第 58 页

"What's this, Grisha?" Korchagin asked in surprise.

Instead of replying, Khorovodko signed to Pavel with his eyes and went inside the building with him. Lida, Razvalikhin and two other Komsomol members pressed around the newcomer demanding an explanation. Khorovodko closed the door and wrinkling his bleached eyebrows announced:

"This is a sort of test mobilisation, Comrades. My own idea. I told the boys this morning a telegram had come from the district, strictly confidential of course, that we're going to war with the German bourgeoisie, and we'll soon be fighting the Polish Pany as well. All Komsomols are called up, on orders from Moscow, I told them. Anyone who's scared can file an application and he'll be allowed to stay home. I ordered them not to say a word about the war to anyone, just to take a loaf of bread and a hunk of fatback apiece, and those who didn't have any fatback could bring garlic or onions. We were to meet secretly outside the village and go to the district centre and from there to the area centre where arms would be issued. You ought to see what an effect that had on the boys! They tried hard to pump me, but I told them to get busy and cut out the questions. Those who wanted to stay behind should say so. We only wanted volunteers. Well, my boys dispersed and I began to get properly worried. Supposing nobody turned up? If that happened I would disband the whole cell and move to some other place. I sat there outside the village

waiting with my heart in my boots. After a while they began coming, one by one. Some of them had been crying, you could see by their faces, though they tried to hide it. All ten of them turned up, not a single deserter. That's our Poddubtsy cell for you!" he wound up triumphantly.

When the shocked Lida Polevykh began to scold him, he stared at her in amazement.

"What do you mean? This is the best way to test them, I tell you. You can see right through each one of them. There's no fraud there. I was going to drag them to the area centre just to keep up appearances, but the poor beggars are dog-tired. You'll have to make a little speech to them, Korchagin. You will, won't you? It wouldn't be right without a speech. Tell them the mobilisation has been called off or something, but say that we're proud of them just the same."

Korchagin seldom visited the area centre, for the journey took several days and pressure of work demanded his constant presence in the district. Razvalikhin, on the other hand, was ready to ride off to town on any pretext. He would set out on the journey armed from head to foot, fancying himself one of Fenimore Cooper's heroes. As he drove through the woods he would take pot shots at crows or at some fleetfooted squirrel, stop lone passersby and question them sternly as to who they were, where they had come from and whither they were bound. On approaching the town he would remove his weapons, stick his rifle under the hay in the cart and, hiding his revolver in his pocket, stroll into the office of the Komsomol Regional Committee looking his usual self.

"Well, what's the news in Berezdov?" Fedotov, Secretary of the Regional Committee, inquired as Razvalikhin entered his office one day.

Fedotov's office was always crowded with people all talking at once. It was not easy to work under such conditions, listening to four different people, while replying to a fifth and writing something at the same time. Although Fedotov was very young he had been a Party member since 1919; it was only in those stormy times that a 15-year-old lad could have been admitted into the Party. "Oh, there's plenty of news," answered Razvalikhin nonchalantly. "Too much to tell all at once. It's one long grind from morning till night. There's so much to attend to. We've had to start from the very beginning, you know. I set up two new cells. Now, tell me what you called me here for?" And he sat down in an armchair with a businesslike air.

Krymsky, the head of the economic department, looked up from the heap of papers on his desk for a moment.

"We asked for Korchagin, not you," he said. Razvalikhin blew out a thick cloud of tobacco smoke.

"Korchagin doesn't like coming here, so I have to do it on top of everything else.... In general, some secretaries have a fine time of it. They don't do anything themselves. It's the donkeys like me who have to carry the load. Whenever Korchagin goes to the border he's gone for two or three weeks and all the work is left to me."

Razvalikhin's broad hint that he was the better man for the job of district secretary was not lost on his hearers.

"That fellow doesn't appeal to me much," Fedotov remarked to the others when Razvalikhin had gone.

Razvalikhin's trickery was exposed quite by chance. Lisitsyn dropped into Fedotov's office one day to pick up the mail, which was the custom for anyone coming from the district, and in the course of a conversation between the two men Razvalikhin was exposed.

