Elena Stanislavovna, who had as much idea about three-eighths-inch dies as a student of the Leonardo da Vinci ballet school, who thinks that cream comes from cream tarts, expressed her sympathy.
"The shops we have now!
Nothing but long queues.
And the names of the shops are so dreadful.
Stargiko!"
"But I'll tell you something else, Elena Stanislavovna.
They have four General Electric engines left.
And they just about work, although the bodies are junk.
The windows haven't any shock absorbers.
I've seen them myself.
The whole lot rattles.
Horrible!
And the other engines are from Kharkov.
Made entirely by the State Non-Ferrous Metallurgy Industry."
The mechanic stopped talking in irritation.
His black face glistened in the sun.
The whites of his eyes were yellowish.
Among the artisans owning cars in Stargorod, of whom there were many, Victor Polesov was the most gauche, and most frequently made an ass of himself.
The reason for this was his over-ebullient nature.
He was an ebullient idler.
He was forever effervescing.
In his own workshop in the second yard of no. 7 Pereleshinsky Street, he was never to be found.
Extinguished portable furnaces stood deserted in the middle of his stone shed, the corners of which were cluttered up with punctured tyres, torn Triangle tyre covers, rusty padlocks (so enormous you could have locked town gates with them), fuel cans with the names
"Indian" and
"Wanderer", a sprung pram, a useless dynamo, rotted rawhide belts, oil-stained rope, worn emery paper, an Austrian bayonet, and a great deal of other broken, bent and dented junk.
Clients could never find Victor Mikhailovich.
He was always out somewhere giving orders.
He had no time for work.
It was impossible for him to stand by and watch a horse . and cart drive into his or anyone else's yard.
He immediately went out and, clasping his hands behind his back, watched the carter's actions with contempt.
Finally he could bear it no longer.
"Where do you think you're going?" he used to shout in a horrified voice. "Move over!"
The startled carter would move the cart over.
"Where do you think you're moving to, wretch?" Victor Polesov cried, rushing up to the horse. "In the old days you would have got a slap for that, then you would have moved over."
Having given orders in this way for half an hour or so, Polesov would be just about to return to his workshop, where a broken bicycle pump awaited repair, when the peaceful life of the town would be disturbed by some other contretemps.
Either two carts entangled their axles in the street and Victor Mikhailovich would show the best and quickest way to separate them, or workmen would be replacing a telegraph pole and Polesov would check that it was perpendicular with his own plumb-line brought specially from the workshop; or, finally, the fire-engine would go past and Polesov, excited by the noise of the siren and burned up with curiosity, would chase after it.
But from time to time Polesov was seized by a mood of practical activity.
For several days he used to shut himself up in his workshop and toil in silence.
Children ran freely about the yard and shouted what they liked, carters described circles in the yard, carts completely stopped entangling their axles and fire-engines and hearses sped to the fire unaccompanied-Victor Mikhailovich was working.
One day, after a bout of this kind, he emerged from the workshop with a motor-cycle, pulling it like a ram by the horns; the motor-cycle was made up of parts of cars, fire-extinguishers, bicycles and typewriters.
It had a one-and-a-half horsepower Wanderer engine and Davidson wheels, while the other essential parts had lost the name of the original maker.
A piece of cardboard with the words "Trial Run" hung on a cord from the saddle.
A crowd gathered.
Without looking at anyone, Victor Mikhailovich gave the pedal a twist with his hand.
There was no spark for at least ten minutes, but then came a metallic splutter and the contraption shuddered and enveloped itself in a cloud of filthy smoke.
Polesov jumped into the saddle, and the motor-cycle, accelerating madly, carried him through the tunnel into the middle of the roadway and stopped dead.
Polesov was about to get off and investigate the mysterious vehicle when it suddenly reversed and, whisking its creator through the same tunnel, stopped at its original point of departure in the yard, grunted peevishly, and blew up.
Victor Mikhailovich escaped by a miracle and during the next bout of activity used the bits of the motor-cycle to make a stationary engine, very similar to a real one-except that it did not work.
The crowning glory of the mechanic-intellectual's academic activity was the epic of the gates of building no. 5, next door.
The housing co-operative that owned the building signed a contract with Victor Polesov under which he undertook to repair the iron gates and paint them any colour he liked.