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

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But even 24 hours later I was still in Stavropol, at the city airport of plain rustic looks. Just having served "two winters and two summers" was not enough, you still had to reach home.

I had a flight ticket to Kiev bought from the city Aeroflot office, but when I arrived at the kolkhoz field of an airport, the flight was delayed for an hour, then for another hour and only by noon the piston-plane AN-24 ran along the takeoff strip, and beneath the wing of the aircraft, thru the muffled hum of motors, floated rarefied clouds over topographic landscapes. The construction battalion stayed in the past, but it still hanged about and I was thinking of the First Company Master Sergeant who stuck to me on a city bus last week.

And it was so stupid, did he really need it when clad in his civvy outfit? Because he was drunk, he wanted to show off what an important piece of shit he was, that's why.

"What are you doing here? Back to barracks! I'll report to Battalion Commander at the Morning Dispensing!"

"And I'll say you were drunk as a swine."

None was said by neither one to nobody…

And that major also was in his civvy, so how could I know?

"I'm a Major!" shrieked he, "How dare you?"

Who'd guess you were a Major when you have civilian rags on? Look at me – all's in full view; the black shoulder-strap clear of any yellow crap means clear conscience – a rank-and-file construction battalion!

It's because of that barmaid in the cafе that we came to grips. She was a juice sort and, at first, it was me who she addressed the purposeful swing of her ample breasts to, before he flashed his rank trump, or was he bluffing? Nah, you can't dupe such a woman…

I still belong to the Construction Battalion. Forever. Some part of it stuck in me. To the very end….

But I did not think of anything like that then, I was just a dembel flying home. Not home meaning "barracks", but home meaning "home". Although my mother wrote in her letter that they had sold their quarter-khutta in Nezhyn Street, and bought half-khutta someplace deeper in the Settlement. No fear, I got the address, I would find it.

But I couldn't think about Konotop for long, I got accustomed to thinking about other things and so I thought my usual thoughts… As we took the drummer from Pyatigorsk to the Military Flight School to show that he was real good.

There went 3 of us – Long, the drummer and I. We wanted the cadets from the vocal-instrumental ensemble at the Flight School saw for themselves that the drummer was a pro so that they would put a word to their zampolit to find him some position in the chmo by their School because he was to be drafted to the army. Such was the idea.

The cadets were, so too conveniently, rehearsing on the stage in the hall like a summer cinema, without the roof. They handed Long their guitar, the drummer sat behind the drums… Wow! The two dudes made a duet da bomb, a potpourri from Jimmy and Jimmy, they unleashed their souls in full letting them on a free flight… Poor fools! They sort of run a bulldozer over those rosy cadets in their blue shoulder-straps who needed a drummer of the kind that follows the pioneer banner next to the bugler with the red pennant on his horn:

du-du-du-d?! du-du-du-d?!

Not a chance they'd ever mention such a Drummer to their zampolit. So well-groomed boys, them those cadets; well-fed too…

Was it all over? No more evening roll-calls? Neither Zampolit, nor Chief of Staff, nor pieces… I was flying home; at home, everything would be nyshtyak! Not for nothing, I had been dreaming of it all those two years, or rather did not allow myself to ever think about home…

That was my first flight on an airplane; better than crawling endless 2 days by train. My wrist still hurt a bit; that fool of a bitch in the hotel the night before. She would give, only there was nowhere,” Let's go to your room,” said she. I asked the mujiks in the room, and they left.

So, while she was demonstrating her unbreakable virginity and maiming my wrist with her fingernails, they started to come back, one by one. The sеance is over. But I didn't strong-arm her, she just grabbed my hand and started her claw-work. That Stavropol was just some breeding ground for sadist chicks, I swear.

Hopefully, Olga would not notice… but if she would, then what? You could get any kind of scars when doing your combat duty…

The AN-24 landed in Rostov. I went to the toilet by the takeoff field and, on the way back, a military patrol stopped me.

Right! Corduroy shoes is an utter breach of the Statute of the Internal Military Service, but I'm a demobbed dembel flying home, bros! My plane's already buzzing its propellers! They let me go.

At refueling in Kharkov I sat tight and, at last, landing in the airport Boryspol brim-filled with the summer sunlight… On that first flight, I thought it was already Kiev and, entering the bright sunny square full of all kinds of vehicles and scurrying pedestrians, I went straight to the big shield bearing huge "T" and two rows of chessboard squares, to get a taxi.

