the most final
concluding work

Prospective business with foreigners did not prosper either. On the day of the attempt at acquiring a suitable acquaintance, there sounded only Roman languages on the sidewalks of Khreshchatyk. It was no use to approach such passers-by with my English of Nezhyn make.

2 times Twoic hallooed me at different twos of Negroes in slouch hats. However, the targets in response to my cheerful, "Hi! let's have a talk!" shied, for some reason, and kept mum. Probably, they had already experienced invitations "to go out for a talk" at some or another of dance-floors. I had to explain to Boss that they were Negroes from some of former French colonies, so English did not click with them.

The futile hunt seemed to wear Twoic or, maybe, he decided to think over another new plan, anyway Massa got seated tightly on a bench in the University greens and allocated me 2 hours for an uncontrolled free search. The task did not seem too attractive, but I had to work off the grub, both consumed that morning (buns and Pepsi) and upcoming. So, leaving him thoughtful on the bench, I did not shirk my duty in any way and kept the ears pricked up for anyone uttering something in Shakespearean parlance from any side. On Shevchenko Boulevard a group of neat men, passing the Vladimir Cathedral, referred to it as "cathedral". Might it be?.

"No," one of them explained in Russian, "we are speaking in Latvian."

I felt fed up. Okay, one more last try at The Intourist hotel and that's it… On the wide porch in front of the glazed entrance, a burly block with a saxophone string around his neck asked politely what I needed. They kept some naive bulldog at the establishment. How could I—a foreign tourist—possibly knew all those local dialects? On an indulgent survey of the two-meter tall aboriginal, I, without a word of comment, went over in and turned to the left where the bar was.

The inscription in English asked to pay in local currency only and notified that the current day of the week was a day off. Yes, it's time to have a rest… The massive-looking chairs by polished tables turned out very responsive and tremendously comfortable. My loyalty got rewarded, had I been shirking I wouldn't enjoy such a soft seat; much better than the hard bench planks accommodating Twoic.

At the far end of the bar enjoying its day off, there loosely sat 12 she-apostles and their black-bearded Teacher with his fervent sermon of the truest truth. What's their language, by the by? They should know better. Okay, when reporting Twoic, I'd mention coming across a non-governmental delegation of poultry farmers from Romania.

Separated from me by a vacant table, two Germanly colorless girls exchange brief clues over the empty top of their table, while doing their level best at keeping their looks off me. Damn that f-f..er..I mean, fundamental language barrier. The chicks were bored. It would be manna for them to hear, "You're cute and I'm cool, besides, I have a friend named Twoic. How about to dump the boredom in a party of 4?." But they would hear nothing of the kind because of the obnoxious language prison, they're locked up in their cell, and I in mine. We don't even look at each other, like sage foxes ignoring unattainable grapes. But they at least could prattle between themselves, while I stayed some deaf and dumb.

"An o'fooly nais plais," informed I the girls urbanely, "ain't it? Baat (with a slight sigh of disappointment) nahbady to have a tauk wid!" And I gave a gallant nod to their amazed gazes, "Bye-bye!."

~ ~ ~

For the period elapsed since that hunt, no jackpot had ever turned up, yet Twoic liked having me about because I was not only a relic of his student life but also a docile tool all ready, like a young pioneer, for anything. So, after the first telegram, there followed similarly curt ones, just the village name and the weekend date for me to show up. It took a half-hour ride to get from Konotop to Bakhmuch by a local train, and then ten more minutes by bus.

"What's the news about you each weekend getting on a train with flowers? Visiting your wife or what? But you're, like, divorced."

"Visiting a friend in the country. The flowers are for his mom and grandmother." "

"Are there no flowers in the village?"

Yes, they were there, yet much more than flowers there was work waiting for my arrival. Repairing the roof, constructing a barn, turning dirt in the garden. After the work, of course, hooch, gobble up to your heart's content. However, without the flowers, I'd be like a farmhand there, while a bouquet in my hands, like, turned me into a guest, sort of…

The house of Twoic's parents stood on the village outskirts in a narrow lane named Shore. The lane narrowness resulted not from its layout but was dictated by the dense fruit trees overhanging the fences from both sides. The house, of course, was called khutta, yet, in terms of quality, it was still a house. Between the gate and the khutta, there was a well behind a low palisade to the left, with water at just 2 meters down the concrete 1.5 meter rings, with a tin roof over the pail chained to the windlass. On the right, there stretched the whitewashed brick wall of the structure comprising anything – a summer kitchen, whose porch way almost closed with the steps in the high porch to khutta's veranda, a garage for a car that still had to be bought, a tool store, a shed. However, the entrance to the barn was not from the yard but from the back of that building.

Passing between the two porches, you found yourself in the backyard with one more shed of timber for goats, chickens, pigs, and anything else. Under the windows of the khutta, there grew raspberry bounded by half-dozen of Apple trees and, still farther, the huge vegetable garden beyond which there opened an even field followed by the distant windbreak belt hiding the railway. The collective farm did not use that field because of abnormally high subsoil moisture. The folks on Shore lived in a big style indeed…

The house was ruled by Raissa Alexandrovna, Twoic's mother, because her husband, Sehrguey, was, for the most part, engaged in the housework and he didn't have much time for yakking. Of course, when something really put his back up, he could address his wife with a loud appeal to shut up her bunghole. Then Raissa Alexandrovna would pause, bite her lower lip and act a dull and dumb villager, however, all that was a pure theatricality – in 5 minutes the phone on the veranda would ring up asking for Raissa, not Sehrguey.

Apart from the domestic affairs, she ran the local politics, accepting several visitors a day, both on an appointment and without it. Her favorite scenic image was that of a folksy rural woman beset with all kinds of troubles and worries, in a quilted waistcoat and weathered kerchief on her black hair, and only the irony in the look of her black eyes did not fit the disguise. She knew how to artfully tie her kerchief, re-arranging its appearance several times a day. The knot changed its position from the forehead to under the back of her head, or else above the ear—the gypsy style—depending on whom Raissa Alexandrovna was going to let in. For the current visitor (in his jeans, long hair and the beard like that of a hippie from Los Angeles) she unexpectedly got it tied under her chin. Then Twoic told me it was the young priest at their village.

The hippie priest left and, in half-hour, a Zhiguli car pulled up by the gate and a young, extremely loud, woman in awful need of "a gown, eh?!." entered the yard. Raissa Alexandrovna took her to the veranda and was humbly making her brains for at least 40 minutes before sending away with a promise of that "a gown, eh?". She did not sell things at home, to accomplish the transaction the visitor had to visit the trade base if only the negotiations ended positively.

Raissa winked at Twoic and me after the retiring priest's wife, blissful Mother, and crossed her face with a thumb. Holy, holy, holy! But then she decided that we had spent way too much time playing cards on the porch step, and ordered us back to the garden to turn the dirt, or spread the muck, hauling it there in the handcart whose wheels kept sticking deeply into the black soil on the way, or to collect the corn ears…

However, when I and Twoic were erecting another barn of logs, we were out of her jurisdiction – Sehrguey had announced a smoke break that's why we were playing… The food after work was not a havvage but a bounteous rural grub on lavish fat, with dill aroma, mouthwatering whiffs of steam over the plates, and a bunch of crispy green onion studded with fresh water drops, on a dish in the table center.

The chef cook in the khutta was Grandma Oolya who cooked delicious things with just one hand, the other, since long paralyzed, she kept in the pocket on the stomach of her apron. And distilling hooch was also her responsibility because she liked to watch the product dripping into the vessel set beneath the tube…