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Outside Tresor,now chained for the night, suddenly barked in his reverberating bass.
Through a sleepy haze Tonya heard her mother speaking in a low voice.
“No, she is not asleep yet. Come in, Liza.”
The light footsteps of her friend and the warm, impulsive hug finally dispelled her drowsiness.Tonya smiled wanly.
“I’m so glad you’ve come, Liza. Papa passed the crisis yesterday and today he has been sleepingsoundly all day. —-
Mama and I have had some rest too after so many sleepless nights. —-
Tell me all the news.” Tonya drew her friend down beside her on the couch.
“Oh, there’s plenty of news, but some of it’s for your ears only,” Liza smiled with a sly look at Yekaterina Mikhailovna.
Tonya’s mother smiled. She was a matronly woman of thirty-six with the vigorous movements of a young girl, clever grey eyes and a face that was pleasant if not beautiful. —-
“I will gladly leave you alone in a few minutes, but first I want to hear the news that is fit for everybody’s ears,” she joked, pulling a chair up to the couch.
“Well, to begin with we’ve finished with school. —-
The board has decided to issue graduation certificates to the seventh-graders. I am glad. —-
I’m so sick of all this algebra and geometry! What good is it to anyone? —-
The boys may possibly continue their studies, although they don’t know where, with all this fighting going on. —-
It’s simply terrible. . . . As for us, we’ll be married and wives don’t need algebra,” Liza laughed. After sitting with the girls for a little while, Yekaterina Mikhailovna went to her own room. —-
Liza now moved closer to Tonya and with her arms about her gave her a whispered account of the encounter at the crossroads.
“You can imagine my surprise, Tonya, when I recognised the lad who was running away. Guess who it was?”
Tonya, who was listening with interest, shrugged her shoulders.
“Korchagin!” Liza blurted out breathlessly.
Tonya started and winced.
“Korchagin?”
Liza, pleased with the impression she had made, went on to describe her quarrel with Victor.
Carried away by her story, Liza did not notice Tonya’s face grow pale and her fingers pluck nervously at her blue blouse. —-
Liza did not know how Tonya’s heart constricted with anxiety, nor did she notice how the long lashes that hid her beautiful eyes trembled. —-
Tonya paid scant heed to Liza’s story of the drunken Khorunzhy. —-
One thought gave her no rest:
“Victor Leszczinski knows who attacked the soldier. Oh, why did Liza tell him?” —-
And in spite of herself the words broke from her lips.
“What did you say?” Liza could not grasp her meaning at once.
“Why did you tell Leszczinski about Pavlusha . . . I mean Korchagin? He’s sure to betray him. . . .”
“Oh, surely not!” Liza protested. “I don’t think he would do such a thing. —-
After all, why should he?”
Tonya sat up sharply and hugged her knees so hard that it hurt.
“You don’t understand, Liza! He and Korchagin are enemies, and besides, there is something else. —-
. . . You made a big mistake when you told Victor about Pavlusha.”
Only now did Liza notice Tonya’s agitation, and her use of Korchagin’s first name confirmed what she had vaguely suspected.
She could not help feeling guilty and lapsed into an embarrassed silence.
“So it’s true,” she thought. “Fancy Tonya falling in love with a plain workman.” —-
Liza wanted to talk about it very much, but out of consideration for her friend she refrained. —-
Anxious to atone for her guilt in some way, she seized Tonya’s.
“Are you very worried, Tonya?”
“No, perhaps Victor is more honourable than I think,” Tonya replied absently.
The awkward silence that ensued was broken by the arrival of a schoolmate of theirs, a bashful,gawky lad named Demianov.
After seeing her friends off, Tonya stood for a long time leaning against the wicket gate and staring at the dark strip of road leading to town. —-
The wind laden with a chill dampness and the dank odour of the wet spring soil fanned her face. —-
Dull red lights blinked in the windows of the houses over in the town. —-
There it was, that town that lived a life apart from hers, and somewhere there, under one of those roofs, unaware of the danger that threatened him, was her rebellious friend Pavel. Perhaps he had forgotten her—how many days had flown by since their last meeting? —-
He had been in the wrong that time, but all that had long been forgotten. Tomorrow she
would see him and their friendship would be restored, a moving, warming friendship. —-
It was sure to return—of that Tonya had not the slightest doubt. —-
If only the night did not betray him, the night that seemed to harbour evil, as if lying in wait for him. —-
. . . A shiver ran through her, and after a last look at the road, she went in. —-
The thought, “If only the night does not betray him”, still drilled in her head as she dozed off.
Tonya woke up early in the morning before anyone else was about, and dressed quickly. —-
She slipped out of the house quietly so as not to wake up the family, untied the big shaggy Tresor and set out for town with the dog. —-
She hesitated for a moment in front of the Korchagin house, then pushed the gate open and walked into the yard. —-
Tresor dashed ahead wagging his tail. . . .
Artem had returned from the village early that same morning. —-
The blacksmith he had worked for had given him a lift into town on his cart. —-
On reaching home he threw the sack of flour he had earned on his shoulders and walked into the yard, followed by the blacksmith carrying the rest of his belongings. —-
Outside the open door Artem set the sack down on the ground and called out;”Pavka!”
There was no answer.
“What’s the hitch there? Why not go right in?” said the smith as he came up.
Setting his belongings down in the kitchen, Artem went into the next room. —-
The sight that met his eyes there dumbfounded him: —-
the place was turned upside down and old clothes littered the floor.
“What the devil is this?” Artem muttered completely at a loss. —-
“It’s a mess all right,” agreed the blacksmith.
“Where’s the boy got to?” Artem was getting angry. But the place was deserted and dead.
The blacksmith said good-bye and left.
Artem went into the yard and looked around.
“I can’t make head or tail of this! All the doors wide open and no Pavka.”
Then he heard footsteps behind him. Turning around he saw a huge dog with ears pricked standing before him. —-
A girl was walking toward the house from the gate.
“I want to see Pavel Korchagin,” she said in a low voice, surveying Artem.
“So do I. But the devil knows where he’s gone. —-
When I got here the house was unlocked and no Pavka anywhere about. —-
So you’re looking for him too?” he addressed the girl.
The girl answered with a question:
“Are you Korchagin’s brother Artem?”
“I am. Why?”
Instead of replying, the girl stared in alarm at the open door. “Why didn’t I come last night?” —-
she thought. “It can’t be, it can’t be. . . .” —-
And her heart grew heavier still.
“You found the door open and Pavel gone?” she asked Artem, who was staring at her in surprise.
“And what would you be wanting of Pavel, may I ask?” —-
Tonya came closer to him and casting a look around spoke jerkily:
“I don’t know for sure, but if Pavel isn’t at home he must have been arrested.”
Artem started nervously. “Arrested? What for?”
“Let’s go inside,” Tonya said.
Artem listened in silence while Tonya told him all she knew. —-
By the time she had finished he was despairing.
“Damn it all! As if there wasn’t enough trouble without this mess,” he muttered gloomily. —-
“Now I see why the place was turned upside down. —-
What the hell did the boy have to get mixed up in this business for. . . . —-
Where can I find him now? And who may you be, miss?”
“My father is forest warden Tumanov. I’m a friend of Pavel’s.”
“I see,” Artem said absently. “Here I was bringing flour to feed the boy up, and now this. . . .”
Tonya and Artem looked at each other in silence.
“I must go now,” Tonya said softly as she prepared to go. —-
“I hope you’ll find him. I’ll come back later.”
Artem gave her a silent nod.
A lean fly just awakened from its winter sleep buzzed in a corner of the window. —-
On the edge of an old threadbare couch sat a young peasant woman, her elbows resting on her knees and her eyes fixed blankly on the filthy floor.
The Commandant, chewing a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, finished writing on a sheet of paper with a flourish, and, obviously pleased with himself, added an ornate signature ending in a curlicue under the title “Commandant of the town of Shepetovka, Khorunzhy’’. —-
From the door came the clinking of spurs. —-
The Commandant looked up.
Before him stood Salomyga with a bandaged arm.
“Hullo, what’s blown you in?” the Commandant greeted him.
“Not a good wind, at any rate. Got my hand sliced to the bone by a Bogunets.” —-
( Bogunets—a fighting man of the Red Army Regiment named after Bogun, the hero of the national liberation struggle waged by the Ukrainian people in the 17th century.)
Ignoring the woman’s presence Salomyga cursed violently.
“So what are you doing here? Convalescing?”
“We’ll have time to convalesce in the next world. —-
They’re pressing down pretty hard on us at the front.”
The Commandant interrupted him, nodding toward the woman.
“We’ll talk about that later.”
Salomyga sat down heavily on a stool and removed his cap, which bore a cockade with an enamel trident, the emblem of the UNR (Ukrainian National Republic).
“Golub sent me,” he began in a low tune. “A division of regulars is going to be transferred here soon. —-
In general there’s going to be some doings in town, and it’s my job to put things straight. —-
The ‘Chief himself may come here with some foreign bigwig or other, so there’s to be no talk about any ‘diversions’. —-
What’re you writing?”
The Commandant shifted the cigarette to the other corner of his mouth.
“I’ve got a damn nuisance of a boy here. Remember that chap Zhukhrai, the one who stirred up the railway-men against us? —-
Well, he was caught at the station.”
“He was, eh? Go on,” Salomyga pulled his stool closer.
“Well, that blockhead Omelchenko, the Station Commandant, sent him over escorted by a Cossack, and on the way the lad I’ve got in here took the prisoner away from him in broad daylight. —-
The Cossack was disarmed and got his teeth knocked out, and was left to whistle for his prisoner. —-
Zhukhrai got away, but we managed to grab this fellow. —-
Here you have it all down on paper,” and he pushed a sheaf of sheets covered with writing toward Salomyga.
The latter scanned through the report, turning over the sheets with his left hand.
When he had finished, he looked at the Commandant.
“And so you got nothing out of him?”
The Commandant pulled nervously at the peak of his cap.
“I’ve been at him for five days now, but all he says is, ‘I don’t know anything and I didn’t free him.’
The young scoundrel! You see, the escort recognised him—practically choked the life out of him as soon as he saw him. —-
I could hardly pull the fellow off—no wonder, he’d good reason to be sore because Omelchenko at the station had given him twenty-five strokes with the cleaning rod for losing his prisoner. —-
There’s no sense in keeping him any more, so I’m sending this off to headquarters for permission to finish him off.”
Salomyga spat in disdain.
“If I had him he’d speak up sure enough. You’re not much at conducting enquiries. —-
Whoever heard of a theology student making a Commandant! —-
Did you try the rod?”
The Commandant was furious.
“You’re going a bit too far. Keep your sneers to yourself. —-
I’m the Commandant here and I’ll ask you not to interfere.”
Salomyga looked at the bristling Commandant and roared with laughter.
“Ha-ha-ha. . . . Don’t puff yourself up too much, priest’s son, or you’ll burst. —-
To hell with you and your problems. Better tell me where a fellow can get a couple of bottles of samogon?”
The Commandant grinned.
“That s easy. “
“As for this,” Salomyga jabbed at the sheaf of papers with his finger, “if you want to fix him properly put him down as eighteen years instead of sixteen. —-
Round the top of six off like that.
Otherwise they mightn’t pass it.”
There were three of them in the storeroom. —-
A bearded old man in a threadbare coat lay on his side on the bunk, his spindle legs in their wide linen trousers drawn up under him. —-
He had been arrested because the horse of the Petlyura men billeted with him had been missing from the shed.
An elderly woman with small shifty eyes and a pointed chin was sitting on the floor. —-
She made her living by selling samogon and had been thrown in here on a charge of stealing a watch and other valuables. —-
Korchagin lay semiconscious in the corner under the window, his head resting on his crushed cap.
A young woman, in a peasant kerchief, her eyes wide with terror, was led into the storeroom.
She stood for a moment or two and then sat down next to the samogon woman.
“Got caught, eh, wench?” the latter spoke rapidly, inspecting the newcomer with curious eyes.
There was no answer, but the samogon woman would not give up.
“Why’d they pick you up, eh? Nothing to do with samogon by any chance?” —-
The peasant girl got up and looked at the persistent “No, it’s because of my brother,” she replied quietly.
“And who’s he?” the old woman persisted.
The old man spoke up.
“Why don’t you leave her alone? She’s got enough to worry about without your chattering.”
The woman turned quickly toward the bunk.
“Who are you to tell me what to do? I’m not talking to you, am I?”
The old man spat.
“Leave her alone, I tell you.”
Silence descended again on the storeroom. —-
The peasant girl spread out a big shawl and lay down,resting her head on her arm.
