the most final
concluding work

Before feeding the fifth unit, they unlocked both the dispenser room—to place the brought thermos pots there—and the dining room, to have where to call the eating parties to.

The dispenser room was narrowed by the large robust shelving along the wall opposite the dispenser window. The lumber shelves' load was a dozen of gaudy cellophane packets with food belonging to the shut-ins visited by their visitors on the visiting day. Twice a week, they heralded along the corridor, "Delivery! Who has a delivery? To the dining room!" Those who knew that in the dispenser room there were things they did not manage to stove away completely during the visit of their visitors, trod to the dining room to finish the chew. If someone failed to keep in mind or rejected recollections about the cellophane packet awaiting them on the shelves, then more attentive and caring wardroom-mates would remind him and solicitously escort to the dining room to assists in eating the delivery.

I did not belong to the workmen and ate with the second party. We lined up in a noisy, diversely dressed, but equally hungry, queue along the wall by the door blocked with a paramedic's body leaned on it, while inside they were sweeping off the tables after the previous eaters. The paramedic also controlled that someone would not get in the line after having his share in the freshly fed party.

At last, he commanded, "Come on!" And we noisily barged thru the unusually narrow door into the dining room with three windows parallel to the long tables, kinda medieval refectory if not for oilcloth on the tabletops. They stood in three rows abutting two opposites walls, and the narrow cross-sectional aisle in the middle cut them into six separate tables. We sat at them, overstepping the benches screwed to the floorboards.

Amid the animated noise spiced with loose, uninhibited, gestures, we waited for the constantly on-duty blond masturbator to bring the wide plywood tray cluttered with aluminum bowls, spoons and bread slices. The tray was unloaded and those who got the havvage put in front of them started eating, while the rest watched the process and waited for the chmo dispenser, also from the shut-ins, to fill the next tray-load behind the partition with his window.

We finished everything off and began to wait for a tray with tin cups of sour-sweet kissel, whose skin I hated so much when at kindergarten.

Once I overslept the feeding and had to eat with the third party… Some grievous sight… There, people treated their faces as Plasticine, kneading out of it the most grotesque masks for no obvious purpose. But then and there I found out who produced baboon shrieks, which I heard from my wardroom, and who was answering him with the roar of a wounded elephant. There were none of conversations, even of most desultory nature, at the third party feeding.

And yet, at times, someone from the second party would mix into the third one. Not because of sincere love for living nature, but simply to use the opportunity and eat the neighbor's ration while he was making faces to the window grates. Sasha, who knew my brother Sasha, was favoring the third party and often ate with them so as to curb such funny in the head, yet crafty, freeloaders.

Those 3 meals were the noisiest time of day in the fifth unit. If someone started to make a needless noise at an unreasonable hour, a pair of paramedics ran to his wardroom and, following a rectifying blow or 2 with their bunch of keys on his head, fixed the troublemaker. That is, they crucified him, in the supine position, tying his wrists and ankles to the iron corners along his bed spring mesh by means of yellowish cloth straps, obviously former bed-sheets worn-out to shreds…

After feeding, everyone dispersed to their wardrooms or strolled aimlessly over the brown tiles in the corridor floor. I would not say that we were starving there – same havvage as anywhere else. Once, each of us was even given 2 pancakes for a dinner; though being cold, they bore a drop of some sticky jam.

Another outstanding event was that incomprehensible late-night feast, when in the hall appeared 2 laundry basins brimming with sausage of two types: liver-squash and blood-mixture, and everyone might grab as much as he wanted. Except for a pair of the third party members, who suddenly grew sane enough, but the fat shut-in in charge of the basins drove them away. Discrimination happens anywhere…

Yet, the main delight in the life of the fifth unit appeared with the stately, flax-haired, nurse who brought it in a pillowcase bulging with angular pieces of refined sugar. That pillowcase she took into the "Senior Nurse" office and every day those, who had the brains to come and ask for, received a few pieces of not just pressed but a real, refined, sugar, which did not melt on your tongue in just 2 seconds.

I, for one, had brains to ask twice a day. And that sugar I tried to consume unnoticed because those too deeply troubled in their head to turn to the original source were annoyingly sane enough to beg it from me. To show that it was over, I patted at the emptied pocket, but then, recollecting that lying was not the right thing to do, I shared the sugar from the other pocket in my pajamas.

