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

Oh, boy! You've really stepped into… Sorry, that was a wrong card… Aha! Here it is!. "May the love and happiness you feel today shine thru the years…"

Paying for the meal I was 1 ruble short. Well, to be honest, I had a ruble, but I wanted to keep it for the next day's expenses. I asked the waiter's name to make up the shortfall later. He gave his name and did not insist on getting the ruble immediately.

Snugly filled, I got back to the room up there, and to the questions of the curious roommates informed, with a yawn, that the restaurant below was still working…

24 hours later, I arrived in Konotop and proudly brought the birthday present to At-Seven-Winds. Natasha's family already lived there in the nine-story block constructed by PMK-7. The trip by the elevator to the fourth floor seemed provincially short, but their door was not opened to me. Guena sometimes left for sessions at his technical institute by correspondence in the Donbas, and Natasha was, probably, visiting some of her section neighbors. I did not know a single one of them, although at times I visited the block because, in the way of helping the young family, I wrote all the test works on philosophy and history for Guena. From the black sheep of a lousy brother-in-law, you still could sometimes get a fluff of wool…

On my way to 13 Decemberists, I turned in one of the dead-ends on Pirogov Street, where stood Guena's parents' khutta. His father was asleep already, and Natalia Savelyevna sat in the living-room with Andrey – her grandson, aka my nephew. I wanted to leave the box and go, but she asked me to assemble the toy railway, Andrey was still awake anyway. When the train model started, with a low buzz, circling over the floor in the living room, I was not an uncle anymore, Andrey and I became equal in age…

~ ~ ~

The recovery of the translations lost on a local train in the frenzy of drunken akinesia, took about a year. Because they still were fresh in my memory I couldn’t extend the pleasure for a longer period. After the final full-stop in the last translated story, I took the four-volume collection to Nezhyn, to return it to Nona.

Nearing the teachers' block in the Count's Park, I caught up with Nona and Lydia Panova, who was my group's curator in the years of my study at the English Department of the NGPI. They were heading to the staircase-entrance in their section but noticed me and stopped to wait. I greeted the ladies and informed Nona how impossible it was to convey by mere words all the gratitude I felt for the four-volume originals, borrowed from her and now brought back, here you are.

She smiled from under her glasses and reached out for the cellophane bag. I intercepted her hand, like, for a democratic handshake in the style of characters by Jack London. But instead, unexpectedly even for myself, I gallantly stooped to kiss the back of her hand. Only after that, the bag was passed. Regaining the upright posture, I gave Panova a stiff nod and left… Well, at least I hadn't clicked the shoe heels like hussar Lieutenant Rzhevsky, the f-f..er..I mean, flamboyant hero of the f-f..er..folklore dirty jokes.

My euphoria got off the local train at the first stop after Nezhyn and grim misgivings turned my fellow-travelers. What a blessing, after all, is the inability to make up detailed plans! Them those plans should be kept as short as possible: Prepare a collection of translated short stories for publishing in 150 000 copies. Period.

When thinking the plan out in all the minor details, you expose your whole undertaking to a deadly risk. There inevitably will pop up some insurmountable detail and send your plan to RIP, the way Titanic was tranquilized by its iceberg. Look out! What the f…!!!!!

Bang!. Krchbrdzzz!. And then there comes the muffled, mind-pacifying, sound of sedate bubbling…what's the use of anything…why to strive for the impossible…ible…ble…

Now, what normal publishing house will ever look thru my scribble-scrabble scrawling?. But, is there a way to transform them into typewritten text? Maybe, learning to type by myself? A yummy plan! D'you know a place where they sell typewriters?. (…and another iceberg penetrates the hold…)

The secretary of Manager of SMP-615 had a juggernaut of "Yatran" typewriter on her desk. Sort of a shop floor machine tool with a black cord to feed it with 220 voltage. You simply touched a key and it responded with series of uncontrollable bursts, in the style of a Kalashnikov assault rifle, nothing like the lasciviously seductive cluck-cluck-cluck of typewriters in the movies. Besides, the secretary did not know Ukrainian, and even Russian texts she typed by only index-finger, in turn.

…well, suppose, after work, I would come to the office and little by little…

Yes, this one also went straight to the sea bottom, because the new boss of SMP-615 was so jealous. He viewed the SMP-615 administrative building as a kinda personal warren or, say, chicken coop, and would not tolerate any bricklayer horsing around even after work. The icebergs of unforeseen details threatened the plan from all sides and brought the navigation to a halt…

We worked in the locomotive depot at the construction of the three-story administrative building, when my sister Natasha, at a chance meeting on a streetcar, shared that Eera, by the by, was going to get married in Nezhyn. Doubts in any information from my sister were senseless, you simply had to take it for granted… The news in passing way of crushed me for more than a day.

Yet, I recovered, thanks to our foreman Mykola Khizhnyak's suggestion that I dismantle the trestles alongside the finished partition on the second floor… When the laid partition gets as tall as 1.2 meters, you have to install the cradles by it, bridge them with timber and continue laying bricks from that trestle, up to the ceiling.