The samogon woman began to eat. The old man sat up, lowered his feet onto the floor, slowly rolled himself a cigarette and lit it. —-
Clouds of acrid smoke spread out.
“A person can’t eat in peace with that stink,” the woman grumbled, her jaws working busily.
“You’ve smoked the whole place up.”
The old man returned with a sneer:
“Afraid of losing weight, eh? You won’t be able to get through the door soon. —-
Why don’t you give the boy something to eat instead of stuffing it all into yourself?”
The woman made an angry gesture.
“I tried, but he doesn’t want anything. And as for that you can keep your mouth shut—it’s not your food I’m eating.”
The girl turned to the samogon woman and, nodding toward Korchagin, asked:
“What is he in here for?”
The woman brightened up at being addressed and readily replied:
“He’s a local lad—Korchagin’s younger boy. His mother’s a cook.”
Leaning over to the girl, she whispered in her ear:
“He freed a Bolshevik—a sailor we had hereabouts .who used to lodge with my neighbour Zozulikha.”
The young woman remembered the words, she had overheard: —-
“I’m sending this off to headquarters for permission to finish him off.”
One after the other troop trains pulled in at the junction, and battalions of regulars poured out in a disorderly mob. —-
The armoured train Zaporozhets, four cars long, its steel sides ribbed with rivets,crawled along a side track. —-
Guns were unloaded and horses were led out of closed box cars. —-
The horses were saddled on the spot and mounted men jostled their way through the milling crowds of infantrymen to the station yard where the cavalry unit was lining up.
Officers ran up and down, calling the numbers of their units.
The station buzzed like a wasps’ nest. Gradually the regular squares of platoons were hammered out of the shapeless mass of vociferous, swirling humanity and soon a stream of armed men was pouring into town. —-
Until late in the evening carts creaked and rattled and the stragglers bringing up the rear of the rifle division trailed along the highway.
The procession finally ended with the headquarters company marching briskly by, bellowing from a hundred and twenty throats:
What’s the shouting?
What’s the noise?
It’s Petlyura
And his boys
Come to town. .. .
Pavel Korchagin got up to look out of the window. —-
Through the early twilight he could hear the rumbling of wheels on the street, the tramping of many feet, and the lusty singing.
Behind him a soft voice said:
“The troops have come to town.”
Korchagin turned round.
The speaker was the girl who had been brought in the day before.
He had already heard her story—the samogon woman had wormed it out of her. —-
She came from a village seven versts from the town, where her elder brother, Gritsko, now a Red partisan, had headed a poor peasants’ committee when the Soviets were in power.
When the Reds left, Gritsko girded himself with a machine-gun belt and went with them. —-
Now the family was being hounded incessantly. Their only horse had been taken away from them. —-
The father had been imprisoned for a while and had a rough time of it. —-
The village elder— one of those on whom Gritsko had clamped down—was always billeting strangers in their house, out of sheer spite. —-
The family was destitute. And when the Commandant had come to the village the day before to make a search, the elder had brought him to the girl’s place. —-
She struck his fancy and the next morning he brought her to town with him “for interrogation”.
Korchagin could not fall asleep, try as he might he could not find rest, and in his brain drilled one insistent thought which he could not dispel: “What next?”
His bruised body ached, for the guard had beaten him with bestial fury.
To escape the bitter thoughts crowding his mind he listened to the whispering of the two women.
In a barely audible voice the girl was telling how the Commandant had pestered her, how he had threatened and coaxed, and when she rebuffed him, turned on her in fury. —-
“I’ll lock you up in a cellar and let you rot there,” he had said.
Darkness lurked in the corners of the cell. —-
There was another night ahead, a stifling, restless night.
It was the seventh night in captivity, but to Pavel it seemed that he had been there for months. —-
The floor was hard, and pain racked his body. There were three of them now in the storeroom. —-
The samogon woman had been released by the Khorunzhy to procure some vodka. —-
Grandpa was snoring on the bunk as if he were at home on his Russian stove; —-
he bore his misfortune with stoic calm and slept soundly through the night. —-
Khristina and Pavel lay on the floor, almost side by side.
Yesterday Pavel had seen Sergei through the window—he had stood for a long time out in the street, looking sadly at the windows of the houses.
“He knows I’m here,” Pavel had thought.
For three days running someone had brought sour black bread for him—who it was the guards would not tell. —-
And for two days the Commandant had repeatedly questioned him.
What could it all mean?
During the questioning he had given nothing away; on the contrary he had denied everything.
Why he had kept silent, he did not know himself. —-
He wanted to be brave and strong, like those of whom he had read in books, yet that night when he was being taken to prison and one of his captors had said, “What’s the use of dragging him along, Pan Khorunzhy? —-
A bullet in the back will fix him”, he had been afraid. —-
Yes, the thought of dying at sixteen was terrifying! Death was the end of everything. —-
Khristina was also thinking. She knew more than the young man. —-
Most likely he did not know yet what was in store for him . —-
. . what she had overheard.
He tossed about restlessly at night unable to sleep. —-
Khristina pitied him, though the prospect she herself faced was hardly better—she could not forget the menace of the Commandant’s words: —-
“I’ll fix you up tomorrow— if you won’t have me it’s the guardhouse for you. —-
The Cossacks will be glad to get you. So take your choice.” —-
Oh, how hard it was, and no mercy to be expected anywhere! —-
Was it her fault that Gritsko had joined the Reds? —-
How cruel life was!
A dull pain choked her and in the agony of helpless despair and fear her body was racked by soundless sobs. —-
A shadow moved in the corner by the wall. —-
“Why are you crying?”
In a passionate whisper Khristina poured out her woes to her silent cell mate. He did not speak,but laid his hand lightly on hers.
“They’ll torture me to death, curse them,” she whispered in terror, gulping down her tears.
“Nothing can save me.” What could Pavel say to this girl? —-
There was nothing to say. Life was crushing them both in an iron ring.
Perhaps he ought to put up a fight when they came for her tomorrow? —-
They’d only beat him to death, or a sabre blow on the head would end it all. —-
Wishing to comfort the distraught girl somehow, he stroked her hand tenderly. The sobbing ceased. —-
At intervals the sentry at the entrance could be heard challenging a passer-by with the usual “Who goes there?” —-
and then everything was quiet again. Grandpa was fast asleep. —-
The interminable minutes crawled slowly by. —-
Then, to his utter surprise, Pavel felt the girl’s arms go around him and pull him toward her.
“Listen,” hot lips were whispering, “there is no escape for me: —-
if it isn’t the officer, it’ll be those others. —-
Take me, love, so that dog won’t be the first to have me.”
“What are you saying, Khristina!”
But the strong arms did not release him. Full, burning lips pressed down on his—they were hard to escape. —-
The girl’s words were simple, tender—and he knew why she uttered them.
For a moment everything receded—the bolted door, the red-headed Cossack, the Commandant,the brutal beatings, the seven stifling, sleepless nights—all were forgotten, and only the burning lips and the face moist with tears existed.
Suddenly he remembered Tonya.
How could he forget her? Those dear, wonderful eyes.
He mustered his strength and broke away from Khristina’s embrace. —-
He staggered to his feet like a drunken man and seized hold of the grill. —-
Khristina’s hands found him.
“Why, what is the matter?”
All her heart was in that question. He bent down to her and pressing her hands said:
“I can’t, Khristina. You are so . . . good.” He hardly knew what he was saying.
He stood up again in the intolerable silence and went over to the bunk. —-
Sitting down on the edge,he woke up the old man.
“Give me a smoke, please, Granddad.”
The girl, huddled in her shawl, wept in the corner.
The next day the Commandant came with some Cossacks and took Khristina away. —-
Her eyes sought Pavel’s in farewell, and there was reproach in them. —-
And when the door slammed behind her his soul was more desolate and dreary than ever.
All day long the old man could not get a word out of Pavel. The sentries and the Commandant’s guard were changed. —-
Toward evening a new prisoner was brought in. Pavel recognised him: —-
it was Dolinnik, a joiner from the sugar refinery, a short thickset man wearing a faded yellow shirt under a threadbare jacket. —-
He surveyed the storeroom with a keen eye.
Pavel had seen him in February 1917, when the reverberation of the revolution reached their town.
He had heard only one Bolshevik speak during the noisy demonstrations held then and that Bolshevik was Dolinnik. —-
He had climbed onto a roadside fence and addressed the troops. —-
Pavel remembered his closing words:
“Follow the Bolsheviks, soldiers, they will not betray you!”
He had not seen the joiner since.
Granddad was glad to have a new cell mate, for he obviously found it hard to sit silent all day long. Dolinnik settled down next to him on the edge of the bunk, smoked a cigarette with him and questioned him about everything.
Then the newcomer moved over to Korchagin. “Well, young man?” —-
he asked Pavel. “And how did you get in here?”
Pavel replied in monosyllables and Dolinnik saw that it was caution that kept the young man from speaking. —-
When he learned of the charge laid against Pavel his intelligent eyes widened with amazement and he sat down beside the lad.
“So you say you got Zhukhrai away? That’s interesting. I didn’t know they’d nabbed you.”
Pavel, taken by surprise, raised himself on his elbow. —-
“I don’t know any Zhukhrai. They can pin anything on you here.”
Dolinnik, smiling, moved closer to him. “That’s all right, my boy. —-
You don’t need to be cautious with me. I know more than you do.”
Quietly, so that the old man should not overhear he continued:
“I saw Zhukhrai off myself, he’s probably reached his destination by now. —-
He told me all about what happened.” After a moment’s pause, Dolinnik added: —-
“I see you’re made of the right stuff,boy. —-
Though, the fact that they caught you and know everything is bad, Very bad, I should say.”
He took off his jacket and spreading it on the floor sat down on it with his back against the wall,and began to roll another cigarette.
Dolinnik’s last remark made everything clear to Pavel. There was no doubt about it, Dolinnik was all right. —-
Besides, he had seen Zhukhrai off, and that meant. . . .
That evening he learned that Dolinnik had been arrested for agitation among Petlyura’s Cossacks.
Moreover, he had been caught distributing an appeal issued by the gubernia revolutionary committee calling on the troops to surrender and go over to the Reds.
Dolinnik was careful not to tell Pavel much.
“Who knows,” he thought to himself, “they may use the ramrod on the boy. He’s still too young.”
Late at night when they were settling themselves for sleep, he voiced his apprehensions in the brief remark:
“Well, Korchagin, we seem to be in a pretty bad fix. Let’s see what will come of it.”
The next day a new prisoner was brought in—the flop-eared, scraggy-necked barber Shlyoma Zeltser.
“Fuchs, Bluvstein and Trachtenberg are going to welcome him with bread and salt,” he told Dolinnik gesturing excitedly as he spoke. —-
“I said that if they want to do that, they can, but will the rest of the Jewish population back them up? —-
No, they won’t, you can take it from me. Of course they have their own fish to fry. —-
Fuchs has a store and Trachtenberg’s got the flour mill. But what’ve I got? —-
And the rest of the hungry lot? Nothing—paupers, that’s what we are. —-
Well, I’ve got a long tongue, and today when I was shaving an officer—one of the new ones who came recently —I said: —-
‘Do you think Ataman Petlyura knows about these pogroms or not? Will he see the
delegation?’ Oi, how many times I’ve got into trouble through this tongue of mine. —-
So what do you think this officer did when I had shaved him and powdered his face and done all in fine style too? —-
He gets up and instead of paying me arrests me for agitating against the authorities.” —-
Zeltser struck his chest with his fist. “Now what sort of agitation was that? —-
What did I say? I only asked the fellow. . . . —-
And to lock me up for that. . . .”
In his excitement Zeltser twisted a button on Dolinnik’s shirt and tugged at his arms.
Dolinnik smiled in spite of himself as he listened to the indignant Shlyoma.
“Yes, Shlyoma,” he said gravely when the barber had finished, “that was a stupid thing for a clever fellow like you to do. —-
You chose the wrong time to let your tongue run away with you. —-
I wouldn’t have advised you to get in here.”
Zeltser nodded understandingly and made a gesture of despair with his hand. —-
Just then the door opened and the samogon woman was pushed in. —-
She staggered in, heaping foul curses on the Cossack who brought her.
“You and your Commandant ought to be roasted on a slow fire! —-
I hope he shrivels up and croaks from that booze of mine!”
The guard slammed the door shut and they heard him locking it on the outside.
As the woman settled down on the edge of the bunk the old man greeted her jocularly:
“So you’re back with us again, you old chatterbox? Sit down and make yourself at home.”
The samogon woman darted a hostile glance at him and picking up her bundle sat down on the floor next to Dolinnik.
It turned out that she had been released just long enough for her captors to get some bottles of samogon out of her.
