As Is

The most handsome patient in the neighboring room joined her, chattering and explaining that Sanyok would soon appear—his treatment was about to end.

Meanwhile, Sanyok was shaking hysterically, sitting on his bed, strapping on his prosthetics. They helped him pull his pajama legs over them, and, tucking two crutches under his arms, he clumsily dragged his shortened body toward the exit.

But Valentina was a good girl; she sat on the bench for a full three minutes before he finally made it there. Then the same handsome patient led her along the short path to the unofficial exit through a hole in the wall.

And Sanyok had gotten drunk again that day…

~ ~ ~

Two days later, along the same path… I look and—I can't get it… it can't be! And who else, if not Olga? Yes, definitely her!

She ran up, we hugged, only her hair was already dark red, and she was wearing unfamiliar flared trousers with big yellow flowers.

That same evening, I went out to the park with her wearing those same trousers, and a tight turtleneck to go with them. And she, of course, was wearing her miniskirt.

On the dance floor, some locals started closing in; those yellow roses on my trousers must have gotten to them. But two 'ladles' from our unit recognized me and approached… One was dressed in civilian clothes, the other wore a 'peshA,' I don't even know which company they were from. The locals realized a construction battalion was going AWOL and dissolved…

. .. .

Olga's life is awash with news. She's gone back to Feodosia, and there's no room in the nursery there for babies. So she waited until the city executive committee chairman had his office hours, picked up Lenochka, and went. But he said the same thing: there's no room, that's all.

Then she simply placed Lenochka on his desk and left. The chairman rushed out into the hallway and ran after her all the way to the stairs: 'Citizen! Collect the child!' Anyway, there was room found.

Now Olga's mother is looking after her grandchild so she can come to me. But on the way to Stavropol, her money was stolen on the train. And my wedding ring is also missing. But that was back in Konotop. She wore it on her finger, even though it was wide. And while she was washing diapers, she didn't notice when the ring slipped into the basin. So and spilled it along with the water into the cesspool hole in the vegetable garden.

. .. .

The next day, she borrowed money for the return trip from the cook who was visiting Rezo at the time, and left along the same path, through the hole in the fence wall…

~ ~ ~

They removed the cast and discharged me. I took the free trolleybuses to the southeastern outskirts of Stavropol, and from the ring road, I walked under the tall trees along the highway to Elista, toward the Deminskaya fork. The dirt shoulder was covered with sparse, bright yellow leaves. The sun was shining, but it felt like autumn already. But where was summer?

A construction battalion truck pulled up on the highway, and the civilian driver shouted from the cab, 'Home?'

I said yes, home, and jumped into the truck back. Because, whether from work or from AWOL, we never returned 'to the barracks' or 'to the unit'. We were returning home…

~ ~ ~

There was some news at home, too. During my absence, our squad had lived through a wild hazing spree. They'd be driven out onto the parade ground after lights out and forced to walk in a circle, while squatted, before being beaten.

The worst offender was Karlookha from the second company; he liked to stab the 'youngsters' with a knife. Not too deeply, but until they bled. And he himself was a real pipsqueak, half a head shorter than a normal human.

Then, in the basement of a 50-apartment building, he lunged at Sergei Chernenko, nicknamed Gray, from Dnepropetrovsk, with his knife. But Gray had developed Zone skills for such showdowns, and he knocked him out. Karlookha's criminal swagger was based solely on his 'grandpahood', but the 'grandpas' from his conscription, who had served time and ate balanda rations, didn't enrolled against Gray on his behalf. So things seemed to have calmed down, but tensions remained.

. .. .

In the wake of this lingering tension, some 'pheasant' from our company pestered me: 'What's up? Acting a muster-thief?'

If you answer affirmatively, then explain how much and under what article the prosecutor demanded for you, and how the case ended. For me, criminal code articles are as sealed off area as organic chemistry formulas. If you say 'yes' not based on doing bird, you become an impostor, according to the Zone code, and face dire consequences. So I said 'no,' and he took me to the Lenin Room and started cutting my hair short with a manual clipper, because it was too long for a 'youngster'.

I didn't mind; it would grow back in two years. However, the clipper jammed and yanked a couple of times, quite painfully.

