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

In fact, they came in need of a bass guitarist for "playing trash" at weddings in the city of Pryluky. So, the following two weekends we serviced two nuptials, yet both for free because the newlyweds were lucky enough to be relatives of that Sasha's chum, so it turned just toiling for grub.

Getting wiser, for the second wedding I brought 3 students from the Physics and Mathematics Department along with me, like, indispensable sound engineers…

~ ~ ~

The handle "Tomato" suited the stoker-"chemist" perfectly because his face had red skin and his hair was of natural orange color. He was the most joyful "chemist" in the world. Having his skills at sharping cards, I'd also walk my life shedding benevolent blessing smile on all four. After shuffling the deck, he dealt hands with eight tricks in hearts for himself. Though fully aware that he was stacking the deck, you could not follow how…

In the excavated foundation pit we worked incompetently but with enthusiasm until, at the end of the month, the foreman presented the work orders for our labor. By his calculations, after deduction of the paid advance, our payment per worker equaled to the student monthly scholarship of 45 rubles. At that moment Auto-Depot 4 ran out of nails, and we had nothing to assemble the formworks with any more. The enthusiasm dried up completely because of the grim prospect of sitting idly for the final 10 days doing no job, during which period our food expenses would eat away the pittance we had earned.

The student construction platoon sent a negotiating team for talks with Director of Auto-Depot 4. The delegation consisted of me and one of the two paramedic-cook girls who did not understand a fig either in construction works or nails for carpentering, but she was a blonde, which quality imparts the right angle to the process of any negotiations… The chief engineer we met at the management office disclosed that Director was not around, harvesting crops in the fields of the patronized collective farm. Good news that a truck with spare parts was leaving soon for the patronizers' field camp, which could also take us along. If there were no blondes in the delegation, he hardly would mention the truck which he himself was driving with the blonde seated in the cab, between him and me…

I was surprised by his knack at recognizing the Auto-Depot 4 vehicles on the highway long before their number plates became discernible. The chief engineer explained that he saw them by their horns, and asked if I knew Tshombe.

Of course, I knew Tshombe who machine-gunned Patrice Lumumba when I was still a pioneer. However, I could not figure out any connection between the trucks rushing in the opposite direction along the sunlit highway and the dictator from I could not recollect which African country, because I was still a pioneer then. So, I denied any acquaintance and said, no, I did not know him.

The chief engineer explained that Tshombe was Auto-Depot 4 Director to whom we were riding now. This Tshombe of a director ordered the radiators of all the vehicles in Auto-Depot 4 to be marked with white paint to produce a large Roman digit V. The marks were visible from afar and, in the opinion of the drivers, resembled horns. The drivers cursed Tshombe's meanness because such marks added complexity to going on their contingent runs. However, Director himself was Tshombe even before the Depot vehicles acquired the horns…

Director was not in the field camp made up of four big trailers; they said he was reaping another field. The chief engineer with the brought spare parts and the blonde stayed by the trailers, and I went to Tshombe. The brand new water tanker of the UAZ-66 make was driven by a ten-year boy, the Director’s son…

Wrapped in the thick cloud of dust, a brown harvester with the white inscription "Niva" on its side was circling about a yellow sun-smitten field. I went to meet it but the harvester rumbled by, and I had to run after, and jump onto the short ladder that led to the inclined cab of the machine. The harvester roared and pounded on in its ride thru the dust. For the first time in my life I had climbed aboard such a juggernaut, but everything went on intuitively – here’s the ladder, that's the door…

In the narrow cabin, a man in a workman cap sat with his back to me and watched thru the glass of the tilted windshield how his combine fell and drew in jagged portions of the cut-down wheat shoots. I slammed the door, cutting off the knock in the bunker behind my back, and joined staring at the shags of ears crawling-up the harvester conveyor belt, while reporting to the top of his cap that our platoon sat jobless, nails were over and we wouldn't earn a kopeck. The engine rumbled, the cut shoots twitched, collapsed onto the wide rotating shaft and flowed, in rared bunches, up the belt. Director never turned around but answered that he would see what could be done, and let the chief engineer come to see him.

