the most final
concluding work

Zhomnir warned that as Head of the Practice, he couldn't put me more than "three" for the chronic absence of lesson plans written by me though they were the must. And I couldn't force myself to at least copy those f-f..er..I mean, fanciful plans from Igor because I was physically unable lining dolls in a row on the piano lid.

I asked Zhomnir not to worry and put whatever mark he could. I really did not give a f-f..er.. I found it meaningless, I mean… When on the third floor of the Old Building the fourth-year students' practice results were fixed next to the Time-Table, I was the one and only having "three". Zhomnir alarmed and started to convince Deaness of the English Department that it was wrong, and he could not have imagined I was so unique. She impregnably advised to look before jumping.

The current Deaness always tried to have the looks of Alice Freindlich from "The Office Affair" movie, only that no Myagkov turned up for her, and she stayed a flinty bureaucrat. Yet, in her cupboard, she kept the skeleton of her divorce on the grounds of sexual incompatibility, because the girls from the English Department did not leak unverified information.

Okay, enough is enough, that'll do for the strangers of all kinds…and now enters…you!.

~ ~ ~

Your personal conception took place on the fourth floor in the Hosty. That particular date Eera arranged herself since it was a room of Phys-Math girls and among the students of the Physics and Math Department I knew only that pair of cooks from the student construction platoon, but they lived in the city.

Shortly before the event, I once again fell in love with Eera but, at first, I did put the end to my polygamy. And could it be otherwise? To Eera alone I owed that salvage shot from gonorrhea.

So, on arrival in Nezhyn for the final academic year, I became straight and reasonable. And I dryly informed Sveta of my reformation when she attempted at the former familiarity. We became just a nodding acquaintance and vague recollection to each other.

And I also returned Maria the book borrowed from her several months ago. Though, I chose a late hour for nullifying that bifurcation.

She opened her door to the staircase landing, in the unbuttoned robe over her nightie. If we assume the possibility of time shifts, then at that moment it easily could be I in her bed awaiting when she'd sent away that dork outside… I did not develop this theory but simply handed the book in, thanked, and left…

And since then my love belonged only to Eera, absolutely undivided, especially after the mentioned falling in love with her once again. It happened when at a chance meeting on the third floor of the Old Building in the wing occupied by the Philological Department, I persuaded Eera to skip a class and, after the bell shut up, we sneaked along the wide empty corridor to the side staircase. There, we did not go down the stairs but followed the ascending flights, although the building had no fourth floor, and the last flight was blocked by a partition with the locked door to the attic. We stopped in the middle of that flight and kissed.

But having memories alone was not enough for me, I wanted to keep all that or to stay myself within that desperately inexpressible beauty. The kisses were to no avail, they couldn't stop the fleeting moment. So all that only remained there, all I could do was falling in love…

In the evening, already on the stairs in the Hosty, Eera passed me the key to the room of the Phys-Math students, so that I went first to open it and she would follow a minute later to keep the rules of secrecy… We did not turn on the light. The bed stood by the window overlooking the Oster banks invisible in the darkness.

With Eera, the burden of protection lay on me, that is, getting out in time to avoid abortion was my responsibility. But on that particular night…a tad bit more!..I'm in control!..more!..just a sec…y-u!..out of the blue!..too late…the train's left…

You were on that train, in the crowd of all-alike fellow-travelers, only you turned out to be a little bit nimbler…

Well, and then – a smooth transition to the already checked out technology: as a quality man of noble disposition, I had to marry. More so, that I would not survive another Eera's report on abortion under general anesthesia…

When Eera was still a schoolgirl, she found a ring on the bridge over the Oster; a nick-knackery ring of those that they sell at stalls among the other casual pieces of fake jewelry. Eera brought it home and her mother, Gaina Mikhailovna, got sad and distressed but she said nothing to her daughter…

Was Eera's marriage with the divorced me a misalliance? Undoubtedly and undeniably. Even a brief matching of the would-be newlyweds' parental pairs against each other would prove it to the hilt:

Spare-Parts Checker at the RepBase vs.

Teacher of German Language at the Nezhyn State Pedagogical Institute of Order of the Labor Red Banner named after Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol;

Locksmith at the RepBase vs.

Deputy Director of the Nezhyn Bakery Plant.

However, the factor of your presence, even though not born yet, mitigated the caste prejudices which, by the way, had long since been abolished by the Soviet system. Still and all, even in the era of the developed socialism in our country, throughout our pre-wedding trip to Kiev, I had my anus impaled on the stake, a kinda admonishment for the cheeky pariah.

