On another occasion, we even visited Decemberists 13, in the daytime, naturally, when there was no one there. After champagne and a joint, we got in a deeply playful mood so that auntie Zina in her part of the khutta panicked, ran to our front door, and kicked up alarmed drumming at it. Probably, the echoes of our frolics passed thru the partition wall making her think of bloody murder in the canonical traditions of the post-war bandit period in the history of the city because it’s highly unlikely that the old innocent lady had any notion of hardcore scenes and stuff…

So, Eera met my brother and sister at the Loony dances, and she knew Lenochka unilaterally from the pictures shot at the photo session around Rabentus' dovecot, which I later pasted on the wallpaper over my bed in the Hosty…

Apart from Eera coming to Konotop to meet my parents, Slavic also was taken along. He and my sister measured each other with guarded looks but skipped sniffing. And that was correct because I brought Slavic for another purpose – I needed him to be put on the alert.

(…"the most powerful force is the force of habit" or something like that was said by V. I. Lenin in one of his works from the 58-volume collection, and, quoting the colonel of counter-revolutionary Whites from the movie "Chapaev":

"Yes, it’s where the Bolshevik leader is right."…)

Consider me, for instance. I have an ample plantation of cannabis to keep me lavishly up to the following season, even with generous largesses to those two tail-clinging bros – Slavic and Twoic. On the other hand, I am in the habit of plundering other folks' plantations. Who'll bite the dust – sound reason or deep-rooted habit? Make your bets, gentlemen!

(…it's sometimes hard to refute the truth in Leninist theses…)

And what else, apart from the habit, smashes up all of the chop-logic reasoning? What drives us on and further on? What pushes to the new, the unknown?

Hope – what if the luck would have it?.

Faith – but there should be, there is somewhere!.

And Love, of course, the love to knowledge and change…

All that summer whenever riding a streetcar along May Day Street, I watchfully kept track of the cannabis growth stages in the Buttuke's khutta yard, and I dreamed of, wished and hoped for it's being of some nonpareil quality, as heavy-duty stuff as was the kif shared by Rabentus for the deeper comprehension of that unforgettable lecture by Scnar.

Once upon a time, Buttuke was the legend and role model for the youth not only in the Settlement but all over the city. Everyone knew Buttuke who did not care a damn for the traffic-officers from State Auto Inspection, aka GAI, and all the militia in the bargain. They just couldn't catch up with him to fine for riding his bike without a helmet, wearing only his long windblown hair.

What? Drunken driving? You have to catch up and prove it, first!. Two patrols ambushed him at night in Zelenchuk Area but he made his "Jawa" leap between the poplars and shoot away along a gleaming railhead in the streetcar tracks. The word "biker" plodded to Konotop much later – we had Buttuke…

And suddenly thundered the news that shook the guys like the Tower of Babel – Buttuke died!

"Bullshit! Alive, but in the reanimation ward."

And the speed was a mere 60 kph, well, plus that of the counter-moving bus whose radiator Buttuke rammed with his head that chanced to have a helmet at the moment.

"See, dudes? The helmet is a good idea, so they do not need to scratch your brains off the asphalt, the shit stays in the helmet neat and tidy."

Buttuke survived, only his mug remained patch-checkered after the restoration. They took the motorcycle from him together with the license, and never gave back. To demonstrate his indignant protest, he became bald and got some loader job. In short, Buttuke was no legend anymore.

However, he bought a scooter and made an eye candy of it – the windshield, rear-view mirrors, as well as all kinds of pendants dangling all around. The saddle was covered with fleece, long and white. And (what was characteristic) he never rode his scooter without a helmet on his head. A regular biker helmet, and also white to match the fleece under his ass…

And now let's reflect on a natural situation – I go to bomb his grass and he suddenly pops out: how could I possibly guess what was still lingering under that white helmet of his? So I brought Slavic too since there was enough of living space…

When it got dark the 2 of us went out.

"Once we went to do our job, me and Rabinovich…"

The moment we were leaving, Eera got very nervous and asked to lock her up in the summer room.

"What's the problem? Lock the door from inside."

"No! You do it."

Well, I locked the door from outside and gave the key back thru the window because I did not know when we were going to return.

(…there's still a lot of things that I will never understand…)

When we returned, Eera checked the loot.

