the most final
concluding work

I liked that kind of life more than sunbathing on the Seim beach sand. I liked the energetic one-legged neighbor Vityouk, the experienced player at the Throw-in Fool. And even more, I liked Ganya, the sister of Raissa Alexandrovna. There was no acting or irony about Ganya, she was calm and attentive, and she understood everything. I was sorry that she had cancer.

Doctors recently removed "the pea" out her belly, and on her coming back home the loving hubby did not give her no peace until she let him see the fresh gash from the surgical knife. I knew that she would not survive because at renovating the stove in her khutta all the firebricks from the old one were quite rotten. Yet, I was told to use the bricks again all the same – there were no others, but I could see that it was not for long…

They buried her in my absence, with heart-rending lamentations at the funeral, Raissa was held from both sides to stop her falling onto the fresh grave of her sister with wild embraces and sobs. When they were taking her from the cemetery, the old villager women yelled at her and other mourners: "So what? Cried Ganya out? Returned?" Twoic was very indignant describing their cruel brutality but, in my opinion, that was primordial psychotherapy and one of the rituals in the continuous comedy of life…

At my next visit, the husband of the deceased was also sitting under the black Mulberry tree in the khutta’s yard. At first, I could not guess where those tiny sounds were coming from. I thought some puppy sneaked into the yard, but it was the widower's whining. Such a burly man, a bus driver, the tears flowed down his cheeks and he did not even try to hide them. If all of them together could not call her back, what's the chance of you doing it single-handed?.

Ganya's son, a guy about 14, was at war with Twoic because he fell in love with Twoic's wife, but then Twoic divorced her, offended the beloved of the youth, sort of. For me, it was complete news that he got married and divorced, but Twoic said, yes, a Jewish girl from the Biology Department.

He also told that his father-in-law, when visiting people, after the first shot of vodka used to grab lard for a snack, sort of to demonstrate that he was not from kosher upholders. Now the ex-father-in-law would raise Twoic's son as he pleased, up to making him a strict Orthodox Jew under the most Ukrainian of all last names. And Twoic sighed at this point in the best traditions of the Moscow Artistic Academic Theater.

Raissa Alexandrovna did not allow time for Twoic's grief though, she shouted from the phone in the veranda that he had to change into clean clothes because they were bringing an aspirant bride for the "evaluating look". The loving mother did her best to find him a good party from among local girls, for which reason they periodically were brought to Shore, otherwise, them those Kiev whores would surely bamboozle the dumbo of her sonny. Twoic said inaudible "fuck!" and went to change.

Soon behind the gates, a car was heard and a pair of parents led their elegantly donned girl into the khutta… I stayed alone on the porch way to the summer kitchen, but then a visitor joined me. Some old man bent literally into an arc. When standing, he couldn't see the face of a man before him, only up to the waist.

We started a desultory talk, and the old man confessed that once he was a young and well-proportioned rural clerk, sporting a military tunic and high boots. The collectivization began and, with the clerk's participation, they were making lists of those to be deported to the Siberia. Now he was not able to look into the eyes of people around him.

And, after all, all was to no purpose. The grandsons of the misers, who at that time got keys and seals of the village council, were now penniless drunks, and the descendants of the robbed and exiled returned from the Siberia and got prosperous again. Because on such a soil only a lazy fool lives poorly… Raissa never showed up and he left, leaning on two short sticks in his hands, gazing at the sand under his feet that walked the road.

~ ~ ~

Then Sehrguey came up with the major project of paneling the khutta’s base with bricks, which he had prepared for several years already. It took me three-weekend visits because the khutta was not a small size. Twoic worked as a bricklayer’s mate preparing the mortar and fetching the bricks up… We finished on a Saturday. Next morning, I got up first and went out on the veranda porch. My shoes stood on the second step with their noses directed towards the gate, although in the evening I left them exactly the opposite.

I put my shoes on, walked out of the gate and, on reaching the end of the lane, turned to the windbreak belt because in its clearings a very slow freight train was clanging along. I strode fast, and then I had to run but in the end I managed to jump on the brake platform of the rear car.

