Honest Moose From the Tribe Of Hooey-Prickers

~ ~ ~

That glassy-eyed hunter from the second category, who wanted to feed on me, pulled up to the ‘dormitory’ in a Volga, as his boss's chauffeur. There was also a rarely unlocked office in the corridor, where those who wanted to negotiate with the engineer about taking cubics from the pile by the mine office side at the bottom of the former quarry came. And this visit became the background to the subsequent incident.

That day, as usual, I went up to the surface to have lunch in the ‘dormitory’ and washed my hands at the washstand on a pole right next to the entrance.

The glassy-eyed one didn't know me, being just passing through. And he was heeled, sneaking up on me with a weapon at the ready—an artifact made of what appeared to be aluminum wire of a strange configuration, the total length being approximately twenty centimeters.

Noticing the cloudy glassiness in his eyes, as well as the hunter-like softness of his gait as he stalked me, I knew I was screwed.

He closed the distance to the barest minimum, and just as he was about to raise his whachamacallit, a gray kitten suddenly jumped out of the grass and rubbed its scruff against the black leg of my spetsookha.

The glassy-eyed poacher instantly lost all interest, lowered his weapon, and, disappointed, returned behind the wheel of the car. The unknown kitten, the one I'd never seen—before or since—in the area, disappeared back into the grass…

. .. .

But mostly I had to rely on my own discretion. Like on that narrow pebble beach beneath the Chabanka cliff…

I wanted to swim in the sea and had already entered the calm, slow waves, but… I stopped.

Two fishermen, in swimming trunks and with fishing rods in hand, stood on a pair of separated boulders, between me and the sea.

The distance separating them was wide enough to swim between. However, I realized that the rods were a barrier, blocking the way into the vast expanse of water. I had to wait until they both raised their rods in sync (the fish were striking quite well!), and then dive under the oncoming wave, and swim unchecked away from the beach.

. .. .

I swam for quite a time, lying, at intervals, on the surface to rest, and wondering why my father had said that the salty seawater supported a swimmer. No difference from floating in a river or lake…

Then I began swimming again, mostly on my back to keep the straight course, squinting against the heat of the sun shining in the bright sky, until I felt a nudge on my shoulder.

Looking back, I saw just below the surface the whitish-transparent body of a jellyfish, as wide as a basin. I swam around it and continued on, but then the jellyfish became more and more frequent—skirting one out, you bumped into the next.

Rising up out of the water, I looked ahead and saw an impenetrable swarm of them, their translucent bodies turning the calm, sun-drenched waves into a kind of jellyfish jelly.

I didn't have the nerve to push through, shoving through their mass, so I took a U-turn and swam back to the already-hazed-by-the-distance shore…

~ ~ ~

Chabanka Beach was covered with multicolored, fairly large pebbles, but there were also stripes of wet sand. On one of these stripes, right at the water's edge, I wanted to write 'EERAH', but the waves wouldn't let me.

They washed in and smoothed out the furrows in the wet sand before I could write all the letters, and I only bloodied my fingertip in vain on tiny shell fragments before I gave up…

. .. .

My first encounter with the sea took place on New Dofinovka Beach, where I went after work, along the shore of the estuary that stretched all the way to the ‘dorm’. The water was smooth and very clear. I walked until I saw some bald truck tires in it, some idiot had rolled them down the bank.

I had to take off my pants and wade into the shallow water to pull the junk out. But around the next bend in the estuary, I saw there was a complete dump—it would take a lifetime to haul it all out, and it was already evening.

After the dump, there were thickets of reeds all the way to the highway, beyond which – only sea…

When you walk the dirt road from the mine to New Dofinovka, you sometimes see enormous ships hanging over the fields. These ships, of course, aren't hanging there; they're moored in the sea, whose horizon blends seamlessly with the sky. So you look—a field, and above it, a ship, and just touching its bow, the enormous orb of the setting sun shimmers red. These ships, due to their enormous size, don't fit in the port, so they're forced to stand amid the sky and the sea…

~ ~ ~

My relationship with Slavik Aksyanov remained even at first, one might say cordial. Although even a cursory glance revealed that in his previous life, he had served as a Nazi officer in a death camp, if not the head of a transit camp in Kolyma, and in his current life, he was overly inclined to draw attention to himself by needless twaddle. But despite all this, I helped him saw boards for the family trestle-bed…

. .. .