"Send Korchagin to us anyway," said Fedotov in parting. "We hardly know him here."

"Very well. But don't try to take him away from us, mind. We shan't allow that."

This year the anniversary of the October Revolution was celebrated on the border with even greater enthusiasm than usual. Korchagin was elected chairman of the committee organising the celebrations in the border villages. After the meeting in Poddubtsy, five thousand peasants from three neighbouring villages marched to the frontier in a procession half a kilometre long, carrying scarlet banners and with a military band and the training battalion at the head. They marched in perfect order on the Soviet side of the frontier, parallel to the border posts, bound for the villages that had been cut in two by the demarcation line. Never before had the Poles witnessed the like on their frontier. Battalion Commander Gavrilov and Korchagin rode ahead of the column on horseback, and behind them the band played, the banners rustled in the breeze and the singing of the people resounded far and wide. The peasant youth clad in their holiday best were in high spirits, the village girls twittered and laughed gaily, the adults marched along gravely, the old folk with an air of solemn triumph. The human stream stretched as far as eye could see. One of its banks was the frontier, but no one so much as stepped across that forbidden line. Korchagin watched the sea of people march past. The strains of the Komsomol song "From the forests dense to Britain's seas, the Red Army is strongest of all!" gave way to a girls' chorus singing "Up on yonder hillside the girls are a-mowing...."

The Soviet sentries greeted the procession with happy smiles. The Polish guards looked on bewildered. This demonstration on the frontier caused no little consternation on the other side, although the Polish command had been warned of it in advance. Mounted gendarme patrols moved restlessly back and forth, the frontier guard had been strengthened fivefold and reserves were hidden behind the nearby hills ready for any emergency. But the procession kept to its own territory, marching along gaily, filling the air with its singing.

A Polish sentry stood on a knoll. The column approached with measured tread. The first notes of a march rang out. The Pole brought his rifle smartly to his side and then presented arms, and Korchagin distinctly heard the words: "Long live the Commune!"

The soldier's eyes told Pavel that it was he who had uttered the words. Pavel stared at him fascinated.

A friend! Beneath the soldier's uniform a heart beat in sympathy with the demonstrators. Pavel replied softly in Polish:

"Greetings, Comrade!"

The sentry stood in the same position while the demonstration marched past. Pavel turned round several times to look at the dark little figure. Here was another Pole. His whiskers were touched with grey and the eyes under the shiny peak of his cap expressed nothing. Pavel, still under the impression of what he had just heard, murmured in Polish as if to himself:

"Greetings, Comrade!"

But there was no reply.

Gavrilov smiled. He had overheard what had passed.

"You expect too much," he observed. "They aren't all plain infantrymen, you know. Some of them are gendarmes. Didn't you notice the chevron on his sleeve? That one was a gendarme for sure."

The head of the column was already descending the hill toward a village cut in two by the frontier. The Soviet half of the village had prepared to meet the guests in grand style. All the inhabitants were waiting at the frontier bridge on the bank of the stream. The young folk were lined up on either side of the road. The roofs of cottages and sheds on the Polish side were covered with people who were watching the proceedings on the opposite bank with tense interest. There were crowds of peasants on the cottage steps and by the garden fences. When the procession entered the human corridor the band struck up the Internationale. Later stirring speeches were delivered from a platform decorated with greenery. Young men and white-headed veterans addressed the crowd.

Korchagin too spoke in his native Ukrainian. His words flew over the border and were heard on the other side of the river, whereupon the gendarmes over there began to disperse the villagers for fear that those fiery words might inflame the hearts of those who listened. Whips whistled and shots were fired into the air.

The streets emptied out. The young folk, scared off the roofs by gendarme bullets, disappeared.

Those on the Soviet side looked on and their faces grew grave. Filled with wrath by what he had just witnessed, an aged shepherd climbed onto the platform with the help of some village lads and addressed the crowd in great agitation.

