Honest Moose From the Tribe Of Hooey-Prickers

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Preface

It takes a careless person to think there only are things they know first-hand by their sense or two. That was the case with the main character in this here book 4 before he had to know otherwise…

The latest research in the field of serious literary critics as well as scrupulous investigations by the appropriate agencies and organs are gradually bringing it to the light that the widely known facts from the protagonist’s adventures, taken for their face value, are all lies. He is a goody-goody boots, deep inside. Perhaps (in very rare cases) a tiny bit forgetful of tying his shoe strings, as yet…

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~ ~ ~ The Planets' Parade

On Day D, aka the departure day, everything hung by a thread, or rather, by a cobweb. This became clear to me immediately, as soon as I went out into the entryway to mellow out, because in the apartment I didn't smoke even plain Belomor.

The web hung from a gnarled beam above the entryway's door frame, and it managed to do so quite vertically, being assisted by a burnt matchstick at its end. It hung upside down, its charred head down, while the preserved end had got caught with a web noose.

Despite its invisibility, it sure was there. Otherwise, the fire victim wouldn't have found anything to hang herself on… But that's not even the question, the real question is:

How long would the web last?

The gap between the beam and the layer of crudely whitewashed plaster was a personal dumping ground for used matches. That's where I, a proud neat freak, stuffed them in. Yes, I kept the entryway tiny vestibule clean, and it had never had a trash can, and would never ever see one.

After Tonya's kid caught me red-handed and did his nice display of canary food on the stool in the center of the kitchen, I had nothing left to lose in the eyes of the apartment's population. And the opinions of other residents on what they whiff at my smoke in the neutral waters of the vestibule didn't bother me, remaining in the lilac-violet part of the spectrum…

But that match clearly demonstrated that the crevice-like dump above the beam isn't bottomless. Moreover, it poses a threat to the cleanliness of the entryway vestibule under my supervision…

Will the noose hold the deceased until I leave?

Searching for some reassurance, I peered out from the shade of the overheated entryway into the courtyard.

A squadron of black ravens floated soundless across the heat-melted sky. They kept heading southwest flat—no swerving, wing to wing. Each one, without exception, glides on motionless wings—who wants to bother with flapping in such heat? The black feather flaps are frozen, spread wide, to allow air to pass through. Hot air rustles between…

There still remained the question: will I make it?

~ ~ ~

Eerah saw me off to the station. As we approached the bus stop, Pugacheva burst into tears after me, singing from the nearest five-story building, her recent hits:

'Please come some day, even for just an hour!…'

My luggage is quite wieldy and not heavy: a briefcase with a collection of Maugham's stories in English (pink softcover, Moscow Prosveshchenie Publishing House), along with a stolen copy of Hornby's 'Learners' Dictionary'; a school notebook, lined, 12 pages, two of which covered with a draft translation of the opening paragraphs of the story 'Rain' (a pencil try full of multiple corrections); a work record book (the first entry dated September 13, 1971, made by the HR department of the Konotop Locomotive and Carriage Repair Plant); the passport; the military ID; shaving kit.

Accompanying the briefcase was a blue sports bag with a shoulder strap. It contained one pair of underwear, two tank tops, a pair of shirts, jeans, and a geologist's jacket, sewn by my mother from thick green canvas.

. .. .

Climbing onto the EMU train, I tossed my luggage onto the thin tubes of the luggage rack, which stretched along the length of the car above all the windows, and returned to the platform. Eerah was nervous that the train doors would slam shut, the train go without me. I climbed one step into the vestibule and stood there, clutching the slippery nickel gleam of the entrance handrail in my palm. 'I left something on the windowsill in the bedroom. Let it stay there until I get back.'

'What is it?'

'see for yourself. I'll come pick you up in exactly a month.'

'Call me as soon as you get there.'

It was the last train car. An old woman ran up the platform, asking me something, but I wasn't listening or hearing, only staring at Eerah until a loudspeaker screamed from the train: 'Careful! Doors closing!' They hissed, and with the first bang, they cut me clear off from Eerah.

