THE OLD FORTRESS
By
Vladimir Belayev
I wanted to fix up the new pigeon-house in the middle of the yard before Petka came. Faster and faster my strong sharp spade plunged into the damp earth, slicing through roots of grass and long, juicy worms. I drove the spade flush into the earth with my boot, heaved on the smooth handle and dug up great spadefuls of soil, tossing them neatly to one side, on a dark, ever-growing heap, veined here and there with twisted white roots.
Soon a deep pit yawned in the middle of our little yard. I dragged up the pole with the pigeon-house on it and lowered it into the ground. Holding the pole with one hand, tossed a few stones into the pit, settled them round the pole and, when it no longer wobbled, quickly filled the pit with fresh earth. I had only to level off the ground, when 'I heard the front gate creak.
"That must be Petka," I thought, and stepped back to admire my handiwork.
From a distance the pigeon-house looked even better. Made of thin, smooth boards, and painted with ochre, it stood out proudly among the old sheds. My pigeons would have a fine life in this little house. Wouldn't Petka be envious! However hard he tried, he would never be able to make a pigeon-house as good as mine.
There was a sound of footsteps. I turned round slowly. It was my father.
"Not a bad pigeon-house that, but you've wasted your time," he said, coming up to me.
"Why?"
"We're moving from here tomorrow. Come into the house and I'll tell you about it."
Before Petka arrived, Father had told me everything. The Regional Party Committee was sending him to work at the Party School. Father had to install there a small printing-press on which the school's newspaper Students' Voice would be printed. And since all employees at the Party School lived in government flats, my father had to take his family and go to live there too.
But what would happen to the new pigeon-house? I was not going to leave it here as a present for the new tenants who would move in after us.
"But I can take the pigeon-house with me, Dad."
"Can you indeed," Father said with a grin. "The students are just waiting for you to come and start keeping pigeons at their place." And as he took a photograph of Lenin off the wall, he added seriously: "Don't be an ass, Vasya. You'll leave that pigeon-house behind. Don't you realize that people are studying there? They need quiet. And you want to send pigeons pattering over the roofs..."
"I won't, Dad, honestly I won't. I'll be ever so quiet."
"I know how quiet you'll be; I used to keep pigeons once myself. A pigeon likes air, freedom. It's not a chicken. You can keep a chicken in any little cubby hole, but even a chicken gets mopy."
At that moment the gate creaked in the yard, and someone called quietly: "Vasya!"
I recognized Petka's voice at once and grabbed my cap. Father looked out of the window.
"Your friend's come to see you," he said. "Give him your pigeons to look after, and let that be the end of it."
Petka did not believe it at first. As he listened to my story, he eyed me distrustfully, thinking that I was playing a joke on him. Only when we reached the main street of the town, Post Street, did Petka at last decide that I was telling the truth; and he looked genuinely upset when he learnt that I was leaving Zarechye.
"Petka, swop me your pistol," I suggested.
"Not likely!" Petka flashed out at once. "I'm not swopping that, I need it myself."
"You need it!" I teased him. "They'll take it away from you in any case."
"Who will?"
"You know who—the militia."
"What good is it to the militia? it's all rusty."
"That doesn't make any difference. It's a weapon, isn't it?"
"A weapon! You know that every chap at Podziamche has a dozen pistols like that hidden away. They even keep sawn-off rifles, and nothing happens to them."
Petka was right. When the Civil War ended, a lot of weapons had been left about in our town, and the lads still kept their finds hidden away in secret places.
All the same I decided to give Petka a scare.
"They'll take your pistol away from you; you see if they don't. It was all right to keep them before, but the war's over now. Come on, before it's too late, let me swop it."
"If they'll take it off me, they'll take it off you," Petka retorted quickly and, with a wink, he added: "You're a sly one, Vasya. Think you've found a mug..."
"No, I don't. We're moving to the Party School, nobody will say anything to me there; they're army men."
For a few minutes we sat in silence.
We had been friends for a long time, and I knew that Petka was rather a coward. "I'll keep quiet for a bit," 'I thought. "Let him think over what I've said."
After a while Petka took a deep breath and asked:
"Well, what would you give me for my pistol?"
"I can give you some pigeons."
"All of them?" Petka asked, starting up.
"Why all? A couple."
"A couple, I like that. I won't let you have it for a couple."
"Well, you needn't... Tomorrow I'll go to Podzamche and get half a dozen pistols just for one of my pigeons." .
"Go and try. it,.. The militiaman will stop you on the bridge for a cert."
"I'll go round the other way, by the mill."
"Go on then..."
"All right, I will..."
Again we were silent.
Far below us, on the bank of the river, a woman was doing her washing. She kept beating the clothes with a stick, then wringing them out and rinsing them again in the fast-flowing water. Near her I could just make out some white dots where geese were bathing. I watched the geese. Suddenly Petka broke into a hurried whisper:
"Vasya! Give me all your pigeons, and I'll give you twelve extra cartridges as well. How's that?"
Aha! Petka had swallowed the bait. I had won. I stood up, stretched myself and said reluctantly:
"All right, but only because you're a friend ...'I'd never have done it for anyone else."
We walked down the path together, each of us pleased with himself and confident that he had fooled the other. From time to time Petka uttered contented little grunts. He had had his eye on my pigeons for a long time, since last winter, and now an unexpected piece of luck had come his way. And I should have a pistol. Tomorrow I would soak it in kerosene to get the rust off, then I could do some shooting. . .
We had left New Boulevard long ago and were walking through Zarechye. We passed the long rows of market stalls, the squat booths of cobblers, glaziers, and tinkers. On the corner of Zhitomir Street, beside a hoarding, stood the workshop of one of the best tinkers in Zarechye, Zakharzhevsky. Furred samovar tubes, upturned copper pots, rusty saucepans with broken bottoms, enamel bowls, zinc troughs lay scattered on the ground in front of the tinker's shop.
Zakharzhevsky came out of the shop in a dirty tarpaulin apron. He began to rummage among his wares. With quick angry movements he threw bits of curled-up tin and shiny strips of brass from one heap to another; there was a clang and clatter of metal on metal.
When we were only a few paces from the shop, Zakharzhevsky straightened up and in a loud angry voice shouted: "Kotka, come here!"
In answer to this shout, a lad came out of the open door of the shop into the street. It was our old acquaintance 'Kotka Grigorenko, my rival.
His dark face was smutted with soot. He was wearing a dirty tarpaulin apron like Zakharzhevsky. In his coarsened, acid-scarred hands Kotka held a heavy hammer. Catching sight of us, Kotka looked rather embarrassed, but, quickly recovering himself "and swinging his heavy hammer, he swaggered up to Zakharzhevsky. We walked past and turned the corner. "They say he's disowned his mother," Petka whispered in my ear, glancing behind him.
"Disowned his mother? Where's he living then?"
"What, don't you know?" Petka replied, looking surprised. "In Podzamche, with Korybko the gardener. And he gets all his meals there, too."
"Does he really?"
"Of course. He's been living there nearly a month now."
What could all this mean?
At home nearly all the packing was done. Aunt Maria was wrapping up the crockery in old newspapers. While Petka and I had been at the cinema, Father had taken down the photographs, leaving dark squares on the wall-paper in the bedroom and the living-room.
When she had packed all our china and six silver dessert spoons in a basket, Aunt began to empty the chest-of-drawers. Father took the clock off the wall, unhooked the weights, and wound the long chain round the dial. I began to feel miserable in the ransacked flat, and went out into the yard to catch my pigeons.
Treading softly, I pushed open the door of the shed. Inside there was a smell of damp fire-wood. Above me, under the thatched roof, the pigeons were cooing sleepily. I could tell the ruffed tumbler pigeon by its voice. The ladder was in front of me. I stuck a sack in my belt and climbed up to the pigeons. Sensing danger, one of them flapped into a corner, uttering muffled squawks. "All right, don't get scared, Petka will give you maize too," I muttered. The pigeons flapped their stiff wings awkwardly. Without hesitating, I snatched them up one after the other—my warm, clean pigeons—and with grief in my heart dropped them into the sack.
On the way to Petka's; the pigeons struggled in the sack, squawking and ruffling their feathers and flapping their wings. The ruffed tumbler even groaned with fear.
Petka was waiting for me on the door-step of his shabby old house. As soon as I came up to him he thrust the pistol, wrapped in rags, into my hands, seized the sack and, muttering, "I won't be a sec'," darted away to the shed.
Sitting on the warm door-step, I heard the key click in the lock as he opened the shed door, then the creak of the ladder under his feet, then Petka's voice calling the pigeons: "Coo-coo-coo."
I felt even sorrier to be parting with my pets. How much trouble I had taken with them! How hard it had been to get maize and barley during the food shortage! In those days I had always been afraid that the neighbours' boys would steal them off me and have them for the pot. And now all I had got was a pistol. . . Would the rust come off, I wondered, I longed to untie the string and take off the rags, just to feel the cold barrel of the pistol in the darkness, and run my fingers over the notches on the butt; but I resisted the temptation.
Petka appeared suddenly out of the darkness. Breathing heavily, he handed me a packet of cartridges.
"Twelve... You needn't count them..." he said, stammering a little from running so hard.
When we came out on the square, Petka tugged my sleeve and, glancing round, whispered:
"Vasya, you know what I heard? That Party School where you're going to live is haunted by ghosts!"
"Don't be daft, what ghosts could there be there?"
"Real ones. True as I'm standing here! A white nun walks along the corridors. It used to be a Catholic nunnery."
"What if it was? Our school used to be a monastery too, but no one ever saw a ghost there."
"But people have seen them at that Party School, I tell you."
Someone was coming across the square.
"Quiet!" Petka whispered and tugged my elbow.
We crouched against the churchyard wall and let the dark shape go past. It vanished round the corner.
"You are a funk, Petka," I said.
"Why?" Petka demanded heatedly.
"What did you get so scared for then?"
"I thought it was a militiaman... You've got a pistol, you know."
"Now you're fibbing. You thought it was a ghost. And now you'll be scared to go home. You needn't come with me any farther."
"I'm not a bit scared," Petka maintained indignantly. "I can go round the cemetery at night, and you..."
"All right, we've heard that tale before."
"Do you think I won't?" Petka really got on his high horse.
"All right, I believe you," I reassured Petka and gave him my hand.
We said good-bye. As soon as I was round the corner, I heard the patter of Petka's sandals on the pavement. The hero's nerve had given way and he was running for home as fast as he could.
I do not know how soon my father and Aunt Maria got to sleep, but I tossed and turned until dawn. The picture of Kotka Grigorenko standing at the door of the tinker's shop would not leave my mind.
We had left the people's school that spring. There had been a lot of talk among the chaps about further study. Petka and I had firmly decided to enter the technical college in the autumn. The other fellows in our class also intended going on with their studies. Before the last exams everyone had been talking about it. But Kotka had kept silent.
He knew very well that he, the son of an executed Petlura man, would not be accepted at the technical college. What Kotka would do after the people's school, no one knew.
And suddenly the news went round that he had gone as an apprentice to Zakharzhevsky the tinker.
Why he, a rich man's son, who had never done a day's work in his life, should want to learn tinkering, nobody could at first understand.
Every morning Kotka ran through our Zarechye on his way to the workshop, carrying his lunch in a packet under his arm. All day he banged his heavy hammer on the anvil, learning to solder saucepans and sharpen the little, propeller-like blades of meat-grinders.
When he passed us going home from work, he smelt of acid, alum, and smoky blacksmith's coal...
For a good half the night that wretched 'Kotka hovered before my eyes, in his tarpaulin apron, with a heavy hammer in his hands.
Surely Galya, a girl ;I remembered from the time when we had studied together at the people's school, could not be friendly with Kotka? True, I had not seen Galya for several days, but that did not mean anything. 'If she valued our friendship, surely she could not forget me so quickly? But perhaps Petka had made it all up out of jealousy, about her being friendly with Kotka?. . .
Then, as I was dropping off to sleep, I remembered Petka's story about the Party School where we were going to live being haunted by ghosts. And as soon as 'I got to sleep I dreamt I saw a skeleton with a sharp scythe on its shoulder. Draped in a transparent muslin veil, it popped up in front of me in an underground passage and stretched out its dry bony fingers towards me. I took to my heels. The skeleton came after me. At last I rushed into a blank wall. I turned round and the skeleton was still there. I felt it seize my throat and start choking me. Numbed with terror, I began to scream...
"Up you get, pigeon-keeper, don't shout the house down," said my father laughing, and gave me a hearty shake as I blinked up at him sleepily. And seeing that I was awake, he added: "The cart's come for our things."
I looked round and heaved a sigh of relief. The morning sun was shining joyfully through the window.
We were allotted a flat in a low white building that ran along one side of the big school yard, a few paces from the main block. It was a big flat—three large rooms with a cosy little kitchen next door, and across a narrow passage yet another kitchen, somewhat bigger, with a tall Russian stove and an iron cooking-range.
Aunt Maria went into this roomy kitchen, tapped the dust-coated cooking-range with her finger, and said to my father:
"But what shall I do with this kitchen? That other little one's enough for me."
"I don't know," said Father, "I don't know." "Dad," I exclaimed suddenly. "Suppose I live here in the summer?"
"Live here if you like, it won't worry me." And Father chuckled in his thick black moustache.
"Are you in your right mind, Miron?" My aunt exploded. "Never think of such a thing!"
"Why not?" my father asked.
"Why, he'll be playing with gunpowder on that stove; he'll blow the house up."
"No, I won't, Aunt. Honestly I won't," I pleaded. "I haven't got any gunpowder. You can look if you like."
"There you are," said Father, "he's run out of gunpowder. You needn't worry. Vasya's a big lad now, he's past all that."
"A big lad!" Aunt Maria muttered to herself, giving in. "He'll start tinkering about here on his own and get his legs blown off..."
"No, he won't," Father said cheerfully and, turning to me, added: "All right then, Vasya, make yourself comfortable."
Aunt Maria and he went away to unpack, and I was left alone in my kitchen.
Here was a stroke of luck! Two days ago I dared not even dream of a room of myself, and now, all of a sudden, I had one. I should be able to bring Petka and the other chaps in whenever I liked.
I ran to the window, turned the latch, and pulled open the frames, tearing apart the old strips of newspaper that the previous occupants had stuck over the cracks. A warm breeze burst into the stuffy room.
I leaned out of the window and, rubbing dust off the sill with my shirt, looked down. Not bad. Quite high for the ground-floor.
While Father and Aunt Maria unpacked our things, I set about getting the kitchen ship-shape. I swept the floor clean and wiped everything with a wet rag—the cornices, the window-sill, the iron cooking-range. Then I wheedled two wooden stools out of Aunt Maria and placed them in the empty corners of the room. For my guests! The cooking-range I covered with newspapers. It would serve me as a table. When we went on with our studies, at the technical college, I should be able to do my home-work here. At first I put the pistol away in the oven, then, changing my mind, climbed up and placed it on the ledge above the stove. I put the spare cartridges there too. On the rusty bottom of the oven I laid out all my tools—pincers, a hammer, two files, and a screwdriver with a broken handle. There, too, I poured out of an old pencil-box my whole stock of nails and screws! Then all I had to do was make my bed! Having spread a few newspapers on the ledge above the stove, I covered them with a red-striped mattress stuffed with hay, drew a sheet over it and, on top of everything, spread my frayed blue quilt, folded double. Against the wall I propped a pillow in a clean, white pillow-case. The bed was a treat! I lay down on the quilt and stretched my legs. From up there I had a good view of the square open window and part of the cobbled court-yard.
There was a sound of footsteps in the corridor. I jumped 'down from the stove. The floor-boards creaked under me. Someone pulled the door, but then, realizing that it was locked, gave a knock. I slid back the bolts. Father entered the kitchen. He stopped by the window and glanced round him. I followed his glance anxiously. I thought he would tell me to put my bed back. But he merely fingered the window-frame and, pushing the stools back against the wall, said: "It's a real study." Then, after a pause, he added:
"And you didn't want to move! You'll have a lot more fun here than at the old place."
Pulling his peaked straw cap down on his forehead, Father walked towards the door.
"Dinner will be late today. I'm going down to the print-shop for some type. Go to your aunt and ask her for something to stay you until dinner."
I did not go to Aunt Maria. Instead, having locked the black padlock on the kitchen door, I ran out into the yard. From a distance I saw my father walk over to a high-wheeled army cart that was waiting for him at the gate and step up on to the driver's seat. The sentry opened the broad iron gate, and the cart drove out into the street.
The yard was empty. Obviously the students were at work. Far away, behind the three-storey building of the school, birds were singing. I listened to their cheerful song and wanted to go into the garden.
The way into the garden lay through a small, squeaky gate. I opened it quietly and walked down a narrow path into the heart of the garden, passing tall bushes of barberry, elder, and sweet-scented lilac. On the right, the garden was sheltered from the road by a long stone wall, on the left rose the blank white side-wall of the school building. At the foot of the garden wall I noticed some low, very familiar-looking bushes. Gooseberries! This was fine! What about picking some?... But suppose 'I got into a trouble?. . . Bending down, I picked the long heavy berries one after the other from the prickly branches. Stinging nettles burned my legs, but I took no notice of them. Voices sounded near by. I snatched my hand away from the gooseberry bush and pricked up my ears. Nonsense! It was some people on the other side of the wall talking to each other as they walked down the road to the river. They were going fishing. I could see the tops of their bamboo fishing-rods bobbing along above the wall.
Having filled my pockets with gooseberries, I went back to the path and walked on farther.
Nice gooseberries here! Just a bit rough and covered with yellowish bloom. They crunched as you bit them. And how sweet they were! You could eat a whole hatful of berries like these without making your mouth sore.
As I walked on, the trees got higher and higher. Among the plain hornbeams and ash-trees I spotted the whitewashed trunks of apple and pear. Very many of them. Burdock grew in the thick grass under the trees. Masses of it! !In the autumn, when the leaves fell and the cranes flew away to the south, there would be plenty of good places for bird-catching here.
But how quiet it was in this garden! Only the song of the birds rose above the sound of my footsteps. I could make out the voices of siskins, robins, finches. You would expect to find a lot of birds here—no one disturbed them, except perhaps the boys from the neighbouring suburb of Belanovka, who probably dropped in from time to time to pick apples or pears.
The path curved and ran along under the wall. There was no fun in following it farther, and so I made my way across the soft green grass right into the depths of the garden. I liked everything I saw here. Besides, I felt that this was a place where I belonged.
Near a tall old mulberry-tree I noticed a high mound surrounded by lilac and thorn bushes. It was covered with thick grass, and on the top stood a white, unpainted bench. I felt like climbing the mound, sitting down on the bench, " and from there having a good look over the whole garden.
But no sooner had I reached the foot of the mound than there was a noise from behind the bushes and I caught a glimpse of something white. I crouched down and hid behind the mulberry-tree. Peeping out, I saw a Lad in a white shirt climbing an old, gnarled tree half hidden from view behind the lilac. In one hand he was carrying la little white net. Cautiously, as though he were afraid of scaring something, the lad climbed up to the boughs of the tree.
I left my hiding-place and crept over to the lilac bushes. Now I could clearly make out the lad's back, his grey-striped trousers, the battered soles of his shoes. The lad tucked the net in his belt to free his hands, and climbed higher. Craning my neck, I watched every movement. I could even hear the scrape of his feet and rustle of his clothes on the dried-up hark of the tree. He reached the bowl and, grasping a thick branch with both hands, peered into a hole in the trunk. A small grey bird shot out of the black hole and with a plaintive cry flew away towards the river. The lad started back and the white net nearly slipped from under his belt.
The bird's frightened cries could be heard now from the edge of the garden.
The lad sat astride-the thick branch and pulled the net out of his belt. He tapped the net on the trunk of the tree and listened attentively. Then he put his eye to the hole but, seeing nothing there pushed the net gently into the hole. After straightening up and taking a breath, he lay flat on the branch. Hooking his right arm round the branch, he jerked the net several times to and fro in the hole, then pulled it gently out again. There was something in it. The lad locked into the net and tipped it up over his hand. A small white egg rolled out. The lad popped it into his mouth and again pushed the net into the hole. Several times he pushed the net into the hole and pulled it out again, until he had taken all the eggs from the bird's nest. Then he tossed the net on to the grass and slid cautiously down the trunk.
While he was doing so, I pushed the bushes apart and walked boldly towards him. I wanted to know what bird's eggs he had found.
Before I could reach the spot, the lad jumped to the ground. I started back in surprise.
A few paces away from me, pulling his shirt straight, stood Kotka Grigorenko. I had never expected to meet him here. What was this young puppy doing in the Party School garden? The cheek! What right had he to come here and pinch eggs! Hadn't he done enough playing about in his own garden!
I already felt myself in charge here, and it made me angry to think of this Petlura puppy showing up in a place like the Party School. But perhaps he was allowed to come here? Perhaps the students didn't know anything about him?
All right, the students might not know, but I did!
Had I met Kotka in the street I should not have spoken to him, but here, in the Party School garden, I realized that I ought to send him packing at once.
"Now then, put those back!" I shouted, striding towards Kotka.
Kotka gave a jump but, seeing me, went on brushing his shirt. He did not even look in my direction, the little rat!
"Are you deaf?" I shouted, planting myself in front of him. "Someone's talking to you."
Still keeping his eyes averted, Kotka went on leisurely brushing the bits of bark off his shirt.
"Do you hear?" he shouted furiously.
Kotka straightened up and, skilfully spitting out into his palm five grey eggs, said in a tone of surprise:
"Are you talking to me?"
"What do you think. . ."
"I was wondering where the squeak came from. I couldn't make it out. . ."
"Why did you rob that nest?"
"Are you serious?" Kotka asked, narrowing his eyes.
"Climb up that tree and put the eggs back," I ordered.
"Aren't you taking rather a lot on yourself, you snotty kid?" Kotka said slyly.
"Me . . . a snotty kid? I'll..."
"What are you doing here anyway?"
Kotka's question made me choke with anger.
"What did you say? I belong here... My father works here... And you've got no right to come nosing around!"
"That'll do," Kotka said, raising his voice unexpectedly. "I'll let you off this time, because I'm not in the mood to teach you a lesson. But mind what I say—next time we may have a different kind of talk."
With a careless gesture Kotka pulled his right hand out of his pocket. The sun glinted on his fingers. While we had been talking Kotka had managed to don a heavy, nickel-plated knuckle-duster.
Wagging the knuckle-duster before my eyes, Kotka walked away, leaving me standing dazedly under the tree.
Perhaps I ought to go after him? No, it was too late now.
I had missed the best moment. Instead of talking to him, I should have given him a good slap on the face, while he had the eggs in his mouth, and then snatched the knuckle-duster away. Then we should have seen who came off best. That would have been something like!
High brown cliffs rose on both sides of the river. Between these overhanging walls the river was shallow and stony. I was walking along a narrow path, and the sharp stones cut my heels. Round a bend in the river I caught sight of the white walls of the cottage where Galya lived. The little rush-thatched cottage stood on an outcropping ledge of rock, huddled against the cliff. There were no other cottages near. Only right at the top of the cliff, where the pointed battlements of Old Fortress loomed dark against the sky, could one glimpse the white cottages of the Podzamche district, ricks of yellow straw, and the long low brick buildings of the steam-mill. The deserted bank along which I was walking was called Otter Bank. There had once been a lot of otters here. They used to make their burrows just above the river.
I stopped by the cottage fence and, after waiting a minute or two, shouted: "Galya!"
From high above, by the fortress, came the sound of creaking cart wheels. Galya's cottage was silent.
"Galya-a-a!" I shouted a little louder, cupping my hands round my mouth.
The latch rattled and Galya's father, Baldy Kushnir, appeared on the cottage doorstep.
I wanted to duck down behind the fence, but it was too late; Kushnir walked across the yard towards me.
Coming up to the gate, he leaned on the wooden rail, took his old, burnt pipe out of his mouth and asked quietly: "What are you shouting about?" "I want to see Galya."
"Galya?" Kushnir said in surprise. "Well I never, a young suitor! Your luck's out, lad; Galya's not here." "Where's she gone then?"
"Where's she gone?" Kushnir paused, sucked at his pipe, let out twin streams of smoke through his nostrils, then, knocking out his pipe on the fence, said calmly: "She's gone for water. Over the other side. If you're a real suitor and not just a lazy-bones, run and meet her. You can help her carry the water."
Without glancing back, I dashed over the stepping stones across the swift shallow river, which curved sharply after passing Galya's cottage and plunged foaming into the dark tunnel under the fortress bridge, to reappear on the other side, a roaring white waterfall.
After crossing the river I ran to the steps that led up the cliff to the bridge.
At last I reached the street that ran down from the town to the fortress bridge. Galya was not there. I paused for breath, crossed the cobbled street, and looked down. From where I was standing I could see the foaming white water-fall, the wooden foot-bridge spanning it beside the high fortress bridge, the broad calm stretch of river beyond the waterfall, and the rocky banks of Smotrich overgrown with yellow lungwort and hawthorn. Steep steps with no rail led down to the waterfall. There was no sign of Galya on the steps. She must have had to wait at the well. You could not see the well from here of course; it was on the other side of the waterfall, behind a wooden church with a graveyard full of tall poplars.
What should I do? Wait for Galya here or run down? 'It would be better to run down. I could help her carry the pails all the way from the well.
And I ran down to the river.
I ran so fast that it was hard to stop. The speed of my descent carried me on to the foot-bridge suspended over the waterfall, and cold spray swept over me. White splashes wetted the boards. The water boomed and roared below; I could see it through the chinks in the bridge. The roar of the water mingled with a rumble from above, where a cart was moving quickly across the fortress bridge. I had nearly crossed the bridge when suddenly, above the roar of the water and the rumble of the cart, I heard a voice calling my name.
"Vasya! Vasya-a-a!"
I glanced round.
To one side, right under the cliff, sat Galya, and with her—someone else. But who it was I could not at first make out.
"Come over here," Galya cried, and beckoned me with her hand.
"Who's that sitting with her," I wondered, pushing my way through the bushes. Ouch, what was that! I had nearly tripped over the pails of water that Galya had left among the bushes.
A big granite boulder barred my path, I climbed it, clinging to tufts of grass. When I got to the top, I paused.
At Galya's side sat Kotka Grigorenko. My heart missed a beat. They might even think I had come on purpose to spy on them. Should I run away?
"Come down, Vasya. Hurry!" Galya called, and, like it or not, I had to jump down from the rock and go over to the patch of grass where they were sitting.
Ignoring Kotka, I offered Galya my hand.
"Where have you been all this time?" she said. "I was beginning to think... Sit down."
Breathing hard, I dropped down on the soft grass.
"We moved the day before yesterday," I said with a nod in the direction of Zarechye.
"Where to?" Galya inquired.
I had to tell her about our moving to the Party School.
"To the Party School?... There's a lovely garden there. Such a big one... I'll be coming to see you and pick cherries," said Galya.
"Yes, you should come..." I said not very confidently.
"I was carrying some water. And I got so tired. Then I saw Kotka coming along the path and we decided to have a sit down. Where were you going?"
"I've got to go over there," I lied, nodding in the direction of the wooden church, "to Podzamche. To see a chap I know."
"To see a chap?..." Galya said slowly. "But didn't you..." And she broke off.
Never mind, let her think that I had been going to see someone else.
Meanwhile Kotka stood up, stretched himself, straightened his white cambric shirt, tightened his Caucasian belt with its heavy silver buckles, and picked up a stone.
Placing his feet wide apart, he swung his arm and the round stone shot out of his hand and fell far way, in the middle of the pool under the waterfall.
"That was a good throw!" said Galya, and the words seemed to burn me like fire.
But Kotka had already picked up another stone, and was saying pompously to Galya:
"That's nothing. Watch where I throw this one."
He swung his arm, but the stone slipped out of his hand and fell quite near us, under the cliff.
"Serves you right!" I nearly shouted. "Don't show off for nothing."
Galya laughed, and Kotka, anxious to find an excuse, explained: "Oh, that was an accident. I've sprained my arm." He even pulled a face. "Are you coming, Galya, or do you want to stay here?"
Kotka did not look at me.
Galya stood up and straightened her dress. All three of us climbed over the granite boulder. Galya bent down to pick up her pails.
"Let me help you," said Kotka, waving Galya aside and grasping the handles.
"Oh no, why should you? I'll carry them myself."
But Kotka was already carrying the pails towards the steps.
"Must you go to Podzamche, Vasya?" Galya asked. "What's the name of this boy?"
"What boy?"
"Why, the one you're going to see."
"Oh him ... Tiktor," I guessed wildly.
"Tiktor? But Tiktor doesn't live in Podzamche. He lives near the theatre."
"Yes, but now he's with some friends in Podzamche. We arranged to meet there."
"Perhaps you could see him another time?" Galya said, looking at me shyly.
But I had decided to show no mercy. I wanted to punish Galya for being with Kotka.
"No, I can't," I said dryly. "I've got to see Tiktor today."
We walked to the steps. Kotka stood waiting for us half way up.
"Thank you, Kotka," Galya said kindly. "I'll carry them the rest of the way."
"Don't be so shy, I'll help you," Kotka said in a deep voice.
"Oh no, Kotka, thank you. You were going in the other direction. You two can go on together," Galya replied, nodding towards me.
"Let me help you, Galya," I suggested.
"I don't need any help. Can't I carry them myself? Go along together. Well, good-bye..."
"No, thank you, I have no desire to share his company," Kotka said, and turned his back on me.
"You keep quiet ... you ... you! ..." I said in a choking voice.
Galya glanced at me, then at Kotka and laughed.
"What a fool I am!. . . You're not on speaking terms, is that it? I was wondering why you were so silent. What's the matter, have you quarrelled?"
"We've got an old score to settle," 'Kotka said, and grasping both pails he carried them up the steps.
"And I never noticed! Well, good-bye, Vasya." And Galya held out her hand.
I pressed her cold fingers, and she walked firmly up the steps after Kotka.
I stood on the steps, looking after them. But what if Galya or, worse still, Kotka turned round? Feeling suddenly ashamed, I walked quickly down the steps and crossed the waterfall. Didn't I curse myself at that moment! "What a coward you are," I thought. "Why did you make that up about Tiktor? You ought to have stayed with Galya and sent Kotka packing. All you need have done was pick up the buckets and carry them yourself. And you couldn't do it! What a flop, after coming all this way to see Galya, all the way from the Party School! Now they'll go the rest of the way together. And Kotka will swank to Galya about how strong he is, and say that you got scared of him. He'll make up all kinds of things against you. He's sure to."
I went round the wooden church. A yellow cigarette packet lay in a puddle by the well. The label with a burning cigarette stamped on it had come unstuck and was floating in the water. I looked at the floating label and remembered how a few years ago we used to collect such cigarette packets, then I struck off up the steep cliff path that ran round Old Fortress on the Karvasar side. I was heading towards Podzamche, but could not for the life of me think why I was going there.
On my way home through town I stopped before the window of a hairdresser's shop. Behind the thick glass stood wax models with thin delicate features. Each of these beauties was adorned with a stuck-on wig. And on either side of the splendid shop-window decorated with coloured paper and magazine cuttings there were two gleaming mirrors. I pretended to be looking at the faces of the wax beauties with drops of glue on their foreheads, and glanced furtively at my reflection in the mirror. I was ashamed to do so openly. The passers-by would laugh at me—such a great big fellow looking at himself in the mirror like a girl! I took another surreptitious glance, and thought to myself, "Kotka’s got broader shoulders than me—that's all."
In the mirror on the other side I caught sight of an angry face, staring eyes, a belted shirt, and black moleskin trousers without a single patch on them. My grey cap was tilted on the back of my head. The only bad thing was my bare feet. I ought to have put my sandals on. "You are a fool!" I muttered to myself. When I had done admiring myself, I squared my shoulders and, bending my arms like a wrestler, strode off down the road to the Party School. The town pavements were smooth and warm with sunshine.
On the patch of grass in the Party School yard the students were playing football.
The sentry at the gate, a swarthy, slant-eyed young fellow in a blue Budyonny hat, was leaning on his rifle and watching the game with interest. I stood by the gymnastics bar.
The bar—a water-pipe polished bright by the rub of many palms—was fixed at one end in the fork of a maple-tree. The other end was fastened with brackets to a post firmly planted in the ground. The post and a heap of clothes thrown on the ground formed a goal for one of the teams. The other goal—two tree stumps—was some distance away, under the windows of our flat. In that goal crouched my old acquaintance Polevoi, Secretary of the School's Party organization. After being demobilized from the Red Army, he had decided not to return to his home, in Ekaterinoslav, and had stayed with us in Podolia. The Regional Party Committee had sent Polevoi to the Party School.
In the goal near me stood the agitated shaven-headed figure of the lecturer in political economy Kartamyshev, dressed in billowing blue riding-breeches and an orange singlet. Yesterday I had heard someone call him, and the biology lecturer Boiko, the "robber brothers." In their blue tunics and sheepskin hats with red velvet tops they certainly looked very much alike.
Now "robber brother" Boiko was darting about in the centre of the field. At first J could not make out what position he was playing in—centre forward or left-winger. Dressed in riding-breeches, he darted up the middle of the field and at last, having captured the ball, dribbled it down my side to the bar. Then I realized that the "robber brothers" were in different teams and playing against each other.
When he was about five paces from the goal, Boiko let out a shout and gave the ball such a kick that I thought it would burst. Spinning and bouncing across the grass, the ball flew into the goal just past my legs and rolled on towards the sentry. Highly satisfied with himself, Boiko wiped the sweat off his face and shouted to the confused goal-keeper:
"Couldn't you catch it?"
Kartamyshev said nothing and, breathing heavily, clumped off in his heavy, hob-nailed boots to fetch the ball from the sentry-box. Disappointed at having let a goal through, he returned to his place at a walk, hanging his head.
Boiko, who was still at his rival's goal, twitted him: "And you say yours is a strong team! Why, we're two men short; but we're still scoring."
"Well, pick some more men. Who's stopping you?" Kartamyshev answered sourly.
The other players shifted about from one foot to the other, waiting impatiently to go on with the game.
"Where can I get them?" Boiko retorted, glancing round.
I wished he would notice me. But Boiko's glance rested on me indifferently; standing on tip-toe, he peered into a little garden behind some clipped lilac bushes where two students were reading newspapers.
"Heh, Bazhura, get up and have a game," Boiko shouted.
"I don't feel like it," came a voice from behind the bushes.
I already knew a few of the students here, but was not bold enough; to ask for a game. I was not a bad player though. "Ask me, ask me, come on, ask me!" I kept saying to myself. I was nearly hopping with excitement, I so much wanted to play. And this was such a good chance to enter the game. But as soon as Kartamyshev laced up the ball, the chance would be lost. I watched the goal-keeper working the end of the leather thong under the cover. The end vanished. No football for me! Kartamyshev prepared to kick the ball to the centre, and was just lifting it in front of him to drop it at his feet when he glanced at me. He stopped and lowered the ball.
"Listen, Captain," he shouted. "Take this lad into your team. He's dying for a game."
Boiko ran his eye over me. Evidently he was not very keen. Then he asked reluctantly: "Heh, lad, can you play?"
"I can a bit..." I answered in a trembling voice, scarcely able to believe that I was being asked to play.
"We all only play a bit," Boiko retorted with a laugh, then said strictly: "Get up by the goal. You're a full back. Understand?"
As if I hadn't understood!
Skipping barefooted over the damp weeds I dashed towards Polevoi. The game had already started and the ball was being buffeted about behind me. Polevoi was crouching in goal, watching the ball.
"I'm a back," I shouted running up to him.
"All right, get in position," Polevoi replied without taking his eyes off the middle of the field.
I took up my position in front of the goal and, pulling my cap on firmly, got ready to kick.
I already felt myself one of the team. If I did well, they would let me play every evening; and on Sundays I would go with the team to the big field near the food stores. Good old Boiko for asking me to play! All that mattered now was that I should play well and kick hard. If only someone would send the ball my way!
But the game stayed in the centre. Then Boiko again dribbled the ball down to the other goal. One of the backs, in white shorts and gleaming top boots, ran to cut him off. Boiko tricked the back and steadied the ball to shoot. Now we should have another goal.
But goal-keeper Kartamyshev saved his team. Taking the ball easily on the toe of his boot, he sent it high into the air. A lovely drop-shot! Not much chance of my doing as well as that. Looking up, I watched the flight of the ball. It landed right at the feet of the other team's centre-forward Marushchak. Marushchak was a hot footballer. I could see his army cap with its shiny peak bobbing among the players. A moment later Marushchak was running straight towards me, the ball at his feet. He was a tall, heavy man. Nearer and nearer came the black ball, looking like a hedgehog. Marushchak made his shot, a hard low drive, straight at me. Now I'd have it!...
I darted this way and that, put out my foot to trap the ball and—missed.
Polevoi was taken off his guard and it looked like a goal. But at the last moment, when the ball was only about two paces from the goal-line, Polevoi threw himself on the ground, grabbed the ball, then, leaping up, threw the ball into the air and punched it hard with his fist. Again the ball flew back to the centre. On Polevoi's white shorts there was now a big green patch. He brushed off the flattened blades of grass and shouted displeasedly:
'I won't do so much hopping about. I thought you were going to kick it. Why did you put your foot there?" Then in reply to my mumbled excuses: " 'Accident, accident!' Always make up your mind what you're going to do. Don't try to kick when the ball's a long way off. Understand? But when it comes to you, go straight for it, and kick it hard. And keep clear of the goal."
I darted forward among the players as if there were someone behind me with a whip. Again Marushchak was coming at me, this time without the ball. The other side must be up to something. And they were indeed. Before Marushchak reached me, his left-winger passed him the ball. Marushchak prepared to shoot.
"Well, here goes," I decided. "If I break a leg, I'll have to put up with it." And I charged at the massive Marushchak. But he thought he could trick me, and with a gentle kick tried to send the ball over my head. Not this time! Another second and the ball would have passed me, but I jumped and got to the ball with my forehead. My cap flew off, but even before I could stoop to pick it up Boiko had taken the ball and scored in the other goal with a long cross shot.
Again the ball went bouncing across the stone yard to the sentry-box. Kartamyshev clumped after it, and Boiko, smiling broadly, shouted to me right across the field:
"Play like that all the time, understand? Passing's the thing!"
I was happy.
