Was this item on the program?
No, it was an example of a surge of inspiration—an impromptu one. However, I liked it.
~ ~ ~
Free of the burden, I walked up Khreshchatyk, preparations for the November demonstration were underway there—a brass band played loudly, and troops from the Kyiv garrison marched.
Endless steps had already been laid along the sidewalk for spectators. Three, all in all, but they were wide enough for the citizens to stand upon them in a happy crowd and wave the balloons in their hands, en masse, to demonstrate their approval and collective joy.
(You never know, my neighbor from the landing said she once glimpsed herself in the evening news, holding a balloon. Actually, she never went there with anything but a flag. A small one. 'Peace to the world.' But the jacket was definitely hers. Pink. It used to be red. But then at the dry-cleaner’s, as she came to collect it back, they told her it looked even better this way. It suited her natural blush so perfectly…)
-.-
There were two days left until the upcoming event, and the steps were still empty. I walked along the middle one, my heels loudly clicking on the thick wooden planks—a man in his prime, in a red shirt under a gray vest—and the sun winked cheerfully at me through the branches of the mighty Kyiv chestnut trees overhead.
The path to the metro and the train station stretched before me, and I was once again ready for trenches, walls, and partitions.
People certainly need celebrations, and brass bands too, to let themselves move through life at a more joyous pace…
~ ~ ~
When Panchenko—without considering for a split second whether he might crack someone's skull—threw a four-section cast-iron radiator through a fourth-floor window, seemingly for no apparent reason, his prank actually had a pretty sound basis.
With this homespun imitation of a bolt from the blue, he clearly signaled to everyone concerned that the gangster veteran's balls were still quite hairy, and under his cap of eight-wedge converged under the central rivet (a favorite style of gangsters in the late fifties), he was still quite a wild man.
The signal was addressed primarily to the foreman who drew up his work orders, as well as to the chief mechanic, who accepted and signed those orders for subsequent payroll, so that Panchenko would have the wherewithal to start a new, honest life. From another clean slate. And it was about time, after all, the man had waded into his well over fifty.
And he couldn't care less that after my second trip to Romny, I was no longer in line for the position of the visitant to hospitalized colleagues on behalf of the CAT-615 trade union committee.
-.-
This, initially pretty chaotic position, I managed to elevate to a level of impeccable perfection. Gone were the days of ashamedly drooping of ears when one of the loaders or carpenters, returning to work after a couple of days parked at the railway hospital, would voice loud reproaches about being ignored, passed over with the due consolation, while in the masonry team there are no omitted workers.
But what does this have to do with me? The foremen of the folks outside our team don't report to me!
And a radical solution was found to the problem: after each workday, I would call the hospital reception desk from the payphone bolted to the station building: did one of ours, by any chance, come to you? The workers there, by the way, quickly got into the swing of things and, without any further clarification like 'who are your 'ours'?', were clearly passing on information about the presence of patients from CAT-615. Even about abortions, which had nothing to do with me, since the hospital sent the patients home that same day to recover.
