In our first year at the factory school, Monka quite unexpectedly received an inheritance from his grandmother. He had never seen his grandmother, who had immigrated to New York long ago, in the time of the tsar, but when she died she had left Monka all her savings.
Monka was found through a notary by some distant relatives, and one fine day he received three hundred and twenty-five rubles cash down, in Soviet money. Of course, the simplest thing would have been to donate it all to the Children's Friend Society, or to hand it to Sasha Bobir, who collected money for the Aviation and Aeronautics Society of the Ukraine. But the amount was so large that it turned Monka's head and as soon as he came back from the bank on Saturday he took a party of our chaps to the Venice Restaurant. "I want to enjoy myself!" he announced, showing the manager his money. "We must have the whole restaurant to ourselves!"
What they did there, how exactly they enjoyed themselves, I don't know. Most of us were at the club attending a lecture called "What came first—thought or speech?" The only-thing I do know is that on the following day the revellers and their generous host looked very much the worse for wear. They all felt sick. After stuffing themselves with cakes and pastries, they had eaten every dish on the menu— salted herrings, biscuits, caviare, pork, souffle, beef-steaks, sturgeon... and washed it all down with wine of the most outlandish sort they could order. The whole inheritance had been spent in one evening.
At that time the incident caused quite a sensation in town, and when Monka applied for membership of the Komsomol, we did not accept him. "You may be a working lad, but you're a playboy. You're petty bourgeois at heart, my lad!" Nikita told Monka at the committee meeting. "The sons of the rich used to guzzle like that and you're following in their footsteps. You'll have to wait a bit and we'll see."
Now Monka Guzarchik lived on his grant and liked to refer to himself ironically as "a member of the non-Party layer of society..."
When he had met me at the gate today, Monka had whispered: "Poor old Vasya! I hear Tiktor's
started something against you. Is that so? He wants to get you expelled from the Komsomol, doesn't he? Poor old chap! So you'll be one of us."
I must have sunk pretty low if even Monka was sorry for me!
Sadly I gazed at the far bank of the river, at the fortress bridge linking the two cliffs, at the Old Fortress. So far I had kept the vow that Petka, Yuzik Starodomsky and I had made over Sergushin's grave; I had worked as well as I could for the cause of the Revolution. But why this report, and why were my friends so sorry for me before there was need? ...
The waterfall thundered out of the low tunnel under the bridge, swooping downwards in a thick yellow flood; only when it struck the rocks below did it break into white foam. '
I remembered the old legend that many years ago, when the Turks quit our town for ever, they had thrown from the bridge an iron chest full of ducats, rubies, gold bracelets and huge glittering diamonds as big as hen's eggs.
Before sinking to the bottom, the heavy chest, swept on by the raging current, had been thrown several times against sharp rocks which had split it open. People said that every year, after the ice had gone down the river, the turbulent spring floods brought up gold coins and precious stones from the river-bed. Once, so it was said, in the time of the tsar, Sasha Bobir's grandfather had found a fragment of the ruby-studded crown of some Turkish vizir who had fled before the advancing Russian and Ukrainian army. Beside himself with joy, Sasha's grandfather went to a tavern and scratched a ruby out of the piece of crown. In return for the ruby the tavern-keeper gave him so much vodka that when he drank it he no longer knew what he was doing. Sasha's grandfather woke up at the other end of town, by Windy Gate, without his. crown. It had been stolen by vagrant horse-thieves. The disappointment sent the old man out of his mind and he ended his days in an asylum, where he used to wander about the shady garden with a crown of burdock leaves on his head.
When Sasha was admitted to the Komsomol he related even this sad story about his grandfather, and Nikita did not miss the opportunity of saying: "You see, chaps, what wealth does for you! We of the young generation must be free of the power of money and possessions!"
The old folk of our town, however, related the story of the crown rather differently. According to them, it was on this bridge that the Turks had strangled the young Yurko, son of Bogdan Khmelnitsky, and thrown him into the waterfall with a stone tied to his feet. Before his death, Yurko had cursed the Turks and all their treasure.