The game went on at a lively pace. The ball swung to and fro up and down the field. Students gathered round to watch us. It was getting dark. Big horned beetles were buzzing over the leafy maple-tree.
I charged up and down the field, quite forgetting that a back should never move far from his own goal. Once I tried to shoot at goal, but Kartamyshev took the ball easily. My feet were scratched all over, my heel was pricking me—I must have got a thorn from the acacia bushes in it—and my big toe, which I had stubbed on a stone, was bleeding; but I felt no pain. It was hot. Streaming with sweat, I chased the ball about the field, trying to capture it from other players. In an effort to get past me, Marushchak took a long shot at goal, but missed. The ball hit the wall and bounced back to the goal-post, marked with a round patch of whitewash. The danger was past and I calmly watched the game return to the centre.
The other players were as hot as I was; and there was a smell of sweat, tobacco, and boot polish in the air. Polevoi had a red scratch on his knee.
From the street I could hear someone shouting: "Vasya, Vasya!"
I passed the ball out to the left wing, then glanced at the street to see who was calling me.
His nose pressed against the wooden cross-bar of the fence, Petka Maremukha stood on the stone coping eagerly watching the game. His face wore an expression of deepest envy. As I dribbled the ball past the fence, I shouted to him;
"Don't go away, we'll finish soon."
Petka nodded and shifted himself into a more comfortable position on the stone coping. I took a running kick and sent the ball up in a fine drop-shot. The ball landed on top of the maple-tree, crashed down through the branches and, bouncing on the bar, rolled past Kartamyshev out of play.
Somewhere inside the building a bell rang. .
"Let's go for supper, comrades," Polevoi shouted and, scooping up the clothes that had served as a goal-post, left his goal.
"You take the ball, Comrade Marushchak," Boiko instructed and, walking over to Kartamyshev the goal-keeper, suggested: "Let's slip down to the river for a dip before supper."
Kartamyshev agreed, and both of them set out for the gate, pulling on their blue tunics as they went.
I ran after them and was first to reach the street.
"Hullo, old chap!" I said joyfully, pressing Petka's plump hand as hard as I could. "Did you see me nearly get a goal? Fine, wasn't it?"
"You muffed a lot too. A nice mess you made of that drop-shot," Petka answered coldly.
"Wouldn't you have made a mess of it?" I retorted.
But Petka seemed not to hear my question.
"How did you get to know them all so soon?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know them all, only about half. Yesterday they were playing gorodki here and I got to know their names... Come and see my place," I suggested.
"What? In there?" Petka said, glancing suspiciously in the direction of our block. "Is it allowed?"
"If you come with me, it is," I said importantly, and we walked to the gate.
Petka liked everything about my kitchen—the bed on the stove, the tools laid out in the oven, the window overlooking the yard. While he was inspecting everything and touching everything with his plump, girlish fingers, I sat on a stool digging the thorn out of my heel with a pin.
Near me, on the edge of the cooking range, an oil-lamp burned feebly.
When I at last got the thorn out, I stamped my foot on the floor; the raw scratch only hurt a bit. I rinsed my hands under the tap and began to think what I could give Petka to eat. Suddenly I remembered my encounter with Kotka in the garden.
"Petka, did you know that Kotka comes round here?
"Where? To the Party School?"
"Yes, here of all places!"
And I told Petka of our encounter.
"You should have got hold of him and put him on the floor," Petka said boldly.
"All very well for you to talk—put him on the floor! I'd have done it too. But you know what? Korybko lets him come into the garden."
"Why, does Korybko work here?"
"Yes, of course. That's the funny thing. I didn't know at first, and when I caught Kotka in the garden I was surprised too. What does he mean by it, I thought, treating the place as if it belonged to him? And then, yesterday evening, I saw the two of them walking across the yard. Korybko had a great big pair of scissors and a pail of whitewash. I asked one of the students what this old man was doing here, and the student told me he was a gardener."
"So that's it..." Petka said slowly. "If Kotka's lodging at Korybko's, of course, he'll be able to come here when he likes. That old devil will let him in to the garden when the apples get ripe too."
"Yes, he will," I agreed.
"Now Kotka will clean out all the nests here. You know what a collection of eggs he's got?" Petka said. "It's even better than the one in the town museum. He's been collecting eggs for a long time. A big fellow like him, and still climbing trees... By the way, Vasya," Petka checked himself suddenly, "I've got a note for you."
"Who from?" "Guess." "Tell me."
"No, you've got to guess."
Petka pulled a blue envelope out of his pocket and put it behind his back.
"Hand over," I shouted.
"I'll give it you, but you must swear you'll do one thing." "What?"
"If anyone asks you when you got this letter, you must say this morning."
"But it's evening now!"
"I know. But you say you got it this morning all right?"
"Who's the letter from?"
"Swear, then I'll tell you."
"Very well, I'll take it myself. Give me that letter!"
I stepped towards Petka and grabbed his arm.
"I won't give it you, Vasya. Honest, I won't. I'll tear it... Oh, don't twist my arm!"
It was hard to get the letter away from Petka. I let go his arm and said: "All right then—I swear."
" 'I swear!' None of your tricks! Say it all."
"I swear that if anyone asks me when I got that letter I'll say this morning."
"Take it then." And Petka handed me the crumpled envelope.
I tore it open and began to read the letter.
"Vasya!
"If you have time, come round this evening and we'll go to the cinema.
"Galya"
I nearly went for Petka with my fists. "Why didn't you give it me this morning?" "I couldn't. I had to go down to the allotment with Dad first thing."
"When did Galya give you the letter then?"
"This morning. When she was going to the market for milk. What's she say?" And Petka tried to see what was in the letter.
"Wait a minute," I said, pushing Petka back. "Couldn't you have dropped in to see me when you were going down to the allotment?"
"Of course not. I had to look after the cart. If I had left it out in the street, someone might have pinched it."
"All right then," I said. "Then I'll tell Galya when you gave me the letter."
"Oh, don't, Vasya. She'll think I'm a liar. . ."
"Why?"
"Well, when I was coming down the boulevard on my way here, she was on the swings. And she ran up and asked: 'Did you deliver that note?' And I said I did. And all the time it was in my pocket. 'When did you deliver it?' she said. And I said I gave it you this morning."
"But why did you lie?" ;
Petka sniffed plaintively.
"This morning she asked me to be sure and give you the note. I swore I would. And then I forgot. I was ashamed to admit I was such a stupid."
Feeling that he had given himself away properly, Petka glanced round and mumbled:
"I made that up about going to the allotment. I just forgot."
Now I understood everything. Galya's pride had prevented her from asking me in front of Kotka whether I had got her note. Apparently she had been very keen to see me this evening. And I, like a fool, had invented all that about Tiktor and been so cold with her!
"Who was Galya with on the boulevard?" I asked, trying to hide my feelings.
"Who was she with? Why, Kotka, of course," Petka replied, not realizing how his words had stung me. "Yes, she was with Kotka!" Petka repeated cheerfully. "That's right.
He was giving her a swing. Galya was screaming because she was afraid, but he kept pushing her until she nearly went over the top."
I pictured Kotka swinging Galya on the iron swing, the two tall ash-trees creaking, Galya's blue dress flying in the wind—and a wave of bitter disappointment swept over me.
"Did you clean the pistol?" Petka asked.
"I did"
"Done any shooting?"
"Not yet."
"What about doing some?"
"Let's."
"When shall I come?"
I thought for a moment. Why not now?
"Listen," I said to Petka firmly, "Let's try it now."
"Now? Where?"
"We'll go into the garden." I climbed on to the stove for the pistol.
"Into the garden?" Petka repeated. "Don't be an ass! They'll hear us."
"No, they won't. There are trees all round, and it's dark. There won't be anyone about. You could throw a bomb and no one would hear you; the house shuts out the sound. And the students are having supper now anyway." I jumped down with the pistol in my hand.
"No, Vasya. I'm not going in the garden. Let's go to Paradise Gates tomorrow. There are cliffs there, and no one goes that way."
"But there's no one here either!" I insisted.
Petka eyed the pistol as if it were a live snake. No one would have thought that it had been his property only a few days ago.
"Please, Vasya, let's go tomorrow, to Paradise Gates. I'll bring some of my cartridges. Let's go tomorrow, Vasya!"
"Not so loud!" I hissed at Petka. "We're not going anywhere tomorrow, we're going today. And if you don't come into the garden with me now, I'll never speak to you again. Understand? I'll tell all the chaps what a coward you are. Understand? And all the girls too. Come on!"
Tucking the pistol under my shirt, I walked to the door and flicked the catch open noisily.
When Petka and I were making our way through the dark garden I began to regret that I had ever started this thing. Everything was different in the garden at night. The barberry bushes towered up like huge trees; mulberries, pears, apple-trees formed a solid barrier in front of us. Somewhere, a long way off, a door banged, and again there was silence. Crickets sang in the wall which we were following. Sometimes they would all stop suddenly, as if listening to our footsteps, and then strike up again.
Through the leaves of the trees we could see the clear starlit sky cut in two by the Milky Way.
We went straight ahead without bothering to keep to the path. Stinging nettles burned our legs; brushwood and dry weeds rustled underfoot. In front of us there was not a light to be seen. The garden lay on the very outskirts of the town.
Petka tip-toed silently behind me, keeping close on my heels.
"Over to the left," I ordered, and gripping Petka's arm, led him to one side.
I wanted to get as far away as possible, to the gully at the bottom of the garden.
The mound surrounded with lilac loomed up in front of us.
"Is this where you're going to shoot?" Petka asked.
"No, I'll just load."
Taking a clip of cartridges out of my pocket, I pushed it into the butt of the pistol and pulled back the breech. The breech slid back with a click—everything was all right. Now there was a round in the barrel. "Come on," I said.
"Vasya, tell me when you're going to fire, and I'll cover my ears," Petka implored.
I said nothing, thinking to myself: "Won't I just! Think I'll tell you when I'm going to fire. What fun will that be! I'll blaze away all of a sudden and you'll jump out of your skin with fright."
I already had my finger lightly on the trigger, but it was not safe to shoot yet. Someone might hear us.
The trees grew thinner, and by the clear light of the stars we made out the old nunnery wall in the distance, beyond a low line of bushes.
After another three steps, I halted. "It's not worth going any further," I thought. "And it's too dangerous to shoot at the wall—the bullet might ricochet back."
A tall crooked tree loomed up before us. One of its thick branches stretched out towards the wall like a huge paw. An owl hooted down by the river.
And suddenly I gave a little jump, and with a strained, high-pitched shout of "Halt!" let fly straight at the trunk of the dark crooked tree. The pistol jerked back and a red tongue of flame spurted from the muzzle.
The echo had scarcely died away in the dark recesses of the garden and the neighbouring gullies, when there was a noise under the wall and I distinctly heard a voice shout in Polish:
"Quick!"
The shout was followed by two thundering revolver shots from the bushes. I saw the flash of exploding cartridges and heard the bullets whine past over my head.
"Run!" Petka shouted and dashed away through the bushes.
"Make for the wall," I panted as I dashed after him. We tore back through some nut-trees to the stone wall that surrounded the garden on three sides.
I ran up to the wall, jumped and gripped the sloping top with both hands. Stones and mortar pattered into the dense stinging nettles below.
As I heaved myself over, I heard Petka scrambling up the wall behind me.
We both dropped down in the dusty track leading to Privorotye almost at the same time. What a relief it was to run on that smooth track after the prickly needles of the garden! Our feet sank into soft dust that was still warm from the day's sunshine.
We did not stop till we reached the top of the road, near the white building of the Party School. The left wing of the building that faced the road was in darkness. Only a faint glimmer of light shone from a window on the third floor.
"Who was that?" Petka asked, panting after the hard run.
"How should I know?" I retorted.
"Who did you shout 'Halt' to then?"
"Bandits!" I answered firmly.
I had done nothing of the kind, of course. It had all happened by chance. I had simply been afraid to press the trigger without some excuse, and I had shouted to deaden my own fear.
But who had it "been really? Who had shouted "quick"? Who had fired at us?
Only then, standing in the dusty track, a few paces from the gate of the Party School, where there were so many armed men, I suddenly felt very frightened. I even regretted that we had moved out here, to the outskirts of the town, away from our quiet Zarechye, where nothing of the kind had ever happened to me.
"Petka, why go home?" I said calmly. "Come to my place and sleep with me on the stove. And tomorrow morning, early, we'll go to the garden and I'll give you some goosegogs."
"No, thanks!" was Petka's prompt reply. "I told you there was something spooky about this place. Satan can spend the night here, but not me. So long!" He ran off down the street to Zarechye, and his white shirt quickly disappeared in the darkness.
At the crack of dawn, when my father and aunt were still fast asleep, I got up and went into the garden. Dew shone everywhere—on the leaves of the plum-trees, on the round dark-red leaves of the barberries, and on the big patches of burdock.
As I walked down towards the wall I even wondered why we had been so scared the evening before. Perhaps it had just been one of the students who had fired? Who could tell! I could hardly believe that it had all happened here, in this very garden. The shots and our mad rush out of the garden seemed like a dream of the night before, which had been stuffy and oppressive because I had slept with the window shut.
But as I approached the gully, my footsteps lagged—suppose there was a man lying there, killed by the bullet from my pistol?
I went up to the bushes under the wall at a snail's pace. The bushes were very still; on one of them a linnet was singing. The grass round the bushes was flattened. At length I screwed up my courage and gingerly parted the bushes. The linnet gave a plaintive cry and, swooping under the branches, flew out of the garden. There was no one in the bushes. I was about to go on further when, lying on the grass, near a tree stump, I suddenly noticed a dented aluminium bowl. Beside it lay a similar aluminium spoon. In the bowl, under a layer of cold fat, lay the remains of a half-eaten meal of barley porridge. The students often had such porridge for supper. Probably the men who had fired at us had been eating this porridge. Who had they been? Why should they have been having supper here, in the garden, under the bushes? Perhaps it had been the students' patrol? But why had they left the bowl behind?
I wanted to look for empty cartridge-cases in the grass, but a feeling of uneasiness came over me in this still, dew-sprinkled corner of the garden.
If Petka had been with me, it would have been a different matter. But Petka was a long way off. He must be still fast asleep in his little house in Zarechye. The students in the white building of the Party School, were asleep too.
All of a sudden I longed to be back there, at home, in my kitchen.
Picking up the bowl, I walked over to a tall crooked tree. It was an old birch, the one I had fired at the evening before. I recognized it by its crooked dead branch that stretched out towards the nunnery wall. This was where Petka and I had stood when I shouted "Halt!"
On the bark of the birch-tree there was a fresh brown scratch. Pretty good! I had hit the target with an instantaneous shot; the tail of the bullet, splayed by the impact of striking at close-range, was sticking out of the trunk.
What should I do with the bowl?
I didn't want just to throw it away in the grass. On the path down the side of the garden stood a tall walnut-tree with smooth light-grey bark. A big hole loomed in a cleft between two of its branches, about the height of my chest. I pushed the bowl into the hole and it fell down inside the tree.
Having once again examined the old birch and the bullet sticking out of its trunk, I decided that I must bring Petka here without fail—let him see what a good shot I was!
Forgetting all my fears of the night before, I strode off up the path to the garden gate.
I was only a few paces from the gate when Korybko the gardener, looking like a hunter, with his old fowling piece over his shoulder, appeared from behind the gooseberry bushes. He was wearing a dark coat, and blue nankeen trousers tucked into rust-coloured boots. On his head there was a blue cap with a black band, shiny peak, and a black chin-strap. His face was heavily wrinkled and he had a big moustache. He limped towards me.
"Stop! Stop!" he shouted although I had shown no intention of running away. ''I'll teach you to steal gooseberries!" And he took the gun off his shoulder.
Half afraid that he might let off a charge of salt at me, I muttered: "What's the matter, Uncle? I belong here."
"What do you mean you belong here?"
"I'm Mandzhura!" I announced proudly, as if my father were at least head of the Party School. "I'm the son of the printer Mandzhura!"
Korybko eyed me suspiciously, blinked his dark baggy eyelids, and slowly put his gun back on his shoulder.
"Moved into the white wing, eh?" he said, more mildly now. "Used to live at Zarechye, didn't you?"
I nodded.
"What are you doing rambling about the garden at this hour? Looking for something?"
"I went out for a walk."
" 'For a walk!' " The gardener grumbled. "Everybody still asleep, and he goes for a walk... What d'ye think this is? The boulevard? You be careful, don't let me catch you picking those gooseberries. If I tell your father..."
But I did not wait for him to finish. "All right, Uncle!" I cried, and made my way home.
"But I must be careful of that old devil," I thought as I approached the house, "he's not to be trusted. If he gets up like this to watch the garden when only the gooseberries are ripe, I wonder what he'll do when the apples and pears are ready."
Breakfast was delicious. Aunt Maria had made potato fritters. They were soft, with a crisp rosy crust on them. The pile of fritters, done to a turn, steamed in the middle of the table in a glazed earthenware bowl. There was a faint smell of fried sunflower oil in the room.
Famished after my morning walk, I sat facing my father and forked one hot fritter after another into my mouth, burning my lips. Father munched his fritters in silence, his thick black moustache moving slowly up and down.
I looked at him and longed to tell him what had happened to us the night before. But I was afraid. You never knew, Father might be angry and take my pistol away. No, I mustn't say anything. But suppose Petka suddenly started telling people about it?...
"When does term start at the technical school, Vasya?" Father asked, putting his fork down.
"When does term start?..." The unexpected question made me jump. "September the fifteenth."
"I suppose you know there won't be any exams?"
"No, there won't, Dad. I told you: everybody who's finished at the people's school gets accepted without exams."
"Well, be careful. Or it'll be too late."
"Too late for what?"
"To prepare yourself. It would be better for you than loafing about with your Petka all day if you looked up a thing or two. You'll forget everything before the summer's out."
"Don't worry, I remember everything. You test me."
"You are artful, aren't you? How can I test you?" my father said with a smile.
And indeed there was nothing he could ask me. Although Father knew how to set type in French, Italian, and even in Greek, he could never have told you what a suffix or a prefix was. One day I had some decimal problems I just couldn't get right. I went to ask him and he didn't even know what a denominator was.
Aunt Maria brought an enamel tea-pot in from the kitchen and after making "raspberry tea" with a pinch of dried raspberries, started pouring out. Then she gave Father and me two fruit drops each and sat down at the table.
"Do you study long at the technical school?" she asked looking at me.
"About three years."
"And after that?"
"After that they send you to the institute."
"Where the ecclesiastical college used to be?" asked my aunt.
"That's right."
"You'll be quite grown-up when you finish at the institute."
"I'm grown-up now," I replied offendedly.
And I drew a finger, shiny with butter, across my upper lip. It had no hair on it of course—I just wanted to show off.
"All right, grey-beard," said my father rising from the table. "I'm going into town now; you help your aunt to chop the wood."
At that moment, the door opened and Polevoi entered the room. He greeted us all, shaking hands even with me.
"Sit down and have some tea," Father suggested, and called to my aunt who had gone to the kitchen: "Bring us a clean cup, Maria!"
"No, thanks," said Polevoi, "I've only just had some."
"Well, try some fritters then. They're home-made."
"No, really, don't trouble.. I've just had breakfast." And glancing round him, Polevoi asked: "Fixed up already?"
"It didn't take long," Father replied.
"When will you be joining up with our organization?"
"I'll pick up the rest of the type from the print-shop today and ask the secretary for my enrolment card."
"The sooner the better," Polevoi replied. "While they've been studying, the people here have got a bit out of touch with production, and you're one of the men on the job. We've got to strengthen our organization."
Father smiled. "You won't strengthen it much with me! You're all learned men and I'm just ignorant. Look at my boy here," Father nodded at me, "even he knows more than I do."
"All right, don't be modest,"' said Polevoi. "Tell me, are your papers in order? What detachment are you in?"
"The third."
"Any weapons?"
"Only a Nagant. I handed in the rifle at headquarters." "That doesn't matter, we'll issue you with a rifle from the stores here. You'd better leave the detachment and join us. You'll find it difficult to run all the way to headquarters from here if there's an alarm. Make a point of getting your discharge today..."
When Father and Polevoi had left, I put on my best sateen shirt and sandals, brushed my hair with a prickly brush, and ran off to Otter Bank.
On Central Square, below the town hall, the shops were already opening. The shopkeepers were putting their hooks under the corrugated-iron shutters and jerking them so that they flew up under the eaves with a clatter and hid themselves there. Gay shop-windows appeared one after another.
I walked past the windows. The pavement was still damp from the night before. From the confectioner's came the heavy sweet smell of bonbons. Aronson the sweet-seller was already busy behind his counter. Lovely bonbons he made—delicious! And so many different kinds! Dark-red ones with cherry fillings, pale-yellow, lemon ones, clear ones made of honey, nuts, black-currants, barberry... But the nicest of all were the sharp, lemon-flavoured bonbons. It was specially good to eat them when the weather was hot and you felt thirsty. Aronson always put a few drops of mint inside, and when you ate them your mouth would feel cool as anything, just as if there was a breeze blowing into it. What about going in and buying a quarter of a pound to treat Galya? But I had only ten kopeks. Not enough... And feeling the last two five-kopek pieces in my pocket, I walked on down the street.
"A pity term hasn't started at the technical school," I thought. "They say you get a grant of fifteen rubles a month. Then I'll be able to buy as many bonbons as I like without asking Dad for money."
The morning sun gleamed on the nickel-plated alarm-clocks, gold bracelets, and time-darkened silver glass-holders in the window of the jeweller's. As I rounded the corner, the best cafe in our town, run by Pan Shipulinsky, came into view. Through its tall clean windows I could see the little white marble tables. The door was fastened with a heavy padlock—Shipulinsky had not arrived yet.
The town-hall clock chimed the hour. It was nine o'clock. Galya must be awake by this time. I had better hurry! Quickening my pace, I turned down a narrow street lined with tall, three-storey houses. The old houses stood very close together and the windows above me were very small, with no casements. On one of them I noticed a coat of arms—a swan with a date carved under it in Roman figures, a very ancient date by the look of it.
I emerged from this dingy side-street into Bell Street, which was cleaner, although there was dung lying about, and in places weeds sprouted between the cobbles. Chickens roamed about the road in search of barley seed. On one side of the street stood a tall building that had once been the military court. The domed roof of a church showed in the depths of the court-yard. Further on was the wooden fence of Old Boulevard. I pushed open the little squeaky gate that lead on to the boulevard, and had only gone a few paces when at the corner of the broad avenue I met Galya. I felt myself in the wrong with Galya and did not know whether to let her pass and then call after her, or to rush up to her at once...
Galya was walking fast. In her hand she held a small wicker basket covered with a piece of cheese cloth.
"Hullo," she said very coldly, and giving me a curt nod, walked on.
"Galya!" I shouted after her.
She stopped. Tall, rosy-cheeked, dressed in a simple light-blue frock, she stood in the middle of the avenue, looking at me in surprise. Her dark hair was combed back and her small rosy ears were peeping out.
"Where are you off to in such a hurry?" I asked.
"Oh, somewhere..."
"Where is somewhere?"
"Aren't you nosy! I wonder why? Well, if you're so interested, I'm going to see Dad. I'm taking him his lunch." And Galya waved her basket.
Neither of us said anything for a moment. Galya looked towards the river that flowed past below, under the cliff. Then, without a glance at me, and as if she was not at all interested really, she asked:
"And where are you going?"
"I. . . I was coming to see you."
"To see me?"
"Of course! Why are you surprised?"
"Well, I'd never have thought it."
"Why not?"
"You didn't come when I asked you."
"Galya, honestly, it wasn't my fault! Let's go over there, to the cliff, and I'll tell you everything."
"What do you want to tell me?"
"How it all happened. It was Petka's fault ... Let's sit down."
"No, I won't sit down, I'm in a hurry. But if you like, you can come with me. It'll soon be lunch-time at the factory and Dad won't have anything to eat."
We walked on together. When I told Galya how Petka had tricked us both, she was very surprised.
"Well, I never, the fat swindler! ... And I thought you were angry with me about something. You didn't come for so long, so I thought I'd write you a note. Then, when I'd sent it, you still didn't come. And when we met, you didn't even speak to me. All stuck up you were... Well, I thought, it doesn't matter then."
"You wanted to see me?" I said with a sarcastic laugh. "I can't believe that! You were going with Kotka all the time."
"Oh, then..." Galya murmured indifferently. "When you went off to Podzamche, Kotka land I went on the swings, then we saw a funny picture at the cinema, and when it got dark, we went in there." And she nodded calmly at Shipulinsky's cafe.
"To Shipulinsky’s?" I repeated, and even coughed with anxiety.
"Yes. And if only you knew what almond cakes we had, and pistachio ice-cream afterwards!"
"Well, what of it! I go in there every Sunday with the chaps."
"Do you really?" Galya exclaimed innocently. "Why, that time you bought me an ice-cream, we had it in the street! We ought to have gone to Shipulinsky's."
"And so we shall! Of course we shall!"
The next moment I was cursing myself.
"You boasting fool! How can you take Galya to Shipulinsky's when you haven't any money!"
And Galya, as though guessing my thoughts, asked:
"But where do you get money from, Vasya? You don't go to work."
"I've got more money than your Kotka. I've saved up..."
"H'm, I wonder ..." Galya said slowly. "You can't have more. You don't know how much money that tinker pays Kotka, do you? Guess. No, you'll never guess? Only nine rubles less than my father gets at the factory! Kotka gets thirty-five rubles a month. There!"
"Oh, he was just making that up."
"No, he wasn't. Zakharzhevsky himself told Dad how much he pays Kotka."
"Well, of course he pays him a lot," I said. "Zakharzhevsky's a swindler, he works just for himself. He can trick money out of people all ways in his shop. That's why he pays Kotka such a lot—to keep him quiet."
"I don't know about that," Galya replied, and fell silent. We abandoned the subject.
The nearer we got to Hospital Square, the more distinctly I could hear the chugging of the factory petrol engine. Soon we saw the red brick walls of the factory building and made straight towards it across a weed-grown square.
The Motor Factory faced the square. Why it was called the Motor Factory it was hard to say. The factory did not make any motors; it made only small straw-cutters and occasionally repaired heavy crank-shafts for the neighbouring mills. Beside the factory stood a big yellow building—the factory offices. That was where the peasants went to pay their money before taking home the green-painted straw-cutters.
The Motor Factory was the biggest enterprise in our town—one hundred and ten workers were employed there. In the mornings the factory hooter howled so loudly that you could hear it in Zarechye, and even in our flat at the Party School.
A narrow iron chimney with a sharp-pointed cowl on top, pegged to the ground with four thick stays, rose above the factory, belching smoke. When we came nearer we caught the smell of charcoal.
"Are you very much in a hurry?" Galya asked me, stopping.
"No, why?"
"You can wait for me, if you like. I'll take Dad his lunch and come straight back here." "Be quick though."
"I won't be long," Galya shouted and ran away. From the broken iron-framed windows of the factory came the clank of machinery. A steam-hammer thudded heavily.
It must be fine to work here, in this factory, boring the hard iron with those sharp, whirring drills! And then, when dinner-time came round, to sit in the sunshine in the factory yard, among old rusty fly-wheels and lumps of iron, and eat new bread and Cracow sausage out of a handkerchief! The sun would be warm as anything, the birds singing in the trees of the hospital garden next door, and you would sit there munching away at your sausage without hurrying yourself. There was plenty of time for dinner at the factory—a whole hour, just like the long break at school.
And how fine it must be, when somebody asked you who you were, to be able to answer: "A worker!" And then add: "I work at the Motor Factory!" To work at the Motor Factory, to be a metal worker, counted for a lot. In our little town there were printers, railwaymen, millers, wood workers, but no one was so respected as the metal workers. "They're the thoroughbred proletariat," people would say, "the real working class!"
On the big revolutionary holidays, when the townspeople marched past the pine-wood platform in what had once been Governor's Square, the Motor Factory always- marched first, behind the big band. The factory's banner was made of heavy velvet, with a gold fringe—the finest banner in the town. On the red velvet there was painted a picture of a stalwart worker in a leather apron opening a tall black furnace and letting out a stream of molten metal.
The factory's banner had not been made in our town like the other trade-union banners. The velvet banner of the metal workers had been specially ordered from Kiev, where it had been made by the very finest craftsmen. It was very heavy, and it was usually carried by the strongest of the furnace men—Kozakevich, a keen wrestler and a very merry fellow. Not long ago, on the sixth anniversary of the seizure of Bessarabia by the Rumanian boyars, the working people of the town had held a demonstration demanding the return of Bessarabia. The day was dull and gusty. The wind tugged fiercely at the velvet folds of the banner, the pole bent, but Zhora Kozakevich marched at the front of the column, his head held high, and did not let the banner slip out of his bronzed muscular hands...
Yes, there was no doubt about it, it was a great honour to be a metal worker. A pity I could not apply for a job at the factory now! I must finish at the technical school, and then...
I went up to the smoke-blackened exhaust-pipe. It stuck out of the wall curving downwards. The stones of the pavement under the pipe were dark and slippery from petrol fumes. Light-blue puffs of smoke were coming out of the pipe.
I wondered if the smoke was hot. Cautiously I passed my hand under the pipe. The warm steady breath of the engine played on my palm. I touched the pipe—the pipe was warm too.
Suppose you covered the pipe altogether, would it stop the engine? But as soon as I lifted my hand to the black greasy funnel of the pipe, the powerful blast of warm air pushed it down again. Then I tried with both hands at once, and they were both pushed away.
Soon my hands were covered with a shiny film of oil, and smelt, like the pipe, of burnt petrol, of the factory, of machines. "All metal workers must smell like this," I thought, and I began to feel uncomfortable that I should be loafing about the streets in the day-time when everyone else was at work. But it made me even more uncomfortable to think that I had such a long time to amuse myself, right until autumn, when studies began at the technical school.
"Come on, Vasya!"
I turned round. Galya was waiting for me at the gate, swinging her empty basket.
Galya and I went for a walk down the boulevard and had a go on the swings, and when I felt that Galya was no longer angry with me, I took her home; then I went off in a cheerful mood to bathe under the waterfall.
But later in the evening, when all six windows of the students' club at the Party School were glowing with light, I began to feel very depressed. I left the kitchen and went out on to the porch steps..
A big beetle buzzed among the branches of a sycamore-tree, then zoomed high into the air. In the red wing opposite, where the school instructors lived, there was a bright light in one of the windows. Someone was playing a balalaika. Kartamyshev and Boiko lived in that room. It must be one 'of them who was playing.
The students' supper dishes were being washed in the kitchen. I could hear the aluminium spoons and bowls, and the big gravy pans, clattering in the vats of hot water.
I remembered my promise to take Galya to Shipulinsky's cafe. That afternoon, when we had had enough of strolling about the boulevard, and were about to part, Galya had looked at me slyly and asked: "Will we soon be having those cakes?"
"Of course," I had said huskily, and got away as quickly as I could.
Now I could not show myself to Galya until I had some money, otherwise she would think I was a cheat like Petka. But where could I get money from? Borrow from Petka? He wouldn't give me any. And he hadn't enough anyway—twenty kopeks at the most. A pity I had swopped my pigeons for Petka's pistol! What was the use of the thing anyway? I could have taken the pigeons to the bird market and sold them. I should have got at least four rubles.
What else had I that I could sell? I began to go over my possessions in my mind: pincers, hammer, shell caps, a stamp album—nothing that was fit for sale.
The clatter of crockery in the kitchen grew louder. I pictured the head cook pouring boiling water from a copper pan on to the greasy bowls and spoons. Spoons... spoons ... spoons... I repeated the word to myself quietly, several times. In a little wicker basket belonging to my aunt lay half a dozen silver spoons wrapped in paper. More than once my aunt had taken them out of the basket and said to me: "That's your wedding present, Vasya. When you get married, I'll give them to you for your new home."
"Why shouldn't I take the spoons now, if they were meant for me? Not all perhaps—half of them, say?
That warm summer evening, as I sat on the stone steps of the porch, I came to a firm decision to take half my aunt's spoons.
The old, grey-haired jeweller sat at a little wooden table behind his shop-window. Gripping the three silver spoons in my pocket to stop them jingling, I walked past the shop, unable to make up my mind to go in.
There were some people with the jeweller. Two of them. They were talking to him, and he, not rising from his seat, was looking up at them out of the corner of his eye.
"Can't you go away! ..." I whispered, fuming at the jeweller's talkative customers.
I did not want to go back to the shop again, so I crossed the street and stood by the window of another shop. A plate of sweets, half-melted by the sun, lay behind the dusty glass. Flies were crawling about the dish, fluttering their wings and burrowing their tiny noses into the sticky mass. I kept glancing furtively at the jeweller's. At last the door banged and the two people walked into the street. One of them, a short man in a dark-blue blouse that reached to his knees, was holding a silver watch. He glanced down at it, spat cheerfully, and handed it to his companion—a tall man with a bald patch, wearing dark, horn-rimmed spectacles. The man with the bald patch shrugged his shoulders, slipped the watch in his pocket and went off in the other direction; the man in the blue shirt ran lightly down the slope to the bridge. Evidently, the bald man had wanted to palm the watch off on the little fellow in the long blouse, but nothing had come of it.
I crossed the street and, plucking up courage, pushed open the door of the shop.
A big grandfather clock was ticking in the corner. There was a smell of acid. A heavy fire-proof safe stood close to the wall behind a wooden counter. The grey-haired jeweller sat hunched over his table, examining through a magnifying glass a bracelet with a dark-green stone in it. When I walked up to the counter, he raised his head and looked at me.
"Do you ... er, buy silver?" I asked timidly. The jeweller took the magnifying glass out of his eye and placed it on the table.
"Well, suppose I do. What about it?" "You see, I want to sell..."
And, nearly tearing my pocket in my haste, I pulled out the spoons and placed them in a row on the wooden counter. The jeweller promptly scooped them up and started examining the mark of each one. Then, eyeing me suspiciously, he asked: "Whose spoons are they?"
"Mine," I answered almost in a whisper, feeling the blood rush to my cheeks. Then I added: "Mother told me to sell them. She's ill."
"Mother told you?" the jeweller asked. "In other words, the spoons belong to her, not you." I nodded.
"Where do you live?" "In Zarechye," I lied. "Address?"
"The Old Estate, near the church ..."
"On top of the cliff?"
"Yes..."
"What's your name?"
"Maremukha!" I blurted out, and shivered in expectation, thinking that the jeweller was about to seize me by the collar and call a militiaman. But the old man, having written the name down on an empty cigarette packet, asked dryly:
"How much?"
"How much will you give me?"
"The goods are yours, you name the price," the jeweller said severely and glanced out of the window.
I summoned up all my courage and said as firmly as I could: "Six rubles!"
"Too much," the jeweller said, rising. "Four." "All right, four then."
Without looking down, the old man opened the drawer of the table, took out a yellow wallet, counted out the money and placed it on the counter. Grasping the four dirty notes in my fist, I ran out of the shop.
I walked home past the creeper-hung fences with my head lowered, trying to avoid the glances of the passers-by. I felt hot. My face blazed with shame. Only when I was quite near the Party School did I unclench my fist, smooth out the crumpled sweaty notes, and stuff them into my pocket.
"Vasya, wait!" someone shouted behind me.
I swung round. Petka was running down Zhitomir Street. As he came nearer, I noticed that his forehead was gleaming with perspiration.
"Gosh, I'm tired!" Petka said, gripping my hand. "I've been weeding maize all the morning. I did four rows, and then Dad let me go for a walk. . . Where have you been all this while, Vasya, why didn't you come round?"
"I haven't had time."
"Who fired at us, do you know yet?"
"How should I know! Perhaps it was some thieves from Podzamche, looking for gooseberries."
"Don't tell me that," Petka said pompously. "What ass would go scrumping gooseberries at night! You can't pick them at night. They're not like apples."
I did not answer. Those wretched spoons were giving me no peace. Suppose Aunt Maria had already missed them, and would start asking about them in front of Petka? I did not want to take him home with me.
"Let's go to your garden, Vasya," Petka suggested. Evidently he wanted to try the gooseberries.
"Not now. Korybko's nosing round there at this time. I'd rather go for a swim."
"Where?"
"Paradise Gate."
"That's too far," Petka grumbled. "It's so hot now."
"Never mind, we'll go through the cemetery. It's cool there." And I set off along the fence of the Party School in the direction of Paradise Gate.
Petka unwillingly trotted after me.
The swim cheered me up a little and I quite forgot about the money lying in my pocket. Only when I had left Petka, and was nearly home, did I remember the spoons again. My fears returned. "If only they don't notice, if only they don't notice!" I thought as I walked down the dark corridor of our flat.
My aunt's voice reached me through the door. I entered the room and saw my father sitting at the table. He was eating his dinner. Aunt was taking an empty saucepan off the shelf.
Unwillingly I sat down at the table opposite my father. "I got a ticking-off on your account today," said Father. "A ticking-off?" I repeated, pricking up my ears. "Polevoi was asking me about you." "Polevoi?"
"Yes. Seems he's taken a liking to you. Kept on asking one thing and another. 'Where did he go to school?' he says, 'What's he thinking of doing in future?' I told him everything. Then he says: 'Well, it's time the lad joined the Komsomol. You're a Communist, Mandzhura,' he says, 'a front-ranker, but your boy's kicking his heels doing nothing. Let him come along to our Komsomol meetings.' Understand?"
Aunt Maria set a plate of rich dumpling soup in front of me. Little green pieces of fennel floated on the top.
"Do you understand, Vasya?" My father asked again. I felt very ashamed at that moment. Why had I taken those spoons? Father still did not know they had been sold, but he might find out at any moment.
I could not endure his glance and lowered my eyes. "I understand," I whispered, stirring the hot soup with my spoon.
For many months I had been envying the boys who wore the dark-red badges of the Komsomol in their button-holes. How I envied them!
Often, when the Komsomol printers marched from the old part of the town to their club in Zhitomir Street, I would stand for a long time watching them pass.
"When I go to the technical school in the autumn," I thought to myself, "I'll attend the Komsomol meetings, and after a bit I'll make an application." It had never entered my head that I could join the Komsomol here, at the Party School. I had thought the students looked on me simply as a stranger living among them, but apparently that was not the case at all.
"I must talk to Polevoi about the Komsomol!" I decided. But as luck would have it, Polevoi had gone off somewhere and no one knew anything about him. All the evening I hung about the yard, sitting on the bench by the horizontal bar, wandering about round the sentry, walking up and down outside the students' kitchen. Students and staff went to and fro, but Polevoi was not among them.
