Kolyma Tales Read Online Free PDF Page B

and thought frantically. Today he would be in the warmth of the carpentry shop. He’d sharpen the axe and make a handle. And sharpen the saw. No sense hurrying. He could kill time till dinner signing out the tools and finding the quartermaster. By evening they’d realize he didn’t know how to make an axe handle or sharpen a saw, and they’d kick him out. Tomorrow he’d have to return to the work gang. But today he’d be warm. Maybe he could remain a carpenter tomorrow and the day after tomorrow – if Grigoriev was a carpenter. He’d be Grigoriev’s helper. Winter was nearly over. Somehow he’d survive the short summer.
    Potashnikov stopped and waited for Grigoriev.
    ‘Do you know how… to be a carpenter?’ he asked, holding his breath in sudden hope.
    ‘Well, you see,’ said Grigoriev cheerfully, ‘I was a graduate student at the Moscow Philological Institute. I don’t see why anyone with a higher education, especially one in the humanities, can’t sharpen an axe and set the teeth on a saw. Particularly if he has to do it next to a hot stove.’
    ‘That means you can’t do it either…’
    ‘It doesn’t mean anything. We’ll fool them for two days, and what do you care what happens after that?’
    ‘We’ll fool them for one day, and tomorrow we’ll be back in the work gang…’
    Together the two of them barely managed to open the frozen door. In the middle of the carpentry shop stood a red-hot cast-iron stove; five carpenters were working without coats and hats at their benches. The new arrivals knelt before the stove’s open door as if it were the god of fire, one of man’s first gods. They threw down their mittens and stretched their hands toward the warmth but were not able to feel it immediately since their hands were numb. In a minute Grigoriev and Potashnikov knelt, took off their hats, and unbuttoned their padded jackets.
    ‘What are you doing here?’ one of the carpenters asked with hostility.
    ‘We’re carpenters. We’re going to work here,’ Grigoriev said.
    ‘Alexander Yevgenievich said so,’ Potashnikov added hurriedly.
    ‘That means you’re the ones the foreman told us to give axes to?’ asked Arishtrem, an older man in charge of tools who was planing shovel handles in the corner.
    ‘That’s us, that’s us…’
    ‘Here they are,’ Arishtrem said, looking them over sceptically. ‘Two axes, a saw, and a tooth-setter. You’ll return the tooth-setter later. Here’s my axe; make yourself a handle with it.’
    Arishtrem smiled.
    ‘You’ll have to do thirty handles a day,’ he said.
    Grigoriev took the block of wood from Arishtrem’s hands and began to hack away at it. The dinner horn sounded, but Arishtrem kept staring silently at Grigoriev’s work.
    ‘Now you,’ he said to Potashnikov.
    Potashnikov put the log on the stump, took the axe from Grigoriev’s hands, and began to trim the piece.
    The carpenters had all left for dinner, and there was no one left in the shop except the three men.
    ‘Take my two axe handles,’ Arishtrem said, handing the two ready pieces to Grigoriev, ‘and mount the heads. Sharpen the saw. You can stay warm at the stove today and tomorrow. After that, go back where you came from. Here’s a piece of bread for dinner.’
    They stayed warm at the stove those two days, and the following day it was only twenty degrees below zero. Winter was over.

An Individual Assignment
     
    That evening the overseer rolled up his measuring-tape and said that Dugaev would get an individual assignment for the next day. The foreman, who had been standing beside them and asking the overseer to credit his work gang with ‘an extra ten cubic meters of earth till the day after tomorrow’, suddenly fell silent and stared at an evening star sparkling over the crest of the hill. Baranov, Dugaev’s ‘partner’, who had been helping the overseer measure the amount of work done, picked up his shovel and began to clean the already cleaned pit.
    Dugaev was