Golden Hands, Dirty Hands By Darren Baker

česky

One of the old propaganda films shows a library for Marxist-Leninist thought in Prague. Naturally the reading room is full of working people eager to learn from the masters. One of them is a brick mason, still wearing his working clothes and jotting down notes from a volume of...well, it doesn't matter. What's important is that he and the other brick masons are going to gather around their salami and cheese tomorrow and talk about Lenin instead of girls. Now when I see such a film, one thought comes to my mind: Where can I find a brick mason like that?!

Of course, I don't need a brick mason to tell me about Lenin. I need one who understands that the working clothes don't come off until the job is finished, one who stands back from the wall and says, "Now that's a work of art." The brick mason I once hired to do some work in my bathroom would stand back, look at his watch and shout, "Oh, shit, it's three o'clock."

That left it up to me to look at his work of art, which it decidedly wasn't. When I would point out this mistake and that one, he would squint his eyes, take a long hard look and mumble, "How can that be?"

Finally I was moved to ask him if he did work like this in his own house and he said, "No, no, it looks much worse there."

I had been warned that the age of Golden Czech Hands, when craftsmanship was the pride of the country, died out long ago thanks to people like Lenin. The Communists, determined to build everything overnight, forgot all about beauty and quality control as they raised one block of flats after another. Okay, but you can see similar dwellings in the West, too. And my first experience with a hired worker in this country wasn't all that bad.

I hired him to put cork down in my hall and kitchen. Since the floor was uneven, I asked him if he had the technology to make it smooth. Sure, he said, and he promptly took a big rock out of his bag and began scraping away at the rough spots. It wasn't exactly the kind of technology I had in mind, but he did a good job and stayed until late at night to finish it.

The next man I hired, this time for some painting, also claimed he had all the technology necessary to do the job. And he did. The only thing he was lacking was a brain, for this moron ended up spraying paint everywhere, including on my new cork.

His performance was somewhat repeated by my brick mason, the anti-Lenin, after he stepped in some adhesive on the floor and walked all over my flat with it on the bottom of his shoe. When I pointed out the mess he had made, all he could do was look around and mumble, "How can that be?"

At least these experiences didn't have the tragic consequences suffered by my friends. They had hired this company to build a sidewalk from their backdoor to a little pond they had in their garden which was stocked with fish. The workers had already left by the time they arrived home, so they poured a glass of wine and strolled down to the pond. And there they saw several of their fish floating on the surface. At the water's edge was the foam that killed them, foam from the soap that the workers had used to wash their hands. And where did they get the soap to clean their hands in the pond? From the sink with running water located right there in the garden.