The Excavation, 01

  On the thirtieth birthday of his own life Voshev was dismissed from the small mechanical plant where he had been earning him his livelihood. The dismissal letter read he was being removed from works due to increasing feebleness and reverie of him amid general pace of work.
  Voshev took his belongings into a bag at the apartment and walked outside in order to better understand his future in the open air. But the air was empty, still trees protectively keeping the heat within their leaves, dust boringly lying on desert street – the nature was in such state. Voshev didn’t know what destination he is willing to get attracted to and leaned at the end of the town on short fencing of some steading where familyless children would be trained to labor and public benefit. Further the town was over – there was only a pub for migrant and low-paid category workers, it having no yard as an establishment, and behind the pub a clay hillock reared up, and an old tree grew on it solely among bright weather. Voshev reached the pub and entered it towards sincerely human voices. Here were unrestrained people who had abandoned themselves to the oblivion of their mishaps, and Voshev felt more muffled and eased among them. He was present inside the pub until the very evening, when the breeze of changing weather blew; then Voshev came to open window to notice the nightfall, and saw the tree upon the clay hillock – it waved because of weather, its leaves turning up with secret shame. Somewhere, probably in sovtorg (Soviet trade) workers’ garden, a brass band has been pining; monotony of unrealized music going with the wind into the nature through around-ravine wasteland, since joy was rarely the band’s due but at the same time the band could render nothing equivalent to music and would spend their evenings without a move. Once the wind was over, the silence fell again, covered then by all the quieter darkness. Voshev set next to the window in order to observe tender darkness of the night, listen to various sad sounds and suffer with his heart enclosed within stiff stony bones.
— Hey, Pabular! – the words sounded in by now silent establishment. – Serve us couple of mugs – to pour into cavity!
  Voshev discovered long ago that people would always come to the pub in pairs, like a groom and a bride, and sometimes even in united wedding parties.
  This time the food worker didn’t serve the beer so two roofers, who came here, wiped their thirsty mouths with aprons.
— Ya bureaucrat of a man, ya shall be given orders by labor folks with their single finger while ya’re being so stuck up!
  But the food worker kept saving his energy from duty wear for his private life purposes and wouldn’t enter debates.
— The establishment is closed, citizens. Make yourself busy at home.
  Roofers took themselves each a salty bread ring from the saucer and went out. Voshev was alone in the pub.
— Citizen! You demanded only one glass but keep sitting here permanently! You paid for a drink, not for the premises!
  Voshev grabbed his bag and set off into the night. Inquiring skies shone above him with agonizing power of stars, but inside the town lights were already put out, and those who had such opportunity were now fast asleep after getting full with their dinners. Voshev walked upon ground grind down to the ravine and laid there with his stomach downwards in order to fall asleep and part with his own self. But for falling asleep you need mental serenity, your trust to life, forgiveness of experienced grieves while Voshev was lying in dry strain of awareness and didn’t know – whether he’s of any use in this world or it would do without him just as well? From an unidentified place there blew a wind for people not to suffocate, and with its feeble voice of doubt a suburban dog gave notice of its duty.
— The dog is bored, it keeps on living due to the fact of its birth only, just like me.
Voshev’s body went pale of tiredness, he felt cold to his eyelids and closed his warm eyes with them.
  The brewer was already cleaning up his establishment, already winds and grasses have been agitated with the sun, when Voshev unwillingly opened his eyes filled with wet energy. Once again he was to live and feed himself so he came to zavkom – plant trade union committee – to protect his unnecessary labor.
— Administration say you used to stand and think amid the manufacturing process, - he was told in the committee. – What were you thinking of, comrade Voshev?
— Of the life plan.
— The plant functions according to trust preset plan. You could elaborate on your private life plan in the club or at the recreation zone.
— I was thinking of the common life plan. I’m not afraid of my own life, though, it’s no mystery for me.
— Well, so what could you do?
— I could come up with something like happiness, so that the inner meaning would increase the manufacturing rates.
