Part 2/2

The sun reluctantly poured into the room, some of it tinkling Inyatkin’s face. The tobacco’s smoke with sunlight were able to arouse a small flash of consciousness in Inyatkin but not more than that. What did was the mere utterance of ‘Gregorivich’ from Vassiliy Sohnsovich’s neck.
“I have examined the cause of your illness,” Vassiliy Sohnsovich said with his half-illuminated face.
“You did?” asked Inyatkin.
Vassiliy Sohnsovich’s pipe nodded.
“Is there any solution to this? Am I curable?”
“What do you think what I was doing the whole night?” Vassiliy Sohnsovich said, irritated by the reasonably dumb question.
Inyatkin said nothing as his mind was used to becoming empty by seeing people in even a tiny spark of rage.
“One thing I must insist,” Vassiliy Sohnsovich continued, “that you should remain in moscow till fall.”
“Why is so, Vassiliy Sohnsovich? I have a job in Liptesk, a father to attend,” said Inyatkin, clearly having image of Maria Fyodorovna dangling in front of his eyes.
The light shifted from lower part of Sohnsovich’s face to his upper part, showing a blood-red inflamed eye of his.
“I don’t force a cat to drink milk. Your case is one of its own, and sometimes trees produce beautiful flowers, but bitter fruits.”
Inyatkin, not able to understand this academic language, was intimidated by the gaze of cryptic harshness that Vassiliy Sohnsovich was projecting out.
“I guess, I should,” Inyatkin mumbled.
Vassiliy Sohnsovich closed his eyelids in affirmation.
“What will I do here? Where shall I stay in Moscow?” asked Inyatkin, his indication was clearly that Vassiliy Sohnsovich take him onboard.
“A bird always finds some tree,” said Vassiliy Sohnsovich leaving the closet.
Inyatkin sat there for minutes decrypting the last words that Vassiliy Sohnsovich said was an invitation, or a decree to get out. He got up after minutes, taking a full breath, and finding some courage to go to Vassiliy Sohnsovich to ask whether he should stay with him.
Inyatkin roamed through the house, but Vassiliy Sohnsovich was nowhere to be seen. Inyatkin looked for him in the kitchen, in the bathroom, through the hall, up in the fireplace: “Vassiliy Sohnsovich?” he said the last time exiting the door.
“Maybe I do need to find an employment here in Moscow after all,” Inyatkin said to himself.
Just as he had come flowing from the train station, he went back to it, flowing, only this time without an obstruction. And this, indeed, amazed Inyatkin.
“Nothing bad has happened…. Vassiliy Sohnsovich’s treatment is working,” said Inyatkin sitting at a bench of the train station.

An old man with pockmark on his right side of the face and gray hairs, hanging only by the sides, came
and sat by Inyatkin, and flipped through the newspaper.
He reached for his coat pockets one after another, not able to find what he was looking for.
Inyatkin, clearly observing him, and being a generous hearted man, took out half-filled packet of
cigarettes and offered to the old man.
“Thank you, young man. Thank you,” said the old man, taking a pair.
“Where are you going young man?”
“Nowhere, Sir.”
“Then what are you doing at the station?” asked the old man, adding: “are you an employee here?”
“No sir, no employee. Looking for employment. And a home, too.”
“I know young man, I know.”
Inyatkin with his eyes wide open looked at him.
“I know,” he continued, “the housing problem that has emerged in Moscow. Not that we are not aware. It’s
just a cocoon, young man, before things start to get beautiful as a butterfly.”
Inyatkin didn’t know what to say, so he just nodded.
“Come with me, young man, I will get you a job and a place to live. I am in the party.”
The old man took Inyatkin’s hand and took him to the station. He talked to a man in striped suit, then in a
black one, occasionally pointing towards Inyatkin, then he took Inyatkin to a cabin where a fat man with
a tree trunk like face greeted both the old man and Inyatkin.
