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

I did not belong to the workmen and ate with the second party. We lined up in a noisy, diversely dressed, but equally hungry, queue along the wall by the door blocked with a paramedic's body leaned on it, while inside they were sweeping off the tables after the previous eaters. The paramedic also controlled that someone would not get in the line after having his share in the freshly fed party.

At last, he commanded, "Come on!" And we noisily barged thru the unusually narrow door into the dining room with three windows parallel to the long tables, kinda medieval refectory if not for oilcloth on the tabletops. They stood in three rows abutting two opposites walls, and the narrow cross-sectional aisle in the middle cut them into six separate tables. We sat at them, overstepping the benches screwed to the floorboards.

Amid the animated noise spiced with loose, uninhibited, gestures, we waited for the constantly on-duty blond masturbator to bring the wide plywood tray cluttered with aluminum bowls, spoons and bread slices. The tray was unloaded and those who got the havvage put in front of them started eating, while the rest watched the process and waited for the chmo dispenser, also from the shut-ins, to fill the next tray-load behind the partition with his window.

We finished everything off and began to wait for a tray with tin cups of sour-sweet kissel, whose skin I hated so much when at kindergarten.

Once I overslept the feeding and had to eat with the third party… Some grievous sight… There, people treated their faces as Plasticine, kneading out of it the most grotesque masks for no obvious purpose. But then and there I found out who produced baboon shrieks, which I heard from my wardroom, and who was answering him with the roar of a wounded elephant. There were none of conversations, even of most desultory nature, at the third party feeding.

And yet, at times, someone from the second party would mix into the third one. Not because of sincere love for living nature, but simply to use the opportunity and eat the neighbor's ration while he was making faces to the window grates. Sasha, who knew my brother Sasha, was favoring the third party and often ate with them so as to curb such funny in the head, yet crafty, freeloaders.

Those 3 meals were the noisiest time of day in the fifth unit. If someone started to make a needless noise at an unreasonable hour, a pair of paramedics ran to his wardroom and, following a rectifying blow or 2 with their bunch of keys on his head, fixed the troublemaker. That is, they crucified him, in the supine position, tying his wrists and ankles to the iron corners along his bed spring mesh by means of yellowish cloth straps, obviously former bed-sheets worn-out to shreds…

After feeding, everyone dispersed to their wardrooms or strolled aimlessly over the brown tiles in the corridor floor. I would not say that we were starving there – same havvage as anywhere else. Once, each of us was even given 2 pancakes for a dinner; though being cold, they bore a drop of some sticky jam.

Another outstanding event was that incomprehensible late-night feast, when in the hall appeared 2 laundry basins brimming with sausage of two types: liver-squash and blood-mixture, and everyone might grab as much as he wanted. Except for a pair of the third party members, who suddenly grew sane enough, but the fat shut-in in charge of the basins drove them away. Discrimination happens anywhere…

Yet, the main delight in the life of the fifth unit appeared with the stately, flax-haired, nurse who brought it in a pillowcase bulging with angular pieces of refined sugar. That pillowcase she took into the "Senior Nurse" office and every day those, who had the brains to come and ask for, received a few pieces of not just pressed but a real, refined, sugar, which did not melt on your tongue in just 2 seconds.

I, for one, had brains to ask twice a day. And that sugar I tried to consume unnoticed because those too deeply troubled in their head to turn to the original source were annoyingly sane enough to beg it from me. To show that it was over, I patted at the emptied pocket, but then, recollecting that lying was not the right thing to do, I shared the sugar from the other pocket in my pajamas.

Once in 20 days a slim black-haired woman with a sharp nose and, naturally, in the white smock, came to the hall in the middle of the corridor. You could see at once that she was from the glassy-eyed, but I had already kicked that stuff and, therefore, accepted the version of the fifth unit old-timers stating that she was a former circus acrobat. The acrobat cut the stubble off our faces with a hairdresser machine, and for the haircut she used scissors if you did not ask to crop it also with the machine in "zero" style…

The cultural life was ensured by the TV set. One hour before, and one hour after the news program "Time", during which it was a break for the procedures. Some 10 watchers gathered around it dragging stools and chairs from their wardrooms. The paramedic by the observation wardroom also moved nearer…

At night, the wardrooms were lighted with the electric bulbs until the daylight. Probably, so that no one did something to himself or his neighbor. Sleeping with the light on is inconvenient because even if in your dream you were free to walk some city streets or in the wild, the inescapable presence of the bulbs was felt even there. Yet, the corridor was not lighted so too brightly for the on-duty paramedics to normally doss down in their chairs.

