第 56 页

The Chairman of the Executive Committee read the dispatch he had just received to the end. A shadow flitted across his face, and a huge gnarled hand strayed into his luxurious crop of hair and paused there.

Nikolai Nikolayevich Lisitsyn, the Chairman of the Berezdov Executive Committee, was only twenty-four, but none of the members of his staff and the local Party workers would have believed it. A big, strong man, stern and often formidable in appearance, he looked at least thirty-five. He had a powerful physique, a big head firmly planted on a thick neck, piercing brown eyes, and a strong, energetic jaw. He wore blue breeches and a grey tunic, somewhat the worse for wear, with the Order of the Red Banner over the left breast pocket.

Like his father and grandfather before him Lisitsyn had been a metalworker almost from childhood, and before the October Revolution he had "commanded" a lathe at a Tula munitions plant.

Beginning with that autumn night when the Tula gunsmith shouldered a rifle and went out to fight for the workers' power, he had been caught up in the whirlwind of events. The Revolution and the Party sent Lisitsyn from one tight spot to another along a glorious path that witnessed his rise from rank-and-file Red Army man to regimental commander and commissar.

The fire of battle and the thunder of guns had receded into the past. Nikolai Lisitsyn was now working in a frontier district. Life went on at a quiet measured pace, and the Executive Committee Chairman sat in his office until late night after night poring over harvest reports. The dispatch he was now studying, however, momentarily revived the recent past. It was a warning couched in terse telegraphic language:

"Strictly confidential. To Lisitsyn, Chairman of the Berezdov Executive Committee.

"Marked activity has been observed latterly on the border where the Poles have been trying to send across a large band to terrorise the frontier districts. Take precautions. Suggest everything valuable at the Finance Department, including collected taxes, be transferred to area centre."

From his window Lisitsyn could see everyone who entered the District Executive Committee building. Looking up he caught sight of Pavel Korchagin on the steps. A moment later there was a knock on the door.

"Sit down, I've got something to tell you," Lisitsyn said, returning Pavel's handshake.

For a whole hour the two were closeted in the office.

By the time Korchagin emerged from the office it was noon. As he stepped out, Lisitsyn's little sister, Anyutka, a timid child far too serious for her years, ran toward him from the garden. She always had a warm smile for Korchagin and now too she greeted him shyly, tossing a stray lock of her cropped hair back from her forehead.

"Is Kolya busy?" she asked. "Maria Mikhailovna has had his dinner ready for a long time."

"Go right in, Anyutka, he's alone."

Long before dawn the next morning three carts harnessed to well-fed horses pulled up in front of the Executive Committee. The men who came with them exchanged a few words in undertones,and several sealed sacks were then carried out of the Finance Department. These were loaded into the carts and a few minutes later the rumble of wheels receded down the highway. The carts were convoyed by a detail under Korchagin's command. The forty-kilometre journey to the regional centre (twenty-five of them through forests) was made without mishap and the valuables safely deposited in the vaults of the Regional Finance Department.

Some days later a cavalryman galloped into Berezdov from the direction of the frontier. As he passed through the streets he was followed by the wondering stares of the local idlers.

At the gates of the Executive Committee the rider leapt to the ground, and, supporting his sabre with one hand, stamped up the front stairs in his heavy boots. Lisitsyn took the packet with a worried frown. A few minutes later, the messenger was galloping back in the direction whence he had come.

No one but the Chairman of the Executive Committee knew the contents of the dispatch. But such news had a way of getting round, especially among the local shopkeepers many of whom were smugglers in a small way and had almost an instinct for sensing danger.

Two men walked briskly along the pavement leading to the headquarters of the Military Training Battalion. One of them was Pavel Korchagin. Him the watchers knew; he always carried a gun.

But the fact that his companion, the Party Committee Secretary Trofimov, had strapped on a revolver looked ominous.

Several minutes later a dozen men ran out of the headquarters carrying rifles with bayonets fixed and marched briskly to the mill standing at the crossroads. The rest of the local Communist Party and Komsomol members were being issued arms at the Party Committee offices. The Chairman of the Executive Committee galloped past, wearing a Cossack cap and the customary Mauser.

