As Is

Yes, on occasion, my innate nobility simply oozes forth, but overall, I'm no Spanish grandee, that's for sure…)

~ ~ ~

At the beginning of February, our bread factory festival ended. We were transferred to the construction of the Medical Center, where the foundation had already been covered with concrete slabs, but only partially. We sheltered from the winter wind under those slabs and warmed ourselves by a fire made from whatever wooden scraps we could find, because there was no trailer at the deployment site. And although the site of the future Medical Center was quite sprawling, it was located on the outskirts, where prey for jackals never wandered…

. .. .

Transportation for carrying military construction workers to and from work was provided by the city motor pool with its civilian drivers…

Our squad encountered a dashing ace. As he flew onto the site of the future Medical Center in a UAZ-66, he slammed on the brakes, and the trained vehicle slid across the frozen puddles in a technical pirouette—backwards toward us. The moment of complete stop coincided with the neighing of the horn: 'Go-go-go! Home-go-go-go!'

During the stunt, the poorly secured but well-ripped tarpaulin over the truck back, billowed with its wide holes like a parachute in the arms of a landed saboteur. The driver dangled a snaggle-toothed grin from under his scrawny mustache—for the sake of airing. He enjoyed giving out such campy, nomadic romance.

Besides, he trained the exhaust pipe to blast, but reserved the gunfire for driving along city sidewalks—to scare passersby. Bam!

— 'Oh, Mommy!'—and she slung her hands over the chest. But she still didn't drop the string bag.

The guys tried to explain something to me about the engine and carburetor, but all that stuff was always above my head…

~ ~ ~

One of my first days in the new place, I went to the outhouse shed, the M-&-F kind, right on the edge of the territory. When we need to take a leak, we unhesitatingly direct our drainage system around anything that can serve as a screen to protect it (the system) from drafts, so I wouldn't trudge into the frontier regions for that.

Simply because of the freezing temperatures, using the unit's latrine became too risky. The entire floor there turned into a smooth yellow skating rink, too slippery to walk on, and even when squatting over the hole, the soles of my tarpaulin boots tended to glide off across the ice. Yellow as well…

. .. .

One of my first days in the new place, I went to the outhouse shed, the M-&-F kind, right on the edge of the territory. When we need to take a leak, we unhesitatingly direct our drainage system around anything that can serve as a screen to protect it (the system) from drafts, so I wouldn't trudge into the frontier regions for that.

Simply because of the freezing temperatures, using the unit's latrine became too risky. The entire floor there turned into a smooth yellow skating rink, too slippery to walk on, and even when squatting over the hole, the soles of my tarpaulin boots tended to glide off across the ice. Yellow as well…

. .. .

While defecating in the ruins of the frontier outhouse, I began to experience strange auditory sensations. I, like, heard… well, not exactly, not right away—voices… more like echoes of voices… a distant, unbroken hum, like the indistinct murmur of a crowd, without splashes, clarity, or meaning…

Then I pulled out one of the letters. My inside pocket had been bulging with them for a long time. I never reread them, but I kept them there anyway. Without specifying who the letter was from, I wiped my ass with it, stood up, buttoned my pants, and suddenly stumbled upon the source of the noise:

… the crumbling boards of the walls and partitions between the stalls were covered with inscriptions, completely, leaving not a single living space… names, dates, and towns written and scratched with pencils and ballpoint pens… some had crept over others because there was nowhere else…

It became clear to me that the territory of the future Medical Center had once housed the Stavropol conscript Assembly and Distribution Center. The conscripts, swallowed by the jaws of an eternity of two years, had been hastily scribbling their farewell marks across the moldy boards:

'Sakha, settlement…'

'Afos, village…'

'Dran, city…'

They were already there—swept away, seized, absorbed into the gorge—that's why the voices, transformed into some kind of shared, wordless murmur, were no longer audible. There's a hum, but the hands are still writing their farewell to the irrevocable themselves:

'Andron…'

(… in a construction battalion, the universal human urge to leave a mark doesn't disappear, but becomes anonymous. You won't see the classic 'Vasya was here' here; a construction battalion serviceeman signs for everyone:

'OREL, DMB-73.'

Read: 'Recruited from the city of Orel (or the region), demobilized in 1973.'

