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

"We have different tastes then." And all the same, there still remained fifteen minutes…

I passed thru the immense lobby of the station, climbed up the white stone stairs to the second floor and, up there, rested my elbows on the wide white parapet over the grandiose hall dissolving high overhead into the twilight-filled void. Idly watched I the rough confusion of human particles in the Brownian movement swarming at the tiled bottom far below. About 5 minutes later, this tiny bit of me would mix with them, but now I was just looking down at the bustling fuss.

Their hasty streams thinned about the center of the lobby and, after bypassing it, they again became denser. The reason for the phenomenon was the athletic figure in a scarlet jacket walking there in unhurried circles. Waiting for someone. Whom? Not me. Nobody waits for me except for Twoic who, probably, right now is by the metro entrance checking the waves of the passengers from the neighboring Suburban Trains Station.

Ain’t it funny? Here, in the main station, this burly block goes round and round, waiting for someone, while a bit shorter slob, Twoic, is circling now by the nearby, smaller, Suburban Trains Station, also in a state of expectation. If you extend this line, then somewhere still farther, say, at a streetcar terminal, there is a teenager waiting for somebody. And so on, just like that endless little man in a fire extinguisher on the staircase landing of the second floor in my kindergarten, the man in his cap from the somersaulting pictures who instilled the notion of infinity in me. That kindergarten "I" hadn't even heard the word "infinity", and only infinitely gazed at the fire extinguisher trying to understand: where did those men in caps go? That zany kid is me, who replaced him, and I will be replaced by other "I" because we all are finite unlike the little man in his cap…

Near the metro station, I rested my chin in the chest to hide my face under the tilted brim of the hat. My friend Twoic walked along the line of payphones in the wall, to and fro. He wore a freshly re-established mustache, a prestigious leather coat, the thinning hair and a somewhat surly pensive look in his countenance. There he turned and started back.

After catching up with him, I silently followed from behind. At the end of the row of phones, he turned again right to my grin: "Hi, Twoic. And where are the guys?"

"Hooey-Pricker!" He turned his broad face up and issued the characteristic Twoic's giggle, followed by that same taut sharp squint to snapshoot the situation: what and how?

After a blithe hug, he let me go and started up confused speculations on reasons that aborted coming of Petyunya and Slavic.

Waves of the freshly arrived crowd gurgled from the Suburban Trains Station inundating all of the sidewalk, making us to retreat to the wall.

Twoic gave up developing sketchy hypotheses about possible excuses for the absence of our dear friends, asked me for a 2-kopeck piece and began to spin the disk on a payphone, holding an open pocket notebook in his clutch. It’s safer to have a blunt pencil than a sharp memory, as ran a KGB adage once shared to me by their brunette gallant…

Rucks of sundries floated by in the waves carrying mesh bags, suitcases, rolls of wallpaper, packages, boxes, buckets, bundles of pipes, briefcases, backpacks, seedlings, cornices, bird-cages and all other kinds of imaginable and exotic items, they flowed to the metro and to the stops of public transport of all types on the square, dashing fleeting looks at the pair of metropolitan tough guys.

The one with the broad leather back, spinning the phone disk, should be the boss, and the other, with a sticky gaze from under the lowered brim of his hat, a bodyguard. And although not everyone in the crowd knew such words as "boss" or "bodyguard", yet at the back of their collective mind, they shared common respect to those 2, at least for having their spines free of burden, and having where to call on the phone in the metropolitan city of Kiev.

How could they guess, that ever-flowing crowd, that Twoic was an upstart in the city, and I was a nothing-at-all called in by his telegram?. And, by the by, where's he calling? I had no idea, and it did not matter for I was just an instrument. There's always someone to decide for us, and my part always was to execute the orders…

~ ~ ~

A year before, Twoic became a graduate student and now paced along the straight path to PhD. His scholarship was higher than that of undergraduate students, yet not enough to meet expenses for divers temptations pervading the big city life. Okay, there were no problems with clothing, because his mom controlled a district trading base. Food also was not a pressing issue, coming back from weekend visits to his native village, Twoic fetched torbas tearing the hands off by their weight. Yet, for all that manna from heaven he had to pay in kind by the exposure to the parental chewing his ear off with their twits for a diffused lifestyle, and working thru all the weekend: digging, manuring, hauling, pulling in the garden and about the khutta.

