第 57 页

Korchagin smiled.

"Twenty years from now we won't have a single balk left, Comrade surveyor."

The old man gave him an indulgent look.

"The communist society, you mean? Well, now, that's pretty much in the future, isn't it?"

"Have you heard about the Budanovka Collective Farm?"

"Yes. I've been in Budanovka. But that's the exception, Comrade Korchagin."

The commission went on measuring strips of land. Two young men hammered in stakes. And on both sides stood the peasants watching closely to make sure that they went down where the half-rotten sticks barely visible in the grass marked the previous dividing lines.

Whipping up his wretched nag, the garrulous driver turned to his passengers.

"Where all these Komsomol lads have sprung up from beats me!" he said. "Don't remember anything like it before. It's that schoolteacher woman who's started it, for sure. Rakitina's her name, maybe you know her? She's a young wench, but she's a troublemaker. Stirs up all the womenfolk in the village, puts all kinds of silly ideas into their heads and that's how the trouble begins. It's got so a man can't beat his wife any more! In the old days you'd give the old woman a clout whenever you felt out of sorts and she'd slink away and sulk, but now she kicks up such a row you wished you hadn't touched her. She'll threaten you with the People's Court, and as for the younger ones, they'll talk about divorce and reel off all the laws to you. Look at my Ganka, she quietest wench you ever saw, now she's gone and got herself made a delegate; the elder among the womenfolk, I think that means. The women come to her from all over the village. I nearly let her have a taste of the whip when I heard about it, but I spat on the whole business. They can go to the devil! Let them jabber. She isn't a bad wench when it comes to housework and such things."

The driver scratched his hairy chest visible through the opening in his homespun shirt and flicked his whip under the horse's belly. The two in the cart were Razvalikhin and Lida. They both had business in Poddubtsy. Lida planned to call a conference of women's delegates, and Razvalikhin had been sent to help the local cell organise its work.

"So you don't like the Komsomols?" Lida jokingly asked the driver.

He plucked at his little beard for a while before replying.

"Oh I don't mind them.... I believe in letting the youngsters enjoy themselves, putting on plays and such like. I'm fond of a comedy myself if it's good. We did think at the beginning the young folk would get out of hand, but it turned out just the opposite. I've heard folks say they're very strict about drinking and rowing and such like. They go in more for book learning. But they won't leave God be, and they're always trying to take the church away and use it for a club. Now that's no good, it's turned the old folks against them. But on the whole they're not so bad. If you ask me,though, they make a big mistake taking in all the down-and-outs in the village, the ones who hire out, or who can't make a go of their farms. They won't have anything to do with the rich peasants'sons."

The cart clattered down the hill and pulled up outside the school building.

The caretaker had put up the new arrivals and gone off to sleep in the hay. Lida and Razvalikhin had just returned from a meeting which had ended rather late. It was dark inside the cottage. Lida undressed quickly, climbed into bed and fell asleep almost at once. She was rudely awakened by Razvalikhin's hands travelling over her in a manner that left no doubt as to his intentions.

"What do you want?"

"Shush, Lida, don't make so much noise. I'm sick of lying there all by myself. Can't you find anything more exciting to do than snooze?"

"Stop pawing me and get off my bed at once!" Lida said, pushing him away. Razvalikhin's oily smile had always sickened her and she wanted to say something insulting and humiliating, but sleep overpowered her and she closed her eyes.

"Aw, come on! You weren't brought up in a nunnery by any chance? Stop playing the little innocent, you can't fool me. If you were really an advanced woman, you'd satisfy my desire and then go to sleep as much as you want."

Considering the matter settled, he went over and sat on the edge of the bed again, laying a possessive hand on her shoulder.

"Go to hell!" Lida was now wide awake. "I'm going to tell Korchagin about this tomorrow."

Razvalikhin seized her hand and whispered testily: "I don't care a damn about your Korchagin,and you'd better not try to resist or I'll take you by force."

There was a brief scuffle and then two resounding slaps rang out. Razvalikhin leapt aside. Lida groped her way to the door, pushed it open and rushed out into the yard. She stood there in the moonlight, panting with fury and disgust.

