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

We started a desultory talk, and the old man confessed that once he was a young and well-proportioned rural clerk, sporting a military tunic and high boots. The collectivization began and, with the clerk's participation, they were making lists of those to be deported to the Siberia. Now he was not able to look into the eyes of people around him.

And, after all, all was to no purpose. The grandsons of the misers, who at that time got keys and seals of the village council, were now penniless drunks, and the descendants of the robbed and exiled returned from the Siberia and got prosperous again. Because on such a soil only a lazy fool lives poorly… Raissa never showed up and he left, leaning on two short sticks in his hands, gazing at the sand under his feet that walked the road.

(…as it turns out, the theft of a crimson tablecloth is not the worst thing that can happen to you, there are things for which you punish yourself much more severely…)

~ ~ ~

Then Sehrguey came up with the major project of paneling the khutta’s base with bricks, which he had prepared for several years already. It took me three-weekend visits because the khutta was not a small size. Twoic worked as a bricklayer’s mate preparing the mortar and fetching the bricks up… We finished on a Saturday. Next morning, I got up first and went out on the veranda porch. My shoes stood on the second step with their noses directed towards the gate, although in the evening I left them exactly the opposite.

(…some signs I can read easily –

"the Moor has done his job…"…)

I put my shoes on, walked out of the gate and, on reaching the end of the lane, turned to the windbreak belt because in its clearings a very slow freight train was clanging along. I strode fast, and then I had to run but in the end I managed to jump on the brake platform of the rear car.

(…everything turns out as it should when you have read it right…)

The freight train picked up speed and passed Bakhmuch station without stopping. People at the platform looked in surprise after the freight train. On the brake platform, I was standing happy and pleased with myself, my hair played with by the wind, sort of a tramp by Jack London…

In winter village chores come to a standstill and Twoic sent me a telegram only in April. We were turning dirt in the garden when his father brought the news about the Chernobyl explosion. The day was cold and windy, the gray clouds flew low. Twoic started a lecture about radiation but I did not care a fuck. What's the difference? However, the wind blew from East and did not let the radiation to reach the village. The clouds absorbed it and took over as far as Scotland, to the laundry hung there on clotheslines. Of course, the Scots had then to throw away that washing, so Morning Star…

But all that would happen later but presently Twoic, leaning against the wall by the payphone, dialed the number, and I scanned the endless flow of hustling crowd, which had no idea about the subtleties in relations between mafia bosses and their bodyguards. And I tried to figure out who of us was more interested in this friendship. Was it the would-be PhD Twoic, or I, his genie from a bottle?

It's a dumb thing to do psychoanalysis having no know-how from the trade… At Psychology lectures in the pedagogical institute, they, of course, shared that it was some mean presumptuous invention of the decaying West called to degrade and belie the capitalized name of Man which sounds proudly. A sad pity, the lecturers uttered not a word about methods in that indecency. Thus, we’ve got no other option but invent the content for the Psychoanalysis thing and work its methods out by ourselves.

Swing your arm, push your shoulder against it – we'll start this bitch of a collider manually!.

(…let's assume, the essence of such an analysis is to answer the dirtiest of all the questions—that of "why?"…)

So, why am I stuck with Twoic? For which reason? The healthy village food performed by his grandmother? Absolutely, yes. Carrying the flowers on a local train, I do look forward to enjoying the meals. Besides, there is one more alluring bait that I strive to with no chance of getting it though, like the ass ridden by Till Eulenspiegel. For any kind of ass, you'll find the sort of grass he will run after like a good little boy. So which one am I after?

The wild descriptions of sex orgies, generously shared by Twoic, keep glowing the embers of hope that I, his loyal servant, will get some crumbs off the master's bed. Say, some slut girlfriend of another whore of his. The dreams do not come true yet, but who says the ass should ever reach the grass? It's a smart ass, and he doesn't give even a sidelong glance at the bunch of grass dangling in front of his nose. He pretends not seeing it even point-blank, and he trots after it just so, for the sake of warm-up, because he adores physical exercises and other agricultural works. Yet, to see what, actually, an ass is up to, you don't need to be as wise as Solomon himself…

Just for the record, there was an attempt at "with a girlfriend's girlfriend"… They came from Nezhyn to Bakhmuch, the ex-lover of Twoic and her girlfriend. Twoic and I met them and took to the village by bus. 2 mattresses were spread in advance over the dry hay in the loft over the summer kitchen. Out of delicacy, Twoic took his ex-lover to the nearby grove, leaving the whole loft for me to use it in undivided mode.

The chick was appetizing – slender and busty but she undressed only down to her pantyhose. No doubt, the modish black fishnet item made her legs look even prettier, but what the fuck I needed that mesh for? The same old acquaintance of a dirty trick – welcome on upper dangles, but no horsing about the chastity belt. I did not try at tearing the pantyhose to shreds, and all attempts at stirring up a reciprocal flame of passion in the teaser fell flat. The state of stalemate was sustained until Twoic brought back his ex-lover from the romantic walk to the grove…

Next morning, I got up first and went for a swim in the kopanka – a pond of about 20 by 20 meters dug in the field by a back-hoe. When I returned, Raissa Alexandrovna was sitting on the veranda porch.

