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

of. But what could you expect, eh? Factory teams, their trade-union committees bought them trunks and leggings, but no outfit would disguise the fact that mujiks were far over their thirties. If some 15 years before, a couple of them attended the Youth Sports School volleyball section, than that's all their training. And the field's a fairly big one – the standard field for playing soccer. After a dogtrot from end to end, the poor bugger turns a sore sight with his tongue hanging out down his backbone, over the shoulder. You couldn't but feel pity for the geezer. Yet, since I came to the match I sat there, what's the difference when you don't have a.. a-anything else to do. No use of carping.

And suddenly the tall Poplars in the dense row behind the empty opposite stands stirred and rustled… Like, the breath of some invisible giant puffed at them. However, all that became at once unimportant because in the field, quite of a sudden, there was unfolding such a game for which you were all leaning forward, clutching the planks of the bench under you, and turning your head from side to side to follow the ball rocketing over the field, dissecting the air in its flight like a white cannonball which was not allowed to ever touch the ground. Midfielder soared up a half-meter above his own height to pass the ball to the right striker who, one-touch, sent it to the center. The center striker cleverly caught the pass, kicked the ball over the defender, easily bypassed him and – what a mighty strike!. Wow!. No way to guess from where and how he popped up, but the left midfielder intercepted the ball and sent it back far away to the center of the field where at once they kick up a skirmish to get it…

We watched spell-bound closely following the ricochets of the ball from one team to another, getting accelerated by each hit of a leg, or a head, or a chest… It was not them who played the game, it was the game who played them. It was Game.

Finally, even the drunks realized that something unprecedented was happening in the field. They roared and whistled like a 100 000 crowd went mad in the stands… Probably, that shooed off the invisible. The players, one by one, began to shrink and shirk and soon they just jogged around in their soaked thru T-shirts… I am not too much of a football fan, yet now I am convinced that there is real Game in existence.

(…five minutes of Game, is it not enough? Fans of renown clubs might have seen more, but in bits, not at a stretch, poor homeopaths.

Yes, that Game was gone, dissolved, raced away like a hasty gust of wind, like a bursting drop of happiness, yet it was there and it still fascinates me…)

The reason for my taciturnity was that I kept my tongue sealed up… At first, I let it enjoy all the freedom of speech it wanted, but a month after my getting a job there was a general meeting of the Construction Shop Floor workmen attended by a representative of the "Motordetail" Management.

There was an unmistakable air of a leader about that block of a representative. You just couldn't imagine such an individual as a child with a balloon, or a youth frustrated about his pimples. Oh, no! He came from his mother's womb ready-made, just like that – half-bold, wearing glasses, with hanging stomach and the well-bred stateliness… In his speech at the meeting, he outlined the tasks facing us in the currently crucial period of the Acceleration. It was time for everyone to work harder at their workplaces, both we, the workmen at different construction sites and they, the Management, at their posts, steering our engagement and activities to achieve the set goals.

He finished and the meeting's chairman asked if there were any questions. I raised my hand.

(…it was a breach of the tacit rules, by which the question about questions was closing any meeting. However, I raised my hand because he really put my back up that nightingale from the plant Management…)

I asked to explain the difference between the "engagement" and "activities" I was really curious. Thank you.

The Management representative whispered something to the meeting's chairman and the latter announced the meeting closed. The participants, with relief, hurried to their homes.

A couple of days later a guy from the village of Bochky, who was coming to work by motorcycle, entered the locker room with his round biker helmet squeezed under his oxter, like an astronaut at the launch pad, and announced his intention to change the lock in his locker because of schizophrenics walking about the room. He addressed no one in particular, but the wide locker room grew silent, mujiks stopped donning their spetzovkas, dropped the start of-the-day exchanges and turned their faces in my directions, a kinda wait-in-the-hushed-expectancy, you know. That's why I started keeping my tongue on a short leash.

(…you can't kick against so mighty levers of power with their arsenal of tacit regulations, elusive omnipresence, and superb pedagogical skills – they even managed to teach the "schizophrenic" word to a moron from Bochky…)

~ ~ ~

"You been to Romny?" Here, in the showers room of the Konotop bathhouse filled with clouds of steam, the noise of water rushing from taps, the clank of tin basins against marble tops of low tables, each of us looked like an "irrevocably free" from the Area of the fifth unit in the regional psychiatric hospital.

"Though having that experience, I still can’t recollect you." Even I myself admired the impeccability of the poetic rhythm in my answer. The neighbors stopped rubbing soap in their respective sponges and, pricking up their ears in attention, moved closer – the Konotopers are marked by their innate propensity for poetry.

I kept staring at the inquirer. The accordion groans over the evening Area… it's getting dark… soon to go up for the night…