Little stories about clear love

I. The telephone rang for a long time, shrill and agonizing. It seemed determined to finish the Man off and was doing everything in its power to achieve that. But the Man refused to give up and pretended not to hear it. He lay on the sofa, reading a newspaper. This went on for about half an hour. Finally, the Man could take no more; he rose from his couch, walked over to the phone, picked it up, and hurled it onto the floor with all his might. The telephone shattered into pieces. It grew so quiet that his ears ached. The Man returned to the sofa and went back to reading the newspaper. The struggle between Homo sapiens and his invention ended in the inventor's complete triumph.

II. He loved Her. She, however, loved another. Such things happen in life. But He did not know this. And so He hanged himself in his room overlooking the green park where She and her Beloved liked to take their strolls.

III. When the last leaf fell from the old maple tree, his hope fell as well, dashing against the frozen ground and shattering into a thousand pieces—only to gather itself back together, after a while, into the single unified feeling of waiting for a pure Love.

IV. He searched for Death for a long time, but she was well hidden. He looked for Her on rooftops, in gas stoves, in rivers and lakes, in rope nooses, and in white pills, but could not find Her. And then, when he decided to look down the barrel of a gun, his search was crowned with success.

V. He waited for Her for long years. He loved only Her, and Her alone. And so, as He was living out his final hours, She happened to drop in on him. But seeing what She had turned into over half a century, He died before She had a chance to tell Him that She had always loved only Him.

VI. The rain poured down relentlessly. The two of them, He and She, stood near a damp brick building, gazing at the soaked leaves that swayed above them. Ah, if only they had known that this rain was radioactive, they would have stepped inside that damp brick building and gone on enjoying those leaves for a long time; but, alas, they knew nothing. They loved each other too much to notice what was happening all around them. The rain poured on, gradually washing away both those soaked leaves and the two of them—Her and Him, lovers who had been gazing at those leaves...

VII. The New Year arrived and crushed their pure love beneath its foot.

VIII. Passion overtook them suddenly. There was nothing they could do to stop it, but the cave-in, beginning just as suddenly, did a terrible thing to them both... When the rescue workers dug their bodies out, they were fused into a single mass of flesh, and what remained of their lips was locked in a deep kiss.

IX. He drowned in her eyes, but then surfaced, climbed out of them, and turned away. She turned him back toward herself and dove into his eyes, which were filled to the brim with sorrow. Alas, they could not be together. And there were reasons for that.

X. He was watching television and smoking a cigarette. Clouds of gray smoke floated about the room and drifted out through the open ventilation pane, into which a yellow moon (likely yellowed from tobacco smoke) was peering. When the cigarette was finished, He stood up, switched off the television, closed the pane, and went to bed.

March 1, 1992

FAIRY TALE: K O L O B O K

(Written out of suffering from pure horseshit, based on motifs of the Russian folk tale and other literary works by Soviet writers)

Note: KOLOBOK is something spherical, though with minor imperfections, alias—a round loaf measuring 22'33". Created out of a substance contained, alias—a dry crust in grasses growing across fields, formed under, alias—under intense squeezing of grain, lightly salted, with brief-action add-devices of a transparent... tasting fluid meant for hurling. Heated to a temperature of... alias—...

CHILDREN ARE NOT REQUIRED TO READ THIS, THEY WON'T GET IT ANYWAY.

One day, old man Appolon Romualdych, returning home from field labor at the local "Ilyich's Red Bast Shoe" KALkhoz, pulled the footwrap off his foot, sniffed it—and got utterly stoned dumb. And from this very dumbfounding, an idear shoved its way into his brain, and he voiced it to his missus, Getera Feoktistovna, who was fussing about the kitchen, noisily banging all sorts of pots and cast-iron skillets (just for show, naturally, since there was nothing to scoff—a great famine stalked the entire Russian land). And said Appolon Romualdych:

"My dear wifey, Geteria Feoktistovna. How about you bake a kolobok for supper, on account of I'm sick of munching on boiled plantain leaves."

