第 41 页

Soaked to the skin, their clothing chill and sodden, the men worked on until long after dark.

And with every day the strip of upturned earth penetrated farther and farther into the forest.

Not far from the station loomed the grim skeleton of what had once been a brick building.

Everything that could be removed bodily, torn out or blasted loose had long since been carried off by marauders. There were gaping holes in place of windows and doors; black gashes where stove doors had once been. Through the holes in the tattered roof the rafters showed like the ribs of a skeleton.

Only the concrete floor in the four large rooms remained intact. At night four hundred men slept on this floor in their damp, mud-caked clothing. Muddy water streamed from their clothes when they wrung them out at the doorway. And the men heaped bitter curses on the rain and the boggy soil. They lay in compact rows on the concrete floor with its thin covering of straw, huddling together for warmth. The steam rose from their clothing but it did not dry. And the rain seeped through the sacks that were nailed over the empty window frames and trickled down onto the floor. It drummed loudly on the remnants of sheet metal roofing, and the wind whistled through

the great cracks in the door. In the morning they drank tea in the tumbledown barracks that served for a kitchen, and went off to their work. Dinner, day after day with sickening monotony, consisted of plain boiled lentils, and there was a daily allowance of a pound and a half of bread as black as coal.

That was all the town could provide. The job superintendent, Valerian Nikodimovich Patoshkin, a tall spare old man with two deep lines at his mouth, and technician Vakulenko, a thickset man with a coarse-featured face and a fleshy nose, had put up at the station master's house.

Tokarev shared the tiny room occupied by the station Cheka agent, a small, volatile man named Kholyava.

The men endured the hardships with dogged fortitude, and the railway embankment reached farther into the forest from day to day.

True, there had been some desertions: at first nine, and a few days later, another five.

The first major calamity occurred a week after the work started, when the bread supply failed to arrive with the night train.

Dubava woke Tokarev and told him the news. The secretary of the Party group swung his hairy legs over the side of the bed and scratched himself furiously under the armpit.

"The fun's beginning!" he growled and began hastily to dress.

Kholyava waddled in on his short legs.

"Run down to the telephone and call the Special Department," Tokarev instructed him, and turning to Dubava added, "and not a word to anybody about the bread, mind."

After berating the railway telephone operators for a full half hour, the irrepressible Kholyava succeeded in getting Zhukhrai, the assistant chief of the Special Department, on the line, while Tokarev stood by fidgeting with impatience.

"What! Bread not delivered? I'll find out who's responsible for that!" Zhukhrai's voice coming over the wire had an ominous ring.

"What are we going to give the men to eat tomorrow?" Tokarev shouted back angrily.

There was a long pause; Zhukhrai was evidently considering some plan of action. "You'll get the bread tonight," he said at last. "I'll send young Litke with the car. He knows the way. You'll have the bread by morning."

At dawn a mud-spattered car loaded with sacks of bread drove up to the station. Litke, his face white and strained after a sleepless night at the wheel, climbed out wearily.

Work on the railway line became a struggle against increasing odds. The railway administration announced that there were no sleepers to be had. The town authorities could find no means of shipping the rails and engines to the railway job, and the engines themselves turned out to be in need of substantial repairs. No workers were forthcoming to replace the first batch who had done their share and were now so completely worn out that there could be no question of detaining them.

The leading Party members met in the tumbledown shed dimly lit by a wick lamp and sat up late into the night discussing the situation.

The following morning Tokarev, Dubava and Klavicek went to town, taking six men with them to repair the engines and speed up the shipment of the rails. Klavicek, who was a baker by trade, was sent as inspector to the supply department, while the rest went on to Pushcha-Voditsa.

The rain poured down without ceasing.

