Gloomy was a dog with a big muscular body like a lion, who always followed Sveta. He liked laying at her feet, when she sat on a porch at her dormitory. Maybe he was attached to her because she fed him, although to the lieutenant F. this strange couple appeared as an ancient mythical heroic pair. She represented a goddess of war with her mighty faithful servant. A helicopter was a dragon (because of the round body and big eyes), who faithfully served to the flight engineer F. And definitely it was a female dragon.
“My machine is very beautiful, — wrote the flight engineer F. in one of his letters. — When she is in flight, she is so gentle and I see her curves, the insides of me freeze from admiration. All harmony of the world has been collected in a sound of her engines, it is a music that needs to be heard. Her paraffin is light-yellow and transparent as…(the line was crossed out)… And her hydraulic fluid had the color and smell of cranberry juice. This machine with its convex rear doors, with smoky, splattered grease bonnets, flexible blades with a narrow long tail, with its roaring speed and heavy fire — all of these represent to me Eros and Thanatos (see “Terminology and Glosssary” — Editor) of my war.
As for Sveta, the flight engineer F. had made no attempt to get closer to Sveta, although every mornings he would ask Gloomy “Say hello to your hostess”. Gloomy sleeps in the corridor of a dormitory because they did not allow him to sleep inside of their room. Maybe the flight engineer F did not want to destroy the mystery created by his imagination, or maybe he was just afraid that she would refuse him as she refused all the other men. Although, the flight engineer F was a fatalist, who believes in fate.
It should be said that the flight engineer F. could not impatiently look at any flawless forms of life. If he saw something beautiful, he must grab a piece of paper and a pencil in his hand; and he began to draw a picture.
Mostly, naked women and bareback horses were the theme of his drawings. Sometimes he combined these themes and drew a naked woman on a horseback. In his opinion, these two kinds of living beings were the most perfect that the Creator sculpted.
When the flight engineer F., for the first time entered the dining room of the Shindad’s air base, he saw how a waitress Sveta was proudly carrying her tray, how her fringe and tail were moving in time with her steps, how she was looking and snorting with her nostrils flared with discontent. He could not resist it.
In his room, on a shelf was a rolled up poster. On one side of the poster was a picture of a caravan inspection; it displayed how a landed leading chopper was on the right behind the caravan (picturing three camels who were directed by two cameleers in trousers and turbans) ; there was also a second helicopter pictured in the upper left corner. Sketching with a brown pencil, the poster also demonstrated all distances and shelling sectors towards the mountains pictured somewhere on the horizon.
But the other side of this poster was clear, and after wiping with a loaf of white bread, the surface of this side became pristine. Flight engineer F. borrowed from everyone all pencil stubs and began his work.
In the evening he pinned the sheet to the plywood wall in his tiny kitchen, moved a bench under the table to have more free space, took a step back, squinted, stretched out his hand with a pencil, swinging in the air like a sword, and with a few light touches he started his drawing of a feminine silhouette.
— My beautiful has arrived… — he was whispering, stepping back.
She was standing, looked up to the sky and covered her eyes from the sun with her palm. She was naked, with the barely outlined collarbones, nipples-eyelets, a navel, and knees…
After admiring her transparent nudity for a few minutes, he wrapped her thighs with the thin piece of a white cloth.
Wow! — the flight engineer Losenkov had exclaimed peering over his shoulder. — I wonder how good the picture will be, when you will finish it…
The artist did not answer, he covered the picture with a clean rag. He knew that he should stop painting her, that any further drawing would kill the magic of unspoken things, but he wanted to transfer to the paper not only her lines and figure, but the entire mosaic of her flesh, her tanned and delicate skin, which was like something powdered with a sweet pollen, which he would not be tired of licking, if only…
So, he continued the creation of the picture in his mind. During breakfast, lunch and dinner, he looked delicately at the waitress, mentally drawing her head, torso, legs, the location of her bumps and dimples; and then he repeated the sketch on his thigh with his finger. Her skirt was short and legs were long and her opened shirt showed her soft elastic belly and ribs, which he wanted to take with both hands and open her like a pomegranate full of seeds…
Then after a dinner, returning to his unit, he usually takes out his notebook, and a pencil; then he will be drawing a sketch of her body, how he had memorized by drawing on his thigh that was still burning from the imaginative sketches of her.
During the nights, he would transform these daily imaginative sketches to paper. The shades, stitched to her body by blinks of the sun, were placed onto her shoulders, chest, lilac bones, the thighs, and her matte skin, as he wanted it to be. The resemblance of her face was too close to the original, and he gave her a baseball cap to shadow most of her face. Instead of a heavy kettle, he put into her hands a belt of his rifle, which was posing right there in a corner. Now the imaginative canvass of his picture (in which she was holding his gun as a full blood horse, full of fire and an unstoppable energy) has been completed.
She was appearing from the white light, as a goddess of the sun. It seemed to him, that when the last stroke would be placed on the paper, she could have stepped down from this rolled paper; and with her bare feet, she will touch the floor in front of the artist. Kneeling, he spent a bit of time on her leg; even a throbbing vein on her ankle was pictured.
When the perfect embodiment of her had been achieved, and it became obvious that any slight change will only worsen the picture, he framed her with an inscription in English. Immediately this picture transformed into a poster that invites viewers to Shindand, to 302 flying squadron; and this strong willed woman, sunbathing and holding a AKS-7, seems to invite whoever you are — a boy, a man or an old man — to come here, and you will have no regrets!
Followed the admiring sighs and exclamations which filled the room, the artist hung the poster on the wall, over the old pictures from newspapers and magazines, pictures of trophy — weapons, mountain roads with steep curbs, helicopters on the ground and in the sky.
— She is an icon! — The first lieutenant Torgashov exhaled, raising his hands. — She will be our guardian angel…
— I think, she is too thin. — The first lieutenant Losenkov pointed at her breasts.
— It is you, Losenkov, who is the bald-headed one! — Torgashov disagreed. — She is gorgeous!
And everyone became involved into the hot dispute, and everyone expressed different opinions.
The artist took a cigarette and went outside. Whilst walking, he inhaled and exhaled the cigarette smoke. He was thinking about something; and after the artist reached the bathhouse, and he swam in the pool, he already knew what to do.
This poster he will present to her! Yes, it would be an unexpected move — he thought excitedly, quickly walking. It would be a surprise for her. The detailed options of how he will do it, he left for his bedtime, when he will be alone behind his closed eyelids.
A few days later, pilots visited the room, as they had heard about the beauty hanging on the wall. Each of them asked him to draw the same beauty for them, or may be even a smaller version of her. They promised to bring the new papers for drawings and new pencils, candies, soda, alcohol, and money. Even the Police Commissioner had been visiting the artist. The Police Commissioner stood silently for a moment, looking at the picture and when he was ready to leave the room, he asked to pull the picture down or at least cover it because tomorrow an inspection team from Kabul was expected. After him, the first lieutenant Taran came and standing on a stool, he commenced a real photo session of the poster with and without a flash.