368
PARTISAN REVIEW
everyone of them tries to wangle some hard-to-get item or certificate
out of the kolhoz. They exploit the fact that we have a competition
for who can get out the biggest vote. They know there'll be some
pickings from the regional committee - various forms of acknowl–
edgement and cushy work assignments .
What do I mean by this? That I used to crawl to the election
point dead drunk, dragging the ballot box on my back, and that the
goddamn voters try to heave all sorts of crap into it. It gets heavy.
Sometimes they shove broken glass in there, because a lot of glass
gets busted during a drunk, and you can't find any new glass in the
whole region. "All the glass went into the Olympics," they say, "ce–
ment and steel too; wait 'til we recover from building stadiums and
restaurants for jumpers and runners. Better you should have mud
on your face here, than us in the international arena as the luminary
of the whole world in the struggle for health and physical culture of
the workers."
And actually, Citizen Judges, if it weren't for me in these elec–
tions of yours, maybe you wouldn't be judges, and there would be
absolutely no one to judge me besides my own incorruptible con–
sCience.
Behind the very election center an attack on me was effected by
unknown individuals in the form of blows and insults to my holy duty
as vice president. The unknown individuals had stretched over their
faces torn women's stockings like in a French film with Belmondo in
the lead role. They beat me on the head and on the cheeks, that is,
on my puss, with a black shoe from the same film, saying cynically,
"Take this, blondie . . .." Then followed a swear word which I can
only utter behind doors closed to the public.
But I saved the box with the votes and various garbage at the
risk of my life, although the ballots did get wet, and we quickly sub–
stituted clean ones for them, put the signatures in ourselves , and so
on. It's in capitalist countries that a ballot can disappear at the whim
of the corrupt politicians, but with us ballots don't disappear. To each
spoiled one we answer with five new ones . How do you like that!
So because of all this, Citizen Judges, I count on your party
mercy to carefully examine my case which I consider a crime not
against the laws of our motherland but against her enemies - Presi–
dent Demyanov and brigade leader Koletvinov . I rt'quest a break for
the satisfaction of needs, that is, number one and number two, in
view of the damage done to my intestines by poor nutrition during
(he preliminary investigation and of the blows administered to my