Pavel Korchagin pulled his foot out of the sticky slime with an effort. A sharp sensation of cold told him that the worn sole of his boot had finally parted from the uppers. His torn boots had been a source of keen discomfort to Pavel ever since he had come to the job. They were never dry and the mud that filtered in squelched when he walked. Now one sole was gone altogether and the icy mire cut into his bare foot. Pavel pulled the sole out of the mud and regarded it with despair and

broke the vow he had given himself not to swear. He could not go on working with one foot exposed, so he hobbled back to the barracks, sat down beside the field kitchen, took off his muddy footcloth and stretched out his numb foot to the fire.

Odarka, the lineman's wife who worked as cook's helper, was busy cutting up beetroots at the kitchen table. A woman of generous proportions, still youthful, with broad almost masculine shoulders, an ample bosom and massive hips, she wielded the kitchen knife with vigour and the mountain of sliced vegetables grew rapidly under her nimble fingers.

Odarka threw a careless glance at Pavel and snapped at him:

"If it's dinner you're hankering after you're a bit early, my lad. Ought to be ashamed of yourself sneaking away from work like that! Take your feet off that stove. This is a kitchen, not a bathhouse!"

The cook came in at that point.

"My blasted boot has gone to pieces," Pavel said, explaining his untimely presence in the kitchen.

The elderly cook looked at the battered boot and nodding toward Odarka he said: "Her husband might be able to do something with it, he's a bit of a cobbler. Better see to it or you'll be in a bad way. You can't get along without boots."

When she heard this, Odarka took another look at Pavel.

"I took you for a loafer," she admitted.

Pavel smiled to show that there were no hard feelings. Odarka examined the boot with the eye of an expert.

"There's no use trying to patch it," she concluded.

"But I'll tell you what I can do. I'll bring you an old galosh we've got lying around at home and you can wear it on top of the boot. You can't go around like that, you'll kill yourself! The frosts will start any day now!"

And Odarka, now all sympathy, laid down her knife and hurried out, returning shortly with a deep galosh and a strip of stout linen.

As he wrapped his foot, now warm and dry, in the thick linen and put it into the galosh, Pavel rewarded Odarka with a grateful look.

Tokarev came back from town fuming. He called a meeting of the leading Communists in Kholyava's room and told them the unpleasant news.

"Nothing but obstacles all along the line. Wherever you go the wheels seem to be turning but they don't get anywhere. Far too many of those White rats about, and it looks as if there'll be enough to last our lifetime anyway. I tell you, boys, things look bad. There are no replacements for us yet and no one knows how many there will be. The frosts are due any day now, and we must get through the marsh before then at all costs, because when the ground freezes it'll be too late. So while they're shaking up those fellows in town who're making a mess of things, we here have to double our speed. That line has got to be built and we're going to build it if we die doing it.

Otherwise it isn't Bolsheviks we'll be but jelly-fish." There was a steely note in Tokarev's hoarse bass voice, and his eyes under their bushy brows had a stubborn gleam.

"We'll call a closed meeting today and pass on the news to our Party members and tomorrow we'll all get down to work. In the morning we'll let the non-Party fellows go; the rest of us will stay.

Here's the Gubernia Committee decision," he said, handing Pankratov a folded sheet of paper.

Pavel Korchagin, peering over Pankratov's shoulder, read: "In view of the emergency all members of the Komsomol are to remain on the job and are not to be relieved until the first consignment of firewood is forthcoming. Signed R. Ustinovich, on behalf of the Secretary of the Gubernia Committee."

The kitchen barracks was packed. One hundred and twenty men had squeezed themselves into its narrow confines. They stood against the walls, climbed on the tables and some were even perched on top of the field kitchen.

Pankratov opened the meeting. Then Tokarev made a brief speech winding up with an announcement that had the effect of a bombshell:

"The Communists and Komsomols will not leave the job tomorrow."

The old man accompanied his statement with a gesture that stressed the finality of the "decision. It swept away all cherished hopes of returning to town, going home, getting away from this hole.

A roar of angry voices drowned out everything else for a few moments. The swaying bodies caused the feeble oil light to flicker fitfully. In the semidarkness the commotion increased. They wanted to go "home"; they protested indignantly that they had had as much as they could stand.

Some received the news in silence. And only one man spoke of deserting.

