第 8 页

这一天，还没有到上工时间，他就提前到发电厂去了，免得呆在家里。他从门房那里拿了钥匙，打开门，进了安装着发动机的厂房。当他擦着风箱，给锅炉上水和生火的时候，还一直在想：“列辛斯基家里现在不知道怎么样了？”

已经很晚了，约摸是夜里十一点钟的时候，朱赫来来找保尔，把他叫到院子里，压低了嗓音问他：“今天你们家里为什么有人去搜查了？”

保尔吓了一跳。

“什么？搜查？”

朱赫来沉默了一会儿，补充说：“是的，情况不大妙。你不知道他们搜什么吗？”

保尔当然清楚他们要搜什么，但是他不敢把偷枪的事告诉朱赫来。他提心吊胆地问：“阿尔焦姆给抓去了吗？”

“谁也没抓去，可是家里的东西都给翻了个底朝天。”

保尔听了这话，心里稍微踏实了些，但是依然感到不安。

有几分钟，他们俩各自想着自己的心事。一个知道搜查的原因，担心以后的结果；另一个不知道搜查的原因，却因此变得警惕起来。

“真见鬼，莫不是他们听到了我的什么风声？我的事阿尔焦姆是一点也不知道的，可是为什么到他家去搜查呢？往后得格外小心才好。”朱赫来这样想。

他们默默地分开，干自己的活去了。

列辛斯基家这时可闹翻了天。

德国中尉发现手枪不见了，就把勤务兵喊来查问。等到查明手枪确实是丢了，这个平素彬彬有礼、似乎颇有涵养的中尉，竟然甩开胳膊，给了勤务兵一个耳光。勤务兵被打得晃了晃身子，又直挺挺地站定了。他内疚地眨着眼睛，恭顺地听候发落。

被叫来查问的律师也很生气，他因为家里发生了这种不愉快的事，一再向中尉道歉。

这时候，在场的维克托对父亲说，手枪可能叫邻居偷去了，尤其是那个小流氓保尔•柯察金嫌疑最大。父亲连忙把儿子的想法告诉了中尉。中尉马上下令进行搜查。

搜查没有什么结果。这次偷手枪的事使保尔更加相信，即使是这样冒险的举动，有时也可以安然无事。

Part One Chapter 3

Tonya stood at the open window and pensively surveyed the familiar garden bordered by the stately poplars now stirring faintly in the gentle breeze. She could hardly believe that a whole year had passed since she had been here where her childhood years had been spent. It seemed that she had left home only yesterday and returned by this morning's train.

Nothing had changed: the rows of raspberry bushes were as carefully trimmed as ever, and the garden paths, lined with pansies, mother's favourite flowers, were laid out with the same geometric precision. Everything in the garden was neat and tidy—evidence of the pedantic hand of the dendrologist. The sight of these clean-swept, neatly drawn paths bored Tonya.

She picked up the novel she had been reading, opened the door leading to the veranda and walked down the stairs into the garden; she pushed open the little painted wicket gate and slowly headed for the pond next to the station pump house.

She passed the bridge and came out on the tree-lined road. On her right was the pond fringed with willows and alders; on the left the forest began.

She was on her way to the ponds at the old stone-quarry when the sight of a fishing rod swung over the water made her pause.

Leaning over the trunk of a twisted willow, she parted the branches and saw before her a suntanned, barefoot boy with trouser legs rolled up above the knee. Next to him was a rusty can with worms. The lad was too engrossed in his occupation to notice her.

"Do you think you can catch fish here?"

Pavel glanced angrily over his shoulder.

A girl in a white sailor blouse with a striped blue collar and a short light-grey skirt stood on the bank, holding on to the willow and bending low over the water. Short socks with a coloured edging clung to her shapely suntanned legs. Her chestnut hair was gathered in a heavy braid.

A slight tremor shook the hand holding the fishing rod and the goose-feather float bobbed, sending circles spreading over the smoothness of the water.

"Look, look, a bite!" the excited voice piped behind Pavel.

He now lost his composure completely and jerked at the line so hard that the hook with the squirming worm on the end of it fairly leapt out of the water.

"Not much chance to fish now, damn it! What the devil brought her here," Pavel thought irritably and in order to cover up his clumsiness cast the hook farther out, landing it, however, exactly where he should not have—between two burdocks where the line could easily get caught.

He realised what had happened and without turning around, hissed at the girl sitting above him on the bank:

"Can't you keep quiet? You'll scare off all the fish that way."

From above came the mocking voice:

"Your black looks have scared the fish away long ago. No self-respecting angler goes fishing in the afternoon anyway!"