No! She did not even smoke cigarettes but could determine weed quality by simply sniffing at it. With the accuracy of up to 80 percent… In general, the spoils from Buttuke were from the remaining 20 percent, I wouldn't grow such crap on my plantation…

Later in Nezhyn, Slavic sniffed out one more cannabis growing spot next to the bridge across the Oster, near the Bazaar square. He brought me to the location and showed the lush beauties as if decorated with ostrich feathers of green. However, the property was surrounded by a tall fence.

I also do not like monotony, yet once again we went out in the dark because a habit is the most irresistible force… So, I climbed over the fence and with the ghostly gait of a sneaking redskin approached the one-summer-old trees. The khutta stood aside and was not in the way with the light in only one window. Well, let the man watch his TV program, I don't mind.

No sooner I gently rustled the magnificent beauties than the ground started to quake in a pulsating seismic tremor accompanied by a thunder-like clatter from the khutta direction, and the light from the window was eclipsed by the black silhouette of that galloping Dog of Baskervilles.

It took a split-sec for all that happened then and, actually, without my participation. The instinct, laid in our spinal cord by countless generations of gnawed to death and shredded ancestors, did the trick. I could only watch how the fence jumped to meet me, and my right pedal extremity kicked its top rail.

Somewhere unbelievably far below, by the narrow vein of the Oster river, shimmering in the dark of the Ukrainian night, the already indistinguishable fence shook and vibrated from the ramming push of the wolfhound… I left the upper layers of the stratosphere but, halfway to the moon, it occurred to me that there was not enough air in my lungs for the return to my native planet. That's how I forsook becoming "Apollo 14"…

Slavic was saved only by his desperate spurt from the spot of my landing. Because among the ancestors, that mutually formed our spinal cord, lots of wretches got squashed flat too…

~ ~ ~

The fourth course was not sent to a collective farm with patronage assistance, we had a month of school practice but this time in village schools. Another difference to the school practice at the third course—finalized with the written comment from the respective city school teacher bubbling of what incredibly wonderful teachers we, the students she had been in charge of, were going to become in future—was that each group of trainees had an overseer from the English Department to assess our professional skills by the practice results. An eye for an eye, so to speak, because we also evaluated them in the years of our study…

When we, the first-year students, were split into 4 study groups, Lydia Panova became the curator of mine. She was a spinster and in unrequited love with Deputy Dean of the English Department, Alexander Bliznuke, who, in his turn, was in unrequited love with his young beautiful wife. Taking advantage of his official position, Bliznuke employed his wife as a teacher at the English Department as soon as she graduated the Nezhyn institute, but the ungrateful one soon jilted him and fled to someone else in Kiev.

Lydia Panova, with her hormonal mustache, thick glasses and the equally thick mask of makeup on her face, had no chances to lasso Bliznuke, although the girls of my group were pulling for her. She lived in the five-story block for the institute teachers by the sports grounds in the Count's Park and whenever Bliznuke had an imprudence of walking under her balcony, she started talking to him in English, and the following day she was teaching us more enthusiastically.

The second group's curator was Nona Panchenko (not a relative to the famous boxer), she also was unmarried and wore glasses, but no cosmetic plaster, and looked much younger than Panova. Once at some kind of voluntary Saturday work, Veerich wanted to treat her to a glass of wine. I played the errand-boy and approached her with it, like, would you have a sip of lemonade to quench the labor thirst? She smiled at me with a pleasant smile and refused. Nona smiled pleasantly at everyone but wasn't lassoing anybody.

The curator of the third group wore glasses (again!) was a blonde and a perfect fool (yes, monotony). She mastered English within the limits of the textbook by Galperin for the first-year students and unconsciously loved Sasha Bryounchooguin, the only boy in the group under her curatorship. To that conclusion, I was led by her habit to take the floor at every general meeting of the English Department with a harangue in his address, like that Roman senator with his constant call to destroy Carthage.

A local boy from a well-to-do family, polite and ever-smiling, he 2 times a month attended classes. Who would ask for more? But she had been crushing on him non-stop for 4 years. She literally f-f..er..I mean, filled everyone’s ears with her crying in the wilderness.

As we, already as the fourth-year students, were at a meeting in the big Auditorium 4, she again took the floor to chew the same rag, "Admire, please! Bryounchooguin's skipping even the general meeting!"

