Ольга Палагина – Stories from Lyubavino. Chronicle of an extraordinary Incident (страница 3)
Here, Mikhalych paused and poured everyone another round. They clinked their glasses in unison, took their drinks, and followed them with a bite to eat.
“So, our bright spark was suffering then, warming up his machine for an hour, hour and a half every morning. He kept racking his brains, trying to figure out a scheme…”
He made a theatrical pause, allowing his listeners to fully absorb the anticipation.
“So, our local genius, our regular Kulibin, sees this – steam, hot steam, pouring out from a manhole cover… So-o-o, he just stands there, thinking, ‘What a brilliant solution! I’ll just park the belly of my excavator over that hot steam, and it’ll be absolutely perfect!’ Without a second thought, he drives right on over it, and then, his brilliant mind is already racing ahead, and he’s rejoicing: ‘What bliss! Come Monday, I’ll get to sleep in a whole hour longer!’”
Mikhalych rolled his eyes theatrically, imitating Zhenya’s blissful expression.
“And with a clear conscience and a sense of duty accomplished, he proudly carried his ‘bright little head’ home for the weekend, peace in his heart.”
The men, anticipating the punchline, exchanged merry glances and chuckled gleefully.
“So, we come in on Monday… The place is packed! The entire construction site is gathered! Over those two days, the excavator had turned into a literal iceberg! Can you even imagine?!.. A meter-thick layer of ice!!! A METER!!! There’s still a photo hanging in the site office to this day. It took us a whole week to thaw the thing out…”
The entire crew, groaning and snickering, their eyes wet with laughter, raised their glasses in unison to Zhenya – to his health and to his ever-so-“bright little head.”
Need I tell you, dear reader, that each of these men, in their work lives – which were meager on bonuses but rich in adventure – had their own share of absurd tales, and certainly more than one. But Zhenya stood out from the rest with a particular talent: thanks to his unconventional way of thinking, he consistently managed to get himself into situations that were… well, let us say, a touch more ludicrous than anyone else’s.
The next morning, so as not to cause any trouble for the site supervisor (and he was known to be a good sort), they put in a bit of work according to the schedule. After lunch, however, they returned to the previous day’s business, which had been left half-finished, and managed to pull out the entire cable, right to the end. Their haul was over fifty meters of a hefty, fat copper cable, for which they got a truly substantial sum. They gave the site supervisor a generous cut for his understanding of the situation and, naturally, stocked up on alcohol and snacks for another feast, to duly give thanks once more to the higher powers for their such benevolence towards them, mere mortals!
Once again, the air was filled with heated debates, discussions of burning issues, work stories, and army tall tales.
This time, Mikhalych, with great relish and fascinating detail, told the story of Lyosha the tractor driver, who, according to him, wasn’t just any tractor driver, but a genuine treasure hunter and a man blessed by Lady Luck.
“So, here’s how it went,” began Mikhalych, squinting and deliberately drawing out the pause to build suspense. “Lyosha was plowing a field for an acquaintance of his… An ordinary, everyday job, right? But that day, everything went, as they say, through a ve-ery well-known place…” Mikhalych gave a sly smirk, sweeping his assessing gaze over his audience. “Right at the edge of the field, his plow suddenly hit something – like it was a concrete slab. Lyosha, of course, started with a few choice curses, thinking he’d hit another damned boulder. But when he took a closer look, he was stunned: sticking out of the ground was a whole clump of fused copper plates, like the scaled skin of some giant serpent turned inside out. Turns out, it wasn’t just rusty junk, but the real deal – ancient coins, ‘scales’ they call them, from pre-Petrine times, I think! Well, can you imagine?! The uproar that caused – you wouldn’t believe it! Our local archaeologists were drooling – clearly, they’d been dreaming of such a find their whole lives, and then here’s our Lyosha, a tractor driver from the back of beyond, who goes and stumbles right into history! TV crews showed up with their cameras, newspapermen swarmed him like locusts, and our modest Lyosha was a local celebrity for a whole week. Right, Lyosha?” Mikhalych winked at the man of the hour, his eyes twinkling with mischief. “The find, of course, was promptly scooped up by the ‘right people,’ but the field’s owner still rewarded Lyosha – with cash. Not a gold ingot, mind you, but it was enough for a couple of crates of Zhiguli beer…”
Mikhalych proposed another toast, and the men, listening in rapt attention, could only shake their heads in wonder, glancing at Lyosha with a mixture of admiration and mild envy.