The distance between Chabanka and the mine was about two kilometers. About the same as to New Dofinovka. However, the road to Dofinovka passed along a dense belt of trees, while in the middle of an empty field near Chabanka, flies inevitably closed in on me—a whole swarm. They buzzed, flew around, and followed as I went on.

And I didn't want to lead a 'tail' and thereby reveal the location of the supposed mine. I had to devise a precise way to shake the followers off my tail. Because the grocery store in Chabanka turned out to have a wider selection of food.

Twenty meters from the mine ‘dormitory’ stood a long building of another former farm, unreconstructed. It became my 'disinfection airlock', the first necessity on any spaceship arriving to explore an unknown planet.

I entered from the far end and—accompanied by an escort of flies—walked to the end facing the ‘dormitory’. Catching the whiffs of manure from days gone by, the swarm became confused and scattered in all directions, in the active search for the same thing, but fresher. Meanwhile, I freely emerged outside, with food from Chabanka, without a single nagging buzzer behind me…

~ ~ ~

Slavik asked the office for permission to rip a few boards from the air-lock farm floor, relics of a kolkhoz husbandry, to make a trestle-bed for himself and his wife. They were expecting arrival of Slavik's mother-in-law.

So we plucked material from the farm for the upcoming piece of furniture. The boards turned out to be quite sturdy, but hammered in place with overly long nails, yet we had a digging bar.

On solving the question of prerequisite requirements, he wondered about the dimensions of the planned piece.

By that time, I already had a well-defined, clearly structured system of numerology, which brought the meaning implicit in the numbers to undeniable clarity. So, for example, in the aforementioned system, '22' means 'death', '24' means 'wife', '10' means 'sex', and so on. Everything is tested by personal existential experience. All that remains is to simply substitute values, based on a current situation.

Taking into account the intended purpose of the product, I suggest Slavik the most optimal length: 2 meters 10 centimeters, that is, '10' for two—perfect for a young family.

But he's stubborn!

'I want 2 meters 30!'

Well, you know best what namely is your want…

He got hold of a sawhorse from somewhere, the kind used for sawing firewood, and we got started. A board on the sawhorse, two marks with a tape measure, and off we go!

And when we stopped for a smoke, Lyuda, his wife, walked past on her way to the ‘dorm’. And, pointing her finger at the sawhorse, she declared to Slavik with obvious disgust: 'Don't even think I'll ever lie down on that ugly thing!'

And she left, completely indignant, and I was finally convinced she was part of another world. What normal woman hasn't seen the thing?

Plus, Lyuda could read minds…

. .. .

I once walked into their room, and Slavik was glued to the TV and putting borscht away. 'Thanks, I'm not hungry,' said I and sat by the door, waiting for him to finish his grub.

Behind him was a refrigerator, and on top of the refrigerator was a mirror, face down, and the mirror had two plastic feet on the back of its frame so it could stand up when it wasn't lying down. And from the chair where I'm sitting, this is the scene I see: Slavik stubbornly staring at the TV, shoveling borscht into his belly with a spoon, while two green legs, shaped like curved horns, protrude from his hair, like a lyre, only without strings—a mirror, of course, wouldn't need them.

That's when I thought (entirely to myself): 'Aha! As it turns out you're not only a Nazi, but also a horned one!'

To which his wife responded, with a more than eloquent look, 'Who the hell are you, to count the skeletons in our family closet?'

Then, demonstratively, she walked over to the refrigerator and smoothed Slavik's protruding horns down to the flat surface—the legs are articulated, after all.

So he finished eating, hornless. Thanks to the marital care of Lyuda, a mind reader.

. .. .

Now, when Slavik dragged that floorboard airstrip into their room for test flights, something must have gone wrong. Three days later, he was shortening that runway in the weeds with a hacksaw. That's what they call trial and error in action.

'What's he monkeying around?' one Makhnovist asked another as they passed.