With graphite, chalk, paint on walls, pipes, tin, whatever. Every construction site erected by the Stavropol Construction Battalion, a year or two before 1973, bore such a sign.

It was replaced by:

'TULA, DMB-74.'

The turn will come for:

'SUMY, DMB-75,'

'DNEPR, DMB-75,'

but that's still a long way off…)

~ ~ ~

VIA 'Orion' took part in the city music competition.

Although we presented two numbers, we didn't snag any spots. It seemed the entire event was held for the benefit of a single local singer. The young man sang without a microphone, but his voice filled the entire hall. What a singer!

(… I never heard him again. Neither on the radio, nor on television. 'No spots'—muslim magomayevs and joseph kobzons entrenched themselves there for decades…)

Our second number at the competition was 'Song of the Indian', from Tom Jones's repertoire. No one knew what he sang about in it, and the Soviet remake lamented the bitter lot of the American Redskins (it later turned out that Tom Jones had plenty of his own hits, and this is a John Dee’s song performed by the band 'Raiders,' but the reversal of the terms didn't ease the plight of the natives):

'From the reservations, brother, mark it well,

There's only one way—straight to hell…'

At the competition, the 'brass' section of 'Orion' already had two trumpeters. Ensign Jafar Jafarov was transferred to our battalion, I don't know where from or what for, because I didn't care. He just came into the Club one day and announced he played the trumpet…

. .. .

Jafarov's oriental appearance left a pleasant impression of softness. A round face with soft, swarthy skin, the soft gleam of his black, olive-like eyes, his gentle smile when he uttered his 'I swear on my mother!' And he really did play the trumpet, which he brought to rehearsals at the Club and carried away in its surprisingly hard case. Kolya Commissar began to blow the Club's equipment much better under Jafar…)

. .. .

Gray, Karlookha's tamer, began to frequent the Club, not for the music, but for the relative privacy—a rare luxury in construction battalion life.

He'd given up on work right from the start of his service, simply serving another stint, tanning two years in the construction battalion. What fucking difference was it from a penal colony? The regime was a little more lenient, and the protective rags was khaki instead of blue. Brought to the construction site in the morning, he would go into town, returning only for the evening truck. From time to time, he was locked up in the room at the checkpoint, and a couple of times he was carted away to the city garrison guardhouse. However, even the Battalion Commander, with his chronic brain leak, clearly understood the futility of such educational approaches to this sturdily built, thin-lipped product of the correctional system.

The bald spot of a scar on his left eyebrow somehow humanized his sharply defined face, drooping forward like a wolf’s from his broad shoulders… Gray’s walk in life was the simple straight path of a hereditary thief.

In the band room, he shared stories of his recent adventures in the city, or he'd bully Commissar. This isn't right, since they were both from the same draft, but for Gray, the Zone Code took precedence over the commandments of the construction battalions.

Preparing for his transformation into a 'pheasant,' Commissar got a striking tattoo on the back of his right hand—two triangles of mountain peaks, and between their sharp summits, an arc of the rising sun with spiky rays. And this entire shining new world of thick lines rested on an explanatory and educational inscription for the most obtuse dummies: 'NORTH CAUCASUS.' On stage, Commissar kept his tattoo facing the audience, and, raising his trumpet to play notes, he proudly glanced at the sprawling masterpiece of an unknown tattoo artist.

Gray probably didn't appreciate the fact that Commissar was flaunting a more massive blot than his bluish cross spider (a Zone's crest for the initiated), barely larger than a ping-pong ball. Such blatant inequality, even in the absence of any Zone restrictions on geographical tattoos, encouraged Gray to pick on the cheerful Trumpeter.

(… however, where the word 'probably' is used, you shouldn't just take my word for it—it will probably be followed by nothing but speculation, assumptions, and idle conjecture. There could be a ton, a carload, a freight train, of possible interpretations, but the word 'probably' dismisses them all and leaves just one, perhaps not the most accurate.

Words require careful handling. Sometimes you blurt out something so brazen, like: 'Labookhs—we're one family. We're all for each other!' and then you're embarrassed to have said just another hooey, again!

Because generalizing statements are only good for slogans, like: 'Workers of the world—unite!' Or: 'Bipeds! Love one another!'

