a secret drawer. I was famous, Stiura! Two furniture factories competed for me; each one wanted me to go there and pass on my experience to the young apprentices. I went and had a look, but there wasn’t a scrap of handwork for me todo at either of them. Know what they were doing? They used hardly any solid hardwood, just took trashy old planks straight off the circular saw and glued them together. And they used compressed wood-shavings, too. All I was supposed to do was to make a few drawings for them and select plywood for the veneers. No, thank you, not for me. My sort of work’s different. My work, if you want to know, was shown at the National Handcrafts Exhibition; they were even going to send it abroad, but then they changed their minds—’cause of politics. Know where they put my dresser? In the council chamber of the District Soviet building, right under Stalin’s portrait. There’s fame for you!”
The next plank proved even harder to fit, so after trying it first one way and then another, he gave up and took a long smoke. Inhaling greedily, which made his prominent Adam’s apple slide up and down his unshaven neck, he squinted at the tip of the faintly crackling cigarette and his face was suddenly warmed by a smile.
“There’s only one thing I regret,” he said, “and that is that I didn’t make Stalin’s coffin, the dear old monster.”
“Yes,” sighed Stiura, slicing bread, “I guess you’d have made a good job of it.”
“Uh-huh!” he chuckled enthusiastically. “Just imagine getting an official government order for
that
job! There’d have been at least three colonels—no, three generals—at my disposal to get the materials. ‘O.K.,’ I’d have told ’em, ‘I want an unlimited quantity of mahogany by tomorrow. And the same amount of Honduras cedar. Ye-e-es … Don’t forget the teak, either, eight planks of it, and some rosewood.’ And I’d have lined the cover with boxwood.… Or maybe dogwood. No, sandalwood’s better; it has a strong scent, so the old bastard could go on sniffing it for all eternity. The smellof sandalwood can make you tipsy—even without a bottle. Just so as you stay asleep, old pal, and don’t wake up! The best thing you ever did was sleep. People love you much more now you’re asleep.”
He stared at some vague point in the distance as though looking right through the wall, and his smile was gradually transformed into a fixed mask covering a face that had turned white with anger:
“You did more terrible things than two Hitlers could have dreamed up. God, the fires that must be waiting for you in the next world. You timed it well, old man, cleared off just in time.…”
Pain and nostalgia were in the man’s voice, and Ruslan shared the same feelings in his own way: he, too, pined for a bygone life and longed to get back to it. But he had the patience to wait, without whining in that miserable fashion. Stiura didn’t like the way the Shabby Man whined either:
“See what your silly mooning does for you! What’s the point of all that sort of talk? It’s just hot air; you can’t bring back the past. We have to go on living somehow!”
“As soon as I’ve put this dresser together, I’ll forget it all, as if I’d cut it out of my mind.”
“The dresser can wait. You’d do better to put your own life together. You’re just frittering the time away. Or are you trying to burn yourself up on purpose? After years without touching a drop, you’ve turned into a soak.”
“That’s because I’m making up for all that lost drinking time, Stiura.”
“Well, I wish you’d go and make up for that sort of lost time somewhere else. Think I’d hold on to you? No, I’ll even pay the fare for you to go back to Moscow. Maybe you’ll come to your senses a bit quicker once you get there.”
“But how can I leave my work, Stiura?”
“O.K., I agree—since you’ve started it, you might as well finish it.”
“That’s not the point. If I
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