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LEVERSbyALEKSANDR YASHIN 1956 |
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LEVERSbyALEKSANDR YASHIN 1956 |
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In the evening in the kolkhoz office, as always, the kerosene lamp was burning and the battery-powered radio was crackling. They were broadcasting marches, but you could barely hear them. There were four men sitting around the square pine table, talking. The tobacco smoke was so thick that the flame in the lantern could hardly breathe, just like during a large, general meeting. It seemed that the radio was crackling because of the vast quantities of smoke in the hut. A large, clay pot for cigarette butts stood on the table. It was already full. From time to time, a flame flared up from the butts in the pot. When that happened, the bearded cattle-breader Tsipyshev would cover the ashtray with a splinter of table glass. And every time he did this, someone would repeat the same joke:
The truth is only good for meetings, holidays, criticism, and self-criticism. But for taking care of business, forget it, it doesn't belong.
"You'll burn your beard and won't be able to scare the cows anymore.
And Tsipyshev invariable answered:
"If they stop being afraid, maybe they'll increase their milk production."
And everyone laughed.
They shook their cigarette ash onto the floor and windowsills. It was only the butts that made it into the pot.
They sat for a long time, talking unhurriedly, about this and that,--frankly, with no caution--like good, old comrades.
Through the semi-darkness on the wooden walls you could make out haphazardly arranged posters and slogans, a list of the kolkhoz members noting their work-days, a scrap of an old wall newspaper, and an empty blackboard divided into two parts by a white line: on one half, written in chalk, was the word "black"; on the other half, the word "red".
"You know, they brought sugar to the village store the other day!" said storeroom keeper Shchukin, the youngest of the conversationalists, in whose attire was reflected the city school: he had on a shirt and tie, and sticking out of the chest pocket of his jacket were a ballpoint pen and a comb.
"What, did somebody inform on them?" craftily asked the third of the men at the table. He was missing his left arm, plump, pudgy, and wore a threadbare raincoat draped over his shoulders as if he had just come from the front.
"Nobody informed on anybody. Mikola sent his wife to my house with two kilograms. He said we'll settle up later."
"And you took it?"
"I took it. You expect me to spend my whole life without sugar? You would've taken it, too."
"But Mikola won't be sending any to you, Pyotr Kuzmich," said Tsipyshev, laughing into his beard, screwing up his eyes and glancing sideways at the one-armed man. "He's mad at you. But Seryoga's his buddy," he said, turning to Shchukin. "Seryoga didn't fire him, even though he took over his job at the warehouse."
Until recently, Sergei Shchukin had been a regular kolkhoz worker. When he joined the Party a month ago, he began to argue that all the leadership posts in the kolkhoz should be held by Communists and that it would simply be unseemly if they didn't give him greater authority. Everyone agreed with him. They remembered that the kolkhoz storeroom keeper had several times been reprimanded for theft. So they put Shchukin in charge of the storeroom. At the next general meeting, no one objected to this change. Shchukin bought himself a ballpoint pen and started wearing a tie. His predecessor was sent to work in the village store. It was him they were talking about.
"I took it," said Shchukin after some thought. But all the same, where's the truth? Where does the sugar go? Where's the soap? Where's everything?" After these words, he took the comb out of his pocket and began to straighten his thick, young, unruly hair.
Then the fourth conversationalist spoke up:
"And why do you suddenly need the truth, storeroom keeper?"
This fourth man was middle-aged, but already turning grey, pale, and apparently not very healthy. He was smoking continuously--more than the others--and coughing a great deal. When he stretched his hand to the pot to toss away the cigarette butt that was burning his fingers, you could see his large, thick nails, and under the nails, earth. Not dirt, but earth. This was the commander of the field-crop cultivation brigade, Ivan Konoplev. He had a reputation as an honest, but severe muzhik. He spoke rarely, but caustically. However, no one took offense at his sharp words, sensing no hostility in them. And Shchukin was not offended.
But the one-armed man, whom everyone called by his name and patronymic--Pyotr Kuzmich--took exception:
"The truth is necessary. We base everything on it. But, guys, there's something I don't understand. What the heck is going on in the raion? (raion=district center--trans.) They tell us, "Make plans from below...let the kolkhoz decide what it makes sense to plant and not plant." But then they don't approve our plan. This is the third time they've returned it to us for correction. I guess they took all the kolkhoz plans, balanced them up, and it turns out that they don't jibe with the raion plan. And the raion plan comes from above. Just can't figure it out. It's like when a scythe hits a rock--sparks fly, but nothing gets done. Again there's nothing left of our plan. That's the truth for you! They don't trust us."
