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

in the Transcarpathia. The exacter location was not of much concern to me because I did not plan to work at school in any place at any time. So, Gaina Mikhailovna (since I was so brave) came up with an idea to follow the example of Komsomol members from the earlier generations who recklessly went to erect new cities that were not yet on the map. And, by the way, there was an article in the newspaper that nearby Odessa they started to build a new city-port of Yuzhny…

It was decided that I would go there as soon as you became one month old because it was still not easy for Eera to keep you single-handed. Thus, I was whiling away the pre-launch month with the swaddles and walking the carriage, where you were sleeping in. Only I had to keep to the strict instructions and never-never move the tulle cover fixed on the raised top to screen the baby inside. And after the month expired, and you passed your medical examination, the tulle could be removed and substituted with a traditional safety pin for keeping safe from evil eye…

My brother Sasha came on a visit from Konotop, and you had your debut visit to the Count's Park. Eera and Slavic joined us also. By the park lake, Slavic and I sparked a joint but my brother never blew jive.

We returned thru the narrow gate by the building of the Musical Pedagogical Department. The gate’s jambs were connected with an iron strip welded some 10 inches above the ground, like a stile impeding the passage of the carriage. I, in spacey sluggish manner, asked Slavic for help to move the carriage over, but no sooner had he reached out for its handle than Sasha barked brutally at him, "Get off with you!"

Slavic coweredly obeyed, and you were carried over the stile by me and Sasha. I felt pleased and proud to have such a brother, and also glad that you had such sort of an uncle who wouldn’t leave his niece to Slavic…

Your next appearance to the Park took place on the arrival of Eera's brother from Kiev. Igor came together with his wife who kept chewing his ear all the time while he, in a soft good-natured manner, smoothed away the spiky wrinkles she turned out of nothing. I thought then it might be because of her PMS but later I learned that she had that PMS for life, without a break.

During the walk, she kept flinging her umbrella open every other minute, and then the rain started to drizzle. When she did it for the dozenth time, Eera also got it about the cause and effect and asked her sister-in-law not to open the umbrella anymore. Igor's wife was happy to be noticed and appreciated, she left the umbrella alone and on our way back there was no rain…

In his family, Ivan Alexeyevich enjoyed the handle of Prince, and he was pleased with it. A natural reaction of a peasant son to getting such a title. And he looked princely too, especially when, well-nourished and imposing, he sat in a white tank top and blue sportswear pants next to a newspaper, wide open in his hands. So the handle was, like, a compliment to tickle his pride, and he certainly deserved it because he was a getter.

In the era of deficits not only wedding suits were hard to be acquired but different other types of products too. So getters was getting them… Once my father-in-law even fetched and dropped in the kitchen a whole sack of buckwheat, by the central heating battery beneath the windowsill.

In the corner to the left from the window, there was installed the gas stove, the titan for water boiling occupied the right corner, so that sack of buckwheat filled the center completing the composition to advantage. And that was a righteous lump of pride too, because other folks had to go for a special trip to Moscow to buy that product, and suddenly in a kitchen of provincial Nezhyn a whole sack of buckwheat!

(…same sort of pride that some people get from a hunting trophy, like a pair of tusks, a sword sawed off a fish, or such thick branching…well, ahem…which, in general, can also be fixed in the wall…)

Okay, getter, if so is your disposition, then tickle your pride for a week, let's say two, or even a month bypassing that f-f..er..I mean, fabulous sack in the kitchen, but it had stuck there already for so long that even the mother-in-law started to grumble just to receive his usual response, "A? Well, yes…" before he buried himself back in the newspaper…

But then in the messy pile of newspapers alongside the TV on the table, a certain headline caught my eye. I did not read the article itself but the headline suggested that there was some archaeological subject. The main thing, I liked the headline for some reason, so short and sweet and to the point. It somehow reminded me of the toilet room cut-outs' exhibition in the Hosty.

I picked the paper up and folded it in a certain way so that only the headline would stay in view. It was bedtime already but I still dropped to the kitchen for a second and with a caressing gesture—there even was some faggish tint to it—I put the newspaper on the sack of buckwheat. On the way out, I put the light off leaving behind in the darkness the sack headlined

The Prince's Tomb

I mean, as a son-in-law I was a regular SOB, yet the next morning the sack faded in the woodwork before my getting up…

The day before I was leaving to participate in erecting a new city, I went to Konotop to see Lenochka who was in the pioneer camp by the Seim. After she confirmed that I was her father, the caretaker of her platoon allowed us to go out of the campgrounds.

In the Pine forest, Lenochka picked up a long