Pavel had done his best to behave politely but this was too much for him. He got up and pushed his cap over his eyes, as he usually did when roused.

"You'd do better, miss, if you took yourself off," he muttered through his teeth, drawing on the most inoffensive part of his vocabulary.

Tonya's eyes narrowed slightly and laughter danced in them.

"Am I really interfering?"

The teasing note had gone from her voice and given way to a friendly, conciliatory tone, and Pavel, who had primed himself to be really rude to this "missy" who had sprung from nowhere, found himself disarmed.

"You can stay and watch, if you want to. It's all the same to me," he said grudgingly and sat down to attend to the float again. It had got stuck in the burdock and there was no doubt that the hook had caught in the roots. Pavel was afraid to pull at it. If it caught he would not be able to get it loose. And the girl would be sure to laugh. He wished she would go away.

Tonya, however, had settled more comfortably on the slightly swaying willow trunk and with her book on her knees was watching the sun-tanned, dark-eyed, rough-mannered young man who had given her such an ungracious reception and was now deliberately ignoring her.

Pavel saw the girl clearly reflected in the mirror-like surface of the pond, and when she seemed to be absorbed in her book he cautiously pulled at the entangled line. The float ducked under the water and the line grew taut.

"Caught, damn it!" flashed in his mind and at the same moment he saw out of the corner of his eye the laughing face of the girl looking up at him from the water.

Just then two young men, both seventh-grade Gymnasium students, were coming across the bridge at the pump house. One of them was the seventeen-year-old son of engineer Sukharko, the chief of the railway yards, a loutish, fair-haired, freckle-faced scapegrace whom his schoolmates had clubbed Pockmarked Shurka. He was carrying a fancy fishing rod and line and had a cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth. With him was Victor Leszczinski, a tall, effeminate youth.

"Now this girl is a peach, there's nobody like her about here," Sukharko was saying, winking significantly as he bent toward his companion. "You can take my word for it that she's chock-full of r-r-romance. She's in the sixth grade and goes to school in Kiev. Now she's come to spend the summer with her father—he's the chief forest warden here. My sister Liza knows her. I wrote her a letter once in a sentimental sort of vein. 'I love you madly'—you know the sort of thing—'and await your answer in trepidation'. Even dug up some suitable verses from Nadson."

"Well, what came of it?" Victor asked curiously.

"Oh, she was frightfully stuck up about it," Sukharko muttered rather sheepishly. "Told me not to waste paper writing letters and all that. But that's how it always is in the beginning. I'm an old hand at this sort of thing. As a matter of fact I can't be bothered with all that romantic nonsense— mooning about for ages, sighing. It's much simpler to take a stroll of an evening down to the repairmen's barracks where for three rubles you can pick up a beauty that'd make your mouth water. And no nonsense either. I used to go out there with Valka Tikhonov—do you know him?

The foreman on the railway."

Victor scowled in disgust.

"Do you mean to tell me you go in for foul stuff like that, Shura?"

Shura chewed at his cigarette, spat and replied with a sneer:

"Don't pretend to be so virtuous. We know what you go in for."

Victor interrupted him.

"Will you introduce me to this peach of yours?"

"Of course. Let's hurry or she'll give us the slip. Yesterday morning she went fishing by herself."

As the two friends came up to Tonya, Sukharko took the cigarette out of his mouth and greeted her with a gallant bow.

"How do you do, Mademoiselle Tumanova. Have you come to fish too?"

"No, I'm just watching," replied Tonya.

"You two haven't met, have you?" Sukharko hastened to put in, taking Victor by the arm. "This ismy friend Victor Leszczinski."

Victor, blushing, extended his hand to Tonya.

"And why aren't you fishing today?" Sukharko inquired in an effort to keep up the conversation.

"I forgot to bring my rod," Tonya replied.

"I'll get another one right away," Sukharko said. "In the meantime you can have mine. I'll be backin a minute."

He had kept his promise to Victor to introduce him to the girl and was now anxious to leave themalone.

"I'd rather not, we should only be in the way. There's somebody fishing here already," said Tonya.

"In whose way?" Sukharko asked. "Oh, you mean him?" For the first time he noticed Pavel who was sitting under a bush. "Well, I'll get rid of him in two shakes."

Before Tonya could stop him he had slipped down to where Pavel was busy with his rod and line.

"Pull in that line of yours and clear out," Sukharko told Pavel. "Hurry up now. . ." he added as Pavel continued fishing calmly.

Pavel looked up and gave Sukharko a glance that boded no good.

"Shut up. Who do you think you are!"

"Wha-at!" Sukharko exploded. "You've got the cheek to answer back, you wretched tramp! Clear out of here!" He kicked violently at the can of worms which spun around in the air and fell into the pond, splashing water in Tonya's face.

