The Town By The Sea tof-3 Read online

  He must have cut across the side-road and made his way through the yards to the Market Square. It was a difficult route, specially for a wounded man; he would have had to climb several fences and get through the barbed wire between the yards, and, after all that, run out on to the well-lighted Market Square. There was a watchman on the square. He sat by the co-operative grocer's wrapped in a sheepskin, with a shot-gun in his hands. Perhaps the watchman had been asleep? Not very likely. At any rate he swore he hadn't slept a wink. Only ten minutes before the incident his wife had brought him a bowl of meat and buckwheat porridge for supper. The meal was still warm when the guards ran up and asked him if he had seen anything. It was hard to imagine how the wounded man could have slipped across the Market Square without the watchman—an old, experienced soldier—noticing him. Nevertheless the trail did lead to Market Square. The barbed wire round the red-brick house on the other side of the street had been pulled apart. On one of its spikes there was a scrap of cloth that must have been torn from the clothing of a man crawling through in a hurry. Apart from the scrap of cloth on the barbed wire there were no other traces of the stranger.

  Farther away, on the steps of the large building where the staff of the district education department lived, a drop of dried blood was discovered.

  One of the few lucky ones who were allowed to leave the guard-room and take part in the pursuit of the bandit was Furman, once a juvenile delinquent and now a pupil at the factory-training school. At the sight of the blood on the steps Furman was overjoyed. He thought it was the bandit's blood. But the wife of the director of district education who lived in the house said it came from a chicken she had killed the previous Friday. Bitterly disappointed, the unlucky sleuth wandered away.

  It could only be supposed that the bandit had got out on to the lighted square, slipped past under the very nose of the sleepy watchman and crossed the bridge into the old part of the town. From there he could make either for the Polish or the Rumanian frontier.

  In the attic of the shed at headquarters, the bandit had dropped a bundle of fuse wire and a detonator. Apparently he had intended first to do away with the sentry, then make his way to the ammunition cellar and blow it up, headquarters and all. When he came out on the balcony and saw no one in the yard, he must have concluded that the sentry was asleep. Sasha would have had a bad time if he hadn't come out of his nook and looked round. As it turned out, Sasha had been quite unarmed while he was on guard.

  PEELING THE SPUDS

  Relieved from his post, Sasha lay down on the couch in the guard-room and pretended to be asleep. No one in the guard-room was sleeping after the excitement of the night. We kept telling each other over and over again what had happened and making all kinds of wild guesses. Furman, a little, thin fellow, insisted that the bandit had dressed himself up as a woman while he was in the garden, and slipped across the Market Square in disguise. Only Sasha took no part in the discussion.

  The chaps said that when Nikita ran into the yard he had started to put Sasha through it. Sasha had tried to make excuses, but Nikita had cut him short:

  "You're just a funk, that's what you are! Taken unawares, were you? Weren't expecting it, were you?... I suppose if they start dropping bombs on you from an aeroplane, you'll be taken unawares again and start shouting, 'I say, gentlemen, what do you want? Halt! Halt!...' Call yourself a member of the Komsomol."

  Nikita's words must have had a very strong effect. Sasha could think of nothing better than to pretend he was ill. He lay on the couch muffled up in his "raglan" coat. Fie was very ashamed of himself for his part in the night's happenings. And who wouldn't have been in his place!... Sasha's "illness" started like this. When he came into the guard-room, he complained that his legs felt weak and he had a terrible headache. Then yellow circles started floating before his eyes...

  And now, as he listened to our excited talk, Sasha tried to pretend he was in a fever. He made his teeth chatter, kicked his legs about and moaned pitifully. Actually his moans were more like the whining of a puppy that had been outside on a cold night. Anybody could see he was longing to get properly ill. Sasha would have given a lot at that moment for a dose of scarlet fever, say, or "flu." Instead of laughing at him, everybody would have been sorry and said it was because he had been ill. But Sasha was fit as a fiddle. We knew that, and we knew quite well what was the matter with him.

