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

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.

(…it's only now I realize that she was crying about herself, about her life flashed by in a flick. Just so recently she was scampering to the ballet school with her girlfriends and—here you are!—a man in the parade-crap in front of her, like, the son came back from the army. When?..)

My mother looked back at the small frightened girl standing by the kitchen table and, finishing the last sob, she said, "What do you fear, silly? It's your dad who's come."

Then she again turned to me, "How that you did not meet Olga? She went to the third shift, working at the brick factory."

~~~~~

~ ~ ~ My Universities: Part Two

That was exactly the moment which I never allowed myself to dream of in those 2 years when in the morning I woke up not from the bellow of an on-duty jerk but because of a female embrace, that of Olga. She came home from work, lay atop of me, hugged thru the blanket, and I awakened to answer her kiss. Our talk somehow did not come out well, if an exchange of one-word clues could be called a talk at all. And we looked at each other in such a manner that my mother, who was on her vacation, promptly took our daughter Lenochka and went to Bazaar…

Everything in life is surely repeating itself. What was, will be there again. The difference, if any, is slightly made by circumstantial details… For instance, that my mother returned from Bazaar (and not from a store) without oranges, and that nothing restrained me this time… As for the hieroglyphics left on my wrist by the claws of that hotel sadist, Olga, sure enough, marked them well, studied attentively and read their message, but not out loud. Actually, I did not insist on her sharing the obtained information.

(…there’s no substance more flexible than time. The current year lasts elastically and shows no wish for termination, while a year lived thru shrinks into a mere point of time.

A point has no length whatsoever, it ends at its own start. So, tell me any good reason to consider shorter stretches than a year as having even a point's worth. Really, what can you say about the last month? That it had several Fridays and there was thirteenth among its dates. Right. And about the last hour? Oh, yes! It had sixty minutes… Empty term-juggling, jejune re-shuffle of numbers.

A decade, when lived thru, turns into a same-size point. After that point idled at school, a person begins to grow bristles. Another such point spent at Zona brings about aching joints (especially in the right shoulder), yet it still is just a point…)

A week after the demobilization, the two-year eternity at the construction battalion becomes tattered scraps of memories pinned onto a point in the past. The flow of ever-moving life carries all those points off, to hell or whatever other destination, and it does not matter where exactly, because you don't have time to ponder on such matters but have a more urgent task – to get along the streaming flow of life….

When bathing, there are two ways of entering the water. Following the first, you go into it step by step, your shoulders pulled up, rising on the tiptoes as the bottom grows deeper. The other way is to enter until the water is knee-deep and with a shriek (the element’s not vital and might be left out) plunge headlong forward… It was time for me to dip into civilian life…

Overseer Borya Sakoon died neglecting his promise to retire in 4 years.

The Arkhipenkos moved to the Kamchatka Peninsular, which, reportedly, was Fishermen Paradise where fish jumps into your skiff of their free will.

My brother and sister graduated the Railway Transportation School and were sent to work off for their diplomas by exploration and construction of railways somewhere in the Urals between Ufa and Orenburg.

Vladya and Chuba returned from the army half-year before me and had time enough to acquire streamlined conformity to the concurrent life-flow. Skully had developed a solid bold patch over his head and looked for becoming 27, which age ended draft liability of a USSR citizen. He was exempted from the army as the only breadwinner for his single mother with her single mother, God save them both until his coming of the right age!

I was not much amused at my re-appearance in the Konotop polite society. We gathered at the Vadya's, I stuffed a joint, yet my friends did but a couple of drags each, just for civility's sake… From Vadya's khutta we ventured to the Loony park where The Spitzes were playing dances. When passing Deli 6, Vladya farted at a lighted match held by Skully close to his ass. The emitted ammonia flared up in a blue bunch of flame. It did not delight me though, having seen all sorts of suchlike tricks in the construction battalion, I did not care for the commemorative improvising.

In general, my way of getting on high wasn't fine with them, and theirs didn't turn me on. We