Syedyshev Oleg
Syedyshev Oleg

Humorous Essays Based on students' memories

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

Essay 171. Muriuk

Of course the procedure of placement of institute graduates is a very serious moment in lives of the professionals to be. Everybody approach it differently. For example, I collected a pile of papers to ground my request to direct me under the supervision of the Ministry of Health of Kirgizia.

Volodya Bobkov asked to send him to any place, but to work as a psychiatrist, and he received a job placement in a village of Kedrovka at a mental institution for psycho-chronic patents. Vagram Agadzhanian asked to send him to Prokopievsk regional traumatology hospital and his request was complied with. It is not clear how to explain Sasha Popovitch’s agreement to go to Muriuk, a prison camp of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It could be only excused by spring avitaminosis, as the placement was conducted in March.

Otherwise it is not clear, how he, a purely city dweller, could give his consent to go to taiga, to lumbering, located in the middle of the nowhere 150 kilometers away from a town of Marshinska. You cannot even imagine what a distant place it was. Though Sasha signed his agreement and forgot about it, and why not, life was going on. There was a period of preparing for examinations, then final state examinations, a graduation party and a first month of vacation, all that flew very fast. In the middle of August Sasha received a letter from Muriuk with a reproach for his not coming to the destination of his job placement. What made Shurik to promise to go there, he cannot understand even now. He promised that he would go there to get introduced and asked to send a car for him. They arranged to meet at the Kemerovo oblast chief medical administration at ten in the morning on the next day. Sasha came there on time and waited for five hours. Then he called Muriuk and found out that the car left to pick Sasha up at seven in the morning. Shura got confused; what was the place he was going to work at that after a mild rain a car could not get to Kemerovo for eight hours. Susha came home perplexed and haunted by a thought of: “I am not going to Muriuk”. Yet it is so good that there are friends. One of Sasha‘s friends visited him and invited to go fishing. Sasha was in a very low mood, so he immediately accepted the invitation. When he came back in three days, his mood was quite vigorous, so he calmly received the news that there was a telephone call from the medical administration, and that he was invited to have an appointment with the head of the medical department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Yurii Sergeievitch Zakharov.

If invited, we will come. As they say: got bathed-shaved and left. I will say a couple of words about Yurii Sergeievitch. He was a former officer of Kemerovo CPSU Regional Committee; he was that much active in promoting the party’s ideas that started receiving one reproach after another for his being too close to people, which was expressed through his addiction to the “demon drink”. The party did not leave its affiliates to the mercy of fate, so Y.S.Zakharov, a foul-mouth and a drunkard, started ruling the medical service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Kuzbass.

He aggressively met Sasha: “Well, why are you not at work?” Sasha said that he had changed his mind to go to Muriuk.

“What the f…k, changed your mind? You will go”.

“No, I am not going”.

“You will go, what the f…k, you won’t?”

Yurii Sergeievitch, let me go in peace. I…”

Sasha did not manage to finish, because Zakharkov burst out with such severe cursing to express his indignation in exclusively swear words. He banished Sasha from his sight. The next day Sasha was again at his office, and came there all week long. “I beg you, do not let me commit a sin, do not come here every day, or I’ll kill you…”. Though, Shura as he was waiting exactly for that said: “Fine, I’ll come here every other day”. So one day he visited the office and the other one made a telephone call, and finally he got the right moment of repentance, which all lovers and admirers of the “devil drink” periodically have.

Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, a person realizes that he is ruining himself, ruins his family and offends people around… He is angry at himself and feels sorry at the same time. As a rule this condition appears after the first shot to cure a hangover. “The devil” is gnawing one’s heart, it’s terrible. So at the very moment Sasha paid another visit to Zakharkov, and it was already November. “Will you agree to work at “the five?” – he asked quietly. It should be said that Sasha got confused because of such metamorphose with the man, but he regained his self-control and asked, what “the five” meant?
“This is a regional hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs”.
“Is it in Kemerovo?”
“In the Kemerovo”. I did not make a mistake, Y.S.Zakharkov said it exactly that way.

So in a day Alexander Kirillovitch Popovitch worked as a physician-anesthesiologist at the regional hospital of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Though, if to be completely honest, he managed to work there only for four days…
No, he was not fired, he was transferred to work as a therapeutist, and he did not object, because for how long one could loaf without a job, as if all the six ears of his study were spent in vain.

February,8 2014

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
Publishing licence #214040300555

Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content