I got out of the cab into the cloud of dust about the bunker, climbed down the ladder and jumped off. Having seen neither the face nor the skin color of the man I had talked to, I still felt that some dictators were worthy of respect…

Back at the field camp, they called us into the trailer with a long table for the midday meal. Such a dinner does not fall under the category of havvage, it was some really cheerful chow. The cook in his camouflaged by layers of grease, but otherwise white, jacket splashed half-dipper of sore cream into a huge enamel bowl and filled it over with red steaming borshch. A big piece of boiled meat was put on top. On transferring the bowl’s content into me, I got filled to the brim.

For the second course, the cook served golden balls of fried young potatoes in the veil of dill, then poured with meat sauce. Absolutely delicious, but having no room for the additional treat, I finished it off only for principle's sake.

The compote seemed a glut excess, yet I managed to poured it, gradually, in.

With thanks for the meal, I rose and very very carefully ascended the steps in the front porch. Reaching the ground, I unbuckled my belt and walking the gait of parted dividers proceeded to the garden at the field edge. There I gradually laid me down on an armful of dry hay under an Apple tree, in the hope that maybe I still would not explode. Somehow.

And so it happened! By the time the blonde came into the garden, I felt normal. She sat under the same Apple tree, leaned her back on the trunk and smiled at me her sweet inviting smile.

I was amazed by the exact coincidence in the scenic design – a garden around her and me below the Apple tree, and only Serpent was skipping the picture. And, with warm tenderness, I began to think of Eera and pride myself for keeping staunchly truthful. Because I abstained from falling in the usual groove and going along with the flow despite all too ingratiating conditions for the purpose – the bed of hay in the Apple-tree shade in the Garden of Eden conveniently supplied by the blonde…

The next morning saw me, and the chief engineer, and a long tape measure marking out the projected walls of two inspection holes in the boxes under construction. Tshombe did find what to keep us busy with…

A couple of days before the completion of the term at the construction platoon, Sasha Chalov popped up at the Auto-Depot 4 on no particular purpose, just to drink the sun in the tumbler. Giving a tender jerk to his briefcase he, as was his custom, recited his favorite quatrain:

" One won't sound at all
And two won't jingle this way
When people of such quality
Live in the Soviet land!"

From the poetry standpoint, the piece sucked more than absolutely, yet in the same breath, conveyed an optimistic message, inspiring and bright. The stoker-"chemists” helped to sort out the contents of the portfolio, which made one bottle for a snout and soon after the consumption, Sasha Chalov left.

It was already late, so Tomato and Yura also steered to their stoker-house but, on the way, they knocked on the door of the girls' room. It happened to be locked. They knocked again and then, carried away with the recollections of their happy school days and themselves—adolescent hooligans—they started cutting capers around the locked door. Some paper slips were lit to burn and shoved in the gap under the door. The girls defended their safety pouring, from inside, water from their kettle.

In the background was I, stretched out on my bed, producing a soundtrack of hue and cry. A sudden rage against the whole female tribe flushed me, like, because of them all was so boring and awry that I myself did not know what I needed. So, I lay there yelling the most disgusting things.

Were the door open from the very beginning, the "chemists" would simply get in and out, but now they were burning with hunting ardor. Under the sword of Damocles of getting sent back to Zona, they surely had no intention to jeopardize their present conditions, they were just having fun.

However, the poor girls in the besieged room were not up to all these logical operations or seeing any fun at all, when a pair of convicts were attacking their door, under my instigating, idiotic, shrieks from the common bedroom, "Bitches! Wolf whores!" Finally, one of the guys from their Phys-Math course approached my bed and said that it was not right. I shouted to the stokers that that was enough, and Tomato with Yura faded in the woodwork right away; "chemists" have no problems concerning logic.

Next morning I knocked on the door to the girls' room. It was not locked. I entered and apologized for the previous night. "Afraid of expulsion from the institute?" asked the one with the brown hair.

Hardly would she believe that I was just ashamed. Even less, could I bring it over to her that I did not know exactly whether I was afraid or wanted to be sent down…

(…looking back brings not too much fun because of frequent temptation to spit in your own face. However, the truth remains true only when it's unvarnished, and all that shit is also me…)

~ ~ ~

Since I earned some kopecks at the student construction platoon, I bought a doll for Lenochka. Of course, I wouldn't be smart enough to do it, but the All-Union radio station "Mayak" for at least thrice a day aired the most popular hit of season:

"Daddy, present me,
Daddy, present me,
Daddy, present me
With a doll!."

