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

That, at first somewhat chaotic, position I did manage to bring to the impeccable state-of-the-art perfection. Forgotten were the times when someone from the jacks or carpenters returning to work after a couple of days in the railway hospital grumbled disparaging complains about being neglected and not visited by me in the infirmary, whereas no bricklayer on my team was ever ignored. But how could I know? Their foremen did not report to me!

The problem was solved radically – at the end of every working day, I called the hospital registry office to ask if they had admitted for a treatment any employee of SMP-615 and they informed me even of abortions which could be safely counted out because the patient went home on the same day.

Then there arose the question of justifying the use of the 3 rubles, which the trade-union allocated for visiting a hospitalized co-worker. How to spend the sum, so that each sufferer received the equal amount of consolation, regardless of their age, gender, and other inclinations?

Not at once, but that issue also found the proper and—without indulging in false modesty—superbly clear-cut solution. One ruble was spent on drinks – the invariable three bottles: one of beer, one of lemonade, one of kefir. Cakes, marshmallows and/or other sweets were bought for the second ruble. For spending the final, third one, I went to the railway station to chose from the wide counter of the news stall, next to the restaurant entrance, the always popular cartoon magazine Perets, the Konotop city newspaper The Soviet Banner—which my father affectionately called "our little liar mutt"—and a couple of the central periodicals for the kopecks of change. From the station, with the fully readied visiting package, I walked to the hospital…

Frictions arose later when I was handing in the report for the spent 3 rubles to get reimbursement from the trade-union. "Boss" Slaushevsky rigorously protested mentioning the bottle of beer in the report. (Trade-unions and beer are two things completely incompatible, mutually exclusive, so to say.) Then, as a compromise, I suggested he write the reports himself and I would sign anything.

And now that, brought to the perfect equilibrium, shebang had to live no longer than until the November report-election trade-union meeting of SMP-615. Still and all, I did manage to feed waffles to Panchenko…

Hearing on the telephone the registry's report, that they had a certain Panchenko from SMP-615, I realized there was no time to lose, I did not want to run the risk of an abortive discharge.

First of all, I bought waffles for him. Then again waffles. And once more – waffles, for the entire ruble, all in different wrappers and from different shops…

With a short glance back over my shoulder at the fuzzy reflection of the 2 of us in the grate-less window with the black winter dark outside, I complimented the interior of the hospital hall. The cellophane packet in my hand issued a soft luring tinkle when I stretched it out to the patient. He could not refuse, as any other employee at SMP-615, he perfectly knew there was beer as well…

Why was I so uncontrollably laughing in backstreet short-cuts from shop to shop to collect waffles of hodgepodge hues? It's hard to explain, but I laughed splitting my sides, laughed till tears streamed down my cheeks…

A couple of days later, Lydda, a bricklayer from our team, asked me, confidentially, in the trailer, "Visited Panchenko?"

"Sure."

"With cakes?"

"No. To him – only waffles."

She knew that I never lied, for the principle's sake. I fell silent and tense because once again I had to restrain a surge of irrelevant laughter.

In a moment, Panchenko entered the trailer for some reason. Carefully, weighing each of her words, Lydda asked if I had visited him.

"Yes."

"With the package?"

"Well, there were some newspapers. I did not even read them."

No more words were said. The rest she poured out at home to her husband Mykola. That he was already a family man for whom it was a crying shame to look up to that wafflister Panchenko…

~ ~ ~

I did not immediately understand why my divorce proceedings left me a vague impression of some incompleteness. Something felt oddly amiss.

(…the trademark of my mental retardancy is that in the end, I get it plus stuff which, at first, I did not even guess to think of…)

Of course! That people's judge had completely forgotten to mention alimony! As if I was childless… The task of correcting the judicial error lay on my shoulders.