A plasterer from the third company was in the room, visiting his fellow Armenians. So, he offered to finish the haircut for the self-proclaimed barber.

'Pheasant' himself was already unhappy about having started the whole thing and passed him the clipper.

Anyway, Robert Zakarian finished my hair, and whenever the clipper jammed, he kept saying, 'Sorry!'

I'd already forgotten such words even existed…

~ ~ ~

Later, Robert started coming to the Club and became Orion's vocalist. He spoke with a rich Russian accent, having grown up in the Far North, where his father served time in a labor camp, for dissidence or something similar.

When his ancestor was released on parole in the same region, Robert's mother moved there, taking Robert and his younger brother from sunny Armenia.

When his sentence ended, Robert's father applied for his family to emigrate from the Soviet Union. Two years later, permission was granted, despite the fact that the applicant had already died.

With some time remaining before the emigration, Robert went to visit his Armenian relatives in the city of Sochi. There, he met a Russian girl named Valya and fell in love. They exchanged addresses, and upon returning to the North, Robert announced that he refused to leave the Soviet Union.

But all the paperwork had already been completed in the entire family's name, and without him, neither his mother nor his brother would be released. His brother tried to explain the situation to the enchanted through nightly no-holds-barred fights at his place of residence. However, Robert didn't give in, nor did he change his resolve to keep true to his promise to his beloved.

Then his mother introduced nightly crying into his daily routine, and eventually they landed in Paris, where they were met by relatives whose invitation had finally allowed them to be released.

. .. .

In Paris, he found work on a construction site. He didn't speak the language, had no friends, and his only dream was Valya from Tula…

A year later, as part of a tour group from France, Robert Zakarian arrived in Moscow, and on his very first evening, separating from his group at the hotel, he headed to Tula. He lived there for ten days, in Valya's parents' house, before her mother persuaded him to surrender to the authorities.

When he reported to the KGB in Tula, they were overjoyed, because their superiors in Moscow were already in an uproar over the disappearance of the Parisian tourist. Robert was taken to the airport and deported to France.

In Paris, he approached the Soviet Embassy, asking to be allowed back into the USSR to reunite with his beloved.

('Back to the USSR!' was his motto then. But, unfortunately, he didn't speak English either.)

He came there every week, and the embassy employee, with a tattoo of 'Tolik' on the back of his hand, shook his head and said there was no answer to his application…

It took Tolik a whole year to finally nod instead of shaking his head and say the answer was yes.

Robert arrived in Tula, married Valya, they had a daughter, and he was drafted into our construction battalion. He loved to show a black-and-white photograph of his family—himself on the left, broad-faced and dark-haired, looking out with the serious, wide-set eyes from under the thick, black eyebrows of a reliable family man; his wife, Valya, on the right: a white blouse and a round face in the frame of light-brown curls; their baby daughter between them, in a lace cap…

. .. .

So, you've got it messed up, demented ComBat! Our ranks aren't all cripples and convicts! We even have double emigrants here!

~ ~ ~

On November 7th, Orion gave its first concert on the stage of the MCU-11 Club.

Vladimir Karpeshin, aka Karpesha, played drums and hi-hat. Vladimir Rassolov and Robert Zakarian performed as lead vocals. Alexander Rudko sang along with them on bass guitar, and I played rhythm guitar. Silently.

Our vocal and instrumental ensemble even included a trumpeter, Kolya Komissarenko, aka Commissar, a short, dark-haired soldier of a cheerful Jewish looks from Dnepropetrovsk. He played diligently, but he was just as bad as I was in my singing. Every false note on the trumpet clearly tormented Rudko, but he endured it stoically.

Perhaps the presence of the trumpet on stage tickled the piercing nostalgia for his philharmonic past. To somehow survive the ultra-jazz outbursts, he repeatedly pared the trumpet part down to its bare minimum…

. .. .

For the concert, we changed into full parade crap (three of the Orionists in borrowed, as a construction battalion soldier only receives his dress uniform after serving one year in the Soviet Army).

The first number of the concert was 'The field, wide field' (a kinda patriotic one).

