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Before getting their diplomas and workplace appointments, all the institute graduates were summoned to the assembly hall in the New Building. We had to sit thru a usual blah-blah about keeping high the NGPI honor wherever we get distributed by our appointments.

Than a black-haired stranger took the floor and said that each of us was given, on entering the hall, a sheet of paper and a pencil, right? Now, it should be admitted that not everything's straight as it should be in our schools. So, let us write about what we, the graduates, did not like in the schools we had practices at, or even earlier, or even when we ourselves were still school students. Just any occasion when some teacher behaved incorrectly, in our opinion, or allowed themselves incorrect statements. To make it easier to start, let's use the phrase, "And I still remember how…" after which it would go on by itself, okay?

His educative speech left me stunned with awe and realization of how deeply backward I stayed. The KGB had obviously upgraded to the conveyor-system technologies in the production of secret collaborators. Hundreds of rats hatched in just one sitting! And no need to use the bait of spy school individually.

(…in each of us, there lurks a small frightened animal hidden deep inside and thinking logically: "If I don't write they can cancel my diploma or fork out the appointment to the worst of stinking holes. It's better to write – one time does not count."

But that time of no account is, actually, just the start. Later, in the hole you were appointed to, they will come up and show you your essay, and dictate the next…)

Okay, bitches, you'll get it written!. In the back of each seat in the assembly hall, there was installed a rectangular hinged piece of plastic, a kinda mini-desktop. I brought down the one in the back of the seat before me, placed the crisp sheet of paper on the smooth plastic surface, and wrote:

"And I still remember how in the fourth grade my Class Mistress, Seraphima Sergeevna, stated:

'Well done, Sehrguey! You collected most of the waste paper.'

And I was filled with pride and joy."

I signed my final report to the KGB with my real name and I am proud of it till now…

~ ~ ~

(…The great discovery of Karl Marx about the emergence of surplus-value, remained, as it, unfortunately, is, not pushed to all of its potential limits. He quite correctly noted that some part of his working time a laborer toils for himself, and the remaining part for the factory owner. Good fellow, Karl, hit the bulls-eye!. However, that's not all there is there to it.

The main (yet unnoticed) trick lurks in the fact, that it is impossible to determine who exactly the laborer toils for at this or that part of a split second. And this, not yet perceived (although indisputable) truth is applicable not only to the methods of production but to any other sphere of human activities as well.

(Hopefully, I'm not advancing too fast, and you are in time to stick down your notes? Okay, proceed to the full-stop, while I'm opening the second bottle…)

Hence, we can safely state, that there are no bad guys in the world, but there are no good guys either. An elusive, uncatchable, fraction of a second separates good from evil.

Well, so you think that guy is a good man? I love your innocence! Stay assured, you're still alive only because of meeting him in the right part of the second. Some tiny pinch of time earlier or later, and that vampire would have dropped aside your lifeless corpse already, with your blood system sucked-up dry and lymph nodes gnawed to tatters!.

Or let's take those same witches queuing to be burned at the stake and illuminate the darkness of the Middle Ages. The gloomy blockheads of executioners could not understand that they were burning not the right ones, and at the wrong moment.

My point is, no matter how – at the stake, on the pale, in the guillotine, on the electric chair, in the gallows, against a wall facing the firing squad… well, whatever!.. they always execute the guiltless. These are not those ones, those were not these. No!. Wait!. Oops… Too late… The pattern iterates in the same endless vicious loop…

But even those, at the moment of wrong-doing, were simply order-executing tools. Whose orders? Who were they toiling for? Well, if I had the answer to that question, would I be still living here, eh?

One thing is clear, though. Between the tool engaged at the operation end and the don of mafia there lies a chain of several links making the "who" practically untraceable. Because, if we paraphrase the favorite expression of my Uncle Vadik, which he picked at the history classes in School 13:

"a zombie of my zombie is not my zombie"…)

Hearing your heartrending cry from the bedroom, I rushed there and was just in time. You were wriggling in the carriage under the open leaf in the window, and your grandmother, drooping over you, went on with her incantation, "Little angel! Little angel!" While you were getting torn apart in screams.

"Gaina Mikhailovna! She's not an angel but a girl!"

In her responding glance, there glinted the malice from the one who had sent her, but lacking arguments to refute my statement, she silently left.