In the small hours, Wardroom 9 was usually visited by a young guy eager to show how dexterously he juggled a pair of boiled eggs from a delivery. Sometimes he demonstrated a small, yet proficiently executed picture, where a stark naked male was moodily chasing a girl with only her high boots on and the triangle of Russian crown-fillet on her head. Her long taut braid flapped on the run and, in fright, she looked back at the meter-long dick of the determined pursuer. Apparently, a copy of some original from the first half of the XIX century.

Then a frail man with elusive eyes came to take the young guy away. According to his repeatedly shared story, he got to the psychiatric hospital after accidentally breaking the window panes in the khutta of their Village Council with a walking stick, not omitting a single glass… He kissed the youngster in his pate thru the stubble hair, called him "mnemormysh" and led him back to his wardroom. It was his habit, to kiss any young person in the pate and call him "mnemormysh".

(…never before or later heard I that word from any one at all, in no dictionary whatsoever you’ll find an entry for the unheard word, but still the gentle tenderness of its sounds makes it so lovable, soft, like, say,"pinniped pup", can you feel it, eh?—I’m serious, not kinda pulling for a fella from our side, you know, repeat any of these 2 for 10 times before shaving and you’re guaranteed from cuts even if using Neva blades…)

~ ~ ~

The time for getting up was announced by paramedics jingling their key bunches against beds’ side rails so that by the arrival of the head doctor and the nurses the fifth unit life would orderly flow in its channel. First of all, all flocked to the toilet.

2 / 80 = F(0)!

Two toilet bowls for 80 shut-ins are too FUCKING few(!),

so queuing to them started in the corridor. The line continued inside, closely parallel to the walls in two rooms, firstly, in the hallway, and then in the toilet itself.

In that anteroom, I once fainted for the first time in my life, absolutely for no reason whatsoever. Black darkness congested in my eyes, and rubbing my back against the wall, I slipped down to the floor and sat in nowhere. However, I did not lose my being completely and after a while, though still thru the darkness, there began to come echoes of distant voices explaining to each other that I just passed out. Then the blackout turned murky gray growing gradually lighter, then I opened my eyes and returned into the line.

For those who couldn't keep in check their excretory system any longer, a tin basin with handles was placed on the floor tiles in the center of the actual toilet room. When it got filled up full, some of the nuts would ladle the excrement with his hands into a separate pail and empty it into one of the two bowls, the remaining urine was poured out in the stub of a drainpipe in the corner.

There was some tacit time quota for squatting on the bowl, when it ran out, the nearest queue started to grumble, and a minute later some of the deaf-mute nuts, from those lining in the hallway, would yank you off the toilet bowl without explanations why…

After breakfast, the toilet was locked until the end of the midday meal, when they opened it briefly for washing the floor. The last chance to use the toilet was the half-hour following the dinner, because of the final floor washing of the day.

My rather lax attitude to the urinary matters before entering the madhouse left my bladder lacking the proper discipline to fit into that quite simplistic schedule. When feeling the urge, I lapsed into a panicking confusion – how to withstand it until the next half-hour of the open toilet? Appealing to paramedics in whose possession was the coveted key did not make sense because of their unchanging answer, "Piss off! You can't use the toilet, the floor there is washed." So to avoid a warming up, explanatory, hit over the head by the whole key bunch, you had to conform and piss off.

One day, driven to desperation, I tried to take a leak into the sink on the end wall in the corridor, and got jabbed on the ribs by the shut-in who often smoked there on the sly, admiring the sink, like, it was a park fountain on repair.

During another crisis, overcoming shame, I turned to an elderly nurse with keys on her belt, trying to delicately explain my need and plight.

For a considerable stretch, she couldn't understand my muttering about what I felt within my bladder, but then she opened the door to the shower and, indicating the drainage trap, ordered, "Puddle here!" No wonder they were named "sisters of mercy" in the Czarist army…

~ ~ ~

One time, the shut-ins were driven, in groups, to the bathhouse in another building. There, it was necessary to stand under the lukewarm shower in a slippery cast-iron bathtub, disgusting long streaks of slimy-brown rust stuck forever to the flaky enamel in its sides. While you soaped the washcloth left by the previous shower taker, the next one, naked already, pops up by the greenish eggshell of the bathtub with a remarkably intense glare at the rotten concrete in the too low ceiling while giving a twitch to his cheek of not immediately interpretable meaning… The small waffle towel got soaked before you could wipe half of yourself, and the residual moisture got absorbed by the underwear on the way back to the unit…

pops up the next to the greenish eggshell of the bathtub with a remarkably intense glare at the rotten concrete in the too low ceiling while giving a twitch to his cheek of not immediately interpretable

In the afternoon, it was better not to come too near the windows in the hall. A couple of tower cranes were seen thru the panes, slowly turning their beams at distant construction sites, and from the bus station, there came muffled announcing on PA loudspeaker about the departures of buses to indiscernible destinations and wishes of a good voyage. The sun was shining, the snow melting, life was going on out there, but you were on this side of the vertical iron bars…

Saturdays were for reception of visitors to the fifth unit, who were not allowed on any other day of the week. The harsh ringing of the doorbell in the corridor called the on-duty nurse to check who was out there, and then they shouted along the corridor the name of a shut-in to go outside the door and see his visitors.