Something was obviously afoot. The main square and sidestreets grew deserted. Not a soul was in sight. In a flash huge medieval padlocks appeared on the doors of the tiny shops and shutters boarded windows. Only the fearless hens and hogs continued to rummage among piles of refuse.

The pickets took cover in the gardens at the edge of the town where they had a good view of the open fields and the straight road reaching into the distance.

The dispatch received by Lisitsyn had been brief:

"A mounted band of about one hundred men with two light machine-guns broke through to Soviet territory after a fight in the area of Poddubtsy last night. Take precautionary measures. The trail of the band has been lost in the Slavuta woods. A Red Cossack company has been sent in pursuit of the band. The company will pass through Berezdov during the day. Do not mistake them for the enemy. Gavrilov, Commander, Detached Frontier Battalion.

No more than an hour had passed when a rider appeared on the road leading to the town, followed by a group of horsemen moving about a kilometre behind. Korchagin's keen eyes followed their movements. The lone rider was a young Red Army man from the Seventh Red Cossack Regiment, a novice at reconnaissance, and hence, though he picked his way cautiously enough, he failed to spot the pickets ambushed in the roadside gardens. Before he knew it he was surrounded by armed men who poured onto the road from the greenery, and when he saw the Komsomol emblem on their tunics, he smiled sheepishly. After a brief confab, he turned his horse around and galloped back to the mounted force now coming up at a trot. The pickets let the Red Cossacks through and resumed their watch in the gardens.

Several anxious days passed before Lisitsyn received word that the raid had failed. Pursued by the Red cavalry, the riders had had to beat a hasty retreat across the frontier.

A handful of Bolsheviks, numbering nineteen in all, applied themselves energetically to the job of building up Soviet life in the district. This was a new dministrative unit and hence everything had to be created from bottom up. Besides, the proximity of the border called for unflagging vigilance.

Lisitsyn, Trofimov, Korchagin and the small group of active workers they had rallied toiled from dawn till dusk arranging for re-elections of Soviets, fighting the bandits, organising cultural work, putting down smuggling, in addition to Party and Komsomol work to strengthen defence.

From saddle to desk, and from desk to the common where squads of young military trainees diligently drilled, then the club and the school and two or three committee meetings — such was the daily round of the Military Commissar of Battalion Two. Often enough his nights were spent on horseback, Mauser at his side, nights whose stillness was broken by a sharp "Halt, who goes there?" and the pounding of the wheels of a fleeing cart laden with smuggled goods from beyond the border.

The Berezdov District Committee of the Komsomol consisted of Korchagin, Lida Polevykh, a girl from the Volga who headed the Women's Department, and Zhenka Razvalikhin, a tall, handsome young man who had been a Gymnasium student only a short time before. Razvalikhin had a weakness for thrilling adventures and was an authority on Sherlock Holmes and Louis Boussenard. Previously he had been office manager for the District Committee of the Party, and though he had joined the Komsomol only four months before, posed as an "old Bolshevik".

Someone was needed in Berezdov to take charge of political education work, and since there was no one else to send, the Regional Committee, after some hesitation, had chosen Razvalikhin.

The sun had reached its zenith. The heat penetrated everywhere and all living creatures sought refuge in the shade. Even the dogs crawled under sheds and lay there panting, inert and sleepy.

The only sign of life in the village was a hog revelling in a puddle of mud next to the well. Korchagin untethered his horse, and biting his lip from the pain in his knee, climbed into the saddle. The teacher was standing on the steps of the schoolhouse shading her eyes from the sun with the palm of her hand.

"I hope to see you soon again, Comrade Military Commissar," she smiled.

The horse stamped impatiently, stretched its neck and pulled at the reins.

"Good-bye, Comrade Rakitina. So it's settled: you'll give the first lesson tomorrow."

Feeling the pressure of the bit relax, the horse was off at a brisk trot. Suddenly wild cries reached Pavel's ears. It sounded like the shrieking of women when villages catch fire. Wheeling his mount sharply around, the Military Commissar saw a young peasant woman running breathlessly into the village. Rakitina rushed forward and stopped her. From the nearby cottages the inhabitants looked out, mostly old men and women, for all the able-bodied peasants were working in the fields.

