Honest Moose From the Tribe Of Hooey-Prickers

~ ~ ~

Not everyone, in their entire life, is given the opportunity to experience complete happiness. I managed to get it free of charge. Moreover, I can pinpoint the time and place of absolute happiness that befell me. Those brief hours of my first stroll through Odessa.

. .. .

The joyful light of the sun spilled over the streets which I walked. Or rather, I was no longer there, I had dissolved, become a part of everything around me, and everything was an extension and a part of me in this unfamiliar city, where everyone I met recognized me, where everyone had had to wait so long for my arrival. The thoughts of those I passed were transmitted to me, and I, in turn, thought my thoughts to them…

Here walks a woman joyfully, proud of her beauty.

… wow!… what a cool chick!

And she blossoms triumphantly.

… but I have Eerah…

And the woman, sadly faded, bows her head, and passes by.

To the middle-aged Caucasian man, standing bored on the corner, looking around with a yawning gaze, I tossed in a thought: 'Hey, Javad, I remember your dagger strike!'

Boredom—gone! It rolled away down his sorrowfully slumped shoulders. The mustache tip twitched, stunned by the sudden memory of treacherous attack by Javad, a jiffy ago a completely unknown cat. Javad, who are you?!

… Okay, let's not think sad things…

A fleet-footed flock of pioneers in scarlet ties and white shirts hurries past to the celebrations marking my arrival. Finally, you're with us!

I enter a large bookstore to make a list of future purchases, chatting with the sellers and customers without opening my mouth.

I walk up the steps of the movie star stairs, reminiscent to quite a few of extras, past the monument to Richelieu, who was never a cardinal in his life.

In a green grove nearby, there are more pioneers, but this time a different group. They were too engrossed in considering the ordinary fraught cars carrying goods for the port.

'Pioneers!' I shout to them. 'ships are more beautiful than railway cars!' They look around, wave, and smile. They recognized me!

The taxi driver takes me to the Bratislava restaurant, explaining, in a brotherly way, that on weekdays it's a cafeteria. But today is a celebration—my arrival, and he, too, knows that this is me, the so-long-awaited-for I…

~ ~ ~

After washing my hands and face with water from the restroom tap, I went upstairs to a huge dining room to serve just me. A single waitress appeared out of nowhere for me to have someone to order soup from.

She walked away, and suddenly a wrinkle on the white tablecloth caught my eye—the mark of clumsy ironing. I just had to place my palm on the tablecloth and move my hand, just so slightly. The wrinkles were gone…

…well, of course, I had so many diapers to iron—I could remove any wrinkle with just a touch, easily…

The waitress approached and then left again, not disturbing the silence in the shadowy room. I started on the fish soup, made to recipes of the port city. On the low bandstand nearby, the speakers and amplifiers of the absent restaurant group stood silent in reverently solemn awe.… so, what should I listen to?… something light… okay, let it be The Smokie…

I snap my fingers.

Not a sound.

… what?! Am I not omnipotent?! Or are they switched on differently here?

And then it hit me, crushing, like an unexpected blow to the plexus, the feeling of miscalculation. Somewhere, an irreparable mistake had occurred. I'd made a terrible error.

I can't eat this soup at all. The rice has turned into shells, ground to powder, and they've settled to the bowl bottom in a layer of tiny mother-of-pearl shards.

… something is catastrophically wrong somewhere… something's been missed, or misinterpreted… but what?!

Thoughtfully, I begin pacing back and forth between the tables. I explain to the waitress who approached that I can't eat, that I've forgotten something.

'What?'

My jacket's in the restroom,' I say, the first thing that comes to mind.

And that very moment, the door to the hall swings open to let in a neat pensioner announces that my jacket is downstairs, in the cloakroom.

I go down to the cloackroom barrier, where a woman with the inimitably rich Odessa accent hands me the jacket the old man brought her from the restroom.

