The Tallest Story Ever

Сергей Огольцов

The Tallest Story Ever

Epigraph:

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Vasiok_01

The fog shuffles off in wearily rotating curls. Looks like it’s gonna grow thinner… Nope. Just a weeny whiff of a fleeting illusion. The sticky gloom is back again as thickly opaque as before. Still, some clandestine activity is felt within, a life invisible swathed in the coils of all-engulfing shroud. Who’s cocooned under the wrapping cover? Why hiding themselves away?

And also the sea is there, quite nearby, for sure closer than at a literal stone throw. A low wave splash runs up onto the shore spread flatly, runs to reach the self-elimination, to fall and roll back mutely hushed… The clocklik slow breathing of a mighty giant who doubts not his strength even in sleep. The intake then flowing back to be replaced by the next exactly same wave in their Indian file, the wave delivering the inevitable exhale…

A seagull squeak pierces the hum of calmly breathing abyss…

Whoa! Slow down, man! Are you gonna invent a brand new Mobile-Dick or something? Had a nasty fall from too high heels, ain’t it? Someone’s landed on their head, for sure. Gulls are cute enough to shun blind flying. Both dark or mist would keep them safely home. Birds never developed a radar in their system and bats are domineering in that line, they find their way in the most raggy surroundings by catching echoes of the ultrasonic peeps which they produce.

[–]

An utterly unknown ornithologist Dr. Horst fon Holtzschnabel maintains that a number of winged species did reach the gray zone frontier about possessing radar-like equipment and some of them (i. e. Colibri) even crossed over and use the gizmo at their household in undercover manner. He argues the reason for the situation lies in the cocky attitude distinguishing the whole of Aves class. Enough to mention their ostentatiously pretentious aristocratism. Any commonplace sparrow would claim their kinship to Condor, the Czar in the Realm of our Feathered Friends. They would loudly chirp and swear with the most solemn oaths stating their kinship to the Royalty by their great-grand-auntie Blue Bird lineage…

(A between-the-lines note in the manuscript found in Saratoga, Saratov State, and lost irrevocably at the secret testing grounds in Tomsk-4.)

[–]

Basta! Enough of egg-head blabber! Open your eyes and view the boundless expanses of the sea. No more wobbling…

The mist peels off the rising eyelashes.

Surprise! Instead of oceanic vistas, my eyes got opened to the gullibility of my sense of hearing. This here couple of my ears, though never spurred in any way, was too quick at jumping to conclusion. Over-zesty tandem of two smarties. Quick does not mean right you, silly organs! Too shoddy an interpretation of the soundtrack.

But then it’s my fault also, in part. Not fully awaken, I eased control and – here you are! – missed by a mile. Limitless horizons surely make a rare commodity hereabout. And no mistake.

Wherever directed, your glance gets parried off by one or another plane junction. Even Mr. Vius with his ability to watch the both worlds at any given moment would hardly account for all the details of the interior design. And here comes that big-big “if”: If he’d manage to unclasp and raise his 2-meter-long lashes. Some uphill trick in his state of eternal hangover. Moderation is the ticket to a healthy happy life, Mr. Vius, the obnoxious blood-sucker you!

As for the surf its sound was provided by the completely dry crowd. Except for perspiration drops condenced on this or that block in the multitude astur within the spacious architecture.

Seems like my agenda for tonight includes “sleepover at the airport”? Yoy! Who’d ever suspect any quirk to romanticism in me? Or had some petty deuce seduced me to tank up above my parametric limits?

Nope. The guess is turned down by the symptoms’ absence. No sloppiness in none of the eyes. Neither Sahara-desert-like dehydration has invaded my oral cavity. Hence: I’m sober as a babe unborn and go under any name but Vius.