'It's like you can't tell—a boinking deck, of course.'

'A-ah…'

What else can you expect from villagers? They don't know how to present things gracefully—using numerological terms. No, they just blurt it out as is

And when his mother-in-law arrived, he went completely berserk. He came into my room and made faces. The intent of his grimaces was clear. He wanted to make me insane…

~ ~ ~

One time, Ivan, the operator of Machine No. 1, invited me to have lunch with him and his assistant in their adit. Ivan's wife worked in Odessa, in the mess hall of some military academy where Negroes from the countries of awakened Africa also studied. Well, these Afro-Africans, when half-asleep, aren't exactly hungry, judging by the amount of provisions she brought home.

When Ivan removed the lid from the aluminum pot, it was just brimming with rib meat, though without any side dish. The three of us—Ivan, his assistant, and I—spent a good deal of time finishing off that hecatomb. A whole heap of bones formed. On the sand, next to the empty 5-liter pot.

And then Slavik came to ask for some spare part, and the sight of that gnawed still life of cannibals sent the poor guy into a frenzy. His face contorted, without any pretense. He must have remembered the soup by his mother-in-law…

Perhaps due to this stress, even a few hours later, when the ‘dorm’ residents were enjoying the cool of the late evening on the wide hand-made bench by the entrance, he charged at me like a lout.

For some reason, he even snatched a gold bar from the weeds, raised it above his head with both hands, and hurled at me.

It was a beautiful picture—the full moon casting silvery light on the arcing trajectory of the bar, glistening white, like aluminum, against the velvety darkness of the luxurious seaside night. (Or was I wrong? And the mine did produce platinum, after all?)

Now it was my turn to run hells-first like Alik the Armenian. Slavik's wife, Lyuda, took her Cyclops home from the demonstration performance area…

. .. .

On my next visit to Odessa, I stopped by a legal aid bureau, which I hadn't planned at all; it happened so spontaneously. The sign just caught my eye. There, without revealing names or geographic coordinates, I asked for recommendations for when a dorm roommate is bothering me.

'Contact your company's Komsomol committee.'

Well, damn, these guys are from another world too. I'm telling y’all—they're everywhere already!

Глава

~ ~ ~ Whose Side Are You On?

Yes, but if Yakovlevich is Chief over the chiefs, both en masse and separately, then who the hell is the Chief Engineer?

It's not hard to guess—who is Creator's antithesis? The Prince of Darkness and the master of personnel in the devilish cohort of fiends, in all his glory. Who else?

This was immediately noticeable even in the relationship between the two—a respectful, yet armed neutrality.

I remember how they stood in the shaft tunnel, talking face to face—the epitome of polite correctness! The foreman, in his black overalls, and the chief engineer, in a motley summer shirt, with a wide handkerchief tucked around his collar to keep out dust. He should have had a pith helmet instead of a plastic one, and—a ready-made picture of 'I'm the boss here!' Although, of course, the underground world is his domain.

(… you might object: is contact possible between such diametrically opposed entities? Don't forget, it was the twentieth century, when everything was so intertwined and confused that elementary Geometry was no longer helpful…)

~ ~ ~

I took a sympathetic stance toward Foreman. I liked him just so, without any propaganda or gimmicks like sharing fish and loaves, and such like magic. A single miracle—when he rejuvenated my passport—was practically enough for me.

By the way, the Chief under Chief also presented his credentials. As if anyone hadn't gotten it yet!

. .. .

He showed up during lunch break, to hold a union meeting for the workforce. (Oh, sure! What hell could exist without a trade union!)

The assembled group settled under the trees around the farm, which was inside the dormitory. He sat down on a chair in front of everyone, took off his shoes, and his socks too. Like, well, that's just stupid, huh? All this gossip about my hooves! Do I have them? Nope!

But you can't fill my head with bullshit! No way to feed me this illusory nonsense.

Those Makhnovist fiend-bandits stretched out in the grass in their black overalls. Only I was wearing a white nylon shirt, worn by me under my spetsookha overalls and daily washed after the shift night when I showered.