'But the pockets were full,' the cloakroom attendant comments with a bitter reproach that we both understand. She meant that Sunny City after a long wait had seen me, after all, and bestowed every possible gift upon me, and I had lost those gifts because of an unforgivably stupid mistake, though I don't know what it was. I trudge upstairs dejectedly to pay for the ground mother-of-pearl soup…

~ ~ ~

It's like that board game—you climb higher and higher along a winding path of numbers, and then you fall into a pipe that runs all the way to the bottom. Wheeze!…

From the pipe end, I rolled out of the Bratislava restaurant, where I'd deliberately left my jacket in the restroom because it had my documents and money in its pocket, and I'd already reached and found myself in a shining new world, where neither money nor documents are needed, not necessary anymore, not even remotely so.

. .. .

On the way to the bus station, I notice a long rip in my pants. From the hip. The seam has split downwards from the right pocket, over the thigh. I continue walking, covering the hole with my removed jacket, the pockets empty—I've spilled all, unable to keep the priceless gifts…

The wide-open locker where I left my bag and briefcase is void as interstellar space.

I bought a ticket to Youzhny with my last ruble and, along with the change, stuffed it in my back pocket.

The bus is packed, passengers standing tightly in the aisle. My seatmate sighs silently and rubs and rubs the indelible stain on the fabric of her skirt. But no cleaning products from Arabia will be able to remove it…

I know—it's stained because of my mistake. Because of my unknown fault.

The stuffy bus slows to a stop in front of each and every traffic light, red with anger. Then he gets stuck waiting for a long time on a trench-ridden street, letting an endless line of dejected pioneers pass, trudging through the dust along mounds of earth… It's all my fault – I've ruined the holiday…

Little by little, the bus finally makes its way out of the city. At the stops, passengers abandon it forever. But I waited and got off at the second-to-last stop — it wouldn't be right to show up in Youzhny with a hole like Spartacus's spear wound in his thigh.

. .. .

On the outskirts of the village, I respectfully greeted a boy of about twelve, then asked for a needle and thread. He understandingly led me to a secluded thicket of weeds, behind a fence made of unevenly large parallelepipeds of light stone in a wall with thick mortar joints.

He ran off to return with a friend who was carrying a needle and a long piece of black thread.

The boys sat up on the fence, their backs to me. Taking off my pants, I began to mend the split seam. On the other side of the stone wall, brakes squealed, engines roared and rumbled along the difficult roads of the endless cosmic battle…

My buddies sat there, pretending they had nothing to do with it, and it wasn't behind them, in the thick weeds, that a member of the Revolutionary Military Council was mending a thigh wound…

With grateful, undisguised gratitude, I handed over the needle, still with a fairly long piece of thread.

Alone, I descended under an Apple tree, pulled out a Belomor cigarette, lit it, and drove the used matchstick, half-burned by its own flame, into the ground, so it goes out completely.

Oh! How she howled! With a heart-rending, desperate cry—that piebald cow under the neighboring tree, raising her muzzle to the heavens in protest and complaint…

But I didn't know! Everything was so intertwined, so fused!

~ ~ ~

Then I wandered through the dense willow spinney, and high above me, a bird as large as a stork hovered in the sky, wings outstretched. It hovered there, unmoving, in the same place, almost motionless. A retinue of smaller winged escorts, also motionless, clung to the firmament on either side of the stork…

… so that's where the Supreme One is… God or the Devil, or whatever else—I can't tell… the chaotic world is woven into an all-too-incomprehensible tangle… and here I am—stripped, just documents, a pocket notebook, a pen, and a handkerchief with a small sailboat… it's time we made the contract, isn't it the tradition?

I take out a pen and a bus ticket. Having no idea how to draw up such contracts, I simply signed under the column of numbers punched out by the cash register at Bus Station #3. I put the pen back in my pocket and leave the ticket on the leaves of a flexible willow fork. I turned my back on the document—we're playing fair, no peeking.

A breath, like a rustling gust of wind, stirred the bushes… When I turned around, the ticket was still lying in the same fork, but turned over with the back, clean side up… So, that's your signature? Clear! You can't forge one like that…

I emerged from the undergrowth to a tall brick building that resembled the central warehouse of the KLCR Plant, and there I began asking people where the HR department was. I was told everything was already closed, but after the second shift there would be a bus to the city, and I needed to wait.