“Please sit, Boris Akakievich. Please sit, sir,” the fat man said. “Everything has been arranged, Boris
Akakievich,” he continued, bending and taking out a uniform and placing it on a brown wooden table in
front of Inyatkin. “Here you go, Mr.”
“Inyatkin Gregorivich.”
“Yes, Mr. Inyatkin. Here is your uniform for the service. And just you need to sign on these pages,” the fat
man said, taking out a novella-sized file, putting a pen on it, and sliding it to Inyatkin.
“Sign it, young man, sign it,” said Boris Akakievich, smiling.
Inyatkin in a gulp of excitement rammmed through the novella, making a mark on every single page.
Then the fat man presented a rose to Inyatkin: “Welcome to the People Railway Services.”
He then rang the bell. A beautiful woman with reddish-brownish hair, and bluish eyes appeared in the
cabin.
“Here, Nadya Ivanovna will explain you the work.”
“It’s getting time for the train, I should be going,” Boris Akakievich said, hugging the trunk man’s
branches, and greeting Inyatkin. Inyatkin, rendered bewildered by the whole event, said nothing but thank
you to the old man.
Boris Akakievich departed leaving Inyatkin with the fat man alone who started to give him a strange look,
and Inyatkin frozed like a snowman with his eyes scratching the floor.
“Nadya,” the fat man shouted.
The door opened, the beautiful woman in white top and grey skirt presented herself.
“You are here, come fast,” Nadya exhorted.
Nadya took him to a window, of which there was a circle open. She scratched something on a paper,
pasted it on a shiny card holder, and pushed it through the window on Inyatkin’s head. She then picked
up the sleeping brown telephone: “We have a new recruit here, CASAP.”
Her face took dark contours.
“Come as soon as possible, Idiot.”
A big man in a dirty mud filled costume came by Inyatkin.
“Let’s get to work,” he said in a loud-slow voice that seemed to send white blood cells of Inyatkin into alarm.
Inyatkin nodded.
The big man held Inyatkin’s hand like a screw driver, and dragged him through the railway station to a
small hut. The hut had various equipments stabbed into it’s walls, and two switches to signal red or yellow.
“Here you go. Congratulations.” the bearish voice said and departed from the greyish-darkish hut.
What a rush, Inyatkin thought.
“It had never happened with me before, got a job so fast,” he said to himself. “Just don’t know how to
operate here.” said he, touching the black plastic switches.
But as luck would provide, Inyatkin learned the techniques to pass the train with the help of engravings
done by a previous operator on the back of the hut. Everytime he was to see the soilish instructions, he
was to do it just right.
After a month’s time, he was awarded the ‘121st Best Worker on Railline’ award. He recounted everything
to Papa Dmitrovich through letters, and Dmitrovich, being a skeptical man, at first didn’t believe in his
words, but when Inyatkin sent the letter with the medal, a star shone in Dmitrovich’s eyes.
He also wrote several letters to Maria Fyodorovna, but only recieved one, though one should not be considered less from a girl like Maria Fyodorovna, explaining: “I am happy for you.”
That night, when the moon was not present in the  star filled sky, and Inyatkin’s head was on ‘War and Peace,’ he brooded over the events that has happened in the last two months.
“Everything has become a pot of fortune for me. When Vassiliy Sohnsovich would let me free, I would and yes, with a surety of forty bulls – I will propose to Maria Fyodorovna. And she would not say no…no she will not. I know that.”
The pleasant turn of scenario was not to last long, however. After a week or so an Inspector General visited Inyatkin’s hut with his two proteges. Inyatkin seeing the Inspector General saluted him, taking a bucket full of air inside his lungs.
“Very well… Very well,” the Inspector General said, scratching his chin. “Show me your identity card, Comrade. And give the notebook of the logs to Rabokov and Tabokov here.”
Rabokov, Tabokov nodded and brought a devilish smile to their mugs, with their mouse like teeth ready to chew the notebooks.