And then even the wind outside couldn't stand it anymore and slammed the tall windows, open on the occasion of spring and good weather. The panes got nearly smashed out.

She ducked and lost what there was further to proclaim in her perennial hit clue about Carthage…

And at last, the curator without glasses, the curator of non-feminine gender, the curator of the fourth group was Roma Gourevitch. He was also a Jew, as any of all other Gourevitches I've ever met, or as that same Bliznuke, only older and balder. And he was constantly busy with debating or talking to some or another one, completely involved and steaming with enthusiasm…

Once I had to retake a test on the subject he taught. The affair was to be settled in the Old Building, of course. Making sure that he got out of the New Building in the right direction, I went to the Old Building and waited for his approach. 10 minutes later I grew worried and combed thru the 200 meters of the asphalt path between the Old and the New Buildings. He had just reached the corner of the New Building, stopping every counter moving teacher for an animated discussion. I returned to the position by the Old Building but this time got seated on a bench under the giant Birches. 20 minutes later, he could be spotted by the big sad bust of Gogol. Good fellow, Roma! The half of the distance over!. Yet, do you have much of a choice when the teacher is late for the appointed retaking of the test you failed at the first go?

It took Roma 62 minutes to get over that f-f..er..I mean, flimsy 200 meters, but I'm sure that was not the limit of his knack for loitering. For all that, I bestowed him with the handle "ebullient slacker". His official appellation contrôlée was "Roma-Phonetist" though because he was distinguished against the rest of teachers at the English Department by the purest pronunciation of the sound "th". It was he who read the texts about the Parkers family on the tape-recorder for the students to parrot them in the booths of the Language Laboratory. No wonder he was referred to as "Phonetist"…

Besides the Phonetics, we were taught lots of other subjects, different and necessary. Take, for example, the Comparative Lexicosemantosurdographosemasiology – your tongue would go to pieces before you manage to pass the exam. That Comparative Lexi…well, whatever…ology was studied under a hereditary teacher. The dynasty broke off at her because she was a retired virgin and chastely buttoned her teacher’s raincoat with a huge safety pin up to the fold in the dried-up skin under her chin.

She was an irreplaceable pensioner because it was her, who wrote the textbook on the subject. A skinny paperback pamphlet from the institute printing house with the smeared typeface authored by…well, it's embarrassing…the name was such…with some whistling sound in it…or maybe hissing?. Anyway, her name was shorter than that of the subject… Yes, I remembered! Shakhrai she was! (And it's not a handle, faith! Some Ukrainian last names do make you think before you jump.)

If during her lectures she allowed herself too much, sort of, walking along the aisle between long desk rows, say, how do they stick down my comparatively smeared pearls into their notebooks? – there was nothing easier than putting her in her proper place. Undo your shirt on the chest, 2 or 3 buttons, and stroke wistfully and gently your hair on the solar plexus. That's all. The hissing wanderings got safely blocked and till the break bell, she would be sitting at the teacher desk like a nice little girl, staring at her plan of the lecture which she knew by heart… I do adore virgins.

Zhomnir once said that after even the briefest talk with her, he got an itching desire to take a bath. Well, tastes differ. I do not remember if I took a shower after the exam on that most Comparative – well, how-you'd-call-it – at which I also had to scratch my chest…

And all those were our specialization subjects, apart from general ones lectured by teachers from other faculties and departments. And each lecturer fancied themselves a Don Corleone extorting due respect, like, he or she made me an offer I couldn't refuse and returning to the student hostel I would immediately plunge into the study of their subject… Yeah, as soon as I'm back to the Hosty!

The only one who evoked sympathy in me was Samorodnitsky, for some of the philosophies because he lit a cigarette at his exam. Openly so, imposingly, and, with all that, in a good manner – he took from his briefcase an ashtray with a lid and shook the cigarette ash off into it.

To that examination, I came from the Hosty and started driving some kind of a fool improvising from a lamppost, possibly from some different philosophy. But he suddenly got interested, sat upright, and put me 4. He said that I needed to change the Department, and he would see to it, but soon after he emigrated to Israel…

So, I was practicing at the school of the sugar factory at the station of Nosovka (20 minutes by a local train from Nezhyn in the Kiev direction) and Zhomnir was in charge of our group of trainees.