Twoic had enough health and strength to make the sport of farmer's chores. And he especially liked hauling something weighty and bulky – armfuls, bundles, sacks with a harvest from the garden to the shed. Raking up the muck in the pig stall, or from under the bull calf, was not as pleasant, but also a job he was used to. Quoting the old priest from their village, "Where there's muck, there's lard". However, the mom's moans and lamentations about the Kiev whores, who rob and eat off the goof of her sonny, were more than enough to make even a saint see red. That's why Twoic needed ready money, but where to get it, was a tricky question.

Unloading freight cars at the station as in the student years seemed below a graduate student level. Besides, he was a skilled workforce at playing Preferans. The game was pure Arithmetic, and in his curriculum vitae, Twoic had 2 years at a mathematical special school, plus the feel of whether a player was bluffing or having a good hand indeed. And there also, last but not least at Preferans, was Twoic's appearance of a natural hick, putting opponents off track.

However, the hostel was too shallow waters. You ripped your neighbors for a fiver once or twice, and they started shying you. Everyone grew so awfully busy, no time for a pool at all, yet between themselves, they went on playing. Yes, behind the locked door in someone's room, a kopeck per trick, so mean misers. Still and all, somewhere, someplace there had to be the upper crust, the elite. It was the capital, after all. Playing by candlelight, on the green cloth, with a freshly unsealed deck, and the trick no less than fifty kopecks, that was his dream. But how could you reach the upper crust without money?

All that brought Twoic to designing sundry romantic plans for getting a jackpot… The initial plan to become a drug trafficking baron in the cannabis market somehow withered by itself. It was followed by a plan to make friends with some of the foreigners scudding thru the capital, to establish a stable barter trade for clothes smuggled from outside the Iron Curtain… That's when he called me to use as a productive tool at the operational end. And since then I entered into the service to Twoic on quite acceptable terms if you don't care a f-f..er.. a frigging flick anymore about anything at all…

Prospective business with foreigners did not prosper either. On the day of the attempt at acquiring a suitable acquaintance, there sounded only Roman languages on the sidewalks of Khreshchatyk. It was no use to approach such passers-by with my English of Nezhyn make.

2 times Twoic hallooed me at different twos of Negroes in slouch hats. However, the targets in response to my cheerful, "Hi! let's have a talk!" shied, for some reason, and kept mum. Probably, they had already experienced invitations "to go out for a talk" at some or another of dance-floors. I had to explain to Boss that they were Negroes from some of former French colonies, so English did not click with them.

The futile hunt seemed to wear Twoic or, maybe, he decided to think over another new plan, anyway Massa got seated tightly on a bench in the University greens and allocated me 2 hours for an uncontrolled free search. The task did not seem too attractive, but I had to work off the grub, both consumed that morning (buns and Pepsi) and upcoming. So, leaving him thoughtful on the bench, I did not shirk my duty in any way and kept the ears pricked up for anyone uttering something in Shakespearean parlance from any side. On Shevchenko Boulevard a group of neat men, passing the Vladimir Cathedral, referred to it as "cathedral". Might it be?.

"No," one of them explained in Russian, "we are speaking in Latvian."

I felt fed up. Okay, one more last try at The Intourist hotel and that's it… On the wide porch in front of the glazed entrance, a burly block with a saxophone string around his neck asked politely what I needed. They kept some naive bulldog at the establishment. How could I—a foreign tourist—possibly knew all those local dialects? On an indulgent survey of the two-meter tall aboriginal, I, without a word of comment, went over in and turned to the left where the bar was.

The inscription in English asked to pay in local currency only and notified that the current day of the week was a day off. Yes, it's time to have a rest… The massive-looking chairs by polished tables turned out very responsive and tremendously comfortable. My loyalty got rewarded, had I been shirking I wouldn't enjoy such a soft seat; much better than the hard bench planks accommodating Twoic.

