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

a bottleful freshly tanked into the hold, I could only admire how quickly he was leaving. Moreover, those 2 bulls were already towering above me.

None of them followed him either, only the older officer tapped his shoe heels against the asphalt in a pretty fast step dance, staying in the same spot though. The performance was accompanied with a strange, possibly, also Irish, air, "Oolyou-lyou!". The border guard accelerated sharply and dissolved in the darkness.

The militiaman dancer picked the open, but still not started, bottle up from the bench. He turned it upside down in his outstretched hand and held so in both sadistic and mournful attitude, while the wine gurgled out to the ground.

"Come on," the second man said to me, nodding at the already open side door in the van… I stuck my head inside. In the dim light of a tiny bulb in the ceiling, those invited before me sat along the blind sidewalls. An elderly militia petty officer sat leaning his back against the partition from the cab, facing the public.

Admiring the impeccable finesse of my own movements, I ascended the interior. The door slammed shut behind me. "Good evening!" amiably and indiscriminately greeted I all the present, and at once got a kick in my ass.

"The prick even 'good-evening' knows!" yelled the petty officer who hit me.

Falling on someone from the previous catch, I automatically exclaimed, "I beg your pardon!" and immediately looked back fearful of another kick. It seemed, I was not going to get it for the "pardon", the officer was too lazy to get up.

The ride was not long. Leaving the vehicle, I recognized the courtyard where The Orpheuses were brought for giving the testimony on the disappearance of the accordion made in DDR, but now I was taken to another building. At the desk in the corridor, there sat a militia Captain. After a couple of questions addressed to my fellow-travelers, they were sent to the cell.

Then he turned to me. Observing that I answered his questions adequately and did not try to push for my rights nor refuted the report of the officers who delivered me, he asked where I worked. Then he called somewhere to verify and after a very short talk as well as checking my proficiency at bending exercises, he finally ordered me to go home. "Straight home! Got it? Nowhere else!"

I went out of the gate. Why do they all push me around? Fuck them! And I obstinately returned to the park and bought a ticket to the dance-floor.

To celebrate the new stage in the on-going anti-alcoholic campaign, the gate was guarded by a militia sergeant and 2 public order enforcers adorned with festively red armbands.

"Did you drink today?" demanded one of them.

"Never!" responded I and proceeded to my bench under the fence to sit there until the end of dancing. Which happened after a couple of numbers…

The letter of advice on my detention reached SMP-615 a month or 2 later. I already forgot about it when the new boss called me from the construction site and demanded to write an explanatory. He obviously made his mind to use the situation to full advantage, and in a week the trade-union committee met to consider my personal case.

With the autumnal chillness setting in, I attended the meeting in my raincoat and hat on.

The new boss, in his jacket and tie, began to expound my transgressions. The freshest of them, attested by the paper from the militia, was my violating directives of the Party and Government on a park bench. That's how I disgraced SMP-615 in the eyes of the public and the authorities! How long to tolerate?!

However, I chose the position of an observer and to all rhetorical questions answered with a shrug of my left shoulder under the raincoat…

And my contemptuous attitude to the management?! Here, if you please – an explanatory written in verse! From the stack of papers on the desk in front of him, the new boss picked up one sheet and shook it in the air.

…wow! I did not know there was accumulated such a dossier on me…

And look at another sample here! The reminder written by me to the trade-union committee (he read it up), "3 months ago I applied for upgrading my bricklayer category. However, till now the qualification commission of SMP-615 neither raise an eyebrow nor move their horns."

The trade-union committee burst in laughter, the new boss, obedient to the herd instinct, also grunted not understanding though what funny was about it…

Besides, it's simply dangerous to be next to me because I was putting an arm under the slab!.

And that’s a fact. On that day there were 4 of us: the overseer Karenin, the carpenter Ivan, the crane operator Vitalya and I. The sun was glaring upon the March snow around the construction site where we were starting a new apartment building. The foundation blocks had been laid in the pit since autumn, and then, throughout the winter, Ivan's job was to look after them. From 8 to 5. He was coming to turn on the heater in the trailer, and watched the silent white snowdrifts outside the window, or considered the cut-outs of cute beauties from girlie magazines that he glued on all the walls to give his hands at least some job… On that March day, he became my hand.

The task was simple – to lay 4 courses of bricks in the short wall of the future staircase-entrance so as to install a stump of a slab over the future doorway to the basement. Standing on the trestle between the foundation blocks, I raised 2 short corners and started laying courses under the shnoorka to finish the stump’s prop of a wall. It was a half-hour task, no more, while the working day ended in an hour plus. However, Vitalya, the crane operator, was impatient to climb down from his perch in the cab of the tower crane and play cards with Ivan till 5. So he