The entire population of the village was stunned by the sudden appearance in the town square of a monument to the local janitor Ivan Mukhin—a man, according to everyone, the most ordinary and simple. Even before anyone explained the monument’s existence, Mukhin himself smashed the statue with a sledgehammer, unable to withstand the wave of passions, intrigues, and machinations that crashed over him. It turned out that the monument to the janitor had been created…