Suddenly shouts and the sound of running feet could be heard from the guardroom next door.
Somebody was barking out orders. The prisoners stopped talking to listen.
Strange things were happening on the square in front of the ungainly church with the ancient belfry. —-
On three sides the square was lined with rectangles of troops— units of the division of regular infantry mustered in full battle kit.
In front, facing the entrance to the church, stood three regiments of infantry in squares placed in checkerboard fashion, their ranks buttressed against the school fence.
This grey, rather dirty mass of Petlyura soldiers standing there with rifles at rest, wearing absurd Russian helmets like pumpkins cut in half, and heavily laden down with bandoliers, was the best division the “Directorate” had.
Well-uniformed and shod from the stores of the former tsarist army and consisting mainly of kulaks who were consciously fighting the Soviets, the division had been transferred here to defend this strategically important railway junction. —-
Five different railway lines converged at Shepetovka,and for Petlyura the loss of the junction would have meant the end of everything. —-
As it was, the “Directorate” had very little territory left in its hands, and the small town of Vinnitsa was now Petlyura’s capital.
The “Chief Ataman” himself had decided to inspect the troops and now everything was in readiness for his arrival.
Back in a far corner of the square where they were least likely to be seen stood a regiment of new recruits— barefoot youths in shabby civilian clothes of all descriptions. —-
These were farm lads picked up from their beds by midnight raiding parties or seized on the streets, and none of them had the least intention of doing any fighting.
“Let them look for fools somewhere else,” they said.
The most the Petlyura officers could do was to bring the recruits to town under escort, divide them into companies and battalions and issue them arms. —-
The very next day, however, a third of the recruits thus herded together would disappear and with each passing day their numbers dwindled.
It would have been more than foolhardy to issue them boots, particularly since the boot stocks were far from plentiful. —-
And so everyone was ordered to report for conscription shod. —-
The result was an astonishing collection of dilapidated footwear tied on with bits of string and wire.
They were marched out for parade barefoot.
Behind the infantry stood Golub’s cavalry regiment.
Mounted men held back the dense crowds of curious townsfolk who had come to see the parade.
After all, the “Chief Ataman” himself was to be present! —-
Events like this were rare enough in town and no one wanted to miss the free entertainment it promised.
On the church steps were gathered the colonels and captains, the priest’s two daughters, a handful of Ukrainian schoolteachers, a group of “free Cossacks”, and the slightly hunchbacked mayor—in a word, the elite representing the “public”, and among them the Inspector-General of Infantry wearing a Caucasian cherkesska. —-
It was he who was in command of the parade.
Inside the church Vasili, the priest, was garbing himself in his Easter service vestments.
Petlyura was to be received in grand style. —-
For one thing, the newly-mobilised recruits were to take the oath of allegiance, and for this purpose a yellow-and-blue flag had been brought out.
The Division Commander set out for the station in a rickety old Ford car to meet Petlyura.
When he had gone, the Inspector of Infantry called over Colonel Chernyak, a tall, well-built officer with a foppishly twirled moustache.
“Take someone along with you and see that the Commandant’s office and the rear services are in proper shape. —-
If you find any prisoners there look them over and get rid of the riffraff.”
Chernyak clicked his heels, took along the first Cossack captain his eye lighted on and galloped off.
The Inspector turned politely to the priest’s elder daughter.
“What about the banquet, everything in order?”
“Oh, yes. The Commandant’s doing his best,” she replied, gazing avidly at the handsome Inspector.
Suddenly a stir passed through the crowd: —-
a rider was coming down the road at a mad gallop,bending low over the neck of his horse. —-
He waved his hand and shouted:
“They’re coming!”
“Fall in!” barked the Inspector.
The officers ran to their places.
As the Ford chugged up to the church the band struck up The Ukraine Lives On.
Following the Division Commander, the “Chief Ataman” heaved himself laboriously out of the car. —-
Petlyura was a man of medium height, with a square head firmly planted on a red bull neck; —-
he wore a blue tunic of fine wool cloth girded tight with a yellow belt to which a small Browning in a chamois holster was attached. —-
On his head was a peaked khaki uniform cap with a cockade bearing the enamel trident.
There was nothing especially warlike about the figure of Simon Petlyura. —-
As a matter of fact, he did not look like a military man at all.
He heard out the Inspector’s report with an expression of displeasure on his face. —-
Then the mayor addressed him in greeting.
Petlyura listened absently, staring at the assembled regiments over the mayor’s head.
“Let us begin,” he nodded to the Inspector.
Mounting the small platform next to the flag, Petlyura delivered a ten-minute speech to the troops.
The speech was unconvincing. Evidently tired from the journey, the Ataman spoke without enthusiasm. —-
He finished to the accompaniment of the regulation shouts of “Slava! Slava!” —-
from the soldiers and climbed down from the platform dabbing his perspiring forehead with a handkerchief. —-
Then, together with the Inspector and the Division Commander, he inspected the units.
As he passed the ranks of the newly-mobilised recruits his eyes narrowed in a disdainful scowl and he bit his lips in annoyance.
Toward the end of the inspection, when the platoons of new recruits marched in uneven ranks to the flag, where the priest Vasili was standing, Bible in hand, and kissed first the Bible and then the hem of the flag, an unforeseen incident occurred.
A delegation which had contrived by some unknown means to reach the square approached Petlyura. —-
At the head of the group came the wealthy timber merchant Bluvstein with an offering of bread and salt, followed by Fuchs the draper, and three other well-to-do businessmen.
With a servile bow Bluvstein extended the tray to Petlyura. —-
It was taken by an officer standing alongside.
“The Jewish population wishes to express its sincere gratitude and respect for you, the head of the state. —-
Please accept this address of greeting.”
“Good,” muttered Petlyura, quickly scanning the sheet of paper.
Fuchs stepped forward.
“We most humbly beg you to allow us to open our enterprises and we ask for protection against pogroms.” —-
Fuchs stumbled over the last word.
An angry scowl darkened Petlyura’s features.
“My army does not engage in pogroms. You had better remember that.”
Fuchs spread out his arms in a gesture of resignation.
Petlyura’s shoulder twitched nervously. The untimely appearance of the delegation irritated him.
He turned to Golub, who was standing behind chewing his black moustache.
“Here’s a complaint against your Cossacks, Pan Colonel. —-
Investigate the matter and take measures accordingly,” said Petlyura. —-
Then, addressing the Inspector, he said dryly:
“You may begin the parade.”
The ill-starred delegation had not expected to run up against Golub and they hastened to withdraw.
The attention of the spectators was now wholly absorbed by the preparations for the ceremonial march-past. —-
Sharp commands were rapped out.
Golub, his features outwardly calm, walked over to Bluvstein and said in a loud whisper:
“Get out of here, you rotten heathens, or I’ll make mincemeat out of you!”
The band struck up and the first units marched through the square. —-
As they drew alongside Petlyura, the troops bellowed a mechanical “Slava!” —-
and then swung down the highway to disappear into the sidestreets. —-
At the head of the companies, uniformed in brand-new khaki outfits,the officers marched at an easy gait as if they were simply taking a stroll, swinging their swagger sticks. —-
The swagger stick mode, like cleaning rods for the soldiers, had just been introduced in the division.
The new recruits brought up the rear of the parade. —-
They came in a disorderly mass, out of step and jostling one another.
There was a low rustle of bare feet as the mobilised men shuffled by, prodded on by the officers who worked hard but in vain to bring about some semblance of order. —-
When the second company was passing a peasant lad in a linen shirt on the side nearest the reviewing stand gaped in such wide-eyed amazement at the “Chief” that he stepped into a hole in the road and fell flat on the ground. —-
His rifle slid over the cobblestones with a loud clatter. —-
He tried to get up but was knocked down again by the men behind him.
Some of the spectators burst out laughing. —-
The company broke ranks and passed through the square in complete disorder. —-
The luckless lad picked up his rifle and ran after the others.
Petlyura turned away from this sorry spectacle and walked over to the car without waiting for the end of the review. —-
The Inspector, who followed him, asked diffidently:
“Pan the Ataman will not stay for dinner?”
“No,” Petlyura flung back curtly.
Sergei Bruzzhak, Valya and Klimka were watching the parade in the crowd of spectators pressed against the high fence surrounding the church. —-
Sergei, gripping the bars of the grill, looked at the faces of the people below him with hatred in his eyes.
“Let’s go, Valya, they’ve shut up shop,” he said in a deliberately loud defiant voice, and turned away from the fence. —-
People stared at him in astonishment.
Ignoring everyone, he walked to the gate, followed by his sister and Klimka.
Colonel Chernyak and the Captain galloped up to the Commandant’s office and dismounted.
Leaving the horses in the charge of a dispatch rider they strode rapidly into the guardhouse.
“Where’s the Commandant?” Chernyak asked the dispatch rider sharply.
“Dunno,” the man stammered. “Gone off somewhere.’’
Chernyak looked around the filthy, untidy room, the unmade beds and the Cossacks of the Commandant’s guard who sprawled on them and made no attempt to rise when the officers entered.
“What sort of a pigsty is this?” Chernyak roared. —-
“And who gave you permission to wallow about like hogs?” —-
he lashed at the men lying flat on their backs.
One of the Cossacks sat up, belched and growled:
“What’re you squawking for? We’ve got our own squawker here.”
“What!” Chernyak sprang toward the man. “Who do you think you’re talking to, you bastard? —-
I’m Colonel Chernyak. D’you hear, you swine! Up, all of you, or I’ll have you flogged!” —-
The enraged Colonel dashed about the guardhouse. —-
“I’ll give you one minute to sweep out the filth, straighten out the bedding and make your filthy mugs presentable. —-
You look like a band of brigands, not Cossacks!”
Beside himself with rage, the Colonel violently kicked at a slop pail obstructing his path.
The Captain was no less violent, and, adding emphasis to his curses by wielding his three-thonged whip, drove the men out of their bunks.
“The Chief Ataman’s reviewing the parade. —-
He’s liable to drop in here any minute. Get a move on there!”
Seeing that things were taking a serious turn and that they really might be in for a flogging—they knew Chernyak’s reputation well enough—the Cossacks sprang into feverish activity.
In no time work was in full swing.
“We ought to have a look at the prisoners,” the Captain suggested. —-
“There’s no telling whom they’ve got locked up here. —-
Might be trouble if the Chief looks in.”
“Who has the key?” Chernyak asked the sentry. “Open the door at once.”
A Sergeant jumped up and opened the lock.
“Where’s the Commandant? How long do you think I’m going to wait for him? —-
Find him at once and send him in here,” Chernyak ordered. —-
“Muster the guard in the yard! Why are the rifles without bayonets?”
“We only took over yesterday,” the Sergeant tried to explain, and hurried off in search of the Commandant.
The Captain kicked the storeroom door open. —-
Several of the people inside got up from the floor,the others remained motionless.
“Open the door wider,” Chernyak commanded. “Not enough light here.”
He scrutinised the prisoners’ faces.
“What are you in for?” he snapped at the old man sitting on the edge of the bunk.
The old man half rose, hitched up his trousers and, frightened by the sharp order, mumbled:
“Dunno myself. They just locked me up and here I am. —-
There was a horse disappeared from the yard, but I’ve got nothing to do with it.”
“Whose horse?” the Captain interrupted him.
“An army horse, of course. My billets sold him and drank the proceeds and now they’re blaming me.”
Chernyak ran his eye swiftly over the old man and with an impatient jerk of his shoulder shouted:
“Pick up your things and get out of here!” Then he turned to the samogon woman.
The old man could not believe his ears. Blinking his shortsighted eyes, he turned to the Captain:
“Does that mean I can go?”
The Cossack nodded as much as to say: the faster you get out the better.
Hurriedly the old man seized his bundle which hung over the edge of the bunk and dashed through the door.
“And what are you in for?” Chernyak was questioning the samogon woman.
Swallowing the mouthful of pie she had been chewing, the woman rattled off a ready answer:
“It’s an injustice it is that I should be in here, Pan Chief. Just think of it, to drink a poor widow’s samogon and then lock her up.”
“You’re not in the samogon business, are you?” Chernyak asked.
“Business? Nothing of the kind,” said the woman with an injured air. —-
“The Commandant came and took four bottles and didn’t pay a kopek. —-
That’s how it is: they drink your booze and never pay.
You wouldn’t call that business, would you?”
“Enough. Now go to the devil!”
The woman did not wait for the order to be repeated. —-
She picked up her basket and backed to the door, bowing in gratitude.
“May God bless you with good health, your honours.”
Dolinnik watched the comedy with frank amazement.
None of the prisoners could make out what it was all about. —-
The only thing that was clear was that the arrivals were chiefs of some kind who had the power to dispose of them as they saw fit.