"At the raion what they do is appoint the truth to honorary presidums so it won't be insulted and will keep its mouth shut," said the pale Konoplev as he tossed a cigarette butt into the pot.
Shchukin took the floor again:
"The truth is only good for meetings, holidays, criticism, and self-criticism. But for taking care of business, forget it, it doesn't belong. That's how it is, right?"
A cautious and awkward look suddenly flashed on the face of Tsipyshev. Apparently, he ceased to enjoy this frank conversation.
"Okay, cut wood, but watch where your chips fly," he sharply noted to Shchukin. Then he immediately changed his tone, as if regretting his rudeness. "The truth, brother, is the truth. If they put you up on an honorary presidium, you'd lose touch with the land, too," he said and laughed, blowing through his moustache and beard.
Tsipyshev's beard grew not only on his chin, but also on his cheeks and behind his ears. It flowed into his thick, reddish eyebrows and hung over his eyes. When Tsipyshev laughed, his entire face laughed--his entire beard--and his eyes twinkled somewhere in the depths of all that hair.
"I was at the raion Party committee the other day to see," continued Pytor Kuzmich, naming the first secretary of the raion committee. "'What are you doing to us', I said. 'The kolkhoz members won't agree to change the plan a third time. It's insulting. Now we're supposed to grow flax. We should put aside the best land for flax. We've already done experiments with rabbits and grassland farming. We've wasted so many people for nothing. The grain disappeared, which isn't good for the government. Give us,' I told him, 'ten or twenty hectares to start with. Then ten, then a thousand. We'll get used to it, we'll ask for more ourselves. Give it to us gradually.'
"'No,' he says, 'all at once. We must,' he says, 'overfulfill the plan. We must actively introduce the new method.'
"'Of course, actively,' I say. 'But this is the north; we don't have so many people, and the land has its own demands. You have to persuade the people. Lenin pointed out that you have to actively persuade.' "And he says, 'It's your job to persuade them! We persuaded you earlier when we organized the kolkhozes. And now you persuade others. Carry out the Party line. You,' he says, 'are now our levers in the village.'
"He's talking and spreads out his hands. Apparently everything's not going well for him either. But he has no flexibility. He doesn't understand what the Party wants. He's afraid to understand."
"A tense atmosphere!" said Shchukin as if to explain Pytor Kuzmich's words, and he again reached for his comb.
"And things won't go well. He's not going to keep his job here long," said Tsipyshev. "He's very strict. He doesn't listen to people. Decides everything himself. For him, that's all people are--levers. And as I figure it, guys, this is bureaucracy. Let's say we go to him at a meeting. We talk like a human being, heart to heart. But, no, he can't do it without being strict; he has to do everything strictly. He'll look down on everyone from above and growl out, 'Let's begin, comrades! Everyone present?' Well, our heart drops to our shoes. We sit and wait for a dressing-down. If you talk straight...if something's not right, the people will move mountains for you if you give them one straight, honest word. But, no, he can't do that."
"He thinks that the Party will lose authority if he talks with the people like a human being, simply. He knows that the kolkhoz gets 100 grams per work-day. But he keeps saying the same thing over and over again: the cost of a work-day rises every year and the standard of living is improving. The cows disappeared from our kolkhoz; but what did he say? 'With every year, our kolkhoz animal husbandry is being strengthened.' He should at least say we're not living too well because of this and that...but we will live better.' Just say it, and people will take to their jobs more willingly."
"Tense atmosphere!" Shchukin again offered as a conclusion for Pyotr Kuzmich's hot words.
Ivan Konoplev, finished another cigarette and became agitated, bursting to say something, apparently biting and caustic, but a severe asthmatic cough again seized him, and he left the table. At the threshold of the room, Konoplev picked up the broom and spent a long time spitting into the corner. Cattle-breeder Tsipyshev sympathetically said to him:
"You changed your tobacco again, didn't you? I told you a long time ago, smoke only makhorka and it'll be easier for you."
