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

Once I had to retake a test on the subject he taught. The affair was to be settled in the Old Building, of course. Making sure that he got out of the New Building in the right direction, I went to the Old Building and waited for his approach. 10 minutes later I grew worried and combed thru the 200 meters of the asphalt path between the Old and the New Buildings. He had just reached the corner of the New Building, stopping every counter moving teacher for an animated discussion. I returned to the position by the Old Building but this time got seated on a bench under the giant Birches. 20 minutes later, he could be spotted by the big sad bust of Gogol. Good fellow, Roma! The half of the distance over!. Yet, do you have much of a choice when the teacher is late for the appointed retaking of the test you failed at the first go?

It took Roma 62 minutes to get over that f-f..er..I mean, flimsy 200 meters, but I'm sure that was not the limit of his knack for loitering. For all that, I bestowed him with the handle "ebullient slacker". His official appellation contr?lеe was "Roma-Phonetist" though because he was distinguished against the rest of teachers at the English Department by the purest pronunciation of the sound "th". It was he who read the texts about the Parkers family on the tape-recorder for the students to parrot them in the booths of the Language Laboratory. No wonder he was referred to as "Phonetist"…

Besides the Phonetics, we were taught lots of other subjects, different and necessary. Take, for example, the Comparative Lexicosemantosurdographosemasiology – your tongue would go to pieces before you manage to pass the exam. That Comparative Lexi…well, whatever…ology was studied under a hereditary teacher. The dynasty broke off at her because she was a retired virgin and chastely buttoned her teacher’s raincoat with a huge safety pin up to the fold in the dried-up skin under her chin.

She was an irreplaceable pensioner because it was her, who wrote the textbook on the subject. A skinny paperback pamphlet from the institute printing house with the smeared typeface authored by…well, it's embarrassing…the name was such…with some whistling sound in it…or maybe hissing?. Anyway, her name was shorter than that of the subject… Yes, I remembered! Shakhrai she was! (And it's not a handle, faith! Some Ukrainian last names do make you think before you jump.)

If during her lectures she allowed herself too much, sort of, walking along the aisle between long desk rows, say, how do they stick down my comparatively smeared pearls into their notebooks? – there was nothing easier than putting her in her proper place. Undo your shirt on the chest, 2 or 3 buttons, and stroke wistfully and gently your hair on the solar plexus. That's all. The hissing wanderings got safely blocked and till the break bell, she would be sitting at the teacher desk like a nice little girl, staring at her plan of the lecture which she knew by heart… I do adore virgins.

Zhomnir once said that after even the briefest talk with her, he got an itching desire to take a bath. Well, tastes differ. I do not remember if I took a shower after the exam on that most Comparative – well, how-you'd-call-it – at which I also had to scratch my chest…

And all those were our specialization subjects, apart from general ones lectured by teachers from other faculties and departments. And each lecturer fancied themselves a Don Corleone extorting due respect, like, he or she made me an offer I couldn't refuse and returning to the student hostel I would immediately plunge into the study of their subject… Yeah, as soon as I'm back to the Hosty!

The only one who evoked sympathy in me was Samorodnitsky, for some of the philosophies because he lit a cigarette at his exam. Openly so, imposingly, and, with all that, in a good manner – he took from his briefcase an ashtray with a lid and shook the cigarette ash off into it.

To that examination, I came from the Hosty and started driving some kind of a fool improvising from a lamppost, possibly from some different philosophy. But he suddenly got interested, sat upright, and put me 4. He said that I needed to change the Department, and he would see to it, but soon after he emigrated to Israel…

So, I was practicing at the school of the sugar factory at the station of Nosovka (20 minutes by a local train from Nezhyn in the Kiev direction) and Zhomnir was in charge of our group of trainees.

Early in the morning, we went there from the high platform of the Nezhyn station – the team of 10 students from different groups and Zhomnir in his teacher’s raincoat and dark blue beret, gripping his briefcase with cave-in sides.

(…everyone dresses to fit their role model.

Beret, raincoat, briefcase – read "teacher". Can you imagine a plumber in such an outfit?. That's what I mean…)

Before the practice, my mother sewed me a jacket. It looked like a geologist anti-encephalitis jacket but from a thicker tarpaulin of green color. I liked it, especially the color of so a Robin-Hoodish hue…

The most vivid impression from the practice was left by the football match between the sugar factory team and that from the locomotive depot of the Fastov station. The game in the championship for the Cup of the Trade-Union Committee of the South-Western Railway took place on the school football field. I went out of the school building for a break between the classes and got stuck.

It was a warm and sunny September day. On the green grass of the field, some 20 men were chasing a single ball, and a separate mujik ran in their wake and whistled with shrill trills. The crowds of fans were represented by, firstly, a grim man in black overalls and, secondly, me. I start the count with him because he was the first to stand by the field edge, and he was a more intent watcher – it took me a while to go under the trees behind one of the goals for to stuff a joint. On coming back, I left a respectful distance between me and the other fan not to tease his sense of smell with vain hopes or odd reminiscences. I just stood in the sun and enjoyed the championship match.

A sharp sting in the neck threw me from high. I recoiled, slapped the wasp, looked back and saw Igor Recoon sneaking up from behind with a guileful grin.

I hid neither the joint nor the smoke, "Igor, when you have any questions come up openly and speak easy."

He effaced the smile and said, no, he was just so, and then hurried to the school where sounded the long bell for classes.

A young errand-boy arrived on his bicycle with a bag-load of doping for the local bozos in the field. They jogged, and gulped, and passed the bottles to each other to furiously rush to attack.

