It’s time to bang the rail, like they did in camp for mealtimes, and we haven’t done a damn bit of work yet.”
Nobody here banged a rail, but by some instinct he guessed—and after the second day Ruslan began to guess, too—that it was time for them to go home. By now he had collected three or four planks, of which he said, “Not much good, but they’ll do,” although in Ruslan’s opinion they were little different from the rejected planks, except that perhaps they smelled a little less moldy. The Shabby Man tied them together with a piece of string and carried them off under his arm. By this time of day the effect of the colorless liquid had worn off, his breath smelled less unpleasant and he strode away along the railroad ties quite briskly, as a prisoner should when returning from work. The only thing that aroused his escort’s displeasure was his idiotic singing.He always sang the same song, in an awful plaintive whine, which made Ruslan want to whine, too:
You’re a lucky fellow, comrade, you’ve nothing but the best
,
Your wife, you see, has two legs like a proper woman should
,
But as for me, why, my wife has one leg made of flesh
And the other one, dear comrade, is made of fucking wood! …
In the streets, thank God, he stopped this dreadful caterwauling; if he had done it in front of other people, Ruslan would have died with shame.
The planks were put into a shed. There the Shabby Man, humming to himself, sawed them, planed them, took them out one after another and inspected them in the light, then finally took them indoors—by now much thinner, paler in color and even giving off a pleasant smell. Ruslan escorted him into the house, stretched out in the doorway and lay so quietly that they forgot he was there. From Ruslan’s viewpoint, the thing that was being put together in Stiura’s room and that took up almost the whole of one wall simply looked like a huge box. The Shabby Man called it a “three-door sideboard-dresser.” Seated on a stool, he fitted the new planks up against the ones that were already in position, changed them around this way and that and asked Stiura whether she liked the way it looked “like this!” Stiura was ironing a tablecloth on the table, and answered after a brief glance around, or without looking at all:
“Yes, it’s fine. What do you mean ‘like this’?”
“You always say everything’s ‘fine,’ ” said the Shabby Man indignantly. “All you want is somewhere to put your junk.Can’t you see that this plank is upside down? It looks all wrong.”
“How can it be ‘upside down’?”
“Can’t you tell from the grain that the butt end of the wood is at the top? Whoever saw a tree growing with its butt end upward?”
Stiura glanced at it again, knitting her pale eyebrows as though agreeing with him, but she still made objections:
“O.K., so that’s how a tree grows. But a plank—what difference does it make which way up it stands?”
This gave him cause for more indignation:
“I know you can’t tell the difference, but the plank can. It remembers the way it grew when it was a tree, so it’ll dry up with misery and then the whole panel will warp.”
“Well, I suppose you must be right,” said Stiura.
Triumphantly he replaced the plank in the right position and showed Stiura how this was now “quite a different kettle of fish,” and he babbled on while the plank was shaved down until it fitted, then smeared with glue and held in place with clamps:
“Just you wait, Stiura, till we get to the varnishing—then you’ll see whether I’m a cabinetmaker or a fraud. You’ll see that I never use a pad, only the palm of my hand. You have to rub in the varnish with your skin; otherwise it’ll just be dead. Why, before the war I was the only person in the Pervomaisky District of Moscow who could make a dresser in the old Russian peasant style. Or a bureau with a secret drawer. When I’ve finished this, I’ll make you a bureau with
Nobody here banged a rail, but by some instinct he guessed—and after the second day Ruslan began to guess, too—that it was time for them to go home. By now he had collected three or four planks, of which he said, “Not much good, but they’ll do,” although in Ruslan’s opinion they were little different from the rejected planks, except that perhaps they smelled a little less moldy. The Shabby Man tied them together with a piece of string and carried them off under his arm. By this time of day the effect of the colorless liquid had worn off, his breath smelled less unpleasant and he strode away along the railroad ties quite briskly, as a prisoner should when returning from work. The only thing that aroused his escort’s displeasure was his idiotic singing.He always sang the same song, in an awful plaintive whine, which made Ruslan want to whine, too:
You’re a lucky fellow, comrade, you’ve nothing but the best
,
Your wife, you see, has two legs like a proper woman should
,
But as for me, why, my wife has one leg made of flesh
And the other one, dear comrade, is made of fucking wood! …
In the streets, thank God, he stopped this dreadful caterwauling; if he had done it in front of other people, Ruslan would have died with shame.
The planks were put into a shed. There the Shabby Man, humming to himself, sawed them, planed them, took them out one after another and inspected them in the light, then finally took them indoors—by now much thinner, paler in color and even giving off a pleasant smell. Ruslan escorted him into the house, stretched out in the doorway and lay so quietly that they forgot he was there. From Ruslan’s viewpoint, the thing that was being put together in Stiura’s room and that took up almost the whole of one wall simply looked like a huge box. The Shabby Man called it a “three-door sideboard-dresser.” Seated on a stool, he fitted the new planks up against the ones that were already in position, changed them around this way and that and asked Stiura whether she liked the way it looked “like this!” Stiura was ironing a tablecloth on the table, and answered after a brief glance around, or without looking at all:
“Yes, it’s fine. What do you mean ‘like this’?”
“You always say everything’s ‘fine,’ ” said the Shabby Man indignantly. “All you want is somewhere to put your junk.Can’t you see that this plank is upside down? It looks all wrong.”
“How can it be ‘upside down’?”
“Can’t you tell from the grain that the butt end of the wood is at the top? Whoever saw a tree growing with its butt end upward?”
Stiura glanced at it again, knitting her pale eyebrows as though agreeing with him, but she still made objections:
“O.K., so that’s how a tree grows. But a plank—what difference does it make which way up it stands?”
This gave him cause for more indignation:
“I know you can’t tell the difference, but the plank can. It remembers the way it grew when it was a tree, so it’ll dry up with misery and then the whole panel will warp.”
“Well, I suppose you must be right,” said Stiura.
Triumphantly he replaced the plank in the right position and showed Stiura how this was now “quite a different kettle of fish,” and he babbled on while the plank was shaved down until it fitted, then smeared with glue and held in place with clamps:
“Just you wait, Stiura, till we get to the varnishing—then you’ll see whether I’m a cabinetmaker or a fraud. You’ll see that I never use a pad, only the palm of my hand. You have to rub in the varnish with your skin; otherwise it’ll just be dead. Why, before the war I was the only person in the Pervomaisky District of Moscow who could make a dresser in the old Russian peasant style. Or a bureau with a secret drawer. When I’ve finished this, I’ll make you a bureau with
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