the most final
concluding work

Skully also dropped out of the Railway Transportation College and entered our Experimental Unit which was a smart move. They didn’t pay him any scholarship there but after getting the diploma he’d be sent to slave in the middle of one or another nowhere. Did he really need it?

So three of The Orpheuses got together. As for Chuba, he worked at the Car Repair Shop Floor put there by some protective hairy hand because a carpenter’s profession is cleaner than ours and better paid for, we scarcely ever ran into each other in the Plant.

And we continued to play dances even when Vladya chiseling sheet-iron peened heartily his finger. Club paid each of us thirty-six rubles a month. It seemed too little, but what could we do? At our attempt at talking business to the Club Director, he said that after buying the electric guitar for one 150 rubles there remained no funds to increase our salary.

True, the guitar of Iolanta brand was a classy thing – so neatly streamlined and it sounded miles better than make-it-yourself ones after The Radio magazine guide, Iolanta’s smooth scarlet gleam eclipsed and turned them into pieces of spray-painted plywood.

Soon after, I was sent together with Projectionist Konstantin Borisovich to the city of Chernigov after new instruments from the local music factory there – the bass, and rhythm electric guitars. Pavel Mitrofanovich talked to the Plant Management and I was exempted from work for two days, because of the long way to Chernigov and back.

There we stayed overnight in a hotel as business travelers, and at nine in the morning we were at the factory. Konstantin Borisovich went to talk with their management and I had to wait in the corridor for a couple of endless hours. At last, they called me in for checking the guitars which had no cases, and were much heavier than Iolanta, and covered even if with the glossy but black lacquer. It was clear at once that the factory hadn't yet mastered the electric guitar manufacture or, maybe, Konstantin Borisovich did not have enough funds on him to purchase some better products. Although, when we brought the caseless instruments to Konotop, Chuba admitted that the bass guitar would do.

The following Monday in the Repair Shop Floor locker room, Vladya kicked up agitation for us, all the Orpheuses, to get exemption from work for health reasons. His idea was to visit the Plant Medical Center with complaints about the sausage we ate the day before when playing trash at a wedding which snack was certainly stale. Only we had to go all together and keep saying the same thing.

So we found Chuba in the Car Repair Shop Floor and the 4 of us arrived in the Medical Center facilities all ill because of the bummer sausage we never ate.

The doctor suggested us get seated on chairs under the corridor wall and sent the nurse to the Plant Bath House after tin basins which were brought and lined on the floor at our feet – one basin for each of the ailing Orpheuses. The morbid preparations were crowned with her fetching a bucket of luke-warm water which she made purple pouring in a handful of potassium permanganate.

The doctor came back from his office and explained that the concoction should be drunk in liters before poking two fingers into the mouth, each person their own, to tickle the root of each respective tongue as deep as possible, which procedure would remedy the obvious food poisoning.

The macabre aspect of the basins in their waiting position on the floor as well as the instructions delivered with an unmistakable sadistic pleasure worked like a charm on both Chuba and Skully, their crises was over in no time to speak of and, leaving no traces, they hurried to their respective workplaces.

However, Vladya’s and my cases evinced a graver nature and we staunchly endured the whole hog of the procedure throwing up into the basins everything that we had for breakfast that morning. The doctor, impressed by our obstinacy, gave us exemption for the current working day.

We changed and left thru the Main Check-Entrance in the crowd of workers going out to the canteen for the midday break. Thus, for all our pains and labors we got just scarce 4 hours of freedom, all in all, and the next morning – get back to the mill, O, boy!.

The Club Director, Pavel Mitrofanovich, kept us informed that Club was fixin' to buy an electric organ Yonika to be played by Lyokha Kuzko as the fifth Orpheus. Lyokha had thinning but long, reddish hair and sported a horseshoe-shaped mustache a-la The Pesnyary to somehow distract the public attention from the severe bend in his nose, the legacy of some old-times fight. Because of that disfigured nose, his handle was Rhinoceros.

He was seven years older than us, yet he was a cool dude who had The White Album by The Beatles on his tape-recorder which he played to Vladya and me when he invited us to his place. His father, Anatoly Efimovich Kuzko, the teacher in button-accordion class at Club, had built for Rhinoceros a red-brick two-story house in the yard of his fatherly khutta. The first floor was the garage with a sheet-iron gate, and on the second floor, there were two rooms and a kitchen. Some folks could live conveniently, anyway. Yet, the garage stayed empty of any car because Kuzko Senior did not buy it for Lyokha who was drinking like a fish for which reason his wife Tatyana left him taking their baby daughter away.