With a clang, the train jerked, pulled more smoothly, and went into full gear, clacking along the rails in the direction of Kyiv…

. .. .

On the evening before the launch, Eerah and I went out to do some shopping. The department store was closed, but the glass kiosk next to it was still open. Inside sat a plump, middle-aged gypsy woman, from whom I bought a new razor, a shaving brush, a standing mirror for the same purpose, and a couple of nose-pieces.

Across the field of each, thin blue sine waves ran, symbolizing the sea, and in the center was a circle drawn with an equally thin, but red, line. One circle contained a small boat with a sail, and the other nose-piece presented a slim anchor.

The sailboat traveled with me, in my pocket; the hanky with the anchor lay on the windowsill. When I return, I'll put the circle on the circle. The boat—to the anchor. This will be the rite of return…

~ ~ ~

We came back, and when it got completely dark, my mother-in-law suddenly panicked, anxiously mumbling me there was no need to go anywhere at all, and it's not late yet to return my Kyiv-Odessa train ticket at the advance ticket office, tomorrow, at the station.

I almost afucamuzza… well, anyway… of what ticket return was all this! Eerah and Tonya also joined the conference, and the only thing missing was my father-in-law, urgently summoned to the emergency situation at the Bread Factory.

Her gaze stuck to the oilcloth under the TV set on the table, but Gaina Mikhailovna, forgetful to set it free, kept rambling on incoherently about the gravity of the present state of affairs, when even Vanya didn't manage to get through…

A week earlier, Ivan, Tonya's husband, had left for Transcarpathia, his homeland, but for some reason, he never arrived there, returning a day later from Kyiv—I still couldn't figure out what was going on. Now he was holed up in the confines of his bedroom, along with both of his young children.

. .. .

By then, I'd already realized that the world had hopelessly stuck in a mire of never-ending battle—but between whom? That was the question!

The quagmire of confrontation was, of course, concealed by life's camouflage net, a distraction. But through the superficial veneer and smokescreen of everyday routine, I gradually began to notice gaps, inconsistencies, hidden signals. More and more often, I'd sense someone nearby suddenly blurting out (without even realizing it) something transcendental, something beyond the boundaries of the mundane, something they insist on selling us—clung like a leech—as the truly real, the only possible reality.

What kind of indiscriminate interceptions? Who did I catch them from? Am I sure, it's about people?

Well, let's say so. So far, I haven't managed to understand enough to find the right term to dub them…

So, they let things slip? About what exactly? How?

About things, we're always taught to see only this way and no other, within certain boundaries—from here to there, and not a micron deeper.

… Vanya was sent as an emissary… he failed to get through… and whose side are you on?… (the fire at the Bread Factory is just an episode in a universal battle)…

Who's on whom? What are they fighting for?

The most urgent task is to collect the fragments of slips of the tongue, the crumbs of the scattered pieces of the puzzle that hold together the latently hidden reality, the real one. To assemble them into something comprehensible, and most importantly, to stay on course, not to get lost in the half-hints of what really is. In that fundamentally hidden, shebang, which precedes all superstructures…

~ ~ ~

An unprecedented thunderstorm broke outside the blackened living room window. The roar of the water rushing through the night was drowned out by the cannon roar of all-shaking thunder and flashes of lightning's blinding blades. The unbearably white column of fire struck the center of the yard, precisely on the transformer box. Pitch blackness closed in around everything.

Tonya groped her way to the bedroom to calm Vanya and the kids. She soon returned, holding a burning candle.

In the flickering light, it suddenly became clear that I was opposing the Mothers. Yes, yes! The very ones mentioned too briefly and with wary apprehension by Goethe…

The three Mothers—there they are: the old but mighty one; the middle-aged but experienced one; and the very beginner—Eerah. I can't count on her, she's one of them.

I have to convince them, otherwise nothing will work.

