the most final
concluding work

The winter broke out somehow straightaway, the snowdrifts piled high up as if they always were there… Before the dances, I went to pick up Olga. She introduced me to the khutta's elders and betters who turned so glad and full of invitations to take my coat off, get seated and have a drink, but, no, thank you, I still had to work that night and it was time for us to leave. So Olga got dressed and we left.

Yet, it was a bit early for Club because we weren't moving the equipment from the stage and only locked the Mirror Hall after the dances. To pass the spare time, we visited the bench by the oil storage Base. Olga had a bottle of wine in her bag and we drank it, not too much though just to tone up in general as well as to get warm. And then we went to Club treading the crunchy snow crust tightened by the traffic's tires and treds in the passers’-by footwear…

Already at night, moonless and dark, yet with the myriads of bright star-specks pricking the sky everywhere, we came to revise the unfinished bottle of red wine stashed away in the snowdrifts… The wine felt too cold for making you warm, and as tasteless as ice. We scarcely drank half of what was still there and had a smoke.

Then I unbuttoned my coat, she unbuttoned hers and got seated in my lap. We had already used to treat each other as personal property. I might freely run my hand deep into her pantyhose to reach the convex concavity item which I missed on the crazy cuckoo's night. She, in her turn, casually undid my belt and unbuttoned the fly for a comfortable grip at my boner.

Everything went on in the usual groove with long, like a protracted dive into another dimension, kisses blended in. But, all of a sudden, there happened something of which I couldn’t understand what or how but only that it was somewhere else… where I got into… out of myself… and mingling with… the fusion grew firmer with each push… no I remained anymore just we… we… we… and nothing else… unmakeoutable… doesn't matter… and all's swimming… blurred with blindfolding mist… what's that?. What?!. Oh, no!. More!.

The connection was lost. The night slowly emerged back from nowhere… the snowdrifts… the bench… there again… A couple of thrusts after the elusive new world showed there was nothing to sustain, to return, to keep on with.

We broke apart becoming her and me again. Stunned, I stood up.

That same bulb from up its post. Winks of sparks from the snowdrifts around. The black sky in pin-pricks of stars…

When no one would think of thinking…

Where's my hat? Dammit, wherever be it can wait…

November 17… 17-year-old locksmith apprentice… lost his virginity…

And she?

Saying goodbye to her, so quaintly quiet, by the khutta of her aunt, I realized that now it was my duty to be stronger than she and I did not have to give much thought to anything else, from now and forever and ever.

The following evening I came to the Evening School of Working Youth where Olga at times attended classes because Aunt Nina pressed for the paper about her finishing eighth grade.

After the break bell, she went out into the corridor and left with me skipping the rest of the classes. I saw Olga to her aunt's khutta following her heated report about the record-making bleeding she had the previous night.

It was not possible, of course, for our love affair to melt the ice and snow of the winter all around us, yet all the winter snow and ice could not suppress our flaming ardor. Moreover, we fanned the passion's flame at the least opportunity.

The snow-clad bench by the oil storage Base was soon rejected because of its unwanted backrest… The sheet-iron trailer by the tiny ice rink in the Plant Park was more convenient, but it took an unbearably long stretch of time waiting until the bros would finish their wine, then go thru their atomic reports to each other about what kind and which dosage of alcohol they consumed earlier on that day and which circumstances led to having it in their current composition, concluding the brag session with argumentative punches at each other's mug (without drawing the knife though), before they, at last, dispersed.

Drawing the knife when Kolyan was around, a bro could just as well kiss it goodbye before the inexorably pending confiscation… Kolyan O’ Settlement was a specimen of the increasingly scanty breed of heroes. Not too large an exemplar though, he was only 1 meter and 80, and utterly laconic. On the other hand, he didn't really need to flash eloquence because a fleeting glance at those fists about 20 kilos each was enough to dry up any wish for odd discussions. Even for a dumbo repeatedly surprised with a sandbag on his conk from around the corner, it was immediately clear that Kolyan would make a toast of him in less than 6 secs flat. Among the bros, of course, he could say a thing or 2, only you had to sit on a sufficient stock of patience while waiting till his words were out, after all.

Admittance to the trailer was granted us because he miscalculated me for a champion-bro in a specific line which irrevocable mistake he entertained since my "engagement" with Olga back in summer as we just started going out together.

One evening starting off to the Plant Park, I spruced my little finger up with a ring cajoled out of my sister. A casual tawdry fake it was with a splinter of glass or something. Rather reluctantly, Natasha farmed it out after I swore it was just for that one time.

