"Beyond Reasonable Doubt"

By Maxim Zuzin

This is a book about my life which I have wanted to find support of my readers by. It's about love and romance. Strife and battle. Search of well-being and like that. It's also about all kinds of intricacies of life and professional efforts and endeavors. It's an example of legal practice, business activity and collaborating with the State. Though, I live in Russia and the contents relate to this country, it is also about international involvement and worldwide range of events.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 6, 2016
• ISBN: 9781365588181

Book preview

"Beyond Reasonable Doubt"

BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT

Massimo Provenzano

Yea, though I walk through the valley

of the shadow of death, I will fear no

evil: for You are with me; Your rod

and Your staff they comfort me.

(Psalm 23:4)

Bandy

The story was told to Mike by his cousin Andrew, who then got drowned in Jenisej river breaking down through the spring ice. So, he might not confirm it. As for Nick, he would probably keep his silence on it, not being a talkative person. Anyway, it was as follows. Andrew came with a visit to Nick. He lived just several hundreds feet yonder off the hostel. He came to watch a spy movie about a Second World War time resident in nazi Germany who passed over through a radio station the secret files to Moscow. A subsequent part of the movie was to begin. When the pathetic music was about to play. Small Mike who barely was a year old took a toy wooden bandy for Russian hockey out of his toys box and approached Nick who sat on an armchair from behind under the watch of Andrew who sat on the divan. Andrew just looked what way the events would develop not paying much attention to small Mike’s intentions. He did not take it serious because Mike was a small one. Mike moved back and a bit aside the bandy to make a better blow. He knocked upon the head of his elder brother who had been unawares of any danger. Mike put all the forces of his small body into the strike. Nick wailed of pain and spoiled fun of watching the TV set. He wept and threw himself on small Mike who held the bandy to make another blow. Andrew jumped and tackled Nick down. Through much tears and snots it got calmed down however.

It was not clear why small Mike did it. Did he understand that Nick was a kind of being a stranger having been born of another man from the mom’s first marriage? He loved Nick all the same. Or was it a struggle for a bigger share of power in the home? Nobody knew.  

Sauna

That day Mike had to go into the sauna along with his mom. He was still in an age when he just began to understand the meaning of the things. He wanted to go with his dad but his parents decided that he was too young yet to go into sauna as a man. So he should go as a baby, with his mom. When they got into sauna, the mom put Mike on the concrete bench into a metal washbasin the administrator gave out to the people in the sauna. It was the first time Mike visited the sauna. But, the first time with his mom and in a female day of the sauna as it functioned. Mike tried not to look at the naked white bodies of the women. But, he could not help getting turned on. The women began to protest that Mike was in the sauna among the females.

‘He’s just a child yet,’ objected his mom.

‘Look the way he’s gotten, and then understand he’s no child,’ protested the women.

It was the last day Mike was in the sauna among the females.

Sun hares

Once Mike along with the other boys tried to catch up the sun hares. They called so the bunches of the sunny beams reflected off a hand mirror upon a wall or something else. The girls were held up one by one by the female kindergarten teachers from taking part in the game. The sun hares could not be caught. They had jumped on the wall at all unthinkable heights. Even if taken over they had strangely eluded out of the hands. Then, Mike turned around to see he was left alone to play. All other boys stood near the teachers. Mike looked at the sun hares still jumping on the walls. They approached him one by one waiting for a snatch. A real hare would not have done so.

‘Why don’t you catch the sun hares, they’ve come from the sun and want to play with you, Mike’, asked one of the women.

‘No’, said Mike, ‘They jump off your hand mirrors.’

‘Mickey, don’t cheat the other boys, it’s an honest game, go and look if there’s some sun hares hiding in our mirrors.’

Mike approached the kindergarten teacher, and said ‘Give me the hand mirror and I’ll show you.’

She lifted up the mirror for Mike not to be capable to reach it.

‘No deal, Mike, the hand mirrors are not for the boys to play with.’ She said.

‘Give me’, Mike jumped trying to take the small mirror out of the hand of the woman.

‘Vow, you are unruly boy.’ She commented.

‘Give the mirror to me and then let him go to see if there’s some sun hares in it,’ said the other kindergarten teacher that sat in the shadow.

The first woman smiled and passed over the mirror. Mike went up to the woman in the shadow. He took the mirror. After this, he had made a few quick steps to get under the sunlight. He moved the hand-mirror. A sun hare darted across the wall. It jumped over the window.

The first woman wrested the small circle mirror out of the Mike’s hands. ‘You are a smart one, Michael.’

A short moment of silence passed.

Then the woman, who possessed the hand-mirror first said, ‘It was a crazy sun hare like Michael himself is.’

Girls laughed. Some of the boys laughed too. 

‘Mike’s going to the corner and does not spoil the game with the sun hares for the rest of the boys’, she sentenced.

He sat in the corner and watched other boys jump up the shadowed wall. While the girls laughed. His humiliation was subdued by the pride that he knew why the boys could not catch the sun hares.

Signal flags

An April day was in his full strength. The sunshine changed into the cloudy grayness and returned again. A group of kindergarten children went from medical test in the local child polyclinic. They went in a column of two rows. Mike went in the middle of the column. He was clothed in a brown and yellow checked coat, black small trousers and a black rabbit fur hat. Mike wanted very much the small red flags that were given to a boy who went at the right side of the column with those flags in his hands. He asked the teacher to allow him to carry those small red flags and move them in the wind to make the red cloth wave but she did not allow.

