Сергей Огольцов – DIY Masterpiece (страница 10)

And then he remembered:

‘Hey, Tomka? I remembered!’

‘Mmm… well, remembered what?’

‘I remembered what I wanted to ask: what day is it today? The twelfth?’

She stirred slightly, rousing herself from her languor:

‘And?…‘

‘So tomorrow's Friday? Right?

‘And?…‘

‘They’re screwed!’

‘Who?’

‘She even asks! The Knights Templar, screwed… and me too!’

‘What are you babbling about?’

‘Friday the 13th, Grazdetsky's exam in Scientific Typology.’

‘Why so early? It's almost two weeks before the exam period.’

‘As if I know? Leaving for somewhere. I’m in deep dive… I'll have to tango around the floor, maybe someone has the textbook. At least to check the color of the cover. He's such a picky bastard… ‘

‘A load of BS! You're just gonna slip away. And by the by, the room is all mine today; the roommates went their homes after victuals… ‘

‘No, I told you, we’re offed.’

He ran his legs thru into the trunks, then followed jeans legs (with a finalizing hop), socks, and shoes. With the T-shirt and sweater pulled on he was ready to leave.

‘You're a lying asshole.’

‘Just don't be rude to an uncley, okay?’

‘Get lost, asshole.’

‘Now much better.’

He headed for the exit, once again sincerely admiring the impeccable choice of location for the "pencil-box" exhibit.

The entire exhibition consisted of a single drawing on a large-format (60 x 80) sheet of Whatman paper, pinned to the inside of the door wing.

Stark naked, of course, lady. Just a drawing, in pencil, yet in the style of heart-warming realism. Not irresponsible Picassesque squiggly scribbles, but a view to look at and admire. A woman of age much pulled for by Balzac, with haughty condescension, displays a truly mature forms and the attitude of general weariness with all them gaping onlookers, stunned, their jaws dropped all the way on hinges.

Tomka says it was a present from a student at the Kyiv Academy of Fine Arts or something.

And models aren't a cheap commodity these days, especially those willing to strip down to the last thread of their attire. Future Michelangelos from the academic bohemia chip in to pay for her sit-ins. Whoever contributes the most gets to choose where to set up their easel, and so on… the tightwads and the poor get shoulder blades and buttocks to practice their drawing skills. Harsh, but fair.

Yes, but how did Tomka get such an expensive gift? The lady obviously was drawn from the front row. Or did his classmate also work there as a model? The budding Vrubel couldn't scrape together enough cash for her youthful beauty, and was forced to pay with one of his early works, when he was practicing on a junky pro? In kind for in kind, so to speak. Barter, or whatever the term is in Scientific Economics, huh?

But the issue isn't the chronic poverty of aspiring artists, but Tomka—look at her flawless choice of spot to pin the effing masterpiece! It just offs you!

Let's say, that's it, he's heading out of the "pencil-box", and gets face to face, as well as to all other things on view, that roped Balzac into scribbling his masterpieces… Oh-oh, you’re in trouble, poor boy…

And whether you like it or not, you'll still look back, out of associative reflex, and – aha! Welcome to the snare, birdie!

Because what your backward look see is Tomka standing by the windowsill. Her robe unbuttoned, the long hem half casually tossed behind the winning hip curve, below her hand resting in triumphant akimbo on her waistline.

The unmistakable artistic flair for composition proved by how that naked half of her body—the silky descend from her shoulder to the slick hillock of her breast followed by the soft concave belly with the dip of the navel, then curly forelock on the springboard mound of her pubis, and the protracted touchdown along her long rounded thigh, gliding over her knee, in a slightly balletic twist—lasts unbearably long all the way to the foot…

And yet, only half will be shown. After all, the difference between pure art and pornography is concealment. Some small detail must be kept secret, which enhances the alluring magic. A woman must have a certain mystery, even if it's only a tiny curl or a strand of three hairs, otherwise we simply slide into a routine turn of fucking.

