The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
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On arrival in the Odessa airport, I couldn't see it in the dark, and from there, on a city bus, I reached the intercity bus station where all the ticket offices were already locked, yet the baggage room still operated and in the waiting rooms there were benches for overnight sitting.
Of course, I felt myself the winner because I did manage, despite everything, to break thru Kiev. The gleeful delight with the success was assuring me of my exceptional invulnerability.
The return to actual state of things was not too pleasant when a rarefied line of passengers slogged in the early morning thru the station's back door for the first bus. In the incipient daylight, I sat in numb doze with my head thrown back over the bench backrest, leaving my whole throat, in the disdainfully victorious attitude, completely undefended. The pain from the needle stung to the right from my Adam's apple made me pinch the skin in the carotid artery area. Of course, there was no needle there but the feeling of a deeply stuck or, rather, hurriedly pulled out, needle persisted. The following half-hour I winced, rubbing, time and again, the skin covering my throat about that spot.
The ticket office opened and they informed me there were no runs to Yuzhny, and to get there I needed a local communication bus from Station 3 located by the New Bazaar.
Having reached there and examined the bus schedules fixed on the walls of Station 3 where the line "Yuzhny" repeated itself at different hours, I decided that I should take a walk before departure because—damn you, OMG!—it was but Odessa-Mommy!. I’m in Odessa! Yay!.
At the end of the small station-hall, there stood just a couple of sections of automatic storage cells. All their doors were locked except for one in the upper row of a section. I put my things inside, combined a code, dropped 15 kopecks into the slot, and slammed the door. The out-of-order lock did not click, that's why the cell stayed unused.
I took the documents out from my briefcase and put them in the inside pocket of my jacket. Then I quietly closed the door, so that it would look as if locked. On the crest of the hill-tall wave of euphoria, I left the bus station and entered Odessa…
~ ~ ~
Not everyone has chanced to experience the state of complete happiness in their life. I am from among those luckier ones. More than that, I can indicate the time and place of the absolute happiness experienced by me. These are the few hours of my first walk in Odessa…
The gleeful sunshine was filling the streets which I walked. I was a part to everything around and everything was a part of me in that unfamiliar city, where everyone tacitly recognized me because they had so long been waiting for my coming. I felt what was being thought by people and mentally responded to their thoughts… Here walked a woman rejoicing in her own beauty.
…wow!..that's a really good one!.
And she bloomed up victoriously.
…but I have Eera…
To which the woman saddened and, with her head lowered, passed by.
For a middle-aged Caucasian, gaping around with a ho-hum stare, I threw in the thought – "Eew, Javad, I still remember your dagger blow!" With all of his boredom shed off right away, the man woefully sagged his shoulders and pulled at the mustache, stunned by a sudden memory of a treacherous stub from Javad of whom up to the present moment he had not had the slightest idea.
…okay, let's not think sad things…
A swift flock of pioneers in scarlet neckties and white shirts shot past hurrying to the celebration of my arrival into the city.
On entering a big bookstore to make my choice for the future, I communicated with the shop-assistants and buyers there without ever opening my mouth.
I walked up the steps of the famous stair, bypassing the monument to Richelieu who never was a cardinal. In the nearby green grove there again were pioneers, but another ring and too much, to my mind, carried away with watching the freight cars slowly rolling into the port grounds.
"Pioneers!" shouted I to them. "Boats are nicer than cars!"
They looked around, waved and smiled, they recognized me.
The taxi driver took me to the “Bratislava” restaurant sharing on the way that it was a canteen on weekdays. But the current day was the holiday to celebrate my arrival, and he also knew that it was the so-eagerly-and-longly-awaited-for I…
I washed my hands and face with the water from a tap in the toilet, then I climbed to the upper floor to become the only guest in the huge dining room. The lone waitress appeared from somewhere and I ordered soup. When she left, I noticed a wrinkle in the tablecloth resulted from hasty ironing; I passed my palm over the crease and it disappeared.
…well, no wonder, after ironing those heaps of swaddles it's easy to smooth any crease out with just laying hands upon…
The waitress came and went leaving me alone in the whole wide hall. I began eating soup cooked by the recipes of the port city. On a low deck nearby there stood silent loudspeakers and amplifiers of the restaurant group.
…so, what to listen to?. something light… okay, let it be The Smokie… I flicked my fingers.
No sound.
…what?!. am I not omnipotent?!. or is the music here switched on some other way?.
And then, as if rammed by an unexpected blow, I got crushed by the feel of a gross mistake. Somewhere, there was a fatal flaw in my suppositions; I was terribly wrong somewhere. The soup became utterly stodgy, not eatable any more. The rice in it turned into fine shell-flakes that