It must be noted, our dear reader, that Lyosha was, in general, a man upon whom life had smiled with particular favor. If he got into a car accident, he would emerge without a single scratch, although the car itself would be damaged beyond repair. He would frequently find money lying right on the road – and in bills, no less, and not small ones. He would regularly stumble upon forgotten troves of scrap metal – abundant remnants of metal structures left in the fields and rivers of Russia – which he would then sell for a handsome sum and use the proceeds to spoil his wife.
In short, Lyosha was lucky: one day he’d find a treasure, the next he’d win the lottery. The men, listening to Mikhalych, just kept shaking their heads: “Well, some people have all the luck!” – and with a certain degree of awe, they kept glancing in the direction of Lyosha, that born lucky charm.
“Yeees…” Mikhalych drew out the word philosophically, bringing the point home, “it seems if our Lyosha were sent to the Sahara, he’d manage to find a diamond vein there, and stumble upon an oil field for good measure!”
The company burst into unanimous guffaws, while Lyosha, casting a modest glance downward, merely smirked:
“Well, it happens…”
And so Mikhalych, holding forth on the benevolence of the heavenly powers as manifested in the discovery of the copper cable, came to a “sober” conclusion that such a stroke of luck was none other than the doing of Lyosha, their fortunate talisman. For, as soon as he had joined their crew, good fortune itself had simply floated right into their hands. Mikhalych raised a shot to Lyosha and his luck, which seemed to have been stashed in his pocket since the very day he was born. The men unanimously joined in, knocked back their last shots, and, content with both themselves and the presence of such a lucky individual in their ranks, began to leisurely gather their things and head home. Tomorrow was a new workday, the free-for-the-taking cable had been fully extracted, the celebration was over, and the usual work routine awaited them in the morning.
Mikhalych and Lyosha proudly carried home crumpled five-thousand-ruble notes to their wives – an ironclad justification for two evenings missed by the family hearth. The remaining members of the “whoo-hoo crew,” as yet unburdened by family ties, proudly carried their earnings home to themselves – without any need for excuses to anyone.
And so, the morning of the fateful day arrived. There was no sign of trouble – until the site foreman, flushed and agitated, burst in to tell Mikhalych that the inspectors were coming tomorrow and the crew was hopelessly behind schedule, all thanks to their irresponsible deviation from the plan over the last two days!
“What are we going to do?!” wailed Vasily Sergeich – for that was the foreman’s name – for the entire office to hear. “We’re this far behind! And you’re still here with your cables and your drunken orgies!”
Ninochka, the secretary, passing by, shot them a sidelong glance. Her mind operated on a unique and mysterious wavelength. She interpreted the word “cables” in the only way she found intelligible. But her brain failed to connect the image of Foreman Mikhalych with an orgy of drunken
“Mikhalych, we’re utterly screwed tomorrow if we don’t at least start digging for those pipes…”
“Ah, don’t you worry…” he replied calmly, scratching his stomach.
“Don’t worry?! What do you mean, ‘don’t worry’? ! What kind of ‘don’t worry’ is that?!” Vasily Sergeich was on the verge of hysterics.
“It’s time to take a crap, and we haven’t even eaten!..” Mikhalych grumbled, for the hundredth time repeating his favorite saying about falling behind schedule. “Stop your trembling, Sergeich… The lads and I will put our backs into it now… We’ll sort this out properly, the way adults do. How does it go with them, over the hill? ‘Do or die…’ And how is it with us? ‘Die, but get it done…’ That’s the whole difference, Sergeich! And who are we? We’re Russian! Tha-a-a-at’s it!..” Jabbing a finger toward the sky and proudly lifting his chin, he strode off with a purposeful step toward his crew.