Chapter 7

 

 

 

… It was that borderline hour between the end of the night and the beginning of dawn, when the probability of catching a taxi was zero. And I had to walk home. After Dunya’s fantastic demarche, my mood was shitty. And I decided to walk through the park, past the local “Disneyland”. For some reason, it seemed to me that it would be more fun that way. However, the dimly lit, motionless rides of the amusement park resembled the scenery of some absurd performance, bringing on even more melancholy. And I turned into one of the side alleys of the park."

 Suddenly, in the middle of the night, a dog began to bark nearby, and another one joined in. A few minutes later, the polyphonic barking of dogs could be heard from all corners of the city. So friendly and synchronously, the four-legged creatures greeted the moon, hanging in the sky like a platinum medallion, broken from the neck of a Canis of the constellation "Hound Dogs."

The dogs' choral singing had an unexpected effect on me. My soul was relieved of melancholy, and my head became clearer. And with a joyful sinking of the heart, I forgave Dunya those offensive and unfair words that she threw in my face as she got into the taxi.

Finally, the dog's singing died down, dis-solving into the night space. I stopped, listened to the silence and moved on. This unkempt corner of the park where I found myself was decorated with a plaster sculpture of a canoeist with an oar on a pedestal. And on the opposite side of the alley there was a public toilet, an example of park architecture from the 50s and 60s of the last century. A sort of rectangle with walls made of shell rock, but without a roof and with empty openings instead of doors. Inside, it was divided by a blank wall into two equal halves: men's and women. And in each of these halves there were six oval holes made in the reinforced concrete floor, directly above the cesspool.

I was quite drunk, but not so drunk that I was unaware of what was happening. So when, in-stead of the aforementioned latrine of times from the end of Stalin's autocracy and the beginning of Khrushchev's thaw, a certain "unidentified object" appeared before me, and I thought it was a figment of my imagination.

However, having taken a few steps towards it, I was forced to abandon my assumption about its virtual nature of origin, and admit that it was a very real one-story structure with the attic.

I walked around it on the left side and stopped in front of the facade. The glass door was locked. I backed up and saw a glowing sign on the front of the building: "Restaurant Knyazha vtikha," which translated from Ukrainian meant "to bring pleasure."

"So that's it!" I thought. And felt like a character in some Kafkaesque plot." The former public toilet has been transformed into a public catering establishment! And this metamorphosis made me burst out laughing. "Knyazha vtikha!" I repeated, laughing, "Knyazha vtikha!"

"Don't make waves," Brian cut me off. And have continued: "The transformation of a toilet into its opposite—this means something! But what if this contains the key to the secret essence of capitalism?"

“Capitalism? This socio-economic phenomenon was studied and described in the works of Karl Marx,” I objected.

"Karl Marx, as we know, dissected capitalism as an economist. And you have the good fortune to look at it from a physiological point of view, to observe post-processing, or, in other words, the imitation of turning shit into gold. And this, I believe, is the pinnacle that capitalism has reached in its development, its quintessence, its extract," Brain insisted.

Suddenly, a light flashed in the restaurant windows. The glass door opened slightly, and in the resulting gap, the cone-shaped head of Anubis with ears sticking up appeared. However, instead of a dog's bark, human speech was heard: “Why are you making noise? People are resting, can’t you see?”

 “Forgive me, dear head,” I began to justify myself, “I was so shocked by the transformation of the public toilet into a catering establishment..."

“Not in an establishment,’ but to a five-star restaurant, at a hot spot,” the head objected.

“An unfortunate place, you say?” I asked.

“Not an ill-fated place, but at a hot spot,” he corrected me. “But if you still have something left in your pocket, come in, you’re welcome.”

After this, I was finally convinced that I was dealing not with an Egyptian deity, but with a real night maître d'.

“Yes, something is still "ringing"!” I said, slapping my hand on my trouser pocket. And, giving in to temptation, I sat down at the table standing on the terrace under a large open umbrella.

"What shall we drink: champagne, cognac, vodka?" asked the ingratiating night maitre d', throwing me the look of a hardened profiteer.

“Black coffee and a glass of mineral water, please,” I asked.

"How banal!" he said, disappointed. And he left.

I sighed with relief, relaxed, stretched my tired legs and seemed to doze off. And when I opened my eyes, I saw him again.

“Here’s Mukuzani, I found it in the buffet,” he said triumphantly, uncorking the bottle.

“What is this?” I asked cautiously.

“If you like, Georgian coffee!” he said, showing me the large, gnawed teeth of an old predator in a smile.

We clinked glasses and drank some tart Georgian wine.

“What are you doing in our park at night? What are you looking for here? What are you sniffing around for?” he asked, staring at me with the piercing eyes of a local inquisi-tor.