"0-o-oh! Good people! Come quickly! Come quickly! They're a-murdering each other over there!"

When Korchagin galloped up people were crowding around the woman, pulling at her white blouse and showering her with anxious questions, but they could make nothing of her incoherent cries. "It's murder! They're cutting them up..." was all she could say. An old man with a tousled beard came up, supporting his homespun trousers with one hand as he ran.

"Stop your noise," he shouted at the hysterical woman. "Who's being murdered? What's it all about? Stop your squealing, damn you!"

"It's our men and the Poddubtsy crowd . . . fighting over the boundaries again. They're slaughtering our men!"

That told them all. Women wailed and the old men bellowed in fury. The news swept through the village and eddied in the backyards: "The Poddubtsy crowd are cutting up our fellows with scythes.... It's those boundaries again!" Only the bedridden remained indoors, all the rest poured into the village street and arming themselves with pitchforks, axes or sticks pulled from wattle fences ran toward the fields where the two villages were engaged in their bloody annual contest over the boundaries between their fields.

Korchagin struck his horse and the animal was off at a gallop. The animal flew past the running village folk and, ears pressed back and hooves furiously pounding the ground, steadily increased its breakneck pace. On a hillock a windmill spread out its arms as if to bar the way. To the right, by the river bank, were the low meadows, and to the left a rye field rose and dipped all the way to the horizon. The wind rippled the ears of the ripe grain. Poppies sprinkled the roadside with bright

red. It was quiet here, and unbearably hot. But from the distance, where the silvery ribbon of the river basked in the sun, came the cries of battle.

The horse continued its wild career down toward the meadows. "If he stumbles, it's the end of both of us," flashed in Pavel's mind. But there was no stopping now, and all he could do was to listen to the wind whistle in his ears as he bent low in the saddle.

Like a whirlwind he galloped into the field where the bloody combat was raging. Several already lay bleeding on the ground.

The horse ran down a bearded peasant armed with the stub of a scythe handle who was pursuing a young man with blood streaming down his face. Nearby a sunburned giant of a man was aiming vicious kicks with his big heavy boots at the solar plexus of his victim.

Charging into the mass of struggling men at full speed, Korchagin sent them flying in all directions. Before they could recover from the surprise, he whirled madly now upon one, now on another, realising that he could disperse this knot of brutalised humanity only by terrorising them.

"Scatter, you swine!" he shouted in a fury. "Or I'll shoot every last man of you, you blasted bandits!"

And pulling out his Mauser he fired over an upturned face twisted with savage rage. Again the horse whirled around and again the Mauser spoke. Some of the combatants dropped their scythes and turned back. Dashing up and down the field and firing incessantly, the Commissar finally got the situation in hand. The peasants took to their heels and scattered in all directions anxious to escape both from responsibility for the bloody brawl and from this man on horseback so terrible in his fury who was shooting without stop.

Luckily no one was killed and the wounded recovered. Nevertheless soon afterward a session of the district court was held in Poddubtsy to hear the case, but all the judge's efforts to discover the ringleaders were unavailing. With the persistence and patience of the true Bolshevik, the judge sought to make the sullen peasants before him see how barbarous their actions had been, and to impress upon them that such violence would not be tolerated.

"It's the boundaries that are to blame, Comrade judge," they said. "They've a way of getting mixed up — every year we fight over them."

Nevertheless some of the peasants had to answer for the fight.

A week later a commission came to the hay lands in question and began staking out the disputed strips.

"I've been working as land surveyor for nearly thirty years, and always it's been the dividing lines that caused trouble," the old surveyor with the commission said to Korchagin as he rolled up his tape. The old man was sweating profusely from the heat and the exertion. "Ljooking at the way the meadows are divided you'd hardly believe your eyes. A drunkard could draw straighter lines. And the fields are even worse. Strips three paces wide and one crossing into the other — to try and separate them is enough to drive you mad. And they're being cut up more and more what with sons growing up and fathers splitting up their land with them. Believe me, twenty years from now there won't be any land left to till, it'll all be balks. As it is, ten per cent of the land is being wasted in this way."