The next day, in the afternoon, it rained. In the morning the sky was clear and the sun shone brightly. It looked as if it would keep fine all clay. But clouds appeared unexpectedly in the west. I had only gone a few streets from Petka Maremukha's, on my way home, when a strong wind sprang up, dust whirled down the street, and the passers-by ran to take shelter in the gateways. I ran too. The wind flung dust in my eyes and ruffled my hair. I pelted down the middle of the road as hard as I could go, listening tensely for the first clap of thunder. Low bluish storm-clouds jostled together over the town. It was getting darker every moment. It seemed like evening rather than midday. I saw a line of bushes and the green fence of the Party School behind them in the distance; then the first heavy drops of rain spattered on the dusty sun-warmed earth. Just as if it had been frightened by the rain, the wind dropped and a dirty scrap of paper that had been flying about all over the place dropped helplessly to the ground.
I was just running past the sentry into the yard, when the rain lashed down in full force. While I ran to our wing, the earth became black and wet, the grass and bushes gleamed, and I heard the rain pattering on the iron roof. Reaching my room, I pulled off my wet shirt and looked out of the window. Streams of water trickled down the panes as the rain drove against them. I could hardly see what was going on in the yard.
I opened the window and the noises of the storm burst into the room. Thunder rumbled somewhere beyond the fortress and broke off suddenly, as if choked by the pouring rain. In the rain, the main building of the Party School looked empty and deserted; the windows gleamed whitely like the walls, as at sunset. I leaned over the cold window-sill and pushed my head outside. The rain pelted on my hair and neck. It's lovely to lie on a cool window-sill with torrents of rain pouring down on the back of your head. Water was foaming out of the drain-pipe straight into a round rusty boiler with iron handles. Leaves from the roof, and blue egg-shells, glinted in the steady torrent. The boiler was already full, and the water was overflowing on to the sandy earth. Two fat ducks appeared from nowhere and waddled up to the drain-pipe, quacking with pleasure. One of them opened its yellow beak and stretched its neck to catch the water flowing out of the boiler. But soon she grew tired of that and, uttering a final quack, flapping her well-washed white wings and shaking her head, she waddled after her companion towards the gate.
At that moment, above the noise of the rain, I heard a rumble of wheels. Two high army carts drove quickly into the yard. Men were sitting on them covered with sacks and tarpaulins. The carts turned left and disappeared through the arch into the back yard.
The rain soon stopped, as summer rain always does. In an instant the yard was quiet and bright. The clouds drifted away from the sun and a vivid rainbow mounted over the garden, one end resting on the wet iron roof of the Party School.
Can anyone stay indoors when there is a rainbow shining in the sky! I kicked off my sandals, pulled on a dry shirt and, rolling up my damp trousers, ran out on to the steps. What I saw brought me up with a jerk.
Down in the yard, by the drain-pipe, Polevoi was washing himself, uttering loud snorts. He was bending over the iron boiler, scooping water in his big hands and splashing it over himself, now on his neck and back, now on his chest. Sometimes he bent right down and put his face in the water. Beside him on a stone lay a little grey lump of soap.
Polevoi was wearing only his pants; his clothes hung near by, on a lilac bush. I walked down the steps. Polevoi went on washing himself and snorting loudly; he did not hear my footsteps.
How should I address him? "Uncle Polevoi?" No, that wouldn't do. Only kids called people "Uncle," and I was grown-up.
After standing about a bit behind Polevoi I gave a cough and followed it with a quick, "Hullo, Comrade Polevoi!"
Polevoi turned round at once. A trickle of water ran down his nose. His soft wet hair fell over his sunburnt forehead, almost to his eyebrows.
"Hullo, young man! You haven't come to turn me out, have you?"
"Turn you out?"
"Out of here. Because I'm taking your water. This boiler belongs to you, doesn't it?"
"No, it belongs to the school."
"Well, you see, I got so dusty on the way here; so when the rain stopped I thought I'd have a wash in rainwater. It's better than any bath, you know."
"But where have you been, Comrade Polevoi?"
"Catching bandits," Polevoi answered briefly, pushing his hair back with his hand. "We had to lie in ambush in a mill. For a whole five hours. And you know how much dust there is in a mill? It's enough to choke you. Specially in the loft."
"Did you catch any bandits?"
"We did," Polevoi replied with a grin. '.
Now I realized where he had been all this time. Why hadn't I guessed before! Only that morning Father had been saying that a big detachment of Communists and Komsomol members had left town to clean up a bandit gang. Polevoi must have been out with the detachment too. I gazed at him with delight and envy.
When Polevoi had put on his clothes, donned his faded cap over his wet hair and was about to go away, I asked guardedly:
"Is it true that I can come to the 'Komsomol meetings?"
"It certainly is," Polevoi said with a smile. "I told Miron."
"When?"
"When... Now, what's today, Thursday? Yes, Thursday. That means there'll be a meeting tomorrow. Come along to the club at five o'clock."
I arrived at the club not at five, but at half past four. The club was situated on the second floor of a building that had once been a church. Even now, here and there, the dark face of a saint peeped out from under the slogans posted up round the top of the walls. And the ceiling was not flat, as in ordinary rooms; it was sort of round.
Rows of black desks stood in the big club-room in front of the stage, and on the curtain there was a picture of a worker stripped to the waist striking chains off the globe with a sledge-hammer. In the left-hand corner, just below the stage, stood a piano. On the seat in front of the piano sat Marushchak, the student who had been in the football team. When I entered, Marushchak was sitting deep in thought, but no sooner did I approach the desk, than, as if to greet me, he started playing the "Dogs' Waltz." He glanced at me and went on playing. His body swayed slightly from side to side, he nodded his head, sometimes he even closed his eyes—obviously he enjoyed playing the piano. Now and then he would lift his hands high above the keys, then, as if losing his temper, bring them down all of a sudden. The piano made such a din it seemed all the strings would snap. When Marushchak got tired of the "Dogs' Waltz," he played "Mummy, Buy Me a House in the Country."
Students began to gather in the hall. They took their seats, banging the desk lids. I got up quietly and went and sat at the back of the room. I did not feel very comfortable; all the people round me were strangers and Polevoi was nowhere to be seen.
The curtain was pulled back. In the semi-darkness of the stage there was a small table covered with a red cloth with a jug of water on it.
As soon as the curtain was pulled back, Marushchak banged the lid of the piano and put on his cap. Nearly all the students at the Party School wore light-blue, summer Budyonny hats, but Marushchak could not part with his rakish peak-cap. He must have kept it from the Civil War, that smart cap with its purple top, yellow band and its little shiny peak. Such caps had been worn by the Red Cossacks, the men who had driven Petlura out of our town. Even Kotovsky himself, the huge broad-shouldered commander of the Red Cossack Corps, when he had once attended a parade in our town, had worn a cap like Marushchak's.
The meeting began. How the chairman and secretary were elected I did not hear; I also missed how the chairman, quite a young student in bulging blue riding-breeches and a velvet blouse, announced the agenda. Very soon after the meeting started, Marushchak walked up the creaking wooden steps on to the stage. He talked about the Red Cossack regiment that was affiliated to the Party School. It turned out that Marushchak had visited the regiment recently and taken them presents from the Komsomol.
Marushchak spoke slowly, with many pauses—obviously he wasn't used to making speeches. Sometimes he would search a long time for the word he needed and wave his arm in annoyance, as if he were hewing with a cavalry sword. Marushchak ended his talk abruptly. Everyone thought he would go on talking, but he just smiled and said:
"Well, that's all. What else is there to say?" A few questions were asked. He answered them quickly and briefly.
The young fellow in blue riding-breeches rang a bell and moved that there should be no debate, but that Marushchak's information should be acted upon.
Treading noisily in his heavy, hob-nailed boots, Marushchak left the stage and sat down beside me. He must have been agitated when he was making his report, for his forehead was beaded with perspiration. His eyes fixed on the stage, he felt for a handkerchief and wiped his face. I watched Marushchak out of the corner of my eye and did not notice what was happening on the stage. I felt flattered that Marushchak had sat down beside me, at the same desk, and I even made up my mind to ask him whether it was true that he had been with Kotovsky. But at that moment, Marushchak noticed I was looking at him and gave me a penetrating glance. I turned away and started examining the portraits hanging on the wall. The desk swayed, its lid banged, and I realized that Marushchak was getting up.
"Just a minute, Comrade Chairman! I think there are people here who are not in the Komsomol."
A stir passed through the hall, then there was silence. All the students turned towards our desk.
The chairman rang his bell and asked: "How can there be, Comrade Marushchak? I announced that after the talk the meeting would be for members only. The other people went out."
"Well, I don't think this lad's in the Komsomol." And touching my elbow, Marushchak added: "Have you got a Komsomol card?"
"Comrade, are you a 'Komsomol member?" the chairman called across the hall from the stage.
"No," I whispered.
"He's not a member. Not a member!" I heard the students beside me call out to the stage.
"Please, leave the room then," said the chairman. "This is a closed meeting now, and only Komsomol members may be present."
Not yet properly aware of what had happened, I rose and walked slowly to the door. I felt all eyes on me. Because of me the meeting had been held up, and everyone was waiting for me to go away.
"Chucked out! Chucked out!" I thought, and my sandals scraped on the smooth floor. The blood rushed into my cheeks. "Why did I come here? What a disgrace! Now all the students will point at me and whisper to each other: That's the one who was asked to leave a closed Komsomol meeting.' "
The worst of it was that they must think I had stayed behind on purpose to listen to what they were talking about, but I just hadn't heard the chairman announce that the meeting was for members only.
As soon as I got outside I saw Polevoi. He was walking quickly along the pavement.
"Has the meeting started yet?" he called, still some distance away.
I nodded without speaking.
"Ah, what a nuisance, I was kept behind at the District Committee," Polevoi said as if apologizing, and then, coming up to me, he asked: "Where are you going? Come along to the meeting."
If only he had not said that! I felt even more hurt, and forcing back my tears, I gave a silent wave of my hand and Walked away.
On a bench under the stone wall, just at the foot of New Bridge, sat a street vendor. Her head was wrapped in a black woollen shawl. On the pavement beside her stood a basket, full of sunflower seeds.
"Two glassfuls!" I said, land with pain in my heart gave her a ruble note.
First she counted out the change. I put the coins away and held open my trouser pocket.
Spitting the shells over the rail, I walked slowly across the bridge. The shells took a long time to reach the water and, landing lightly, floated away with the current—such tiny white specks you could hardly see them.
Little shingle-roofed cottages stood under the cliffs on the green banks of the river; they looked like match-boxes tossed down from above.
The bridge seemed very long today. Its worn planks creaked under my feet, and when I saw the river far below glinting through the cracks I felt even more upset. I had been so glad when I learned that Polevoi was in favour of my joining the Komsomol, and it had been such a blow when I had been asked to leave the meeting.
But perhaps they had found out somehow that I had taken the spoons, and that was the real reason why they had turned me out? Why had I sold those spoons!
Soon, however, the tasty, well-fried sunflower seeds took my mind off my troubles. I remembered Galya. I had promised to see her yesterday, and had not turned up. I must go and see her now, and ask her into town.
An hour later, the two of us were sitting in the open-air cinema on the boulevard, watching an interesting picture called "The Master of the Black Cliffs." The bench was tall, with a back to it. I couldn't touch the ground and kept swinging my legs. Behind us, in a little box like a pigeon-house, the projector whirred noisily and a bright beam of light poured out of the small square window in the box, piercing the darkness. Tall trees towered up on both sides, and the sound of a piano that was twanging somewhere near the screen was taken up land absorbed in their thick leaves. The sky above was dark blue and full of stars.
Galya gazed silently at the screen, only when the subtitles appeared reading them aloud in a quick whisper. Whenever I tried to help her, she waved me aside and told me to stop interrupting.
When the last part was being shown and the bearded master of the black cliffs was wandering along the rocky shore searching for a boat, a wind sprang up and the trees on the boulevard rustled and swayed. The white sheet of the screen billowed like a sail, and it really did look as if there was a storm at sea and the white waves were beating against the cliffs not on the screen, but somewhere near us. In the noise of the wind I even thought I heard the thunder of the surf.
"Isn't it cold!" Galya said shivering. I didn't know what to say, and wished I had brought my jacket. It would have been good to offer it to Galya now.
The pianist struck a last resounding chord and the lanterns on the posts all went up at once. Their light was unsteady because of the wind. The rustling of the trees grew louder. When we entered the dark avenue leading down to the bridge, I felt as though we were walking through a wild and deserted forest.
On the bridge it was really cold. I took Galya's arm and walked fast, anxious to cross the long, high bridge as quick as possible.
"What a wind!" said Galya. "Like autumn!" "Never mind," I said, "it won't be so bad in town. It's only crossing the bridge that's so cold."
In the town, between the high walls of houses that lined the narrow streets, the wind was indeed less. Now it blew above us, over the roofs, and we could hear the iron weathercocks whistling and the occasional bang of a window. We turned into the main thoroughfare—Post Street. A bright stream of light from the open doors of the sausage shop flooded the pavement. Once again I felt the money in my pocket, and as soon as we drew level with the sausage shop, I said to Galya as off-handedly as I could, "I'm quite cold, you know... Let's drop in..."
"Where?" Galya interrupted in a soared voice and glanced at the window of the sausage shop.
"No, not there—at Shipulinsky's."
"Shipulinsky's? No. We'll go there another time."
"Let's go now," I pleaded.
I didn't want to take Galya to Shipulinsky's another time. I wanted to take her there now, on this cold windy evening; I wanted to spend all the money now.
"Oh, yes, I had quite forgotten!" Galya burst out laughing. "We talked about the cafe that day and you remembered, didn't you? Do you think I really want to go there? You are funny!"
"I'm not thinking anything, I just want some coffee," I replied offendedly.
"It's so late. How shall I get home?"
"That doesn't matter, I'll see you home."
Galya thought for a minute, then she suddenly made up her mind.
"All right then, let's go there."
We entered the cafe timidly and sat down at the far table, by the window. We could have taken a table nearer the counter, of course. But the handsome, flaxen-haired Pani Shipulinskaya was standing there in a pink silk dress and white lace apron. I didn't want her to hear what we were saying.
For a few minutes we sat in silence. Galya looked at the pictures hanging on the walls, but I could not feel at ease. I was afraid to speak loudly to Galya in this almost empty cafe. And the strange greenish light of the gas lamps put me off too. No one else in town had gas lamps now except Shipulinsky; they hung from the ceiling on gilded chains.
Pani Shipulinskaya did not look at us and went on wiping the counter with a clean cloth. I got tired of waiting and coughed.
"Franek!" Shipulinskaya called to her husband.
Pink-cheeked, slightly bald, in a neat black suit, Shipulinsky bobbed out behind the screen. He looked in our direction and quietly, but loud enough for us to hear, hissed at his wife: "Why didn't you tell me there were some customers in the shop?"
"I thought you knew," she replied, moving la tall shapely fruit stand with artificial apples on it to the edge of the counter.
Shipulinsky walked jauntily over to our table. He eyed Galya with a professional smile, then cast a glance at me. I hastily put my feet, clad in dusty sandals, under the table.
"What can I do for you, young people?" Pan Shipulinsky asked. And eyeing Galya he added: "What would the young lady like?"
Galya blushed and, nodding towards me, said quietly: "I don't know, he. . ."
"Bring us..." I mumbled hoarsely, land coughed. "Bring us coffee and cakes..."
"What coffee would the young people prefer? Warsaw or Vienna? Or perhaps, black?"
"Any kind!" I said.
But Galya corrected me:
"No, not black."
"Very good!" Shipulinsky agreed. "I suggest Warsaw coffee. It's nicer. And what pastries?"
"A cream slice for me," said Galya.
"Oh, any kind!" I said.
"In other words, I shall bring the pastries and you will choose for yourself," Shipulinsky concluded. He slipped away behind the screen, his patent-leather shoes scraping on the tiled floor. And at once the glasses began to clatter.
Now I felt a little better. The coffee was ordered, so were the cakes—now I had only to wait, eat, and pay the bill. I had already got warm in the well-heated cafe, and no longer thought of the wind outside.
"See how he does everything himself!" Galya whispered to me, leaning across the table, and la lock of hair fell over her forehead.
"Of course! He doesn't want to hire a waiter because he'll have to pay tax."
"Why? Don't people who have no servants pay tax?" "Yes, but not so much!" I said almost under my breath, for Shipulinsky was already approaching with a gleaming tray.
He brought the coffee in silver glass-holders; on top of each glass floated a blob of something that looked like melted ice-cream, and in the saucers lay little gilded spoons with curved handles.
Galya picked up her spoon and dipped it in her glass. Shipulinsky disappeared behind the screen again and was back almost at once.
"Why so many?" I almost shouted in alarm. Shipulinsky had brought a plate with at least ten pastries on it—cream slices, eclairs, tarts with pink cream and cherries on top, and flat apple slices. He placed it on the table.
"We don't need so many cakes! We only need two! We haven't enough money to pay for them all!" I wanted to ' shout, but I could not utter a word, and the wretched Shipulinsky, as if sensing that his pastries might be refused, slipped away behind the screen.
Thoroughly upset, I felt the money in my pocket and did not know what to do. I wished we had never come to the cafe, and would willingly have forfeited both coffee and cakes to be outside in the street without a scene. If I had not enough money to pay, Shipulinsky wouldn't let me out; he would ask for a deposit. But what deposit could I leave him—shirt, trousers, belt? And what a disgrace it would be in front of Galya!
Unaware of my anxiety, Galya sat calmly sipping her coffee.
"Why don't you drink your coffee?" she asked.
"I don't want any," I grunted.
"Well, I like that—you don't want any! Why did we come here then? Drink it up!" She pushed the glass of coffee towards me and asked: "Which cake do you want?"
"Well, we only die once," I thought, and, closing my eyes, I said desperately:
"I don't care which..."
"I'll give you a custard cream—it's very nice and there's lots of cream inside. Here you are."
I toyed at the rich pastry with my spoon. In my anxiety, I scarcely tasted the yellow cream inside.
"Eat it up! Eat it up!" Galya kept hurrying me. "Or we'll be here till morning."
Almost choking, I forced a piece of pastry into my mouth, and was just about to wash it down with coffee, when I felt someone's glance upon me.
Outside the window, resting both hands on the iron rail, stood my father in a white duck suit and straw cap. He was eyeing me narrowly. I felt like crawling under the table; Father's gaze burned into me.
I lowered my eyes. When I cautiously raised them again, Father had gone. He had disappeared in the darkness as suddenly as he had appeared.
"Why are you so pale, Vasya?" Galya asked. "You haven't got a chill, have you?"
"It's nothing. Just a pain in my side," I lied, and noisily pushed back my heavy chair.
As if from nowhere, Shipulinsky popped up beside our table.
"The young people wish to pay their bill?" he asked tenderly.
"Yes!" I said in a trembling voice, and feeling suddenly cold all over, I thought: "This is it!.
"Two glasses of Warsaw coffee and—two pastries," Shipulinsky whispered almost inaudibly, looking at the cake stand. Then cheerfully wagging his half-bald head, he said loudly: "One ruble, forty kopeks!"
Cheering up at once, I fished a crumpled ruble note out of my pocket, smoothed it out, then sprinkled forty kopeks in coins on the table. A few sunflower seeds fell out with the coins, but I was ashamed to pick them up. Clapping my cap on my head, I slipped out into the street after Galya without a backward glance.
The wind was still blowing, and we felt cold again in the street, but I didn't care about the weather now. How lucky that everything had turned out all right! Yet I could not forget my father's appearance at the window. Perhaps he was waiting for me on the corner.
We walked down narrow Smith Street, past the Venice restaurant and the Finance Department, past the ruins of the theatre that had been burnt down during the war. The huge seven-storey Stephen Bathori tower loomed up before us. At the foot of the tower there was a dark hole. That was Windy Gate, the northern entrance into the old part of the town. As we walked under the low vaulted arch of the gate, our footsteps resounded on the pavement and the wind whistled in our ears.
"Oho-oho!" I shouted, and the gate threw back the echo like a barrel.
"Be quiet, you mad thing!" Galya cried. "Somebody'll think we're being robbed!" And she hurried forward through the arch.
There was no one about the other side of the tower. The starlit river, gleamed right at our feet; frogs croaked on the opposite bank. Our vague, trembling shadows glided over the water. Beyond the white Turkish Steps that led up the cliff to our old school, we could see a black rock towering above the river, some distance away. Broad and flat on top, jagged round the edges, it hung poised above the river, looking as if it might fall at any moment. The river swept round its base in a sharp curve. Upstream the water was calm and quiet, but here it roared, and even now, in the darkness, you could see the ripple and swirl of the current.
As we approached the black rock, I felt a prickly sensation down my back, and wished I had brought the rusty but accurate "Zauer" with me. The place we were passing through was a trouble spot, and had a bad reputation. Not long ago a passer-by had been robbed here. The bandits had stripped him naked and he had only just managed to escape and run for shelter to us, at the Party School.
We passed the black rock, and the worst was over. Now we were nearly at the low trestle-bridge that crossed the river to Otter Bank. Galya's house was quite near. Suddenly Galya tugged at my arm and whispered.
"Sh! Who's that?"
A man was standing on the bridge, leaning over the rail. He was looking at the water, and from below, where we stood, we could see him well.
"Vasya," Galya whispered. "I'm afraid... Perhaps he's a bandit? Let's go back."
"Where?"
"We can go round."
"Go round?"
"Yes, through the Polish volwerks."
Now we were only about five minutes' walk from Galya's house, but the road to Otter Bank through the Polish volwerks would take at least an hour. We should have to go back through Windy Gate, down Post Street, over New Bridge, then make a detour along the dark boulevard, turn down the Podzamche slope ...
The man on the bridge stirred, and the rail creaked.
"Well, here goes!" I decided, and bent down. In the wet, dewy grass by the roadside, I found a sharp heavy stone. I gripped it firmly.
"Come on," I whispered to Galya.
"I'd rather not, Vasya! Let's go back."
"If you go back, you've got to pass Black Rock. Have you forgotten that?"
Galya followed me silently. I walked quietly across the bridge, trying not to make a noise with my sandals. I held the stone behind my back.
The man by the nail turned round at once and waited for us to come up.
So as not to be left behind, Galya pushed forward between me and the rail. Without realizing it, she elbowed me into the middle of the bridge, towards the stranger. I tried not to look at him, expecting him to shout "Halt!" at any moment.
The man was only about two paces away, when I plucked up courage and looked in his direction.
Leaning against the bridge rail, the muzzle of his carbine pointing to the ground, stood a militiaman.
I at once stamped loudly on the bridge flooring and took Galya's arm.
"If only he doesn't notice the stone," I thought.
"Haven't got a match, have you, youngsters?"
In this dangerous spot, it was good to hear the voice of someone who could do us no harm.
"We don't smoke," I replied hoarsely. "Wouldn't you like some sunflower seeds?"
"Sunflower seeds?" the militiaman repeated. "Yes, if you can spare them."
"Here you are, comrade." I poured a handful of seeds into the militiaman's warm hands, and put my hand into my pocket again.
"That's plenty," said the militiaman. "I'm robbing you as it is. Thanks very much. The time will go quicker now."
The militiaman had a kindly face.
"Good night!" I shouted as we went our way.
"Good luck to you!" the militiaman responded.
The cliffs ended and we came to the fortress bridge. In silence we walked across the rough narrow dam. The river had fallen, and now many rocks were showing that had been underwater in the afternoon. From beyond the high fortress bridge that linked the town with Old Fortress came the dull booming of the waterfall. We went up to Galya's house. Its white walls gleamed through the dark trees. The window farthest from the bridge was open. Just as we got to the gate Galya asked: "You paid Shipulinsky a ruble forty, didn't you?" "That's right."
"Well, take my share," she said, and held out her hand.
"What?—Are you joking?"
"No, I'm not. Take it. I've got money and you haven't much. H know that."
I was taken utterly by surprise. I should have shown Galya the money I had left, I should have said I had still more money at home, but I only muttered: "I won't!"
"Then we're going to quarrel!"
"If you want to quarrel over..." I began heavily, but Galya did not listen.
"Take the money, Vasya," she insisted. "Do you hear!" And so saying, she pushed the coins into my pocket. Before I could pull them out again, Galya had darted to the gate. I rushed after her, but the gate banged in my face.
"I'll chuck it away, Galya! I'll chuck it away this moment, outside the gate!" I hissed after her, trying not to shout too loud, so as not to wake her father.
"Chuck it away then!" Galya's voice reached me distantly from behind the trees. "Good night!"
I was terrifically hungry when I got home. I tried the door of the flat—it was locked. From behind the well-padded door came the faint sound of my aunt snoring.
Now I regretted living on my own. If I had not set up my quarters in the kitchen, I could have gone to the pantry and found something to eat—a hunk of bread and goat's cheese, or a cake.
There was not even a crust of bread in the kitchen.
Then I remembered that Aunt Maria sometimes put food down the disused well near our wing, to keep it fresh. I went into the yard.
What had happened? The whole fringe of the sky beyond Dolzhetsky Forest was purple. Only a few minutes ago the sky had been the same as it always was. The purple light was growing visibly, and against it the dark tops of the trees showed more and more clearly. The glow stretched from Old Fortress to the food stores and far away beyond the Polish cemetery, at Paradise Gate. "That's a blaze!" I thought. "There must be at least ten cottages on fire!"
A column of flame spouted up amid the glow. The moon rose, round and purple, above the trees. As the moon rose over the garden, the fiery band along the horizon began to pale. The moon also grew paler and paler until it was yellow again.
I walked round the building to the disused well. It was surrounded by a few stunted plum-trees and clumps of stinging nettles. Passing my hand round the stone rim of the well, I found a rope. "Caught a fish!" I thought gaily, and pulled something heavy out of the well.
On the end of the rope there was an enamel saucepan. Taking the lid off, I saw a cold stiff layer of fat that had set firm like ice. Under that fat there must be some meat. But how to get it? After a moment's thought, I broke two twigs off a lilac bush and using them as a fork, fished a heavy lump of something out of the soup. It was a bone with a split edge and cold marrow inside. How I enjoyed my supper, sitting on the cemented edge of the well, in the deserted moonlit garden! Much better than at Shipulinsky's. If only Galya had been with me! I wondered whether it had really been Father looking at me in the cafe, or had I just imagined it? The thought of my father set me worrying again, and the meat lost its flavour.
I wouldn't mind if Father just pulled my leg a bit for taking a girl out to a cafe so soon. But he might ask where I had got the money. If he did that, I should be done for. And why on earth had we gone and sat by that window? As if there hadn't been plenty of free tables in the corner! No one would have seen us there. . .
Somewhere near the garden wall a nightingale began to sing. His strong, tender notes floated through the silent garden.
Suddenly three rifle shots rang out in quick succession beyond Old Fortress. The echo rolled over the town. I put the saucepan down on a stone. In the prison across the road, a sentry whistled. A sudden burst of machine-gun fire came from the direction of the shots.
The dogs at the food stores yelped an answer. The sentry at the gate of the Party School sprang into action. A moment later, doors were banging inside the building—first one, then another, then a third. . . . Someone raced down the boarded corridor to the students' quarters. Muffled shouts reached my ears.
Before I could run to our wing of the building and climb the steps, booted feet were pounding down the stone staircase and students began to appear in the yard. I could hear the click of buckles as they tightened their belts. One of the students darted aside and, bending down, stamped his foot on the pavement; his boot was too tight.
A tall student charged out of the doorway.
"Get your rifles, comrades!" he shouted, clapping his hat on his head.
With these words he ran to the low door of the armoury-near the main entrance and disappeared inside.
Lights at once flared up at ground level, in the two barred and white-washed basement windows. All the other windows of the building were dark, except for two at the far end overlooking the garden which reflected the faint light of the half-risen moon.
One after the other, students were running out of the armoury. I could hear them loading their rifles.
"Are the runners here?" That was Polevoi.
"Here, Comrade Secretary!" came several voices.
"Wake up the staff! Look lively!" Polevoi commanded.
The runners darted away across the yard in different directions. One of them crashed straight through the lilac and burdock towards our wing.
"Where's printer Mandzhura live?" he asked, panting.
The runner turned out to be that stocky Komsomol member who had been chairman at the Komsomol meeting and had asked me to leave the hall.
"This way!" I shouted and led him into the corridor.
The runner struck a match. By its flickering light, I showed him the door of our flat. He hammered on it with his fist.
"Who's there?" came my father's muffled voice.
"Alarm! Hurry!" the runner shouted and rushed away.
While Father was getting dressed I stood on the steps.
The students were already forming up under the white wall of the main building. From my raised position I could see them well; only the right flank was hidden by the lilac bushes.
"I'll come with you. Can I, Dad?" I whispered to my father, as soon as he appeared on the steps.
"With me? Where!" Father shouted angrily, not glancing at me as he ran down the steps into the yard.
Again I heard Polevoi's quiet, muffled voice from across the yard:
"Attention! First platoon—follow me, quick march!"
The students moved off under the wall in fours. Polevoi marched in front without a rifle. Father fell in on the march and I lost sight of him.
No songs or loud commands, only the sharp click of heels accompanied the students as, with bayonets glinting in the moonlight, they marched out of the gates into the street. As soon as the column had passed, the sentry quickly closed the tall iron gate.
I felt very lonely standing there, on the steps. It was no use going to see my aunt. I knew there was no one left in the whole of this big building, except a few non-Party workers and the wives of the instructors and their children. The town was quiet and still, very still, but the stillness was deceptive. I knew that at this very moment from every street in the town, and even from the distant railway station, men of the special detachments were hurrying to answer the alarm at Special Detachment Headquarters in Kishinev Street.
I walked across the moonlit yard towards the gate.
"Halt! Who goes there?" the sentry shouted loudly.
The voice sounded familiar.
"Friend," I answered quietly.
"What friend?"
"I live here."
"Name?"
"Mandzhura."
"Come a bit nearer."
The sentry was standing in the shade of a tall elm, and at first I could not make out who it was in the darkness. When he came out into the light, I recognized Marushchak.
"Ah, an old acquaintance. . ." Marushchak drawled with a grin, and shouldered his rifle. "Why aren't you asleep?"
"Asleep! What about the alarm?"
"What alarm?"
"What alarm! As if you didn't know!"
"First I've heard of it!"
I realized that Marushchak was pulling my leg, but I went on questioning.
"Where did all' the students go?"
"Who knows! Perhaps they went to the baths!"
"To the baths, at night? What do you think I am—nuts?"
Marushchak laughed.
"Now I see you're not nuts," he said, "but you're nosy —that's a fact."
At a loss for an answer, I shifted from one foot to another.
Marushchak came to the rescue: "Let's sit down, now we're here."
We sat down on the bench near the horizontal bar. I carefully shifted the pistol in my pocket and asked:
"Are sentries allowed to sit down?"
"Not in the army, but they can here," Marushchak replied, rummaging in his pocket.
He fished out his pouch, rolled a cigarette and struck a match.
"Dad gone too?"
"Yes."
Puffing at his cigarette, Marushchak said irritably: "They wouldn't take me, darn them! This is the second time I've been on duty when there's an alarm."
"It isn't Petlura crossing the frontier by any chance?"
"Petlura? Hardly. Might be one of his gangs though."
A shot resounded some distance away, beyond Dolzhetsky Wood. Presently it was followed by another.
"Still plugging away, the bastards!" said Marushchak.
He took a last pull at his cigarette and neatly spat out the stub. For a little while it burnt in the grass like a glow-worm, then went out.
The moon shone bright. Now it hung right over the prison. Nightingales were singing very loudly in the garden. "The specials must be outside town by now," I thought, and at that moment I heard the faint tolling of a bell behind me. At first !I thought it was my fancy, and glanced at Marushchak. But he, too, had heard it, for he had turned round and was peering at the open windows of the main building, where the strange sound was coming from,
Boom, boom, boom . . . came the steady tolling of the bell, just like the one in the cathedral tower.
"What the hell! What's he playing about at?" Marushchak exclaimed and jumped up.
"Who?"
"Wait a minute!"
Quick footsteps were echoing down the corridor inside the building. A door slammed below and I saw a man run out into the yard. He glanced round, jumped over the wire fence, and ran towards us. It was one of the older students whom I didn't know, a slightly round-shouldered man in a big Budyonny hat pulled down to his ears.
"Hear that, Panas?" he asked Marushchak quietly.
"I hear it all right," Marushchak replied, "but at first I thought it might be you."
"Me?" the student exclaimed indignantly. "You must think I want a job to go ringing bells at night..."
"Have you got your gun?" Marushchak asked sternly.
"It's here," the orderly replied, smacking his holster.
"'Keep a watch at the gate for a bit and I'll go and have a look," Marushchak went on, and with a glance at me asked: "Like to keep me company?"
"Why not?"
"Well," said Marushchak, "we'll see what kind of a hero you are."
Whatever side you saw it from, the Party School looked very big and roomy. You had only to go inside, however, to discover that the building only looked so big from outside because there was a small orchard laid out in the centre of it. The orchard was separated from the garden by the high walls of the instructional block. Only pear-trees, very old and crooked, grew in the little round orchard.
When I first saw it, the orchard struck me as rather queer because there was no entrance to it; only in one place, between the windows of the dining-hall, could one make; out the traces of a door that had obviously been walled up a long time ago. There was no way into the garden except through the corridor window on the ground-floor. Even Korybko the gardener, in spring, when he had to paint the trunks of the trees with lime, and in autumn, when he gathered the ripe fruit, entered the orchard that way. The corridors of the Party School were very long. All of them, except those on the very top floor, ran into each other. By following the corridors, one could go all over the old building, with its steep dark staircases, arched windows, creaking floors, and dank smell that reminded you of the nunnery. The corridors on every floor were low and vaulted; their windows with deep sloping sills, like loop-holes, looked out only into the orchard. Square whitewashed stoves with heavy iron doors and narrow ash-pits jutted out of the walls, almost blocking the corridor. The students' kitchen was joined to the rest of the building by a long corridor that ran through all the cellars. It was not a very nice walk to take, especially alone. Low vaulted ceilings, a stone flagged floor, not a single window into the open, only dim little lamps near the ceiling shedding a fitful light on the heavy iron-bound doors with round spy-holes in them, that led into the store-rooms and wood-cellars. A good half of the cellars were empty.
Korybko had taken over the cellar farthest from the kitchen. There he kept his rakes, hoes, and pruning shears; the shelves were covered with seeds.
It was Aunt Maria who had shown me the way to the kitchen the day I had taken her spoons. She and I had gone together to the kitchen, and while she was talking to the cook I hurried back with a saucepan of buckwheat porridge. As I ran down the corridor, I noticed that the door of one of the cellars was open and glanced in. Korybko, grey-haired and wrinkled, was sitting there on a bench, sharpening a hoe with gnarled, unsteady hands. It was such a surprise to see him there, underground, that I even felt quite frightened,
All this I remembered as Marushchak and I walked up to the school building, from which, louder and louder, came the resonant tolling of the bell.
I pictured what the building was like at night, with not a single living soul in it except this mysterious bell-ringer. What if Marushchak sent me alone to inspect the deep nunnery cellars? "Marushchak can go to the devil!" I thought. "I'm not going inside. I'll wait for him here." But it was too late.
Marushchak opened the door gently and held it back for a moment. As soon as I crossed the threshold, he let the door close silently and, overtaking me, strode into the dark entrance-hall.
At once it seemed that the bell was ringing in one of the rooms on the ground-floor—either in the dining-hall or the library. Marushchak hesitated and was about to turn in that direction, but shook his head and walked up the staircase. We went higher, to the landing on the first floor—still the bell rang, now, it seemed, on the first floor.
At last we reached the top floor. The oak doors of the club-room were shut. The staircase led straight up to them. Turning left, we started opening the doors along the top-floor corridor. The toll of the bell still did not cease. We could hear it just as well here as downstairs—rather muffled, but distinctly audible, just as if someone had carried the bell after us while we were mounting the stairs.
The strain was too much. I cautiously drew the Zauer pistol out of my pocket and cocked it in the corridor. Marushchak glanced at me, noticed the pistol, but said nothing.
About two paces from a glass door stood the orderly's locker, and beside it a wooden stool. On the locker stood a lamp shaded with newspaper. Its light fell on a book with a bright cover.
There were no other lamps in the corridor. Slanting rays of moonlight filtered through the corridor windows from the inner court. The tops of the old pear-trees rose level with the windows.
The door from the corridor into the students' quarters was open. In the gloom I could see rumpled beds and upturned stools. The smell of living quarters, of human bodies and leather boots drifted from the rooms. We walked on tip-toe, very quietly, trying to discover where this mournful cracked ringing came from without disturbing the bell-ringer.
We walked half-way down the corridor—the bell rang quite near us, almost at our side, but where exactly, it was impossible to say. At first it seemed to come from under the floor-boards, then out of the stove, and finally I began to think that the sound came from the inner court, and put my head out of the window; but there I could see nothing except trees.
I gripped my pistol firmly. My finger was on the trigger.
"Quiet!" Marushchak whispered.
I stopped and held my breath. In the hushed stillness the tolling of the bell sounded even clearer. Marushchak pressed his ear to the stone wall separating the corridor from the students' quarters. He listened for a bit, shrugged his shoulders and tip-toed up to me.
"I'll get to the bottom of this hanky-panky!" he said in a low whisper. "Let's lie down."
We lay down. In that position we could hear better. Before us, the moonlit corridor stretched for about fifty paces to a blank wall, on the other side of which was the students' club.
Marushchak rolled over quietly on his side, and pulling back the bolt of his rifle, slipped a cartridge in the breach. He listened attentively. The bell went on tolling monotonously.
Marushchak jumped up and rushed to the open window. "Stop ringing, you swine, do you hear? I'll find you, you son-of-a-bitch, mark my words!" he shouted hoarsely; and raising his rifle he fired into the trees.
The echo from the shot crashed back through the windows into the corridor. And as if someone had jerked my elbow, I fired after Marushchak out of the next window.
We both peered out into the orchard.
Strange to say, as soon as the shots died away the ringing ceased. All was silent again. 'Only far away, near Otter Bank, some dogs started barking.
We stood in silence at the open windows for a good five minutes, then went back into the yard.
