As Is

The obscenities, delivered in a chicken-like squeak, lose their weight in their gross and net values, yet the ardor of the brawler's emotions was no less intense than the passions raging in Shakespeare's works…

~ ~ ~

Olga arrived in the middle of the day. We were brought in for lunch, and then they told me, 'Your wife is waiting in the checkpoint corridor.'

I ran there, then to the headquarters barracks. They gave me leave until the morning. The battalion commander isn't here, they said, but they'll extend it tomorrow after the morning parade, they said. Then I barely managed to get the parade crap. The sergeant major was gone, along with the key to the supply closet. Dut the military patrol in the city would snatch you up in no time, even if you had a stack of those leave slips when strolling in a fatigue.

So, we arrived in town only in the evening, but she already had a room at the hotel. A single room with a faucet and a sink on the wall.

Then some red-haired guy knocked on the door. Olga introduced the clown: 'Meet, please, we arrived on the same train.'

The fellow traveler invited us into his room, where he was having a get-together with friends.

And as we were walking down the hall, Olga asked me to pretend I was her brother; on the train she'd taken the traveler on a ride that she was going to visit her brother.

(… c’mon, so what…

Abraham and Sarah pulled that very stunts…)

The redhead had a long table in his room, completely covered in wine—a real hussar's feast. He had previously been a cadet at the Stavropol Military Aviation School for Pilots and Navigators, but they'd kicked him out for something, and now he came to visit his friends, who were already in their third year…

I'm familiar with the aviation school; our squad about a week was putting up partitions in the basement of some building there. When the bell rang and the cadets ran from the courtyard to their classrooms, we'd rummage through the trash cans in their gazebos, shooting cigarette butts…

Now they're here around the table, sharing memories, raising toasts to this and that from their shared past. We drink too. But I see this half-baked cadet quietly drop his hand onto Olga's knee—she was sitting between him and me. What to do? Should I stun him with a bottle on the headtop? Not exactly right behavior for a brother. I might scare off a potential brother-in-law, huh?

Of course, she took his hand off, and I acted like I didn't notice. We went back to our room, and she says, 'Well, what's the big deal?'

It's true, when we all sat down to smoke on a bench near the dried-up fountain at Peace Square in Konotop, people would also stroke her knees, and Olga, taking a drag on her cigarette, would brush away those playful little hands, like a pestering fly. But we weren't married then!

~ ~ ~

In the morning, as I ran to the UAZ van that carries ensigns to the checkpoint for morning parade, Jafarov was laughing all over the back.

'You ran like you were in slow motion. It’s obvious you do your best, but the run stays in the same place, no progress, I swear on my mother. Good news, there was no headwind.'

They only gave me leave until evening roll call, bitches. When I returned, Olga was asleep. Already in her smock, but for some reason inside out…

Then it was time to vacate the room—they rented for one day, until midnight… I said I had to be back for evening roll call, and she said she also had a train that evening.

We went to a movie, some fairy tale about a Persian Hercules named Rustam… Then we sat on a bench at the bottom of Komsomol Hill.

She said she had to go to the station, but I didn't need to see her off, and started crying. Passersby chuckled under their breath—a classic scene from Repin's painting: the girl gets pregnant, and the soldier doesn't give a fuck.

After she left, I sat for a bit longer and then went home…

. .. .

The next day, in the mess hall, I knocked over a bowl of soup from the tabletop. It spilled all over my legs, the hot bastard, and even burned me through my cotton pants. I don't know how it happened. Everyone at the table looked at me, strangely silent. No one laughed…

I knocked the bowl over myself… What kind of sign is that? The smock was inside out…

(… some thoughts are better left unthought, just leave them alone, but if heedlessly started, they’d better be dropped and not thought through down the road to their inevitable conclusions…)

~ ~ ~

DepuPolit ordered the club director, Alexander Rudko, to have a brass band ready by Victory Day, May 9th, otherwise he would be fired and sent to work as a plasterer's mate at a construction site, and the company sergeant major would be ordered to rot him 'on the floors' until his demobilization.

Naturally, we stood up for the bandleader, the bass guitarist of 'The Orion' and we didn't disappoint. In three weeks, we, too, had a state-of-the-art brass band ready.

Jafarov and Commissar, of course, are blowing trumpets, Rassol is wheezing on the baritone, and Zameshkevich is going boom-boo-boo-boo on the tuba. It turns out they used to go to the brass club in their school days.

Karpesha is drumming. Rudko is playing the clarinet, and the club's artist is thumping-thumping on the bass drum. And I have the most important instrument in the brass band—two cymbals. Bzdenz!

Sasha Lopatko started his service in the same squad as me, but then his dad arrived, held talks in the headquarters barracks, and Sasha was appointed artist at the Club… His dad, by the way, was a priest, and probably for that reason Sasha was drafted into the construction battalion as a priest's son, because you can't trust military equipment to just anyone…

We prepared two numbers: 'On the Hills of Manchuria' and 'Farewell of Slav Woman' not because we were afraid of DepuPolit’s threats, but simply because a labookh will do everything humanly possible for another musician's sake.

