“Well, how’s it going?” Romashkin asked Ivanovich as we came in from the cold into the control room. “It’s all right; any calls?” “No, everyone is watching football. Only that crazy woman from Youth Street won’t stop.” “Maybe we should go to see her?” “Okay, go ahead.” “Are you with us?” Ivanovich turned to me at the door. “No, he’ll stay here with me,” Romashkin said. “I remembered a few other stories. You’re not in a hurry, are you?” “Absolutely,” I nodded. It was obvious that the master was eager to talk to someone.
“That’s great! Then listen. Just don’t write about it; I’m telling you this as a friend, not for publication in the paper. Once, on New Year’s Eve a woman did not give her husband money for a bottle of vodka. He got angry, went to the toilet and hit the hot water valve with a hammer. As a result, the man was scalded and six floors were flooded. The court ordered him to pay compensation to the neighbors for the damage caused. This is called getting back at your wife! But the wife is also stupid! How much did the bottle cost, and how much did the repairs cost?”
“There are smart guys who change pipes under pressure. I remember at one of them had a valve ripped out. He calls me up and says: ‘Why did that happen?’ ‘Hey! Who’s supposed to shut off your water supply’ I said. Me? It’s six atmospheres!’ You know what he said to me? He said: ‘I thought the house was small so the pressure is so-so.’ Can you imagine that!” “And there are totally stupid calls like: ‘The TV was working when the radiators weren’t on, but now they are on – it doesn’t work.’ Romashkin chuckled. “Listen, do you often deal with psychos at the newspaper?” “All the time!”
Crazy people visited our newsroom with enviable regularity, especially in the fall and spring. Some complained that their enemies were harassing them with ultrasound and X-rays; while others blamed their neighbors for allegedly poisoning them with gases pumped into their sockets. Madame Galina, an extravagant old lady in a feathered hat, a former French teacher, showered us with poems of her own composition. The poems were dedicated to two well-known psychiatrists in town, who had treated Madame Galina. She loved them with an unrequited platonic love – first one doctor, then the other. When the lovers changed places in her haloperidol reality, she would run to the editorial office and demand the return of the notebook with her poems.
She would immediately cross out the hated name, put another one in its place, and go home happy with words: ‘Now you can publish it’. Of course, no one published her poems, but Madame Galina was secretly happy about it. She was afraid of accidently hurting the rival, whom she had robbed of her love – what if her feelings for him flared up again; and what would the poor woman do then? Go mad again?
Crazy beekeeper Evgraf Mordin specialized in auras, UFOs, and the treatment of all diseases with propolis and bee bread. He usually appeared in the editorial office with a shaped of an upside down letter “L” and methodically walked around the rooms, looking for geopathogenic zones in them. At the same time, he would intimidate the young ladies of the newsroom that they would never “give birth” because the copier and a printer were evil. The girls paid no attention to this madman, but were afraid of another psycho named “Maniac”.
The “Maniac” called the newsroom only on Thursdays. In a well-modulated voice, he would announce that he was cloudy in women’s lingerie with lace. The girls would shriek and throw down the phone with such genuine horror as if they had just held a cobra in their hands. Psycho would called back – until one day the head of the letters department, Varvara Surovtseva, who had forty years of uninterrupted journalistic experience, picked up the phone. “I’m in my panties and a bra,” he began as usual. “I wrote it down. Go on,” the woman said, not stopping to write an article for the newspaper. “I’m in lace panties and a bra...,” the madman stammered. “So am I. What’s next?” The Maniac hung up. He never called the paper again.
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I could tell Romashkin at length about the editorial lunatics. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was surrounded by madmen, and their ranks were multiplying, squeezing the newspaper and me into a ring. Their complaints confused my thoughts and made my head swell. I wanted to throw out the annoying visitors, but I was afraid of being rude, so I listened to the old people’s nonsense and cursed myself for being soft-hearted.
“Do you like your job?” Romashkin asked me suddenly. “What do you mean?” “Literally,” he got up from the desk, went to the dark window and looked at his reflection. “Don’t’ you ever want to start all over again, quit the newspaper, for example?” “I would have quit a long time ago, but you know, it’s a small town, there’s nowhere to go.” “What about other options?” “You mean a career change?” “That too.” “Is there an offer?” “Maybe,” the master on duty replied evasively. “It’s getting late. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
I walked through the city at night, thinking about the conversation with Romashkin. What had he really meant? Did he want to employ me in his press service, or did he have another job in mind? Suddenly I realized that the prospect of leaving the newsroom frightened me. Over the years, I had gotten used to the constant hustle at work and bustle with hostile colleagues and the same topics year after year. Would it be better in the new place if Romashkin called tomorrow? What do I tell him, “Sorry, I changed my mind”? On the other hand, I don’t have to change everything so fast. It’s not a matter of life and death. Or am I wrong? Oh, so hard!
My stomach clenched into a tight knot and rose to my throat. My heart was racing. My legs grew weak and instantly unruly. I stopped to catch my breath when something sharp stabbed me in the neck. It’s a stroke! I thought longingly and fell into the snow as if knocked out.
Like an old cathode ray tube, a pale blur flashed and faded before my eyes, and then I saw a picture. In it, the beekeeper Mordin, imagining himself a soldier in Christ’s army, was pointing an air rifle at the cars parked under his window. He saw them as aliens who had come to take over the world that he, the old warrior, was called to save. The bullets clicked through the iron bodies of the cars. Chock-chock! Suddenly, one of the bullets turned into a wasp and flew towards me with a menacing howl. I waved my arm to drive it away, but it was too late. The wasp had stung me.
I didn’t think the Reaper would come after me without warning. I didn’t even realize what had happened. I walked along, didn’t touch anyone, turned the corner, and – bang, it’s over because some crazy beekeeper had a vision of “Alien”. You could say it was bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Maybe you are right. But I don’t believe in coincidences.
I remember people in white coats hovering around my body, a police siren wailing. Someone tried to cover my wound and revive me. And I was standing next to them, watching the commotion indifferently. I couldn’t understand that I was lying in the snow, and that the bright red splatter all around me was not paint or ketchup or tomato juice, but real blood, my own blood. It was like a dream or a movie. And then I found myself in a very strange place.
To be continued