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

But enough of that, let's return to Lenochka's try at fixing the dismally wrong situation of having no normal dad… She entered the room and sat on my lap, cutting me off the desk with the opened dictionary, a copybook, and a Morning Star issue on it. Turning her face up at me, she raised her hand and fondled my cheek with her small palm. Probably, she tried to show her austere father how to do the trick.

(…what pushed me off? Fear of falling to incest? Not a chance, with my built-in robotic self-control.

Most likely, the pitiful smile on her face saying "Oh, you poor thing!" put my back up…)

"Well, enough, Lenochka, I have to work."

The smile gave way to a sullen look, she pouted and started to bound in revenge, still sitting on my lap.

"What?! Dreams of sweetmeats? Ain't it a bit early?" And I rose to my feet, like a soulless robot, leaving her without the pad for bouncing.

Several days later, coming back from work, I noticed a change on the bookshelves. There appeared a black hole. The high cheekbone in Eera's face, on the amateur photo in the middle of the stream, was punched thru. The tool of that vandalism and, maybe, even Voodooism served a sharp pencil or, possibly, a ballpoint pen. I did not dwell on the question: who? – it didn’t matter.

"Lenochka, come here!"

"What?"

"As a father, I have to take care of your education, so that you understand what is what. Now, look at the photo on the shelf.”

"What?"

"This is called 'baseness'."

"It's not me."

"I am not saying it's you. Just remember what 'baseness' is. And it makes no difference who does it."

The photo had to be taken to the studio opposite Loony. Their employee Arthur, a young Armenian specializing in the transfer of photo portraits to ceramics, said the hole was fixable. Only I asked to enlarge the picture to the size of a wall portrait, leaving everything as it was, and the stream too… For the restored and enlarged photo, I also bought a cardboard frame and put it back on the shelf.

Seeing the result, my mother gave out an icky snigger, and that was her only comment. I did not start any pedagogical conversations on the topic, and the photo remained completely immune to malicious attempts and stood there for the dust to gradually set in…

~ ~ ~

Before an anniversary of her son Andrey, my sister Natasha complained it was impossible to find a railway model even for the ready money. If I remembered that huge circle of tiny rails with a miniature train running along, back at the Object… I did have vague recollections of the beautiful toy and picked her complaint up as an excuse to break out of everyday Konotop life. I was a loving uncle after all!.

For a start, I went to Kiev. The saleswoman at the specialized department store Kids' World sat glumly behind the counter in a black padded jacket of workmen over her blue coat of the specialized store uniform. She perked up a bit when I reported that my wish was a chuff-chuff. She chuckled and answered in a villagers' parlance, so that the churl of me would get it easier, "Ain't a-having no chuff-chuffs here." It did not surprise me though because whatever said by Natasha couldn’t be some other way.

The next detail, popped up into the plan, became the capital of our mutual Motherland – Moscow. That's where led the caravan trails to trodden by those exasperated with empty store shelves in the semi-deserts of chronic deficit… In the metropolitan Kids' World, there were chuff-chuffs with cars, and rails, and bridges so that the train could run along, powered by a tiny battery. I took the prey to the railway station, stored it in an automatic storage cell, and returned downtown to snatch my share of the cultural life in Metropolis.

At the ticket office of the Bolshoi Theater, they told me that the tickets had to be reserved 2 weeks beforehand. A little disappointed, I left the glorious hotbed of culture discriminating against flotsam loving uncles.

Right outside, on the sidewalk, there stood a glass cubic booth entirely curtained from inside with all sorts of show bills, in which they sold tickets to the theaters and concert halls of the Moscow City. For the coming night, they offered to choose from the concert in the Kremlin Hall featuring the most prominent pop stars and the concert of a nondescript jazz band at the Central Theater of the Soviet Army. So I could visit the Kremlin for the staple stale garbage they poured for years on TV, or… "Jazz, of course!"

(…they say that the railway station in Chernigov was built under the Germans, during the occupation. And I trust those sayers. Why? Well, at least for the fact, that they are not paid for the gossip, unlike official compilers of countless Soviet history books.

And they say also, the bird-eye view of the Chernigov station presents a Teutonic cross. I had never considered the building in question from above, yet I can testify that from all the stations visited by me, only there any time of the day you could have ready boiling water from a big copper tap…)

And all that reminds me, that the building of the Central Theater of the Soviet Army looks like a five-pointed star, if you fly over that pentacle and have time to cast a look down, so the hearsay… Inside, it had a massive interior with a large hall on the first floor, and the exhibition stands in the wide galleries on the second.