Rudko dreamed of doing it with a four-part arrangement, like Pesnyary band. However, due to the limited vocal range of the singers and the absolutely botched performance of Commissar's trumpet (which he himself stared at in amazement, his already bulging eyes wide open, but continued to stubbornly blow in the wrong direction until he reached the end), this philharmonic piece of crap was almost booed.

However, Robert Zakaryan received warm applause for his reworking of a French song (a kinda lyrical one). Its melody was on everyone's lips, accompanying—year after year, decade after decade—the weather forecast on the news program 'Vremya' on Central Television:

'Yes, I can forgive you all

And let to the sky like a bird free of thrall…'

Servicemen of Caucasian nationalities (primarily the Separate Company) enthusiastically greeted the song 'Eminnah' performed by Vladimir Rassolov (a kinda oriental comic song):

'Under the burka of your girlfriend

There's no girlfriend but your Grandpa.

Uh, Eminnah!…

And the song 'Rains' from the repertoire of Fofik (the 'Orpheuses' vocal-instrumental ensemble at the KEMP Cultural Center, Konotop), received a unanimous ovation ( a kinda hit of the season).

However, in his verbal review, the battalion's Political Officer, aka DepuPolit of the MCU-11, in a close group of musicians after the concert, the shoo-in song was the lowest-rated: 'Rudko! These fucking rains of yours have already fucked sick and tired any living soul!'

He gave his voice a saccharine, faggot-like tone, in the manner of aspiring pop stars: 'Rains… rains again… but you wait… no, I won't wait… and fuck you stupid fucker… '

We couldn't help but laugh. The Political Officer had never heard this song before, but he clearly grasped the essence of the lyrics of this type of mass-produced crap.

'I'll get through any rain,

'Cause I love you! Ou! Ou! Ou!…'

~ ~ ~

Once again, our squad experienced a change in command. Prostomolotov was transferred back to his squad, but he wasn't demoted from corporal because he wasn't caught with anything. It was just the ensign, the platoon commander, who had gotten mad at him, which prompted the rotation.

Most likely, at some point, he couldn't hide his intellectual superiority over the ensign. 'Acted a muster-thief' as they call it in the construction battalion.

Alik Aliyev, an Azerbaijani in tight, pheasantly-narrowed pants, replaced him. He was a tall, slender man with a handsome round face, where thin, clear skin stretched over high cheekbones and a well-developed jaw.

. .. .

A week later, he was promoted to corporal. On this solemn occasion, Alik Aliyev ordered the squad to form up, clapped his right fist into his left palm, and declared, bubbling with delight: 'Me be you fukka!'

However, he was a bit hasty in his predictions and cheerful anticipation. In our squad, there were some equally tall but more emotionally reserved privates who calmly and rationally shared with the corporal their standpoint (which he understood and accepted): while people who ended up in the construction battalion after the Zone don't leap too actively, he, who had been awarded this high honor merely on the basis of his poor command of Russian, would be better off displaying restraint and modesty, the ticket for many a wreck to survive in our harsh world, full of the never-ceasing struggle for existence.

As for me personally, he had never had hard felings from the start. While still a private, Alik happened to witness a situation in our company's Lenin Room, where two senior soldiers were explaining to Prostomolotov, then our squad commander, the principle that musicians were beyond certain provisions of the Internal Service Regulations…

. .. .

So we simply did our job—digging, laying, dragging, lifting—and after work, we got the rest that was possible under the construction battalion's conditions. Of course, we weren't allowed to lie down on top of the blankets on our beds in the quarters (that was the privilege of the 'grandpas'). But there were stools in the central aisle of the barracks—you could sit and repose, or in the Leninist utilra, because it had become too cold to sit out in the gazebo at the entrance to the barracks…

Then winter came. We were issued warm hats and quilted fooflo jackets. The GAZ’s and UAZ’s trucks that took us to work had canvas covers stretched over their backs, and even wooden benches were installed underneath, from side to side, so we no longer had to sit on haunches, gripping at each other’s shoulders…

~ ~ ~

In the blue darkness of the approaching night, our squad assembled after work at the foot of the nine-story building, but the truck was late picking us up. We even went out to meet it, across the remains of the forest belt, then another hundred meters, onto the sidewalk stretching toward the distant block of five-story buildings, empty of pedestrians at such a time of darkness. There we stood, undisturbed, in a wide circle, tapping our boots at each other to keep them from utter freezing…

Taunts, laughter, elbow-pokes, slaps on the shoulders—the usual excitement at the end of an ordinary workday, before heading off to the usual chow in the construction battalion mess hall.