How many times had we, Zarechye chaps, ignoring the hetman's curse, wandered along the river when it was in flood, our eyes fixed on the muddy bank, hoping to find among the-bits of wood, wet hay, and melting ice, just a small coin to buy elastic for our catapults!...
It was not Yasha's report that worried me. Certainly not! Having thought it over, I had firmly decided that the report did not matter at all. Tiktor could have written anything he liked against me—that I was a supporter of Petlura, that it was me who had planned to blow up Special Detachment Headquarters—and I shouldn't have minded. False accusations can always be exposed sooner or later.
I was not frightened. What depressed me was the sympathetic remarks of my friends, and above all, the strange silence of Nikita Kolomeyets.
"If someone sends in a report against a member of the committee and you are the secretary, you ought to come and tell the chap straight out what he has been accused of. Find out whether it's true or not, but don't pretend to be dumb, don't let a chap torture himself for nothing," I reasoned as I walked up and down along the cliff. And I felt sure I was right.
Nikita's silence—that was what surprised, worried and offended me.
Yesterday we had been together in the hostel all the evening and he hadn't said a word! Although
Tiktor's report was already lying on his desk.
When he sent me to Kharkov, Nikita had said: "You go, you're a lad of spirit!"
Didn't that mean he trusted me? Of course, it did!
Now Nikita was silent. Putting people off with vague phrases! "Human nature at its worst..."
Evening was approaching. A cold wind with a touch of frost in it blew from the river. Again I went up to the little bench on which those familiar letters "V" and "G" were carved. The bench stood on a hummock and the wind whistled round me. I don't know why I slipped my hand in my pocket and took out my Zauer. Even when I went off to work at the factory-training school, I took the pistol with me. Nikita often pulled my leg about it.
"What do you want with a gun at work, Vasil?"
"But where can I put it?"
"Leave it in the hostel."
"That's all right for you, you've got a locker that locks. But mine's always open."
"Ask the locksmiths, they'll put a lock on it for you."
"What's the use of a lock? Locks can be broken."
"Vasil, you're incurable! You've got used to guns. You'd like to be living in the period of War Communism all the time! Vasily Mandzhura can't adapt himself to peace-time conditions!"
I knew that Nikita was joking, but his jokes nettled me a little. Fine peace-time conditions with what was going on all round us!
It was not a year since the Pilsudski men had attacked the Soviet frontier post near Yampol and killed the commander. Quite recently enemies of our republic had murdered the Soviet diplomatic courier Theodor Nette. And the murder of Kotovsky? ... I ought not to be the only one with a gun—all the young workers who lived on the border should be armed and ready for anything. And I went on bringing my pistol to work with me...
I took aim at one of the battlemented towers of the Old Fortress, but it was already rather dark and the sights were blurred.
But what was this mysterious report of Tiktor's? .. .
I shoved the pistol into my pocket and wandered back to the hostel, utterly fed up.
Our hostel was unusually quiet. But, of course—there was a film on at the club. All the chaps would be there. Pity I was late.
There were two li
ghts on in the dormitory, one on the ceiling, the other by Nikita's bed.
Our secretary lived with us. There was a heap of books on his bedside locker. As usual, Nikita had stayed at home. "I'll have my fun, when I'm old," he used to say, "now, while my eyes are all right, it's better to read books." "To read books a to exchange hours of boredom for hours of delight." "A book is a friend of man that will never betray him," Nikita often repeated to us the dictums of certain philosophers known only to himself. And he read like a man bewitched—on the way to the hostel, walking blindly along the pavement with an open book before his eyes, at home in the hostel until late at night, and during the lunch-hour, sitting on a rusty boiler in the school yard.
Obviously Nikita had no intention of going out anywhere this evening. He was lying on his bed undressed; his clothes lay neatly folded on a chair beside him.
I walked silently over to my bed and took off my cap.
Nikita looked round and said: "There's a questionnaire for you under your pillow, Mandzhura. Fill it up and hand it in to me in the morning."
My heart sank. Now it was starting!
It must be a special, tricky sort of questionnaire.
"What's it about?" I asked in a whisper.
"For your pistol," Nikita replied, not taking his eyes off the book. "Special Detachment papers aren't valid any more, we've got to make personal applications for permission to carry fire-arms."
