He assumed his sullen expression.
‘My skin is what! They no like it. Say bad heart.’
‘Who says bad heart?’
‘At the medical. They make me do medical. Look at my papers, say no good — bad heart. Is all lies, those papers! Nothing wrong with my heart. Is my skin!’
‘Wait a minute. What trouble with your heart?’
‘I have a fever as a kid — is nothing! Some doctor in Anadyr says later maybe I get bad heart. I don’t get a bad heart. Nobody says so, nobody in Chukotka! Here they say it! Not my heart. My skin, eh — Chukchee skin. No good!’
The heavy-truck chief breathed loudly through his nostrils.
‘We’ll soon see about that!’ he said.
He picked up the phone and called Bukarovsky.
Kolya lit himself a cigarette and waited. Nothing would be coming out of Bukarovsky. All the road manager could ask for was an urgent hospital check. Which Komarova would hold up for two weeks. In two weeks he would no longer be here.
He listened to the shouting match, and the phone slammed down. ‘Okay, all fixed! He’s getting you a hospital check — urgent. Komarova will arrange it herself. You’ll have the long hauls, I promise!’
‘Did I ask for them? Did I ask anything? Is my skin!’
‘Kolya, come on! It’s a fuck-up with your papers. Everywhere there are fuck-ups! You’re wanted here. Everybody wants you!’ He came and put his arm round the Chukchee and squeezed him. ‘And didn’t I hear you’ve got a little bit somewhere who also wants you? Somewhere out at a collective? Eh? Eh?’
‘Is my business,’ the Chukchee said, sullenly.
‘Sure it is, Kolya. Sure. Shagging your ears off, you dog. What? Tearing down there every night in a bobik!’
‘Yes, one thing more,’ he said. ‘No bobik. I come in, give up bobik. No-good driver, no bobik. I have to walk here now.’
‘What!’ Yura reached for the phone again. ‘Liova? Liova, what’s this −’
More minutes of shouting before the phone slammed down.
‘You’ve got a bobik. He said you never even asked him.’
‘Why ask? If I’m no good? No favours.’
‘Kolya, Kolya.’ The little man squeezed him again. ‘Nobody says that. You’re the best! Don’t get so hot. Okay, for a few days you do short runs, until your check-up. After that, I promise you — Bilibino, Baranikha, Pevek, everywhere! Go on, off now. And someone will run you back. My drivers don’t walk!’
So that was settled: his medical condition established, hospital check-up in motion, a bobik once more at his disposal, and short runs a certainty.
He started on them at once.
He managed a trip to Ambarchik in the week and brought back a fish for Vassili, and also one run each to Provodnoye and Anyuysk. He carried the rest of the car on them.
The same week he started the night assembly.
‘She is making stroganina,’ Vassili told him on Friday. ‘You want to come tomorrow?’
‘Vassili, what I am getting is better than stroganina.’
‘Sure. I told her. Your eyes are hanging out.’
‘It’s not the only thing.’
‘I believe you. You’re overdoing it. She says you need oil and if you can’t come she’ll send you stroganina.’
‘I’ll be very glad. Also for the oil.’
‘So what work did you manage with the bobik?’
‘A bit, not much.’
‘You’ll find the underside can be a bastard. Unless you have a pit. Everything fits from below.’
‘I expect I’ll find it.’
He found the underside a tremendous bastard. He took sacking and a bit of carpet with him but still his back froze as he lay under the chassis.
As Vassili had said, the thing was a toy, but an unbelievably heavy toy, clumsy, rugged, all of it unexpectedly difficult. He had brought the block and tackle just for the engine. He found he was using it for everything.
To fit the front suspension the completed frame, immediately fast-frozen to the ground, had to be lifted. The block and tackle lifted it. To fit the other end he had to attach wheels to the front, drag the thing out like a wheelbarrow, and turn and back in again, to get the rear in position. The block and tackle lifted that, too. He was improvising all the time, and swearing all the time; yet everything fitted — laboriously, painfully; but locking together like a meccano set.
He slept all day Saturday and Sunday and worked through both nights, muffled to the eyebrows, the kerosene stove pushing out feeble warmth. But when he drove back Monday morning the chassis was on wheels, the steering in, the transmission ready, even the exhaust loosely attached.
‘Look, you can’t continue like this,’ she told him. It was five in the morning. She was in a dressing gown, having heard him come in. ‘You can’t finish it before you go up, anyway. In two or three days you will be going up. Even today I could be given a date. And you need to be thoroughly rested for it.’
‘Yes,’ he said, dully. He was truly desperately tired.
‘Today you won’t accept all jobs. They’ll understand — your medical coming up … this Evenk girl. And stay near the depot. My office could phone in at any time.’
He fell into bed and slept like a log for two hours, until she woke him with coffee. Then they left together, still in the dark, Komarova scouting the street before signalling him out in his bobik.
The call did not come that day, but the next. It came when he was out on a local run, and he returned to find Liova signalling him over.
‘Kolya, you want a light number with the medical centre?’
‘What is it?’
‘They need somebody tomorrow morning — a three-day job. Komarova has a sprained ankle and can’t drive out of town. She has a few trips, maybe including the collective. And since you know the place,’ he said, grinning, ‘it’s yours if you want it.’
‘Okay, I don’t mind,’ he said.
He went to his own apartment after work, to pick up his ID and some clothing out of the wardrobe. He had worn very little of it; had been in the apartment very little the past few days.
He was taking a shower when Anna Antonovna looked in, and when he came out she was still waiting, ready for a chat. And within ten minutes of her departure Lydia Yakovlevna also looked in, alerted by the old lady, he had no doubt. The girl was furiously resentful.
He had someone at the collective, didn’t he? Everyone was saying he had a girl there. It was very insulting for her. People knew she was his girl now; she was braving Alexei’s future wrath, risking her reputation. And for what — for him to go with a filthy little Evenk whore? Come on, the truth now. He had an Evenk girl, didn’t he?
Not an Evenk girl, he said. Just Evenk friends. They were good people. He had always had Evenk friends.
Oh, yes? And Chukchee ones, too? He had been seen! Going off with high and mighty Komarova, to that Chukchee place. And what had that haughty bitch said about her? Had she been spreading any lies?
What lies? Nothing. Why should she? Everyone knew what a lovely person Lydia Yakovlevna was. Everyone spoke well of her, of her charm, her warmth, as he did himself.
Oh, did he? Well, let him prove it. He was a different person since he’d come back from Bilibino with all that money. Go on, let him spend some of it, a good meal, she’d dress up for the occasion, and they’d share a full night together.