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

When it was my night shift, I came across a brood of rats in the passage around the twinned boilers. I hollered and rushed to trample them, but they fled. And then I wondered where that sudden rat-hate had cropped up in me from?. The pure instinct of self-preservation that’s what it was. Rats would not forgive the humans, including me as well, the death in flames of that rat martyr, so to forestall their avenge I attacked first. Fucking moron…

One night I was sleeping on the workbench when some strange thing lit on my chest. Something dark like a clot of black fog, sort of, and it pressed to strangle me. I wanted to brush it off but had no strength even to stir or at least scream it away as if all of my strength had dried up leaving me pitifully paralyzed. It took a desperate effort to wake up.

Later Vanya, putting on a look of an expert, began to lecture me it was a bogey. They're just fucking stupid in that Crimea of theirs. Bogeys live at folks' homes, right? The stoker-house is anything but a home. Where could a bogey pop up here from, eh?.

What I omitted to tell Vanya was that the creature sat exactly in that place on my chest which I had shaved by the safety razor in front of the mirror piece embedded in the wall plaster. Well, to get a macho look, of course, because what I had there was like that down on Vanya's upper lip. But it fucking did not work and the chest remained unchanged, smooth and bare…

After the evening roll-call, I went to Demino and there I found the house of Irina whom I met when we played dances at their club. There was also her elder sister in the house. Irina left the kitchen for a while and her sister started a solo Sing-a-song about how Irina was only nineteen-year-old and had never come across a low-grade buster in her life as of yet and would I mind her taking a look at my military ID, by the way. That was her way to hint, sort of, about her sister's being a virgin.

"No worry, I'm not a buster."

The soldier’s military ID, as stipulated in the Statute of the Internal Military Service, each serviceman had always to have by him, and so was mine in my jacket inner pocket. There was a slight problem though boiling down to just one line at the bottom of its first page: 'wife – Olga Abramovna Ogoltsova". Because of that record, I had to drive a fool to that smart-Alec of a guardian-sister about conbatists' IDs being locked up in a big iron safe at the Battalion Staff and given out to us together with the Leave Ticket which papers we had to hand in on coming back from the city and, going on AWOL to their village, I skipped disturbing Battalion Commander with a request for my military ID.

Then there popped up the husband of the elder of the two sisters, named Senya who at first, like, started to be jealous, sort of, but then all of us drank tea in peace and I left…

A week later, a soldier from Separate Company appeared in the stoker-house. There's a girl, he said, at the corner of the wall fence, who asked for me. I went there, it was Irina… Demino folks sometimes went from Stavropol to their village along the asphalt road on foot, in twos or threes, but she was alone… Hello. Hey. Kisses… We agreed that after the evening roll-call I come to the village.

"Will you walk with me a little?"

That meant along the whole wall, past the Staff barrack, past the checkpoint. "No, I'll wait for you near that corner."

I walked along the paths inside the battalion, parallel to the asphalt road outside. And from that far off corner, I even walked with her a bit.

(…now I am sorry for missing that opportunity. After all, how beautifully we might have passed together along the whole construction battalion. Leisurely, absorbed in each other, seeing nothing of the drab world around. And if the on-duty Ensign suddenly stopped me at the checkpoint I might just tell him to…

Although, who cares what exactly might have been told if I missed it and cowardly walked inside like a worthless boob…)

At night she took her clothes off down to the panties, which she abstained to remove and actively defended. The item of discord was rather capacious and stretching willingly, maybe after all those who, like me, aspired yet failed to become the buster.

In the morning, after the night spent in monotonous useless efforts at peeling those panties off her, I left the girl in her staunch irremovables and went back, without any tea at that time.

6 kilometers along an asphalt road with the nature awakening around for a new day – it's a rare treat. The light was flowing all over the sky, but the sun hadn't yet hove into sight. On a roadside hillock, I saw a horse among the greens of broad-leaved grass and, without giving it a moment's thought, turned towards him… Pure idiocy. I had never ridden a horse in my life, but I suddenly felt like it.

The horse started to retreat, and I ran after him but did not catch up, and only drenched my canvas pants with the thick dew covering the grass.