The orderly was waiting for us impatiently. Before Marushchak could climb the garden fence, he rushed up to him.
"Well, what happened?" he asked.
"Nothing much."
"But what devil was it ringing?"
" 'Devil, devil!' " Marushchak muttered. "How could it be a devil, if it was afraid of a shot! Can't you hear, it's stopped now? Devil without a tail, if you ask me ..."
"But how can we catch him?"
"Never mind, we'll stop his game. Seems we made a mistake when we laughed at Neverov."
"Who's he?" the orderly asked.
"Neverov? A Komsomol member from the third platoon. He was on night duty last week, he heard that ringing too, and was so scared he woke up the lads in his room. As soon as he woke them, the ringing stopped. We laughed at him, but now, as you see, there's more in it than we thought."
"We must tell Neverov about this," said the orderly.
"No, there's no need to do that. Let's agree that we won't tell anyone," Marushchak said sternly.
"What about the head of the school?"
"We'll tell him. And Polevoi. But no one else. Agreed?"
"Very well."
With a glance at me, Marushchak said: "And not a word out of you, lad, not a murmur."
"I'll go, Panas, shall I?" the orderly interrupted.
"Go along then. But if anything happens, come and fetch me."
When the orderly had gone, we sat down on the bench and Marushchak asked: "But do you understand why you shouldn't let on about this?" "More or less."
"You see, there's no doubt about it—someone's trying to scare us... And we've got to keep quiet about it until we find out what's what, or else if we let on too soon, the rumour will get round the town."
All of a sudden I made up my mind and told Marushchak how someone had fired at Petka and me in the garden. Marushchak listened attentively. The more I told him, the more serious his sharp, weather-beaten face became. "How long ago was this?" "Last week."
"And you're sure they shouted in Polish?"
"Uh-huh. Someone shouted 'Quick!' then they fired at us—Bang! Bang!... We got away, over the wall."
"It's a good thing you told me. That puts quite a different complexion on the matter. Looks as if someone's really got his knife into us."
"But what have you done to anyone?" I asked cautiously.
"Aha, it's what we're going to do. Just think. We've been brought together here from all over the province—young and old. Some from the army, some from the villages. For a lot of the lads it's the first time they've had a book in their hands. Just take me as an example. What was I seven years ago? Shooting at dogs with a catapult and catching pigeons in a net on the cathedral tower. As soon as I grew up the revolution came, then war again—the hetman, Petlura, Pilsudski, what have you! My uncle took me with him to the Reds, and before a year's out the squadron commander calls me up. Take over a platoon, Comrade Marushchak,' he says. So they gave me a platoon. And I hardly knew anything myself. I hadn't even got a moustache.
I shouted 'attention!' my voice used to break like a young cockerel's. Then it started. If you weren't fighting, you were in hospital. I was wounded five times. At Popelnya a dum-dum got me in the side—I thought that was the end of me. Then what happened afterwards? We finished fighting; I stayed in the army for a bit; new lads came along and took over. Well, I thought, it's time I went home. The commissar called me up. 'Wouldn't you like to study, Comrade Marushchak,' he says. 'Yes, I would,' I says. So I came here. And when we've finished our studies, we'll go away—some of us to the villages, some to the centre, some to the sugar refinery, some to the railway. We'll shake everything up. And when we squeeze those kulaks a bit, they'll squeal. But we'll rally the decent folk for work and make Soviet power as firm as that!" Marushchak banged his fist on his palm. "Now judge for yourself: will that be very nice for those gentlemen who used to rule the roost in these parts?"
"Not very," I said quietly.
After a pause Marushchak smiled and asked:
"Were you sore with me the other day?"
"Why?"
"'Because they asked you to leave the meeting?"
"Oh ... that was nothing..."
"Don't feel sore, lad. Friendship's friendship, but we can't all do the same things. You ought to understand that yourself."
"I do understand it."
"Well, if you can do that, you're a fine lad!"
And before I could recover from Marushchak's unexpected praise, he asked me: "Have you been living in this town long?"
"Since nineteen sixteen."
"And you never heard anything about this house before?"
"One chap I know told me a tale about there being ghosts here, but I don't believe him. The director of the people's school, Valerian Dmitrievich Lazarev, told us there's no such thing as a ghost. He said it's all a lot of rubbish."
And I told Marushchak everything about our favourite history master.
Marushchak listened attentively.
"It seems your Lazarev is a learned man, isn't he?" he asked.
"I should think he is! He knows everything—where every tower is, who built it, what year it was built. And all the things he told us about Old Fortress! And about Ustim Karmeluk!..."
"I'd like you to take me to see him. I'm fond of hearing about old times," said Marushchak. "Would you really? Let's go then." "Fine! Does he live far away?"
"Not very. Near Kishinev Street, where the 'Komsomol club is."
"Shall we go tomorrow?"
"Yes, let's!" I agreed willingly.
I was delighted at the thought of taking Marushchak, a big, broad-shouldered student, in army uniform, to see Lazarev. Let Lazarev see what kind of friends I had now. Marushchak had fought Petlura!
I realized that the loss of the spoons had been discovered as soon as Aunt Maria appeared in my kitchen. She appeared suddenly, flinging the door open. Her face was cross and worried. I had scarcely time to hide the slippery, gleaming pistol, which I had been taking to pieces and cleaning with gunsmith's oil.
Aunt Maria went over to the stove and opened the oven. Putting her hand inside, she swept all my tools out on to the iron door. I watched her anxiously.
"What do you want, Aunt?" I could not help asking. "What are you looking for?"
Aunt Maria shot the tools back into the oven and shut the door with a bang. Then she ripped the paper off the stove and, pushing aside the iron lids with her finger, looked inside.
"What are you looking for?" I repeated.
"You haven't taken the spoons, have you, Vasya?" she asked. Her voice was worried and plaintive.
"What spoons?" '
"The silver ones."
I shook my head dumbly. It was cowardice and I knew it. And how I cursed myself for it afterwards! It would have been far easier to own up straight away. That would have been the end of it.
"The spoons have gone," my aunt continued. "There are only three left. I thought you might have taken them."
"What would I want with the spoons, Aunt?" I said as calmly as I could.
She 'believed me and went away. I remained in the kitchen. It was easy to imagine my aunt rummaging in the chest, pulling out all the drawers in the sideboard, peering under the bed. She was very fond of those spoons; they were our family's most valuable possession. I knew that, but I hadn't the guts to go and own up.
Presently, when the rattle of drawers in the other room had ceased, Father came in to see me. I knew he would come, and was ready for it, but his first glance took some facing.
Father shut the door firmly behind him and sat down on the stool in the middle of the room.
"Vasil!"
"What, Dad?"
"Let's talk to each other as man to man. Tell me: did you take the spoons?"
"No, Dad!" I said in a trembling voice. "Is that the truth?"
"Yes!"
"Well, who took them then?"
"How should I know? Perhaps they've been stolen."
"Who could have stolen them, do you think?"
"How should I know? Perhaps some stranger ... a beggar or somebody."
"Vasil, you know that no beggars come in here. The sentry wouldn't let a beggar in."
"Perhaps he got in through the window when Aunt was out?"
"I've asked about that. Aunt Maria says she hasn't opened the street windows once."
"Well, I don't know."
"Vasil, make your own confession! I won't be angry with you. . ."
In another minute I would have confessed, but just then a voice I hardly recognized as my own said: "I haven't anything to confess, Dad."
"Nothing to confess?" Father's voice trembled. "Vasil, tell me how you got enough money to be sitting in Shipulinsky's cafe."
"I borrowed two rubles from Petka."
"What Petka?"
"Maremukha..."
"From the Old Estate?"
"Uh-huh."
"Is that the truth?"
"Yes. . . And he gave me another ruble for my pigeons."
"All right. We'll go and see him."
"Who?"
"Maremukha."
"But he's not at home."
"Never mind, we'll find him!" And Father very calmly put on his straw hat.
With dragging feet I followed my father into the yard. Instruction was over and the students were playing football while they waited for dinner. Marushchak's cap showed up for a moment among the players land I turned away. It seemed to me the students knew everything already.
I followed my father with hanging head, like a convict.
Soon we should arrive at Maremukha's. There, in front of Petka, the old cobbler Maremukha, and Petka's mother, everything would come out. Everyone would know that I was not only a thief, but a coward.
"We walked for some distance in silence.
As we passed the grounds of the trade school, I caught sight of Zakharzhevsky's shop on the corner. Now Kotka Grigorenko would see me. That must be him now, banging away with a hammer inside the shop.
By the hoarding, Father stopped suddenly.
"Vasil! I'm ashamed of you, can't you see that? I don't want to disgrace you. You're my son, Vasil, and I'm a Communist. I want you to grow up a decent, honest lad. When I was your age I had a much harder life, but I never lied to my father. And you mustn't lie to me."
A woman who was passing glanced at us in surprise. As soon as her footsteps died away, I gathered all my strength and said:
"Dad, I sold the spoons!"
"Who to?"
"I thought they were mine. Aunt said..."
"Who to?"
"Aunt said they were for me when I got married..."
"Do you hear my question? To whom did you sell those spoons?"
"I sold them in town, at the jeweller's."
"Come on," said my father, and felt in his pocket for his wallet.
The mere thought of how we went to that jeweller's shop gives me the shudders. When he heard that my father's name was Mandzhura, the jeweller glanced at the lid of his cigarette packet and laughed.
"Who are you shouting at?" he said. "The spoons aren't yours, they belong to Citizen Maremukha."
It cost my father a lot to persuade the jeweller to return the spoons. Father had to pay interest on them. Instead of four rubles he had to give the jeweller four rubles ninety kopeks. The old swindler made a profit of thirty kopeks on each spoon.
On the way home, when we were half way across the fortress bridge, I stopped my father and said quietly, trying not to meet his glance: "Listen, Dad. I give you my word of honour that I will never lie again, but please don't tell anyone about this. I'll never lie again, I swear! You won't tell anyone, will you?" "We shall see." "What do you mean, Dad?" "We shall see, I say."
"You mean you don't want to? Before, you were sorry about losing the spoons. But now you've got them back—why won't you?..."
"I was sorry about the spoons, was I?" Father interrupted me. "You think I want this junk? Why, I can eat with wooden spoons. There!"
And before I realized what was happening, Father had pulled all three spoons out of his pocket and flung them over the rail into the foaming waterfall. The gleaming silver spun down into the water. A pock-marked man in a straw hat who was driving past in a big bullock cart even opened his mouth in surprise.
Unable to tear my eyes away, I watched the spoons fall. I did not look up at my father until they disappeared in the foaming water below.
That day I had no dinner. So as not to meet anyone I knew, I walked far away beyond Paradise Gate and lay down on the grass near the cliff. Pulling a spring of wild garlic out of the ground, I chewed its reddish bitter-tasting root.
Black bumble-bees and honey-bees buzzed around me. A gay-feathered hoopoe flapped out of the wood and perched on a near-by stone; for a second he stood shaking his comb then, noticing me, flew away behind a mound. Two robins perching on the thin branches of a bush struck up a merry song. But none of this interested me now. I could not even be bothered to search for the robins' nest in the grass; although it must be somewhere there, full of warm speckled eggs, or the robins would not have stayed fluttering about on one bush for so long.
The thick grass dotted with buttercups, purple-flowered cockle, and tousle-headed daisies, smelt sweetly; the sharp green blades swayed to and fro right in front of my face. I stared at them indifferently, thinking all the time of only one thing.
When we had been going to the jeweller's, Father had said to me: "Vasil, do you remember when the Petlura men were in the town how you and your pals came out to me, at Nagoranye? You were the first person to tell me how the Petlura men shot Sergushin. Remember? For a long time after that I thought: what a fine lad my boy's growing up to be... But now..."
Father swept his arm downwards, and that hurt me more than anything. I would rather he had called me any name, or cursed me with the most terrible words, I would rather even have had him whip me with a buckled belt, as our old neighbour, Grzhibovsky 'the sausage-maker, used to whip his youngest son Stakh—nothing would have hurt so much as that silent downward sweep of my father's arm.
It was quite clear that Father would tell everyone I had stolen the spoons.
He would tell Aunt Maria first, and she would complain about me to Polevoi. And Father himself would tell Polevoi everything too. It was the end of the Komsomol for me, the end of everything... ' Everyone would despise me, Galya most of all. "Fancy making all that up about Kotka," she would say. "And all the time he was a thief himself!" She wouldn't even look at me...
It would have been quicker to go home through the cemetery, of course, but it was a bit too creepy round there of an evening, and skirting the cemetery fence I walked into town along a dusty track through the fields.
In the yard of the Party School, near the iron gates, stood Marushchak and Valerian Dmitrievich Lazarev. Lazarev was wearing an old tussore tunic, rubbed at the elbows, and a straw hat. I could not believe at first that it was Lazarev. The day Marushchak and I had agreed to call on Lazarev, he had been out. His wife told us he had gone to Kiev, to attend a teachers' conference. We had decided to go and see him later, when he returned.
"Hullo, Valerian Dmitrievich!" I said, taking my cap off.
"Ah, Mandzhura! How are you!" Lazarev replied absently. "Do you live here?"
I felt even more offended. Not only had Marushchak got to know Lazarev without me, he had not even told Valerian Dmitrievich who had sent him.
"Yes, I do. In that white wing over there," I answered, and was just about to go away, when behind me I heard the calm familiar voice of my father;
"Perhaps you'll have your dinner?"
"No, I don't want any, Dad. I've had some."
"Where could you have had dinner, Vasil?" Father asked, smiling. "What restaurant was it this time?"
"I didn't have it in a restaurant. I had it ... at Petka Maremukha's..."
"Well, that doesn't matter, you can have another dinner. Come with me."
As we walked away, I heard Lazarev say to Marushchak: "Very well, that's agreed—after school?"
"Yes, mind you come. We'll be expecting you," Marushchak replied.
"What does he want me for?'' I wondered, trailing across the grass after my father. "First he won't say a word to me, then he comes and fetches me for dinner."
Father's broad back with jutting shoulder-blades swayed slightly as he walked; the hem of his white blouse was stained with printer's dye.
"By the way, Vasil," he said, turning round, "when did you manage to have dinner with your Petka? I was down at Zarechye a little while ago and I called in to see them. Petka asked me why you hadn't been round at all, he said he had something he wanted to see you about. You might drop in one day, Vasil."
Again Father had caught me out.
"Hey, young man! Young man!" a voice shouted.
Marushchak was running after us.
"Comrade Mandzhura," he said to my father, "do you mind if I keep your son for a moment?"
"Not for long though, his dinner's cold as it is," Father replied, and walked on towards the porch.
As soon as he had entered the building, Marushchak asked me: "Vasil, who told you about the ghosts?"
"Why?"
"Don't be scared, I'm just interested."
"It was Maremukha."
"Who is he, a friend of yours?"
"Yes."
"You couldn't ask him who he heard that from, could you? You know, just in an off-hand way."
"I could."
"But don't make a lot of it, let him do all the talking. Understand? You'll ask him, will you?"
"All right."
"Good. Off you go then, have your dinner."
At dinner, as I ate the thick lukewarm pea soup, I simply could not make up my mind whether Aunt Maria knew what had happened to the spoons. While I was having my dinner, Father, taking the counterpane off his bed, lay down and picked up the newspaper. He read the paper and rustled the pages, not saying a single word. Aunt Maria was silent too. Either they had quarrelled themselves, or they were both angry with me. Still not knowing what to make of it, I finished off with sweet millet porridge and cold milk, and slipped out quietly on to the steps.
A cheerful song was coming from the windows of the students' quarters.
How I envied the students at that moment! I envied them for being older than me, I envied their cheerfulness and clear consciences. Why hadn't I been born seven years earlier? I should have been able to fight the Petlura men, and perhaps I might even have been wounded, and I should certainly be a member of the Komsomol. But now they would never accept me...
At that moment a starling on a tree burst into song. On the very first day we had come to live here, I had noticed some starlings building a nest under the eaves of our wing. They kept on flying to and fro, little nimble speckled birds with a dark-blue sheen on their feathers. And not long ago I had heard the chirping of their young. Every day the chirping grew louder. When the old starling flew into the nest, the youngsters would poke their yellow beaks out of the hole in the wall and scramble for the first worm. All day long the eaves rang with their chirping, and only in the evening, when the sun sank behind the cemetery, the well-fed youngsters would quieten down, and the parents, tired and contented, would fly into the near-by acacia bush and begin their song. It was one of them now who had struck up his evening serenade. Through the thin foliage of the acacia I could see the starling's black breast and his fine sharp beak pointed upwards to the sky. His lusty careless song was good to hear. Now he imitated an oriole, now he warbled like a nightingale, now he whistled like a finch, now he twittered just like a sparrow. Louder and louder he sang, as though to drown the voices of the students. I was so absorbed in watching the starling that I did not notice Petka Maremukha running towards me. He was flushed and out of breath.
"I ... they wouldn't let me in ... I could hardly make ... the sentry ... Let's ..."
I stared at Petka in bewilderment. " "Let's ... Come on..." -
"Where?"
"Don't you know? ... Come on ..."
"But where?"
"The wrestlers are here!" Petka burst out.
"Just a sec', Petka," I interrupted. "Who told you there were ghosts at the Party School?"
Petka glanced over his shoulder and asked quietly: "What's up?"
"Nothing. We've been here all this time and nothing's happened. Not even a sound of them."
"It was Sasha Bobir told me. Perhaps he was pulling my leg."
"You ask him who told him—it's interesting."
"All right."
"You won't be seeing him tomorrow, will you?"
"I might be. I'm going to Podzamche for maize tomorrow morning."
"Drop in and see him, Petka, it won't take you long. I'd like to know where he got that from. What ghosts could there be here?"
"All right, I'll drop in. Will you come to the wrestling today?"
"Let's go tomorrow. I'll come round in the evening."
"Come early though," Petka insisted. "About seven."
"Righto," I promised. "And don't forget to ask Bobir."
"All right, I won't," said Petka, and we parted.
Of all the chaps I ever knew Sasha Bobir was the unluckiest.
One day, when the old High School was still going', we were sliding down the telegraph pole by the high-school wall into Bell Street. We all slid down quickly, but Sasha decided to show off and started braking. He would let himself slide a bit, then brake all of a sudden. Sasha was only a little way from the ground when suddenly he let out such a scream that even the lads who had reached the river came running back to see what had happened.
Sasha jumped to the ground still screaming, and with his hands clutching his belly, rushed away up Bell Street into town. We rushed after him.
Without even stopping to knock at the door, Sasha charged straight into Doctor Gutentag's flat. We tried to follow him but were stopped by a nurse in a white coat. Sasha's howls floated through the open windows into the street. It sounded as if Doctor Gutentag was cutting him up in small pieces.
Standing under the window, we made wild guesses about what had happened. Petka maintained quite seriously that when Sasha was sliding down the pole his stomach had burst open. My friend Yuzik said he must have been bitten by a tarantula spider that had crawled out of a crack in the pole.
Presently the screams subsided. We had already decided that Sasha Bobir was no longer a dweller on this earth, when he suddenly appeared on the steps looking very pale and clutching his stomach. He was followed by Doctor Gutentag in a white cap and gleaming gold pince-nez. In his hand the doctor held a dark, blood-stained splinter wrapped in cotton wool.
As Sasha walked down the steps, the doctor called to him and, holding out the gory splinter, said:
"Take it with you as a souvenir."
When we got round the corner, Sasha pulled up his shirt and showed his stomach, which was slightly swollen and painted almost black with iodine. The splinter had entered the skin just at the belly-button land run up his chest. The spot where it had entered was covered with a round piece of plaster, about the size of a five-kopek piece.
Making agonized faces, Sasha told us that Doctor Gutentag had pulled the splinter out of his flesh with huge pincers, and had even called in his daughter Ida to help him. We walked beside Sasha, shivering and glancing at the splinter. It certainly was a whopper—much bigger than any that had ever stuck in our bare feet!
Sasha was very proud of what had happened. Though our ears were still ringing with his screams, he insisted that he had felt no pain at all.
"What did you scream for then?" Yuzik asked.
"Why did I scream? On purpose! So the doctor would do me free."
For the next few days Sasha, who now smelt like an iodine bottle, was hero of our class.
The incident was soon forgotten, but two months later everyone was talking about Sasha again.
During long break, when we were playing "he," Sasha ran to the high-school sheds and accidentally trod on the wooden cover of the refuse pit. The cover tipped up and Sasha dived into the hole.
Everyone thought that was the end of Sasha. But when we ran up to the dark edge of the pit, whence rose the sour stench of decaying rubbish, we heard a hoarse, muffled shout:
"Help!"
"Are you all right?" Yuzik asked, peering cautiously into the pit.
"I'm standing. It's not very deep!" came Sasha's voice.
We pulled Sasha out with a pair of reins hastily borrowed from the head-master's carriage.
A bedraggled figure, with scraps of paper and cabbage leaves sticking to his clothing, Sasha scrambled out of the pit and started hopping about and shaking himself. There was potato peal in his ginger hair and he stank.
Having shaken himself well, Sasha stripped naked and put his wet clothes in a corner of one of the sheds. The lads filled buckets of water from the well and doused Sasha in cold water, like a horse. Splashes flew all over the place, sparkling in the sunshine. Shivering with cold, Sasha hopped now on one foot, now on the other, snorting and sneezing and rubbing himself all over. His whole body was covered with goose-flesh.
Nikifor, the caretaker, gave Sasha an old suit of livery that reeked of tobacco. Dressed in this gold-purled uniform, which was several sizes too big for him, Sasha ran into the Great Hall and sat there all day, until Nikifor's wife had washed and dried his clothes. Between lessons we ran in to see Sasha.
As soon as he saw us, Sasha threw off his livery and went waltzing round the hall, stark naked.
And I remember another occasion. We had only another year to go at the people's school. The chaps had grown up and learnt something. Only Sasha Bobir had gone astray. He had suddenly started serving in church, for the bishop. Sasha would attend school in the day-time, but as soon as evening came, off he went to Trinity Church. What gave him the idea I don't know. Once or twice we went to church on purpose to see Sasha serving. In a splendid, gold-embroidered surplice, with a long embroidered apron in front, our Sasha padded about after the grey-haired bishop, swinging a censer. He would light candles, or snuff them with his fingers, and sometimes he even went round the congregation collecting money on a tray. The whole class boycotted Sasha. We drew a caricature of him in our wall newspaper, the Red Schoolboy, and even asked Lazarev to transfer this priest's toady to another group. Only Kotka Grigorenko used to talk to Sasha in those days. Enemies in the past, they suddenly became bosom friends. They sat at the same desk and walked home together.
I do not know how much longer Sasha would have gone on serving the bishop, perhaps he might have become a deacon, or even a real priest, but quite unexpectedly one day Sasha's older brother Anatoly, a printer and a member of the Komsomol, returned from Kiev. He had been studying there for three months, and when he came home he started persuading Sasha to give up the bishop.
Sasha's brother must have used some good arguments, for about two days after his return Sasha stopped going to Trinity Church. And a month later he announced that priests were a lot of tricksters, and that the bishop was the biggest swindler of them all. Soon he was telling us how every time there was a service the bishop emptied all the money out of the cups and the tray, kept half of it for himself and gave the rest to the priests. Sasha swore that on candles alone the priests and bishop at Trinity Church earned three times more than Lazarev, the director of our school.
It turned out that Sasha had become a server for the bishop quite by chance. One evening, he and two other chaps had climbed into the garden of Kiyanitsa the priest. Sasha sat in a tree shaking the branches, and the other two picked up the apples. They had both filled their shirt fronts when they suddenly noticed Kiyanitsa and took to their heels. Poor Sasha was left in the tree without a chance of escaping. As he climbed slowly to the ground, he thought that Kiyanitsa would be sure to give him the strap and take his shirt away, or worse still—march him off to his parents. Nothing of the kind happened.
As soon as Sasha jumped down, Kiyanitsa took him kindly by the arm and said: "Did you want some apples, boy? Certainly! You may take as many as you like."
Sasha timidly picked up two apples from the grass, expecting to feel the sting of Kiyanitsa belt at any moment. But Kiyanitsa merely said: "What's the matter? Don't be shy, take all you want."
Sasha thought it over, then, deciding there was nothing else he could do, started gathering up the ripe, fragrant apples. He stuffed his pockets, his shirt front, then he took his cap off and filled that. "Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb!" he thought.
Feeling rather heavy, he stood in front of Kiyanitsa and waited to see what would happen next. To Sasha's great surprise, Kiyanitsa did not lay a finger on him, and instead of taking the apples away, even opened the gate to let him out.
"If you want any more, come and ask me, I'll give you some," said the priest. "But you mustn't steal."
Three days later, Sasha plucked up his courage and went to the priest's again. Before taking Sasha into the garden, Kiyanitsa asked him a lot of questions about the school,' what new teachers had been taken on, and how Lazarev managed things.
His questions were very kindly and afterwards he offered to help Sasha with his home-work. So Sasha started visiting Kiyanitsa the priest regularly. At first he went to church with him, then, when Kiyanitsa made him a server, Sasha started going there of his own accord, every evening.
I was very surprised when I heard that it was Sasha Bobir who had told Petka about the ghosts. After we had left the people's school, I had seen nothing of Sasha round our way; he used to hang about in Podzamche all the time. How could he know that there were ghosts in the Party School? I waited impatiently for tomorrow evening.
But unfortunately I discovered nothing. What was more, I could not even call on Petka at seven, as I had promised.' Next morning, when I was washing under a lilac bush, four peasant carts drove into the yard. The driver of the first cart asked the sentry something. The sentry pointed to the back-yard and the carts drove in there.
Later on, when the sun was overhead, I saw some students bring several bundles out of the building and load them on the carts. I decided that another Petlura gang must have crossed the border somewhere and the students were going out to catch them.
Dinner-time came round.
I ran into the room and heard my father say to Aunt Maria: "That's enough!"
"It is not enough," my aunt burst out suddenly. "You can't shut me up like that! I've always said what I think and I shall go on doing so."
"Well, say it then," Father said gently.
"And I will too. They may be politically conscious, or whatever you call it, but...
"Are you starting that again, Maria?" said Father, raising his voice.
"Why, isn't it the truth? Of course it is! When we lived in Zarechye nothing happened. But as soon as we get here it starts—the soup's stolen, the spoons..."
"Be quiet, Maria!" Father shouted.
"The spoons are stolen..."
"Quiet, I say!"
"I won't be quiet! The spoons were stolen, and the..."
"Silence!" Father shouted very loudly, standing up. "I'm sick of hearing about your spoons! Listen to me. I took the spoons myself and gave them to the Commission for Aid to Juvenile Delinquents. Understand? And if you make any more fuss, I'll give them the rest too."
Aunt Maria fell silent at once, but eyed Father with disbelief.
In order to save me from my aunt's reproaches, Father had made up something that had never happened. I had never expected that! I felt sorry for my father. "What a rotten dog I am," I thought. "Why on earth did I have to sell those spoons? I could have asked Dad for money, he would have given it me... And now all this about the soup! ..."
That night there was an alarm, and the next day Father came home in a filthy state. Just before dawn there had been heavy rain out in the country. Father's black trousers were stained with mud up to the knees; his boots were soaked and looked like two big chunks of clay. Standing on the front steps, Father scraped the mud off his boots with a piece of wood and told me about the alarm. The night before the Soltys gang had stopped the Odessa-Moscow train near Vapnyarka. After robbing the mail van, the bandits had made for the Rumanian frontier. The special detachment men had laid an ambush for the gang not far from the Proskurov Road, but the bandits had changed their direction and made for Mogilyov.
"Where are you off to, Vasil?" Father asked.
"I wanted to..."
"Come in and have a word with me," Father suggested, and walked into the kitchen.
I shut the door and walked over to the stove.
"Sit down," said Father and pointed to a stool.
We sat down.
"Aren't you tired of kicking your heels doing nothing, Vasil?"
"Yes, a bit," I replied quietly.
"I think you are too. When you've got nothing to do, all sorts of silly ideas come into your head. Spoons, for instance..."
"But it's not my fault, Dad. We don't start at the technical school for a long time yet. What can I do! None of the chaps are doing anything."
"I don't know what the chaps are doing, but I think that while there's still time it wouldn't be a bad thing if you did some work."
I looked at Father. The tiff with my aunt did not seem to have upset him much... Calm and reserved as usual, he sat on his stool, watching me with twinkling eyes.
"Well, what about it, Vasil?"
"I don't know..."
"Again 'I don't know'?"
"Well, you tell me, and I..."
"All right, I'll tell you."
Father got up and paced across the room. After a minute or two he walked up to me and said: "You see, Vasil, our Party School has a state farm. It's not very far away, but it's not very near either. On the Dniester. The country round there's fine—orchards, a river... There's a group of students going off to work on that farm today. What do you think, would you like to go with them?"
"But will they take me?"
"They will. I've spoken to the head of the school already."
"All right, I'll go!"
"You will?"
"Yes, I will."
"But you'll have to work on the farm, Vasil. No loafing allowed there. And you won't have any chances to take young ladies out to coffee in the evenings. You'll be earning your own living. Agree?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then hurry up and get packed, and report to Polevoi in the back-yard."
"Is Polevoi going too?"
"Yes. He's chief of the detachment. Hurry up now."
"All right, Dad!" I shouted joyfully and, springing on to the stove, I started gathering up my things.
I took my old autumn coat off the hook, folded it and tied it up in a bundle with a towel, sheets and pillow. Father stood behind me, watching me pack.
We set off for the country—eighteen of us—and I didn't even have time to see Galya before I left. As our cart crossed the fortress bridge, I stood up and saw the roof of Galya's cottage below me, under the cliffs. And I felt very sad that I had not said good-bye to Galya. Perhaps, at that very moment she was sitting in her room with never a thought that I was passing, that I should be away for such a long time. I couldn't run and tell her about it—no one would have waited for me. As it was, I could still hardly believe that the students were taking me to work at a state farm, that I was going to work with them like a grown man. It grew dark rapidly as we drove towards the Dniester. The cart-track wound in and out among the allotments and maize fields. There were gleaming puddles everywhere. Now and then lumps of mud flew off the wheels into the maize. I could hear the horses' hooves squelching in the rnud and water splashing the wooden bottom of the cart. Soon the mud grew so bad that we had to turn off on to the main road, although the road was hardly suitable for the village horses, which were all only half shod.
On the main road we drove faster. The cart shook, and at every bump my teeth chattered. I sat on my blanket bundle, but that did not help much, and I longed for the cart to turn off on to the soft cart-track again.
Our driver, Shershen, a man of about thirty, in homespun breeches, brown shirt, and a soldier's cap with a broken peak, kept lashing the squat, but sturdy horses with a rawhide whip that had a long, springy handle. The whip cracked fiercely land I felt sorry for the horses. They were having a hard time of it as it was; every little sharp-edged stone must dig painfully into their unshod hind feet where the hooves were badly worn. But I did not dare tell the driver not to whip the horses, and rode all the way in silence.
The students on the last cart were singing. Mingling with the rattle of the carts, their song carried far over the silent fields. The air was still fresh from the recent rain.
Beside me sat four students whom I did not know. Three of them talked and joked among themselves; the fourth was asleep, his head resting on a sack of oats.
Listening to the students' talk and watching the black tops of the lime-trees fly past at the side of the road, I thought anxiously of what the future held in store.
Suppose I could not do farm work and they sent me away? I must work as well as the grown-ups, so that no one would have a bad word to say about me.
Although our town was only about fifteen versts from the frontier, I had never been on the Dniester. I only knew from hearsay that it was a broad and very swift-flowing river. True, there was a single-track railway that went as far as the Dniester, but no passenger trains ran there. About twice a month a shaky train of ballast trucks and an old engine creaked down to the Dniester for sand and gravel. The line had not been repaired since the war and was overgrown with weeds.
Petka had once managed to cadge a ride on the ballast train. He had a fine time. When he got back he kept on telling us how good it was to swim in the Dniester, what wonderful sandy banks it had, without any pitfalls or sudden drops, much better than the Smotrich.
Petka vowed that you could see Bessarabia fine from our bank, and that a Rumanian soldier had even shouted at him.
Needless to say, I listened to Petka's story with great envy. And I longed to see the Dniester myself, but I had never thought it would happen so soon.
It was a long drive. We passed a sleepy village of white cottages among trees. A tall well-sweep pointing up to the dark sky flashed past. Shershen jerked the reins; in a sudden silence we turned off the cobbled road on to a cart-track, and here I felt that the Dniester must be near at hand., A moist breeze blew from the horizon before us, where the clear, starlit sky joined with low, black hills. I realized that it came from the Dniester, for no rain had fallen recently and the ground was dry.
Presently, as we topped a rise and plunged downwards with dogs barking in the distance, I noticed a white strip of river mist. It hung low over the Dniester, spreading to the left, and disappeared round a bend in the river, far away among the gullies of the surrounding country. It looked like a dense trail of smoke left by a cart-load of blazing hay.
As we approached the Dniester it grew colder, and I was just thinking of putting on my coat, when suddenly the first white cottage loomed up out of the ravine.
"Here we are!" said the student sitting next to me. "Enough singing! You'll wake the villagers," came Polevoi's voice from the rear cart.
The song broke off and only the creaking wheels of our carts could be heard.
The village stretched a long way. The cottages were scattered far apart on low hillocks. Sensing familiar ground, our wheeler let out a cheerful neigh, and Shershen slapped his back gently with the reins.
"Is this the state farm, Uncle?" I asked Shershen. "That's right, lad. It used to be one of the gentry's estates, now it's a state farm."
The cart drew up at a tall iron gate. Shershen jumped down, went over to the gate and knocked on it with his whip.
"Hey! Grandad!" he shouted.
A watchman appeared behind the gate with a rifle on his shoulder.
"Is that you, Shershen?" he asked doubtfully.
"Yes, here I am! And I've brought some guests. Open up!"
As soon as the gate opened, we drove into the yard and halted by the stables. Muffled neighs came from the horses inside.
What a relief to stretch your legs after a long journey!
The other carts drove in. While the drivers unharnessed their horses, the students gathered round Polevoi.
"Shall we unload the things, Comrade Polevoi?" someone asked.
"Wait a bit," Polevoi replied, and turning to the watchman: "Where's the director, Grandad?" "He isn't here."
"How do you mean?"
"He's gone to Vitovtov Brod."
"Been gone long?"
"Before dark. A messenger came and they went off together. Can't say how much truth there is in it, but the village folk are saying a gang's come across the border. They've called all the Party men in the district."
"I'll wake Kovalsky up if you like, chief," said Shershen, going up to Polevoi.
"Who's he?"
"The foreman."
"No need for that. Let him sleep. I'll make his acquaintance in the morning," Polevoi replied. "Where's the hayloft here? That's what I want you to tell me."
"The hayloft? There it is. There's plenty of last year's hay in it." And Shershen pointed to a long dark building with his whip.
"That's fine," said Polevoi. "We've got a bed for the night, now what about supper? And a drop of tea wouldn't do any harm."
"There's nowhere to brew it," someone muttered gloomily.
"Oh, that's a detail!" Polevoi replied.
"It may be a detail, but we haven't brought anything to brew," said la tall student standing near me.
"Is that so?"
"Yes, it is."
"That is bad," Polevoi said despondently. "You can't make tea without the stuff to make it. Although..." And noticing me, he called suddenly: "Mandzhura!"
"Yes?" I responded timidly. "Do you know a plum-tree when you see one?" I did not reply, thinking that Polevoi was making fun of me.
"What's the matter, lost your tongue? Do you know what a plum-tree looks like? A Hungary, for instance, or a Reine Claude?"
"Of course..." I began.
"All right then, be a sport, run into the orchard and break off some plum branches. Young ones, though, without any insects. See?"
"I see," I answered and turned to the watchman: "Where's your orchard?"
"Over there, behind the stables," the watchman answered, puffing a twist of tobacco. "First you'll come to the melon-field, and the orchard's behind it."
Against the dark sky all the trees looked alike. Had anyone else told me to go into the orchard and gather plum branches, I should never have gone, but I could not disobey Polevoi. Peering upwards and feeling the leaves on the trees, I stumbled about the well-dug state farm orchard for a long time, searching for a plum-tree. At last, oh the very fringe of the orchard, I spotted a shapely young tree that looked very much like a plum. I struck a match—it was a plum all right, a real black plum-tree. I could see that by the big ripening fruit glistening among the sparse foliage.
In a second I had gathered a good bunch of branches from that tree alone, and so as not to walk back through the dark orchard, I decided to climb the fence and go back by the road.
The fence was quite near. I could hear the voices of the students from behind the dark stables land see the gleam of the camp-fire. When I reached the fence, I realized that it was not so low as it had seemed from a distance. Holding the bunch of branches in one hand, I scrambled to the top. The ground seemed a long way down, but there was nothing else for it, and with a crash I jumped into the weeds at the side of the road.
I was scarcely on my feet again when a man in white, with a rifle in his hands, leapt out of the roadside bushes and rushed away to the stacks on the other side of the field.
He disappeared at once in the maize, and all I could hear was the crunch of stalks under his flying feet.
I ran back to the others as fast as I could.
Gasping for breath, I rushed into the state-farm yard and, thrusting the bunch of plum branches at Polevoi, poured out my story about the man in white.
"You didn't imagine it, did you?" Polevoi asked.
"Of course not! He had a rifle!" I retorted hotly.
"The devil knows who he is..." Polevoi said thoughtfully. "Perhaps it was a bandit?" And he started issuing instructions: "Comrade Shvedov, Comrade Bazhura! Take your rifles and go to the allotment. Jump to it! Have a good look round. And you, Grandpa," he said to the watchman, "go along with them, so that they don't get tangled up in the wire."
When the students had gone, there was a silence. Any moment, it seemed, there would be an alarm shot and everybody would rush away to help. But time dragged on. Far away, beyond the orchard, perhaps on the other side of the Dniester, in Bessarabia, dogs were barking. The flames of the camp-fire lit up the alert, stern faces of Polevoi and the students.
Polevoi's lean face looked swarthy under the peak of his Budyonny hat that was pulled down low over his bushy eyebrows. He was staring fixedly at the water steaming in the iron pot, but anyone could see that he was straining all his senses to catch the slightest noise from out there, beyond the orchard.
The water came to the boil.
"All right, lads," said Polevoi. "We've kept quiet long enough. Our scouts haven't found anything, by the look of things. Now we'll make a fine brew of tea."