  Nikita came in from the yard. He was carrying a smoky iron pot.

  "Well, young people," he began solemnly, "in spite of the serious happenings of last night the demands of Nature must be satisfied. I am not mistaken, I trust, in saying that we are all hungry. To put things in a nutshell, there are spuds behind the stove. We'll peel as many as we can in this pot, then we'll imagine the aroma of sizzling fat, and soon we shall have a modest but satisfying meal. Who's against?"

  No one was against Nikita's suggestion. "Who's for?" Nikita asked. Everyone except Sasha raised their hands. "Majority in favour! The debate is over!" Nikita exclaimed cheerfully, and going over to Sasha, he ripped off his overcoat: "Wake up, Sasha, old man, the dicky-birds are singing. Come on, spuds need peeling!" "I can't.. . I feel awful," Sasha moaned. "Sasha, our dearly beloved Comrade Bobir!" Nikita said very tenderly, winking at us. "We all know you are ill, very seriously ill, we all know very well what has caused your illness, nevertheless we all beg you not to act as if the end of the world had come, and wish you a rapid recovery. You mustn't let yourself be captured by that alien spirit Melancholy... Dearly beloved Sasha," Nikita went on, posing like an orator, "we beg you in all sincerity to overcome your sadness and peel the potatoes, for sooner or later you will get hungry yourself, and, as 'tis said, he who does not work, neither shall he eat... As for the real cause of your malady, Sasha, old man, you mustn't be too angry with me for those harsh words that were hurled at you on the threshold of this mansion. Even Homer sometimes nods, you know. We're all young still, we all make mistakes, and everyone except a hardened nitwit learns something from his mistakes, Why be sad and spoil your own valuable nerves with grieving?"

  Rocking with suppressed laughter, we listened to Nikita's speech, trying to understand how much he meant jokingly, and how much was serious.

  Sasha tried to keep it up; he clutched his head and rubbed his red freckled face, but at last he got up and with a shiver took his seat on the bench.

  Nikita pulled a sack of potatoes out from behind the stove and, dumping it down in the middle of the guardroom, said: "The host requests his honoured quests to present themselves at dinner!"

  We set to work on the muddy potatoes.

  Penknives and cobblers' knives with corded handles gleamed in our hands. Furman produced a real Finnish dagger with an antler haft, which he had kept since the days when he had been a juvenile delinquent. At ordinary times Furman kept his treasure in a green box under his bed, only taking it out with him when he was on guard. It was his boast that when he had this knife with him there wasn't a bandit in the country he was afraid of!

  Nikita spread out an old newspaper on the floor near the stove. Soon curly potato peelings were reeling off our knives and falling with a rustling sound on the sheet of newspaper.

  "But who was it?" Petka muttered, still shaken by the events of the night.

  "Now, that is a question!" Nikita exclaimed grinning. "Anybody would think you came from the convent we used to have in this ancient town. It's clear enough who it was... Don't you remember what the papers said last autumn about the frontier guards nabbing a spy? We're on the frontier too, and you've got to be on the look-out.. ."

  "But what do these spies want here?" Petka asked again. "What have they left behind?"

  "Oh, they've left a great deal behind, old chap," Nikita replied, seriously now. "In the time of the tsar, nearly the whole Donbas was in their hands. Think of Krivorozhye, and the iron ore! May be when you've finished training you'll find yourself in those parts. Notice the old names of the factories there—Providence, Dumot, Balfour... The foreign capita
lists lost millions of rubles in those factories. Soviet power has trodden on their corns good and proper! Did you think they supplied Denikin and Wrangel and Petlura for nothing? They thought those bandits would get them back all they had lost. They didn't spare the cash either. And it all went down the drain..."

  The door opened and Polevoi entered the guard-room.

  "What's the news?" Nikita asked, glancing at him inquiringly.

