The two tall Canadians, John and Ivan, appeared in the Ukrainian village accompanied by three huge trucks. While the local girls eyed the strange tall blonde visitors, the local men walked around the trucks.
A rumor was soon making the rounds that the trucks contained biotoilets, gifts from the Pope. This lead some of the townsfolk to consider who should be permitted to use the new toilets - certainly not those families whose members had been disrespectful of the public five-seat toilet, which as a result of the abuse emitted a stench far removed from anything created by the world-famous house of Christian Dior.
The trucks and their enormous trailers were parked near the fence of the village cemetery, and the Canadians, John and Ivan, joyfully headed to the district office to meet with the local official.
It is necessary to note that the district center is a village called Wolftown, and the village where the trucks and their cargo were parked is called Lambville. It is an irony not lost on the locals, who referred to the district boss as "Our Master."
In the Master's office, Ivan, a third-generation Ukrainian Diaspora, explained their presence in the archaic Ukrainian spoken by his grandfather. He explained that his colleague John represented a Canadian charity that had previously brought humanitarian aid to five countries on different continents. He had selected the town to benefit from his shipment by closing his eyes and pointing to a spot on a large map of Ukraine. That was how the trucks came to be sent to Lambville, selected in a manner that John thought to be fair and impartial. It was a selection process applauded by the board of the humanitarian NGO that financed the gift, noting that the random choice of destination underscored the charity's mission statement that called for the fair and impartial selection of beneficiaries.
Our Master listened, smiling and nodding his head while trying to understand the implications the gift had on his career: Why hadn't customs officers reported this cargo of 50 mini-tractors and implements to Tsar, the head of the oblast administration? And why wasn't he been told they were coming? He would learn later from the Tsar's assistant that nobody in the oblast administration had known who had sent the trucks. The order came that the tractors were to be distributed to loyal people, each of who would later be responsible for delivering 500 votes as payment. The official added that, by the way, the Tsar had learned of the Master's ambition of becoming a deputy, an ambition to which he did not object.
Our Master's thoughts returned to John and Ivan, who were summarizing their monologue. They said that they planned to select 50 young, experienced, honest and skillful farmers to receive the tractors. John, once a farmer himself, wanted to address each of the recipients personally.
Our Master noted the Canadians' naivete with satisfaction. They were as pristine as the mountain dew. Their intention to be impartial, achieved by blindly pointing at a map only contributed to his belief. In our neglected fields, he thought, there are more stray dogs than farmers. And even if we could gather 50 young agricultural heroes, grain traders would soon buy their crops in bulk at bargain prices and the equipment would be auctioned to pay the farmers' debts.
Ukraine, Our Master told the Canadians, does not make big mistakes because it does everything very carefully. It would take months to compile a list of suitable farmers. Therefore, he said, as head of the local administration, he would give John a stamped and signed document transferring responsibility for the tractors to him, as head. He also promised that the administration would arrange a farewell dinner-party for the duo: Take care, guys! Safe journey!
"This is the final decision," the head of administration said, his eyes dimly reflecting his recent criminal past.
Three days passed, and the visitors' attempts to contact the district administrator were met with the same answer: The list of farmers had not yet been completed, and Our Master is very busy. The administration had, despite all efforts, also failed to find an empty warehouse where the Canadian equipment could be stored.
John and Ivan had never had so much free time on their hands: They visited a clothes market, a shop called Your Buddy that sold vodka, the Astoria, Eldorado and Aroma supermarkets, the Ace of Spades casino and a sauna called Santa Maria. They bided their time by supporting the local economy.
The Canadians noted with amusement that district administration officials used keys to enter the building's toilet, kept locked lest visitors to the building from the surrounding villages should forget the habit of talking to nature when satisfying their natural physiological needs.
In Lambville, the Canadians looked at the ruins of the local coliseum: iron ribs and concrete slabs stripped of windows and doors was all that remained of the old collective animal farm.
Most of Lambville's residents had forgotten the habit of employment and salaries, and lived on the so-called "underfoot forage" which grew in their gardens.
The instincts of their expropriating grandfathers intact, the farmers hatched a scheme to separate John and Ivan from their cargo long enough for the farmers to draw lots to determine who would receive the tractors, said to be able to plough, sow, mow and thresh.
Then, rumors began to circulate that supermarkets in Wolftown were treating visitors to free vodka. Initially, people thought that Muzzle, the markets' owner, had died, and that his employees had joyously uncorked the bottles. But Muzzle turned out to be alive, though the vodka was being poured for free. In exchange for 200 grams, folks were asked to carry placards reading: "Canadian tractors are apples of discord," "We will not allow stinky tractors to vandalize our cemetery," "Canadians, let your Polish hostages go home," and "Get out of the country, Ukrainian fascists."
