Simenion Davidod the soviet farm chairman was oppressed by an irresistible longing to do some physical labour. All his strong ,healthy body dried out for work: for work which by the end of the day would make all his muscles ache with heavy yet pleasant weariness, and ensure easy, dreamless sleep.
One day he went along to the smithy to see how the repair of the communal harvesting implements was progressing. The acrid, bitter scent of heated iron and burning coal, the ringing song of the anvil and the hoarse, complaining wheezes of the ancient bellows made his heart beat violently. He stood for several minutes in the twilit forge with his eyes closed beatifically, silently, almost painfully, enjoying smells he had known since childhood. Then he could not resist the temptation any longer: he picked up a sledge hammer. For two days he worked from dawn to dusk, and did not leave the smithy. The smith’s wife brought him his dinner. But how could he do a good work when he was called away every few minutes? The shoe went blue and cold in the tongs, the old smith, Sidorovich, grumbled, and his apprentice openly grinned as he noticed that Davidod’s hand, weary with the physical strain, wrote absurdly squiggles instead of letters on the official documents brought to him, and sometimes even dropped the pencil on the earthen floor.
Davidov hated working in such conditions and, to avoid being a hindrance to the smith, swearing as jucily as any bo’sun, he went back in a foul temper to his seat in the collective farm office
From the book “Harvest on the Don” by Mikhail Sholokhov (translated from the Russian by H.C.Stevens)
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