Once in 20 days a slim black-haired woman with a sharp nose and, naturally, in the white smock, came to the hall in the middle of the corridor. You could see at once that she was from the glassy-eyed, but I had already kicked that stuff and, therefore, accepted the version of the fifth unit old-timers stating that she was a former circus acrobat. The acrobat cut the stubble off our faces with a hairdresser machine, and for the haircut she used scissors if you did not ask to crop it also with the machine in "zero" style…

The cultural life was ensured by the TV set. One hour before, and one hour after the news program "Time", during which it was a break for the procedures. Some 10 watchers gathered around it dragging stools and chairs from their wardrooms. The paramedic by the observation wardroom also moved nearer…

At night, the wardrooms were lighted with the electric bulbs until the daylight. Probably, so that no one did something to himself or his neighbor. Sleeping with the light on is inconvenient because even if in your dream you were free to walk some city streets or in the wild, the inescapable presence of the bulbs was felt even there. Yet, the corridor was not lighted so too brightly for the on-duty paramedics to normally doss down in their chairs.

In the small hours, Wardroom 9 was usually visited by a young guy eager to show how dexterously he juggled a pair of boiled eggs from a delivery. Sometimes he demonstrated a small, yet proficiently executed picture, where a stark naked male was moodily chasing a girl with only her high boots on and the triangle of Russian crown-fillet on her head. Her long taut braid flapped on the run and, in fright, she looked back at the meter-long dick of the determined pursuer. Apparently, a copy of some original from the first half of the XIX century.

Then a frail man with elusive eyes came to take the young guy away. According to his repeatedly shared story, he got to the psychiatric hospital after accidentally breaking the window panes in the khutta of their Village Council with a walking stick, not omitting a single glass… He kissed the youngster in his pate thru the stubble hair, called him "mnemormysh" and led him back to his wardroom. It was his habit, to kiss any young person in the pate and call him "mnemormysh".

~ ~ ~

The time for getting up was announced by paramedics jingling their key bunches against beds’ side rails so that by the arrival of the head doctor and the nurses the fifth unit life would orderly flow in its channel. First of all, all flocked to the toilet.

2 / 80 = F(0)!

Two toilet bowls for 80 shut-ins are too FUCKING few(!),

so queuing to them started in the corridor. The line continued inside, closely parallel to the walls in two rooms, firstly, in the hallway, and then in the toilet itself.

In that anteroom, I once fainted for the first time in my life, absolutely for no reason whatsoever. Black darkness congested in my eyes, and rubbing my back against the wall, I slipped down to the floor and sat in nowhere. However, I did not lose my being completely and after a while, though still thru the darkness, there began to come echoes of distant voices explaining to each other that I just passed out. Then the blackout turned murky gray growing gradually lighter, then I opened my eyes and returned into the line.

For those who couldn't keep in check their excretory system any longer, a tin basin with handles was placed on the floor tiles in the center of the actual toilet room. When it got filled up full, some of the nuts would ladle the excrement with his hands into a separate pail and empty it into one of the two bowls, the remaining urine was poured out in the stub of a drainpipe in the corner.

There was some tacit time quota for squatting on the bowl, when it ran out, the nearest queue started to grumble, and a minute later some of the deaf-mute nuts, from those lining in the hallway, would yank you off the toilet bowl without explanations why…

After breakfast, the toilet was locked until the end of the midday meal, when they opened it briefly for washing the floor. The last chance to use the toilet was the half-hour following the dinner, because of the final floor washing of the day.

My rather lax attitude to the urinary matters before entering the madhouse left my bladder lacking the proper discipline to fit into that quite simplistic schedule. When feeling the urge, I lapsed into a panicking confusion – how to withstand it until the next half-hour of the open toilet? Appealing to paramedics in whose possession was the coveted key did not make sense because of their unchanging answer, "Piss off! You can't use the toilet, the floor there is washed." So to avoid a warming up, explanatory, hit over the head by the whole key bunch, you had to conform and piss off.

One day, driven to desperation, I tried to take a leak into the sink on the end wall in the corridor, and got jabbed on the ribs by the shut-in who often smoked there on the sly, admiring the sink, like, it was a park fountain on repair.

During another crisis, overcoming shame, I turned to an elderly nurse with keys on her belt, trying to delicately explain my need and plight.

For a considerable stretch, she couldn't understand my muttering about what I felt within my bladder, but then she opened the door to the shower and, indicating the drainage trap, ordered, "Puddle here!" No wonder they were named "sisters of mercy" in the Czarist army…

~ ~ ~