Once upon a time our dry cargo stood in one of the ports of the Baltics. The loading was already over when my fellow sailors who lived in this city came to visit the steam boat. First, we drank a little for a meeting in the captain’s salon, then went to dinner at a country restaurant – the former mansion of some Ostsee baron. In the menu were elaborate medieval dishes, cooked according to the recipes of the baron's chef, and the same elaborate snacks - this was already the recipe of the baron himself. Judging by the inscriptions, the German baron was a nature of fascinating, one can even say, passionate.
After dinner, our entire company went first to one bar, then to another, where “for a dear guest from Leningrad” local musicians performed some classical works from the repertoire of my compatriot and teaser – Sergey Vladimirovich Schnurov.
Someone joined us, someone left for physiological, so to speak, reasons. Finally, the cousin of the wife of one of my peers offered our company to go to work with him.
“We have a real Russian couple there!” He said, “It was built under Alexander the Third.”
Having decided that before I returned to the steam boat I needed to refresh myself, I strongly supported this idea. We were driving a long time. I remember some taxi, then a dark brick building, iron gates and a lot of bars instead of doors along the way as we walked from the car to the doors of the bathing complex. In addition to the Russian steam room, there were shower cabins, a large wooden barrel with ice water and a rest room. In the middle of this room stood a copper three-bowl samovar, in which floated several litre bottles of vodka and whisky. The owner welcomed everyone to drink while the room was warm.

I woke up in the morning. There were drunk bodies around me, which showed that no one had reached the couch yesterday. After taking a shower, I decided to get out of this "bath" faster, or you could already be late for the ship's departure. But I failed to get out. Literally behind the first turn of the corridor there was a grid door and a guard who waited behind it. And then I remembered with horror that our owner, this cousin of someone’s wife, yesterday in the bar was telling something funny about his work “in the zone.”
“Yes! So I’m in jail,” I realized, “I need to get out of here, and urgently!”
The attempt to wake up the cousin was unsuccessful. Even swinging it under a cold shower, it was possible to only a small, but rhythmic moisture on the motive of "Leningrad-SPb-point-ru". There was an intense desire to drown him in a barrel. and what? Shouldn’t someone who is already in prison be put in prison? Well, by the analogy, "to shoot twice the statute does not say." Then I decided that this logic would not work here and needed a different plan. For example: to take this body, I do not remember how it was called, that is, they call it, to drag to the barracks with the guard and try to explain that I am not escaping from the prison, and so, went to the bathroom to bathe: "Here is with this man, that is, the body. I have other bodies, if necessary.”
How will it look from the side?“I thought, ‘Some incomprehensible, squeezed and unbarred man with a senseless prison worker in his arms? An attempt to escape with the hostage? No, I will not pass. What is the name of the cousin’s wife? Is it Yarek, or Yatsek, or,, George Viktorovich at all?”
I had to shave myself in front of the mirror, fix my clothes and go to the barracks alone.
The young man! – I started my story – you see, I was invited to the bathroom with you yesterday. Your employee. He sleeps in the corner. Sorry, I do not remember his name. Don’t think I’m escaping from your prison. I need to go to the port urgently. There I am waiting for a ferry that is due to leave in the sea in two hours.
The guy looked at me silently.
“Damn,” I thought, “he was very young, apparently he went to school after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Maybe he doesn’t speak Russian anymore? And why did I tell him that I would leave this country in two hours?“!”
and Sir! – I started again, now in English – here there is a place to be a confusion...
“Yes, okay,” the security guard replied in good Russian, “you can’t explain, you don’t ‘escape from our prison’!”
Why are you so sure? I was surprised, even a little offended.
The prison is female.