Velichko himself rang the shop in December.
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 what about the hours", "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 wants me for six months. A trial."
"And you?"
"And I don't know."
That evening he did not say a word about it, and the next day he said nothing either. 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.
"Good. At least you're honest. 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 take the simpler jobs at the machine."
He looked at me.
"You can't."
"I can do heel tips. I've been watching for twelve years."
Igor thought for a couple of minutes. Then he said that yes, I could do heel tips, but I couldn't work on welts and wouldn't learn in two weeks, and that Slava would be the one teaching me, and that it would be a circus.
"Let it be a circus."
He gave Velichko his answer on Thursday.
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