the most final
concluding work

Fyodor, Yasha and I became bosom friends on the common basis of dry wine. After classes, we started to the deli located round the corner of the department store opposite the church where Bogdan Khmelnytsky centuries ago married another of his wives, to buy 4 to 5 bottles holding 0.75 liters of white dry wine each. Yasha was a firm supporter of moderation and his dose constituted just one bottle in the haul, while Fyodor and I entertained more liberal perspective.

From the deli, we proceeded past the Bazaar and the restaurant "Polissya" to the second bridge over the Oster River, from which long Red Partisans Street started and went off to finally turn right, towards the highway beyond the city. But our route was much shorter and, from the bridge, we climbed down into the tall grass on the left riverbank nearby the Catholic Chapel used as the Youth Sports School grounds, snug and cozy place to stretch out for a libation.

A finger-thick layer of sediment covered each bottle bottom, but we knew how to drink from the neck without stirring it up. The emptied bottles were thrown into the nearly motionless waters of the Oster because somewhere downstream the floodgates of the dam were shut. After a short-lived reproachful popping, the bottles froze on the water, kinda fishing rod floats with their necks in osculatory appeal to the sky.

And, lying in the tall grass, we carried on enlightened exchange on this and that, and other such things, interspersed by prolonged gulps before to change the subject. The chat was our snack, like chomping the well-known fact that when the Oster had still been navigable, a merchant boat full of treasures sank someplace there. And recently the Japanese came up with a proposal that they would clean up the entire riverbed of the Oster, provided that they get the treasure, but the ours responded: "Piss off, Japs! Don't be too cunning!"

Or, for a change, we were discussing Latinist Litvinov, that ruthless beast of an exact executioner.

"Read sentence 7 from Exercise 5." But how could you possibly read it when seeing for the first time in your life?

"Sentence 7 comes after Sentence 6."

"…"

"Sentence 7 comes before Sentence 8."

"…"

"Get seated, please. Your mark is two."

Wholly serene, as cool as a cucumber, with his head like a light bulb, maybe, a bit more hair on it, he turns to the next victim… Thus, the poor students did not have a choice but to dub him with the handle of "Lupus".

His beautiful wife was a fourth-year student already, and in her first year, at the winter examination session, she managed to pass the credit in Latin only at her sixth try. He entered the record into her Grade Book, and articulated coolly, "Be smart, and marry me." Figuring out that in the summer session it would be not a credit but the examination in Latin, she realized that the resistance was of no use…

After elaborate discussion of the cadre policy at the NGPI, we glided into a trifling gossip about our roommate Ostrolootsky who’s cool only at staggering but still believes—can you believe it?!—into the final victory of Communism… Innocence itself…Though you never can tell…Who knows?. After all, they still keep Lenin’s mummy in the Mausoleum… Imagine the unthinkable technologies they so possibly will have in that frigging future, eh? After so dreadfully advanced in medical science they’ll reassemble the guy from just his boot strings, you know… but what then? To storm the Winter Palace anew? It’s a museum now. And no Royal Romanov to revenge for his hanged brother…

Then and there we stipulated that after Fyodor and Yasha got their diplomas, at their farewell party I would ramble into the Oster waters with a glass of champagne aloft in my hand. Like in the movie "The Land of Sannikov" the Czarist army lieutenant enters the rolling surf after the schooner sailing away to discoveries.

"There is a point between the past and the future,

And that split second is what we call life…"

And then we, happily mushy, got up and made for the Hosty overtaking the lazy bottles still sticking from the middle of the river.

In the blue-tiled shower on the Hosty’s first floor, I made a discovery that I had a rather resonant voice. So I brought my guitar from Konotop and sang from the window of my room on the third floor to serenade no one in particular.

Of course, Irina from Bakhmuch notified the whole pack of Artemises at the English Department that I was not a kosher game. As a result, the uniform sweet sadness in the eyes of girls gave way to the expression of alert vigilance, and my entering their rooms did not triggered an automatic invitation to have a tea-party any more. But all the same, I sang.

Sometimes students of the Music-Pedagogical Department descended from their fifth floor to knock on Room 72 door, requesting the guitar at least for one evening. Probably, they wanted to get some rest…

Moreover, end September, when our course students attended the wedding of a student mate in her native town of Borzna, I was strumming and singing there all night the numbers from the repertoire of The Orpheuses, The Orion, and Duke Ellington. And the folks danced to my music!. The slender bride in a long white dress, pressing herself to the massive figure of her groom, did not miss bestowing her grateful looks on the wedding singer. Her brother stood on guard by the record player to shoo off those who wanted to start a disk. Not every wedding could boast of having live music…

~ ~ ~

At the beginning of October, I was summoned to the personnel department of the State Pedagogical Institute. The head of the personnel department, without looking into my face, urged me to pass on into the additional room behind his office desk, but he himself remained where he was.

In the adjacent room, there also was a desk with a lanky man at it who had a shaven face of about 40 years old and pale-dark hair of indistinct length. After my entering and getting seated, he clasped the fingers of his long hands on top of the desk and introduced himself as a Captain of the Committee of State Security, aka the KGB, and went over to briefing me that to prevent the espionage activities of the CIA agents coming to our land under the disguise of news correspondents the KGB needed young people who spoke English. Such people were to get the appropriate special training and be subsequently sent to foreign countries to ensure the security of our state.

Wow! Wild dreams did come true without ever turning to the precinct militiaman Solovey! Captain of KGB was in person making me an offer that I wouldn’t even try to refuse. Not for nothing in my adolescent dreams, I was trying on the shirt of Banionis from "The Dead Season"! It only remained to discuss the details… When after the classes on my way to the hostel I see him with a newspaper in his hands, then an hour later I need to call this here number to get further instructions. And at that, we parted…

A week later, when I called him with the payphone fixed in the glass-walled cage by the second, permanently locked, entrance door to the hostel lobby, he instructed me to come to the railway station, and there proceed to the wooden house of the station militia, next to the public toilet, and enter the first door to the right in their corridor… Behind that door, under his dictation, I wrote the application to enlist me in the secret contingent of the KGB, to which end I chose the conspirative by-name "Pavel" as my operational pseudonym…