the construction battalion, or maybe his penalty stretch at VSO-11 was over and for that occasion, the lieutenant, Deputy Commander of Fourth Company, stepped into his shoes. However, the lieutenant’s fists were nothing like the sledgehammers of the departed Captain and buddies kinda stirred up some fuss about TV set, like, why in Separate or in Third Companies they could watch TV, football and stuff while our box was dead for more than a year, ain't we humans? Stuff it!
At that point, the Battalion Commander ordered to collect the Company personnel into the Political Classes Room. He entered it together with the lieutenant and sat atop the desk, like, Prince Charming, where his trousers jerked up to the knees for demonstrating the gray fur above his shoes and socks.
And all of us facing him from the stools brought in from the barrack aisle, a-gape and ready for some sage advice. The Spanish artist Goya produced a whole bunch of the like pictures, series of them…
"Are you fucking going on strike? Eh? Stupid dicks! No fucking Italy for you here! The motherfuckers over there enjoy spaghetti! One macaroni can be long, another – short, because it fucking broke in halves!"
Here he made a pause in his cryptic monologue, perched proudly above our heads, turning from side to side his thick-rimmed glasses. Some swollen-headed fur-legged owl, not having the slightest idea what fucking folly he had thrown up right now.
And we all sat before him with dull stares full of faith and willingness which we should demonstrate to seniors in rank…
Yet, behind the statutory look that I was supposed to present each and every commander, there reeled on Pickle’s tale about the hermaphrodite Sofochka from the Orel draft. Pickle couldn’t say how much her parents had to shell out for the medical commission to turn a blind eye at certain peculiarities in the physiological structure of their child because of craving for a time break, at least in those two years.
That way Sofochka was classified as fit for non-combatant service and sent to the construction battalion where they make a real man out of anyone… Shortly before the Orel draft demobilization, in the barrack of Fourth Company, there developed an explosive love triangle, the dembel cutie involved. She was indiscriminately giving her favor to a couple of her fellow-servicemen, though in turn. The buddies couldn't find a peaceful solution to the question: whose bunk bed she should visit after the lights-out.
Then in the same Political Classes Room, there was also ordered a meeting of the Fourth Company personnel. So I might chance to be sitting on that same stool which was seated by Pickle when Battalion Commander put the question squarely, "Sofochka, fuck the whore of your mother, is there dick or cunt by you there, eh?"
The private so addressed rose from his stool and, approaching the senior in rank, dealt a slap in the face, "Old goat!" Then, rolling her hips proudly, she returned to the stool with her back to the happy squeaks of a laughing owl.
Fathers-Commanders. Some fucking army!. Take it or leave it, yet I couldn’t shrug the Pickle's story off as some sheer bunk, the details were falling in all too readily with the surrounding shit…
I woke up back into the current meeting just in time for the concluding address delivered by Lieutenant-Colonel from his perch: "Fuck it! You’re given the highest matter! The brain! The fucking gray stuff!."
Hmm, looks like he’s got bored already into some other gyrus of his gray matter…you're in the fucking army now…aw, fuck it all!.
~ ~ ~
At the Morning Dispensing, Chief of Staff announced that the day before he saw a soldier from our battalion floundering on an AWOL in the city. He had even chased the motherfucker but couldn't take over, however, the just retribution could never be avoided and now he would pass along the ranks and find that fucking stain defiling the glorious name of our battalion.
And so he paced along, scanning carefully the rows of petrified faces in First Company, Second Company, Third Company, and Fourth Company.
…fuck yourself, Major!..there remains only the gate and the road outside it…
Keeping silent, he slowly retraced alongside the ranks.
…what a dolt!..if you were chasing someone yesterday, there's no fucking chance he’d attend the Morning Dispensing…go and wipe up your drivel…the buddy's now kicking back around in a drier room…or substituting the on-duty serviceman… it might have also been one from those squads who never come to barracks slaving at the city plants for months…
The Major started his third attempt, the fucking optimist.
First Company, Second Company, Third Company, and Fourth Company.
..so happy now?..the stupid head gives no respite the legs…that's some fucking ar…
"Here he is!"
The index finger from the boxer-like fist of Major pointed at me.
"What?! If it were I my ass’d be kicked before the Dispensing!"
"To the clink!"
The on-duty officer and two dippers with red armbands approached me demanding to hand in my belt and escorted me to the checkpoint guardhouse. On the move, I went on to debate that the bitch of Major knew it as well as I did that it was not me, but they locked me in the clink all the same…
About an hour later the on-duty officer unlocked the door to give me back my belt because I was assigned to the penalty work – sprinkling sand over the ice covering the road to the city. The truck with its bed-load of sand was at the gate already…
Squinting my eyes at the whistling wind, I was dutifully throwing shovelfuls of sand over the iron tailgate of the moving truck. Yet, when it entered the city and went after another load of sand, our ways parted at the nearest traffic lights.
Then I jackalled for a bottle or 2 and woke up at dark already seated on a bench at the foot of the Komsomol Gorka Hill.
It turned out that the blizzard meanwhile got fully subsided and only slow big snowflakes were descending from the dense dark above