![]() Wanna know what I did? I kept this factory from burning down. I was here way back when there wasn’t anything here, nothing at all, but I was here. (A whiff of alcohol.) Go on and take a seat. So you’re from Fifteen, then, the hardest-working shop, always working late. And here I was, thinking, who are those folks? You make sure to come by again. There’s certainly something worth looking at here, that’s right. It’s all fancy-schmancy over here now, isn’t it? (Felt boots, baggy overcoat, moustache.) Happy New Year! Olya’s smile, now, for a smile like that you’d do anything! Olya’s with the quality control department. Get a load of that! What kind of machines are those, anyway? They’re, like, war trophies. Out past the enormous windows, just touched by frost, the sharp outlines of bare branches. But what’s the time? We got plenty of time. Hey boys, let’s go check out Four, what’d they do over there? I haven’t seen it yet. My grandma’s been wheezing for three days, she can’t take this kind of freezing cold. Man, when we lived in the Urals, minus forty-five in the winter was no big deal. They say it was during the blockade, but I don’t remember. ![]() I can’t remember it ever being this cold. It’s freezing outside, enough to knock the wind out of you. I did, I already did! Is that so? When was that? The trams run until eleven (setting a sprocket in graphite lubricant). Come on, D, quit your dawdling and finish it, or else the trams’ll stop running. I’ll take care of the, you know, the stuff. My dad’s on duty, he’ll be gone all night. Well sure, of course we’ll take D with us! We’ll all head over to my place. He’s just as much of an idiot as you, but at least he shuts up sometimes. Although now you mention it, I would spend the whole year with you, Olenka, if you were up for it. The whole year? Oh, sorry about that, I meant to say, New Year’s Eve. ![]() Attention, attention!ĭ (a skinny red-head) contends that the module has to be assembled this year, not left until next year. What I mean is that in five minutes we will get ready to go and wish each other a Happy New Year, and then we will exit the shop in an orderly fashion, hop on the tram, and be home in time to hear the clock strike twelve on the radio. And no looking up, either, not a chance, although if you do go ahead and try to lift your frost-burned face you’ll see a red banner over the entrance, and white letters, and above them the spotlight’s beam, drilling through the murky, sleepy sky over the Narva Outpost all the way into outer space, although its target really isn’t outer space at all, but the clock on the Central Tower, that’s what! The time on the clock is five to ten, but the snow-covered cornices and ledges crowning both the Central Tower itself and the entire recently restored main building gleam white.Ĭomrades! A clapping of hands gets everyone’s attention, and he breaks into the old song: “Five minutes! Five mi-i-inuu- utes!” No, don’t worry, we’ve still got two hours. It feels like the snow would catch fire if you held a match to it. In this kind of cold, breathing is impossible: you might as well try to breathe black pepper. The snow doesn’t just crackle under their feet, it actually squeals. The factory workers hurry home in this freezing cold, holding their breath, to ring in the New Year. Multitudes of snowflakes, tiny as sparks, keep flying into the beam and swirling around like burning gunpowder. A spotlight over the entrance points its beam directly up. Pure nonsense, in white letters on red, right there above the Freedom Factory. Well, one smart mother did instill it in her first-grade son: when you see those letters, white on red, don’t read them, it’s pure nonsense―but don’t you tell anybody what I just told you. ![]() Fisher is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie.Įxcerpt. Fisher and co-translator Derek Mong collaborated to produce The Joyous Science: Selected Poems of Maxim Amelin (White Pine Press, 2018), awarded the 2018 Cliff Becker Prize. Fisher’s recent translations include works by Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky, Nilufar Sharipova, Ilya Danishevsky, Aleksey Lukyanov, and Julia Lukshina. Buksha’s work has been translated into Polish, Chinese, French, and English.Īnne O. In 2004, The Freedom Factory won the National Bestseller award and was a finalist for the Big Book Award. Since her breakout fiction collection Alyonka the Partisan (2002), Buksha has been winning acclaim as a brilliant stylist and satirist whose linguistic experimentation is guided by a healthy sense of the absurd. She holds a degree in economics from Saint Petersburg State University and has worked as a journalist, copywriter, and day trader. Poet, fiction writer, and artist Ksenia Buksha was born in Saint Petersburg. ![]()
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