the most final
concluding work

End February, a year after I told Mother that I agreed to be operated on, I had to lie under the knife. A manly man should keep his word, ain't it?

Starting in the evening and all night long, my stomach ached sharply and the ambulance, called in the morning, diagnosed the appendix that had to be removed before too late. I walked to the vehicle myself but there I had to lie down in the canvas stretcher placed on the floor. Mother also wanted to go, but along Nezhyn Street, there was walking an acquaintance of hers, who was late for her work, and Mother forwent her place to the woman who she always praised as a very good legal consultant deserving all the possible respect.

In the City Hospital, despite the urgency of my diagnosis, they were too lazy to carry me on the stretcher, and I had to walk up to the second floor myself. There I changed into the blue hospital gown over a white shirt with no buttons and walked to the operation room.

They helped me to lie onto the long tall table and fixed all my extremities to it by wide sturdy belts. A white sheet was thrown over a tall frame above my face so that I could not see what they were doing to my tied up parts. A nurse, whom I also could not see, stood behind my head and asked all sorts of diverting questions. The interview was obviously intended to substitute the general anesthesia because they only syringed some local anesthetic in my stomach.

The injection took effect, I followed how they were splitting me down there and getting into my abdomen but it felt somehow in a distanced way as if they were doing it to my pants, although at the moment I had nothing on but the hospital shirt on me. A couple of times it really hurt though, so that I even groaned but the invisible nurse behind my pate began to pour a fiddle-faddle of what a gutsy patient I was, she never saw so brave, so I shut up to let them finish their business without any distracting noise. However, to a cot in the long corridor, I was taken on a gurney, after all.

Two days later they brought me a note from Vladya. He wrote that he was down in the reception hall but they did not let him pass thru, and our class would come to see me when I was allowed to get up, and I should recover as soon as possible because Chuba grew violently untamed and kept jumping at Vladya like a Mazandaran tiger.

After the surgery, they warned me to hold back coughing and avoid any straining so that the stitches keep the cut. But could you really avoid it when having such friends?

"Chuba Maza.." And, crushing the paper slip in my fist, I pushed my face into the pillow to keep back the rolling up round of laughter.

"Mandara.. tiger.”

Hha! Haha!

"Ouch! It hurts!"

And even after I managed, with a lot of preservative stops, to read up the note, there was no way to ward off the jerky lines popping time and again up in my mind.

"Tiger Chuba Mazanda…”

Haha! Haha!

And tears seeped thru my eyelids squeezed so tightly. Vladya! You're worse than a tiger, O, son of a bitch!.

Ten days later I was discharged, and in one more week came to the hospital to have the stitches thread pulled from my stomach, and collect the reference releasing me from PE classes for one month…

By the by, Vladya's scrawl was more cryptic than a team of famous detectives could possibly decipher with all their methods of elementary deduction.

Half of the written essays he handed in were not even read by the Literature teacher who returned them unchecked but fiercely gashed, crisscross, in red ink. On some occasions, he even failed himself to make out heads or tails in his own graffiti and turned to me for assistance.

I was the expert arbitrator in his cryptographic disputes with Zoya Ilyinichna, "No, there is nothing wrong with the spelling, he always writes "e" that way, and this one stands for "a" by him."

"What "e"? What "a"? They're just ticks!"

"Yes, for sure, but that tick's tail is, like, a bit longer. See?"

I had a rough talk with Father when he said I should have my hair cut, for it already was as long as it’s damn hard to find a name for. And because of my looks, he was summoned to the Zampolit at the RepBase.

The enterprise repaired not just helicopters, but military machines and instead of Directors or Managers they had high-rank officers and Zampolit’s post was that of Deputy Commander at the RepBase. Now, that Commander simply ordered Father to stop his son from being a frightful sight in the city.

True, I did have a yan for sporting long hair like that by The Beatles. And even though the length of theirs was beyond my reach, my hair had already grown enough to touch the top of the shoulder blades when I threw my head back as far as I could to marvel my profile reflected by the mirror in the wardrobe door. At a recent CJR match, I performed the Dean Reed's hit "Jerico" hopping on the stage with a muted mike and whipping my face with my hair.

One good whipping deserved another. How would the RepBase Zampolit know that I was a son of their worker? As if few other Beatles fans were hanging out around the city. I had been told on, and no doubt about it.

However, I couldn't have words with Father for too long because I was sitting on his neck, and Zampolit threatened him with firing if I kept my hair any more…

A vigorous infection swept over our school in spring. The acutest cases of grave epidemic forms were registered in our grade which definitely turned its main locale and spiller…

Vladya and I were seated on stools at the last desk. Quite ordinary stools whose black-painted seats had oblong holes in their center to insert your hand for conveniently moving it to some different place if needed. Their commonness became a challenge… When we wiped off our foreheads the sweat from selfless toil, the black seats of our stools bore deep white scars crying out, ‘THE BEATLES! THE ROLLING STONES!”, and we looked around – what else could supply us a sufficient pastime?

Some unlimited naivety indeed – what could be out there to busy yourself with in a graduating class? Actually, nothing… Still and all, we gave the boredom a slip – we started writing poetry.

It was a prolific poetic eruption turned out in various forms and genres. At the break, we presented our creations to the classmates. We laughed and they were laughing too, unaware that the virus of poeticizing had already started the invisible undoing of their immune systems. Many of them began trying their hand at the production of rhymed lines. Even Chuba turned out some trifle of an epigram. But the indisputable crest-riders in that wave were sitting, sure enough, on the maimed stools at the last desk… Fortunately, the epidemic eventually died down without fatalities.

So, as it was said already, that year we lost the CJR final to the prestigious School 11. In the Contest of Greetings, we schlepped on stage a dummy ship of cardboard, exactly the same as two months before us they dragged out at the Central Television CJR. And they also joked our jokes there, two months before. Both the ship and jokes were still fresh in the memory of the jury members and we were accused of blatant plagiarism in the end.

The team of School 11 came out in top hats made of blackened Whatman paper and finishing their Greeting they presented the hats to our team. I did not get my share, because their Captain left his one on the jury desk to bribe them into the right choice when taking the right decision.

After the defeat, going home without shields yet in top hats, our team members were doffing the paper head-gears at the Settlement crossroads to bye-bye each other and I felt hurt that only I didn't have the thing.

By the moment when the streetcar stop at School 13 was reached, there remained just 2 of all the team – Valya Pisanko and me. And then I insidiously asked Valya for her top hat, like, just to try it on. She credulously gave it and, clapping the paper thing onto my head, I ran away along Nezhyn Street.

I knew she wouldn't follow, she lived in Podlipnoye and had to turn in the opposite direction. Indeed, she didn't chase and only screamed behind, "Sehrguey! Give it back! It's not fair!" I knew it was not fair, but I did not return and did not give it back. Why should I?

The next morning in the lean-to which served my summer bedroom already, I was nauseated by the sight of that piece of Whatman paper blackened with gouache, some disgusting loot.

~ ~ ~