the most final
concluding work

At half-past seven, I got off the local train in Konotop. I do not know where I spent the following hour because when I came to the 50-apartment block the black Saturday was in full swing. The growling bulldozer in the shroud of the blueish mist of smoke from its exhaust pipe, was burying itself in the hill of earth it moved in the middle of the would-be yard. Grynya and Lydda had already changed into their spetzovkas and padded jackets. "You did not go to Nezhyn?" Lydda asked.

"No."

I took a sheet of paper from my briefcase with the report to the trade-union committee about spending 3 rubles to visit a patient in hospital.

I put the paper on the side of a concrete pipe, 1.5 meters in diameter and 1.5 meters long, and they signed it without reading. "And now?" asked Grynya, "Are you changing or what?"

My stance to black Saturdays was always firmly negative but what else had I to do? I changed into the work clothes, took my shovel and went to scrape the upshot truck-dump with the mortar stuck to its insides, replacing Vera Sharapova. She was sharp and since long noticed that so was my way to drive off my jealousy fits…

At night, back to 13 Decemberists, I was lying prostrate in the unfolded bed-armchair amid the pitch-black darkness in the living room.

Lying all the time on your back is tiring. I wanted to change position and turn over, but I did not allow myself to stir because I needed to become inconspicuous, yet movements might betray your location. When motionless, I kinda became a part to the bottom of a boundless ocean, nothing but that oceanic immensity remained in all empty world. To become a part to such absolute void, you should keep smooth and streamlined and make no rips, so that nothing would cling to you and just go on floating its way. But what enormous emptiness!

Surviving in vacated vapid void is not a trivial problem. Of course, there is always a choice. Why survive if you can stop the torment at any moment? However, never in my life had I even played with the thought of suicide, not formatted that way. Well, and since there was no choice, I had to solve the problem.

There is just one and only solution – systematicy. Nothing else can serve to overcome emptiness. Whether you're systematically jamming vodka, or systematically jogging in the park does not matter much as long as you keep maintaining a certain cycle…

Luckily, I already had some investments that provided certain means for spanning the void. The five-day workweek, that's for one. My participation in SMP-615 public life – two. And also, visits to Nezhyn for intellectual communication with Zhomnir, once in 2 or 3 months. Who would ask for more?

Any system, so that to work, would need some sort of a carrot to tip for spinning the wheel, to reward for successful conclusion its vicious circle, to stimulate diving into the next, exactly same, rotation.

On Thursdays, I visited the bathhouse with 2 tours into the steam room. Bars of soap and sauna whisker, aka a bunch of dried birch twigs for self-whipping midst the burning hot steam, were on sale at the bathhouse ticket office on the first floor. Leaving the bathhouse, I left those instruments of pleasure on the gray marble tops of low tables in the common washing hall on the second floor, taking home only the changed underwear for the subsequent laundry.

On my way from the bathhouse to the place of residence, I consumed 2 bottles of Zhigulevskoye beer and bought an issue of Morning Star from the news stall in Peace Square, for reading with a dictionary until next Thursday.

On Mondays, I did washing in a tin basin on the bench in the yard, in winter the washing was done in the summer-room section of the shed.

The ironing day depended on the weather conditions around the clothesline, which was stretched from the porch to the shed and not to the wicket anymore; better late, than never.

Weekends were harder to fill, but once a month in Peace Movie Theater they showed another of action movies starring Belmondo, or a comedy with Pierre Richard.

Summer Sundays were no problem at all, I spent them on the Seim beach lying on the pink, with red circles, cover for wrapping babies. That very one which on weekdays was spread over the tabletop when ironing the dry laundry. That cover stayed at 13 Decemberists after one of your earlier visits there. It was rather short and my legs, in part, stayed outstretched over the bare sand, but who cares?

3 times a Sunday, I had a swim for the buoys, where there were no screaming bathers. I lay on my back over the water, with my arms and legs wide apart, and pronounced the self-made ritual formula,

"Oh, water! Ran into each corner of mine!

We be of one blood – thou and me.”

Then I swam back to the screams and splashes, got out the water to the coverlet to lie down and turn from side to side in the scorching hot sun, at times reading Morning Star. On the beach, I read it without a dictionary, underlining the words which later had to be written out in a copybook.

At the midday-meal time, I left the beach and went to the store in the nearby village of Khutor Taransky. It was a casual khutta under a thatched roof, but with a thick iron strap fixed across the door with a weighty padlock.

Store Manager, an elderly burly squaw, who prided herself on having seen even Sakhalin Island, unlocked the door for just one hour. When she dropped the iron strap on the porch, the door opened into a room with 2 dust-covered windows in the same wall with the door and wide, two-tier, shelves running along the remaining three walls, above the 3 wooden counters.

I systematically bought one item of canned food, a pack of cookies and a bottle of lemonade. After opening the victuals with the opener borrowed from Store Manager, I took the meal out to the empty street of 4 silent khuttas and deep sand in the road, sizzling from the heat. There, next to an old crooked Elm, I sat on the wide bench of a cracked but mighty board turned gray by the years of exposure to the whims of weather going its unchanging season circles around the tree over the bench by the thatched khutta of the store.

The assortment of things on the store shelves never changed. Buying a can of "Tourist's Breakfast", I saw that next Sunday I would have "Sprats in Tomato Sauce" for the meal, and a week later "Zucchini Squash". The can with the sticker "Adjika" instilled obscure apprehension because I kinda heard somewhere that it was bitterer than even wasabi, yet it was still a month away. Maybe, I'd combine it with the small jar of cherry jam from the following shelf, eh? Will make a complex dinner.

In the end, I wiped the aluminum spoon with the wrapper from the finished off cookies, and hid the spoon at the back of the khutta, in the thatched straw over the blind wall, the way Anti-Soviet kulak bandits were hiding their barrel-sawed shotguns… Even Marcello Mastroianni hardly could have dreams of so sweet "Dolce Vita"…

And right in that khutta, I bought a doll for your birthday present. There were only 2 dolls on the shelves – a girl and a monkey, both of rubber. Each one had a tiny squeaker in its back to make a sound when squeezed. The pair of motorcyclists, who somehow managed to overcome the deep scorching sand in the road on that day, advised me to but the monkey, but I preferred the girl, as I had been planning all previous Sundays, in a bright dress—also of rubber—to her knees.

I could buy a present from Department Store in the city, of course, but all the toys there were made of plastic. Besides, I wanted it to be a gift from that enchanted khutta with its cool shade, kinda sanctuary amid the summer heat…