Free Diggers by Viktors Duks Page B

mess of water and clay at the very bottom. Anatolijs came crawling out from the ground in front of my eyes. His rubber suit and long rubber boots were so dirty that he looked like a big piece of clay. To the left of me—Professor, the scientific director of the War Museum, was pulling a rubber protective garment over his head. The boots were too small, so I offered him mine. Professor slid into the hole. The cameraman and soundman from the Environmental Film Studio tried to record this historic discovery. It didn’t work—all that we heard from the dark hole was some grumbling. In a minute the cameraman was preparing to slide into the hole, too—there was nothing else to do. The camera—the expensive camera—was covered with a special cover.
    â€œYou’re going in there, too?” I asked the Classicist.
    â€œI guess I’ll look at it on film,” the Classicist responded, and I completely agreed with him. There were no more clean rubber overalls, but crawling into the dirty ones would have been the same thing as to get into the hole as you were.
    The first item on the expedition agenda was completed. The sun was far from setting, so it was decided that we would go to the unknown flyer and dig him out. It would have been fine if we had not been tortured by one thought—the pump had to be carried back! Weary from the sun and the fresh air we went back. Our fingers stretched straight by themselves from the heavy load, and at every meter our feet tripped across roots or fallen trees. We carried it. We wanted to howl when the last 20, the last ten, the last five meters were left. Then we were at the end. We loaded the pump onto the trailer, and then, scattered, we went back t the meeting place. Mario tried to play with a hand grenade, then he got scared and the Communicator continued the game. I don’t know where they went off to.
    Covered with dry clay, sweaty and tired (let me add that we were tired, but you get more tired sitting in an office; we were pleasantly weary), we got to our cars, which like sexy women were on the sunny meadow and offered themselves as the most pleasant calming effect. Oh, my darling! I opened the trunk of my car and pulled out food and mineral water. The carbonated water poured into my throat, and in a moment I felt it pass through my whole body. Time for a smoke! We set out a lunch table on the hood of the BMW. We ate fatty bacon, rye bread and onions, if you don’t include modern gastronomic weaknesses of human beings—things like catsup and a few other things.
    It was afternoon. Driving along the curvy and sandy rural roads, our caravan arrived at the place where the Soviet military airplane had crashed.
    ***
    Covered up with years of earth, the ditch hid a great many small fragments of an airplane. It was hard to find anything that was larger than a man’s hand. Digging around, we concluded that the airplane and its contents had burned after the crash. The poor pilot, we decided, had been torn to bits, so we forgot all about any attempt to locate his breastbones or his head. We looked for his medals with great effort, though. We found nothing. The boy would join the army of unknown dead soldiers.
    Evening.
    What kind of a finale can there be to an evening if there are ten guys who for a short while are left without women?
    We decided to spend the night at the farm of one of the diggers. His mother and father greeted us like family—gave us the whole second floor. After cleaning up our dusty bodies in a very, very nice way, we lighted a fire, and after a while a pig that the Communicator had killed was roasting on it. Idyllic! And we had four liters of vodka. The pact that the Classicist and I had cooked up about being dry was completely forgotten this night. We were just happy.
    Morning.
    I opened my eyes.
    I found with joy that some kind soul had put a full bottle of mineral water in front of my face. My shaking fingers opened the cork,