Such verbal pretzels only work as long as common interests coincide with the interests of a given, individual mammal, and the moment they diverge, it's like, 'You do your business, and we look after ours.'…)

Take, for example, that same Yura Zameshkevich. Having locked the boiler house, he takes refuge in the Club, so as not to be an eyesore to the Fathers Commanders. He'll strum a guitar here and serenely sip a mug of chifir (for Chuck Palahniuk's space monkeys: mix a 250g packet of tea with 250ml of water, bring to a boil), where he's one of us—a person of refined character, a sophisticated connoisseur of true music, which is exactly the bomb, a loyal friend, a reliable comrade, and simply a brother—a labookh, in a word.

But then his wife from Tula arrives and waits at the checkpoint while he runs to get his dress uniform, and greatcoat to leave for the city with her. He scrapes the fur off his muzzle as he runs, gets a leave slip from the headquarters barracks, and for some reason darts into the Club, where I am sitting peacefully in the empty hall, in the back row. He leaps into the band room, hops back, and on his way out, he grabs my unsuspecting dick with his bear pow clutch and lifts me into the air. Of course—I screamed!

Then the pain gradually faded, leaving an inescapable sense of bewilderment. Why?

(… I haven't come across an answer to the question raised, neither in the writings of the naive primitivist Freud and his sycophants, nor in the Upanishads and Bhagavatas, nor in both Testaments, nor in the Koran. And only in 'The History of the Russian State from Ancient Times' does V. Solovyov briefly mention the incident with Dmitry the Pretender, when he hid in the distant chambers of the palace, but a bestial Cossack discovered him there, grabbed him by the 'secret knot', and dragged the usurper out to the raging rubble for cruel reprisal. But at least there is some practical purpose… But why did Yura need mine?

There are questions unfathomable by the means of human mind; all we can do is point them out for the enlightenment of the inquisitive for their speculative skills’ edification, and then shrug our shoulders sadly, and spread our arms wide—Alas! This is beyond of mere mortals’ comprehension…

By the way, science has invented a beautiful, sonorous term for exactly such cases. Let's say you're so cool that you can pee through three meters thick glacial ice, in a jiffy, but suddenly something so fucking stupid pops up that even a mammoth would sooner pee his dick off than through the fucker, then you know—you stumbled at that damn transcendentalism…)

~ ~ ~

So what were we, the club-goers, doing there? Alongside solfeggio, rehearsals, and the sullen grinding of our brains against transcendental questions? Enjoying the briefly mentioned, fleeting sip of chifir? Alas, its bitterness was a rare treat. And vodka wasn't often enough…

. .. .

We had a coded knock on the door of the band room, which ensured unhindered access. Knock out the right rhythm—the door will open, but if not, then go back where you came from or yell through it, locked, what the fuck you need.

Once, after the correct knock and the clang of the lock opening, the DepuPolit’s bulky figure grew in the door, accompanied by an ensign from the fourth company, like a bodyguard; and it must have been him knocking out the code, the fucking guide.

However, The Orion's lead singer, chef Volodya Rassolov, aka Rassol, reacted instantly, and while the tourists were swiping their faces left and right to check who was there and what preoccupied with, he casually transferred the bottle to the tarpaulin boot of the pair standing next to the bookcase.

Of course, DepuPolit still ended up branding us a den of alcoholics and parasites, but still unable to present any direct evidence…

. .. .

So, the basis of our time was conversation: who was who in civilian life, what life would be like after demobilization, when we returned home (we still were so naive as to believe it was possible to return anywhere at all from the incessant flow of the stream of ever-changing space), and about how the Third Company went to kick shit out the Separate Company, but the choorkas fought them off with blakhas, and the private pigman was probably screwing his harem of sows, and why else would they squeal so much at night after lights out?

Karpesha was undoubtedly the laureate of conversation. In a quiet, brotherly, confidential tone of voice, he would rustle to you for hours about how he went on leave and broke up and made up six times in ten days with the girl he met there, his former classmate, as it turned out…

Not interested in listening for the seventh time? Go out into the empty Club hall, sit next to Robert in the back row, and he'll tell you about life in Paris, where everyone knows everyone else. That, for example, Jean Marais is gay.

And that's a shame, of course, because while I didn't like him as Fantômas, his D'Artagnan in The Iron Mask is a total macho, masculinity incarnate. That's what fucking Paris makes of men.