— Happiness will result from materialism, comrade Voshev, not from the inner meaning. We can’t stand up for you here, you are unconscientious as a person, and we don’t want to find ourselves at the tail of mass.
  Voshev was going to ask for some most simple work to earn enough to survive, for him only to think during his leisure time; but for such request to be applied you need to have a bit of respect toward others, while Voshev failed to see any feeling coming from them towards himself.
— You’re afraid of being at the tail – since it’s an extremity, so you got on the neck!
— You, Voshev, got extra hour from the government for your reverie – used to work eight hours, now seven, so you’d just keep on like that – in silence! If every each of us started contemplating, who’d keep on doing things?
— With no contemplation people keep doing things meaninglessly! – said Voshev thoughtfully.
  He left the committee without help. His hiking path lay amidst the summer, with houses and technical improvement under construction on sides – in those houses yet shelterless mass will mutely exist. Voshev’s body was indifferent to convenience, he could live in the open air without getting exhausted, at the same time pining with his mishap during satiety and days of rest at his former apartment. Once again he had to pass by the suburban pub, once again he looked at his night shelter – something conjoint with his life was left down there, and then Voshev found himself in a space, where in front of him there were only the horizon and sense of breeze to his bowed face.
  In one and a half kilometer there was a house of highway supervisor. Having been used to the emptiness, the supervisor was arguing with his wife loudly, the woman sitting next to open window with a child on her laps, replying to her husband with exclamations of scold; the child itself was pinching his shirt frill silently, though understanding but not saying anything.
  This patience of child encouraged Voshev, he saw that the mother and the father don’t feel the meaning of life and got angry while the child lives reproachlessly, growing up to his own torment. Now Voshev decided to strain his soul and not to spare his body for the work of thought in order to soon be back to highway supervisor’s house and tell the conscientious child the secret of life, that being forgotten by his parents over and over. ‘Their body’s now wandering mechanically, - Voshev observed the parents, - the essence remains unfelt by them’.
— Why don’t you feel the essence? – asked Voshev, addressing towards inside the window. – You have your child alive but keep arguing, while he is born to end up the world.
  The husband and the wife, with the fear of conscience, hidden behind the spite of their countenances, were looking at the witness.
— If you have nothing to exist peacefully with, you’d at least respect your child – it’ll pay all right.
— And what does it have to do with you? – the highway supervisor asked him with spiteful delicacy to his voice. – You walk – so keep walking, the road’d been paved for your like…
  Voshev just stood there amid the path, hesitating. The family was waiting for him to go, saving their spite in store.
— I would go but I have nowhere to. Is it far from here to some other town?
— Close, - the supervisor said, - if you don’t just stand here, the path’ll lead you there.
— And you do respect your child, - Voshev said. – When you’re dead, he’ll but remain.
  Having these words said, Voshev walked away from the supervisor’s house and there he took his sit on the edge of a ditch; but soon he felt doubt for his life and weakness of body since lacking the verity, he couldn’t keep laboring and stepping along the path without knowing precisely how the world is arranged and where you’re supposed to be willing to get to. Voshev, exhausted with contemplation, lay down in dusty passable grasses; it was hot, day-time breeze blew, roosters crying somewhere in the village – everything was giving itself to unrequited existence, only Voshev parted from it and hushed. Dead, fallen leaf was lying next to Voshev’s head, it was brought from distant tree with the breeze, and now this leaf was due to humility in the ground. Voshev picked the dried-off leaf up and hid it in secret compartment of his bag where he kept various objects of misfortune and obscurity. ‘You hadn’t had the meaning of life, - Voshev presumed with stinginess of sympathy, - stay here, I’ll find out what you lived and perished for. Since no one needs you and you lie about in the middle of world, I’ll keep and remember you’.
— Everything in the world lives and suffers without awareness, - said Voshev being next to the road and stood up to keep hiking, surrounded by universal patient existence. – As if someone or some of few ones extracted convinced sense out of us, taking it for their own use.
  He walked along the road until getting exhausted; Voshev would get exhausted easily every time his soul recalled it was ceasing to know the verity.