So, they went by along a road between two rows of garages and were about to come on to cross the road. The group stopped at the commanding shout of the teacher. The women checked the rows and one of them getting in front of the column they ordered the kids to come along. The children moved. When they were on the road appeared a heavy truck that came from the right side. The women did not think it a peril because the rules of the traffic obliged the driver to stop and let the column of the children to cross the road.

The driver indulgently pushed the brake out of an ease of a man that knew little trouble. But, the truck did not react. The man pushed and pushed on the brake pedal but there ensued from it no response of the mechanisms. He grabbed the handle of the gearbox and tried to get on a lower gear. The truck went on the column of the children on the full speed.

Some kids stood still and watched the fast approaching truck, the other tried to run but struck upon the backs of the other kids. The boy with the red flags tried to run forward having no obstacle ahead. But Mike got out of the ranks and took the boy by the scruff of the neck. He made him to turn over to the right with his left arm and took the small red flags out of the hands of the boy first one then the second. Then he let the boy to run. Mike imagined himself to be a military traffic regulator. Be began to move the flags in the combinations of signals he made by his heart as he knew from the films he had seen. A spirit of a military traffic regulator fully came upon him. He went along the road on the approaching truck that signaled itself with the honk. The signals of Mike’s flags resulted so that the truck had to turn to the right, left of Mike. Mike made all his movements by an instinct led by a mighty spirit of the answer to the oncoming danger.

The driver looked at the approaching boy and had nothing to do but to turn right. The truck struck a big poplar tree after it got down off the road and the driver hit the front glass with his head. The truck was not damaged much but small clouds of vapor beat up out of the hood that opened a little.

The children began to run off the road in a straight column. Mike himself stood near the car. The driver jumped out of the cubicle and began to curse rubbing his head. The teacher ran from behind and grabbed Mike into her arms. She cursed back and called the driver bad names. Then, she turned around and after making several steps put Mike on the asphalt. She went along holding him hand by hand. It was all over. Nobody ventured to remember it in the kindergarten. And, after some time Mike himself forgot about that valiant deed of his.

Arson

Anastasia, Mike’s mom was not a completely obedient girl in her childhood. Once she and Gloria, the girl of twelve and her classmate to boot, had a vengeance plan against an old man whom they deemed to be a miser and who by their common opinion deserved some evil to be made to. It was rather not a plan but a spontaneous action of revenge. The girls walked beside the wooden fence of the household of that old man whose name was Brian and one of them took out of the pocket a box of matches. It was Anastasia. She ignited the matches one by one and approached them closely to the wood as if to put on fire the wooden fence. In reality the girls just played in a revenge of arson. They did not have the definite intent to make the harm. But, when old Brian saw the occupation of the girls it was enough for him to cry wolf and grab both girls to carry them to their parents for a matter of the due punishment. He brought both girls to the house of the Gloria’s mom Margaret and delivered them to the family justice. Margaret upbraided the girls and rebuked they had made such an evil act. Listening to all the reproaches, Anastasia took a piece of chewing gum and gave it to Gloria that stood beside.

‘Yea, share it, share. You’ll have to share all the things between yourselves when in the jail.’ Commented Margaret.

A prophet

From his childhood, as far ago as he remembered, Mike always wanted to be a prophet. He played a prophet. He said that he would be a prophet when he got grown up. He told it due the Lord said him to do so, because he heard the voice of the Lord. It was as natural for him as to hear everybody else say.

Once a girl played among other children in the hostel. It was September. The leaves fell on the ground and spotted it with the gold. Mike said that he was a prophet and was to be a son of God when he grew up. The girl laughed wickedly. She went somewhere into the hostel. After a few minutes, she came on the small asphalt playground that was the place where the people went in and out the hostel. It was the gates of the hostel.

‘Come to me, Mike,’ she said.

She held a glass filled with something yellow.

‘Come to me, Mike,’ she said once more.

Mike was afraid to come to her, feeling there was some mischief on her part. He started to go off backwards. But, some elder boys ran from behind and held him by the arms.

‘Hold him fast, I’ll anoint him with the oil, if he wants to be a prophet,’ she said.

She approached Mike. One of the boys took off Mike’s hat and threw it on the dusty ground. The girl poured the sticky oil on Mike’s head. It flowed down Mike’s head and even down the back between the collar and the body. The boys let Mike arms and kicked him once. Mike tried to pick up his hat, but the boys shoved him from the place where the hat lay. Mike faced them all, but one of the boys gave him a strike on the cheek with his hand, and shoved again. Mike fell on the ground, flat on his back, and struck off his bowels. The boys and the girl ran on him and began to throw the dry dirt and leaves on his face and rubbed all that stuff into the oil on his head. Then some of them kicked once more upon his left side and threatened to blow on the face with a boot. Mike moved back his head by an instinct. Then they tried to shake their hands of the oil mixed with the dust. But, could not. They called Mike by cuss words and went into the hostel. Mike stood up heavily; his belly ached and gave the nausea of the guts that had been struck off. Mike went into the grove of the yellow trees that was in few feet off the gates. He took the golden leaves and tried to dry off the oil and dirt mixed up. He took more and more leaves and tried to dry up his head but could not.

Suddenly, he heard a voice, ‘Michael.’

He got up. He knew it was the God.

‘Michael. The way you won’t be able to get rid of the oil and dirt on your head, they won’t be able to wash it from their hands,’ said the God.

Two potato pies

This day Mike did not go to the kindergarten. His elder brother Nick did not visit the school, either. So, eight years older Nick was to look after Mike, a little boy as yet. Nick did not like it much. Still, he was obliged to, because their parents left home for the work. Anyhow, Nick could bear it, on account he was not yet aged enough to be totally parted with the childhood interests.