With these words, Polevoi shook the dew off the plum branches and threw them into the boiling water.
The twigs boiled for a long time. The students and the watchman returned from their reconnaissance with nothing to report. All the carts had been unloaded and our belongings piled close by on the grass. Polevoi kept his eyes on the boiling water, occasionally stirring it with a spoon.
"Tea's ready!" he said at last.
He poured tea out for everyone in our aluminium mugs, and when we were all seated round the pot, tipped two ladles of boiling water over the fire.
Sitting on the grass, under the starry sky, we drank the hot, rather bitter tea. It smelt of orchards in autumn. How good that tea tasted! I drank two full mugs, burnt my lips and mouth and was the last to finish.
"Get your rifles!" came Polevoi's voice from the darkness.
The students went for their rifles. I sat on the grass and saw them drawing guns and ammunition from Polevoi.
"Who hasn't got a rifle yet?" Polevoi asked sternly.
"We've all got ours," someone answered.
"But there's one rifle left over," said Polevoi. "Has someone gone away?"
"We're all here," Shvedov answered quietly.
"Mandzhura!" Polevoi shouted.
"Yes," I answered, standing up.
"Have you got a rifle?"
"But can I?"
"What did you think—we brought you here to play skittles?" said Polevoi. " 'Can I? Can I?' " And striding forward, he thrust a rifle into my hands. "Get hold of it. And no playing about. If you play about with it, we won't accept you for the Komsomol."
It was nearly midnight by the time we had posted sentries to assist the watchman and gone to the hayloft to sleep. I took with me a real, heavy rifle, with a smelly leather sling buckled to it. Rifle in one hand, bedding in the other, I scrambled into the loft after the students. Sinking in the dry hay, I scrambled up under the dark rafters. I was very glad that I had been issued with a rifle.
I had been glad, too, to hear what Polevoi had said about the Komsomol. So Father had kept secret that first crime of my life. He had taken mercy on me and not told the students about it.
But had I the right to hide that story when I applied for admission to the 'Komsomol? Of course not! . . .
Spreading out their blankets and sheets, the students were making ready for the night. The great heap of hay heaved and swayed under us. It was very warm and cosy in the loft.
"No smoking, though, lads!" Polevoi ordered.
I made my bed near Polevoi. Still gripping my rifle, so that it shouldn't slip down through the hay, I spread out my sheet, undressed, lay down with the rifle between my legs, and wrapped myself in a light blanket. For a few minutes I lay with my eyes open, listening to the distant voices of the sentries and the neighing of horses in the stables. Then, feeling that I was dozing off, I pushed my arm under the rifle sling, and thus, pressing the cold, slippery rifle to my body, fell asleep.
I slept soundly, but towards morning I started having terrible nightmares. I felt as if I was being crushed by a heavy weight; it was even hard to breathe. Then I was flying through the air for a long time.
When I opened my eyes, I could not make out at first where I was. There was hay all round me. The rifle lay on my chest, and I myself was in a sort of burrow, under an old pony-trap strewn with hay. I must have fidgeted in my sleep. Swathed from head to foot in my blanket, I had slipped to the bottom of the hay, plunged into space, and finished up by rolling under the trap. Close by I could hear voices and laughter. Dragging my sheet and blanket behind me, I burrowed my way out into the open. Soon I stood up in a patch of burdock, blinking in the bright morning sunshine.
"Where did this wild beast spring from!" Polevoi exclaimed, pointing me out to the students.
Sleepy and tousled as I was, I must indeed have looked like a wild beast.
The students were standing outside the barn already dressed and tidy. They were laughing at me. I looked down at the puddles and splashes of soap on the grass. Everybody had washed long ago.
Noticing my confusion, Polevoi said: "All right, pick up your belongings and come with us to find somewhere to live." And, turning to the students: "Let's get moving, comrades, we haven't got much time. Before we know where we are, they'll be asking us to start work."
I hastily rolled the sheet and blanket into a bundle, pulled on my trousers and shirt and, carrying my rifle by the sling, ran to catch up with the students.
The students had already reached a big, two-storey house with an iron roof that stood on the edge of the estate some distance from the barns and stables. The house was surrounded by unkempt flower-beds, all its windows were broken, and wild grapes were growing up the walls and round the rusty drain-pipes.
I was paired up with the student who had shown me out of the Komsomol meeting. Short and thin, with a dark, smooth complexion, he looked quite young. He turned out to be only three years older than me. He was not more than eighteen, but at first he acted like a grown-up and talked to me in a tone of lofty condescension.
Until midday, this student and I were bringing wheat to the thresher. Then, when we got out in the field, he boasted that it would only take him a minute to load the cart with sheaves.
"Try and keep up with me," he said pompously, and grasped a fork.
After the seventh sheaf, however, his fork began to tremble. Somehow or other he managed to pass me the bulging sheaf and, wiping the sweat from his forehead, grunted: "These blighters are heavy! Let's have a smoke."
While he rolled a cigarette and lighted up, I jumped down, seized the gleaming fork and with a wild flourish plunged it into the splendid sheaf lying on top of the next shock, which was still untouched.
It was very hard to throw the heavy, slippery sheaves one after another on to the cart without stopping for a breather. But I kept it up without a pause. I wanted to prove to the student that I was stronger than him. As I plunged my fork into the dry sheaves, I thought to myself, "You showed me out of a closed meeting, you've got wide breeches, a Budyonny hat, and top-boots, you're older than me, but I work better. Look!" Wheat ears and chaff showered down my neck. My back and shoulders were aching, my hair was littered with straw, but I would not give up until I had loaded the whole shock of fifteen sheaves on the cart. Only when all that remained of the shock was a patch of crumpled cockle and grass and a mouse-hole going deep in the earth, did I lean my fork against the cart. Breathing heavily, I walked over to the student who was now sitting on the prickly stubble. I walked slowly, trying not to show that I was tired.
"You're a sharp worker, I see," he said, getting up. "They knew what they were doing when they put you with me. I used to have strength once', but it got lost somewhere in the famine. All right, get up on top, and I'll load for a bit."
Taking the work in turns, we soon piled the cart high with sheaves, squared them up with a long stick, climbed on top and drove back to the farm slowly, so as not to lose any sheaves from the load. When we turned on to the dusty road, I asked cautiously:
"What's your name?"
"In the first place there's no need to be so timid, I'm not a baron, or a prince," the student said grandly. "My name's Kolomeyets, Nikita Fyodorovich Kolomeyets of Balta—at your service!" He doffed his hat, bowed his head and let his hair flutter in the breeze.
"What are you, an orphan?"
"How did you get that idea?" Nikita answered in surprise.
"Well, why did you go hungry? Haven't you got any parents?" I could not help asking, struck by the student's lean appearance.
"Why not? I have. They're still living in Balta. But I separated from them on religious grounds," Kolomeyets replied carelessly, and even rather mysteriously.
I eyed Kolomeyets doubtfully, but it was clear that he was speaking the truth. I decided that my new acquaintance was the son of a priest. As though guessing my thoughts, Kolomeyets frowned and lashed the horses with his whip.
"But don't think I come from clerical circles," he said. "It's quite the other way round, my Dad was the purest proletarian in Balta, he used to work at a rolling-mill. But he still believed in God, and he used to tan me like a monkey. I just couldn't re-educate him. All the rooms at home were hung with icons. Lamps burning everywhere. At fasting time not a scrap of meat. I suffered for a long time under my father's tyranny, but one day I forgot about fasting and praying, and brought a ring of sausage home with me. Lovely stuff—plenty of pepper and garlic, and all gleaming with fat. I sat down outside the house and chewed. One of the windows was open, and inside sat Dad reading the Bible. But I didn't know. I just sat there, stuffing myself to my ears. I'd have eaten the whole sausage, but Dad noticed the smell from his room, and down he came on me with the strap. That was a real tanning. A soldier's belt, you know, with a brass buckle on the end. I ran away into town and walked about the streets, crying my eyes out. My back hurt, and my heart hurt, and I just didn't want to live any more. After all, it wasn't fair to skin me like that just because of a bit of sausage. I turned down the main street, and lo and behold—the Komsomol club! There were lights in all the windows, and on the board outside hung a notice: 'Lecture on the Origin of Religion, Admission Free.' And my luck was in, you know, the lecturer turned out to be a good one, full of fire. He had hair just like a priest's, right down the back of his neck, and he kept striding up and down the stage, shouting: There's no God, religion's a lot of bourgeois fairy-tales, man is a descendant of the ape.' That got me on the raw. 'Listen to this,' I thought, 'there's no God, and it was all because of God that I got that licking.' I went home and there was no one in—everyone had gone to church. And the key was lying under the dog's kennel. I opened the cottage, lighted the lamp, and there were those icons flickering all round, and the saints staring down at me—old, bad-tempered blighters they looked. I grabbed all the biggest of them off the wall and went and threw them straight into the cesspit. They may have been holy, but they sank all right. When I had done it, I began to feel frightened. 'It's all up now, Nikita!' I thought. 'No more living at home for you! Your Dad will kill you when he comes back from church.' So I left him a note. This is what I wrote: 'Dad, you tanned me for eating sausage during a fast, but there isn't really any God, it's all a lot of bourgeois fairy-tales, and in revenge I've chucked your saints down the cesspit. So long.' I asked the Komsomol for help. They gave me a job as care-taker at their club, and I used to get pretty hungry, I can tell you. The fasting I did then—well, it's better not to think of it. 'And after a time, the Komsomol committee sent me to the Party School."
"Comrade Kolomeyets..."
"You can call me Nikita."
"Nikita, why don't you play football with the other students?"
"Football? That idiotic game!" Nikita shrugged his shoulders. "Only sops play football. Think I want to mix with them?"
"What sops?" I almost shouted. "What about Polevoi? And Marushchak? Even Kartamyshev doesn't mind playing, and they say he's going to be a member of the District Komsomol Committee."
"Now, now ... don't get worked up. I was only joking. . . But on the whole I consider football a senseless waste of time. Better to read Rubakin. Ever read any of his books?"
"No."
"Very interesting, and instructive. When I used to look after the Komsomol club in Balta, I got very keen on them. When everybody left, I would collect up the cigarette ends under the benches, put the light out everywhere but on the stage, drag the sofa out of the library, lie down and cover myself with the red table-cloth, and read. I was craving for something to eat, but there wasn't anything. So I just smoked and read."
"Have you read Spartacus?" I inquired, anxious to show off, but he took no notice and went on thoughtfully:
"Yes, Balta... A good town, Balta... I left a girl of mine behind there—Lusya. But I suppose you're still a kid and don't know anything about such matters yet."
"Oh, don't I!" I said offendedly. "I've got a girl in town myself."
Nikita glanced at me and laughed.
"Quite the ladies' man, eh! I'll have to be careful when I'm talking to you."
We drove past the melon-field. Here and there the round yellowish shapes of melons peeped out of the dark green. In the middle of the field stood the watchman's shelter, built of poles.
"Hi!" Nikita shouted, cupping his hands round his mouth.
The watchman dressed in a brown homespun shirt and carrying a heavy stick came out of his shelter. "What do you want?" he asked suspiciously. "Sell us a water-melon, Grandad," Nikita shouted.
"Where do you come from?"
"We're from town. We're working at the state farm."
The old man hesitated for a moment, then walked into the field. He did not look for long. Coming out on to the road, he offered Nikita a long-shaped water-melon.
"Take it. It's a good melon."
"Thanks, Grandad. How much do you want for it?"
"Nothing!" the watchman replied.
"Why not?" Nikita asked in surprise. "We won't take it for nothing."
"Take it, take it," the old man insisted. "You're young fellows, I don't suppose you've got much money. Take it for nothing. One of those other devils would have got into the field, but you're decent folk, you came and asked properly. For that you can have it free."
"Well, thanks very much, Grandad!" Nikita said, and whipped up the horses. "May you live another three score and ten!"
As soon as we were on the move again, Nikita banged the melon on the wooden seat. The melon cracked open and its juice spilled over the dry ears of wheat.
"Look, it's yellow inside!" Kolomeyets exclaimed. "Never mind, it may be yellow, but it's ripe. See how black the pips are? Take a chunk."
I took the smaller half of the water-melon and, holding it to my mouth, began to munch at the middle. The melon was very juicy and the warm, sweet juice dripped down my shirt. I swallowed large lumps of melon and felt grateful to Nikita for treating me. He certainly seemed to be a smart, enterprising chap. You could feel safe with him.
The horses laboured on slowly, dragging the heavy cart. Larks, invisible in the sun's rays, were singing high above. Somewhere beyond the dark green hills flowed the Dniester. From the state-farm threshing-floor Game the steady chug of the threshing-engine. Black smoke from its funnel rose above the orchard.
By the bridge we were met by Polevoi.
Hatless and barefooted, his tunic collar unbuttoned, he was leaning on the bridge rail.
"You're a fine pair!" he said sombrely. "Why have you been so long?"
"Long?" Nikita answered offendedly. "But we're ahead of everyone, Comrade Polevoi."
Polevoi climbed up with us.
"Get moving and look sharp," he ordered.
Nikita cracked his whip, the horses strained forward and the cart rumbled on past the wall of the state-farm orchard.
"How about the others?" Polevoi asked.
"They're still loading," Nikita told him. "We were first to get away."
"Well, you see, our chaps have been stepping on it up here. We're running out of wheat and there's nothing to thresh," Polevoi explained more gently. "So if you're ahead of the others, go and work at the thresher. The state-farm workers will bring in the sheaves. I think they'll manage it quicker."
At first I felt sorry we had been taken off loading, but as soon as I climbed on the grated platform of the thresher and took my stand behind Nikita, I realized that the new job would be far more interesting.
We were only just in time. The supply of sheaves that had been carted earlier had run out just as we arrived, and the long, red-painted thresher was working for nothing. Some students were tying up sacks of grain and gathering loose straw off the trampled ground.
The 'threshing-floor was situated on a 'rise among broken-down clay sheds, some distance from the state farm. Apparently these had once been part of the landlord's estate; now only the crumbling clay walls remained.
A small steam-engine with a tall smoky funnel was chugging near by, connected to the thresher by a broad leather driving-belt. From time to time crushed rosin was sprinkled on this belt and there was a smell of rosin in the air. Not far away stood -a high rick of straw. Village girls in gay-coloured skirts and rough blouses were moving about on top of the rick, spreading the straw with forks and rakes.
Students were dragging bales of straw from the thresher to the rick and passing them up to the girls, who pulled them apart and stamped the straw down. Cheerful voices and girlish laughter reached us from the rick—work there seemed to be going with a swing.
"All right, take your first lot, lad," said Shershen, our driver of yesterday, from below. Nikita had taken his place at the drum.
So saying, Shershen passed me a sheaf from the cart. I grabbed it and nearly fell off the thresher—it was so heavy. Quickly untying the tight, neatly fastened binding, I divided the sheaf in two and pushed one half over to Nikita. Nikita shook the wheat apart and pushed it, ears first, into the drum. The curved gleaming teeth of the thresher seized the wheat ears, crushed them and drew in the stalks. Now that it had something to feed on, the thresher shook and rattled, and a cloud of dust rose from the drum.
"We're off!" Nikita shouted and, pushing his hat on to the back of his head, let out a whistle that sounded all over the threshing-floor.
"Nikita's whistling, he means business. Put a spurt on, lads!" Polevoi shouted, chuckling and scraping straw towards the engine with his foot.
When we had nothing to do, we helped the stoker. Polevoi would bend down, gather up an armful of straw and toss it neatly into the furnace of the engine. As soon as it fell on the red-hot grating, the straw started smoking, flames broke through, and soon it was a blazing mass.
Nikita nudged me angrily. "Come on! What are you staring at?"
I hurriedly gave him the second half of a sheaf. More and more dust rose from the drum. My nose began to tickle. Sneezing, I shoved the untied sheaves at Nikita. The sun blazed down on us, little bits of thistle stuck in our hands, but there was no time to pull them out. "I'll get them out afterwards with a needle," I thought, tearing the binding apart. I felt proud to be working like a grown-up. And not just anywhere, but at the drum! If only Petka could see me now! Even in his dreams he had never stood on the platform of a threshing-machine. Petka had even envied Kotka Grigorenko that he worked for Zakharzhevsky the tinker.
Proud and happy, I took the sheaves from Shershen. Wearing ragged canvas trousers, Shershen strode about the sheaves with his fork.
Now he was starting a fresh row.
"Give me that big one at the end," I thought, "It should be enough for three lots."
As though guessing my thoughts, Shershen tossed the far sheaf up to me. As I untied it, something heavy fell at my feet. I bent down and saw a rusty bolt lying on the platform.
"Look, Nikita!" I whispered to Kolomeyets.
He picked up the bolt and frowned.
"Right in the middle of the sheaf?"
"Uh-huh!"
"Come on there, Nikita!" someone shouted from below.
"Wait a bit, can't you!" Nikita shouted and, putting the thresher out of gear, he called Polevoi.
"It's a kulak trick, that's certain," said Polevoi, when I told him where I had found the bolt. "Iron bolts don't get into sheaves by accident. It's not a bird's nest, you know." And he warned me quietly: "Keep your eyes open, Mandzhura, maybe you'll find something else. They planted a bolt on us, they might plant a bomb there as well."
The threshing continued.
Now I was feeling every sheaf before passing it on to Nikita, and he often shouted at me to hurry up. I was in a grand sweat. My shirt had stuck to my back, and salty sweat was running into my eyes. I wiped them on my sleeve and kept thinking, "I wish the break would come!"
And more and more often the voices of the students rose from below: "Hey, get a move on!"
They had got into the swing of things. Raking the straw away, they pushed the rough sacks quickly under the iron pipe, and they were annoyed when the stream of warm grain flowed thinly. Before dinner everyone went down to the Dniester to bathe. The road to the river ran along the state-farm wall. We passed the spot where I had surprised the unknown intruder the night before. By day the orchard did not look so big as it had at night.
As soon as we passed the wall, we caught sight of the gleaming Dniester. At first glance, it seemed to me very wide—about five times wider than our Smotrich. I had swum the Smotrich without any trouble, but to swim this would take some doing. Nikita and I sat down at the water's edge. The hilly Bessarabian bank was clearly visible.
Green vineyards rambled over the low clay slopes. On a hill some distance from the Dniester stood a village of white, straw-thatched cottages with little gardens. Beyond them the gilded dome of a church gleamed dully. From the village several paths ran down the steep slopes to the Dniester. They led to two mills rising darkly out of the water. From a distance, these black-boarded water-mills anchored in midstream and linked to the bank by narrow gangways looked like chicken-coops washed away in a flood. The Bessarabian bank was deserted, save for two women kneeling on the gangway of the left-hand mill, washing clothes. The clip-clap of their beaters reached us across the water, mingling with the creak of the millstones.
"Well, let's have a bathe, Vasil, shall we?" said Nikita, and pulled off a dusty boot.
When he took off his shirt, I noticed that his back and chest were covered all over with thick black hair.
Nikita stroked his hairy chest and said with pride:
"I've been like this ever since I was a kid. It's hereditary. My Dad's hairy too—something awful! But he still won't believe he's descended from the apes."
"Hey, Nikita!" the tall, broad-shouldered Bazhura shouted to us. "Let's swim over to the other bank."
"I'd never get there," Nikita answered, standing up with a shiver. "I'm too tired. Just let's have a swim."
The pair of them—the stalwart Bazhura and the short, puny Kolomeyets—slipped into the clear waters of the Dniester and swam about quietly.
Polevoi came and sat down beside me.
"Well, Mandzhura, made friends with Nikita? Did you work well together?" he asked.
"Didn't you see for yourself how we worked."
"Kolomeyets is a good lad, very sociable."
"But he doesn't play football, he says it's a kid's game," I remarked.
"Oh, that's an old story," Polevoi said with a laugh. "He just span you that yarn because you're new. When he first came to the Party School, he used to be so stuck up you couldn't get near him. 'I was the best footballer in Balta,' he says, 'I used to play goal-keeper for the town team. In the match against Odessa, I didn't let a single goal through.' Everyone lapped it up, of course, and I thought to myself: 'Here's luck, at least we've got one real player now!' So we went out for a kick-about and asked Kolomeyets to come with us. As soon as he got in goal, we found out what kind of player he was—he didn't stop a single shot. He just waved his arms about like a windmill, and we banged in one goal after another. Didn't we laugh afterwards! He's a joker, is that Kolomeyets."
At that moment 'Nikita climbed out of the river and came towards us. Drops of water glistened on his hairy chest.
"Pm telling your mate how you played football with us, Nikita," said Polevoi, winking at me.
"Ah, football..." Nikita gave a confused smile, and started hopping about as if he had a bubble in his ear. Then without looking at Polevoi, he said to me: "What are you sitting there for? Come and swim!"
The water in the Dniester was cold, and the current very fast. I dared not follow Nikita into the middle of the river, so I swam slowly along by the bank. Before long, the current had carried me far downstream. To reach my clothes, I had to run back along a sand-bank.
"Where are your quarters, Mandzhura?" Polevoi asked, watching me dress.
"On the balcony."
"Going to sleep on the balcony?"
"Yes."
"What about your things?"
"On the balcony too."
"Suppose it rains?"
"I'll manage."
"Mind you don't make a mistake, lad. You might find it better with us. There's a free corner going just now. It's dry and warm, and you won't have to worry about the rain."
"No thanks, Comrade Polevoi, I'd rather be on the balcony."
"As you like," said Polevoi and, testing the water with his hand, he began to undress.
It was not at all bad for me on the balcony. Garlanded on two sides with wild vines, it looked like a summer-house. I spread my straw mattress on the loose, sun-bleached floor-boards, and tucked my belongings in an alcove by the door that led into what had once been the master's dining-room. There, the students, their crackling straw mattresses spread on the floor, had taken up their quarters. I could, of course, have gone in with them, but I didn't like that dark hall with its shutters boarded up on the outside. It was too gloomy and cold.
"I say, you've got a fine place here!" Kolomeyets exclaimed when he came in to see me. "Like being in a tropical forest! Even lianas!" Nikita touched the vine that was climbing up one of the iron supports and, resting his elbows on the shaky railing of the balcony, gazed into the distance.
The Dniester, which lay in a deep valley, could not be seen from the balcony, but we had a good view of the Bessarabian village on the far bank.
"You know what, young man?" Nikita said, turning to me. "This place definitely appeals to me. Good view, fresh air, and all that kind of thing. I'm going to come and live with you. Any objections?"
"Why should I object? Move in now."
It was quite dark, when Nikita and I spread our mattresses side by side and got into bed.
For a few minutes we lay in silence. A mosquito whined above my ear. On the Bessarabian bank someone was singing a slow sad song.
"Sounds as if they're burying someone," I said.
"Well, what have they got to be cheerful about!" Nikita replied. "The Rumanian boyars give the poor blighters a bad time with their gendarmes and priests. That's not the kind of life to make you dance the Cracovienne, you know."
"What do you think, will Bessarabia become Soviet one day?" I asked.
"One day it will," Nikita said dreamily, puffing at a cigarette. "It's our territory. You know, don't you, that the Rumanian boyars grabbed it while we were bashing the white generals."
A breeze sprang up and the tree-tops rustled gently; the weathercock creaked on the roof. Nikita lay on his mattress with a thick army blanket drawn up to his chin. The cigarette glowed between his teeth.
"That old devil must have enjoyed life here. A house like this all to himself!" he said.
"What old devil?" I asked, not understanding.
"That Grigorenko."
"Who?!"
"The local landowner Grigorenko."
"What Grigorenko? Do you know him?"
"Of course!" Nikita sneered. "I used to visit him every Saturday, we had tea on this balcony..."
"No, honestly, you don't know him, do you?"
"How could I? You are an ass!" Nikita exclaimed. "What do you think I am, a landlord, or the Chief of Police? Shershen told me today that the landlord who owned this estate was called Grigorenko."
"'He wasn't a doctor, was he, by any chance?"
"A doctor? Wait a minute... Shershen did say something about a doctor. Let me think... No, this landlord wasn't a doctor, but he had a brother in town who was—a doctor of medicine, or something like that. Why, do you know him?!"
"Not half!"
And I told Kolomeyets why Doctor Grigorenko had been sentenced to death.
"What a dirty scoundrel!" Nikita exclaimed. "So both brothers turned out to be enemies. One of them betrayed Communists to Petlura, and the other's still treating people cruelly over there, on the other side."
"The landlord isn't over there, is he?"
"But that's the whole point, old chap. As soon as Soviet power was set up, the peasants drove him out of here, and the estate was made a state farm. But he packed his bag and slipped over to the other side. Now he's living in clover with the boyars. He's got an estate over there as well."
"The one we can see from here?"
"That's right... So his nephew's alive, is he? Working for the tinker, you say?"
"Uh-huh. For Zakharzhevsky."
"They're all trying to look like workers nowadays, the sons-of-bitches!" Nikita said. "They're in a spot with a record like theirs. No place for them at college, no place anywhere. So they wangle."
"Kotka comes to the Party School sometimes."
"What's he come there for?"
"He comes to see Korybko the gardener."
"Just a moment, I think I've seen that young toff. . . He's a dark, nippy chap, isn't he?"
"Yes, that's right."
"Well, it must be him then. One day, when I went into the gym, I saw a strange lad swinging on the parallel bars. 'What are you doing here, citizen?' I says. 'Strangers aren't allowed in here.' But he just hooks his legs over the bars and says: 'I'm not a stranger, I came to see a member of your staff, Korybko the gardener.' So he must be the last of the Mohicans?"
"His name's not Mohican, it's 'Grigorenko."
"Oh, Vasil, Vasil!" Nikita chuckled. "You are an uneducated savage, I see. That was a howler!"
"Hey, Nikita!" a voice boomed from the next room. "Will you be going to sleep soon in that bird's nest of yours? If you don't want to sleep yourself, you might let other people."
Nikita paid no attention and went on: "Why did I call that Grigorenko the last of the Mohicans—there's a question! Because he's the last offspring of a dying class, the dying class of landowners and feudals. In our country there aren't going to be any more such creatures. Got that?"
I made no reply. I did not want anyone to shout at me.
The sad, lingering song could still be heard from the other side of the Dniester. I could not stop thinking of what Nikita had said about Grigorenko. Again that wretched Kotka came into my mind. "Perhaps Galya still doesn't know I've gone away? I must write her a letter," I decided as I fell asleep.
Several days passed and still I could not find time to write to Galya. In the morning, as soon as the sun was up, I would run down to the Dniester, undress on the cliffs, and take a running leap into the swift water. I would snort and splash about, washing myself and driving away the last traces of sleep. Then off to the dining-hall, where the plates and spoons were already clattering! Our morning meal was simple but filling—hominy. The hominy was served up with various extras—now with sour milk, now with cold dried-fruit salad, now with cold borshch from the day before, now with cream. Sometimes it was brought to table swimming in milk fresh from the cow, sometimes it came in bowls sprinkled with pieces of brown fried fat that sizzled in your mouth.
And always it was tasty, crumbly, hot, a dazzling yellow colour, and smelt delicious. It rose in golden heaps in our aluminium bowls.
After a meal like that, you couldn't hang about doing nothing. Work just leapt into your hands—team-work at the thresher, amid the scents of fresh wheat, with the village girls singing. The state farm's smoky threshing-engine whirred and clattered, the hot summer sun blazed overhead, and only a few paces away the swift, cool Dniester waited for you when work was over.
For dinner we were also given hominy, but now it took the place of bread, with firsts and seconds. The cook sliced the thick-boiled hominy into squares, and while we were bathing after work, placed a square beside each bowl.
After dinner it would be so hot that you couldn't sit in the stuffy house. We would go out into the state-farm garden and rest—some in the thick grass under the lofty poplar-trees, some in the cool, empty barns, on dry mounds of last year's hay.
It was good to lie in the grass, under a tree somewhere and watch the hot air quivering in the sunlight a few paces away, or a flimsy cloud drifting across the clear sky. And sometimes you could hear the tinkle of cow-bells down by the Dniester, or the intermittent jingle of a coachman's bell far away on the other side.
It was good to lie in the soft grass and feel your whole body aching with weariness after the day's work. It was good to examine your straw-scratched sunburnt hands—I had already brought up some fine blisters on mine. It was good to know that the bread you were eating was no longer your father's, but bread you 'had earned yourself, that you had a right to the crumbly hominy that Makhteich the cook gave you, because you, like the other students, had earned it with your own scratched and blistered hands. It was good to lie under a tall, slender poplar-tree and reflect on the fact that you were beginning to live independently, that the road to everything in life lay open before you.
Usually, as soon as I lay down under a poplar, or under a jasmine bush, Ryabko appeared. Ryabko, the state-farm dog, was black and white, with clipped ears and a bushy tail that was always full of burs. Even from a distance Ryabko would gaze at me with appealing eyes, wag his tail, and try every fawning trick he knew to gain permission to lie at my feet. But Ryabko had fleas, so I always kept him at a distance. He would stretch himself out somewhere in the shade, resting his hairy black nose between his dirty paws, let his dry tongue loll out of his mouth, and pant heavily. Soon he would calm down, close his eyes, and fall into a doze.
"I'll just have a bit of a rest," I thought, "then I'll go to the club and write Galya a long, long letter. . ." I pictured to myself how surprised Galya would be to get a letter from me and, thinking of her, I fell asleep. I woke up, my head heavy from the heat. Loud voices reached me from the house, where the students were playing skittles. It was evening.
Since the night when I had surprised the stranger in the burdock there had been no alarms at the state farm. But the bandits were active in the neighbouring villages. The boyars of Rumania kept 'sending one gang after another across the Dniester. Other gangs were sent by the Polish landlords. These bandits would hardly have dared to act so arrogantly had not their masters—the Polish and Rumanian bourgeoisie—been supported by the capitalists of America, Britain, and France.
In preparation for a fresh attack on the Soviet land, the capitalists were collecting all the scum they could find that hated Soviet rule. Usually the bandits crossed to the Soviet bank on dark, cloudy nights and filtered away into the surrounding villages. They joined up with the local kulaks and former Petlura men, robbed travellers on the roads, attacked the Village Soviets and the Poor Peasants' Committees, set fire to cottages, and murdered Communists. As autumn drew near, the bandits grew even more arrogant—they knew that there had been a good harvest, that the peasants were living better than before. The bandits' bosses wanted everything the other way round, they wanted to see the gentry and the landlords restored as masters of these rich lands, they wanted our state farm to become a landlord's estate once more.
Fearing to wage an open struggle against Soviet rule, the foreign capitalists tried to get at us through their agents —the bandits. Armed with machine-guns of British make, carrying hand-grenades at their belts, and wallets stuffed with American dollars in their pockets, the bandits scoured the roads at night. In the day-time they hid in the woods, in the barns or in the deep, musty cellars of the local kulaks. They were afraid to come too near the state farm—they must have known we all had rifles.
There was everything to show, however, that our state farm—the first socialist enterprise on the bank of the Dniester, with many Communists and Komsomol members working there—was an eyesore to the enemy. On the Rumanian side of the Dniester there was a low hill from which you could easily see the state-farm threshing-floor. Passing landlords would often stop their carriages on that hill and watch for a long time through binoculars how the threshing was proceeding at the state farm.
And the threshing was going well. Every day more and more heavy bulging sacks of fresh grain were carted to the barns. A huge rick was rising behind the threshing-floor, where the straw was piled day after day. From the top of this stack you could see the little town of Vitovlov Brod, twenty versts away, right on the Rumanian border.
On Saturday, after a fortnight's work at the state farm, I received my first wages—eleven rubles, thirty-seven kopeks. At first, I decided to save all the money until I got back to town, but then I gave in and went to the village co-operative shop. There I bought half a pound of sweets, some pink burdock oil to put on my hair, a comb in a leather case, and a bottle of "Lilies of the Valley" Eau-de-Cologne. On my way back, I kept taking the bottle out of my pocket and sniffing at it. And when I had almost reached the farm, unable to resist the temptation any longer, I stopped by the stables, poured some Eau-de-Cologne on to my palm, sprinkled my shirt and dabbed my face. The scent was strong. It stung so hard that everything went dark before my eyes. Pushing the bottle into my pocket, I shut my eyes and broke into a run. Now I wanted the stuff to evaporate as soon as possible.
I had not gone more than a few paces, when I bumped into somebody's outstretched arm. Opening one eye, I got a blurred glimpse of Kolomeyets.
"What are you doing, friend, playing at blind-man's-buff?" Nikita asked cheerfully.
But the next moment his face changed and he started sniffing the air with distended nostrils. Then, gripping my shoulders, he sniffed my shirt.
"Have you been using scent?"
"Yes," I answered carelessly, wiping my tears. "Nice-smelling stuff, isn't it? It's called 'Lilies of the Valley.' "
"Using scent!. . . What bourgeois prejudices are these! Why, you'll be wearing a collar and tie tomorrow? Who gave you this idea?"
"Why, isn't it allowed?" I asked in a trembling voice. "That's a fine question! Are you trying to make yourself out a fool, my lad? Do you want us to put you through it at a students' meeting for these disgusting habits borrowed from the past?"
"But I didn't know we weren't allowed to use Eau-de-Cologne. I thought, if Eau-de-Cologne was sold at the cooperative shop, you could buy it and use it."
" 'Sold at the co-operative shop!'" Kolomeyets mimicked. "They sell vodka there too. Perhaps you'll be drinking vodka tomorrow? Eau-de-Cologne, my lad, is a bourgeois commodity, it's what the rich play-boys use—lords and aristocrats and all that crowd. You're a son of the working class, you don't need that kind of luxury." "What lords?" I shouted.
Kolomeyets replied in a careless drawl: "Maybe not lords, but bourgeois types, everyone who's got a lot of money. Private capital, to put it in a nutshell. But you're a son of the working class. Understand? You want to join the Komsomol. And I'm just advising you as a friend—not as one who is a Komsomol member to one who isn't, but as a friend, understand?—that you put that rubbish out of your head. Eau-de-Cologne, neck-ties, and all such trash is petty-mindedness, and I advise you to forget it right away, or you can say good-bye to the Komsomol."
Nikita spoke sternly and severely, quite differently from the way he had talked when we first met. And I realized that he was not at all the joker he had seemed at first.
He gave me such a skinning that I at once left the farm to rid myself of the scent in the fresh air. I gave all the students I met a wide berth, fearing that they, too, might hold me up to ridicule for using "Lilies of the Valley."
In a shady gully that led down to the Dniester, Ryabko ran up to me, wagging his tail. Not thinking for long, I took the scent bottle out of my pocket, pulled out the cork, and poured the whole bottle on Ryabko's tangled, dusty coat. "So as not to waste it," I thought. Suspecting nothing, Ryabko gave a joyful squeal and, thinking I had tossed him something to eat, started searching the ground. But after a moment or two, he put his ears back, looked round, and froze to the spot, as if a bumble-bee had alighted on his back. At length, growing bolder, Ryabko licked his scent-soaked fur, burnt his tongue and, tucking his tail between his legs, made off "back to the state farm, uttering pitiful yelps. Every moment his yelps grew louder, as though he had broken his leg, and suddenly he started barking. I felt sorry for Ryabko. "You are a cad, Vasya," I thought. "What harm has the dog done you?" Full of remorse, I firmly decided to collect as many bones as I could at supper and recover Ryabko's affection.
By the Dniester, I undressed and shook my shirt for a long time to give it an airing, then I swam and washed my face well to destroy the smell of Eau-de-Cologne.
On my way back I met Polevoi.
"Been swimming, Mandzhura?"
"Just a bit."
"Let's go along to the threshing-floor and watch the mechanics take the thresher to pieces."
"What, has it broken?"
"Not yet, it hasn't, but one of the bearings is knocking. So I've asked some men from the factory to come and have a look at it."
Hardly able to keep up with Polevoi, I asked cautiously: "Comrade Polevoi, why do they sell bourgeois prejudices at the co-operative shop?"
"What bourgeois prejudices?" Polevoi asked warily. "Eau-de-Cologne."
"Eau-de-Cologne?... How do you mean?" "Well, take a Komsomol member, for instance, mustn't he use it?"
"Generally speaking. . . Why not? After shaving, say, for hygienic purposes. But what do you need Eau-de-Cologne for? You haven't got a beard yet?"
"If I get one, can I use it then?"
"Can you use what?" "Eau-de-Cologne?"
"Why shouldn't you? Use as much as you like, if you've got a lot of money."
Now I wanted to kick myself for listening to Kolomeyets and pouring the Eau-de-Cologne away. Fancy throwing away a ruble forty kopeks on a dog's back! And why? Just because I had been afraid of being "put through it!"
At the threshing-floor, two workers had spread some bast sacking by the thresher and were tinkering with the parts. When we came nearer, I recognized one of them as Kozakevich, the foundry man from the Motor Factory. He was kneeling in front of a crank-shaft, measuring its diameter.
Zhora Kozakevich's oil-stained cap was tilted on the back of his head, his canvas blouse that had once been navy but now, thanks to the sun, had faded to a pale blue, clung tightly over his broad shoulders.
"Well, is it anything serious, comrades?" Polevoi asked. "If there's a babbit and a forge here, I'll cast the bearings fresh and my mate here will polish them—that's all." "There is a babbit," Polevoi said, "and we'll ask the smith in the village for the use of his forge. How long will it take?"
"To finish the repair? Not very long. A day and a bit. We'll make a quick job of it," said Zhora, and noticing me, he asked: "What are you staring at me for, young man?" "I was at the club one day when you put Zhegulyov, that touring wrestler, on the mat," I answered in confusion.
"Oh, so that's it..." Zhora drawled with a twinkle in his eye. "So you're a wrestler as well. Glad to hear it. Let's get to know each other." And he offered me his heavy sunburnt hand.
I took it awkwardly. Polevoi, who was standing near, smiled.
I was glad I had met Zhora.
At supper, Zhora told me that tomorrow evening, when he had finished the repair, he would be going to town. He agreed to take a letter and post it for me in a town box.
As soon as supper was over, I went to the club and started writing to Galya.
"Hullo Galya!
"You must think I'm in town and don't want to come and see you, but I'm not in town at all, I'm on the Rumanian border, at a state farm. I am working as operator of the threshing-machine there. This state farm, by the way, used to be the estate of Kotka Grigorenko's uncle. That bourgeois lived pretty well, I must say! It's very good here, I'm earning a lot of money and I go swimming three times a day in the Dniester. The first night we arrived I discovered a bandit who was hiding by the wall waiting for a chance to take a shot at us. He got frightened of me and ran away. We didn't catch him, but if we had, it would have gone hard with him. On the whole, it's very dangerous here, because there are a lot of bandits about. We are all armed. I have a rifle, too, and forty rounds of ammunition. It will soon be my turn to stand guard all night outside our house. Everyone will be asleep and I shall be on guard.
