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…

Next week, coming back to the Plant after the midday break I, as always, dropped into Vladya's khutta to flock and go on together. Vladya shared the news about one of his neighbor's hens who died in the yard that morning and concluded with the suggestion of taking the body over with us to hang it in our locker room, just for fun.

The plan did not inspire me too much but I still lent Vladya a helping hand in smuggling the demised into the Plant because you needed both your hands to climb the wall along Professions Street but if dragging along a newspaper package with a dead hen, you had nothing to grab hold of those holes in the concrete slabs with…

From the locker room ceiling there hung a length of wire for a light bulb, which was missing together with its socket. Vladya took someone's unfinished shabashka from under the window, rested it on a locker in the middle row, climbed upon the work in progress and wrapped the unemployed wire around the hen's neck. She froze up there with her dirty white wings spread loosely above the naked skinny legs.

The midday break was over and the Mechanical Shop Floor machine-tools started their scraping wails when a plump black-haired locksmith from the Repair Unit entered the room. Catching a glimpse of the bird, he did not laugh but left immediately. In a split-second our Overseer, Borya Sakoon, flew in.

With his eyebrows shot up and the lips pouched to farm the small letter "o", motionlessly stood he for one entire moment staring at the listless animal above his uplifted face. Then he turned over to us, "Hairy-yobbos! You did it, bitches!"

For some unadvertised reason, Borya was in the habit of calling The Orpheuses working at the Experimental Unit "the hairy-yobbos"…

We, certainly, denied the allegation but Vladya took the dead bird off, wrapped it back into the same newspaper and dropped somewhere outside the Repair Shop Floor. In the final analysis, Borya was right – with merely two eyewitnesses, by the end of that working day the entire Repair Shop Floor knew that the hairy-yobbos (the workingmen masses slavishly aped the Overseer’s example in calling us that name) fixed a chick in the locker room. And if the thing remained there for at least half-hour it would inevitably kick off grim rumors circulating Konotop about someone got hanged at the KahPehVehRrZeh Plant…

~ ~ ~

Olga and I ceased dating at the gate of her aunt's khutta because we found a more suitable place, or rather she showed it to me.

A little farther along Budyonny Street, there was a short dead-end to the left, leading up to the closed iron gate of the oil storage base. Near that gate, by the garden fence on the roadside, there stood a park bench. Who and when schlepped it so far from the Park I couldn't say but, strategically, it was positioned in an impeccably correct spot wrapped in the shadow out of reach of the feeble light from the bulb above the closed base gate. On that bench, I got acquainted in absentia with Olga's Konotop relatives…

Her mother's sister, Nina, immediately after the war served as a telephone net switcher at the headquarters of a Soviet Army division stationed in Poland. On her demobilization, Nina didn't return to the Soviet Union because she had married a Pole and they had a child already, so Nina stayed to live in her husband’s land.

4 years later, she arrived in Konotop to attend the funeral of one of her parents and that was a mistake. They never let her go back despite the fact that her young daughter remained in Poland, and the country itself was a member of the Socialist Camp Community. She never found out what happened to her daughter or her husband nor did she know anything about their current situation, because none of her letters was answered.

After 15 more years, Aunt Nina registered her marriage to Uncle Kolya who did not drink and had a good job in the forestry, only he often needed to go somewhere by his motorcycle with a sidecar. Yet, he had built a really good khutta of three rooms and a kitchen. They had no children and adopted a baby girl, named her Olya and were very fond of her. Not long ago they bought a piano for Olya although it's, probably, too late to start playing it at eleven.

Aunt Nina worked at the Meat-Packing Plant in three shifts. To reach her workplace she had to walk two kilometers along the railway track on the city outskirts. But on the other hand, her family didn't need buying meat at Bazaar because even though the bags of workers after their shifts were looked thru at the Meat-Packing Plant check-entrance, they never frisked the panties of exiting women…

And on that same bench, we talked about Art. For example, there we discussed the "Romeo and Juliet" after watching the movie together in the basement cinema at Loony.

"They talked and talked and I could not make a damn thing out what all their talks were about, yet tears were dripping from my eyes all the same just like by some fool…”

It was also there (I'm still about the bench) that Olga harpooned me up, hard and securely. She uttered just one phrase but if you're a born patsy of graphomaniac you're in a deep trap.

"Yesterday I entered in my diary: ‘…when he kissed me goodbye I was devastatingly happy.’”

Dammit! You're done for! And there is no way out! Firstly, in many tons of the read and re-read literary output, I had never come across such an expression " devastatingly happy". Secondly, she kept a diary! Thirdly, but not lastly, I was there in that journal!.

After the dances, we sometimes saw her girlfriend Sveta to the porch of Sveta's khutta. At so late a time the Konotopers who dwelt in khuttas did not venture into their yards, more so Sveta's Granny and Grandpa. After giggling by our side for the stretch of a smoke, Sveta went in to bed, and the porch with the narrow plank bench was left at our disposal.

On one of such evenings, Olga told me to wait on that porch while she'd be gone to her khutta because Aunt Nina had the third shift that day and Uncle Kolya left by his motorcycle for someplace in the district.

It took a long wait before from the neighboring yard came the tinkle of the handle-latch in the wicket closed by departing Aunt Nina. A few minutes later, Olga appeared at the porch and mutely beckoned me to follow. We went out into the back-alley and noiselessly entered the yard of her khutta.

The door from the veranda opened to a large kitchen succeeded by an even larger living-room to the right, and a bedroom to the left, both separated from the kitchen by cloth curtains in the doorways. After the living-room, there was another bedroom for Olga and small Olya. We did not go there but turned into the owners' bedroom to the left.

Olga switched on the feeble night-light lamp and went out to the bedroom behind the living room. I was left alone facing the large double bed of a ceremonial aspect dimly glinting its nickel-plated siderails, and a smaller, more casual, bed next to the curtains in the doorway to the kitchen. Tight grip of unrelenting tension overwhelmed me.

She returned in a dressing gown whose unbuttoned sides were kept in place by her arms folded on its front. Not uttering a word, we both looked at the smaller bed and Olga put out the light. Under the gown, she had only panties on. I hastened to follow the suit reserving just my underpants. Then, in the bed, there followed a long wordless wrestling match for each of her dressing gown sleeves. Finally, I threw the whole item on a chair by the wall, the score of the clothes we had on became even – 1:1.

When I turned over to her, she lay on her back under the cover pulled up to her chest shielded by her tightly crossed arms. I felt it was chilly in the room and got under the cover too. The scramble to peel her small panties off took no less efforts than that about the large dressing gown. At last, there we were both stark naked, next to the cover shoved aside because it got darn hot under it. And then…

Then she writhed and dodged furiously from under me, pushing my hands away. I managed only to rub my cock between her thighs and against the tiny turf of hair without knowing what was what but feeling just a little more and…Now, almost…about there…Damn, she turned off again!.