Kiev was needed to exchange the coupons from Nezhyn ZAGS for goods in the metropolitan bridal salons. True, the divorce-stamp in my passport nullified any discounts for a wedding ring for me, yet my sister Natasha promised to lend me the neat gold ring that she wore, for some odd reason, on her thumb. As for the stake, it was not seen from outside, but caused horrible pangs within the rectum and turned my gait into drag-and-shuffles of a semi-palsied old man or that of a young Cossack raider who was removed from the said impalement-stake after a slightly belated amnesty. "Mercy, Cossack-brothers! Finish me off!"

Poor Eera! Would any girl in her dearest girlish dreams ever dream of such a companion to a bridal salon?. Never! By no means! No and no, over again!

To me, the hellish torture suffered on that trip served the palpable reminder of the truth from Heraclitus: never enter the same river, for your ass' safety sake!.

Alas! The wisdom of the previous generations does not make us wiser until we (quoting the famous letter of Ukrainian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey) get seated on a hedgehog with the personal stark naked arse.

Nevertheless, in Kiev, the bride got rigged for the impending happy occasion, and I bought brown shoes made by the Dutch company "Topman". The footwear was a bit too loose, but the realities of the era of deficits taught us grabbing any chance bird at hand, and a month later the shoes become a fitting hand-me-downs to my father-in-law. That's for whose sake I was dragging that stake!.

Soon, I felt better and we started looking for a suit to dress the groom. We combed thru the department stores of major railway stations between Nezhyn and Kiev: Nosovka, Kobyzhchi, Bobrovitsa – to no avail. The suit was hunted down only in Chernigov, far from the electrified railroads, and it imparted quite a decent look to me.

A week before the wedding, I left the hostel and moved to the three-room apartment of Eera's parents… The eldest of their 4 children, Igor, was a Major of some sophisticated troops stationed in the city of Kiev. Victoria, their next child, lived in Chernigov and worked in the city museum there.

Then came Tonya, who graduated the NGPI and was sent to teach Russian language and literature to kiddies in a Transcarpathian village, where she met a local boy, Ivan, whose courting (in a simple and unpretentious style of a Bandera man) kindled reciprocative feelings in her… Unable to reach over the language barrier, he knocked on the door of the young teacher late in the evening and, when it opened, his shotgun was mutely pointed at her chest. Like, be mine or nobody else’s.

Ivan's brothers were in time to disarm him, but the depth of feelings in the romantic lover did impress Tonya, which her attitude deserved her a chance to survive among the superb views of the Transcarpathian nature. She married him, gave birth to a pair of lovely children, returned to Nezhyn and, together with her entire young family, lived in one of the narrow bedrooms in the three-room apartment of her parents.

For their night rest, the parents enjoyed the folding coach-bed by the wall in the living room which also served a passage to both bedrooms. Opposite to that blind wall, there was a wide window behind a tulle curtain separating the windowsill occupied by a couple of neglected aloe flowerpots from the abutting table with the TV box on its top.

The curtain also veiled the backs of the chairs squeezed in between the table and the windowsill so that the chairs pushed under the tabletop would not take up space until needed. The chairs had plush-covered seats and they were from the same set with the table which, if you removed off it the electric iron, the messy pile of central newspapers, the TV, and the checkered oilcloth, presented its dark glossy varnish and could be folded out for a celebration feast.

When there was no festivity, those chairs from the set that found no place under the folded-back table were put in the corners of the living room, draped with the clothes for household wear and keeping heaps of those same newspapers, and all sorts of whatnots dumped upon their seats to keep them out of the way for a minute or two and forgotten there for a couple of months.

Besides all that, the living room also contained a wardrobe with a big mirror in its door, and a varnished hutch whose front was of two sliding glass-sheets protecting from the dust two shelves of crockery inside. Upon the hutch, there stood, lamely leaning its frame against the faded wallpaper, a repro of "The Unknown Beauty" by Kramskoy and scornfully observed from under her ostrich feather the dump around, including the "The Major's Matchmaking" repro fixed in the opposite wall.

There was no balcony in the apartment, thanks to its being situated on the first floor, but there was a boxroom niche in the tiny passage between the living room and the bedroom filled up with Tonya's family.

Eera and I were placed in the second, narrower, bedroom with a large plywood chiffonier from the times of the 20th Congress of the CPSU, and a veteran pier glass on a small table between the door and the windowsill. Along the wall with the carpet of almost the same pattern as in my parents', there stood the hand-me-down conjugal double bed for the soon-to-be newlyweds. It remained only to get married…

~ ~ ~