right – we had been so close, sweat mingling, buddies for so many years…
Then I went up to the third floor in the next section and laid the traverse wall with ventilation ducts working alone until Peter Lysoon appeared to call me to the trailer. Along the way, he somehow kept his eyes off me and spoke on esoteric botanical topics.
All those strange symptoms flew out of my head when in front of our trailer I saw a UAZ-van with a burly militiaman next to it in his red-band forage cap accompanied by psychiatrist Tarasenko… Our team, together with overseer Karenin and superintendent Ivan, formed an uneven semicircle facing the visitors.
Tarasenko announced to the standing audience that my behavior had always been abnormal and today I stepped over the line by burying my shirt into the hole in a concrete slab. Then he democratically asked the crowd if they had noted any additional anomalies about me.
The people responded with silence. One of our women endeavored to clarify that the shirt was completely worn out and Tarasenko, so as to avoid meandering discussion of a tangent topic, ordered me to go into the trailer and change.
I obeyed unquestioningly, and then I climbed into the van with some drunk in its hold, and we were taken away… During the stop near the Medical Center, the drunk began convincing me to jerk the claws in different directions – the militiaman couldn't chase 2 at once. I kept quiet, realizing that it was better 45 days under syringes than the rest of my life on the run. Then a young plain-clothes guard joined us, bringing one more drunk and, along the trodden familiar road, I was taken back to the city of Romny.
On the way, we made a stop in some roadside village for an additional load of 2 old ladies in black and a troubled man who anxiously swore to all of the present, in turn, that he did not remember anything of what was yesterday.
Upon arrival at the psychiatric hospital, we were led in different directions and, for some reason, I was X-rayed in a supine position. Maybe, they were just testing a newly installed equipment… I did not see any of the drunks anymore, in the madhouse such cases belonged to unit 3, while I was an adherent of the fifth unit…
And again the Area became the arena for daily brainwashing applied to my ass, followed by the overcrowded wardroom for the night repose… Of the acquaintances among all the categories higher than that of the absolutely free, I saw only Sasha, who knew my brother Sasha, but he slept without ever waking up.
As a veteran and for the sake of philanthropy, I turned to the head doctor with the plea to substitute my iminazine injections for iminazine pills. She promised to think it over and, 10 days before the expiry of my stretch, she canceled the concluding stab from the 3 injections in my daily quota. And right now, her name popped up in my grateful mind – Nina it was.
Nothing more remarkable happened, except that I learned how to provide first aid in case of epilepsy fit. It is necessary to grab the epileptic by the legs and drag away from the Area into the shade under the canopy. There he would go on beating his back against the ground, yet with gradual reduction of the tempo until his excitement finally die out. Some halfwits consider it useful to slap flies with their dirty paws from his face, however, that does not have a telling effect on the course of the seizure…
On that narrow trail under the railway embankment, Petukhov did not tell me just one thing – why I was so closely followed and kept under the unremitting control. But there was no need for it because I knew the reason as well as he did.
My arrest took roots in the reconstruction of the maternity hospital, a long two-story building by the crossroads of Lenin Street and the descent from the Department Store. Each construction enterprise of Konotop performed their part in the works. SMP-615 was responsible for several partitions and bathrooms in the right-wing on the first floor. 4 plasterers and I were sent to accomplish the task. We managed it in just 1 week.
When the women were already plastering the partitions laid by me, in the corridor appeared a man in a clean suit and a necktie. Beholding the 4 yummy females, the visitor began to spread out his peacock tail against the backdrop of the wretch of a hand, for which he took me.
I politely asked him to keep his ardor in check and not cough in all directions.
"Hey, you! Know who against you're ramming? I am the First Secretary of the City Party Committee."
"And I am a bricklayer of the fourth category."
"Okay! You'll have it!"
He left and a half-hour later our chief engineer flew into the corridor, out of his breath, because he was also the chairman of SMP-615 party committee. "How d'you dare use foul language at the First Secretary of the City Party Committee?"
The plasterers unanimously testified that there was not a single taboo word on my part which information did not console the chief engineer though, but he left.
That's all. Nothing could be simpler – a male with levers of power at his command versus a male in a mortar splattered spetzovka. The only thing that really hurt me was the accusation of using the derivatives of "fuck" because in all the years at SMP-615, I righteously refrained from using such words even deep in my mind…
~ ~ ~
The autumn came and, soaping myself in the bathhouse, I suddenly discovered a bulging stomach on me, kinda rigid fore wings of a May beetle, and similarly unyielding. Soon, my mother noticed that I was turning double-chinned. After one of the late evening dinners at 13 Decemberists, she put her hand on my shoulder to victoriously announce, "You're getting fat, Brother Rabbit! Relax, so