To this monologue, Getera Feoktistovna replied:

"Are you out of your mind, you old fart? Have you been sniffing your footwraps again, you damned glue-sniffer? What am I supposed to bake you a kolobok out of, you frozen carrot?"

"Well, go," replied Appolon Romualdych, "to the neighbors. They're former kulaks; maybe they stashed something away. I know them kulak mugs—they stuff their gullets with blinis every single day!"

Off went the old woman to the neighbors and traded a thousand rubles in banknotes for half a pint of flour. Returning to the ancestral home, she prepared the dough and baked her old man a kolobok, the size of a sixteen-kilogram kettlebell if you went at it lightly with a bastard rasp for about ten weeks. The old man went so far as to say "thank you" for that and gave her a juicy smack on the forehead, leaving a whopper of a bruise afterward. And so she set this Kolob on the windowsill to cool off, while she and the old man whistled off somewhere, clearly trudging after some hooch so they could wash their creation down. And why wouldn't they, eh.

Meanwhile, Kolobok stood on the windowsill, stood and stood, and then leaped right out into the street. And right there, just by chance, the kAlkhoz chairman was strolling past; he spotted him, snatched him up with a deft maneuver, and began stuffing him into his gargantuan maw. But Kolobok applied contact heel taekwondo to him and took off on the run, while the chairman was busy working his jaw back into place. Having worked it loose, the chairman let out such a shriek across the whole native kAlkhoz of his, hollering that good-hearted folks were doing him in.

Kolobok ran all the way to the woods, sweating like a pig, poor bastard. And no sooner had he dashed into the forest than out along the dirt road came the district police precinct officer on a motorized jalopy, with a red, swollen mug. He climbed down from his steel steed, swayed, let out a most flavorful belch, and planted his face straight into the roadside mud. Kolobok tumbled right over him and kept going, on business, like, although he didn't actually have any business on the agenda. So there he goes, whistling all kinds of smash hits and humming something like "Instead of a heart, I've got a fiery motor...".

On goes Kolobok, on and on, when toward him comes a muzhik, all dried out, covered in hair, with wild eyes. The viper let out a roar, so terrible that from the sheer shock Kolobok couldn't hold certain things in and made a puddle; the fellow lunged at Kolobok and just opened his maw to devour the poor passerby when Kolobok applied to him, too, his wrestling technique unknown in these parts. And once again—hit the road. He ran for a long time, until a crimson tongue flopped out of his mouth and he was thoroughly boiled over. Falling into the wet grass and lounging there for about two hours, Kolobok trudged onward.

He stomps along, stomps along, and lo and behold, holy-mothers-and-fathers-aunts-and-uncles..., right in front of him looms a wooden post, and on it, holy smokes, shines the inscription:

       "State Border of the USSR"

Oh, how unutterably overjoyed Kolobok was! And the second he made a dash for the other side, past the post, over the hillock, something went clatter in the bushes, an assault rifle burst tore right through the kolobok, water squirted out of him (the old woman must not have baked him through), and he collapsed into the raw mud of the border strip, closing his clear eyes forever. Peace to his dough! Ekh!

P.S. The border guards devoured him, lead crunching against their rotten teeth...

THE END
December 24, 1990

EKH!!!

(delirium of a quiet madman)