They both lived in the hostel of an agricultural college where their dad taught chemistry to future agronomists, machine operators and accountants. Their flat was on the first floor, which was completely reserved for the teachers’ families. The female students occupied the upper stories of the building.

At the beginning, the boys hang about on the first floor. Mostly, near the reception room of the hostel. The still atmosphere ruled the place. Almost nobody went in or out the door. It was the morning. So, all were whether absent for the lectures and work or slept in the rooms.

After all, Nick took Mickey into a dark corridor as far from the concierge lady as it was necessary for her not to be able to eavesdrop what he was about to say to his younger brother.

‘Look, Mickey, stay a little while here when I’ll go and see what it is like on the upper floors,’ offered Nick with an outward enthusiasm, but little real hope.

‘Nope, I’m gonna tell the mom if you leave me here alone,’ stated Mike not giving a chance to reconsider it.

Nick was experienced enough not to argue with a kindergarten boy, whose last reason – the tears in the presence of the concierge lady, or then, much worse, before the mom was to count with, if the elder boy did not want to reap the harvest of the consequences.

So, Nick simply said, ‘Ok, let’s go to a reconnaissance, I’ll go first, you’ll follow a few steps behind.’

‘No, you shall run away from me and leave me alone down here,’ answered Mike, ‘That’s no deal.’

Nick invited Mike to follow with a hand gesture like people did when they were on some important mission that was not to be much noised about. They climbed the stairs and got on near a window that let the sun to lighten the place.

‘Well, you’ll go with me but first let’s make a deal. I’ll be a lieutenant, and you a sergeant. Anyhow, I’m much older than you are. So, you’ll listen to what I say, and execute my orders. Then, no matter what we do, we will keep it from the mom and dad ‘cause it’s gonna be a military secret.’ Nick bargained now with a reasonable assurance that his superiority of age will let him control the situation.

‘No, I don’t want to be a sergeant. You better be a general and I’m somebody a bit lower than you in the rank just to execute your orders.’ Mike knew there should be somebody he spoke of, only he had forgotten how this rank was called. That left more than enough of the room for maneuver to Nick.

‘Ok, Mike, you’re gonna be a colonel,’ said the elder boy now sure that he caught Mike on his craving for adventure.

Mike was glad he was a colonel, the more so on account Nick acknowledged him to be in this rank. Now, Mike felt his importance. The common task to reconnoiter the upper floors somehow shortened the seemingly insurmountable gap of age between the boys. Though Nick was a general, Mike felt himself to be only as little lower in the imaginary rank as could be. This condition added him some rights to influence the situation. It was not because Mike would use his last resort of a capricious whimper or else to threaten an appeal to such an instance as mom.  But owing to they were somewhat more equal with Nick now, two partners in a real deal Mike sniffed Nick was up to because of all his cautious diplomacy. Usually, he was not that kind with Mike. Anyway, Mike was going to hearken to what Nick said not because he was of something no more than a iron ball chained to his elder brother’s leg, which prevented the last to have some real fun. But because he was obliged so due to the military discipline that made even the adults to comply with what the higher rank officers said as it was in the army.

Then, they got on the second floor. Now, it seemed Mike knew what attracted Nick to the upper floors. A smell of fried pies penetrated the halls of the building.

‘Thus, we gonna ask some pies from the girls?’ asked Mike now sure he was close to the solution of the riddle why Nick acted so suspiciously.

‘No, Mike, they won’t give us some even if we beg for,’ said Nick, ‘Don’t forget we’re gonna make a sortie and a pair of pies will be our trophy.’

Mike felt dizzy of the abundance of new words the real meaning of which he did not know for sure. Also, he was afraid to get in a mix with the adult female students for a pair of pies. He knew their army’s forces were not enough to grab the pies by force. He felt afraid of his elder brother’s idea.

‘I don’t wanna mix up with the girls. They’ll punish us and tell it to our parents that we fought with them,’ he sounded his apprehensions.

‘Don’t worry, Mike. Leave it to me. We’ll take the pies by ruse. We won’t fight with the girls, who fry the pies,’ explained Nick.

Still, Mickey felt a kind of fear, knowing that the girls, who were adults, were much slier than even Nick had ever been. Nick saw that Mike was frightened because of the absence of the information about his design.

‘Mike, you are a colonel, don’t forget it. Where’ve you seen a colonel to be afraid of a bunch of girls,’ admonished Nick.

‘But, they are stronger than us,’ said Mike what it seemed for him to be a deadly argument.

‘Don’t fret over it, Mike, we’ll make the whole operation from an ambush. If there’s some wrong, we’ll retreat,’ assured Nick.

‘Even if we are a general and a colonel two of us, the girls are stronger, and they tell the mom and dad,’ said Mike still full of doubt.

‘We’ll make the subversion while they don’t see us,’ assured Nick.

Now, Mickey felt as though Nick was right, anyhow all said his elder brother was a smart boy. So, he nodded consent.

‘But, promise me first not to look at what I do,’ asked Nick.

‘Ok,’ agreed Mike now sure that Nick was up to some clever thing that would cover up his mischief.

Mike was left at the shadowed place where the staircase went on the second floor. He closed the eyes leaving a narrow space between the eyelids enough for him to see what Nick was going to accomplish.

But, Nick turned around and said, ‘Turn your back on me, it’s sure you don’t peep at.’

