The Town By The Sea tof-3

by Владимир Павлович Беляев Неизвестный Автор

  "But we've been sent to your plant, comrade!" I said, looking the dandy straight in the eye.

  "Well, I didn't invite you!" And he spread his arms like an actor. "How can you complain! I don't understand! Why, only a half an hour ago, I accepted a student from your place. Leokadia Andreyevna, what was that blonde fellow's name? You know, the one you said was like your friend, Comrade Kuchkov."

  "Tiktor," the typist replied languidly, glancing at a sheet of paper. "He wasn't like my friend, he was like the Don Cossack Kuzma Kuchkov!" And so saying, the typist turned away from the dandified young man and stared indifferently out of the window.

  "You see, there was room for one, so I took Tiktor on. And incidentally, I did so at my own risk, because if the town labour exchange gets to know about it, I may collect a nice raspberry. We've got enough local people queuing up, as it is. Even footballers!... But you, young people... Alas!" And again he made that theatrical gesture with his arms.

  "We're fifth graders!" Petka exclaimed. "We've been studying a long time and. . ."

  "I know and I understand," the young man interrupted Petka and tossed his cigarette out of the window. "I come from the working class myself and I quite understand your awkward position, but there's nothing we can do about it!"

  Encouraged by the sympathetic tone the young man had adopted, I asked:

  "What shall we do?"

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  "Take the train to Kharkov. You'll get there tomorrow morning. Get the Supreme Council of National Economy to send you somewhere else. To the Don has perhaps. It's all the same to you."

  "What do you mean—'all the same to us!' " Petka burst out indignantly. "Where do you think we'll find the money to go to Kharkov? It cost us the last of our grants to come here."

  "Well, I can't help it," the dandy replied, and looked out of the window, obviously anxious to finish this unpleasant conversation. I looked at the carefully pressed lapels of his waisted jacket, at his tough, sunburnt, bull neck, and at the fastidiously knotted bow and thought: "What can we do? What else can I' say to this dressed-up noodle? He simply doesn't want to understand what a hole we're in."

  Realizing-, however, that it was foolish and pointless to say anything, I turned to my friends and muttered:

  "Well... Let's get going, if that's the way things are..." "Au revoir," the dandy called and moved closer to the typist to continue his dictating.

  Coming out into the yard, I sat down on the cold stone step. Two workers in rust-stained tarpaulin jackets were pushing a truck of small but for some reason rusty castings along a railway line. I gazed at the workers with envy, although the work they were doing was rough and demanded very little skill.

  "What shall we do, eh, Vasil? What are you sitting there for? Can't you hear?" Petka mumbled, standing over me. "We were fools to go with that cabman! That was my fault! We ought to have come straight here with Tiktor. And now he's been taken on and we're left out in the cold," Sasha admitted, very upset.

  Sasha's words, his distressed, frightened face spotted with freckles, brought me to my senses.

  "The driver's got nothing to do with it, Sasha. Suppose we had all four come here together? There was only one place going. Then what? They might have taken you on, but what about us?"

  "Don't get peeved, Vasil! Think of something. You went to Kharkov, you got these passes..." Sasha said very peacefully.

  Suddenly I remembered the farewell words of our director at the factory-training school Polevoi: "Don't give up when you meet with failure. Don't take it lying down. Clench your teeth and go on ahead again!"

  These words and the memory of all the other things Polevoi had said made me even more furious with that hair-creamed bureaucrat in the office.

  "We'll have to go to the very top... That's what we must do!... To the director... And if he doesn't help us— to the Party Committee!" I said firmly.

  ... The director of the works turned out to be a short grey-haired man in blue overalls. At first we did not believe that he was the owner of the well-lighted office cluttered with machine parts, cultivators, castings, test-tubes of sand and copper filings...

  The director's office was more like a laboratory, or an assembly shed. Had it not been for the diagrams on the walls, the comfortable leather arm-chair, and the big oak desk with its telephones and inkstand, we should have thought we had made a mistake.

