Chapter List

Part Overview

Overview

The first time I saw an inventor was before the Second World War. We lived in Baku, where I was a student in the fourth grade. One day, coming back from school, I saw some repairmen sadly smoking cigarettes next to a broken electric transformer booth. The repairmen were looking at a big black transformer standing on a high brick foundation. The foundation was more than one meter tall, and the transformer looked like an impressive monument. People were waiting for a crane to take the broken transformer down and install a new one.

Later, I did my homework by the light of an oil lamp. We had no electricity that evening, nor the second evening, nor the third. A crane in those days was considered very rare and valuable equipment, and getting one was not a simple matter. The electricians complained about the situation, and did not know when they could finish their job.

I did not realize that an inventor lived in Apartment #11. There were rumors that this neighbor, who was a bookkeeper, on the next day would bring the transformer down from the foundation. Every tenant in our building had a nickname. Some of them were named very respectfully, like "Uncle Kostya," or "Uncle Vlad" but the bookkeeper was...