one had a tiny squeaker in its back to make a sound when squeezed. The pair of motorcyclists, who somehow managed to overcome the deep scorching sand in the road on that day, advised me to but the monkey, but I preferred the girl, as I had been planning all previous Sundays, in a bright dress—also of rubber—to her knees.
I could buy a present from Department Store in the city, of course, but all the toys there were made of plastic. Besides, I wanted it to be a gift from that enchanted khutta with its cool shade, kinda sanctuary amid the summer heat…
~ ~ ~
Although I am not sure if any system would save me without adding our team to it. This isn't meant to say that the team members surrounded each other with caring attention, tenderness and moral support. Like hell, they would! In our team, as anywhere else, they were all too glad to have a good laugh at your expense. And everyone had a family and kids of their own, as an outlet for their tender care. Except for ruddy, pug-nosed, Peter Kyrpa, handled Kyrpanos, but eventually, he also got lassoed, and corralled, and broken in as a family man by Raya, from the team of plasterers. And yet, from 8 am to 5 pm our team, even with each one distracted by their personal problems and concerns, became one family. For all the hole-picking jokes in each other's qualities, you wouldn't become a victim of a detrimental practical joke like piercing your brains by stench of smoldering wool, or any other injury-prone idiocy.
Did bricklayers use taboo words in ladies' presence? Both yes and no. I have never heard a four-letter word addressed to any woman on our team. Never. But when the crane operator puts a pallet of bricks on your foot, you report it to the whole world—and very loudly too—without paying much attention if there were ladies around.
Were women on a bricklayer team using taboo words? Both no and yes. At the moment charged with trauma threat or loss of life, they’d rather shout "Oy! Mamma!" or issue shrill incoherent shrieks. Whereas at the intervals between shoveling mortar into the boxes for bricklayers, or rigging the brick pallets with the prickly steel cables, Katerina could casually share the folklore song:
"Fuck yourself, you fucking dumbos,you're more stupid than they said,No way to marry your daughter?Go fuck her in my stead!.."
I have to admit, that mute replaying this particular obstreperous folklore piece in the brain convolutions of my inner self sometimes worked as a painkilling palliative.
But, after all, is the foul language the only thing to frown at in the world? The bricklayer Lyoubov Andreyevna once complained to the head engineer, who accidentally dropped in at the construction site, about the insulting words of our foreman Mykola Khizhnyak, by which he identified all women indiscriminately: "Inside-out insoles!" Up to now, I haven't got the slightest idea what it could possibly mean, but she somehow got hurt. Probably, because she was the most beautiful woman on our team, only sad at times.
It is sad for a woman to know she's beautiful and, at the same time, not to know what to do with her beauty and just watch how it flows away in vain.
She had a husband five years younger than her. Before their marriage, he was walking around with a knife hidden in the top of his high boot, and she made of him an exemplary family man and a safe member of society. But she still remained sad, especially in winter frosts, when the mortar in the boxes would develop a centimeter thick ice crust while climbing thru the air to the seizure line. "Oy, Mamma! How my poor little hands did get numb with the cold!"
And that parasite Sehryoga would readily respond from the other end of the line, "Serves you good! Your mummy-daddy kept telling 'study well, sweetheart, so as to become an accountant!' And what was your answer? 'No! The shovel is my one and only love forever!' So shut up now and love it until you get dark blue!"
"Parasite!"
Anna Andreyevna was not as beautiful as Lyoubov Andreyevna, but she was kind, especially after the break for the midday meal. She, as most of the team, lived in At-Seven-Winds and went home for the midday break. There, she would accompany her meal with a couple of shots and return to the workplace softened and kindhearted. Her only drawback that she was hunting my brick hammer. The moment my vigilance got slacken, she'd snatch my brick hammer and bury it in the wall covering with mortar. Most bricklayers cut bricks with their trowels but I, for righteousness sake, did it with the hammer…
Lydda's and Vitta's husbands were SMP-615 employees as well. They were locksmiths at the production building in the base grounds, under the supervision of the chief mechanic. As any locksmiths, they, naturally, were drinking. And the following morning in the bricklayers' trailer you had for one half-hour to listen to curses to those busters who even were not anywhere around.
Although the curses from Lydda were a treat to hear, she sang them out like a song, with Vitta's backing in the background.
Vitta herself was not eloquent. When we were finishing off the uppermost part of the walls on the 110-apartment block, for the final bridging with roof slabs, she was next to me in the line of the bricklayers, and, when I jumped out over the wall, all she could say after disappearing me was: "Sehrguey! Where to?"
The brick courses in my part of the seizure needed jointing so I jumped outside onto the concrete awning over a balcony on the fifth floor. But she had no idea about that awning! Now, a man dives from the roof of a five-story building and all she's up to saying is: "Sehrguey! Where to?" Here's, in a nutshell, the female logic, and knowledge of physics – down, of course, I've jumped! Where else?.
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