The whole night the girl worked in the field hospital. She bandaged the wounded men, brought them water, and adjusted their bandages. Her face was drawn and tired, and she seemed not to notice the silent gratitude in the men’s eyes. Toward dawn a hatless, disheveled Cadet in rumpled overalls came blustering into the hospital.
“There she is, that Judas bitch!” he shouted, his face twisted with hatred.
She reeled away; pale at first like death itself—then flushed from mortal fear. “You, you,” she shouted back. “You kill the workin’ man; it was his misery that made him fight. I didn’t know how to fight like a man so I killed you the way I knew how …”
They took her out to the white wall where she meekly fell to the ground with two bullets in her heart. It was the same spot where the workman in the cotton print shirt had lain. She lay there for some time, staring at the threatening, grey sky with her thick-browed, wide-open grey eyes.
1936
The Safety Inspector
by Vassily Grossman
Vassily Semyonovitch Grossman, 1905-1965, born in Berdichev, Ukraine. His father was a chemical engineer and his mother a teacher of French. He studied engineering in Kiev and at Moscow. His first novel Glueckauf about life in postwar Donbass appeared in 1934. During the Second World War Grossman served as war correspondent. His novel The People Immortal, published in 1942, was adapted for the stage in 1946, and later translated into English. The Safety Inspector received an enthusiastic review in Literaturnaya Gazeta in 1946.
Whenever Polina Pavlovna was angry and began to talk loud and fast, Korolkov remembered his dentist’s drilling machine. Korolkov had a theory about dealing with his wife, which he based on long engineering experience. As a safety inspector in the coal industry, he had devoted many years to studying detonations in subterranean projects. Having seen too many complications in trying to contain or eliminate accumulations of methane gas in otherwise well-ventilated shafts, Korolkov became a skeptic. So then, whenever his wife began to snarl and rile him during his peaceful after-dinner newspaper reading, he wouldn’t even try to keep up the argument. I’m curious about what would happen, he’d think, if they put in here the interdepartmental commission with academician Skachinski as chairman—even they’d probably be unable to make any sense out of her.
Korolkov’s friends would often advise him to find another job. “Any way you look at it,” they’d tell him, “this is the most miserable job in the coal industry.” He knew it too; the inspector tries too hard, the production men are unhappy; he stops the drift and removes workers from cleaning jobs to scaffolding; the coal face is blocked off and the men in charge of production are mad. They may even rat on him. When the inspector stops trying, it’s even worse—if somebody gets hurt it’s his neck. No matter what, he is the first to be blamed, and anything can happen in a mine—a slide; a cave-in; a cable break; a little fire; a big explosion; people slip, fall, die …
“How many times were you prosecuted, Apollon Markovitch?” a friend once asked him.
“I stopped counting,” he had said. “I don’t keep personal statistics.”
In spite of all his troubles, this thin, stooping engineer with a funny bow tie around his sinuous neck would stubbornly glower at the world and refuse to leave his post. As he couldn’t imagine himself without this nerve-wracking job, Korolkov couldn’t picture life without his formidable, long-faced wife who had once descended into a smoke-filled shaft to save him from burning to death. For the last twenty years she was bivouacking with him from mine to mine of the Donbass region after they had spent two years in an earthen shanty of the distant Karaganda, and had lived through the dizzying heat of the Kazachstan desert, the severe Tirgan frosts, and the ferocity of the Ural bedbugs in Chelyabinsk dormitories. Her character, true enough, wasn’t the most congenial, but as far as Korolkov was concerned, she was a typical woman with her unexplainable and unexpected moods, the same as a mine, especially a gas mine.
The transfer of the Heavy Industry Commissariat had reached Apollon Markovitch Korolkov in the village Makeyevka, a mine of the Budyonny Management. “Apollon Markovitch,” the manager said to him with a devilish chuckle, “I’ve for you a real box of candy from Moscow.”
Korolkov. yawned. “I’ve seen such boxes of candy; have eaten more than a ton of them in my life.”
“But this one is different,” the manager said, rustling his papers. “This one may get stuck in your throat.” Korolkov was surprised at the manager’s ill humor. “What’s the matter?” he asked angrily. “Is this because number four’s closed? What have they come up with now? Is this a warning or a new summons to court, huh?” He reached out for the paper.