So, Mike had to turn about. Nick approached an electricity plug. He put down the sleeve of his sweater to cover up his right hand. Then, he took out of the left pocket of his trousers a piece of the copper wire and put it into the right hand covered by the wool cloth of the sweater. After this, he put that copper wire into one of the two holes of the plug. Then, he made the same with the other hole making use of the second piece of the copper wire. Mike saw it because from time to time he would swiftly turn his head around to watch what Nick did. Suddenly, Nick turned around his head himself. He saw Mike spied on him.

‘Mike, you promised not to look at,’ warned Nick seriously and a bit nervous, ‘You’ll spoil the whole deal.’

Mike turned around to watch the staircase. After a moment of silence, he made a few steps back and tried to see what was going on behind in the obscure picture reflected from the open glass door. Nick took the third piece of the copper wire and posed it above the first two poked into the holes of the plug at a distance of about ten inches. Then, he let the copper wire go down, previously closing the eyes and turning the head aside. The copper wire just fell on the wooden floor, not having touched the other pieces of the copper wire poked into the plug.

‘Shit,’ expressed Nick his disappointment with a cuss word.

Then, tried it again getting a little closer to the electricity plug. All of a sudden, Mike saw a flash in the glass and heard something blow up not very loudly. Dazzled, he stood straight, not having courage to turn around to see what was what. He felt as Nick grabbed him abruptly from behind his back as a good wrestler would have done, and got downstairs with him, into the shadow of a dark corner.

‘Hist,’ said Nick in a low voice, ‘Keep mum.’

As the local custom was the pies were fried on the small portative ovens that were, as it was the real case, prohibited to use. It was because the wires of the hostel were not calculated for such a charge. The rulers of the time pretended that students should eat in the dinner room of a college campus, and eat there enough.

Nick was already grown old enough to take over the female students on how the electricity works. The fuses cut out. Several worried girls appeared from the rooms, bereft of the electrical energy. The ones guilty of the prohibited trade of cooking got nearly desperate because they thought that the oven, smuggled into the hostel as a most illegal item, had over-charged the circuit to get it broken. In such a case concierge would not be a good guest on the place of the disaster.

‘Shit… What’s the hell around here with the electricity?’ exclaimed one of the female students.

‘Seems like the fuses could not stand it no longer again,’ stated the common opinion the other one.

‘What we’re gonna do with that this time?’ asked some of the girls.

‘It’s not good an idea to call the administrator,’ said the one guilty of cooking pies.

‘But, who’s who can arrange it with the electrician to fix the fuses?’ insisted the one, who had the alibi. ‘Even if we set down a bottle to him he would not get through the concierge lady unnoticed,’ she added. ‘There’s gonna be a lot of stink out of it.’

‘I’m ‘fraid to get into the switchboard,’ as if excused herself the other one from the room where they cooked the pies.

‘I am not also keen on burning up my fingers,’ remarked the one that seemed to make too much of an affair of it, as if she never cooked anything herself.

At that moment, Nick got in on the spot from around the corner. Mike dragged himself behind. All looked like the boys happened on the second floor by a mere chance.

‘What’s going on down here?’ Nick asked with quite enough cheek to cover his jitters.

‘Oh, Nick, what’s a lucky strike you’ve gotten over here,’ happily said one of the girls. ‘You’ll help us to fix the fuses, won’t you?’ said she to add, as though wanted to make avail of her feminine charms to allure the boy into helping them to solve the problem with the electricity.

‘To help you to fix the fuses?’ repeated Nick as if with a doubt, to add the importance to the whole affair. ‘I don’t know if I might help you. Never tried it with the fuses in my life.’

‘Come on, Nick. It’s Ok with you. You always fix the electrical stuff like them lamps or irons, don’t you?’ insisted the one, who did not want to make it a public affair.

‘ ‘Tis not the same. The wires are under the tension. It’s 220 volts,’ said Nick not without a success to show himself skeptical.

‘Nick, we were just about ending to cook the potato pies and all of a sudden the electricity went off,’ expressed herself one of the girls, the tears were about to appear on the eyes now when the rescue seemed to be at hand and the first stress got off. ‘We’ll give a pair of pies to you and your brother Mike. Whether you don’t like the potato pies?’

It seemed to Nick that the fish might get off the hook now when the gentle was already about to be sucked off totally.

‘Ok, ‘tis Ok, I’ll fix it. Don’t worry over it,’ Nick announced promptly.

‘We always knew you’ve been a good boy,’ relaxed herself the girl.

Nick went up to the switchboard, opened it.

‘Well, what can be done in here?’ said Nick to denote it as a serious case.

The girls watched him unscrew one of the fuses, and look at the backside of it, which was burned. Suddenly, he turned a bit nervous. He recalled that there was no copper wire to fix the matter except in his pocket. It would be suspicious just to pull out a piece of the copper wire out of his pocket to trim the fuse.

‘I gotta go get some copper wire there’s in our room,’ said Nick a bit fretful that his mischief could be detected.

He went downstairs. Mike was left in the company of the girl students. The image of the enemy did not dissolve totally in the fuss over the fuses. It seemed to Mike that Nick just deserted him because the sortie got a bad way. All the same, he tried to chase away these thoughts from his head and stay natural. Anyhow, he believed in the military genius of his general. It was all that was left to him.

‘So, Mickey, whom we’ll be when we’re grown up?’ inquired one of the girls.

‘Who is we?’ mumbled Mike in a loss forcing himself to stand still and not to step back.

The girls laughed.

‘Maybe, you’ll be an electrician to help the poor girls like us if the fuses get burned out?’

‘Try, Mickey,’ said the other, ‘Go fix it in the switchboard.’

Mike felt the nausea of fear to come into his soul. His body got week. He was about to confess. It seemed as though the girls guessed why the electricity had gone off. Then, he remembered about the mom and that she would have been ashamed. So, he found a source of the interior strength to hold out anyhow.

