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

in the monthly pointers of labor performance board and, without ever looking at me, entered the building. He soon returned, got back into the car and his 2 burly passengers came out of it and approached me.

"Let's go."

"Where?"

"You'll see."

It's inconvenient to talk turning your face up in two directions. I got up and put my hand on the back of the chair, "Okay, I'll just take the chair back."

"They'll take it without you."

And the 2 of them instantly gripped my biceps – each one from his side with both hands. Gently and slowly they led me towards the Volga.

At a distance, the monitor group of 2 locksmiths and one welder stood watching from the shade in the doorway to the production building, a lost and found preparatory sketch by Repin for his famous "The Arrest of a Propagandist".

The archangel on the left, responding to my meek compliance, loosened his grip a little. He already, like, just strolled along comradely embracing my arm with his palms.

I shouted to the driver, "The one on my left is shirking!" The grips from both sides immediately hardened and soon the 3 of us were sitting in the back seat, with me in the center. Like, a f-f..er..I mean, festive king on the coronation day.

While Svaitsikha was opening the gate—the first and last time that I saw it locked—I shouted to her to take back from the porch the chair I had borrowed from her workplace. And the Volga drove to Konotop.

After some other gate, they told me to get over into a small UAZ van with no windows in the back. One of the burly guys got in with me, the vehicle revved ahead but soon we stopped again. Thru the opening to the driver cab and the following windshield, there were seen the Poplars nearby the City Medical Center.

After a prolonged wait, the back door swung open. On the sidewalk stood the psychiatrist Tarasenko. "Yes, it's him." After those his words, the door slammed shut again and I was taken to Romny. Without any voluntariness on my part…

~ ~ ~

Your looks depend on how favorable is the disposition of the mirror you are looking in. I noticed it more than once. In some mirror – wow! I'm really gorgeous! While in another – is that ghoul I?

The most in-love-with-me mirror I had ever met, was the pier-glass in the hall of the fifth unit of the regional psychiatric hospital in the city of Romny. It showed me what a terrific handsome man I was, after all. And without any cinematic sweetness – just a comely man and that's it.

In those three months in Odessa, I looked like Konkin, or he was made up to look like me when starring in "No way to change the meeting point". And it did not matter much, who's like who, the main thing that there, from the pier-glass, at me was looking a man of unusual, for the stereotyped standards, handsomeness by the Titian's brush. The red pajamas in pin-thin yellow stripes, brown soft hair slightly lightened by their sunburn, but the main advantage was the color of the eyes. Some singular, inimitable, color – that of melting honey.

And let Captain Pissak, composing my verbal portrait in front of the ranks of the First Company, say, "Look at his eyes! They are lynx eyes!" But no, Captain, the pier-glass would not lie – they were good!

The only pity was that no one saw it except me. The hall was empty, and the corridor was quiet. A dozen shut-ins stayed in the observation wardroom and all the rest of the fifth unit for the entire daylight hours were kept—with the break for a midday meal—in the Area.

It's summer, after all!.

When, in the Experimental Unit by the Repair Work Shop at the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant, we, the Unit’s locksmiths, in the end of working day were awaiting for the final, most slow-go, concluding, half-hour to expire and, leaning our backs against the vices, were yakking of this and that though, in general, of nothing, some younger locksmiths agreed that it would be nice to get back to the army again, but only now, already knowing what's what and, surely, not for the full hitch of 2 years, but, like, for a week, or 2, or maybe for a month…

To me, a soon-to-be draftee, such conversation seemed unconvincing, yet now I'm ready to agree, that the same phenomena might have more than one and rather different appearances.

At first sight, thru the roundly perplexed eyes, things look one way, but when you watch them from the height of the accumulated experience, they acquire quite a different aspect. And 1 month is just a trifle. They do not lock you up for less than 45 days in the madhouse. 45 days is half of a season: half the summer, or half the spring, or whenever they pinched you and made a shut-in.

As a regular at the fifth unit, I knew that already as well as some other nuances, however, I hadn't yet been there in summer. For me, as an unmitigated recidivist, they no longer cared to spend expensive insulin. That time I was not treated there, but getting punished with iminazine. 3 executions per day multiplied by 45; I knew what mess they would turn my ass into in the subsequent half-season… And, as a cheaper patient, I was placed in a larger wardroom, Number 8. The more the number of sick people spending the night around, the higher chances for hearing their screams from their nightmares, or witnessing a showdown lighted by the inexorable electric bulbs.

(…every summer has its drawbacks and, first of all, the influx. Any resident of any resort would agree – on the arrival of those crowds, the standard of living takes a nosedive…)

In summer, the fifth unit served, on average, 40 patients more than in other seasons. To provide everyone with a place to sleep, in Wardroom 8, for example, 2 side-by-side beds served to accommodate from 3