Nikolai recounts two comic stories about two elderly men from his village: In our village there lived a greedy old man who was a warehouse manager. People used to come to him asking for stuff, but he did not like to give things out, pretending to be deaf. If someone asked whether he had nails in the warehouse, he would say, ‘what horses? We have no horses here’ or something. In our village there lived another old man. He fought in World War II, spent time in ShirokLag (a work camp for soldiers), and was wounded. He told me a story from the war. Once a German tank drove into the trenches where he was hiding. After the tank passed the trenches, a guy from Central Asia, who was also in the trenches, asked the others (looking at his pants), ‘Do you know whether blood can be yellow?’