With the storm raging outside, heedlessly exposing my profile to the candle's reflection's flicker in the solid black, opaque glass, it only by pure miracle I managed to beg their permission to set out the next day…

And finally, their eldest spoke somewhat haltingly: 'If something happens, if it goes wrong… in the worst case… contact the Chief…'

. .. .

That night, I had a prophetic dream where I was lying supine on a gurney, trying to be completely inconspicuous in the chilling fluorescent light pouring from everywhere: the ceiling and the walls… Perhaps it was pouring from the floor either, but I can't say for sure, since, in an effort to blend in with the surroundings, I kept my eyes tightly closed, trying to conceal myself, doing my best to hide…

There were no lamps at all, but everything around was drowned in a luminous grayness that erased every shadow without exception, not allowing them to fall even in the slightest direction…

Some figures were standing around, a tight group in white… One of them, behind my head, so it was impossible to see who exactly, said confidently: 'When rid of the fat, then maybe it will work…'

Even without looking, I knew that the one who said it was me… Inconspicuously, so as not to give myself away, and therefore still not opening my eyes, I glanced at the stomach of me lying on the gurney, where a thin layer of something softly yellow was visible through the translucent skin—the very fat I had just mentioned…

~ ~ ~

Stepping out into the swaying vestibule of the train car, I blew up the joint. A herd of seahorses floated across the dusty sky in the automatic door glass, their tails tucked under their bellies, each under its own. They were strictly ordered, in a single file—from the seasoned sea mare to the little foal that rounded out their line. They were as fond of systematicity as the white figures of elephants lost long ago.

The train accelerated, breaking into a thundering gallop, but was unable to break away from the herd of seahorses…

A man with a row of medals on the chest of his jacket emerged into the vestibule. A war veteran, he certainly knew who was on whose side.

We chatted for a bit, not making any particularly clear points, just showing mutual friendliness, until a younger man stepped toward us from the next platform, carrying a tall bundle of slats.

He separated us with this bundle of rods, like that carried along by the ancient Roman cops to beat the ancient troublemakers, without leaving the scene of their disrupting public order, and strode inside the car.

The vet suddenly fell silent, his frightened gape fixed at the top corner of the vestibule behind me. I knew for a fact that the corner was empty, but if he saw it, than there it was. Leaving the decorated soldier alone with his find—let them sort it out for themselves—I followed the lictor into the half-empty train car, because the outskirts of Kyiv were already rolling by in the windows beneath the luggage rack…

~ ~ ~

At the station, I carried my things into the cool of the underground luggage storage labyrinth. Emerging to the surface, bathed in the heat of the station square, I circled it to the right corner, where I slipped through an inconspicuous passage to long flights of stairs descending into a deep ravine, where at the very bottom stood the canteen where Lyokha Kuzko had once brought Olga and me.

But the protracted descent down the stairs finally ended, and I blew the joint, yet very soon stopped dragging, because a platoon of cops, having just finished lunch, was stomping toward me from the canteen. So I had to modestly walk through the gauntlet of law enforcement, the joint smoldering between the fingers of my idly hanging hand.

After the lunch, I returned to the station to make my rounds. The glass-eyed there were not as many as during the night patrol in Nezhyn as a single warrior in the field. Perhaps the time of day was a factor. However, there still were some. At my approaching, these at once pretended they were just so, like everyone else, like, ordinary passengers on their way somewhere.

I went up to the third floor, to the mother-and-child room, and explained to the guard that I'd be passing through their station in a month with my wife and infant daughter, so I stopped by to check out the conditions. Well, yeah, I see the corridor here is pretty clean, thank you…

Near the toilets on the first floor, a young cop with a richly purple black eye persistently averted his gaze, even though we both knew that each of us knew, without being told, that he'd been punched because of the joint sneaking through the cop's squad ranks, and he, a victim of the universal battle, would never forgive me for it, from now on, until his deathbed.

Then, for quite a long time, I stood rooted to the spot in the waiting room on the second floor. The vast UnionPrint desk stretched out before me, covered in thick layers of newspapers, magazines, and stationery. But throughout my entire stay, I stubbornly kept my eyes fixed on the same postcard depicting a deep blue sky.