In the Plant Park, Olga and I climbed up to the projectionist booth in the summer cinema whose key was obtained from the younger projectionist, Grisha Zaychenko. The moment she saw the ring on my little finger, Olga clung tighter than a leaf from the sauna whisker in the steam-room: who gave me that?

Borrowed from Kiddy, said I, my younger sister.

With outright disbelief, Olga demanded the thing for a closer inspection. Hardly had I passed the ring when she clapped it on her finger, some other than the little one though.

Okay, says I, that was enough for showing off and let her give it back for I had promised Natasha to return, it was, like, from her boyfriend.

At that point, Olga took heed and tried to take the ring off but – no go! She twirled, and pulled, and spat at the darn thing to no avail, the ring snapped real tight on. The date turned into a dungeon torture session until she somehow managed to force it over her finger joint.

When, at last, I shoved the cursed ring into my hip-pocket, we were not fit for kisses and stuff with Olga's finger hurt and swollen and me feeling sorry for her. So I locked the booth and we left…

Now, Kolyan at that same period was picking up steam in the ticket office together with the Plant Park watchman, and he observed who it was coming down from above. And what could he possibly have thought, if from the booth portholes, for some half-hour the female moans were floating over the entire summer cinema?

"Oh, my! Mmmm! Ouu! Ay!"

That’s why, he kinda thought: where, in such a small…well.. thing…could it…sort of…be sitting? In a word, he respected me as a bro hero, only from another branch.

And for all those reasons, coming on a visit to the sheet-iron trailer and having sat in heated expectation thru the ongoing stupid debates of the present booby jerks on that it was high time to kick the ass of the Peace Square hippies who lately had become way too hippy, and when at last they’d free the premises of their presence happy with their being such cool goons, we still had to wait until Kolyan would finish his endless explanation as to where…well…to…kinda put…the key…well…of…sort of…the trailer…

The warmest feelings were left by the long sheepskin coat of Aunt Nina in which Olga once ventured from the khutta wicket. We descended into the snow-filled Grove with the patches of smooth hard ice of the frozen Swamp and it was good, but, as always, not enough…

~ ~ ~

At Plant, the term of our apprentice training expired and we began to get the payment of 70 rubles a month – almost as much as other locksmiths. Now, cutting the iron with a chisel, we no longer hammer-squashed our fingers and we (the hairy yobbos) were even trusted with the manufacture of an experimental product from scratch… It's interesting.

We scrutinized the intangible speculative thought turned into the visual lines of blue-prints specked with countless figures to indicate dimension. Observing those figures, we asked the gas cutter to cut the necessary pieces out from 20 mm-thick sheet iron, asked the marker to delineate the contours, asked the planer to scratch odd metal off to the markings, asked the welder to weld this one to that, and that to another…

Why so many requests? Well, because everyone's busy, sort of… Sometimes from the request to its execution, it took weeks of waiting, or go and ask once again…

And—lo!—the skeleton of the product-in-progress on the deck-rack outta the Repair Shop Floor grew with the added assemblage parts, began to gradually acquire engaging looks. Overseer ceased to call us "hairy yobbos" at every turn, and the Experimental Unit locksmiths drop the stale joke about the launch date of our "Lunokhod-2", aka Lunar Rover.

At that point Manager of the Experimental Unit ordered to deliver the already thoroughly-smeared cardboard folder with the multitude of blue-prints to Yasha and Mykola-the-old letting the more skilled workforce finalize the disembodied technical idea in weighty tangibility… It hurts.

The following product was simply ruined by us… Using lots of material, we assembled the massive stand “Glory to Labor!” on the deck-rack and called Borya Sakoon to assess the accomplished work before erecting it on the square in front of the Main Check-Entrance. The overseer looked thru the blueprints and said something was wrong though he couldn’t put the finger on it.

Engineer-Technologist climbed down from the Shop Floor Management Office above the locker room and joined Borya’s negative appraisal – yes, something was certainly amiss, not quite the thing. However, neither separately nor together, they could tell exactly what’s not right, even after checking the dimensions of the manufactured monument with a tape measure.

The author of the ill-starred project was called from the Design Bureau by the Plant Management. And it took a while even for him to discover the reason. We faithfully preserved all the subtleties of his idea and executed it in metal without any deviations except for producing the mirrored reflection of the blueprints. The product was cut to pieces and the square remained without the prospective architectural beautification…