Since December, I started sending monthly 30 rubles to Red Partisans for which transaction, on the payday, I visited the post-office opposite the bus station. And, as you were not my only child, I sent the same amount to 13 Decemberists as well. For several years "30 to Nezhyn, 30 to Konotop" became my financial way of life, and the most recursive line in the pocket notebook. Why just that sum? I don't know. In total, that made up half of my earnings. For the second half, apart from my hygiene-bath-laundry expenses, I sometimes bought books, and every day had a midday havvage at canteens.

At first, my mother tried to convince me that the Konotop's "30" could be brought home and past from hand to hand, although she did not even need that money; my argument for the refusal was that doing it that way was more convenient for me.

My status of an alimony-payer was not a secret in our team, given my principle of answering direct questions directly, it was enough for them to ask why each payday I trotted to the post-office from our Seagull. And some women bricklayers also asked that question: why 30 rubles exactly?

Fighting back a wave of anger welling up in me from I didn't know where, I answered no more was necessary and were I even paid 3,000 rubles a month, the monthly "30" to Nezhyn and Konotop would remain just "30".

There were times when I was not able to send out the alimony, and then the line "30 to Nezhyn, 30 to Konotop" had to wait until the required sum was scratched up and, after sending it, a crude tick popped next to the line…

At certain periods, I sent only 15 rubles each way. One such period happened after I accidentally overheard a talk between my mother and my sister Natasha. They were discussing Eera's having sold my sheepskin coat, and keeping all the money to herself. I did note the disappearance of the sheepskin coat, but I had no idea where it was gone, neither how, nor why.

Now, to restore the reputation of Caesar's wife, I had to lower the alimony rate to 15 rubles, until the sum of 90 rubles was collected… I took the money to Nezhyn and, in the post-office on Red Partisans Street, I asked an occasional visitor to fill out the money order address as I dictated. In the space reserved for a personal note, I wrote, in a clumsy left slant, "for the sheepskin coat."

Why 90 rubles? Well, the market price of a new sheepskin coat with longer skirts amounted to 120 rubles. Mine was short and way back from the Object – the rest was pure Arithmetic.

On receiving so large remittance, my mother wanted to ask me about something, but at that time I was not on speaking terms with my parents, so there was no point in asking the deaf and dumb fool of me about "for the sheepskin coat."

(…here, it is worth to note, that the wisdom of outsiders cannot make us smarter. In one of his stories, telling about a young man who stopped communicating with his parents, Maugham remarks that in this harsh and hostile world people will always find a way to make their situation even worse.

I accepted the wisdom of the maxim, but I did not use it. It took 10 years of separation—4 of which were spent in a full-scale war—so that when arrived on a visit in Konotop, I started again to talk with my parents.

And it was pleasant to pronounce the words "Mom", “Dad". It’s only that the pleasure was as if wrapped in felt sheath preventing real feel and it somehow felt as if I was addressing not my parents, or it was not exactly I talking to them. Probably, the habit was lost or, maybe, because all of us, by that time, had already changed so much…)

As expected, trade-union positions were shut off for me airtight, but no one could ever violate my right to carry out my public duty. I mean the monthly watches in the ranks of the volunteer public order squad.

By seven o'clock in the evening, the SMP-615 male employees gathered in a long room of "The stronghold of the public order squad" whose entrance was in the blind butt wall of the endless five-story block by the Under-Overpass. That same building where there was the workmen canteen number 3, at the opposite end.

First to come was usually the auto-crane operator Kot which was not his handle nor code name of any kind but a quite innocent Ukrainian last name. He took a seat at the wall-butting desk with a load of old papers, pulled his headgear of cheap yet elegant rabbit fur, and started flipping thru the news accumulated from the month past since our previous vigil.

Then, one by one, we popped up too and started our discussion, full of decent virility, of this topic or that, to which Kot, still submerged into his perusal, would blear out from under the black fur of perished animal, that were our wise talk commenced even from as high as the orbital Salyut space station it would inevitably land onto the cunt of Alla Pugacheva or some more available, local slut. And, as a rule, he never mistook because of those coming late enough to miss his arrogant but accurate prediction.

