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

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In place of Captain Chernykh, a Siberian, another Captain arrived to take command over Fourth Company, transferred from the Mongolian steppes.

He was the pleasantness itself with an exceptionally long hook of a nose reaching his upper lip constantly stretched in a gracious smile. When on duty, he did not keep to the Commander office but walked the barrack aisle sharing his friendly boasts about the money certificates he had brought from Mongolia, and occasionally started small wrestling matches with soldiers. And those matches made him so happy and agitated; his eyes began to shine, red blush crept into his cheeks and the hanging nose began to scrape already both of his lips.

I couldn't get it at once although something pretty familiar flickered in his grimaces, intonations, yet what exactly I could not…Damn! I got it! The boy from Nalchik!. But then, well, that's an officer…Besides, there was his wife…

In short, I dubbed him after the name of the Mongolian currency and the reasonable handle immediately took root among the soldiers of the company. So, at another of evening roll-calls, Tughrik once again got into how rich he was with all those certificates for tughriks, and that the first thing next day he was going with his wife to buy a new refrigerator, and a new wristwatch as well, because the one he had was just a shame and had to be thrown away, regardless of its name: "Commander's".

I could not stand it any longer and spoke up, "If you don't want to throw it away then give it to some soldier."

To which, he immediately called out, "Who said that?! 2 steps out of the ranks!"

I stepped out. He approached me and in a demonstrative way unfastened the wristwatch strap. "Here you are!"

I took the watch and put it into my pocket, although he certainly expected a different outcome and had to suffer that friendly small surprise.

However, the next day it was me to be surprised with the hell of trouble brought about by that fucking watch. Half-day and no less I walked the streets attempting to sell it and no one agreed to buy. They knew if a conbatist offers you a watch it should have been pinched or at least cut off from a cold body. And a good watch it was, I swear, once my father paid 25 rubles in Moscow for the exact same thing, but I asked just meager 7.

For the first time, I was not jackalling and stuff but offering a square deal… Nah, commerce is a dead thing if there is no demand. In the end, I took it to a watchmaker's, and when the mujik there suggested 3 rubles I just had no choice.

Relived, I stepped out of the workshop with the dough earned so honestly just to be confronted by an alky, "Hey, soldier! Buy a watch from me! I'll give it for just 3 rubles!" That's a coincidence for you! But those sots got outrageously brazen, they did not even stop at messing around with conbatists…

A week later, Vanya told me how a young cook was sleeping recently in the workshop of the stoker-house. Being the on-duty officer that day, Tughrik stuck his long nose even to the stoker-house and saw the young on the mattress spread over the workbench. He clutched the soldier’s dick and stuck like shit to a shovel, "Gimme! Gimme it! " And now, concluded Vanya his story, that Tughrik was already sucking two young cooks, while one of them was, in the intervals, fucking his wife…

Once in the barracks, the wafflister made a try to push me around, "Seems, like you think you are so great a grandpa, eh?"

I did not say a single word to it, but only protruded my lips to issue three tiny sounds, "Tchmo-tchmo-tchmo!"

He mutely turned around and walked away with his back stiffened at unforgiving attention. Since then, he dropped to notice me at all because I was such a scoundrel. “A naasty scoundreel!”

A newcomer dipper appeared in the company barrack who was transferred from another construction battalion somewhere in Dagestan where he went to an AWOL and caught his wife a-cheating on him with another man. He tried to raise dust for that reason but got tied up and locked in the clink which he flooded with so convincing promises to bump off everyone involved as well as himself for a dessert, that they transferred him to us – the remotest point in the same Military District… The soldier was of some Caucasian origin, I can't be more specific, in Dagestan alone there were about 48 different nationalities.

He did not talk to anyone and no one talked to him. Because of fear maybe, kinda when seeing a new beast in your native cage.

One evening, he sat on a stool in the aisle of the company barracks with a newspaper in his hands. I was passing by and some headline attracted my attention. I mean that all I wanted was just to have a look and give it back. But he replied, "Fuck off!"

"What?! Thief-swaggering, salaga?"

He jumped up to his feet. And I never had a chance to reach him, a whole pack flew in to kick up a blizzard. The private broke away and ran out of the barrack. And—which is characteristic—no grandpa was in that pack, just only dippers. Later I figured out that they were so pissed because of his making them fear him for several days; they were scared of his being not like them. No ethnic grounds though, just because of his family tragedy he harbored the danger of bumping you off and fuck the quadrangle of the circle problem. Any pack is cemented by fear…

Yet, the buddy ran away no farther than the Stuff barrack, he did not have the nerve to make for his native Dagestan… The on-duty officer came to our barrack and led me to the clink already occupied, in part, by a Dnepropetrovsk