Inyatkin presented the identity card to the Inspector General.
“Notebooks?” Both mouse exclaimed, bulging their button like eyes.
“A….A….Comrade Sir,” Inyatkin said, staring at the Inspector General’s brownish shoes, “nobody had given me any instructions to maintain any logs. I..I don’t have them.”
“What?” Rabokov, Tabokov shouted in unison, coming to their toes.
“I see, and where is your name written Comrade on the card?”
Inyatkin tried to show his name to the Inspector General on the identity card. But no name was there, only “SOVIET RAILWAYS,” with the stamp.
The Inspector General, and Rabokov-Tabokov engulfed Inyatkin like a snake.
“You little bastard. Who are you?” thundered the Inspector General, ” I know who you are. You are a spy. A traitor. You will recieve the highest punishment. I will see to it.” the Inspector General yelled sending Inyatkin’s small eyes out of his sockets.
“TRAITOR. TRAITOR. TRAITOR.” chanted Rabokov-Tabokov, pulling out his ears.
The terrifying chant persisted in Inyatkin’s ears, even after the Inspector General and the troop left, through the whole ominous night. Inyatkin did nothing but heard the chant till dawn. When, at last, he gained consciousness – thanks to a dog licking his socks – he found his hut was surrounded by a bulk of goods – matchboxes, diapers, cigars, stockings – and on the other side of the track, a big steel snake lay gasping for breath.
Tales of this horrific sight set fire on every ear of Moscow, so much so, that a welfare group was even ready to take Inyatkin’s cruel heart out. But fortunately for Inyatkin, the big man who had shown him his hut, kicked him out like a stray dog sitting on one’s porch.
“Oooooo… What is happening? Bad luck multiplied by two?” thought Inyatkin, seeing children playing on the dew filled grass in the park on Herzen street. The children’s parents also saw Inyatkin and mistaking him for someone else, straightened him out with tree sticks, rods, and of course vodka bottles.
Inyatkin, having nowhere to go, and in a hope to permanently carve his fortune in gold, crawled his way to Vassiliy Sohnsovich. He related to Sohnsovich how the events  – at first really promising – have turned against him again. Sohnsovich listened to Inyatkin’s story with a raven’s attention, only flipping his eyes once through the whole narration.
“I beg you, Vassiliy Sohnsovich, do something. The whole of Moscow hates me.” Inyatkin cried, his black eyes bulging every second.
After a long silence, Vassiliy Sohnsovich unfolding his hands, propounded: “Only one thing can be done.”
He then tore a small piece of paper from one of the books, took out a glass bottle, and sprinkled the creamish-white powder on the paper.
“Sniff it,” instructed Vassiliy Sohnsovich, pasting the paper beneath Inyatkin’s nose.
“What is this, Vassiliy Sohnsovich?” asked Inyatkin, making a horrifyingly stupid face.
“Just do as I direct,” shouted Vassiliy Sohnsovich.
Inyatkin engulfed the powder in a single breath, instantly feeling a wind of relief, the smell of palm trees and Maria Fyodorovna’s sweet voice.
“Lay down there,” Vassiliy Sohnsovich pointed the couch laying beside the lamp.
Inyatkin got up with trembling feets and laid himself, like a cat, on the couch. Vassiliy Sohnsovich donned a white garb, lighted tobacco leaves in all four corners of the closet, and also beneath the couch. He produced an old black suitcase from the heart of the wall, and took out silvery-shiny objects, and started rotating one after another over Inyatkin’s mug. The red liquid started gushing out of the skin, mixed with orangish light from the lamp gave Vassiliy Sohnsovich a sense of mystifying pleasure, while Inyatkin lay in the rigmarole of a pleasant sleep.
The séance continued through the whole full moon night of Moscow. In the morning, when Inyatkin woke up, he found Vassiliy Sohnsovich with the pipe on the sofa. The smoke enlarging his aura. Before Inyatkin could utter a word, Vassiliy Sohnsovich said in an unusually gentle voice: “You may go now.”