I scrupulously examined the exhibition of envelopes and matchbox stickers issued during the Great Patriotic War, because I arrived there 2 hours before the concert. And what else could I do in the unfamiliar winter Moscow? The pictures on the envelopes and stickers, notwithstanding their innocent primitivism, seemed nostalgically appealing because I grew up on black-and-white movies of that period.

Then I went down to the hall, where the jazzmen soon began to install and check their instruments on stage – the drummer kit, the vibraphone, the speakers… Having finished these preparations, the musicians attacked the bold Jewish man for coming so too late. Defensively, he drove them a fool about hardships of Moscow life, and then went on a counterattack threatening on one of those days to give up all that music altogether, and let anyone give him a good reason why he needed all that at all. They left the stage, and the hall began to slowly fill up. For the audience of about 100 jazz lovers, the rows of violet soft plush chairs in the hall were more than enough.

And the concert started… The announcer was a tall fat girl who also sang at times. I took in one number after another and wanted only one thing – let them not end. What Dixieland the vibraphone sounded! And what bass guitar riffs! For one number the bassist was left alone with the girl and his bass guitar and they, just 3 of them, performed such a blues on the wide empty stage!.

The Jew came out only once, he played a tom-tom. Played?!. The whole continent of Africa would never give out on their drums any likeness to that number. I forgave him for his bald head and dumb talk before the concert because he turned into a completely different person. He forgot that he did not need it and created rhythms filling you with joyous, fervently spumescent thrill. "Bravo!"

Apparently, in the Central Theater of the Soviet Army, aka TTSA, they held another event, parallel to the concert, because to the barrier in the cloakroom there also crowed officers in uniform, who had not been present at the performance. The cloakroom attendant girl brought 2 clothes at once, and put them on the counter: a Generals' greatcoat with red silk lining and karakul collar (so this withered mushroom on my right is a General?) and the camel’s demi-saison hair from Alyosha Ocheret. She laid them down on the barrier and gave a weeny wistful sigh.

(…and what else can you do? The everyday insoluble conundrum – either a hussar in his prime, yet without a kopeck in his pocket, or a busted disrepair of General with a secured income.

Everyone has levers to please the ladies in sighing mood, it's only that those levers are located in different spheres…)

Moscow taxi drivers were more professional than their Kiev counterparts. Anyway, the one who picked me up after the concert, having estimated my look and lack of hand luggage, guessed to take me to a hotel where they did not start the fiddle-fart talk about reservations… The hotel Polar was starting from the sidewalk and getting lost somewhere up there in the darkness. The receptionist sent me by elevator to unimaginable heights between the twelfth and sixteenth floors.

The suite was similar to the flophouse-styled doss rooms at Ukrainian railway stations, where you could spend a night if having the passport and 1 ruble on you. It's only that in the room at Polar the beds were more, about 20 pieces, for the most part laid already with the guests changed to their sportswear. At that moment, my stomach reminded me of the omission to dine after the cultural life, and also of having no snack when in the pursue after a train model. So I asked where a dining room or buffet was, and the relaxing sportsmen, kinda gloating, explained that anything of the sort was closed at seven. I felt more and more hungry as well as the growing urge to punish my neighbors too happy to break the unwelcome news, so I take off my camel coat and whipped back down by the elevator.

On the wide slab of a porch outside, alongside the hotel entrance, there also was a tall door to the restaurant which, naturally, was locked, yet well illuminated far inside where you could discern some kind of motion… I started to pound onto the brown frame of the glazed door. A man in a cap and yellow straps on his jacket sleeves appeared behind the glass. At the sight of me in the jacket wide open on a white shirt, against the black-ink background of the night pricked by the weeny sparkles of downing flakes, he had no choice but to deduce that I was a guest, who had ventured out from the restaurant to powder my nose and stuff, in the open air. He unlocked the door and I rushed past him into the hall.

The restaurant occupied a pretty wide area, which allowed for celebration of 2 unrelated weddings at once, and there still remained vacant tables. I had to wait for a long time, but at last a waiter approached me to whom I reveal my wish to have a square meal, plain, without excesses. To pass the time before he fetched my Spartan order, I watched the dance of the newlyweds from the nearby wedding. At the end of their kinda tango, the burly bride got bugged and dealt a mean elbow punch into the chest cage of the skinny groom. He clutched his tie to keep a painful gasp back, face cringed in a fake smile, where a few teeth were missing. The foundation of marital relations was being laid as early as the wedding party.