The manager had to swallow before answering. “To be frank with you, all you need is two pails of rectifier—nothing else. But … have a look. Here’s a transfer to Central Inspection … With an expression of personal gratitude and a three-thousand ruble bonus. Plus other benefits.”
Taking a look at Korolkov’s furrowed face above his protruding Adam’s apple, the manager gave another chuckle. This sourpuss sitting in front of him had no sense of humor.
Apollon Markovitch had thought at first that someone was pulling his leg; then he decided somebody in Moscow had made a mistake. When he finally convinced himself that the transfer was in order, he became rattled. As he rode down the elevator he kept shaking his head in disapproval.
Down in the mine he was finding fault with everything. He made a report against the drift manager, slapped a fine on a well-respected old foreman, and when he came home late in the evening he met his wife’s scowl with a scowl. “These Moscow wise guys have decided to give me a change of scenery with a three-thousand-ruble bonus,” he said. looking at her long face. “They’re transferring me to Moscow as Senior Inspector. God only knows what’s on their minds. ‘A box of candy,’ the manager calls it.”
If Korolkov had been wondering how his wife was going to take the news he got the surprise of his life. Polina Pavlovna hadn’t said a word. All during supper she was studiously watching her husband, as if she had suddenly discovered a terribly dangerous deformity on his face. Finally, he couldn’t stand it any longer. Aiming his fork at a pickled tomato, he asked, “Why’re you staring at me like a sphynx?”
Polina Pavlovna swallowed hard. “Apollon,” she gasped in a voice choked with tears, and then … for the first time in their married life she broke down crying. In his confusion, instead of trying to comfort her, Korolkov walked out to attend a mine surveyors’ general meeting. Later in the evening when he came home he asked, “Why did you cry, Polya?”
When she told him he burst out laughing. “What’s the matter with you?” he asked. “Are you crazy or something? Me running after Moscow dames? Just take one look at my muzzle—who’d want an old ape like me! Besides, why should I run out on you; you’re the only woman with whom I can prove myself as a man.”
“What would you want with me in Moscow?” Polina Pavlovna insisted. “I’m nothing but a homely old fool, and a nervous wreck to boot. You think I still remember a word from what they taught us in gymnasium? Professors will be coming to see you there and what’ll I tell ’em? You’ll burn with shame for me.”
Apollon Markovitch stared at his wife in amazement until doubts began to overcome him too. He walked up to the mirror to take a good look at himself. Filling his chest with air and blowing out his cheeks, he tried to make his face look handsome; he tried this way and that way and in the end he didn’t like what he saw. “Oh, heck, who cares,” he waved his hand and went to sleep. But sleep was slow in coming.
Thoughts of the past came instead; the first years of his married life. He had been working at the mine “Ivan” no more than twenty verst from here. Polina Pavlovna, sporting a blue flowing house dress and pony tails was as long-faced and homely then as she was now. His friend, the happy-go-lucky head miner Vanka Kuzhelev, a straightforward blabber-mouth, had warned him not to get married. “What do you want to do?” he had said
. “Marry a horse? We’ve got forty mares in our subterranean stable, each as kind as a lamb. Why go’n look for a jibber?” Poor Kuzhelev was killed in a 1912 mine fire. How much coal had they mined since then? How many old people had passed away and new ones come? And all the innovations: electricity, pneumatic hammers, new work systems, and who knows how much more to come?
Yeah, a transfer to headquarters! Who had put in a good word for him? A blank wall. It had seemed as if there wasn’t a man in the coal industry who hadn’t had an axe to grind against him, and yet—somebody in Moscow must have liked him. Everything he had ever done was listed in the transfer order, like in 1930 when he had prevented a catastrophe in mine 17-17 B. Korolkov snickered. “They’ve nothing to do at headquarters but go digging in old files to find something like that! They may do what they want but they can’t make me spend the rest of my days in Moscow.” Polina Pavlovna would watch the apartment and he’d take a ride down to the Sub-Moscow coal basin to have a look at the bituminous coal they’re mining there. That soil, somebody had told him, was bloated—so saturated was the coal with carbon dioxide—as in Mexican mines. One look at the Sub-Moscow coal and you’d seen Mexico. How strange was coal, Apollon Markovitch mused, unable to fall asleep, and how strange was a woman’s soul. “The thoughts she has! Whoever would’ve thought anything like it!” Again he remembered Polina Pavlovna’s blue house dress and this brought melancholy—every single white flower in it stood out so clearly! He had been such a greenhorn then, entertaining dreams about organizing an expedition to explore the center of the earth. Huh!