On May 9th, we changed into our parade crap and drove around various construction sites in a UAZ van, accompanied by the 'goat' where DepuPolit sat in the passenger seat. Holidays are for slackers, but a construction battalion is always on alert.

The construction site squads, along the route of a two-vehicle column, received orders to temporarily leave the work front and form up. DepuPolit gave out a very brief speech (ComBat, with his cerebral marasm, would have gone on for half an hour, not knowing what he was talking about), we played 'Slav Woman' and 'The Hills' and the sun glinted off the copper of polished pipes… A brass band is the first necesity for a festive occasion.

~ ~ ~

The next step in the Orion's career was a dance evening at the club in the village of Demino, with which we shared the same chipped asphalt road.

Responding to the invitations, the soldiers not only played, but also, taking turns on their instruments, descended one by one from the small stage into the small hall to dance among the local youth. Of all the Orion members, only Alexander Rudko, the indispensable bass guitarist, was left behind…

To the endless song about a bird-loving ornithologist, performed by Robert Zakarian, I embraced the ample forms of the village girl Irina. Life was smiling upon me…

. .. .

On the eve of his demobilization, Yura Zameshkevich informed the Deputy Battalion Commander for Logistics and Supply, ZamPoTyl Avetisyan, that only I and no one else could replace Yura as Battalion Boilerman. Zameshkevich's statement was convincingly supported by Battalion Cook Vladimir Rassolov, aka Rassol, who still had six months left to serve. During the petition, the cook didn't fail to congratulate the Deputy Logistics Officer on his recent promotion to the long-awaited rank of major. As a result, Major Avetisyan sanctioned my acceptance into the glorious ranks of the chmo.

The collective name 'chmo' encompassed all the soldiers involved in the battalion's internal services: the pigman, dishwashers, stokers, cooks, mechanic, tailor, shoemaker, artist, projectionist, staff clerk, drivers of commanders’ vehicles, and even the assistant paramedic at the medical center. In short, everyone who wasn't lucky enough to toil on the construction sites constituted the 'chmo,' under the command of Major Avetisyan.

(… originally, 'ЧМО' was an acronym for 'person who hinders society', but the overly expressive sound (chmo) made people forget the original meaning of the three letters, and now everyone thinks 'ЧМО' is the same as 'sod' only worse…)

Before returning to civilian life, Yura Zameshkevich showed me the location of the well with the main water valve, used to maintain the proper water level in the water tower above the boiler room. He taught me how to light the burner in the steam boiler furnace, read the pressure gauge and the water level tube on the boiler. I was transferred to the fourth company, where all the 'ЧМО' belonged, and Yura was demobilized.

. .. .

Major Avetisyan assigned me a partner named Vanya from the Crimean 'youngsters' draft. He had peach-fuzz where his mustache should have been, but bushy eyebrows.

It's doubtful Major Avetisyan chose Vanya because of his eyebrows’ thickness. Most likely, Vanya's father, who came to visit his son on his third day of service, found some compelling arguments during negotiations with the major in the headquarters barracks.

I shared Yura Zameshkevich's lectures with Vanya, and we began taking turns on a daily basis.

. .. .

The boiler house of Military Detachment No. 41769, aka MCU-11, consisted of two tall halls in a red brick building. Each hall contained a pair of massive steam boilers, enclosed within a shared, cube-shaped firebrick furnace. And a multitude of pipes populated the space about the boilers with various valves and shutoff valves—for hot water, cold water, steam, fuel supply…

High-pressure air pumps are mounted in the concrete floor in front of the boilers to atomize the fuel into the furnace nozzle of the corresponding boiler. However, only one of the four was used, the furthest from the entrance; 3 others stood still as backups for the winter heating season.

The job of a stoker, aka boilerman, aka fireman, in the summer was to supply steam to the kitchen cauldrons for cooking and hot water to the dishwasher. We also heated water for the bathhouse for the entire MCU-11 and Separate Company personnel once a month.

So, three times a shift, we had to sit for three to four hours at an old table with torn plywood on the round tabletop, next to a tall window, a few meters from the deafening rumble of the air pump, backed by the roar of flames shooting from the nozzle into the furnace's innards, until the on-duty cook knocked on the latched door of the steamshop to say the food was ready.

Then we could turn everything off. Silence is a priceless blessing… Until the next time to again turn on the bombination… enjoy…

To the right of the front door is a narrow section of the pump room, used to pump hot water through the heating system in the winter. But if you go straight from the entrance to the corner behind the twin boilers of the first hall, you'll see a door on the right—to a small workshop. It contains a window, and a workbench without a vise, opposite the entrance, and a small iron safe box, raped up irreparably. In the corner between the door and the window, it stands with the door ajar, with a hammer and a blunt chisel on a shelf inside.

Between the corner and the entrance, next to the light switch, is a narrow piece of mirror embedded in the plaster, which accommodates no more than a half of the shaving man's face.

~ ~ ~ the crest of a wave

The arrival of summer was celebrated by the MCU-11 chmomen with a collective drinking bout.