Clearing his throat somewhat, but still bending over, Konoplev raised his head and hoarsely said:
"Our raion bosses have forgotten how to talk to people, they're ashamed to. They understand everything, but they're afraid to make the leap. There's your persuasion. They rely on 'levers'. They see boarded up houses in the village, but they don't want to talk about it out loud. Their only concern is that all the figures in the reports are round. But what about the people? What are they left with?" And Konoplev again was racked with an agonizing cough.
"Enough, enough! Keep quiet or your whole soul will jump out!" Tsipyshev stood up from the table and went to Konoplev at the threshold. "Listen, Ivan, we'll get you a vacation pass from the raion committee. You'll go to the seaside, take in the air, and at the same time you can look around, see how people are living there. You'll come back and tell us all about it. It'll buck up everyone's spirits."
Konoplev waved impatiently with his arm as if to say, "Sit down. What are you coming here for? Go away." But he was unable to actually say anything because of his cough. Tsipyshev returned to the table.
"Our air is no worse than the air at the seaside," Pytor Kuzmich noted dreamily. "What air we have! It used to be that if you wanted to cure yourself from a cough you'd take a walk to the tar-works, or go hunting for resin. You'd live in the pine forest for three or four weeks, pour resin from buckets into barrels, and, see, you'd earn some money and your breathing would be easier. But who buys this resin nowadays? No one that I've heard of. They used to make turpentine out of it and rosin for violinists. Nowadays they play without rosin."
"It's been replaced with plastic. Look!" Shchukin showed his comb. "This is also made from plastic."
No one paid any attention to Shchukin's comb.
"Our lantern's gonna go out completely, fellows," said Tsipyshev as he raised his beard.
From the threshold, Konoplev responded:
"You'll die without air. Lanterns need air, too."
Konoplev gave one final rattle to the dry broom and returned to the table. His face was pale, his breathing labored.
"This is the way I understand things," he said. "As long as you don't have faith in the ordinary kolkhoz muzhik, you won't have any genuine order and we'll come to more than a little grief. They like to write: 'A new man has appeared.' And it's true, he has appeared! The kolkhoz has transformed the peasant. Yes, transformed. The muzhik isn't what he used to be. And that's good! So you have to trust this muzhik. He's got brains, too."
"The wolf couldn't eat him," Tsipyshev slyly affirmed.
"See! We not only have to teach, but we have to listen, too. But instead everything comes down from above...from above. They send plans down from above, chairmen from above, productivity figures from above. There's no time for persuasion, and no need; it's easier that way. All they do is send down and recommend. They've cut back on cultural work. Clubs and reading rooms only figure in the accounting--there's no one to give lectures and reports. All we have left are campaigns for various preparations and harvests--five-day campaigns, ten-day campaigns, month-long campaigns."
Konoplev paused for a breath, and Pyotr Kuzmich seized the opportunity to take the floor:
"It's like this: the wedge won't go in, so you blame the the wood-- it's rotten. Just try and disagree with the raion. They'll give you advice, make recommendations. But it isn't advice; it's an order. If you don't fulfill it, it means you've let go of the reins. If the kolkhoz workers don't agree, it's a political failure."
"Why failure?!" Konoplev practically screamed. "Do they really think we're not fighting for the same cause? That we have different interests?"
"Well, the raion committee doesn't get pats on the head, either. They have demands put on them, too."
Konoplev became impassioned. "Right next to us, in the Gruzdikhinsky raion, things are different. Shurin went there the other day. He says that there the chairmen don't go weak in the knees when the bosses in the raion summon them. There's not that fear. The secretary comes to the kolkhoz without ceremony; he talks with people, not with paper."
On the shelf in the front corner, the radio became louder. It continued to crackle and hiss like a fire-extinguisher spitting out foam. But now through the crackle and hiss emerged not music, but hesitant speech, stressing the "O"s. They were reading letters from the virgin lands. Some young fellow was talking about his work successes in the Altai. The conversationalists listened:
"They call us Moskovites, even though we're from different cities. We get along well, no one gets insulted. We had an amazing harvest last year. Wheat as thick as reeds. Even the old-timers can't remember such grain. There weren't enough places to store the grain. It was hard..."
The young man read a message to his mother. He obviously was shy in front of the microphone.
"You see," said Pyotr Kuzmich, "they have problems even there. There's no place to store the grain." He poked his arm in the direction of the radio, and the canvas raincoat slipped from his left shoulder, the side without an arm.