At about 10 past 7, there came a militia officer—ranking from lieutenant to captain—contributed to the mujiks' gossip before pulling a drawer in his desk and handing out the red armbands with the black inscription "public order squad".

Grouped in threes, we left the stronghold to patrol the late evening sidewalks in vigil beats – to the station, to Depot Street, to the Loony and along Peace Avenue, but no farther than the bridge in the railway embankment. The round took about 45 minutes after which stretch we returned to the stronghold—some of the threes tired and emotional—and after a more enliven yackety session, set off for the final watch, so that by 10 o'clock we would go home until our next duty turn a month later…

A couple of times, KGB officers appeared at our late-hour matinees to share their instructions. The first time it happened on the occasion of the upcoming Holiday of the Great October Revolution, and we were instructed to be especially vigilant not to allow provocative pranks. When the KGBist left, a belated militia officer appeared to scoff at his predecessor, already absent, by asking us if now we knew it well that on seeing a spy we should immediately grab him by the collar.

The second and last time, a KGB officer, already another, disseminated confidential information in order to facilitate the capture, ASAP, of a former KGB worker who had disappeared in an unknown direction. She could have changed her hairstyle and color of her hair, explained the KGB officer showing us her black-and-white portrait, yet she got a special sign simplifying identification – a contraceptive coil of Dutch production inserted in her vagina… Our mujiks did not immediately get it what all that was about, but in a moment poured so suggestive questions that the KGBist preferred to leave in an accelerated fashion. After all, he only executed his orders and was not responsible for the stupidity thereof…

In one of the vigil rounds, the men from my "trinity" gave me a slip. Walking in a group of 3 red-armband ornamented volunteers, seemed more or less sane, but seeing that among the passers-by along the sidewalk of the tightly trampled snow under the windows of Deli 6, you were the only one who sported a red rag on your arm, made you feel as if you were not all there.

Keeping a brazen mug, to demonstrate that I did not care a fig, I went on to the station square. However, carpenter Mykola and driver Ivan was not to be made out from among the hasty silhouettes of passers-by. Some of the younger folks looked back at a strange phenomenon – a saucy solo public order trooper. It did not take being a genius to figure out that my co-volunteers peeled off their armbands, bought a bottle of "mutterer" in some grocery store and now, in a secluded spot, were gurgling in turn from the neck to tone up and feel warmer. Where? That was the question.

Most likely, in the quiet mess of short lanes and dead ends between Deli 6 and the high first platform of the station. In that jumbled warren of warehouses, venereal dispensary, a couple of private khuttas without kitchen gardens, and other lumber structures. There I turned not that I had any chance or desire to partake in that bottle but surprising 2 evasive Smart Alecs by the efficiency of the deductive method allowing you to detect them in a quiet nook under a lamppost would only serve good both SOBs.

However, instead of the driver and the carpenter, in the cone of yellow light from the bulb up the post, I ran into a genre scene. A romantic couple—a girl walking with a boyfriend—were intercepted by their mutual acquaintance, a burly lovebuster, who started sorting it out.

The appearance of the fourth superfluous with a red armband slowed down the action but only for a moment. Realizing that no more vigilantes were to pop up, the tough started kicking the shit out of his smaller, but luckier in the romantic matters, opponent. The bantam fell on 1 knee, threw his jacket of "fish-fur" fabric off onto the nearby snowdrift, next to his hat that rolled there a minute earlier, and rushed into a retaliatory attack.

I stayed a non-interfering on-looker with a red rag on my arm. The girl picked up the jacket with the hat and held them, as Eera once was holding my rabbit fur hat in the main square of the Nezhyn city. With the odds being too long, the lightweight got felled in the snow, the girl placed his clothes down under the lamppost, took the conqueror by the arm, and walked with him away, into the labyrinth of the tangled snow-clad alleys.