My parents came on the very first Saturday. I was greatly surprised because I did not tell anything to anyone when leaving for Romny. As it turned out, the following day my landlady informed them of my absence, they called SMP-615 and were told where I got off the bus the day before. At the bus station, someone also recollected seeing me, and the tangle got unraveled…

We met on the landing in front of the door to the fifth unit, one of the long benches was vacant and we got seated along it, in one row. My mother, pushed the fluffy kerchief back from the head onto her shoulders and said, "How's that, sonny?" and she started to cry,

My father, so as to calm her down and in the way of consolation, announced, “Again! Started again!" He did not take off his fur hat, and did not cry, but kept his eyes directed at the bench opposite, where another pair of parents fed all the goodies from their cellophane packet to their shut-in – a crazy guy who did not talk at all because he had been bitten by an encephalitic tick.

I also was eating all sorts of homemade cakes and buns brought by my mother, and Eclair cakes with custard filling from the cooking shop by the Under-Overpass, because she knew what I loved. There was also lard in the cellophane packet to take it with me, but I flatly refused. So, at the end of the visit, my mother handed the bag to the nurse for storing it in the dispenser room shelving. Still and all, I declined going to the dining room when they yelled from the corridor to come and eat deliveries. For the principle's sake…

On the following Saturday, my brother and sister came instead of our parents. My brother had no hat on his head, but he frowned just like our father and said, "Why, Sehryoga? It's no good you do it."

As for Natasha, she did not cry but kept upbraiding me, "Tell me just one thing – you really need it? Well done, good fellow!" She said that Eera did not come, although she phoned her so that she knew.

Eera never came to Romny, but I understood that she had to look after the baby… On March 8, they brought a gurney to the corridor with a pile of free postcards for the holiday. I filled one out to Nezhyn with congratulations and love for Eera. While writing, I was horrified by the ugly quiver in the message lines, and the handwriting was anything but mine. Probably, because of injections…

~ ~ ~

The head doctor of the fifth unit never started whim-wham discussions of my preferences in music, she was busy with curing me. I was injected with iminazine intramuscularly, 3 times a day. An initial couple of days, it still could be tolerated, but later there remained no intact spot in the buttocks. One shot got upon another, sore nodules cluttered my ass and turned it into a terrain of tightly swollen knolls, it became difficult to even walk along the corridor, leaving any orbiting out of question. Besides, the skin down there, denied any time for regeneration, started bleeding, not too profusely but constantly, the hospital underpants soaked thru and stained the pajamas from inside.

The most unbearable was the third, concluding, injection of a day. It was shot at about 9 pm, the tinkling of the steel boxes with syringes pulled on the gurney along the corridor, made my teeth clench in a spasm. The tinkles gradually neared our wardroom, and the on-duty nurse appeared in the doorway with a syringe in her hand. Having done an injection, she returned to the corridor after another syringe for the next shut-in.

Once a nurse missed me and, so as not to remind her, I pretended to be asleep and, when the gurney tinkled away to Wardroom 8, I could not believe my own luck. An hour later, the nurse called me from the doorway, holding a syringe in her uplifted hand, she smiled victoriously, "Hoped to skip it, Ogoltsoff?"

In the manipulation room, before they started a round, those syringes were charged according to the list, and when on the gurney remained an unused syringe, she realized that someone had been missed… You remembered – well done, but why to smile?. At that moment, she reminded me of Sveta from my polygamous past; probably, by her hairstyle…

And I was also injected with insulin intravenously, but at first, the head doctor warned my parents that they should agree to that treatment. Beltyukov, a young but experienced neighbor in the wardroom, told that they extracted insulin from bull's liver, there was nowhere else to get it from. The purpose of those injections was to bring a shut-in to a coma. Many were cured that way, subtracting the percentage on whom the drug worked incorrectly. Still, the number of survivors remained higher. The tricky part was snatching the shut-in off his coma in time.

Shots of insulin were done to me and Beltyukov in the morning, one insertion in the vein inside arm elbow. Then the nurse called the nearest paramedic and he came together with volunteers from the shut-ins to fix us with rags to the iron beds we were stretched on. They fixed only our arms but firmly, so that we could not wring them away when led back out of the current coma.

After about 20 minutes, the nurse returned to the wardroom to fill out some ledger, sitting at the white desk in the corner. That's why it was placed in that improper place – she was watching us like milk on fire not to let it drip over when seething.