The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
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For breaks, I visited Lyalka. He lived by Peace Square on the second floor in a red-brick five-story block between the Peace movie theater and the Department Store, right above the ice-cream pavilion "Snowflake".
His father, in his youth, had a criminal record and, when reaching the venerable age, became an ideological inspirer of the following generations of thieves. Returning from Zona, they shared warm recollections about Lyalka's dad coming to the court in a jacket over a tank top to instruct them to keep their tail up when in Zona, bandying words with the judge and having to forcibly leave the room. I was too late to meet him. But his mother-in-law, Lyalka's grandma, was still living like a hermit in the bedroom with a view of the pitch-mounted roofing felt atop the "Snowflake". She shared the room with the decrepit but malicious lap-dog Bayba and Lyalka's mom.
Lyalka replaced his dad in the line of moral support to the guys departing to Zona. He did not attend the court hearings but he knew on what day they started to the place of serving their time and came to the station for a goodbye thru the bars of a special car, aka stolypin….
The balcony in Lyalka's flat went from the living-room into a wide quiet courtyard bounded by the five-story buildings, with occasional Apple trees and the desolate khutta locked up with crosswise nailed boards – the incubator for growing criminals. In the dovecot above the khutta, Lyalka's younger brother, double-handled both Slave and Rabentus, held pigeons when not in Zona.
Their mother, Maria Antonovna, a dressmaker from the atelier behind the main post-office, once dreamed of a violinist career for Lyalka and she even bought him a violin for the purpose, which he stacked away in the nailed up khutta when, like, going to a lesson. So, for all her pains, she had only managed to provide him with the inbred love for good clothes, Lyalka's shirts, and jeans, and shoes were always tiptops. But he also loved music, unlike Rabentus whose interests were confined in his pigeons and havvage, that's why he was twice as thick as slender Lyalka.
On that balcony, we listened to the records of Czeslav Neman, Slade, The AC/DC… With the doorbell starting its buzz, Lyalka would go to the hallway and lead the visitor to the kitchen to move them shmotki, some jeans or a shirt with foreign stickers.
At times it turned out not a client but some of his brother's bros, or simply a guy from the city rowdies, like Count-Junior, or Horse, who just was short-cutting thru the yard and got attracted by the sound of the loudspeakers (Lyalka's khutta enjoyed a dynastic respect) and fancied dropping in to share his notions that everything should be fair and founded on justice. For such a case, Lyalka played some hard-hard rock – The Arrowsmith or The Black Sabbath. Those home-made natural philosophers and champions for keeping the world in line with concepts of true justice could not withstand more than one number and they left the sofa covered with a hard inflexible rag because of a sudden recollection of some urgent business awaiting them City.
Lyalka closed the door after them and, rolling his eyes under the forehead, shook his head with a sigh – oh, those boars! – but the traditions oblige. Then he stroke his fair nail-beard and put on the LP of Engelbert Humperdink…
And he also had craving for knowledge and was not shy to show it. One day he did not hesitate to ask me about the meaning of "excess" after hearing the word from me. In short, he needed me like an oasis among all those justice-lovers.
No doubt, the main fusing factor in our connection was the weed, substituted in bleak periods between the creamy seasons with all kind of pills – noxiron, seduxen, kadein – to give their succor in times of need, only you had to know what should go with what and to which proportion…
He was going out with his girlfriend Valentina to the dance-floor in Loony. Valentina had beautiful Spanish eyes, as one of the boars put it in the form of a compliment, "I'd cut and pick such eyes up on the wall."
One evening I danced with her girlfriend, Vera Yatsenko, though I knew that Quak pined after her for years, but Vera was going out with him for a week or so before cutting him dead for months.
After that dances, Quak stopped me and Vera in the park alley. He asked her for an apology and permission to talk to me. She went on in the leisurely crowd strolling to the exit from the night Loony park. Quak and I stepped aside to the trimmed bushes not to be in the way of the current. I could see that Quak was pretty loose, not quite blind but well plastered. He leaned his forehead against my shoulder and, looking at the ground, said, "Sehrguey, I've been with Olga."
Of course, that friendly confession scraped me deep, but I withheld explaining the fallacy of such a perspective – that it was not he who was with her, but rather she who was with him, and that he was not the only one she took use of. First of all, such subtleties were beyond his scope of comprehension even when sober, to leave alone his current state, and secondly, I needed to catch up with Vera Yatsenko…
I saw her to one of the two-story blocks along Peace Avenue and, when we were standing in the quiet dark courtyard, Quak popped up in the
