The bottle deposit man

When I was a kid in Russia we used to have bottle deposit people rather than bottle deposit machines. They were supposed to take empty bottles and give you the deposit. Since most of them were the kind of people who earned their money elsewhere they did not actually want to take the bottles and tried to avoid it.

He was about 40 when I first saw him. I was 13. We moved to a new place, and I came to the store with the empty soda bottles. There was a slow and sad-looking line of several alcoholics and one bodybuilder-like-looking guy."Oh," - the bodybuilder sighed. "He sometimes accept bottles from men, but a girl has no chance." "Wanna bet?" - I grinned.

Of course the bottle deposit man did not want to acceptthe bottles. I went to the manager of the store, and told him about it. "We don't have space for them," - he said. "That's not my problem," - I said and started putting bottles in a row on his table. "OK, you've made your point," - he said, - "let's go and I'll make him take the bottles".

We went to the bottle deposit man and the manager made him take the bottles. That was not surprising. That's what had always happened everywhere. What was surprising was that the bottle deposit man did not learn his lesson immediately. Or ever.

I lived there for three years and he has never agreed to accept the bottles. Ever. Every time I went to the manager's office, and every time upon seeing me the manager said "OK, let's go downstairs", and went there with me and made the man accept the bottles. A couple if time I asked the bottle deposit man whether, since he knows already that rape is inevitable, it would be better to relax, but he just smiled at me enigmatically.

Three years later I started to bring a lot of bottles very often. "Are you leaving the country?" - he asked once. That was very surprising: not many people knew that a lot of Jews suddenly started leaving the country, and he had no way of knowing that i was Jewish, except maybe my face. - "Yes, we are." - "Thank god, and godspeed," - he said, and smiled to me for the first time ever. But he still never agreed to accept my bottles without the manager.