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

Bryounchooguin, the only boy in the group under her curatorship. To that conclusion, I was led by her habit to take the floor at every general meeting of the English Department with a harangue in his address, like that Roman senator with his constant call to destroy Carthage.

A local boy from a well-to-do family, polite and ever-smiling, he 2 times a month attended classes. Who would ask for more? But she had been crushing on him non-stop for 4 years. She literally f-f..er..I mean, filled everyone’s ears with her crying in the wilderness.

As we, already as the fourth-year students, were at a meeting in the big Auditorium 4, she again took the floor to chew the same rag, "Admire, please! Bryounchooguin's skipping even the general meeting!"

And then even the wind outside couldn't stand it anymore and slammed the tall windows, open on the occasion of spring and good weather. The panes got nearly smashed out.

She ducked and lost what there was further to proclaim in her perennial hit clue about Carthage…

And at last, the curator without glasses, the curator of non-feminine gender, the curator of the fourth group was Roma Gourevitch. He was also a Jew, as any of all other Gourevitches I've ever met, or as that same Bliznuke, only older and balder. And he was constantly busy with debating or talking to some or another one, completely involved and steaming with enthusiasm…

Once I had to retake a test on the subject he taught. The affair was to be settled in the Old Building, of course. Making sure that he got out of the New Building in the right direction, I went to the Old Building and waited for his approach. 10 minutes later I grew worried and combed thru the 200 meters of the asphalt path between the Old and the New Buildings. He had just reached the corner of the New Building, stopping every counter moving teacher for an animated discussion. I returned to the position by the Old Building but this time got seated on a bench under the giant Birches. 20 minutes later, he could be spotted by the big sad bust of Gogol. Good fellow, Roma! The half of the distance over!. Yet, do you have much of a choice when the teacher is late for the appointed retaking of the test you failed at the first go?

It took Roma 62 minutes to get over that f-f..er..I mean, flimsy 200 meters, but I'm sure that was not the limit of his knack for loitering. For all that, I bestowed him with the handle "ebullient slacker". His official appellation contrôlée was "Roma-Phonetist" though because he was distinguished against the rest of teachers at the English Department by the purest pronunciation of the sound "th". It was he who read the texts about the Parkers family on the tape-recorder for the students to parrot them in the booths of the Language Laboratory. No wonder he was referred to as "Phonetist"…

Besides the Phonetics, we were taught lots of other subjects, different and necessary. Take, for example, the Comparative Lexicosemantosurdographosemasiology – your tongue would go to pieces before you manage to pass the exam. That Comparative Lexi…well, whatever…ology was studied under a hereditary teacher. The dynasty broke off at her because she was a retired virgin and chastely buttoned her teacher’s raincoat with a huge safety pin up to the fold in the dried-up skin under her chin.

She was an irreplaceable pensioner because it was her, who wrote the textbook on the subject. A skinny paperback pamphlet from the institute printing house with the smeared typeface authored by…well, it's embarrassing…the name was such…with some whistling sound in it…or maybe hissing?. Anyway, her name was shorter than that of the subject… Yes, I remembered! Shakhrai she was! (And it's not a handle, faith! Some Ukrainian last names do make you think before you jump.)

If during her lectures she allowed herself too much, sort of, walking along the aisle between long desk rows, say, how do they stick down my comparatively smeared pearls into their notebooks? – there was nothing easier than putting her in her proper place. Undo your shirt on the chest, 2 or 3 buttons, and stroke wistfully and gently your hair on the solar plexus. That's all. The hissing wanderings got safely blocked and till the break bell, she would be sitting at the teacher desk like a nice little girl, staring at her plan of the lecture which she knew by heart… I do adore virgins.

Zhomnir once said that after even the briefest talk with her, he got an itching desire to take a bath. Well, tastes differ. I do not remember if I took a shower after the exam on that most Comparative – well, how-you'd-call-it – at which I also had to scratch my chest…

And all those were our specialization subjects, apart from general ones lectured by teachers from other faculties and departments. And each lecturer fancied themselves a Don Corleone extorting due respect, like, he or she made me an offer I couldn't refuse and returning to the student hostel I would immediately plunge into the study of their subject… Yeah, as soon as I'm back to the Hosty!

The only one who evoked sympathy in me was Samorodnitsky, for some of the philosophies because he lit a cigarette at his exam. Openly so, imposingly, and, with all that, in a good manner – he took from his briefcase an ashtray with a lid and shook the cigarette ash off into it.

To that examination, I came from the Hosty and started driving some kind of a fool improvising from a lamppost, possibly from some different philosophy. But he suddenly got interested, sat upright, and put me 4. He said that I needed to change the Department, and he would see to it, but soon after he emigrated to Israel…

So, I was practicing at the school of the sugar factory at the station of Nosovka (20 minutes by a local train from Nezhyn in the