~ ~ ~

I had to wait a long time, then rode through the night on a small PAZ bus. Fellow passengers, in twoes or threes at a time, climbed out on the dimly lit streets, until the driver ordered me to leave the now-deserted PAZ at the corner of a spacious, empty square.

Ahead, the yellow light of a streetlamp flowed along a narrow street, and I walked between its fences, then turned left, repeating my choice at the next fork in the road. The dry click of claws on the asphalt followed me, keeping pace. Judging by the sound, the dog was a large brute, but I wasn't at all afraid and didn't look back, continuing to walk slowly.

But then the same wide square opened up ahead, and I stopped, about twenty meters away, because that was my post. The yellow light of the streetlamp held its lonely pole within a translucent cone-shaped cap. But I remained outside the yellow circle, vaguely spread across the asphalt… It couldn't reach my feet.

From the black silhouette of a five-story building on the left, a cat trotted stealthily across the road, disappearing into the dark courtyard of the house on the right, with its wooden fence, where it was greeted by the delighted clanking of a dog chain. A rendezvous of opposites. At times, even slaves get their share of effing boinking…

. .. .

The night wore on, and I stood motionless, pretending I had no idea, no connection to the unbearably grinding chaos beyond the horizon, where, with a screech of metal, the giant gears of the universal mechanism were stalled—because of my irreparable mistake…

~ ~ ~

When a dump truck slowed behind me, I turned around but didn't give way, merely raising my right hand, because this was my post.

The people in the cab were headless; the impenetrable blackness had cut their heads off at the shoulders, bathed in the light from the yellow cone of the streetlamp.

When the driver climbed down from the cab, he still had a head, even wearing a cap. He gently led me aside. I didn't resist. Having cleared the road, he got back in and drove off, carrying the other one, with a slate-black darkness on his shoulders.

The tire tracks were etched black on the road. I couldn't leave it like this—the universal darkness would begin to spread, following these black milestones. I began to rub the waymarkers with the soles of my shoes.

How long would my shoes last?

In response, a wind picked up, and a wide spread-out newspaper came running from the square, rubbing against my leg. I made out the headline: 'The Prince's Tomb'.

'Took you a long time, hon, getting here, huh?'

She rustled farewell and glided on, dancing along the street's asphalt.

The sky turned gray…

Exhausted by the dog, but content, the cat carefully crossed the road, back to her five-story building. To her aristocratic daily life, in the attics of high society. A plaintive whine of despair and the sobs of clanking chains echoed after her.

A new day dawned, but I still stood at my post until a woman in white walked along the far edge of the square, from right to left, toward a corner out of sight from my post.

Soon, an old woman in black hobbled in the same direction, pushing a baby stroller. But I knew there was no baby in it. She was pushing eggs. White, round like billiard balls. Eggs. In clusters.

It became clear to me that I could leave my post, and I walked into the deserted square…

Further and further I walked, not disturbing the silence of the empty streets, until I turned into the open door of the checkpoint.

In the cramped duty room, I asked a tall old man in a black robe, glasses, and a cap, for water. He gave me a glass of water, and together we watched closely: would I swallow the black speck floating in circles on the surface?

I drank it all. The speck stuck to the side of the glass. The black old man told me how to get to the Employment Bureau…

~ ~ ~

The Bureau was locked, but then a woman arrived with a key and opened it. I told her I was looking for work, and she replied that I needed to wait for one more Bureau employee who would be arriving soon.

Not far from the office, I found an open milk cafe. I bought a large bottle of milk with my remaining kopecks, but only drank half. As much as a tall, thin glass could contain. Over it, I repeated Romeo's parting words, spoken with the poison in his fist: 'I drink to you, love!' And then I drank it.

By the time I returned, the second employee had arrived. At the very first glance, one could see that she was Death, and the one who had arrived with the key was Love.

