<1941 was starting. The end of one epoch, the beginning of another.

The work at the vineyards was over. I bought two axes and a saw and inquired where, at what agencies I could contract to saw and split firewood. I didn't have to look for a workmate, he offered himself. Gipsy Ivan Buzhor bestowed encomium on the work! But next Monday he didn't appeared at work and said they gave him a job of a coachman, with horses. It was a pity!

I quickly walked down the steep footpath by the synagogue to the city and near the old graveyard I almost ran into an old woman walking along the same footpath. She proved to be our old acquaintance, Feofaniya Petrovna Budy, an eye doctor.

"Ivan Buzhor told me everything. I was just outraged! He works for me by the day, paves the garden path with bricks, clears up the garbage."

"For you? By the day? But he went to some agency as a coachman...">

We halted and looked at each other in surprise.

<"As a coachman? No! He has no job. They summoned him to the NKVD and said that if he worked with you, a former landowner, they would take a note of him as an ideological enemy and he would be overboard, they wouldn't let him join the trade union.>