. .. .

Well, Gray will share his memoirs about how he scared off lovers who inadvertently wandered onto his street. How, emerging from the gate with his dad's double-barreled shotgun, he'd cock the trigger and ask conversationally, 'Well, Romeo, have you had enough fun? Or shall we talk about love?'

And the one being questioned, losing the chance for an interesting discussion, takes off, but, damn it, stubbornly zigzagging and, for a goodbye, shouting instructions over his shoulder: 'Run, Sveta! Run!'…

Or, to change the subject, how he beat his wife for the first time, and the next morning her eyes were swollen shut, like a chink’s…

. .. .

And Jafarov, thoughtfully caressing the beautiful soft shine of his pipe, will tell how he was still just a kid, and playing hack work at some party, he spied with a childish eye through the keyhole as some whore gave some officer a blow job, and then she came back into the hall and danced there, and passionately kissed another officer, higher in rank than the one she was giving blow jobs to: 'But such a fucking beauty. I swear on my word of honor! What a woman!'

And when he served in the combined military band, their leader would parade around town in a tuba. It's the largest trumpet in the band, you have to slip it over your shoulder. He'd put it on and parade around in his tuba: catching hack work, such a rascal—I swear on my mother.

He'd see funeral wreaths being carried somewhere, and he'd go right there: 'Want a military band for the funeral? We can work it out.' I swear on my mother, such a hustler. But playing it not with a full band, of course; in a skeleton composition. That kind of hack work is called 'playing the sleeper'. Yeah.

Well, one time, we showed up just like that, for playing. Second floor, the apartment door open to the landing, everything’s as it should be. We went in. In the first room, relatives were sitting along the walls, crying, all as it should be. But looks like a bit too much, and no one pays attention that people with trumpets had arrived. So, the manager asks the woman he'd arranged it with, 'What's up?'

'Oh! We're in such a terrible situation! We'll probably have to cancel the funeral.' And she leads us into the second room, which is also full of relatives, and everyone is bawling even louder than in the first.

And in the middle of the room is a table, and on it is a coffin, all right, as it should be, and in that coffin is a dead man sitting. I swear on my word! He's actually sitting!

You see, he was hunchbacked in life, a huge hump, and he can't get it to lie down. Basically, the whole hack work job is over… But the manager, the son of a bitch, doesn't give up. He goes over and presses on the dead man's forehead, and he rolls over and lies down as he should. Only now—splash!—his legs are sticking out of the coffin, and the lid won't close. 'We've already tried that,' says the one with whom we'd arranged it, and roars louder than anyone in the room.

But I told you the manager was a total swindler, huh? He figured it out: 'That's it,' he says, 'let everyone except the musicians leave the premises.'

So, anyway, the sleeper goes out, lowered face down to the floor, and the coffin gets dropped on his back—wham! Who wants to lose a hack work job, huh?

('Did it… oh… work?' I ask, half-drowned in my tears.)

Well, something crunched, but—I swear on my mother!—he straightened up. So, the coffin lifted back on the table, the dead man shoved inside. Everything's as it should be… except…

('??'—I don't have the strength to ask anymore.)

His legs are sticking out ten centimeters from the coffin because, and I swear on my mother, he's gotten longer…

. .. .

In the labookh's tall tale about the hunchbacked sleeper, reality intertwines with fiction… In a daze, passed out, I slide backwards onto the plywood seat in the club hall, lie there, in stitches, breathe my last, choked with laughter.

And I don't even guess that in Stavropol there is a Regional Committee of the CPSU. And the Regional Committee has Chairman whose last name’s Gorbachev, and that he is the future mortician of the USSR, nicknamed Hunchback. However, among the Stavropol tsekhoviks of that period, the nickname 'Envelope' stuck to him.

(… 'Tsekhoviks' were people who wanted to do business under the developed socialism conditions. But they had to pay a price to make their dreams come true.

M. Gorbachev trained the Stavropol 'tsekhoviks' to bring him their pay in an envelope, as is the custom throughout the civilized world…)

~ ~ ~

I don't want to leave an impression as if a construction battalion is nothing but backbreaking labor with no silver lining. Sometimes, spring would come to us, too, forcing us to switch to summer uniforms. We hand over our undershirts, long johns, fooflo jackets, and padded trench coats to the company sergeant major because the winter uniforms had become too heavy. We traded in our faux-fur ushanka hats for dandy piss-cutters.