"You've seen, my children? That's how we used to be treated too. But no more. Nobody dare whip us peasants any more. We've finished with the gentry and their whippings. We're in power now and it's for you, my sons, to hold on firmly to that power. I'm an old man and I'm not much good at speech-making. But I'd tell you a lot if I could. I'd tell you how we used to toil like oxen in the days of the tsars. That's why it hurts to see those poor folks over there." He pointed with a shaking hand toward the other side of the river, and fell to weeping as old men do.

Then Grishutka Khorovodko spoke. Gavrilov, listening to his wrathful speech, turned his horse around and scanned the opposite bank to see whether anyone there was taking notes. But the river bank was deserted. Even the sentry by the bridge had been removed.

"Well, it looks as if there won't be any protest note to the Foreign Affairs Commissariat after all," he laughed.

One rainy night in late autumn the bloody trail of Antonyuk and his seven men came to an end.

The bandits were caught at a wedding party in the house of a wealthy farmer in the German colony in Maidan-Villa. It was the peasants from the Khrolinsky Commune who tracked him down.

The local women had spread the news about these guests at the colony wedding, and the Komsomols got together at once, twelve of them, and armed with whatever they could lay their hands on, set out for Maidan-Villa by cart, sending a messenger post-haste to Berezdov. At Semaki the messenger chanced to meet Filatov's detachment, which rushed off hot on the trail.

The Khrolinsky men surrounded the farm and began to exchange rifle fire with the Antonyuk band. The latter entrenched themselves in a small wing of the farmhouse and opened fire at anyone who came within range. They tried to make a dash for it, but were driven back inside the building after losing one of their number. Antonyuk had been in many a tight corner like this and had fought his way out with the aid of hand grenades and darkness. He might have escaped this time too, for the Khrolinsky Komsomols had already lost two men, but Filatov arrived in the nick of time. Antonyuk saw that the game was up. He continued firing back till morning from all the

windows, but at dawn they took him. Not one of the seven surrendered. It cost four lives to stamp out the viper's nest. Three of the casualties were lads from the newly-organised Khrolinsky Komsomol group.

Korchagin's battalion was called up for the autumn manoeuvres of the territorial forces. The battalion covered the forty kilometres to the divisional camp in a single day's march under a driving rain. They set out early in the morning and reached their destination late at night. Gusev, the Battalion Commander, and his commissar rode on horseback. The eight hundred trainees reached the barracks exhausted and went to sleep at once. The manoeuvres were due to begin the following morning; the headquarters of the territorial division had been late in summoning the battalion. Lined up for inspection, the battalion, now in uniform and carrying rifles, presented an entirely different appearance. Both Gusev and Korchagin had invested much time and effort in training these young men and they were confident that the unit would pass muster. After the official inspection had ended and the battalion had shown its skill on the drill ground, one of the commanders, a man with a handsome though flaccid face, turned to Korchagin and demanded sharply:

"Why are you mounted? The commanders and commissars of our training battalions are not entitled to horses. Turn your mount over to the stables and report for manoeuvres on foot."

Korchagin knew that if he dismounted he would be unable to take part in the manoeuvres, for his legs would not carry him a single kilometre. But how could he explain the situation to this loudmouthed coxcomb festooned with leather straps?

"I shall not be able to take part in the manoeuvres on foot."

"Why not?"

Realising that he would have to give some explanation, Korchagin replied in a low voice:

"My legs are swollen and I will not be able to stand a whole week of running and walking. But perhaps you will tell me who you are, Comrade?"

"In the first place I am Chief of Staff of your regiment. Secondly, I order you once more to get off that horse. If you are an invalid you ought not to be in the army."

Pavel felt as if he had been struck on the face with a whip. He jerked the reins, but Gusev's strong hand checked him. For a few moments injured pride and self-restraint fought for supremacy in Pavel. But Pavel Korchagin was no longer the Red Army man who could shift light-heartedly from unit to unit. He was a Battalion Commissar now, and his battalion stood there behind him.

What a poor example of discipline he would be showing his men if he disobeyed the order! It was not for this conceited ass that he had reared his battalion. He slipped his feet out of the stirrups,dismounted and, fighting the excruciating pain in his joints, walked over to the right flank.