order—he asked me an absolutely well-grounded question, "Are you sick?"
To which, without a moment’s delay, I gave it out proudly, "I am incurably infected with life."
Yay! I liked the sound of it myself. The sergeant, from awe and admiration, could not find what else to say but did not let me pass all the same….
That is why I had to celebrate the family holiday alone, although Eera and Gaina Mikhailovna predicted in a duo that nothing good would come of it.
Yes, the prophecy was slap accurate. All I managed to get in the "Polissya" restaurant was a shot of vodka – the last in stock, so they told me. I was encouraged to buy a bottle of cognac instead, but I'm not a drunk to put away a half-liter cognac single-handed. So, I concentrated on that lonely shot and meditations, for a snack, on the futility of arguing with Mothers and that under the conditions of all-pervading matriarchy there certainly had to be a system of communicating vessels between my mother-in-law and the unfriendly waitress.
In the "Seagull" restaurant, located farther off from Red Partisans, I bought a fluky bottle of champagne and also a parsley salad… On my way back from the celebration, the champagne, naturally, hit my bladder.
In those days I tried to do everything right (in the hope to avoid the inevitable). That was, like, sort of insurance – the righteous guy's wife couldn't cheat on him…or what? There, of course, was no guarantee but, if not to consider the matter too closely, the assumption inspired some puny hope… As long as peeing in the sidewalk was wrong, I headed for the toilet in the Bazaar whose gate turned out to be locked for a long time before my coming, and I had to climb over. That also was not entirely correct, but not too noticeable in the dark.
By the time when in the corner of the empty and dark Bazaar I approached the iron-sheet door to the toilet, it already bore a block-letter inscription "On Repair" drawn in chalk. Meanwhile, the champagne reached the peak in its fight for freedom, so I had to pour my indignation at the dictatorship of the communicating vessels out on that same door. Without impairing the inscription though.
Well, and who else could met me climbing out down the gate but a militia patrol? Welcome to your native planet! Of course, they did not buy it that someone would go over the closed gate when there was so much of sidewalk in the dark around, and I was taken to the sobering-up station.
The doctor there, to check my stage of intoxication, offered to perform several forward bends.
"Heels together, toes apart?" inquired I conversationally. But that capillary vessel complicated the task, and I had to do the bends with my feet pressed close to each other.
Then the doc asked how much and which stuff namely had been consumed, received clear information and, with a shrug, handed me over to the lieutenant.
The lieutenant wanted to know my place of work and, learning I was not local, asked for my mother-in-law's number and called Gaina Mikhailovna to identify my voice over the phone. Then they just pointed at the door, refusing to give me a little lift, and threatening to lock me up if I attempt to do any more nuisance of myself.
Thus, despite the die-hard opposition by conspiring females and their henchmen, your first birthday became a truly unique event – the one and only time when I got into a sobering-up station…
~ ~ ~
The development of my marital relationship with Eera moved onward thru gradual and quite predictable stages. At first, when after a working week I came to Nezhyn and excitedly pressed the coveted nipple in the doorbell, Eera in a flash opened the door for me. I hugged her in the hallway, and we kissed.
She even smeared my wrists with glycerin to treat the skin cracks from the frost at the construction site. "Oh, what a silly fool you are!" said Eera and I felt happy, although the cracks smarted.
At the following stage, the kissing got cut out. Still later, instead of embraces, we exchanged the casual cues, "How d'you?" "Fine." And that is correct because something had to be said anyway.
The relationship did not stop at that, and the door started to be opened by my parents-in-law, mostly by Ivan Alexeyevich. Sometimes, I had to push the doorbell button twice already…
In the winters when my hands' skin condition became of no interest, I stopped freezing it. Probably, I grew more experienced, or else the skin realized it had no chances of being treated with glycerin anymore.
At our final kiss in the hallway, I instantly realized that something was wrong. Instead of her lips, Eera somehow guiltily set up her neck, and there wafted a whiff of fox. It's not that I had ever sniffed a fox, yet directly got it – the vixen funk. Later on that visit, she told me that she had been home alone, the doorbell rang and it turned out to be one of her classmates from school. He knelt before her in the kitchen, embraced and kissed her knees, but she told him to leave and nothing happened.
And there, of course, happened another fit of covert agony, but even choking in the steely grip of jealousy I still managed to keep my heartbeat bursting absolutely out of time and, when it numbed and breathing gradually normalized, I somehow began to live on further…
From the hallway, I proceeded to the bathroom to wash my hands, and then entered the living-room to say "good evening" to everyone absorbed in TV watching, and to sit down at the table abutting the windowsill.
The table center was allotted to the TV but, beside it, there remained enough of the oilclothed room for the plate, fork, and bread laid by Eera so that I could have a supper. I did not block the screen and did not bother anyone, if only