"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sukharko!" she cried.

Pavel leapt to his feet. He knew that Sukharko was the son of the chief of the railway yards where Artem worked, and that if he hit that flabby, mousy mug of his he would complain to his father and Artem would get into trouble. This alone prevented him from settling the matter then andthere.

Sensing that Pavel would hit out at him in another moment, Sukharko rushed forward and pushed him in the chest with both hands. Pavel, standing at the water's edge, teetered dangerously, but by frantically waving his arms regained his balance and saved himself from falling in.

Sukharko was two years older than Pavel and notorious as a troublemaker and bully. The blow in the chest made Pavel see red.

"So, that's what you want! Take this!" And with a short swing of his arm he punched Sukharko's face. Before the latter had time to recover, Pavel seized him firmly by his uniform blouse,clinched him and dragged him into the water.

Knee-deep in the pond, his polished shoes and trousers soaking wet, Sukharko struggled with all his might to wrench himself loose from Pavel's powerful grip. Having achieved his purpose, Pavel jumped ashore. The enraged Sukharko charged after him, ready to tear him to pieces.

As he spun around to face his opponent, Pavel remembered:

"Rest your weight on your left foot, with your right leg tense and right knee bent. Put the weight of your whole body behind the punch and strike upward, at the point of the chin."

Crack!

Sukharko's teeth clicked as Pavel's fist struck. Squealing from the excruciating pain that shot through his chin and his tongue which was caught between the teeth, Sukharko flailed wildly with his arms and fell back into the water with a loud splash.

Up on the bank Tonya was doubled up with laughter.

"Bravo, bravo!" she cried, clapping her hands. "Well done!"

Seizing his entangled fishing line, Pavel jerked at it so hard that it snapped, and scrambled up the bank to the road.

"That's Pavel Korchagin, a rowdy if there ever was one," he heard Victor say to Tonya as he went.

There was trouble brewing at the station. Rumour had it that the railwaymen on the line were downing tools.

The workers of the yards at the next large station had started something big. The Germans arrested two engine drivers suspected of carrying proclamations with them. And among the workers who had ties with the countryside there was serious ferment because of the requisitioning and the

return of landlords to their estates.

The lashes of the Hetman's guards seared the backs of the peasants. The partisan movement was developing in the gubernia; the Bolsheviks had already organised nearly a dozen partisan detachments.

There was no rest for Zhukhrai these days. During his stay in the town he had accomplished a great deal. He had made the acquaintance of many railway workers, attended gatherings of young folk, and built up a strong group among the mechanics at the railway yards and the sawmill workers. He tried to find out where Artem stood, and he asked him once what he thought about the Bolshevik Party and its cause.

"I don't know much about these parties, Fyodor," the burly mechanic replied. "But if there's help needed, you can count on me."

Fyodor was satisfied, for he knew that Artem was made of the right stuff and would stand by his word. As for the Party, he wasn't ready for that yet. "Never mind," he thought, "in times like these he'll soon learn for himself."

Fyodor left the power station for a job at the railway yards, where it was easier for him to carry on his work. At the electric station he had been cut off from the railway.

Traffic on the railway was exceedingly heavy. The Germans were shipping carloads of loot by the thousand from the Ukraine to Germany: rye, wheat, cattle. . . .

One day the Hetman's guards arrested Ponomarenko, the station telegrapher. He was taken to the guardhouse and brutally beaten. It was he, evidently, who gave away Roman Sidorenko, a workmate of Artem's.

Two Germans and a Hetman's guard, the Station Commandant's Assistant, came for Roman during working hours. Without saying a word, the Assistant Commandant walked over to the bench where Roman was working and cut him across the face with his riding crop.

"Come along, you sonofabitch!" he said. "You've got some explaining to do!" With an ugly leer he seized hold of the mechanic's arm and wrenched it violently. "We'll teach you to go around agitating!"

Artem, who had been working at the vice next to Roman, dropped his file and came at the Assistant Commandant, his massive frame menacingly poised.

"Keep your fists off him, you bastard!" Artem spoke hoarsely, doing his best to restrain his rising fury.

The Assistant Commandant fell back, unfastening his holster as he did so. One of the Germans, a short-legged man, unslung his heavy rifle with the broad-bladed bayonet from his shoulder and sharply clicked the bolt.

"Halt!" he barked, ready to shoot at another move.

The tall, brawny mechanic stood helpless before the puny soldier; he could do nothing.

Both Roman and Artem were placed under arrest. Artem was released an hour later, but Roman was locked up in a luggage room in the basement.