Владимир Беляев - The Town By The Sea

for your personal troubles, they can soon be put right. Go to Comrade Kirillov in room thirty-two. He will find you accommodation and all the other things. Take this note."

He scribbled a few words and handed me a sheet from his note-pad.

"Have a rest today and go to the theatre in the evening. Go and see Saksagansky acting. There's a really great Ukrainian artist for you! One of these days, when you grow up, people will envy you that you saw him acting in person. You'll find it a lot better in all ways than those 'Sharks.' Spend the night here and leave tomorrow. . . Yes, and give Kartamyshev my regards. Tell him to keep a close eye on that frontier. Well, good-bye, lad!" And the secretary offered me his hand.

I said good-bye and sped joyfully out of the room, nearly tripping over the carpet as I went.

As I closed the door behind me, I heard the secretary speaking into one of his telephones: "A comrade who's come here on a visit will be dropping in to see you. He's been robbed. We shall have to help him. . . Yes, from the fund for Communists in need of assistance. . ."

I don't know how long I spent at the Central Commit tee. Maybe an hour, maybe more. The time flew past with out my noticing it. When I came out from under the arch, the sun shone brightly in my eyes. The morning mist had drifted away, and on the bare trees in the university square opposite, the crows, sensing the approach of spring, were cawing loudly. The roofs were dripping, and the snow, dark and crumbly like sugar soaked in tea, melted before my eyes.

Here was luck! I still couldn't get over my good fortune. I had thought I should have to stay here for about three days, arguing and going all over the place, but after one talk—everything was settled! And so quickly! It was really amazing. Perhaps I had dreamt it all? Of course not! I fingered the crisp new notes in my pocket. They were from Kirillov. Just in case they might be needed I had given him the list of pupils and our letter to the Central Committee of the Komsomol. I had never expected to get any money when I went to see Comrade Kirillov. 'I had just gone in and shown the secretary's note to an elderly man in a navy-blue tunic, and after asking me a few questions and having a good laugh, he had handed me a whole fifty rubles. He had also given me a pass to the hostel for visiting Party workers, in Artem Street, as if I were already a member of the Party.

With a great load off my mind and rejoicing for my friends at school, I skipped gaily across the street and wandered into the deserted park covered with melted snow.

The last snow of winter, grey and thin as jelly, slithered about under my feet. Here and there, black patches of sodden earth covered with dead leaves and frozen grass showed on the mounds. What a fine park it was on that glorious sunny morning! And no one else about except me, who scarcely knew whether I was on my head or my heels for joy!

I turned round. Through the bare trees 'I could see the familiar outlines of a tall building. For a moment I fancied I could see someone smiling in the sunlight and waving to me from a big window—the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukraine, a true friend of Comrade Stalin. In my joy I stamped my foot so hard that I cracked the hard trampled coating of ice on the foot-path and sunk ankle-deep in snow. I stood like that and listened.

Far away the trams were clanging, crows were flapping about in the birches, in the next street a motor-horn quacked like a duck, but all these sounds were drowned by the beating of my heart.

Spring was coming and the sun was warm, and that spring morning I quite forgot I was in a big, strange city...

Swaying torches blaze in the spring breeze. Tails of sooty smoke weave above the heads of the Komsomol column marching down the cobbled road leading from the station into town. Beyond the roadside ditches filled with the water of the thaw stretch black, desolate allotments. How quickly the snow has vanished while I have been away in Kharkov! Very likely the deep gullies that run down to the Dniester, right on the border, are the only places where the last, dirty snowdrifts remain.

At the head of the column a taut canvas sheet strains in the wind. The marchers' feet strike firmly on the cobblestones. A single clear voice is singing in the front rank:

In the storm ofOctober

An army was born

Ofthe Komsomol, daring and brave and young.. .

Then the ranks pick up the familiar chorus:

The oppressors to crush,

The oppressors to crush...

The fresh spring air helps on the song. I sing, too, hugging my brief case, which is now once again wrapped in newspaper.

... The young railwaymen's Komsomol group had already formed up with lighted torches on Station Square when the train steamed in to the platform and I, jumping off before the train stopped, ran out on to the station steps. Panchenko of the District Committee, in a sheepskin hat, was pacing about with the group secretary in front of the ranks.

"Hullo, Mandzhura!" he said as he passed. "Got back? Fall in with us. We're holding a demonstration to get Kabakchiev, the Bulgarian Communist, out ofjail. Hurry up—we're late!"

I fell in quickly and we stepped off at once, carrying a red calico banner on which was written:

WE DEMAND THAT THE BULGARIAN FASCISTS LIBERATE THE HEROIC REVOLUTIONARY FIGHTER KHRISTO KABAKCHIEV

"I'll march with them as far as Soviet Square and join up with my own chaps there," I thought, picking up the song.

White cottages, the first buildings of the town, loomed out of the darkness.

My home town! I felt its evening stillness shattered by the boisterous songs of the marchers. They were songs that frightened the musty representatives of the old world who still lived among us—former tsarist officials, priests, private traders and all those who hoped for the return of the tsarist regime one day.

Lowering storm-clouds gather above us,

Sinister forces threaten us still. . .

the marchers struck up a fresh song.

How I longed to tell the fellows beside me that I had just come back from Kharkov where I had talked with no less a person than the Secretary of the Central Committee himself. How I longed to tell everyone that the secretary had called Pecheritsa a "landscape-painter." If only I could have related how I had seen Saksagansky acting in a play called Vanity! But my neighbours went on singing and took no notice of me.

Even Panchenko had not asked about my trip. From the way he had greeted me you would think I had been to the next village, not the capital... Panchenko was marching at the side of the column. I could make out his deep, soft voice among the other voices.

Along the other side of Hospital Square, near the dark building of the factory-training school, another torch-light column was moving towards the centre of the town.

Was it the factory-school chaps? Of course it was! Only our group had such bright torches.

"Cheerio, chaps! Thanks for your company! I'm off to my own group!" I shouted to the railwaymen and, breaking away from the column, I sped across the square.

My feet dragged in the muddy clay. What a fuss Sasha would make if I lost his galoshes! Splashes of ice-cold water flew out on all sides. My trouser-legs were wet through already. Nearer and nearer came the light of the torches. I gasped for breath. Everything would be all right as long as I didn't get caught on the barbed wire! There was a gap in it somewhere round here. Yes, here it was. . . One last spurt and I was running along the firm road, overtaking the rear of the column.

"Hey there, chaps! Hurrah!" I shouted, waving the heavy brief case so joyfully that the paper flew off. But who cared! No one would call me a bureaucrat now. "Pugu!" I shouted like a Cossack, spotting Sasha's ginger mop. "Take your galoshes, Sasha!"