Mondegreen by Volodymyr Rafeyenko

Author:Volodymyr Rafeyenko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2022-02-20T12:28:15+00:00

Conditionalis

Deep in reflection, Sancho figured that he had travelled half a mile or more when he noticed something ahead that looked like daylight coming though some kind of opening—this path, which he regarded as the road to the other world, was to finally lead him out of here.

—Servantes, The Ingenious Hidalgo Don Quixote of La Mancha

In nature, there exists a Minsk market, but there is also a market near the Heroïv Dnipra metro station, and one needs to distinguish between the two. The latter one is about a mile and a half from home, but it is nonetheless better to go to that one. One can always get a good deal on cured fat and other homemade delicacies there, which are brought in from the villages and small towns of the Kyiv region. For example: nice, still warm milk; colostrum; and buckwheat honey. Haba never had enough money to buy everything that he wanted, but he did have a system.

If he were to buy a chunk of cured fat this Saturday, then next Saturday, for example, he’ll get a ring of sausage and a head of garlic. And, on Friday, he’ll pick up some milk that is still warm.

“My cow isn’t just any cow, it’s a sorceress,” the old yellow man says (that’s how the teacher Zhuangzi probably looked), nodding a request for a cigarette, lighting up, and blowing out some smoke with great satisfaction. “This cow’s grandma was named Mathilde von d’Este. People would say that she was a direct descendent of the Hapsburgs. (Once, I, Zhuang Zhou, dreamt that I was a butterfly—a happy butterfly freely fluttering among the flowers, and I didn’t know that…) 1 This cow did so many good things for our family. We, just so you know, live in Publiieve-­Neronove. It’s over thirty-­seven miles away from Kyiv. But that’s not important. Mathilde turned out to be so wise that, for twenty years in a row, she worked as secretary for the local branch of the Communist Party, ran the library, and served as the head of the local forest ministry for several years. And no surprise there—blue blood always reveals itself in the end.”

“The cow worked as a secretary for the local branch of the Communist Party?” Haba repeated to himself quite seriously. “In Publiieve-Neuronove?”

“First of all—there is no need to say ‘Neuronove,’ because it makes you think of neurons, which have nothing to do with this. There are no neurons, brother, in this world. It’s fiction, a fake term. Don’t ever mention neurons to anybody. No one in the Kyiv region will understand you.”

“So how do you pronounce it?”

“Publiieve-­Neronove. You, perhaps, have heard of the poet, Ovid (Publius Ovidius Naso).

“Yep, I’ve heard of him.” Haba nodded. “And as for Neron, is it that one?”

“Yes, Nero (Nero Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus), at birth—Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, between 50 and 54 AD—Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus Germanicus. And in our parts (the Kyiv region) he was simply known as Nero. Nero is Nero, the Roman emperor, the last in the Julio-­Claudian dynasty.

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