The Post Office

The only things in the village more important than the post office are the store that carries bread and the walk-in clinic. But when you come right down to it, the post office really is the bigger deal. The master built it back in the day, to use as a school, so it’s solid and roomy, and has little stoves to keep thing toasty. And so very orderly it is, with a separate office for the savings bank, and a room for outgoing packages, and even a special place to hand in newspaper subscriptions. The main room is where the post and telegraph clerks sit, behind a counter covered with blue linoleum and painted a reddish brown.

Postmaster Ilya Semyonovich Yablochkin is a bulky bulldog of a man. He wears a skull-cap to hide his bald spot, and sateen sleevelets to hide the fact that his shirt is out at the elbows. Yablochkin knows his worth and his customers’ too, which is why he torments them, making them wait in line until they are good and docile. He moves the abacus beads slowly back and forth to tally things up, writes even more slowly to fill out forms and record sheets, and, with regal dignity, takes out the book that has a pocket to hold stamps, and extracts them with licked fingers. He loves illustrated envelopes, and better yet if the picture celebrates the current date. He only accepts packages neatly sewn up in white fabric inscribed, legibly, with the to whom, the where to, and the from whom. The sender gets confused, scampers off to rewrite a form, and messes up for the hundredth time (it’s so hard not to put the amount in numbers), while the entire line is hissing and yelling mean things, because everyone knows that the same fate is awaiting them. The grand finale is the stamping of the outgoing mail, for which purpose a little pan of sealing wax is kept boiling on a small electric hot plate. With a deep sigh best fitted to the guardian of a state secret, Yablochkin stands up and takes a special wooden-handled seal from the safe. Dripping the wax onto wherever string meets string, he presses the seal down with great deliberation, then lifts it and admires his handiwork.

Ninka the telephone lady sits at a separate counter, mumbling “town exchange, town exchange, hey girls, Sheshurino calling, come in… town exchange, town exchange…” into her mouthpiece. It’s as if she’s chewing on the words. The line is always busy. The wooden benches are occupied by biddies with children, business travelers, casual laborers here to build a cow barn, and suchlike nobodies. And all of a sudden, Ninka yells “Kherson? Booth two. Move it, move it! Who wants Kherson? Fifteen minutes!” A little man darts across the room, losing his briefcase on the way, and starts yelling so the whole post office can hear: “Masha? Masha! I’m stuck here for two days! Masha! We’re being audited!” At which every single person there smirks, because they all know that the old pops from Kherson has hooked up with Valka the shop girl and has been wearing himself out with her in the sweltering heat, on a stove bench padded with feather-filled coverlets.

The mail carriers are supervised by the deputy postmistress, the chunky, blue-housecoat-wearing, lackadaisical Valentina. She rakes her pencil right through the subscription receipt, tearing it and crossing out everything except the district newspaper. ‘Na-taaa-sha,” she says in her singsong way, “you know very well there’s limits on everything. You want a sub for Rural Life, starting in January? But… you know that’s not happening. No Peasant Woman neither. Working Woman, nope. Pioneer, nope. And what d’you want with the latest fashions? That’s what the library’s for.” And that’s the extent of her sympathy for schoolteacher Natasha. Meanwhile, Valentina’s taking out subscriptions to hard-to-find magazines for her girlfriends and all the right people. Meaning that she’s making good use of her official position.

At a round table covered with linoleum patterned to look like marble, an old gal from a faraway village sits. Puddles have spread all around her overshoes, and she’s hot from the stove that gobbles up wrapping paper and spoiled forms. She slips a grey goat-down shawl onto her shoulders, unties a cotton scarf, white with blue specks, and uses it to mop her forehead. Rummaging in her oilskin bag, faintly berating herself for the old fool and birdbrain that she is, she finds her spectacles and, holding them like a magnifying glass, starts scrawling text for a telegram, skittering the pen across the paper, making star-shaped blots, and quietly agonizing over the weakness of her eyes and the feebleness of her brain. She calls over a young whippersnapper who’s capering around alongside his mama, proud recipient of a money transfer from the city, and asks him for help, so the kid dashes off, in big skewed letters, “doter cumme grannies sick will dye if you don’t.” With a sigh of relief, the old girl heaves herself up and takes her place at the end of the line.

Over the entrance to the savings bank, which occupies a corner office just off the main room, hangs a poster showing a pink-cheeked young man buying savings bonds. He’s flashing a snowy-toothed smile and pointing with a clean, pink hand at a house, a car, and a beautiful wife in an imported fur coat. The old lady peers into her money purse, which is sewn up on one side with a thick black thread, and heaves a rueful sigh. On all the walls, overlapping like the scales on a fish, are directives, orders, examples of completed forms, and other such bureaucratic folderol, that no one ever reads.

Lunch time’s creeping closer, and Yablochkin is already groping for the sign that reads, in no uncertain terms, “LUNCH,” when workers from the logging company come barreling in, filling up the whole place. They’ve just been paid, so now they’re going to be sending remittances home. Shading his eyes with one hand, like the captain of a ship, Yablochkin watches to make sure they don’t walk off with the inkwell. Or any pencils. Or draw moustaches on Lenin’s portrait. Or write four-letter words anywhere. They smell of diesel fuel, tar, and cheap tobacco, they’re swarming all over the little tables, while their foreman, biting his lips, is writing addresses on the forms.

Then the door crashes open, nearly shaking the spring loose in the process, and in swoops a little woman, limping on her left leg. It’s Nadka Rukomylo, a nasty, drunken troublemaker. Her coat is flapping open, her headscarf has come untied, and Nadka means business. She pummels the foreman for all she’s worth with her oilskin bag, which ends in him blotting a form and punching her in the eye with his free hand. As Yablochkin blows a whistle he keeps stashed away for spats like these, the combatants are dragged to separate side of the room. The foreman, who owes Nadka for the corner he’s renting from her, counts out the rubles and sprinkles a hillock of coins on top, with a look that says, “Here, choke on it.”

It’s now exactly five minutes to lunchtime, so Yablochkin, emerging from behind the counter, pulls on his sheepskin jacket and fur overcoat, and in a combat veteran’s far-from-indoor voice, roars “LUNCH!”

And everyone obediently files out of the post office and for a whole hour, while the padlock sits on the door collecting frost, they crowd together, stamping their chilly feet, smoking, and cussing Nadka, who’s to blame for them having to spend the next sixty minutes out there in the freezing cold.