Besides The White Album, Lyokha also shared The Forensic Medicine Textbook to look thru. The yellowish aged pages had lots of black-and-white photographs with explanatory notes beneath them.

Knowing the illustrations by heart, Lyokha shared his favorite spot in the textbook, where there were rows of small-sized pictures (3 by 2 cm, like for a passport), demonstrating the difference between intact and dented hymens.

Climbing up and down the Plant concrete wall at midday-meal breaks was a real shortcut that spared a half-kilometer walk if compared to going thru the Main Check-Entrance.

At home, I warmed up soup or vermicelli on the kerogas in the veranda and took the meal into the kitchen where I doffed my spetzovka pants and jacket keeping only my tank top and underpants on. It caused no inconvenience to anyone because with the parents at work and the younger ones at their College I was home alone.

The reason for taking off my working clothes was those surplus ten minutes before going back to the Plant. While eating, you could use a stool even with your dirty spetzovka on, yet smearing the couch or an armchair with it was not right.

To fill the odd ten minutes up, I strummed the guitar and screamed different songs to train my vocal skills which I have never had. Yet, I sang all the same – may Beata Tyszkiievich, a professional Polish beauty torn from a color magazine and pinned above the folding bed-couch, forgive me as well as The Who in the black-and-white photo next to her. They also witnessed one time how my wild wails happened to bring about a boner and, grabbing from the desk under the window a ruler left behind by the younger gone to their college, I measured my cock. Locksmithing definitely instills respectful attitude towards knowledge of specific details…

One day, coming back after the midday break, Vladya and I saw Skully on a bench of the Overseers’ Nest in the company of Borya Sakoon and some stranger in clean clothes.

"Here they're coming," said Overseer, and the man suggested us, including Skully as well, to go along with him. From the flitting farewell grimace on Borya Sakoon’s mug, we could get it that the invitation was issued by a representative of law-enforcement organs, staying in the dark though as to why.

Clad in our faded T-shirts with no spetzovka jackets on because of a sunny, hot, October day, we followed his athletic figure in a tartan shirt walking contrary to the flow of latecomers who leisurely sauntered from the canteen in the square outside the Main Check-Entrance gate. Everything went as usual, and only we were pulled out and estranged from the routine life of the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant.

"Where to, smarties?" asked Peter Khomenko flashing a broad smile from the counter-directed stream of workmen, yet, at the abrupt turnabout of our escort, his mirth dried up at once and he accelerated his pace towards the Mechanical Shop Floor, not caring to wait for an answer.

"Who's that?" asked our guard-and-guide alertly. I replied that was my tutor, and we left the Plant thru the Main Check-Entrance.

He told us to get into the Volga thru whose windshield shimmering in the sunshine, there peeped Chuba’s face wearing a nervous smile, and they took us to the City Militia Department, which was next to the Passport Bureau.

Behind the gate to the City Militia Department, there was a wide yard-coral bounded by barrack-type one-story buildings. We were separated and led to different rooms in different buildings where different people began to ask us questions and write down our responses.

Of course, not everything in the proceedings got recorded. For instance, the interrogation of Skully started as follows, "Do you know that fucking moron?"

"Which moron?"

"The one who brought you here."

"No, I dunno."

"That was Head of the Criminal Investigation Department."

"No, I dunno."

At that moment I was interrogated by the mentioned f-f…er…well, I mean, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department.

Seated at the large desk, pretty hunky, with his hair sticking closely to the skull, he asked who the day before was present at the rehearsal in the Variety Ensemble room in Club… And who was the last to leave?. Who was approaching the closet where so much expensive German accordion of four registers had been kept?.

He took notes all the time and when the phone on his desk rang, the receiver got picked and pressed to his ear with his shoulder raised to the tilted head, the way Marlon Brando did in the movie where he was the sheriff, while the moron kept writing on…

After interrogating all of us, they told us we were free to go and might be getting back to work… We sauntered up along the street to the Department Store and turned left towards Peace Square. 4 Orpheuses in smeared spetzovka pants and old T-shirts… Along Peace Avenue, we also strolled in no hurry – the working day was ending at five.

In Zelenchuk Area, we had a bit of fun, jumping at each other like Mazandaran tigers and tearing down the worn T-shirts on our bodies. We did not stop the revelry until all the four T-shirts were torn wide open from their collars to the waist. And why not? The day was sunny and pretty warm, so we simply tied the tatters with knots upon our navels and went on, like happy hippies. It was Skully to start the whole horseplay, probably, because he had such a hairy chest…