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

I took a liking to him just so, no proof demanded, like, bread’n’fish multiplication and stuff. In fact, his trick about juvenilization of my worn-out passport was more than enough for me.

By the way, the chief under Chief also presented his credentials. One day during the midday break, he came to hold a trade-union meeting. (Ahem!)

We settled under the trees by the hostel. He got seated on a chair and took off his shoes, and socks too. Like, don’t you think all talks of my clove foot are a stupid gossip now? Stuff and nonsense! But I am not the one to be hooked on by illusory chaff.

The devils of Makhno bandits lay down around in the shaded grass under the trees in their black spetzovkas. Only I was in the nylon shirt which I wore in the mine under the spetzovka jacket and every evening washed in the shower.

(…nylon is ideal for washing: you rub it for six seconds flat and it's clean, and then it gets dry even faster…)

In the way of a polite, albeit arch, response, I also took off my helmet. Like, you wanna make me believe you've got no hooves? Come on, admire my hornlessness then!. All the other workers had their helmets on, especially Slavic Aksyanov.

And so it went on for some 10 minutes when suddenly the rooster crowed. Surprise! The chief, who's not Chief, shoved his socks into his pockets, and raced to the nearby country road, thrusting his feet into the shoes on the run. And there, as if from under the ground, popped up a biker in black and in a black-leather ribbed helmet, like those the miners wore in the days of the first five-year plans. And they whizzed off in the direction of New Dophinovka. Not clear enough? Who shoots away at the rooster crowing?

Not that I confronted with… well… the chief engineer, but there happened certain frictions. Like it was when a truck dumped a heap of coal for the winter, and I shoved all that anthracite into the stokehold. At the end of that day, he came from Vapnyarka and asked me, haughtily so, "Well, how much is you want? 3 rubles enough?"

I went amok: half-day in the sun, and he, like as if offering a pittance to a dirty wretch. Okay, you're the prince of darkness, but I am also a chosen, even if not initiated, one.

"No!" said I, "let I'll be paid the worth of my labor."

"You won't get such an amount then."

I did not believe him and the next day applied for a day-off and went to the Mining Management in Pole Explorers Square. I was shown the door of the chief accountant office, Weitzman was his name. No sooner had I stepped into his office than the phone on the desk rang. He took off the receiver, "You are listened to."

(…just like that, word for word: "You're listened to." Clear, smooth, distanced. Without sticking his neck out for a fraction of a millimeter. That's some Weitzman for you!.)

I depicted the essence of the matter in hand, he got it at once and took out a thick book in a gray paperback The Unified Norms and Tariffs, and he found in it where it was about loading and unloading of loose coal and gave me to read. There it stood in black on white, that even if I were shoveling that coal in an area north of the Arctic Circle—to be paid with the highest northern coefficients applied—and with each shovelful of coal I were circling 3 times around the hostel, before heaving it into the stokehold window, so as to gain the bigger distance of moving the load—then, by the rates from that normative bible, I was entitled to the payment of 1 ruble and 20 kopecks.

(…and it was revealed unto me, who did not know the truth hitherto, that to foremen, supervisors, engineers, etc., etc., should the workmen bow low for the lies added to work orders. Without the addition of false figures, the working class would die out long ago, together with their families. Pray for your benefactors and bread givers, O, workmen!

But what bastard composed all those rates and tariffs? I’d like to share my shovel with them in a brotherly way…)

His diggings were near the Hunchback Bridge in Odessa. There he lived in a house of his own, together with his wife and their son, fifth-grader. He treated me to a glass of home-made tomato juice. (Ahem…) Everything as expected – some red, thick, brackish liquid. But could I say "no"? Margarita also drank it, at the annual ball of Satan, in Moscow. Yet until now, I brew the black tea after the recipe he shared… That evening he also shared his recollections about working in the Arctic, where, after work, he put a pair of bricks on an electric stove and seated his wife atop of them to bring into the working conditions for the night…

One time the impure attempted at a putsch, they wanted to change the layout of world stratification. The day before it, the mining engineer Pugachov popped up at the hostel and opened one of the locked doors in the corridor. Like, distributing to the miners some food products to be paid for later, on their payday.

I walked along the corridor and Slavic Aksyanov shouted to me from that room, "Come on, get it too!"

There were five Makhno devils inside the empty room and a box of "Prima" packs upon the desk without a chair; Pugachov was meting out from 5 to 10 packs each.

Food products, eh? Ammunition supplies! "No, thank you, "Belomor" is my smoke."

Going out, I still heard Slavic motivating the devils, "No fear! Youth will write off everything!"

The next day not a single traffic lights worked in Odessa. It was a day of complete bedlam; people were shouting at each other, and the trolleybuses were jostling and jumping like mad. There was no shooting, of course, because the putsch took place on