the most final
concluding work

But then I decided to finally break up with Eera because I was fed up with all that heartbreaking harrowing… Moreover, because she absolutely didn't trust me and that’s for sure.

The watchwoman in the Hosty’s lobby passed me a letter:

"Sehrguey,

I have been fascinated by you for so long, but I dared not say it.

Today I'll be waiting for you at 19.00 near the Old Building.

Lyouba"

That evening, as usual, I escorted Eera to the staircase-entrance vestibule in her apartment block, and there she unexpectedly caught some fire of unrestrained passion, “Do not go, hang on a little more, please!" I looked at the watch it was ten to seven, "Well, the guys are waiting at the Hosty. We're fixin' to draw a pool at Pref."

"They can wait. Don't go!"

I hardly managed to leave… When I neared the Old Building it was exactly seven because I had checked the time under a street lamp on the way. And on the square in front of the Old Building, there was no one. But I did not tarry there smoking, waiting, looking around; not at all.

I crossed the empty square without ever stopping; maybe in a bit slower tempo than my usual. But then, after all, I had all the right to admire the nature of the winter night, had I? That Pine tree by the corner looks like a Cedar; could it really be it? In the thicket of close-set branches lives an owl, there, midst them, it's always dark and quiet even at day-time. Look at the snowdrift under the Pine-Cedar, at scattered offals from his feasts, shreds of small rodents; one of the nature sanitizing care-takers…

And, by the by, I didn't lie at all. The moment I entered Room 72, Slavic and Twoic followed me, "Well, will we draw a pool, or will we?"

The letter, as it soon turned out, was written by Eera's girlfriend whose name was not "Lyouba", Eera invented it while dictating to the girl. Everyone may get attracted by the novelty, but it takes a driveling chump to be caught out…

Well, and besides, there appeared Maria, a brunette of the age so ardently canvassed for by the once popular French writer Balzac.

When she smiled at me on the sidewalk, I did not immediately snap in. As it turned out, she happened to drop for a minute to that she-ox's birthday, only I did not notice when. So, in general, she told me what apartment-block she lived in and her apartment number – 42.

Although having a rather busy next day I still slotted a visit to the new acquaintance and also found money for a bottle of vodka which I carried using Alimosha’s trick – in the sleeve; it made for such a hard bicep. So I came to the said address, the fourth floor, the door to the left. She opened.

We had a little snack and landed on the sofa… I do hate coming on entering or almost so which happens at times, the scorch-hot trickle's bored thru, the floodgate burst, your standard pleasure quota past salvage. Fuck!

"Sorry," says I, " In a dreadful hurry. There's a concert at five."

Which concert? Where?. In short, she also came to the Old Building Assembly Hall and was sitting in the second row, when from the stage, and already playing the bass guitar, and already as the leading vocalist, I was screaming,

"Do you remember those two sta-a-rs?!

That disappeared from the sky?!.."

A third-year student, Vitya Kononevich, played the rhythm guitar and sang along, backing with a third; and on the drums some, well, Lyosha, it seems, also from that course, a local guy he was.

After the concert, Maria and I had a walk. She led me to a friend of hers. The woman brought a mug of medicinal alcohol out to the staircase landing, and a piece of fish for a snack. It was 96 percent medicinal alcohol because my tongue at once stuck to the palate. But since then our go-rounds with Maria in their duration were not inferior to the acts in Shakespeare’s plays…

She had a son, sixth-grader, who I never met in her one-room apartment. Apart from the sofa, there was a double bed and a radio receiver on the nightstand next to it. All night long it was playing softly to itself in the middle waves ranges, glowing with its small yellow eyelet.

And she cum in really grand style, "More! More! A! I wanna.. Mo-o-ore! A!." Maybe it was her worked out coda, but still a cool one. She didn’t condone the semen smell and asked me to go to the bathroom right away. I did not mind, she was worth it. For my willingness, she rewarded me with a massage, so was her profession. I couldn't get it why they were so crazy about it. Oh, massage!. But I did not contradict even on that point…

Sometimes, even way too late at night, the doorbell rang. She rose from the bed, threw on her long gown and went out to the landing to have a word with the untimely visitor. I was not quibbling, I understood that a nurse, even a masseuse, had somehow to survive in this world. She had a beautiful body, like in black-and-white pics of Soviet amateur pornography against the backdrop of filled up ash-trays and empty bottles on the kitchen windowsill, and she herself was good-looking too, in that Transcarpathian style. But she seldom took off her nightgown in bed, if at all, she said there was a breast problem, mastitis, or something.

And after ramming into way too many "eager-top-unsurrenderable-downs" that felt even refreshing for a change. More so because she knew how to use her lower parts. "And may I do it that way?" And she would get unleashed in such a "way" which I never imagined possible, and had not even dreamed of. Yes, you may and welcome all the way!

When dropping to Room 72, she skillfully used the scanty furniture set there… In between having a sex we were on genuinely friendly terms. She shared her plans for buying me a pair of slippers, and promised to cure would I catch a venereal disease. She told me…

Well, it doesn't matter though, or else I will never finish, like after a mug of medicinal alcohol, sort of. In a word, I wanna say, Balzac was not a fool, albeit a Frenchman…

~ ~ ~

At the May Day demonstration, willing or not, you had to carry the portrait of one or another member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU, the privilege rooted in your being one of just 4 boys at your course. After airing the member over the main square in the institute's columns, it still had to be taken to the Old Building and handed over to House Manager.

When I was leaving the House Manager storeroom, Slavic warned me that he saw Eera in front of the Old Building, and she asked him where I was. Slavic knew that I had broken up with her for over a month already, that's why he warned.

The separation was painful for me. The evenings stretched endlessly long without her voice over the telephone. And I was missing her German-like gait from afar… Seeing her occasionally in the institute corridors, I got it over and over again that there was no one as beautiful as her, and my heart tightened bitterly. But still and all I had to be firm and put the final period, after all…

So, to avoid an unbearably painful encounter, I decided to sit tight in the Old Building until she left. Moreover, the day before while on a country outing, Maria and I arranged to spend May Day at her place…

For the outing, we went to the station, and, in the bright rays of the sunset, walked along the path by the tracks to the forest on the outskirts. On the way, we met a couple of workmen. One of them started to yap, but I just ignored the bumpkin – anyone would envy when you walk so a juicy beauty to the wood, while the nightingales around tear themselves apart in so vigorous trills that stand upright like one solid wall of sound…

We found a clearing among the trees, and in the gathering darkness, I built a fire. It was very warm, she even took off her cloak. We did not have glasses for the wine brought along… "More! A! More!.."

The bonfire was already burnt out, and screening for a sec the iridescent glow from its coals, some dark shadow rushed across the clearing. A homeless dog. How he scared her!

There is nothing more appealing than a freaked out woman, and you, a kinda epic knight, protectively embrace her shoulders. And your stud feels like a ride… "More! Mo-ore!. A!."

We were returning already in the middle of night and had to wait for long at the stop for the last bus carrying workers from the defense plant Progress after their second shift. Or rather, female workers, there were only women on the bus giving Maria way too hostile looks. Like, we were slaving like damned, while that slut horsed around with her cuntfucker. In spring even females grow intolerant and bitchy…

That is to say, that I did not need that meeting with Eera and I waited for another 20 minutes before I left the Old Building.

"Sehryozha!" She still waited between the massive columns on the high porch.

Well, what can I do if she's so beautiful? If I have to keep in check my breath, hold my heart back from leaping out?.