  "None so far. Seems to have vanished into thin air..." Polevoi glanced at the sack of potatoes: "Going to do some cooking? Do me a favour, chaps, will you?" he went on, pulling off his wadded jacket.

  "When the spuds are ready, leave a few for me. In the meantime I'll have forty winks..'. You take over as guard commander, Kolomeyets."

  "Yes, Comrade Polevoi!" Nikita answered smartly, jumping to his feet.

  Our director nodded and lay down on the couch. But before he had time to stretch himself out, there was a whistle from the yard summoning the guard commander. Polevoi jumped up, but Nikita grabbed his rifle and said: "No, have a rest. The new guard commander is already on the job!" And so saying, he ran out into the yard.

  We stopped peeling the potatoes and listened to the voices outside the door.

  Polevoi listened too. His lean sunburnt face with its sparse young stubble was serious and strained.

  Only a few minutes ago Polevoi had seen off Vukovich the OGPU representative from the frontier guard detachment. From the Komsomol members at the district OGPU we had heard that Vukovich was always entrusted with the most difficult cases. Polevoi had shown Vukovich where Sasha had first spotted the bandit and how the bandit had got into headquarters. From the attentive manner in which this tall fair-haired security man in the green-topped cap of a frontier guard listened to our director, we realized that Vukovich attached great importance to Polevoi's opinion. He questioned Polevoi in a quiet, calm voice. Any of us who watched him from afar would have given a lot to know what was in Vukovich's mind at that moment.

  He and Polevoi sat together for a long time in the attic. They must have examined every inch of that dusty attic floor. Then, following the path of the fugitive, they squeezed through the gap and, using a ladder brought by Fur-man, climbed down from the roof of the hostel into the little garden, and thus worked their way, step by step, right as far as the Market Square. Vukovich questioned the grocery store watchman at great length, then returned to headquarters, where he left Polevoi.

  "He'll have to use his noddle this time!" Nikita had said when Vukovich left. "This business will come before the District Party Committee. Kartamyshev himself will go into everything..."

  Now, as we listened to the voices in the yard, we con- « eluded it was Vukovich, who had come

  back. The thought was too much for Polevoi, who threw his jacket round his shoulders and strode to the door. But he was just reaching for the handle when the door opened and Nikita came in.

  He was ruffled, and from the way he thrust his rifle into the rack, we realized that the conversation he had just had at the gate, had annoyed him.

  "What was it?" Polevoi asked.

  Sitting down and starting to peel a potato, Nikita answered unwillingly:

  "Appearance of a mangy sheep not even concerned with guard duty!"

  "What else? Make yourself clear!" Polevoi said more severely.

  "Tiktor turned up. He wants to guard headquarters with the rest of the Komsomol members, you know. Says he only just found out that our group was on duty. Pretending to be innocent as a lamb, and reeks like a vodka still!" Nikita snapped angrily, carving a thick slice of peel off a large potato.

  "What then?" Polevoi insisted.

  "Then I told Tiktor we could do without him and his conduct would come up for discussion later."

  "How did he have the cheek to look you in the lace!" Polevoi said, lying down again. "You'll be a weak-minded lot, lads, if you forgive Tiktor for the way he acted last night."

  But even without Polevoi's saying it, we all realized that Nikita would not forget how Yasha Tiktor had not answered the call from headquarters because he was drunk.

  AN UNWELCOME VISITOR

  How many times at Komsomol meetings, in the hostel, in the school workshops had Nikita said to us:

  "Behave yourselves well, chaps. The whole town has its eyes on you, remember. You are workers-to-be, the best chaps in town, future Party men."

