The Town By The Sea tof-3 Read online

  The latest edition of a Kharkov newspaper was pasted on a board near the House of Ukrainian Trade Unions.

  A small head-line caught my eye:

  MUSSOLINI ATTACKED

  At 11 a.m. today an unknown elderly woman fired a revolver almost point-blank at Mussolini. He was coming out on to the ; Capitol Square from the building where the 5 International Congress of Surgeons is being held. The bullet grazed Mussolini's nostril.

  The woman who fired the shot has been arrested.

  "What a shot!" I thought. "No better than Sasha! Fancy getting that close to a dirty fascist like Mussolini and not finishing him off! She shouldn't have taken the job on, if she couldn't shoot. Grazed his nostril! ... So that's why the kid was shouting 'Latest report from Rome!' I wonder if there's anything more about it."

  Next to the report from Rome there was a column about the outrages committed by the Bulgarian fascists on the Communist Kabakchiev. Below it I read that the airship Norway would soon be flying from Italy to Leningrad. In the centre of the next page, I saw a picture of a man with a beard. Above the picture was a head-line:

  CURRENT TASKS OF THE PARTY

  From the Concluding Speech of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine at the Plenary Meeting.

  I scanned the portrait of the General Secretary and noticed his kind, smiling eyes. Hadn't I seen him somewhere before? But of course—on the cover of the magazine Vsesvit in our hostel.

  I strolled along the pavement, swinging my brief case. "I'm in Kharkov! I'm in Kharkov!" the thought drummed in my temples. People hurried past me and I tried to be like them in every way. I marched on confidently, showing no surprise at anything, and little by little I began to feel I was an old inhabitant of this large, capital city...

  Ever since I had left the train, I had been pursued by the thought that Pecheritsa would suddenly pop up in front of me just as unexpectedly as he had appeared in my compartment.

  A street sign was flashing on a building ahead of me:

  New American Thriller!

  SHARKS OF NEW YORK

  Both parts in one programme

  Nervous people and children not admitted

  At the sight of this enticing notice I lost my head for the second time since I started on my journey. Forgetting all about my hunger, I made a bee-line for the cinema. When should I get a chance of seeing such an interesting film in our little town!

  The box-office was in a dark, damp-smelling archway. From the commotion that about half a dozen lads were making round the box-office I realized that there were very few tickets left. A bit of shoving and pushing got me a place in the queue.

  Clutching my brief case under my arm, I unfastened the safety-pins with trembling fingers. It would be my turn soon.

  "Next! What row?" the ticket-seller snapped at me from her box.

  At last I got the second pin undone. Glancing over my shoulder all the time, I pulled the wad of money out of my pocket. As I took two ruble notes out of the wad, I felt someone was watching me.

  Two suspicious-looking fellows in check caps pulled low over their eyes were lounging near the box-office.

  "Pickpockets!" I thought and pushed the wad of notes deeper into my jacket pocket. Thrusting the change into the pocket of my chumarka and grabbing the little blue ticket, I charged after the lad who had been in front of me in the ticket queue.

  "Hurry up, dearie—it's just starting!" said the ticket-woman, tearing my ticket with one hand and releasing the wooden turnstile with the other.

  As soon as I got into the buzzing hall, the lights went out and a bluish beam from the projector pierced the darkness. I trod on someone's foot. "Good-heavens, what a bear!" A voice hissed irritably. Trying not to look at the owner of the voice, I plumped down in the first vacant seat. . . Ten minutes passed... I forgot I was in Kharkov, I even forgot it was dark outside and I had nowhere to spend the night.

  ... The New York gangsters—terrible hairy fellows, with brutal faces, broken noses and square jutting chins, roamed about the screen with huge Colts and Brownings. They filed through steel bars, cracked open fire-proof safes, chased each other on express trains, aeroplanes, speed-boats and cars, shooting down their rivals point-blank in a practised way that made you think they even enjoyed doing it.