Korolkov gave a deep sigh. Why wasn’t it destined for them to have any children! At moments like this he’d have been able to tell his son, “Look, boy, they want your father in Moscow.” Wouldn’t his son have been proud of him! He sighed again: what strange crab kept creeping into his mind just to keep him awake …
2
Everybody was congratulating Korolkov, marvelling at his promotion. The chief of the Rescue Station, Fadeyev, an old friend from way back and a co-survivor of the Gorlov mine catastrophe, dragged him into his office. “It’s amazing, absolutely amazing how you managed to do it,” Fadeyev chuckled. “Who ever compiled for you the list of all the exploits and sent it up to Moscow? So help me I should try the same. Who did you send it to, Andrey Friedrichovitch himself?”
“What’s the matter with you, Nicolai Tikhonovitch?” Korolkov said earnestly. “I only found out about it yesterday myself.”
Fadeyev paid no attention. “Sacre bleu,” he said, shaking his head. “You mean to tell me they’ve done it all on their own? Here, ‘In 1927 Apollon Markovitch Korolkov has faultlessly completed the conversion of a number of mines to gas production. In 1932 he has applied the experience of the Donbass to the largest mines of the Kuzbass.’ ” Fadeyev gave a sly wink, “That sonovogun hasn’t forgotten anything, has he? It must’ve taken him two weeks to dig it out …”
Korolkov had piously hugged his chest. “Nicolai Tikhonovitch” he pleaded. “So help me it wasn’t me. Believe me, whatever there was, and there was aplenty, I’ve somehow managed to forget it. True, after reading the order yesterday it came back to me. But that experience transfer had absolutely skipped my mind. Come on, you know me better than that?”
Fadeyev became serious. “All right, pal,” he said, “you don’t want to level with an old friend. To hell with you then.”
“So you think I’m nothing but a dirty sonovogun,” Korolkov flared up. Not waiting for a reply, he walked out, slamming the door so hard that the dredger cover came off the wall with a bang.
He was supposed to inspect the tiny mine 5-S. The bespattered gig waited for him at the office door. “Let’s go, Apollon Markovitch,” said the cabbie, an old disabled coal heaver, tossing aside the leather mantle. “I’ve brought you your kit.”
“I’ll need my torch, too,” Korolkov said. “I don’t like those 5-S torches. They always leak.”
“I’ve brought you your torch,” the cabbie replied. “Wrapped it in a rag.”
It was a muddy cart track that led to the mine, over heavy, moist soil covered with half-rotten clusters of last year’s foliage. Every here and there young grass greened in spots along little mounds on the roadside. White, pure clouds unpolluted by coal dust floated in the otherwise bright, sunny sky, and a warm breeze wafting from the village, but born far away on the Azov Sea, brought with it a moist, cheerful breath that made even the sad nag dilate her nostrils in joy.
The gig shook on the bumps but Korolkov was too deep in thought to notice it. I’m a lucky sonovogun after all, he mused. An interested friend must be having an eye on me, who knows, maybe following me even now … somewhere behind … Wondering, “Ey, what’re you going to do in 5-S, Apollon Markovitch?”
They arrived. Swinging his torch, Korolkov trudged toward the pile driver in the slushy mud that seemed to grab his feet and pull off his boots. How many hundreds upon hundreds of times had he been walking through miry mine yards like this, never for a moment stopping to consider how life might be in Moscow … how it would be to wear light polished shoes and walk along an asphalt sidewalk, enjoy the night life on the Boulevard or stop at a pavilion to listen to nice music while sipping a glass of tea with lemon? And yet, after having spent most of his years in god-forsaken mines, he had marvelled at Makeyevka’s town park and its people’s way of life when he first came.
