第 19 页

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!