Владимир Беляев - The Town By The Sea

"Why should I tell lies?" I said indignantly. "Only people who're afraid and have guilty consciences tell lies. I want to help you catch that snake myself."

"That's the idea, Mandzhura," Vukovich praised me smilingly. "It's the duty of all young workers to help us. We are dangerous only to the enemies of the Revolution, and the better we work, the sooner we shall get rid of them altogether."

"You've got a big job on," Nikita put in.

"Yes, to make the whole country free of parasites," Vukovich assented. "Just a minute." And he lifted the telephone receiver. "Shemetova? Vukovich speaking.., Is the chief there? We'll be round in a moment, tell him we're coming, please."

The office of the chief of the frontier guard detachment and the district OGPU department glowed in the soft light of bowl lamps hung close to the ceiling. How strange to find people here, at this late hour, when all the other offices in town had closed long ago!

The arm-chairs were soft and comfortable; a glass of strong tea steamed on the edge of the big walnut desk. The chief nodded to us to sit down and with a telephone pressed close to his ear went on listening attentively.

Soon he got an answer.

"Is that the commandant's office, Vitovtov Brod?" the chief shouted into the telephone. "What's become of you down there! ... Yes, what happened?... Yes... Yes... Steady, Bogdanov, not so fast, let me get it down." The chief picked up a sharp pencil and, pressing the receiver even harder to his ear with his left hand, jotted notes on a pad with his right. "Who led the group?. . . What? That bandit again? Yes, gone to the right place! Less work for the revolutionary tribunal... Who stopped him?... I see... Yes... Splendid! Thank him officially on my behalf... What?... Of course... To headquarters at once!...

What?.

Listening involuntarily to this one-sided conversation, I glanced round the big room and, I must admit, began to feel rather timid. It was the first time I had seen the security chief at such close quarters.

I had seen him before, from a distance, when he rode round the ranks of frontier guards and convoy troops on his white horse. His face reminded you of ;Kotovsky, who had been murdered only a short

time ago. Lean and erect, a born horseman, pistol belt strapped tight across his body, he would bring his hand up to the shiny peak of his green frontier guards cap and greet the troops in a cheerful ringing voice, and the troops of the garrison would answer with a shout that drowned the chiming of the clock on the old town hall.

And now he sat before us without his cap, dressed in a well-cut field tunic of good cloth. His fair hair was combed back from a high, slightly bulging forehead.

When he had finished speaking, the chief put down the receiver, surveyed Nikita and me with a quick glance and said cheerfully to Vukovich:

"Another attempt to cross the border, at Zhbinets. Nine smugglers. And not one of them got through. The commander of that post, Gusev, is a good man. Dealt with them with his own forces without calling up the emergency group. Got the ringleader with a grenade."

"What were they bringing over?" Vukovich asked. "Saccharine again?"

The chief looked at his pad and said slowly: "Not much saccharine. Only—thirty pounds. A lot of other trash— scarves, stockings, gloves, razors, ties, and even a whole bale of Hungarian furs."

"Who wants Hungarian fur when the winter's nearly over?" Vukovich said smiling.

"Oh, perhaps some profiteer's wife wanted it for her bottom drawer," the chief said. "But something else was found, more important. In a walking stick that the leader of the gang threw away as soon as the shooting started, Gusev discovered seventy hundred-dollar notes."

"Seven thousand dollars?" Vukovich replied, making a quick calculation. "Not a bad salary for someone... "

"We'll get to the bottom of it," said the chief and, abandoning the subject, looked inquiringly in our direction. "These comrades from the factory-training school," Vukovich reported, "have some important information about Pecheritsa... Go ahead, Mandzhura." The chief nodded.

I told my story quietly, without hurrying. The chief watched my face keenly with his light penetrating eyes. Suddenly he raised his hand and stopped me:

"And Pecheritsa spoke Russian to you all the time?" "All the time. That's the funny thing! After kicking our instructor Nazarov out of school just because he spoke Russian!"

