About Velichko Igor told me on Monday, at breakfast, and told it with relish: he's coming on Friday, bringing a batch of leather cases from the restoration workshops, thirty or so, all torn at the corners, and paying half up front. The cases are working ones, not museum pieces: tools and instruments are carried in them, and they tear every year. Their own people have their hands full with the collection, and routine repairs go outside.
"Thirty cases," I repeated.
"Thirty-one. I counted from the inventory." Igor was buttering bread and was pleased with himself. "If he pays up front, I'll put in a new motor before the season. Ours smokes at the low revs already, you've heard it."
I had heard it: our machine has been humming since spring in such a way that in the shop you can't tell at once who has come in, and everyone got used to it long ago.
"Who is this Velichko?"
"A restorer. Leather, bindings, all that. He's their head man for leather."
Igor finished chewing and added without any emphasis, in passing, the way one adds a thing decided long ago:
"And I'll show him the father's knife while I'm at it. He ought to know them."
"Show him," I said.
All week I didn't think about it. That is, I did think about it, but the way one thinks about a matter that will take place on Friday: on Wednesday I entered the hotel batch, on Thursday I went to the bank and stood there for forty minutes, and on Thursday evening we hunted for Igor's passport, which turned up in the box of tickets, where I had put it.
On Friday I went out to the car with a folder and a pen.
Velichko turned out to be elderly, neat, in glasses, and the cases were in plastic crates, interleaved with paper: eight in three of them, seven in the fourth. I spread the inventory on the bonnet, counted aloud, noted three cases with torn-off flaps on a separate line, took the money, counted out the change and wrote the ticket, and he stood beside me the whole time and was, I think, pleased to be dealing with someone who can count.
"Shall I carry them in myself?" he asked when I picked up the first crate. "They're heavy."
"There's shelving in our passage, you can't get past it with a crate." I lifted the crate. "And Igor's at the machine just now, there's no room to turn round."
There were four crates, and I carried them in myself, in four trips, and on the third Velichko did after all take hold and carried one as far as the front step, but he didn't go inside, because on the step I took the crate out of his hands and said thank you.
He stood a minute longer and talked about the weather, and then about how the workshops are moving and how that goes on and on, and how half the collection has already been taken away and the other half is in boxes and nobody knows where anything is.
"And have you been there long?"
"This is my thirty-fourth year."
"And always leather?"
"And always leather." Velichko looked at our front step. "It's nice here. Cramped, but nice."
I said it was cramped.
He drove off twenty minutes after he had arrived.
"That was quick," said Igor when I set the last crate down by the bench. "I thought he'd be an hour."
"I didn't keep him. The man's busy."
"That's true." Igor was already opening the first crate and taking out a case, and you could see by his face that he liked the work. "Listen, you're good at this. I'd have talked half a day away with him and got nothing done."
We put the motor in two weeks later.
Open in the reader