Igor Yevtishenkov - Collection of Stories

When you’re in a hurry, you don’t chew and instead you gobbleyour food down. If you want to enjoy it, you have to take time. I don’t remember the taste of what we were eating while serving in the Navy, we just wolfedit downand that’s it. Now I can afford to eat outevery day but my wife likes to eat in and I have to admit she has a knack forcooking! On Saturday mornings, we usually send out forfish sandwiches and a nice tiramisu cake. Sometimes our friends call us and we havethem roundand serve upsomething special. While I’m barbecuing, my wife slicespizza upand lets everyone help themselves to what they want.

I know that Mike and Jenny, our neighbours, cutmeat outentirely from their diet. They both have gastric ulcers and meat causes stabbing pains in their stomachs. It does not agree withthem, so my wife usually cooks steamed vegetables and chicken for them. That goes well with olives and lettuce. I think we have to follow them if we want to feel healthier. They say a lot of raw vegetables can fillme upeven though I suspect it’s not true, but my wife thinks vegetables can help her stay slim and she won’t put onweight. She says I can put awaythree steaks, a pizza and some beer in one meal and it’s unhealthy. Of course, it’s much better be off picking at a salad for half an hour pretending it’s so delicious. Oh, those women!

You know pizza is a kind of meal that takes some drink to washit down. It might be either spicy or quite dry and water helps me swallow it. My friends usually drink beer and they say “let’s drink to the teetotaler’ bantering with me. Today I woke up late and had some chocolate biscuits with milk and cereal. I didn’t really want it and just was dippinga biscuit in milk. It soaked upthe milk and I was enjoying it very much. I felt great that morning after being out the night before at a party with my mates. Even dark stains on the tablecloth didn’t make me feel sick. I was smiling, recalling Jane trying to water downneat whiskey with sweet cola. Her hands were shaking and cola spilled overthe edge of the glass. She’d never drunk whiskey before and it made her feel nervous because she wanted to look cool. So it was enough for her to drinkit upand flake out, out cold, as if she were an alcoholic, drinking like a fishevery night. She’s been sleeping upstairs in my bedroom since then.

A hungry man goes into a restaurant at a railway station and orders a whole chicken. He asks a waiter to bring it to him to examine it before cooking. The waiter brings one at once. The hungry man puts his point finger into the chicken’s rump and says:

‘It’s from Brazil, defrosted and 6 months old. Ugh, how disgusting! Bring me a fresh one.’ Stunned, the waiter goes away. The manager sends him across the street to the butcher’s. The waiter, breathing heavily, takes a fresh chicken to the strange man. The hungry man again puts his point finger into the chicken’s rump and says:

‘Hm-m, it’s from a local village, killed two days ago. But it’s ok. Cook it!’

A visitor at another table, drunk and barely able to move, comes up to the stranger, turns his back on him, lowers his trousers, underpants to his knees and asks in a stammering voice:

‘Excuse me, I’ve been here for a few days and can’t remember where I am from. Could you help me, please?’

I started painting about two years ago, after my divorce. I wanted to forget about my previous life. There was no rush, so I did about two or three hours every evening, just to relax and pass some time – I used to come home from work, tired, but after painting for a few hours, I felt totally refreshed. Last week, some colleagues dropped in on me and saw my paintings. Some of them complimented me on them, so I gave them away without thinking any more of it. Yesterday, one of my colleagues introduced me to an art agent, who offered me the opportunity to display my paintings in his gallery. I was so thrilled, I hadn’t been able to calm down until now. I think that “ every cloud has a silver lining’.

My boyfriend works as a programmer in a global software company. I envy him since he doesn’t have to clock onand clock offwhen he leaves work, unlike me in the hospital. He can stay at home and work in bed for weeks without seeing his colleagues and management at all! They have no machine that shows he has worked an extra long shift like me and that allows me to take time offat a later date. He has no shifts at all. I was planning to take a holiday in July this year but had to bringit forwardas I was told July was going to be a very busy time for our hospital. I love my work but my hospital is understaffed and I hate to always be pressed fortime. I find it almost impossible to find the time to pay more attention to the patients and talk to them a little bit longer than I do now, even though I feel that is an essential part of my job. Of course, I can chat for a few minutes but then I have to press onwith my other duties. Our hospital hires many nurses from overseas. However, when their work permits run outafter three years, they have to leave and the management has to fill staff vacanciesagain. Many nurses like me who are permanent stafffor five or ten years burnthemselves outand can’t stand it anymore. The strenuous work quickly wearsthem outand they quit, completely exhausted and devastated after five or seven years.

I’m a teenager and still have a lot of spare time unlike my parents. So after school I usually hang outwith my friends in the streets or in the park. My mum and dad say they used to knock around togetherfor years and it was OK in their days. If they have free time today, they say they love whiling awaytheir days going round the shops or just chatting to one of their old friends. Sometimes our family goes away for a weekend and mucks aboutat our old cottage in the countryside, enjoying nice weather or riding bikes together. Mum adores it because it’s out of the city and there is no one who can reach us. The few neighbours are very friendly and welcoming and we always get together for barbecue or a cup of tea in the evenings.

We were informed the sales conference would be coming aroundsoon. So we had to hurryour sales reports along. To tell the truth, I couldn’t believe that the conference was coming up again already. Before I knew it, the last year had slipped away! There’s an awful lot of paper work to do leading up to the conference, given that it’s going to be heldin our foreign branch. I hope it’ll breakthings upand make life a bit more interesting there. The excessive hype about our new products and the new marketing campaign completely passedme by. I was busy working outa new distribution channel in Brazil from scratch.