the most final
concluding work

The AN-24 landed in Rostov. I went to the toilet by the takeoff field and, on the way back, a military patrol stopped me.

Right! Corduroy shoes is an utter breach of the Statute of the Internal Military Service, but I'm a demobbed dembel flying home, bros! My plane's already buzzing its propellers! They let me go.

At refueling in Kharkov I sat tight and, at last, landing in the airport Boryspol brim-filled with the summer sunlight… On that first flight, I thought it was already Kiev and, entering the bright sunny square full of all kinds of vehicles and scurrying pedestrians, I went straight to the big shield bearing huge "T" and two rows of chessboard squares, to get a taxi.

The taxi driver was a long-haired mujik about 30 in brown leather shoes with thick strings. I told him to take me to the railway station and he asked me to wait in the car while he would look for additional fellow-travelers; there still remained 48 kilometers to Kiev. He left and I remained to wait in the front passenger seat. It was hot and I took off my parade-crap jacket and, to pass the time and keep in check the growing inside tension, I stuffed and smoked a joint.

The driver came back with two more passengers to fill the backseat: a Major and a Lieutenant-Colonel, but younger than our Battalion Commander, and we started. Maybe, that driver in brown shoes scented the weed in his car and got carried away by some personal memories, but he drove like mad, and after crossing the Dnieper over the Paton Bridge, he dropped heeding the traffic lights completely… Or, maybe, the traffic lights had a day-off and it was a sunlit holiday of free driving for anyone to overtake whoever they wanted however they could…

Paying for the ride at the station, the Lieutenant-Colonel said, "Well, chief, you're flying indeed!" So, most likely, the driver got his drift on the wake…

In 1975, "diplomat" briefcases were a fairly seldom sight attracting attention by their foreign voguish looks which would be forgivable for senior officers but I, a private man, was stopped by a military patrol the moment I stepped into the central hall of the Kiev Railway Station. And the patrol, by the by, were cadets again, yet this time with red shoulder-straps. They checked my military ID and the demobilization papers, there was nothing to find fault with.

And then I made a mistake of looking at my shoes. The patrol commander followed my glance and traced back a flagrant violation of the statutory uniform. I was taken to the station military commandant office, under the magnificent stairs which led to the giant marble statue of Lenin's head, on the landing half-way to the second floor.

The on-duty officer at the commandant office told me to open the "diplomat" whose innards proved instantly that I was nothing but a dembel: pantyhose, a bottle of vodka, and the stolen crimson tablecloth.

"Go," said he. "Come back in the uniform shoes and get your case."

I rushed to the huge ticket-offices hall on the left. There was a long line at the ticket office for the Moscow's direction. In the line, some 30 meters off the ticket office, I made out a soldier in the parade-crap. He was a big man, which meant his feet were not small, and he looked sad because (that's elementary) he was returning after his furlough to serve another year.

"Where are you going?"

"To Moscow."

"Come on."

I led him straight to the window of the ticket office and explained it to the line, which all of a sudden grew so animatedly clamorous, that we had urgent orders to defense their peaceful sleep and safety at the remote border-lines of our Homeland. He bought a ticket to Moscow and I to Konotop.

When we moved away, I described for him the situation about the case. A pheasant cannot say "no" to a dembel. We sat on one of the many benches in the huge waiting hall and exchanged the footwear…

"Where could you manage so fast?" asked the on-duty officer at the commandant office.

"Bought from a gypsy on the platform."

With the case set free, I hurried to where the sad after-furlough buddy was hiding his feet in the statute violating kicks deeper under the bench. I landed down next to him, but we did not have time to change – the loudspeakers announced that the train to Moscow was going to start off the sixth platform, and we ran there so as not to be late… The strings on the borrowed shoes got loose and started lashing the floor on the run, but we boarded in time…

The train knocked hastily over the rails, it was carrying me to Konotop, yet my uptightness did not slack up, I urged the train to go faster and could in no way calm down… Only late at night getting off the train on Platform 4 of the Konotop Station, I believed that that's it.

"After his service done,

Came the soldier home…"

And I again rode the familiar Streetcar 3, but this time to the very terminal. The darkness outside the window made the pane-glass show a vague reflection of the khaki jacket and the forage cap of serviceman parade-crap… At the terminal, I asked where Decemberists Street was, and they told me to go right…

Protracted fences, dark khuttas behind their wickets, rare lampposts made up some unfamiliar outskirts. Having asked someone else along the way, I went out onto Decemberists Street and walked along it until I reached the wicket with the scarcely discernible in the dark plate marked 13.

I entered the yard and knocked on the first door in the khutta. It opened… Was that my father so gray-haired? When?.

In the light falling on his back thru the open door, he looked incredulously at my parade-crap, "Sehrguey?" Then he turned to the inner house, "Galya! Sehrguey has come!"

My mother came out onto the porch and buried her head in the breast of the parade-crap jacket, crying loudly.

Standing one step lower, I confusedly patted her shoulder, "Well, Mom, calm down, I'm back after all." I really did not know what there was to cry about.

My mother looked back at the small frightened girl standing by the kitchen table and, finishing the last sob, she said, "What do you fear, silly? It's your dad who's come."

Then she again turned to me, "How that you did not meet Olga? She went to the third shift, working at the brick factory."

…service done…

^~ ~^~~^~