to Alexander (‘Esa’) Plaksin
27 years of snailmail communing
made us friends, brothers, comrades-in-arms
See you, buddy
You know yoursel
 

Foreword, a sort of

1. Excuses & Apologies

Haunted by crush landings in however modest try at giving fantasy a free rein, aggravated, on top of that, by being all thumbs at spinning yarn, I am cornered and left out any other option but telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. In other words, no merry sallies outside the straitjacket of my personal experience. Such, muchly rueful, limitations cancel any hope to ever reach the stardom of the literary conveyer-line celebrities bell-jingling as requested by the bestselling practices at the fantasy, science, thriller, mystery, action—each and every, you name it—twist of fiction in the field… Born to crawl, go and fly a kite.

Still—poor, yet proud—I hereby declare that not anything at all would fit under your skin glib and smoothly, neither would you offhand pull off any fancy whatsoever, like, walking thru the walls and/or over the waters, not to mention the shameful inclination for the unhealthy recreational addiction to sucking strangers’ blood in totally unsanitary environs. (A sigh.)

2. Structure & Texture & Content

Sprung from its lengthened title, the novel goes thru this here Foreword, sort of, to be followed by the epigraph—curt, but to the point—and then flows into the narration of not excessive terseness—4 books, all in all—where some passages might arise reasonable doubts whether my pledge of the forthcoming truth was made in good faith.

So again: my objective is keeping true to life as close as I can. But then, not every truth is met with a warm hug, there’s no guarantee from someone tossing up their back and yelling, “Bullshit! Not a chance of selling that to me!” My most amicable, immediate advice to hard-duty skeptics is to put The Rascally Romance off until they, hopefully, got it that even truth can have, now and then, surprises up its sleeve to make a Holy Cow or 2 moo and moo from envy. And if the truth of this here observation stays dim for some obtuse dunce, then it’s my turn to envy their blest innocence.

The text flow assumed for this work follows the simplistic block style of separate paragraphs, episodes, parts, and books to make reading engagingly easy. At times you come across a little bit deeper aligned stretches started with “(…” and concluded by “…)”, as follows:

(… this here formatting indicates that you are within a footnote raised up into the text body for reader’s convenience while presenting an appropriate comment or tangential point, simple and handy…)

Quotations are served on separate lines offset like this:

 
“ Shine! Shine on! You! Crazy Diamond!
 

Last but not least, watch out for the only picture someplace in the text validating that all this is not just another screenplay for one more animation blockbuster and stuff but just as is. If this is not the most ergonomic approach, I don’t know what else can be.

And, yes, my main concern throughout the work was providing adequate fabric to pull over so elegant framework. Stay assured, neither jerky sketches nor psycodelic splotches, nope! I/we/us were/are/and will be pulling for simple machines and leverage lucidity. I mean you don’t have to sharpen your comprehension’s edge by use of this or that dope for following twirly quirks, and fancy whimsicalities, and cerebral-tissue-busting niceties.

Though a first-person story, The Rascally Romance, nonetheless, is not a swaggering report on Me, Myself and The Number One. No, I’m not up for narcistic self-portraits. What? This mean and stupid rascal me? Alas, but not, ‘tis gone, ‘tis gone! So, pray, desist! It’s sooner, a cross-section of the whole generation. The unvarnished Night Watch of the period, if you like, from the most breathtaking, unequaled, and fascinating era since the Creation.

Now, full of bitter comprehension, I witness the glorious period packed, cinched, and sealed, tight and proper, 2 labels, crisscross—«stagnation»><«restructuring»—all ready get dumped into the bottomless bin of Past. Yet, neither smart labeling nor shifty package tricks would ever obscure the fact that the entire history of mankind owns no period to match the one when so naively young we were.

3. Style & Language & Age Restrictions

Sure enough, each and every generation inevitably enjoys or lives thru their own youth, yet some of them miss out to erect an epistolary pillar to mark the fact appropriately.

The erection at hand abides by the style of… mm… How will you name the critter? OK, let’s christen it Rabid Realism because this particular ball is ruled by Mrs. Naked Truth and no soft soap is handed out here to any written or tacit law.