Oh, boy! You've really stepped into… Sorry, that was a wrong card… Aha! Here it is!. "May the love and happiness you feel today shine thru the years…"

Paying for the meal I was 1 ruble short. Well, to be honest, I had a ruble, but I wanted to keep it for the next day's expenses. I asked the waiter's name to make up the shortfall later. He gave his name and did not insist on getting the ruble immediately.

Snugly filled, I got back to the room up there, and to the questions of the curious roommates informed, with a yawn, that the restaurant below was still working…

24 hours later, I arrived in Konotop and proudly brought the birthday present to At-Seven-Winds. Natasha's family already lived there in the nine-story block constructed by PMK-7. The trip by the elevator to the fourth floor seemed provincially short, but their door was not opened to me. Guena sometimes left for sessions at his technical institute by correspondence in the Donbas, and Natasha was, probably, visiting some of her section neighbors. I did not know a single one of them, although at times I visited the block because, in the way of helping the young family, I wrote all the test works on philosophy and history for Guena. From the black sheep of a lousy brother-in-law, you still could sometimes get a fluff of wool…

On my way to 13 Decemberists, I turned in one of the dead-ends on Pirogov Street, where stood Guena's parents' khutta. His father was asleep already, and Natalia Savelyevna sat in the living-room with Andrey – her grandson, aka my nephew. I wanted to leave the box and go, but she asked me to assemble the toy railway, Andrey was still awake anyway. When the train model started, with a low buzz, circling over the floor in the living room, I was not an uncle anymore, Andrey and I became equal in age…

~ ~ ~

The recovery of the translations lost on a local train in the frenzy of drunken akinesia, took about a year. Because they still were fresh in my memory I couldn’t extend the pleasure for a longer period. After the final full-stop in the last translated story, I took the four-volume collection to Nezhyn, to return it to Nona.

Nearing the teachers' block in the Count's Park, I caught up with Nona and Lydia Panova, who was my group's curator in the years of my study at the English Department of the NGPI. They were heading to the staircase-entrance in their section but noticed me and stopped to wait. I greeted the ladies and informed Nona how impossible it was to convey by mere words all the gratitude I felt for the four-volume originals, borrowed from her and now brought back, here you are.

She smiled from under her glasses and reached out for the cellophane bag. I intercepted her hand, like, for a democratic handshake in the style of characters by Jack London. But instead, unexpectedly even for myself, I gallantly stooped to kiss the back of her hand. Only after that, the bag was passed. Regaining the upright posture, I gave Panova a stiff nod and left… Well, at least I hadn't clicked the shoe heels like hussar Lieutenant Rzhevsky, the f-f..er..I mean, flamboyant hero of the f-f..er..folklore dirty jokes.

My euphoria got off the local train at the first stop after Nezhyn and grim misgivings turned my fellow-travelers. What a blessing, after all, is the inability to make up detailed plans! Them those plans should be kept as short as possible: Prepare a collection of translated short stories for publishing in 150 000 copies. Period.

When thinking the plan out in all the minor details, you expose your whole undertaking to a deadly risk. There inevitably will pop up some insurmountable detail and send your plan to RIP, the way Titanic was tranquilized by its iceberg. Look out! What the f…!!!!!

Bang!. Krchbrdzzz!. And then there comes the muffled, mind-pacifying, sound of sedate bubbling…what's the use of anything…why to strive for the impossible…ible…ble…

Now, what normal publishing house will ever look thru my scribble-scrabble scrawling?. But, is there a way to transform them into typewritten text? Maybe, learning to type by myself? A yummy plan! D'you know a place where they sell typewriters?. (…and another iceberg penetrates the hold…)

The secretary of Manager of SMP-615 had a juggernaut of "Yatran" typewriter on her desk. Sort of a shop floor machine tool with a black cord to feed it with 220 voltage. You simply touched a key and it responded with series of uncontrollable bursts, in the style of a Kalashnikov assault rifle, nothing like the lasciviously seductive cluck-cluck-cluck of typewriters in the movies. Besides, the secretary did not know Ukrainian, and even Russian texts she typed by only index-finger, in turn.