the most final
concluding work

Now, everything that keeps me on Twoic's leash boils down to the needs of my stomach, and that of the reproductive organ and… and is that all?. We need something else here, thinking in only 2 dimensions seems not enough for a Hegelian… Where is the third?! Spit it out!. A-aha! Here it is – the brain! The brain with its lofty aspirations and, first of all, the need to pour out the crap crammed into it, to ease the tension in the storage cells so as not to burst sending its gray matter in every thinkable direction. Ain’t it a torture – be full of pearls but having no one to spill the goods in front of?

Twoic presented me with that opportunity also, by his questions. How to choose the right route in the jungle of a research institute laboratory squabbles, where each spider for himself in the common jar, one for all? Who's more practical for your scientific career – a talented but alcoholic Micro-Chief, aka the manager of the laboratory, or the dull as 2 felt boots together Macro-Chief in charge of the institute department? Who of the two to choose for your Master?

Answering these and similar questions, I was amazed by the largeness of reprobate Machiavellianism stockpiled in me. I wouldn't ever dream of having so vast resources, communication with Twoic brought into the light the cached stash.

However, the essence of my maxims was so plain that Twoic sensed all of that himself and instinctively conformed to even before my broadcasting. It's only he couldn't put it to words that we get landed into this world where everything is occupied already—"the house's sold out!"—which situation calls for snatching a place under the sun for our dearest selves, and the end justifies the means, so… And Twoic was all too happy to agree. But what about me? Do I live by this sermon? Do I follow it, eat it out?

Well, now, are you happy with your self-psychoanalyzing? Got all the nooks turned inside out? Don't be shy, we are alone – Twoic's too busy with dialing and checking his pocket notebook. So, is that it? The orgies for your stomach plus hopes for getting a second-hand whore, and tickling your vanity by spilling intellectual pearls? Is it the full list of reasons why I'm with him?

Well, that's why, definitely, yes… And also because of the feeling of freedom, when I break loose from the routine of my ordered, polished, clockwork way of life with the bath-going on Thursdays, washing on Mondays, ironing on Tuesdays, with the beach or reading room on weekends and the ever-present feeling of voided privation, and never ending vigilance…

Wow! As I see, you now flashed your love for freedom too, well done! And, hopefully, is that all?

Of course, yes, is not all of that enough for a sincere friendship?

Don't try to cheat the dialectics. You have omitted the opposite force – hatred.

And why should I hate him? He feeds me, provides drinking, presents an outlet to escape…

Seems like, in your enumeration, you bashfully omitted the opportunity to practice masochism, eh? What is a pleasure if not some sweet pain?

…had he slept with her or not?.. everything in me contracts into a tight tangle of scorching pain and slowly dissolves in mute shrieks: no, it cannot be.. but if?. and the pangs grip anew to be followed by numb warmth spilling over the innards: no, no, no…

At one of my first visits to the Twoic's village, we were sitting at the bus stop by the wide empty square in the tight breeze beneath the warm stars of a summertime night. The whitewashed walls in the stop-shed, as well as the planks of the benches, were stamped with inscriptions and cuts of all kinds of Deep Purples, Dynamos, Svetas, Blitzes, Vovas, and lots of dates… All of a sudden, Twoic spoke of Eera, "She said she had never had a better sex than with you."

That compliment, sort of, scalped me. They do not come up with such confessions at a café table. For such a subject, you should lie together in one bed after having a sex. Did she count on Twoic someday would deliver these words to me and I recreate the whole picture? No, a combination of too many moves… she’s not a Bobby Fisher… Sooner, the feline female custom of branding their fuckers by marks of scratching talons… That's why he reached then out for a cigarette of Belomor-Canal…

…don't succumb to complexes, Twoic, I've never been a sex prodigy… and now I know why he found me in Konotop… and I am sorry for the helpless babble about blessing drops… he came then with much more trivial agenda – to urinate over the ashes of his dear friend, Hooey-Pricker, and stop feeling envious even post mortem…

He somehow felt that he had blurted out a bit too much and, to efface it, started swearing that he had never in his life had anything with Eera… As if I asked him whether it was so.

"Have you ever beat her?" he asked a little later.

Oops, so she shared about that slap too.

"I hit just once, at the final date," reported I, "but it was a light spank, solely to comply with the protocol."

Twoic laughed his endemic laughter…

The next morning, we went for a swim in kopanka. I did not feel like entering the water, so I just walked around the pond and lay on the beach.

Twoic swam it from end to end. His blue eyes radiated a melting glow of satisfaction when he came ashore nearby me with water trickles dripping from his trunks.