  Nikita had a good reason for saying that. In those days, young workers were few in our little town—some apprentices in the local print-shop, two pupils at the power station, five young railwaymen, and eight apprentices at the Motor Factory, which, although considered the biggest in the district, had little more than a hundred workers altogether. Young workers who were Komsomol members often had no Komsomol group at their place of work and belonged to groups in other organizations. But we factory-school trainees worked together, in one body, and our group was considered a strong one. We set an example to every boy and girl in town. At all youth conferences our delegates sat on the platform, and took part in the debates, and their opinion—the opinion of a big body of young workers always carried a lot of weight.

  The chaps who belonged to our group had fire and courage. They read a lot and thought about the future; they put loyalty to their work, and to their mates at work above everything.

  We had Nikita Kolomeyets to thank for much of this. Besides being our group Secretary and political instructor, he was a good friend. He wasn't above singing a song with us, but when it came to work, he was strict and exacting, and never let things slide.

  At that time, factories were springing up all over the country. Factory schools were being opened to train the new generation that was to take the place of the old workers. Thousands of young fellows from working families joined these schools, anxious to become turners, mechanics, foundry men, smiths, milling-machine operators.

  It was all right for the youths who lived in the big industrial centres. But in the little towns it was more difficult. Take us, for example. We had heard about these factory schools as far back as 1923, and, of course, the boys and girls who had lost their parents during the Civil War and had been brought up at the children's home were keen as mustard on the idea. But for a long time 'not a single factory school was opened anywhere in the whole district, not to mention our little border town. Many of the chaps even thought of moving to other towns.

  What hope was there that a training school would ever be founded at the Motor Factory, which only made straw-cutters for the countryfolk and showed no signs of expanding! New workers were not needed there—it had quite enough already.

  But Nikita Kolomeyets, Dmitry Panchenko and other members of the District Komsomol Committee made up their minds to get a factory-training school started in our town.

  Their proposal was supported by the District Party Committee. Nikita and the other activists were able to prove that a school-come-workshop of this kind would quickly repay the cost of organizing it. On Hospital Square, next to the Motor Factory, stood a big, half-ruined house which before the Revolution had been a Jewish religious school for students of the Talmud. The house and its empty out-buildings were given over to the factory school. All ownerless machinery was put at its disposal. In an old distillery Nikita discovered more than ten turner's lathes. You can imagine how glad the chaps were when they found out they could become skilled workmen without leaving their home town!

  Now, under Zhora Kozakevich's instruction, H was becoming quite an expert at moulding axle-boxes for carts, gears for separators, and once even, just for practice, I cast a bust of the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph, using as a model an old bust of the emperor that I had found washed up on the river-bank after a flood. True, the emperor's moustache and side-whiskers did not come out properly, and the bronze didn't get as far as the tip of his nose, but even so that bust landed me in hot water! Yasha Tiktor seized his chance and started calling me a "monarchist," because, as he put it, I was "fabricating images of tyrants." The accusation was so
stupid that Nikita did not agree to have it brought up at the group meeting, but all the same, to have done with the affair, I cast the snub-nosed monarch to another shape.

  My friends in the other shops were getting on well too. Petka was turning out handles for straw-cutters and sickles. He had also learnt how to make good draughtsmen on his little turner's lathe—he just used to reel them off ready to play with. Sasha tinkered about all day with motors and only ran over to us when we were casting, to watch the pigs for piston rings taking shape.

  And so we went on learning and hoping that when we finished our training in six months time we should go and work at factories in the big industrial towns.

  Everything would have been fine if Pecheritsa, the new district education chief, had not appeared on the scene.

  Within a month of his arrival, a new saying was all over the school: "Nothing was wrong till Pecheritsa came along."

  Ours was one of the town's schools that Pecheritsa decided to inspect.

  The day before he came, we had been casting. We were unloading the full moulds, knocking the dry sand out of them and sifting it, tapping the cinders off the still warm fly-wheels with chisels and hammers. The foundry was hot and dusty.

  We were making such a din and clatter that we did not notice a little man with a moustache, in riding-breeches, tall yellow boots and a richly embroidered shirt, enter the foundry. The little fellow had