The Town By The Sea tof-3

by Владимир Павлович Беляев Неизвестный Автор

  The band struck up a polka. I was about to invite Lika to dance, when I started as if I had been pricked with a pin. On the other side of the hall, not far from Petka, stood Golovatsky, arms folded and watching us intently. Apparently Tolya had not forgotten his joking advice to me "not to get tied up with the neighbours." Now, seeing us together, he was lost in speculation.

  "Who cares!" I thought. "I'll tell you all about it afterwards, Tolya." And taking Lika's elbow, I led her on to the floor.

  Before we had finished the polka, however, Grisha Kanuk appeared at the entrance. His sweat-stained face showed that he had only just finished work in the foundry.

  I wondered why Grisha had not gone home to change, instead of coming to the club in his dirty working clothes. The moment he caught sight of me, he started beckoning me out of the hall.

  "Somebody wants to see me, Lika, excuse me," I said and after finding her a seat went straight over to Grisha.

  "Golovatsky, you and all the active members of the Komsomol are wanted at the works at once," Kanuk whispered panting. He must have run all the way from the works.

  "But there's no one there..." I began bewilderedly.

  Luka Turunda touched my elbow as he ran past.

  "'Hurry, Mandzhura," he said. "It's a meeting with Rudenko."

  By the time we got to the director's office, the room was full of Communists and Komsomol secretaries from the works. By the light of the two green-shaded lamps I recognized Kazurkin, Secretary of the Town Party Committee, our Flegontov, and the OGPU chief whom I had seen when the mine was discovered under the foundations of the blast-furnace.

  "We won't wait any longer," Rudenko said looking round when we had all sat down. "Tonight, comrades, making use of the fact that tomorrow would be a day-off, our enemies intended blowing up all the vital sections of our plant. Their plan is in our hands! There it is." Rudenko pointed to a crumpled paper lying before him. "I consider it my duty to thank our comrades, the security men, for discovering this document in time."

  Ivan Fyodorovich turned to the security man and gripped his hand warmly. The latter shook his head, as much as to say that neither he nor his assistants deserved any gratitude.

  The announcement shocked us, and in the tense silence that followed the director's voice sounded even more impressive.

  'The first warning we got of this kind of thing came to us, as you know, during the Komsomol members' voluntary work on Sunday. The despicable hireling of the bourgeoisie who had been entrusted with the task of detonating the mine lost his nerve and failed to carry out this act of sabotage. Then the lads in the foundry spoilt everything for him. Fortunately he has now been arrested, and at the first interrogation turned out to be very talkative. Similar mines planted by the old owner and his assistants in 1919 have been discovered in the stoke-hole and near the furnaces..."

  "Who was it, Ivan Fyodorovich?" several voices asked at once.

  "The worst worker and the worst drunkard at the plant —Entuta," the director said amid tense silence.

  "So that was the man who tried to frighten us with his anonymous letter after we had showed him up!" the thought flashed through my mind.

  After a pause the director went on: "Our comrade here will tell you the rest." And again he looked at the benevolent little man in the grey suit, beckoning him to take the chair.

  All night, until daybreak, we stood watch in the shops, guarding the works until every fresh mine that had been discovered was rendered harmless.

  The fact that the good-for-nothing drunkard Kashket had turned out to be a foreign agent soon lost its novelty. "Wasn't it obvious from the start that the foreign capitalists would recruit their agents among such degraded types!" I reflected as I paced up and down between the cooling furnaces. "People like him who've never had any feeling for their country will do any filthy work to get more money or another bottle of vodka... "

  Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya, about whom the security man had spoken in a restrained but very impressive manner that evening, had known about Kashket's past for a long time, ever since she had agreed to become a resident foreign agent in our town, concealing her secret activities against the Soviet state under the mask of being a dancing-mistress.

  The first messenger to arrive on a cargo ship from London met her in secret. Besides handing her a letter from her husband, the sugar-refinery owner who had escaped to England, the messenger presented her with a certain "business document." This document was a list of people who were "still loyal," compiled by Nestor Makhno himself, who was in those days living in Paris and, so it was rumoured, even lectured on his bandit activities at the Staff Academy. With the help of the Entente forces he was hoping to return on his machine-gun carts to the shores of the Azov Sea.