The style is characterized by noble restraint in choice of means, limitlessly so. All’s kept radiantly simple, no need to enroll an online group for joint munching—a chunk a week—to get to juicy innuendos in gnarly concoction by the author along with sniffing out the pans in his pun-kitchen… Not in this case. Firstly, you should be dead to see such honor. Remember that German fellow? The one who unearthed Shakespeare and kicked off the successful ad campaign about his writing skills among his myopic compatriots? He came 200 years after the poor Will’s bones went asleep beneath their tombstone. Dig it? Can you read Shakespeare today? It’s when those eggheads step into picture to collect their flocks of mutts… But while you and I are still around I tried to make of the process of reading an old good DIY entertainment.

And it would be only fair to note that grim-mouthed pearl-clutching language purists might disapprove of absolutely casual taboo words in The Rascally Romance. Fully grasping their venerable point, I would willingly pull along with the sentiment but for the fear to look a petty diddler. In a true-to-life presentation, you just cannot hold back them those words because life, as it is, would differ from a family movie. For which reason, I expressly discourage any person under 18 years of age to read any further.

I am serious: DROP IT RIGHT AWAY, KID! Before it’s too late…

4. Technical Notes & Self-Appraisal

Letters are not supposed to be split into chapters or parts—which technique would only push the addressee towards unnecessary associations— they just flow on and on, and on, to their end. However, leaving Reader without any map or compass midst hundreds upon hundreds of pages in any direction, depriving them of sort of a guiding star or two seems nothing but inhuman sadism. Not my style, eh? Gentlemanly full of caring compassion for humanoid brethren and sistern, I couldn’t suppress kindhearted addition of The Table of Contents to the work.

Though what else could you expect of a fucking philanthropist, eh?.

5. Acknowledgments & Disclaimer

I thank you all, whose names appear in the tale, as well as those who are not in here (you are indefinitely more in numbers and your contribution to The Rascally Romance having been written after all is equally important).

And of no less significance is Your, Dear Reader, tagging along up to this very line. Because any book can only be produced by the collaborative team of 2: the reader and the author. Thank you, I—(dead serious and no horsing)—am hugely honored by Your most kind cooperation.

And now we’ve just reached the point when everyone has to decide for themselves whether to return to their pursuit of customary business and/or pleasures—to all those pet joys, and daily problems alongside with habitual rewards and outlets befitting people of sober good sort, which (between the two of us, as one buddy-teammate to the other) might be the most reasonable course because you never know what insidious vortexes and currents might lurk out there—or keep rowing on ahead, past and beyond the popping buoy of this here Foreword, a sort of…

Whoa! After such a rambling passage I do have to shut up and take a breather, so feel free to use the lull for making your informed decision…

To be frank, it doesn’t matter how randomly or strictly Your cons and pros are scattered for the choice, and stay assured there’s no way to dump the blame on me because of the disclaimer to wind it all up—

*Regardless of which tack you pick, you’ll never be the same hereafter*

^~ ~^~~ ^~

epigraph:

 
Looks like that’s it,
In any case, as of yet,
And even if not quite,
Still, sort of, may be,
Because when otherwise,
”Hey, you!.“
Bang and – a-ha!.
 

Vladimir Sherudillo

_{~ ~ ~} The Birchbark Sketches

…Varanda…

…a handful of random sounds…

…some sonorant nothing… as any other name…

At this distance, the river itself is nothing but a discordant growl of water in nonstop tumbling over them those bulky boulders littered at random to block the way, ramming vainly into their blunt pates, maybe temples, to only get split by their huge indifference into maddened spits, and spill around the gobs of splashy froth, and keep rolling forth in unremitting helter-skelter on, and on, and on without ever getting outside the trap of Here and Now, fixed within futile breakout from nowhere to nowhere, under hollow tam-tam taps, not to time neither in key, by the rounded gravel at the bottom of its riverbed…

And what about the fit duration, Doc? Seems like setting it down to infinity plus this one day, would be close enough… Nations been risen and passed away, to quote the famous lecture by sage Abu-Lala before his string of camels, while this river runs here and still has to, thru all those ages upon eons ever since before the beginnings of time.