“Go…me….where?” asked Inyatkin feeling heaviness in the left side of his face.
“Where you came from,” replied Sohnsovich.
“The hut?” Inyatkin asked, touching the left side of his face and feeling strangely void.
“Liptesk, you idiot.” raged Vassiliy Sohnsovich. “You are cured now, you have now been emancipated from bad luck.”
Hearing these words from a great man like Vassiliy Sohnsovich sent a wave of tremendous joy over his yellowish body, so much so, that he even forgot the iron-heavy mug of his.
Inyatkin gathered himself and helped himself out of Vassiliy Sohnsovich’s house, thanking him, and bidding him a beautiful goodbye.
On the streets of Moscow, now horror didn’t wait for Inyatkin, but for the Muscovites. Wherever Inyatkin stroll, people put their eyes down as if they were looking at the sun. Passing a gift shop in Arbat street, Inyatkin’s heart ached to take something for Maria Fyodorovna, so he did.
Entering the gift shop, Inyatkin found himself to be looked upon by every pair of eyes for a second or two, then in the third every soul buried themselves down on the earth, behind the shelves, and the owner under the counter.
Inyatkin took a pair of Classic Moscow Earrings, his guts saying he would not be left with money for the train ticket. But Alas! The spirit of good luck presented itself and the owner from the burrow said: “Please go! Take it! Take whatever! Just go!”
That’s what Inyatkin did, and why wouldn’t he? He thought, he had gone from so much of suffering, that’s what evens it out. Indeed, Newton’s third law.
At the train station, similar incident took place, the ticket master instead of charging, on perceiving Inyatkin, ran from the counter to the basin.
“Oh, spirit of good luck, now always be with me. Just like this,” Inyatkin prayed, keeping the train ticket in his right pocket.
On the train too, he was free to sit anywhere he wished for, for every other passenger was on the wall like cockroaches. This journey was indeed comfortable and beautiful for Inyatkin. The not so cold, not so warm air brushing against his half heavy, half numb face, the rivers flowing with sun over them making a heart-warming sound, the lavender and the lilies activating every pleasure centers in the body.
All this sight was so meditatively serene, that it seemed Liptesk arrived only after seconds. Inyatkin went straight to Maria Fyodorovna’s house, and the farmers, women with children scattering in all directions like a spider plant, giving Inyatkin an obstruction free way.
Inyatkin knocked the brown door at 12, Bolshaya Street, summing every ounce of courage he had to tell Maria Fyodorovna, what he always wanted to tell.
An old lady with a blue ribbon, and mournful eyes opened the door. Though, this is not what Inyatkin saw. Inytkin saw Maria Fyodorovna naked and this he was not expecting, however pleasant it may be for him. This sight made Inyatkin more red than he already had become, and the old lady loosed every bit of color she had looking at Inyatkin.
“Who is it, Tyotinka?” asked Maria Fyodorovna, coming into the hallway, holding a radish and a Finnish knife.
The aunt replied nothing, standing breathless.
Maria Fyodorovna looked at the half-faced man standing on the porch holding  silvery earrings, which at the time really looked like a monster’s nose ring. She threw the Finnish knife at the half-faced man in an intense horror. The knife touched Inyatkin’s heart. Seeing this act from clothed Maria Fyodorovna, he took his steps backward to the banks of Voronezh river, the blood dripping from his heart making a trail. More than the blood – the white water drowning his body in a wet glumness.
Inyatkin sat on the stony bank of the river, looking at the flowing water topped with leaves, flowers, and spirits. He loosed consciousness that night, then weeks after his flesh, and the bones until there was nothing but a blossoming sunflower with its astounding elation and fortune enough to dwell in its love – the sunlight, every day, till the bright yellow ball hung up in the nostalgic blue sky.