Death checked my documents and irritably announced that I had already been divorced, but Love only smiled, replying, 'So what?' Then she went into another room to make a phone call, leaving me with a disgruntled Death, who bore a certain resemblance to Olga. Probably the color of her hair, though longer.

On coming back, Love informed there had been found a job for me at the Odessa Mine Administration, and now I needed to go to Polar Explorers Square and find the chief engineer there. And also remind him about the car, as she'd forgotten to mention it over the phone. A car for Maria. Okay? He knows…

. .. .

The chief engineer said there was no place for me at the Administration, only work in the mine as a timberman. But I did have a higher education.

Rather hastily, I assured him that my education was flexible and would in no way interfere with my underground duties, that was for sure!

Then he sent me to the back of a truck, which was waiting silently next to the administration building in the square.

I jumped into the back as a skilled conbatter trained for the exercise twice a day for 2 years. Chief liked it and ordered the driver to start the truck.

Soon the city floated away over the horizon. The dense network of utility power and communications cables disappeared from the air overhead. Besides me, in the back was a tall, white refrigerator, clearly weathered and well-worn. And a pair of black chains. Similar in design to chainsaws, but more powerful and longer.

They looked like a pair of snakes mating, inexorably creeping toward me along the floor of the wooden truck bed, jittering in excitement from constant jolts and hops on the potholes.

In a village called 'Vapnyarka', the truck turned into industrial-looking territory. The chief engineer leaned out of the cab and told me to throw the chains out of the truck bed.

Relieved, I tossed the predatory, lustful creatures into a wide puddle, though there was plenty of dry space nearby. 'What the hell are you doing?' the chief engineer yelled, though he clearly liked my reprisal.

The truck driver dragged the drowned couple through the open warehouse door. Then we pulled into a residential area of the village, where we moved the refrigerator into one of the cottages in a group of summer houses surrounded by a low picket fence. The chief engineer plugged the power cord into the outlet to make sure, and the refrigerator hummed contentedly.

'I almost forgot,' I said. 'Maria asked you to send a car.'

Actually, I'd been remembering that phrase the whole way, I was just waiting for the perfect moment…

. .. .

The chief engineer explained how to get to the street faucet. I went there, took off my jacket, washed my hands and arms up to the short sleeves of my shirt, as well as my face and neck. A couple of policemen with stars in their shoulder boards stood to one side of me, and on the other side were also officers, just as many, but wearing army uniforms.

The four of them waited patiently while I splashed around, because I was with Chief, and after this lavation, no needle could pierce the skin of my neck.

Then I turned off the tap and wiped myself with the tiny hanky, which instantly became soaked.

After leaving the village, the truck continued on its way, carrying only me in the back. The highway plunged down a steep, straight slope, and suddenly, to the right, an endless void opened up. Immeasurable nothing.

Confused, I couldn't figure out what it was. However, a moment later, the space stirred, came into motion, the white crests of long waves rushed toward the shore. So, it was the sea! I took out my notebook and, after checking the square dial on my wrist, wrote on the inside back cover:

'July 20, 1979

1:30:15

Eerah

Sehrguey

Liliana'

The highway tilted up. Having conquered the climb, the truck turned left onto a dirt road and, through the outskirts of a village, drove into a field, where the dirt road continued right next to a forest belt. After another two kilometers, at the end of a long descend, two or three barrack-like buildings appeared.

The road passed them, and a hundred meters further on, it ended in a wide quarry depression. At the bottom stood a small house with a sign reading 'Dofinovka Mine.' The narrow-gauge railway tracks stretched past the office windows to get swallowed by the dark muzzle of a tunnel cut through the sheer wall of the pit.

~ ~ ~

Three of us sat in a trio of shabby but durable chairs (thanks to the sturdiness of their armrests), behind a pair of tightly curtained windows.

Closest to the curtains of the corner window sat the mine foreman, a man with a reddish mustache, aproximately of forty-five years of age, the fact confirmed by the rather thinning hair on his crown.

