the most final
concluding work

As expected, trade-union positions were shut off for me airtight, but no one could ever violate my right to carry out my public duty. I mean the monthly watches in the ranks of the volunteer public order squad.

By seven o'clock in the evening, the SMP-615 male employees gathered in a long room of "The stronghold of the public order squad" whose entrance was in the blind butt wall of the endless five-story block by the Under-Overpass. That same building where there was the workmen canteen number 3, at the opposite end.

First to come was usually the auto-crane operator Kot which was not his handle nor code name of any kind but a quite innocent Ukrainian last name. He took a seat at the wall-butting desk with a load of old papers, pulled his headgear of cheap yet elegant rabbit fur, and started flipping thru the news accumulated from the month past since our previous vigil.

Then, one by one, we popped up too and started our discussion, full of decent virility, of this topic or that, to which Kot, still submerged into his perusal, would blear out from under the black fur of perished animal, that were our wise talk commenced even from as high as the orbital Salyut space station it would inevitably land onto the cunt of Alla Pugacheva or some more available, local slut. And, as a rule, he never mistook because of those coming late enough to miss his arrogant but accurate prediction.

At about 10 past 7, there came a militia officer—ranking from lieutenant to captain—contributed to the mujiks' gossip before pulling a drawer in his desk and handing out the red armbands with the black inscription "public order squad".

Grouped in threes, we left the stronghold to patrol the late evening sidewalks in vigil beats – to the station, to Depot Street, to the Loony and along Peace Avenue, but no farther than the bridge in the railway embankment. The round took about 45 minutes after which stretch we returned to the stronghold—some of the threes tired and emotional—and after a more enliven yackety session, set off for the final watch, so that by 10 o'clock we would go home until our next duty turn a month later…

A couple of times, KGB officers appeared at our late-hour matinees to share their instructions. The first time it happened on the occasion of the upcoming Holiday of the Great October Revolution, and we were instructed to be especially vigilant not to allow provocative pranks. When the KGBist left, a belated militia officer appeared to scoff at his predecessor, already absent, by asking us if now we knew it well that on seeing a spy we should immediately grab him by the collar.

The second and last time, a KGB officer, already another, disseminated confidential information in order to facilitate the capture, ASAP, of a former KGB worker who had disappeared in an unknown direction. She could have changed her hairstyle and color of her hair, explained the KGB officer showing us her black-and-white portrait, yet she got a special sign simplifying identification – a contraceptive coil of Dutch production inserted in her vagina… Our mujiks did not immediately get it what all that was about, but in a moment poured so suggestive questions that the KGBist preferred to leave in an accelerated fashion. After all, he only executed his orders and was not responsible for the stupidity thereof…

In one of the vigil rounds, the men from my "trinity" gave me a slip. Walking in a group of 3 red-armband ornamented volunteers, seemed more or less sane, but seeing that among the passers-by along the sidewalk of the tightly trampled snow under the windows of Deli 6, you were the only one who sported a red rag on your arm, made you feel as if you were not all there.

Keeping a brazen mug, to demonstrate that I did not care a fig, I went on to the station square. However, carpenter Mykola and driver Ivan was not to be made out from among the hasty silhouettes of passers-by. Some of the younger folks looked back at a strange phenomenon – a saucy solo public order trooper. It did not take being a genius to figure out that my co-volunteers peeled off their armbands, bought a bottle of "mutterer" in some grocery store and now, in a secluded spot, were gurgling in turn from the neck to tone up and feel warmer. Where? That was the question.

Most likely, in the quiet mess of short lanes and dead ends between Deli 6 and the high first platform of the station. In that jumbled warren of warehouses, venereal dispensary, a couple of private khuttas without kitchen gardens, and other lumber structures. There I turned not that I had any chance or desire to partake in that bottle but surprising 2 evasive Smart Alecs by the efficiency of the deductive method allowing you to detect them in a quiet nook under a lamppost would only serve good both SOBs.

However, instead of the driver and the carpenter, in the cone of yellow light from the bulb up the post, I ran into a genre scene. A romantic couple—a girl walking with a boyfriend—were intercepted by their mutual acquaintance, a burly lovebuster, who started sorting it out.

