GROSSMAN: EVERYTHING FLOWS: a workshop that employs the disabled

[Robert Chandler]

Dear all,

The hero of this work, set in the mid –1950s, gets himself taken on as a
metal worker in a small workshop that employed the disabled.

 Среди  рабочих были  инвалиды  Отечественной войны; были покалеченные на
производстве  либо  на транспорте,  имелись три старика, покалеченных еще в
войну 1914 года.  [...]
   Инвалиды   в   артели были  по  большей  части  люди  веселые,  склонные
юмористически   относиться   к  жизни;   но  иногда  с кем-нибудь  из  них
приключался  припадок,  и к грохоту молотков, визгу напильников примешивался
крик припадочного, начинавшего биться на полу.
   У  седоусого лудильщика Пташковского, военнопленного 1914 года (говорили,
что  он  австриец, но  выдает  себя  за  поляка), вдруг цепенели руки, и он
застывал  на  своем табуретике  с  поднятым  молотком, лицо его становилось
неподвижным,  надменным.  Надо  было его тряхнуть за плечо, чтобы вывести из
оцепенения. А однажды припадок, случившийся с одним инвалидом, заразил сразу
многих, и в разных концах мастерской стали биться на полу, кричать молодые и
старые люди.

“The other workers included injured veterans from the Great Patriotic War,
as well as men who had been crippled in accidents in factories or on the
roads and railways; there were even three old men who had been crippled as
long ago as the First World War. [...]
The other workers were, for the main part, good-humoured people who
preferred to look on the bright side of things.  Now and again, however, one
of them would have a fit, and his screams as he began to writhe on the floor
would mingle with the banging of hammers and the squeal of files.

 Ptashkovsky, a tinsmith with a grey moustache, had been taken prisoner by
the Russians during the First World War (people said he was Austrian, just
pretending to be a Pole). Suddenly his arms would go completely numb and he
would freeze there on his little stool, his hammer raised in the hair, his
face immobile and haughty.  Someone would have to shake him by the shoulder
to bring him out of this paralysis.  There was one occasion when one man had
a fit and this set off a chain reaction; in different corners of the
workshop young and old alike were writhing on the floor and screaming.”

Does anyone understand just what is going on here?  It seems like the first
person has an epileptic fit, but epileptic fits are not, as far as I know,
communicable in this way.

Best Wishes,

Robert

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