A Flower Ungodly - Anton Prus

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with schizophrenia and that kleptomania was a manifestation of his illness. No one was ashamed of laughing at the sick sergeant. We were all healthy and good and not crazy.

      Ukrainians had a whole bunch of loonies, and we, Leningraders, even gloated because they called our beloved city the city of barracks and garbage dumps. In any case, we did not feel any sympathy when the course foreman Shadrin, very provincial, with a huge head and face of a Yakut, even though he was a Jew from Odesa, ordered Podbelsky, a Kyivan, to step forward. Podbelsky was odd: very tall, with disproportionately short legs, a huge chin, hunched over, and very quiet.

      «Cadets,» the foreman shouted, «our first-year cadet Podbelsky gave a general’s wife an enema. Got the wrong place. Cadet, why did you do it?»

      «Well, sir foreman, she’s, I, she had, there was, I didn’t know, and then it went, and I – »

      «Podbelsky, are you trying to amuse us here? The wife of a military general wrote a complaint against you, and you are playing the fool?!»

      Podbelsky stood and moved his fingers as if he was searching where to put an enema. He was looking at us and smiling but, at the same time, crying. Then Pinochet came out and enunciated that for the behavior of Podbelsky, the entire fifth platoon would wash the department of that clinic. I didn’t see or hear Podbelsky for probably half a year. He continued to study, or rather, his shadow did. Then he also disappeared. This time we were all gathered in formation and told that Podbelsky had schizophrenia. We couldn’t help but look around as if trying to see who else was crazy – it was one too many schizophrenic people for a year. And to think that we all answered a psychologist’s questions for a whole day and passed the interviews. Where were they coming from?

      No one else was schizophrenic, but there were quite a few boneheads. They could become military doctors – sergeants, warrant officers, and foremen. I doubt they could work as hairdressers, so how did some become surgeons? Sometimes I have nightmares that one of these bonehead officers is operating on me. But even among the ordinary cadets, there were surprisingly stupid people. The boneheads marched perfectly and loudly answered, «Sir, yes, sir!»

      Administering an enema into the wrong place is a crime, but being a bonehead is okay. During the anatomy exam, one had to answer about the female uterus. He was given a section of the uterus glued between two large pieces of glass. The uterus is quite a small organ, even with tubes. They were generous with the glue when making the section, so it occupied a lot of space, while the uterus only accounted for ten percent in the middle. Our bonehead could not answer a single question. When the exasperated professor asked him to point out the uterus at least, our Vanya traced his little pencil around the edge of the glue, about 80 centimeters in total. The teacher was so stunned he could only say, «Cadet, we are studying human anatomy here, not that of an elephant! Get out of my sight!»

      And so I continued my half-awake living, but something stirred in the corners of my soul – see how good it is to be a looney, you won’t be here. Madness is the ticket to freedom. Fishing, skiing, parents, house plants – they don’t care if you’re crazy. But it was not clear what happened there, inside a psychiatric clinic, what it was like to be schizophrenic… In the meantime, I could occasionally be a bonehead when life got unbearable. So I walked around, arranging my face into an idiotic expression, which made the superiors mad, especially coupled with the fact that the strap on my overcoat always – I swear, sir – had just been stolen, and my cap had no metal rim that gave a dashing appearance to a cadet of an elite military academy. Some sergeants ordered their caps with enlarged fields, almost sombrero-like, which seemed to them the height of coolness. The brims of my cap hung down dejectedly, reflecting my mood.

      Love poetry and vexation of spirit. Girl number 1. Sveta.

      Sad thoughts came and went, but my whole consciousness was engulfed in the flames of love. It was impossible to live without love. Love was necessary. And a necessity always finds a way to materialize sooner or later. From lack of freedom, my soul quietly dried up like a pair of socks left by the fire, and love – while providing some distraction – accelerated the process, so by the second year of service, my soul looked like fish jerky. A human in love is like a chicken with its head cut off – it still runs, but, in essence, it has already died. And a seventeen-year-old cadet in love inside a military incubator is a mad and ridiculous creature. Why I decided that I was in love, I don’t know. I just did. Maybe because Sveta – my classmate, no, I’d known her since kindergarten – was the only girl who did not succumb to my innocent proposals to examine and touch each other’s private parts. All the other girls in my kindergarten group quickly agreed to this harmless game. Sveta was an angel, both because of her purity and because she sang in an angelic voice while playing her guitar.

      Moonlit panorama,

      Night as clear as day.

      Sleep, my sweet Svetlana,

      Sleep the night away.

      Little nose is nestled

      In the pillow soft;

      Stars are just like freckles

      Shining from aloft.

      She did have the prettiest little nose, although freckleless. I thought about her at school, I thought about her while fishing, during the exams, dreamily resting my cheek on my hand, thought about her at the academy while standing in formation, thought about her when falling asleep and waking up. The only moments I did not think about her was whenever our room was engaged in group masturbation. I couldn’t picture someone as pure as her during this enjoyable yet shameful activity. I must say, it turns out that I did not think about Sveta quite often. At any rate, my face towel became rigid like a tin sheet in a single week… I visited her at the edge of Kupchino; swamps and lakes overgrown with reeds started right behind her house. She sat at the table studying for her music school entrance exams, and I sat on the couch where she slept. Knowing this, I was close to losing consciousness: here, she lies undressed, resting her beautiful head on the pillow, touching the sheets with her bare legs… and I touch the same couch with my buttocks.

      I knew I looked stupid just sitting there. Coming all this way to sit still for hours. So I took her big toy dog to comb it instead of staying motionless. I came to see Sveta five times, and I combed the unfortunate dog each time. It became manicured like a lawn in front of a Scottish castle. Sveta was already giving me funny looks, and I understood that it was a little bizarre to sit and comb the dog like that, especially since it was already so smooth that it could win the world championship for the smoothest toy dog hairstyle! To be honest, I didn’t just look at Sveta. Sometimes I hugged her. Yes, I hugged Sveta, but not really her, but rather, a sleeping bag. Once at school, or not even at school, but in the summer, at a pioneer camp, we harvested carrots for a whole month. When the shift ended, I asked her to lend me her sleeping bag. I said there weren’t enough sleeping bags to go fishing with the boys and that we needed just one. I, in fact, came up with all of this to at least talk with her coherently about something. So we talked, and she gave me her sleeping bag. But when I brought it home, I, of course, could not resist hugging and sniffing this sleeping bag. And maybe imagining Sveta in its place a little bit. The sleeping bag smelled of Sveta. Only its middle part had an unpleasant odor, but I achingly sniffed that part and was not at all angry with my love for smelling like that.

      The sleeping bag was back at home, and I was in the barracks, so there was nothing to hug or sniff, and I had to pick where to go on leave: to the sleeping bag or to the living Sveta? In the end, I chose the real girl. But Sveta didn’t know that we had closer contact – I’m talking about the sleeping bag – and again looked at me funny, probably because I was sitting on the sofa with half-closed eyes, combing the dog. Then I plucked up the courage, moved to her table, and my hand slowly started to sneak up to her hand. It took ages. I watched my hand in horror while it lived its own life, almost touching Sveta’s, then crawling

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