Сергей Огольцов – The Tallest Story Ever (страница 3)
Stop! Damn you! Be gone all pessimistic “or else”!
Who am I?
No answer.
Who am I?!
No answer.
O, shi… Ahem, but it’s a lousy turn… The effing terminal station. Just to think of it! Not even knowing who I am at all… But if I ran into and stopped by a patrol? What then?
Patrol? What patrol? What blithering hooey do I give out?
My thoughts whisked in all directions like batty Chiropteras, stumbling, colliding, redoubling the fuss in the darkness under the parietal bone. In so extreme a commotion, the head just had to go reeling.
Damn! That was some hell of a carousel. A Ferris wheel seat emerged from somewhere down there. The clown sitting in it obscenely span his tongue within the wide red circle of lips painted in his face. The fool’s cap drawn tight down his forehead bore ‘amnesia’ embroidered in clumsy stitches. It was drenched thru and thru, dripping huge coarse drops of… Oh, no!
No, no, bitch! I’m not your share! What darn amnesia could ever develop by a boy of 15? Well, I mean… How old am I, by the by?
Anyway, a chance checkup won’t hurt. Especially when it’s free… Now, let’s go thru and see:
The year of the Battle of Asculum?–279 B.C.
Checked. What year is it currently?–A current year. A leap one.
Another check. How many times were done?–Three.
By who?–Old man Olkhoo.
Ha! 107 % – correct answers, amnesia is over horizon, as of yet…
And already on the crest of the wave of euphoria, as ecstatically as a giddy shaman from Ekibastuz:
‘Hey, good guy, what’s your name?’–‘It’s Vano in Georgian, and in Russian’s Vahnia!; in Armenian I’m Ohanes, but in Russian – Vahnia!’
Not a bad try, sorcerer, this here hit from 50s’ on the single marked 78 RPM. You still wanna convince me you’re 15 years of age?
Whatever. No amnesiac would recollect, betcha.
Wait! I forgot to go thru my pockets! After the interrogation and cross-examination of those detained during the pocket-raid it would be easy to deduct and identify the bastard pretending to be me. The bastard has conspired not just a memory leak but a full-fledged drenching!
Okay, I see. Neither cigarettes nor a zippo. Consequently, I’m not a smoker and will go for a first-rate deceased in excellent condition. But for how long have I given up?
No answer.
Damn! With no amnesia there should be a response. Some freaking inconsistency. Forget it. No use in driving oneself into the mire of mind depression. I possibly never had a try. Keeping my virginity in this regard. That’s why the question about the duration of my abstinence can’t be answered. Or, to put it more exactly, the answer was given by its absence. Crisp and clear. Perfectly logical. Zero means nothing. No surprise there was so profound silence in the answer. Thus, I have nothing to do with nicotine. Never have had such an addiction.
And which ones have I got? Whoa! Let’s don’t consider it a question. There are more urgent needs. Although, it does contain a certain reason. An astrologess I knew once told me, ‘Give me your friend’s name and I’ll make a list of his addictions’. Yet, about hers, Amalia kept her mouth shut.
But this is a crying sexism! I can recollect the astrolo-lady’s name while my own… Wait-wait-wait! Here is some card too. And, by the by, in the pants’ back pocket. The right one, as usual.
Oho! Not just a card but a golden opportunity, a second to none cue. An airline ticket. The transit flight 0244 from ZRH to TLV, the registration starts at 17.00, Departure gate D43.
And (the main part in it, rra-ta-ta-dah!) my name is Semyon Nulin! A damn nice to know who you are dealing with in your own person. Besides, I’’m a MR. Good job, boy! Let’s hope you’re straight.
So, at five, right? And the huge digital clock in the waiting room wall shows 10 to 17.00. Doesn’t matter. There’s no passport any way. What do I look like? It wouldn't hurt to meet the hottie. Where’s the rest-room? There are mirrors. Okay, Semyon. Tear your ass off this here bench. Let’s go get acquainted…
‘Don’t jiggle, Vasia,' a disgruntled voice muttered in low volume to my left ear. They planted slues of foocking cams here. While the side pockets in your foocking jacket, are covered with the hanging flaps. Don't fidget, you foocking fashionista, let me slip your passport in on the sly…
A stifling horror seized me. Chills shot down my spine. Their intensity ice-coated my tongue, and it clanged awkwardly against the icicles on the alveoli and teeth behind the lips, hardened like glacial facing.