"I am good at my work already, Galya, and I am very glad I came. Soon there will be some fine ripe pears here, and when I come back to town, I'll bring you a lot. The black plums are ripe already. You can pick and eat as many as you want—not like in town. Sometimes I miss you very much, Galya. Of course, there are a lot of students I'm friendly with, and there are plenty of village girls working on the farm, but not one of them can take your place. Remember that!!!
"If you have time, write and tell me how you are getting on, whether you go to the cinema, what pictures you've seen, what is on at the Soviet commercial workers' club, and what the weather is like in town. It's very hot here. I sleep at night on a balcony with nothing but a sheet over me, but in the morning I have to cover myself with a blanket', because of the mist from the Dniester.
"If you remember me and still like me, Galya, please write, because I'm lonely here without you. And if you see Petka Maremukha, tell him I'd like to know whether he found out from Sasha Bobir what I asked him to find out before I left. If Petka has found out what I asked him to find out, get him to go to the Party School, find a student there called Marushchak and tell him everything he has found out from Sasha Bobir. Tell Petka I'm having a good time here, and make him write and tell me how my pigeons are doing at his place. Tell him to write about everything in detail.
"Oh, and I nearly forgot to tell you, Galya, that Zhora Kozakevich has come here from the Motor Factory to repair the thresher. He's the amateur wrestler who threw Zot Zhegulyov the champion with the grip of steel at the commercial workers' club. We've got to know each other and he has shown me a couple of holds from French wrestling that would make you gasp. When I learn those holds properly, I won't just beat Petka Maremukha, I'll put Lightning Lev on his back. I've filled out here, the food's good, and the work's given me muscles like a wrestler.
"My hand's tired now, so I'll stop. Write me an answer. With comradely greetings,
"Vasily Mandzhura."
When I had finished writing, I blotted the letter with an old newspaper and took the "Lillies of the Valley" out of my pocket. At the bottom of the frosted-glass bottle there were still a few drops of clear greenish liquid. I pulled out the cork and sprinkled the remains of the Eau-de-Cologne on my letter. Again the pleasant smell filled the air. So that this pleasant smell should not evaporate, I quickly put the letter in the envelope, licked the flap and stuck it down tightly.
The harvest was nearly over and the last of the wheat had to be brought in for threshing as soon as possible. But, as luck would have it, the weather was so hot that you could bind the sheaves only at night-time or at dawn. As soon as you tried to bind a sheaf tightly in the heat, the dry grain sprinkled out of the ears on to the cracked and dusty earth. But the nights were moonlit, each one clearer than the last. The full moon rose from behind the tall poplars, flooding light on the ivy and vine-covered farm-house, the shady orchard, and the steep bank of the Dniester.
From our balcony, on such moonlit nights, you could see the tall funnel of the threshing-engine gleaming above the barns. But every night the moon rose later. We knew that soon it would not come up at all and the nights would be different—starry but dark. We had to make the most of the full moon and bring in the wheat before it was too late. That was why, on Friday, everyone who could went out to the farthest field six versts away to reap the last of the wheat.
Until late in the evening the reapers and harvesters clattered steadily on the steep clay bank of the river. Their toothed arms swung over the level crop, tossing bunch after bunch of wheat on to the prickly stubble.
The students put in a lot of work that day. Where there had once been a broad, rich cornfield stretching from the dusty road to the river-bank, there was now only heavy ears, of reaped corn lying in long strips on the bare stubble.
Mouse-holes, little heaps of earth cast up by moles, traces of old village field boundaries, larks' nests built on hummocks—all that had once been hidden in the thick corn was now exposed to view.
It was dark when the students returned to the farm, hungry and sunburnt. I returned with them. Just before evening, I had carted a barrel of cold, spring water out to the far field. The students had nearly drunk it dry and now only a few drops tinkled at the bottom of the barrel. No sooner had I unharnessed the lean, mangy horse than Polevoi came up.
"Listen, Vasil," he said. "Are you very tired?"
"Not a bit. I was carting water. You can't call that work."
"Listen to me then. The men have done a hard day's work today. After supper they'll all go to sleep and there'll be no waking them. You'll have to keep watch in the field tonight. As soon as the moon rises the village girls will start binding the sheaves. You and Shershen must take a couple of horses and go out with them too. When the girls have finished binding, they'll go to sleep and you will keep watch, just in case some kulak or other tries to pinch the sheaves. After supper, you can have a couple of hours sleep until the moon rises. Shershen will wake you."
"I'm all right, I don't need any sleep," I said, and thought to myself: "I wonder what horse they'll give me for guard duty."
They gave me Chestnut, a frisky brown horse, which after carting sheaves in the morning had been resting since midday in the cool stables.
Until then I had ridden the state-farm horses only as far as the watering-place—to the Dniester and back. On the way to the river the horses walked quietly, stepped gingerly into the swift-flowing water, and just stood there, neighing and snorting. But on the way back, knowing that the wooden mangers had been filled with oats while they were away, they raced one another at full gallop. You had to grip the reins with all your strength to save yourself from a fall.
And one day I had watered a grey stallion, strangely nicknamed "Cholera." He gave me such a ride on the way back that I thought it was all up with me.
I dug my heels into Cholera's soft flanks, I hauled on the bridle with every bit of strength I possessed, but it was all in vain. The stallion left all the other horses behind and galloped snorting towards the state-farm yard. Trees and posts flashed past. We reached the end of the wall and charged in at the wide-open gates... At the sight of the stables, the stallion gave such a bound that I slipped back on to his hindquarters and lost the reins. The log wall of the stable rushed towards me and I could see the black hole of the door getting wider and wider.
There was no longer any hope of stopping the horse and I saw that he would take me right into the stall. That wouldn't have been so bad. But when the stable was only a few paces away, I realized I was going to hit my head on the door beam. With Cholera still galloping at full speed, I jumped and landed knee-deep in a soft heap of dung. It was only this that saved me, or I should have been lying under the wall with both my legs broken.
Chestnut was a frisky animal, but a good deal quieter than Cholera. Shershen himself put the leather saddle on Chestnut's back, tightened the straps, slapped the horse's neck and, when all was ready, said to me: "Jump on, lad, let's go!"
I slung the rifle on my shoulders, adjusted my pistol so that I could mount easily, and walked up to the horse. I was just about to grab the mane, when Shershen burst out laughing.
"Who mounts a horse like that!" he said. "You mount a horse from the left side. What, haven't you ever ridden a horse before?"
"I've ridden a horse, but never with a saddle ..." I muttered.
And, indeed, it turned out much easier to mount from the left side.
I got on the horse and at once pushed my feet firmly into the stirrups. The ground far below looked dark and dangerous. Chestnut stood quietly, merely trying to chew through his bit. Shershen adjusted the bridle of his Grey and leapt lightly into the saddle like a real cavalryman.
"Off we go!" he said and gathered up the reins.
We trotted out of the yard, and at once I realized that I did not know how to ride a horse. Chestnut jolted me up and down until my teeth rattled. And, as if that were not enough, the rifle battered my back—I had made the sling too loose. Trying not to bite my tongue, I attempted to get in time with the horse. But at first I did not succeed. My legs dangled loosely in the stirrups and I bounced up and down on the saddle so wildly that I thought the girths would break at any moment and I should take a header into the ditch. A good thing Shershen was about ten paces in front of me and could not see anything. But I was sorriest of all for the horse. I felt I must have been breaking Chestnut's back, and at every jolt the saddle seemed to tear great gashes in his skin.
At last I got my toes into the stirrups and tried to rise in time with the horse. This was better. When Chestnut lifted his right foot, I tried to help him and rose a little in my stirrups. Gradually the jolting stopped, we rode along more smoothly, and I felt I was beginning to understand the horse. Growing bolder, I sat up straight like a real horseman.
"If only Galya could see me now!" I thought. "On horseback, and with a rifle too! Suppose I were to gallop into town now and call on Galya. She would rush out of her cottage, frightened and not knowing what it was all about, and I should say to her: Forgive me for waking you, Galya, but I have been sent on an important secret mission. Where I am going I cannot tell you. I have come to say good-bye. Perhaps I shall be killed, but tell no one of my visit. 'Remember that I shall love you till my last breath!"
I should say all that very calmly. Then I should offer Galya my hand over the fence. She would clasp it to her, still bewildered. Perhaps she would beg me to dismount. But I should not dismount. Wheeling my horse, I should gallop away into the darkness without a backward glance.
And Galya would not sleep all night. Her pillow would be soaked with tears, she would toss and turn, and sigh and weep. That night she would be very sorry she had been friendly with Kotka...
And suppose I really did slip off to town?...
But at that moment Chestnut stumbled, my feet slipped out of the stirrups, and I nearly dived over the horse's head. The jolt banished all thought of Galya. Again I became aware of orchards and white cottages nestling amid the trees. Here and there an oil-lamp gleamed from the little square windows, the red moon was rising over the fields...
Outside the village, Shershen put Grey into a gallop. Chestnut dashed after him and I discovered that galloping was much pleasanter than trotting. The horse's hooves whisk up the soft warm dust on the road, something rumbles inside him, and your body no longer feels the saddle as the fields dotted with dark shocks of harvested grain float towards you....
When we had ridden four versts from the village, we started overtaking village girls in their high-hitched skirts. The girls were carrying bundles of food. I realized they were making for the same place as we. One of the girls recognized Shershen as she stepped aside to let him pass.
"Hey, Uncle Shershen!" she cried. "Be you going to guard us?"
"That's right, lass, in case Satan tries to run away with you," Shershen shouted gaily, checking his horse for a moment.
The girls' homespun blouses dotted the moonlit field.
They gathered up the reaped corn in armfuls, the binding twisted quickly in their fingers, and soon a dark heavy sheaf fell on the stubble. Sprinkled with dew, the damp clover made good binding. Here and there the girls were putting the finished sheaves into shocks of fifteen. It was just as if a lot of little cottages had grown up suddenly in the field. The work was going with a swing. Some of the girls were gathering up loose wheatears and tying them into the sheaves.
How deep and easily you could breathe on that clear moonlit night above the Dniester! The air was pure and sweet; a man could draw enough strength from it to finish any job in a few minutes. Breathing deeply of the scents of wormwood and dry mint, listening to the distant cry of the landrail, I rode slowly round the state-farm field.
The tinkling of a coachman's bell reached me from the other side of the Dniester. Who could be passing at this time of night? Perhaps it was some landowner driving round his fields? Or perhaps a sleepy priest was setting out to hear the confession of a dying man? Or perhaps Rumanian gendarmes were carting their latest prisoner off to Khotin Jail?
I could even hear the wheels of a carriage creaking on the other side of the Dniester.
Chestnut walked slowly, trying to reach the grass with his teeth. I relaxed the reins and the horse halted, uprooted a clump of weeds and started chewing them.
But suddenly Chestnut snorted, pricked up his ears, and uttered a loud neigh. A minute later, the carriage horse on the other side of the Dniester responded cheerfully, and for a second its neigh drowned the tinkling of the bell.
"Hey-ey-ey! Vasil!" a shout reached me from the other end of the field.
I recognized Shershen's voice and gave the reins a shake. Chestnut at once broke into a gallop.
Straight across the field I dashed, avoiding the sheaves as best I could. "Perhaps it's a kulak stealing the sheaves and Shershen's calling for help?" I thought and, just in case, I unbuttoned my holster.
But Shershen was standing by a shock talking peacefully to a tall village girl with a white kerchief on her head.
"Get down, we're going to have supper," Shershen called to me. "This is my landlady's daughter, she's got some food for us."
"Supper! But we've only just had supper at the state farm..."
"Come on, come on!" Shershen insisted. "When was that!. . . At about nine o'clock and it must be two by now. It'll soon be getting light."
I jumped off my horse and Shershen neatly tied the bridle to its leg. Chestnut and Grey, their stirrups clanking, went off to graze, and the three of us sat down by a shock, on the prickly stubble.
The girl untied her bundle and took out a loaf of fresh-smelling bread.
"Cut the bread, Uncle Shershen," she said. "Oho!" Shershen exclaimed, tossing the loaf on his hand. "Still warm! When did you bake it, Natalka?"
"We didn't bake that one. Neighbour baked it in return for some bread we let her have."
Natalka took a broad bowl from under a rough cloth and poured a whole pot of sour milk into it. Then she spread an embroidered cloth on the stubble and placed wooden spoons in front of us. Meanwhile Shershen cut the bread in thick slices and piled them beside the bowl.
"And here's some goat cheese, Uncle," Natalka said, unwrapping a piece of paper.
"All in good time," Shershen replied, dipping his spoon into the sour milk. "Brr, it's cold! You didn't put a toad in it by any chance, did you?"
"Oh, Uncle!. . . What a thing to say!. . ." Natalka exclaimed. "How can you mention such horrid things when you're eating!"
"A horrid thing? Nothing of the kind. You're only young yet, you don't know that in many of the villages the women put toads into their milk on purpose." "That's just a tale," Natalka said. "No, it isn't," Shershen insisted. "When I was working for one of the gentry, on his estate, my landlady went in for that kind of thing. She always had toads swimming in the pots of milk down in the cellar. One very hot day, when I got home, I says to her: 'You haven't got anything cold, have you, mistress?' 'Certainly I have,' she says, 'go down into the cellar and have a drink of cold milk.' And so I did. I picked up the first pot I came to and drank it down. All in one go. And as the milk went down, I felt something hard slip down my throat with it. At first I thought it was a clot of cream, then I felt it moving. And then that toad starts dancing about in my inside! As if it was at a fair. . ."
" Realizing that Shershen was joking, I laughed, but Natalka made a face and put her spoon down.
"Oh, what a thing to say!. . . It's taken all my appetite away!"
"But it's true!" Shershen continued his tale without a glimmer of a smile. "And listen to what happened after that. Just then, we were expecting a change in the weather—rain. And as soon as it got dark, that toad started croaking away inside me. And my landlady, she couldn't sleep. 'Look here, Shershen,' she says, 'you'll have to move, I can't keep you here any more—there's no peace with you in the house.' And I says to her: 'It's not me that's spoiling your peace, it's this toad of yours croaking inside me. It's forecasting a change in the weather.' "
"Well, and what happened then?" Natalka asked. Now her curiosity was aroused and she could hardly restrain her laughter.
"I drowned the wretched thing, in vodka. And now, when ever somebody offers me milk, I ask whether there are toads in it. If there aren't, I can drink it without worrying." And, as if to confirm his words, Shershen took a spoonful of the sour milk.
Keeping pace with Shershen, I set to work with my spoon, drinking the ice-cold milk with the tasty home-made bread. Soon there was nothing left on the embroidered cloth but an empty bowl and a white piece of goat's cheese. The three of us had eaten the whole loaf.
"Is she one of your family?" I asked Shershen, when we had mounted our horses and were riding away from Natalka.
"She's my landlady's daughter," Shershen said. "I board with them."
"Haven't you got a cottage of your own in the village?"
"A cottage of my own?" Shershen whistled gaily. "Not yet, lad. I used to have one over the other side, but the Rumanians burnt it down in 'nineteen, after the Khotin rising."
"Were you in that?"
"Of course! Everyone was in it. You see, before the Revolution, I used to be a farm-labourer—now for one landowner, now for another. I worked near Bendery, and at Tsiganeshti; I even did four months as stableman to a merchant in Kishinev. Have you seen Ataki village over there on the other side, opposite our state farm? I was born in that village. Well, I went off and earned some money, got everything ready to build a nest, and just before the war I came back to the village. I married a beautiful girl three years younger than me. We had known each other since we were kids. And I had only just got started, built myself a cottage, planted a fine vineyard, and bang!—the war breaks out and I'm called up for the army. I served on the Caucasian front, got as far as Erzurum, and when the Revolution came, I went back home. Now I've come to stay, I thought. My son had grown while I had been away, he was four years old. Now, if he's alive, he'll be about your age."
"How could he be! I was born in nineteen nine," I said offendedly.
"It doesn't matter—I'm just saying he'd be a big lad by now. Well, we'd only just divided up the gentry's land, when we heard some rumours going about that the Rumanian boyars wanted to grab Bessarabia for themselves. And so it was. Soon a certain Pan Radulescu, from Bucharest, comes to our village, stays with the priest and—how the two of them worked it I still don't rightly know—goes off to the assembly at Kishinev as a deputy from our village! But no one had ever elected that Radulescu, many of the villagers had never set eyes on him. Then a newspaper comes down to the village and we read that the delegate from Ataki, Radulescu, has demanded that Bessarabia be joined to its old friend Rumania. After that came the coup, and the gendarmes arrived. And that started it! They took the gentry's land away from us, and those of us who had had a share got thrashed with ram-rods. I was one of them.
"There's no describing the hatred we felt for those Rumanian boyars. And when we heard the people were rebelling in Khotin and the neighbouring villages, all the poorer folk among us rebelled too. Some went on horses, others on foot, some had pitchforks, others had shot-guns, and off we went to Khotin. It was very cold, I remember, the beginning of January, but I just grabbed the rifle I'd brought back with me from the war and went off to 'Khotin in nothing but the tunic I had on. We gave those 'Rumanians a hard fight. How many farms we burnt, how many of their gendarmes we put under the ice of the Dniester, I couldn't tell you. But the trouble was we had no one to help us, we hadn't got a leader among us—someone like Kotovsky, say. He was busy fighting Petlura then and couldn't reach us. The gendarmes killed eleven thousand of us. I was wounded at Khotin itself, near the fortress. Ever seen it? A machine-gun bullet got me in the leg. I crawled over to this side across the ice. How I wasn't frozen—I don't know. I crawled over the ice, leaving a trail of blood. There were wounded comrades all round me. They were trying to cross the ice to the Ukrainian bank too. And the Rumanian soldiers had got field-guns and were firing after us. They let us have it proper. In one place the shells nearly set the ice drifting.
"Well, I got over to this side, and here Petlura was in power—the same thing as the Rumanian boyars.
"A Ukrainian hid me in his cottage until my leg healed, and then I found out that I couldn't go back to my own village. I knew they'd kill me. The Rumanian gendarmes were shooting everyone who had rebelled against the boyars. And I was also told that my cottage had been burnt to the ground. The land, the vineyard, everything, those gendarmes had taken it all from my wife and handed it over to the new landowner, Grigorenko. And so I've stayed here by the 'Dniester, biding my time. I just can't bring myself to leave this village. Some chaps I know are mining oil in Baku. They write me letters saying they're getting fine wages and I ought to come. But I just can't. I keep waiting for the day when we shall go and liberate Bessarabia. I know a frontier guard chief in Zhvanets. And whenever I go down there to fetch the state farm's mail, I tell him the same thing. 'When are we going over the other side?' I says. 'Mind you take me with you as a guide,' I says. 'I know that part well—I've walked over every bit of it. And I've got an old score to settle with someone. Mark my words,' I says, 'if you cross the border without me, I'll never speak to you again.'
"He's a good lad, that frontier man—comes all the way from Moscow. He laughs and says: To start with,' he says, 'there's no frontier here at all, so we're sure to go over there sooner or later. We've just stopped here temporarily. But as soon as we get the order—we won't forget you, Shershen.' "
"And have you heard anything of your wife?" "In 'twenty three, we had a refugee from over there come here. He'd set fire to his master's house and run away to us. I had a talk with him while we were waiting for the frontier guards to come. He said he'd seen my wife. After the uprising, he said, she worked as a labourer for one of the kulaks, then the gendarmes came and drove her away from here—they must have found out I was alive and working at the state farm. And since then I haven't heard a murmur. But up to 1922, we even used to shout across the river to each other. I'd stand on the hill, you know the place—where they water the state-farm horses. And she'd come down to the mill and pretend to be doing her washing on the bridge, but all the time she'd listen to what I shouted, and sometimes she would shout back. One day we were calling to each other and we didn't notice there was a gendarme hiding in the maize. He sat there listening, and then he went for my wife with his whip. She dropped her washing in the river and cried with pain. And I kept running up and down the bank, watching that devil torture my wife. It made me gnash my teeth with anger. And just then our frontier guard came past. I remember how I begged him for his carbine. 'I'll kill that swine,' I says. But the frontier guard wouldn't let me have it. 'Never mind,' he says, 'be patient. The time will come when your Bessarabia will be free again.' "
Beyond the ribbon of mist that hung over the river the moonlit Bessarabian shore seemed quite near. Shershen reined in Grey and gazed across the river with eyes full of longing and anger.
I realized that he would wait all his life for the moment when he could cross the Dniester and set foot on the soil that was so dear to him.
The balcony where we slept became infested with wasps. From early morning until they retired into the crack under the roof where they had made their nest they buzzed over our mattresses, and we could not get a wink of sleep.
"Oh, to hell with this!" said Nikita one morning. "We'll have to move out of here."
"Let's smoke them out," I suggested.
"They'll smoke you out before you smoke them out. I've no desire to go about with my face swollen," Kolomeyets replied, driving away a persistent wasp.
But the wasp refused to retreat. Whereupon Kolomeyets jumped out of bed in nothing but his underclothes and bolted into the big room, where the students were still asleep.
We decided to sleep under the straw stack by the thresher. There it was even better than on the balcony. We could spread as much straw as we wanted under us, and there was straw above us too; another advantage of sleeping there was that the state-farm melon-field was close by. At night, if you wanted to, you could feel about and choose a ripe melon, or water-melon, and tuck into it there and then, under the starry sky. The only thing was that we had to carry our sheets and blankets a long way. That must have been why Nikita, when I suggested going out on the third night, said unwillingly: "Well, to be quite honest, Vasil, I'm not very keen on going out there to sleep. It's rather a long way, you know. Let's bed down with the lads in the room." "Where can you bed down there when it's crowded already! A lot of them are sleeping in the barns, as it is." "We'll squeeze in somewhere."
"But what's the sense of it, Nikita? We'll have plenty of time to sleep inside when we go back to town. But out there, under the stack, there's fresh air and it smells good, and you've got the melon-field just by—everything you could wish for! You said yourself that you liked it there."
Nikita wavered. "I may have said so once, but somehow I'm not so keen now. Dragging our stuff all that way, you know..."
"I'll carry your bedding myself, if you like. You needn't carry anything."
"No, Vasil, I don't really want to. And it may rain. See that?"
Lightning flashed beyond the Dniester, illuminating the dark, cloudy sky-line. There were certainly a lot of clouds about this evening; an odd star showing here and there.
"What does rain matter, Nikita? No water gets under the stack. Don't you remember, the might before last..."
"Perhaps it didn't the night before last, but it may tonight..."
"So you won't come out to the stack?"
"No."
"Well, I'll go by myself then."
"By yourself?" Nikita gave a long whistle. "You are daring, aren't you?"
"Do you think I won't?"
"I think you'll get a wee bit scared and come running back in the middle of the night." "We shall see!" I said doggedly. By the time I set out for the stack with blanket and sheets under my arm, I was longing to stay behind and spend the night in the farm-yard, somewhere near the students, on a cart-load of hay. But I was too stubborn for that. If Kolomeyets found out, he would make my life a misery, he would "put me through it" again, he would tell everyone that I had been afraid to spend the night alone in the field. "Fiddlesticks!" I said to myself. "There's nothing to it. I'll sleep there alone and nothing will happen to me. What is there to be afraid of? And won't I be able to make Kolomeyets feel small tomorrow!"
As soon as I had made my bed under the stack and was lying in it, Ryabko trotted up. Now it never occurred to me to drive him away. At least I should have one living soul to keep me company.
"Come here, Ryabko," I called. The dog came closer and cautiously licked my hand. Since I had poured the Eau-de-Cologne over him he had been afraid of me, and now he suspected fresh trickery. "Lie down, Ryabko!" I ordered. "Here, on the blanket." Ryabko hesitated and started to retreat. I had to pull him down by force. He settled himself at my feet and at once began to search contentedly for fleas.
The lightning over Bessarabia was coming regularly now, and after every flash the sky seemed darker, as if the stars were being snuffed out one by one.
The stack towered over me. Its lower layers were so tight you could not even thrust your hand between them. You couldn't see a thing round the stack. The white wall that had shown up so well from here even on the darkest nights had now disappeared in the pitch blackness and could be seen only when the lightning flashed across the Dniester. In the glow of lightning I caught sight of the threshing-engine for a second. Its tall funnel made it look like an elephant with its trunk raised. Beside it, I glimpsed the water barrels and the square outlines of the thresher.
Tomorrow, first thing in the morning, we should take our stand on its grated platform. I should hand Nikita the first half sheaf, the toothed drum would rattle as it crushed the ears of wheat, there would be noise all round. . . But how lonely and deserted it was now at the threshing-floor! No one about. Not a soul! Only Ryabko and I lying under the stack. I shifted the cold rifle closer to me and adjusted the pistol that hung from a leather thong round my neck.
I was still afraid to carry the pistol about openly—I thought one of the students might take it away from me. Having begged a long strip of rawhide from Shershen, I had tied both ends to the ring on the butt of the "Zauer," and in the evenings I would carry it about with me under my shirt, right next to the skin. When I was asleep, it dug into my side, and I slept restlessly, tossing and turning. I fell asleep long after midnight and woke up conscious that Ryabko was no longer beside me. He was barking loudly not far away at some stranger who was approaching the state farm from the direction of the Dniester. I could hear footsteps. They drew nearer. No, it was not one man, there must be several—you could hear the potato-tops crunching under their feet. I pressed close to the stack. Ryabko barked hoarsely. He was snapping right at the legs of the approaching strangers.
Someone tried to coax the dog. "Here, boy, come here—have a bit of bacon!" The voice was soft and insidious.
"Give him one with your sabre to stop his row!" another voice growled angrily.
And at that moment I heard a dull blow, and a terrible squeal from Ryabko. Evidently crawling away in terrible pain the dog whimpered pitifully, and suddenly fell silent altogether.
"That was a clout!. Cut him in half, I should think. Even hurt my hand," said the man who had struck, and laughed hoarsely.
"Quiet, lads!" someone ordered.
The bandits stopped a few paces from me, near the threshing-engine. From below, I could make out their dark shapes fairly well.
The bandits stood listening. I was afraid to stir. I felt as if I should never be able to move my arms or legs again. My body grew numb, but my head was crystal clear.
Now I could hear every whisper of this terrible night, every straw that rustled overhead in the breeze, the buzz of grasshoppers behind the stack. Dogs, wakened by Ryabko's squeal, were barking far away in the village.
"Now listen, lads," said one of the bandits—evidently the leader—after a minute's silence. "See that stack? As soon as we've set fire to it, everyone follow me into this ditch. Then we'll wait. And when they run up to put it out, we'll mow those Communists down from here like a bunch of hares. . . Get your grenades ready! Oleksa, go and start the fire."
"Give me the matches," said the man who had been told to set fire to the stack..
The next moment he had left the other bandits and was making his way towards me with awkward, cautious strides.
I leapt out of the stack and half-naked, with only the pistol dangling at my belly, rushed into the darkness. Quick, quick, I must reach the state farm before the bandits set fire to the stack! And I raced straight across the melon-field towards the state-farm house, to warn the students, to wake them up and return with them to face the bandits. But I had not gone more than la few paces when I crushed a slippery melon with my foot and plunged full length on the ground. I jumped up at once, and nearly shouted with pain. In falling I had dislocated my ankle. For a moment the pain deadened all fear. Feeling the tears rush into my eyes, scarcely able to stand, I released the Zauer's safety catch and fired my first bullet at the bandits.
In the blinding flash I realized that I had given myself away, that not even the shadow of the tall stack could save me now. Again fear rushed upon me, but my finger would not leave the trigger and I fired automatically. I could see nothing except the pitch darkness and the brilliant flashes above the bucking muzzle of the pistol.
When my last cartridge flew out of the breach, I heard the bandit's hoarse voice.
"Grenade!"
Quite near me a huge column of flame spouted out of the melon-field. I was deafened at once and only felt melon plants lash my face.
My first thought was to call for help, but my mouth was full of earth. I tried to spit, but felt myself falling—slowly and very far away. I was not afraid to fall. Another grenade exploded—I did not even shudder. Suddenly a pleasant, easy feeling swept over me, the pain died away, something warm trickled down my forehead. I mustered all my strength to spit the earth out of my mouth, but my lips and tongue would not obey me; they seemed soft and numb, as if they were no longer my own. Only aware of the taste of earth in my mouth, I collapsed on the ground.
I do not remember how I was taken to town, how at dawn the chief surgeon of the town hospital Gutentag performed a very serious operation on my head, removing two splinters that had lodged in the bony part of the skull.
He also cut out a broken rib and straightened my dislocated ankle. All that I learnt later, when I came to.
. I woke up slowly and with difficulty At first, still lying with my eyes shut, I listened for a long time to a distant monotonous tapping. I could not understand what it was. I felt as if I was in a big house, and about six rooms away someone was knocking ceaselessly on a closed door.
"But perhaps it's the thresher working and I've overslept?" I thought, and tried to jump up. But I could not do so; my legs and all the rest of my body felt terribly heavy, as if I were tied to the bed.
I opened my eyes and saw Petka Maremukha. Fie sat perched on the edge of a white stool—funny, lop-eared Petka Maremukha. He was staring at me wide-eyed, as if it were not me but a corpse that was lying in front of him.
Petka was wearing a white gown. Its high collar was digging into his chin. Noticing that I had opened my eyes, Petka fidgeted on his stool and whispered in a plaintive voice: "Go to sleep, Vasya, it's early ..."
"No, it isn't, I'm getting up..."
"You mustn't!" Petka jumped up in alarm. "You mustn't get up yet. Sleep! Perhaps you want some cranberry juice? Here, have some."
I remembered that I had been thirsty for a long time. Taking a full glass of pink cranberry juice from Petka's trembling hand, I pressed my lips eagerly to its edge. The juice was sharp and cool. Staring at me with frightened eyes, Petka watched the glass empty. As soon as I had finished drinking, he snatched the glass out of my hand and placed it on the marble-topped bed-table.
"Now go to sleep," Petka ordered.
"What's that knocking, Petka?" I asked when I had recovered my breath.
"It's the Motor. 'What's knocking!' Go to sleep."
"What motor?" I insisted.
"You know, the engine at the Motor Factory!"
"What engine?... Where am I?... What about the farm?..."
At that moment, my aunt entered the room in a white gown like Petka's. Tall and grey, she looked like a doctor. Petka rushed up to her.
"Maria Afanasyevna, look, he wants to get up. I keep telling him to go to sleep and he won't listen to me..."
"We must shut the window. The air in the room is fresh now," Aunt Maria said quietly and walked over to the window.
"Don't, it's all right as it is," I muttered feebly, and again fell fast asleep.
I did not wake up again until late at night. Aunt Maria and Petka were gone. A blue electric Lamp burnt high in the ceiling. A strange nurse dozed in a chair by the bed, her arms resting on the marble table.
From the open window came the faint rustle of la maple-tree by the hospital wall. Stars twinkled through the leaves—it was a warm autumn night outside. The town was asleep. The engine at the Motor Factory had long since ceased its chugging. Petka was asleep on the couch in his little house, and my people were sleeping too.
Now, as I lay there in the night, I began to feel that I should live, although my leg and wounded chest still hurt badly and with every little movement of my neck a sharp pain stabbed through my head. Cautiously I freed my hand from the blanket and drew my fingers across my forehead. It was all in bandages. On my temple, my fingers encountered short, prickly hairs, and I realized that my head had been shaved while I was unconscious. I wanted to talk to someone, to ask how I had got here, but there was no one about except the sleeping nurse. For a few minutes I lay with eyes wide open, staring at the ceiling. I tried to remember everything that had happened, but the effort soon tired me and I fell asleep again till morning.
Every morning, before he went to work, Father would call in to see me. He would eye me for la long time. Even now I could not bear his steady gaze, which brought back memories of the spoons, and I would turn away. Father asked me no questions—he must have known everything. He brought me apples and pears from the Party School garden. He would ask how I felt, go and consult the doctors, bring me interesting books from the library. In those days I realized how dear they were to me—Father, Aunt Maria, and tubby Petka Maremukha. But strange to say, I had only to start questioning them about what had happened afterwards, on the night when I had slept under the stack, and they would all mutter, as if by secret agreement, "Later, later!" Only Father gave me a clear answer: "Get well quick, Vasil, then you shall know everything!" Apparently the doctor had told them not to worry me unnecessarily with recollections of that terrible night when I had fired at the bandits.
Several days passed. One evening, when I was lying alone in my little ward listening to the boys kicking a football about in front of the Motor Factory, loud, hurried footsteps echoed down the hospital corridor, the door opened and Nikita Kolomeyets and Marushchak entered the room. Nikita had got so brown while I had been in hospital that I scarcely recognized him. He had been given a gown that was too big for him and his dark, shaven head looked very funny poking out of the loose collar. Big, broad-shouldered Marushchak, in dashingly smart boots and a gown that reached to his knees, gazed down at me, smiling. I had not seen him for a long time—since I left town to work on the state farm. And I was specially glad to see him here now.
Nikita surveyed the ward, wrinkled the tip of his nose and, dragging a chair up noisily, said:
"I say, you've got a swell place here, old chap! Lord Curzon himself never slept in a ward like this."
"Better than on the balcony?" I asked.
"The balcony had the wild beauty of the jungle," Nikita replied, "but here, behold, we have civilization. Do they give you that juice here, or is it from home?"
"Here. They make it in hospital."
"Gosh, I'm thirsty!" said Nikita. "May I?" And without waiting for a reply, he lifted the glass to his lips.
"Put it back, Nikita!" Marushchak ordered. "The lad here's wounded, he may feel thirsty any minute, and you pinch his juice!"
"No, have a drink, Nikita!" I protested hastily. "I can get as much as I like."
"There you are, what did I say—civilization!" Nikita grinned joyfully and, smacking his lips, started to drink the juice. He even closed his eyes with pleasure. "Lovely!" he said, licking his lips, "Gorgeous! I must have a spell in hospital too, to get some free cranberry juice."
"Only people who are seriously ill are given juice, Nikita," I said as calmly as I could. "No one would admit you to hospital, however much you asked."
"How do you know? They might do. Now, if I had gone with you to the thresher that night and got myself knocked about... But no," he went on after a moment's consideration. "It would probably have been me who shot them. Not just one, but the whole lot."
"Why, did I shoot anyone?" I asked, struggling up. "Well I never!" Nikita exclaimed laughing. "He performs what you might call a heroic deed, then he pretends not to know anything about it!"
"But I don't know anything, Nikita. I only came to when they got me here."
"Don't you really know?" Nikita asked. "Of course not!"
"Well, in that case we'll give you a spot of information." And turning to the silent Marushchak: "Any objections, Comrade Marushchak?"
"Go on and tell him, I'll help you," Marushchak agreed.
... The bandits at whom I had fired had come a long way. They had been sent into Soviet territory from Bessarabia, to help Ataman Satan-Maloletka.
At the time when we were working on the state farm, the ataman's affairs were in a bad way.
To reinforce the frontier guards a special group of anti-bandit personnel had arrived from Moscow. Daring and experienced men of the CHEKA. The bandits were having a bad time. Nearly every night small detachments of mounted CHEKA men rode out of the gates of the local security headquarters to patrol the surrounding forests. In leather jerkins, with heavy Mauser pistols in wooden holsters at their belts, they thundered through the sleepy streets of the town on strong, hardy horses. Their horses' hoofs resounded loudly under the arch of the Old Fortress.
When they had ridden out of town on to the soft country by-roads, the CHEKA men vanished into the darkness; and only in one house, in Seminary Street, whence they had come, were their task and final destination known. From dusk to dawn lights burnt in that house. The CHEKA men worked all night, carrying out the government's order to clear the border regions of bandit gangs.
Quite often, when the security chiefs planned big operations, the students from our Party School and the Special Detachment men—Communists and Komsomol members from town Party and Komsomol organizations—helped to carry them out. It was not unusual for them, even during the day, after an alarm had been given, to report at Special Detachment Headquarters in Kishinev Street, where they drew rifles and under the command of security men left town for long periods to comb the surrounding forests.
As it turned out, while our group had been peacefully engaged in threshing the grain of the new harvest at the state farm, the students who had been left behind with Marushchak in town, had not remained idle. Several times they had to interrupt their studies and join in the rounding up of bandit 'gangs.
One would have expected the bandits to keep away from town and to fear the Party School like the plague, but, as Marushchak now explained, it was not like that at all. The bandits had friends right in the town, land one of those friends turned out to be the old gardener Korybko. Under the tsarist regime he had worked at the diocesan convent which had now been taken over by the Party School. When Soviet power was established in the town, Korybko continued to frequent the building.
Sometimes, as if from long-standing habit, he would take his sharp, heavy sheers out of his overcoat pocket and painstakingly, without asking any money, set to work in the yard in front of the main building, trimming the thuja bushes, pruning the acacias, and weeding the garden beds. People got used to the old gardener, and when it was time for the neglected garden to be put tidy, the head of the Party School took Korybko on as a member of the staff. Like other members of the staff, Korybko received dinners in the students' dining-hall and then he would spend all day with sheers and clippers in the garden or court-yard of the Party School.
Meek and untalkative, he roused no suspicions. Often, after working late, Korybko stayed the night in his storeroom by the kitchen, where he slept on a rough couch covered with a straw mattress. No one knew that the old gardener had a grown-up son whose name was Zbyszko. In the very first months of the Revolution, young Korybko, then still a student at the Kiev Polytechnic, hearing that the Polish gentry were mustering their legions, went to Warsaw, and there entered the service of Pilsudski. With the Polish army he took part in the seizure of Zhitomir. Later, when Budyonny's cavalry drove the Polish legions out of the Ukraine, Zbyszko fled with them to Poland.
As soon as the Reds took over our town, old Korybko started telling his Podzamche neighbours that his son had died of typhoid fever in Kiev. The neighbours sympathized with the old man, took pity on him, and soon forgot that the gardener had ever had a son at all. But Zbyszko was still alive, and when the Polish intelligence service needed to make contact with the bandits on Soviet territory, he was sent to our town as an envoy. And there the young lieutenant of the Polish intelligence service found his old father very useful. Often, when in need of food or a night's rest, young Korybko came to his father at the Party School and spent the night there—now in the garden, now in the attic, now in the drying-shed, where the gardener dried rings of pear and apple on a slow fire.