‘I’m too small yet. They don’t allow the boys like me to make such things,’ explained he, not even afraid now to look as a coward.

‘Good,’ said the interrogator, ‘Let’s wait till Nick brings the copper wire.’

Mike backed away to the opened glass door. The girls began to speak with one another about the stuff Mike hardly understood. A few minutes it took for Nick to go to their room and back to the second story to make it plausible that he looked for some copper wire, seemed to Mike to be as long as just can be. Then, Nick turned up.

‘Ok, let’s trim it,’ said he when approached the open switchboard.

In a rather short space of time, Nick fixed the fuses as though he was occupied with such business the most part of his life. It was like Nick lost the interest to be up to the level of playing it the right way the needs of the conspiracy required. After the fuses were fixed, he closed the switchboard.

‘It’s all with them fuses,’ said he.

‘So, now the pay,’ told the girl. ‘Will you wait till we warm up the pies?’

‘Nope,’ simply said Nick.

The girls went each one into their rooms and the cookers gave Nick a pair of pies. The elder boy delivered to his brother his part of the loot. Mike tried the pie. It was cold. As a rule, he liked potato pies most. But, this one did not seem good to him. The cold pie tasted of starch. Mike’s stomach refused to digest the potato-dough stuff properly. Though Mike ate not already for a long time, the hunger disappeared almost totally, leaving only a soft nausea. In a word, the boy did not have the appetite for the pie.

‘‘T would be better if we just asked our mom to cook some potato pies on the weekend,’ complained Mike in half a voice.

Nick did not answer.

Seeing off the boys, one of the girls said, ‘A good one of a husband some fortunate baby’s gonna get.’

‘Yea, the boy really knows how to handle the things around the household.’ Added the other one.

The boys disappeared around the corner to get downstairs.

After they went to the first floor, and it was not possible for the girls to overhear them, the younger boy told, ‘It is not tasty, the pie. We’d better just ask some pies off the girls. Anyhow, they’d allow us to bite a morsel off a pie. This one is bad. We even did not ask them girls to warm up the pies. We’d better just ask the mom to fry some potato pies.’

‘You don’t understand it ‘cause you are too small yet. That was fun,’ affirmed Mike, but without sounding real happy with the spoils.

A choice of two

Once a grown-up man offered Mike a choice between two candies. One was chocolate, the other caramel. He held them behind his back in the hands.

Mike said, ‘I take them both.’

The grown-up man got somewhat upset and pronounced, ‘Mike, that’s no deal, it’s a choice…what do you like best, the chocolate one or caramel?’

Mike said, ‘I better like chocolate, but I wanna take them both.’

‘Ok, Mike, but that’s a choice, all depends on what candy you like best, try it again.’

Mike repeated, ‘I choose them candies both.’

‘Mike, do not play a fool. Whether you do not know what you want?’ the young man asked, ‘Seems like you want too much.’

Mike kept silence. The young man turned about and went away.

The tears dropped off the boy’s eyes, ‘I knew what I wanted, I wanted both, them candies.’

He lost the chance to take at least one of the candies. He imagined how he would eat the chocolate one first lest it should melt in his hand. Then the caramel one after the taste of chocolate would disappear in his mouth. To say that Mike was simply disappointed meant to say nothing at all. However, the thought he could take both sweets at once somewhat comforted his soul. Simply, he was not fortunate enough.

Armenian girl

Mike heard this story when he was yet a small boy and went into the kindergarten. It was told him instead of fairy tales. His grandmother, the dad’s mom, made it known to him the events of her own father’s life connected with his presence on the Turk Front during First World War. Then, he got a rather cogent story of his grand-grandfather’s life, by what he knew from the grandma’s other tales, or some other details he received from other people like his own mom or dad.

His grand-grandfather Nick had been rather an average man in respect of his morals except for an acute sense of equitability that was intended to defend and justify his own wishes and needs the same as Mike himself had. Mike heard it from somebody that his grand-granddaddy Nick had believed in the God like it also was with the grand-grandson. Though grand-grandfather Nick had not been so scrupulous on keeping the strict letter of the word of God as it was with Mike when he got grown up.

Nicolas Nagibin was born in the European part of the Russian Empire. There he got married and conceived several children. The place he lived in was scarce of land. So, like many peasants, he listened to the call of the government to go East to Siberia. He received a subsidy from the government and a dray to move to Siberia. After several months of travel he made it to a place he was allotted to. It was situated near the taiga forest, in the upstream tributes of the great Jenisej River. It was a settlement where he knew nobody and nobody knew him. No kith or kin. Just a bunch of hunger mouths that sat down on the cart that had been drawn to the place by a pair of scraggy horses he was obliged to return to the local authorities. He had neither house nor home. The Siberian winter was ahead. There were only left three rubles in his pocket. Enough to buy a heifer and start a household. Instead, he went to the bar and drank off the money.       

Then, he got a job on the gold mine. He worked in the bunker for about a month without seeing the daylight. The food from above was the only remembrance about the life on the surface. They slept underground. The rock was lifted on the surface by ropes. No ventilation but for the air draught. From the instruments a small crow-bar and rock-axe. The shift was a whole month long. After Nick got above, he drank without a stop for the other month provided for the rest. Then, a new month of hard work. Thus, all year round. So, the household was left totally to the care of his wife, except for the hay collection season reserved to get the fodder for the numerous cattle, when Nicolas had to show who was the man and the master in the house and whom was all held on.     