It's so wonderful to stand in the lightly dressed ranks at the morning parade, under the crisply blue sky, with translucent feathers of clouds up there in the bottomless heights; to drive, in the glow and sparkle of the warming sun, in an open truck back, into the city, where so many colorful dresses, so many skirts, line the sidewalks!

. .. .

In the spring, the population of girls experiences a sharp rise, and even begins to spill over, off the sidewalks.

In any case, at the end of the workday, two girls even appeared on the grounds of the future Medical Center… I was nearing the assembly point where the UAZ was arriving for us, and these two girls were walking ahead, about thirty meters away. They must have taken a shortcut somewhere, and so they were leisurely strolling, talking to each other. Taking turns.

Suddenly, their conversation stopped. Passing the area where the team had to gather to get into the truck, they revved into a quick pacing and disappeared from sight.

And there was Sasha Khvorostyuk, already waiting, the first to show up. He perched on a half-meter post, his knees spread wide to rest his hands on them, in his signature pose of a BLB—Boss of Latrine Buttboys. Pleased as Punch, some cock of the walk, smugly turning his beak from side to side. His dick dangled from the unbuttoned fly of his cotton pants…

That's why the girls were trotting, and they'd never shortcut here. Because of that fucking platypus!

~ ~ ~

And sometimes, in a construction battalion, you suddenly find yourself in a completely different world, far removed from all these trenches, shovels, pallets, bullying…

. .. .

That Sunday morning, everything was going as usual, but from the ring road the truck took an unusual turn. Corporal Alik Aliyev probably knew where we were going, but his limited vocabulary hampered his ability to communicate beyond common commands and responses. So he remained silent, his expression mysteriously important…

The truck pulled up in front of the city circus building. We jumped out after Alik, and a man in civilian clothes waiting on the sidewalk explained the task we faced during the transitional period when the circus was changing shifts. One circus troupe was leaving the circus, and a midget circus was arriving to replace them.

(… what role does a construction battalion play between two circuses?

Exactly! Upload one and unload the other…)

But it was still a celebration, and we were festively hauling large boxes into long, canvas-topped trailers, and festively hauling identical boxes out of identical, but different, trailers.

And then we ate ice cream and drank kvass from a yellow barrel on wheels, right at the edge of the circus plaza's sidewalk. From there, we went inside the building and sat wherever we liked on the crimson velvet chairs in the empty amphitheater surrounding the arena.

. .. .

The performers of the newly arrived troupe of midgets going in admired circles around the shortest soldier in our special forces up-and-down-loading team. If he'd been smarter, he'd have been two centimeters shorter so they couldn’t draft him for the hitch, but as it was—one meter fifty-six and a half? Wow! Just right for someone fit for non-combat duty!

One of the midgets was whispering something to him—the soldier would never admit what. They were probably recruiting him for a group of strength acrobats, where a whole pyramid of lightweight midgets is built on the shoulders of a mighty dwarf…

The midget woman called me to go out with her. We left the building through a side door, and she led the way to the residential trailers.

(… it's somehow strange to follow a woman who's up to your waist; you feel like an elephant in an Indian village…)

She climbed onto the high porch, raised her hand high above her head, and tugged at the unyielding doorknob. Sadly, she asked for help.

I put my hand onto the willingly yielding handle, and swung the door open.

'Thank you!' came a voice thinner than a piccolo.

'You're welcome.'

It's so awkward to live in a world not designed for you…

. .. .

I returned to the circus, where Alik Aliyev, forgetful of the world around, was galloping in circles across the arena chasing a white pony. But the haughty quadruped couldn't care less about flirting horsemen in tarpaulin boots, even with corporal stripes in the shoulder boards.

In the orchestra pit, above the curtain, a brass band was hurriedly rehearsing bravura marches, with that brazen, off-key quality characteristic of all circus orchestras. The Labookhs shut up for a quick smoke break, and a group of midgets gathered near the heavy folds of the curtain, listening as one of them, the size of a middle-schooler, was throwing a jealous tantrum at her husband, whom she'd caught in a trailer with another midget…