The freight train picked up speed and passed Bakhmuch station without stopping. People at the platform looked in surprise after the freight train. On the brake platform, I was standing happy and pleased with myself, my hair played with by the wind, sort of a tramp by Jack London…

In winter village chores come to a standstill and Twoic sent me a telegram only in April. We were turning dirt in the garden when his father brought the news about the Chernobyl explosion. The day was cold and windy, the gray clouds flew low. Twoic started a lecture about radiation but I did not care a fuck. What's the difference? However, the wind blew from East and did not let the radiation to reach the village. The clouds absorbed it and took over as far as Scotland, to the laundry hung there on clotheslines. Of course, the Scots had then to throw away that washing, so Morning Star…

But all that would happen later but presently Twoic, leaning against the wall by the payphone, dialed the number, and I scanned the endless flow of hustling crowd, which had no idea about the subtleties in relations between mafia bosses and their bodyguards. And I tried to figure out who of us was more interested in this friendship. Was it the would-be PhD Twoic, or I, his genie from a bottle?

It's a dumb thing to do psychoanalysis having no know-how from the trade… At Psychology lectures in the pedagogical institute, they, of course, shared that it was some mean presumptuous invention of the decaying West called to degrade and belie the capitalized name of Man which sounds proudly. A sad pity, the lecturers uttered not a word about methods in that indecency. Thus, we’ve got no other option but invent the content for the Psychoanalysis thing and work its methods out by ourselves.

Swing your arm, push your shoulder against it – we'll start this bitch of a collider manually!.

So, why am I stuck with Twoic? For which reason? The healthy village food performed by his grandmother? Absolutely, yes. Carrying the flowers on a local train, I do look forward to enjoying the meals. Besides, there is one more alluring bait that I strive to with no chance of getting it though, like the ass ridden by Till Eulenspiegel. For any kind of ass, you'll find the sort of grass he will run after like a good little boy. So which one am I after?

The wild descriptions of sex orgies, generously shared by Twoic, keep glowing the embers of hope that I, his loyal servant, will get some crumbs off the master's bed. Say, some slut girlfriend of another whore of his. The dreams do not come true yet, but who says the ass should ever reach the grass? It's a smart ass, and he doesn't give even a sidelong glance at the bunch of grass dangling in front of his nose. He pretends not seeing it even point-blank, and he trots after it just so, for the sake of warm-up, because he adores physical exercises and other agricultural works. Yet, to see what, actually, an ass is up to, you don't need to be as wise as Solomon himself…

Just for the record, there was an attempt at "with a girlfriend's girlfriend"… They came from Nezhyn to Bakhmuch, the ex-lover of Twoic and her girlfriend. Twoic and I met them and took to the village by bus. 2 mattresses were spread in advance over the dry hay in the loft over the summer kitchen. Out of delicacy, Twoic took his ex-lover to the nearby grove, leaving the whole loft for me to use it in undivided mode.

The chick was appetizing – slender and busty but she undressed only down to her pantyhose. No doubt, the modish black fishnet item made her legs look even prettier, but what the fuck I needed that mesh for? The same old acquaintance of a dirty trick – welcome on upper dangles, but no horsing about the chastity belt. I did not try at tearing the pantyhose to shreds, and all attempts at stirring up a reciprocal flame of passion in the teaser fell flat. The state of stalemate was sustained until Twoic brought back his ex-lover from the romantic walk to the grove…

Next morning, I got up first and went for a swim in the kopanka – a pond of about 20 by 20 meters dug in the field by a back-hoe. When I returned, Raissa Alexandrovna was sitting on the veranda porch.

"So how was the water?" she asked with the hint in her ironic black eyes.

"Cold," answered I in all the senses.

After breakfast, already without Raissa around, Twoic asked directly, "Well, how?"

"No hows. We're incompatible."

"How that?"

"She wanted being raped, I wanted to get a shared pleasure. The 2 things just do not click together."