(… nylon’s ideal for washing—you rub it for six secs flat, and it's clean, and it dries even faster…)

As a polite, albeit sarcastic, retort, I took off my helmet. Wordlessly. Like, are you trying to show off your hooflessness here? Well, then admire my hornlessness! And the others who came from the mine—everyone has his helmet on. Especially Slavik Aksyanov.

And so the unionists spent about ten minutes twaddling, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a rooster crowed.

Good heavens! In a split second, the boss, who isn't Boss, has his socks in his pockets! He slams his bare feet into his shoes and—off he goes! And out of nowhere, a biker stops by him. All in black. Leather jacket, pants, and even a black leather helmet, like on the miners in the newsreels of the first five-year plans period.

Wheeze! They disappeared toward New Dofinovka. Not clear? Who runs away at the rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo?

. .. .

It's not that I was picking a fight with… well, say… the chief engineer, but there were frictions. Like that time, at the back of the ‘dormitory’.

A dump truck had poured a pile of coal for the winter, and I shoveled all that anthracite into the boiler room. And already at the end of the day, he shows up from Vapnyarka and asks, but so haughtily, 'Well, what’s your want? Is three rubles enough?'

I saw red—after toiling away in the scorching sun for half a day, and here he was, like, offering a handout to the lowest drunk. Okay, you're the prince of darkness, but I'm still the chosen one, even if so hopeless slow learner.

'No!' sez I. 'Let them pay my due according to the standard.'

'Then you won't even get as much.'

. .. .

I had no faith in him, and the next day, taking the day off I went to Polar Explorers Square in Odessa. In the hallway, they showed me the chief accountant's door, with the name on it: Witzman.

And as soon as I stepped into that office, the phone on the chief accountant's desk dinged. He picks it up: 'You’re being listened to.'

(… yes, literally, word for word, 'You’re being listened to.' Clean, smooth, impersonal. No chance to pinpoint a fault. Wow, that’s some Witzman!…)

I explain the gist—he catches it instantly, and pulls out a thick, soft-covered book, 'Unified Standards and Rates,' looks up the details of loading and unloading bulk coal, and hands it to me to read.

There it is, in black on white, that if I were shoveling in the Arctic—(to be paid at the highest, northern rates), and carried each shovel around the entire 'dormitory' three times before hurling it into the boiler room window—thereby increasing the distance traveled—then, according to the rates in this standard bible, I'd still be entitled to 1 ruble 20 kopecks.

(… and was it revealed onto me, who hadn't grasped the truth before, that to the foremen, the superintendents, the engineers, and so on and so forth—you, working people, should bow low, touching their feet for the sham they scribble in work orders. Without their padding, the working class would have died out long ago, together with their innocent families.

Pray for your benefactors, giving you your daily bread, O proletariat!

But what afucamuzza bastard drew up all those tariffs? I'd share my shovel with them, brotherly…)

. .. .

Another time, the advance payment was delayed, and I visited the chief engineer at home in Odessa. Since it was Saturday, I didn't need a day off.

His diggings are near the Hunchback Bridge over the railroad tracks. A pleasant own house. He also had a wife there and a fifth-grader son. He told his wife to treat me to a glass of homemade tomato juice. (Ahem!…)

It was just as it should be—a red, thick, salty liquid. How could you refuse? Margarita drank too, at the annual ball of Satan in Moscow.

(… but I still brew tea exactly to the recipe he shared…)

That evening, he also shared memories of his work in the Arctic, where after work he'd lay a couple of bricks on the electric stove and seated his wife on top to get it ready for the night…

~ ~ ~

One time, the force of evil attempted a coup—they wanted to amend the order in the world's stratification. The day before, engineer Pugachev showed up in the 'dorm' and opened one of the locked doors in the hallway, under the guise of distributing food supplies to tide the folks on till the payday.

I was walking down the corridor when Slavik Aksyanov shouted from that room: 'Come on in, get some too!'

Five Makhnovists in the middle of a bare room, and a crate of Prima cigarettes on a table without a chair. Pugachev hands them five to ten packs each.

Food, right? Ha! Nothing else but ammunition!

'No, thanks, Belomor is my smoke.'

