(excerpt)
The lawyer lady hadn’t come in for days. That hadn’t ever happened, at least not since I’ve been working here. I told Zoki, but he just shrugged and grunted something about how he never chitchats with the customers.
(…)
I’ve been nagging Zoki for years about how we should sell lightbulbs, cause people are always looking for them, but he won’t. He always repeats that super exciting story about how, at his old workplace, the boss bought three different kinds of lightbulb and then they just sat on the shelves for months, no one touched them. I tell him that at our place the customers are asking for them, but no point, he just shoos me away. He’s not into new stuff.
But now I needed a lightbulb, cause mom busted the one in the bathroom. Just good luck that my favourite Chinese storeowner had already opened up. He was standing in the doorway and watching people walk by, like he always does when there are no customers. (…) Chepan, that’s his name, stepped to one side and let me in, bowing a little as I passed by. I haven’t ever seen a Chinese person stand up straight. They’re all hunched over all the time, as if it were an honour that someone was just looking at them. The guy’s name is more complicated than Chepan, but when he introduced himself, that’s what I heard, so it stayed Chepan. My name’s pretty simple. Fema. Even a Chinaman can get that right.
He found a lightbulb in under thirty seconds and handed it to me. Then he put his elbows on the countertop, propped his chin on his hands, and smiled at me. It always starts like this.
‘You know joke about sick employee?’
‘I don’t,’ I said. Every time we talk, he tells another joke, cause when they came here, someone told him that in this country he could knock people off their feet if he just told them a good joke. So he’s always telling his Chinese jokes, and he always insists that I tell jokes from here. I already told him Bita’s joke, the dragon joke, course I didn’t tell it as good as Bita. I can’t tell jokes. I always mess something up, but Chepan doesn’t care. He giggles like an idiot at anything.
‘Sick employee tells boss that he cannot go work,’ he began, all excited, and he stood up straight, as if he were on stage. He acts out the jokes. Like this time, he started talking with a hoarse voice. I figured the sick employee had a sore throat.
‘“Sorry I have to stay at home, take sick day.” Boss say nonsense!’ He used a deeper voice for that, clearly the strict boss. ‘When I sick, I climb into bed with my wife, and I always feel better. You try!’
I began to chuckle, not because of the joke, because Chepan’s wife had just appeared behind him. I’ve never once heard that woman say a thing. She just stands there smiling, her hands on her waist, like a life-sized doll. She sometimes says something to her husband, but you can’t figure out what they’re talking about, like not even in general, cause the whole time their faces are blank, not even a twitch. Like as if they had no facial expressions apart from totally cheerful and totally blank.
‘Next day employee go to work. Boss ask, “it help, what I tell you, no?”’ Chepan continued, and he was bowing a little again, so I knew that the joke would be over soon. He always assumed this pose before telling the punchline. ‘Employee say, “yes, boss sir, thank you! I feel much better. And you have very beautiful home!”’
I smiled, cause I knew he was expecting me to smile, though I didn’t get it at first. These Chinese jokes are weird, they’re all about cheating on your spouse. Makes you think China can’t be too interesting a place, though Chepan’s always talking about it as if it were the land of milk and honey. Sure, guess that’s why they left. Though everything looks better when you’re looking back on it. Then he pestered me to tell him a joke too, so I muttered out the one about the kid sitting by the pool, but of course I messed up and started by saying, ‘shitting by the pool,’ and the whole point is that you mix up ‘sitting’ and ‘shitting,’ and that’s the joke. Not that it mattered, cause Chepan would have laughed if I had been reading the obituaries in today’s paper. He’d wrapped the lightbulb up in tissue paper, though I always tell him not to, but I think wrapping stuff up is pretty much like breathing for him. He accompanied me to the door and bowed again, and I suddenly wanted to give him a tug on the ear just to see if he would make a face. I didn’t, of course. I just waved, and he grinned. So, either a grin or a blank face. Then I guess you really can live life like that.
By the time I got to the store, Derel had come in. We hadn’t seen him in a long time. He must have come down with something, he looked like shit, but he’d brought some new kind of Ukrainian cigarettes, fucking strong, but at least they’ll wake me up. The nice thing about Derel is that I don’t have to talk much, he talks enough for both of us. I just nod. Like this time, he was explaining something for minutes on end, and I put my cigarette out on the wall and was about to go inside when suddenly I saw the lawyer lady.
Translated by Thomas Cooper