Page:Diamonds To Sit On.pdf/172

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DIAMONDS TO SIT ON

The staff poet was walking up and down the corridor. He was in love with one of the typists, whose slender hips inspired poetic feelings in him. He would lead her down to the other end of the corridor and whisper passionately to her, to which she would reply : ' I have some very urgent work to do to-day and I’m terribly busy ’, which really meant that she was in love with some one else. The poet kept getting into everybody’s way and went round to each of them in turn with the same monotonous request : ‘ Just let me have eight copecks for the tram.’ He went into the worker corres­ pondents’ department to try to collect this small sum of money, and after going all round, in and out of the tables where the readers were sitting, and after fingering the piles of letters on the tables, he began again : ‘ Just let me have eight copecks for the tram.’ The readers, who were the most serious people in the office, took no notice of him. The reason for their being so serious and severe was that they had to read at least a hundred letters each day scrawled by hands more used to wielding an axe or a painter’s brush or wheehng a barrow than holding a pen and writing a letter. The poet went back to the general office, but he could not collect the eight copecks, and was attacked by Avdotiev, a member of the Union of Communist Youth, who asked him to become a member of the automobile club. The poet remembered the smell of petrol and disappeared at top speed. ' Listen,’ said Avdotiev as he sat on the edge of the sub-editor’s table. ‘ Just stop for a minute and listen. It’s serious. We’ve formed an automobile club and I was just wondering whether the paper would give us a loan of, say, five hundred roubles for eight months ? ’ ‘ You don’t need to wonder,’ said the sub-editor. ' What ? Don’t you think there’s a hope ? ’