But what then? What makes me sleeping on this varnish? By the by, a rather prudently designed piece of furniture, this bench is. A well-thought-out gadget of the projected capacity up to 3 sitters. Handrail restricted sections for keeping each user separately. The mankind’s being broken in for the comforts in the future they are making for. No chance rubbing shoulders; not a glance away from your phone screen; you’re held in your cell safely and with the utmost care. Speaking up to a stranger may happen only in old movies fragments: black-and-white, naive, nostalgic. But so what? The trade is real smart, you get relieved of that freaking load of Homo sapiens, you’re freed from thinking!

The bench stretch allotted to a single sitter is generous enough to allow for the ongoing growth of weight as well as volume, globally, in an average bench user. The trend shows steady similarity in rate for both transit and stick-in-the-mud sitters.

However, don’t count on a cozy sleep inside a personal closure over such a bench. Nope, M’am, no go. However tight you curl up and stick your nose between your knees. The galvanized handrails, aka armrests, would gloss with the indifference of distant stars and never let you stretch your legs into the neighbor’s corral.

On the whole, the benches give you a righteous tip-off: there’s no sleep like at sweet home or in your castle, a terminal would only provide you with a portioned rest in a seated position upom no more than ⅓ of a bench.

Ahoy! Observe the gull who woke me up with her high-volume squeal over the fake surf. What a prominent plumage sports she! The copper-and-gold cloud of Afro makes a dandelion of her head. The hazardous flight thru the mist over, she’s landed on the floor surface tiled in milk-white. Her back is leaned against a bench-leg over the glossy tile stream. No attention whatsoever paid to the thicket of shanks hustling by. The heels of her shoes wedged under her buttocks to prevent slippage upon the over-smooth floor. So the knees have no other option but to stick up. Just so modestly. Completely submerged is she in a gaudy accordion-folder book put over her knees parted in quite decent way, discreetly. A grasshopper in orange hose. The picture-crammed book folds open full length hang down from over the two orange stalks waving in metronome-like motion to and fro.

Armadas of sundry footwear speed up in both direction, tramp the hard smooth surface past the pair of picturesque steamers made of the bright Afro-dandalion’s book winking to me from the other side of the stream of legs never at rest, hasting along the milky riverbed between the banks of varnish.

Amid the tumult of milk striders there strikes a melodious PA gong splash demanding attention of all who might be concerned, to the unyielding dragonfly sputter.

But wait-wait-wait! Slower, please! What language is that? And where am I at all?!

By the looks of public around, neither Sherlock nor Holmes would deduce where exactly they got stranded. The usual mixture of transit crowds. Skin pigmentation in the throng is a wide stretch from glossy coal to albino glitter. A multi-racial mass of extras, where each nomad speaks their personal Mutter sprahe.

Under the like circumstances, the question word “where?” just doesn’t click. Repeating it just grows the pool of “oops!” There-there! No need to get upset, though. With an adroit turn of a steer wheel we’ll substitute the question word and ram the problem from another angle/ Let us surprise it with: “what for” am I there I don’t know where?

There followed a prolonged pause and indistinct clapping of the eyelashes. Soundless. However, the urge to scratch the back of my neck was held in check successfully. Simply nipped in the bud. Just in case. What if I was born and raised in a civilized class of society? Ain’t it a shame to let your side down? But then who knows… I could as easily originate from among drifter bums… Wild guesses are of no use for finding out the details of the matter in hand.

And at that very point my toes curled up, the glutes contracted, and I clawed the bench section armrests to gain a steady foothold for self-defense. Because my enclosure got blockaded by the necessity pitiless and having no mercy just as a pack of wolves, the must to ask myself the main question stared squarely into my face. No shilly-shally tricks would help out. Yes, I have to. The moment when the shocking crash of my 2 fallen thru attempts dies out would flag off the decisive try. Silly slyness doesn’t work in serious matters.

The chills sent forth by the cold-blood fingers of despair ran over my skin. The epidermic cells were quick to understand that the main question in any, however audacious, form would bump into the same silence. Scornfully haughty. But try I must. At least to try:

”Who am I?”

