the most final
concluding work

And in February I ran into a huger penalty… Lekha Kuzko was going then to the city of Korosten to bring electric guitars for the KEMZ Palace of Culture, and I wanted to go with him. That morning I climbed up to the Management Office and asked to let me go, but they told me to wait for the CEO of the Repair Shop Floor.

When Lebedev's black greatcoat showed up in the Mechanical Shop Floor aisle, I went out to meet him. However, at so early an hour, his back was not straightened up to the proper degree or else he'd kept it overly upright the day before but all he managed to mumble at the moment was "no".

Then I saw red and just left, because I hadn't changed yet into my spetzovka. Yet, as it turned out, Lekha was already gone to Korosten.

In short, I got "absence from work" for that day and the CEO of the Repair Shop Floor gave out the order about transferring me to a lower-paid position as a workman at the Smithy Shop Floor for the extent of three months.

"You'd better use the wood to make the coffins for yourself

Because the penal battalions are going to attack…"

In the Smithy Shop Floor, instead of the remorseless wail of machine-tools, there thundered hydraulic hammers sending tremor thru the asphalt floor and the everlasting fire roared violently bursting in the furnaces where black iron slugs got heated to the scarlet whiteness. The howling of hefty fans thru the grates of their rounded boxes was also a mighty part in the score.

Such fans had a meter wide sweep of their blades and were it to catch a reckless hand… Well, that's the reason for those muzzle-gratings…

In a word, you couldn't find a better place for improving your vocal skills. Shout at the top of your lungs and no one would ever hear you. Even I couldn't hear myself but still kept yelling:

"Oh, Mommy,

Oh, Mommy-Mommy blues,

Oh, Mommy blues…"

But my yelling exercises went on only while my partner Borya was learning how much we were to load on that day.

Borya was a penal workman, like me, for violation of labor discipline, yet he was native there, a smith from the Smithy Floor. A blonde over thirty years old, he was not very tall or bulky, you'd hardly think he was a smith. And, in his case, the discipline was violated by being in a state of intoxication at his workplace.

Our job was plain and invariable – loading of steel slugs into the furnaces.

Those slugs waited for us in the left wing of the Smithy Shop Floor building. They were sizable pieces of axes from railway car or locomotive wheel pairs cut up by the gas cutters during the day shift.

The ex-axis pieces were, sure enough, too heavy to be hoisted by a couple of workmen, penalized or not, that’s why there was a ground-operated bridge crane in the wing. I grabbed hold of a piece with the grip donned on the winch hook, and Borya hit the buttons in the hand console hanging from the winch in the bridge crane and forwarded the slug to the trolley where I directed and held in place the descending grip until it opened and let the piece go.

That way we stacked several layers of the slugs, depending on the length of the cut pieces (the longer, the heavier) because the following part of our job was to push the trolley along the narrow gauge track of rails.

We pushed it into the main building, onto the turntable there which looked like a sewer hatch but swerving in its place. Applying our bodies to an end of the loaded trolley, we turned it 90 degrees to the left and rolled on further, towards the furnace.

The most demanding point in the process of slugs transportation was to start a still-standing trolley. That's where you had to exert your sinews in earnest, and when the trolley began to slowly roll on then, Ha! bitch, you're, ours!.

The vent of each furnace was furnished with a wide iron shelf outside. Turning his face away from the fiery heat pouring out the vent, Borya tossed a half-meter-wide tube-roller on the shelf. Then we put onto the roller the oblong spade with raised side edges, which prevented the slugs from rolling off the spade.

That spade had an enormous, five-meter-long, handle made not of iron but of steel with the cross-section of six by four centimeters. The handle ended with the crossbeam for two workmen to grab its halves from each side of the handle.

But first, I held the end alone so that Borya could use the nearby jib crane to hoist a slug from the trolley into the spade, shielding his face from the fire in the furnace with his hunched-up shoulder. Then he turned the crane over back to the trolley, came up to me, and each of us grabbed his half of the crossbeam.

"Hup!"

And we, rubbing shoulders, went three-four wide strides, accelerating to jogging, towards the flaming hell in the furnace. The run ended with a synchronous jump up and sharp push of the crossbeam down with the aggregated weight of our bodies so that the springy handle would transmit the impact to the spade and toss the slug up and out.

On landing after the jump, your face would turn, on its own accord, away from the scorching heat of fire raging in the furnace. That's why Borya worked in the smith's protective tarp apron, and I was finishing off my once-beloved red sweater.