It might have been a very long time before anyone guessed the truth about Korybko's son, had it not been for my Zauer.
That night, When Petka and I went into the garden to try out the pistol, Korybko the gardener had met his son on the edge of the garden. He had brought him supper in a students' aluminium bowl.
It was this aluminium bowl that helped Marushchak to discover the truth about Korybko.
When I gave Marushchak the bowl, he began to make discreet inquiries as to who might have dropped it in the garden. It turned out that a few days after the incident 'Korybko had come to the cook and asked him for a new bowl to replace the old one, which, according to the gardener, some "imp" had stolen from his storeroom. . . .
The cook had given him a new bowl and forgotten about it. But When Marushchak started asking whether any utensils were missing from the kitchen, he remembered the loss and complained to Marushchak that someone had taken the gardener's bowl. Marushchak didn't give anything away, but started keeping an eye on the old man. Soon he discovered that the gardener was a Pole, a very religious man, who did not miss a single service at the Polish church. That night in the garden, when I fired my pistol, the man who fired back had shouted "Hurry!" in Polish. But still Korybko could have cleared himself of suspicion had it not been for the business of the bell-ringing.
When Marushchak got to know Valerian Dmitrievich, he asked him a lot of questions about the history of the Party School building. Together they walked through the long corridors and tried to discover the cause of the strange bell-ringing. And one day Lazarev recollected a story he had been told when he was still a student—the story of a nun in white who roamed about the diocesan convent at nights, unable to find peace, and calling the Franciscan nuns of the ancient Catholic nunnery to service.
How had the legend of the white nun arisen? Who needed it? Why had it been invented?
A very long time ago, this ancient building surrounded by its high wall had been the abode of Franciscan nuns. Sometimes they went out into the world in their white robes, visited the villages land tried to convert the local peasant women to the Catholic faith. The nuns wanted there to be more supporters of Poland in this region, they wanted more good land for the nunnery. But the Russian government started to close these Polish churches and nunneries. And one day this particular nunnery was closed too. The tsar ordered that it should be converted into a convent for the daughters of the Russian Orthodox clergy.
The daughters of priests from all over the province were assembled in this dark, dank building. The nunnery church was converted into an Orthodox church. The cells became class-rooms. Here the convent Fathers were to train the daughters of the priests as educated wives for the clergy of the diocese.
But the Franciscan nuns who had been driven out of their nunnery could not forgive the Russians the injury they had suffered. They started to frighten convent girls. From time to time a tall woman in white began to appear in the corridors of the convent and walk silently round the building.
When they saw her, the priests' daughters screamed so loud that" they could be heard all over the large building.
Rumours of the white nun reached the town and the Polish noblewomen said that God himself and the Pope of Rome were visiting their vengeance on the Russians for closing the nunnery, that the appearance of the white nun was la sign from God, that soon there would be an epidemic of plague which would wipe out all Orthodox believers, and that only true servants of the papal throne would be left alive.
When darkness fell, the daughters of the convent were afraid to go into the dormitories and stayed together, barricading the doors. And once the head-mistress of the convent encountered the white nun near the kitchen and collapsed in a dead faint. Only in the morning was she found lying on the stone floor of the cellar.
After that incident, the local chief of police started sending parties of policemen to patrol the college at night, and, strange to say, the nun disappeared. But now the mournful tolling of a bell was heard in the corridors. Perhaps one of the fanatical nuns, who after the closing of the nunnery had gone to live with local Catholics, had made her way into the college. And afterwards, perhaps, when the police prevented her from entering, she continued to make her presence felt by bribing one of the college servants to toll the bell.
The mystery of the tolling bell was solved by Marushchak while I was away at the state farm. Already suspecting Korybko of having connections with people hostile to us, one day, when Korybko had gone to a service at the Catholic church, Marushchak entered the store-room where the gardener kept his tools'. There he found nothing unusual, except perhaps for a Catholic prayer-book with a note folded inside it that ran as follows:
"Father! At nine o'clock tomorrow evening I shall be waiting for you in the cemetery near the tomb of Canon Tszylatkowski.
"Zbyszko."
After carefully searching the whole store-room, Marushchak was about to leave when he suddenly noticed a light sprinkling of soot just under the chimney. It was summer and the time for cleaning chimneys had not yet arrived—the old gardener must have been to the chimney for some other purpose. Moving a wooden bench, Marushchak opened the chimney door and glanced inside. There he saw something white. He put his hand into the chimney and pulled out a heavy bundle. Inside the bundle, wrapped in cloth, lay a Mauser pistol and two spare cartridge-clips.
Having carefully closed the chimney-door land put the bench back in its former position, Marushchak rushed off to the district security department to inform them of his discovery. There it was at once ascertained that Mauser No. 6838 of the year 1918 had belonged to Grishchuk, a security man who had been found murdered two weeks ago in a well near the small border town of Vitovtov Brod.
That night Stanislaw Korybko the gardener was arrested. During the search two ampules of an unknown poison were found in his possession.
The following evening, young Korybko, a lieutenant of Pilsudski's intelligence corps, was also arrested, in the Polish cemetery near the tomb of Canon Tszylatkowski. His hair and beard were unkempt and he was dressed unobtrusively as la young peasant. When the security men approached him, he attempted to escape and even fired on them; but the security men caught him, took his revolver away, and shortly afterwards he met his father at the interrogation.
It turned out that Zbyszko had been sent to contact and work with the bandit gang led by Satan-Maloletka. The bandits, who were short of arms, were to make a raid on the Party School armoury. The old gardener had found out that there were nearly two hundred rifles in the armoury, as well as many revolvers and boxes of ammunition. He had told his son this, and his son had given him the poison. The bandits had decided to attack the school in the dead of night. The evening before old Korybko was to put the poison in the students' supper. Besides the poison, in case of accidents, Zbyszko had given his father a Mauser pistol, the one he had taken from the murdered security man two weeks ago.
When the old gardener and his son were arrested, the security men made another thorough search of the gardener's store-room. They, too, examined the chimney. There they noticed something that Marushchak in his haste had overlooked. At the back of the chimney hung a rusty iron ring connected to a wire. When someone gave the ring a hard pull, the mournful tolling of a bell was heard from above. The wire stretched from the cellar to the top floor, where it was connected to a brass bell concealed in the wall. Coated with dust and soot, the bell had hung there for many years—apparently since the time when the white nun walked the corridors frightening the daughters of the convent. Perhaps the bell had first been concealed in the wall by priests from the Vatican, in order to frighten the superstitious nuns, to make it seem that this mysterious bell-ringing was a miracle, a sign from God. And perhaps the Catholic gardener Korybko had learnt the secret in our day from one of the Catholic priests in town. As soon as you pulled the iron ring in the chimney you heard the slow resonant tolling of the bell, the same tolling that Marushchak and I had heard when we searched the empty building during the alarm.
"Why did you toll the bell?" Korybko was asked at the interrogation.
"I wanted to frighten ... the Communists..." Korybko answered sullenly.
"Communists aren't convent girls!" the interrogator said.
"I was a fool," Korybko admitted. "Ghosts are out of fashion these days. I made a mistake and gave myself away for nothing."
Korybko the gardener was arrested on that same rainy night when I had gone out to sleep under the straw stack.
The bandits who had crossed the frontier had intended to mow down the students near the burning stack and then move on to link up with Satan-Maloletka's gang. My shots had prevented the bandits from carrying out their plan. They had not even managed to set fire to the stack. When, at the sound of the explosions on the melon-field, the students had run out of the state farm, the bandits had not even shown fight, and had made off towards Bessarabia. But one of them did not escape. A bullet from my Zauer had wounded him in the leg, smashing the bone. Abandoned by his comrades, the bandit had crawled over the allotments to the Dniester, and there, at the water's edge, he had been picked up by a patrol of frontier guards coming from the nearby post to investigate the cause of the firing.
Such was the story that Marushchak and Kolomeyets told me while they sat by my bed. As I listened to them, I regretted that it would still be some time before I could go to the Party School to look at the nunnery bell concealed in the wall and inspect Korybko's store-room.
"Did they find my pistol?" I asked Nikita cautiously.
"You bet!" said Nikita. "It was lying beside you. The watchman picked it up. Polevoi's taking care of it now."
"But will he give it back to me?"
"Why not?" Marushchak said in surprise. "They'll register it and give it back to you."
"But I'm not in the Komsomol yet!"
"Oh, that's only a matter of form now," Marushchak replied confidently. "But you've got to get well quick."
"Then come along to the meeting," Nikita added graciously. "We'll go into everything there."
" 'Come along to the meeting'..." I murmured, remembering how Nikita had offended me once. "You'll chuck me out again."
Marushchak chuckled. "What a long memory you've got! Don't worry, we'll elect another chairman for that occasion—a kind one."
Just then, two nurses entered the room, wheeling a high stretcher on rollers. At the sight of this stretcher my heart sank and I immediately forgot about my guests.
"Time for a fresh dressing!" plump, blue-eyed nurse Khristya announced.
"Not today surely!" I groaned. "Can't I have it tomorrow?"
"Tut-tut, aren't you ashamed! A hero like you and afraid of dressings," Khristya exclaimed, putting her strong gentle arm under my back.
It was Doctor Gutentag himself who did my dressings. And today, when I was wheeled into the big well-lighted treatment room, he was waiting for me, tweezers in hand—a short, bald, sharp-featured man with a white cap pulled low over his forehead. As soon as the nurses had lifted me from the stretcher on to the white table, Gutentag strode up to me and seized my leg. Then he started bending the knee and feeling it. I raised myself on my elbow and watched the doctor's strong, incisive fingers apprehensively.
"Does it hurt?" Gutentag asked t last in a deep booming voice.
"A bit..." I gasped plaintively.
"A bit doesn't count," the doctor interrupted, and instructed the nurses to remove the dressings.
A very thin, quick-fingered nurse started unwinding the bandages. A long purple scar with traces of stitches round it ran across my chest where the rib had been removed.
Gutentag glanced at the soar and gave a whistle of satisfaction.
"It's healed splendidly," he said. "In a couple of days you'll be able to give him a plaster. Just dab it with colloid and that's all. Understand?"
The nurse nodded, wiping the soar with spirit and covering it with a clean bandage.
Everything was all right until she finished bandaging my chest and started on my head. I bit my lip in advance-and squirmed my legs about the table.
Gutentag frowned ominously. "What's all this about?" "It hurts, doctor!" I moaned through clenched teeth. "It'll make you fiercer!" the doctor retorted. "Next time you won't let 'em throw a grenade at you. Call yourself a fighter! You shouldn't get hurt yourself, you know, it's the enemy that ought to be on the ground. Got that?"
I realized that the doctor was having me on, and listened fearfully to the nurse's light, quick fingers unwinding the bandage. Less and less of it remained on my head, and at last the end flicked past my eyes. I screwed up my face. Now the worst would come. The nurse started gently removing the pads covering the wounds. "O-o-o—!" I moaned. "Careful... O!. . ." "Stick it, stick it!" Gutentag mumbled somewhere near. I could see neither the doctor, nor the nurses—my eyes were misted with tears. They rolled down my cheeks, hot and salty, and I licked them off my lips.
The pain was awful when the nurse peeled off the pads; they had dried on to the hair that had grown round the wounds. I writhed about on the table, waving my arms and moaning.
"That will do! It's all over, all over, do you hear!" Gutentag shouted in my ear, but I still lay kicking my legs, hearing nothing and moaning. "You see, we've managed to avoid trepanation of the skull," Gutentag whispered quietly to the nurse. "Everything is going well. He's a strong lad!" And he slapped my leg.
It was good to return to the ward with the dressing over; now for two days I could live quietly, without fear of pain.
Long tiled corridors ran from one end of the building to the other. The wheeled stretcher rumbled on the tiles. Through the narrow vaulted windows that floated past I caught a glimpse of the blue sky and the sun setting far away over Dolzhetsky Forest. How I longed to roam out there in the forest, to be with the chaps I knew!
We had nearly reached the ward. Sitting on the oak bench by the door I saw Sasha Bobir, Petka Maremukha and—Galya. Galya was here! Dear, wonderful Galya had come to see me! I was ready to jump off the stretcher and run up to her.
Petka got up and, walking beside the stretcher, muttered hastily: "The doorman didn't want to let three of us in to see you, Vasil, so I went and saw Gutentag, land then they let us in!"
Petka was about to walk into the ward with me, but Khristya raised her hand.
"Wait a bit," she said. "When we've put the patient to bed, you can come in."
When my pillows had been bounced up and Khristya had tucked me up under my grey woolly blanket, I received my guests. The first to come to my bedside was Galya. I felt as though I were seeing her for the first time. She was so pretty, so beautiful, the dearest person on earth at that moment. She was blushing shyly, and the tips of her ears were scarlet with excitement. Offering me her warm hand, which I shook with all my strength, Galya said quietly: "Did you get my letter, Vasil? I answered at once."
"No, I didn't," I mumbled in confusion. "But it doesn't matter. I'll get it all right. They'll bring it to me. My things are there as well." I did not want Sasha and Petka to know of our correspondence.
"And I thought... Does it hurt much, Vasil?" Galya asked, nodding at my bandaged head.
"Not so had," I replied as carelessly as I could. "Who did your operation, Vasil?" Sasha inquired. "Gutentag."
"It couldn't have hurt then. When he operated on me, I felt no pain at all," Sasha said with a sniff.
"That's a fine comparison!" I said huffily. "You just had a splinter, but look at this!" And I pointed to, my wounds.
"For a start, it wasn't just a splinter, it was a great big chunk of wood," Sasha retorted. "It went right down to the bone."
"You had a splinter down to the bone, tut I had my skull split open so that you could see the brain!"
"The brain?" Maremukha repeated in horror.
"Yes," I said with as much calm as I could muster, and glanced sideways at Galya.
She, too, was staring in alarm at my bandaged head. To heighten the effect and make myself seem an even greater martyr, I added carelessly: "Oh, it's nothing really. As soon as the wounds heal up a bit, the doctor will fix some of those gold plates under the skin. They'll be stronger than bones."
"Will he fix them with solder?" Bobir asked.
That nearly caught me out. "Solder? No, why ... not with solder... There's a sort of ... you know, a sort of special paste. I forget what it's called."
"Did you hear that Korybko had been arrested, Vasil? Now we'll be able to go into the garden as much as we like," said Petka. "I didn't want to tell you before, because..."
"I know all about it," I interrupted, "the students told me. And what's Kotka doing now?"
"Kotka's living with the tinker now," Petka went on. "And you know what, he goes to the printers' Komsomol now."
"You . don't say so! Does he really?" I could net believe it.
"He does," Bobir grunted. "He comes to every open meeting. And he'll soon be making an application to join the Komsomol."
"Well, he won't get away with it!" Galya burst out suddenly. "Everyone knows that Kotka didn't start working for the tinker for nothing. He wants to get himself a worker's record—that's what he wants!"
I listened to Galya and could mot believe my ears. Not so long ago I had thought she and Kotka were friends. . . I gazed joyfully at Galya, at her high forehead, at her thick soft hair combed back behind her ears, at her slightly upturned nose. Galya averted her greenish eyes, straightened her jumper, and said uncomfortably:
"What are you staring at me for? Do you think I'm not telling the truth? It's true. . . He told me so himself."
"Who, Kotka? What did he tell you?" Petka asked curiously.
"Yes, Kotka himself. When Vasil here went away," Galya nodded in my direction, "Kotka came to my house and said, 'Let's go to the fair.' Well, we went. And on the way, Kotka opened his purse and started boasting. 'I'll be taking you on the roundabouts,' he said, 'see how much money I've got! And it was all earned by work,' he said. 'But it's not the money that counts. I'll get even more money. The main thing is to have a worker's record. When I've done a bit more work, I'll have a worker's record, then no one will be able to say a thing about who my father was. When I'm considered a worker, I'll get on fine.' "
"And you ... did you go on talking to him after that?" I asked indignantly.
"Why?" Galya answered calmly. " 'I don't need your money,' I said, 'nor your roundabouts, and you're a thief and a rotter.' And I turned my back on him and walked away."
"You did that, Galya?" Petka exclaimed. "You told him that to his face?"
"Ask him yourself if you don't believe me."
"Who do you think I am!" Petka snorted contemptuously. "I haven't spoken to him for three years as it is."
"Hullo, young people, come to see the sufferer?" said a familiar voice.
I glanced round quickly and the others jumped to their feet. Polevoi stood at the door smiling. His shaven head was just as sunburnt as his face.
"Sit down, sit down. What made you jump? I'm going to sit down too," Polevoi said and picked up a free stool. Placing it beside my bed, Polevoi sat down heavily and looked at me. The boys sat down too. Smoothing her light-blue dress, Galya seated herself on a stool beside Polevoi. "You mustn't be angry with me, Vasil, for not coming in to see you Before, as soon as we got back—I had a lot to do. But I sent Kolomeyets. Did he come?" "Yes, he did. And Marushchak came too." "Well, then there's not much left for me to say. I was going to tell you about your exploits. How're you feeling?" "Not so bad."
"But I suppose I know already," Polevoi confessed. "Before I came in here, I asked the doctor a lot of questions. He says you're doing all right, the wound's healed up fine, he says, you'll soon be chasing a football about. Feel like a game, Vasil?" "Yes, I do."
"Then try and get well quick, so that you'll be up before the end of term," Polevoi commanded, and with a glance at Petka seated meekly by the bed, he said: "I know this young fellow. And I think I've seen this fair chap somewhere before," he added, nodding at Bobir. "But the young lady's quite a stranger to me."
Polevoi glanced at me slyly. Galya blushed in confusion and did not know where to turn her head.
To break the awkward silence, Polevoi turned to Galya and, still smiling, said with a nod at me: "Mind you keep this hero in hand, Miss, because I've heard he's already started taking young ladies out to coffee."
I caught my breath. Polevoi must have learnt about Shipulinsky's cafe from my father. And what if Father had told him about the spoons? Blushing with shame, I squinted sideways at Polevoi, trying to guess how much he knew. But Polevoi's face wore a sly, mysterious smile that told me nothing. Then he stood up and said unexpectedly:
"By the way, I've got something I want to talk to you, young folk, about. What are you thinking of doing with yourselves this autumn? What are your plans?"
There was a silence.
At length Sasha Bobir gathered courage enough to ask: "What plans do you mean?"
"Have you finished at the people's school?" Polevoi asked in a business-like tone.
"We did that in the spring!"
"Well, and now what?" Polevoi asked, surveying us keenly.
"I don't know about Sasha and Galya, but Petka and I were thinking of trying for the technical school in the autumn," I said quietly.
Polevoi looked thoughtful. "The technical school? Well, of course, that's not a bad idea either. But I've got a more interesting suggestion. As you. know, lads, we're getting the country's old plants going one after another nowadays, and soon, I reckon, we'll start building new ones. For those factories we'll be needing skilled hands. Plenty of them! In many towns nowadays they're opening factory-training schools. There will be one in our town. Only yesterday they told me up at the District Party Committee that I had been appointed director of that school. You see, when I was a lad I used to work at a factory in Yekaterinoslav. The money for this school has already been allotted. It's going to have special workshops. The pupils will get grants. We'll have good instructors. Soon we'll start collecting pupils. Now, I'd like to see some fine, plucky lads joining us. And when I look at you—well, you're not a bad bunch. You'll be able to relieve the older folk, you'll be new reinforcements for the working class. What about joining the factory-training school in autumn?"
We exchanged glances.
"I've heard of that school," Galya said quietly. "My father's been asked if he'd like to be instructor in the joinery shop."
"Well, that's fine, isn't it? You'll be going to school with Rather."
"But can I go there?" Galya asked doubtfully.
"Why shouldn't you!"
"But I'm not a boy," Galya said quietly. "Surely they don't take girls lat a factory-training school."
"Do you think we ought to open a special girls' convent for you?" Polevoi said with a laugh. "Times are different now. Couldn't you learn to be a mechanic, or a turner, say? You'll qualify all right, if you're ready to study and work."
"Can you learn to become a fitter at this school too?" Sasha asked, still eyeing Polevoi doubtfully.
"The fitter's section is going to be the biggest of the lot," said Polevoi, and with a glance at us all, he added: "Well, I'm off now, youngsters, so you just think it over amongst yourselves. If you like the idea, you'll be welcome. I shall be your chief."
I was not discharged from hospital until after the end-of-term party; so I had no chance to celebrate with the students who were leaving, or even to play a farewell game of football with them. When Father and I drove up to the familiar iron railings of the Party School, I was struck by the unusual stillness that reigned over the yard. There was no sign of the students in their blue Budyonny hats running to the lecture rooms; no one was pacing to and fro, rifle in hand, beside the sentry-box. The gates were fastened with a big rusty padlock. Splashes of whitewash could be seen on the windows of the main building. The whole place was being repaired in preparation for the new school year. Little wooden cradles hung on ropes near the drain-pipes, and the roof was splashed with bright blobs of green and brown paint where the painters had been experimenting to find out what paint would go best on the faded, peeling iron.
Father wanted me to live with him and Aunt Maria in the flat until I got quite well, but I insisted on the kitchen "and had my own way. When Doctor Gutentag had discharged me from the hospital, he had said I should walk as little as possible and rest whenever I could, but as soon as I found myself in familiar surroundings, I longed to be out and about, and after dinner I slipped out of my kitchen into the fresh air.
Leaning on an old stick of my father's, I hobbled slowly down the front steps and set off across the weed-grown yard to the main building. The building was very quiet. The banisters of the worn stone staircase leading to the upper storeys were coated with dust, the boarded floors of the corridors were splashed with whitewash, and black-painted desks from the lecture rooms lined the walls. The doors of the students' club stood wide open, and as I passed them I caught a glimpse of the familiar slogan above the stage: "Peace to the cottage—war to the palace!" When I reached the window from which Marushchak had fired his rifle, I realized that I had come for nothing. The hole in the big stove had already been filled in; only a neat layer of red bricks showed the place where the old nunnery bell that had frightened so many people with its mysterious tolling had hung. I felt the bricks, scratched a dry bit of plaster off the wall and wandered slowly down to the garden.
The leaves of the trees were already tinged with yellow and weeds had spread thickly over the grass. The barberry bushes were red with little berries, like bits of coral. There were no young birds about. They must be all grown up by now. The walnuts stretched along beside the wall, their smooth grey trunks towering above the nearby apple and plum-trees. In a cleft between the branches of the oldest of the walnut-trees, I noticed the dark hole where I had put the aluminium bowl that early morning in spring.
It was very still in the garden and when I came nearer to the walnut avenue I heard a faint sound high up in the tree-tops—it was a ripe nut falling through the big glistening leaves. I noted where it fell and limped towards the spot.
The nut was large and ripe, and smelt a bit like iodine. I put it in my pocket and started searching for more. There were lots here in the thick grass under the burdock, and in the weed-grown ditches. Some of them lay dry and bare in their hard shells, others were still covered with green fleshy skin. It was easy to break this skin with your lingers and let the clean, slightly moist nut roll out into your palm. My pockets grew heavy with the nuts I gathered, my knee began to ache, Father's stick was left far behind at the very beginning of the avenue. I was still weak and beads of sweat broke out on my forehead. But I went on crawling about trying to find as many nuts as I could, and I was so busy with my search that I did not notice how dark it was becoming. The sun had long since set behind the houses of Belanovka. It was time to go home. Nearly exhausted, but with my pockets full of nuts, I went out into the yard and, sitting down on a bench beside the garden gate, started cracking the nuts. I would put a nut in the chink between the gate and the iron gate-post, pull the gate gently, and the nut would crack open easily, scattering bits of shell and white kernel into my waiting palm.
There were already quite a lot of broken shells lying round my feet, when I heard Petka's voice behind the bushes.
"If we don't give that snake what he deserves now, he'll get even more cheeky later on." Petka was saying with conviction.
"Hey, Petka, come here!" I shouted, getting up.
"Look, he's out in the yard already!" Petka exclaimed, appearing from behind the bushes with Sasha Bobir. "We thought you were still in bed... Give us some nuts!"
I poured nuts into Petka's chubby hand and gave some to Sasha. Like a monkey, Sasha popped a nut into his mouth and started cracking it with his teeth.
"Steady on, you ass!" I said. "You've lost two teeth already, do you want to lose the rest? Crack them in the gate.
See how I do it!"
Now the gate swung to and fro without stopping.
Petka gobbled his nuts, glancing every now and then at my bulging pockets.
"Where have you been, chaps?" I asked.
"We were going..." Petka began. "Look here, Vasya, Grigorenko will soon be a member of the Komsomol."
"A member of the Komsomol!?"
"That's right," Sasha affirmed calmly munching a nut. "My brother Anatoly told me. He's in the printers' Komsomol organization and 'Kotka has been going there. My brother says Kotka handed in his application yesterday."
'"They haven't dealt with it yet, have they?" I asked hastily.
"They'll do that on Saturday at the meeting," said Bobir.
I heaved a sigh of relief. "Well, we'll see about that," I said. "It's not settled yet."
"You think they won't take him?" Petka burst out excitedly. "They'll take him, you see if they don't. Don't you know what a wangler he is?"
I turned on Sasha. "Why don't you do something about it? Your brother's in the printers' Komsomol, tell him what a rotten type Grigorenko is. He'll just chuck that application down the drain—and that'll be that!"
"Haven't I told him already? As soon as I heard about it today, I told him everything. But the trouble is Anatoly has gone out into the country on affiliation work, and he won't be back until next Thursday. When I told him about Kotka, he said I ought to get all my pals together and go to the meeting on Saturday."
"Well, we've blooming well got to get him timed down!" I said emphatically.
"Perhaps, instead of getting people turned down, Vasil, you'll get turned in?" said my father's voice behind me.
He was standing by the wall, near the sentry-box.
"But why, Dad! I'm all right now."
"No headache?"
"None at all!"
"What about your leg?"
"A bit."
My leg still hurt, the knee ached, but if I had said as much to my father, he would have sent me to bed at once.
"Move up a bit, lads," Father requested Petka and Sasha.
They hastily complied.
"Who's got the nuts?"
I pulled a handful of nuts out of my pocket and gave them to my father.
Eyeing me closely, he said: "So we've had time to visit the garden, have we? Oh, Vasil, Vasil. I ought to tan your hide, but I can't bring myself to do it. Didn't I ask you not to move about much, to rest? But no, you had to go into the garden. Suppose the stitches break open and you have to go back to hospital—what then?"
"They won't break open," I replied without much certainty, and my hand wandered at once to my ribs.
Father was silent for a moment as he cracked a nut vigorously on the bench with his hand. Then he asked: "Who was it you wanted to get turned down?"
"Kotka Grigorenko, the doctor's son," I explained. "Don't you know him?" "Why?"
"His father was sentenced to death by the Extraordinary Commission!" I said hotly.
"And what about Kotka himself?"
"He's against us all!" Petka burst out indignantly.
'"He was a troop-leader in the Petlura Boy Scouts, and now he's got himself apprenticed to a tinker just so that people will think he's a worker," I added.
"And when we used to go to the High School," Sasha announced weightily, "I heard him myself swanking about being related to the hetman who captured our fortress."
"You want to know about Kotka, do you?" I went on heatedly. "He used to have a big house of his own, he used to call us chaps 'cattle,' Kotka did. If Petlura came back now, he'd knife the lot of us. You can't have a chap like him in the Komsomol."
"So you're going to give him a fight at the meeting?" Father asked calmly and with a note of challenge in his voice.
"Oho, not half we won't!" I replied belligerently.
"Well, you're quite right," Father agreed. "But there's no need to get so heated about it. If you're quite sure he's not fit to be a member of the Komsomol, prove it. The thing is to prove that he's a dirty dog himself—that's the whole point. Everyone who joins the Komsomol ought to have a clear conscience. And if you're certain that there's a stain on Kotka's conscience, don't be afraid to say so straight out."
Remembering my father's advice, the three of us discussed at great length how we should object to Kotka's admission to the Komsomol.
We decided not to mention our minor grudges against him but to speak only of the main thing, as my father had advised us. We decided that Sasha Bobir should speak first because his brother was a member of the printers' Komsomol, then Petka would say his bit, and I would speak last and state our main objection—what Galya had told me about Kotka in hospital. I had to persuade the meeting that 'Kotka was a cunning careerist, that he had become a worker only to cover up his past as quickly as possible.
When my pals had left, I started rehearsing my speech alone in the empty kitchen.
"Comrades!" I shouted at the top of my voice, addressing the Russian stove. "This outsider, this upstart dressed as a worker, this dirty-hearted careerist, wants to join the Komsomol just to ... just to..."
At this point I dried up. I didn't know how to go on. All I had was a good beginning.
"Never mind," I consoled myself, "I'll manage somehow! And even if I don't say it all, my pals will help me. After all, there'll be three of us."
But by Friday evening it turned out that only Petka and I should be speaking at the 'Komsomol meeting. Sasha was out of action. He had been unlucky again.
We had heard that after dinner on Friday our Zarechye chaps were going to play football on the ground near the Motor Factory. We got there before the kick-off and Sasha at once asked to be given a game as left-winger.. But there were enough players already land he was refused. Sasha looked disappointed, but a little while later, pretending that he did not really want to play very much, he said to Yasha Tiktor, the captain of the Zarechye team: "All right, I'll go and sunbathe, but if anyone gets crocked, call me."
Just behind the goal-line there stood a dilapidated referee's tower. When they played volley-ball at the stadium, this tower was usually dragged up to the court and the referee would climb on top and stand there blowing his whistle like a militiaman on point duty. Sasha climbed up the tower, took everything off except his purple pants and let the sun shine on his skinny freckled body. The platform on top of the tower was not very big and Sasha's legs dangled over the edge.
"You won't get sunburnt, Sasha!" Petka shouted from below. "Freckle-faces never get sunburnt. Come down here with us!"
Sasha did not even reply to the invitation. Offended at not being allowed to play, he had decided to remain in solitude.
Petka and I stretched ourselves out on the soft grass on the very edge of the pitch and when the game started soon forgot about Sasha. The Zarechye chaps did not play very well at first. I even began to think they shouldn't have started playing with two goals, but were only fit to practise with one. The forwards were very weak, and the captain of the team Yasha Tiktor, at centre, muffed so many shots that it was painful to watch. As the game went on, however, more and more good shots were made, and towards the end of the first half the chaps started heading to each other very neatly. Just then there was a desperate howl behind the goal-line from Sasha Bobir. We looked up and witnessed a strange scene.
Sasha was jumping up and down on the top of the tower, waving his arms and shouting. Above his head buzzed a great cloud of bees. They seemed to be stinging him, for Sasha's howls grew louder and he rushed to the rails. The tower toppled over and Sasha sailed into the grass some distance away. But even there the bees went on stinging him. Seeing that he could not escape them, Sasha leapt to his feet and with a shout of "Help, chaps, they're eating me!" charged towards the players in the middle of the field. The game stopped as if the ball had suddenly vanished into thin air.
"It's a swarm, chaps! Run!" Tiktor bellowed at the top of his voice, and was the first to bolt for the street.
On hearing the wise command of their captain, all the players to a man, as well as the spectators and the self-appointed "half-backs" behind the goal, scudded across the grassy field in the direction of the hospital. Heaps of abandoned clothes dotted the goal-line, the new yellow ball lay forgotten in the goal, and Sasha, blinded by bee stings, still desperately clawing his face and shouting for help, rushed after the fleeing players in his purple shorts, with the cloud of infuriated bees—where had they sprung from so late in the year!—buzzing after him.
Half an hour later, when Sasha was lying on the oilcloth-covered couch in Dulemberg's dispensary swelling visibly, we learnt the details of what had happened.
While Sasha dozed in the warm sun, a queen bee from a passing swarm had settled on his purple shorts. Her example was instantly followed by the whole swarm. Perhaps Sasha in his fright crushed the queen, or perhaps he knocked her off roughly, but in any case the bees stung him so badly that by evening Sasha's eyes were little narrow slits, the skin of his face had risen like dough in a kneading-trough, his freckles had become large blotches, and even his arms and legs were swollen. Dulemberg poured nearly a bottleful of ammonia over Sasha, then we covered the stings with damp earth, but none of these cures had much effect. Squealing with pain, Sasha swelled up before our very eyes.
The next day, Saturday, Sasha was a little better, the swelling had gone down, but it was clear that to appear at the Komsomol meeting in such a state would be to ruin everything. Leaving the injured Sasha at home, Petka and I set out for the meeting alone.
When we arrived, the meeting had already begun and the Komsomol members were standing and singing The Young Guard. All the front seats in the long narrow hall were taken, and Petka and I had to sit right at the back, under a placard appealing for money to build an air squadron which was to be called Our Answer to Chamberlain.
The first two questions on the agenda did not interest me much. Scarcely hearing what was being said, I kept muttering the words of my speech under my breath and waited impatiently for the meeting to deal with applications for membership of the Komsomol. I had a good view of the back of Kotka's head and his broad shoulders in a well-fitting cambric shirt. Obviously he felt he belonged here, he already felt he was a member! Many of the lads, too shy to go in front, were sitting at the back or standing by the door, but Kotka had arrogantly chosen himself a seat in the front row. The sight of him sitting there beside old Komsomol members made me feel that the question of his acceptance had been settled long ago. We with our objection would only make fools of ourselves here, among members of the best Komsomol organization in town.
"Perhaps we had better not say anything after all? Who will listen to us! Half the chaps sitting here are grown-up, lots of them have been in the Civil War, nearly all of them are in the Special Detachments, they all understand politics better than us and know who should be in the Komsomol and who shouldn't. Let's just sit tight until the end of the meeting, and when we know what's happened, slip away before anyone sees us? No one will take any notice of us, no one will laugh at us for saying the wrong thing, and no one will point at us afterwards!"
With such thoughts in my mind, I felt myself growing more and more nervous. I had not yet said a single word, but my mouth was already dry, my head was beginning to ache and the stitches in my chest and head felt as if they were breaking open. But then I decided I just had to speak. In the first place, Petka would jeer at me; secondly, 'Kotka might be admitted to the Komsomol; and finally, what should I tell my father if he asked me, when I got home, what sort of fight we gave Kotka at the meeting! "No, you must speak whatever happens! If you don't, you're a funk. You must speak, do you hear!" I whispered to myself, and suddenly, in the same row where Kotka sat, I spotted the familiar head of Nikita Kolomeyets. Nikita had come to the meeting! Fine! I had heard that Kolomeyets had stayed in town after finishing at the Party School and was waiting for further orders from the District Committee of the Komsomol, but I had never expected to see him at the printers' meeting.
Now I felt a good deal bolder. I knew that even if I made a mess of things Nikita would not let me down. I wanted him to see me. I got up in my seat and started making signs to him with my fingers. But just at that moment Petka tugged at my shirt and whispered:
"Get ready!"
"What for?"
"Listen. They're..."
From the distant platform came the quiet voice of the chairman, a tall fellow in spectacles, with a thick mop of black hair:
"The committee has received an application for Komsomol membership from Konstantin Ivanovich Grigorenko, of the professional class, present social position—worker, apprenticed to a private tinker. Grigorenko has been attending our organization for four months. On the committee's instructions, he has collected money among the private apprentices of Zarechye in aid of the Society for Union between Town and Country. . ."
"Question!" It was Nikita who spoke.
I cheered up at once. "Go on, Nikita, give him a piece of your mind!"
"Perhaps we'll have questions later?" The chairman said addressing the meeting.
"No, it's not that kind of question, Comrade Chairman, I wanted to ask what group the said comrade is to be accepted under," Nikita persisted.
"How do you mean—what group?" The chairman asked in a tone of surprise. "It's quite clear—he's a worker."
"I see!" Nikita said loudly.
I could not understand whether he agreed with the chairman or was keeping something up his sleeve.
When the chairman read Kotka's application and answers to the questionnaire, I felt that the ground was slipping under my feet, and that Petka and I should have hardly anything more to say.
Grigorenko admitted himself that his father had been sentenced to death for counter-revolutionary activities by the Extraordinary Commission, and that for this reason he had utterly disowned all his family. When the application had been announced, the chairman read out a statement from the local paper which said that Konstantin Grigorenko, sixteen years of age, on religious and ideological grounds hereby disowned both his father and his mother and asked to be considered an orphan. The statement had been published six months ago.
"Where is his mother now?" Nikita asked sternly without rising.
Kotka addressed the chairman. "Allow me to answer that question, Comrade Chairman?"
"Go ahead."
"My mother is living here, in this town," Kotka said calmly.
"And you have no connections with her at all?" Nikita asked.
"Absolutely none!" And Kotka shook his head proudly.
"Why not?" Nikita asked.
Kotka looked bewildered. "How do you mean—'why not'? I've disowned her."
"We know all about your disowning her," Nikita said. "It's quite interesting, in fact—a chap turning himself into an orphan of his own accord. Perhaps you'd like us to treat you like a little baby that's been left on someone's doorstep, eh? Can't you tell us why you disowned her? I understand about Dad, he was a counter-revolutionary, what you might call a dirty dog as far as the revolution was concerned. You had a good reason there. But what about Mum, what's she done?"
"I don't quite understand the substance of the question," Kotka said slowly, but with evident anxiety. "The woman who was my mother in the physical sense was from the moral point of view quite alien to me, and was the wife of a man hostile to us... And so I... And besides, she was an indirect exploiter."
"Who did she exploit?" Nikita asked.
"You ask 'who'?" Kotka exclaimed indignantly. "The maid ... sick people, I mean, patients. . ."
There was laughter in the hall. I could not understand whether people were laughing at the question Nikita had asked, or at Kotka's answer.
Disregarding the laughter, Nikita went on: "So you state finally that you have no connections with your mother?"
"That is my final statement!" Kotka said proudly.
"I see! So you're a complete orphan," Nikita said, and turning to the chairman, he added: "I have no more questions."
While other Komsomol members were asking Kotka all sorts of petty questions—how old was he, did he earn much with his private tinker, was it long since he stopped believing in God—I hastily considered what I was going to say.
Kotka was facing up to the meeting very boldly, he used phrases like "the substance of the question," "the physical and moral sense." "an indirect exploiter". . . Someone must have taught him all those long words.
"The application is now open for debate," the chairman said. "Who has any objections?"