I knew for sure that prevailing upon a baby whose infirm psyche hasn't got adequate training, who, as of yet, too feebly orients herself in the world, was wrong, especially persuading her that she was an angel. And more so under the window open widely! Like, inviting – fly to where it's nice, where angels like you frisk and flutter around happily!

I started to convince you that you were a girl named Lille and nothing of an angel at all. You still kept crying but not so desperate as before when the soul was being wrenched in efforts to escape the mortal body.

Yet, what was the matter? I put you onto the bed and unwrapped the swaddle; you cried on, arching your infant torso… The reason was found in the soles of the tiny feet both wearing the stretches of whitish arachnoid fiber like those rascal-marking fluffs on my camel's-hair coat. I rinsed them off. Blinking your blue eyes in surprise, you calmed down. I swaddled you back again and took over to the carriage where you peacefully fell asleep…

Ironing your swaddles was my responsibility so that I would keep everything under control, watched closely. And it was also me to hang them, after washing, out over the common linen ropes in the apartment-block yard.

The ropes ran from the central pillar like spokes from a wheel hub. It’s where I learned that I had allies in this world because alone I would hardly solve the problem of hanging swaddles the right way. I mean it, really, which way to put them on the rope – face down or back down? I put the first one this way, the second upside-down. And that very moment, a white dove came from above, lit on the central pillar and cooed in protest.

Aha! Thank you, friend! I'll keep to the instruction!

Since then I was hanging a whole load of swaddles homogeneously…

Zhomnir suddenly lost all of his interest in my translations from Maugham. He cut off his usual cheerful threats to take them one of these days to "matchmaking" in Kiev. Instead of encouragements, there came languid explanations that it was necessary to take into account the ongoing changes in conjuncture. That the following year there would be the centenary of another English writer. Translations from that one would be much easier to shove thru. And Maugham, actually, was a gay person…

Well, let's say, rendering the story about a young suicide pianist, I was able to figure out his orientation by myself. However, in what gutter would this here best of the worlds be today without the gay composer Tchaikovsky? Either Maugham or nothing!

Alexander Vasilyevich shrugged his shoulders…

In the living room at Red Partisans in the presence of Gaina Mikhailovna, I complained to Eera about Zhomnir's double-dealing. They both knew about my ambiguous ambitions to become a literary translator. Eera started pathetic exclamations while my mother-in-law, without any comment, went out to Tonya's bedroom and returned with a powder box. She opened it, powdered her face in front of the mirror in the wardrobe door, and took it back in the same tacit manner. That's all.

In the evening, Zhomnir rang the doorbell and invited me to go out with him into the yard. His bicycle leaned against the house wall by the staircase-entrance. Under the dark foliage of the thick Cherry crowns behind the common linen ropes, twilight was already gathering and creeping towards the hung laundries. From the neighboring apartment block sounded The Eagles' Hotel California:

"Warm smell of colitas rising up in the air…"

I did not know at that time what a tragically creepy end the song had, and simply was getting on high from the concluding guitar break…

Zhomnir obviously envied the atmosphere around, but then he started to talk business. As it stood, my translations had ceased to be mere scribbling, yet still remained in a ballpark, kinda a beta version. He did not insist on changing the author, but let them be upgraded to the alpha…

He left, and I respectfully admired the skills of the old school. With all their ignorance about the textual formatting of the world, and with the naive belief in bewitching thru the cooked sausage, yet just a single powdering was enough to overpower Zhomnir and seize him by the gills! Well done, mother-in-law!.

Apart from the baby’s security considerations, the swaddle ironing was needed to pass the time… Eera, as a mother with a newborn, was exempt from working off for her diploma. I got an appointment somewhere in the Transcarpathia. The exacter location was not of much concern to me because I did not plan to work at school in any place at any time. So, Gaina Mikhailovna (since I was so brave) came up with an idea to follow the example of Komsomol members from the earlier generations who recklessly went to erect new cities that were not yet on the map. And, by the way, there was an article in the newspaper that nearby Odessa they started to build a new city-port of Yuzhny…

It was decided that I would go there as soon as you became one month old because it was still not easy for Eera to keep you single-handed. Thus, I was whiling away the pre-launch month with the swaddles and walking the carriage, where you were sleeping in. Only I had to keep to the strict instructions and never-never move the tulle cover fixed on the raised top to screen the baby inside. And after the month expired, and you passed your medical examination, the tulle could be removed and substituted with a traditional safety pin for keeping safe from evil eye…

the most final
concluding work

:from the personal
site
of
a graphomaniac

~ ~ ~