Velichko rang in December, himself, at the shop.
I picked up, and he apologised at length first for ringing a work number about something that wasn't work, and then asked whether I could call Igor. I called him.
They talked for about fifteen minutes, and I could hear only Igor: "yes", "and how much is that", "and how does it work time-wise", "and how do you get there", "understood", "no, I'm not saying no".
Then he put the receiver down and stood by the telephone.
"They've opened the section," he said. "He's calling me for half a year. A trial."
"And you?"
"And I don't know."
In the evening he did not say a word about it, and the next day likewise. On the third day I heard him talking to Slava behind the partition and stopped in the passage with the tickets in my hands.
"Twenty-two pairs a week, can you manage that?" Igor was asking.
"I don't know," Slava said honestly.
"You're right not to know. And if it's eighteen?"
"Eighteen I can manage. Probably."
"'Probably' is no use to me. Think about it till Monday and tell me straight."
On Monday Slava said he could manage eighteen, and that for twenty-two he'd need someone for at least two days a week.
Igor spent the whole evening working out what a person for two days would cost, and it came out that he would cost almost everything we'd earn on the difference, and a little more on top.
"It doesn't add up," he said.
"For half a year it adds up," I said. "If I stand at the machine for the simple work."
He looked at me.
"You can't."
"Heel tips I can. I've been watching for twelve years."
Igor thought for a couple of minutes. Then he said that heel tips, let's say, I can, but the welt I can't and won't learn in two weeks, and that it will be Slava who teaches me, and that it will be a circus.
"Let it be a circus."
He gave Velichko his answer on Thursday.
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