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 175. An escape

How strongly university graduates do not want to be placed on a job in a village. And what great memories they have of those years afterwards. With what passion and even delight they remember that. Tolya Veselov was very upset when he was placed on a job in Muriuk.



Though a credit should be given to him, he was upset not for himself, but for his wife Liudmila. For some reason Tolya believed that his wife was so vulnerable, such a city girl. And he brought her to Muriuk, to the end of the world. So Anatoliy was doing his best to brighten up her rural life. Though it turned out, that Liudmila happened to have philosophical mind and took everything surrounding her calmly. Tolya was very happy when his grandmother came to Muriuk to visit them, for her that was a heroic deed; she was for the first time on a plane, and what kind of plane – U-2. Though most of all Anatoliy was surprised that Liudmila was not complaining to his grandmother, but asked her about various down-to-earth things. Grandma’s lessons turned to be useful; Tolik was mellowing out, when he saw his wife watering a cucumber bed with boiling water; not the cucumbers, no, just the bed. He was extremely happy and proud of his wife, when they were the first in Muriuk, who had first cucumbers.

They were juicy, with pimples, and when taken a bite of, sputtered juice and crunched loudly. They seemed to be sweet to him. It remains an enigma, why doctor Veselov decided that they had to be stored in the attic, but that was the fact, which was well known to everybody not only in the village, but at the correction labor colony as well. One early morning a pediatrician of Muriuk Galina Ivanovna Drobyshevskaya came to the Veselovs and asked Tolya to assist her in childbirth in a village of Shirokoie.

In Muriuk everybody knew that Tolya never denied assistance, but in that case he did not want to leave his house very much. Two days before a prisoner escaped from Muriuk colony, and that was an emergency event, so Tolik did not want to leave his Liudmila at home alone. Nevertheless he quickly got dressed and warned his wife: “Be careful! A prisoner escaped from the camp…”. They had a chic trip on an all-terrain vehicle to Shirokoie, and arrived just on time, when the childbirth started, and the head was already visible. I will skip description of the process of the childbirth; will mention only that the happy father was making so much fuss and was so happy, that he was an absolute nuisance for the doctors with his attempts to help somehow. Well, sure enough, when everything was successfully over, from nowhere on the table there appeared a bottle of home-made brew.
It was useless to refuse, so everybody had a drink all together to good health of a sturdy newborn. During the process of making good wishes, they did not notice as that was already night, and it was time to go back to Muriuk. They found neither a car, nor a horse, but the demon drink adds not only power, but courage as well, so they chose to walk home on foot through taiga with a hope to be picked by a “passing car”. Beware of the demon drink, it is so many-sided; so without sophistry it helped our doctors to lose their way, and in taiga night comes instantly. Galina started crying: “We will never make it out of taiga…”; to calm her down Tolya was climbing trees to see if there was fire burning somewhere. In the morning, Tolya’s sensitive nose felt smell of smoke, and they rushed directly to that source of life. They saw the first house and light coming out through windows. But it sounded, like thunder: “Hey! Who’s coming? Freeze! Or I’ll shoot!”. Anatoliy and Galina gladly ran to the voice crying out: “We are doctors”.

Burst of machine-gun fire sounded over their heads, even branches started falling down from trees, and they flopped down into a muddy pool untill guards approached them. It turned out that they came back to Shirkoie again, and at the very time there was a search for the escapee from the camp there.
Later Tolya learned that the runaway prisoner was hiding in his attic and was living on Liudmila’s special cucumbers all that time. Yes, they were tasty and crunched, but the escapee got so much fed up with them for the period of his escape, that he voluntarily went to surrender. After coming down unnoticed from Tolya’s attic, the prisoner approached a control post of the colony. When he saw a guard, he set on a bench and asked for a cigarette.


The latter handed him a cigarette without looking: “Why are you so gloomy?”, the prisoner inquired. “I was just reprimanded for the escape”. “It’s not a big deal, you’ll find the escapee, and the reprimand will be annulled…”. The guard looked down and became dumbfounded: “I’ll kill you, bastard”. Though his reprimand was really annulled…

March,1 2014

© Copyright: Oleg Syedyshev, 2012
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Translated by Viktoria Potykinato content ↑


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