  This list included the name of the anarchist Entuta, nicknamed Kashket. Madame had got her plump bejewelled fingers on him back in the days when she still owned the "Little Nook" restaurant. Kashket came to his "mama" to cadge drinks, which thanks to Madame's "kind heart" he rarely paid for. And when at her own dancing-saloon in Genoa Street Madame demanded Kashket’s first signature on a receipt for a hundred rubles received from the British Intelligence Service, Kashket did not hesitate.

  For a whole year after that Rogale-Piontkovskaya and her agents were left to themselves.

  Connections with London broke down. For a long time no ship flying a British flag entered a Soviet port. Madame's bosses decided to make contact with her by other means.

  Had he succeeded in blowing up security headquarters in our town in Podolia, Kozyr-Zyrka was to have visited the Donbas and the Azov coast and handed fresh instructions to other resident secret agents, Rogale-Piontkovskaya among them. Apparently that was the Kozyr-Zyrka's second task, which had baffled Vukovich for so long.

  Many things that at first sight seemed trivial had helped Vukovich in his work. One of them was the chance suggestion I had made in my letter to Nikita that the keeper of the dancing-saloon might be a relation of the old countess whom we had seen in the far-off days of our childhood in Zarechye.

  Vukovich established a link between Pecheritsa's appearance in the town by the sea and the fact that the engineer "killed at Uman" was passing the time very pleasantly abroad and had even got his name in that strangely named index of celebrities Who's Who.

  When Polevoi wounded Kozyr-Zyrka in the loft of security headquarters, Kozyr-Zyrka took refuge in Pecheritsa's flat and entrusted Pecheritsa with this second task.

  It was quite possible that had not Vukovich discovered in time where Kozyr-Zyrka was hiding, Pecheritsa might have made a "business trip" to Kharkov, taking in the Azov coast as well. But things

  turned out differently. Pecheritsa had to flee and lat the same time carry out the task that he had been landed with by Kozyr-Zyrka.

  When Vukovich had laid hands on both Pecheritsa and Kozyr-Zyrka, he was able to tie up all the threads.

  Nikita's warning at the station had had a purpose. Any gossip about Rogale-Piontkovskaya might have hindered the exposure of the plot.

  Madame's nerve had begun to fail her of late. As soon as she learnt that Kashket had been arrested, she hastily packed her family jewels and with the coming of dusk decided to go "for a boat trip."

  While Petka Maremukha was acting her on the stage, Madame was making her way round the breakwater towards the foreign ship, which was finishing loading in the bay.

  The town security chief did not tell us that evening that another boat with Soviet security men in it had followed Madame's boat, and that it was they who had prevented Madame from climbing aboard up a conveniently lowered rope ladder... He merely explained what a danger "had threatened the works, and mentioned in passing that "Madame was detained in time."........

  I. must admit that many of us were still very puzzled during the night we spent guarding the works. I can write of it all now in such detail because the following days of discussion and thought about this mysterious affair helped us to understand what had happened.


  ACROSS THE AZOV WAVES

  Such a gale blew up in the evening that the yellow waves raged fiercely even in the harbour. The low-funnelled paddle steamer moored there ready for sailing rose and fell on the pounding seas.

  The name of the ship was written in a semi-circle over one of the paddle-wheels:

  FELIX DZERZHINSKY

  Not long ago when calling at our port on its way to Kerch, this steamer had been the first to bring us the sad news of the death of the man whose name it now bore. Even before, it entered the harbour from the bay, we heard the melancholy note of its siren. Its flag, edged with mourning, flew at half mast.

  Before the newspapers arrived from Mariupol, we had learnt all the details from the ship's wireless operator. We were told that Felix Dzerzhinsky had died of heart failure in Moscow, after his speech to the Central Committee, where with his usual vehemence he had exposed those despised enemies of the people—the Trotskyites. The news of Comrade Dzerzhinsky's death overwhelmed us... Not long ago, just before I set out for this town, I had heard Dzerzhinsky ring up the chief of our frontier-guard detachment. I still remembered with what excitement Nikita had said to me: "Do you know who that was on the phone? The first security man of the Revolution!"

