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

So our Seagull made an extra round to bring us to the base, yet knowing there was no pay awaiting there diminished our enthusiasm usual for the rides at this time of day. The pitiful lack of the puniest interest even in the most pressing issues of our time demonstrated by the busload of us brought to sit thru the meeting, which rolled, with catastrophic swiftness, to its end, filled the cadre with bitter indignation which made him forget the rut of protocol and ask another question, both stinging and exotic, "How could you be so passive?"

At so unfamiliar sounds the folks simply did not know what to do with their hands, that’s why I had to get up and respond rhetorically, "And who, I wonder with your kind permission, would the active lead if there were no acquiescent passives, eh?" Still and all, that f-f..er..I mean, forlorn diploma keeps you obliged to follow a certain line of conduct.

The inspecting functionary was unprepared, in his turn, for such a counter-question, and the meeting got safely closed…

So, the SMP-615 management decided they would show a proper respect to the system of higher education in our state by making me, a carrier of a diploma for such an education, an Assessor of the Comradely Court which required one Chairman and two Assessors for the period of one year, until the next report-and-election meeting of the trade-union.

At the Assessor position, I discovered a latent tyrant lurking inside me, who used to come up with suggestions of the most draconian punishments. For example, a month of solitary (sic!) correctional labor for the plasterer Trepetilikha, in the northern, far-off parts of the SMP-615 grounds. Whereas, for her, a day was lost, if at the bus ride from the station to At-Seven-Winds she would not yackety-yak a couple of colleagues to coma.

Of course, from the SMP-615 production building (the place of the supposed correctional labor) to the check-entrance house by the gate, there was a distance of merely 200 meters, and the check-entrance house was the seat of Svaitsikha the watchwoman, whose tongue was also in no need of oiling. However, the court did not heed my proposal and sentenced Trepetilikha to be removed for 3 months from the position of straw boss in the plasterers' team, which meant the cut in payment to the amount of 10 rubles for each penalty month. Anyway, she got off lightly because her offense could easily have a political resonance.

The trial revealed the following chain of events:

Trepetilikha peeked out of a window in 110-apartment block and saw that the accountant of SMP-615 was going home.

Well, and why not go? She lived in the At-Seven-Winds area, and it took her about 15 minutes of a leisurely stroll to get home from the SMP-615 administrative building. And the time was already twenty to five. Her gross mistake was in answering the question of Trepetilikha who drooped out of the window, "Well, well, and what's there to be carried?" The plasterer meant the cellophane packet in the hands of the passer-by.

"Fish," responded the dimwit of an accountant.

The word "fish" served the detonator for what followed. Trepetilikha went to pieces, collected the women of her plasterers' team and, with prolonged intonations, informed them on the unfair distribution of life's good things, despite the era of developed socialism, "They're sitting there in the offices! Made themselves warm and cozy! An electric heater under each bitch's asshole! And we a getting stiff from cold! And when it's fish, it's for them?! Enough, girlfriends! Collect your spats and hawks! Yes, and even so brazenly she mouthed, 'It's fish I've got.' But do we have no families?!"

The fact is that our Seagull bus at times brought food from ORS, aka the Department for Workingmen Provision. Once, when we were on the 110-apartment block, they brought fresh buns, and on the 100-apartment block, it was mineral water in glass bottles of 0.5 liters.

When and what was meted out in the administrative building of SMP-615, I had no idea, but the following day the women on Trepetilikha's team did not start working and that, from whichever viewpoint, was a strike.

I never knew whether they had brought them fish or some other equivalent, but the finishing work was, after all, continued and Trepetilikha stood before the court. That is, our Comradely Court. The SMP-615 management could not turn a blind eye to the fact of idle time with a political lining to it, especially when the deputy chief technologist wore a tie with the imprinted sickle and hammer. Which says a lot. Yes, my cloth scarf bore a pattern of Kremlin tower on top of the five Olympic Rings and the inscription "Moscow-80", but I had nothing to choose from, while the neckties at the Department Store were fairly diversified with crisscrossed, striped, and even dotted pattern…

On a mature contemplation, it can’t but be admitted that rejecting my proposal to transfer Trepetilikha to the SMP-615 base, the Comradely Court made a wise decision. Keeping her there would tantamount to playing with an open fire atop of a powder keg. Had they brought there something of which she did not get a share, she'd blow up the whole base.

"There are certain women in the settlements of Russia…"

Without false modesty, I have to note that in the villages of the Konotop district one might come across even more cool females whose potential could only be measured in megatons or even by the Richter scale.

"Phui! What brazen folks I have to get along with! The whole of the village was out to hassle me! I’ve barely managed to bark them off!"

And the welder Volodya Shevtsov would even get exiled, had the court played along with my suggestion.

He was a very professional welder who had worked for 20 years at the KEMZ Plant, and there was some kind of hereditary intelligence about him. Maybe, that's why he was drinking like a fish.

When looking at his crisp curly hair, I somehow had associations with the City on the Neva. There was some intelligentsia flair in Volodya… elusive feel of the white nights in Pete-Town… subtle allusion to the Peterhof fountains… But he got tanked up like any other boozer, especially on paydays.

At the court session, the Chairman described the case as follows, "We get off in the station square after work and, by reaching the next from there traffic-lights, Volodya manages to get plastered in full."

Well, it was he who slept – from the station to the traffic-lights by the Under-Overpass there were 2 delis plus the Rendezvous bar in the station square.

At that point, I suggested deporting Volodya to some countryside where there were no traffic-lights tempting simple innocent souls by their unhealthy satanic wink, which would take away the reason for Volodya to booze until he's steaming.