"Not everyone can go to the Altai," muttered Konoplev. As he started coughing again, he stood up from the table, grabbed the pot of cigarette butts with both hands, and went to the threshold. There he kicked the broom away with his foot and dumped the butts out into the corner.
The men then discovered that during their entire conversation, another person was present.
From behind the wide Russian stove came the commanding shout of an old woman:
"Where are you dumping that, Wheezy? You're not the one who has to clean up. I just washed the floor, and you got it all mucked up again."
Caught unawares, the men winced and exchanged glances.
"You're still here, Marfa? Why?"
"Why? I'm watching you! You'll burn down the office and I'm the one they'll drag into court. The broom's dry, there'll be a spark, and God know what next."
"Go home, Marfa."
"When it's time to go, I'll go."
The friends abruptly broke off their conversation, as if they felt themselves somehow guilty toward one another.
For a moment they heard the street, the sound of the wind, and the far-off voice of a young woman singing.
Sergei Shchukin turned off the radio, cutting off the voices of the virgin lands campaigners.
The men returned to tearing off bits of newspaper and rolling up cigarettes. They were quiet for a long time, just smoking. When they again began throwing out short phrases, they were empty phrases, about nothing really. About the weather--rotten weather, the kind that makes your bones ache. About newspapers--they come in different types; some, you use to roll up a cigarette, but as soon as you light it you can't even smell the tobacco. Then about yesterday--they were supposed to go somewhere, but didn't go. About tomorrow--they should wake up early; the wife's been promising to make pancakes forever. Empty phrases. But they spoke them in muffled tones, quietly, and even then, they kept glancing around and behind the stove as if hidden there was not Marfa, the office maid, but some unknown outsider of whom they had to be careful. Tsipyshev became serious, no longer speaking or smiling, only asking three times, to no one in particular:
"What's keeping that schoolteacher? We should begin the Party meeting."
Only Shchukin behaved a little strangely. He couldn't sit still, and the stool kept squeaking under him. His eyes--young, mischievous, sly--flashed and looked at everyone challengingly. It was as if Shchukin saw something which no one else saw and, because of this, he felt superior to the others. Finally, unable to restrain himself, he burst out into laughter.
"Oh, that damned woman gave us quite a scare!" said Shchukin, laughing.
Pytor Kuzmich and Konoplev looked at each other and also broke out laughing.
"Yeah, that she-devil! She jumps out bellowing from behind the stove. And I'm thinking..." Ivan Konoplev with difficulty finished the sentence: "I'm thinking he's come, you know, to denounce us."
"We got scared like little kids in someone else's pea-patch."
The laughter diffused the tension and returned everyone to their normal senses.
"And what are we afraid of, guys?" thoughtfully and a little sadly Pytor Kuzmich suddenly pronounced. "We're afraid of ourselves!"
But Tsipyshev did not smile. As if not noticing that Konoplev and Pyotr Kuzmich were cracking up, his stern gaze fell only on Shchukin.
"You're too young to laugh about this! If you had been in our shoes...."
But Shchukin wouldn't back down. Besides, Pyotr Kuzmich and Konoplev were obviously on his side. They were winking animatedly at him as they kept laughing.
"How we were afraid!" said Konoplev.
Marfa was silent behind the stove.
Two young men of Komsomol age entered the office.
"What do you want?" said Tsipyshev, turning his entire body toward them.
"We want to listen to the radio."
"You can't. Our Party meeting is about to start."
"But where can we go? There's a bunch of us out here."
"Go wherever you want."
Saying this, Tsipyshev looked at his friends, as if wanting to see if they approved of his behavior.
Pytor Kuzmich did not approve.
"Here's the thing, fellows," he said, turning to the youths. "We'll get through the meeting quickly; we'll talk a little, and then you can take over the place."
Finally, schoolteacher Akulina Semyonovna arrived--young, pint-sized, practically a girl. She wearily undid her jacket, took the grey woolen scarf from her head, and stuck herself in the corner, under the wooden shelf holding the radio. With her arrival, Tsipyshev became a little more animated. But this animation expressed itself in his asking the teacher in an excessively strict, commanding tone:
"What is this, Akulina Semyonovna, making everyone wait?"
Akulina Semyonovna looked guility at Tsipyshev, Pyotr Kuzmich, then at the pot with cigarette butts, at the lamp, and lowered her eyes.