“And you there?” Chernyak spoke to Dolinnik.
“Stand up when Pan the Colonel speaks to you!” barked the Captain.
Slowly Dolinnik raised himself to his feet from the floor.
“What are you in for?” Chernyak repeated.
Dolinnik looked at the Colonel’s neatly twirled moustache, at his clean-shaven face, looked at the peak of his new cap with the enamel cockade, and a wild thought flashed through his mind:
Maybe it’ll work!
“I was arrested for being out on the streets after eight o’clock,” he said, blurting out the first thing that came into his head.
He awaited the answer in an agony of suspense.
“What were you doing out at night?”
“It wasn’t night, only about eleven o’clock.”
He no longer believed that this shot in the dark would succeed.
His knees trembled when he heard the brief command:
“Get out.”
Dolinnik walked hurriedly out of the door, forgetting his jacket; —-
the Captain was already questioning the next prisoner.
Korchagin was the last to be interrogated. —-
He sat on the floor’ completely dumbfounded by the proceedings. —-
At first he could not believe that Dolinnik had been released. —-
Why were they letting everyone off like this? But Dolinnik . . . —-
Dolinnik had said that he had been arrested for breaking the curfew. —-
. . . Then it dawned upon him.
The Colonel began questioning the scraggy Zeltser with the usual “What are you in for?”
The barber, pale with nervousness, blurted out:
“They tell me I was agitating, but I don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Chernyak pricked up his ears.
“What’s that? Agitation? What were you agitating about?”
Zeltser spread out his arms in bewilderment.
“I don’t know myself, I only said that they were collecting signatures to a petition to the Chief Ataman for the Jewish population.”
“What sort of petition?” both Chernyak and the Captain moved menacingly toward Zeltser.
“A petition asking that pogroms be prohibited. —-
You know, we had a terrible pogrom. The whole population’s afraid.
“That’s enough,” Chernyak interrupted him. —-
“We’ll give you a petition you won’t forget, you dirty Jew.” Turning to the Captain, he snapped: —-
“Put this one away properly. Have him taken to headquarters—I’ll talk to him there personally. —-
We’ll see who’s behind this petition business.”
Zeltser tried to protest but the Captain struck him sharply across the back with his riding crop.
“Shut up, you bastard!”
His face twisted with pain, Zeltser staggered back into a corner. —-
His lips trembled and he barely restrained his sobs.
While this was going on, Pavel rose to his feet. —-
He was now the only prisoner besides Zeltser in the storeroom.
Chernyak stood in front of the boy and inspected him with his piercing black eyes.
“Well, what are you doing here?”
Pavel had his answer ready.
“I cut off a saddle skirt for soles,” he said quickly.
(“What saddle?” the Colonel asked.
“We’ve got two Cossacks billeted at our place and I cut off a bit of an old saddle to sole my boots with. —-
So the Cossacks hauled me in here.” Seized by a wild hope to regain his freedom, he added:
“I didn’t know it wasn’t allowed. . . .”
The Colonel eyed Pavel with disgust.
“Of all the things this Commandant thought of, blast him! Look at the prisoners he picked up!” —-
As he turned to the door, he shouted: “You can go home, and tell your father to give you the thrashing you deserve. Out with you!”
Still unable to believe his ears, Pavel snatched up Dolinnik’s jacket from the floor and rushed for the door, his heart pounding as if it would burst. —-
He ran through the guardroom and slipped outside behind the Colonel who was walking out into the yard. —-
In a moment Pavel was through the wicket gate and in the street.
The unlucky Zeltser remained alone in the storeroom. —-
He looked round with harassed eyes,instinctively took a few steps towards the exit, but just then a sentry entered the guardhouse,closed the door, inserted the padlock, and sat down on a stool next to the door.
Out on the porch Chernyak, much pleased with himself, said to the Captain:
“It’s a good thing we looked in. Think of the rubbish we found there—we’ll have to lock up that Commandant for a couple of weeks. —-
Well, it’s time we were going.”
The Sergeant had mustered his detail in the yard. When he saw the Colonel, he ran over and reported:
“Everything’s in order, Pan Colonel.”
Chernyak inserted a boot into a stirrup and sprang lightly into the saddle. —-
The Captain was having some trouble with his restive horse. —-
Reining in his mount, the Colonel said to the Sergeant:
“Tell the Commandant I cleared out all the rubbish he’d collected in there. —-
And tell him I’ll give him two weeks in the guardhouse for the way he ran things here. —-
As for the fellow in there now,transfer him to headquarters at once. —-
Let the guard be in readiness.”
“Very good, Pan Colonel,” said the Sergeant and saluted.
Spurring on their horses, the Colonel and the Captain galloped back to the square where the parade was already coming to an end.
Pavel swung himself over another fence and stopped exhausted. He could go no farther. —-
Those days cooped up in the stifling storeroom without food had sapped his strength.
Where should he go? Home was out of the question, and to go to the Bruzzhaks might bring disaster upon the whole family if anyone discovered him there.
He did not know what to do, and ran on again blindly, leaving behind the vegetable patches and back gardens at the edge of the town. —-
Colliding heavily with a fence, he came to himself with a start and looked about him in amazement: —-
there behind the tall fence was the forest warden’s garden. —-
So this was where his weary legs had brought him! —-
He could have sworn that he had had no thought of coming this way. —-
How then did he happen to be here? For that he could find no answer.
Yet rest awhile he must; he had to consider the situation and decide on the next step. —-
He remembered that there was a summerhouse at the end of the garden. —-
No one would see him there.
Hoisting himself to the top of the fence, he clambered over and dropped into the garden below.
With a brief glance at the house, barely visible among the trees, he made for the summerhouse. —-
To his dismay he found that it was open on nearly all sides. —-
The wild vine that had walled it in during the summer had withered and now all was bare.
He turned to go back, but it was too late. There was a furious barking behind him. —-
He wheeled round and saw a huge dog coming straight at him down the leaf-strewn path leading from the house. —-
Its fierce growls rent the stillness of the garden.
Pavel made ready to defend himself. The first attack he repulsed with a heavy kick. —-
But the animal crouched to spring a second time. —-
There is no saying how the encounter would have ended had a familiar voice not called out: —-
“Come here, Tresor! Come here!”
Tonya came running down the path. She dragged Tresor back by the collar and turned to address the young man standing by the fence.
“What are you doing here? You might have been badly mauled by the dog. It’s lucky I. . . .”
She stopped short and her eyes widened in surprise. —-
How extraordinarily like Korchagin was this stranger who had wandered into her garden.
The figure by the fence stirred.
“Tonya!” said the young man softly. “Don’t you recognise me?”
Tonya cried out and rushed impulsively over to him.
“Pavel, you?”
Tresor, taking the cry as a signal for attack, sprang forward.
“Down, Tresor, down!” A few cuffs from Tonya and he slunk back with an injured air toward the house, his tail between his legs.
“So you’re free?” said Tonya, clinging to Pavel’s hands.
“You knew then?”
“I know everything,” replied Tonya breathlessly. “Liza told me. But however did you get here?
Did they let you go?”
“Yes, but only by mistake,” Pavel replied wearily. “I ran away. —-
I suppose they’re looking for me now. I really don’t know how I got here. —-
I thought I’d rest a bit in your summerhouse. —-
I’m awfully tired,” he added apologetically.
She gazed at him for a moment or two and a wave of pity and tenderness swept over her.
“Pavel, my darling Pavel,” she murmured holding his hands fast in hers. “I love you. . . . —-
Do you hear me? My stubborn boy, why did you go away that time? Now you’re coming to us, to me. —-
I shan’t let you go for anything. It’s nice and quiet in our house and you can stay as long as you like.”
Pavel shook his head.
“What if they find me here? No, I can’t stay in your place.”
Her hands squeezed his fingers and her eyes flashed.
“If you refuse, I shall never speak to you again. —-
Artem isn’t here, he was marched off under escort to the locomotive. —-
All the railwaymen are being mobilised. Where will you go?”
Pavel shared her anxiety, and only his fear of bringing trouble to this girl now grown so dear to him held him back. —-
But at last, worn out by his harrowing experiences, hungry and exhausted, he gave in.
While he sat on the sofa in Tonya’s room, the following conversation ensued between mother and daughter in the kitchen.
“Mama, Korchagin is in my room. He was my pupil, you remember? —-
I don’t want to hide anything from you. He was arrested for helping a Bolshevik sailor to escape. —-
Now he has run away from prison, but he has nowhere to go.” —-
Her voice trembled. “Mother dear, please let him stay here for a while.”
The mother looked into her daughter’s pleading eyes.
“Very well, I have no objection. But where do you intend to put him?”
Tonya flushed.
“He can sleep in my room on the sofa,” she said. “We needn’t tell Papa anything for the time being.”
Her mother looked straight into her eyes.
“Is this what you have been fretting about so much lately?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“But he is scarcely more than a boy.”
“I know,” replied Tonya, nervously fingering the sleeve of her blouse. —-
“But if he hadn’t escaped they would have shot him just the same.”
Yekaterina Mikhailovna was alarmed by Korchagin’s presence in her home. —-
His arrest and her daughter’s obvious infatuation with a lad she scarcely knew disturbed her.
But Tonya, considering the matter settled, was already thinking of attending to her guest’s comfort.
“He must have a bath, first thing, Mama. I’ll see to it at once. —-
He is as dirty as a chimney sweep. It must be ages since he had a wash.”
And she bustled off to heat the water for the bath and find some clean linen for Pavel. When all was ready she rushed into the room, seized Pavel by the arm and hurried him off to the bathroom without more ado.
“You must have a complete change of clothes. Here is a suit for you to put on. —-
Your things will have to be washed. You can wear that in the meantime,” she said pointing to the chair where a blue sailor blouse with striped white collar and a pair of bell-bottomed trousers were neatly laid out.
Pavel looked surprised. Tonya smiled.
“I wore it at a masquerade ball once,” she explained. “It will be just right for you. Now, hurry.
While you’re washing, I’ll get you something to eat.”
She went out and shut the door, leaving Pavel with no alternative but to undress and climb into the tub.
An hour later all three, mother, daughter and Pavel, were dining in the kitchen.
Pavel, who was ravenously hungry, consumed three helpings before he was aware of it. —-
He was rather shy of Yekaterina Mikhailovna at first but soon thawed out when he saw how friendly she was.
After dinner they retired to Tonya’s room and at Yekaterina Mikhailovna’s request Pavel related his experiences.
“What do you intend doing now?” Yekaterina Mikhailovna asked when he had finished.
Pavel pondered the question a moment. “I should like to see Artem first, and then I shall have to get away from here.”
“But where will you go?”
“I think I could make my way to Uman or perhaps to Kiev. I don’t know myself yet, but I must get away from here as soon as possible.”
Pavel could hardly believe that everything had changed so quickly. —-
Only that morning he had been in the filthy cell and now here he was sitting beside Tonya, wearing clean clothes, and, what was most important, he was free.
What queer turns life can take, he thought: —-
one moment the sky seems black as night, and then the sun comes shining through again. —-
Had it not been for the danger of being arrested again he would have been the happiest lad alive at this moment.
But he knew that even in this large, silent house he was far from safe. —-
He must go away from here,it did not matter where. —-
And yet he did not at all welcome the idea of going away. —-
How thrilling it had been to read about the heroic Garibaldi! How he had envied him! —-
But now he realised that Garibaldi’s must have been a hard life, hounded as he was from place to place. —-
He, Pavel, had only lived through seven days of misery and torment, yet it had seemed like a whole year.
No, clearly he was not cut out to be a hero.
“What are you thinking about?” Tonya asked, bending over toward him. —-
The deep blue of her eyes seemed fathomless.
“Tonya, shall I tell you about Khristina?”
“Yes, do,” Tonya urged him.
He told her the sad story of his fellow-captive.
The clock ticked loudly in the silence as he ended his story: “.. . —-
And that was the last we saw of her,” his words came with difficulty. —-
Tonya’s head dropped and she had to bite her lips to force back the tears.
Pavel looked at her. “1 must go away tonight,” he said with finality.
“No, no, 1 shan’t let you go anywhere tonight.”
She stroked his bristly hair tenderly with her slim warm fingers. . . .
“Tonya, you must help me. Someone must go to the station and find out what has happened to Artem and take a note to Seryozha. —-
I have a revolver hidden in a crow’s nest. —-
I daren’t go for it, but Seryozha can get it for me. —-
Will you be able to do this for me?”
Tonya got up.
“I’ll go to Liza Sukharko right away. She and I will go to the station together. —-
Write your note and I’ll take it to Seryozha. Where does he live? —-
Shall I tell him where you are if he should want to see you?”
