第 70 页

Every morning, just before the bell to rise sounded, a lusty cockcrow would ring out over the sanatorium. The puzzled attendants would run hither and thither in search of the errant bird. It never occurred to them that Ebner, who could give a perfect imitation of a cockcrow, was having a little joke at their expense. Ebner enjoyed himself immensely.

Toward the end of his month's stay in the sanatorium Pavel's condition took a turn for the worse.

The doctors ordered him to bed. Ebner was much upset. He had grown very fond of this courageous young Bolshevik, so full of life and energy, who had lost his health so early in life.

And when Marta told him of the tragic future the doctors predicted for Korchagin, Ebner was deeply distressed.

Pavel was confined to his bed for the remainder of his stay in the sanatorium. He managed to hide his suffering from those around him, and Marta alone guessed by his ghastly pallor that he must be in pain. A week before his departure Pavel received a letter from the Ukrainian Central Committee informing him that his leave had been prolonged for two months on the advice of the sanatorium doctors who declared him unfit for work. Money to cover his expenses arrived along with the letter.

Pavel took this first blow as years before during his boxing lessons he had taken Zhukhrai's punches. Then too he had fallen only to rise again at once.

A letter came from his mother asking him to go and see an old friend of hers, Albina Kyutsam, who lived in a small port town not far from Yevpatoria. Pavel's mother had not seen her friend for fifteen years and she begged him to pay her a visit while he was in the Crimea. This letter was to play an important role in Pavel's life.

A week later his sanatorium friends gave him a warm send-off at the pier. Ebner embraced him and kissed him like a brother. Marta was away at the time and Pavel left without saying good-bye to her.

The next morning the horse cab which brought Pavel from the pier drove up to a little house fronted by a small garden.

The Kyutsam family consisted of five people: Albina the mother, a plump elderly woman with dark, mournful eyes and traces of beauty on her aging face, her two daughters, Lola and Taya, Lola's little son, and old Kyutsam, the head of the house, a burly, unpleasant old man resembling a boar.

Old Kyutsam worked in a co-operative store. Taya, the younger girl, did any odd job that came along, and Lola, who had been a typist, had recently separated from her husband, a drunkard and a bully, and now stayed at home to look after her little boy and help her mother with the housework.

Besides the two daughters, there was a son named George, who was away in Leningrad at the time of Pavel's arrival.

The family gave Pavel a warm welcome. Only the old man eyed the visitor with hostility and suspicion.

Pavel patiently told Albina all the family news, and in his turn learned a good deal about the life of the Kyutsams.

Lola was twenty-two. A simple girl, with bobbed brown hair and a broad-featured, open face, she at once took Pavel into her confidence and initiated him into all the family secrets. She told him that the old man ruled the whole family with a despotic hand, suppressing the slightest manifestation of independence on the part of the others. Narrow-minded, bigoted and captious, he kept the family in a permanent state of terror. This had earned him the deep dislike of his children and the hatred of his wife who had fought vainly against his despotism for twenty-five years. The girls always took their mother's side. These incessant family quarrels were poisoning their lives.

Days passed in endless bickering and strife.

Another source of family trouble, Lola told Pavel, was her brother George, a typical good-fornothing, boastful, arrogant, caring for nothing but good food, strong drink and smart clothes.

When he finished school, George, who had been his mother's favourite, announced that he was going to the university and demanded money for the trip.

"Lola can sell her ring and you've got some things you can raise money on too. I need the money and I don't care how you get it."

George knew very well that his mother would refuse him nothing and he shamelessly took advantage of her affection for him. He looked down on his sisters. The mother sent her son all the money she could wheedle out of her husband, and whatever Taya earned besides. In the meantime George, having flunked the entrance examinations, had a pleasant time in Leningrad staying with his uncle and terrorising his mother by frequent telegraphic demands for more money.