Bookoff

_

01

Bookoff was dying and he knew it.

The process drew not much if any emotion out him. In a retarded zombie-like manner, shuffled the irreversible stages by. He just carried on without making much song and dance about the nearing fact. Anyway, the skeleton like his was of no use for dancing. The SOB jammed too tight at every other joint.

Aging trains you in self-restraint. Gradually, various occurrences of all kinds stur you less and less, and are met equally calm, ‘Yes, and so what?’ And be grateful if your reaction does not trigger a sharp shoot. Especially in the sacrum.

Not quite indifferent, yet rather listless was Bookoff’s attitude to his own demise. Kinda a visit to the dentist. Willy-nilly, you have to, because it pains. Only the date and hour are not agreed upon, but it is soon already. And he knew that.

His awareness Bookoff shared to no one. He never looked for another guy’s ear to share gossip of his very own snags. It was not like him. The suffered heart attacks were survived on his feet. Even massive ones. Only later, many years after. He could let it slip. Maybe, because of sloppiness arriving when the old age got a say.

Secondly, there was no one to cater his consolations to and prepare for the outcome. The shop-assistant boys at the supermarket were the only choice available to him. He patronized the retail shebang twice a week, buying bread, pasta, and some ketchup to put at home to his frige and forget.

He didn’t know the conquerors’ language. The blonde at the supermarket checkout liked to stage a show for his opposite number buddies. The invisible rifle was pointed at Bookoff, the right palm edge struck across the opposite biceps: “pouf-pouf!”. Dumb clown…

Tee fool’s black haired buddy seized the moment in between distant shelves to ask Bookoff tete-a-tete if he knew Russian. The old man made no answer, even though heard the question with his already half-deaf ears. He walked to the checkout and put by the computer monitor the money, his monthly allowance from the Red Cross mission, printed in the language he knew not, collected the change and went away…

Changes in human life are predetermined for 100 %, thanks to the biological sciences. We know beforehand when a human would get ripe, reach their prime, get dry behind the ears and finally plonk into the Lethe, aka River of Oblivion…

(Employing poetic lingo here aids to mitigate the involuntary contraction of the sphincter at the thought kept deep in the dungeon of any human’s conscience, which policy enables them to pull thru their daily tasks.)

To plumb a person’s biographical clearway is a much more complicated operation. Too many factors have to be considered for the purpose: marital status, their participation in social and political life, changes in geo economy situation and lots of other cats as well, always at ready to run across the unsuspecting guy’s way. Effing jinxes!

And this here person was just an average common man who didn’t care a fig about political analyses and the like trash. Otherwise, long-long ago he certainly would get a hunch of no other final to his biography. Such end was preconditioned by the dynasty schooling, which handed the skills of a strategic smiley to the guy at the rudder in the state inimical to the mountainous region where Bookoff had to live his days out. Plus an immeasurable superiority in monetary and demographic resources. Plus the army equipped with the most modern arms exponentially mightier than those possessed by the mentioned mountainous region considered by the formidable neighbor their hereditary backyard. Plus the corruption of the government and authorities in the “independent state” cobbled up in murky waters of the collapsing USSR.

And lots of other noodles would be added onto his ears by charlatans trained for claptrap TV shows. It’s only that he didn’t switch the damn tube on, not just never but absolutely never.

Bookoff was dying in a style. In a self-made mansion built for a big family. The family got swept away by capitulations and refugee stampedes. Only he stuck back like an old nail whose rust started roots in the wood. Easier to break off than rip out.

Now he was dying alone, silently, aware that he was passing away and that the fact had to be carried on his feet.

From time to time, civilian citizens of the power that had achieved the unprecedented victory came to his house to measure it for their big families. The house was big enough and situated in a good location at the end of a quiet dead end. The garden was also good, even though neglected.

