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

Our following meetings took place outside her apartment, and she began to show interest in studying my military ID. The balls about my ID locked up in the safe at the Commander’s office did not roll far with her – she was two years older or have I told so already?

Then there cropped up some nagging predicaments and confusions in the otherwise peaceful flow of my service. I got in a scrape or two, and we lost sight of each other. Already before the demobilization, I went to visit her again, but her mother said Tanya was not home.

I waited for her at the staircase-entrance and, when she eventually appeared, we went out to a wide night courtyard between the five-story apartment-blocks and she succumbed both readily and quietly on a table in the playgrounds. However, I cum too soon, much faster than in that staircase-entrance which outcome I did not like at all and broke off our relationship, in conformance with the demand of Captain Pissak, Commander of First Company. Because, as it stands in the Statute of the Internal Military Service, "an order of the commander is the law for a lower-ranked serviceman"…

~ ~ ~

The closer the demobilization, the shorter is your sleep. Where have you retired, O, the euphoric times when I, still a salaga, was falling asleep the moment my head touched the pillow? An enviable bliss.. And now, the evening roll-call over, the long aimless visit to the Club paid, again I'm plodding back to the barrack without any hope to get a wink of sleep… So, we get together, the nighthawks of the same feather, an upscale insomniac detail of buddies from undercover Royal Troops infiltrating the SA,

stretched upon bunk beds in one or another koobrik. We gossip of this, we gossip of that, or just drive a fool.

(…many years later I learned from Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago that it was an old traditional pastime among zeks, inherited from the Czarist times when someone in the cell retold some novel by some Dickens with adaptations and retouch of the details to bring them closer to the everyday contemporary life. Only instead of "driving a fool" zeks called it "stamping a novel"…)

When it was my turn, I stamped a novel of revenge about two young lovers and a cruel baron from the castle on the hill. That heinous brute of a baron imprisoned the young man in the dark dungeon cell illuminated only when he brought in a couple of torches along with his beloved to use her as a sex slave right in front of the poor guy. A month later, the prisoner tore out the peg that fixed his chain to the wall and paid the bills for lodging and warm hospitality.

(…the plot had nothing to do with Dickens or any particular literary work because when driving that fool I, with my closed eyes, watched the gossamer blouse of Michelle Mercier presenting her nipples in the first sequel of "Angelica". However, here arises the question: if I have farmed out my Michelle to the baron applying her (one whole month!) to tickle his senile fantasies, taking turns with his wolfhound and various objects of medieval utensils and implements, then (even though jerking at the peg in the futile attempts to pull it from the wall, but still collaboratively keeping time with the concurrent porno scenes) may it be I'm a pervert?

Of course, the question was forwarded not by the listeners but by myself, and much later too, but still and all…)

During the epilogue centered on the methodical dismantling of the baron into the constituent parts performed in monstrously graphical manner, Khmel suddenly wailed, "Hey, on-duty!"

From the cabinet-box by the faraway barrack entrance, the on-duty came and Khmel told him, "He had fucking fucked already with his snoring, dome the fucker, let him RIP."

"Who?"

"In the koobrik over two passages."

The on-duty bent over the peace disturber and listened to the sleepy breathing, "No, not this one."

Lyolik joined in the conversation, "Who the fuck cares? Dome the fucker all the same!"

(…the depth of philosophical wisdom of the utterance still brings the tears of tender delight to my eyes.

"Who the fuck cares? Dome the fucker all the same!."

Here! Here it is – the quintessence of statuary and other service relations, the pledge of having a well-trained army, marked with combat zeal and readiness…

I’d be happy to add of the "Soviet army", the one that's plopped into oblivion… but who nowadays believes in Father Christmas?..)

A soldier-dembel pines away under incessant tension. A state of incomprehensible, groundless anxiety deprives him of sleep, appetite, and the ability to assess and conform his actions to the requirements of elementary logic and common sense… Every morning, the buddies from your draft get lined up in groups facing the ranks of the Morning Dispensing and, after a brief farewell from Zampolit, or Chief of Staff, they march to the gate by the checkpoint, they go home. And when would my turn come?!.

After idling around to 3 o'clock at the location of VSO-11, I got in the cabin of UAZ-66 truck used for fetching bread to the Canteen from Stavropol. Under the canvas top of the truck back, climbed Lyolik and some of his buddies, also going to AWOL.

The truck left thru the gate and sped to the city along the asphalt road wet after the recent thunderstorm. The asphalt closer to the roadsides was all ruts and holes full of rain water so the white car that jumped out of the road turn was darting along the middle. The UAZ driver dodged, leaping with the right wheels of the truck onto the muddy roadside. The turn was rushing at him, he braked and slewed left. The truck jumped back onto the asphalt and skidded along in a free-style gliding.

The driver, next to me, was frantically spinning the wheel hither-thither and back again. The truck kept speedily crabbing along, changing the sides at her will, paying no attention to whatever the driver was doing to the wheel. In the end, we were turned in the opposite direction and, after traveling backward for some time, the truck capsized… The embankment was not too high—about two meters—so we reeled just a couple of times.

Tumbling under the slope inside the cab of a truck, you live thru a strange sensation as if you were a fish in a bowl. Probably, that is weightlessness. The driver, the wheel, the cab door, and once again the hovering driver are slowly floating past you… I landed on him when the motion died leaving the truck on her side. Yet, the driver was the first to climb out thru the window overhead. I followed him.

