The Foundation Pit (Fragment)

On the day of the thirtieth anniversary of his personal life Voshchev was given his walking papers by the small machine shop where he had been getting the means for his existence. In the document of dismissal they informed him he was being detached from production as a consequence of a growth in the strength of his weakness and of pensiveness in the midst of the general tempo of labor.

Voshchev took his things in a sack from his apartment and went out into the open air, the better to comprehend his future. But the air was empty, the unmoving trees thriftily preserved the heat within their leaves, and the dust lay there bored on the unpopulated roadway-such was the situation in nature. Voshchev did not know whither he was being drawn, and at the end of the city he supported himself with his elbows on a low fence of a certain residence in which children without families were being taught to work and be useful. Beyond this point the city ceased—and the only thing there was a beer parlor for migratory workers and low-paid categories which stood, like some official institution, without any courtyard; and beyond the beer parlor rose a clay knoll and an old tree grew on it all alone in the midst of the bright weather. Voshchev made his way to the beer parlor and encountered there sincere human voices. Here were to be found unconstrained people devoting themselves to the oblivion of their own unhappiness, and for Voshchev it was more sad and more easy among them. He was present in the beer parlor until evening fell, till the wind of the changing weather began to rustle; at that point Voshchev went over to the open window so as to observe the beginning of the night, and he saw the tree on the clayey hill- rocking back and forth from the bad weather and turning its leaves over and over out of clandestine shame. Somewhere, evidently in the park of the Soviet trade employees, a brass band languished. The monotonous, nagging music was being wafted off by the wind into nature across the waste land this side of the ravine, because the wind was supposed to feel gladness only rarely, but could accomplish nothing itself equal in meaning to music and spent its time in the evenings motionless. After the wind silence once more settled in, and a still more silent darkness covered it over. Voshchev sat there at the window so as to observe the tender darkness of the night, to listen to various sad sounds, and to be in a state of torment within his heart which was surrounded by hard and stony bones.

“Hey, you food industry fellow!” resounded in the by now silent establishment. “Give us a pair of mugs-something to fill up our empty insides with!”

Voshchev had long since noted that people always came into the beer parlor in pairs, like brides and grooms, and sometimes in whole marriage companies.

The food industry employee served up no beer this time, and the two newly- arrived roofers wiped off their thirsting mouths with their aprons.

“You bureaucrat! You ought to jump whenever a working man even raises his finger—but instead you act conceited!”

But the food industry employee saved his strength from being worn down at official duties so as to keep it for his personal life and did not enter into disagreements.

“This institution, citizens, is closed. Go find something to do in your own apartment.”