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

(from the French "l’attention!"), haza (from the German "Hause"), havvat (from the English "have a"), as well as manifold borrowings from the languages in the family of friendly and free brother nations fused into the common, unsplittable, USSR.

(…however, back to my malyava, aka letter (fenya’s term from the German "mahlen")…)

The champion for the public fundamental morals, who offended me in the metro, had no notion that under the appearance of a black man there lived in me a vulnerable tender soul as well as the digestive tract of a delicate constitution. I did not suspect it myself until I felt how, after the mentioned insult, I gradually became "mournful in the belly" because the intestines began revolting after the traumatic discovery that in public eye they were a constituent part of a bum.

About the Maidan, which then was named Square of October Revolution, it became clear that I could not hold back the pressure of the tides that stormed the ampoule (which follows the large intestine) and that there remained no hope for reaching the greens by the University, with the only public toilet known to me in the downtown part of Kiev. Fortunately, I remembered the Ministry of Education with their ministerial toilet on the second floor, and not too far from the square, it’s only that the intemperately intensive rioting within my system called for additional suppressive efforts…

I flung the tall entrance door open and rushed, in a concentrated jog, up the marble stairs.

"Hey! Where?" shouted the attendant from the chair to the left from the entrance.

"Plumbing system check," reported I over my shoulder, without slowing down the businesslike strides…

When all the sorrows subsided, I left the restroom, polished like a malachite jewelry case, and descended the wide white stairs, with the demeanor of archangel Gabriel in dignified idle stroll and, maybe, even gleaming blissfully.

I wanted to share the Good News and, turning my face to the attendant, informed benevolently, "Hey, look! The check says it's okay around here. Yea!." And I went out into the blatantly atheistic Karl Marx Street, between two dense walls of the like, severely administrative, buildings.

(…Karl certainly knew it's only thanks to the collective efforts that Man managed to become Crown of Nature. Because single-handed you can neither kill a mammoth not fly to the moon.

But how fragile the state of unity is!. How willingly and readily we do split ourselves, humans, by the color of skin and hair, by caste, faith, party affiliation: they are not us, we are not them, we're higher prized, at least for 1 ruble…

Some unsolvable mystery – how the assemblage of ape-shaped boobs keeps able for collective achievements, given their chronic proneness to self-castration?..)

~ ~ ~

My visit to Kanino kicked off the rise of national self-awareness within me. For a descendant of Novgorodian ushkuynik robbers and Tatar raiders, who for centuries were raping Ryazan womenfolk, taking turns with less stable, accidental, bands of fuckers, it was not appropriate, and even disreputable, to earn my living by giving hugs, on a daily basis, to the stinking undisinfectioned shit of rags when shoving them into the press box.

So, for the first time in my working career, I applied for firing me on the strength of my own free will. Now, in my workbook, the disparaging Article 40 got obscured by the perfectly acceptable standard record "dismissed on the application"—who would look any deeper?—and I went to hire on in the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant.

Everything went without a hitch, I had smoothly past the medical checks but at the final stage, already at the personnel department, I suddenly heard "no go". Why not?

As it turned out, there remained no quota for me. The head of the personnel department exposed it in detail, that there were tacit but strict regulations forbidding to hire a person with higher education to become a workman among the workforce of fewer than 1000 undiplomized employees. In the plant collective of 5000, there remained no extra thousand to allow for my case, some sons of a bitch with diplomas arrived before me and exhausted the quota.

(…the disappointment did not kill me, I somehow used to cope with falling through, nevertheless, it was a significant shock to realize the existence of the "shadow" legislation, ignorance of which did not exempt you from its application…)

So I went to the city outskirts opposite the Settlement, to the "Motordetail" plant where I was hired on as a bricklayer in the Construction Shop Floor. The bastards with diplomas had not infiltrated yet the large modern enterprise.

If we subtract the havvage in its canteen, the plant "Motordetail" stood out as a crystal-like embodiment of dream model for an industrial enterprise and a casual walk over its Construction Shop Floor was enough to confirm the statement. The spacious locker rooms attractively paneled with tiling in brown colors of the spectrum were combined with as spacious (and also tiled, not just cemented) shower rooms. The recollection of the said conveniences, waiting for you at the end of the day, would warm your heart during the working hours.

I knew my job and was used as a bricklayer-loner for non-standard tasks in separate spots of application. They would equip me with a pair of helpers to fetch bricks and mortar and—off we drive!—the drum brickwork of wall in an underground water well, or erecting chimneys over the roofs in two-apartment cottages…

I liked the frequent change of tasks: each one required a special approach and circumspection which kept your mind from slipping into sloth and your spine from growing stiff. And for the periods of relative calm between the missions, I was sent to the team of bricklayers at the construction of the 130-apartment block for the plant employees in the neighborhood adjacent to the plant. The team there were no aces, but it was they to live in what they built…

Neither in the locker room nor with the team was I a dream gossip. When asked of something, I would reply and then again keep silent while indetectably