Yes, it’s proven by the raw facts of life—on reaching the door, a harebrained glance back, and—stomping back to surrender…

Just in a circle from that obscene pearl of folklore about the pole and the sponge in the yard: you near the door with a big, bored woman seated in a straightaway pose—a reflective look back, and, nothing doing, you want it—the pole’s up, and—into the same sponge. The fairy-tale goes in the rutted circle. The exibit—a look back—the pole erect—the fresh start… A looped cycle—no escape…

Therefore, using the Odysseus vs. sirens trick, he would at times modestly lower his gaze before the masterly creation making you iterate the concluding shudders over again… The masterpiece of seemingly unassuming yet inspired strokes of pencil was certainly a trap… But when you watch the worn-out lino by the door, Tomka's provocative poses behind your back simply do not work. Ha!

Yet, Grazdets is a real bastard, by the tip from Matvey, in his fourth year of study. And what's more, it was such an ominous coincidence: the date and the day of the week. No, in this scenario, today it would be better to say "bons vars, madam!" and leave, head-bowed, straight into the dorm’s hallway…

Thus, approaching the door, he mourned, along the way (and not for the first time), the bitter fate of the Templar brothers—the most mysterious medieval order of knights in all the dark ages.

On Friday the 13th, they were all arrested, tortured, forced to take the fall, and burned at the stake for it, without the slightest presumption of innocence. Those who survived went underground, became Freemasons, and now run the global banking system…

Emerging from the darkness of the Middle Ages into the bright light of the bastard investigator's lamp beneath the window, he almost reached for the door, but some elusive instinct made him suddenly turn around—in time to deflect the tomahawk (disguised as a pillow in a pillowcase) hurled at him. The missile landed onto the empty bed of her roommate on the right.

Tomka stood by the windowsill, stark naked, all the good on show. Naked, yes, yet thanks to her natural understanding of the basic lines of artistic aesthetics, she stood with her feet hidden into slippers—one foot tucked away for secrecy, the other for mystery’s motif.

‘Look,’ Tomka said in a mixture of promise and threat, ‘you'll regret it… ’

‘Come on, babe, don’t fuss… Seriously… Out for a sec, just to warn the Templars… and I’m back… ’

CPP #7: Mourning the Separation

The raw glare of the sun in the frosty patterns of whitish ice on the window pane made the cold in the hut even more sharp and piercing, almost biting. Yulia squeezed her eyes tighter, turned about under the shaggy sheepskin wool in the old sheepskin coat—her father's—to face the wall and sooner drift back to sleep, until Mother’s call for her to get up.

Then Yulia would toss the sheepskin coat aside, lower her feet off the bed onto the tops of her felt boots cut ankle-height. And she would bend over, sitting, all the way to her knees, and pull out from the boots under her heels the socks she'd knitted herself.

Of course, she did all this without thinking: what’s to be done after what—no, it just happened, all of its own accord. Because no one thinks about how to or what follows what when they breathe, it's just life…

As always, in her morning routine, she would pull the knitted socks on her feet, put on her shortened felt boots, and, across the hard clay in the hut's earthen floor, go to the washstand below the mirror on the wall – to wash her face with cold water, and comb her light-brown hair in bob cut, like by that cheerful Komsomol girl in a pre-war film.

And then would begin the daily round of household chores and domestic drudgery—lighting the stove, using a poker to pry aside the flat rings in its top so that the bottom of the black cast-iron pot fits in, sinking it with the oven fork inside, closer to the red-yellow flames splash in the firebox, and—once the water for the heifer has warmed up—pulling it out with the fork.

After pushing the larger ring back, she’d cover the diminished circle of fire roaring in the stove with the soot-blackened bottom of the kettle.

She’d peel beets and potatoes for dinner, have breakfast with Mother, sweep the hut, go out with pails to fetch water from the well, collect and bring in from the yard the yesterday's frost-dried laundry, unyieldingly hard, standing there like those large sheets of cardboard with rules and examples that hung on the blackboard at their village school.

But in the hut the washing would soften, and become just right for ironing. The heavy iron into which you need to pour live coals smoldering in the stove firebox after the morning heating the hut with that couple of chopped logs…

While Mother rakes manure from under the heifer and chops firewood with an axe in the barn: enough for the whole day and for tomorrow morning…