With our necks defensively pulled in, we strode back pulling the shovel after us, and Borya went to hoist the next slug onto it.

"Hither-thither…To and fro…

Ooh!. How good it feels!.."

Then we drove the emptied trolley back to fetch a new batch of slugs… Inside the furnace, they also had to be stacked in layers and rows starting from the deepest, otherwise, they just wouldn't fit in. The more of them loaded inside, the shorter the runs with the shovel…

I didn’t immediately mastered the synchronous jumping, and Borya cursed me with inaudible, behind the rumble and roar, taboo words because the slug wrongly dropped across a layer would fucking fuck your ass when stacking in the following ones from the bunch.

Borya was overly terse. I had more communication with the fan (singing in a duo) than with him. Yet, one time Borya shouted into my ear, "We've done forty tons today!" The red flames from the furnace reflected in the teeth bared in his pleased smile and the whites of his eyes. Some labor victory!.

Empty worthless bullshit. It's just because we did it.

"You load sixteen tons and what do you get?

Another day older and deeper in debt…"

We worked two shifts – the second and the third, leaving the first one to the gas cutters for cutting axes to pieces.

On the payday I could hardly believe my eyes – I had earned 120 rubles a month!.

"…transfer to a lower-paid position…"

" Ha-ha, Mr. Lebedev!

Ha-ha! Mr. Heath!

'Cause I'm a workman!

Yea! Yea! Yea!.."

And to the smiths, the cashier was forking out two-three unopened packs of money in bank wrapping plus stray notes. Over 300 rubles!

Yes, Borya, you'd better cut out boozing at your workplace.

" Hither-thither…To and fro…

Ooh!… How good it feels!.."

And Olga again wanted something else… Once, when I was throwing the slugs into her furnace, she started pressing, "Tell it... what!.. you're doing... now…"

"I'm…making!.. love…to you!.."

"No!.. tell it…the other!.. way…"

"Which…wa..way?!.."

"You..ou.. know!.. which…"

And I started to moan it out, "I'm…fuc…king…you!.."

"Ah!"

"You'm…fu… cki…ng…I…"

"Oh, my!.."

The dark kitchen. The baby's asleep. And what could it understand anyway…

Another night she called me from the darkness, "Hit me!"

"You crazy?"

"No, I'm not! Hit me!"

Well, at last, she made me lightly slap her cheek.

"Not just so! Hit hard!"

Knowing she'd not get off my back in any way, I meted out a more sonorous slap. She stretched on her back sobbing.

"O, babe! Did it hurt?"

No answer, just quiet sobs. And I had to comfort her in the most effective, as far as I know, way. And it was good…

Then I was lying on my back thinking. Why would she? And so persistently… A slap in the face as the punishment for misconduct?. Some whoever…before me?..without me?..instead of?.

End May the term of my penal exile to the Smithy Shop Floor was over, and that same day I got the draft notice order to report for induction on May 27…

And again there was a feast in our khutta yard because in the Settlement traditions seeing-off to the army was almost as great a regale as a wedding.

They all drank and sang, only without The Orpheuses' accompaniment, and Mother was carrying around the table Lenochka in her arms, wrapped in a swaddle over her loose baby shirt. Clasping her Grandma's gown collar with her tiny fingers, she looked around with her pink lips open in surprise…

The next morning they saw me to the two-story House of the Deaf by the bridge in the railway embankment over Peace Avenue. There were lots of draftees in the caps on their bare-of-hair heads in the thick crowd of seers-off.

Tolik Arkhipenko kept assuring everyone that I would be just fine but nobody listened, my brother smoked in wistful consideration of the skin-headed draftees, Father concentrated on frowning deeply, Mother comforting Olga who sobbed burying her face in my chest…

The draftees were commanded to board two big buses which started to move but, after turning into Peace Avenue, stopped – someone was missing. We went out to the roadside. The crowd of seers-off rushed across Peace Avenue. Olga ran up ahead of all.

She was kissing me with her soft wet lips and pressing to my chest her small soft breasts without a bra under the light summer blouse wet from her tears.

The belated draftee was brought in a car, and we were told to board again. The motor started up. The door slammed and the bus finally, uncompromisingly, and irretrievably moved away carrying us to where the army would make of me a real man and defender of our Soviet Homeland.

^~ ~^~~^~