The taxi driver was a long-haired mujik about 30 in brown leather shoes with thick strings. I told him to take me to the railway station and he asked me to wait in the car while he would look for additional fellow-travelers; there still remained 48 kilometers to Kiev. He left and I remained to wait in the front passenger seat. It was hot and I took off my parade-crap jacket and, to pass the time and keep in check the growing inside tension, I stuffed and smoked a joint.

The driver came back with two more passengers to fill the backseat: a Major and a Lieutenant-Colonel, but younger than our Battalion Commander, and we started. Maybe, that driver in brown shoes scented the weed in his car and got carried away by some personal memories, but he drove like mad, and after crossing the Dnieper over the Paton Bridge, he dropped heeding the traffic lights completely… Or, maybe, the traffic lights had a day-off and it was a sunlit holiday of free driving for anyone to overtake whoever they wanted however they could…

Paying for the ride at the station, the Lieutenant-Colonel said, "Well, chief, you're flying indeed!" So, most likely, the driver got his drift on the wake…

In 1975, "diplomat" briefcases were a fairly seldom sight attracting attention by their foreign voguish looks which would be forgivable for senior officers but I, a private man, was stopped by a military patrol the moment I stepped into the central hall of the Kiev Railway Station. And the patrol, by the by, were cadets again, yet this time with red shoulder-straps. They checked my military ID and the demobilization papers, there was nothing to find fault with.

And then I made a mistake of looking at my shoes. The patrol commander followed my glance and traced back a flagrant violation of the statutory uniform. I was taken to the station military commandant office, under the magnificent stairs which led to the giant marble statue of Lenin's head, on the landing half-way to the second floor.

The on-duty officer at the commandant office told me to open the "diplomat" whose innards proved instantly that I was nothing but a dembel: pantyhose, a bottle of vodka, and the stolen crimson tablecloth.

"Go," said he. "Come back in the uniform shoes and get your case."

I rushed to the huge ticket-offices hall on the left. There was a long line at the ticket office for the Moscow's direction. In the line, some 30 meters off the ticket office, I made out a soldier in the parade-crap. He was a big man, which meant his feet were not small, and he looked sad because (that's elementary) he was returning after his furlough to serve another year.

"Where are you going?"

"To Moscow."

"Come on."

I led him straight to the window of the ticket office and explained it to the line, which all of a sudden grew so animatedly clamorous, that we had urgent orders to defense their peaceful sleep and safety at the remote border-lines of our Homeland. He bought a ticket to Moscow and I to Konotop.

When we moved away, I described for him the situation about the case. A pheasant cannot say "no" to a dembel. We sat on one of the many benches in the huge waiting hall and exchanged the footwear…

"Where could you manage so fast?" asked the on-duty officer at the commandant office.

"Bought from a gypsy on the platform."

With the case set free, I hurried to where the sad after-furlough buddy was hiding his feet in the statute violating kicks deeper under the bench. I landed down next to him, but we did not have time to change – the loudspeakers announced that the train to Moscow was going to start off the sixth platform, and we ran there so as not to be late… The strings on the borrowed shoes got loose and started lashing the floor on the run, but we boarded in time…

The train knocked hastily over the rails, it was carrying me to Konotop, yet my uptightness did not slack up, I urged the train to go faster and could in no way calm down… Only late at night getting off the train on Platform 4 of the Konotop Station, I believed that that's it.

"After his service done,
Came the soldier home…"

And I again rode the familiar Streetcar 3, but this time to the very terminal. The darkness outside the window made the pane-glass show a vague reflection of the khaki jacket and the forage cap of serviceman parade-crap… At the terminal, I asked where Decemberists Street was, and they told me to go right…

Protracted fences, dark khuttas behind their wickets, rare lampposts made up some unfamiliar outskirts. Having asked someone else along the way, I went out onto Decemberists Street and walked along it until I reached the wicket with the scarcely discernible in the dark plate marked 13.

I entered the yard and knocked on the first door in the khutta. It opened… Was that my father so gray-haired? When?.

In the light falling on his back thru the open door, he looked incredulously at my parade-crap, "Sehrguey?" Then he turned to the inner house, "Galya! Sehrguey has come!"

My mother came out onto the porch and buried her head in the breast of the parade-crap jacket, crying loudly.

Standing one step lower, I confusedly patted her shoulder, "Well, Mom, calm down, I'm back after all." I really did not know what there was to cry about.