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

"Are you crazy? That's Eera!"

Well, she had just peeped in and there was someone standing by the window. Where could Eera possibly get such a cute nightie from?

As if I knew; I saw it for the first time too…

On the second day, I left the Hosty in the morning. The big deli in the main square was stormed by the crowd after a rare deficit: white-and-blue cans of condensed milk.

Proud of my hunting skills, I returned to Room 72 and Eera greeted me from the bed by the window, "Wow! You brought condensed milk?" I was f-f.. well, I mean, flabbergasted. "You… what the… er… that is, how?"

"You had such a swagging nose, anyone could read it."

And possessing such skills to write counterfeit letters? There was something, not that there… In short, I surrendered, and we started to live on together as one tightly united family. In learned books, they call such life-style polygamy in which I was the joining link, sort of.

(…the joining link should master and keep to one golden rule – no names. "Darling" is the very thing, it sounds pleasant and causes no misunderstandings.

Maybe someone would pull for "kitty" or "bunny", which is a matter of taste, but, in my humble opinion, why to start up a superfluous menagerie?

"Yes, darling…"

"Come on, darling…")

Sveta did not kick up unneeded dust anymore. She clearly knew her exact place – after Eera, before Maria. Officially, the girls were not introduced but knew about the existence of the rest. Eera and Sveta, for sure, and Maria, most likely, as well.

Talking to the darlings, I was not especially keen on that topic – who knows what about who, but Nezhyn was a provincial town where everyone knew everything about everyone else… When in the third year, I had a pedagogical practice at School 2 and once at the break a teacher of theirs started divulging a kinda disparaging information about Maria. When at it, she carefully kept her eyes off me addressing exclusively my course-mate who also practiced at that school.

That tootsy of my course-mate was a very studious student, and she took lots of pains when preparing for her first lesson at that practice. At home, she collected all her dolls and puppets and arranged them in a row seated upon the piano lid, so as to get properly prepared, "Good morning, children! Who is on duty today?."

(…infantilism is a lethal weapon for me, more dreadful than a machine gun. I mean, it makes me wanna puke…)

But the newlywed couple on our floor in the Hosty were well matured. After their marriage, they got a whole room for themselves. The students living there before were moved to other rooms, only the furniture remained.

At times, to relax after intense mental work in their educational process, they arranged "races" on Saturdays. A couple of other students from the floor were invited then for the overnight stay, and after the dinner they started the "race" heats with the change of partners. I do not know the details though, I did not participate in those races, Vitya Kononevich was the principal jockey there…

(…honestly, if you ask me, having a sex is something just for two. It is of so intimate a nature that even a condom doesn't fit well in between the lovers.

No arguing, I'm fairly old-fashioned on this point but there's nothing doing about it, that is my innate quality…)

~ ~ ~

In summer, I was passing my pioneer practice at the camp "The Young Construction Worker" near the town of Sednev. At the times of Chernigov Princedom there stood a mighty fortress for defense from Tatars, Lithuanians, or Novgorodians – whoever would come to plunder. And now of all the fortress there remained just one tower. From the tower, a steep winding descent led down to the bridge connecting the sandy banks of the Snov river. After the bridge, you got into a small pinewood with two pioneer camps, side by side: "The Young Construction Worker" and "The Young Chemist", and then followed the boundless vistas of wheat fields…

My trainee position at the camp was that of a substitute caretaker. That meant that when the caretaker of some platoon went to Chernigov, I was to oversee the on-duty kids from her platoon laying tables in the canteen for breakfast, midday meal, tea, and supper, and if on that day the camp was taken out to the river, I had to watch that the platoon's pioneers did not splash outside the iron grating but only within the fenced part of the calm flow.

Going to Chernigov was not so easy because of transportation problems, and caretakers seldom went there. So, my remaining job was to switch on the music in the radio-unit room broadcasting thru the camp loudspeakers, and also to announce on the microphone the "dead-hour" and "lights-out". I don't know why, but those announcements I gave out with the feline drawl of a fag, "Attayntion! Leets-ouwt for thee camp!."

The radio-unit was installed in the room of the senior pioneer leader, partitioned from a small gymnasium whose only equipment was one bed on which I slept. The door in the far wall of the gym opened onto the stage of a small open-air auditorium bounded by Pine trees.

I was kicking back, and reading what would turn up in the camp library, and growing my beard because after the camp I was going to work with the student construction platoon of the NGPI. In short, I was wallowing in the life of reprobate unshaven renegade…

The position of senior pioneer leader was filled with my course-mate, Irina from Bakhmuch. I somehow did not immediately realize that she was courting me, until her invitation to the ancient tower of Sednev with its tiny built-in romantic restaurant.

The loopholes in the thick (of about a meter-and-a-half) walls opened to the fleeing shadows from summer clouds racing by, over the plain far below, like a horde of raiding robbers… She treated me to the