with each other, toasting this and that from their mutual past.
We also drank. And then I saw how that kicked-out cadet dropped his palm on Olga's knee. What to do? To surprise him with a bottle crushed against his pate? Not quite traditional treatment of your prospective brother-in-law though.
Of course, she took his hand off and I, like, didn't see anything. Soon we left and back in our room she said, “Well, and so what of it?”
Indeed, on Peace Square in Konotop when our whole passe alighted on a bench by the constantly dry fountain for a smoke, they also stroked her knees and she as casually brushed their stray hands off. Yet, we weren't married then…
In the morning, when I ran to the UAZ van taking Ensigns to the detachment, Jafarov rocked with laughter in its open bed.
"You ran as if in a slow-motion film stretch. Clearly doing your best, but still no progress. I swear by Mommy. Good luck there was no counter wind."
They gave me the Leave Ticket only till the evening roll-call, dirty fuckers. When I returned, Olga was still sleeping, in her blouse inside out.
Then it was the time to check out, the room was for one day only. I told her I should be back at the Battalion for the evening roll-call, and she said her train was also in the evening.
We went to the cinema, some kind of a fairy tale about a Persian Hercules named Rostam… Then we were sitting on a bench at the foot of the Komsomol Gorka Hill.
She said that she had to go to the station, but no need to see her off, and she started to cry. The rare passers-by scoffed on the sly – a classical picture by Repin: the girl got pregnant but the soldier doesn't care a fuck.
When she left, I sat on a little more and then went home…
The next day in the Canteen, I knock-toppled a bowl of soup from the table. It spilled in my lap, scolding even thru the canvas pants. I could not get it at all how it happened. Everyone at the table looked up at me, oddly silent, and no one laughed.
Spilled the soup in the lap…What sign could it be? The blouse inside-out. Why?.
(…it’s better not to think some thoughts, just leave them alone and if heedlessly started they’d better be dropped and not thought down the road to their inevitable conclusions…)
~ ~ ~
Zampolit ordered the Club Director, Alexander Roodko, there should be a brass band by the Victory Day, on May 9, or he'd get the boot and busted to a construction site as a plasterer's hand, and his Company Master Sergeant would rot him "on the floors" until his demobilization day.
Of course, we pulled for The Orion leader and did not let him down, in mere three weeks a brass band was thrown together. Jafarov and Commissar, clear enough, were two horn players, Pickle played the baritone, and Zameshkevich blew the tuba. As it turned out, in their schooldays, they participated in a brass music course. Karpesha was the drummer, Roodko played the clarinet, the Club painter dubbed the big drum and mine was the main instrument in any brass band – two copper plates. Bzdents!!.
Sasha Lopatko began his service in the same squad-team with me, but then his Dad came and held negotiations in the Staff barrack and Sasha was appointed the Club painter… His Dad was, by the by, a priest and, probably, for that reason Sasha got to the construction battalion. You can’t trust whosoever handling advanced weaponry, right?.
We rehearsed 2 numbers: “On the Hills of Manchuria” and “Farewell of the Slav Woman”, not because we got way too scared by Zampolit's threat but simply a lahbooh would do whatever is humanly possible to help out another lahbooh.
On May 9, we changed into parade-craps and were taken by the UAZ van to different construction sites escorted by the "goat"-Willys carrying Zampolit. Holidays were invented for idlers and the construction battalion warriors are always on duty. The squad-teams at the sites visited by those 2 vehicles got ordered to briefly leave their front of work and fall in by their projects. Zampolit pushed over a very short speech (the Battalion Commander with his leaky brain would start an oration for a half-hour without knowing what he was about at all), we played "The Slav" and "The Hills" and the sun shimmered playfully from our brass and copper… To have a holiday you do need a brass band…
Next step in The Orion's career became the one-night dances in the village club of Demino, in 6 kilometers from our detachment along the same asphalt road. In response to the kind invitation, the musicians not only played but, replacing each other at the instruments, climbed, in turn, down from the small stage to the small hall to dance midst the local youth. Of all The Orions the pleasure was withheld only for Alexander Roodko, the irreplaceable bassist.
Under the long-long song sung by Robert Zakarian, I was embracing the ample-bodied villager Irina. Life was smiling on me…
Before his demobilization, Yura Zameshkevich reported to Major Avetissian, the Battalion Supply and Maintenance Commander, that no one but I was qualified to replace him at the position of the Battalion Stoker. Zameshkevich's statement was actively backed by a Battalion Cook Vladimir Rassolov, aka Pickle, who had still another half-year to serve. In course of petitioning, the chef congratulated the Supply and Maintenance Commander on obtaining the long-awaited-for rank of Major. As a result, Major Avetissian granted my enrollment to the glorious ranks of chmo.
The collective name of chmo embraced all the servicemen engaged in the battalion internal services: the pigman, dishwashers, stokers, cooks, the locksmith, the tailor, the shoemaker, the projectionist, the drivers of the vehicles for the commanding officers, as well as the assistant paramedic at the first aid unit – anyone, in short, who was not fortunate enough to work at construction sites was referred to as