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

basis of their shared nationality, but then they split and joined the Mensheviks and the Social Democrats.

Sasha Nesteryouk, on a flying visit thru the room, waved his black scarf playfully and proclaimed anarchy to be the mother of order.

Fyodor and I declared ourselves fighters from the Peasant Army of Nestor Makhno and threatened to fuck up anyone distracting us from playing Throw-in Fool. Yasha, as a resident of Poltava, became a representative of the Ukrainian Central Rada. The horseplay was not too long but as loud as usual…

Next morning, no one remembered the noisy pastime and would forget it altogether were I not so stupid as to mention the jolly game at the meeting with the KGB man. Captain got wired, sat upright and, instead of usual two lines, squeezed out of me a whole page with the names of who was in the room, which party was his choice.

He did not like the conclusion in my report that the game died out because we got bored; I had to re-write all after he edited the page and crossed the statement out… And the hell of a rumpus broke loose.

The KGB started calling the guys from the English Department for interrogations, even those who never popped up in Room 72 that cursed night. They wrote down their testimonies – who entered second? who sat where? why declared himself a Kadet? Some students were summoned more than once. Dudes were coming back to the hostel with drawn faces, retelling the interrogation, anxiously discussing the possible outcome. Under the single-party political system, you could very easily be denied the diploma even after four years of study…

Three weeks later there was a general meeting of the English Department because the Organs detected certain unhealthy tendencies among our students. The KGB captain was introduced to the meeting and read out the list of the participants in the subversive Game of Parties. It eased me up a little when I heard my name mentioned – they wouldn't guess that it was I who finked on guys. Then they began to selectively call the players to the large blackboard in the auditorium.

Lipes said that he dropped in absolutely by chance, seeking a teapot, stayed for just a minute and did not have time enough to get it what game it was at all.

Sehrguey Nesterenko from Kiev, without any preliminaries, banged off a dramatic declamation of the lines in a Shakespeare play:

"Romans! Countrymen! Lend me your ears!.."

He was called to stop the balagan and get back to his place immediately.

As for Yasha Demyanko, he felt obviously happy to lean onto the lectern with his elbows and begin developing logical syllogisms in the most flowery Ukrainian language about the unprecedented precedent at hand.

In the end, Marc Novoselytsky faced the meeting, as the instigator, and said how sorry he was for not getting it at once how bad that game was, and promised solemnly to never ever play it again. The meeting decided to announce a reprimand to everyone from the Captain's list and called to always guard and uphold the honor of the Soviet youth…

Returning to the hostel from the meeting, everyone seemed to give me sidelong glances and whisper behind my back.

Sasha Ostrolootsky, to relieve the stress from the interrogations in the KGB, drank a bottle of vodka without any snack and had to throw up, however, he managed to run out to the toilet.

Everyone finished the studies and received their diplomas. The KGB Captain failed to bloat the Game of Parties up to the dimensions of the "doctors-poisoners" case about their attempt at assassination of Leader of All Nations, Comrade Stalin, with their medical treatment. However, he certainly proved to his seniors that not for nothing his salary was paid to him…

(…and I am still thinking that it was not for nothing that Gray came to the battalion stoker-house to beat me up for ratting. It’s only that he anticipated the events and came ahead of time…)

The first time that thought came to me at the concluding meeting with Captain in the current academic year. He handed over twenty rubles and told me to sign the receipt that I got the money for secret collaboration. Damn! It was not silver coins and the sum didn't coincide with that paid to Judas, yet the rubles burnt my hands urging to get to Konotop as soon as possible and use up all of it for ganja right away… That failed to restore my peace of mind. I rode the footstep of Streetcar 3, looking at my reflection in the glass of folded door (I always liked the way it reflected me) and hated that face in the glass. Why have I ruined my own life?.

~ ~ ~

Between the New Building and the Hosty, there was a rather wide ditch for draining of excess water from the Count's Park lake into the Oster. We walked together—Nadya, I and Igor Recoon—bypassing, for some reason, the New Building from behind, when I noticed an iron pipe connecting the banks of the ditch. It sagged about a meter above the surface of still water overgrown with duckweed.

"I dare me to go over!" said I.

Nadya screamed, "No! Don't dare!"

And Igor immediately said, “I bet you won't!"

The pipe was not wide (cross-section 10 cm) and, half-way over the ditch, it teetered under my feet. With Nadya's "ah!" and "oh!" behind my back, I regained a feeble balance and, fluttering my arms, advanced for another couple of meters and spurted the final segment.

"Aha!" shouted I and looked back.

Igor waved me from the other bank, "I dare you to return!"

Some viper of a homie, eh? I'm the Ogoltsoff but not just limitless so…

And why did I start all that at all? Because of the darn masculine pride. The day before, our course had a picnic by the Oster, almost outside the city. There Nadya challenged me to compete in swimming, one hundred meters down the river.

She went ahead at once and after another twenty meters, I