A page rustled. Nikita felt for the pencil on his locker and marked something, as if to show that the conversation was over.
All right! I'm not going to beg you to talk...
It was very still. The sound of spring streets floated in through the open window. That special sound of spring! Have you noticed that in spring every noise comes to you as if you were hearing it for the first time? A cock crowed in the next yard and it seemed to me I had never heard such a fine, full-throated crow in my life...
In the stillness of the room, I examined the printed questionnaire that I had to fill in for the right to carry la pistol. I was expecting Nikita to say something about Tiktor's report.
"Oh, yes, Vasil, I nearly forgot," Nikita murmured, looking round. "There's a parcel for you in your locker. I signed for it." And again he buried himself in his book.
The square heavy parcel, criss-crossed with packing thread, smelled of bast matting and apples. Across the bottom was written in indelible pencil: "Sender: Miron Mandzhura, Cherkassy, District State Printing-House."
Now that he had gone to work in Cherkassy, my father sometimes sent me parcels. Everything they contained was shared round the hostel—an apple for one, a lump of glistening salted pork for another. The other chaps' parcels were shared out in exactly the same way.
There were a lot of tasty things in that parcel. And I was hungry. But I could not open it. If I started treating Nikita now, without waiting for the other chaps to come in, he might think I had heard about the report and was trying to get round him—trying to bribe him with home-made poppy cakes.
And sad though 'it may seem, I had to leave Dad's parcel where it was, in the locker by my bed.
I undressed and lay down to sleep, listening to the rustle of pages as Nikita went on reading his book.
CLEARED!
The committee assembled the following evening in the locksmiths' shop at school. The long room seemed much too large for such a small meeting, specially in the evening, when the school was so quiet.
We seated ourselves on the benches. Tiktor, whistling quietly, sat, or rather lounged on the bench opposite me. There was a triumphant sneer on his face, his blonde locks hung luxuriantly over his big forehead. He felt good.
"Let's start, comrades!" Nikita nodded his head and walked forward between the benches. "There's not much on the agenda today, so we'll have time to prepare for the tests as well. We have two questions to discuss. The first concerns the conduct of Komsomol member Yasha Tiktor, the second is to investigate Tiktor's report on the conduct of Komsomol member Vasily Mandzhura, who is also a
member of our committee. If anybody's got anything else they want to bring up, we'll 'discuss that as well of course. Are there any objections?"
"I want my report to be discussed first," Tiktor grunted.
"Why?"
"Because I gave it in two days ago."
"What difference does that make?"
"I write a report and you want to discuss my conduct! What do you mean by it? What grounds have you got for that?"
"What grounds?" Nikita frowned, knitting his thick black brows. "All right then, Yasha, you and I will go along to Central Square and I'll show you the broken window in the pub—it still hasn't any glass in it—and the chaps will wait for us here.. . How about it, chaps, do you agree? Will you wait for us?"
The chaps laughed and Tiktor's face fell. "Don't try your games on me!" he said threateningly to Nikita. "Let's take a vote on it."
"That's always possible," Nikita replied with surprising calm. "All we have to decide is what we are going to vote about. I think we should discuss these questions in order, in chronological order, so to speak."
Tiktor looked bewildered. "What d'ye mean?" "Just this. On the evening of the twenty-first of February, Komsomol member Yasha Tiktor went to Barenboim's pub, got himself roaring drunk, started a fight, smashed a window, failed to turn up after an alarm from Special Detachment Headquarters..."
"There's no more special detachments, so that doesn't matter!" Tiktor interrupted.
"It does matter, a lot!" Nikita said sharply. "There are no more special detachments, they've been combined with the other security organizations, that's true, but we have always had, and we still have, strict military discipline, which is obligatory for every Communist and Komsomol member. I repeat, on the evening of the twenty-first, of February, Komsomol member Yasha Tiktor did not act as befits a member of 'the Komsomol. That's the first point. The second is this. On the night of the fifth of March, Komsomol member Vasily Mandzhura travelled in the same carriage as the escaping counter-revolutionary Pecheritsa and, in Tiktor's opinion, intentionally refrained from detaining him. Let us discuss both questions in that order."
