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

Sergeant Ziganshin recollected the beauty of both sunsets and dawns in his native Tatarstan steppe and refused. The rest three sailors followed the suit (being not Tatars though) and later all of them were awarded one of the higher orders in the Soviet Union after a proper check if they didn't become CIA agents while being fed up back to normal in the cornucopious State of California [only by mid-90's Askhat Ziganshin managed to rehabilitate from his addiction caused by the never-subsiding making him drunk at undercover interrogation sessions disguised as ceremonial parties].

All that happened in 1960 and gave birth to a popular folk-rock song running something like this:

Beware the boogie man!Ziganshin's on the loot!The night beforeHe chomped his buddy’s boot!

Which is the oddest point in this whole story because at that period the USSR hadn't got any VIA yet…)

The porridge was liquid too and as hot as the borshch. Compote poured into the cups from well-dented aluminum kettles, was not so hot, yet also liquid. The stunning din of bustle in a railway station served the background to munching and slurping. At times (not every day though) the peaceful symphony of animated feeding got pierced thru by loud curses and dings of a cup hurled bouncing and spilling along the central aisle. Nothing to get jumpy about, the soldier noticed that his cup was leaking and expressed his indignation with that fact because in the since-long-established prison tradition using of impaired utensils was the prerogative as well as the mark of a petukh, aka faggot among inmates.

On finishing the meal, the tools of personal saturation had to be taken to the Dishwashers' window and put in the appropriate piles or stacks on the shelf-ledge. As those accumulate, Dishwashers themselves would topple the heaps into the corresponding sections of the trough under the streams of steaming water from the taps.

Now we could leave the Canteen and return to the "training" barrack so as not to miss the next command to fall in…

The subsequent army experience proved that borshch was never to happen for breakfast or supper, those started immediately with kirzookha, and in the morning next to the bread on the tables they put a tray with 20 cubes (1" x 1" x 0.5") of yellow butter brought from the Bread-Cutter's window, which you spread on the bread with the handle of aluminum spoon picked up from the pile. If the butter was brought in one piece it was portioned by the most authoritative serviceman of those present at the table, with his spoon handle.

The piece of butter could also be reduced by a passer-by serviceman who started his army service a year and a half earlier, and now approached your table to reward himself for his combat merits. The lump sugar, brought for tea, would also do for one or another honored veteran…

On the whole, the ration was unpretentious, yet enough for to survive. In autumn it became even simpler – cabbage and water for the first course, cabbage and no water for the second, water and no cabbage for the third.

On a seldom lucky day, you could detect a sliver of lard a-floating in your portion of the kirzookha porridge (the detachment had its pigsty, after all) but nothing beyond the lard.

And on the Soviet holidays, they would even add white buns for the morning tea…

At first, I couldn't eat soldiers' food. Not that I was over-squeamish, but simply because no matter how hard I tried I still couldn't manage to stuff that ration into myself. It stubbornly stuck in the throat.

At one of the meals, a soldier from the previous draft, seeing my diligent agony, laughed and explained, "No fear! You'll get used and start to havvat anything." He was right. The matter was that in the construction battalion they did not eat, but "havvat".

"The company went to havvat – catch on!"

"And what havvage is it today?"

As soon as I stopped eating and started havvating, everything fell into place. At times, I even havvatted an additional portion.

But that came later because if a soldier in his first half-year in the service (handled in that period "young", or "salaga", or "salabon") dared approach the dispenser window with the bowl in hands, the cook, most likely, would feel lazy to splash into it a scoop of havvage and simply shriek instead, "Fuck you, salabon!" Not because of being a genetic misanthropist, but just aping the attitude he had suffered from when being a "young" himself. However, he also might not start shrieking – you come across exceptions anywhere.

(…in his 2 years in the army service, a Soviet soldier ascended the hierarchical ladder of servicemanship.

In the first six months, he was a salaga, aka young, aka salabon.

For the next six months—after the following draft had brought in a new wave of youngs—he became a dipper.

1 year of service and 2 younger drafts behind made him a pheasant.

For the concluding six months, with no old-timers above him, he was a grandpa.

And, at last, Minister of Defense of the USSR has signed the order on demobilization of the servicemen drafted 2 years ago, which act turns a grandpa into a dembel to be dismissed on the arrival of the new draftees.

The hierarchy terminology is not overly hieroglyphic.

Young meant the youngest in the service.

Dippers were entrusted with dealing the havvage out – for the youngs too early, for the senior servicemen below their status.

Pheasants took in the width of their cotton pants to have them tight like sausage skin and began to stagger kinda bunch of dandies.

Grandpa was antipodal to young, and dembel presented a nice abbreviation for "demobilization".

To go thru that ladder you had to live 2 years… At the age of 18 or 20 such quantity of time seems an eternity.

Besides, the quality of time in the army is unpredictable, some days fly by hardly having been started, while others – vice versa, you feel that no less than a week had passed already but—no!—it's still today. In the army, the amount of