"I was delayed at school. Pytor Kuzmich," she said, turning to the one-armed man, "I'd like to decide something with you before the meeting. There's no wood at the school."
"Business later," Tsipyshev interrupted. "Right now we have to conduct our meeting. The raion committee long ago demanded that we hold two meetings a month, and we can't make a deal to enter only one into the minutes. How would we explain ourselves?"
At this, Ivan Konoplev wheezed, and Tsipyshev, as if again feeling awkward and unsure of himself, looked around, seeming to ask forgiveness for his words. But everyone remained silent. Then Tsipyshev's voice completely took on a firmness and command. What happened? His beard became smoother, longer. His eyes grew severe--the lively spark which had flashed in them during the friendly conversation disappeared. He turned to the maid Marfa with a tone of command:
"You, Marfa, leave! We're conducting a Party meeting here. We're going to talk."
And Marfa felt the change which had occurred. She did not disobey; she did not object.
"Talk, talk. You think I don't understand? I'm going."
When the door had quietly closed behind Marfa, Tsipyshev arose and pronounced the very same words the secretary of the raion Party committee pronounced in similar circumstances. He even used the same dry, strict, smooth-talking voice that the raion committee secretary used at the beginning of meetings:
"Let's begin, comrades! Everyone present?"
He said this and it was as if the switch on some miraculous mechanism clicked on: everything in the hut was transformed to the point of being unrecognizable--people, things, even, it seemed, the air.
Shchukin and Konoplev silently moved back away from the table. Pyotr Kuzmich remained seated where he was, but he took the canvas raincoat that was half falling off his shoulders and put it to the side, on a bench.. Schoolteacher Akulina Semyonovna settled deeper into the corner under the radio. Their faces all became concentrated, tense, and bored, like people prepared for something which had long ago become familiar, but which was still solemn and important. Everything earthly and natural disappeared; the activity was carried over into a different world, a complex situation, not entirely familiar or understandable to simple, sincere people.
"Everyone present?" repeated Tsipyshev, looking around at those gathered, as if there were at least twenty of them.
But, as we know, there were only five. Cattle-breeder Stepan Tsipyshev, it turns out, was secretary of the Party organization. He had been elected secretary not long ago on the recommendation of the raion committee. Flattered by this, Tsipyshev tried as best he could to fulfill his role, and, being an unsophisticated person, he unintentionally began to imitate the "raion boss". True, he sometimes spoke ironically of himself, but he fulfilled every directive from above with such fervor and so literally, that sometimes it couldn't have been worse if he were poking a stick in the spokes. The Party zonal instructor, who was present for Tsipyshev's election, joked that Comrade Tsipyshev had many virtues and a few shortcomings, the main shortcoming being his beard. Tsipyshev took this joke seriously, like an order, and decided that his beard and all other hair must be removed from his face. But to date he had not found an appropriate moment to do so.
Pyotr Kuzmich Kurdyavtsev, the one-armed man, turned out to be the chairman of the kolkhoz. Ivan Konoplev, as we have already noted, was the commander of the field-crop cultivation brigade. Sergei Shchukin was the storeroom keeper. After Shchukin had been made storeroom keeper and his predecessor transferred to the village store, there were no longer any ordinary kolkhoz workers in the Party organization. Akulina Semyonova was from the intelligentsia, even though she was one of their own, a fellow villager.
"I call upon the first speaker, our kolkhoz director, Comrade Pytor Kuzmich."
Pytro Kuzmich Kurdyavtsev rose.
Tsipyshev sat down.
The Party meeting had begun.
And everything that the members of the Party organization, including the secretary himself, had earlier been discussing with such frankness and insight--denouncing red tape, bureacracy, and pedantry in business and in speeches--began here, too.
"Comrades!" said the chairman of the kolkhoz. "The raion Party committee and the raion executive committee have not ratified our production plan. I think that we overlooked some things and got sloppy. This is not the way we should do things. We did not carry out work to explain things to the masses, to persuade them. And we have to persuade people, comrades. We are the Party's levers in the kolkhoz village. This was pointed out to us by the raion Party committee and the raion executive committee."
With careful, stealthy movements of her hands, trying not to disturb anyone, the teacher again tied up her hair with her scarf. Her face could not be seen, and no one could say what she was thinking at that moment.