The buddies from the truck back were already standing by the driver. Lucky fellas… On the road, the Battalion Commander's "goat"-Willys squeaked its brakes. To simplify the assessment of the situation, I merged with the green foliage of the forest edge.

"Who else was that?"

"I dunno, some soldier from Separate Company asked to take him along…"

After two kilometers, the forest was over, and so was the tense tremor in my hands, when I entered the city. I went to a cinema to take off the adrenaline rush. It was "How to Steal a Million" with Peter O'Toole. Or was it "The Remarriage" with Belmondo?

Nah! After Belmondo, I met Nadya, a student of something there. We walked for a long time, hugging here and there, but when I went over to kisses, she bit my tongue. "I know what you're hinting at!"

Stuff it! What hints were there? It hurt so, I could hardly speak seeing her to the one-story house where she rented a room.

She dropped in and brought out a can of condensed milk, kinda emolument to the wrongly wounded warrior. I hugged her for goodbye but shunt kissing. When she left, I looked at the can in my hand then at the wall of the house. No stray nails… So I placed the can on the railing and went away bypassing the pleasure for my bitten tongue…

Just only four dembels still stuck around in the construction battalion – I, Gray, Red from Dnepropetrovsk, and Alexander Roodko. I had already got myself a parade-crap, borrowing it from a pheasant in Third Company. Because of transference after one year of service to Fourth Company as a stoker, I missed then getting a parade-crap both at First and Fourth Companies…

Before the Morning Dispensing, there started up a round-dance by the sorteer. The eager on-lookers jogging to watch the entertainment informed hastily, that the night before Gray made a young truck-crane driver take him from a site to the battalion and, when they reached Separate Company, he got to the wheel himself and crashed into a pole. Nothing terrible happened, the dented truck crane did not really need a repair. However, Chief of Staff, when they reported to him on his arrival, went amok and wanted to kick Gray’s ass personally.

"YOU FUCKER!"

What a mighty hook! The major put every kilo of his stout body into the ramming wallop and!. Whoops!. Gray dodged. Hmm…boo, Major!..and I had always thought you were a boxer…

The soldiers helped Chief of Staff to get back on his feet. The on-duties convoyed beltless Gray to the clink…

At the Morning Dispensing that followed, Zampolit announced that Red was going to the demobilization, and the next day Roodko and I as well. I approached him in the Staff half-barrack.

"Comrade Zampolit, I need a testimonial."

"What testimonial?"

"For admission to the institute."

"You are an absolute son of a bitch, Ogoltsoff!”, blurted Zampolit out, “ Are you fucking sane? An alky, junky, gangsta! I'll give you such a fucking testimonial that no Zona will accept you other than the jug for lifers! Fuck! It's our oversight that you get out of here at all. But you wait! The society will deal with you, they’ll crush you yet and grind down to the finest powder!"

Then 3 of us were paid money at the Staff's accountancy. Wow! So I even had some earnings! 120 rubles for two years of honest work…

Roodko and I went to see Red off and to equip ourselves at the same go. When in the city, Roodko bought a sports-bag for his journey home, and I chose a "diplomat" briefcase, they were just getting in vogue then. The inside between the gleaming plastic walls got filled with dembel stuff: cellophane-wrapped pantyhose for Olga, a bottle of vodka for me and my father, and a crimson silk tablecloth with a fringe, for 7 rubles 50 kopecks, which Red bought for his mother and asked me to keep in the "diplomat" while we were sprinkling down the dust on the way home that he started. Besides, I loaded in the kicks bought by me – light and practical footwear with black corduroy tops for just six-fifty, because in the battalion I couldn't find high shoes for the borrowed parade-crap and went shopping in the pair borrowed from the Third Company on-duty Sergeant for just a day.

After the Red's way was sprinkled properly and our clamorous goodbyes were nearing the bus stop for him to set off to the railway station, I was not drunk and clearly remembered that crimson silk tablecloth inside my "diplomat". I did not remind Red of the gift he had bought for his mother. I stole it.

To give me one last chance, he sobered up, for just a second but completely, checking if I would tell him. His eyes met mine. The Red’s attempt at the last minute rescuing ran into my snooty poker face. In drunken submission to the inevitable, his head dropped onto his chest and he staggered on never looking back anymore. I watched the distance growing between us in the sunlit sidewalk – 10 meters, 20… But I never called out, "Hey, Red! You forgot it, buddy!"

(…and no prissy bitch on the Varanda river banks could ever bring about redemption for this my dirt…)

Next morning, Roodko and I stood facing the ranks of VSO-11 and Chief of Staff announced that we were going to the demobilization. We both made the "to left!" Clutching the black plastic handle of my black "diplomat", I followed Roodko’s back and his blue sports bag, no thoughts, no joy, some odd emptiness. Just 2 dembels walking away, leaving behind 2 years amputated from their lives.

After a couple of steps we did, Battalion Commander spotted the corduroy kicks heading past him to the gate behind which the society lurked in ambush making ready to grind me down to powder at the nearest convenient moment. Battalion Commander made the last, desperate, attempt at saving the doomed, "What the fuck?! Watch the motherfucker in the fucking dancing pumps!" However, Chief of Staff cut short his fatherly protective impulse, "Let the fucker get the fuck out!” said he, "The motherfucker’s fucking motherfucked already all and every fucking one here!"

Good-bye and you, Fathers-Commanders…