"This look was in his eyes when getting off her," thought I. The thought brought pain and even though not so acute as I expected, yet more replete than I would like…

~ ~ ~

She approached me on the beach and started a talk about the Morning Star dropped on the sand next to the pink coverlet on which I was sitting. If I really read or it was it just a trick to lure girls. What that big article was about, for example.

So, I had to retell for the examiner what happened to a 19-year-old youth, a member of the family of smugglers. They regularly flew from Pakistan to England, swallowing a heap of small tight packages before the flight. Stomach served an ideal repository, the specially trained controller dogs at airports couldn’t sniff out any drugs. Upon arrival, at a safe house in London, the whole family underwent the stomach lavage and—rah-rah-rah!—congrats on the successful shipping.

The fizzle happened on the flight when one of the small packages burst in the stomach of the young man. They used to tamp too much into one package and, on the arrival, the guy was taken from the aircraft straight to the hospital with a severe overdose. They washed the drugs out of his stomach and saved his life. And that was the end to the family business. Some sad, in general, story…

She sympathized and shared that she was also a nurse… Basically, a good profession for a girl about 30, who did not look a movie star, yet everything else was in place. My trunks could witness to the fact because, when finishing the story, I had to pull my knees up to my chin to look like a civilized gentleman and not a heated gorilla in the zoo.

Then everything went on like in a fairy tale, she told me her address in At-Seven-Winds, and we arranged my coming to her place on Tuesday with a visit of friendship and reciprocal understanding. She strolled away along the sandy beach, and I had to stretch out on my stomach, so as not to attract the public attention by my swimming trunks stuck out in anticipation of the day after tomorrow…

That day came at last and, after work, I rode from the station square to City. In The Flowers shop there happened nothing to my liking and I had to buy a kinda crossbred of daisies and sunflower. There still remained a hell of a lot of time before the appointed hour, so I took a walk back to the station and then along Club Street to At-Seven-Winds.

In Zelenchuk Area, Vladimir Gavkalov, the truck crane operator from SMP-615, who looked like Eera's brother Igor, crossed my path.

"Sehryoga!" yelled he on the run, "You've lost your way! The bathhouse’s in the counter direction!"

I did not like that whisker of a bouquet myself but valiantly carried it on.

And all the same, up to At-Seven-Winds I got half-hour ahead of time and decided to keep my long-standing promise to myself that one of those days I’d come on a visit to that family of tall Birch trees in the vast area of construction sites… Following the trail trod in the tall grass, I approached the group of the white-trunk beauties.

Stupid bitches! The tenants from the nearest street who made a garbage dump under the trees… Scrunched between the closing in cloud layers, the sun went down like a bulb, without a sunset. Clenching my teeth at the ugly discovery, I took my stupid bouquet to the address, for the principle's sake.

"Oh!" she said. "Even with flowers!"

And I, both immediately and too late, got it that it should have been vodka… Then we chattered about nothing in the kitchen of her one-room flat. After tea, there happened an incident – the big jar of strawberry jam slipped from her hands and thwacked against the floor. It took her a considerable time to collect the large sticky puddle and wash the floor in the kitchen.

At about eleven she started sending me home. I had to drive a fool that everything there was locked and latched already, and the wolfhounds set free to run around. She, like, took pity and granted me half of her double bed, on the condition that I would behave.

When she put the light out and also lay down, I endeavored to continue the relationship in the most natural way, which move was met with unyielding resistance. I would never learn nothing! Did she call me for to wallow in demonstration of her chastity? I dropped trying and felt I didn't really care, just like about that sealed post package on my bookshelves.

…probably because the loss of jam was too great a shock… the three-liter jar would have seen her for at least thru half the winter… or maybe an ominous sign for the superstitious… and I don't care those morons have made their stupid dump there… when from one or another construction site I watched them waving at me it somehow eased… like a promise of something nice… when they eventually will cut them down and replace with a five-story block the trees will all the same be waving their tops like saying "Hi!" thru the heat haze… it will stay by me while those smarties remain stuck in their garbage heap for life…

In the dead of night, I awoke because light cautious fingers were feeling my cock thru the underpants. The nurse, after the failure to get raped, was checking why so. She'd better ask the sand on the Seim beach… But those frisking fingers of a stranger checking my flesh… It had already been somewhere… Only I couldn't recollect where and when before falling asleep again.

In the morning I left, declining the proposed tea with sugar. What was her name? She should have one anyway… it was some easy name, yes, sure… see? I even snap my fingers… now… well… er… perhaps… something like… mmm… yes…

~ ~ ~