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

"I walk, and I keep smiling to myself
and at the thought 'what would they think of me?'
I into laughter burst…"

…another piece crafted in the neighborhood?…

…no, it's by some Czech with a tilt towards poetry…

…you mean, Czechs are not homies?..I'll have your throat cut!…

…have mercy, oh, Abraham!..check in the bush maybe we'll square it up with Yahweh keeping your sonny unscratched…

…and if I am Taras Bulba?…

…oh, yes!..in the dried form, pressed for the herbariums…Robinson Crusoe's goat is more of a Cossack than you…drop your bragging before the neighbor's nanny-goat got chocked and died in a laughter fit…

…not a chance…they say that laughter is the sovereign property of Khoma Sapiensoff…

…well, from the standpoint of physiology all is radiant clear – spasms and coughs tremendously benign to health, but how to grasp it from the significance's point of view?…

…I love challenger kids, yes I do!..let's have a look…where are the decent people laughing?..right, in the places specifically designated for the purpose…that’s where you have to look for an answer…like, in the circus or, say…

…hurray!..to the movies, we are going!..that's some comedy!… Fantozzi, what a good fellow!..wow!..knows his trade!…

Bang! Ding! Plop! Chink! Pisssssss…

Glee and guffaw, giggling, laughter beyond all the limits and past all the bounds.

Boo-ooh-ha! Ha-ho-ho! Gu-gu-hu! Wu-hu-hu!

And only my neighbor to the left, a lady of immense proportions, sits listless, silent. Why? Dozed off or what? No, dutifully gazes at the silver screen, still yielding no reaction.

The man in there does his best to turn her on, he takes a run to hit his head against the lamppost. The hall reports by a happy volley… And she? Good news she's not yawning.

But what's that? Unbelievable! At a minor episode, where Fantozzi, after another fall, plop, splash, whizzz, changes in a suit five times bigger his size and the public almost do not react, exhausted in the previous convulsions, that's when from the exorbitant volumes of my neighbor rolls out the laughter of the same dimensions. Well done, comedian! But how do you start her?

…and now, when asked: why do people laugh?..my answer is – because of fear…

…fear?!..

…exactly!..you can’t put your finger on anything more dreadful for a woman than uglifying clothes… while, when the comedian's bicycle drops its saddle on the run and the zany lands with his asshole onto the pipe still sticking up there, the hall is swaying from the males' guffaw… a lady, naturally, can weather by such a trifle…

…laughter from fear!..nonsense!..they do not laugh but flee when scared…besides, your arguments are based on laughter of the basest sort…and people laugh because of not only that someone stumbled-slipped-sprawled-fell-into-the-drains, they laugh at witticisms as well…then, there are still epigrams…there's a hell of lots of ways to have a hearty laugh…

…verily, verily, I say unto you!..laughter comes from fear and is both request and prayer begging Unknown to avert the thing they laugh at, to keep it off the prayer sayer, I mean, off them who’s splitting their sides…and same exactly foundation underlies the laughter caused by the finest witticisms…where "ha-ha-ha" reads: "let me never be a target of such a joke!"…while laughing at oneself is just a prayer: "let I never again step into it!"…they are inseparable Siamese – fear and laughter…tell me what you laugh at and I'll tell what you are afraid of!…

…so, Fool, you mean to say that someone who never laughs, is not afraid of anything?.

…Your Majesty!..we are not considering abnormal anomalies, the subject at hand is a representative of the class of vertebrates, the subclass of mammals, the species of primates, the subspecies of anthropoid with the Latin name "homo sapiens."..so don't f-f..er..fret our brains, please…

…but look, then it means that by the means of a joking you can find out…

…aha!..starting to see?..excellent!..on we go!..and here, by the way, a kilometer post… …what does it tell?..no, I can't make out, it's still dark.

…well, to hell!..let it be…it's not the first neither the last…stop molesting orphan ones!..do you need it? yomp your way…

Oh, I'm sorry. No crooked tricks or dirty intent, I swear. Once again, please, forgive. Have a nice stay!

…hmm…so, what were we about?..ah, well, of course!..considering the immortal question hoisted by the classic: "What are you laughing at?"…the answer is: at something that we fear to learn firsthand…what is the forerunner of laughter?..that's right – a smile…and what is the smile?..right once again – the show of teeth…let's say, we meet each other at the lowest rungs of the evolutionary ladder, where I can’t see what kind of stegosaurus you are, and you suspect me of being lungfishy…at that uneducated period, we roamed without passports…now, we meet and – first and foremost – what?..that's right!..we bare our teeth, like, look what I have, in case of you allow yourself excessive liberties…see, where all these laugh-hiccups and giggle-spasms spring from?…boiled down to its elementary basis, laughter is a means of self-defense with a Hegelian dual function – to shoo away and carry favor (2 in 1)…it is used, however, not in case of real danger (it's not the right time for giggling) but when the threat is an imaginary one…they don’t use it in absence of threat, or imagination, or when there is nothing to protect…using its monopoly on the gizmo under our consideration, the man climbed up to the top of the aforesaid ladder up to the level where they issue passports and enroll you, if so is your wish, to gyms to learn kickboxing…Amen…