Ekh!       life sucks in this world!
Ekh!       up in heaven it's fine!
Ekh!       I love one little girl!
Ekh!       which one? Won't tell you mine.
Ekh!       Makhnovist anarchists.
Ekh!       sadistic communists.
Ekh!       Siberian cholera.
Ekh!       Chinese scurvy.
Ekh!       machine gun fire.
Ekh!       shed the oppressor's ire.
Ekh!       no pity for Isaura.
Ekh!       wanna sit in the Central Committee!
Ekh!       the bastards crucified Christ.
Ekh!       the Jews are my foes.
Ekh!       it's morning on the street already.
Ekh!       can't see a damn thing.
Ekh!       maybe I should go hang myself.
Ekh!       ain't got any rope.
Ekh!       I'm Evgeny, not a genius.
Ekh!       who gave me three rubles?
Ekh!       dear native militia.
Ekh!       I feel bad without you.
Ekh!       shots fired in Karabakh.
Ekh!       a little boy-onnanist.
Ekh!       should send matchmakers to my sweetheart.
Ekh!       Mount Elbrus alpinist.
Ekh!       I sit on the sofa.
Ekh!       outside the window snow falls.
Ekh!       comrades and brothers!
Ekh!       AIDS is buzzing across Russia!
Ekh!       shoot, you won't miss.
Ekh!       straight at the little father Tsar.
Ekh!       fall into rank.
Ekh!       strip buck-naked.
Ekh!       my own sweet sister.
Ekh!       I love only you.
Ekh!       pity you're a stranger to me.
Ekh!       I won't come near you.
Ekh!       of the Baku commissars...
Ekh!       ... 26 were shot.
Ekh!       is Lenin in the mausoleum?
Ekh!       I saw him, so he is.
Ekh!       Chapaev was a hero.
Ekh!       the Communist Party doesn't lie.
Ekh!       a dead old mare...
Ekh!       ... won't take you far.
Ekh!       Soviet intelligence.
Ekh!       punched the enemy on the nose.
Ekh!       tired of reading yet?
Ekh!       'cause I can't take any more.
Ekh!       hang the communists.
Ekh!       crucify all the Jews.
Ekh!       brother, I'm no sadist.
Ekh!       don't consume cologne.
Ekh!       reading "Pravda", "Izvestia".
Ekh!       reading them backwards.
Ekh!       I know no dishonor.
Ekh!       give me an airplane.
Ekh!       my hardcore love!
Ekh!       there's no joy in life for me.
Ekh!       my native homeland.
Ekh!       Stalin, where are you?
Ekh!       where are you? WHERE!?!
Ekh!       a plane fell from the sky.
Ekh!       seventeen tons of makhorka shag.
Ekh!       our boys could've used a smoke.
Ekh!       if only they'd delivered it.
Ekh!       four damn tank men.
Ekh!       their single dog.
Ekh!       the knot was tied tight.
Ekh!       don't you love the Cheka?
Ekh!       bad news from the fields.
Ekh!       the whole harvest is ruined.
Ekh!       never been to the Pentagon?
Ekh!       then sit back and catch on.
Ekh!       Semites all around.
Ekh!       I'll strangle every one.
Ekh!       don't shoot at the icon.
Ekh!       I only love K****** alone!
Ekh!       Japanese intelligence.
Ekh!       and moonshine in the States.
Ekh!       bananas are rare these days.
Ekh!       a single boxcar stands.
Ekh!       fellas, don't you beat.
Ekh!       neither her nor me.
Ekh!       Robot Werther was a fool.
Ekh!       there's no smoke without fire.
Ekh!       two young Little Octobrists.
Ekh!       and the third's a communist.
Ekh!       give me back my child!
Ekh!       shoot yourself, masochist!
Ekh!       Stalin is a damn Tatar!
Ekh!       Beria's a bald Uzbek!
Ekh!       they shat all over my country.
Ekh!       combative 20th century.
Ekh!       went on writing too long.
Ekh!       time to wrap it up.
Ekh!       that's it, enough for today.
Ekh!       ought to stamp an official seal!

