THE LEVERS
411
"All right, all right, keep quiet, or your whole soul will jump
out of you!" Tsipyshev got up from the table and went to the door–
way to Konoplev. "You wait a bit, Ivan, we'll wangle a pass to a
rest home for you from the district committee. You'll go to the ocean
for the air, at the same time you'll have a look at how people live
there, you'll learn a few things and tell us about it. You'll give us
all a bracing up."
Konoplev met him with an impatient motion of his hand as
though to say, "Sit, why are you coming over here, go away!" but
because of his coughing could not say a word. Tsipyshev returned
to the table.
"His wife
will
give him such a pass, he won't recognize
his
own
family afterward," said Shchukin. "She's a sharp one. Cough as
much as you like, smoke, drink, only don't take a step away from
her."
"Our air here is not worse than sea air," noted Piotr Kuz'mich
musingly. "Air we have! It used to be once, to cure a cough, you
went to a tar-works or tapped resin. A man would live three-four
weeks in a pine woods, would gather some of this resin from boxes
into barrels and without noticing it, all of a sudden, he's making
money and at the same time his breathing's easier. Do they buy this
resin anywhere nowadays? Somehow I haven't heard about it. They
made some kind of turpentine out of it and rosin for violinists. Now,
I bet, they play without rosin."
"They've substituted plastic for it. Take a look!" Shchukin
showed his comb. "It's also made out of plastic."
No one looked at Shchukin's comb.
"Our lamp is dying out altogether, boys." Tsipyshev raised
his
beard in the air.
From the doorway, Konoplev responded, "You'll die out with–
out air. Even a lamp needs air."
For the last time Konoplev rattled the dry broom and returned
to the table. His face was pale, his breathing difficult.
"I understand our situation this way," he said. "Until there's
trust in the most ordinary peasant in the kolkhoz, things won't work
right, we'll have no little grief ahead to swallow. They write in our
papers-a new man has appeared. True-he's appeared! The kol–
khoz has made over the peasant. True-it made him over. The