"Get inside, you fool!" Razvalikhin called to her viciously.

He carried his own bed out under the shed and spent the rest of the night there. Lida fastened the door on the latch, curled up on the bed and went to sleep again.

In the morning they set out for home. Razvalikhin sat gloomily beside the old driver smoking one cigarette after another.

"That touch-me-not may really go and spill the beans to Korchagin, blast her!" he was thinking.

"Who'd have thought she'd turn out to be such a prig? You'd think she was a raving beauty by the way she acts, but she's nothing to look at. But I'd better make it up with her or there may be trouble. Korchagin has his eye on me as it is."

He moved over to Lida. He pretended to be ashamed of himself, put on a downcast air and mumbled a few words of apology.

That did the trick. Before they had reached the edge of the village Lida had given him her promise not to tell anyone what had happened that night.

Komsomol cells sprang up one after another in the border villages. The District Committee members carefully tended these first young shoots of the Communist movement. Korchagin and Lida Polevykh spent much time in the various localities working with the local Komsomol members.

Razvalikhin did not like making trips to the countryside. He did not know how to win the confidence of the peasant lads and only succeeded in bungling things. Lida and Pavel, on the other hand, had no difficulty in making friends with the peasant youth. The girls took to Lida at once, they accepted her as one of themselves and gradually she awakened their interest in the Komsomol movement. As for Korchagin, all the young folk in the district knew him. One thousand six hundred of the young men due to be called up for military service went through preliminary training in his battalion. Never before had his accordion played such an important role in propaganda as here in the village. The instrument made Pavel tremendously popular with the young folk, who gathered of an evening on the village lane to enjoy themselves, and for many a towheaded youngster the road to the Komsomol began here as he listened to the enchanting music of the accordion, now passionate and stirring, now strident and brave, now tender and caressing as only the sad, wistful songs of the Ukraine can be. They listened to the accordion, and they listened to the young man who played it, a railway worker who was now Military Commissar and Komsomol secretary. And the music of the accordion seemed to mingle harmoniously with what the young Commissar told them. Soon new songs rang out in the villages, and new books appeared in the cottages beside the prayer-books and Bibles.

The smugglers now had more than the frontier guards to reckon with; in the Komsomol members the Soviet Government had acquired staunch friends and zealous assistants. Sometimes the Komsomol cells in the border towns allowed themselves to be carried away by their enthusiasm in hunting down enemies and then Korchagin would have to come to the aid of his young comrades.

Once Grishutka Khorovodko, the blue-eyed Secretary of the Poddubtsy cell, a hot-headed lad fond of an argument and very active in the anti-religious movement, learned from private sources of information that some smuggled goods were to be brought that night to the village mill. He roused all the Komsomol members and, armed with a training rifle and two bayonets, they set out at the dead of night, quietly laid an ambush at the mill and waited for their quarry to appear. The border

post, which had been informed of the smugglers' move, sent out a detail of its own. In the dark the two sides met and clashed, and had it not been for the vigilance displayed by the frontier guards, the young men might have suffered heavy casualties in the skirmish. As it was the youngsters were merely disarmed, taken to a village four kilometres away and locked up. Korchagin happened to be at Gavrilov's place at the time. When the Battalion Commander told him the news the following morning, Pavel mounted his horse and galloped off to rescue his boys. The frontier man in charge laughed as he told him the story.

"I'll tell you what we'll do, Comrade Korchagin," he said. "They're fine lads and we shan't make trouble for them. But you had better give them a good talking to so that they won't try to do our work for us in the future."

The sentry opened the door of the shed and the eleven lads got up and stood sheepishly shifting their weight from one foot to the other.

"Look at them," the frontier man said with studied severity. "They've gone and made a mess of things, and now I'll have to send them on to area headquarters."

Then Grishutka spoke up.

"But Comrade Sakharov," he said agitatedly, "what crime have we committed? We've had our eye on that kulak for a long time. We only wanted to help the Soviet authorities, and you go and lock us up like bandits." He turned away with an injured air.

After a solemn consultation, during which Korchagin and Sakharov had difficulty in preserving their gravity, they decided the boys had had enough of a fright.

