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

and tapering. I only did not like the whitish narrow scars on the inside of the left wrist, as from a teenager’s toying with the suicide, but I never asked about them. And at that moment I only asked what's wrong.

She sobbed and said that in the morning on the plantation, the senior overseer was putting her to shame. He told it was unworthy of a teacher's daughter to have anything in common with such a renegade and married man as I was. And that he would call her mother, and tell her everything the first thing on our arrival back in Nezhyn.

But what was there to tell about!?. And of which teacher mother?.

"Of Ger..maaaaan.." and the tears quashed her speaking.

"Damn them all, then! Come with me!"

"Where?"

As if I knew where, but she agreed, and we went out there… At first, it was a field of corn, not the one over which we walked at our arrival, here the stalks were shorter and scantier. Then the field tilted down and we came up to a long secluded stack of straw.

The day was warm and clear. We stretched out on the straw broken off of the stack side and were lying there, talking, kissing. I wanted to open up to her my whole soul, up to admitting that I was a space cadet. And I wanted her so badly, only the sun was in the way. But with the approach of the evening, the solitude dissolved. Next to the stack, there appeared an unnecessary dirt road, some trucks and motorcycles started to pass by, gaping at her red sweater…

We returned in the dark and were met by Anna, who waited for us between the hostels to warn about the ambush up there. She also told that when the senior overseer teacher came to their room, he screamed and shouted that both Eera and I had shunned work but were seen strolling around, and the dean offices of our respective Departments, as well as the Institute Rectorate, would be informed about such brazen breach of discipline.

During the briefing, Olya, Vera, and Jan emerged from the darkness for the joint brain-storming of the problem: what to do? Jan kept shaking his head and repeating in Czech, which had already grown a bit more intelligible, that "it is-a not-a good-a". Olya ordered him to shut up, and better go to the canteen to fetch some food for us; because only he could do it without evoking unwanted suspicions… Jan and Olya were understanding each other without translation; so he soon returned with a newspaper parcel for the hunted-after "milovitsy". I did not know that I was that hungry.

Meanwhile, the girls were quick at drawing a plan for the campaign of persecuted students against oppressor-teachers. Eera and I would go to Borzna, the native town of Vera, and stay for the night at the khutta of Vera's parents. In the morning, Eera would go to Nezhyn as if she had gone there 2 days before because of being unwell, and I would come back to Bolshevik as if coming from Konotop, unaware what's the fuss.

Czech Jan saw the 2 of us to the road out of the village, still preaching about "lovely pretty milovitsy" and we left into the night…

The night was dark and windy and the road all potholes, and longer than 10 kilometers from the approximate estimation by Vera. Eera got very tired, and in the end, I even piggybacked her like Gogol's Homa Brutus the witch bestriding him, for the distance between 2 posts in the roadside electricity line.

Having already been on a visit to Vera's khutta, Eera found it even in the dead of night. Vera’s mother bedded us on the floor in the living room and promised to wake Eera up for the seven o'clock bus to Nezhyn. We lay down and, to my embrace, Eera said that she was too tired and that she had to get up early. In a moment she was fast asleep, but I still lay for a long time full awake, gloating and grinning in the dark that we had rubbed the senior overseer's nose in it… No trumps? No ace? Grab my cock and wipe your face!.

When I awoke in the morning, Eera was gone and Vera's brother gave me a lift to Bolshevik by his "Jawa" bike. Students and teachers were just coming out of the canteen and he, cracking his motor, carried me alongside the crowd in the slow triumphant ride. A certain stupid asshole stood still with his jaw dropped. Yet, Vera's brother was disappointed when to his inquiry I answered that Eera and I had no sex on the floor in their living room…

~ ~ ~

She stayed in Nezhyn for a long time, and I again gave in to the image enforced on me by the society… 3 workmen from Borzna came to conduct a stretch of running water; the pipe of half-inch cross-section in a knee-deep trench. I was passing by and helped them a little because of nothing better to do. The mujiks got emotional and bought some vodka, yet without a snack. A throwaway kitchen oilcloth was found and spread under a cherry tree, we sat on it with our feet lowered into the trench for comfort, and killed the bottle.

And then the senior overseer came up to witness the disgraceful recidivism when, instead of work, I was at boozing drastically, so he again began to croak what was awaiting me, when back in Nezhyn… While the youngest of the workmen went to the store after a catch-on addition, I dropped in at the plantation. My course-mate girls started to speak up that I did not notice my own and keep the company exclusively with the girls from the Philological Department. I told them I was a Slavophil since my early childhood, so the Anglo-Fac's beef to heels did not turn me on, in short: Phil-Fac forever!

Then the mujiks called me from the trench. We finished