Kharkiv is a multicultural city. It is also a city of remarkable and distinctive characters. Apparently, it was precisely these factors that led to the appearance of such a remarkable character as the “Kharkiv Greek” in writer A. Yablonovsky’s short story “Yakov the Switchman”…
I saw a Greek guy selling meat in Kharkiv—he was a real “performer,” not just a shopkeeper! What a hard-working Greek he was! He started by hiring three clerks—all cut from the same cloth, fine fellows—top-notch: dark-browed, with faces like cats’ and smooth as wild boars. And, of course, there was no end to the cooks: in the morning, the shop would be packed with people—it was a madhouse, you couldn’t even turn around—and then there was the Greek: sitting at the register, taking money, and keeping everything in check, he’s always messing with everything—saying something to everyone, laughing at everyone. But sometimes he’d shout at the clerks: “Three pounds of kidney meat for the pretty woman Anna!” “Seven pounds of thigh meat for the dark-browed girl Marusya!” Or sometimes a young cook, woman, would come up to the register, and he’d spread his arms wide and start putting on a show: “Listen, my dear, what are you doing? For God’s sake, how can you treat people this way?” The cook, of course, would stammer, “What’s going on? What am I doing? What am I doing?” — “Well, for heaven’s sake: because of you, all my clerks have gone wild—they don’t sleep, they don’t eat, they just think about you”… That’s what a real scoundrel he was! That’s the guy! And don’t think he was only good with women—no, he could handle anyone: if some cook came into the shop, he’d shout, “Four pounds of veal for the young man in the straw hat!”…
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