December 1990
(Partially published in the newspaper "Molodyozhny Kuryer", MASSR, July 24, 1991)

TERRORIST VOROBYOV

(in 5 parts)

Part I

Unnamed

I am a Soviet man
And it's all the same to me,
Whether an English tire,
Or Chinese porcelain.
If only I had a Kalashnikov in my hands,
I would bring terror
Upon all the democrats and
Other disgraces.
I would put all the communists
Against the wall for
What they have done to the country.
Everything is fine with me,
Both in my head and in my family,
But, alas, life is bad
On my native land.
And my hand will firmly
Grip the handguard.
And, pulling the trigger,
I will empty everything
That sits reliably
Inside my magazine.
Not a single communist
Will escape from me.
I know—you will say
That my method is cruel,
But someday one really must
Teach the reds a lesson.
And the bullets that hit
In the rear or the side
Will knock the new delusions
Out of their minds.
There will be pain and groans,
And scarlet blood—
This is the handiwork
Of Terrorist Vorobyov.

Part II

Reskom

With a blow of a crowbar I'll take down
The sentry from his post by the warehouse.
And, taking his rifle,
I will go after the chief man of the Reskom.
Sneaking secretly into the House of Soviets,
I'll walk up to the padded door.
And, having knocked, getting no answer,
I'll kick that door wide open.
And I'll catch a glassy gaze,
A frightened, cowardly gaze.
And a shot will thunder loudly,
The first bastard will breathe his last.
Blood will pour, soaking his shirt,
A black hole will gape in his forehead,
And suddenly I'll feel the grip
Of a cop who ran in at the noise.
I'll stun him with the rifle butt,
And beside the first bastard
I'll carefully lay down
The poor cop...
Stepping out of the building into the frost,
I'll toss the rifle into the snow.
And, like a rabid dog,
I will howl. Man,
My terror is dreadful.
I know I will spill
Blood more than once yet,
Until the very last communist
Drops dead, the pederast!

Part III

November 7

November 7 arrived in the country.
The communists took their places on the grandstands.
I mingled with the people in the gray crowd,
And I march in the middle of the 201st row.
In my backpack I carry my light machine gun,
But nobody suspects a thing.
And the thin young ice crunches underfoot,
While the people keep yelling and yelling.
About a hundred paces remain to the stands,
I carefully untied my backpack,
And, aiming the barrel at a well-fed face,
I bolted out of the crowd like a trotter.
My dear old RPK began to rattle,
The whole gray crowd scattered in fright.
And a burst cut down everyone
There on the grandstand. Hastily
Shoving in a new belt, again
I started chattering away with the machine gun.
Hot blood flowed across the asphalt
And washed over my boots.
Once again I taught the reds a lesson
In this miserable and impoverished country.

Part IV

The Mausoleum

In the line to the Mausoleum
I'm freezing, yet still I stand.
A signet ring gleams on my finger,
I'll tell you about it below.
Two men with red armbands
Pat down my pockets.
We came out onto Red Square,
Just a stone's throw from the coffin.
The splendid Kremlin Chimes struck,
And suddenly it grew colder.
The KGB guards changed at the entrance,
Saluting the genius.
And now I am beneath the archway of the passage,
Soon vengeance will be done.
There He is, our beloved Ilyich.
Lying, the dear one, under glass.
I pull a mine out of my ring
And throw it at him.
The blast deafens everyone in the hall,
People run outside.
And together with the crowd
I'm swept out into the December chill.
Blood is dripping from my sleeve,
But I am satisfied—
The microclimate is ruined,
Their leader will rot.

Part V

Demise

Across the mountains and a valley
Flooded with blood,
I run toward my beloved,
Sinking knee-deep in the dark brown mire.
My running is hard...
My legs sink deeper and deeper.
I am exhausted
By the trot of black days.
The cry of my soul
Flies like a bird.
And all around I see only angry faces.
The cry of my soul flies, yet, shattering against the glass,
It falls beneath her window.
But she does not hear it.
The blood in the valley rises higher and higher.
And already neck-deep in scarlet foam,
I swim, as if down the Siberian Lena River.
But a steep wave covers me.
And in my eyes I can no longer see the day.
Yet my soul strains to break free,
Its cry beats against the panes again,
But my love does not hear it,
The blood in the valley is higher,
Higher than the mountains, the shaggy clouds.
I perished, to the great joy of my enemies.

November – December 1990