The Town By The Sea tof-3

by Владимир Павлович Беляев Неизвестный Автор

  The wife goes down there and brings him back that stinking mud from the estuary. She warms it up on the stove and then puts the old man in a tub and plasters him with it. The pain lets up a bit, and again Dad puts his nets in the boat and off he goes to sea. Sometimes for rybets, sometimes for puzanok, sometimes for taran.

  There's tons of fish in this little puddle!" And Luka nodded towards the sea.

  "I say, Luka, who are the people that go for treatment in those sanatoriums?"

  "People come here from all over the place. Suppose you were still living in your Podolia, or perhaps even further away. One night you wake up and feel your legs aching fit to drive you crackers. Off you go to the polyclinic. The doctor gives you the once over and tells you you've got chronic rheumatism. They give you a free pass at work and you're here..."

  "Then perhaps it was Vukovich I met in the avenue?" I thought to myself when we parted. "Now he's on holiday and out of uniform, he doesn't want to have anything to do with me." But the idea seemed absurd.

  ALL RIGHT, MADAME!

  Even from a distance young people could be seen crowding round Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya's establishment. Some lazily nibbled sunflower seeds as they watched the lucky ones who strode in through the open doors without bothering about the price. Others, more impatient, stepped, back to the fence on the other side of the road and stood on tip-toe to see through the high windows into the hall, whence came the sound of music and the shuffle of dancing feet.

  After paying the ticket-seller in the plaid frock a whole fifty kopeks, I entered a long hall with cracked papier mache columns. The air was stuffy and reeked of powder and cheap scent.

  A few couples were moving stiffly up and down the middle of the hall in a sort of march, which I afterwards discovered was called a "fox-trot."

  Young men with blank, pompous faces, now rising on their toes and stepping forward, now taking two steps back piloted their wilting girl friends round the stuffy hall. They seemed very proud of being able to walk round like this, keeping up the monotonous rhythm and performing a few simple steps before an audience of resting dancers and people like myself who had merely come to look on. I could not see anyone who looked like the owner of the establishment and I waited impatiently for Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya to appear.

  As I watched Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya's clients amusing themselves, I could not help remembering the dances that used to be held at the Party School in our town. I often used to go to them before I joined the factory-training school. They were quite different.

  The student musicians would take their places on the platform and their brass band would rock the lofty ceiling of the former convent chapel, which had now been made into a club. Everything was so jolly and gay that even the saints whose faces still adorned the walls seemed to enjoy the blaring music, while the Lord of Sabaoth, standing in his sandaled feet above the slogan "Peace to the cottage, war to the palace!" looked ready to bound into the dance himself, together with his winged angels and Moses the Prophet.

  The students and their girl friends from the suburbs danced the mazurka in proper ballroom style and no one, of course, paid any particular attention to the patched, down-at-heel boots of the men and the wooden clogs that some of the girls were wearing.

  There were swift Hungarian dances and smooth graceful waltzes. Gay Cracoviennes followed the Pas

  d'Espagne, and if Boiko, the natural history lecturer, asked the band to play his favourite "Chinese polka," with its crouching down and other antics, there was not a person in the hall who would not join the line of dancers.

  I, too, joined in that dance, bending my knees and waddling across the hall, with my fingers pointing now to the right, now to the left.

  Once I found myself paired up with the old cook Makhteich. He had come to ask the duty man when to ring the bell for supper and Boiko had dragged him into the dance. To the tap of the kettle-drums, Makhteich and I whirled round the hall, nearly cannoning into the platform with its glittering array of brass trumpets. I noticed the smell of buckwheat porridge, fried meat and onions coming from my "lady" and guessed for certain what the students were going to have for supper.

  There was much fun and Laughter at those student dances. Friendly land unrestrained, they made you feel gay. They bubbled with youth. They were the dances of a brave, active body of men who wanted to relax and have a good time.

  But what was it here? Could you call this a dance? These people were like a lot of statues walking about! No one had anything to do with his neighbour and they all seemed to think they were dancing better than anyone else. But there wasn't any real dancing at all!

