Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

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Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

"All have died
except for those who are alive, and those whom we remember"Confucius

Essay 151. With a sickle at the balls

It’s been known for a long time that meat of gelded piglets tastes better than of not gelded ones. There is hot polemics in the European Union now: whether to geld or not to geld. And they inclined to the idea that it was better not to geld. A law which forbids gelding piglets to turn them into boars comes into action since 2018.
And in those remote 60s of the last century there were not any “the green” yet, and nobody fought against gelding as it was. People knew that gelded piglets (bores) had tender and tasty meat, and meat of not gelded piglets (bucks) was hard and stinky.
In those days I did not care about anything of that; I simply did not know the taste of meat of the bucks. However the fact that such an event as group gelding was undertaken and without me, plunged me into shock. I was asking Zhenka: “Just how could you do that?” and: “Why did not you tell me that you were going to do that?” Yevgeniy did his best to get out of a scrape saying that it had not been planned and happened by chance. It did not console or sooth me. By my sighs he realized that something had to be done and quickly. Zhenka Romashov would not be Zhenka Romashov, if he did not find a simple resolution of the situation; he offered to arrange a gelding action once again. He was consoling me saying that at the previous time the weather had been bad, it had been wet, and next weekend it should be warm and sunny. And what was the point of consoling me? It was not necessary to comfort me; the most important thing was that we would do that. During the week I went to Kedrovka and let my parents know beforehand that I would not visit them on the weekend, as I had to study hard. Now I do not even remember what tales I told them. For some reason I did not want them to know the real reason of my not coming to visit them. I do not know why.
We scheduled the action on Sunday. Zhenya was absolutely calm, and I was for some reason nervous, as if we were going to do something forbidden. Kolya Kozlov was also going with us, and Zhora went to his training for the whole day on that day; he was doing heavy weight lifting and was especially good at jerk. We never missed a chance to ask Zhora a question of: “Well, how is it going with a good jerk?” Is everything all right?” or: “Well, and has your jerk failed you today?” We were having a good laugh, and Zhora kindheartedly ignored our jokes: “Dorks…”. At about ten o’clock we left the house at 22 Hertsen street, which was in the Third Special Kirovskiy district of Kemerovo and followed Zhenka. We had divided responsibilities beforehand: Kolya was in charge of holding a piglet, Zhenya of cutting, and my task was to carry a plastic bag with balls and collect money, as last time Zhenya’s hands had been in blood and iodine, and Kolya’s hands had been also dirty. Piglets had had no desire to lose their balls just for nothing. All in all we were walking and listening to Zheka, and he was uttering words of wisdom. And why we implicitly obeyed him? Just because it even did not occur to me that the time of the action had to be specially chosen. Yevgeniy was explaining to Kolya and me that last time he had made a mistake and had come after lunch, but at that time people had already been tired and wanted to relax for the rest of their day off, and there were they offering to geld piglets. That was why there had been total refuses. And today, Zhenka was inspiring us, we would see that he was right. And he really turned to be right. Yevgeniy would’ve made an excellent businessman, if he lived till these days. Though let’s not be sad. Zhenka turned to be right about everything.

He was right that last time people had not responded to the offer, and later, after they had learned that their neighbor’s piglet, the one Zhenka had worked on last time, was alive, and healthy and full of energy, remembered that they needed their piglets to be gelded as well. And back then they kept piglets practically in every household in the Third Special in Kemerovo.

It happened so that the first was the house, which owner had jokingly asked to castrate her husband last time. There were three piglets in the yard, small ones. I felt sincerely sorry for them. The woman knew the prices, but asked us to do everything not for fifteen, but for ten rubles. Zhenya did the right thing; he did not start saying no, but agreed. And why to refuse, that was a five minutes’ business; and the first client is sacred. The woman called her husband to help us.
The one, who his wife had asked us to cut something off last time, without which that was not possible, was a mean and stinking drunk little guy. The first thing he did, he grabbed hold of Kolya’s shirt front and demanded certificates. And he was a bit taller than Kolya’s waist. However the woman snapped at him in such a way that he rushed to a pen and came out with two screeching piglets in his hands.


And while Zhenka using only a scalpel and iodine simply “tore off” the piglets’ balls and turned those two poor things into eunucks with the help of Kolya, who was holding the victims during the execution, the man brought out the third one. In my ten times washed plastic bag there appeared first six small trophies. And when the woman brought out of the house and gave us tchervonets (ten-ruble banknote), the little guy howled and grabbed hold of Kolya’s shirt front again.
It was funny to look at the picture. And the woman kind of without any laughter again asked us to castrate the little guy-scum of the earth, saying that she was sick and tired of him. Yevgeniy addressed me with a question: “Do we have enough iodine?” I patted on my pocket and said that we had enough.

The man let Kolya go and in some strange way happened to be outside the gate and shouted at the top of his voice: “Help! Killers!” Neighbors started coming out to the street, it looked like they knew freaks of that Heracles, and started asking the woman about what was going on. She informed them that the medical assistants were gelding piglets. That was some advertising for us! There was a line to invite us, we were lead from a household to a household, and in a couple of hours we were already on our way home with a plastic bag full of testicles and a bundle of money, which Zhenya counted while walking. The sum was astounding – seventy five rubles. Kolya and I were really happy, but Yevgeniy offered to put thirty rubles into the fond of our mini-dorm on food expenses for all of us, then he divided forty five rubles between three of us and gave Nikolay and me fifteen rubles each.

In the evening when Zhora came after his training, we had a swell dinner: piglets’ testicles fried with onions and black pepper and accompanied with vodka “Osobo Moskovskaya”.

I started eating the first piece very carefully, I was afraid of something, and it was not clear of what. Though my curiosity prevailed, and I agreed with Zhenya that that was finger-licking good.

23 March, 2012

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
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