I had to wait a long time before I finally heard footfalls behind me. The reverently hushed hum of the vast station hall accentuated them with a distinct, audible clarity.

I kept my eyes down on the sky. The footfalls stopped. A dark coin, the diameter of an iris, dropped on the bright blue. Only then did I turn around and walk away without looking back—from now on, no causal genes will be able to change the color of your eyes…

Already in the middle of the hall, the station's PA loudspeakers finally managed to reach me:

'The Kyiv-Odessa train is departing from platform three. Those seeing the travelers off, please leave the carriages.'

~ ~ ~

It hardly needs a special emphasis that in those artlessly simple days of communicational virginity, not a single of the bravest minds ever had, in the thick of their however feverishly immodest dreams, even a fleeting fantasy of installing surveillance cameras in public places.

What then (given the underdevelopment of relevant technologies at the period described) caused the inexplicable scene that unfolded that evening in the line of passengers standing at the bus stop in front of the Kyiv bus station?

There can only be one answer: the vigilance of the taxi driver.

(… in the current context, the term 'cause' is used without delving into the heap of its multi-layered meanings. Here, we apply the meaning established in traditional usage, which is still used by 'scientific minds' (yes, in quotation marks — it would be more correct to call them 'crappy ones') in their representation of the phenomena of the surrounding reality, conventionally and orthodoxly arranged by them in a linear sequence of a schematically standard chain-continuum — 'cause-effect'.

However, during the period in question, I had already left the confines of the outdated etiology, due to an excessively deep absorption in tracing the intricacies of the intermittent and incompletely articulated sequence of transcendental signs-symbols of varying volume and content, which appeared to me in unexpected bursts of revelation, which inspired to daringly go on with the search for new, elusive, but such enticing levels of comprehensive understanding of the adjacent, genuine reality, buried in the alluvial of false and inert careless lightness, in order to achieve, through prophetic insights, a true understanding of the world and my role in it, because 'at times the edges can be lift, briefly, and we see what we were not supposed to…', quoting the illustrious American transcendentalist…)

. .. .

So, let's return to the taxi driver at the taxi stand, next to the entrance to the underground luggage storage hall at the Kyiv Long-Distance Train Station…

At 5:06 PM, a young man of about twenty-five to seven years old, six feet seven inches tall, brown-haired, straight hair, and a trimmed mustache, emerged from the underpass. He was wearing a gray jacket and gray trousers, a clashing shade. Under the jacket, peeked a blue summer shirt.

Visibly upset, the brown-haired man got into a taxi, where he offered driver to go to the luggage storage hall for him and fetch his briefcase and bag from the automated locker, the number and code for which he would provide.

The taxi driver, naturally, declined.

The man seemed lost in thought, twirling a burnt match in the fingers of his right hand. Then he sighed, broke the match with the same fingers, asked for a moment's wait, and disappeared down the steps of the overpass. Five minutes later, he reappeared with his things and a request to be taken to the Kyiv bus station.

Having been delivered to the said location, the passenger paid, slung his bag strap over his left shoulder, and, grabbing the handle of his briefcase with his left hand, slammed the door. Synchronously with the click of the door lock, and seemingly by accident, he wiped the nickel-plated door handle with the right side hem of his jacket, erasing his fingerprints, as is typical of crime films. After these manipulations, the brown-haired man disappeared through the doors of the intercity bus station.

What else could the taxi driver do?

Naturally, he called (on a nearby pay phone) the operative with whom he secretly collaborated under the code name 'Traktor'.

What did the line of passengers I had joined witness, upon my return from the bus station, after visiting the men's restroom and standing dumbfounded for five minutes in the middle of the lobby, staring fixedly at the multi-meter smile of the flight attendant in her blue uniform cap, depicted on a gigantic poster: 'Fly Aeroflot!'?

