the most final
concluding work

The only backwash of the excursion was that I owed the factory those 3 days, I mean 3 daily norms of 32 bales each. Technologist Valya said not to worry though and just produce 2 or 3 surplus bales every day until I made up.

I never liked to be a debtor, so on the third day after coming back from Moscow, I brought to work a newspaper-wrapped snack, aka "brake", to keep me during my fit of Stakhanovite shock work.

When the factory bus took everyone to the city, and Popovka women went home on foot, I faced the slow-go creaky wailer of a press, and the hillocks of rags grown up all around it during my Moscow recreation, whose mass wasn't noticeably reduced in the working day-shift ended just now… Like an enthusiastic champion for the victory of Socialism in a singled-out country, I worked the second shift, then the third, and even managed to sleep in the locker room for about 20 minutes before they came back by bus for the new working day….

In summer, another presser started to work by us and very timely too because Misha the presser went on his annual vacation. The newcomer had some kind of a long oriental name because he was a Tajik, but I could not pronounce it in any way. So I dropped the attempts at unfamiliar phonetics and started to call him simply “Ahmed”.

Ahmed was short and swarthy, and never parted with his happy smile until he tried to enjoy a midday meal in the canteen at the "Motordetail" plant. Returning from there, he stretched out on a bench in the locker room to groan pitifully, while the women from Popovka stood around the sufferer gravely shaking their heads and sharing all kinds of Stone-Age health-care recommendations… After the payday, Ahmed began to come to work with "brakes" wrapped in newspaper and his digestion normalized, upholding my belief in power of printed text…

On his first working day, it was I who passed to him the wisdom and niceties of the presser profession. After exhaustive explanations on the purposes of all the 3 press buttons, followed by live demonstration how a skillful presser was expected to lock the box’s door with the hook outside it, I started to share to Ahmed my delights caused by the statement of a certain German poet that all seagulls, when in flight, look like the capital "E". And why? The name of his beloved was Emma! That’s a good fellow, ain't he? Eh? What a smart eye!

Enthusiastically grabbing a scrap piece of wire from the floor, I scratched capital E's, a flock of them, in the gray plaster coat of the nearby wall scarcely lit by a bulb over the press…

Among the wastes brought and dumped at Rags, there at times happened usable things. So, loader Sasha stored in his locker about half-dozen sweaters with and without the rain deer file across their chests; and each day he was sporting another one from his collection…

Volodya Kaverin did not care for small fish. He hunted fur cuffs and collars from discarded coats so that having hoarded enough of them he would order to sew a fur jacket for him or, maybe, a fur coat. 3 collars had been collected so far, and twice a week he used to take them out of his locker, like, to air the goods and, giving them a shake, in turn, he'd proudly ask you, "It should work out a nyshtyak jacket, right?"

Vanya, in his locker, was keeping a ceremonial tunic of Lieutenant-Colonel of the Soviet Army with golden shoulder straps and stuff…

When I was sent on the errand to buy vodka from the liquors store on Semashko Street, they at once equipped me with the kind of jeans of which I could be only dreaming when I still cared for such things. It’s only that the maple leaf or, maybe, some kind of a flower embroidered on the right leg was some excessive, in my opinion, detail of design…

The line to the store started way far from it, and it was a pretty tangled line looping with incomprehensible twists over the sidewalk, for which fact such lines were handled "Gorbachev’s loops". But it was not advisable to share the handle too loud because, as the rumors had it, the KGB sec-cols were present midst the thirsty part of the population to pick up fresh jokes and take note of especially dissatisfied citizens.

On the strength of those rumors, I demanded a camouflage outfit from the recycling colleagues, and everyone agreed that, yes, it was necessary, though they did not manage to find me normal jeans without that effeminizing flower on the thigh.

Despite the costly disguise, I still was identified by the pair of errand-boys from SMP-615, however, they chose to keep aloft.

With its progress, the line ofttimes was shaken by grave rumors that vodka at the store was running out. And indeed, the movement stalled. But soon a truck arrived at the store back and volunteers full of unconcealed enthusiasm dragged inside the wire boxes of 25 bottles each…

I returned to the recycle factory with vodka, at half-past four. 2 loaders, in turn, had been pressing the bales to fulfill my daily norm. Because of inexperience, they produced the bales with underweight. Valya, the bale weigher, expressed her dissatisfaction with loud yells from inside her booth, while half-deaf Misha kept cheerful silence and sprightly dragged the lightweight bales away. His barrow rolled to the Hut outdoors with noticeable acceleration – moving a-pace with the rest of our boundless Homeland of Great October, loader Misha was entering the crucial phase in the reconstruction, aka Perestroika…

~ ~ ~

And with all the deficit of terry towels, the running-water pipe over the tin trough in the washing room, where everyone washed the layered dust off their hands before the meal, there hung no less than a dozen of such towels, angled from among the rags. However, my personal towel was brought from 13 Decemberists, and I kept it in the locker room, hung separately on the heating pipe in the corner by the right window. I was afraid that if left in the washing room, it would be used by inattentive folks like any other piece of garbage hanging there.

How come I had such a deficit? At some of my visits to the village, Raissa Alexandrovna, appreciating my labor achievements about their khutta, paid in kind, presenting me a towel and a brand new briefcase. It was a very nice towel, white and fluffy, not for the whole body though, just for the face and hands, judging by its size. And it had a blue squirrel sitting in it in profile with a bushy tail, also very pretty.

Yet one day, coming back from the midday voyage to the remote canteen at the "Motordetail" plant, I noticed that someone's dirty paws had horsed around the tender squirrel in the corner.

Naturally, I kicked up some dust – what the f-f..er..frivolities with my personal belongings?!. My towel was not picked up from the rags in the dirty garbage, I brought it from home! Everyone pointed at Ahmed.

Once again, in detail, I explained, specifically to him, where the towel had been brought from and I urged him to understand and never ever again, under no circumstantial conditions, use it. There were flocks of that crap hanging in the washing room, were those towels not enough for him? He apologized and said he did nah a-know…

So I had to take the towel back to 13 Decemberists and wash it on Monday. On Wednesday, freshly washed and ironed, the blue squirrel was hanging as the pennant of champions for cleanly way of life in the corner of the locker room.

At a half-hour break, I was playing "goat" with the loaders, when the locker room door slammed after belated Ahmed. Murmuring some Tajik folklore tune, he bypassed the table covered with the sketchy line of bones.

Vanya jabbed me into the side and pointed with his chin into the corner, meaning "look at the prankster!" Ahmed meticulously, like the surgeon before operating on Lucy Mancini, was wiping his wet paws on the bushy tail of my squirrel. But, by the sidelong glance from under the squint of his olive eyelids, I figured it out that he knew it as well as I did that he was no fucking doctor.

"Ahmed," said I, and general attentive silence suspended all the motion in the locker room. "As I see, you fell for the creature, eh? I present it to you together with the towel."

"Oy, I forgotta!"

"Presents are not to be discussed. Take it, it's yours."

And I slammed 2 doubles at both ends of the bones line on the tabletop.

~ ~ ~