This, Being Part 1, The First
And so it began to rain, indeed.
But not yet. Because we are about to review what happened with aspiring poet Steve Kowalski on this one day in our past, now to be recalled, and perhaps recounted.
For it was Friday, March 1, The Year of Our Lord 2019, and still winter, and therefore still wintry cold in the Ukrainian capital, superadded by miserably blustery. Much worse than your average Winnie-the-Pooh day.
Given his almost debilitating nervousness and the feeling that his gut was going to puke itself out of his own throat, it’s a good thing Steve Kowalski had had the presence of mind to put on his jean jacket – his favorite of the several he had, with “Billy the Kid” engraved into each button, having been passed down to him with a bunch of other things in a large, cardboard box from his older cousin, Victor – before rushing out to meet his fate as against the Ferret.
And fate he did meet, but so did the Ferret, and in a far worse way than Kowalski, to the latter’s surprise and great relief, but also even greater frustration: a frustration that, try as he might to dispel it, would never desist in burrowing its way deeper and deeper into Steve’s psyche.
We cannot authoritatively speak to the degree to which that frustration continues to work in and against Steve Kowalski today, or if it persists as a mental, emotional, and spiritual issue (of great inner torment and anguish, of course!) for him at all, as, as Our Gentle Readers will likely have observed, we have just barely caught up with Steve again, with the advent of this-here Commix/Checkout Volume Number 4.
But what we CAN do, and pretty well at that, if we do say so ourselves, is tell you about how Kowalski was forced to spend the ensuing moments following the Ferret’s heart-attack collapse and skull-crunching pavement crash about 20 feet away from Kowalski in front of the central synagogue on Shota Rustaveli Street in downtown Kyiv.
For after the Ferret fell, turned to dust, and blew away (apparently), following which Kowalski had a strange but brief encounter with the rabbinical behemoth known colloquially as The Great Big Jew, among one or two other sobriquets, it began to rain.
And though the weather was not cold enough at that moment to turn the annoying and unpleasant drizzle into sleet or snow, it was cruel enough to turn the surprise precipitation into a blistering and dartlike freezing rain.
Which robbed Kowalski of the chance to simply stand there, even for a short while, as any one of us, having been thrust into the same situation, would likely yearn to do, to think about and marvel at that, which had just taken place: to savor his suddenly newfound freedom from the Ferret; to humbly praise God and take stock in the courage he’d managed to muster in having gone out to answer the Ferret’s challenge, thereby disproving cowardice on his part; but worst of all, to begin to deal with and process the anger, frustration, and resentment he already felt gnawing at his guts because he’d been denied the chance of using his fists against the Ferret the best he could, even if he’d been meant to lose the fight.
But now, he’d never know, one way or the other, because the longed-for, insane moment he’d set his mind on fire for had also held the possibility of a different outcome; that he might have won.
And he did win, but in a way that had actually taken any real sense of victory away from him; in a way, Kowalski thought, that he preferred had not happened. It was just about the lousiest way to win a fight he’d ever seen or heard of in his life – and that shittiest of all wins had just happened to him! Had “befallen” him – and that, Kowalski further thought, might be an even better way of putting it.
But as the rain intensified, needling and jabbing Kowalski in the neck, head, and face, ever heavier and ever harder, the only thought that now came to Kowalski’s mind, suppressing all the others, was to get home to his miserable, albeit centrally heated, little flat, where he could unwind these new feelings and thoughts over a hot cup of coffee or tea, taken together with some cookies or biscuits. The Palats Sportu (Palace of Sports – Eds.) metro station was right there, just a few steps down from the synagogue, and his home, such as it was, only three stops away.
Kowalski flings out his left foot in the direction of his intentions, but is immediately catapulted forward into a maelstrom of windy darkness, and then just as suddenly pulled violently back – and back, and back… his arms wrenched in someone’s massive, vicelike grip behind him. Kowalski is relieved of gravity as he helplessly kicks his feet out at the surrounding, suffocating, grimy, murky ether.
“Stevie!” he hears, booming malevolently from behind him, but as though from some far-off and fearsome netherworld chamber. “Where ya hoppin’ off to?! Haven’t seen you in a while! Wha’da’ya say we catch up on some old times – huh?!”
And then, Steve Kowalski is there…
Filed by Saint Stephan, April 5, 2025