  When we filed into the room, the director was standing at a vice with a hammer and chisel in his hands. The vice was clamped to the window-sill. It held a piece of rusty metal.

  Scarcely looking down, the director was cutting through the metal with firm, heavy blows, like a regular mechanic.

  Noticing us, he put the hammer down on the window-sill and wiped his hands.

  "What can I do for you, young people?"

  He looked like an old craftsman and reminded me a little of the fitters' instructor at the factory-training school.

  The very tone of the director's voice told us that he was a calm, considerate man. True, he did not read all the passes. He glanced at the first and, when I told him what a fix we were in, he asked:

  "All of you from Podolia?"

  "Yes, all from the same town," Petka said.

  "You've come a long way then. From the Carpathians to Tavria! I know your town a bit. We marched through it on the way to the Austrian front. Some big cliffs and precipices round your way, aren't there? And a fortress standing on the top of the cliffs."

  "That fortress is still standing there!" Sasha exclaimed, and we all cheered up a bit.

  "But I must say I don't recall there being any industry there," the director said. "Where did your factory-training school spring from?"

  "There's a factory-training school, but not much industry yet," I" answered, although I knew the workers of the Motor Factory, who considered themselves a big plant, would have been mortally offended had they heard me. "That's why they sent us to you, because there's nowhere to put us at home yet. The Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine told us that young workers like us would soon be needed everywhere— in the Donbas and in Yekaterinoslav and... here!" I added.

  The director raised his shaggy eyebrows and looked at me shrewdly.

  "You don't need to tell me they've sent you, I can see that for myself..." he said slowly. "But they never asked beforehand whether we needed you just now. Where am I going to put you to start with—that's the question."

  He picked up the passes from the desk, looked through them again, and shook his head.

  "Which of you is Maremukha?"

  "Here!" Petka shouted, as if he were answering roll-call at the Special Detachment Headquarters, and stepped up to the director..

  "Well, what can you do, Maremukha?"

  "I'm a joiner and ... and a turner. I can turn wood."

  "Wood?" the director said in surprise. "I thought bread was your speciality. You look as if you knew how to put it away."

  Sasha and I laughed at Petka's confusion. Plump and rather clumsy, he stood at attention before the works director like a soldier. His trousers were badly crumpled from sleeping in them during the long journey.

  "Well, Maremukha, your luck's in," said the director. "Good joiners are just what we happen to be short of. And I don't suppose there are any down at the labour exchange. Now which of you is

  Mandzhura Vasily Mironovich?"

  I stepped up to the director.

  "What are you, a 'Galician?" the director asked.

  "Why?" I said, taken aback.

  "The name's Galician. . . But you're not far from Galicia in any case. Almost the same people as you, they are. Only the Zbruch in between... Well, what has Vasily Mironovich Mandzhura got to say for himself?"

  "I'm a foundry man!"

  "A foundry man?" The director walked over to the little table, picked up the first piece of metal that came to hand, and holding it out to me, asked: "What metal was this cast from?"

  "Pig iron," I sa
id, looking at the broken length of metal.

  "Oh, was it?" The director puckered his eyes slyly, giving me a piercing glance.

  Without another word, he went over to the vice, took out the old, battered piece of metal, put in the piece he had just shown me, and gave it a resounding blow with his hammer. The metal bent like proper iron, but did not even crack.

  "Well, is it pig iron?" the director asked and glanced at me even more slyly from under his shaggy brows.

  "That's nothing," I said slowly. "There's all kinds of pig iron. Malleable, for instance..."

  "You mean ductile, don't you?" the director corrected me, livening up noticeably.

  "Yes, ductile."

  "And how do you make pig iron ductile?"

  "You have to ... put a bit more iron into it ... and a drop of steel..."

  "Steel? Steady on, that'll make the casting more brittle! Everyone knows that steel makes iron brittle."

