Сергей Огольцов – DIY Masterpiece (страница 9)

Only he and Shchurin remained of their regiment, but Shchurin hadn't lost his cap, even though he was wounded—a piece of shrapnel had cut his watch strap, the Krynchenko’s watch on his right hand, drawing blood, but not damaging the bone or tendons. That was in the morning. At 7:30.

But the platoon commander wasn't killed; he got ascended when the wave of bombers ebbed, after their indiscriminate carpet bombing. From above, it was impossible to see yesterday's dead from those still alive. The drone of Heinkels departing after the next trip's cargo faded in the sky, and the platoon commander stood up. At his full height. He raised his revolver on a sling above his cap-clad head and commanded the entire regiment, of which he was the only officer left with 8 soldiers under his command:

‘Forward!’

He didn't shout ‘For the Motherland!’ or ‘For Stalin!’ he shouted ‘Forward!’ and rose up into a high explosion of a 150mm, and not a shred of him remained in the clods of earth that fell back afterward. Neither of him nor of the revolver. So—it was ascension.

Ivan was showered with those clods of earth, and he jumped up and ran forward, lightly, without a backpack, with only his rifle…

Though not hit anywhere, Ivan looked the worst in that crowd of people sitting and groaning around him. His jaw dropped, his gaze fixed, his lower eyelids couldn’t withstand that frozen, as if forever, gaze and—drooped…

… Ah, Vanya, what have you done today?… I don't know… Where have you been all day?… I don't know…

. . .

Just like that, without a cap, he would march a couple of days later, in a column of 240,000 prisoners of war, through unliberated Kharkov. The light snow that had fallen as they entered the city soon melted, but the thousands continued to march.

Occasionally, old women with pursed lips, wearing coats already stashed away for the summer, could be seen on the sidewalks. In one place, a cameraman in a leather coat squinted, leaning against a tripod.

There were no guards. None of the prisoners attempted to escape. Where to? The column just followed the motocycle with a sidecar rolling ahead.

And so they walked, fluttering the equally frayed hems of their tunics, many of them unbuttoned at the chest, in violation of regulations. Without the belts with their buckles, which they had been ordered to throw into heaps two days earlier…

You'll easily recognize Ivan among that dense crowd in the photos online, by his closely cropped head lacking the cap, and by the sullen way he turned his gaze away from the camera.

However, not everyone there was wearing a cap, and you can count not a little scowling skulls and short-shorn gazes, although… what am I? It’s, like, rather on the contrary… the other way round had been meant…

CPP #6: Grasping the Artistry

The narrowness of the bed forced the pair of sweltering bodies to press themselves flat against each other, over the sheets and mattress separating their sluggish inertia from the spring mesh, which also doesn't move, absolutely not, if you compare its current state with its recent behavior, when, gone crazy from its creak-crack-clang-knock, it, like a frenzied bacchante, filled with them all of the room around (standard design "pencil-box” of 2 opposite openings (door & window), 4.6 m x 2.5 m) on the third floor of a student dorm (the room’s project provided capacity – 4 souls).

The area of direct contact between the two skins—bare to the point of outright nudity—marked with profuse perspiring (slippery and, most likely, mutually multiplying), prevent the gradual formation of an infinitely thin crust of dried sweat that starts to cover the nakedness of other, not contacting epidermis areas.

The bedstead (one-quarter of all the same-named inventory items within the penal-box enclose space) is not pushed closely enough against the room corner walls. The headside (whose hooks don't fit snugly into the 2 well-worn gaps in the iron frame of the spring mesh) stands not quite vertical. The tilt matches that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa so much, that both would run parallel, absolutely, if the structure were accidentally put next to the window in the room of this here dorm.

His shoulder juts out (perhaps a trifle too far) beyond the side edge of the spring mesh, which sags resiliently under the combined weight of the pair of bodies, and 1 mattress, and the layer (between the pair and the spread-out, mesh-covering mattress) of fine ripples, pressed to form dense folds in the fabric of the screwed up sheet.

