Andrew and Boris were pals. As the first letters of their first names in your first ABC close coming one after the other. They first met in the students’ hostel. Andrew was living there, and Boris was visiting his date, a young girl from Ingushetia, a girl with a sweet non-Caucasian name Malina. That courtship was a year long and purely romantic. The daughter of Vahnahsky people cared deeply for Boris. To show her heavenly true love she came to the faculty, wearing her national dress the day of his birthday. Boris was thrilled. He told Andrew the kick he got out of it was akin to sexual pleasure when his girl friends were making love with him.

The development of that relationship, could be read on the door of Malina’s room. Having found Malina out, Boris wrote everything he wanted to say on the door. She answered. First these inscriptions covered the door, then spread out to the nearest wall and crawled to Andrew’s room. To defend his living space, Andrew joined the dialogue. “This door is sacred! — Smarovsky wrote across the wall to counter the sprawling crawl. — The new world is being created here. Don’t trespass”. That started their friendship.

Boris and Andrew soon became bosom friends, though seemingly they had scarcely anything in common. Tshukin was born in Moscow, not in Kamishin. His father didn’t serve in Rapid Development Division, he was in diplomatic service. In the 80s he wasn’t fighting in Afghanistan, he was working in the Soviet trade representation in Japan. While in the 90s the textile factory in Kamishin was curbing up its work and came to a standstill, Boris Tshukin’s father was becoming distributor general of a huge Japanese corporation. In spite of all this, Tshukin senior was not a typical newrich and Tshukin junior was not the all-round son of a newrich. At first sight he resembled modern upgrade Kostic in the movie “Pokrovsky Gate” played by Oleg Menshikov — fervent, honest, ever striving, acting only himself. Andrew was puzzled to learn after a couple of months of their acquaintance about an apartment in one of Arbat lanes, an estate in Zhukovka and sums of money Boris’s father controlled. If Smarovsky had known about it before, their relations wouldn’t have been that easy-going. His proletariat complex would have inhibited him. The gap in rank and standing counts sincerity out. But there was no retreat. Boris turned out to be a real guy through and through. In two months he had managed to spend a night, drunk in the telephone booth at the entrance of pleshka, a day in the Institute dressed as a young woman, no teacher had found him out — and had borrowed a loan from Andrew.

Tshukin’s parents were intelligent and not overindulgent. Boris entered the Institute not boosted by his parents. In money matters his father introduced a rigid scheme. Double daily allowance fixed by Minfin and not a penny more. When Boris’s 1 thousand dollars coat had been stolen in the hostel, his father gave him a loan to be retuned with the interest percent. So Tshukin had to sing accompanying himself with a guitar for half a year in the subway crossing to pay the debt. In the less eventful time he did odd jobs together with Andrew to raise some money. On one occasion he brushed and polished footwear. He came into possession of a chest of bootcleaning brushes bought by chance from an old babushka in Kalyazin, got hold of a tape-recorder with tunes of the 40’s and placed himself snuggly at the entrance of Serpuhovsky. There he was exercising his art for a month, polishing the boots and shoes of the astonished passers-by to the “Rio-Rita” tune. He was working with two brushes as the old masters in the Soviet westerns about the Civil War.

Three times Andrew and Boris got into scrapes, four times they stood the ground, Andrew saved Boris’s life once, Boris helped Andrew out from militia. There were two girls who both of them dated at different periods of their life. There was a girl who had nearly turned them into deadly enemies but she got timely arrested for keeping drugs. Eventually, their friendly relationship of two students had grown into real friendship of two men likely to last into the old age.

Though Boris had come into the firm “BAD BOYS” straight after the graduation, and Andrew three years later, by the age of 30 Smarovsky had managed to become the art-director, and Tshukin got stuck as a valuable copy-writer. Boris was indifferent to promotion. In his view, business was not an ascending scale with promotion pattern, but rather a playground, a stage where the show was going on and money instead of the audience. If an actor performs well, he comes into the money. If his performance is poor, someone else does. But deep in his heart money didn’t thrill him. First and foremost he was performing for himself not just for the sake of money. All his life tumults linked into a chain of episodes like scenes of the series with a predictable end. No matter what difficulties had Boris to encounter, sooner or later he was to inherit his father’s business. That was why making similar moves, achieving similar aims, hitting similar targets Boris and Andrew were unlike each other in the core. The cost of error was drastically different for either of them. Boris was relaxed inside. Andrew was tense, with all his strength charged. Boris felt success was a brainstorm, Andrew thought you couldn’t do without brainy work to pave the way to success. Both of them dreamed not only of earning money, but of accomplishing something worth living up to, breaking new ground. They employed different means. Boris felt being like the centre of a whirlwind that would draw in the whole world around him and would breathe it out absolutely different. For Andrew this world was an intricate, delicate mechanism, where he had to find the spring that would set it in different motion. But until he had found that very spring the only mode of action for him was not to destroy it.

— Now, then. I’ve got “Maccona” in my apartment house.

A stain was spreading over the table cloth, the colour of a rotting apricot. The coffee in the cracked cup was subsiding rapidly. And though it was not pouring into Andrew’s body, his brain was charged with a touch of malice and vigor. It clicked.

— I’ve broken my favorite cup.