sasha and his chum tore me away from our mutual Earth-Mommy, dragged to the second floor and dropped onto the bed there. Some fucking lot of comradely solicitude it was! I had to throw up and out from the second-floor window like that jet from the wall in the stoker-house…