  I felt as if I had been shot through in ten places, and by the time the terrible spectacle was over I could scarcely understand why I was not dead. Only when I got outside, hot and excited and glad to be still alive, did I remember that I had nowhere to stay the night.

  It was all because of that train getting into 'Kharkov so late! If it had arrived earlier, when it was still daylight, I could have gone to the Komsomol club and they would have found me a bed in a hostel. But now where could I go?

  The light under the archway had already been extinguished and the people were feeling their way out in darkness, treading on one another's heels.

  "Stop pushing for God's sake!" said a voice behind me and at that moment someone gave me a tremendous shove in the back.

  "What are you pushing for?" I said, turning to a lanky fellow in a cap pulled down over his eyes.

  "Beg your pardon, it wasn't me, it was him," and the lout, grinning impudently, nodded to his neighbour.

  Then someone shoved me again. And what a shove! I nearly dropped my brief case. And suddenly someone crushed my foot with his heel. I jumped with pain.

  But deciding that I had better not make trouble, I gripped my brief case firmly and struggled out of the dark archway into the- lighted street.

  What a bunch of louts! Must have learnt their tricks from those American gangsters! That's what they came to the film for. . . Spoiling other people's galoshes!

  The station buffet was still open and I decided to have a snack and then doze on a bench until dawn.

  The air of Kharkov had made me ravenous, and as I went up to the glass counter I was already groping in my jacket pocket. Suddenly I remembered that after buying my cinema ticket I had not pinned my pocket up again.

  Oh! I felt my legs sag under me. The glass chandelier hanging from the stuccoed ceiling swam before my eyes. . .

  My pocket was empty!

  "Steady," I told myself. "The main thing is not to panic. Pull yourself together!"

  With sad, hungry eyes :I gazed at the grinning mouth of a pike on a salad dish, then crept miserably away from the counter.

  "Steady on, don't get excited!" I tried to reassure myself. "You've just got your pockets mixed."

  Going over to the window-sill, I tossed my brief case on to it and rummaged through my pockets with trembling fingers. But all in vain—the money had gone, gone with the Sharks of New York.

  In the pocket of my chumarka I found the crumpled ruble and coins that the ticket-seller had given me for change. But what were these in comparison with the wealth that had been stolen from me! It must have been those scoundrels in the check caps who had taken it!

  But how should I get home?

  "Keep it up along the sleepers!" I remembered the words of a long-forgotten song.

  Yes, along the sleepers. . . There was nothing for it. I would do a day's work here and there for the kulaks on the road. I would work as a farm-labourer and get back!

  Perhaps I could sell my chumarka?. . . But who would buy a ragged old thing like that?

  When we were in a tough spot Nikita had advised us to remember the old sea saying: "Rub your nose and you'll get over it." I scratched my nose so hard that I nearly took the skin off. But it didn't help a bit!...

  Should I send Nikita a telegram asking for help? Just one word—"robbed!" and the address—"Kharkov Station —To be called for"?... But what a row it would cause at school! "Look at that!" they would say. "We've sent a fool! Instead of sticking up for us, he's been wasting our money!

  Just a wool-gatherer!" And wouldn't Tiktor gloat!

  No, I mustn't send a telegram.

  I must find my own way out of the mess. It had been
my fault and I must take what was coming to me! Now I realized the truth of Nikita's advice, when he used to tell us: "Mind you never have anything to do with those Harry Peels and Rudolph Valentinoes. They're poison. Those films are a school for bandits. They can't lead a man to any good!"

  How right he had been! What on earth had made me go and see those "Sharks"!. . . It wouldn't have mattered if I had never even heard of them!... What could I do? How could I get out of this mess? And the money they had stolen! A small fortune!

  I started to count the change that the thieves had left me. A ruble forty kopeks. Not very rich! But it was enough for bread and soda water. I would stick it out for a couple of days somehow, get everything done, then bilk my way home. I would creep under the carriage seat and lie there quietly so that the conductor wouldn't notice me. Or perhaps I could jump a goods train.