After Nick settled down a bit, the First World War broke out. He was sent to the Turk Front. About three long years of dugout war ensued. Then, the February Bourgeois Revolution. The army began to get on its loose. The self-rule of soldiers’ committees sapped the military discipline. The soldiers got on frequent leaves. On one of such leaves Nick met that Armenian young woman. He himself was at that time already a man advanced in the age. He had had a family in Siberia. But, here on the Turk Front he was very long without any feminine company. The chief obstacle for a romance of Nick with this young woman was that she had been a private prostitute of a young Armenian nobleman. The last had not wanted any children from this poor young woman. So, he had abused of her. The woman had been sick with an ignoble venereal disease, though was no more contagious. The medicine of the time did not have enough knowledge to cure her totally, besides she was poor to pay a good doctor. So, the excuse of the young Armenian nobleman had been that she could not have born him healthy progeny. He had prevented a possible pregnancy with as measures as he had might.

The old soldier and young Armenian woman pleased each other. The problem of the ambivalent marital status of the young woman was solved with a fist scrap when two pretenders met at the young woman’s room. The scandal could be bounded to such a dispute:

‘Do not play any jokes, you beard. We southern guys have hot blood and may not to be able to contain ourselves! So, you better be careful,’ threatened the young Armenian nobleman.

‘You are hot blooded, I am cool blooded ‘cause I’m from up North. So, I won’t strike first, and try simply to explain to you what’s what now with this here woman, and wait you understand and go away from this place. If you try to strike all the same, I’ll punch second. And, if you don’t lie dead on the floor, it’s only because you have your brains put into the right way not to argue and go away from here.’

The young Armenian nobleman made an instinctive movement to clutch the hilt of his dagger that was hung up to his belt.  Then, his eyes caught the sight of a three-angle- bayoneted rifle that stood in the corner on its butt end nearby the old soldier. So, the hot-blooded southerner just threw himself on the old soldier with bare hands. The old man had to make good his threat.

The young nobleman getting up the dusty floor hawking off the blood and the fragments of his teeth, hissed, ‘You dirty beard, don’t understand what you’ve gotten in. It’s my country and I’ve got a lot of friends here. You are a dead man.’

‘If that’s your country why are you not able to protect it from the Turk yourself and I’m stuck here for three years in a row,’ hollered the softly drunk angry old man, and kicked the young Armenian nobleman upon his unprotected belly, ‘You time is over to suck our blood, you dirty counts!’ brought the old soldier forth the fruits of the Bolshevik propaganda. ‘Anyhow, I’ve got a lot of mine friends also and if I don’t return tomorrow morning to the positions, they will come here and pick you up for a talk.’

So, all the trouble with the young woman’s quasi-marital status was settled down. She begot and bore a daughter to the old soldier, who visited her on his leaves. But, then the October Socialist Revolution got about. The Soviet Russia went out of the war, concluding a separate piece treaty with the Germany and its allies. The Civil War was on the threshold. They said to Nick that the bands of the natives were at large in the part of Siberia he lived in. All the same, he decided to stay in Armenia to protect his new wife and daughter from the Turk as long as need be, and then to decide what to do concerning his second family in Siberia. Anyway, he got quite a few new acquaintances among the Armenian, who invited him to stay taking into consideration that any rifle was counted in the Armenian emergency volunteer corps they collected against Young Turks. 

His regiment was almost totally recruited from his Siberian local friends whom he wanted to charge with taking care of his family back in Siberia. He went to the railway station to see off his friend to come back to Siberia. There the soldiers had a farewell party and drank much. When Nick was already drunk enough his fellow countrymen tackled him down. As much as he tried, now knowing about a conspiracy against him, Nick could not withstand the efforts of his many friends. They tied up his arms and legs with soldier belts and poked him into the door of the military wagon, where they got themselves. The officers shut them up.

It’s hard, but still possible to imagine the predicament Nick got into when the war got over such a way and he had to decide what to do. However, he opted to stay in Armenia, because there was his new wife and small baby daughter. But, to woke up sober after a hard drinking and realize that he was forced to leave his Armenian family alone, a war ahead, and the Armenian themselves unable to protect their land against Young Turks, it was a real anguish. Then, the matters got only worse. Back home, Nick turned a Red guerilla and waged a war against White Guard troops of the general Koltchak in Siberia. After the Civil War was over somebody from his Armenian wife kindred, sent him a telegram to the effect that Young Turks killed his Armenian family. To say that Nick was just sorrow stricken meant not to say much about what he felt. It was a kind of his personal fault, it seemed to him, to get a new woman, and such young and beautiful in that troublesome time. He grieved much, and told everybody how beautiful was his Armenian baby, even to his own Russian wife and children. Such dark and deep eyes she had had. Still, he had a hope that it was a lie about his Armenian woman and daughter to have been killed, in that her kinsmen disliked Nick much. It was on account Nick was the cause of her break-up with the native young nobleman, as full of abuse as their relations were before Nick stepped his foot in the Armenian woman’s room. It might be that they spitefully cheated him to make him bad. Then, one of his Armenian friends sent him a letter to Siberia, that it was all well with his Armenian wife as Nick called her and his small daughter. In the letter there were even the childish scribbles his Armenian friend asserted to be made by his daughter’s hand. His Armenian wife was illiterate and might not write herself. Though she sent a few words written by his friend announcing that she was now his friend’s woman.  All it was to the effect that they managed to run away and find a refuge before Young Turks occupied a big part of Armenia and the massacre of Armenians ensued. First, Nick was relieved and could not believe it because it was so good to hear. But, then a real doubt came into his soul that his Armenian family were murdered and his friend just cheated him in his turn to give Nick an illusion. Then the jealousy drove him to think that the Armenian kinsmen did not leave blackmailing him. This doubt ate with canker his soul. Afterwards, when several years passed Nicolas Nagibin alleged that he made an official inquiry into the Interior Affair Ministry. He got an official certification that the woman he had counted for his second wife in Armenia and who had born him a daughter was alive and settled on the shores of the Black Sea on the Russian territory. She was registered under a new surname of the Armenian man that had been his friend after she had officially married him. But, even now Nick feared that the guys in the local office of Interior Affairs simply falsified the paper to get rid of the old man’s solicitations. Somebody told that it was not a reasonable thing to believe old Nick at all because he heard voices of angels and did not consent to go through a medical treatment. He alleged an angel said him that he was forgiven by God, because his grand-grandson would be a righteous man and punished for old Nick’s sin of making it together with his Armenian woman.