Shchukin was again smiling. He pulled the ever-present pen out of his pocket and turned it around in his hands. Then he took out his comb, looked through it at the lamp, quietly blew on its teeth, then put it back in his pocket. He did not begin to comb his hair. His face spread wider and wider, and in his eyes flashed a crafty, mocking twinkle. It seemed as if Shchukin might burst out laughing again. But he didn't. He only poked Konoplev in the side and whispered to him:
"You see what's happened? Can you recognize him now?"
Konoplev also smiled. But his smile was crooked, unfriendly.
"Fine. Don't interrupt him. That's the way it has to be. Pytor Kuzmich is doing his job now. The way they do it in the raion, so do we. Like priest, like parish.
"And the truth?"
"The truth takes care of itself. The truth will get to us soon enough. It will thunder out."
"We'll get to the point where we can't take it anymore."
"We'll get there."
Konoplev stretched himself to the table, pulled the clay pot to himself, and smoked and smoked. He decided not to cough; he restrained himself, even though everything was boiling and whistling in his chest..
Pytor Kuzmich Kudryatsev did not speak for long. The point of his speech came down to this: the fighting efficiency of the Party organization will be cast into doubt in the eyes of the raion unless the kolkhoz's plan for crop rotation is immediately and unconditionally corrected in accordance to the directives of the raion Party committee and raion executive committee. All the subsequent speakers agreed with this. Anything else was impossible.
The speakers were Akulinka Semyonovna, Shchukin, and Konoplev. There was no difference of opinion, just as there was none during that friendly conversation before the Party meeting. True, this agreement and unanimity expressed itself in a somewhat different, perhaps contradictory way.
Tsipyshev was satisfied with the unity of the Communists and spoke on the second agenda item himself. The zonal secretary of the raion Party committee has brought attention to the fact that the kolkhoz is deficient in its political-educational work. A written report on the relevant facts has been made to the first secretary of the raion Party committee. "Comrades, we don't give encouragement to the best among us," said Tsipyshev in connection with this topic, "and we don't punish the laggards. There is no competition. Look at our red-and-black board. It's a clean slate. We must lead the masses, comrades! Here's what I think: We should establish a prize and give it to one or two workers in each division. And then we fine someone else, just so that both sides of the slate look right. The raion Party committee will approve."
The meeting unanimously decreed to single out five workers for a prize, and three for a fine. There was discussion only on the subject of choosing in which divisions they should find workers for reward, and in which they should find those for punishment.
They didn't manage to actually sign any resolutions--Marfa came back to clean up and lock the office. Pytor Kuzmich suggested that they entrust drafting of the resolutions to the secretary.
"You know how to write it, he whispered," satisfied that the meeting had come to an end: "'In the conditions of the surging rise of labor activity, spreading throughout the entire kolkhoz....'"
"'Throughout the entire nation,'" suggested Shchukin.
They got ready to go home quickly, and it seemed that each of them had a feeling of fulfilled duty and, at the same time, an awkwardness, a dissatisfaction with themselves. Boots were already clattering on the porch, and the young people appeared in the door.
"Just in time," answered Pytor Kuzmich. "Just in time. Come in, kids, all of you."
The cool wind from the street burst into the hut. The flame in the lantern came to life. Stools were moved, windows opened.
"You and your smoke!" the girls complained.
With the appearance of the young people, Akulina Semyonova stood up straight and tossed the scarf from her head. These were people her own age, with whom she felt more free. Sergei Shchukin began walking in circles. He tightened his tie and gave all his attention to the girls.
The switched-on radio unexpectedly sounded out loud and clear. They were broadcasting materials about the preparation for the Twentieth Party Congress. Everyone listened to this report.
Becoming kinder before he left, Pytor Kuzmich told Akulina Semyovna:
"You'll get your wood. Don't worry. I'll give the orders."
Tsipyshev went up to Sergei Shchukin and pressed his arm just above the elbow:
"You gonna stay here?"
"I'm staying."
"Well, keep an eye out, just so that nothing...."
When chairman of the kolkhoz Kurdyavtsev and field crop leader Ivan Konoplev walked along the dark, dirty street away from the office, they renewed their conversation about life, the daily grind, and work--the very same conversation they were holding before the meeting.
"Now that's what the Twentieth Congress will say!" they repeated. And again these were honest, sincere people--people, not levers.
THE END
Translated by Eric Konkol
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