the most final
concluding work

Needless to make any special point that at those, communicationally underdeveloped, old simple days, even the bravest minds could neither imagine, in however sprightly fantasy flights, nor dream about installation of surveillance cameras in public places. Then, given the conditions of the aforesaid period, what else could cause the ungraspable scene which took place the same evening in the queue of passengers lined at the bus stop in front of the Kiev intercity bus station? There might be solely one reasonable explanation – the vigilance of the taxi driver.

Now, back to the taxi driver in the cabstand by the steps to the underground checkroom hall at the Kiev railway station for the trains of long-distance destination… At 17.06 a young man of about twenty-five-to-seven years old, height one-meter seventy-six-to-eight centimeters, with straight brown hair, and a trimmed mustache, emerged from the underground passage. He wore a gray jacket and gray pants, not matching though the shade of gray in the jacket. Noticeably upset about something, the man got into the taxi and suggested the driver go down to the underground hall instead of him, and bring a briefcase and a bag from the indicated automatic storage cell, the code to which he would provide. The driver, naturally, refused.

The dark-haired individual fell into a reverie, twisting a burnt match in the fingers of his right hand, then sighed, broke that match, asked to wait a bit and disappeared down the passage steps. Five minutes later, he appeared again and asked to take him to the intercity bus station. Upon arrival at the specified location, he paid, hung the sports-bag over his left shoulder, gripped the briefcase handle with the same-side hand, and slammed the door. Synchronously and, like, accidentally, he wiped nickel-plated door handle with the right hem of his jacket destroying, by all the canons of criminal films, his fingerprints. After those manipulations, the man disappeared into the entrance to the intercity bus station.

What could the driver do? Of course, he, naturally, called the operative who he was secretly collaborating with, under the operational pseudonym "Tractor".

What was witnessed by the queue of passengers at the bus stop to which I joined coming back from the bus station building, after a visit to the men's toilet and a five-minute pit-stop in the middle of the empty lobby to stare at the multi-square-meter billboard "Fly by the Aeroflot!" with a stewardess wearing her most happy smile and the blue uniform piss-cutter in it?

Nearby the stop, a freshly washed red Zhiguli car pulled up abruptly. A man wearing dark sunglasses got out of it, came up to me and, holding out the ignition key in the bunch with divers other ones, instructed, "Get in the car, we'll go right now."

Keeping mum, I turned away. The man proceeded to the bus station building.

Soon after, 2 young men emerged from behind the right corner of the building—one of them in the militia uniform, the other wearing plainclothes—both of whom took a position on the right off the queue. Round the left corner, the same man in sunglasses came together with a short companion in a thick-fabric cap; they stopped on the other side of the queue. The man in the cap (an obvious scumbag and tipsy as well) mixed with the line of passengers and approached me. He started rubbing against me from behind. The nearest passengers watched in bewilderment.

That disgusting scene was interrupted by the appearance of a bus with the inscription "Polyot" on its side… On the way to the Borispol airport, I did not respond to the puzzled looks of the fellow-travelers, returning with my mental gaze to what had not been recorded by the then-non-existent (and, therefore, absent) surveillance camera in the men's toilet room of the Kiev intercity bus station.

I went up to the sloping trough of the common urinal and poured into it the mustard-brown powder of all the dope I had on me. Then I crumpled its packing sheet of paper and threw it to the trash-bin. The way I was taught by the French criminal movies starring Belmondo.

At the airport in Borispol, I didn't use an automatic cell to keep my bag and briefcase, both were left in the baggage room for them to have a shakedown of luggage and see there was no point in rubbing their scumbag provocateurs against my ass… A ticket to Odessa for a plane flying from Moscow cost 17 rubles. It did not exceed the amount of 20 rubles I had by me, stashed for covering survival needs until the first advance payment at construction sites of the new port city…

On arrival in the Odessa airport, I couldn't see it in the dark, and from there, on a city bus, I reached the intercity bus station where all the ticket offices were already locked, yet the baggage room still operated and in the waiting rooms there were benches for overnight sitting.

Of course, I felt myself the winner because I did manage, despite everything, to break thru Kiev. The gleeful delight with the success was assuring me of my exceptional invulnerability.

The return to actual state of things was not too pleasant when a rarefied line of passengers slogged in the early morning thru the station's back door for the first bus. In the incipient daylight, I sat in numb doze with my head thrown back over the bench backrest, leaving my whole throat, in the disdainfully victorious attitude, completely undefended. The pain from the needle stung to the right from my Adam's apple made me pinch the skin in the carotid artery area. Of course, there was no needle there but the feeling of a deeply stuck or, rather, hurriedly pulled out, needle persisted. The following half-hour I winced, rubbing, time and again, the skin covering my throat about that spot.

The ticket office opened and they informed me there were no runs to Yuzhny, and to get there I needed a local communication bus from Station 3 located by the New Bazaar.

Having reached there and examined the bus schedules fixed on the walls of Station 3 where the line "Yuzhny" repeated itself at different hours, I decided that I should take a walk before departure because—damn you, OMG!—it was but Odessa-Mommy!. I’m in Odessa! Yay!.

At the end of the small station-hall, there stood just a couple of sections of automatic storage cells. All their doors were locked except for one in the upper row of a section. I put my things inside, combined a code, dropped 15 kopecks into the slot, and slammed the door. The out-of-order lock did not click, that's why the cell stayed unused.

I took the documents out from my briefcase and put them in the inside pocket of my jacket. Then I quietly closed the door, so that it would look as if locked. On the crest of the hill-tall wave of euphoria, I left the bus station and entered Odessa…

>~ ~ ~

Not everyone has chanced to experience the state of complete happiness in their life. I am from among those luckier ones. More than that, I can indicate the time and place of the absolute happiness experienced by me. These are the few hours of my first walk in Odessa…

The gleeful sunshine was filling the streets which I walked. I was a part to everything around and everything was a part of me in that unfamiliar city, where everyone tacitly recognized me because they had so long been waiting for my coming. I felt what was being thought by people and mentally responded to their thoughts… Here walked a woman rejoicing in her own beauty.

…wow!..that's a really good one!.

And she bloomed up victoriously.

…but I have Eera…

To which the woman saddened and, with her head lowered, passed by.

For a middle-aged Caucasian, gaping around with a ho-hum stare, I threw in the thought – "Eew, Javad, I still remember your dagger blow!" With all of his boredom shed off right away, the man woefully sagged his shoulders and pulled at the mustache, stunned by a sudden memory of a treacherous stub from Javad of whom up to the present moment he had not had the slightest idea.

…okay, let's not think sad things…

A swift flock of pioneers in scarlet neckties and white shirts shot past hurrying to the celebration of my arrival into the city.

On entering a big bookstore to make my choice for the future, I communicated with the shop-assistants and buyers there without ever opening my mouth.

I walked up the steps of the famous stair, bypassing the monument to Richelieu who never was a cardinal. In the nearby green grove there again were pioneers, but another ring and too much, to my mind, carried away with watching the freight cars slowly rolling into the port grounds.

"Pioneers!" shouted I to them. "Boats are nicer than cars!"

They looked around, waved and smiled, they recognized me.

The taxi driver took me to the “Bratislava” restaurant sharing on the way that it was a canteen on weekdays. But the current day was the holiday to celebrate my arrival, and he also knew that it was the so-eagerly-and-longly-awaited-for I…