Naturally, the bright illumination endlessly pleased both local residents and guests, as it raised their spirits and firmly kept them at a high level. Alas, this consequence of the favorable relationship of celestial bodies had another side - the rapidly thickening twilight in the evening, turning into such pitch darkness at night that even a person with good eyesight could hardly dare to walk along some dirt country road not lit by lanterns.
Considering that even the wide main city streets, completely covered with asphalt, were also almost unlit, since the lanterns hanging on poles above them had long since broken and served only as resting places for birds, it was also better not to walk along the central avenues, here and there upended by the roots of the mighty poplars growing along them, at night. Those who walked there at this time with a dog or returned from work, walked very slowly and often illuminated their way with a mobile phone screen or a Chinese pocket flashlight.
On this warm summer evening, the darkness thickened as quickly as usual. After eight o'clock the courtyard was empty, and only the dogs living there occasionally barked at passers-by, hurriedly walking home. After ten o'clock the dogs had disappeared somewhere, and complete silence had settled in the courtyard of the old apartment building where Onufriev lived. It seemed that even the stars that had poured out in the sky did not want to intrude into this quiet courtyard surrounded by glowing windows and therefore tried to blink as weakly as possible, Orion's Belt had completely faded, and the red supergiant Betelgeuse, shining next to it, was trying to turn the rays emanating from it somewhere to the side.
Suddenly, in this eerie ringing silence and pitch darkness, a strange rumble was heard. It came from an iron garbage container into which Varsonofy, having decided to part with mountains of junk, reluctantly threw a box with toys, blocks, magazines and models dear to his heart. The rusty, heavy container shook and swayed, constantly increasing its amplitude, and at the same time, a grinding sound was heard from inside, as if someone was pushing iron pins along its thick walls with great pressure.
Finally, the container fell, generously throwing bags of garbage with which it had been filled during the evening right onto the wide sidewalk that ran nearby. After that, an excavator bucket on a long curved boom appeared from it. As if hesitating to take the necessary but dangerous step, what the boom was attached to, from the dark depths of the fallen container, probed the ground to find out whether this step could still be taken. The bucket hit the asphalt several times with its sharp teeth, while shifting left and right and moving up and down on its mount.
Having discovered that the exit from the container opened onto a wide, hard road, the excavator boom resolutely extended to its full length, after which the bucket, with a swing, tore the wire for drying clothes, stuck deep into the sandbox, and, leaning on it, a bulky heavy sideboard crawled out sideways. Attached to its left extreme wall was the boom of a lifting crane, and therefore it vaguely resembled a robot equipped with two huge manipulators.
Standing up on short legs and jumping a little to throw off potato peelings and cabbage leaves, he, finally getting used to the thick darkness, grabbed the container with the boom of the lifting crane by the loop welded to its bottom, finally turned it over, lifted it up and shook it slightly. From there, with a clang and a grinding sound, a noticeably larger refrigerator poured out, with caterpillar tracks spinning on either side, a washing machine with a drum kit that seemed to have grown into it, a white enamel bathtub that had landed softly on all four wheels in rubber tires, and a round crystal multi-tiered chandelier with candle-shaped lamps.
On its outer side, a long metal corrugated shower hose stuck out of the decorative casing that was supposed to cover the place where it was attached to the ceiling and connected to the apartment's electrical wiring, ending, as it should have, in a plastic mixer with many holes for water.
"What a shame the owner had to throw us into the recovery chamber along with other people's parts!" - exclaimed Servant, looking with surprise at the limbs attached to him there and, at the same time, not without pleasure, playing with them with the help of mechanisms brought to an ideal state, rotating joints, moving pistons, winding cables and moving a bucket. "Say thank you, old man, that you were restored at all, otherwise you would have gone to the dump tonight and would have burned there in a couple of days," the Chandelier clinked maliciously with a hundred of its crystal pendants. "At least this young technician attached a shower hose to me, I'm still glad that tomorrow I won't end up under the tracks of a bulldozer!" - she added joyfully.
After these words, the gazes of all the abnormal things unanimously directed at the Refrigerator, who, almost not listening to the squabble that had begun, was examining his tank tracks sparkling with a new metallic coating. "Yeah, Lustra is absolutely right, with this development of events it would be better to ride on the tracks yourself!" he exclaimed cheerfully. "Well then, let's get out of here quickly, because soon there will be a garbage truck here, and they will take us to where we are so afraid of going - to the dump!" Vanna buzzed, rearing up and briskly spinning the wheels of the front axle, which seemed to start much easier than she expected, because of which Vanna, frightened, abruptly stopped them.
"What do you say, automatic washerwoman with hanging drums?" Vanna asked the Washing Machine with a laugh. "What a mess you've got, sister, Varsonofy has made fun of you the most!" Vanna shook with laughter and, turning upside down, slapped her wheels on the bottom. "That's for bragging for thirty years in a box that the owner, unlike us, almost finished you, and you only needed a few parts to complete the set!" Vanna added and, bursting into loud laughter, began to no longer slap, but to beat herself on the stomach with the wheels, filling the yard with the roar of the sounds of blows, many times amplified inside Vanna. Washing Machine, as if in time with her friend, played a short, fast part on her drums with her hose-like hands and finished it with a blow on a ringing copper plate.
"You're right, we need to get out of here quickly, because the garbage truck will come to empty the containers in the middle of the night, and if we don't hide, then we won't have any reasons to have fun," Washing Machine summed up the short meeting and deftly hit the copper plate with her stick again. "We need to leave before anyone sees us, there are fields nearby covered with tall reeds, we'll move there now, hide and decide what to do next!" Washing Machine declared and pointed with her drumstick in the direction she suggested they head.
Her plan seemed so reasonable and correct to the abnormal things that they immediately expressed their readiness to implement it. After that, Servant deftly placed the Washing Machine on the Bath with a crane, and, resting his arrows on the ground, easily jumped onto the top of the Refrigerator. Varsonofy's models, repaired and enlarged by a mysterious force, quietly moved along the sidewalk onto a wide, almost unlit street, at the end of which, in the complete darkness between the garages, there was a gaping opening where a winding, wavy dirt road began, leading to the suburban fields.
The almost silent movement of the column was only occasionally announced on deep potholes by the light jingling of the pendants on the Chandelier, rolling behind everyone. She was carefully pressing the box Onufriev had thrown away with all its contents to her side, which she had decided at the last moment to take with her just in case. A few hours later, after the moon had set, late at night, a garbage truck arrived in Varsonofy's yard, and the driver, seeing the overturned container, thought: "Great, the hooligans have made things a little easier today, so I'll finish my shift about twenty minutes earlier."
Having emptied the remaining containers, he drove on, and in the morning the janitor, the building manager and the plumber, noisily rolling the container back into its correct position and used shovels to throw the trash scattered around into it. "Yeah, some really rowdy hooligans came through here last night, they usually just dump the trash can on its side, but now they turned it upside down! Probably drunk vacationers had a good time on their way from the restaurant," they assumed and went on working.