The only thing about him that bugged Ilya was the bulge where his right ear should be that lay about a quarter of the way down his neck and turned to one side. Chisnok kept good company, however, and though his physical deformities were many, there seemed to be no deficit of mental ability as far as Ilya could tell. But sometimes, as now, when they cruised the post-Soviet mudways and covered walkways past the fish, herb, and sock vendors to Megapolis, Ilya clutching his 3x5cm "Английский во время сна!", laughing at nothing in particular, that Ilya really noticed these deformities and it kinda bugged him.
Chisnok's parents were from the Ukraine. Farmers by default, Chisnok's father had risen to local political power with the rise of Ukranian nationalism against the radical policies of Kruschev. He was so adept a facilitator that he drew hoards of crowds from across the Krai right up close to his tinny speakers, which were really just scrapped decks and speakers and woofers from boosted German V6's and 8's. Invoking Marx, he cautiously navigated the seas of agricultural symbolism, his practice theatre being the dinner table of his family home, audience being his two young sons and harried wife, and showtimes being something like 30 years of the same old performance before he finally started venting exodomestically, which the rest of the family mostly cite as the turning point of their collective happy adult lives, and which attracted the ears of so many other similarly-inclined husbands and sons who had found only impoverished ears in their own domestic situations and who were looking for an out.
He held the local CP hostage and, in return, got himself an int'l passport (for those countries who would let Ukranians enter, with a then-real value of about 1.1 million rubles, and a now-collector's value of about 100,000), a diploma certifying him either as a Doctor of Pedagogical Oratory or a Doctor of Oratorial Pedagogy from Moscow State University, depending on how you translate it, a one-way flight to desolate but up-and-coming Sakhalin Island, and a post at an institution designated to observe the institutionality of the growing higher education systems in Sahkalin Oblast and neighboring Krais Primorsky, Kamchatka, and Khabarovsk. The latter two concessions only came after the crowd had gathered to hear Papa speak only to have him come out in bathrobe and fake sniffles and say sorry, he was ill, and he wouldn't be able to speak for some time, and the crowd getting a peek of some definitely contraband scotch on the table and later the MSU degree on the wall just about had Papa's balls, that night, if there hadn't been an extremely untimely snowstorm which drew most of the villagers back to tend the crops and if the rest of the scotch hadn't numbed the rest into passivity. The night
Chisnok's parents were from the Ukraine. Farmers by default, Chisnok's father had risen to local political power with the rise of Ukranian nationalism against the radical policies of Kruschev. He was so adept a facilitator that he drew hoards of crowds from across the Krai right up close to his tinny speakers, which were really just scrapped decks and speakers and woofers from boosted German V6's and 8's. Invoking Marx, he cautiously navigated the seas of agricultural symbolism, his practice theatre being the dinner table of his family home, audience being his two young sons and harried wife, and showtimes being something like 30 years of the same old performance before he finally started venting exodomestically, which the rest of the family mostly cite as the turning point of their collective happy adult lives, and which attracted the ears of so many other similarly-inclined husbands and sons who had found only impoverished ears in their own domestic situations and who were looking for an out.
He held the local CP hostage and, in return, got himself an int'l passport (for those countries who would let Ukranians enter, with a then-real value of about 1.1 million rubles, and a now-collector's value of about 100,000), a diploma certifying him either as a Doctor of Pedagogical Oratory or a Doctor of Oratorial Pedagogy from Moscow State University, depending on how you translate it, a one-way flight to desolate but up-and-coming Sakhalin Island, and a post at an institution designated to observe the institutionality of the growing higher education systems in Sahkalin Oblast and neighboring Krais Primorsky, Kamchatka, and Khabarovsk. The latter two concessions only came after the crowd had gathered to hear Papa speak only to have him come out in bathrobe and fake sniffles and say sorry, he was ill, and he wouldn't be able to speak for some time, and the crowd getting a peek of some definitely contraband scotch on the table and later the MSU degree on the wall just about had Papa's balls, that night, if there hadn't been an extremely untimely snowstorm which drew most of the villagers back to tend the crops and if the rest of the scotch hadn't numbed the rest into passivity. The night