  SPRING MORNING

  Day came. The porters started cleaning the station and I went out into the street. Sleepy and hungry, I felt I should scarcely be able to last a day on bread and soda water. The long journey, the lack of food, the worry and excitement of it all had drained my strength. I swayed as I walked down the street.

  The trams had not started yet, but there were plenty of people about. Janitors were opening gates. Housewives with shopping-bags in their hands were hurrying off to market. They were all heading in one direction, so to kill time I wandered after them.

  "Blagbaz," the famous Kharkov market, was the first place to wake up.

  Stalls were opening one after the other. Miserable and unwashed, I walked round "Blagbaz" until a pungent appetizing smell struck my nostrils. It even ousted the smells of salted cabbage and celery. Nostrils quivering, like a hound on the scent, I made in the direction of the smell. A lean-faced market woman, in a wadded jacket, was bustling about by two smoking braziers on which stood two huge pots.

  "Hot flachkies! Hot flachkies! Buy up, buy up, good people! Very tasty, very cheap! You'll never find such tasty flachkies anywhere else, not even in fairyland! Oh, they're lovely! The best cheapest food you can get in the world! Buy my flachkies! .."

  ... If any of you have ever stood in a market, beside a blazing brazier, with a clay bowl in your hands, and a rough wooden spoon—it must be a wooden spoon—and standing thus, eaten fresh, hot, peppery tripe cutlets, or flachkies as they are called in the Ukraine, with cream and spice, and onions, and garlic, and red pepper, and grated cheese, all scented with laurel leaves and parsley, you will understand just how hard it was for me not to break into my last ruble.

  Even three hours later, when the offices opened and I walked up to the tall building on the corner of Karl Liebknecht Street, my mouth was still burning with the red pepper.

  Those flachkies hadn't been so cheap, after all. Half a ruble gone already! Now what? Suppose the head of the Central Committee's education department was away and I had to wait for him?

  Enough! No more luxury today! Until tomorrow 'I must not spend a single kopek. No soda water for me. I could drink from the tap—it was free and just as good. I must save my money, so that I could at least buy a scrap of bread to keep me going on the road back, when I should be dodging the inspectors.

  I had no trouble getting into the building. My Komsomol membership card and other papers were inspected and returned to me with a pass.

  I walked into the spacious entrance-hall and handed the pass to the sentry. The sentry checked it and showed me where to go. As soon as I entered the hall, I began to feel timid. When I had to take my coat off, I felt worse. At the cloak-stand, together with my hat, galoshes and chumarka. I seemed to lose half my courage.

  "What floor, comrade?" the liftwoman called out to me. I had heard before that in the capital there were machines that carried people right to the top of buildings, but it was the first time I had ever seen a lift.

  "I want Room 246," I said to the liftwoman, looking at my pass.

  "Get in, I'll take you up."

  "No thanks," said I and walked off hurriedly down the carpeted corridor to the stairs. Stairs were safer!

  At a cautious pace I mounted the stairs. During my travels, my feet had got used to the warm galoshes and now, as 'I walked along in my thin-soled shoes, I felt as if I had nothing on my feet at all.

  Wondering at the cleanliness and quiet everywhere, I turned into a corridor at the top of the stairs. All the doors had little numbers on them, but I could not find the education department.

  A shortish, thick-set man in top-boots was walking down the corridor towards me with steady, deliberate tread. I could not see his face—the sun from the windows was shining in my eyes.

  "Please, comrade, can you tell me..." I began, hurrying up to the man.

  "I can indeed," he said and stopped in front of me.

  But I could ask no more. . , Before me stood the very man whose photograph 'I had seen the evening before in the newspaper.

  In my surprise I forgot the number of the room I was looking for.

  To help me out of my confusion, he asked cheerfully:

  "Got lost? Where are you from, lad?" "I'm from the border. . ." "From the border? A visitor from afar, eh? What's your business?"

  And at that moment a daring thought flashed into my head—what if I told the General Secretary himself all about our troubles?

  "May I speak to you?" I asked.