That last placard worried Ivan, who had neglected to tell John the reason he had wanted to bring the cargo to Ukraine. It was he who had persuaded John to choose Ukraine over the Congo. While Ivan had told John that he wanted to visit his ancestors' motherland, he had neglected to reveal the secret of two 85-year-old men, former soldiers of Ukrainian rebel army fighters who had been friends and had been prisoners in Mauthausen together. Their post-war fates had been different, though: Ivan's grandfather went to Canada, while the grandfather of Roman, chief of the customs service on the western border, spent 30 years in Siberia, feeding body lice.
Sitting in Roman's office, Ivan unwillingly started the conversation in an official way. He told Roman how energetically John had collected the money that had purchased the advanced agricultural equipment, how they transported it from Quebec to Gdansk in Poland, there to rent three trucks and six drivers for the trip to Ukraine.
Roman didn't bother to look at the customs documents, stamping the papers and storing them away. Then he took a bottle of vodka from his safe, telling Ivan that they were meant to drink to their grandfathers' memories.
Now, having seen the sinister placard referring to Ukrainian fascists, Ivan thought that the ubiquitous KGB was immortal. He worried about Roman. The independent democratic Ukraine would not stand for a customs chief whose grandfather had been a "zealous banderovits."
Ivan just wanted John to sign the documents so persistently offered them by Our Master and leave this kingdom of fearless oligarchs.
The local grain trader, a man assigned a minor role in the half-criminal hierarchy prevailed upon the owner of a small gas pipeline to store the tractors in his vacant warehouse. The pipeline owner and grain trader, until recently members of Our Master's Honest Patriots political party, believed that taking control of the equipment would benefit their new party, Real Patriots, and propel them into parliament.
The trucks were unloaded by evening, and the happy Polish truck drivers headed home in their trucks, while John got ready for the long siege of Our Master.
Blissfully happy, John was strolling around Lambville. He had become able to speak Ukrainian a little and had become quite fluent in Russian coarse slang. Ivan warned his friend a few times not to get carried away by the euphoria and remember that in Ukraine one can only trust "sacrificing nationalists." John responded with jokes and carefree laughter. He made friends with the local laureate of prison songs and Diogenes.
But in his conversation with the head of the local administration, John had impetuously said that he was able to immediately determine whether a person is honest or dishonest at first sight.
And there in Lambville, John met a fellow whose glance was pious and virtuous. The guy playfully introduced himself as Offshore Zone. Soon John was standing in front of shelves mounting to the ceiling of Offshore's spacious pantry. On the shelves sat hundreds of jars of pickled vegetables, jam and stewed meat. Next to them there were shelves laden with bottles of home-brewed vodka.
His new friend proudly described the vodka as his offshore zone.
John, who never drank, could only say, ""Oh!"
Offshore then displayed a brilliant combination of two talents: He was both a taster and a seducer. The words "just a little" and "three drops" were immediately followed by the opening of one more bottle.
John awoke with the feeling that someone was chopping firewood where his brain was supposed to be.
Next to him lay an unknown girl wearing stunning Parisian lingerie, which only slightly covered her robust body. The girl lazily stretched and blew a kiss to the petrified John.
John was, of course, unaware that the girl was lovingly referred to as Pussycat by her family and nicknamed Perpetual Motion, a tribute to her sexual tirelessness, by the sons of local oligarchs.
Very soon the house, whose owner was still undetected, was full of unwelcome visitors. John saw Ivan's pale face among those of other men and women. On the floor, he saw torn packets of a product sometimes called "intimacy for two" by shy drugstore customers.
Pussycat stood up hastily and addressed the crowd, and Ivan in particular, adding emotional gestures to her monologue: John carried me around the room for a while. He was kissing me the way my father used to kiss me before I fell asleep when I was a little girl. I was resisting John, but then he suddenly blacked out.
Later, John and Ivan were brought to the Our Master's office. Our Master, they learned, was Pussycat's father.
Our Master solemnly handed a medical certificate to Ivan and asked him to explain its contents to John. Ivan translated the text into English. The head asked the Canadians to note that the medical examination of his daughter determining that the girl was still a virgin had been carried out the day before the rape had been committed. He added that the signature of the doctor and the stamp of the medical institution were genuine, and that according to Ukrainian law, alcoholic intoxication doubles the penalty to 12 years in prison.
Then the Master took out the prepared documents and gave them to John. Before saying goodbye, he smiled slightly, but did not shake anyone's hand. He was, after all, still in the role of the aggrieved father.
On the airplane, John once again remembered the skillfully scattered evidence of his sexual frenzy and smiled. Ivan rejoiced that John's sense of humor had seemed to recover. Agreeing with his friend's diagnosis, John said that next time he would bring his humanitarian aid to Congo, which was desperate for condoms.
Wags in Lambville said that Our Master was now obliged to embroider images of a tractor and Pussycat's lingerie on the banner of his party.
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