"And he spoke it well, fluently, without an accent?" the chief asked.

"Yes, just like a Russian. If I hadn't known he was a Ukrainian, I'd never have guessed it from the way he talked."

"We shall have to bear that in mind," the chief said to Vukovich. "That means he may be anywhere in the Soviet Union by now. Go on, young man."

I related how I had discovered Pecheritsa's disappearance, and the chief said to Vukovich: "There, you see? Dzhendzhuristy's theory that he made a break for the border turns out to be wrong. He's not the kind of enemy that puts his head in the noose straightaway. Perhaps he has three or four other tasks to carry out. He thinks he'll lie doggo for a bit and let us forget about him..."

A bell rang sharply outside the door. Shemetova appeared.

"Moscow on the line, Comrade Chief!"

"Now then, look sharp with those latest reports on anti-contraband work!" the chief ordered and picked up the receiver.

A minute of silence.

"District chief of frontier security speaking," the chief said in a loud clear voice. "Hullo, Felix

Edmundovich..." And he signed to Vukovich for us to leave the room.

... Long ago the marchers had returned to their homes. Long ago their torches had cooled in the club store-rooms. Silence reigned over the steep white streets of our little town. Cocks were crowing far away across the river.

"You know who that was on the telephone?" Nikita said impressively, stopping in the middle of the road. "Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky! Do you realize that, Vasil? Dzerzhinsky himself! The top security man of the Revolution! ... On a night like this you don't want to sleep at all... Are you very tired after your journey, Vasil? If you aren't, let's go for a walk round town."

... I shall never forget that calm spring night on the cliff near the Catholic church.

Tired after walking all over the town, we sat down to rest on the oak rails of the old stairway that led steeply down the cliffs to the river. Here and there the moon was reflected in the little puddles on its worn steps.

The dark silhouettes of the Catholic saints on the portals of the church rose up behind us. They seemed to be petrified for ever in some strange ecstasy that was incomprehensible to us. The sleepy crows cawed quietly on the bare branches already swelling with the sap of spring. A motor purred down at the power station. Far below, the river Smotrich glistened at the bottom of the cliff. A trembling bar of moonlight lay across it. Beyond the hamlet of Dolzhok a faint gleam on the horizon signified the approach of dawn.

"That's how it is, Vasil..." said Nikita, as if thinking aloud. "All over the world a terrible, desperate struggle is being waged between the oppressed and the oppressors. And you and I are in that struggle. Our country has been the first in the world to show the oppressed the right path to a better life. We ought always to be proud of that. We've got cunning and clever enemies to fight. But we shall win, the working people will win. I am sure of that."

The familiar chimes of the town hall clock came to us from behind the old houses of the town.

"Three," said Nikita. "Three in the morning... Yes, Vasil, we're living at a very interesting time. Believe me, none of our descendants will see as much in their youth as you and I, because it's not only our youth, it's the youth of the whole Soviet land... And one day we'll be telling them about it, perhaps even about tonight. 'Yes,' you'll be saying, 'I used to live in a little town on the border. The Civil War had only just finished. There were still a lot of bandits about—the last remnants of the old order who were up in arms against us. There were quite a few people who hated Soviet power in those days, because it had trod on their corns pretty hard. Soviet power had said: "Enough! You've done enough grabbing to last your lifetime, enough squeezing of blood out of honest working folk, now come on, and get down to work yourselves." But they wouldn't have it, the snakes! They were all for back-sliding, for squirming off the path of labour and equality, and every day they longed for Soviet power to be overthrown... And once, you will say, 'a friend of mine and I went on important business to the headquarters of OGPU (you'll have to explain to them what OGPU was, you can be sure of that) and just when we were in the chief’s office, the chief had a telephone call from Moscow, from Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. That same Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky who was a terror to all enemies of the Revolution and saved tens of thousands of homeless children from typhus and starvation, from lice and scab, to make them into healthy, happy people... ' "