I returned to the road and walked on yelling all sorts of songs – nobody was near to hear my crap.

"Sleep! The night of June is just six-hour loooooooooong!"

In a week I received her letter sent from Stavropol, "…my soul aches – for whom? – for you!…" So beautiful words were wasted because I had already been harpooned and trophied by the one who "…was devastatingly happy…"

(…I never answered the letter but I do hope that Irina had eventually found a proper buster and they started living a happy, wealthy, and blissful life thereafter…)

~ ~ ~

After one year of service in the armed forces of the USSR, a soldier was eligible for a 10-day furlough to visit his home, the place where he was drafted from. When I spoke of my right to Major Avetissian, he did not even want to listen. How could Vanya possibly withstand ten days working round the clock alone?

Vanya said that, yes, he was up to the task, and Major Avetissian promised to give me a 10-day leave if I do a cosmetic overhaul in the stoker-house, to wit, whitewashing its interior.

The VSO-11 locksmith, private Ter-Terian, showed me the spot in the tall grass where they buried the lime not utilized at the previous cosmetology efforts. I loaded it in portions in a bath basin with handle-ears, added water to the proportion, hoisted it upon the furnaces to reach the ceiling in the stoker-house and with a broad brush – …slip-slop… slop-slup… – whitewashed where I could reach.

Then I took a long iron ladder from the locksmith Ter-Terian and leaned it against the walls, at some places against the pipes run under the ceiling, and – …slip-slop… slop-slup… – went on because it's just a circus and nothing else – …slip-slop… slop-slup… – but on the other hand, does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?

However, no Tom Sawyer would stand a whole week of circus-like whitewashing – two hugely tall and wide halls plus two enormous furnaces with a pair of twinned boilers within each.

Heated anticipation – that's what helped me to hold out that week… After all, Olga and I – …slip-slop…– missed trying so many things yet – …slip-slip-slop!..– we'll do it that way and even so and then all over again in full juxtaposition–…slop!…slop!..slop-slup!..– ten furlough nights that would fucking shatter the fucking world –…slip-slip-slop!…SLOOOP-slup!.

And now the renovation's over. The concrete floor in both halls bears variously shaped white splotches, even though I've swept it. The pipes under the ceiling got hastily wiped up. The whitewashing if not too uniform but then universal – without left-out spots. All in all, two huge halls and two gigantic furnaces.

"Comrade Major, the overhaul is done."

"And you call this an overhaul?"

"Comrade Major, you have promised…"

“I promised nothing!"

That's how Major Avetissian had fucked Tom Sawyer… SLIP-SLOP!!

At the end of the day, Gray came to the stoker-house, "Got the fuck?"

"Yea."

In the construction battalion, everyone knows everything about anyone else.

"Fuck him. Now we'll have a flight to Paris."

From the inner pocket of his jacket, he takes out a folded newspaper page, opens it at the place marked by a brownish thin plate, breaks a pinch of it off then folds and hides the paper back. The pinch gets crumbled into a tiny pile in his palm over which he presses and rolls a "Belomor-Canal" cigarette in between his fingers until two-thirds of the tobacco pours into his palm. A sharp blow into the Belomor’s thick-paper mouthpiece scatters the rest of the tobacco away. He bites the edge of the paper tube and pulls the cigarette tissue halfway off the mouthpiece. The stuff and tobacco in the palm mixed with care, the lengthened cigarette tube starts to consume the mixture in gentle tiny jerks.

Though watching the process for the first time ever, I still knew he was stuffing a joint.

"Spark it," and he brought up a burning match. "Keep the smoke in you.”

We smoked the joint passing it to each other, I diligently copied his way of inhaling and keeping the smoke in the lungs.

"Well, so what?"

"What what?"

"You asking? Wasn't you fucking touched? Well, you're some moose!"

"I'm sorry."

Disappointed, he left for the evening roll-call…

~ ~ ~

One week later, on my day shift, 2 soldiers of a Central Asian appearance modestly entered the stoker-house filled with the duet wailing by the furnace and the pump. Probably, from Separate Company, or else ours from the Crimean draft.