Pavel did not meet Taya until late in the evening of his arrival. Her mother hurried out to meet her in the hallway and Pavel heard her whispering the news of his coming. The girl shook hands shyly with the strange young man, blushing to the tips of her small ears, and Pavel held her strong, calloused little hand for a few moments before releasing it.

Taya was in her nineteenth year. She was not beautiful, yet with her large brown eyes, and her slanting, Mongolian brows, fine nose and full fresh lips she was very attractive. Her firm young breasts stood out under her striped blouse.

The sisters had two tiny rooms to themselves. In Taya's room there was a narrow iron cot, a chest of drawers covered with knick-knacks, a small mirror, and dozens of photographs and postcards on the walls. On the windowsill stood two flower pots with scarlet geraniums and pale pink asters.

The lace curtain was caught up by a pale blue ribbon.

"Taya does not usually admit members of the male sex to her room. She is making an exception for you," Lola teased her sister.

The next evening the family was seated at tea in the old couple's half of the house. Kyutsam stirred his tea busily, casting hostile glances over his spectacles at the visitor."I don't think much of the marriage laws nowadays," he said. "Married one day, unmarried the next. Just as you please. Complete freedom."

The old man choked and spluttered. When he recovered his breath he pointed to Lola.

"Look at her, she and that fine fellow of hers got married without asking anyone's permission and separated the same way. And now it's me who's got to feed her and her brat. An outrage I call it!" Lola blushed painfully and hid her tear-filled eyes from Pavel.

"So you think she ought to live with that scoundrel?" Pavel asked, his eyes flashing.

"She should have known whom she was marrying."

Albina intervened. Barely repressing her wrath, she said quickly: "Why must you discuss such things before a stranger? Can't you find anything else to talk about?"

The old man turned and pounced on her:

"I know what I'm talking about! Since when have you begun to tell me what to do!"

That night Pavel lay awake for a long time thinking about the Kyutsams. Brought here by chance,he had unwittingly become a participant in this family drama. He wondered how he could help the mother and daughters to free themselves from this bondage. His own life was far from settled,many problems remained to be solved and it was harder than ever before to take resolute action.

There was clearly but one way out: the family had to break up, the mother and daughters must leave the old man. But this was not so simple. Pavel was in no position to undertake this family revolution, for he was due to leave in a few days and he might never see these people again. Was it not better to let things take their course instead of trying to stir these turbid backwaters? But the repulsive image of the old man gave him no rest. Several plans occurred to Pavel but on second thoughts he discarded them all as impracticable.

The next day was Sunday and when Pavel returned from a walk in town he found Taya alone at home. The others were out visiting relatives.

Pavel went to her room and dropped wearily onto a chair.

"Why don't you ever go out and enjoy yourself?" he asked her.

"I don't want to go anywhere," she replied in a low voice.

He remembered the plans he had thought of during the night and decided to put them before her.

Speaking quickly so as to finish before the others returned, he went straight to the point.

"Listen, Taya, you and I are good friends. Why should we stand on ceremony with each other? I am going away soon. It is a pity that I should have come to know your family just at the time when I myself am in trouble, otherwise things might have turned out differently. If this happened ayear ago we could all leave here together.

There is plenty of work everywhere for people like you and Lola. It's useless to expect the old man to change. The only way out is for you to leave home.

But that is impossible at present. I don't know yet what is going to happen to me. I am going to insist on being sent back to work. The doctors have written all sorts of nonsense about me and the comrades are trying to make me cure myself endlessly. But we'll see about that.... I shall write to mother and get her advice about your trouble here. I can't let things go on this way. But you must realise, Taya, that this will mean wrenching yourself loose from your present life. Would you want that, and would you have the strength to go through with it?"

Taya looked up.

-"I do want it," she said softly. "As for the strength, I don't know."

Pavel could understand her uncertainty.

"Never mind, Taya! So long as the desire is there everything will be all right. Tell me, are you very much attached to your family?"

Taya hesitated for a moment.

"I am very sorry for mother," she said at last. "Father has made her life miserable and now George is torturing her. I'm terribly sorry for her, although she never loved me as much as she does George...."

