even money on you?..50 rubles?!..but that's a jackpot!..now, subtract the tenner for a bus ticket, then 25 for the flight to Kiev, and the fiver for the local train…and keep in mind the havvage expenses…now, give me one good reason for expecting tender love and crazy passion?…
…castes are divided by the abyss unbridgeable…who do you pull for?…where d’you belong?… what are you: a master or a slave?…
…I am what I am what I am at the fifth bottom after the ninth gate…your ‘master’ trap is a too cheap try, everybody’s got at least three masters – Stomach, Genitals, and Brain…the deeper you dig the more of them spring out which one to serve?…so could you get off my back, please?.
…show proper respect to der Heilige Arthur’s teaching, infidel…he sez we cannot change ourselves, we’re only capable of getting to know us a tad bit better, and it’s me who widens your horizons, pal, be grateful to your constant second…or, mayhap, you wanna swap our ordinal numbers?.
…cut out this empty ding-dong, you knows yoursel – the first to wake up retains the slippers all day long so there’s no use to shuffle kings, and cabbage, and walruses, and carpenters…
…to saddle then! and back to your trinity of Masters…if only you don’t want to look for a suitable outsider, Genosse Feldzug-Führer…
…shut up with your red herring!…any raccoon at the Central Committee axiomatically slaves for his stomach…to be a slave’s slave?…count me out! I do not care for his stomach…neither for fucking dialectics with all due respect to imbibed Socrates…
…but then what else to busy me with? I cannot do a better job than my legs…
…enough! no more quibbling!…say it in plain words – are you a master or a slave?…
…damn! you are a nail-hard customer…okay, I am the master of my cock if it will make you happy…
…great!…that makes 33 % plus… you're cooking on gas, bro!…so on we go, would you devour your neighbor at the demand of your empty stomach?…
…I don’t think so…
…yes or no, sweetie?…
…no!…fuck you!…
…good boy! now, I see myself whom I’ve loved so much…and, by the by, you’re at level 66 % plus…now, to disentangle the remainder of the Gordian lacework…
…but I don’t remember what we were about…
…stop your zigzagging!…it’s master or slave choice…who rules who, you know…
…oh!…I’m more tired than my legs already…well, as long as my system is kept in check by means of…
…enough!…no more words!…”means of” is nothing but an instrument…congrats, Mr. Master-unto-Yoursel…two words of warning though…don’t stick your neck out nor try to change the world because a revolutionary without a supporting party is as ridiculous as a stateless citizen…and if I were you I wouldn’t kick up much sing and dance about God’s being dead 'cause all we need is Master giving us commands…but let’s peep out into the wide wild world…what are you personally out there?…
…I have no slaves!…nor need any…
…easy, corner-cutter…a slave owner is someone else’s slave in 99 % plus…and you know as well as I do that having none does not exempt you…so, whose one are you?… Maugham’s?… John Mill’s?…
…yes, yes, yes!…as well as of that topless nuts who popped up above the fence in the Area…I am a slave to all and everything, yet temporarily, until my expiration date or simply getting bored…
…seems like we’ve run into another vicious circle with no chance to be resolved at the round table in m/u 41769’s stoker house, sorry for interrupting your trudge…wipe your snots and just keep walking…some business you're a specialist in…
And he walks, stepping on the tails of the transparent bands of scampering grains of snow. Each step is no different from the previous one, none of the steps changes a jot of the road, and neither the low leaden sky, nor the walls in windbreak belts on both sides get changed in any way.
…all and the same…that same all…everything moves to stays the same…
Occasionally, a concrete kilometer post with figures in a blue squarelet of tin approaches gradually to fall behind. A few hours of such uninterrupted walking, even without any load, and the ache, slight but nagging, would seep into the shoulder bones. He knows that. But not on this day. The district center is at most 15 kilometers from the village, as said by his uncle. And from the town there starts the transport services of a developed civilization…
Something looms at a distance on the roadside; some huge object. Fixing his gaze on that motionless strangeness midst the general chaotic stir, he is nearing it, trying to guess from afar: what could it be?
…some machinery…aha…and what kind of it?…
…who knows, they're tinkling out lots of them for agriculture…let's get closer and then…
A weeny burning sensation breaks up in his bladder.
…would you but wait a bit with your urges?..yes, machinery, yet from another sphere…
He stops by a tangerine-yellow road roller.
…how could you possibly get to it, poor thing?..feels chilly, eh?..no doubt…way too accustomed to asphalt tropics…bituminous heat and stuff…what are your plans for to survive the winter?..no escape to warmer countries, too heavy on the rise, besides, it's too late…and no tool to dig a furrow for yourself, not your specialization…anabiosis remains the only chance, buddy …freeze into the surrounding environment like them those cold-blood earth-water animals…though not a bed of roses too…
He pours his empathy out onto the scattering of small-sized gravel, then zips the fly up and steps over the uneven dark spot in the road, which a couple of hours before was tea prepared by Uncle's wife for a meal.
…everything flows, everything changes…one and the same tea can’t be poured out twice…
~ ~ ~
It was his second visit to the village where he was now walking from. The first time though he did not come himself but was brought by his Dad. The days in that summer lasted forever, unhurried, like the slow stream splitting the village into ‘ours’ and ‘theirs’. The knee-deep water in the quiet creek was rolling soundlessly along the sandy bottom. A little bit upstream you got into the