  "You have to cast the metal first, then anneal it in special ore... Manganese ore, I think," I said, remembering what our instructor Rozakevich had told us.

  "Ah, anneal it!" the director grew even more lively, and a pleased smile spread over his face. "That's the answer to the mystery! I've been struggling with that annealing for over a year now, counting from the time when the workers elected me director of the plant. We took this plant away from the foreign capitalists after the Revolution, and when they ran away with the Whites, they took all the production secrets with them. They thought we'd be done for without their help. But little by little we're finding things out ourselves. Now we're getting down to the secrets of annealing by scientific means, so to speak, so that we won't have to do our founding by rule of thumb. I mean to give the pig iron at this works the same ductibility as iron itself. Get it? So that if a peasant starts harvesting his wheat with one of our reapers and happens to run against a stone, nothing will go wrong. So that the teeth won't break! And those teeth, lad, are a great thing. They save the blades from all sorts of devil's tricks. Get it? And I want the Ukrainian peasant to feel thankful to us for our reapers! It's not enough to blather about bringing town and country together. Those teeth are the things that'll do it!" And the director stroked the rusty piece of metal as if it were a favourite kitten. "Well, young man, what did they teach you?" he asked, swinging his gaze on Sasha Bobir.

  "They put me in the fifth grade as a fitter," said Sasha, "but the thing I like most is taking engines to pieces."

  The director eyed Bobir, chuckling slyly. "You take engines to pieces! That's the spirit! And who puts them together again after you?"

  "I can put them together myself, if there's need. Depends on the engine. If it's a Sunbeam motor-bike, I can do it easy as pie," Sasha could not help boasting.

  "I'll have to put you into RIP then," the director decided.

  "How do you mean, 'RIP'?" Sasha's voice trembled slightly.

  "That's what one of our departments is called—the Repair, Instrument, and Power department. We call it RIP, because it's easier to say. RIP caters for all the other departments."

  Going through our passes again, the director said: "Well, you, young people, for right or wrong, I'm going to take you on at the works. Why do I make such a favour of it, you'll ask. Because in our country there is still unemployment. We've got lots of people and, as yet, not many factories. But that will pass, I'm sure. Very soon we shall get rid of unemployment, just as we've got rid of other troubles. We'll build new factories and maybe, one day, no one will believe that there ever was such a thing as unemployment in Soviet times. But at the moment it exists... All right then, go round the works today, get your papers in order, and tomorrow, at the sound of the hooter, report to the foremen. If you'd been local lads, I'd have sent you to queue up at the labour exchange. But sometimes, I repeat, we have to make exceptions. But mind you work well, to the best of your ability! -Get it? No shirking or turning up late! This is a Soviet works. Get it? We've sent the old owner, John Caiworth, packing, and taken the business we built for him into our own hands. It's to our own advantage to run the works properly. We value and respect workers who treat the works as their own.. . Any Komsomol members among you?"

  "All of us," Sasha put in hastily. "And Vasil was even on the committee!"

  "All the better!" the director said gladly. "Those Komsomol lads are a great help to us. When you've signed up in your shops, go to the works Komsomol committee and see Golovatsky. Put your names down there and start your new life."

  GETTING SETTLED

  Our landlady gave us three long canvas sacks. Petka and I stuffed them with dry, prickly hay and, after sewing them up, propped them against the shed where the goat was bleating to be milked.

  Maria Trofimovna wanted to wash the floor in our room herself, but we had got used to the job while living at the hostel, and we decided we could manage without her help. Petka carried up buckets of cold water from the little well in the yard, while I, barefooted and with my trousers rolled up to the knees, scrubbed the cracked boards with a wet rag. Then I cleaned the window. When I had polished it, the window let a lot more light in, and we were both glad to see our little room so spick and span.

  In the tree-surrounded house next door, which faced the sea, someone was playing the piano. The windows of the house were open and the sounds of the piano floated into our room, mingled with the bleating of the goat and the boom of the near-by sea, which as evening approached was falling into a calm.