  The next day, at lunch-time, on Flegontov's instructions, I read out the Central Committee's announcement on the death of Dzerzhinsky to the workers of the foundry.

  "The sudden death from heart failure of Comrade Dzerzhinsky, terror of the bourgeoisie, true knight of the proletariat, noble fighter for the communist revolution, tireless builder of our industry, ceaseless toiler and fearless soldier of great battles...

  "His weak heart, strained beyond endurance, at last refused to function and death claimed him instantly. Death in battle..."

  I got that far and stopped. Choking sobs rose in my throat. With an effort I checked myself from

  bursting into tears before the whole foundry, before the sad, stern faces of my mates. Afterwards, when in a quiet, muffled voice I had finished reading the announcement, folded the newspaper and was walking back to my machine, Flegontov came up behind me and placed his heavy graphite-smeared worker's hand on my shoulder.

  "Hard to read, wasn't it, Vasil?" he said quietly. "I know how you feel. What a great loss! You understand, old chap, how all of us—young and old, Communists and non-Communists—must rally round the Party to make up for our loss. We must press on no matter what the bourgeoisie plot against us. . ."

  And now, as I stood on the quay looking at that name I loved so well, I still could not get used to the idea that Dzerzhinsky was no longer with us...

  The Felix Dzerzhinsky was on her way to Rostov-on-Don from the Crimea and we were to make the stormy voyage on her to Mariupol, where a district Komsomol conference was being held.

  Not being used to rough weather, we felt rather scared of putting out to sea on a night like this...

  A tall sailor appeared on the upper deck and shouted: "Hi, Selezen! Get the boats ready!"

  The sailor's voice had a familiar ring but I could not see his face.

  Tolya Golovatsky, who was standing near me, said: "It's going to be tough, chaps! The barometer's falling."

  "The wind seemed a bit quieter to me..."

  "Don't you believe it, Mandzhura. Take a look at the weather tower. There were only eight balls hanging up there, this afternoon. Now there are nine."

  "Yes, if the captain has ordered them to get the lifeboats ready, the sea must be really rough," Kolotilov, the freckled secretary of the customs Komsomol group, agreed with Golovatsky.

  We mounted the creaking gangway and the officer of the watch checked our tickets. Golovatsky suggested going up on deck.

  "The cabins are stuffy, you'll feel rotten down there," he said, glancing at Kolotilov who was already looking rather pale.

  Having stacked our things near the stern life-boat, we went to the rail. We could make out distant signal lights somewhere near Kobazovaya Hill.

  Soon the gangway was taken in. The stevedores cast off the bow line. There was a hiss of steam, the engine burst into life and the ship moved slowly away from the granite harbour wall. The stern line slipped off the mooring post and was thrown on to the deck. Its paddles churning swiftly, the ship manoeuvred out into the harbour. The rudder chain clanked. Slowly the grey hump-backed warehouses dwindled in the distance.

  Striving to make his voice heard above the roar of the wind, Golovatsky shouted: "Shall we have a song, chaps?"

  And taking our answer for granted, he struck up in a deep pleasant voice:

  Forward, young sailors and Communists all,

  Arise to build the new age!. . .

  Looking back affectionately at our little harbour, we picked up the refrain in ringing voices that were at once borne away on the wind.

  Dotted with twinkling yellow lights our town slipped past along the sandy Azov shore. As I sang my favourite song, I tried to pick out the lighted window of our little house. Sasha and Petka had volunteered to see me off, but I had refused. It had not been certain that the ship would leave on time, and they had to work the next day.

  I also wanted to spot Lika's ivy-covered window in the house next door. Now I was sure that she would carry out her promise. At dinner today, Maria Trofimovna, our landlady, had unwittingly confirmed my conviction.