…wow!..it's time to shout "eureka!" and jog off to the patent office…

…why, silly sweetheart?..it's been a long time since all the wheels were reinvented…any supernova idea was brewing more than once in brains of a Chaldean priest, or a Greek sophist, a medieval alchemist, an Aztec knot-tier, a prophetic Brahman, or a Tibetan sage…all discoveries and uber-super ideas are nothing more than using other words or symbols for the same truths old as the hills…invariable, as the change of seasons, or phases of the moon, of day and night rotation…every day is new and unique, every day is a repetition of myriad of lots of exactly same days…

…you know how to wrap it nicely, smart Alec…yet, there's a question from the audience: did you fix the shit firm enough, citizen?…

…sit tight, marijuanisto!..no chance you tear it off unless you’ve got some hugely "bitter but" up your sleeve, or have you?…

…uh-oh, alas, but, yes, Your I-ness…where—in the scintillating shebang of yours—would you place the smile of a two-month-old baby?..what is it afraid of, when smiling to its mother, or nenka, or mutter, or whatever?..that toothless smile seems to flush all you mental juggle-schmuggle straight down the drain…ain't it, Mr. Brilliant Kid?.

It's dawning. Murky-gray ceiling of dissolving darkness overhead gets propped by the endless walls of hazy trunks alongside both roadsides, veiled with a mesh of hunger-black branches and chance twigs still bearing haphazard spots of withered leaves. Along the shredded asphalt, the comets of tiny snow specks are scuttling, swaying, drifting off their orbits, whirling their thinned streams of dry powder snow.

The wind is favorable. From behind. So blow, buddy, blow! Not a chance you ever pierce the padded jacket presented by my aunt. The head in the tight-knitted "cock" hat, warm socks on the feet in the sturdy likes of army boots. The road under the current of whipped-up snow streams stretches to the horizon to merge with infinity… Blow, the curly one! The ancient Greeks found it out, sounding flute makes the march easier. Sturdy rig, firm trail, what else would you want for to be happy?

A cleft in the windbreak belt let a country road fork off. Thru the gap, there peeps a surprised field: who's so happy here? And because of that field, and of that make-believe road ahead, and because of so grim morning with the pale-transparent streams of white snow scudding on under the wind, a sudden jubilant delight and silly joy cut loose welling up the throat to splash out a cry into the confused desert around, "I! Am! Happy!" The snow streams whisked up along the asphalt keep silent, busily reflecting, like a mirror, the whirlwind spirals in the clouds galloping so low overhead.

"Am! Happy!" Repeating, somehow with a threat and as if inquiringly.

"Happy!" This time sounds sad already.

…yes…the music played but shortly…where are you, happiness?..only in the past or in the future…some elusive illusion…

…and when coming across its tiny speck I'm always alone…why so?..it even hurts somehow…now, if she were by…though she needs no hiking marches…or if she watched on a screen, in a dream, anywhere – this very morning, and this crippled road, a solitary traveler along…

…dumb moron!..will you ever get it?..stupid wretch!..there is no "she" at all but only your driveling indistinct dreams unclear even to the dreaming fool…dreams of an impossible conjunction of heavenly beauty and passion for pleasures of quite earthly nature, a non-existent combination of cold-sharp mind and cunt clinging fervently which craves for you and only you…shut your lusty gape, kiddo…you've built a bridge atop a mountain and keep a-waiting for a river to run under…and besides, to get some anything you need to give some kind of something…and what, with your kind permission, do you have to offer?..this dapper dandy padded jacket?..wow!..yes, some heavy-duty rig…and being worn for just a week, no longer…what?..there's even money on you?..50 rubles?!..but that's a jackpot!..now, subtract the tenner for a bus ticket, then 25 for the flight to Kiev, and the fiver for the local train…and keep in mind the havvage expenses…now, give me one good reason for expecting tender love and crazy passion?…

…castes are divided by the abyss unbridgeable…who do you pull for?…where d’you belong?… what are you: a master or a slave?…

…I am what I am what I am at the fifth bottom after the ninth gate…your ‘master’ trap is a too cheap try, everybody’s got at least three masters – Stomach, Genitals, and Brain…the deeper you dig the more of them spring out which one to serve?…so could you get off my back, please?.

…show proper respect to der Heilige Arthur’s teaching, infidel…he sez we cannot change ourselves, we’re only capable of getting to know us a tad bit better, and it’s me who widens your horizons, pal, be grateful to your constant second…or, mayhap, you wanna swap our ordinal numbers?.

…cut out this empty ding-dong, you knows yoursel – the first to wake up retains the slippers all day long so there’s no use to shuffle kings, and cabbage, and walruses, and carpenters…

…to saddle then! and back to your trinity of Masters…if only you don’t want to look for a suitable outsider, Genosse Feldzug-F?hrer…

…shut up with your red herring!…any raccoon at the Central Committee axiomatically slaves for his stomach…to be a slave’s slave?…count me out! I do not care for his stomach…neither for fucking dialectics with all due respect to imbibed Socrates…

…but then what else to busy me with? I cannot do a better job than my legs…