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

with demands to discharge you both immediately on behalf of the state examination to be taken by the mother. The Head began to hesitate only she said they needed a go-ahead from another maternity boss, sitting in one of the lanes branching off Shevchenko Street.

From an unfamiliar nurse who happened to come to work by her bicycle which was slumbering now leaned in a shady spot against the wall until the end of her shift, I borrowed it and drove over there. In the unattainable height of the bottomless sky hung a few clouds shaped like spiraling galaxies over the bus stops, where already started to accumulate the end-of-day lines of passengers. The bike swept past, like the besom of Margarita riding to the ball of Satan… When I jumped off it by the small maternity office lurking in a lane, the witch's son of a bitch kicked me in the groin with its back wheel and neighed in vicious cheer, mutely but spitefully.

I ran into the office to surprise two women peacefully idling last minutes of their working day. Taming my breath, I started the same negotiations. They made a telephone call somewhere and flatly announced – no discharge without BCG, the next day they'd vaccinate you and then set us free.

On the way back, I drove much slower, dejectedly fixing the bike's chain that fell off awfully often. When the bicycle was returned to the owner, I went to the waiting room to find Tonya there. I started to convince her that we could easily kidnap both Eera and the baby, only I had to go and fetch Eera's clothes.

Tonya sprinkled me with the knitted belt of her jacket, the way exorcist priests do when busy with their job. The belt was dry, of course, but all the same I stopped freaking Tonya out, though I knew perfectly well that if I did not get Eera out of there that day, I would lose her.

Eera came to the room and, in turn with Tonya, explained it to me that just one day did not mean anything. It was evening already. I saw Tonya to my parents-in-law's, but I couldn't stay in the bedroom even with its thoroughly rinsed door…

I returned back to the maternity hospital but did not enter the gazebo; I wouldn’t stand another night of listening to the animal howling of women in childbirth. So I went to the night watch, like the last in the field from the squad of guarding knights of Uncle Chernomor.

I walked in a slow, dilatory, pace because ahead there still was a whole night which turned out so dark, that bypassing the five-story block of Zhomnir, I stepped into a deep pot-hole puddle on the sidewalk, with my right foot. Pfui! Though deft in dodging the dragon, next to the lair of Laban I screwed it up so ingloriously.

I did not stop till reaching the water pump across the road from the locked gate of Nezhyn Vegetable Cannery, where I had the foot ablution and also washed the soaked sock. A cavalcade of buses, brightly lit from inside, rumbled from round the turn to the Progress Plant; they jostled past void of any passengers. I firmly squeezed the water out of my sock and put it back on.

In that manner, one sock dry and the other wet, yet both hidden beneath my pants, I reached the station. A knight vigilant should never stop in his watch round.

I walked a couple of circles in the half-dark and fully empty ticket-office hall with its floor-tiles wrapped in nighttime sending back tiny hollow echoes to my delayed steps. Another circle was performed in the waiting room filled with silent motionless figures of people seated on the benches.

Past the locked canteen-restaurant, I went to the second floor to coast thru the waiting rooms up there. Never before had I noticed how strangely change at night the look of people's eyes. Not by everyone though, yet some of them gazed thru the eyes glazed by some uncanny gloss. The ones of those weird looks got startled by my appearance; they tried to hide the unearthly glare in their eyes, but I could easily make them out within the sitting rows of unsuspecting passengers half-asleep in the massive night silence of the station… Behave yourselves, glassy-eyed! The guard is on the watch!.

The rain caught up with me beneath the lights on pillars over the empty traffic bridge. A quiet summer rain it was. I did not intend to go to Pryluky, so reaching the city limit I turned back and walked to Red Partisans. The rain was not increasing and not ceasing either. We strolled on together at the same laggard pace…

The door was opened by Ivan Alexeyevich; Gaina Mikhailovna was peeping from the dark of the unlighted living room. "Where are you roving? It’s raining outside."

"The rain is warm."

"Maybe, I'll beat you?"

"Not worth it."

In the bedroom, I dropped all wet clothes off and lay down naked. As in all the previous nights without Eera, I spread her nightie full length and enclosed in my hug so that I could protect her even absent from by my side… Much later, I learned that the in-laws concluded I was whoring on that night…

Next day in the afternoon, I carried you from the hospital, wrapped in a quilted silk blanket and some frilled tulle. Eera walked alongside, with a bouquet which Tonya had bought in advance. But the flowers in it were not roses…

~ ~ ~

Her final examination, Eera passed with another group from her course. I waited for her by the columns on the high porch and, embracing by the waist, helped her down the steep steps. She wore a yellow knitted jacket with three-quarter sleeves. The head of my group, Lyda, who happened about, was watching us from aside with an empathetic smile in her face…

That yellow jacket I liked and got it by chance. Eera told me then that they brought goods to the department