  "There's been a terrible crying to-do next door," she had said. "The lady's sobbing her heart out and the engineer's black as thunder. Their daughter wants to go to Leningrad and they've been trying to talk her out of it. Her mother says she'll give her anything. 'You don't need that .. . what d'ye call it ... "conservatoire," ' she says. 'We'll teach you at home. I'll hire two teachers and the choir-master from the Liski church will come round too. You'll die of consumption in Leningrad. But their daughter won't give in. Dead set on the idea, she is. She's a stubborn little miss."

  Maria Trofimovna was a reliable source of information about next door and as I listened to her I felt glad Lika was going away, yet sorry that she would go without my being there to see her off. I had wanted to talk to her frankly about everything and say good-bye to her and wish her success in her new life of independence.

  Children of workers and sailors, we march

  With hearts that are strong and loyal.

  No fear have we oftempest or storm,

  Nor of long hard days of toll. . .

  sang the boys.

  The ship was pitching hard. Now it would plunge down from a billowing, foam-capped wave, so that your heart rose to your throat and your legs suddenly felt as if they had been filled with air, now it would rear up on a mountain of angry water and-the paddles would lash the long broken ridges of the waves. The rising wind howled at us from the pitch blackness of the open sea which was broken only by the flashing beam of the beacon on the headland.

  One by one, the shore lights disappeared and the light of 'the beacon showed us that we were leaving the bay.

  But we sang in spite of the storm:

  Let the storm winds rage and the tempest blow, The tide of the workers is high.

  Forward, young sailors and Communists all, Forward to conquer or die!...

  "Your singing's fine, but do you mind clearing your stuff away from the boats. We might have to lower them if things get worse." Again I heard that familiar voice, this time at my elbow.

  I turned. For an instant the beam from the lighthouse showed up the face of a young navigating officer and I recognized my old friend.

  "Weasel!"

  I gave such a shout that all our delegates turned round.

  The sailor fell back a pace and his quick gypsy eyes widened. Obviously it was a long time since anyone had called him by his childhood nickname. For a moment he rubbed his forehead in a puzzled fashion, as if trying to remember something, and only when the beam from the lighthouse swept again over the heaving deck did he run towards me with outstretched arms.

  "Mandzhura!. . . Where did you spring from?" ... Something caught in Yuzik's throat. He gl
anced round helplessly, then mastering his excitement, he spoke more quietly.

  "Fancy meeting you here? Well, I'm darned! Vasya!. . ." I could hardly believe it myself. On a ship's deck, in a storm like this! But he it was, my old friend Weasel!

  Half an hour later, the Felix Dzerzhinsky rounded the harbour bar and set course across the open sea for Mariupol. Yuzik was relieved from his watch and invited me to the officers' saloon. Golovatsky and several of the other delegates went with me.

  With great difficulty, clutching hand-rails and banging our elbows on the bulkheads, we made our way to the saloon.

  "I've found a friend, Nikolai Ivanovich!" Yuzik said joyfully to an old waiter in a white apron. "Haven't seen each other for years!. . . How long is it since we met, Vasil?"

  "Over five years."

  Weasel put his arm round my shoulders and said reproachfully: "You couldn't even write to me!

  You're a fine pal!"

  "But we did write to you! Petka and I, both of us! You answered once, then dried up. We we're a bit sore about it, thought your naval training had made you stuck-up."

  "Me stuck-up!" Yuzik laughed. "I kept on writing and the letters came back to me all the time."

  "What address did you write to, I wonder?"

  "To 37, Zarechye."

  "So that's what it was!" I said with relief. "We had moved to a flat in the Party School."

  "Now I understand," Weasel said, also with a kind of relief in his voice, and again his face brightened with joy.

  The ship was pitching and rolling. Any moment, it seemed, the huge waves would smash one of the glass portholes and pour into the saloon.

  "You've grown up," Weasel said eyeing me closely. "Not the same Vasya that ransacked the birds' nests, eh! Remember how we found that hawk's nest on the cliff near the cemetery?"

  "You bet I do!" I said smiling. "We found a yellow egg there with red spots on it."