#daddy a

(joke's on you I already started writing)

We passed upon the stairs We spoke of was and when Although I wasn't there He said I was his friend Which came as a surprise I spoke into his eyes I thought you died alone A long long time ago Oh no, not me I never lost control You're face to face With the man who sold the world I laughed and shook his hand And made my way back home I searched for form and land For years and years I roamed I gazed a gazeless stare At all the millions here We must have died alone A long, long time ago Who knows? Not me We never lost control You're face to face With the man who sold the world

("Whose life shall we ruin next?")

He never even remembered the three lucky packets of cigarettes that he wasted his money on and was robbed off the first day. He survived without them, without smoking silk, without breaking his arm, while avoiding being sent to Gereshk – It was only when he came back to Ukhta that he learned not everyone avoided it. Yogush, stupid Yogush who had it the easiest, asked to be sent to Afghanistan. Daniil told him so when they met up – they sat on the bench in front of Daniil’s parents’ khrushchevka, feeling too old to go upstairs and sit with the old folks in their apartment – that it must have been some bullshit, because why would he do that – Roman Arkadyevich listened and nodded and occasionally took a sip from the bottle of vodka they shared. Every time his hand clasped the neck of the bottle, a deep-buried memory pushed itself into the forefront of his conscience. Abuladze got it in to up here. You've got some catching up to do, Romik. At least this vodka was cold. He could imagine what Yogush went there for. Maybe he saw those who returned with expensive gifts for their girlfriends and mothers, satin bathrobes, beautifully decorated pocket manicures, and American underwear. You could get rich if you wanted to, if you had the right spirit for it – you just went there, sat on your ass for a bit, ate disgusting watery porridge, and then came back. It was just a mission in support of the local government, how much could you actually do. Roman Arkadyevich didn’t believe in stories about planting gardens of friendship and building bridges for future cooperation between the brotherly socialist countries, but he couldn’t imagine there was a lot to do except breathing in sand dust and getting heatstroke and returning home a bit richer - or as a gruz dvésti. A lottery. Yogush has always been a lucky bastard with good connections, and those guys always made it out. Roman Arkadyevich wondered whether Yogush could make himself a stager in a year or two over there, in the barracks somewhere in Gereshk or any other shithole with a similarly sombre name. He couldn't wait for him to return just so he could ask - what did YOU do to the new recruits? Did you strip them naked and forced them to drink in the barracks bathroom for your own amusement? What did you push inside them when others held them down - the tips of toilet brushes, brooms, bottles? - but he never got the chance. They sent Yogush's body - maybe it was his - back in a black tulip. Roman Arkadyevich didn't make it to the funeral; by the time the zinc coffin arrived, he'd already started his studies at the Moscow Institute of Oil and Gas. 

He would dare to guess that not many of them became governors of Chukotka though.