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

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the bus was going to the city for which I had to wait.

I waited for a long time, then there was a long ride thru the night by a small PAZ bus. The fellow-travelers were leaving the bus, in twos and threes, on dimly lit streets in the city, until the driver told me I had to get off too, on the corner of a large empty square.

Getting off the empty bus, I saw the yellowish gleam of lamp lights in a narrow street nearby and went along its fences, then turned to the left and at the next crossing I chose the left turn once again. Dry snaps of claws against the asphalt behind my back were following me; judging by the sound, it was some hugely big beast of a dog, yet I was not afraid at all, and I did not look back, and just kept walking on slowly.

Ahead, the same square opened and I stopped about 20 meters from it because it was dead sure that I reached my sentry point. The lamp on a pillar poured down yellow light, but I stood outside the circle drawn by its cone on the asphalt so that it could not reach my feet.

From the black silhouette of the five-story block on the left, a cat trotted stealthily across the road to the yard of a dark khutta and was met there with a joyous jingling of dog's chain, the date of antipodes. Even slaves have it off at times…

The night went on and I stood motionless, pretending that I had nothing to do with that crushing din and ramble beyond the horizon, where the cogwheels of the universe clockwork with frenzied screech were coming to a clash halt because of my fatal mistake at who knows what…

When the dump truck pulled up behind me, I turned but did not give way, and only threw up my right hand, because that was my post. Those sitting in the cabin had no heads, impenetrable pitch-black darkness cut them off to the shoulders dimly visible in the feeble beam of the lamplight from the pillar.

The driver, who came down from the cab, had a head though; he led me, with care, aside. I did not resist. The dump truck left, taking away the one on the passenger seat, with the viper asp blackness upon his shoulders.

Black traces of tires stayed on the road. They should not be left there – the darkness would follow reading the black marks. I began effacing the traces with the soles of my shoes. Would they last long?

The wind was rising, a spread open newspaper sheet raced frisking from the square to rub against my shank. I made out the headline "The Prince's Tomb"; it took it a really long time to find me. The paper rustled its goodbye and slipped farther on along the asphalt…

The sky became gray… The dog-tired, yet satisfied, cat cautiously retracted her way across the road to the five-story block to pick up her upper-society day life at the lordly loft estate. Woeful laments of suppressed despair and supplicating clank of chain sounded after her.

The new day dawned, but I stood there until a woman in white crossed the square in the distance heading to the left edge of it, unseen from my post. An old woman in black appeared in her wake, pushing a carriage. But I knew there was no baby at all. It was eggs she was pushing along, white and round like billiards balls; dense grapes of eggs.

And I realized that I might leave my post and go on to the square… I walked along empty streets until I turned into the door of a factory check-entrance.

In a narrow room, I asked for water from an old man in black spetzovka, wearing glasses and a workman cap. He gave me a glass of water and we both watched closely if I would swallow the black speck floating on the water surface.

I drank all of it. The speck remained stuck to the glass wall. The man in black told me how to find the nearest employment office…

~ ~ ~

The office was locked, but then a woman with the key came and opened it. I said her that I was looking for a job, and she told me to wait for one more office employee, who should presently come.

Not far from the office there was an open diary café. The kopecks I still had were enough to buy a large bottle of milk, but I drank only half of it. Over a tall tumbler of thin glass, I uttered the parting words of Romeo, "Here's to my love!" And then I drank it…

When I returned to the employment office, the second employee was already in place. I knew at once that she was Death, and the one who came first was Love.

Death looked thru my documents and surly announced that I had been divorced already, but Love smiled and said that, well, so what? Then she went out to the other room to make a phone call and I stayed with Death, obviously irritated, who looked a little like Olga. Maybe, because of her dyed hair, only longer.

On her return, Love said that there was a job for me at the Odessa Mining Management, I had to go to Pole Explorers Square and find the chief engineer there, and also remind him about a car she was waiting for but forgot to mention while on the phone. A car for Maria, okay? He should know…

The chief engineer said there was no position for me at the management and only the job of a roof-fastener at a mine which was incompatible with my higher education.

I hurriedly assured him that my education would not be in the way at all, and he commanded me to get into the bed of a truck standing by the porch of the management, which tootled off and soon was out of the city. Apart from

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