Pavel considered for a moment before replying. —-
“Tell him to bring the gun to your garden this evening.”
It was very late when Tonya returned. Pavel was fast asleep. —-
The touch of her hand awoke him and he opened his eyes to find her standing over him, smiling happily.
“Artem is coming here soon. He has just come back. —-
Liza’s father has agreed to vouch for him and they’re letting him go for an hour. —-
The engine is standing at the station. I couldn’t tell him you are here. —-
I just told him I had something very important to tell him. There he is now!”
Tonya ran to open the door. Artem stood in the doorway dumb with amazement, unable to believe his eyes. —-
Tonya closed the door behind him so that her father, who was lying ill with typhus in the study, might not overhear them.
Another moment and Artem was giving Pavel a bear’s hug that made his bones crack, and crying:
“Pavel! My little brother!”
And so it was decided: Pavel was to leave the next day. —-
Artem would arrange for Bruzzhak to take him on a train bound for Kazatin.
Artem, usually grave and reserved, was now almost beside himself with joy at having found his brother after so many days of anxiety and uncertainty.
“Then it’s settled. Tomorrow morning at five you’ll be at the warehouse. —-
While they’re loading on fuel you can slip in. —-
I wish I could stay and have a chat with you but I must be getting back. I’ll see you off tomorrow. —-
They’re making up a battalion of railwaymen. —-
We go about under an armed escort just like when the Germans were here.”
Artem said good-bye to his brother and left.
Dusk gathered fast, Sergei would be arriving soon with the revolver. —-
While he waited, Pavel paced nervously up and down the dark room. —-
Tonya and her mother were with the forest warden.
He met Sergei in the darkness by the fence and the two friends shook hands warmly. —-
Sergei had brought Valya with him. They conversed in low tones.
“I haven’t brought the gun,” Sergei said. “That backyard of yours is thick with Petlyura men. —-
There are carts standing all over the place and they had a bonfire going. —-
So I couldn’t climb the tree to get the gun. —-
It’s a damn shame.” Sergei was much put out.
“Never mind,” Pavel consoled him. “Perhaps it’s just as well. —-
It would be worse if I happened to be caught on the way with the gun. —-
But make sure you get hold of it.”
Valya moved closer to Pavel.
“When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow, at daybreak.”
“How did you manage to get away? Tell us.”
In a rapid whisper Pavel told them his story. —-
Then he took leave of his comrades. The jolly Sergei was unusually silent.
“Good luck, Pavel, don’t forget us,” Valya said in a choking voice.
And with that they left him, the darkness swallowing them up in an instant.
Inside the house all was quiet. The measured ticking of the clock was the only sound in the stillness.
For two of the house’s inmates there was no thought of sleep that night. —-
How could they sleep when in six hours they were to part, perhaps never to meet again. —-
Was it possible in that brief space of time to give utterance to the myriad of unspoken thoughts that seethed within them?
Youth, sublime youth, when passion, as yet unknown, is only dimly felt in a quickening of the pulse; —-
when your hand coming in chance contact with your sweetheart’s breast trembles as if affrighted and falters, and when the sacred friendship of youth guards you from the final step!
What can be sweeter than to feel her arm about your neck and her burning kiss on your lips.
It was the second kiss they had exchanged throughout their friendship. —-
Pavel, who had experienced many a beating but never a caress except from his mother, was stirred to the depths of his being. —-
Hitherto life had shown him its most brutal side, and he had not known it could be such a glorious thing; —-
now this girl had taught him what happiness could mean.
He breathed the perfume of her hair and seemed to see her eyes in the darkness.
“I love you so, Tonya, I can’t tell you how much, for I don’t know how to say it.”
His brain was in a whirl. How responsive her supple body. . . . —-
But youth’s friendship is a sacred trust.
“Tonya, when all this mess is over I’m bound to get a job as a mechanic, and if you really want me, if you’re really serious and not just playing with me, I’ll be a good husband to you. —-
I’ll never beat you, never do anything to hurt you, I swear it.”
Fearing to fall asleep in each other’s arms—lest Tonya’s mother find them and think ill of them—they separated.
Day was breaking when they fell asleep after having made a solemn compact never to forget one another.
Yekaterina Mikhailovna woke Pavel early. He jumped quickly out of bed. —-
While he was in the bathroom, putting on his own clothes and boots, with Dolinnik’s jacket on top, Yekaterina Mikhailovna woke Tonya.
They hurried through the grey morning mist to the station. —-
When they reached the timber yards by the back way they found Artem waiting impatiently for them beside the loaded tender.
A powerful engine moved up slowly, enveloped in clouds of hissing steam. —-
Bruzzhak looked out of the cab.
Pavel bid Tonya and Artem a hasty farewell, then gripped the iron rail and climbed up into the engine. —-
Looking back he saw two familiar figures at the crossing: —-
the tall figure of Artem and the small graceful form of Tonya beside him. —-
The wind tore angrily at the collar of her blouse and tossed her chestnut hair. She waved to him.
Artem glanced at Tonya out of the corner of his eye and noticing that she was on the verge of tears, he sighed.
“I’ll be damned if there isn’t something up between these two,” he said to himself. —-
“And me thinking Pavel is still a little boy!”
When the train disappeared behind the bend he turned to Tonya and said: —-
“Well, shall we be friends?” And Tonya’s tiny hand was lost in his huge paw.
From the distance came the rumble of the train gathering speed.
Pary One Chapter 7
For a whole week the town, belted with trenches and enmeshed in barbed-wire entanglements,went to sleep at night and woke up in the morning to the pounding of guns and the rattle of rifle fire. —-
Only in the small hours would the din subside, and even then the silence would be shattered from time to time by bursts of fire as the outposts probed out each other. —-
At dawn men busied themselves around the battery at the railway station. —-
The black snout of a gun belched savagely and the men hastened to feed it another portion of steel and explosive. —-
Each time a gunner pulled at a lanyard the earth trembled underfoot. —-
Three versts from town the shells whined over the village occupied by the Reds, drowning out all other sounds, and sending up geysers of earth.
The Red battery was stationed on the grounds of an old Polish monastery standing on a high hill in the centre of the village.
The Military Commissar of the battery, Comrade Zamostin, leapt to his feet. —-
He had been sleeping with his head resting on the trail of a gun. —-
Now, tightening his belt with the heavy Mauser attached to it, he listened to the flight of the shell and waited for the explosion. —-
Then the courtyard echoed to his resonant voice.
“Time to get up, Comrades!”
The gun crews slept beside their guns, and they were on their feet as quickly as the Commissar.
All but Sidorchuk, who raised his head reluctantly and looked around with sleep-heavy eyes.
“The swine—hardly light yet and they’re at it again. Just out of spite, the bastards!”
Zamostin laughed.
“Unsocial elements, Sidorchuk, that’s what they are. —-
They don’t care whether you want to sleep or not.”
The artilleryman grumblingly roused himself.
A few minutes later the guns in the monastery yard were in action and shells were exploding in the town.
On a platform of planks rigged up on top of the tall smoke stack of the sugar refinery squatted a Petlyura officer and a telephonist. —-
They had climbed up the iron ladder inside the chimney.
From this vantage point they directed the fire of their artillery. —-
Through their field glasses they could see every movement made by the Red troops besieging the town.
Today the Bolsheviks were particularly active. —-
An armoured train was slowly edging in on the Podolsk Station, keeping up an incessant fire as it came. —-
Beyond it the attack lines of the infantry could be seen. —-
Several times the Red forces tried to take the town by storm, but the Petlyura troops were firmly entrenched on the approaches. —-
The trenches erupted a squall of fire, filling the air with a maddening din which mounted to an unintermittent roar, reaching its highest pitch during the attacks. —-
Swept by this leaden hailstorm, unable to stand the inhuman strain, the Bolshevik lines fell back, leaving motionless bodies behind on the field.
Today the blows delivered at the town were more persistent and more frequent than before. —-
The air quivered from the reverberations of the gunfire. —-
From the height of the smoke stack you could see the steadily advancing Bolshevik lines, the men throwing themselves on the ground only to rise again and press irresistibly forward. —-
Now they had all but taken the station. The Petlyura division’s available reserves were sent into action, but they could not close the breach driven in their positions.
Filled with a desperate resolve, the Bolshevik attack lines spilled into the streets adjoining the station, whose defenders, the third regiment of the Petlyura division, routed from their last positions in the gardens and orchards at the edge of the town by a brief but terrible thrust, scattered into the town. —-
Before they could recover enough to make a new stand, the Red Army men poured into the streets, sweeping away in bayonet charges the Petlyura pickets left behind to cover the retreat.
Nothing could induce Sergei Bruzzhak to stay down in the basement where his family and the nearest neighbours had taken refuge. —-
And in spite of his mother’s entreaties be climbed out of the chilly cellar. —-
An armoured car with the name Sagaidachny on its side clattered past the house, firing wildly as it went. —-
Behind it ran panic-stricken Petlyura men in complete disorder. —-
One of them slipped into Sergei’s yard, where with feverish haste he tore off his cartridge belt, helmet and rifle and then vaulted over the fence and disappeared in the kitchen gardens beyond. —-
Sergei looked out into the street. Petlyura soldiers were running down the road leading to the Southwestern Station, their retreat covered by an armoured car. —-
The highway leading to town was deserted. Then a Red Army man dashed into sight. —-
He threw himself down on the ground and began firing down the road. —-
A second and a third Red Army man came into sight behind him. . . . —-
Sergei watched them coming, crouching down and firing as they ran. —-
A bronzed Chinese with bloodshot eyes, clad in an undershirt and girded with machine-gun belts, was running full height, a grenade in each hand. —-
And ahead of them all came a Red Army man, hardly more than a boy, with a light machine gun. —-
The advance guard of the Red Army had entered the town. —-
Sergei, wild with joy, dashed out onto the road and shouted as loud as he could:
“Long live the comrades!”
So unexpectedly did he rush out that the Chinese all but knocked him off his feet. —-
The latter was about to turn on him, but the exultation on Sergei’s face stayed him.
“Where is Petlyura?” the Chinese shouted at him, panting heavily.
But Sergei did not hear him. He ran back into the yard, picked up the cartridge belt and rifle abandoned by the Petlyura man and hurried after the Red Army men. —-
They did not notice him until they had stormed the Southwestern Station. —-
Here, after cutting off several trainloads of munitions and supplies and hurling the enemy into the woods, they stopped to rest and regroup.
The young machine gunner came over to Sergei and asked in surprise:
“Where are you from, Comrade?”
“I’m from this town. I’ve been waiting for you to come.”
Sergei was soon surrounded by Red Army men.
“I know him,” the Chinese said in broken Russian. “He yelled ‘Long live comrades!’ —-
He Bolshevik, he with us, a good fellow!” —-
he added with a broad smile, slapping Sergei on the shoulder approvingly.
Sergei’s heart leapt with joy. He had been accepted at once, accepted as one of them. —-
And togetherwith them he had taken the station in a bayonet charge.
The town bestirred itself. The townsfolk, exhausted by their ordeal, emerged from the cellars and basements and came out to the front gates to see the Red Army units enter the town. —-
Thus it was that Sergei’s mother and his sister Valya saw Sergei marching along with the others in the ranks of the Red Army men. —-
He was hatless, but girded with a cartridge belt and with a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Antonina Vasilievna threw up her hands in indignation.
So her Seryozha had got mixed up in the fight. He would pay for this! —-
Fancy him parading with a rifle in front of the whole town! —-
There was bound to be trouble later on. Antonina Vasilievna could no longer restrain herself:
“Seryozha, come home this minute!” she shouted. “I’ll show you how to behave, you scamp! —-
I’ll teach you to fight!” And at that she marched out to the road with the firm intention of bringing her son back.
But this time her Seryozha, her boy whose ears she had so often boxed, looked sternly at his mother, his face burning with shame and anger as he snapped at her: —-
“Stop shouting! I’m staying where I am.” —-
And he marched past without stopping.
Antonina Vasilievna was beside herself with anger.
“So that’s how you treat your mother! Don’t you dare come home after this!”
“I won’t!” Sergei cried, without turning around.
Antonina Vasilievna stood speechless on the road staring after him, while the ranks of weather beaten, dust-covered fighting men trudged past.
“Don’t cry, mother! We’ll make your laddie a commissar,” a strong, jovial voice rang out. —-
A roar of good-natured laughter ran through the platoon. —-
Up at the head of the company voices struck up in unison:
Comrades, the bugles are sounding,
Shoulder your arms for the fray.
On to the kingdom of liberty
Boldly shall we fight our way. . . .