“It’s just that I had a fight with my girl-friend,” I admitted.

“And where is she?”

“She ran away.”

“One?”

“No, with a taxi driver.”

“It happens,” he said and looked at the moon, its oval side caught on the chimney of a house that stood with its end facing the park.

“What do you mean by this "it hap-pens"? Or are you, like a dog, susceptible to lunar magnetism?” I asked him an incorrect question.

“No, more like flatulence,” he answered in rhyme. “But I wanted to say: ‘runs away.’ A woman runs away, she always runs away. Do you understand?”

"A jumping woman or as?" I asked.

“A ghost woman, a dream woman, I was married to one of them, and her name was Galina,” he said.

And, after a pause, he continued:

“We started sinning with Gallia long before the wedding. She couldn't live without it. Almost every day she came to the gates of the naval school where I studied, to meet me after classes. And we went to the seaside, found a secluded place there and made love.”

“You’re a lucky man, maître d’,” I said.

"I'm not a maître d', and certainly not a lucky one. I'm a retired under-navigator, and now I work as a night guard in this fucking restaurant," he said. And, pouring wine, into glasses, he continued: "In the summer of one thousand nine hundred and sixty-five from the Nativity of Christ, Galina and I got married. And in the autumn of that year, I was drafted into the army, or more precisely into the Navy. Galya did not want to let me go, she cried, wailing: "Darling, what will I do without you alone?"

However, even the love of a woman like Galya could not cancel the draft into the USSR Armed Forces.”

“I know this Bolshevik narrative: ‘First think about the Motherland, and then about your wife,’” I said.

“And so, when I was already serving as a sailor on a warship, a letter came from my older brother Vitka. In the soft forms of the epistolary genre, he reported that my Galya was cheating on me.

Of course, I didn't believe it; I thought it was a provocation on his part. At one time, Vitka himself was flirting with Galka, and now he's looking for a reason to separate us...

At this moment something began to knock on the dome of the umbrella under which we were sitting. I decided that it had started to rain, leaned out, hoping to clear my head, and found myself under the massive morning defecation of a flock of birds.

I recoiled, hid my head under the umbrella dome, and felt a prick in the liver area. It was the memory of the girl Alya, Alevtina Goritsvet, whom I had once courted, that awoke in me. I knew that there is the memory of the heart, and there is the memory of the phallus. But then the memory of the liver was revealed to me…

Alevtina Goritsvet, or simply Alya, lived two blocks from me, on Stanislavsky Street. On Sundays, taking with me a cake or a box of chocolates, I would come to visit her.

Alya was setting the table, and we sat down to drink Georgian tea. I sat opposite her and couldn't take my eyes off her. She had the face of an immaculate virgin: smooth pink skin, grey-blue eyes, a small mouth with thin lips, and an oval chin like an apple.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

“You are so beautiful!” I said, embarrassed. And I turned my gaze to her bare arms, to her full chest, rising with every breath.

I wanted to press my face against that breast and never tear myself away from it. I wanted this more than anything, but I could not bring myself to do such a natural thing for a man in love. Furthermore, I was afraid that if I did this, the girl would be offended, throw me out of the house, and I would never see her again.

And she, with a heavy and drawn-out sigh, got up from the table and, without looking at me, collected the dishes. Then she took the chess set out of the drawer, and we played until the evening. Having finished with the chess set, we went for a walk along the streets of Moldavanka or went to the summer cinema "1-go Maya" to watch a film.

After the session, I walked Alya home. And we said goodbye like middle schoolers, silently shaking hands. One of those evenings, Alya ran her palm over my cheek and lips. This display of tenderness caught me off guard; I was confused, not knowing what to do. And she, twisting her lips in a contemptuous smile, turned away from me and left, slamming the gate goodbye.

One winter, the three of us: I, Alya and my colleague Nikolay Serdyuk were walking around the city. After watching the Spanish film "Let Them Talk", in which the singer Rafael played the leading role, we went to the sea terminal: we decided to look at the snow-white liners, at our compatriots heading off on a winter cruise, and finally, to drink a cup of coffee with cognac in the station cafe.

Walking along the embankment, we met Nikolai's friend Sergey, assistant captain of the passenger ship "Dolphin", and he invited us on board. We boarded the ship and immediately found ourselves in the wardroom. There, Sergey's colleagues were celebrating "arrival in the native harbor". He introduced us to each other and, as the senior in rank and position, took a bottle of vodka, poured it into glasses and said the traditional toast: “For those at sea!”

Then there were more toasts: "For patient and faithful women", "For strong sailor friendship". A separate toast was made for Alya, the most beautiful girl in Odessa and the Odessa region. The men drank standing up, which Alya really liked.