" They had a long heart to heart talk. Shortly before the rest of the family returned, Pavel remarked jokingly:

"It's surprising the old man hasn't married you off to someone by now."

Taya threw up her hands in horror at the thought.

"Oh no, I'll never marry. I've seen what poor Lola has been through. I shan't get married for anything."

Pavel laughed.

"So you've settled the matter for the rest of your life? And what if some fine, handsome young fellow comes along, what then?"

"No, I won't. They're all fine while they're courting."

Pavel laid his hand conciliatingly on her shoulder.

"That's all right, Taya. You can get along quite well without a husband. But you needn't be so hard on the young men. It's a good thing you don't suspect me of trying to court you, or there'd be trouble," and he patted her arm in brotherly fashion.

"Men like you marry girls of a different sort," she said softly.

A few days later Pavel left for Kharkov. Taya, Lola and Albina with her sister Rosa came to the station to see him off. Albina made him promise not to forget her daughters and to help them all to find some way out of their plight. They took leave of him as of someone near and dear to them, and there were tears in Taya's eyes.

From the window of his carriage Pavel watched Lola's white kerchief and Taya's striped blouse grow smaller and smaller until they finally disappeared.

In Kharkov he put up at his friend Petya Novikov's place, for he did not want to disturb Dora. As soon as he had rested from the journey he went to the Central Committee. There he waited for Akim, and when at last the two were alone, he asked to be sent at once to work. Akim shook his head.

"Can't be done, Pavel! We have the decision of the Medical Commission and the Central Committee says your condition is serious. You're to be sent to the Neu-ropathological Institute for treatment and not to be permitted to work."

"What do I care what they say, Akim! I am appealing to you. Give me a chance to work! This moving about from one hospital to another is killing me."

Akim tried to refuse. "We can't go against the decision. Don't you see it's for your own good, Pavel?" he argued. But Pavel pleaded his cause so fervently that Akim finally gave in.

The very next day Pavel was working in the Special Department of the Central Committee Secretariat. He believed that he had only to begin working for his lost strength to return to him.

But he soon saw that he had been mistaken. He sat at his desk for eight hours at a stretch without pausing for lunch simply because the effort of going down three flights of stairs to the canteen across the way was too much for him. Very often his hand or his leg would suddenly go numb, and at times his whole body would be paralysed for a few moments. He was nearly always feverish. On some mornings he found himself unable to rise from his bed, and by the time the attack passed, he realised in despair that he would be a whole hour late for work. Finally the day came when he was officially reprimanded for reporting late for work and he saw that this was the beginning of what he dreaded most in life — he was falling out of the ranks.

Twice Akim helped him by shifting him to other work, but the inevitable happened. A month after his return to work he was confined to his bed again. It was then that he remembered Bazhanova's parting words. He wrote to her and she came the same day. She told him what he had wanted to know: that hospitalisation was not imperative.

"So I don't need any more treatment? That's fine!" he said cheerfully, but the joke fell flat. As soon as he felt a little stronger he went back to the Central

Committee. This time Akim was adamant. He insisted on Pavel's going to the hospital.

"I'm not going," Pavel said wearily. "It's useless. I have it on excellent authority. There is only one thing left for me — to retire on pension. But that I shall

never do! You can't make me give up my work. I am only twenty-four and I'm not going to be a labour invalid for the rest of my life, moving from hospital to hospital, knowing that it won't do me any good. You must give me something to do, some work suitable to my condition. I can work at home, or I can live in the office. Only don't give me any paper work. I've got to have work that will give me the satisfaction of knowing that I can still be useful."

Pavel's voice, vibrant with emotion, rose higher and higher.

Akim felt keenly for Pavel. He knew what a tragedy it was for this passionate-hearted youth, who had given the whole of his short life to the Party, to be torn from the ranks and doomed to a life far from the battlefront. He resolved to do all he could to help him.