A bright red, freshly washed Zhiguli slammed to a stop near the bus stop. A dark-haired man wearing sunglasses got out, approached me, and, handing me the ignition key along with a bunch of other keys, said, 'Get in the car, we'll be leaving in a minute.' I turned away, remaining silent. The man walked into the bus station building.

Soon, two young men appeared from around the right corner of the building—one in a police uniform, the other in civilian clothes. Both took a position on the right side of the line. From around the left corner, the same man in dark glasses appeared, accompanied by a short companion wearing a cloth cap. They stopped on the opposite side of the line.

The man in the cap (obviously a drunk and a slob) mingled with the line of passengers, approached me, and began rubbing his front against my behind. The line observed the dry-hump act in confusion. I stood there indifferently, one hand clutching the strap of my bag slung over my shoulder. My other hand, meanwhile, gripped the handle of my briefcase.

The disgusting scene was interrupted by the arrival of a bus with the word 'Flight' written on its side.

. .. .

On the way to Boryspil Airport, I ignored the puzzled looks of my fellow passengers, my mind's eye returning to what the CCTV camera (which hadn't been invented yet, hence its absence) hadn't captured in the empty men's restroom at the Kyiv Intercity Bus Station.

I approached the long tilted trough of the communal urinal on the wall opposite the stalls and poured into it the mustard-brown dust of all the dope I had on me. The packing paper was crumpled and tossed into the trash. As French crime dramas starring Belmondo had taught me.

(… this demonstrates the ability to program me not only with text but also with cinematic means of influence.

For the rest of my life, right up until this night in this here forest on the banks of the Varanda River, I lived as a disgustingly mulish abstainer…)

. .. .

At Boryspil Airport, I didn't use the automated locker system, but instead checked my luggage into the general storage area: let them search my bag and briefcase and see that there's no point in rubbing provocative drunks up against my ass…

A ticket to Odessa on a passing flight from Moscow cost 17 rubles, which didn't exceed the 20 rubles I had stashed to tide me over until my first advance payment at the construction sites of the satellite port city…

~ ~ ~

I couldn't see the Odessa airport in the darkness, and took a city bus to the bus station, where the ticket office was already locked, but the locker system worked round the clock, and the waiting room had benches for sitting overnight.

Of course, yes, I felt like a winner, having managed, against all odds, to break through Kyiv. The dizziness of a triumphant assured me of my personal complete invulnerability. The return to the real status quo wasn't exactly pleasant, when a small flock of passengers filed sleepily through the station's rear door into the early morning light, catching the first bus.

In the initial light of dawn, they shuffled past my seated figure, my head thrown back in a drowsy half-slumber (still with the same demonstrative brazenness of a victor), over the back of the bench, my neck exposed to any, even malicious one, attack.

The pain from the needle piercing to the right from my Adam's apple made me clutch the skin about the carotid artery. Of course, my fingers didn't catch any needle there, but the distinct sensation of a needle being stuck in, or rather, hastily pulled out, didn't go away. I spent the next half hour wincing, occasionally pinching and rubbing my empty neck…

The ticket office opened, and they told me there were no services to Youzhny, and I needed to take a local bus from Bus Station #3, located near the New Market.

. .. .

Having arrived at the designated point, I studied the bus schedule, where the line 'Youzhny' kept repeating itself till evening hours. I decided to take a walk before leaving, because this—oh my God, damn it!—this is Odessa-Mama! I'm in Odessa! Ahhh… holy shit!

At the end of the small hall (or rather, just a spacious room) of the bus station, there were only a couple of sections of automatic storage lockers. All of their lockers were locked, except for one—in the very top row of the upper section. I stowed my carry-on luggage, created the code, inserted a 15-kopek coin into the slot, and slammed it shut.

The lock didn't click, which is why the locker waited for me unoccupied.

Transferring the documents from my briefcase to my inside jacket pocket, I quietly closed the door to prevent it from swinging open. On the crest of a euphoria wave, rising like a tsunami, I left the station to enter Odessa…