The cage squeaked as the lift was going down. He got out and walked along the main drift until he reached the first inclined plane. The roar of a wagonette train hit his ears a few seconds after he heard the shrill whistle of the horse driver. Then carpenters with saws appeared and a little while later from behind the corner came out a timberman, looking up at the beams and swinging his axe.
With a sigh Korolkov went on his way. He looked over a few coal faces, checked the ventilator doors and examined the timbering in the new tunnel. Sighing again and groaning, he crawled into an air vent. The gas foreman in particular disliked his meticulous inspection routine of air vents. It was the peak of fastidiousness for an inspector to crawl through narrow openings where even a jet of air had a hard time coming through, they said.
Every air vent was in deplorable condition. Crawling on his belly along the narrow, blocked-up passage, the inspector painfully chafed his right hand. It didn’t bother him, however. He liked to ensconce into the most inaccessible spots and talk aloud to himself. But this time he wasn’t alone; right behind him softly followed the supervisor. “Take a breather, Apollon Markovitch,” he advised. “A man your age shouldn’t be crawling in places saturated with carbon dioxide.”
Korolkov couldn’t hold back his annoyance. “Why don’t you mind your own business?” he snapped.
As soon as he rose to the surface, Apollon Markovitch went in to the office of the chief engineer Kosmatov, an old friend with whom he had spent six uneasy hours pinned against a coal face several years ago. He was met by a cackling laughter. “Look at you,” Kosmatov said, shaking his head. “No sooner out of one trouble when you get into the next, five times prosecuted, enemies in every mine, and suddenly … your biography’s plastered on the first page and Moscow has nothing but praise.”
“You know, Stepan Trofimovitch,” Korolkov said in reply, “I saw your east; the air vent’s full of debris, the ventilation is lousy. Look, my friend, I’m going to close the whole section.”
“Come off it,” Kosmatov smiled. “What do you want? To throw the whole book at me?”
“I know the book,” Korolkov nodded. “Three times it has been thrown at me. I’m going to write a little report and recommend ten days to fix it.”
“Have a heart,” Kosmatov begged, watching the pen in the inspector’s coal-blackened fingers. “Give me at least fifteen; I’ve got to speed up production—the end of the month, you know.”
Korolkov silently handed him the paper.
“You don’t give me time to breathe,” Kosmatov growled. A few seconds passed. “All right,” he wa
ved his hand cheerfully, “To hell with you. Go on, be a company man … By the way, have they sent you the blueprints of the new apartment already? Central heating no doubt?”
Apollon Markovitch left his friend cackling and slapping his thighs. Why are they all making such fools of themselves, he thought angrily. Yet he began to realize that his mind was full of elation. The thoughts of past life, gone friends, and the hard, glorious work only fortified it.
“Yeah, yeah, Nikifor,” he told the waiting cabbie. “That’s how it is. Finally they remembered a work-horse engineer too—what’s wrong with that?”
“Who else if not you,” the cabbie agreed. “Oh, they know everything in Moscow. Yeah, they know … I remember a long time ago when two hundred seventy fellows were laid out after an explosion, the Tsar himself sent a telegram—so sorry he was.”
“Who cares about a tsar anymore,” Korolkov snorted. “So I’ll go to Moscow and submit a project to the Kremlin to have a statue built to all engineers and miners who lost their lives in the pits. Also somebody ought to write a book about them, how they lived and worked … About all of them, so that somebody might remember …”
“Yeah,” the cabbie solemnly agreed. “Somebody ought to write a book.”
At home Apollon Markovitch found a surprise. Polina Pavlovina had dressed up as if it was somebody’s birthday. She had on a blue dress he had never seen before, her face was made up, and her lips were the reddest red.
“What did you eat?” he asked. “Strawberries in March?” He felt good, though.
She looked at him with clear, cool eyes. “I’m not going to any Moscow,” she declared.
“How’s that?” he asked, making a wry face.
“What’s the matter with you, you deaf?” she asked. “I’m not going to any Moscow,” she repeated. “I know how that’ll end.”
Treasury of Russian Short Stories 1900-1966 Page 7