the most final
concluding work

Everything became as before, or nearly so… Construction sites in Konotop, weekends in Nezhyn… The eyelids came back to their normal level canceling the need to strain the eye muscles… The translations. The poems…

Those poems started to pop up after the start of my bricklayer career at SMP-615. They were not poems at first, just unattached pieces of irrelevant phrases. Some seemed attractive with the alternating play of sounds within them, others because of inherent ambiguity, or rather being double-barreled so that they could be interpreted in different ways.

While busy with the production process, I, invisibly for my fellow-bricklayers, turned and twirled those pieces in my mind, slit-split them then re-assembled anew, then threw them out of my head to dogs, to devils, to scrap fucks, but the most persistent ones came back after the bum’s rush, and French walk, and kicking-out (consecutively) to stay brazenly there as if they never were away, not for a sec's sliver. Then there remained the only resort – to stick them with a pen down to a piece of paper and forget.

One of the first pieces I showed Eera, and she cocked up at once – who was that Madonna in a padded workman jacket? As if I could know, just one of those queuing in the workmen canteen at the midday break.

As for "To the Tune of V. Kosma" she did not ask anything, it was about her, undoubtedly and clear. Later, she said that they told her it was a good poem, and I stopped showing her any of them. Probably, I was jealous of the unidentified someone, to whom she gave it for evaluation.

When I read to my brother Sasha "The Scythian Interview", his reaction was instantaneous, "You have to be ratted on!"

Ivan, a carpenter from SMP-615, somehow liked the line about a cabbage leaf on the knife blade's edge. After 6 months, he asked to recite for him about that cabbage once again; I'd never imagine the bulky block had a sweet tooth for salads.

At times, when at the end of a midday break there still remained 5 minutes before to leave the trailer and go on with laying the walls, the women on our team asked to read something new, and the recital would be concluded by Grynya’s yell: "Sehryoga! They do not shoe horses with fire, there are horseshoes for that! Gelding you are ungroomed!" He was brought up and educated in the village of Krasnoye on the Baturin highway and should know such things better.

When the number of poems exceeded a score, my attitude to them changed qualitatively. Why should they lie around? Ain't it a pity? And I started to send them to the editorial offices of diverse monthlies and publishing houses, just like Martin Eden from the same-named novel by Jack London. And they kept returning back to me, exactly as his ones to him, with typewritten responses, which looked like one and the same carbon-copied answer.

They informed that the material received from me was inconsistent with the thematic orientation of their publication, besides, their editorial portfolio was filled for 3 to 4 upcoming years, yet not a single word about the verses themselves. Thus, Grynya's review remained unsurpassed: "Gelding ungroomed!"

However, the literary collaborator at one of the journals shared, that a similar style was the vogue in the 1930s. Probably, he aimed to point out the deprecated nature of the stuff, but it rather made me happy – they recognized poems as having some sort of style!

It gradually began to dawn on me that none of the eggheads, slurping from the trough of literary collaboration, was interested in all those poetic "beam blades in the sky" any more than in prosaic skewers in their personal ass.

The final eye-opener arrived with the response from the monthly Moscow to "Tired Alla". A fleeting glance made it quite clear that the literary collaborator perused the suggested piece in the most serious and conscientious way. The meaning of a certain word in the second stanza was not quite evident for him, so he took pains to check the term with a dictionary… He forgot to erase the working marks of his assiduous pencil in my verse. The word "craving" remained underlined and its interpretation—"lust"—was added nearby.

I did not know which dictionary he used to dig it out, but the result offended me. The ultimate blow was dealt by the name of the reviewer who signed the response – Pushkin! Aw, fuck! The mental picture of Pushkin looking up "craving" in a dictionary made me draw the line under my fucking the brains of editors with my f-f..er..formidable, I mean, simplicity. I realized at last, that I was not a Martin Eden and it was anything but America around.

The realization of my non-American origin and whereabouts cut postal expenses for envelopes and registered letters. Sending such a letter was not big deal though, about 50 kopecks, the equivalent of 2 "Belomor-Canal" cigarette packs and 6 boxes of matches because the cost of living in the Soviet Union was fairly reasonable, and treatment of askew illusions, practically, free of charge…

~ ~ ~

In summer, you came to Konotop again, yet without any carriage already. Our team was working at the 50-apartment block near the Under-Overpass, and one of the riggers, Katerina it was, shouted from the ground that I had visitors. I went downstairs and to the sidewalk outside the gate.

You stood next to Eera who was wearing a red sarafan with white Mongolian patterns. I don't remember what you had on, but I do remember how lovely you were smiling… I carefully lowered my plastic helmet onto your straight fair hair, and its visor slid down to touch your nose but it failed to put out your happy smile… I remember that smile from under my helmet.

In a couple of minutes, you both went on down the sidewalk and I watched, and the riggers, Katerina and Vera Sharapova, they also watched from behind the gate, suddenly so silent and pensive, because such beauty was going away – a woman in red, hand in hand with a child of fair straight hair.

You had just turned 3 years old, and I decided that the best gift for you would be a familiar face among the strangers at 13 Decemberists. I went to Nezhyn and, despite my tongue-tied speaking manner, did manage to convince Tonya to let her son go with me to your birthday in Konotop, provided that my father-in-law would arrive the following day and take him back. Tonya was a really brave woman, she was not afraid of my reputation, drenched beyond any hope for restoration after Romny.

The local train was overcrowded and for about an hour we had to stand in the aisle, vacant seats appeared only about the station of Bakhmuch. But how happy you and Igor turned when I brought him to 13 Decemberists! A fountain of joyful squeals!.

The following week my vacation began and 4 of us—you, Eera, I and Lenochka—went to the Seim with a permit to the RepBase recreation camp procured by my parents for us. It was a wide grounds whose low plank fence enclosed a few large Pines and several wooden cabins with 4 beds in each and windows on all the sides, like a veranda. When we first went to the river beach, everyone there got just stupefied, they never saw a Greek goddess go, moreover with so snow-white a skin as Eera's.

Another day the 4 of us went hunting mushrooms in the forest plantation nearby the village of Khutor Taransky. Halfway there, we met a pair of horses, but I worried only about Eera, she always was afraid of those animals.

The forest planting was of young Pines lined up in parallel ranks. Long spider webs stretching across the passages between the lined trees made the plantation almost impassable, but there were suillus under the Pine needles layer on the ground. We were combing thru the corridors walled with the Pine trunks, forth and back. You grew thirsty and I asked Lenochka to take you to the camp—the path was wide and it was no more than just 300 meters—because I wanted Eera all too madly.

For a long time you did not want to go with your sister before, finally, you agreed, but a moment later your loud crying rang along the Pine corridor, and Lenochka explained that you did not listen to her at all, although there were no horses anymore.

In the evening, there was a thunderstorm and downpour, but you were not afraid and only laughed because I was lying on my bed and you were stomping on my stomach. Someone's joy might hurt someone else – at your 3 years you were a weighty kid, but Eera cried out to be patient with my own child. I endured a little more and then I hardly managed to persuade you that's enough, please.

It was a good summer…