“Has the lecturer arrived yet?” I asked the girl on the spur of the moment, as if it were the lecture I was interested in.
“Yes, Comrade Bochua has already arrived,” she softly replied, looking up at me with her large round eyes, “but he’s gone off to have a look at the old fortress.”
“My dear fellow, there’s no need to worry about the corn, the stalks are as sturdy as saplings!” the chairman began thundering in Abkhazian. “As sturdy as saplings, I tell you. But what I wanted to remind you about was the fertilizer.… Yes, they’ve sent us some, but not enough.… If that idiotic commission should come around, just bring them over. We’ve got plenty to show for ourselves.… May I dig up my father’s bones if we don’t manage to fulfill the plan, but my dear Andrey Sharlovich, as for extra land, we simply don’t have any.… What fallow lands?! We haven’t enough fallow lands to spread a handkerchief on. Our agronomist is sitting right here, he’ll tell you — if he ever wakes up, that is,” the chairman added playfully, now glancing over at the individual who was dozing.
But no sooner had he finished his sentence than the latter began gurgling something angrily in reply — before even opening his eyes, as it seemed to me. From what he said, I gathered that he had no intention of rooting up his tea plantations for any crazy commissioners. And having made his point, he broke off as precipitously as he had begun, closing his eyes in midsentence.
The chairman kept his hand cupped firmly over the receiver while the agronomist was talking. But now as he noticed that I was watching him, he frowned and barked out in Abkhazian to the girclass="underline"
“Find out where that blockhead is from and what he wants!”
Returning once again to the receiver, he suddenly adopted the tone of a mildly reproachful host:
“You’ve been neglecting us, Andrey Sharlovich. It doesn’t seem right. And it’s not just me who’s asking for you, but the people — our kolkhoz workers.”
I was somewhat taken aback by the word blockhead. Since the chairman had obviously concluded that I wasn’t a native Abkhazian, I had no choice but to play along.
The chairman was still talking on the telephone. By now he had come full circle and was back on the subject of fertilizer:
“About a hundred tons of superphosphate. Please, Andrey Sharlovich, I beseech you as a brother.”
I watched the girl as she worked. She was adding up something and every once in a while she would move the counters of her abacus as if pensively toying with a strand of large wooden beads.
Finally the chairman hung up the receiver and I walked up to him.
“Hello, comrade. You’re from the State lumber yards, right?” he asked confidently as he extended his hand.
“I’m from the newspaper,” I answered.
“Welcome,” he said, growing more alert and apparently shaking my hand somewhat harder than he had intended.
“Here are my credentials,” I said, reaching into my pocket.
“Oh, that won’t be necessary,” he replied with a peremptory wave of the hand. “One can always tell an honest man by his face,” he had the impudence to add, looking me straight in the eye.
“I’m here in connection with the goatibex,” I said, immediately sensing that anything I had to say on the subject would only sound ludicrous in this company. And I was right. One of the accountants began to chuckle.
“Cut the laughter, you hear!” muttered the chairman in Abkhazian and then added in Russian: “We’ve made great strides with the goatibex.”
“And what specifically?” I asked.
“Well, in the first place we’ve launched a full-scale campaign to educate the people,” said the chairman, bending back the little finger of his left hand and tapping it against his right palm for emphasis. “Today, for example, our respected colleague Vakhtang Bochua is giving a lecture on the goatibex. And we’ve sent our livestock man off to consult with the breeding specialist,” he added, now bending back his fourth finger and again tapping it lightly against his palm. “Why — are there any complaints?” he asked, suddenly stopping short and gazing at me with dark, wary eyes.
“No,” I answered, meeting his gaze head-on.
“Well, there’s this one individual, the former chairman of a kolkhoz that was merged with ours, and he.…”
“No, no,” I broke in, “this has nothing to do with any complaints.”
“But he never signs his name,” he added, as if to reveal the full extent of the man’s cunning. “But we know who he is and how he signs his letters.”
“Can I have a look at the goatibex?” I interrupted, letting him know that this individual didn’t interest me in the least.
“Of course,” he answered, “let’s go.”
The chairman got up from his desk, his large, powerful body moving freely and easily under his loose clothing.
Without saying a word, the sleepy agronomist rose from his desk and accompanied us down to the porch.
“How many times have I told that idiot to clean up the sheep pen,” said the chairman in Abkhazian as we descended the stairs.
“Valiko! Come here a minute!” shouted the chairman, still in Abkhazian, as he turned toward the door which led into the store. “Or have they already married you off in there?”
From inside the store came the sound of a girl’s laughter and a young man’s impudent voice:
“What’s the matter?”
“It’s not what is the matter, but what’s going to be the matter if I lock you two up in there and invite your mother-in-law to come see for herself what’s going on!”
The sound of female laughter was heard once again, and now there appeared on the threshold a young man of medium height with enormous blue eyes which gazed with childlike innocence from his swarthy face.
“Drive over to Auntie Nutsa’s and get some cucumbers for the goatibex,” said the chairman. “A comrade has come from the city and we don’t want to be disgraced.”
“No thanks, not me,” said the young man, “they’d laugh in my face.”
“The hell with them — this is State business,” the chairman declared sternly. “Then take the cucumbers straight to the pen — we’ll be waiting for you there.”
Apparently this young man Valiko was the chairman’s driver. He got into the car, started it up, and with an angry turn of the wheel drove out into the street.
It had grown hot. The two old men were still sitting in the shade of the walnut tree. The one with the staff was relating something to his companion, and as he talked, he would tap the ground every so often with his staff. He had gouged a decent-sized hole already, and one could easily imagine that here in this shady spot he was planning to erect a picket fence to protect himself and his companion from the hot summer sun and the bustle of kolkhoz life.
The chairman greeted the two old men as we approached, and they went through the motions of half rising to greet us.
“Sonny,” asked the one with the staff, “is that young fellow with you the new doctor?”
“He’s the goatibex doctor,” replied the chairman.
“And here I thought he was an Armenian,” interjected the one with the stick.
“Will wonders never cease!” exclaimed the one with the staff. “Why up in the mountains I used to kill those goatibexes by the hundreds, and now they send a doctor for just one of them.
“That old man’s quite a cunning fellow,” remarked the chairman when we had reached the street.
“How so?” I asked.
“Well, one time when the district Party secretary was driving by, he happened to stop in this spot. That old man was sitting there in the shade, just as he is now, and the two of them start talking about how things used to be in the old days and how they are today. The old man says to him, ‘They used to plough the earth with wooden ploughs, but now they use metal ones.’ ‘So?’ asks the secretary. ‘With the wooden plough the earth falls equally to both sides, but the metal plough throws it all to one side,’ says the old man. ‘Well, what does that prove?’ asks the secretary. ‘If the earth falls equally to both sides, then the peasant gets to keep only half of the harvest for himself, and the other half goes to the master. But the metal plough throws the earth all to one side, and that means that the peasant gets all the harvest for himself.’ ‘Right you are,’ says the secretary and with that he drives off.”