Anyway, for Mike all this story about his grand-granddaddy’s love affair was the source of a personal shame and doubt as to the bad repute of his pedigree. He had an obstinate will to prove that it might have been possible to have two wives and do it in a sure way to prevent any tragedy whatsoever. And, to show it by his own life, as though his grand-granddad was his adversary in the competition of proving the truth. Nonetheless, Mike felt as this sin of the past on the part of his ancestor loomed over him. He had the same poison of doubt when tried to imagine that all was Ok with that Armenian girl. It seemed to Mike that the blood of the small Armenian girl was on him.

Moment of truth

The dad held Mike’s hands by his own big palms.

‘But, dad, why you accept all this? That’s a lie. They are not your daughters. And, all those harlots, they just created the semblance of giving birth to your children. That’s not your children. You are no more a fornicator than others. You just keep down and don’t hurry. Who made this witchcraft on you? They want to make that to you only because you’ve got a good immunity because your grandfather Nick had been a prophet and you got vaccinated before Vietnam.’ Small Mike reasoned.

‘The whole thing is not so simple as it seems, Mike. You know I would never accept it, but they pushed on me. You know I am a strong man, but that’s profitless when all are against you. They all conspired…And, it’s not the right word that they have pushed on me. They threatened to slaughter our family, they are frightful men.’ The dad told.

‘Who they are?’ Mike asked.

‘The Chechen, they are frightful men, Mike. I saw it when I served in the army. They always keep together and do not give any one of them to any offence. They are like ‘cosa nostra’, but more frightful. They said, they’d cut out our family.’ The dad related. ‘I’ll take those pills, Mike, we need to win the time.’

‘You do not have much time, dad.’ Mike said.

‘You know, Mike, I see how I make rounds about that hostel building and the small girls and boys tease me, but I cannot keep my nerves and try to swear them but only the froth comes out of my mouth. I see how the adults smile with disdain looking upon me. And…’ The dad began to weep. ‘So, Mike, I am also a prophet and can see the future…But, what you see, Mike?’

‘I see how they poke you into a black cellophane bag with a zipper and take out of the room…But, it’s only what can happen. That’s only the possibility. There always is the other way around.’ Mike said.

‘I see no other way around, Mike…And, only if I just would die like others would do, but that humiliation that’s worse than death. All that pain…Of course, I will not sleep with your mom not to contaminate her. But, all the same I’ll have no chances. You should forgive me, Mike.’ He said.

‘Did you have the friends, dad? I see that that’s impossible to find a man with good immunity among so many people, and the other adult man did not give the blood for the tests. I see that somebody sold you, and it was not just one man.’ Mike asked.

The dad sat silent for some time shaking of anger, then said, ‘You, Mike, promise me that you’ll never have any friends and never serve in the army. I was a good soldier, Mike. I never killed women and children like others.’ The dad began to weep again but it was the bitter tears. ‘I served them, Mike. I served them well.’

‘You, dad, you be sure I won’t leave this that way.’ Mike promised.

‘They promised they’d put you into an orphanage house. Be a good boy, Mike.’ The dad demanded.

‘But, father, the grandma told that when the Chechen women and children were sick while they transported them in the wagons to the Middle East, the granddad Nick gave his blood and they made the bread with it and gave this bread to the sick women and children to recover, and the elders of the Chechen knew it.’ Mike said.

‘I did not know. The grandma never told me about it.’ The father told.

‘But, dad why they make you do all this?’ Michael asked.

‘Michael, I committed a wrong act. I slept with the wife of a very high man.’ He said.

‘And, she told to her husband about it?’ Michael asked.

‘No, Mike. I narrated it to a friend and he sold me to KGB…You, Mike, promise me you’ll never serve in the army and make friends with anybody. And…And, you better invest in people not in pleasures if you’ll fortunate enough to have the money. If I had the money, I’d pay off. Or, if I had the friends they’d help me.’ He said with the tears on his eyes. ‘You, Mike promise me that you’ll kill a Russian and a Chechen for my sake. But, do not tie up with the mob… It was not enough blessing for them.’

‘I won’t, daddy. But, I promise that there’ll be so much blessing that the Russian and Chechen will quarrel over it to kill one another. I promise you. And, I’ll revenge to that who sold you to the KGB.’ Mike said, though he was sure that the dad was taken by a common conspiracy in which the fallen woman took her part to make profit on the dad’s good health.

‘Do not say stupid things, Mike. They are all in common.’ The father pronounced in despair.

Mike knew that the dad was not so guilty as to pay with his life for it, including the shame of madness. So, Mike wanted to revenge and defend his dad.

‘They promised him a flat and dacha in Moscow.’ The dad said about his friend.

Mike knew he would ruin that man.