On a closer inspection, they left tsk-tsking their tongue in disappointment. The house sat on the edge of a sheer precipice. It was doomed to topple down there in one or another of future earthquackes inevitable in the mountainous country.

The South Caucasus mountains always were a zone of seismic instability. When building his house, Bookoff missed the point, he didn’t know such words then. He was happy that the city council allocated a plot of land without a usual drag. And of course the house was built not on the edge. In decades the cavity crawled nearer, Together with the stream of open canalization, stinking rivulet along the bottom far down…

That’s how Bookoff learned the words about seismic instability. But now he had again forgotten them. There was time, when crevices in the kitchen wall under the hood of the gas stove drove him into a dismal rage. Then he got used and stopped seeing them.

And now he is just sitting amid the huge silence of his big house, too big for him. He looks at the window whose blinds are never closed. He cannot see the garden thru the window, just as he can’t make out where ends the nose and start the eyes in the unfocused spots of faces by those shop-assistant boys at the supermarket.

Yet, even without looking, he knows that the garden gone grown with rangy grass up to the waist. The garden which turned his arms into accessory tools for the spade, scythe, rake, which farmed his back out to the incessant aches.

He had neither what with nor what after to take care in the garden… There lingered just one business for him – to die.

Vasiok

_

02

Scary silence reigned in the convolutions. Straining themselves to the utmost, logic and memory united their efforts in lost attempts to roll out at least a single one, however flimsy, reason for my appearing upon the bench intended for a set of three sitters. How to justify my presence in the boundless waiting room smack-bang in the middle of unknown MutterSpraheLand, whose PA system sounds so dissimilar to the all-purpose native to all Global-English-Mother-Tongue.

In futile confusion rushed heady vain thoughts hither-thither rubbing against the winding brain partitions like the tremulant mute school of fish caught with the narrow mesh-work wire cage: where am I? who am I?

In place of answer to their mute pleas there grew and widened emptiness so dense that you could feel it when pulpating thru the cranium and pelage. And only from somewhere absolutely faraway, it’s hard to say behind which bend or membrane in the dura mater, there came a ghostly, vague, and tiny echo echoing another echo. The indecipherable sounds added up into, like, “cockina malia” or something. What the hell?!

But then, if taken without quotes and capitalized, it looked like a family name and the first one put vice versa or< maybe, equally plausible, some African state from the same pod with Burkina Faso and other subjects of international law consisting of a couple of words. However, even the geographic aftertaste didn’t attach much reality to the perversely convoluted echoes.

But soon, maybe, too soon, there appeared an undeniably visual sign.

It surfaced out of nowhere and watched me with a pinch of doubt. Reproach and mistrust were also admixed to its attitude easily discernible against the background of the bendy-screwy confusion of wrinkled furrows and rutted traces of routine mental activities imprinted in the cerebral cortex. Then it stuck to the wall on the left, like a decorative magnet in the fridge door. At the mentioned angle it acquired a striking resemblance to 2 letters, both capital: “K” and “M”. At that point there remained no space for maneuvering, acting fool, playing for time, like, I know nothing, officer, seen none…

But not this time, smart Alec, no putting on – see? There is a sign for you big as a house, slip-splashed in rushy graffiti, white on gray, in a daredevil kid style who plunges headlong for taking the first spring swim across the ice-cold river.

Short rows of the shoulders-arms-head-elbows-palms knit by the united effort into a single body swimming thru the streaming icy ripples. Twist and turn, hither-thither – hooh… shi… hooh… it… hooh…

We two, the sign and I, watched one another with fixed stares. Face to face. In cheeky challenge. None of us needed any further tip there would be beating of crap out of the match. Tooth and nail. Till one of us would kick off. Or both…

For me to surrender or merely retreat was out of question. It’s my last chance to get the main answer. And the rest – ho-ho! – scared out of their wits, would confess to everything even before being asked. Otherwise…

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…