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You are surely a nukie's child, because you know, your
daddy told you – when he didn't prefer to stay silent, when
he said that he was just coming home for a bit and then
would have to go back – that the whole power plant was
leaking. It was leaking like crazy, God damn it, the nukies
cursed, it was leaking, the whole thing was just one leak
after another, somewhere in the ballpark of fifty cubic
meters an hour through the loosened reinforcement,
through the drains. Fifty cubic meters of radioactive water
an hour, my boy, my dear little Soviet boy – even I know
that's a lot. The vaporizers can hardly process it.
Radioactive oversaturation, as they say, and they very often
send your dad on radioactive business trips, all the way to
the great country's capital, to that special Sixth Moscow
Clinic. God damn it – but there's no cure for this
exhaustion, he's always falling asleep at the table, head on
the tablecloth, facedown amidst the cherry jam and slices of
bread. That's a gift from our native fields – so I'm there in
the picture, too. You don't know it, my dear little comrade,
but I was on the work brigade at the jam factory. That very
jar, cherry jam, with a pit.
It's very easy for them to blame him, to call him an idiot, a
drunk or an ideological freak, depending on the audience
and the depth of the argument required. But, my dear little
comrade, I know – daddies never do anything without
thinking about their children. Or even without asking
them. The disguised Father Christmas makes every child's
dreams come true.