Сергей Огольцов – DIY Masterpiece (страница 6)
Dmitri Ivanovich had to go out into the living room and listen—you're right, Antonina Vasilna, the howling like from a dog on a chain. Of course, anyone’s mind would be visited by all sorts of crap… A defense plant, they're running their own experiments there… A bite in the entryway and—hydrophobia. Rabies shots…
But by the end of the week, the hang of the mystery was exposed when he went taking out the trash in the evening. A short caravan going up toward him from the fourth floor landing. The Chief Engineer in a single file with a rather luscious woman climbing up… And—the picture coalesced into an elementary, everyday happening: the lead vocalist of The Stray Bitches showed up at a rehearsal for their next hit, at a fan's place of residence:
‘Good evening!’
‘Hello…‘
And—it was a relief… For who needs a nutcase behind the wall?
. . .
This is where Dmitry Ivanovich's main sore spot lies—the beard starts graying, the devil pokes in the ribs…
Although he doesn't keep a beard, but scrapes his wrinkles every morning, minus Sundays. And he has quite manly wrinkles, a strong chin, and eyebrows thicker than Brezhnev's, our beloved and dear leader. What more do they want?
This here 'they' is about the unpredictably diverse 'them,' with whom Dmitro Ivanovich falls in love a score times a day, anyplace and without a warning…
Oh, those mistresses of torture!…
One sends a ‘bunny flash’, leaping from her milky white thigh, as she ascends the steps of her ancient alma mater…
The other suddenly lifts her elbow to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, although there everything’s quite smooth and tidy, but now her nipple stands out so clearly, through the light fabric of her blouse, jutting out firmly, brazenly, sluttily—down with the oppression of bras!
And—that's it, and his nostrils flare, and the devil knocks at his ribs, and…
And then what? Well, catch your breath, wait for this… whachamacallit… yeah, the fucking adrenaline… remember your family status, your title of Senior Prof, encaged in the backwater morals…
That’s what happens twenty times a day, well, no less than fifteen. Except Sundays, which, by the way, is also far from dogma.
And how can you not envy Buzotsky? Some people are lucky! They did get the asshole a job to wallow in luxury.
Vice-Rector for Academic Affairs. And he also gives lectures. On the most necessary subject of all. Scientific Atheism. By us anything is only the most scientific, starting with the approach…
‘A bunny runs, rain falls all around, a thunderstorm, lightning – bam! And it fries the bunny, and the primitive man sees it and concludes: there is a higher power. That's where the belief in gods comes from… By the way, no one can come even near to my test without your notes of my lectures… And then he ate the bunny, of course.’
Oops! And the bunnies drop their ears low, especially the blond ones. That's his taste. Following the line of least resistance…
Then the well-worn pattern—a private colloquium for two, in a rented apartment in the private sector.
‘I brought the notes…’
‘Yes, fine, put them there for now. Have you ever tried cognac with lemon?’
‘No…’
‘Well, cut this one up then, time to learn.’
And he himself have a daughter in her second year. Dark-haired Rachel, well, in terms of looks, not name. And by the way, it popped up in mind right now—Yulia's daughter is also in her second year. Time flies… We once lived in the same building, we – on the second, they on the first floor…
Perhaps, the one and only time Dmitro Ivanovich ignored the rules laid down by his grand- and great-grandfathers: 'Don't fuck where you live, don't live where you fuck.'
But it wasn't his fault; it all just happened that way. He simply dropped by, like a neighbor, to borrow something from her husband, to get a hammer, I think?
‘And where's the owner?’
‘He just left; there's some emergency at the plant.’
The emergency there, and here, behind the tightly drawn curtains is the courtyard, and everything is sweltering, both here and there, in the irresistible August heat… Yeah, Plato's my friend, untill we’re too hot…
But no desecration of the marital bed—they made do with the sofa in the living room…
Towards the end, though, her daughter started knocking on the door from the landing. He hid in the bathroom. Good luck it's a two-room split…
Wow! Already in her second year at the Philology Department! No, well, that Rachel girl is no match to her; Yulia's daughter has exquisite legs, just like her mother once did…
‘The column of exquisite legs of female students from all the country's philology departments—the goal and support of the Soviet system—enters the festively decorated square!
Congratulations to everyone on the glorious anniversary of the Great October Revolution! Hurray, comrades!… ’
‘Hurray!… Ah! Ah! Ah!’
Who did tell him recently that Inna was having an affair with that sophomore slacker in the English department? The one after his army hitch…
Hmm, but what a girl she was! How only her mother let it pass? The guy is a completely lost case—there's no stretch to slap a stamp on him.
Dmitro Ivanovich’s stock of life experience has no shortages; he'll instantly discern the naive trust and pure gaze of a bearer of socialist morality, a future builder of communist society, who came to the pedagogical institute straight from school. If there were mistakes, it's only a couple of times, no more, after drinking moonshine, in his inexperience, but he puked and slept them off…
Another kettle of fish the both cheeky and elusive eyes of the seasoned scoundrel and obvious junkie—and as if the Soviet Army could do anything else with the likes of him?
Yet what do they even see in that long-mane stallion? Like, say, Tamara, the girl from Ichnya… Oh, what a beauty!…
Dmitro Ivanovich clicketty-clicked his tongue sadly and glanced along the thin brown stripe bordering the paint-coat panel—the color of diarrhea—that splitted the muddy green in the walls, from the, so to speak, whitewash.
However, his mournful gaze met neither sympathy nor understanding. The staircase responded with an apathic disinterested silence—that bitch had seen enough of anything already…
CPP #4: Demonstrating the Restraint
REMARK – (French: Remarque)
1) A comment by the author of a text (book, manuscript, letter), clarifying or expanding on certain details.
2) In an engraving: a sketch set aside from the main image.
(Do 'eyeei!' on the inhale, both 'ha!' and 'hyi!' when exhaling;
the pitch of the sounds does not matter, although 'eyeei!' is significantly higher;
all of the above are hoarse; the rest a kinda freestyle and louder…
Off!.. We!…
Go!..)
‘Hyi!… Ha!… Tomka, do you hear?… Ha!… I wanna… Hyi!… ask… Hyi!… some… Ha!… thing…’
‘Hyi!… Hyi!… Oimi!… Hyi!… Yi!… oAAAau!… Ohma!… yi!…
‘Well… Ha!… okay… Ha!… I then… Hyi! Ha!… ask… Uhm… later…’
‘Aaiei!… yi… yi!… yi!!! o… o… mau… mMaaie!…
CPP #5: Enlightening the Ignorant
'Sergeant Shchurin! Report the number of available personnel!'
'Seven men, Comrade Lieutenant!'
'Halt! What's the matter, Shchurin? Are you trying to trounce Marshal Timoshenko? Who are you to throw around officer ranks? Or do you need binoculars to count the lozenges in my collar-stripe? Report as required!'
'Seven men, Comrade Platoon Commander… '
'Halt! Report by rank, not by position!'
'Seven men, Comrade Junior Lieutenant. Two of them wounded.'
'Malingerers?'
'No, they were both wounded by a bomb from a bomber, but they still can walk. Tischenko was hit above the elbow, they wrapped a bandage around it, and seems, like, he's not dripping anymore. Baibakov got concussed. He can't hear anything and just moos. But when you show him something with your fingers, he nods his head, as if to say, “Got it”.'