The ranks joined in a mighty chorus and Sergei’s ringing voice merged in the swelling melody. —-
He had found a new family. One bayonet in it was his, Sergei’s.
On the gates of the Leszczinski house hung a strip of white cardboard with the brief inscription:
“Revcom.” Beside it was an arresting poster of a Red Army man looking into your eyes and pointing his finger straight at you over the words: —-
“Have you joined the Red Army?”
The Political Department people had been at work during the night putting up these posters all over the town. —-
Nearby hung the Revolutionary Committee’s first proclamation to the toiling population of Shepetovka:
“Comrades! The proletarian troops have taken this town. Soviet power has been restored. —-
We call on you to maintain order. The bloody cutthroats have been thrown back, but if you want them never to return, if you want to see them destroyed once and for all, join the ranks of the Red Army. Give all your support to the power of the working folk. —-
Military authority in this town is in
the hands of the chief of the garrison. Civilian affairs will be administered by the Revolutionary Committee.
“Signed: Dolinnik “Chairman of the Revolutionary Committee.”
People of a new sort appeared in the Leszczinski house. —-
The word “comrade”, for which only yesterday people had paid with their life, was now heard on all sides. —-
That indescribably moving word, “comrade”!
For Dolinnik there was no sleep or rest these days. —-
The joiner was busy establishing revolutionary government.
In a small room on the door of which hung a slip of paper with the pencilled words “Party Committee” sat Comrade Ignatieva, calm and imperturbable as always. —-
The Political Department entrusted her and Dolinnik with the task of setting up the organs of Soviet power.
One more day and office workers were seated at desks and a typewriter was clicking busily. —-
A Commissariat of Supplies was organised under nervous, dynamic Tyzycki. —-
Now that Soviet power was firmly established in the town, Tyzycki, formerly a mechanic’s helper at the local sugar refinery, proceeded with grim determination to wage war on the bosses of the sugar refinery who, nursing a bitter hatred for the Bolsheviks, were lying low and biding their time.
At a meeting of the refinery workers he summed up the situation in harsh, unrelenting terms.
“The past is gone never to return,” he declared, speaking in Polish and banging his fist on the edge of the rostrum to drive home his words. —-
“It is enough that our fathers and we ourselves slaved all our lives for the Potockis. —-
We built palaces for them and in return His Highness the Count gave us just enough to keep us from dying of starvation.
“How many years did the Potocki counts and the Sanguszko princes ride our backs? —-
Are there not any number of Polish workers whom Potocki ground down just as he did the Russians and Ukrainians? —-
And yet the count’s henchmen have now spread the rumour among these very same workers that the Soviet power will rule them all with an iron hand.
“That is a foul lie, Comrades! Never have workingmen of different nationalities had such freedom as now. —-
All proletarians are brothers. As for the gentry, we are going to curb them, you may depend on that.” His hand swung down again heavily on the barrier of the rostrum. —-
“Who is it that has made brothers spill each other’s blood? —-
For centuries kings and nobles have sent Polish peasants to fight the Turks. They have always incited one nation against another. —-
Think of all the bloodshed and misery they have caused! —-
And who benefited by it all? But soon all that will stop.
This is the end of those vermin. The Bolsheviks have flung out a slogan that strikes terror into the hearts of the bourgeoisie: —-
‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ There lies our salvation, there lies our hope for a better future, for the day when all workingmen will be brothers. —-
Comrades, join the Communist Party!
“There will be a Polish republic too one day but it will be a Soviet republic without the Potockis, for they will be rooted out and we shall be the masters of Soviet Poland. —-
You all know Bronik Ptaszinski, don’t you? —-
The Revolutionary Committee has appointed him commissar of our factory.
‘We were naught, we shall be all.’ We shall have cause for rejoicing, Comrades. —-
Only take care not to give ear to the hissing of those hidden reptiles! —-
Let us place our faith in the workingman’s cause and we shall establish the brotherhood of all peoples throughout the world!”
These words were uttered with a sincerity and fervour that came from the bottom of this simple workingman’s heart. —-
He descended the platform amid shouts of enthusiastic acclaim from the younger members of the audience. —-
The older workers, however, hesitated to speak up. —-
Who knew but what tomorrow the Bolsheviks might have to give up the town and then those who remained would have to pay dearly for every rash word. —-
Even if you escaped the gallows, you would lose your job for sure.
The Commissar of Education, the slim, well-knit Czarnopyski, was so far the only schoolteacher in the locality who had sided with the Bolsheviks.
Opposite the premises of the Revolutionary Committee the Special Duty Company was quartered; —-
its men were on duty at the Revolutionary Committee. —-
At night a Maxim gun stood ready in the garden at the entrance to the Revcom, a sinewy ammunition belt trailing from its breech. —-
Two men with rifles stood guard beside it.
Comrade Ignatieva on her way to the Revcom went up to one of them, a young Red Army man,and asked:
“How old are you, Comrade?”
“Going on seventeen.”
“Do you live here?”
The Red Army man smiled. “Yes, I only joined the army the day before yesterday during the fighting.”
Ignatieva studied his face.
“What does your father do?”
“He’s an engine driver’s assistant.”
At that moment Dolinnik appeared, accompanied by a man in uniform.
“Here you are,” said Ignatieva, turning to Dolinnik, “I’ve found the very lad to put in charge of the district committee of the Komsomol. He’s a local man.”
Dolinnik glanced quickly at Sergei—for it was he.
“Ah yes. You’re Zakhar’s boy, aren’t you? All right, go ahead and stir up the young folk.”
Sergei looked at them in surprise. “But what about the company?”
“That’s all right, we’ll attend to that,” Dolinnik, already mounting the steps, threw over his shoulder.
Two days later the local committee of the Young Communist League of the Ukraine was formed.
Sergei plunged into the vortex of the new life that had burst suddenly and swiftly upon the town. —-
It filled his entire existence so completely that he forgot his family although it was so near at hand.
He, Sergei Bruzzhak, was now a Bolshevik. —-
For the hundredth time he pulled out of his pocket the document issued by the Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, certifying that he, Sergei,was a Komsomol and Secretary of the Komsomol Committee. —-
And should anyone entertain any doubts on that score there was the impressive Mannlicher—a gift from dear old Pavel—in its makeshift canvas holster hanging from the belt of his tunic. —-
A most convincing credential that!
Too bad Pavlushka wasn’t around!
Sergei’s days were spent on assignments given by the Revcom. —-
Today too Ignatieva was waiting for him. —-
They were to go down to the station to the Division Political Department to get newspapers and books for the Revolutionary Committee. —-
Sergei hurried out of the building to the street, where a man from the Political Department was waiting for them with an automobile.
During the long drive to the station where the Headquarters and Political Department of the First Soviet Ukrainian Division were located in railway carriages, Ignatieva plied Sergei with questions.
“How has your work been going? Have you formed your organisation yet? —-
You ought to persuade your friends, the workers’ children, to join the Komsomol. —-
We shall need a group of Communist youth very soon. —-
Tomorrow we shall draw up and print a Komsomol leaflet. —-
Then we’ll hold a big youth rally in the theatre. —-
When we get to the Political Department I’ll introduce you to Ustinovich. —-
She is working with the young people, if I’m not mistaken.”
Ustinovich turned out to be a girl of eighteen with dark bobbed hair, in a new khaki tunic with a narrow leather belt. —-
She gave Sergei a great many pointers in his work and promised to help him.
Before he left she gave him a large bundle of books and newspapers, including one of particular importance, a booklet containing the programme and rules of the Komsomol.
When he returned late that night to the Revcom Sergei found Valya waiting for him outside, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” —-
she cried. “What do you mean by staying away from home like this? —-
Mother is crying her eyes out and father is very angry with you. —-
There’s going to be an awful row.
“No, there isn’t,” he reassured her. “I haven’t any time to go home, honest I haven’t. —-
I won’t be coming tonight either. But I’m glad you’ve come because I want to have a talk with you. Let’s go inside.”
Valya could hardly recognise her brother. He was quite changed. He fairly bubbled with energy.
As soon as she was seated Sergei went straight to the point.
“Here’s the situation, Valya. You’ve got to join the Komsomol. You don’t know what that is? —-
The Young Communist League. I’m running things here. —-
You don’t believe me?
All right, look at this!”
Valya read the paper and looked at her brother in bewilderment.
“What will I do in the Komsomol?”
Sergei spread out his hands. “My dear girl, there’s heaps to do! —-
Look at me, I’m so busy I don’t sleep nights. We’ve got to make propaganda. —-
Ignatieva says we’re going to hold a meeting in the theatre soon and talk about the Soviet power. —-
She says I’ll have to make a speech. I think it’s a mistake because I don’t know how to make speeches. —-
I’m bound to make a hash of it. Now, what about your joining the Komsomol?”
“I don’t know what to say. Mother would be wild with me if I did.”
“Never mind mother, Valya,” Sergei urged. “She doesn’t understand. —-
All she cares about is to have her children beside her. —-
But she has nothing against the Soviet power.
On the contrary, she’s all for it. But she would rather other people’s sons did the fighting. —-
Now, is that fair? Remember what Zhukhrai told us? —-
And look at Pavel, he didn’t stop to think about his mother. —-
The time has come when we young folk must fight for our right to make something of our lives. —-
Surely you won’t refuse, Valya?
Think how fine it will be. You could work with the girls, and I would be working with the fellows. —-
That reminds me, I’ll tackle that red-headed devil Klimka this very day. —-
Well, Valya, what do you say? Are you with us or not? —-
I have a little booklet here that will tell you all about it.”
He took the booklet of Komsomol Rules out of his pocket and handed it to her.
“But what if Petlyura comes back again?” Valya asked him in a low voice, her eyes glued to her brother’s face.
This thought had not yet occurred to Sergei and he pondered it for a moment.
“I would have to leave with all the others, of course,” he said. “But what would happen to you?
Yes, it would make mother very unhappy.” He lapsed into silence.
“Seryozha, couldn’t you enrol me without mother or anyone else knowing? —-
Just you and me? Icould help just the same. —-
That would be the best way.”
“I believe you’re right, Valya.”
Ignatieva entered the room at that point.
“This is my little sister Valya, Comrade Ignatieva. —-
I’ve just been talking to her about joining theKomsomol. —-
She would make a suitable member, but you see, our mother might make difficulties.
Could we enrol Valya so that no one would know about it? You see, we might have to give up the town. —-
I would leave with the army, of course, but Valya is afraid it would go hard with mother.”
Ignatieva, sitting on the edge of a chair, listened gravely.
“Yes,” she agreed. “That is the best course.”
The packed theatre buzzed with the excited chatter of the youth who had come in response to notices posted all over town. —-
A brass band of workers from the sugar refinery was playing. —-
The audience, consisting mainly of students of the local secondary school and Gymnasium, was less interested in the meeting than in the concert that was to follow it.
At last the curtain rose and Comrade Razin, Secretary of the Uyezd Committee, who had just arrived, appeared on the platform.
All eyes were turned to this short, slenderly built man with the small, sharp nose, and his speech was listened to with keen attention. —-
He told them about the struggle that had swept the entire country and called on youth to rally to the Communist Party. He spoke like an experienced orator but made excessive use of terms like “orthodox Marxists”, “social-chauvinists” and the like, which his hearers did not understand. —-
Nevertheless, when he finished they applauded him warmly, and after introducing the next speaker, who was Sergei, he left.
It was as he had feared: now that he was face to face with the audience, Sergei did not know what to say. —-
He fumbled painfully for a while until Ignatieva came to his rescue by whispering from her seat on the platform: —-
“Tell them about organising a Komsomol cell.”
Sergei at once went straight to the point.
“Well, Comrades, you’ve heard all there is to be said. What we’ve got to do now is to form a cell.
Who is in favour?”
A hush fell on the gathering. Ustinovich stepped into the breach. —-
She got up and told the audience how the youth were being organised in Moscow. —-
Sergei in the meantime stood aside in confusion.
He raged inwardly at the meeting’s reaction to the question of organising a cell and he scowled down at the audience. —-
They hardly listened to Ustinovich. Sergei saw Zalivanov whisper something to Liza Sukharko with a contemptuous look at the speaker on the platform. —-
In the front row the senior Gymnasium girls with powdered faces were casting coy glances about them and whispering among themselves. —-
Over in the corner near the door leading backstage was a group of young Red Army men. —-
Among them Sergei saw the young machine gunner. —-
He was sitting on the edge of the stage fidgeting nervously and gazing with undisguised hatred at the flashily dressed
Liza Sukharko and Anna Admovskaya who, totally unabashed, were carrying on a lively conversation with their escorts.
Realising that no one was listening to her, Ustinovich quickly wound up her speech and sat down.
