Aunt Nina's for something important. And it was how, because of cruel chance, I became a cuckold…
(…for a long time I couldn't understand my dislike of Lermontov, but now I know – that's because of his lies. Lermontov lied from the very start, from his poem to Pushkin's death:
"…with the lead of a bullet in his chest, he drooped his head…”
Well, let's say this lie was caused by the ignorance of anatomy. A hussar is not a doctor, after all, and for him the loins, where, actually, the bullet hit, and the chest might be the same. Half-meter higher, half-meter lower, who cares?!.
But there is no way to excuse the following lie:
"…he rebelled against the society's morals…"
Pah! Stop kidding, Lermontov-boy. He did not rebel but, on the contrary, he most exactly followed the precepts of the society for such a case. With the utmost rigor and slavish loyalty, Pushkin kept to the rules. And if he himself did not dare disobey the moral code of the society then what can we, mere mortals, do in case of violation of marital fidelity but to file for divorce?.
However, one always looks for some or other way to justify their beloved… What if Pushkin was not at all obeying the dictates of moral customs? What if he intentionally used them for his personal gains? What if the aging, weary, poet worn out by the excesses of poetical lifestyle, threw down the gantlet to the greenhorn French youth on a visit to Russia for a too close attention to his wife, just to simulate a Shakespearean Othello with the hidden agenda of getting killed at the pledged duel and passing away in style?
But the development of this hypothesis requires three doctoral degrees: that in gerontology as well as in psychology, and one more in philology. While having a much more urgent matter on my hands—the letter to my daughter—I’d rather flashback, from the Varanda river to Konotop…)
The next day at the aunt Nina's khutta, she and her aunt performed in duo what I had already heard from Olga solo, about a fresh start from a clean leaf. Then the aunt went to her work. Olga and I drank a glass of hooch each and for about an hour were killing each other all over the kitchen and the adjacent living room adorned by the upright piano.
After we dressed, Olga asked – what now? I replied that the question had been answered and, alas, not by me. She started to cry and said that she knew what to do next, some pills appeared in her palm which she began to swallow. I managed to wring the most of them, yet she still managed to consume some.
I rushed out of the khutta, ran along Budyonny Street and past the Plant Park to Bazaar where a payphone hung at the intersection. Luckily, the receiver was nor cut off yet, and it worked. I called the ambulance.
Probably, it's not every day they were called for a suicide attempt but their vehicle overtook me on my way back. When I came to aunt Nina's, Olga sat limply on a stool in the middle of the kitchen giving reluctant answers to the doctor and nurse in white coats. She had a large mug in her hands and on the floor by her feet there stood a big basin used at the stomach lavage.
The crisis was obviously over and I left without going into details. It was unlikely that she would take another try, and from my own experience, I knew that gastric lavage brings about a general reassessment of values and a fresher perspective on any situation…
Two days later, I was told that they had seen Olga boarding a train of Moscow direction with some kind of a black-haired guy. Most likely, that was the one she'd been cheating on with my active participation two days before…
~ ~ ~
In a week, I went to Nezhyn to the fourth-course graduation party keeping my promise to Nadya. The party was arranged in the hall of celebrations on the first floor of the canteen. Nadya was the most beautiful there, in a long dress made of light chiffon, like a bride at her wedding, only pink.
In the end, everyone went to the Oster bank behind the hostel to build a fire from the thick copybooks with lecture notes scribbled thru all their four years of study. Fyodor and Yasha did not add their share to the fire because I had never seen anything like a copybook near them, another reason was their absence from the party.
The full moon was shining, the bonfire kept devouring by its nationalistically yellow-and-blue flames the pages of once-upon-a-time so necessary notes. The former students stood gazing at the fire—each for themselves from now on—and in the dark tall grass around, the teacher of theoretical grammar wandered in circles. He was a dwarf, no taller than up to your waist, but they said he was very clever. One of the graduates, the ugliest of all and, as gossip had it, dull and rude, agreed to marry him so as not to go to a village to work off for her diploma. She was a villager herself so she knew exactly what she was losing by such her choice…
For our farewell wedding night with Nadya, we went up to her room where there even were blinds on the window. We had goodbyes, and slept a little, and woke up for new goodbyes in breaststroke, and dog paddle, and backstroke, and front crawl and freestyle… When the pale morning light began seeping thru the white blinds and she reached for giving the first blow job in her life, I wearily pulled back. Let at least something remain for her tomorrow’s husband to be first at. All of us—the cuckoldry brethren—have to be generous to each other…
~ ~ ~
When a mujik has nothing to do, he finds hard labor for himself. The khutta at 13, Decemberists Street amply provided an inexhaustible source
