YUZ ALESHKOVSKY
373
flask. Without drinking we'd lose our merciless workers' struggle
against hostile nature.
And the idea came into my drunken but honorable head of how
to reconcile the dual harvesting of kolhoz and private crops by the
kolhozniks.
You wretches, I say, dig away at your own potatoes at night,
put them in sacks, mark them, and me and Fedya the shepherd will
whip them off the next day at lunch time to the school, so that the
fruit of the sinful earth can dry under a good roof. Then I'll make up
all the lost time so as not to betray the people or the motherland, since
I observe a monolithic unity between them even when they're drunk.
And, of course, you'll pay me and Fedya slightly for the work, be–
cause that law about work is all kaygeebee, but me, I'm in favor of
pay for your labor. And there wasn't the least anti-Soviet thing in
these words of mine, which I went and did. That is, I helped my
countrymen save the whole harvest , or else it would have rotted at
the root during that agricultural crisis.
And what's so terrible about my tearing myself apart, so to
speak, on two fronts, and then going home to lunch? I'd been drink–
ing for a week without eating, and my guts began rumbling at the
wheel. It was so bad I didn't make it home, I got dizzy, my whole be–
ing was pierced with pain, and I slammed the radiator right into a
lamp post which they'd taken the bulb out of to save energy.
If
they
hadn't taken it out, maybe I wouldn't have hit it. I'm an experienced
tractor driver.
Then that drunk, President Demyanov, called me a wrecker's
spawn and a chicken's asshole, and the brigade leader threatened to
deprive me of my night pay, my overtime, the medal for distinguished
service they'd promised me, my private garden, and also to take
away my lawful wife so that I wouldn't shame her by doing lousy
work on the side.
This is where my patience gave out, and I declaimed some un–
printable expressions and also some limericks in which our people
choicely brand our presidents and brigade leaders parasites and
swamp snakes.
In response, Demyanov and Koletvinov, who had quickly been
joined by the red-faced party committee, administered a series of
provocational blows to me, one of which landed on my already dis–
eased teeth and another below the belt.
So that's what you're like, I think, you don't give a damn about
the production front and the private peasant sector, the three of you