From the chair by the opposite wall, the chief engineer, chuckling cheerfully, shared the news of my throwing chain snakes into a puddle. The storyteller's boisterous mirth, meeting no response whatsoever, subsided, and he stopped his tries at creating unnecessary excitement.

His on-tip-toes, wary attention to the man sitting opposite him made it clear, without any preamble, who was really in charge here.

From the chair to the foreman's right, under the second blinded window, I, at his request, handed over my passport, feeling awkward at the rather shabby appearance of my ID.

He opened the red-skinned booklet and, without touching it, moved his right palm over the pages.

Literally before our eyes, the document's paper lost its seediness and was filled with a crisp, clear life, as if straight from the printing press. It even began to emit rays of ectoplasmic glow, a dim light from the depths of the paper's structure.

Mesmerized, the chief engineer and I stared at what was happening—we weren't up to work miracles. Now there was no room for the slightest doubt that I had indeed managed to reach the supreme Chief…

(… having long ago abandoned the firmament of heaven, He assumed the guise of a foreman at a backwater mine. His name? It's better not to mention in vain. I can only announce that He chose 'Yakovlevich' as His patronymic…)

. .. .

Then I said that my things had gone missing at the bus station in Odessa, I had no money, and I needed to call my wife; she was worried.

Instantly handing me a dark-blue five-ruble note, the chief engineer simultaneously announced that I would be living in a dormitory at the entrance to the quarry pit.

I didn't need any further explanation that the dormitory, like the mine itself, was merely a deceptive illusion for gullible simpletons and otherworldly fools, in which one must be constantly on guard. So I plucked a brownish fluff from a folded banknote and, with a technically unobtrusive gesture, smoothly transferred the soft mark onto the scratched armrest — we all understand each other here, don't we?

Глава

~ ~ ~ As If A Mine

Beyond my immediate duties—first as a timber worker, then as an assistant of stone-cutting machine operator, not to mention shorter-term jobs and assignments—I was constantly searching for an answer to the question: what lay behind the visible facade of my nearby surroundings?

The desire for at least a modicum of clarity never abandoned me in Odessa as well, where I came for often calls to Nezhyn from the long-distance phone communication point on Pushkin Street. Where the money from? I borrowed from Slavik Aksyanov or his wife Lyuda in the dormitory to tide me till a payday.

In that, so called, dormitory, converted from what had supposedly been a cow farm, there were four (well, let's say four, to keep things simple) rooms, on either side of a long corridor that ran from end to end through the single-story barrack-style building. One of the rooms was occupied by the young, childless Aksyanov family. In the next room there dwelt the Bessarabian family with a one-year-old child. An elderly electrician, single loner, occasionally appeared from behind the door down the hall.

I was assigned a room on the opposite wall of the corridor. The bars on the room's only window, as they repeatedly tried to convince me, were necessary to protect the radio. Which, of course, was missing.

Before doing anything else, I removed the iron frame with its welding-fixed bars of the same metal from the window and placed it outside, in a thicket of rank grass that reached the outside window ledge. Then I whitewashed the walls and spent the entire evening waging ceaseless battles with myriads of vampires disguised as gnats. My melee weapon was a rolled-up newspaper.

The next morning, Slavik Aksyanov, looking extremely exhausted and battered, asked what I'd been doing all evening after finishing my whitewash affair.

'Safari, ' I answered briefly, without going into detail. His appearance, even without explanation, suggested that the poor guy (one from among those myriads) was barely alive after yesterday's newspaper.

. .. .

The rest of the corridor doors were locked like in the Bluebeard's Castle, except for the first one to the right of the entrance, where the shower was located…

Mine workers arrived in the morning on one truck through a couple of villages: Vapnyarka and New Dofinovka. Driving past the ‘dormitory’, they hooted and whistled like devils in the truck back, though they called themselves Makhno’ s bandits.

Every other day, a pair of Makhnovian devils filled the shower's capacious tank with water hauled from a small shack in a ravine about thirty meters from the ‘dormitory’. The structure concealed a deep well with a bucket chained to an iron crank. Electric heating elements heated the contents of the tank long before the end of the work shift.