Why 90 rubles? Well, the market price of a new sheepskin coat with long skirts was 120 rubles. Mine was short, and older than me—dating back to the Object—the rest was pure arithmetic.
Having received such a large order, my mother was eager to ask me something, but by that point I was no longer on speaking terms with my parents, so asking dumbly silent me about 'sheepskin coat' was pointless.
(… it's worth noting here that the wisdom of strangers doesn't make us smarter. In one of his stories, about a young man who stopped communicating with his parents, Maugham notes that in our harsh and hostile world, people inevitably find ways to make their situation even worse.
I accepted the wisdom of the saying, but didn't take advantage of it. It took ten years of separation (four of which in a full-scale war) before, upon returning to Konotop on leave, I began talking to my parents again.
And I enjoyed saying 'mama' and 'papa'. Only this pleasantness seemed to be enveloped in a layer of felt, preventing me from feeling it, as if I wasn't addressing my parents; or maybe it wasn't really me speaking to them. Probably, because of falling out of habit, or else because we had all changed too much by then…)
~ ~ ~
Trade union and social activities, accurately fulfilling my expectations, got blocked for me completely, however, the right of carrying out my public duty remained with me. The right of any citizen to dutifully maintain and selflessly protect the order the safety within their communities can suffer no infringement.
(For those who haven't quite gotten it, don't worry; I wouldn't realize what’s what seeing the above paragraph the first time, either, it’s all about the monthly shifts in a voluntary public order squad.)
By seven o'clock, the male workers of CAT-615 would gather in a room marked 'People's Militia Detachment Stronghold.' The tablet on the only door in all the end wall in the mile-long five-story building that had long since replaced the squalid Department of Workers Catering barracks office near the Under-Overpass. That very building where you find, at the other end, Workers' Canteen No. 3.
The first person to arrive for the squad shift was usually the crane driver, Mykola Kot (no, not a nickname, and not some code name, but a perfectly innocent Ukrainian surname).
He'd sit down at a table propped against the wall and loaded with a stack of old newspapers. To enhance his comfort, he’d pull his cheap but elegant black rabbit fur hat down to touch his ears, and begin leafing through the piles of press news accumulated since our previous shift.
Then, one by one, we'd arrive, take our seats, and begin our manly, dignified conversations on any subject at hand.
Here, Kot, his eyes glued to the ‘newspapers from days gone by and forgotten’, would predict, from beneath the black fur of an innocently slain animal on his head, that even if we began our sophisticated conversation from the heights of the Salyut orbital station, it wouldn’t cancel our landing on the cunt of Alla Pugacheva or some more accessible local slut, inevitably.
As a rule, the prophecy was accurate. And all because of the latecomers who missed his brazen, but on the whole right, forecast.
About ten minutes past eight, a cop—ranging from lieutenant to captain—appeared to contribute to our male ефдл ырщз and hand out red armbands from a drawer in his desk, bearing the word 'Vigilante' in bold black lettering.