At the far end of the bar enjoying its day off, there loosely sat 12 she-apostles and their black-bearded Teacher with his fervent sermon of the truest truth. What's their language, by the by? They should know better. Okay, when reporting Twoic, I'd mention coming across a non-governmental delegation of poultry farmers from Romania.

Separated from me by a vacant table, two Germanly colorless girls exchange brief clues over the empty top of their table, while doing their level best at keeping their looks off me. Damn that f-f..er..I mean, fundamental language barrier. The chicks were bored. It would be manna for them to hear, "You're cute and I'm cool, besides, I have a friend named Twoic. How about to dump the boredom in a party of 4?." But they would hear nothing of the kind because of the obnoxious language prison, they're locked up in their cell, and I in mine. We don't even look at each other, like sage foxes ignoring unattainable grapes. But they at least could prattle between themselves, while I stayed some deaf and dumb.

"An o'fooly nais plais," informed I the girls urbanely, "ain't it? Baat (with a slight sigh of disappointment) nahbady to have a tauk wid!" And I gave a gallant nod to their amazed gazes, "Bye-bye!."

~ ~ ~

For the period elapsed since that hunt, no jackpot had ever turned up, yet Twoic liked having me about because I was not only a relic of his student life but also a docile tool all ready, like a young pioneer, for anything. So, after the first telegram, there followed similarly curt ones, just the village name and the weekend date for me to show up. It took a half-hour ride to get from Konotop to Bakhmuch by a local train, and then ten more minutes by bus.

"What's the news about you each weekend getting on a train with flowers? Visiting your wife or what? But you're, like, divorced."

"Visiting a friend in the country. The flowers are for his mom and grandmother." "

"Are there no flowers in the village?"

Yes, they were there, yet much more than flowers there was work waiting for my arrival. Repairing the roof, constructing a barn, turning dirt in the garden. After the work, of course, hooch, gobble up to your heart's content. However, without the flowers, I'd be like a farmhand there, while a bouquet in my hands, like, turned me into a guest, sort of…

The house of Twoic's parents stood on the village outskirts in a narrow lane named Shore. The lane narrowness resulted not from its layout but was dictated by the dense fruit trees overhanging the fences from both sides. The house, of course, was called khutta, yet, in terms of quality, it was still a house. Between the gate and the khutta, there was a well behind a low palisade to the left, with water at just 2 meters down the concrete 1.5 meter rings, with a tin roof over the pail chained to the windlass. On the right, there stretched the whitewashed brick wall of the structure comprising anything – a summer kitchen, whose porch way almost closed with the steps in the high porch to khutta's veranda, a garage for a car that still had to be bought, a tool store, a shed. However, the entrance to the barn was not from the yard but from the back of that building.

Passing between the two porches, you found yourself in the backyard with one more shed of timber for goats, chickens, pigs, and anything else. Under the windows of the khutta, there grew raspberry bounded by half-dozen of Apple trees and, still farther, the huge vegetable garden beyond which there opened an even field followed by the distant windbreak belt hiding the railway. The collective farm did not use that field because of abnormally high subsoil moisture. The folks on Shore lived in a big style indeed…

The house was ruled by Raissa Alexandrovna, Twoic's mother, because her husband, Sehrguey, was, for the most part, engaged in the housework and he didn't have much time for yakking. Of course, when something really put his back up, he could address his wife with a loud appeal to shut up her bunghole. Then Raissa Alexandrovna would pause, bite her lower lip and act a dull and dumb villager, however, all that was a pure theatricality – in 5 minutes the phone on the veranda would ring up asking for Raissa, not Sehrguey.

Apart from the domestic affairs, she ran the local politics, accepting several visitors a day, both on an appointment and without it. Her favorite scenic image was that of a folksy rural woman beset with all kinds of troubles and worries, in a quilted waistcoat and weathered kerchief on her black hair, and only the irony in the look of her black eyes did not fit the disguise. She knew how to artfully tie her kerchief, re-arranging its appearance several times a day. The knot changed its position from the forehead to under the back of her head, or else above the ear—the gypsy style—depending on whom Raissa Alexandrovna was going to let in. For the current visitor (in his jeans, long hair and the beard like that of a hippie from Los Angeles) she unexpectedly got it tied under her chin. Then Twoic told me it was the young priest at their village.