Nikita's harsh words rang out with terrible suddenness in the quiet, dimly-lit room: "... travelled in the same carriage as the escaping counter-revolutionary Pecheritsa and, in Tiktor's opinion, intentionally refrained from detaining him."
So that was the trap Tiktor had laid for me! "The rotten scoundrel!" I nearly shouted the words aloud.
"Let's vote," Nikita continued. "Who is for Tiktor's proposal to discuss his report first?"
The members of the committee sat in silence. Their faces were stern and thoughtful.
"Who is for the proposed order of discussion?"
"Why bother to vote, Comrade Kolomeyets!" Galya called out. "It's quite clear!"
"Perhaps someone has refrained from voting?" said Nikita and started counting hands.
Petka, who had been about to raise his hand, suddenly remembered that he was only a candidate for the committee and had no right to vote. He snatched his plump hand away behind his back, as if he had burnt it.
"The majority, I think .. . Shall we proceed?"
"Ganging up on me, as usual! ... All pals together, aren't you?" Tiktor mumbled, lowering at Nikita.
"Did you say something, Yasha?" Nikita asked, going pale.
"He meant ... he meant to say he ought to be called to order!" Petka suddenly blurted out in a very squeaky, excited voice.
"Quiet there, Maremukha, I didn't give you permission to speak," Nikita said, and turning to Tiktor, he went on quietly and very calmly: "Speak up, Tiktor, say all you've got to say, don't be afraid, speak so- that you needn't complain afterwards that Kolomeyets suppressed your criticism. I believe you'd even go to that length too..."
"What's the use of me saying anything—you've got it all pat like an exercise-book. Get on with it and start running me down'!" Tiktor flung out idly, lounging back on the bench kicking his legs.
; Keeping a firm grip on himself, Nikita ignored Tiktor's last words and began quietly:
"When a Komsomol member drinks and acts like a hooligan, he..."
"What I drank I paid for with my own money and that's none of your business!" Tiktor shouted.
And then something happened that startled everyone. Never in all our school life had we seen Nikita Kolomeyets blaze up as he did on that quiet evening in the locksmiths' shop.
"Scoundrel!" Nikita shouted so loudly that he could have been heard in the turners' shop next door. "You've got the nerve to boast that you drank on your own money! Who gave you that money you call your own? Who taught you a trade? Who's making you into a citizen? Who's trying to make you live your life decently, for the good of society? Did our fathers fight for your freedom so that you could disgrace the name of the Komsomol in the first pot-house you could find, so that you could hobnob with all kinds of scum—profiteers who only live for the day when we'll be dead? People who ought to have been in jail long ago! They try to get you in their clutches and you drink with them and kow-tow to them. Where's Bortanovsky now, your client, that 'honest craftsman,' as you called him? In jail for smuggling. Go and see the Komsomol members in the militia, talk to Granat, the criminal investigation man, about your friend. He's in charge of that case. Did the best people in Russia die in exile, in tsarist prisons, on the gallows, so that a working man's son, Yasha Tiktor, should sleep in a puddle in Proreznaya Street, when his mates, with rifles in their hands, were defending their town from Petlura's thugs! 'And even that wasn't enough. You acted like a pig yourself and now you've tried to smear your dirt on someone else. 'Let's see if I can stir up a bit of trouble,' you thought. 'Perhaps it'll help me to save my own skin.' You poor fool! Do you think we can't see why you made that re port against Mandzhura? What do you think we are—kids? Couldn't we guess why you suddenly found the energy to write a report of three pages. And with eleven spelling mistakes in it! Yasha, Yasha, it was a crude bit of work, that's a fact..." Nikita paused and his voice became softer. "We haven't come here to punish you. You're our comrade and we want to say this to you: Think what you're doing, Tiktor! You can live a fine life, a life with sense in it. Clean off that scum of the past! Don't wallow in dirt!" Growing visibly calmer, Nikita went on: "Another chap in your place would have said, 'Yes, I made a mistake, I got tied up in that rotten spider's web. I'll try and see it never happens again.' And that would be the end of it. But you kick up a row and try to make out you're in the right and all the other Komsomol members want to put you wrong..."
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