"To hell with it all!" he shouted angrily from his corner, loosing an ugly stream of invective. "I'm not going to stay here another day. It's all right to do hard labour if you've committed a crime. But what have we done? We're fools to stand for it. We've had two weeks of it, and that's enough. Let those who made the decision come out and do the work themselves. Maybe some folks like poking around in this muck, but I've only one life to live. I'm leaving tomorrow."

The voice came from behind Okunev and he lit a match to see who it was. For an instant the speaker's rage-distorted face and open mouth were snatched out of the darkness by the match's flame. But that instant was enough for Okunev to recognise the son of a gubernia food commissariat bookkeeper.

"Checking up, eh?" he snarled. "Well, I'm not afraid, I'm no thief."

The match flickered out. Pankratov rose and drew himself up to his full height.

"What kind of talk is that? Who dares to compare a Party task to a hard-labour sentence?" he thundered, running his eyes menacingly over the front rows. "No, Comrades, there's no going to town for us, our place is here. If we clear out now folks will freeze to death. The sooner we finish the job the sooner we get back home. Running away like that whiner back there suggests doesn't fit in with our ideas or our discipline."

Pankratov, a stevedore, was not fond of long speeches but even this brief statement was interrupted by the same irate voice.

"The non-Party fellows are leaving, aren't they?"

"Yes."

A lad in a short overcoat came elbowing his way to the front. A Komsomol card flew up, struck against Pankratov's chest, dropped onto the table and stood on edge.

"There, take your card. I'm not going to risk my health for a bit of cardboard!"

His last words were drowned out by a roar of angry voices:

"What do you think you're throwing around!"

"Treacherous bastard!"

"Got into the Komsomol because he thought he'd have it easy."

"Chuck him out!"

"Let me get at the louse!"

The deserter, his head lowered, made his way to the exit. They let him pass, shrinking away from him as from a leper. The door closed with a creak behind him.

Pankratov picked up the discarded membership card and held it to the flame of the oil lamp.

The cardboard caught alight and curled up as it burned.

A shot echoed in the forest. A horseman turned from the tumbledown barracks and dived into the darkness of the forest. A moment later men came pouring out of the barracks and school building.

Someone discovered a piece of plywood that had been stuck into the door. A match flared up and shielding the unsteady flame from the wind they read the scrawled message: "Clear out of here and go back where you came from. If you don't, we will shoot every one of you. I give you till tomorrow night to get out. Ataman Chesnok."

Chesnok belonged to Orlik's band.

An open diary lies on the table in Rita's room.

December 2

"We had our first snow this morning. The frost is severe. I met Vyacheslav Olshinsky on the stairs and we walked down the street together.

" 'I always enjoy the first snowfall,' he said. 'Particularly when it is frosty like this. Lovely, isn't it?'

"But I was thinking of Boyarka and I told him that the frost and snow do not gladden me at all. On the contrary they depress me. And I told him why.

" 'That is a purely subjective reaction,' he said. 'If one argues on that premise all merriment or any manifestation of joy in wartime, for example, would have to be banned. But life is not like that.

The tragedy is confined to the strip of front line where the battle is being fought. There life is overshadowed by the proximity of death. Yet even there people laugh. And away from the front, life goes on as always: people laugh, weep, suffer, rejoice, love, seek amusement, entertainment, excitement.'

"It was difficult to detect any shade of irony in Olshinsky's words. Olshinsky is a representative of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. He has been in the Party since 1917. He dresses well, is always cleanly shaven with a faint scent of perfume about him. He lives in our house, in Segal's apartment. Sometimes he drops in to see me in the evenings. He is very interesting to talk to, he knows a lot about Europe, lived for many years in Paris. But I doubt whether he and I could

ever be good friends. That is because for him I am primarily a woman; the fact that I am his Party comrade is a secondary consideration. True, he does not attempt to disguise his sentiments and opinions on this score, he has the courage of his convictions and there is nothing coarse about his attentions. He has the knack of investing them with a sort of beauty. Yet I do not like him.