The court rejected such inhumanity, and Volodya himself took offense at me, without emphasizing the sentiment though. And that's a pity, I did miss his classy refinement, "If you would like to go and fuck yourself, please?" at which splendidly worded suggestion, you felt the refreshing gust of breeze from the seafront of our Cultural Capital…

SMP-615 was based in Konotop, but it had several branches operating at other places: a pair of jacks in Kiev, a construction team plus a truck crane in Bakhmuch, a team with a BELARUS tractor in Vorozhba… The third case was that of the overseer at the Bakhmuch branch. They finished somewhat building there and were leveling the adjacent area with a bulldozer borrowed from a local organization. The overseer noticed that a pile of the moved earth was about to bury a defective bridging slab left over after the project completion. So he took the slab into the yard of his friend or, maybe, relative to cover the earth-cellar pit. The building was safely delivered, and then some rat reported a plunder of the socialist property.

At that court session, I had only one question for the criminal, "What would happen to the cracked slab had it not be taken to cover the earth-cellar?"

He gave a discontented shrug and replied, "Would get buried in the ground. What else?"

I demanded to declare public gratitude to the overseer for his contribution to raising the general welfare of the Soviet people. It did not matter who was whose relative, but all of us were one united family.

Due to the general monotony of life, that proposal was also neglected… At the next year's report-election trade-union meeting, no one mentioned my name for election to the Comradely Court. As if I had never had that f-f..er..I mean, fully worked off diploma in my life…

~ ~ ~

After you turned one year old you came on a visit to Konotop, briefly though, for a week or 2. That summer there were frequent thunderstorms. After one of them, I drove you for a spin in your carriage. My mother and Eera were against it, but I did not want to sit in the house and wait for the next teeming rainfall. Finally, Eera conceded for our going out, and they went back to sleep, people grow sleepy in the rain.

There were lots of huge puddles all over the road, but you and I still managed to make a roundabout over almost all of the drenched empty Settlement – from the streetcar terminal to Bogdan Khmelnytsky Street, and back along Professions Street. You were adequately dressed and sleeping under the buckled apron and the raised top of the carriage. Only at the end of Professions Street, when the rubber tire fell off the right front wheel, you woke and sat up, and grabbed the tire which I had placed over the buckled apron.

You grabbed it with your both hands as if it was a steering wheel, but I took away that wet and muddy piece of rubber. You whimpered a little, then hushed but never went to sleep again. Decemberists Street was not far away already, and we reached there on just the hind wheel pair in the carriage…

Then the weather cleared up and in a couple of days I took you out to the field near the streetcar terminal. There I got you out of the carriage and put on the green grass. You were not too firm on your legs yet and just stood with your hand leaning against the carriage side.

I lay down in the grass nearby. The green field slanted upward into the blue sky, and larks were singing from up there. So loud, joyful. You stood there until your red pantyhose showed a dark patch of moisture. I had to take you back home because pampers had not been invented yet…

Another time I took a spare pantyhose along with us and drove you to the pond by the Approvals village, which Kuba and I had been visiting on our bicycles. It's not too far, 5 kilometers or so. You slept all the way.

The pond by Shapovalovka was rather big. I placed the carriage on a low sandy beach to watch your reaction to an unfamiliar world because you had not seen any ponds yet, it was like the first walk-out from a spaceship to an unknown planet.

You woke and sat up, left on your own with something you've never seen in your lifetime. I stood behind the raised top, so as not to interfere with the first impressions.

You turned to the left—only the wide water surface was seen from your viewpoint—then to the right, there was just the same incomprehensible substance, and you burst into tears. Of course! Waking up in the middle of who knows what and all alone. I had to show up and soothe you before we rolled back….

The clothesline under the load of already dry washing stretched from the wicket at 13 Decemberists to the front porch. On the way, it passed above you sitting in your carriage. My mother stood next to it with the basin in her hands to collect the dried things. Suddenly, you gripped on something hanging alongside, rose and stood up in the carriage at all your height.

My mother told me to remove the baby and you, like, responding, threw both your hands up, as if in a dance, as if to say, “See how big I am! I can do what I want!”

And then thru my mother's eyes, there flicked something so dark and eerie that I instinctively pulled you back. Rather, I pulled the handle of the carriage and, by that move, I yanked its bottom from under your feet. You tumbled over the carriage side onto the ground. The spot was, luckily, soft soil and you, fortunately, landed on your back.

Instantly, I picked you wailing at the top of your lungs, but Eera was already darting from the garden in panther leaps to pound her fists against my head and the shoulders because my hands were busy holding you…

The local train taking you back to Nezhyn was overcrowded with the passengers standing in the aisle as one thick mass as well as in the space separating the bench-seats that abut the car walls between the windows. When I had to take your plastic potty to the toilet in the car vestibule, I kept it over my head like a waiter his tray in a crowded tavern…

(…in my memory, I keep two sets of images which can be easily retrieved and considered in detail. The first set is a collection of apocalyptic impressions, full of howling darkness, crowds in panicky stampede, cold horror.

The second one contains nice, heart-warming pics but they arouse poignant longing for something unreachable, or underachieved. Like that view thru the open door on the bus pulled up nearby Vapnyarka, next to a lean concrete post bearing a blue tin square at its top numbered 379, and behind it there opens a narrow gap for a country road in between the walls of ripening wheat halted immovable, as well as a boy of ten by the roadside post, his hand aloft over his wheat-color-haired head to wave goodbye to the departing bus…

I mean, all those mental slides with you in them are from the second set…)

~ ~ ~

After coming back from Odessa, I lived in a never-ceasing fit of panic, in agonizing fear of what, sooner or later, had to happen or, maybe, had already come to pass. The fear was fueled by jealousy and resentment at not some specific one, but at his taking my Eera from me. The excruciating dread was kept deep hidden as some shameful want, but no camouflage eased the choking grip of misery that never let me go.