Early in the morning, we went there from the high platform of the Nezhyn station – the team of 10 students from different groups and Zhomnir in his teacher’s raincoat and dark blue beret, gripping his briefcase with cave-in sides.

(…everyone dresses to fit their role model.

Beret, raincoat, briefcase – read "teacher". Can you imagine a plumber in such an outfit?. That's what I mean…)

Before the practice, my mother sewed me a jacket. It looked like a geologist anti-encephalitis jacket but from a thicker tarpaulin of green color. I liked it, especially the color of so a Robin-Hoodish hue…

The most vivid impression from the practice was left by the football match between the sugar factory team and that from the locomotive depot of the Fastov station. The game in the championship for the Cup of the Trade-Union Committee of the South-Western Railway took place on the school football field. I went out of the school building for a break between the classes and got stuck.

It was a warm and sunny September day. On the green grass of the field, some 20 men were chasing a single ball, and a separate mujik ran in their wake and whistled with shrill trills. The crowds of fans were represented by, firstly, a grim man in black overalls and, secondly, me. I start the count with him because he was the first to stand by the field edge, and he was a more intent watcher – it took me a while to go under the trees behind one of the goals for to stuff a joint. On coming back, I left a respectful distance between me and the other fan not to tease his sense of smell with vain hopes or odd reminiscences. I just stood in the sun and enjoyed the championship match.

A sharp sting in the neck threw me from high. I recoiled, slapped the wasp, looked back and saw Igor Recoon sneaking up from behind with a guileful grin.

I hid neither the joint nor the smoke, "Igor, when you have any questions come up openly and speak easy."

He effaced the smile and said, no, he was just so, and then hurried to the school where sounded the long bell for classes.

A young errand-boy arrived on his bicycle with a bag-load of doping for the local bozos in the field. They jogged, and gulped, and passed the bottles to each other to furiously rush to attack.

The right halfback of the visiting team passed the ball to the central forward, who went to the corner of the penalty and with a slight but accurate blow rolled the ball into the bottom left corner of the goal. "Goal!" shouted the striker together with the rest of his team.

"No!" roared the local slobs.

Jogging back to his half of the field, the striker came across a wall of 3 locals. "No goal!" they howled at him.

"As if I argue," answered he bypassing their line, unable though to suppress his contented smile.

There was no way to prove anything because the goal had not any mesh and the referee at the goal moment was looking up in the sky together with the bottom of the bottle handed to him by a local footballer.

I approached the first half of the match-watchers, and put a direct question, "So, was it a goal or what?"

The mujik in overalls surly nodded. I rejoiced that the truth, even though mutely, was still present in this world, at least among the working class.

The match for the Cup of Trade-Union of the South-Western Railway ended in a draw, 0:0…

Zhomnir warned that as Head of the Practice, he couldn't put me more than "three" for the chronic absence of lesson plans written by me though they were the must. And I couldn't force myself to at least copy those f-f..er..I mean, fanciful plans from Igor because I was physically unable lining dolls in a row on the piano lid.

I asked Zhomnir not to worry and put whatever mark he could. I really did not give a f-f..er.. I found it meaningless, I mean… When on the third floor of the Old Building the fourth-year students' practice results were fixed next to the Time-Table, I was the one and only having "three". Zhomnir alarmed and started to convince Deaness of the English Department that it was wrong, and he could not have imagined I was so unique. She impregnably advised to look before jumping.

The current Deaness always tried to have the looks of Alice Freindlich from "The Office Affair" movie, only that no Myagkov turned up for her, and she stayed a flinty bureaucrat. Yet, in her cupboard, she kept the skeleton of her divorce on the grounds of sexual incompatibility, because the girls from the English Department did not leak unverified information.

Okay, enough is enough, that'll do for the strangers of all kinds…and now enters…you!.

~ ~ ~

Your personal conception took place on the fourth floor in the Hosty. That particular date Eera arranged herself since it was a room of Phys-Math girls and among the students of the Physics and Math Department I knew only that pair of cooks from the student construction platoon, but they lived in the city.

Shortly before the event, I once again fell in love with Eera but, at first, I did put the end to my polygamy. And could it be otherwise? To Eera alone I owed that salvage shot from gonorrhea.