A murmur passed through the hall, then everyone was very quiet. The chairman stood up on tip-toe and peered round the hall.
Nikita turned round and eyed the Komsomol members sitting behind him. He seemed to be trying to guess who would make an objection.
Kotka stared straight at the chairman. He must have been longing to look round at the meeting, but was too scared.
In the tense silence I heard a sunburnt Komsomol member sitting behind me say to his neighbour:
"Interesting case!"
Catching the whisper, the chairman asked: "Have you an objection, Polivko?"
Caught unawares, the sunburnt Komsomol member blushed and mumbled: "No, I was just making a remark..."
"Speak up, Petka!" I said, nudging him with my elbow.
"Why me! You speak first!"
"We agreed I should be last."
"But Sasha isn't here?" Petka moaned. "I won't be first. You speak!"
"Who has anything to say? Don't be shy, comrades," said the chairman.
"Go on, Petka!" I hissed threateningly in Petka's ear.
Petka breathed heavily, without speaking.
"I've got an objection!" I shouted desperately, and put up my hand like a kid at school.
The chairman brightened up. "Come on, then," he said. "Step up on the platform."
"I can say it from here. . ."
"Come up here, come up here!" the chairman insisted.
The idea of going all the way up to the chairman's table was horrifying.
"I'd rather say it from here. What's the difference!" I begged.
Voices rose from the hall: "Let the lad stay where he is. Don't put him off!"
With a gesture of despair, the chairman sat down on his stool and eyed me keenly.
But I had been put off already. Everything I had been going to say was forgotten. Before me I saw dozens of strange eyes staring at me curiously; Nikita's smiling face was far away. Kotka was also looking at me, and I could see the unconcealed hatred in his eyes. What was I to say? How should I begin? Should I tell how Grigorenko had beaten Petka up at school? But that was a little thing, we had decided not to mention that. What else though?
The meeting waited.
It was terribly quiet.
I realized that if I kept quiet a second longer everyone would start laughing at me. I must speak. What I said didn't matter. But I must say something!
"Comrades!" I said, my voice breaking with agitation. "We are very well acquainted ... I am well acquainted with this ..." here I cleared my throat and forced myself to go on: "type... One of his family was the hetman Petro Doroshenko, and he himself was leader of a patrol of 'pythons' in the Petlura..."
A roar of laughter interrupted me. I saw grinning faces all round me.
"What are you laughing at?" I bawled through the din. "Isn't it true? He was leader of a patrol of Petlura scouts, and his father..."
But remembering that it was no good talking about Kotka's father, I again stopped short, and after a whole minute's pause, mumbled quickly: "He wants to join the Komsomol to make a career for himself. He was always against Soviet power, don't believe what he says now! ..."
I ought to have said more, much more, but nothing would come—there was not a single clear thought in my mind, and my tongue felt like a chunk of lead.
With a wave of despair, I dropped on the bench. I could not look at Petka—I was too ashamed.
"Have you finished, lad?" the chairman shouted.
"Uh-huh," I mumbled.
And again a ripple of laughter passed through the hall.
Kotka's harsh, calm voice reached my ears. "I have something to say about that objection."
"Not now," said the chairman. "You can answer that after the debate. Well, what is it?"
"I wish to say something that has a bearing on the discussion," Kotka insisted. "A few words will be enough."
"Let him speak!" the sunburnt Komsomol member shouted to the chairman. "Let him have his say!"
The chairman nodded to Kotka: "Go on, but make it short."
"I will be very brief," Kotka began even more firmly. "The rubbish this comrade has just been talking can scarcely be rated as an objection. The point is that he is trying to get even with me for personal reasons. . ."
"What are your facts?" the chairman interrupted.
"I am just about to tell you," Kotka announced imperturbably. "The whole point is that this comrade and I were once courting the same girl, and that girl liked me better. Now, of course, he's...."
"It's not true! You're lying!" I shouted from my seat.
"Not so loud, Mandzhura, you can say that later!" Nikita called gently.
His voice calmed me—at least Nikita was on my side.
"Now, of course, he hates me for personal reasons," Kotka went on and grinned widely, expecting to rouse answering smiles from his audience. "Besides that, when my ex-father was still alive, this lad and the rest of the Zarechye riff-raff often used to break into our orchard. One day my father caught him and whipped him with nettles. But I can't be held responsible for that, can I!" And spreading his arms like a real actor, Kotka sat down, confident of victory'.
The things he had said had stung. Kotka had disgraced me in front 'of everyone. Now I hated him more than ever. But, strange to say, although I felt insulted, although I realized that I had made a fool of myself, that I had mentioned trifles and forgotten to tell the meeting all the really important things, nevertheless I felt that the meeting was on my side, that Kotka had only done himself harm by what he had said.
"Let me ask a question, chairman," said Nikita, standing up from behind the piano.
"Question time is over," the chairman said frowning, but added hastily: "Go on."
"Listen, Grigorenko," Nikita said in a different voice, fixing his eyes on Kotka, "tell the meeting in detail what your relations were with Korybko the gardener."
"I don't understand... I ... I was his lodger," Kotka answered hurriedly.
The meeting stirred. We had all caught the alarm in Kotka's voice.
"Go on," Nikita said sternly.
"Then I was a witness when Korybko's flat was searched," 'Kotka added.
"Well, and didn't you know his son?"
"No ... I mean..." Kotka faltered.
"What do you mean? Don't wriggle, my friend! Don't try to twist things."
"I knew him, but I didn't know it was his son. He didn't talk as if he was in front of me."
"So you did see this Zbyszko when he came to see his father?" Nikita asked.
"I did. I saw him twice. Once he came at night when I was in bed, and the other time I came in from town and they were sitting in the kitchen having dinner."
"And you didn't guess anything?"
"What could I have guessed?" Kotka asked.
"Well, that this man was our enemy and so on."
"How could I know that?" Kotka exclaimed.
"Why not? Didn't you know that Korybko's son was a Polish officer and, as it came out during the investigation, a foreign spy, that he had come over from the other side? Didn't you know anything about that?" Nikita asked Kotka.
"Of course I didn't..." Kotka replied with a tremor in his voice, and glanced round as if to leave the hall.
"What did you say at Seminary Street?"
"Where?" Kotka whispered.
"None of that innocent stuff! You know where!" Nikita said fiercely, and turning to the chairman: "Let me speak."
Nikita stepped out into the passage between the desks and, standing almost beside 'Kotka, said: "There are cases sometimes, comrades, when we admit to our organization people from families that are hostile to us. In such cases we go dead against the proverb that an apple never falls far from an apple-tree, "and sometimes it turns out that we are right, and not the proverb. But we do that only if the people who have chosen themselves a new path make an honest break with the past, hide nothing from the Komsomol, and don't lie to us. Here we have this—if I may be allowed the expression—last of the Mohicans... Everything seems all right—he's told us everything, confessed everything, he's got worker's hands, and the way he talks—why, . it's a treat to listen! Just the man to elect for propaganda organizer! Everything seems all right, I say, but is it really? There were you, sitting with your mouths open listening to him, and he fooled the lot of you! ..."
Nikita paused to take a breath. The meeting waited in alarm to hear "what he was going to say next. Kotka sat with hanging head. The chairman moved his stool forward to the edge of the stage.
"Yes, he fooled you!" Nikita repeated, wiping his damp forehead. "You know the case of Korybko the gardener at the Party School, you've read about it in the papers. Korybko and. his son were condemned long ago, the affair's been filed away in the archives, and it's all ancient history, so to speak. But why tell lies? Why tell lies, that's what I want to know? Only a man with a guilty conscience can lie. And this 'type'—as someone here rightly described him —has been lying all along. As you know, I'm new to your organization. The District Committee sent we here temporarily to help on the work. When Grigorenko applied to join the Komsomol, knowing that he had lived with 'Korybko, I asked the investigator who conducted the Korybko case for some details. In the files there is Grigorenko's evidence. When he was questioned, he admitted that he had three times—not twice!—seen Zbyszko, Korybko's son, visiting his father's house, and besides that, in his evidence Grigorenko put it down plainly, in black and white, that he had known ever since the time of Petlura that Korybko's son was a Polish officer, that he had fled the country, and all the rest of it. At the interrogation Grigorenko said his only reason for not telling the authorities about this was that he had been afraid Zbyszko would shoot him. We won't discuss the rights and wrongs of that here—I think you can sort that out for yourselves—but why tell lies, I ask? Why deceive the meeting, why pretend you don't know anything, why shout all sorts of revolutionary phrases about disowning your mother when all the time you are meeting your mother on the quiet? I don't like that at all, comrades. Proposal: not to admit this individual to the Komsomol!" And Nikita sat down abruptly.
"Shall we continue the debate or. . ." the chairman faltered.
"Vote!" shouts were heard from all over the hall. "Who is in favour of Comrade Kolomeyets's proposal?" the chairman asked.
The show of hands screened Nikita from view. "Who is against?" the chairman asked. No one stirred.
"Then . . . just a minute..." the chairman searched on his table for the agenda and peered at it through his spectacles. "Let's go on to the next question... But first I must ask non-members to leave the hall."
While Petka and I were squeezing our way between the benches towards the exit, Kotka Grigorenko strode past us swinging his arms like a wrestler and vanished through the door. When we came out on Central Square, Kotka's whit? shirt was dwindling away down Smith Street. His walk was as arrogant and challenging as ever. He had lost today, but anyone could see he wasn't going to give in.
The next day, Sunday, turned out cold and windy. High up, on the fortress walls, it was very cold. Galya and I had climbed there over the sloping bastions covered with faded, yellow grass, and now the whole town lay spread before us skirted by the river, which wound away in the distance till it looked no bigger than a brook. On the left we could see the little houses of Zarechye with the white front of the Party School showing in the garden somewhere on its edge; to the right, beyond the fortress bridge, on the very edge of the cliff, stood the Russian volwerks, as the western district of our town was called. Far below, where the river curved under the Stephen Bathori Tower, I could see the black rock hanging over the water. It was so far away that you couldn't even see the whirlpool below it. I remembered the night when Galya and I had been coming back from Shipulinsky's cafe and how scared we had been of the militiaman standing guard on the bridge.
How long ago it seemed! More like two years than three months.
We rested a few minutes in silence. The cold wind ruffled Galya's thick hair and she drew her father's jerkin tightly round her. The shabby leather jerkin was too big for her; its sleeves were so long that only the tips of her fingers showed out of the cuffs. Galya's cheeks were flushed from the wind.
"Good up here, isn't it?" I said.
"Uh-huh!"
I don't know where I found my courage, but at that moment, becoming quite bold, I grasped Galya in both arms and pressed her head to my chest.
"Let me go! You stupid thing! Are you mad!" Galya exclaimed.
"It's not stupid ... I just want to kiss you..." I gasped..
My lips touched Galya's face. Very awkwardly I kissed her on the tip of her cold nose and on her forehead.
"You ought to be ashamed, Vasil!" Galya cried, pushing me away with both hands. :
I was afraid Galya would be really angry and refuse to speak to me any more.
"Well, Vasil," Galya said, moving away from me, "if I didn't know you had been wounded, I'd pull your ears for that."
"Don't be angry, Galya ... I ... it was an accident ..." I mumbled in confusion.
Galya blushed with confusion too. And to hide it, she said quickly: "Let's go away from here. I'm hungry."
"Wait, I'll give you something to eat. I've got some apples and bread. Look!"
And I pulled out of my pocket a fresh hunk of bread and four apples. It was my breakfast that I had not had time to eat.
"From your garden?" Galya asked, accepting a big yellow apple.
"It's a Golden Reinette. Smell it!" Galya sniffed the apple and bit into its golden-pink skin. "Try some bread with it. It's nicer with bread," I advised.
"And fills you up more," Galya agreed, taking a piece of bread.
I munched the crisp shiny crust.
"Galya, I've got a question to ask you," I said blushing.
"What question?"
"Will you tell me the truth?"
"That depends..."
"Did Kotka kiss you?" I forced out with an effort. "Why die! he say that about you?"
"Are you starting that again, Vasil!" Galya burst out angrily. "A fool can say anything! I've told you already, that I'm not at all interested in him. I used to go out for a walk with him, sometimes when I was bored. That's all."
Greatly relieved, I pulled an apple out of my pocket and gobbled it down. Then I remembered that I should have offered it to Galya. But Galya was gazing at the white houses on the cliffs in the distance and did not notice my embarrassment.
"Ours is a nice town... isn't it, Vasil?"
"Not half!" I assented.
"Are there any more towns like it in the Ukraine?"
"Couldn't say."
"Or in Russia?"
"There may be..." I said uncertainly.
"Ours is an interesting town!" Galya said. "I'll be sorry to leave it when we finish at the factory-training school. Won't you?"
"Do you think we'll all be accepted?"
"You will be," Galya said with a touch of envy. "Polevoi said so himself..."
"Well, if they take me, I'll see you get accepted too. Honest, I will, Galya! We'll study together."
The cupola-furnace was already lighted. The pine-wood sticks inside crackled as they burnt, and there was a faint smell of smoke in the foundry. But we didn't mind that—in the corner of the big room a hole had been made in the ceiling and through it you could see the clear blue sky. A slanting ray of sunlight fell on the floor of our foundry, and on the reddish heap of sand by the wall.
How fine and clean we had made our foundry today! Everything that was not needed, tools, and sheets of iron with mould cores on them, had been cleared away and were lying on the tables in the store-room next door. The furnace stood in what had once been the big hall of the finance department; beside it, on the sandy floor, towered a stack of new wooden mould-boxes tightly packed with sand.
The sandy floor was covered with rows of small boxes. Among them stood big ones separated from each other by barred partitions. These were for moulding fly-wheels. They were very heavy, those big fly-wheel moulds. What a lot of work we had done, lifting them and carrying them about under the guidance of our instructor Zhora Kozakevich!
Today our foundry was to make its first casting. To celebrate the occasion Zhora had put on a new set of overalls. Now he was walking carefully between the rows of moulds, checking to see if all of them had proper gas-vents; now and then he glanced into the furnace to see how the fire was going. The fire was going well—through the open door you could see the white shavings disappearing in the blaze and tongues of flame leaping upwards to the thin sticks of pine. Above the sticks were logs. As soon as the fire got well alight, we could close the ash-box, plug the side-door with clay and open the flues.
The furnace stood against the wall on bent steel legs embedded in a brick foundation. To make our furnace smart for the first casting, we had smeared it with a glossy coating of oil. Now its black bulky shape gleamed cheerily.
Only six weeks had passed since Polevoi had visited me in hospital, but so many things had happened to me in that short time! I had been nuts on going to the factory-training school, all our chaps had decided to go there. We were accepted very quickly, but when it came to deciding what workshops we should join, it turned out that half the pupils wanted to become foundry men, and the foundry was the smallest shop of all—for ten pupils only. I still didn't know quite what a foundry man was, but the foundry was where I wanted to work. Then came a hitch—Polevoi refused to put me in the foundry.
"You've only just got over your operation, Vasil," he said, "a foundry man's job isn't easy. You know what they call the foundry—the hot shop. I can't let you work there without a doctor's permission. Choose something a bit easier." But I was not so easily put off.
The hot shop! What mystery and danger there was in those words! Melting iron, turning the hard, heavy scrap metal into dazzling molten liquid—how new and thrilling it sounded! This was something quite different from shaping wooden handles for straw-cutters in the joiner's shop, like Petka Maremukha, or grinding door-keys in a vice in the metal shop, like Galya. I wanted to be a foundry man even before I knew what the job meant. From Polevoi I rushed off to the town hospital, but there I was told that Doctor Gutentag was on holiday. For a whole hour I wandered about the little garden in Bell Street near his house. I thought I might bump into the doctor in the street, but my luck was out. Then I steeled my courage and pulled the bell-handle on his front door. The door was opened by the doctor's daughter, a. very pretty, dark-haired girl called Ida. She often stood at the fence of an evening, and more than once I had admired her fine dark face and arching brows. Now, as Ida opened the door and answered my greeting, she looked at me so intently that I felt the colour mounting to my cheeks.
"What do you want, young man?" she asked.
She had noticed my confusion. I could see a remote, hidden smile in her dark brown eyes.
"I, er. . . Is Yevgeny Karlovich at home?"
"Yevgeny Karlovich is on holiday. He's not taking patients at the moment."
"I'm not a patient, I er. . . Tell him Mandzhura would like to see him. He knows... I was one of his patients in hospital. . ."
Ida was about to leave the room, but as she reached the door, she swung round on her high heels and, giving me an even more penetrating glance, asked: "What did you say your name was—Mandzhura? It wasn't you the bandits wounded with a grenade, was it?"
"Yes, it was..." I admitted, not without satisfaction.
"Daddy!" Ida called loudly from the reception room.
She sat in her father's study all the time I was asking the doctor to let me work in the foundry. The doctor wrote a note to Polevoi to say I was quite well again. I took the note back to the factory-training school and all the way kept thinking to myself that Ida had fallen in love with me.
With Gutentag's note I was admitted to the foundry. Kozakevich, our only instructor, set straightaway to teach us moulding. For days on end we crawled about the damp sand under Zhora's instruction—making moulds for flywheels, axle-boxes, and stove doors. At first we just thought it was daft. What a job! Crawling about like kids in the sand and making sand-pies! But as the day when we were to make our first casting drew nearer, I began to find moulding more and more interesting. Now I was beginning to understand why you must take the wooden models out so carefully, why you must be so particular about smoothing out every little bump round the edge of the mould, why you must brush every scrap of dirt out of the deep dark holes left by the models in the sand.
I realized that moulding was not the biggest and most interesting job—that still lay ahead, when we started casting.
And now the great day had arrived. I watched everything our instructor did, longing to see what would happen next.
Far away on the other side of the square, where our school stood, Motor Factory's engine was chugging steadily. Over there our chaps were studying to become locksmiths, turners, joiners; over there Petka was pedalling his lathe and making a piece of dry ash into a handle for a tool; over there, on the second floor, Galya was cutting her keys. It was noisy over there now, just before dinner, but here in the foundry all was still, and in this stillness you could hear the wood crackling at the bottom of the furnace. The pine-wood sticks had nearly burnt out and the fire was reaching up to the big dry logs.
Zhora glanced into the furnace. "Vasil, tell the motor-men to give us some air," he said, "then sit down with the other chaps and have your lunch."
I charged into the next room and yelled excitedly: "Start the motor!"
The stumpy little mechanic-instructor Gumenuk fiddled about round the old car engine for a bit and heaved on the crank-handle. The engine coughed once or twice, then spluttered into life, filling the room with bluish petrol smoke. Near by, on a wooden platform, stood a badly peeled enamel bath with battered edges. It was connected to the engine by long rubber pipes. For a real car radiator the local communal stores superintendent had demanded a very high price from our school; so Polevoi and Gumenuk had fixed up this bath for cooling the engine. They had found it on a junk-heap in the yard of the old military court in Bell Street.
The motor coughed and shook and soon sucked up some water. When the water gurgled in the bath, Gumenuk beamed with satisfaction, took off his cap and wiped his perspiring, bald pate.
Beside the motor, looking very important, stood Sasha Bobir. He was training in the mechanics shop, but his job was dismantling car engines, and Polevoi had sent him over with Gumenuk to help us while we were casting. Sasha kept himself very aloof, hardly deigning to talk to us foundry men. Now, noticing me staring at the motor, Sasha put on an air of knowing everything there was to know about such things. He grabbed a rag, wiped the oily body of the motor land asked his instructor importantly: "Can I start the fans, Comrade Gumenuk?"
The instructor nodded, and Sasha, with the same jaunty air of knowing everything, pulled over a lever and set in motion the two driving-belts connecting the engine with the fans. The black fans whirled their propeller-shaped blades and drove air into the furnace. Now there was nothing else to see here.
I darted into the foundry and the noise of the motor faded away. Air was hissing through the pipes into the furnace. The flames inside were fluttering. At first it seemed that the strong current of air would put the fire out, but soon the flames started leaping up, eating hungrily through the logs to the dark slabs of coke that lay under the heavy load of iron. You could see the fire roaring up through the blue glass of the spy-holes in the sides of the furnace. It was a real strong draught, and I could tell by Zhora's face that he was satisfied.
"Of! and get your lunch, champions! You'll have plenty of time to see all you want to see!" he said, smiling broadly and rolling the sleeves of his tarpaulin jacket up to the elbow.
We sat down with Zhora in a free corner of the foundry, right on the damp sand, and with many a glance over our shoulders at the roaring furnace began to eat our lunch. The bread and treacle crunched between our teeth. Sand had got to the bread in spite of all my efforts to wrap it well. Zhora held a lump of bacon fat in his big sinewy hand and cleaned the salt off it with a penknife, then he started eating it like an apple—in great bites. He munched so hard that big muscles rippled under the dark skin of his cheeks. I looked at Zhora, at his large, rather hairy hands—more like pincers than hands—and remembered how he had once thrown Zot Zhegulyov, the champion with the grip of steel. I felt proud that we had such an instructor.
After lunch, I slipped into the next room so that no one could see me and rolled my sleeves up. I wanted to be like Zhora.
Suddenly I heard Sasha's squeaky voice: "Look, it's dripping, it's dripping!"
I ran back into the foundry and pushed my way to the blue spy-hole in the furnace. And, sure enough, through the blue glass I could see the first slippery little drops of iron oozing over the blazing slabs of coke.
The furnace was very hot now, and smoke was rising from the oil we had smeared over it.
The drops of iron, like hot tears, grew bigger and bigger. Now they no longer oozed over the coke, but dropped through the chinks in large heavy blobs. The molten metal glowed as I had never seen anything glow before.
"What, the milk boiled over already?" I heard Polevoi's voice behind me.
He was bending over us and peering through the spyhole.
"We'll soon be starting, Comrade Director," said Zhora.
"Mind how you go, Zhora—if you make a mess of things, you'll have the whole town laughing," Polevoi warned him.
"We won't make a mess of things, you needn't worry,"
Zhora responded with a smile.
"The lads have asked me to let them see your first casting," said Polevoi. "I've given them permission. They'll be here in a moment when they finish their instruction on the other side. In other words, you'll have a big audience, so mind you don't trip up."
Kozakevich looked worried. "No young audiences for me! They'll break my moulds, or spoil something else."
"Take it easy, Zhora," Polevoi soothed him. "It'll do the youngsters a lot of good to see a casting, and as for the moulds—you needn't worry about that, I'll tell them." "Telling them's all very well..." Zhora complained. "But where are they going to stand? This isn't a theatre or a wrestling show, it's a casting. Look how little room we've got."
"They can stand in the doorway."
"In the doorway?" Zhora grinned wryly. "Come off it. Comrade Polevoi! What if there's an accident, or we have to run out for clay—what then? The entrance must be free, we can't have a lot of onlookers standing there."
"All right, we'll open the windows and they can watch you from the yard. Agree?" Polevoi insisted.
"They can do that, if they like," Zhora consented. "I don't mind them being there. That's your territory. You can hold a fancy-dress ball out there for all I care."
When Zhora picked up a sharp heavy crow-bar to tap the furnace with, there was a crowd of spectators at each window. This was something to look at—the first casting! The young workers gazed eagerly into the foundry. Inside, it was getting very hot and the draughts didn't help much. I knew that Petka was looking in at one of the windows, and guessed that Galya had probably come as well, but I could not turn round. I had an important duty to carry cut-in my hands were three wooden poles, each of them with a clay bung on the end. Zhora lunged with the steel bar and drove the point into the clay plugging the furnace. The dry-clay crumbled and sprinkled into the spout, but the first blow did not reach the iron. Zhora made another lunge—the crow-bar pierced the clay and entered the furnace. Zhora bent down and drove it in further, then began to work it from side to side. He worked it about so vigorously I thought the furnace would topple over. From time to time the crow-bar grazed the spout. Zhora's tarpaulin jacket was stretched taut across his shoulders; standing with his legs apart right by the spout down which the molten iron was to flow, he grunted and worked boldly with his crow-bar.
"Isn't he frightened!" I thought to myself. "Why, the iron might push that bar out and flow right over him!"
With a sharp heave Zhora pulled the bar out of the furnace. Its tip was already white-hot. A red ball of slag rolled out of the hole he had made, and then, like a spring bubbling from the ground, the stream of iron flowed out of the furnace.
Hissing quietly, a dazzling white colour, it ran down the clay spout, carrying away the dust and scraps of clay.
Zhora dropped his crow-bar and, calling Tiktor to help him, picked up the ladle. As the stream of iron poured out of the spout, they caught it in the ladle. Glittering sparks flew up to the ceiling and scattered down on us like stars from a fire-work as we crowded round the furnace. Our clothes began to smell of burning. The iron flowed well, splashing vigorously into the ladle.
"Take over, Gumenuk!" Zhora shouted.
Gumenuk deftly seized the handles of the ladle. When his hands were free, Zhora calmly took one of the bung-poles that I was holding. Keeping his eyes fixed on the stream of iron, he felt the bung with his fingers, shaping it to a point. The ladle was filling rapidly. A sticky reddish coating of slag floated on top of the iron, just like the skin on milk. The skin rose higher and higher. Now we'd done it! Any moment, it seemed, the molten metal would overflow and pour into the pit.
But Zhora was ready. Biff!—he plunged the bung straight into the hole from which the iron was flowing. Sparks flew on all sides, but a small trickle of iron still oozed into the ladle.
Without looking round, Zhora seized another bung-pole from my hand and rammed it home, right in the middle of the flow. Immediately a dark red circle appeared round the clay bung. As it cooled, the iron set round the bungs and the last drops trickled into the ladle, breaking through the grey scum of slag. The foundry at once grew darker; only the ladle swaying gently between Tiktor and Gumenuk gave off a dazzling glare. Zhora quickly picked up small wooden shovel and skimmed away the slag. The white glare from the iron grew even brighter and bubbles appeared on its surface.
"Come on!" Zhora shouted, and took Tiktor's place at the ladle.
Stepping carefully between the rows of mould-boxes, Zhora and Gumenuk carried the ladle to a large square mould in the far corner, where a fly-wheel was to be cast. Zhora started to tip the ladle, but at that moment he shouted at the top of his voice:
"Mandzhura—tow! Hurry!"
I dashed over to the mould and grabbed up a piece of tow that was lying at the bottom of it. Before I could jump bask, Zhora had tipped the ladle and a stream of molten iron was pouring into the mould. The sizzling ladle was only three paces away; sparks flew straight at me, the heat of the molten iron fanned my face. Unable to move away, I pressed back against the wall, blinking when the sparks flew near.
A lot of iron was needed to fill the mould.
It poured into the big hole in a broad steady stream. I began to think it would take all the iron in the ladle to cast this one fly-wheel, but suddenly, right at my feet, a red column of iron spouted up the overflow.
"Enough!" Zhora shouted and carried the ladle away to another mould.
The iron in the filled mould set quickly. First the narrow overflow grew dark, then the broad cone-shaped mould turned red and began to cool.
The trainees took turns in carrying the ladle with Zhora. Zhora tilted the ladle by its double handles, aiming the flow of iron neatly into the moulds, while the trainees merely held the round handle on the other side.
I waited anxiously for my turn to carry the ladle. Perhaps Polevoi had secretly instructed Zhora not to let me carry? Perhaps, they would start again about my operation, about not straining myself? But if Zhora didn't even let me carry the ladle once to the moulds, it would be a disgrace. To be training as a foundry man, to wait all this time for the first casting, and then not to fill a single mould! I did all I could to attract attention; I chased back and forth for fresh bungs, I stalked about among the moulds with a cleaner always at the ready, I handed Zhora his crow-bar...
The furnace was tapped for the last time. Next door the motor had stopped long ago. Except for the cracking of the moulds and the talk of the watching trainees at the windows, the foundry was quiet. Again that blond-haired bony-faced Tiktor stepped up to the ladle. While I still stood here with my bungs he was going to carry again!
They must have forgotten me, or else they were sorry and pretending not to notice me on purpose. Sweating, tired and miserable, I stood by the furnace with hanging head. And suddenly I heard Zhora's voice:
"Just a minute, Tiktor, you've had a go already. Let Vasil try!"
I threw down the bungs and seized the handle.
Zhora led the way.
He bent his shoulders as he walked. Beyond the glare of the ladle I could see his broad back, the hair matted on the back of his neck, his bare muscular tattooed arms streaming with sweat. I walked behind, gripping the handle with both hands and taking short quick steps over the soft floor of the foundry. My feet dragged in the sand, but I had only one thought in my mind—not to fall. If you fell, the molten iron would splash over your legs, or burn your face.
It was very awkward to fill the last mould. The pouring gate was right in a corner, and it was some time before we could get the ladle near it. I stood on tip-toe holding my breath. Zhora lifted his two handles as high as possible.
"Don't dance about now!" Zhora shouted. "Keep still. We'll pour it in from the top!" And he tipped the ladle.
Molten iron streamed into the mould. It was a good thing Zhora's aim was sure—the iron poured straight into the hole. The flow was strong and tiny splashes sprinkled everywhere. They stung my head, my face, my hands. It was so hot it made you want to cry out. I thought the skin was pealing off my face, and then my eyes started watering from the glow. I saw the falling stream of metal through a mist and nearly fell over. I longed for the moment when the ladle would be empty. But that moment was approaching—the ladle was becoming lighter and lighter, the mould was filling up. Then—of all things!—I heard Galya's anxious voice quite near: "Vasil! Your trousers are on fire!"
I moved and jerked the ladle. Instead of going into the mould, the iron streamed over the wet sand. Splashes showered everywhere. The trainees jumped away from the windows, but just at that moment the hubbub of voices, the hissing of the iron, Zhora's shout, "Keep still, Vasil!"—everything was drowned by a wild howl from Sasha Bobir.
"Ow-ow-ow!..." came Sasha's voice from somewhere near the furnace.
"Come on, pour quickly!" Zhora commanded.
We threw, rather than poured, the last of the iron out of the ladle, then dropping the ladle on the sand, dashed next door, where Sasha was howling.
I followed Zhora, putting out my singed trousers as Iran. Sasha was hopping about the room, clutching one of his worn-out boots and uttering fearful howls. Now he clawed at his boot trying to break the laces, now he stamped his foot on the floor with such force that at any moment we expected the ceiling to collapse on our heads. At last, growing desperate, Sasha stood still for a second, threw a wild glance at us, then, as if pursued by a pack of mad dogs, leapt into the enamel bath.
Never in my life had I seen such a leap! Still shouting, Sasha landed on both feet in the warm water at the bottom of the bath. The bath gave way under the impact and tipped over with Sasha inside. Water swept across the floor towards us. Sasha, having apparently gained some momentary relief, took a flying leap out of the open window. We found him on a patch of grass on the other side of the yard. Wet through, tear-stained and subdued, Sasha was sitting cross-legged on the grass, examining a rather red foot with toe-nails that had obviously not been cut for quite some time.
"What's the matter, laddie?" Zhora asked, putting his arm gently round Sasha's shoulders.
Sasha turned his thin freckled face towards us and said plaintively:
"Look..."
"Look at what?" Zhora said, puzzled.
"Look at that," Sasha moaned, poking a finger into his palm.
In his palm lay a tiny grain of hardened iron, about the size of a flax seed.
"Well? A little drop of iron!" Zhora said, stifling his laughter.
"A little drop!" Sasha exclaimed even more plaintively. "That little drop's burnt right into the bone of my foot! Look!"
"Where's it burnt you to the bone! Come along, show us," Zhora asked.
Feeling that nothing would come of playing the martyr, Sasha showed us the small red mark on the arch of his foot with less flourish.
"No, laddie," said Zhora, "you just thought it burnt the bone, because you were frightened. Your bone's all right, but..."
"Comrade instructor," Polevoi's voice interrupted him, "you must inspect their boots next time before casting. No one should be let into the foundry with bad boots. Don't all the lads get special footwear?"
"I don't get any, Comrade Director," Sasha muttered awkwardly. "I'm a motor mechanic, not a foundry man."
"Well, even if you are a mechanic," Polevoi said, smiling as he picked up Sasha's boot, "it's still your job to see your boots are in proper repair. Look, the seam's gone all the way round. Is it too hard to sew it up? Get hold of some thread and it won't take you a minute. Fancy coming into a foundry barefoot... Perhaps you want me to mend your boots for you?"
"No, what for?" Sasha exclaimed in fright. "I'll mend them myself." He went over to Polevoi, trailing his foot-cloth behind him in the grass, and hastily recovered his boot.
"And your foot-cloths could do with a wash," Polevoi said. "You aren't so badly wounded after all—a burn like that won't put you out of action, but dirty foot-cloths can make it a lot worse. Go and have it bandaged. Jump to it!" . Sasha ran off, and Zhora, glancing round at us, ordered: "Now then, you ugly ducklings! Back to work! Think I'm going to clean out the furnace all by myself!"
That day we got home later than usual. "Let's go through the town," I said to Petka as we left the gates of the factory-training school.
"What for?" said Petka. "It's quicker along the boulevard."
"Doesn't matter, let's go through the town. I've got to buy a book on mechanics."
I hadn't got to buy a book at all, of course, I simply wanted people in town to see me in my working overalls, with burnt trousers, looking so dirty and tired.
There was some sort of religious holiday on that day, and now and then, as we crossed New Bridge, we ran into several smartly-dressed shopkeepers' sons out walking with their girls. They sauntered past in their new suits made of smuggled cloth, and their foreign shoes with pointed toes. Their girls wore smart silk dresses, ribbons in their hair, white stockings and patent-leather shoes. They chewed sunflower seeds and sucked fruit drops. How I wanted just then to bump into one of those loungers, those daddy's and mummy's darlings, who hung about the boulevards or sunbathed on the bank of the river below the fortress bridge all day! It would have given me a lot of pleasure to push my way through them, spoiling their smart, foreign clothes with my dirty, soot-stained shirt.
The rotten profiteers! In those years they still lived better than us by swindling honest working people. I walked past them holding my head high, proud that I was a worker, that I had a grant of only eighteen rubles a month, when at any time they could go and ask their fathers for fifty rubles pocket money, or even a hundred.
"Why didn't you wash at school, Vasya?" Petka asked, catching me up and glancing at my face.
"I'll wash at home, with soap," I replied and smudged the soot over my cheeks even more.
My face was stinging, my arms ached, my throat was dry from the sulphur fumes that had floated round the foundry while we were casting.
We came to Bell Street where Doctor Gutentag lived. I slowed down. I hoped that Ida would be standing by the fence and would see me in my glorious dirty state. But Ida was not there, and the curtains were drawn. I walked on regretfully.
"Where's Kolomeyets gone?" Petka asked all of a sudden.
"Nikita?" I asked carelessly. "Nikita's working in Yarmolintsy, he's a propaganda organizer. We'll have to go and see him on Sunday. Let's go, eh, Petka?"
"Is it far?"
"Yarmolintsy? Hardly any distance."
"Let's go then."
"Of course, we will!" I said, warming to the idea. "And we'll take some of the other chaps from school. We'll all go together. We'll take some food and start first thing in the morning. That'll be fine!" Who shall we take? There's Sasha Bobir, and we could take Tiktor, then ... Galya."
"And I'll bring some water in my water bottle," Petka decided.
"You know what?" I said. "We won't just go to Yarmolintsy for a spree, we can do some work there, in their cottage reading-room. We're young workers, aren't we? I read in the paper that young workers ought to give the country chaps a lead. And Kolomeyets will be grateful to us for it."
"But it's not worth taking Galya. Let's make it all chaps."
"Don't start that! She'll come in useful too," I said as calmly as I could. "She can tell the village girls about politics..."
As I spoke, I felt suddenly confused. Even now I got a thrill when I remembered how I had kissed Galya that cold windy Sunday on the walls of Old Fortress. I could not forget that kiss and, whenever I thought of it, I felt even more fond of Galya. I was miserable when I went a long time without seeing her, and overjoyed when Kozakevich sent me to the locksmith's shop to fetch something. Knowing that I should see Galya at her bench, in her blue apron, I did not walk, I ran. And Galya treated me differently now,
Today, of course, she must have shouted: "Vasil, your trousers are on fire!" because she was afraid I should get burnt. When we talked, she often looked away and blushed. Bold and lively with the other boys, she talked to me quietly and hesitatingly, and was a long time trying to find the right words, just as if she were afraid to hurt me. I was sure Galya loved me. The mere thought filled me with pride, and it was awful to think that it might be all my imagination.
Sometimes I wanted to tell everyone—Petka more than anybody, of course—of my love for Galya, but I always checked myself in time. I felt that such things should not be told even to one's closest friend, that I should hide my love for Galya deep down in my heart and not boast about it.
Now I sensed a trap in Petka's words—perhaps he wanted to find out about Galya and me? But Petka—good old Fatty Maremukha—walked on as if nothing were amiss, and I said to him: "Petka, you persuade Galya to come yourself. All right?"
"I don't want to. She'll get tired."
"Mind you don't get tired yourself. You're afraid to swim far, but look how Galya swims! She may be a girl, but she's a lot more guts than you."
"Huh, that's what you think!" Then anxious to change this unpleasant subject, Petka said: "Next week, I hear, they're going to organize a Komsomol group at our school too. Is it true?"
"Fact!"
"And will they accept everyone?"
"No, why everyone? Only the best."
"Do you think they'll take me?"
"We shall have to consider that!" I said pompously, as if I were already a 'Komsomol member.
"You know, Vasil, my Dad's been calling me a 'Komsomol' for a long time. It won't half be rotten if they don't take me!" And Petka heaved a dismal sigh.
The thud of a hammer could be heard in the distance.
In Zakharzhevsky's shop, by the purple light of the forge, Kotka Grigorenko was hammering a white-hot strip of metal. He was working in that dusty little private workshop, still trying to get himself a worker's record. He had not lost hope of tricking us. Anyone could see that he really hated his work. He must be longing to go to town and join the loungers, but Zakharzhevsky was a Catholic and did not recognize the feast days of the Orthodox Church. And so Kotka was still banging away with his hammer when we walked past on the other side of the street.
Petka, of course, kept glancing into the shop, but I only looked once, then, lifting my head high, walked past Kotka, dirty and tired, my trousers scorched, my hands that had long since become calloused and hard pressed to my sides.
Turning the corner, we came into broad Zhitomir Street. Somewhere at the end of it, past green gardens, on the very edge of the town, stood the tall white Party School. Petka turned off to Zarechye. I went on, towards the school.