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MP3 6.2 MB • 128 kbps • 6:44
Story behind the song
Synopsis:
Oleg and Efrem, on the porch outside the Cancer Clinic. Oleg greets Efrem, and Efrem returns the greeting, noting that Oleg is "escaping" to the town. Indeed he is, "What is a poor prisoner to do?" asks Oleg. Efrem notes that Oleg's radiation sessions have been increased, and asks how it is going. Oleg says that although his pain has been long forgotten, he now knows what nausea is. Efrem says that he has refused another operation, and will ask to be discharged. Oleg leaves for the town. Efrem sings about his life, his illness, and a little bit about his treatment.
Lyrics
9. Scene between Oleg and Poddyev, on the porch outside the Cancer Clinic.
Oleg
Hello, Efrem.
Poddyev
Hello, Oleg. You are escaping into town?
Oleg
Yes. What can a poor prisoner do? I get through where the Medical Center wall is half destroyed, cross the road, and in five minutes I’m in the bazaar.
Poddyev
They’ve increased your radiation sessions.
Oleg
Yes. Twice a day, twenty minutes each at 300 rads. On top of that, they are threatening to give me blood transfusions as well.
Poddyev
How is it going?
Oleg
Truthfully, although the pain is long forgotten, I have now come to know what nausea is.
Poddyev
Gets you in the chest and goes on for hours…
Oleg
I go into the apparatus room with that thick X-ray smell, I’m afraid I’m going to spew my guts out.
Poddyev
I can’t take any more. I’m thinking of demanding to be discharged.
Oleg
They want to perform more surgery?
Poddyev
I can’t take any more cutting. I don’t want it.
Oleg
It is good your pain stops when you die.
Poddyev
Propaganda.
(Oleg exits, on his way to the bazaar).
Once so strong, and now so weak
This is the end of me,
And I don't mind.
I am Yefrem Poddyev – you don't know who I am.
I – Yefrem Poddyev – was a life of vibrant color
On the right side of fifty I would have been a man in the prime of life
Firm on my feet strong shouldered and sound of mind
I was tough not so much like a cart horse
But more like a two-humped camel.
After an eight hour shift I could put in another one just like the first.
In my youth on the Kama I used to lug two-hundred sacks about
I have been all over the place and done a mountain of work – pulling down here, digging there, here delivering, and there building. I would think it cheap to take change for ten roubles, I wouldn’t reel on a bottle of vodka but wouldn’t reach for a third.
Yefrem Poddyev knew no end, no bound.
I’d never had a day’s illness in my life.
And I felt, I would always be the way I was.
I sang Volga songs. I lied to hundreds of women scattered all over the place, that I wasn’t married, that I had no children, that I’d be back in a week and we’d start building a house. “God rot your tongue!” one temporary mother in law had cursed me, but my tongue had never let me down except when I was blind drunk.
With it I had talked my way into pay I’d never earned, sworn blind I’d done things I hadn’t, stood bail for things I didn’t believe in, howled at the bosses and yelled insults at the workers.
It was my tongue that had been hit— my quick, ever-ready tongue.
“Poddyev? There’s nothing can scare him!”
And my pals would say, “Ah yes, old Poddyev, he’s got will power.”
I refused an operation, so they started needle treatment: they pushed needles into my tongue as if I were a sinner in Hell, and kept them there for several days. How I wanted it to stop there, how I hoped! No.
My tongue kept swelling.
The endless nightmare was beyond my stength..
The pain erased my courage.
I am not going to sink like a stone but drop like a feather.
As weak as a tear,
this is my end,
and I fall.
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