  Suddenly I burst out laughing. One of the dancers— a sallow-faced man with la pointed black moustache— seemed to think I was laughing at him and glanced threateningly in my direction.

  "My dear neighbour, can it be you? What progress you're making!" exclaimed a voice at my elbow.

  I turned round. It was Angelika. She stood before me in a spotted green dress, her white even teeth gleaming in a smile. Now I was cornered.

  "Good evening!" I said holding out my hand.

  "Do you dance? I'd never have thought it! A quiet boy like you..."

  "I just came to have a look," I grunted, glancing round to see if there was anyone else who knew me in the hall.

  "Now, now!" Angelika wagged her finger at me. "You can't fool me... Oh, good, here's Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya. She'll play now instead of that awful pianist." And standing on her toes she cupped her hands round her mouth and called out: "Glafira Pavlovna, we should like a Charleston!"

  A stout, grey-haired woman in a black dress with very pink cheeks looked round at the shout. No, she was not a bit like the skinny countess of Zarechye! This "Madame" looked more like the owner of a butcher's stall.

  ."That little fellow is your Madame Piontkovskaya's husband, I suppose?" I whispered to Lika, nodding towards the pianist.

  "Goodness, no!" Lika exclaimed indignantly. "She used to be married to an engineer who got killed by a stray bullet lat Uman. Uman's somewhere in your part of the country, isn't it?"

  "Nowhere near! It's another day's journey to Uman from us," I said and noted mentally that Golovatsky's story and what Lika had told me partially coincided.

  The little pianist in a long greasy dress-coat reaching to his knees looked like a grasshopper perched on its hind legs. He obsequiously offered Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya the piano stool. Madame gathered up her skirts and sat down. The stool groaned under her weight. Madame paused with her plump bejewelled fingers raised above the keys. "Do you Charleston?" Angelika whispered to me, but my reply was drowned by a thunderous chord. For a moment I could not decide whether this was the new dance or whether Madame had suddenly decided to break up her piano. "Come on, it's a

  Charleston!" Lika cried. "But I don't know how..."

  "Nonsense! It's a very easy dance. Just look at my feet and you'll soon learn."

  Lika dragged me out into the middle of the hall and planted her hand on my shoulder.

  Several couples were already jerking to and fro around us. Bright-coloured dresses whirled before my eyes.

  I looked down and watched the long brown legs of my partner intently. It was as if Angelika had got tired of having any feet at all and was trying to kick them off. Her legs seemed to be hinged in two or three places; she kept throwing a leg up, waggling it and then stepping towards me.

  "Saint Vitus's dance!" I thought, waggling my legs at the knees until the bones cracked. Then an idea occurred to me. Remembering the student dances back home, I grasped Angelika wildly round the waist and started whirling her across the floor, bobbing up and down, as we used to in the "Chinese polka."

  She looked at me with startled and rather angry eyes. But just as I was going to take a sharp turn, my right foot trod on something soft and slippery. I staggered into Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya, giving her a violent jab in the back with my elbow.

  The tune of the Charleston broke off for a mom
ent and in the silence that followed a word reached me which, though not very loud, stung me like a whip-lash.

  "Lout!"

  Jumping away from the piano, I saw the dancing mistress's rouged face twisted with annoyance. It must have been she who had flung that insulting word at me. But the anger on Madame's face was soon replaced by a set smile, and as if to make up for lost time, she strummed even louder and faster on the piano. Perhaps Angelika did not hear the insult directed at me, perhaps she simply pretended not to have heard it. I swung my partner to the right, towards the stream of fresh air flowing from the entrance, and led her off the floor.

  "Well, you are a clod-hopper!" Lika said, halfjoking, half contemptuous. "The music plays one thing, and you just ignore the tune completely and start dancing some sort of barn dance. You've got no ear for music at all! No idea of rhythm!"

  "I don't know about that, all I know is that people who like pushing round in heat like this must be mad!"

  "They can do the Charleston, and you can't. But why get angry about it?" Lika said soothingly.

  "Wouldn't it be better to go out in a boat on an evening like this?"