"If you will vouch for them and promise us that they won't go taking walks over to the frontier any more I'll let them go," Sakharov said to Pavel. "They can help us in other ways."

"Very well, I'll vouch for them. I hope they won't let me down any more."

The youngsters marched back to Poddubtsy singing. The incident was hushed up. And it was not long before the miller was caught, this time by the law.

In the Maidan-Villa woods there lived a colony of rich German farmers. The kulak farms stood within half a kilometre of each other, as sturdily built as miniature fortresses. It was from Maidan-Villa that Antonyuk and his band operated. Antonyuk, a one-time tsarist army sergeant major, had recruited a band of seven cutthroats from among his kith and kin and, armed with pistols, staged hold-ups on the country roads. He did not hesitate to spill blood, he was not averse to robbing wealthy speculators, but neither did he stop at molesting Soviet workers. Speed was Antonyuk's watchword. One day he would rob a couple of co-operative store clerks and the next day he would disarm a postal employee in a village a good twenty kilometres away, stealing everything the man had on him, down to the last kopek. Antonyuk competed with his fellow-brigand Gordei, one was worse than the other, and between them the two kept the area militia and frontier guard authorities very busy. Antonyuk operated just outside Berezdov, and it grew dangerous to appear on the roads leading to the town. The bandit eluded capture; when things grew too hot for him he would withdraw beyond the border and lie low only to turn up again when he was least expected. His very elusiveness made him a menace. Every report of some fresh outrage committed by this brigand caused Lisitsyn to gnaw his lips with rage.

"When will that rattlesnake stop biting us? He'd better take care, the scoundrel, or I'll have to settle his hash myself," he would mutter through clenched teeth. Twice the District Executive Chairman,taking Korchagin and three other Communists with him, set out hot on the bandit's trail, but each time Antonyuk got away.

A special detachment was sent to Berezdov from the area centre to fight the bandits. It was commanded by a dapper youth named Filatov. Instead of reporting to the Chairman of the Executive Committee, as frontier regulations demanded, this conceited youngster went straight to the nearest village, Semaki, and arriving at the dead of night, put up with his men in a house on the outskirts. The mysterious arrival of these armed men was observed by a Komsomol member living next door who hurried off at once to report to the Chairman of the Village Soviet. The latter,knowing nothing about the detachment, took them for bandits and dispatched the lad at once to the

district centre for help. Filatov's foolhardiness very nearly cost many lives. Lisitsyn roused the militia in the middle of the night and hurried off with a dozen men to tackle the "bandits" in Semaki. They galloped up to the house, dismounted and climbing over the fence closed in on the house. The sentry on duty at the door was knocked down by a blow on the head with a revolver-butt, Lisitsyn broke in the door with his shoulder and he and his men rushed into a room dimly lighted by an oil lamp hanging from the ceiling. With a grenade in one hand and his Mauser in the other Lisitsyn roared so that the window panes rattled:

"Surrender, or I'll blow you to bits!"

Another second and the sleepy men leaping to their feet from the floor might have been cut down by a hail of bullets. But the sight of the man with the grenade poised for the throw was so awe inspiring that they put up their hands. A few minutes later, when the "bandits" were herded outside in their underwear, Filatov noticed the decoration on Lisitsyn's tunic and hastened to explain.

Lisitsyn was furious. "You fool!" he spat out with withering contempt.

Tidings of the German revolution, dim echoes of the rifle fire on the Hamburg barricades reached the border area. An atmosphere of tension hung over the frontier. Newspapers were read with eager expectation. The wind of revolution blew from the West. Applications poured in to the Komsomol District Committee from Komsomols volunteering for service in the Red Army.

Korchagin was kept busy explaining to the youngsters from the cells that the Soviet union was pursuing a policy of peace and that it had no intentions of going to war with its neighbours. But this had little effect. Every Sunday Komsomol members from the entire district held meetings in the big garden of the priest's house, and one day at noon the Poddubtsy cell turned up in proper marching order in the yard of the District Committee. Korchagin saw them through the window and went out into the porch. Eleven lads, with Khorovodko at their head, all wearing top boots, and with large canvas knapsacks on their backs, halted at the entrance.