第 26 页

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."