After Raisa Titovna’s dismissal, personnel reshuffles took place in the shop. Mama was offered the post of salesperson in the manufactured-goods department, they appointed a new shop manager who was able to unite the collective, remove the shortcomings and work without a shortage. The bosses “from above” put forward demands — fulfilment of the plan. The salespeople’s salary depended on this. And here is how they had to wriggle.
Usually goods were brought to the shop by one and the same vehicle — a goods van. The driver was called Kolya, a small, lively fellow, a dancer of the world-famous Virsky ensemble, on pension (at 35 they were thrown out of the ensemble onto pension). The manager would arrange with Kolya a trip “to the district,” namely to Zolotonosha or Zhashkiv for the Sunday kolkhoz market.
In the evening, on Saturday, the salespeople with their own strength would load the goods that the people on the periphery needed, namely: fabrics, oilcloth, rubber footwear, simple underwear “with nap” (probably not every reader understands what this is. In those times women did not wear trousers, but put on simple dense hideous blue or pink pantaloons). So from the evening all the goods were loaded into the van together with the salespeople, and they would set off “into the night” in any weather over roadlessness.
Arriving by night at the market territory, they would sleep there in the van on these very sacks of goods, and early in the morning, at 4.30, the women would already gather in a queue at the vehicle and wake the salespeople, knocking — demanding that they start trading. They themselves also came from the villages to sell agricultural produce. And they were in a hurry to manage to sell their own and return home before dark by passing vehicles (in those times very few people had cars).
Mama would come back late in the evening with full bags of market produce. “In the district” produce was much cheaper than in Kiev. And as my mama loved to say, “what she left, she returned to”: a one-room little apartment on the fourth floor without a lift, I was 11, my sister 2.5, a husband “abandoned” for a day on a day off, and herself “tired as a dog,” but with the plan in trade fulfilled!
Papa treated such work with understanding, but would try to relax on a day off and could meet his wife slightly drunk, which was very much not approved and was cut short by my mama not only with a reproachful look, but with a strong word. And to us she could say, sighing: “poor mother, shitty children!” I, of course, asked why “shitty?” She answered that this was “so, a figurative Jewish expression.”
Anyway, mama’s absence on days off in our family passed more or less peacefully, but the shop manager, who also went to trade, had a very jealous husband, and this van, in which the salespeople slept and shivered from cold all night, he called a “whore-wagon,” and the unfortunate driver Kolya, who fitted in the cab thanks to his small stature, a “whore-driver.” He did not say this maliciously, so it all turned into a joke. Well, that is how we lived!