‘But, why dad you don’t go to the KGB office and kill them all? You’ve got a shot gun in the cupboard.’ Mike demanded.

‘That’s no use. They’ve got the machineguns and they’d kill me all the same. But, I want to leave something to you that you remembered me. They said they’ll take care of you.’ The adult man said.

Mike knew that his dad had not enough guts to give him an example that would have lasted for his whole life.

‘Ok, dad, let’s leave it till tomorrow. I want to see you healthy one more day.’ Mike proposed.

‘I do not have much time, Mike. They said they’d cut out our whole family.’ The dad warned.

‘Just do not make it right now.’ Mike proposed.

‘Yea, I wanted to make it now on the dinner break, but I’ll do it in the evening after I pass some time with you.’

‘Ok, that’s a bargain.’ Mike said.

The dad put the box of the vaccine pills into the cupboard under the cloth and left the hostel room. Mike put the stool and took it out of the cupboard. He went to the other room and ate them all one by one drinking no water, just swallowing them with saliva. But, he took only one pill with the strong synthetic drug in the black holder of pills. He would keep those pills in reserve. He knew that he had the benefit of childhood metabolism. The pills would not act so fast with him because he did not have high hormones level. The sicknesses would give him more time before he would be a man. So, he could do nothing but bail out his dad. Had he done contrary he would have never forgiven it to himself. He would have had no respect for himself in such a case, for the whole of his life. So early in his life, Mike crossed his Rubicon. The moment of truth had come in his life. He had no way back.   

Girls

Once upon a time Mike’s elder brother Nick was in the school, he himself happened not to be taken over to the kindergarten. He was old enough not to be shut up in one of the rooms of his parents’ flat. Which evolutionarily developed out of a number of the rooms that were previously occupied by somebody else, who left the hostel for some better place. Plus water closet and bath room. Every room had its own key. Their flat had no hall but for the common one of the whole hostel itself that went up into the darkest corners of the higher floors. But Mike would be usually on his loose. It would have been hard for him to get through the concierge lady, out the only porch door of the building.

That day, Mike was looking up for some interesting business to get occupied with. To make him surprised he found one of their chambers not to be shut up.  He stood up for a moment afraid to look at the narrow space of the door. He apprehended it were some thieves, of whom he was warned to be as farther as can be. Looked like somebody wanted to get their hands into his parents’ property. But, what he heard was the childish voices possessed surely by some girls about his own age. Now, he knew it almost certainly the concierge that was an old woman herself gave some young mothers the keys of the room to put in the girls, to spare them from listening to adult talks. The young mothers probably came to some girlfriends living in the building. The guests were older or somehow otherwise were already with children. So, they were counted to be more sage about life. They were maybe even capable to give a piece of precious advise to the solitary female student about how to get the same way and keep to herself the boy, who happened to be the happy father, to make up a family. Negative experience was also considered and judged by a jury of unmarried girls. They would usually sentence it to be a mere mistake on the part of the fortune that the poor mother was lonely. Although, such unhappy mother would complain and call the girl, who had not babies, to leave alone completely the males of any sort. To leave them alone to drink and gamble. The other girls were maybe reminiscent of the days when they peacefully played with puppets. Being of age now they wanted to have babies. Not just to sit and play with another young woman’s baby, but to have her own one. So, they did not care. Perhaps, they hoped that in the worst case another young man would appear and take care of the baby. Maybe, because he was guilty of some bad end love affair with another woman. So, the girls would usually want to know how it was with the man, the romance and all like. It seemed like there was a kind of trade union agreement between women. A part of the worldwide complot against the men and boys as Mike thought it to exist. Why the government did not care? Mike did not know it. It had all kind of measures and forces: teachers, concierges, policemen. It seemed to him that all could be arranged. A prospective bridegroom should have come to the hostel’s windows, as the boys usually did. Throw up a little stone to strike gently the glass. Call his beloved one like a knight would do to his princess. Then if all should be Ok, the girl would go down to the hall of the hostel under the eyes of the all-controlling concierge lady. And, if it was winter to arrange for the marriage in there. Or, to do all that on the porch if it was the summer. Then make up a family to live in a hostel for family united students. All public forces seemed to be present. Young men were not let into the girls’ hostel even at most artfully devised entreaties. Teachers were ready to punish students for being unfaithful, drunk, absent from courses. But somehow all the love affairs went wrong. Every girl seemed to compete with another one for the guys. Every one wanted to get a better boy before she got disappointed in him. Then tried to get some guy another girl had. The guys also grunted against such go of the life. They also complained that the women tried to be bosses and so on. Mike also was somewhat jealous that girls dreamed of good jobs like a manager, accountant or judge. They were ready to study assiduously for it. Indeed, Mike never saw or heard that a woman would have been a plumber, mechanic, or coal miner. So, he in his turn was a kind of a chauvinist pig. Girls always wanted to be teachers, concierges, and so on. Mike himself wanted to be an aviator, when grown up. Mike often imagined himself to fly among the clouds. It was his loveliest daydream. He tried to imagine how he lay down on a cloud as upon a heap of cotton. The cotton cloud would be moved by a soft wind toward he did not know where. He was always afraid to fall down. He felt uneasy as if exerted himself not to fall down. In his dreams Mike always had invisible wings that would help him fly and feel the freedom that birds possess…

Suddenly there came a silence and Mike realized that these unbidden guests detected him. He collected up his spirit and went into the room. Two girls played on the floor with whatever they could find in a bedroom. The room itself was full of sunlight. It was warm in there, not as in the hostel hall where he had just stood. The room was almost empty of furniture except a bed under the window and a closet to the right of it. A cardboard box lay in