"So how was the water?" she asked with the hint in her ironic black eyes.

"Cold," answered I in all the senses.

After breakfast, already without Raissa around, Twoic asked directly, "Well, how?"

"No hows. We're incompatible."

"How that?"

"She wanted being raped, I wanted to get a shared pleasure. The 2 things just do not click together."

Now, everything that keeps me on Twoic's leash boils down to the needs of my stomach, and that of the reproductive organ and… and is that all?. We need something else here, thinking in only 2 dimensions seems not enough for a Hegelian… Where is the third?! Spit it out!. A-aha! Here it is – the brain! The brain with its lofty aspirations and, first of all, the need to pour out the crap crammed into it, to ease the tension in the storage cells so as not to burst sending its gray matter in every thinkable direction. Ain’t it a torture – be full of pearls but having no one to spill the goods in front of?

(…who would decline the role of Mentor? Feeding the pearls of wisdom into the oral orifice of a naively gaping youth…)

Twoic presented me with that opportunity also, by his questions. How to choose the right route in the jungle of a research institute laboratory squabbles, where each spider for himself in the common jar, one for all? Who's more practical for your scientific career – a talented but alcoholic Micro-Chief, aka the manager of the laboratory, or the dull as 2 felt boots together Macro-Chief in charge of the institute department? Who of the two to choose for your Master?

Answering these and similar questions, I was amazed by the largeness of reprobate Machiavellianism stockpiled in me. I wouldn't ever dream of having so vast resources, communication with Twoic brought into the light the cached stash.

However, the essence of my maxims was so plain that Twoic sensed all of that himself and instinctively conformed to even before my broadcasting. It's only he couldn't put it to words that we get landed into this world where everything is occupied already—"the house's sold out!"—which situation calls for snatching a place under the sun for our dearest selves, and the end justifies the means, so… And Twoic was all too happy to agree. But what about me? Do I live by this sermon? Do I follow it, eat it out?

(…following your own theories is not the must though. Nietzsche, the inventor of superman in the form of a "blond beast", was himself a physically miserable nuisance.

"Snap a place under the sun for yourself," proclaimed I, that's true. However, as far as I’m concerned, I'd sooner drift away in search for the sun attainable in a more humane way, avoiding their scrimmage…)

Well, now, are you happy with your self-psychoanalyzing? Got all the nooks turned inside out? Don't be shy, we are alone – Twoic's too busy with dialing and checking his pocket notebook. So, is that it? The orgies for your stomach plus hopes for getting a second-hand whore, and tickling your vanity by spilling intellectual pearls? Is it the full list of reasons why I'm with him?

Well, that's why, definitely, yes… And also because of the feeling of freedom, when I break loose from the routine of my ordered, polished, clockwork way of life with the bath-going on Thursdays, washing on Mondays, ironing on Tuesdays, with the beach or reading room on weekends and the ever-present feeling of voided privation, and never ending vigilance…

Wow! As I see, you now flashed your love for freedom too, well done! And, hopefully, is that all?

Of course, yes, is not all of that enough for a sincere friendship?

Don't try to cheat the dialectics. You have omitted the opposite force – hatred.

And why should I hate him? He feeds me, provides drinking, presents an outlet to escape…

Seems like, in your enumeration, you bashfully omitted the opportunity to practice masochism, eh? What is a pleasure if not some sweet pain?

…had he slept with her or not?.. everything in me contracts into a tight tangle of scorching pain and slowly dissolves in mute shrieks: no, it cannot be.. but if?. and the pangs grip anew to be followed by numb warmth spilling over the innards: no, no, no…

At one of my first visits to the Twoic's village, we were sitting at the bus stop by the wide empty square in the tight breeze beneath the warm stars of a summertime night. The whitewashed walls in the stop-shed, as well as the planks of the benches, were stamped with inscriptions and cuts of all kinds of Deep Purples, Dynamos, Svetas, Blitzes, Vovas, and lots of dates… All of a sudden, Twoic spoke of Eera, "She said she had never had a better sex than with you."

That compliment, sort of, scalped me. They do not come up with such confessions at a cafе table. For such a subject, you should lie together in one bed after having a sex. Did she count on Twoic someday would deliver these words to me and I recreate the whole picture? No, a combination of too many moves… she’s not a Bobby Fisher… Sooner, the feline female custom of branding their fuckers by marks of scratching talons… That's why he reached then out for a cigarette of Belomor-Canal…

…don't succumb to complexes, Twoic, I've never been a sex prodigy… and now I know why he found me in Konotop… and I am sorry for the helpless babble about blessing drops… he came then with much more trivial agenda – to urinate over the ashes of his dear friend, Hooey-Pricker, and stop feeling envious even post mortem…

He somehow felt that he had blurted out a bit too much and, to efface it, started swearing that he had never in his life had anything with Eera… As if I asked him whether it was so.

(…if you pretend to be a stupid ass for too long then, at times, you become it…)

"Have you ever beat her?" he asked a little later.

Oops, so she shared about that slap too.

"I hit just once, at the final date," reported I, "but it was a light spank, solely to comply with the protocol."

Twoic laughed his endemic laughter…