I grew bored with the jokes and quips I'd heard many times before, and I headed back to the distant star glowing in the night—a light bulb hanging on the end wall of the nine-story building, which had imagined itself to be a lighthouse in the Drake Passage.

(… one way to overcome the drag of time is to trudge along the available space…)

So I trudged there, from where we came, knowing they wouldn't leave without me, just as they wouldn't leave without a couple of 'grandpas' still changing clothes in the nine-story building… The screams, laughter, and hoots of my comrades died down, plunging into the distance… I walked at a measured pace, thinking about nothing…

(… such states are also called 'beautiful soul’s languor', when you can't clearly formulate a fleeting thought, but still feel it was melancholy…)

Slowly, I entered the remains of the forest belt, when a muffled call came from the sad faraway. Something called me.

Coming back to the now and here, I reluctantly glanced back at the tailgate of the truck, which was backing up at full speed toward me.

There was no time to jump off, though my legs instinctively bent to kick the road. It was precisely my half-turned lean toward the intended jump that saved me—the impact of the tailgate boards, completing the movement I'd begun, sent me flying under a tree, not under the spinning wheels of the truck…

'We yelled so much at you,' said Vitya Strelianny, already in the back of the truck on the way home.

Well, I don't know. I only heard one scream, and from very far away…

My right shoulder hurt for two days…

~ ~ ~ two-way service

By the end of December, our squad was deployed to the construction site of an apartment building. Or rather, to the initial phase of its construction. There, we were greeted by a deep, rectangular crater, empty, not yet filled with concrete foundation blocks.

Near the crater's edge, the tracks of a crane runway lay beneath the tower of a frozen, idle crane. The lunar landscape was completed by a wooden trailer with a single door and a pair of windows flanking it.

A convenient structure: you pulled the door and stepped inside, straight from the snow. But why a 'trailer' if there were no wheels?

. .. .

We got a clear operational task—one for all—to dig a trench for the installation of foundation blocks under the side wall of the building. It was to run not within the pit, but parallel to it, three meters closer to the trailer. Thus, expanding the already gigantic pit.

It turns out that during the excavation work, they discovered that the building was sitting on the water supply for an entire city district. The unwelcome news meant that if the pipes failed due to corrosion or other damage, the apartment building would become a new Noah's Ark. But the sheer weight of the brick and concrete would prevent it from floating.

So, the city development departmen had to wake up, scratch themselves, and decide to move the entire building before it was too late, before starting construction.

However, while the calculations, cost estimates, and other approvals were being finalized, winter arrived, the frost hit, and no excavator could tear through the frozen ground to widen the pit. Now, they threw us into the breach—rescuers from extreme situations, crushers of any insoluble problem…

. .. .

Half the trailer was filled with brand-new—not a fly had sat on it yet!—both bayonet and scoop shovels. We were even given the unheard-of luxury of cloth mittens. Of course, the ground was too hard for any shovels, wielded in mittens or not. Digging bars were needed.

And they brought them, a whole dump truckload, and dumped them with a clanking sound between the trailer and the pit. Heavy, iron, five-foot-long digging bars, their only flaw being that they were homemade.

They found thick rebar rods at a local factory, cut them to the required length, took them to a forge, flattened the ends to give them a pointed shape, and dumped the bunch beside the pit.

However, the digging bar needs to be smooth, since it's a hand tool. The purpose of the rebar, conversely, is to strengthen the concrete, and so it's covered with closely spaced diagonal scars to better bond with the concrete slurry. These scars, though rounded, will wear through any mitten with a dozen blows of a digging bar into the ground, and then this 'supposedly handheld' tool will begin to wear away the skin from your palms, however long-callused and rough they be.

But if not us, then who will protect our beloved Motherland from these idiots busy with planning? The construction battalion will cover everything and rectify any situation…

~ ~ ~

The wind, like a dog that has broken its chain, gallops, runs in circles, pounces from all sides, tugging at the loose laces at earflaps’ tips of our hats, lashing our faces with their flutter. Yet, not this is its, the winds, ultimate purpose, but dragging the black-gray clouds, scraping them against the boom of a tower crane.

