the most final
concluding work

Later, Robert started visiting the Club and became a vocalist at The Orion. He had the purest Russian pronunciation because he grew up in the Far North where his father served his time in a camp, convicted of dissidence or something of the sort. When the old man was paroled to "chemistry" in the same region, Robert's mother moved there too, taking Robert and his younger brother north, far away from Armenia.

With his stretch completed, Robert's father applied for emigration of his family from the Soviet Union. Two years passed, and he passed away before they gave permission.

There remained some time before the fixed date of their departure, and Robert went to spend it by his Armenian relatives in the seaside city of Sochi. There he met a Russian girl Valya from the Tula city and fell in love. They exchanged their addresses and, on his return to the north, Robert bleared out that he refused to leave the Soviet Union.

Yet, the papers were drawn up already for the whole family and, without him, his mother and brother would not be let out. The brother tried to make him understand the situation by fighting him, yet Robert daringly maintained his intentions to keep true his promises to his dear beloved. Then the mother began crying on a daily basis and, eventually, he landed with them in Paris by their Armenian relatives because of whose invitation they were let out.

In Paris, he found a job at a construction site. He did not know the language, he had no friends, and all his dreams were only of Valya from Tula…

A year later, with a tourist group from France, Robert Zakarian came to Moscow, and the very first night, he slipped out the hotel which his group was accommodated at and scurried to the Tula city. For 10 days he lived there in the house of Valya's parents before her mother persuaded him to give himself up to the authorities.

When he turned up in the Tula KGB, the officers there were simply delighted because their bosses in Moscow were all horns and rattles about the disappearance of a tourist from Paris. He was immediately taken to the airport and deported to France.

In Paris, he requested the Soviet Embassy to let him back to the USSR, to his beloved. And then he kept visiting them every week, and the embassy clerk, with a tattoo "Tolik" on his hand, was shaking his head and saying there was no answer to his appeal… It took Tolik about a year to nod, at last, instead of shaking because there had come a positive response.

Robert arrived in Tula, married Valya, they had a baby daughter, and he was drafted to our construction battalion. He liked to show a black-and-white photograph of his family: he himself on the left, black-haired, with a serious look in the wide-set eyes below the broad black eyebrows of an unquestionably family man; his wife Valya, on the right, in a white blouse and fair curls about her round face; the baby-daughter, in between the two, in a fancy cap of fine lace. So, the contingent of our construction battalion comprised not only cripples and jail-birds, we even had a double migrant in our ranks…

On the Seventh of November, The Orion gave their first concert on the VSO-11 Club stage. The drums were knocked and kicked at by Vladimir Karpeshin, handled Karpesha. Vladimir Rassolov and Robert Zakarian provided lead vocals. Alexander Roodko sang along with them and played the bass guitar; I kept silent and played the rhythm guitar.

In our vocal-instrumental ensemble, there also was a horn player, Kolya Komissarenko, handled Commissar, a short, dark-haired guy from Dnepropetrovsk of a cheerfully Jewish appearance. He played very diligently, yet did no better than I in my singing. Every crap note by the horn obviously tormented Roodko who still and all kept putting up with it. Probably, the presence of a horn player on stage tickled his nostalgia for his Philharmonic past. To hear less clam, he time and again cut the horn part shorter and shorter…

For the concert, we changed into parade-crap (three of us into that from strangers because a conbatist got his parade-crap only after 1 year of service). The first number in the concert was "The Wide, Wide Field" song (sort of a patriotic one). Roodko dreamed of making it with a four-part vocal harmony like that by The Pesnyary, but because of the limited range of the vocalists' sound and the crappy clams from the Commissar's horn (at which he goggled his beady eyes out in outright amazement but still blew on) this philharmonic piece of shit was almost booed at.

However, Robert Zakarian got a warm applause for his number (sort of a lyrical one). He performed the adaptation of the French song, the air of which was year after year used by the Central Television News Program "Time" when announcing the weather forecast.

"Yes, I can forgive you all

And let to the sky like a bird free of thrall…"

The servicemen of Caucasian nationalities (mostly from Separate Company) enthusiastically met the song "Eminnah" performed by Vladimir Rassolov (sort of an Eastern-comical one).

"Under the burka of your girlfriend

There's no girlfriend but your Granddaddy.

Uh, Eminnah!.."

And the song "The Rains" from the repertoire of Fofik (The Orpheuses at DK KEMZ, Konotop) was awarded a unanimous ovation (sort of the hit of season).

However, in the oral review delivered by Battalion Zampolit, aka the Political Deputy Commander of VSO-11, after the concert in the close circle of the musicians, the final song received the lowest rating. "Roodko, those fucking "Rains" of yours have already drenched everyone fucking thru and thru."

He made a sugary-nasal voice meaning everyday start-up pop stars, "Rains again... but you wait for me... no, I won't wait... fuck off, you stupid fucker…"

We couldn’t help laughing. That particular song was heard by Zampolit for the first time in his life but he accurately grasped the essence of lyrics in the musical mass production of that sort.

"I'll pass thru any rains

Because I'm loving you! Uh-uh!.."

~ ~ ~

And again our team-squad saw the rotation of commander. Prostomolotov got transferred back to his previous squad without demotion from the Lance-Corporal rank though because he wasn't caught at anything. His clash of personalities with the Ensign, the platoon commander, became the reason for the shuffle. He, most likely, at some point, was not careful enough to keep back his intellectual superiority over the Ensign. "Thief-swaggering" was the conbat term to denote that kind of behavior of the sort.

Alik Aliyev, an Azerbaijani in the slinky pants of pheasantly upgraded outfit, came in his place. He was a slim tall guy with a beautiful round face in which a thin clean skin tightly fitted his high cheekbones and the well-developed jaw.

A week later he was promoted to the rank of Lance-Corporal. For that ceremonial occasion, Alik Aliyev ordered our squad-team to fall in, clapped his hands (the right fist into the opposite palm) and announced, full of bubbling delight, "I would-a fuckan!"

But he somewhat hurry-scurried in his predictions and joyful expectations. There were no less tall but more emotionally reserved privates in our squad, who quietly shared with the Lance-Corporal their concepts (which he understood and accepted) that if people who got to the construction battalion after doing their times in Zona still did not thief-swagger, then for him, who was honored to become a conbatist simply on the grounds of insufficient fluency in Russian, moderation and modesty were the ticket to not dented survival.

And about me personally, he never meant to be mean. While still a private man, he accidentally witnessed a situation in the Leninist Room of our Company when 2 senior servicemen from The Orion interpreted to Prostomolotov, the then commander of my squad-team, the postulate of the musicians being above the vanilla army relations as presented by the Statute of the Internal Military Service…

So we just did our job at work—digging, dragging, laying, hoisting—and after it, we got rest within the built-in limitations of construction battalion life.

Of course, we were not qualified to lie down on our beds in the koobriks before the lights-out (that was the privilege of grandpas) but then there were stools along the aisle, as well as in the Leninist Room, so one could sit down and have a rest, because it was already too cold for sitting in the gazebo next to the entrance vestibule…

Then the winter began. We were given warm hats and scarcely padded khaki jackets. They pulled canvas tops over the truck beds by which we were taken to work, and also installed plank benches—from side to side—and now we rode not seated on our haunches…