  As soon as we entered the big, light office with its large square windows looking out over a garden, he offered me a chair, and I suddenly felt my courage return. It was as if my old acquaintance Kartamyshev were sitting in front of me. Still a little nervous and glancing at the bunch of telephones assembled on the end of the big desk, but speaking quite calmly, I explained why my mates had sent me to Kharkov.

  The Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine heard me out very attentively.

  Twice he picked up a big green pencil and noted something on his pad. When he did this, I would stop, but then he would nod and I would go on again.

  When I began to narrate how Pecheritsa had in-, suited Polevoi with that article in the paper, the secretary asked: "So Pecheritsa insisted on the dismissal of an instructor merely because he had not learnt Ukrainian soon enough?"

  "Yes, that's it! And the way he insisted! He called Polevoi a chauvinist. But how can he be a chauvinist when he's been a Bolshevik right from the start of the Revolution! And why force Nazarov to learn Ukrainian in such a hurry, when he hasn't been in the Ukraine a year yet?" I asked hotly.

  The secretary smiled, and encouraged by his smile, I went on: "And now what's happened?—they're going to close the school. Well, it's not so bad for a chap who's got a mother or father living in town, they can help him until he gets fixed up somewhere. But what about the chaps who came to us from orphanages—what are they going to do? The Petlura men killed their fathers, and there's nobody in town they can turn to. They won't even have anywhere to live. They used to live in the factory-school hostel, but now, as soon as the school is closed, Pecheritsa wants to put the musical college students into the hostel. They're his favourites, they sing in his choir. But what will happen to the chaps from our school? And our training hasn't cost the state a thing—the school pays its way entirely. We make straw-cutters ourselves and sell them to the peasants and live on what we make out of it. It's good for us, and the peasants get the machines they need. It brings town and country together. We thought we would finish at school, become workers and be sent to factories in the Donbas, and other chaps would be taken on at the school. And suddenly this happens... And all because of Pecheritsa. . ."

  The secretary smiled again and said: "Steady on, don't get so upset. The situation isn't half so bad as you think it is."

  "But just imagine it!" I said, spurred on by his encouragement. "They've got enough unemployed at the town labour exchange as it is, and now Pecheritsa will push us on to them. After all that training... And even if the exchange sends us out as pupils to private craftsmen, what shall we be doing? Mending sauce
pans or soldering wash-tubs! Was that what we hoped to do when we started at the factory-training school? Is it our fault there aren't any big factories in our district yet?. . ."

  The secretary interrupted me with a question concerning what I had told him earlier.

  "Is that what he actually said: 'No one will allow the blue sky of Podolia to be soiled with factory smoke?' Or did you just make that up for effect?"

  "What, do you think I'm making all this up?" I said offendedly. "That's just what he said."

  "Curious... very curious... I didn't know he was working so openly. What a landscape-painter, eh! Luckily for us, the people of the Ukraine won't ask him where to build their factories. We shall build them where they are needed. We'll soil the sky a bit here and there, and the air will be all the fresher for it."

  "Polevoi always tells us that our country can't live without industrialization because the foreign capitalists would swallow us up," I agreed.

  "Does he now! Good! You are lucky to have such a good director. Everyone who's in charge of even the smallest undertaking should look at the future from a revolutionary point of view. Tell me, how many fine young chaps like you are there at your school?"

  "Fifty-two... And we all belong to the metal-workers' trade union."

  "Many Komsomol members?"

  "Over half."

  "And when is your course due to finish, according to plan?"

  "In May. Very soon. That's the whole point!"

  "Will all your chaps want to go away to other towns?''

  "Not half they will! They'd go on foot! What do you think we studied for? When we started at school they promised us we all should get jobs at big factories ...”

  "When did you arrive—today?" the secretary asked unexpectedly, again writing something on his pad.

  "Yesterday evening. I would have got here yesterday, but the train was late."

  "Where did you spend the night?"

  "At the station. I got a bit of sleep on one of the benches..."

  "At the station?. . . Why didn't you go to a hotel? Or the peasants' hostel? You know, the big building in Rosa Luxemburg Square.. ."