  And as I spoke, my eye rested on an apple core squashed on the floor. So that was what had earned me the title of "lout!" All right, Madame! We'll see who's the lout. You charge fifty kopeks for admission, you old screw, and you can't even keep the place tidy!

  "Do you like boating?" Lika asked, waving her scented handkerchief.

  "Who doesn't?" I said unguardedly.

  "Then you know what? Let's get away from here and go down to the sea!" And again Angelika seized my arm.

  We had not walked five steps down Genoa Street when we ran into Zuzya.

  "Where to, Lika?" the dandy asked spreading his arms.

  "Down to the sea with a young man!" she flung out coquettishly. "By the way, do you know each other?"

  "Trituzny!" the dandy drawled and without so much as a glance at me held out his big paw.

  I shook it without pleasure and said my name.

  "A thousand pardons, my dear! Ivan Fyodorovich detained me. Temper justice with mercy and come back. Today they'll be playing that tango My Heart's in Rags. We'll learn it together. The words..."

  But I had had enough. The dandy was simply refusing to acknowledge my existence.

  "Come on, Angelika, let's get going, or we'll be bitten all over by the mosquitoes later on!" I said gruffly, and she went with me.

  AT THE ENGINEER’S

  Boats were moored along both sides of the wooden pier. Lika bent down and unlocked a chain.

  "Jump!" she commanded, hauling the boat up to the pier.

  I jumped without hesitating. As my feet struck the bottom of the boat it pitched so violently that I nearly fell overboard.

  "Take a life-belt, Lika!" came a voice from above.

  It was the Life-Saving Society man. He was standing on the pier in shorts and a yachting cap with a white flag on the band. A whistle dangled on his muscular chest.

  "What for, Kolya?" said Lika, pushing off with an oar. "I think my hidalgo can swim. But if anything goes wrong, I'll save him myself without a life-belt."

  "Up to you!" the sailor replied with a chuckle. "Wave if you're in trouble." And he tossed the life-belt back on to the pier.

  I listened to them with a frown. My companion seemed determined to appear better than me in everything! Even in this phrase to the sailor there had been a scornful hint that I couldn't swim and would go to bottom like a kitten, if she didn't save me.

  Angelika plied the oars easily and we drew away from the shore. Already the pier looked quite small, like two matches stuck to the shore in the shape of a "T."

  "Let me take over for a bit."

  "You can try," Lika consented, and we changed places.

  The purple ball of the sun sinking somewhere beyond Kerch blinded me and stained the calm waters of the bay a reddish brown. I plunged my oars deep into the water and yanked at them with all my strength. One of the rowlocks jumped out of its socket and nearly fell into the sea.

  "I know you're strong, Vasil, but why break the boat? Take it easy, as if you didn't care. The boat will go faster."

  And indeed, as soon as I relaxed and stopped digging my oars in so deeply, the boat skated across the water like a flat pebble thrown from the shore, leaving a faint, trembling wake at its stern.

  "Turn a bit to the left, towards the breakwater!"

  "You want to go there?"

  "Don't you?"

  "It's a long way."

  "You don't know what 'a long way' means! If we were making for the sand-bank at this time in the evening, it'd be different. But the breakwater's only a paddle."

  The harbour with its hump-backed warehouses was far away by now and the high granite walls of the breakwater rose above us almost as soon as we passed the signal bell.

  "Yes, quite near really," I agreed. "Is it two versts?"

  "One and a half."

  I was not used to rowing and at each pull I bunched my muscles and pressed my lips tightly together. My expression must have been rather unnatural. Angelika was now surveying me quite openly.

  "You know, Vasil, your glance is like a touch. Like Lieutenant Glan's!" she said suddenly.

  "What do you mean?" I grunted.

  "Lieutenant Glan was the favourite hero of a Scandinavian writer. He was unlucky in love, so he went away and lived in a little hut in the forest, and to hurt the girl he loved sent her the head of his dog as a present... "

  "Sounds like a savage!" I remarked. "Real men don't run away from people."

  "Not from people, but from misfortune in love! He was tired of civilization."