The right halfback of the visiting team passed the ball to the central forward, who went to the corner of the penalty and with a slight but accurate blow rolled the ball into the bottom left corner of the goal. "Goal!" shouted the striker together with the rest of his team.

"No!" roared the local slobs.

Jogging back to his half of the field, the striker came across a wall of 3 locals. "No goal!" they howled at him.

"As if I argue," answered he bypassing their line, unable though to suppress his contented smile.

There was no way to prove anything because the goal had not any mesh and the referee at the goal moment was looking up in the sky together with the bottom of the bottle handed to him by a local footballer.

I approached the first half of the match-watchers, and put a direct question, "So, was it a goal or what?"

The mujik in overalls surly nodded. I rejoiced that the truth, even though mutely, was still present in this world, at least among the working class.

The match for the Cup of Trade-Union of the South-Western Railway ended in a draw, 0:0…

Zhomnir warned that as Head of the Practice, he couldn't put me more than "three" for the chronic absence of lesson plans written by me though they were the must. And I couldn't force myself to at least copy those f-f..er..I mean, fanciful plans from Igor because I was physically unable lining dolls in a row on the piano lid.

I asked Zhomnir not to worry and put whatever mark he could. I really did not give a f-f..er.. I found it meaningless, I mean… When on the third floor of the Old Building the fourth-year students' practice results were fixed next to the Time-Table, I was the one and only having "three". Zhomnir alarmed and started to convince Deaness of the English Department that it was wrong, and he could not have imagined I was so unique. She impregnably advised to look before jumping.

The current Deaness always tried to have the looks of Alice Freindlich from "The Office Affair" movie, only that no Myagkov turned up for her, and she stayed a flinty bureaucrat. Yet, in her cupboard, she kept the skeleton of her divorce on the grounds of sexual incompatibility, because the girls from the English Department did not leak unverified information.

Okay, enough is enough, that'll do for the strangers of all kinds…and now enters…you!.

~ ~ ~

Your personal conception took place on the fourth floor in the Hosty. That particular date Eera arranged herself since it was a room of Phys-Math girls and among the students of the Physics and Math Department I knew only that pair of cooks from the student construction platoon, but they lived in the city.

Shortly before the event, I once again fell in love with Eera but, at first, I did put the end to my polygamy. And could it be otherwise? To Eera alone I owed that salvage shot from gonorrhea.

So, on arrival in Nezhyn for the final academic year, I became straight and reasonable. And I dryly informed Sveta of my reformation when she attempted at the former familiarity. We became just a nodding acquaintance and vague recollection to each other.

And I also returned Maria the book borrowed from her several months ago. Though, I chose a late hour for nullifying that bifurcation.

She opened her door to the staircase landing, in the unbuttoned robe over her nightie. If we assume the possibility of time shifts, then at that moment it easily could be I in her bed awaiting when she'd sent away that dork outside… I did not develop this theory but simply handed the book in, thanked, and left…

And since then my love belonged only to Eera, absolutely undivided, especially after the mentioned falling in love with her once again. It happened when at a chance meeting on the third floor of the Old Building in the wing occupied by the Philological Department, I persuaded Eera to skip a class and, after the bell shut up, we sneaked along the wide empty corridor to the side staircase. There, we did not go down the stairs but followed the ascending flights, although the building had no fourth floor, and the last flight was blocked by a partition with the locked door to the attic. We stopped in the middle of that flight and kissed.

(…her classic breasts under the river algae shade of green in the knitted sweater to match her mermaid-style hairdo, the silk skirt on the strong hips swelling the sketchy outlines of white abstract bunches on the black background, tailored by Maria Antonovna, Lyalka's mother, high wedge Austrian high boots, her eyes slant all too slightly, the slender white Lorraine cross of the frame in the arched tall window behind her back, with the Renaissance azure blue of the sky in its panes, the foamy white splash of dove's wings on the other side of that cross – all that and everything else merged into the picture that I will see and remember all my life…)

But having memories alone was not enough for me, I wanted to keep all that or to stay myself within that desperately inexpressible beauty. The kisses were to no avail, they couldn't stop the fleeting moment. So all that only remained there, all I could do was falling in love…

In the evening, already on the stairs in the Hosty, Eera passed me the key to the room of the Phys-Math students, so that I went first to open it and she would follow a minute later to keep the rules of secrecy… We did not turn on the light. The bed stood by the window overlooking the Oster banks invisible in the darkness.

With Eera, the burden of protection lay on me, that is, getting out in time to avoid abortion was my responsibility. But on that particular night…a tad bit more!..I'm in control!..more!..just a sec…y-u!..out of the blue!..too late…the train's left…

You were on that train, in the crowd of all-alike fellow-travelers, only you turned out to be a little bit nimbler…

Well, and then – a smooth transition to the already checked out technology: as a quality man of noble disposition, I had to marry. More so, that I would not survive another Eera's report on abortion under general anesthesia…

When Eera was still a schoolgirl, she found a ring on the bridge over the Oster; a nick-knackery ring of those that they sell at stalls among the other casual pieces of fake jewelry. Eera brought it home and her mother, Gaina Mikhailovna, got sad and distressed but she said nothing to her daughter…

Was Eera's marriage with the divorced me a misalliance? Undoubtedly and undeniably. Even a brief matching of the would-be newlyweds' parental pairs against each other would prove it to the hilt:

Spare-Parts Checker at the RepBase vs.

Teacher of German Language at the Nezhyn State Pedagogical Institute of Order of the Labor Red Banner named after Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol;

Locksmith at the RepBase vs.