Ignatieva took the floor next, and her calm compelling manner quelled the restless audience.
“Comrades,” she said, “I advise each of you to think over what has been said here tonight. —-
I am sure that some of you will become active participants in the revolution and not merely spectators.
The doors are open to receive you, the rest is up to you. —-
We should like to hear you express your opinion. —-
We invite anyone who has anything to say to step up to the platform.”
Once more silence reigned in the hall. Then a voice spoke up from the back.
“I’d like to speak!”
Misha Levchukov, a lad with a slight squint and the build of a young bear, made his way to the stage.
“The way things are,” he said, “we’ve got to help the Bolsheviks. I’m for it. Seryozhka knows me.
I’m joining the Komsomol.”
Sergei beamed. He sprang forward to the centre of .the stage.
“You see, Comrades!” he cried. “I always said Misha was one of us: —-
his father was a switchman and he was crushed by a train, and that’s why Misha couldn’t get an education. —-
But he didn’t need to go to Gymnasium to understand what’s wanted at a time like this.”
There was an uproar in the hall. A young man with carefully groomed hair asked for the floor. —-
It was Okushev, a Gymnasium student and the son of the local apothecary.
Tugging at his tunic, he began:
“I beg your pardon, Comrades. I don’t understand what is wanted of us. —-
Are we expected to go in for politics? If so, when are we going to study? —-
We’ve got to finish the Gymnasium. If it was some sports society, or club that was being organised where we could gather and read, that would be another matter. —-
But to go in for politics means taking the risk of getting hanged afterwards. —-
Sorry, but I don’t think anybody will agree to that.”
There was laughter in the hall as Okushev jumped off the stage and resumed his seat. —-
The next speaker was the young machine gunner. —-
Pulling his cap down over his forehead with a furious gesture and glaring down at the audience, he shouted:
“What’re you laughing at, you vermin!”
His eyes were two burning coals and he trembled all over with fury. Taking a deep breath he began:
“Ivan Zharky is my name. I’m an orphan. I never knew my mother or my father and I never had a home. —-
I grew up on the street, begging for a crust of bread and starving most of the time. —-
It was a dog’s life, I can tell you, something you mama’s boys know nothing about. —-
Then the Soviet power came along and the Red Army men picked me up and took care of me. —-
A whole platoon of them adopted me. They gave me clothes and taught me to read and write. —-
But what’s most important,
they taught me what it was to be a human being. —-
Because of them I became a Bolshevik and I’ll be a Bolshevik till I die. —-
I know damn well what we’re fighting for, we’re fighting for us poor folk, for the workers’ government. —-
You sit there cackling but you don’t know that two hundred comrades were killed fighting for this town. —-
They perished. . . .” Zharky’s voice vibrated like a taut string.
“They gave up their lives gladly for our happiness, for our cause. . . . —-
People are dying all over the country, on all the fronts, and you’re playing at merry-go-rounds here. —-
Comrades,” he went on, turning suddenly to the presidium table, “you’re wasting your time talking to them there,” he jabbed a finger toward the hall. —-
“Think they’ll understand you? No! A full stomach is no comrade to an empty one. —-
Only one man came forward here and that’s because he’s one of the poor, an orphan. —-
Never mind,” he roared furiously at the gathering, “we’ll get along without you. —-
We’re not going to beg you to join us, you can go to the devil, the lot of you! —-
The only way to talk to the likes of you is with a machine gun!” —-
And with this parting thrust he stepped off the stage and made straight for the exit, glancing neither to right nor left.
None of those who had presided at the meeting stayed on for the concert.
“What a mess!” said Sergei with chagrin as they were on their way back to the Revcom. —-
“Zharky was right. We couldn’t do anything with that Gymnasium crowd. It just makes you wild!” —-
“It’s not surprising,” Ignatieva interrupted him. —-
“After all there were hardly any proletarian youth there at all. —-
Most of them were either sons of the petty bourgeois or local intellectuals—philistines all of them. —-
You will have to work among the sawmill and sugar refinery workers. —-
But that meeting was not altogether wasted. —-
You’ll find there are some very good comrades among the students.”
Ustinovich agreed with Ignatieva.
“Our task, Seryozha,” she said, “is to bring home our ideas, our slogans, to everyone. —-
The Party will focus the attention of all working people on every new event. —-
We shall hold many meetings, conferences and congresses. —-
The Political Department is opening a summer theatre at the station.
A propaganda train is due to arrive in a few days and then we’ll get things going in real earnest.
Remember what Lenin said—we won’t win unless we draw the masses, the millions of working people into the struggle.”
Late that evening Sergei escorted Ustinovich to the station. —-
On parting he clasped her hand firmly and held it a few seconds longer than absolutely necessary. —-
A faint smile flitted across her face.
On his way back Sergei dropped in to see his people. —-
He listened in silence to his mother’s scolding, but when his father chimed in, Sergei took up the offensive and soon had Zakhar Vasilievich at a disadvantage.
“Now listen, dad, when you went on strike under the Germans and killed that sentry on the locomotive, you thought of your family, didn’t you? —-
Of course you did. But you went through with it just the same because your workingman’s conscience told you to. —-
I’ve also thought of the family.
I know very well that if we retreat you folks will be persecuted because of me. —-
But I couldn’t sit at home anyway. You know how it is yourself, dad, so why all this fuss? —-
I’m working for a good cause and you ought to back me up instead of kicking up a row. —-
Come on, dad, let’s make it up and then ma will stop scolding me too.” —-
He regarded his father with his clear blue eyes and smiled affectionately, confident that he was in the right.
Zakhar Vasilievich stirred uneasily on the bench and through his thick bristling moustache and untidy little beard his yellowish teeth showed in a smile.
“Dragging class consciousness into it, eh, you young rascal? —-
You think that revolver you’re sporting is going to stop me from giving you a good hiding?”
But his voice held no hint of anger, and mastering his confusion, he held out his horny hand to his son. —-
“Carry on, Seryozha. Once you’ve started up the gradient I’ll not be putting on the brakes. —-
But you mustn’t forget us altogether, drop in once in a while.”
It was night. A shaft of light from a crack in the door lay on the steps. —-
Behind the huge lawyer’s desk in the large room with its upholstered plush furniture sat five people: —-
Dolinnik, Ignatieva, Cheka chief Timoshenko, looking like a Kirghiz in his Cossack fur cap, the giant railwayman Shudik and flat-nosed Ostapchuk from the railway yards. —-
A meeting of the Revcom was in progress.
Dolinnik, lea’ning over the table and fixing Ignatieva with a stern look, hammered out hoarsely:
“The front must have supplies. The workers have to eat. —-
As soon as we came the shopkeepers and market profiteers raised their prices. —-
They won’t take Soviet money. Old tsarist money or Kerensky notes are the only kind in circulation here. —-
Today we must sit down and work out fixed prices. —-
We know very well that none of the profiteers are going to sell their goods at the fixed price. —-
They’ll hide what they’ve got. In that case we’ll make searches and confiscate the bloodsuckers’ goods. —-
This is no time for niceties. We can’t let the workers starve any longer.
Comrade Ignatieva warns us not to go too far. —-
That’s the reaction of a fainthearted intellectual, if you ask me. —-
Now don’t take offence, Zoya, I know what I’m talking about. —-
And in any case it isn’t a matter of the petty traders. —-
I have received information today that Boris Zon, the innkeeper, has a secret cellar in his house. —-
Even before Petlyura came, the big shopown-ers had huge stocks of goods hidden away there.” —-
He paused to throw a sly, mocking glance at Timoshenko.
“How did you find that out?” queried Timoshenko, surprised and annoyed at Dolinnik’s having stolen a march on the Cheka.
Dolinnik chuckled. “I know everything, brother. —-
Besides finding out about the cellar, I happen to know that you and the Division Commander’s chauffeur polished off half a bottle of samogon between you yesterday.”
Timoshenko fidgeted in his chair and a flush spread over his sallow features.
“Good for you!” he exclaimed in unwilling admiration. —-
But catching sight of Ignatieva’s disapproving frown, he went no further. —-
“That blasted joiner has his own Cheka!”
he thought to himself as he eyed the Chairman of the Revcom.
“Sergei Bruzzhak told me,” Dolinnik went on. —-
“He knows someone who used to work in the refreshment bar. —-
Well, that lad heard from the cooks that Zon used to supply them with all they needed in unlimited quantities. —-
Yesterday Sergei found out definitely about that cellar. —-
All that has to be done now is to locate it. Get the boys on the job, Timoshenko, at once. —-
Take Sergei along. If we’re lucky we’ll be able to supply the workers and the division.”
Half an hour later eight armed men entered the innkeeper’s home. —-
Two remained outside to guard the entrance.
The proprietor, a short stout man as round as a barrel, with a wooden leg and a face covered with a bristly growth of red hair, met the newcomers with obsequious politeness.
“What do you wish at this late hour, Comrades?” he inquired in a husky bass. —-
Behind Zon, stood his daughters in hastily donned dressing-gowns, blinking in the glare of Timoshenko’s torch. —-
From the next room came the sighs and groans of Zon’s buxom wife who was hurriedly dressing.
“We’ve come to search the house,” Timoshenko explained curtly.
Every square inch of the floor was thoroughly examined. —-
A spacious barn piled high with sawn wood, several pantries, the kitchen and a roomy cellar—all were inspected with the greatest care.
But not a trace of the secret cellar was found.
In a tiny room off the kitchen the servant girl lay fast asleep. —-
She slept so soundly that she did nothear them come in. —-
Sergei wakened her gently.
“You work here?” he asked. The bewildered sleepy-eyed girl drew the blanket over her shouldersand shielded her eyes from the light.
“Yes,” she replied. “Who are you?”
Sergei told her and, instructing her to get dressed, left the room.
In the spacious dining room Timoshenko was questioning the innkeeper who spluttered and fumed in great agitation:
“What do you want of me? I haven’t got any more cellars. —-
You’re just wasting your time, I assure you. Yes, I did keep a tavern once but now I’m a poor man. —-
The Petlyura crowd cleaned me out and very nearly killed me too. —-
I am very glad the Soviets have come to power, but all I own is here for you to see.” —-
And he spread out his short pudgy hands, the while his bloodshot eyes darted from the face of the Cheka chief to Sergei and from Sergei to the corner and the ceiling.
Timoshenko bit his lips.
“So you won’t tell, eh? For the last time I order you to show us where that cellar is.”
“But, Comrade Officer, we’ve got nothing to eat ourselves,” the innkeeper’s wife wailed. —-
“They’ve taken all we had.” She tried to weep but nothing came of it.
“You say you’re starving, but you keep a servant,” Sergei put in.
“That’s not a servant. She’s just a poor girl we’ve taken in because she has nowhere to go. —-
She’ll tell you that herself.”
Timoshenko’s patience snapped. “All right then,” he shouted, “now we’ll set to work in earnest!”
Morning dawned and the search was still going on. —-
Exasperated after thirteen hours of fruitless efforts, Timoshenko had already decided to abandon the quest when Sergei, on the point of leaving the servant girl’s room he had been examining, heard the girl’s faint whisper behind him:
“Look inside the stove in the kitchen.”
Ten minutes later the dismantled Russian stove revealed an iron trapdoor. —-
And within an hour a two-ton truck loaded with barrels and sacks drove away from the innkeeper’s house now surrounded by a crowd of gaping onlookers.
Maria Yakovlevna Korchagina came home one hot day carrying her small bundle of belongings.
She wept bitterly when Artem told her what had happened to Pavel. Her life now seemed empty and dreary. —-
She had to look for work, and after a time she began taking in washing from Red Army men who arranged for her to receive soldiers’ rations by way of payment.
One evening she heard Artem’s footsteps outside the window sounding more hurried than usual.
He pushed the door open and announced from the threshold: “I’ve brought a letter from Pavka.”
“Dear Brother Artem,” wrote Pavel. “This is to let you know that I am alive although not altogether well. —-
I got a bullet in my hip but I am getting better now. The doctor says the bone is uninjured. —-
So don’t worry about me, I’ll be all right. —-
I may get leave after I’m discharged from hospital and I’ll come home for a while. —-
I didn’t manage to get to mother’s. I joined the cavalry brigade commanded by Comrade Kotovsky, whom I’m sure you’ve heard about because he’s famous for his bravery. —-
I have never seen anyone like him before and I have the greatest respect for him. —-
Has mother come home yet? If she has, give her my best love. —-
Forgive me for all the
trouble I have caused you. Your brother Pavel.
“Artem, please go to the forest warden’s and tell them about this letter.”
Maria Yakovlevna shed many tears over Pavel’s letter. —-
The scatterbrained lad had not even given the address of his hospital.