  "What a window! So clean you can't even see the glass!" said Petka, surveying my handiwork.

  "Bring up the mattresses!" I commanded, encouraged by his praise.

  And while Petka went for the mattresses I worked out where we should spread them. I decided to put mine right under the window. "It'll be chilly at night, but I'll get the fresh air. And-I'll be the first to hear the works hooter in the morning," I thought.

  The room smelt fine of freshly scrubbed boards and hay.

  As I listened to the sounds of the piano, I found myself wondering anxiously how I could kill time until tomorrow morning—the first morning at our new place of work!

  The only thing I could remember about the works—not counting our conversation with the director, of course—was the long and dusty alley in the foundry, down which I had walked to reach the foundry office. What with the distant glare of iron being poured from the furnace, the clatter of the moulding machines, the clang of the signal bell, the screech of the tackles which the foundry men used to lift heavy moulds—I had been so stunned by it all that I had not even noticed how my future mates in the foundry worked.

  How little this huge foundry with its low glass roof resembled the tiny foundry at our factory-training school, which was always quiet and fairly cool, and where even on casting days there was no noise to speak of.

  Fedorko, the shift foreman, whom I met in the foundry office, a little man of about forty, with a red weather-beaten face and sparse scorched eyebrows, showed no surprise when I gave him the note from the director. Perhaps the management office had rung him up before I arrived.

  Fedorko put my name down on the foundry register and gave me a worker's ticket and a temporary pass.

  "I'll put you on a machine tomorrow," he promised.

  "But I've never worked on a moulding machine before," I told the foreman with a gulp.

  "You'll get used to it," the foreman said shortly. "Two weeks probation is a long time."

  And that was all. The only thing for me to do was to say "good-bye" and leave the office.

  With difficulty I sought out the little house near the management building where, as a passing worker told me, the Komsomol fellows "hung out."

  Finding a door bearing the notice "Works 'Komsomol Committee," I pushed it open.

  A tall man was standing with his back to me on a chair in front of a large map, swishing a ruler about over the territory of China. The room was barely furnished with a desk, bookshelves, a cupboard, and about ten chairs. Maps covered the walls.

 
; The tall man turned round, and to my surprise I noticed that he was wearing a neatly-tied crimson tie.

  "Who are you looking for?" he asked, surveying me closely. His eyes were grey and rather clever.

  "I want to see the secretary of the Komsomol," I said rather surlily. "I'll come in later."

  I was about' to go, when the man with the ruler jumped noisily to the floor.

  "How do you do!" he said loudly, holding out a big sinewy hand. "I was just studying the situation in China."

  Although the stranger wore a Komsomol badge in the lapel of his handsome dark-brown suit, I had already been put off by his smart appearance, particularly his tie, and was anxious to get away.

  "I'll come in tomorrow," I muttered.

  "Why not today?"

  "When today?"

  "Why not stay here now? I'm the secretary. Let's get to know each other. My name's Golovatsky. Who are you?"

  Something seemed to choke me and for a minute I could not say a word. This was news! The secretary of the works Komsomol organization wearing a tie! Who had ever heard of such a thing! The main point in all the debates we had ever held about culture and petty-mindedness was that the more attention a young man paid to his appearance and all that nonsense of creased trousers and particularly the wearing of a tie, the sooner he lost touch with his mates and became a grubbing bureaucrat who did not understand the needs of the working class. Nevertheless I had to tell Golovatsky what had brought me here.

  "What do you think of the opposition?" he asked me guardedly, obviously trying to sound my attitude.

  "What, have you still got opposition supporters here?" I countered.

  "They weren't our own. A lot of riff-raff came here, got themselves jobs and tried to stir up the workers. It didn't come off. The day before yesterday, when the district Party active debated the decisions of the April Plenum of the Party Central Committee, everyone voted unanimously for the Central Committee's line. Our people stuck together well and those traitors didn't get a look in. Now you answer me, what is your personal attitude to the opposition?"