The appearance of the fourth superfluous with a red armband slowed down the action but only for a moment. Realizing that no more vigilantes were to pop up, the tough started kicking the shit out of his smaller, but luckier in the romantic matters, opponent. The bantam fell on 1 knee, threw his jacket of "fish-fur" fabric off onto the nearby snowdrift, next to his hat that rolled there a minute earlier, and rushed into a retaliatory attack.

I stayed a non-interfering on-looker with a red rag on my arm. The girl picked up the jacket with the hat and held them, as Eera once was holding my rabbit fur hat in the main square of the Nezhyn city. With the odds being too long, the lightweight got felled in the snow, the girl placed his clothes down under the lamppost, took the conqueror by the arm, and walked with him away, into the labyrinth of the tangled snow-clad alleys.

The defeated rose and, seeing that I was still there, shot off an ardent confused oration to sing the strength of spirit, before which physical strength was nothing because only the spirit had power. In Konotop, every other passer-by is a born lord-speaker.

To morally support defeated Demosthenes, I noted that during the fight the girl held exactly his things but not the fur "potty" hat of his opponent, which also had been knocked off in the snow. Hearing the words of consolation, he shut up and hastily checked the pockets in his jacket because, with all his innate love for oratorical art, the common sense is a more prominent feature in a Konotoper…

And no one could ever forbid me seeing to it that women of our team each year on March 8 received flowers—callas—one flower for each female bricklayer because I was not a millionaire and the mujiks on our team not every year guessed to ask how much it cost and collect a ruble off a man. However, the reimbursement for the expenses did not bother me much. I discovered that I liked giving presents much more than getting them myself.

But first, I had to find the city greenhouse which was as far as hell itself. You have to get off streetcar 2 one stop before the route terminal. Then take the left turn, and stomp for half-kilometer along the streets from the Civil War period. Like, Yudenich Street or, say, Denikin Street. The names though were quite Soviet, but the look and feel unmistakably White-Guardian…

When I came to the greenhouse for the first time, the manager took me into a long squat structure with its gable roof made of squares of muddy glass dripping the large rare drops of condensate. She wanted me to see for myself there were no flowers. As for the sprouts in those beds, the callas there had not yet matured, not "flared up", they were just narrow white tubes not turned into the wide-lapel muzzles.

And then, with all my tongue-tied speech problems lost and missing, I gave out a sample piece of Konotop oratory. That was to her, who every day was walking among the greenery of the greenhouse, those callas looked not ripe. But for women on our bricklayer team, who day after day saw nothing but crushed bricks, mortar and icy hillocks of dirty snow, those callas, even in that not "flared-up" form, were the most beautiful flowers…

Since then, while I was working in our team, I never was said "no" in the city greenhouse on the eve of March 8. And I proudly transported on a streetcar seat a sheaf of green-and-white callas that would appear in The Flowers store by Peace Square no sooner than in a half-month…

~ ~ ~

My decision was final and irrevocable – it's time to sum it up. The story I was translating should close the books. That was enough of Maugham for me. Even the fact that the concluding story had to be translated twice could not overturn my resolution.

I was forced to translate it for the second time because Tolik Polos path-lifted my briefcase, which, as it was, contained nothing but the copybook with the last translation, Giulia Lazzari it was, when in the morning I took it with me to go after work to Zhomnir in Nezhyn. At such an early hour in the Settlement, you hardly met any passers-by, still less along the railway tracks to the station. Approaching the concrete wall around the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant, I remembered money for the local train ticket, which I had left behind. The absent-mindedness made me go back leaving the briefcase alone to wait by the service passage for my return.

On the way back to 13 Decemberists along the Settlement streets, I met only Tolik who walked in the opposite direction. He also graduated from School 13 but 2 years after me… Grabbing the forgotten money, I came back to the path by the railway tracks. The briefcase was nowhere to see. Only Tolik and I had walked that path. Or was there some unknown third?

The answer was received a week later on streetcar 3. Tolik did not say "hello" to me, he only was making faces from his seat, in the style of Slavic Aksyanov at the "Dophinovka" mine. But—most importantly—his right hand was plastered. Who would need a straighter indication that it was he to pick up the lonely briefcase in a desolate spot? Not me.