  But now the town appeared in the distance; with its cooperative bakeries smoking and evening sun lighting the dust over the buildings caused by population motion. That town began with a smith shop, where by the moment of Voshev passing-by a car was under repair because of trackless driving. Fat cripple was standing next to horse tethering rail, addressing to a smith:
— Misha, pour me a pinch of tobacco: or I’ll tear off the padlock again!
  The smith wouldn’t respond from under the car. Then the cripple pushed him with his crutch in his butt.
— Misha, you’d better put your work away – gimme what I need: or I’ll get you in the red!
  Voshev stopped next to the cripple because from inside of the town the formation of pioneer kids with tired music ahead of them started marching along the street.
— Didn’t I give you entire rouble yesterday? – the smith said. – Leave me alone at least for a week! If my patience’s over, I’ll just burn down your crutches!
— Burn then! – the cripple agreed. – Guys will deliver me back here on a cart – oh, I’ll tear the roof off your forge then!
  The smith got distracted with the view of kids and, growing kinder, poured some tobacco into the cripple’s pouch:
— Rob me, you locust!
  Voshev noticed the cripple had no legs – one at all, while instead of another one there was wooden attachment placed; the cripple would support himself with crutches and auxiliary strain of his right chopped-off leg wooden appendix. The cripple had no teeth at all, having ground them off with eating, but instead he developed enormous face and obese remainder of torso; his brown, stingily open eyes observed the world so strange to them with eagerness of deprivation, with languish of accumulated passion, and inside his mouth gums kept rubbing against each other, uttering mute thoughts of the footless.
  Pioneer orchestra, having passed by and being now in the distance, stroke up the tune of young march. By the smith shop, aware of how their future is important, barefoot girls were stepping precisely to the march; their weak virile-manner maturing bodies were dressed up in middy blouses, while upon their pensive considerate heads red berets were laid loosely, their legs covered with fluff of youth. Each girl, walking as to match common formation, was smiling due to the feeling of her importance and due to life gravity awareness, life still being necessary for continuity of march formation and intensity. Each of these pioneer girls was born at the time when dead horses would lie around the fields of social war, and not all of pioneers had skin by the hour of their origination since their mothers had nutrition only from their own bodies’ reserves; that’s why each pioneer girl had that expression to her face of earlier life sickness hardship, body bareness and expression beauty. But happiness of child friendship, future world fruition in the game of youth and decency of their strict freedom all imparted their faces with self-important joy, taking place of their beauty and domestic plumpness.
  Voshev was standing shyly before the eyes of these marching, yet unknown, agitated kids; he was ashamed that pioneers probably know and feel more than him because children is an epoch maturing within fresh body, while he, Voshev, is put by active and hasty youth back into silence of obscurity as a vain effort of life to reach its goal. So Voshev felt shame and wave of energy – he suddenly got a desire to discover general long-term meaning of life in order to live ahead of children, faster than their swarthy feet full of hard tenderness.
  Some pioneer girl left the lines running to a rye field adjoining the smith shop and picked up some plant or grass there. During this action of hers the little woman bent, showing a birthmark naked on her swelling body, and with ease of imperceptible force then disappeared by, leaving a regret in two onlookers – Voshev and the cripple. Voshev glimpsed at the cripple; that one now had his face swelled with dead-locked blood, emitted a groan and made a move with his hand in the depths of his pocket. Voshev was observing the mood of mighty cripple and he was glad that this freak of imperialism will never get socialistic kids. However the cripple watched the pioneer march until the very end so Voshev started to fear for the integrity and chastity of little folk.
— You’d better looked away with your eyes, - he said to the cripple. – You’d better smoke!
— March aside, bossy! – the footless replied.
  Voshev didn’t move.
— Didn’t you hear? – the cripple reminded. – Wanna get from me?!
— No, - said Voshev. – I was afraid that you would say your word on that girl or influence her in some way.
 With habitual suffering, the cripple bowed his big head to the ground.
— What would I say to a child, ya scunner. I look at children to keep some memory since I’ll die soon.
