The Rascally Romance (in a single helluva-long letter about a flicking-short life) - Сергей Николаевич Огольцов
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In Odessa of those days, the most stable and widely used expression of approval was "you can’t but love!"
"What’s your thought about Sonya's latest groom?"
"You can’t but love!"
And, instead of "no" they were saying "dick to mama!" Yet, with Odessa-Mommy around, it sounded even patriotic.
"So, The Black-Sea Footballer won yesterday, or what?"
"Dick to mama!"
In the small park on Deribassov Street, there grew some unseen trees looking as if they had cast off their own bark. In the evening, the brass band played there, almost like in the times of Johann Strauss, but seldomer. And in some other park, in the daytime, I dived into the pool from the five-meter-tall tower, the air whistled in the ears during the dive. A little later two guys jumped off as well, holding hands, but it was a heels-first cannonball dive and one of them had black socks on. That way those jumpers were effacing my footprints to put off track any possible followers…
At the intercity phone calls station on Pushkin Street, they played a good joke on me. That time I made the order and waited, then went out thru the porchless door wide-open onto the sidewalk. The moment I lit a cigarette, the loudspeaker inside shouted, "Nezhyn! Is anyone waiting for Nezhyn?!" I threw the cigarette into the trash bin by the door and ran back. "It's me! I am waiting!"
To which the telephone operator said on her microphone, "So, wait then!" The crowd in the hall split their sides. That again, they were saving me from something.
Some cat was waiting there too. They announced his number connected, "Chelyabinsk on line! Enter Booth 5!" And before going to where was told, he uttered with a bitter disappointment, "Eew!"
That's an enlightened one! By the booth number alone, he knew beforehand the pending talk’s outcome!.
I got to know Odessa very well. On foot, for the most part. I found the Public Library Nr. 2; and Privvoz Bazaar, where the porters in blue smocks pushed station trolleys in front of them, shouting "Feet! Feet!" so that the crowd would give way to them warned by their shortened "Watch your feet!". There, in Privvoz, an old gypsy cast a curse on me with their witchcraft art; I did not get it what for, but she should know better or maybe I just popped up at the wrong split-second…
Factory of Gastric Juice; who would ever imagine there were such enterprises?!. When I was passing thru the yards of five-story blocks, mujiks at their "goat" game would bang the bones louder against the tables to shoo off the cats, so they would not run across the sidewalk in front of me. Also auxiliary allies…
To Odessa I was going by bus, only a couple of times on foot; it's only 20 kilometers or so all in all. And one time I walked from Vapnyarka to New Dophinovka along the seashore, over the cliff. In one place there stood some military installation behind the fence of barbed wire. The sentry yelled from there it was forbidden to pass by their site, approached and demanded to present my papers. I showed thru the wire my handkerchief with the sailing boat in the circle. He realized at once that the level was different, "Okay, get along…"
From up the cliff, the view was very beautiful. The sea was quiet, almost smooth, yet sparkled and glittered under the sun. Sometimes the wind rushed along to ripple the water and draw various types of galaxies. Spiral, for the most part. The wind was copying them from the clouds that hovered above the sea…
In Streetcar 5 going to the Arcadia beach, I saw Gray from our Stavropol construction battalion. It surprised me a little – four years had passed and he remained looking so young and, for some reason, in the black uniform of a sea cadet, in their cap with the ribbons hanging over the back.
I stood up and quietly asked into his ear, "Gray, is it you?" He did not respond, neither moved the tiniest bit although he heard me, dead sure…
And another time it was my father by a newsagent booth. He did not look like my father at all, I only recognized him by his voice. It was in that exactly voice he told me of the murderer, whom the camp director brought to a new murder.
When he spoke to me, I pretended that I was all too busy examining the portrait of psychiatrist Burdenko in the Ogonyok magazine cover, which hung behind the glass of the booth, so it was the seller who responded to him.
(…confronted with the meetings of such a kind, anyone will start asking themselves: what's going on? But you can't get an answer to it if having no grasp on the conception of monad.
Monad is a made in Germany gadget for philosophizing, which everyone understands to their personal liking. For someone, it might mean a singularity from a set, while for someone else – a whole set of singularities.
For example, when a guy asks his girl, "Tell me! Am I just another one of many for you, or the only one from all their many?" Here, the second "one" in his question is that very monad or, maybe, vice versa…
In some Indian Bible, there is a gaudy picture of a baby that crawls over the grass, a step ahead of him, a kid is running, before whom there walks a man just about to overtake a withered old geezer, and then again only the green of the grass. The picture is called "The Circle of Life". That is, from nothing to nothing.
Now, together, they all comprise one monad because it's the same person.
So, it only remains to assume, that monads can be formed in a different way; for example, by the timbre of a voice; and everything falls into
