I decided to jot down this anecdote so as not to forget it later on. But no sooner had I reached for my notebook than the chairman broke in decisively:
“That’s not necessary.”
“Why not?” I asked in surprise.
“It’s not worth it,” he said, “that’s just an old man’s idle rambling. Don’t worry, I’ll tell you when there’s something worth writing down.”
“Well, never mind, I’ll remember it anyway,” I thought to myself as I put away my notebook.
We made our way along the scorched, dusty road. By now the dust had grown so hot that I could feel it baking through the soles of my shoes.
On either side of the road small farmhouses with their fruit trees, private plots of corn, and green patchwork of lawns would occasionally come into view. The trunks and branches of the fruit trees were overgrown with grapevines, and thick clusters of unripened grapes could be seen peeping through the curly foliage of the vines.
“There’ll be a lot of wine this year,” I remarked to the chairman.
“Yes, the grapes are good,” he replied somewhat absentmindedly, “but have you noticed the corn?”
I looked at the corn, but didn’t notice anything in particular.
“Why, what’s there to notice?” I asked.
“Take a good look,” said the chairman, smiling enigmatically.
“Upon closer inspection I noticed that the corn on one side of each private plot was higher and had thicker and greener leaves than on the other side.
“Was it planted at different times?” I asked the chairman, who continued to smile enigmatically.
“The very same day, the very same hour,” he replied, his smile growing even broader.
“What’s the explanation?” I asked.
“This year there was a reduction in the size of private plots — a necessary measure, of course, but not for our kolkhoz. Tea is our main crop, so what use are these scraps of land to me? I can’t use them for raising tea.”
I took another good look at the corn. And indeed, the difference in the size and strength of the stalks was so pronounced that I was reminded of those textbook drawings used to project future crop yields.
“These peasants are very clever,” said the chairman, still smiling enigmatically. And now his smile seemed to indicate that no city person had ever understood, nor was ever likely to understand, just how clever these peasants could be.
“In what way?” I asked.
“In what way? Go ahead, you tell him,” said the chairman, suddenly turning to the agronomist.
“Well, for example, if a peasant sees some cow dung lying here on the road, he’ll automatically throw it onto his plot — but only onto the part that still belongs to him,” wheezed the agronomist. “And it’s that way with everything they do.”
“That’s peasant psychology for you,” said the chairman condescendingly.
I wanted to jot down this bit about the cow dung, but once again the chairman grabbed my arm and forced me to put away my notebook.
“What’s wrong with writing it down?” I asked.
“This is just casual conversation, not the sort of thing you should write about,” he replied with all the conviction of a man who knew better than I what one could and could not write about.
“But it’s the truth, isn’t it?” I asked in astonishment.
“But do you think every truth can be written down?” he asked, equally astonished.
And here we were both so astonished at the other’s astonishment that we burst out laughing. The agronomist snorted disdainfully.
“If I should tell them,” said the chairman, nodding in the direction of the nearest plot, “that they could keep half of the harvest from the whole plot, then they’d work the land quite differently and take in a good harvest from both parts.”
I already knew that such things went on in many kolkhozes, though of course not too openly.
“Well, why couldn’t you tell them that?” I asked.
“It would be considered a violation of the law,” he sternly replied and then added somewhat vaguely, “though sometimes we do allow them to keep half of whatever’s been harvested over and above the plan.”
Suddenly I was struck by the heavy aroma of sun-steamed tea leaves, and seconds later the tea plantation came into view — its dark-green rows of bushes extending from the right-hand side of the road all the way up to the edge of the forest. In some places the bushes gently skirted the forest, while in others they entered it, forming a sort of cove. An enormous oak stood in the middle of the plantation, and it was undoubtedly here that the tea pickers found relief from the noonday sun.
All around us it was so still that one would have thought the plantation was deserted. But now the broad-brimmed hat of one of the pickers suddenly appeared by the side of the road, while farther away there flashed a white kerchief and then a third figure in red.
“How’s it going, Gogola?” the agronomist called out to the figure in the broad-brimmed hat. The hat turned in our direction.
“Twenty kilos since morning,” said the girl, briefly raising her pretty, delicate face.
“Good girl, Gogola!” the chairman shouted happily.
The agronomist wheezed with satisfaction.
The girl bent gracefully over the tea bush and began skimming its surface with an almost caressing movement of her nimble fingers. She had gloves on her hands, but they were gloves with the fingers cut out, like those worn during the winter by lady streetcar conductors in Moscow.
The only sound to break the silence was the steady plop! plop! plop! of the tender shoots which seemed to jump of their own accord into the hands of the young picker, and from there into the basket. The latter was attached to her belt and pulled it down slightly to one side. She made her way slowly along the row of bushes, moving her hands back and forth from bush to basket and every once in a while bending over to pull out a weed from one of the bushes.
By now the heat had grown intense and there was a slight haziness on the horizon.
The sight of the tea plantation and the steady, quiet work of the almost invisible pickers seemed to have a heartening effect on the chairman.
“Good girl, Gogola, good girl!” he called out, almost crooning with satisfaction.
Still breathing heavily, the agronomist strode alongside us.
“You should put something down about Gogola, I’ll tell you all about her,” said the chairman. “Last summer she picked eighteen hundred kilos — almost two tons.”
But by now I didn’t feel like putting anything down and, more to the point, this was not the story I was after.
“Another time,” I answered. “Tell me, have you and the other kolkhoz been merged for long?”
“That’s a sore subject, my dear fellow. They’ve saddled us with a bunch of losers,” replied the chairman with distaste and then added: “This consolidation business — it’s a good measure, of course, but not for our kolkhoz. Their crop is tobacco, ours is tea. I’d rather raise ten goatibexes than have anything to do with those people.”