And during a day that hit would get you someplace or another and start to spin on and on in your brains even without the radio around until—click!—hey, that's an idea! So I went to the Department Store after a doll, but there were no dolls.

It wouldn't be right to always blame the era of shortages. It's no era's fault if good ideas pop up in the mind of a certain dolt when it's too late already… So I had no other choice but to buy a dog of the biggest available size with the price answering the proportions. The brute was no less than a meter tall, rigged out in trousers and a shirt. The same, practically, doll, only with a canine head…

Lenochka grew a healthy child, and she attended the big kindergarten "Sunny" not too far from home, in the apple orchard alongside May Day Street. All September, I was taking her to "Sunny" and coming after her at the end of the day, because those who worked at the student construction platoon were exempt from the patronage assistance to collective farms.

My beard was shaved off but I kept the hair long. Once I and my brother went to dances together. Sasha Basha had already replaced The Spitzes at the Loony dance-floor.

My brother had served his two-year hitch at the Baikonur cosmodrome and because of that he lost any chance of going out of the country for 20 years. Even visiting the resorts of socialist Bulgaria was out of the question to make sure he wouldn't blurb out to a chance CIA spy sunbathing on a beach that at the Baikonur, besides the astronauts, all kinds of test ballistic missiles were launched every week unnoticeable to all those spy satellites orbiting above us in 3 layers already…

Starting off to the Loony, I put my "Mona-Lisa" sunglasses on. You’d hardly need to wear sunglasses in the evening, but the "Mona-Lisa" in its thin golden rim was commonly viewed as the swanky symbol of a dandy dude of fashion as well as the jeans losing their blue dye with wear. Such jeans were pushed over for 120-150 rubles, which was more than an average workman salary. The mainstream trafficking of jeans to Konotop was operated by well-tanned Algerians who studied at the Engineering Technical School on Peace Avenue.

By the by, those Algerians were so naive. "He said-a come-a go out and talk-a. I come-a out, he kick-a me a kick. Why-a?" But for all their naivety, they never scaled the jeans price down.

And my jeans were bought for just 30 rubles and that what they looked, some Brazilian crap never fading with washing, nothing like Lyalka's "Levi's". Therefore, although it's hard to see thru sunglasses in the evening, they justified themselves on the dance-floor, veiling the misery in jeans…

To the dance-floor, my brother and I arrived after the break when the crowd crammed the place to the utmost. Sasha went around looking for his girlfriend, and I pulled up nigh the stage and remained there listening; Basha's guitarist, Marik, was good at solo riffs.

Then some salabon buster came up and gazed at me. Well, quite understandable too, got impressed with such a hippy-long hair, the "Mona-Lisa", and my metropolitan air in general. So, he stared for a while and got lost in the crowd.

I stood where I was and in a couple of minutes—good evening to your khutta!—the same buster popped up but already with his buddy. They approached me and, synchronously so, swayed back and—whoosh!—two fists were flying at me. I parried them with my shoulder but the collective impact of the double blow slammed me off and I, like, flew into some parallel space.

I mean it – it was a completely different dimension, as if under the sea. The sound of the dances instantly turned off and I was gliding or, rather, spinning along the concrete floor. From all the sides in that mute space around, lots of legs rushed towards me, each one all too eager to kick. And those legs were somehow not complete but, sort of, cutouts, from feet and up to knees, no higher. So they whooshed by from here and there, only soundlessly, missing to inflict bodily harm.

I yanked me up and jumped onto the bench by the circular grating and pressed my back to its pipes. That’s when the sound came back, the shrieks of girls and Basha's preaching on the microphone, "Friends, please, observe…" And round the bench, a pack of guys stood facing me and one of them, such a hefty slob, yelled, "Who're you? Who're you? Take off your glasses!."

I pulled the "Mona-Lisa" off and someone shouted, "From The Orpheuses!" They obviously were Settlement guys although I did not even know them.