The battalion's UAZ-66, which delivers chow to the construction sites—to the guards and those kept on the site even at night by the shock assault—returned from the city with a case of vodka in the same thermos flask used for taking the grub out 3 hours before. The on-duty officer at the gate glanced briefly into the back of the truck, looking for any AWOLs (as if anyone of those came back through the gate! Or as if the on-duty officer didn’t know it as well as I did!), and the truck drove on to the box-shed.

They didn't forget to invite me, too; a stoker is an important connection in a soldier's life.

The drinking bout began after lights out, near the far box-sheds. In the bright illumination of a full summer moon, 15 chmomen sat on the ground in a wide circle, like natives of the field crossed by barbed wire; Everyone was facing the center, where the vodka bottles glittered. Their glitter was backed by the white of a couple enameled pots brimmed with meat, which the cooks had fried in enormous pans on the kitchen's electric stoves. Across two empty sacks, spread out like the tablecloth in fairy tales, rose 3 mounds of five loaves of bread, sliced in the bread cutter’s…

Never before had I drunk vodka straight from the bottle. The initial swigs tasted vile, but the following gulps swept over like a brave falcon.

The snack, unfortunately, disappeared too quickly… I never finished my bottle. Rising up to my unsteady feet, with complete respect for the honorable company, I informed those present of my immediate departure for the village of Demino.

'C’mon, all’s oukay, buddies! What fuckin o-dute… I’m off… fyrcerr… meselves… I'm the one-do-duty… Fuck!'

And yet, to avoid getting caught, I crossed the fence near the pigsty, away from the barracks. And then I headed for the round face of the full moon shining from the sky above the village of Demino.

But not only did it provide the guiding beams, it also swung back and forth, like on a swing. I muttered rebukes to her for such treacherous inconstancy, and to the field as well, which also was not behaving but imagined itself an amusement park, circling, you know, I mean, you know… not a fair play… not at all…

Then I fell and tried to prop myself up on my elbow, but gravity proved too irresistible, and the field so invitingly soft…

I woke up in the twilight of dawn, a hundred meters from the pigsty, and trudged to the steamshop to drink some tap water and crashed onto the wooden workbench in the workshop…

~ ~ ~

Seems like I'd gotten too carried away, dreaming of shuttling between the Club and the boiler rooms for the rest of my service. One morning, after the night shift, Major Avetisyan found me sleeping in the workshop and ordered to go straight to the company barracks. And this at the time when most of the chmomen even skipped evening roll call! The staff clerk, for example, slept in the medical station, on one of two hospital beds, and if anyone had any health complaints, the assistant paramedic would, without delay, escort them to the city military hospital. The mechanic Ter-Teryan never left Grisha Dorfman's sewing workshop. The club artist, Sasha Lopatka, even had his own room in the Club.

And the stoker, poor wretch, after sitting through the whole day amidst the howling and din, had to trudge off to evening roll call, where, in place of an absent chmoman, someone from the ranks would yell 'On duty!' and—no questions asked…

To somehow kill time while the food was cooking in the kitchen, I borrowed a book from the library in the headquarters barracks, through the clerk private. I chose it for its thickness, so it would last longer. Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot.' Holy shit! What a thing! Climaxes follow each other… After that axe-wielding murderer in the school curriculum, I wouldn't imagine the guy could write so well… And there's nothing else to take at headquarters, there's only one shelf, and after Fyodor Mikhalych's book, the crap by B. Polevoy and N. Ostrovsky aren't worth it.

At the Club, Rudko gave me a booklet called 'The Beatles in America,' about their tour of the States. One of the 'youngsters' brought it as a souvenir of his youth spent at large. I started translating because the booklet has more photos than text. However, without a dictionary at hand, my school knowledge only covered 10 to 15 percent of the content; in some places I had to guess from pictures, but Rudko was happy with that…

~ ~ ~

And so it goes, in a circle—a routine of the hissing of steam, the rumble of the pump, then the Club, the evening roll call, and back to the Club. And in the morning, it all starts again…

There comes Jafar galloping, his eyes bulging wide and wild, his soft mug white, and so the shirt on his back too; he'd gotten a good rub on the whitewash somewhere.

'Hide me! The Chief of Staff’s on my tail!'

I squint through the door. And who else is closing in, straight from the kitchen in his boxer's stagger? Jafar barely managed to jump out the workshop window into the weeds.

'No, Comrade Major, no one came in here.' But the major has a nose like a hunting dog, and from around the corner comes:

— Ensign Jafarov! To me!

You'll get it in full, Ensign, I swear on my mother… And why is ChiStaff so mad about Jafarov? Although, what the fuck difference does it make?

And in the evening, there’s a different hunt in the field.

The swarthy cowboys from the Separate Company chased a rat into a length of iron pipe. They splashed gasoline inside and set on fire it. The rat jumped out, engulfed in flames, darting across the field like a fireball, and they followed close behind—a cultural and sporting pastime, 2 in 1…

During the night shift, in the passageway around the twin boilers, I saw a litter of rats—I screamed and rushed to trample them with my boots, but they scattered. But why did such hatred for rats flared up in me? So all of a sudden.