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

But why the KGB Captain remained nameless? He told me his name-and-patronymic but I am hanged if I can recollect it.

Not that I'm afraid of the KGB, or whatever is its new, post-Soviet, name – no; it's just a case of permanent brain cramp at that point. When I try to recollect, his name eludes me… Not that I strive in earnest though…)

~ ~ ~

In those times, there were two restaurants in Nezhyn – "Polissya" in the square in front of the Bazaar, and "The Seagull" in the hotel of the same name to the right from the City-and-District Party Committee behind the Lenin's back on the main square. The third one was on the first floor of the railway station but in the afternoon it worked as a canteen, so I count it out.

The epic provincial backwaters inspiring tender sympathy by a mere thought of it… of the monument bust commemorating the home-geezer whose sail-boat at the dawn of XIX-nth century hove at sight nearby the Antarctic shores, yet the silly innocent penguins couldn’t discern the entire taxidermic impact of the appearance of that strange wooden ice-floe over the dark polar waters carrying a herd of strange penguins gaggling in non-Penguin lingo… of the cathedral closed for renovation works ever since end 50’s… of the firstborn of the Soviet combat-tank industry, the model of 1929, at the Shevchenko Park entrance without any podium, right on the asphalt sidewalk: fill in the diesel fuel and – full ahead!. Even the square before the Bazaar was, actually, just a wide street tilting from the bridge up to the department store…

The restaurants we visited quite seldom, and not all of us because Yasha and Fyodor shunned the facilities. On such occasions, they were substituted by Sveta, the official bride of Marc. The white tablecloths on the tables, and the wide green runner from the entrance up to the screen in the corner, concealing the window to the kitchen, showed at once that it was a restaurant for you and not a shabby bar. And, as it's appropriate for a restaurant, we had to wait thru a long wait before the waitress would bring the ordered goulash and potatoes.

To whittle the span down, Sasha Ostrolootsky would start rubbing his set of spoon-fork-knife lined in a close formation next to the up-turned cone of a napkin upon the tablecloth. Like, he was so well-bred and cleanly. Good news, he didn't stick his pinky finger out at the procedure, some prudish Marquis de Orphanage…

Sveta kept nagging Marc with her "What's that, Marik? I didn't get it!" but in a lower kind of voice… Finally, from behind the screen, the waitress appeared with a tray in her hands… Whoops, taken to another table…

But here, at last, and for us too. She moved the plates from the tray onto the table. Sasha in a well-trained manner poured shots of vodka out from the small and round, like a flask for Chemistry experiments, decanter. Shoot off!

And after the second shot, you were already a participant in a witty conversation of the amicable table-mates. Your fingers toyed so smartly with the fork. The music from the loudspeakers behind the screen was no longer sounding too crude. Your unobtrusively gaze swept over those present in the room. Which one to invite for a slow dance on the green runner?

Marc knew them all, which Department, say, those two girls were from, and in what year of their study. If that was someone not from the Institute, then Sveta, as a local guide, presented all their intimate details. Weren’t we the cream of the libertine crop then, eh?.

In the end, Marc would pay for all from his soft brown purse. Back at the hostel, we reimbursed for our shares…

But for his love to teach you, Marc would pass for quite a decent dude. Coming back from the shower on the first floor, he made sure to peep into the lobby to thank the watchwoman, auntie Dinna, for the hot water. And then he started to drive it home to me that although she had nothing to do with the water, yet now she was prepared to do him favors. Because it's like promising something to someone. Nobody might be positive if you were going to keep your word so that they would get indeed what was promised, however, the person you bestowed a hope on starts looking into your hands and, because of the anticipation, they would pull for you.

(…it seems to me, he was just echoing adages by which his father kept screwing his head on since Marc's early childhood. Jewish wisdom transferred from generation to generation, eh?.

That's from whom the KGB learned hooking fools by promises of a spy school…)

Paying for his free lectures in kind, I presented him The Otranto Castle which book he saw on my cabinet-box and got impressed.

It was borrowed from the library at the KahPehVehRrZeh Club. So, I had to return the book first and a week later I stole it from the shelves. Nothing could be easier, in the privacy of a passage between the stacks of shelves, you stuck a book under the belt in your pants, put your sheepskin coat aright, grab another book on the way to the desk of the librarian, and leave with two books of which only one is registered….

The home-made feasts whooped up in Room 72 cost us much less… While Yasha and Fyodor were dispatched after Calvados in flask-like bottles of foreign looks, Ostrolootsky and I went to the kitchen.

On each floor in the Hosty, there were two kitchens, located by the entrance to the corridor from each of the staircase landings. Each kitchen was furnished with two gas stoves, one water tap combined with the sink, and three rows of boxes on one wall, like those in automatic storage cells, only made of veneered chipwood instead of iron… On the window sill, we were peeling potatoes, lots of potatoes.

Sasha had nice