The feeling of discomfort in his shoulder, deprived of any support, is being endured in a gentlemanly manner, not leaning on neither squeezing the lady any more than necessary to avoid a fall down onto the lino-covered floor of the "pencil-box" if his center of gravity would move, by an unforeseen accident, too exessively out and over the mesh frame edge.

Then he'll have to drop, accidentally, although not as far down as from the absent Pisa Tower, but he still wouldn’t like the idea.

To the left of the bed, on a low nightstand under the sill of a long window, a table lamp has raised its tin cup reflector (so pronouncely up—to the crick in its galvanized neck) and pours a blinding shaft of light (like those lamps glaring, with the savage inquisitorial sadism, from the investigator's desk—into the eyes of the suspect, so that he'll repent, admit, and sign the fabricated confession… Spill out before it’s too late, you bitch!)

The stream of light hits the raised palm of his hand of the arm bent at the elbow anchoring into the mattress—someplace in between their scarcely shifting, stuck-together pair of bodies on the ruffled bedsheet.

The shadowy contour of his open palm (turned like a mirror toward his face, slightly raised by the pillow) is clearly delineated in the flat vertical plane of the wallpaper. Greasy, old, papery, not only unwashable, but also irreplaceable. For years. About 3 or 4 presidential terms now…

The luminous interior piece is the epochal discovery by the Physics and Mathematics department (whose students occupy the dorm’s fourth floor). It produces an incredibly stimulating result. Incidentally, the technology hasn't been patented yet.

Besides making someone take the fall for a criminal act, this lighting device a bunch of other useful functions. For instance, it’ll provide you with a couple of shadowy accomplices, who in an unbridled dance of demonic shadow theater (active like hell, yet mute, which doesn’t matter much – the equipment users produce a mighty soundtrack of their own!), in accelerated random leaps across the pretty wide area in the wallpaper.

The speeded up trot transforms into a gallop!…

The purpose of these animatedly twitching disarrayed contours is as ancient as could be, like all those mirrors in the ceilings of the bedrooms of Ancient Rome: to instigate, spur, and inspire.

However, with all due respect for the antiquity (back in those primitive times they were already pretty good at it!), yet their ancestorial perspective, to put it mildly, sucks. If compared to progressive approach worked out on the fourth floor. The Physics and Mathematics guys absolutely trashed them. Trounced as a matter of fact.

Although, to be fair, one should admit that even the modern dorm-room-wall anime isn't without its glitches. The view angle is far from ideal which flaw forces you, in the course of action, to see-saw your head like a fan at a ping-pong championship, chasing the ball… darting your glance back and forth, while at full gallop, from her back, or tits, or what is there in full afterburner, to and fro: the wallpaper – her back, the wall – her… Stripy impression, basically…

Does it reduce the act’s monotony? In some cases, undoubtedly, yes. Yet in the same breath, it's also unnerving. O my neck! It tends to keep twitching even after. Hither-thither. Damn!

Now, if, say, I'd filmed it from the side… Well, let's say… Although no—this is just flat porn, not a sybaritic pastime… Like you're just stupidly watching a video, one hand laboriously masturbating, while the other loads your piehole with popcorn or, for special fans, sunflower seeds, but certainly not chips—those make your stomach grow, fuck them…

. . .

With a frustrated sigh, he dismissed the thought, which, by the way, is typical of him. By nature, he's a born scientist: inquisitive, thorough, but he still hasn't created a single working model to implement his hypotheses, ideas, and assumptions…

Everything somehow passes by, sinks into oblivion, with a parting gurgle of bursting bubbles…

So he tumbled his attention back from the shadowy outline to the palm itself, in its natural form.

That's right, palmists insist on viewing the left hand—the one less flattened by labor, having fewer calluses, and all that…

Although, if you're a hammersmith or regularly toil with a crowbar, what difference does it make whether it's straw or hay?

So, what was the topic? Aha! Palmistry… Well, there they are, the Venus Hills… the Life Line, that long, damned crevice, you could beat it on ice… or is it the Health Line? (he always confuses the 2)… and here's that, whachamacallit? – Croix Mystique… wait a minute! And where's the Mind Line? Must have dropped out for a smoke break, when you're not busy thinking, why to stick about?… The key to successful achievements is the division of labor, balanced approach, and mindful handling of resources…