As I was leaving, I heard Slavik motivating the devilish bandits behind me: 'No fear! Youth will write everything off!'

. .. .

The next day in Odessa, not a single traffic light worked. It was complete chaos. Strangers were yelling at each other. Trolleybuses were jumping like crazy. Of course, there was no gunfire, because the coup itself was on a different level.

However, in my estimation, the Red Devil Kids didn't pull it off, since I managed to buy 'Atlas of the World,' a thin booklet depicting both hemispheres, in a soft, light green cover.

~ ~ ~

In Odessa of those days, the most established and commonly used expression of approval was 'that's what you love!'

'So, what do you think of Sonya's latest fiancé?'

'That's what you love!'

And instead of 'no' they'd say, 'Mom had a fuck!'

'So, what? Did the Blacksea footballers win or what?'

'Mom had a fuck!'

But since Odessa-Mama was all around, it sounded even patriotic.

. .. .

In the park on Deribasov Street, unusual trees grew, as if they'd shed their own bark. Were they a grove of nudists, or sycamores, after all?

In the evenings, a brass band played there, almost like in the days of Johann Strauss, only less frequently.

And in another park, this time during the day, I dove into the pool from the five-meter-level platform, head-first. The wind whistled in my ears as I flew. A little later, two guys also jumped, holding hands, in the 'bomb' manner—heels down. One of them was wearing black socks. That's how they covered my trail from unwanted 'tails'…

. .. .

At the long-distance phone communications point down the Pushkin Street, I was once pranked in full. On placing the order I walked out the door, which was open flush with the sidewalk, and the very moment I lit a cigarette, the speakers inside blared, 'Nezhyn! Is anyone waiting for Nezhyn?'

The cigarette thrown in the trash can, I jump in: 'I am! I'm waiting!' And the operator behind the barrier shouts into her microphone: 'Well done, then just wait!' The whole point room went nuts… They were saving me from something again.

There was a man standing there. They connected his number. 'Chelyabinsk is on the line! Booth number 5!' And before going where indicated, he says in disappointment, 'Bummer!'

Now that's the enlightened! Just from the booth number alone, he knows already how the talk will end.

. .. .

I learned Odessa quite well, mostly on foot. I found Public Library No. 2 was found as well as Privoz Bazaar, where the porters push station trolleys, shouting 'Legs! Legs!' to get the crowd out of their way.

And there at Privoz, an old gypsy woman cast a spell on me abiding by her own rules while I was eating a bunch of grapes. I didn't even understand why, but she knows better, or maybe I just happened to be in her crosshairs at the wrong moment…

'Gastric Juice Factory.' Who would have imagined such enterprises even existed?!

The bench encircling the old tree next to the white, from his pate to shoe toes, Lenin in the park after his name used for a quick one-night-stand dating which I had got seated upon to repose my tireless legs before guessing the purpose of the facility. No, thank you, I’m a faithful family man…

When I walked through the courtyards of five-story buildings, the men who always play domino 'goat' game there would start banging their bones louder against the tabletop to scare away the cats in ambush to cross my path. Also, a bunch of allies…

~ ~ ~

To Odessa I usually got by bus, walking no more than a couple of times. It's only 20 kilometers there, or so.

I once took a walk from Vapnyarka to New Dofinovka along the cliff above the sea. At one point, there was some kind of military installation, behind a barbed-wire fence. A guard yelled at me, it wasn't allowed to go past them, neared the fence, began demanding from within my documents.

I showed him my handkerchief through the wire, with the sailboat. He immediately realized I was from a different level: 'Okay, go ahead but quick.'

The view from that cliff is very beautiful. The sea is calm, almost smooth, but sparkles and glitters in the sun. Sometimes the wind picks up and ruffles the water, creating a galaxy pattern. Spirals, mostly. The wind copied those from the clouds hanging in the sky above the sea…

~ ~ ~

On tram #5, going to Arcadia Beach, I met Gray, who used to act a big shot pakhan master-thief in the construction battalion. The only surprising thing is that four years have passed, and he is still so young, and for some reason he is wearing the uniform of a naval cadet — a sailor cap, ribbons hanging down the collar on his back.