Владимир Беляев - The Town By The Sea

Rocking with suppressed laughter, we listened to Nikita's speech, trying to understand how much he meant jokingly, and how much was serious.

Sasha tried to keep it up; he clutched his head and rubbed his red freckled face, but at last he got up and with a shiver took his seat on the bench.

Nikita pulled a sack of potatoes out from behind the stove and, dumping it down in the middle of the guardroom, said: "The host requests his honoured quests to present themselves at dinner!"

We set to work on the muddy potatoes.

Penknives and cobblers' knives with corded handles gleamed in our hands. Furman produced a real Finnish dagger with an antler haft, which he had kept since the days when he had been a juvenile delinquent. At ordinary times Furman kept his treasure in a green box under his bed, only taking it out with him when he was on guard. It was his boast that when he had this knife with him there wasn't a bandit in the country he was afraid of!

Nikita spread out an old newspaper on the floor near the stove. Soon curly potato peelings were reeling off our knives and falling with a rustling sound on the sheet of newspaper.

"But who was it?" Petka muttered, still shaken by the events of the night.

"Now, that is a question!" Nikita exclaimed grinning. "Anybody would think you came from the convent we used to have in this ancient town. It's clear enough who it was... Don't you remember what the papers said last autumn about the frontier guards nabbing a spy? We're on the frontier too, and you've got to be on the look-out.. ."

"But what do these spies want here?" Petka asked again. "What have they left behind?"

"Oh, they've left a great deal behind, old chap," Nikita replied, seriously now. "In the time of the tsar, nearly the whole Donbas was in their hands. Think of Krivorozhye, and the iron ore! May be when you've finished training you'll find yourself in those parts. Notice the old names of the factories there—Providence, Dumot, Balfour... The foreign capitalists lost millions of rubles in those factories. Soviet power has trodden on their corns good and proper! Did you think they supplied Denikin and Wrangel and Petlura for nothing? They thought those bandits would get them back all they had lost. They didn't spare the cash either. And it all went down the drain..."

The door opened and Polevoi entered the guard-room.

"What's the news?" Nikita asked, glancing at him inquiringly.

"None so far. Seems to have vanished into thin air..." Polevoi glanced at the sack of potatoes: "Going to do some cooking? Do me a favour, chaps, will you?" he went on, pulling off his wadded jacket.

"When the spuds are ready, leave a few for me. In the meantime I'll have forty winks..'. You take over as guard commander, Kolomeyets."

"Yes, Comrade Polevoi!" Nikita answered smartly, jumping to his feet.

Our director nodded and lay down on the couch. But before he had time to stretch himself out, there was a whistle from the yard summoning the guard commander. Polevoi jumped up, but Nikita grabbed his rifle and said: "No, have a rest. The new guard commander is already on the job!" And so saying, he ran out into the yard.

We stopped peeling the potatoes and listened to the voices outside the door.

Polevoi listened too. His lean sunburnt face with its sparse young stubble was serious and strained.

Only a few minutes ago Polevoi had seen off Vukovich the OGPU representative from the frontier guard detachment. From the Komsomol members at the district OGPU we had heard that Vukovich was always entrusted with the most difficult cases. Polevoi had shown Vukovich where Sasha had first spotted the bandit and how the bandit had got into headquarters. From the attentive manner in which this tall fair-haired security man in the green-topped cap of a frontier guard listened to our director, we realized that Vukovich attached great importance to Polevoi's opinion. He questioned Polevoi in a quiet, calm voice. Any of us who watched him from afar would have given a lot to know what was in Vukovich's mind at that moment.

He and Polevoi sat together for a long time in the attic. They must have examined every inch of that dusty attic floor. Then, following the path of the fugitive, they squeezed through the gap and, using a ladder brought by Fur-man, climbed down from the roof of the hostel into the little garden, and thus worked their way, step by step, right as far as the Market Square. Vukovich questioned the grocery store watchman at great length, then returned to headquarters, where he left Polevoi.

"He'll have to use his noddle this time!" Nikita had said when Vukovich left. "This business will come before the District Party Committee. Kartamyshev himself will go into everything..."

Now, as we listened to the voices in the yard, we con- « eluded it was Vukovich, who had come

back. The thought was too much for Polevoi, who threw his jacket round his shoulders and strode to the door. But he was just reaching for the handle when the door opened and Nikita came in.

He was ruffled, and from the way he thrust his rifle into the rack, we realized that the conversation he had just had at the gate, had annoyed him.

"What was it?" Polevoi asked.

Sitting down and starting to peel a potato, Nikita answered unwillingly:

"Appearance of a mangy sheep not even concerned with guard duty!"

"What else? Make yourself clear!" Polevoi said more severely.

"Tiktor turned up. He wants to guard headquarters with the rest of the Komsomol members, you know. Says he only just found out that our group was on duty. Pretending to be innocent as a lamb, and reeks like a vodka still!" Nikita snapped angrily, carving a thick slice of peel off a large potato.

"What then?" Polevoi insisted.

"Then I told Tiktor we could do without him and his conduct would come up for discussion later."

"How did he have the cheek to look you in the lace!" Polevoi said, lying down again. "You'll be a weak-minded lot, lads, if you forgive Tiktor for the way he acted last night."

But even without Polevoi's saying it, we all realized that Nikita would not forget how Yasha Tiktor had not answered the call from headquarters because he was drunk.

How many times at Komsomol meetings, in the hostel, in the school workshops had Nikita said to us:

"Behave yourselves well, chaps. The whole town has its eyes on you, remember. You are workers-to-be, the best chaps in town, future Party men."

Nikita had a good reason for saying that. In those days, young workers were few in our little town—some apprentices in the local print-shop, two pupils at the power station, five young railwaymen, and eight apprentices at the Motor Factory, which, although considered the biggest in the district, had little more than a hundred workers altogether. Young workers who were Komsomol members often had no Komsomol group at their place of work and belonged to groups in other organizations. But we factory-school trainees worked together, in one body, and our group was considered a strong one. We set an example to every boy and girl in town. At all youth conferences our delegates sat on the platform, and took part in the debates, and their opinion—the opinion of a big body of young workers always carried a lot of weight.

The chaps who belonged to our group had fire and courage. They read a lot and thought about the future; they put loyalty to their work, and to their mates at work above everything.

We had Nikita Kolomeyets to thank for much of this. Besides being our group Secretary and political instructor, he was a good friend. He wasn't above singing a song with us, but when it came to work, he was strict and exacting, and never let things slide.

At that time, factories were springing up all over the country. Factory schools were being opened to train the new generation that was to take the place of the old workers. Thousands of young fellows from working families joined these schools, anxious to become turners, mechanics, foundry men, smiths, milling-machine operators.