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

(…in a flash-forward, I can assure that two years later bedding remained a sharp deficit. I just cannot imagine what those guest sportspersons were doing to it in the Olympic Village…)

So, for the wedding present Eera bought a nice jug of red transparent glass, wisely reasoning that the bedsheets would wear out very quickly but the jug—if not broken—could stand in the hutch until the golden anniversary…

Since the wedding happened to coincide with our mother's birthday, I wanted to present her flowers. Gaina Mikhailovna insisted that no flowers could be bought on November 24, yet I went to the bazaar all the same.

On the bridge over the Oster, I saw a man holding a bouquet in his hands, in a company of two ladies. They were just standing there, looking anything but traders. However, I felt their presence on the bridge was no accident, came up, and asked if he would sell me the flowers… My mother-in-law's bewilderment had no limits, but I knew that somewhere around Odessa or in the worlds parallel to it, I had done something right, which was not forgotten by the unknown yet grateful allies…

We went to Konotop by 15.15 local train. The wedding party took place in a three-room khutta on Sosnowska Street in the Settlement. The flowers caused surprise even there. The surprise grew exponentially, when I presented them not to the bride. Then Sasha remembered what day it was, and assured the guests it was okay.

The following was a traditional Settlement wedding of an Adoptee. The only difference that at the party I gave up smoking. It happened when my neighbor at the table started to convince me of the impossibility of kicking off the habit, especially at a party of any kind. I put out the lit cigarette and that was all there to it.

(…I am a non-smoker even now. That was my way of kicking it…)

The next morning at Decemberists 13, Eera announced my intended trip to the 4th kilometer by Chernigov. There followed a stormy exchange of views with my parents. They opposed the very idea of the trip and demanded it's cancellation. No matter how hard I tried, they could not understand that I had promised to be there on Monday. How to survive in a world where you could not rely even on your own word?

Eventually, Eera took sides with my parents, and they continued trying to prevail upon me in concerted efforts. Only Lenochka was sitting silent aside in the far end of the folding coach-bed.

"So what? Gave him education for your own misery?" my father reproached my mother. Then he turned to me, "We've done all that we could for you. Now it's your turn. Do as we ask. Or we're not the stuff? What are our wrongs? Tell it!"

"Okay, I’ll tell!" responded I, and slammed my fist at the table top, "Why did you stop writing poetry?"

There happened a sharp change in my father's demeanor. In obvious embarrassment, he was turning his eyes away from both his wife and daughter-in-law. Even in the deep wrinkles over his forehead, there appeared never observed marks of shyness, "Well… I was young… it was the war then…"

(…that's life, huh? You start to drive a fool and unexpectedly run into a frank confession…

By now he gave up the poetry for good and switched over to oratory. In long winter evenings, he puts his felt high boots on and goes out to the meeting of neighbors of his age, under the lamp on the post by the Kolesnikov's khutta. And there they stand on the trampled snow, discussing the news from yesterday's news program "Time", hotly debating whether Muammar Gaddafi's a manly man or the same clown as Yasser Arafat…)

In the way of a compromise, they decided that before leaving for Chernigov, I would go with my mother to local psychiatrist Tarasenko from whom (here my father narrowed his eyes threateningly) no one had ever a chance of getting off-hook. Then I escorted Eera to the station, and all the way there she tried to persuade me not to go to the 4th kilometer. However, my word to Tamara was out and past recalling…

In the large light building of the Konotop Medical Center, not far from the Avangard Stadium in the Central Park of Recreation, people were crowding next to each and every door, and only the door to the office of psychiatrist Tarasenko stood out by its forlorn solitude. When my mother and I entered his office, Tarasenko explained the phenomenon by the insufficient awareness of the population, while there, overseas, every fourth citizen kept visiting a psychiatrist.

Tarasenko's office was equipped with his assistant nurse and the standard medical office furniture. However, the furniture was arranged very strangely. The oddity was created by the positioning of the desk. Besides being put in the center of the room, it was also turned the wrong way, with its drawers to the door.

I was asked to get seated at the desk. My mother sat on a chair by the wall, and the present medical team of two stood on either side of me. I did not like this whole disposition intended to inflate my megalomania—you sit there like Chairman Mao, and those in white are standing around as an errand-boy with an errand-girl. So, I pushed the chair a tad bit back from the desk, turned it 90 degrees and, stretching my legs out, put one foot on the other in the attitude of a kicking back cowboy.

And now Tarasenko and his partner rushed to pull abruptly and slam back the desk drawers, with bang and crash… Getting midst so violent a company, I, naturally, pulled my legs back but kept sitting, yet with my ears pricked up: what the heck?

On making sure that I hadn't jumped out of the door, neither tried to flee climbing up