So, on arrival in Nezhyn for the final academic year, I became straight and reasonable. And I dryly informed Sveta of my reformation when she attempted at the former familiarity. We became just a nodding acquaintance and vague recollection to each other.

And I also returned Maria the book borrowed from her several months ago. Though, I chose a late hour for nullifying that bifurcation.

She opened her door to the staircase landing, in the unbuttoned robe over her nightie. If we assume the possibility of time shifts, then at that moment it easily could be I in her bed awaiting when she'd sent away that dork outside… I did not develop this theory but simply handed the book in, thanked, and left…

And since then my love belonged only to Eera, absolutely undivided, especially after the mentioned falling in love with her once again. It happened when at a chance meeting on the third floor of the Old Building in the wing occupied by the Philological Department, I persuaded Eera to skip a class and, after the bell shut up, we sneaked along the wide empty corridor to the side staircase. There, we did not go down the stairs but followed the ascending flights, although the building had no fourth floor, and the last flight was blocked by a partition with the locked door to the attic. We stopped in the middle of that flight and kissed.

(…her classic breasts under the river algae shade of green in the knitted sweater to match her mermaid-style hairdo, the silk skirt on the strong hips swelling the sketchy outlines of white abstract bunches on the black background, tailored by Maria Antonovna, Lyalka's mother, high wedge Austrian high boots, her eyes slant all too slightly, the slender white Lorraine cross of the frame in the arched tall window behind her back, with the Renaissance azure blue of the sky in its panes, the foamy white splash of dove's wings on the other side of that cross – all that and everything else merged into the picture that I will see and remember all my life…)

But having memories alone was not enough for me, I wanted to keep all that or to stay myself within that desperately inexpressible beauty. The kisses were to no avail, they couldn't stop the fleeting moment. So all that only remained there, all I could do was falling in love…

In the evening, already on the stairs in the Hosty, Eera passed me the key to the room of the Phys-Math students, so that I went first to open it and she would follow a minute later to keep the rules of secrecy… We did not turn on the light. The bed stood by the window overlooking the Oster banks invisible in the darkness.

With Eera, the burden of protection lay on me, that is, getting out in time to avoid abortion was my responsibility. But on that particular night…a tad bit more!..I'm in control!..more!..just a sec…y-u!..out of the blue!..too late…the train's left…

You were on that train, in the crowd of all-alike fellow-travelers, only you turned out to be a little bit nimbler…

Well, and then – a smooth transition to the already checked out technology: as a quality man of noble disposition, I had to marry. More so, that I would not survive another Eera's report on abortion under general anesthesia…

When Eera was still a schoolgirl, she found a ring on the bridge over the Oster; a nick-knackery ring of those that they sell at stalls among the other casual pieces of fake jewelry. Eera brought it home and her mother, Gaina Mikhailovna, got sad and distressed but she said nothing to her daughter…

Was Eera's marriage with the divorced me a misalliance? Undoubtedly and undeniably. Even a brief matching of the would-be newlyweds' parental pairs against each other would prove it to the hilt:

Spare-Parts Checker at the RepBase vs.

Teacher of German Language at the Nezhyn State Pedagogical Institute of Order of the Labor Red Banner named after Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol;

Locksmith at the RepBase vs.

Deputy Director of the Nezhyn Bakery Plant.

However, the factor of your presence, even though not born yet, mitigated the caste prejudices which, by the way, had long since been abolished by the Soviet system. Still and all, even in the era of the developed socialism in our country, throughout our pre-wedding trip to Kiev, I had my anus impaled on the stake, a kinda admonishment for the cheeky pariah.

Kiev was needed to exchange the coupons from Nezhyn ZAGS for goods in the metropolitan bridal salons. True, the divorce-stamp in my passport nullified any discounts for a wedding ring for me, yet my sister Natasha promised to lend me the neat gold ring that she wore, for some odd reason, on her thumb. As for the stake, it was not seen from outside, but caused horrible pangs within the rectum and turned my gait into drag-and-shuffles of a semi-palsied old man or that of a young Cossack raider who was removed from the said impalement-stake after a slightly belated amnesty. "Mercy, Cossack-brothers! Finish me off!"

Poor Eera! Would any girl in her dearest girlish dreams ever dream of such a companion to a bridal salon?. Never! By no means! No and no, over again!

