Good Citizens Need Not Fear: Stories

Uncle Timko appeared in the doorway to announce that he needed a glass of milk. Daniil and Aunt Nika evacuated the kitchen and waited in the hallway while he opened the refrigerator.

The human shuffle complete, Daniil resumed inspecting the stove. Aunt Nika followed, her fur hood falling over her eyes until she flung it off, releasing a cloud of dust.

“Grandfather Grishko’s telling everyone he hasn’t seen his own testicles in weeks,” she said. “We’re tired of the cold, Daniil.”

As if in agreement, Vovik’s coughing started up again, deeper in pitch, as though it came not from the bedroom but from beneath the floor. Daniil couldn’t imagine the dainty four-year-old producing such sounds. He stroked the smooth enamel of the stove, never having felt so useless.

“And we’re tired of hearing about the testicles.”

—

The memo on Daniil’s desk the next morning unsettled him. It was addressed from Moscow:

In accordance with General Assembly No. 3556 of the Ministry of Food Industry, Ministry of Meat and Dairy Industry, and Ministry of Fish Industry on January 21, 1985, the Kirovka Canning Combine has been ordered to economize 2.5 tons of tinplate per month, due to shortages. Effective immediately.

At the bottom of the memo, his superior’s blockish handwriting:

THIS MEANS YOU, BLINOV.

The telephone on his desk rang.

“You’ve read the memo?” It was Sergei Igorovich, his superior, calling. Daniil turned to look across many rows of desks. Sergei Igorovich stood in the doorway of his office, receiver pressed to his ear, watching Daniil.

“I have, Sergei Igorovich.”

Daniil went on to inquire about testing alternative tin-to-steel ratios for containers.

“None of that, Blinov. Just stuff more food into fewer cans. Use every cubic millimeter you have,” his superior said. “I see that you’re not writing this down.”

Daniil pulled up an old facsimile and set about doodling big-eared Cheburashka, a popular cartoon creature unknown to science.

“Good, very good,” Sergei Igorovich said. “But don’t think of pureeing anything.”

“No?”

“The puree machine’s on its way to Moscow. Commissar’s wife just had twins.”

Daniil examined the diameter of Cheburashka’s head, making sure the ears matched its size. “Sergei Igorovich? May I ask you something?”

“If it’s quick.”

“I was looking over the impressive list of goods our combine produces, and couldn’t help wondering—where does it all go?”

“Is that a philosophical question, Blinov?”

“All I see in stores is sea cabbage.”

Sergei Igorovich let out a long sigh. “It’s like that joke about the American, the Frenchman, and the Soviet guy.”

“I haven’t heard that one, Sergei Igorovich.”

“A shame,” Sergei Igorovich said. “When I have time to paint my nails and twiddle my thumbs, I’ll tell you the joke.”

Daniil resisted the temptation to roll himself into a defensive ball under his desk, like a hedgehog. He straightened his shoulders. “Sergei Igorovich? May I also ask about the pay.”

Daniil watched his superior retreat into his office, mumbling into his phone about the shortages. Surely the pay would come through next month, Sergei Igorovich said, and if not then, the month after, and in the meantime don’t ask too many questions. He hung up.

Daniil reached into his desk drawer, extracting a new sheet of graph paper and a T-square. He ran his fingers over the instrument, rich red, made of wild pearwood. When he was a child, his parents had awarded him the T-square for top marks in school. At the time, he’d thought the pearwood held some magical property, a secret promise.

He set to work drawing diagrams of food products in 400-milliliter cylinders. Chains of equations filled his graph paper. Some foods posed more of a packing problem than others: pickles held their shape, for instance, while tomatoes had near-infinite squeezability. Soups could be thickened and condensed milk condensed further, into a mortar-like substance. String beans proved the most difficult: Even when arranged like a honeycomb, they could reach only 91 percent packing efficiency. In the middle of every three string beans hid an unfillable space. By lunchtime, Daniil had submitted a report titled “The Problematics of the String-Bean Triangular Void” to Sergei Igorovich’s secretary.

For the rest of the day, Daniil pretended to work while the combine pretended to pay him. He drew Gena the Crocodile, Cheburashka’s sidekick. He pondered the properties of dandruff, specifically Grandfather Lenin’s dandruff. Could a bald man have dandruff? Unlikely. What, then, about the goatee?

—