the most final
concluding work

And the following summer I discovered the existence of capitalized Game. The revelation happened at a football match of the plant team and a visiting one played at the "Avangard" stadium in the Central Park of Recreation. The event attracted an audience of about 20 cut-off slices, like me, who hadn't a f-f..er..I mean, frolic to do, and a couple of random drunks.

So, the teams jogged out to the center, the handshake, referee, tossed coin, all as usual. Then they started the game, sort 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.

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.

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 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… these eyes… same eyes only without the oily blueness over the irises… "Volodya!"

The neighbors pulled back, some of them grabbing the tin basins moved over to other tables. I love the Konotopers' polite understanding, they never want to be in the way of intimate developments…

How could I not recognize him right away? One of my partners in our trinity sharing 2 beds; he smiles bashfully. The absence of that quirk in his eye put me off track at first…

By the official version, the Karabakh war lasted for three years, 1992 – 1994, but, in fact, it started much earlier and hasn't ended yet… On the third (in the unofficial estimation) year of the war, when I stopped to like the expression in Sahtic's eyes, I attempted at evacuating her from the theater of war. By a strange coincidence she, together with Ahshaut and Ruzanna, got to 13 Decemberists, Konotop.

Can you imagine my surprise 3 months later when she appalled me with her coming back together with the kids? Anyway, you surely can’t imagine the facial expression of the RMK Supreme Council’s cashier when she was handing me my 2 monthly salaries in advance, as ordered. 600 of Soviet rubles, the devaluated currency of non-existent state, the sum though was enough for me to cut and run from the war zone. That’s why her countenance reflected both disdain and envy, it’s hard to say of which there was more… I had to fly to Yerevan to meet the repatriates at Zvartnots airport for the subsequent airlift from the airport of Erebuni equipped with a heliport, also by a chopper fetching a barrel of diesel fuel and another group of fedayee fighters to Stepanakert.

Unfamiliar people in Yerevan, learning where we were going to, suggested to at least leave the children, Ahshaut and Ruzanna (in alphabetical order), by them…

When we got to the apartment in Stepanakert which our friends were renting to us for free, I asked about the reason for so quick a return. "I realized that living just so as to live was not worth the while."

Here is a bright example of the unavoidable influence of environmental effects. Take an Armenian woman, brought up in all the strictness of patriarchal-matriarchal way of life, let her live for 3 months in Konotop and she will come back without even asking for permission but philosophizing already, giving out darn wise maxims. Hello! Here you are and sign this receipt, please…

But couldn't that Konotop-acquired wisdom get it that fearing for just yourself is easier to endure than that same amount of fear plus for those who you love? Especially when the air alarm sirens start their wailing, or from the toomb of Camel Back thunder the naval guns brought there from the Caspian flotilla? Not mentioning "Grad" missiles that make no noise at all when on the fly to their final din-bang-crush, and half the block is wiped off. After all, we live in the age of high technologies, you know.

All this is to elucidate the fact that I somehow did not have much spare time to update Sahtic as to certain facts in my previous biography, being busy with waiting for a suitable moment. Though her unawareness was not entirely my fault. Had Sahtic asked a direct question, like, “How many times did they lock you up in a madhouse?” then, as a well-trained supporter of righteousness and, generally, man of principle, I would give a direct exhaustive answer. (It’s noteworthy, that handling me is a fairly straightforward and intuitive job.)

Now, because of all that I was curious, to certain extent, what information could she scoop up there during the evacuation period?

None, as a matter of fact. The Konotopers did not rat on their own. The only puncture happened in a conversation with a fellow employee. (Sahtic even got a job at the KEMZ plant when in the evacuation.) Her gossip, having learned that Sahtic’s husband was named Ogoltsoff, said only, "Hmm…"

And that comment, I reckon, exhausts the denigration of my personality leaked to the Transcaucasia from Konotop sources…

~ ~ ~