To me, the hellish torture suffered on that trip served the palpable reminder of the truth from Heraclitus: never enter the same river, for your ass' safety sake!.

Alas! The wisdom of the previous generations does not make us wiser until we (quoting the famous letter of Ukrainian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey) get seated on a hedgehog with the personal stark naked arse.

Nevertheless, in Kiev, the bride got rigged for the impending happy occasion, and I bought brown shoes made by the Dutch company "Topman". The footwear was a bit too loose, but the realities of the era of deficits taught us grabbing any chance bird at hand, and a month later the shoes become a fitting hand-me-downs to my father-in-law. That's for whose sake I was dragging that stake!.

Soon, I felt better and we started looking for a suit to dress the groom. We combed thru the department stores of major railway stations between Nezhyn and Kiev: Nosovka, Kobyzhchi, Bobrovitsa – to no avail. The suit was hunted down only in Chernigov, far from the electrified railroads, and it imparted quite a decent look to me.

A week before the wedding, I left the hostel and moved to the three-room apartment of Eera's parents… The eldest of their 4 children, Igor, was a Major of some sophisticated troops stationed in the city of Kiev. Victoria, their next child, lived in Chernigov and worked in the city museum there.

Then came Tonya, who graduated the NGPI and was sent to teach Russian language and literature to kiddies in a Transcarpathian village, where she met a local boy, Ivan, whose courting (in a simple and unpretentious style of a Bandera man) kindled reciprocative feelings in her… Unable to reach over the language barrier, he knocked on the door of the young teacher late in the evening and, when it opened, his shotgun was mutely pointed at her chest. Like, be mine or nobody else’s.

Ivan's brothers were in time to disarm him, but the depth of feelings in the romantic lover did impress Tonya, which her attitude deserved her a chance to survive among the superb views of the Transcarpathian nature. She married him, gave birth to a pair of lovely children, returned to Nezhyn and, together with her entire young family, lived in one of the narrow bedrooms in the three-room apartment of her parents.

For their night rest, the parents enjoyed the folding coach-bed by the wall in the living room which also served a passage to both bedrooms. Opposite to that blind wall, there was a wide window behind a tulle curtain separating the windowsill occupied by a couple of neglected aloe flowerpots from the abutting table with the TV box on its top.

The curtain also veiled the backs of the chairs squeezed in between the table and the windowsill so that the chairs pushed under the tabletop would not take up space until needed. The chairs had plush-covered seats and they were from the same set with the table which, if you removed off it the electric iron, the messy pile of central newspapers, the TV, and the checkered oilcloth, presented its dark glossy varnish and could be folded out for a celebration feast.

When there was no festivity, those chairs from the set that found no place under the folded-back table were put in the corners of the living room, draped with the clothes for household wear and keeping heaps of those same newspapers, and all sorts of whatnots dumped upon their seats to keep them out of the way for a minute or two and forgotten there for a couple of months.

Besides all that, the living room also contained a wardrobe with a big mirror in its door, and a varnished hutch whose front was of two sliding glass-sheets protecting from the dust two shelves of crockery inside. Upon the hutch, there stood, lamely leaning its frame against the faded wallpaper, a repro of "The Unknown Beauty" by Kramskoy and scornfully observed from under her ostrich feather the dump around, including the "The Major's Matchmaking" repro fixed in the opposite wall.

There was no balcony in the apartment, thanks to its being situated on the first floor, but there was a boxroom niche in the tiny passage between the living room and the bedroom filled up with Tonya's family.

Eera and I were placed in the second, narrower, bedroom with a large plywood chiffonier from the times of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and a veteran pier glass on a small table between the door and the windowsill. Along the wall with the carpet of almost the same pattern as in my parents', there stood the hand-me-down conjugal double bed for the soon-to-be newlyweds. It remained only to get married…

~ ~ ~

In the late evening before the bridal, Gaina Mikhailovna offered her services for ironing the trousers of my wedding suit, which task, in her opinion, she could do virtuously because in the years of the German occupation she, a young girl Gaina, was taken from a hinterland Ukrainian village and moved to Germany to work for more than two years as a "guest-worker" in a well-to-do German family by whom she became a past master in the above-mentioned art… Strange are the shuffle-and-deal ways of the knowledge deck, but it was how I learned that