FICTION
Yuz Aleshkoysky
FROM
THE BOOK
OF
FINAL STATEMENTS
Malykin worked as a tractor driver harvesting potatoes. At noon he
went to lunch and after lunch, without the permission of the kolhoz directors,
began harvesting potatoes from the private plots of the kolhoz workers and, hav–
ing gotten drunk, broke the tractor.
The president of the kolhoz, Demyanov, and the brigade leader, Koletvi–
nov, rebuked himfor having obstructed work in the kolhozfields. In response to
this, Malykin began insulting them in unprintable words and then, leaving the
tractor out, went home.
After some time, Malykin, having armed himself with a pistol which he
kept at home illegally, came to the kolhoz field and shot at Demyanov but missed.
The second shot he aimed at Koletvinov, wounding him in the left buttock.
Defendant Malykin's Final Statement
Citizen Judges : Last year at the summons of the party
I
served
as vice president of the district committee for the election of the
peoples' judges, namely you. The population of our region generally
has a poor turnout at various elections, since it regards election days
as a kind of holiday and manages to get crocked on home brew early
in the morning. After this political merriment, you have to drag the
ballot box with the ballots along impassable mud, or through our
Tambov snow drifts, or sometimes in the chilling rain. As if dragging
the ballot box weren't enough, you come into some cocky citizen's
shack, and he starts carrying on like a downright dissident, saying he
won't vote, even if you cut him down on the spot, until the manage–
ment sends him an order for ten sheets of roofing iron. His roof, he
says , leaks from election to election and from May 1 to November 7.
But, he says, if someone in my family gives in and votes,
I
con–
sider the vote invalid, and I'll even put myoId lady's mouth upwards
under the stream from the ceiling and let her gather unto herself the
heavenly moisture .
There are some more decent sorts of blabberers, but each and
Editor's Note: Translated from the Russian by Priscilla Meyer.
