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

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That summer saw the reconstruction at 13, Decemberists. As projected by my father, the door from the veranda to the attached room was sealed and the latter got connected instead to the living room. The changes allowed for the heat from the kitchen stove to reach the attached room in winter making it livable all year round. The rest of the khutta was renovated too.

After the reconstruction, I moved to the attached-joined room and a friend of Natasha came on a visit from the city of Shostka. She had been a group-mate of my sister at the Konotop Railway Technical School. Later, Natasha’s girlfriend got married and divorced but she had no regrets because of her skills at sewing jeans like "Levi's" and though the fabric in her jeans was notably not genuine the business thrived and brought a good income.

She was not too tall, but well-tanned, and she had dyed hair to emphasize her appetizing figure. Yet, moving towards righteousness, I, certainly, kept in check my glances and never asked Natasha for how long her friend was going to stay.

Coming back from work, I sat at the desk in my room and read a book in English keeping a dictionary at hand, or else Morning Star, the newspaper of British communists. Probably, they were not exactly communists but, nonetheless, their paper was sold at newsstands in the land of victorious socialism for 13 kopecks piece. After dinner, I worked at translations and had no spare time for special communication with the guest.

I did not know how Eera learned about the visitor at 13, Decemberists, but she suddenly started asking questions about Natasha's girlfriend and then announced that she herself wanted to move to Konotop, so I had to talk about it with my parents.

Returning to Konotop on outspread wings, I at once called my father and mother into the yard. They got seated, side by side, on the bench under the tree by the porch way on whose steps I kept standing and taming effervescent joy frothing within me. Then I informed them on Eera's wish to move to 13, Decemberists. And I was completely unprepared for what happened next.

My mother crossed her arms over her chest and said that she would not accept Eera because it was impossible for two of them to get along together in one place.

I heard her words but could not get it – what's that? My mother who always pulled for me was now sitting on the bench, with her arms crossed, saying she wouldn't have Eera around here.

I turned to the father for help. He shrugged, "What can I do? All documents on the khutta are issued in her name, she is the landlady."

It was already dark in the yard, but in the light of the lamp lit in the veranda, I saw my mother's unwavering, unyielding stance. Desperately, exerted I my mind to limit in search for any worthwhile arguments, appeals, for anything at all, but it was blank and void and dead sure that nothing whatsoever would mollify her.

My father went over into the house and I, overpowered by the hollow emptiness in my head, sat limply on a porch step.

The wicket latch-handle chinked, and the visiting girlfriend of Natasha's entered the yard. She was alone, without my sister. "And why are you like that?" asked she, and got seated next to my mother.

My mother immediately enlivened and started to explain that the next day the 4 of them—my parents, Natasha and Lenochka—would go to the RepBase camp for recreation by the Seim river. However, the refrigerator was full and those staying back at the khutta could cater for themselves.

The girlfriend approved and turned so that the light from the veranda would boldly delineate her large breasts under the taut clinging turtleneck.

Even dumbfounded as I was by the result of the negotiations with my parents, I realized that I was doomed, and when left eye-to-eye with such breasts, without anyone else in the whole khutta, no bridle would restrain me safely. I knew myself and got it clearly that my righteousness would not persist for a whole week, and even the fact that she was my mother's nickname would not save me because, no matter what the fridge was full of, the innocent lamb prepared for the sacrifice was I….

The next day after work, I did not go, as usual, along the railway tracks and the wall surrounding the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant to Decemberists Street, but got on the streetcar going to the Settlement and rode to School 13. From there, I moved along Nezhyn Street, entering the yards of khuttas with one invariable question, "Where can I rent an apartment?"

At number thirty-something, I was told that in the khutta under the big birch opposite the Nezhyn Store, they seemed to be renting.

The birch was found in the indicated place, and it was so old and tall that the red brick khutta under it looked very small. However, it had two rooms and a kitchen, apart from the dark hallway-veranda.

The landlady, a single pensioner Praskovya Khvost, suspiciously looked me over, but showed a room of three by two meters, with the window looking out onto the wide trunk of the birch in the neglected front garden. One-third of the room was occupied by an iron bed produced before WWII and the room itself was entered thru the doorway from the kitchen screened off with hanging curtains. To the right from the same kitchen, behind the same curtains in the doorway, there was the owner's room.

For me, it was essential to leave 13, Decemberists on that very day, and we agreed on 20 rubles a month.

(…Later, Lydda from our team told me that I could find an apartment in At-Seven-Winds for just 18 rubles, but I kept to where I was…)

Coming to Decemberists Street, I borrowed a handcart from a neighbor, put it at the wicket to number 13, and only then entered the yard.

Seated in the folding bed-armchair, Galya was watching TV. I said polite "hello" and that I was not hungry, and then went over to my room to collect the books and disassemble the bookshelves.

The self-made windows in the room did not have leaves to open, that's why I had to take the things out iterating thru the living room and the kitchen. So as not to change the shoes with slippers at each go, I paved the floor with pages from Morning Star. The young woman in surprised silence watched my manipulations from her armchair.

I took the books and bookshelves' parts to the handcart waiting in the street. All fitted in, only I had to drive slowly because the varnished shelves, stacked on top, were sliding over each other.