Because of these clouds, everything around, from morning until night, is drowned in uncanny twilights. We warm up in the trailer, heated by our breath.

The mittens have long since worn to scraps, so instead we grab the frozen rebar with rags found in the trailer. The impact of the rebar on the ground breaks off a gnarled piece the size of a walnut. And so on—piece after piece.

Your partner stands with his yanked up shoulders to the wind, waiting for you to chip away enough shells for a shovelful. He scoops them up and throws them aside. After three or four shovels of scraped-up material, you swap tools and places. As Vitya Strelyany put it:

'We were brought to Stavropol

To dig and shovel the ground,

But it is so fucking hard,

Harder can't be found.'

(… but I have an unspoken suspicion that this is a remake of a Zone ditty from the era of the first Soviet five-year plans, composed in the Donbas mines…)

. .. .

But anywhere you can find a moment of bliss—oh! How sweet is the slumber, sitting on the floorboards, your back resting against the backs of your comrades in the trailer!

After half a day of chipping and shoveling, we discover that at a depth of about half a meter, the permafrost gives way to soil of almost the same hardness, but still yielding to the chopping and stabbing blows of a bayonet shovel.

On the third day, we developed a tunneling technique:

First, you dig a pit, a meter by a meter, and then two meters deep. Step two, retreating a meter along the route of the future trench, you dig a second identical one. You connect two pits with a burrow (2 shafts with 1 audit), cutting it through the softer ground (below the frost-hardened layer). Now, you noose the adit ceiling with the tower crane hook bearing cable, threaded from shaft to shaft. Step three, boring narrow channels across both ends of the bridge from the frozen ground. You go on boring with the digging bar until the crane has enough strength to rip out a solid block of permafrost.

Aha! Fuck you, fucker!

. .. .

Yes, the construction battalion did it! And although many days of chiselling, scraping, and plowing still lie ahead—to the very end of the trench—victory will be ours. We have crushed the spine of the Arctic night darkness, which descended all the way to Stavropol…

~ ~ ~

Besides the trailer, you can find shelter from the cold in the entryways of an apartment building on the opposite bank of the empty pit. If not standing in the piercing wind, even a cigarette warms you, just find someone to chisel it from…

. .. .

While I was sybaritizing on the other side of the pit, Alimosha and Novikov explored the surrounding land. A dairy factory and a bakery emerged through the blizzard's shroud. The pioneers returned in quilted jackets bulging with cardboard pyramids of 0.5-liter milk and loaves of warm bread. Since that day, we've been sending foragers there. It's just a matter of climbing over a couple of walls. And the workers at both factories will watch you loading finished goods from the conveyor line without noticing…

. .. .

Sometimes we go out into the street to beg passersby for money: 'Brother, I'm 27 kopecks short for a bottle, can you help me out?' 'Sister, 11 kopecks for a Belomor, can you spare me? I haven't had a smoke in two days. My ears got swollen with the want.'

Alimosha explained the finer points to me. Never ask pensioners—no use, and they might even start yelling about discipline and sacred duty. Never ask for a large sum. Instead of 27 kopecks, he'll definitely give you 30, and instead of 11, you'll get 15 kopecks.

What do we need money for? Well, instead of shag in packs for 9 kopecks, or rancid Pamir for 11 kopecks. You can buy a 'thermonuclear' Kuba n Portogas or that same Prima, but not the Indian Red and White—sour stuff in golden wrappers. And sometimes we share a bottle of wine, when we're tired, with hunks of bread for snack.

Oh, how low I've fallen! Blagging on the streets like a beggar! Where are my decency and pride? How could I not burn down with such shame?!

(…) well, firstly, we have a more precise term for it: we don't 'beg' at all, we’re 'jackalling'.

And as for the whereabouts of my decency and self-respect, they're always with me, it's just that their form changes, unlike some immutable quantities like that infinite pi they drilled into us in school, I don't fucking know why.

As regards shame, I'm probably a pervert. I'm far more ashamed of that Whatman paper cylinder I stole from Valya Pisanko than of the kopecks I accepted from passersby in the scoop of my outstretched palm.