Changes in the mountain rivers are pretty negligible, except for those in their names. Sure bet, the Stone Age hunters had other sound combinations as for this here stream because all flow and everything changes, handles as well… Now, taking into account the whole multitude of roamers that ever trod these banks, you can’t state who’s runnier: the dateless river of Varanda or irresponsible drifters and purposeful undertakers of any shade and warp in the spectrum. And here am I, a casual bum from endless series, neither the first nor the last by this omnipresent flow.

…extreme pleasure, bro, from your spectacular malarkey… and while you’re at it how ’bout pinning down this “I” of mine, eh?.

A minor spill, considerably dehydrated and motionless for the moment, stretched next to the good ol’ hole thru which all of the future tumbles away into the past—a relay-pipeline from a snotty noddy kid to a grumpy, flea-bitten curmudgeon, yet both share one common thing: this ubiquitous word of “I”.

…me too, me too!. don’t leave me out!. I’m also somewhere in between them those two, on our everlasting journey from the junior to the senior, for even though idling now on this bank I still go with the flow…

 
O, water! We be of one blood!
 

…whoa, man!. what are you up at? acting a freakin smartie?. who cares a flick about your quotation frills at this time of day?.

Yes, time remains the laziest in our assembly, uncaring, has dozed off in earnest about my one-person tent. The twilight outside the well-bleached nylon wall will snail for long along its way to thickening into the dark of night.

…right, then why not to whittle the drag away by something useful, eh?.

…like, to compose the letter promised to your daughter… what’d you say?. we’ve got the promises to keep, remember?. especially when there’s not a flake of chance to fall asleep so early…

…just only watch your mouth, pardner… easy about them those f-f..er..fumbling quotations?.

~ ~ ~

Hello, Liliana

(…a hugely nicer name than “Varanda”, eh?.

…shut up and mind your business!.)

Seems, I do start at last the letter promised to you at our encounter in Kiev… What for? To marshal a chain of self-excuses and belated explanations, to claim not guilty, absolve my flawless self?. Anything can be explained, yet none redone. However, given the word was given, I’ve only got to keep it…

Hard it was to stomach your official correctness and the excessive use of “You” in plural to keep me at a proper distance, “Of course, Sehrguey Nikolayevich…” “Not exactly, Sehrguey Nikolayevich…” Oboy! I began to resent my own patronymic, yet faced the flogging without a flinch, as fits a manly man.

Meting out “Daddy” to a stranger popped up from the Internet vistas is not an easy job, more so if he looks nothing like the Mr. Pretty Guy sitting in your Mom’s album… Some obscure mujik, gray hanging beard… Where is Daddy of your dreams who you’ve missed since your early childhood? You dreamed of that Daddy, not of this old man. No, thanks! Accordingly, our farewell hug at the railway station was just put up with—not a big deal for a woman nearing her thirties—and that’s it. The glacial ice retained its hardness, not a micro crevice cracked the cold surface, the gardens never splash in bloom, nor were they filled with lively cheerful chirps of blackbirds, thrushes, tits, and starlings injecting their joyous trills into the triumphant blare of fanfares at The Happy End. The stranger who failed to become anything but a stranger let you go and I promised write you a letter. That way we parted, two strangers, at the Kiev Railway Station for Long-Distance Trains…

Still of the two of us, I’m better off because so more of you are there in my life than you will ever have of me in yours, much more… I easily can recollect your kick at my nose as you turned over within your mother’s belly. As well as that sterile white cocoon in my arms which I walked with all the way from the maternity hospital and you sleeping inside so calmly… Up to this day, the video record in my mind where you’re walk dancing in the string of your kindergarten partners round the Xmas tree warms my heart. The most beautiful kid is you, straight fair hair in a middle bob, a quilted vest of black silk, red pantyhose, and felt black high boots, so tiny…

I remember lonely Sundays—not a living sole but us—at the empty playgrounds of another kindergarten in the neighborhood, forlorn and quiet on days-off, which we frequented for you to take a ride on the swing pended on two iron rods. At swaying, the swing screeches pierced the still somnolence about the playgrounds strewn with the fallen leaves. Those shrieks, so like to sorrowful gull howls, gripped my heart. Because I was just a weekend Daddy… On weekdays I was far away, working like a dog, a mule, a slave at The Construction Train 615, aka SMP-615, at various building sites in the neighbor region to earn by zealous, selfless labor an apartment for our young family, and have a home, sweet home for us….