‘W-who’re you?’ Only a superhuman straining of will power allowed me to curb the most natural reflex and eschew turning to the undercover speaker.
‘Lost your scenting skills? Dropped to foocking recognize your own? It’s f_ucking me, Tractor!’
‘And who am I?’
‘Oho, 0-7th! It was some drinking bout you have had! And again snacking on agarics, I bet! Look, if some bitch snitches you to the Center, you’d be pinched for another stretch. And over again I’ll have to cook fish soup on foocking Tuesdays and Thursdays to pass it to you in the special-use clink.
‘Petyikka! Is that you?’ Unexpectedly for me, all on its own, this uncanny malarky leapt forth from my piehole.
‘Ha! Whoever ate the fish soup trumped up by Petyikka would foocking never forget it!’
‘It wasn’t me… I just… it was… well, doesn’t matter. It’s only that you at first attempted to pass for a tractor.’
‘The Center’s strict directive: the personnel are to communicate exclusively by their noms de foocking guerre. Aha! The passport is thru and in, below the flaps. Keep in mind, 0-7th, in the mission at hand you’re Nulin, Semyon Efgraphich. Look! Your departure gate began to operate. Good luck, bro. Take care and don’t catch cold under the Abyou-Dabyou foocking conditioners…
Bookoff
_
02
First thing in the morning he had to rip-open his eyes. The past night left them filled with sand, not natural, but something like it, only finer. While under the cover, Bookoff began to scoop with his fingertips the weensy prickly fragments from out the corners of his eyes, brushed the crusty specks from in between the dozen of still remaining lashes, and drew their mass from under the eyelid flaps. An attempt at raising the eyelids brought up a burning sensation. The eyes resorted to tear secretion in self-defense, and Bookoff stumbled into the corridor, where he blindly turned right, to the shower room. He didn't lean onto the walls, but his hands just checked his location on the route.
The water from the tap woke him right off and washed his eyelids. And then in the course of the day winking his eyes was not over-painful.
In the middle of the most spacious room of the big house stood an old chair, turned away from the black oval table at which Bookoff ate from another chair. Always that way only. Such cunning course of action cancelled turning the central chair to the table and back.
The black oval of the large table-top was surrounded with four chairs but only the mentioned pair was put in use by Bookoff.
Because of its dimensions the room allowed for giving place to both the kitchen and the living room at once. The invisible frontier between the two evaded the clear-cut guess at its line. An inhabitant could decide it following their private preferences ast to what was what. Or according to their mood. One even could avoid the hassle altogether by calling the whole room “the kitchen” and that it was entirely. And if you named it “the living room” – so be it till your other moods. In short, whatever was the first to roll of the tongue. Anyway, the people who lived in the big house got it at once.
When of all the population in the house remained only Bookoff, he turned one of the chairs about without moving it away. The item that had lived thru half a dozen repairs, leaned its back against the black oval and became the part of the living-room. That’s where he always sat, waiting for the end of his stay in the room? In the house, and anywhere at all.
Before him, in the left corner from the window, there stood a rocking chair, which he never used. Getting seated or climbing out of it presented too many problems for him.
After finishing his meal, he accurately brushed the crumbs into a cupped hand from that part of the black oval he always ate at. Not that he could see them those crumbs, yet he knew they should be there. Then there remained nothing more to do, but to sit with his back to the table and the kitchen, that started across the border-line run over the table-top.
The motionless eyes in his head were directed to the green of the garden thru the wide window. The wind on the other side of the glass panes noiselessly moved the boughs and foliage in the apple trees, pear trees, and other plants habitually there, year after year. Bookoff’s eyes directed outside from the middle of the living-room couldn’t see what part in the mass of green belonged to which plant. Yet with his inner sight he clearly saw them as skinny saplings, and sometimes as trees waste-deep in snowdrifts, or in the white blossom canopy.
Besides those imaginary visions he could see little, he just kept to his chair seat, waiting.