Sergei had become a frequent visitor at the green railway coach down at the station bearing the sign: “Agitprop Div. Pol. Dept.” In one of the compartments of the Agitation and Propaganda Coach, Ustinovich and Ignatieva had their office. —-
The latter, with the inevitable cigarette between her lips, smiled knowingly whenever he appeared.
The Secretary of the Komsomol District Committee had grown quite friendly with Rita Ustinovich, and besides the bundles of books and newspapers, he carried away with him from the station a vague sense of happiness after every brief encounter with her.
Every day the open-air theatre of the Division Political Department drew big audiences of workers and Red Army men. —-
The agit train of the Twelfth Army, swathed in bright coloured posters, stood on a siding, seething with activity twenty-four hours a day. —-
A printing plant had been installed inside and newspapers, leaflets and proclamations poured out in a steady stream. —-
The front was near at hand.
One evening Sergei chanced to drop in at the theatre and found Rita there with a group of Red Army men. —-
Late that night, as he was seeing her home to the station where the Political Department staff was quartered, he blurted out: —-
“Why do I always want to be seeing you, Comrade Rita?” And added: “It’s so nice to be with you! —-
After seeing you I always feel I could go on working without stopping.”
Rita halted. “Now look here, Comrade Bruzzhak,” she said, “let’s agree here and now that you won’t ever wax lyrical any more. I don’t like it.”
Sergei blushed like a reprimanded schoolboy.
“I didn’t mean anything,” he said, “I thought we were friends . . . —-
I didn’t say anything counter revolutionary, did I? —-
Very well, Comrade Ustinovich, I shan’t say another word!”
And leaving her with a hasty handshake he all but ran back to town.
Sergei did not go near the station for several days. —-
When Ignatieva asked him to come he refused on the grounds that he was too busy. —-
And indeed he had plenty to do.
One night someone fired at Comrade Shudik as he was going home through a street inhabited mainly by Poles who held managerial positions at the sugar refinery. —-
The searches that followed brought to light weapons and documents belonging to a Pilsudski organisation known as the Strelets.
A meeting was held at the Revcom. Ustinovich, who was present, took Sergei aside and said in a calm voice: —-
“So your philistine vanity was hurt, was it? —-
You’re letting personal matters interfere with your work? —-
That won’t do, Comrade.”
And so Sergei resumed his visits to the green railway coach.
He attended a district conference and participated in the heated debates that lasted for two days.
On the third day he went off with the rest of the conference delegates to the forest beyond the river and spent a day and a night fighting bandits led by Zarudny, one of Petlyura’s officers still at large.
On his return he went to see Ignatieva and found Ustinovich there. —-
Afterwards he saw her home to the station and on parting held her hand tightly. —-
She drew it away angrily. Again Sergei kept away from the agitprop coach for many days and avoided seeing Rita even on business. —-
And when she would demand an explanation of his behaviour he would reply curtly: —-
“What’s the use of talking to you? You’ll only accuse me of being a philistine or a traitor to the working class or something.”
Trains carrying the Caucasian Red Banner Division pulled in at the station. —-
Three swarthy-complexioned commanders came over to the Revcom. —-
One of them, a tall slim man wearing a belt of chased silver, went straight up to Dolinnik and demanded one hundred cartloads of hay. —-
“No argument now,” he said shortly, “I’ve got to have that hay. —-
My horses are dying.”
And so Sergei was sent with two Red Army men to get hay. —-
In one village they were attacked by a band of kulaks. —-
The Red Army men were disarmed and beaten unmercifully.
Sergei got off lightly because of his youth. —-
All three were carted back to town by people from the Poor Peasants’Committee.
An armed detachment was sent out to the village and the hay was delivered the following day.
Not wishing to alarm his family, Sergei stayed at Ignatieva’s place until he recovered. —-
Rita Ustinovich came to visit him there and for the first time she pressed Sergei’s hand with a warmth and tenderness he himself would never have dared to show.
One hot afternoon Sergei dropped in at the agit coach to see Rita. He read her Pavel’s letter and told her something about his friend. —-
On his way out he threw over his shoulder: —-
“I think I’ll go to the woods and take a dip in the lake.”
Rita looked up from her work. “Wait for me. I’ll come with you.”
The lake was as smooth and placid as a mirror. —-
Its warm translucent water exuded an inviting freshness.
“Wait for me over by the road. I’m going in,” Rita ordered him.
Sergei sat down on a boulder by the bridge and lifted his face to the sun. —-
He could hear her splashing in the water behind him.
Presently through the trees he caught sight of Tonya Tumanova and Chuzhanin, the Military Commissar of the agit train, coming down the road arm-in-arm. —-
Chuzhanin, in his well-made officer’s uniform with its smart leather belt and numberless straps and leather shiny top-boots, cut a dashing figure. —-
He was in earnest conversation with Tonya.
Sergei recognised Tonya as the girl who had brought him the note from Pavel. She too looked hard at him as they approached. —-
She seemed to be trying to place him. When they came abreast of him Sergei took Pavel’s last letter out of his pocket and went up to her.
“Just a moment, Comrade. I have a letter here which concerns you partly.”
Pulling her hand free Tonya took the letter. —-
The slip of paper trembled slightly in her hand as she read.
“Have you had any more news from him?” she asked, handing the letter back to Sergei.
“No,” he replied.
At that moment the pebbles crunched under Rita’s feet and Chuzhanin, who had been unaware of her presence, bent over and whispered to Tonya: “We’d better go.”
But Rita’s mocking, scornful voice stopped him.
“Comrade Chuzhanin! They’ve been looking for you over at the train all day.”
Chuzhanin eyed her with dislike.
“Never mind,” he said surlily. “They’ll manage without me.
Rita watched Tonya and the Military Commissar go.
“It’s high time that good-for-nothing was sent packing!” she observed dryly.
The forest murmured as the breeze stirred the mighty crowns of the oaks. —-
A delicious freshness was wafted from the lake. —-
Sergei decided to go in.
When he came back from his swim he found Rita sitting on a treetrunk not far from the road. —-
They wandered, talking, into the depths of the woods. —-
In a small glade with tall thick grass they paused to rest. It was very quiet in the forest. —-
The oaks whispered to one another. Rita threw herself down on the soft grass and clasped her hands under her head. —-
Her shapely legs in their old patched boots were hidden in the tall grass.
Sergei’s eye chanced to fall on her feet. —-
He noticed the neatly patched boots, then looked down at his own boot with the toe sticking out of a hole, and he laughed.
“What are you laughing at?” she asked.
Sergei pointed to his boot. “How are we going to fight in boots like these?”
Rita did not reply. She was chewing a blade of grass and her thoughts were obviously elsewhere.
“Chuzhanin is a poor Communist,” she said at last. —-
“All our political workers go about in rags but he thinks of nobody but himself. —-
He does not belong in our Party. . .
. As for the front, the situation there is really very serious. —-
Our country has a long and bitter fight before it.” —-
She paused,then added, “We shall have to fight with both words and rifles, Sergei. —-
Have you heard about the Central Committee’s decision to draft one-fourth of the Komsomol into the army? —-
If you ask me,Sergei, we shan’t be here long.”
Listening to her, Sergei was surprised to detect a new note in her voice. —-
With her black limpideyes upon him, he was ready to throw discretion to the winds and tell her that her eyes were like mirrors, but he checked himself in time.
Rita raised herself on her elbow. “Where’s your revolver?”
Sergei fingered his belt ruefully. “That kulak band took it away from me.”
Rita put her hand into the pocket of her tunic and brought out a gleaming automatic pistol.
“See that oak, Sergei?” she pointed the muzzle at a furrowed trunk about twenty-five paces from where they lay. —-
And raising the weapon to the level of her eyes she fired almost without taking aim. —-
The splintered bark showered down.
“See?” she said much pleased with herself and fired again. —-
And again the bark splintered and fell in the grass.
“Here,” she handed him the weapon with a mocking smile. “Now let’s see what you can do.”
Sergei muffed one out of three shots. Rita smiled condescendingly. “I thought you’d do worse.”
She put down the pistol and lay down on the grass. —-
Her tunic stretched tightly over her firm breasts.
“Sergei,” she said softly. “Come here.”
He moved closer.
“Look at the sky. See how blue it is. Your eyes are that colour. And that’s bad. —-
They ought to be grey, like steel. Blue is much too soft a colour.”
And suddenly clasping his blond head, she kissed him passionately on the lips.
Two months passed. Autumn arrived.
Night crept up stealthily, enveloping the trees in its dark shroud. —-
The telegraphist at Division Headquarters bent over his apparatus which was ticking out Morse and, gathering up the long narrow ribbon that wound itself snakily beneath his fingers, rapidly translated the dots and dashes into words and phrases:
“Chief of Staff First Division Copy to Chairman Revcom Shepetovka. —-
Evacuate all official institutions in town within ten hours after receipt of this wire. —-
Leave one battalion in town at disposal of commander of X. regiment in command sector of front. —-
Division Headquarters,Political Department, all military institutions to be moved to Baranchev station. —-
Report execution of order to Division Commander.
“(Signed)”
Ten minutes later a motorcycle was hurtling through the slumbering streets of the town, its headlight stabbing the darkness. —-
It stopped, spluttering, outside the gates of the Revcom. —-
The rider hurried inside and handed the telegram to the chairman Dolinnik. —-
At once the place was seething with activity. The Special Duty Company lined up. —-
An hour later carts loaded with Revcom property were rumbling through the town to the Podolsk Station where it was loaded into railway cars.
When he learned the contents of the telegram Sergei ran out after the motorcyclist.
“Can you give me a lift to the station, Comrade?” he asked the rider.
“Climb on behind, but mind you hold on fast.”
A dozen paces from the agit coach which had already been attached to the train Sergei saw Rita.
He seized her by the shoulders and, conscious that he was about to lose something that had become very dear to him, he whispered: —-
“Good-bye, Rita, dear comrade! We’ll meet again sometime. Don’t forget me.”
To his horror he felt the tears choking him. He must go at once. —-
Not trusting himself to speak, he wrung her hand until it hurt.
Morning found the town and station desolate and deserted. —-
The last train had blown its whistle as if in farewell and pulled out, and now the rearguard battalion which had been left behind took up positions on either side of the tracks.
Yellow leaves fluttered down from the trees leaving the branches bare. —-
The wind caught the fallen leaves and sent them rustling along the paths.
Sergei in a Red Army greatcoat, with canvas cartridge belts slung over his shoulders, occupied the crossing opposite the sugar refinery with a dozen Red Army men. —-
The Poles were approaching.
Avtonom Petrovich knocked at the door of his neighbour Gerasim Leontievich. —-
The latter, not yet dressed, poked his head out of the door.
“What’s up?”
Avtonom Petrovich pointed to the Red Army men moving down the street, and winked: “They’re
clearing out.”
Gerasim Leontievich looked at him with a worried air: —-
“What sort of emblem do the Poles have,do you know?”
“A single-headed eagle, I believe.”
“Where the devil can you find one?”
Avtonom Petrovich scratched his head in consternation.
“It’s all right for them,” he said after a moment or two of reflection. “They just get up and go. —-
But you have to worry your head about getting in right with the new authorities.”
The rattle of a machine gun tore into the silence. —-
An engine whistle sounded from the station and a gun boomed from the same quarter. —-
A heavy shell bored its way high into the air with a loud whine and fell on the road beyond the refinery, enveloping the roadside shrubs in a cloud of bluesmoke. —-
Silent and grim, the retreating Red Army troops marched through the street, turning frequently to look back as they went.
A tear rolled down Sergei’s cheek. Quickly he wiped it away, glancing furtively at his comrades to make sure that no one had seen it. —-
Beside Sergei marched Antek Klopotowski, a lanky sawmill worker. —-
His finger rested on the trigger of his rifle. —-
Antek was gloomy and preoccupied. His eyes met Sergei’s, and he burst out:
“They’ll come down hard on our folks, especially mine because we’re Poles. You, a Pole, they’ll say, opposing the Polish Legion. —-
They’re sure to kick my old man out of the sawmill and flog him.
I told him to come with us, but he didn’t have the heart to leave the family. —-
Hell, I can’t wait to get my hands on those accursed swine!” —-
And Antek angrily pushed back the helmet that had slipped down over his eyes.
. . .Farewell, dear old town, unsightly and dirty though you are with your ugly little houses and your crooked roads. —-
Farewell, dear ones, farewell. Farewell, Valya and the comrades who have remained to work in the underground. —-
The Polish Whiteguard legions, brutal and merciless, are approaching.
Sadly the railway workers in their oil-stained shirts watched the Red Army men go.
“We’ll be back, Comrades!” Sergei cried out with aching heart.