She quickly got used to the new company, and, casting a cheeky glance at the tipsy sailors, asked:

“Is there anyone brave enough to show me the ship and the captain's bridge?”

“No problem!” Sergey responded immediately. And, getting up from the table, he extended his hand to Alya.

“Well, I’ll go with you!” I said hesitantly.

“Sit, sit,” Alla stopped me. “I’ll just be there for a minute, just look at the Odessa Bay from the captain’s bridge and then straight back…”

Alya and Sergey left, and we drank some more. Then the guys argued about who was stronger. Serdyuk suggested that the sailors settle the dispute with arm wrestling. "Whoever wins will be right!" he said, smiling drunkenly.

I sat in my place, looking now at the "warriors", now at the door. Alya and Sergey had been gone for about an hour, I was nervous, and was about to go looking for them when the door to the wardroom swung open and they burst into the room, laughing about something. In Alya's hand was a capacious branded plastic bag from the duty-free shop for sailors.

“Strange, when she came on the ship, she didn't have any bags!" Thought I.

Meanwhile, Alya came up to the table, sat down next to me and said:

“Lenya, I really need you. Come with me.”

When we left the wardroom for the corridor, Alya looked at me straight and asked:

 "Do you know where we can find a secluded spot around here?”

Without waiting for a clear answer from me, she went straight down the corridor, and I followed her. Seeing the toilet, she opened the door and said: "Come in!" And crossed the threshold first...

“Hey, boy, you’re not listening to me at all,” the sub-skipper called out to me, touching my shoulder with his palm.

“Oh, come on, I'm listening to you, I'm listening!” I lied. «But I just can't understand how you, without any evidence or even witness testimony, could believe that your wife is cheating on you?

“The heart, Lenya, the heart feels everything!” he said. "And in my youth, you know, I was so sensitive!

Once, I dreamed of my wife Galya spreading her loins and my brother Vitka entering her. To see this, even in a dream, was beyond my strength! Without remembering myself, I jumped out of bed, ran out onto the deck, and jumped overboard like a swallow.

The sailor on watch heard a splash of water and raised the alarm: "Man overboard! The emergency!" They fished me out of the water like a puppy, lifted me, wet, onto the deck. What a disgrace it was, if only you had known!

 “They didn’t put you in a mental hospital after that?” I asked, sympathizing with him.

“No, what are you saying! I was immediately taken to the ship's hospital, given a sedative injection. And the next morning I was summoned to the headquarters of the nuclear missile carrier unit.

The commander, Rear Admiral Bering, accused me of weakening the combat capability of not only our ship, the USSR Navy, but also the country as a whole.

However, when he found out the reason why I decided to commit suicide, he scolded me in a fatherly way and told me some interesting facts. It turns out that around thirty percent of married men on Earth are raising children whose biological fathers they are not. And this is far from a complete statistic.

"I have three children myself, and I don't know who they are from," said the admiral. "And I can't bring myself to ask my wife. So, sailor, be more modest, you are not the only one in this situation. Understand this and remember that we, people, are simply obliged to exchange chromosomes to maintain genetic diversity. Otherwise, we are threatened with extinction as a population..."

The skipper was talking, and I was remembering that episode when Alya and I found ourselves in the toilet of the Dolphin liner and she, having locked the door with a latch, said:

“Lenya, please fasten the clasp on my bra, I can’t reach it myself.

Flattered by such trust, I lifted the cashmere blouse on her back and became intoxicated by the sexual scent emanating from her naked body...

“Now do you guess what your Alevtina was doing when she left with that guy?” Brain asked me sarcastically.

I sent him to hell, pulled Alya to me and kissed her between her sweat-dampened shoulder blades. My hands found what they needed on their own…

“Well, listen!” the second skipper continued. “After the meeting with Rear Admiral Bering, the military unit issued an order for me to take a short leave. As I was getting ready for the trip, I thought: "Finally, I'll look this bitch in the eye..."

However, it didn’t work out! On June 5, 1967, the Arab-Israeli war began. At dawn, our missile destroyer, as part of a strike group of ships of the Black Sea Red Banner Fleet, left for the Mediterranean Sea for combat duty…

"Lenya, did you hear the skipper call his wife a 'bitch'?" Brain responded expressively. "Such a comparison is insulting to an animal!"

“Leave the skipper alone, he is the victim of a monstrous falsification!” I said, becoming more and more irritated.

I remembered how back then, in the toilet of the Dolphin, Alya, without turning her head, said in a hoarse voice: "Oh, Lenya, you're such a bitch! Why didn't you do this to me before?"

But whether I managed to fasten the clasp on her bra back then, I somehow forgot...