  "It's the same thing," I said, already deeply prejudiced against the hermit. "And what sort of glance has your Trituzny got? Like a touch, too?"

  Missing the sarcasm in my question, Angelika replied eagerly:

  "Oh, quite an ordinary glance, but a terrific kick! What a pity you missed the match with Enika!. That was a game! Zuzya made a break-through from the centre of the field and knocked the goal-keeper over with the ball. Our supporters simply screamed with delight!"

  "What of it!" I said rudely, tugging at the oars. "We played the Berdichev youth team once with Bobir as goalkeeper. Both our backs were knocked out and three of their players came down on Sasha who was all alone. Do you think Sasha let the ball through?... Not him! Of course, I had to give one of their insides a smack on the jaw for trying to trip me. The ref stopped the game and gave Berdichev a penalty: Right in front of the goal. And Sasha stopped it again, and that dirty dog went off the field with a crease in his mug!"

  "Oh, Vasil, Vasil, you must learn how to talk properly. . ." Lika said reprovingly. "If only you knew how those slang expressions of yours appal me! You're a nice boy, but sometimes you sound so unpolished."

  For a start I didn't know what she meant by that fancy word "appal." But even without that, her cold, edifying tone would have made me furious.

  I said sharply: "It was unpolished men that made the Revolution, you ought to remember that sometimes!"

  Angelika could not find an answer to this or perhaps she did not want to continue the conversation.

  Only the purple crown of the dying sun showed above the horizon, tinting the water with an ominous fiery glow. Behind us the sea was already an oily black. The faint swell caught the last pink reflections of the sunset and the shadow of the breakwater running back to the harbour wall.

  Patting her hair carelessly, Lika said: "How calm it is! I like the sea best of all as it is now."

  "I thought you liked storms best. The sea was very rough when you dived into it that time."

  "I was brought up by the sea and I can't live a day without bathing. It's a habit. But to me the best thing in the world is calm, stillness. And to have a cat purring beside me... To sit on a swing and just

  stroke a little cat. With electricity crackling in its fur... What could be better!"

  How could I listen calmly to
such talk!

  I said: "But that's bourgeois petty-mindedness! You haven't started life yet, and you want peace and quiet already."

  "Oho!" Lika puckered her eyes. "The quiet boy starts to show his little claws. How interesting! I didn't know you were so fond of arguing. My admirers usually listen to me without a word of objection."

  What cheek! Who said she could count me as one of her admirers!

  "No, seriously, Vasil, I'm naughty. I like to mope on my own, to get away from the cares of the world. I love to dream. . ."

  And quite unexpectedly Lika began singing in a soft, pleasant voice:

  In a little grey house on the edge of the town,

  In a little grey house where sadness abides. . .

  "Specially in winter," she went on. "When twilight comes and day still lingers among the purple shadows, I like to be alone and talk to yearning. . . She comes out from behind the curtain over the door—a kind, sad fairy, with ash-grey hair, just like the colour of the sea now, and she soothes me.. ."

  "It's the life of luxury her father gives her that makes her have all these daft ideas!" I thought. This was the first time I had met such an outspoken philistine at close quarters.

  "What do you live for then?"

  "By inertia. I'm waiting for a lucky chance. Perhaps some strong man will turn up and change everything for me."

  "Why not do it yourself, without a nurse?"

  "I've never tried."

  "You ought to."

  "Oh, I'm too bored!"

  "What's the sense in living then? If you just wait for someone strong to turn up and moan: 'I'm bored, I'm bored. . .' "

  I could see my words had stung Angelika sharply. Again an angry little spark leapt into her eyes, as it had done a short while ago, in Rogale-Piontkovskaya's saloon.

  "And what do you live for, my dear sir? Do you enjoy your monotonous work in the foundry?"

  "Monotonous?" I exclaimed indignantly. "That's just what it isn't! Today I make one kind of mould, tomorrow another. I turn out thousands of new parts. It makes me glad to think that I'm working for my people and not swindling anyone. Isn't that worth doing? Monotonous, my foot! There aren't any boring jobs, but there are boring, hopeless people."