— You probably got mutilated at some capitalistic battle, - said Voshev quietly. – Although cripples sometimes also happen to be old men, I saw that.
  Mutilated man turned his eyes onto Voshev with bestiality wrath of superior mind in them; the cripple even kept silence at first because of his anger for the passer-by, then pronounced with slowness of embitterness:
— There are old men like that but there are no cripples like you.
— I haven’t been at real war, - said Voshev. – Otherwise I’d be not entire back from there as well.
— I can see you weren’t there: where such a fool as you are might be back from! When a man didn’t see a war he’s kinda woman who never had a baby – lives like an idiot. ‘Cause you are all transparent through your shell!
— Eh!.. – said the smith sadly. – I look at kids and at the same time feel I’m about to shout out ‘Viva May the First!’
  The tune of pioneers had its rest and now stroke up a march of movement. Voshev kept on his languishing and came to this town to live in it.
  Until the very evening Voshev was walking around the town silently, as if expecting for the world to become widely-known. However he was still unclear in the world and could feel, within in the darkness of his body, calm place where there was nothing and at the same time nothing prevented anything from appearing. As a person who lived on default, Voshev kept walking by people, feeling accruing strength of grieving mind and secluding himself all the more within the narrowness of his sorrow.
  Only now he saw the middle of the town and its facilities under construction. Up on the scaffolds night electricity was now on but field light of silence and withering scent of slumber had approached here from the common space and remained undisturbed in the air. Apart from the nature, in the bright spot of electricity, people were working eagerly, erecting brick fencings, carrying burdens of load in board-and-plank nightmare of scaffolds. For quite a while now Voshev had been watching the construction of a tower unknown to him; he saw the workers were shifting uniformly without abrupt impulses but something had come to the construction for it to be completed.
— Don’t people wane in sensation of their life, when buildings wax in their number? – Voshev daren’t believe. – The man sets a building and gets upset. Who lives there then? – Voshev kept doubting on the go.
  He walked away from the middle of the town toward its end. While he was moving there, unhabituated night fell; only water and wind inhabited this darkness and the nature, and only birds managed to sing the sadness of this great substance since they flew above and it was easier for them.
  Voshev got in a wasteland and found warm pit for a bed; as he walked down to this earthen depression, he put his bag, where he collected every obscurity for memory and revenge to, under his head, grew sad and felt asleep for that matter. But someone entered the wasteland with a scythe in his hands and started to cut grass holts that had been growing here from time immemorial.
  By the midnight the mower reached Voshev and decided for him to stand up and leave the square.
— What do you want with me! – Voshev replied reluctantly. – What square, it’s but an odd space.
— Well, from now on it’s going to become a square, stone works are to be started here shortly. Come look at this place in the morning for it’ll soon be sealed forever under facilities.
— Where am I supposed to be?
— Feel free to accomplish your sleep in the barracks. Go there and sleep until the morning, and in the morning you’ll be clear.
  Voshev left, following the mower’s story, and shortly he saw board-and-plank shed at former kitchen garden. Inside the shed there were seventeen to twenty persons asleep, and half dimmed lamp was lighting up unconscious human faces. All the sleepers were thin as dead men, they had this narrow space between skin and bones all occupied with tendons, and from how thick these tendons were you could tell how much blood they had to let through during the strain of labor. Calicos of their shirts let observe, in precise contours, slow refreshing work of heart – it was beating near, in the darkness of every sleeper’s drained body. Voshev peered into the face of the nearest sleeper – wondering, if it expresses mute happiness of satisfied individuality. But the sleeper was lying dead, his eyes hidden deeply and sadly, cooled legs stretching helplessly in old worker pants. Save breathing, no sound could be heard in the barracks, no one had any dreams or walked down the memory lane, - every one existed with no surplus of life, and during slumber only man-protecting heart was staying alive. Voshev felt the cold of tiredness and lied down amid the warmth of two bodies of sleeping workmen. He fell asleep, unfamiliar to these people with their eyes closed and glad to have a shelter near them – and so he slept, not feeling the verity, until bright morning.



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