The hippie priest left and, in half-hour, a Zhiguli car pulled up by the gate and a young, extremely loud, woman in awful need of "a gown, eh?!." entered the yard. Raissa Alexandrovna took her to the veranda and was humbly making her brains for at least 40 minutes before sending away with a promise of that "a gown, eh?". She did not sell things at home, to accomplish the transaction the visitor had to visit the trade base if only the negotiations ended positively.

Raissa winked at Twoic and me after the retiring priest's wife, blissful Mother, and crossed her face with a thumb. Holy, holy, holy! But then she decided that we had spent way too much time playing cards on the porch step, and ordered us back to the garden to turn the dirt, or spread the muck, hauling it there in the handcart whose wheels kept sticking deeply into the black soil on the way, or to collect the corn ears…

However, when I and Twoic were erecting another barn of logs, we were out of her jurisdiction – Sehrguey had announced a smoke break that's why we were playing… The food after work was not a havvage but a bounteous rural grub on lavish fat, with dill aroma, mouthwatering whiffs of steam over the plates, and a bunch of crispy green onion studded with fresh water drops, on a dish in the table center.

The chef cook in the khutta was Grandma Oolya who cooked delicious things with just one hand, the other, since long paralyzed, she kept in the pocket on the stomach of her apron. And distilling hooch was also her responsibility because she liked to watch the product dripping into the vessel set beneath the tube…

I liked that kind of life more than sunbathing on the Seim beach sand. I liked the energetic one-legged neighbor Vityouk, the experienced player at the Throw-in Fool. And even more, I liked Ganya, the sister of Raissa Alexandrovna. There was no acting or irony about Ganya, she was calm and attentive, and she understood everything. I was sorry that she had cancer.

Doctors recently removed "the pea" out her belly, and on her coming back home the loving hubby did not give her no peace until she let him see the fresh gash from the surgical knife. I knew that she would not survive because at renovating the stove in her khutta all the firebricks from the old one were quite rotten. Yet, I was told to use the bricks again all the same – there were no others, but I could see that it was not for long…

They buried her in my absence, with heart-rending lamentations at the funeral, Raissa was held from both sides to stop her falling onto the fresh grave of her sister with wild embraces and sobs. When they were taking her from the cemetery, the old villager women yelled at her and other mourners: "So what? Cried Ganya out? Returned?" Twoic was very indignant describing their cruel brutality but, in my opinion, that was primordial psychotherapy and one of the rituals in the continuous comedy of life…

At my next visit, the husband of the deceased was also sitting under the black Mulberry tree in the khutta’s yard. At first, I could not guess where those tiny sounds were coming from. I thought some puppy sneaked into the yard, but it was the widower's whining. Such a burly man, a bus driver, the tears flowed down his cheeks and he did not even try to hide them. If all of them together could not call her back, what's the chance of you doing it single-handed?.

Ganya's son, a guy about 14, was at war with Twoic because he fell in love with Twoic's wife, but then Twoic divorced her, offended the beloved of the youth, sort of. For me, it was complete news that he got married and divorced, but Twoic said, yes, a Jewish girl from the Biology Department.

He also told that his father-in-law, when visiting people, after the first shot of vodka used to grab lard for a snack, sort of to demonstrate that he was not from kosher upholders. Now the ex-father-in-law would raise Twoic's son as he pleased, up to making him a strict Orthodox Jew under the most Ukrainian of all last names. And Twoic sighed at this point in the best traditions of the Moscow Artistic Academic Theater.

Raissa Alexandrovna did not allow time for Twoic's grief though, she shouted from the phone in the veranda that he had to change into clean clothes because they were bringing an aspirant bride for the "evaluating look". The loving mother did her best to find him a good party from among local girls, for which reason they periodically were brought to Shore, otherwise, them those Kiev whores would surely bamboozle the dumbo of her sonny. Twoic said inaudible "fuck!" and went to change.

Soon behind the gates, a car was heard and a pair of parents led their elegantly donned girl into the khutta… I stayed alone on the porch way to the summer kitchen, but then a visitor joined me. Some old man bent literally into an arc. When standing, he couldn't see the face of a man before him, only up to the waist.