In the khutta by the Nezhyn Store, my landlady had a visitor. The 2 old women grew silent and watched the underground functionary shipping stacks of illegal literature to his new safe house…

Back in Decemberists Street, I returned the handcart to its owner and gathered some of my clothes—the briefcase from Odessa stood at the ready—then I said polite "goodbye" to Galya, and left her to enjoy the TV because I knew how to win with dignity.

(…of course, it was not her fault to get into the thick of a family sorting out, yet later she managed to marry a guy from the Settlement, not for too long though, but that's already her personal story…)

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Defying the Wash

The landlady fondly quoted her deceased spouse and every other day boozed with her veteran lady-friends, not in the kitchen though, because of the tenant, but behind the closed curtains in the doorway to her room.

Softly, I kept turning pages in the rented room and did not intervene with anything – no use forbidding folks to live their lives in style.

My connection with 13 Decemberists was not cut off entirely. I had to ask my father to manufacture at the RepBase some spare parts to the wardrobe designed for installation in my room. He produced a prop and two thin tubes according to my sketch; my mother sewed the needed piece of burlap and it turned out a fabric-walled wardrobe in the corner, as it once was in the hallway of our apartment at the Object. However, since then the advancement of technology moved far ahead and the top for my wardrobe served a Polystyrol plate, light and thick, of those used for thermal isolation finishing inside the walls of railway cars renovated at the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant.

The room was seemingly too squalid to become a safe house, and conspirators shunned to show up. So I switched over to considering it a hermitage cell whose appearances were to my liking, especially the black-and-white bark of the birch behind the window pane allowing for no other view; sometimes, when tired of translations, I just sat and looked at the black marks in the huge tree trunk.

When I settled down, my mother came for a visit, escorted by my father. In the kitchen, my former and my current landladies measured each other with mute, irreconcilable, glances while exchanging official nods. Then my parents stood and sighed silently under the raw bulb hanging from the ceiling on its dust-blackened wire. To all their questions I responded in a polite, though monosyllabic, way and they soon left because the one and only chair in the room was not stimulating much longer stay.

Mid-September, in the middle of a working week, Eera came from Nezhyn. She found our construction site in At-Seven-Winds, I changed in the trailer, and we went off to the city. I always liked that romantically loose cloak reaching below her knees.

We went to visit Lyalka. His wife, Valentina, was relieved to learn that everything was fine by us. A couple of times, after occasional quarrels between me and Eera, she used to later come to Konotop asking Valentina to call me from the Settlement which was a long way from Peace Square. And so, with Valentina's mediation, Eera and I reconciled upon the folding coach-bed covered with a hard carpet in the Valentina and Lyalka's living-room.

In fact, you'd hardly call them "quarrels", it's only that at times Eera got in a huff and felt like yelling. Like, because I was so ugly to look at, which she discerned after we went out to watch some sort of a comedy with faggy innuendos produced at the MosFilm studious. Or else, that no one would ever be interested in those translations of mine…

But real wrangles between us just did not work. Despite my tongue-tiedness, I somehow managed to convince her that such yells were not our role, why to give out other people's clues? However stupid it might seem, but I myself understood what I meant although could not express it properly…

And it happened just once that I misbehaved. That time I brought my payment from SMP-615 and put it on the table under the old pier-mirror. Eera asked how much was there and then started yelling that was not money. She did not need such alms!

Then I grabbed that skinny stack and tore it in two before throwing out of the window… While Eera was away out in the yard, I did not know what to do and kept cursing bitterly my lack of restraint.

At my stay on the next weekend, Eera somewhat shyly shared that they do accept glued bills at the bank.

(…and that's correct because banks also need money, and 70 rubles are not scattered in your path, except when you chanced to pass under a window on the first floor, but even then in a torn-up condition…)

What I, personally, was surprised by at that occasion, it's the poor quality of paper used for printing money. Say, if you cut some funny money of newspaper—the same number of bills—it would be harder to tear it up that my payment. It literally went in two of its own will, in my hands….

Then we visited the new Culture House of the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant built next to Bazaar. They say the construction cost amounted to 6 million rubles. The Loony’s Director, Bohmstein, moved over there to embrace the same position. The Culture House had only two floors, less than in Loony, but on the upper one, there was a ballroom with a bar.

We came to my apartment the moment when Praskovya was driving her orgy of alcoholic widows out into the neighborhood. I introduced her and Eera to each other in the kitchen. The landlady carefully examined her and, in my opinion, she also liked Eera's loose raincoat. She even kissed her suddenly and me as well, on the spur of the moment, and then went to sleep behind her curtains.

Eera made a small grimace of misunderstanding, however, she did not dare resist, and as for me, I did not care at all. One time Eera and I were going by a local train, and some gay guy from the opposite seat started to make overtures to me. Eera simply flew in a temper; she even started bickering with him, and that was ridiculous because I always was indifferent to them. Say, once, Sasha Chalov's daddy kissed me on the cheek, and now it was tipsy Praskovya. Who would care?

Yet, in my entire life I've never come across a more sweet, lasciviously tender and, at the same time, so eagerly tight-fitting cunt than on that night; even by Eera herself it was both the first and last time that I happened to feel it that way. As for where the carnal treat of a lifetime had sprung from – the austere interior of a monk’s cell or the kinda blessing double kiss by the boozed landlady – I remain in the dark till now, and pretty firmly too.