Владимир Беляев - The Town By The Sea

It was all right for the youths who lived in the big industrial centres. But in the little towns it was more difficult. Take us, for example. We had heard about these factory schools as far back as 1923, and, of course, the boys and girls who had lost their parents during the Civil War and had been brought up at the children's home were keen as mustard on the idea. But for a long time 'not a single factory school was opened anywhere in the whole district, not to mention our little border town. Many of the chaps even thought of moving to other towns.

What hope was there that a training school would ever be founded at the Motor Factory, which only made straw-cutters for the countryfolk and showed no signs of expanding! New workers were not needed there—it had quite enough already.

But Nikita Kolomeyets, Dmitry Panchenko and other members of the District Komsomol Committee made up their minds to get a factory-training school started in our town.

Their proposal was supported by the District Party Committee. Nikita and the other activists were able to prove that a school-come-workshop of this kind would quickly repay the cost of organizing it. On Hospital Square, next to the Motor Factory, stood a big, half-ruined house which before the Revolution had been a Jewish religious school for students of the Talmud. The house and its empty out-buildings were given over to the factory school. All ownerless machinery was put at its disposal. In an old distillery Nikita discovered more than ten turner's lathes. You can imagine how glad the chaps were when they found out they could become skilled workmen without leaving their home town!

Now, under Zhora Kozakevich's instruction, H was becoming quite an expert at moulding axle-boxes for carts, gears for separators, and once even, just for practice, I cast a bust of the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph, using as a model an old bust of the emperor that I had found washed up on the river-bank after a flood. True, the emperor's moustache and side-whiskers did not come out properly, and the bronze didn't get as far as the tip of his nose, but even so that bust landed me in hot water! Yasha Tiktor seized his chance and started calling me a "monarchist," because, as he put it, I was "fabricating images of tyrants." The accusation was so stupid that Nikita did not agree to have it brought up at the group meeting, but all the same, to have done with the affair, I cast the snub-nosed monarch to another shape.

My friends in the other shops were getting on well too. Petka was turning out handles for straw-cutters and sickles. He had also learnt how to make good draughtsmen on his little turner's lathe—he just used to reel them off ready to play with. Sasha tinkered about all day with motors and only ran over to us when we were casting, to watch the pigs for piston rings taking shape.

And so we went on learning and hoping that when we finished our training in six months time we should go and work at factories in the big industrial towns.

Everything would have been fine if Pecheritsa, the new district education chief, had not appeared on the scene.

Within a month of his arrival, a new saying was all over the school: "Nothing was wrong till Pecheritsa came along."

Ours was one of the town's schools that Pecheritsa decided to inspect.

The day before he came, we had been casting. We were unloading the full moulds, knocking the dry sand out of them and sifting it, tapping the cinders off the still warm fly-wheels with chisels and hammers. The foundry was hot and dusty.

We were making such a din and clatter that we did not notice a little man with a moustache, in riding-breeches, tall yellow boots and a richly embroidered shirt, enter the foundry. The little fellow had

an amazing moustache—a great drooping ginger thing.

Throwing us a careless glance, but without saying hullo, the man with the moustache went into the next room and started fingering the gleaming, freshly painted model of an axle-box. He glanced frowningly at a gap in the roof made by a shell and, walking past a cast-iron fly-wheel, kicked it as if to test how strong it was. The burnished fly-wheel let out a clang and swayed dangerously. The man with the moustache steadied it with his hand, then, without saying a word to anyone, clasping a bright yellow brief case under his arm and looking as if he owned the place, walked out of the foundry on the Hospital Square.

"Next time don't let anyone in without my permission. We get all sorts of outsiders strolling in here, and then we find the models are missing," said Zhora when he heard about this visit.

Zhora was afraid somebody might walk off with the gear-wheel models made of ash that was a hundred years old. He had borrowed them from the Motor Factory, where he used to work.

.. . Two hours later we were attending a social studies class. Nikita was telling us about the country's social system and, as part of the lesson, was reading out an article from the newspaper Molodoi Leninets.

The door opened and in walked the man in the embroidered shirt who had been round the foundry that morning. Thinking the stranger was merely passing through the class-room to get to the school office, Nikita paid no attention to him and went on reading the article.

Then the man with the moustache went up to the blackboard and, planting himself in front of Nikita, said to him loudly in Ukrainian:

"When the person in charge of you comes into the room, it is your duty to report to him what you are doing."

But that was not enough to put Nikita off. He merely went a shade paler and snapped back: "People in charge usually say good morning when they come into a classroom. . . As for your coming in here, I simply don't know you."

The stranger tried a new line of attack.

"Why are you teaching in Russian?"

"I am not teaching in Russian, I am reading an article from a Russian newspaper and everyone understands perfectly well what I am saying."

"Are you not aware that all teaching in the Ukraine must be given exclusively in the Ukrainian language?"

"I repeat: I am not teaching, I am reading an article."

"This isn't Moscow! The people who live in the Ukraine are Ukrainians..."

"Comrade Stalin says there are more Russians than Ukrainians in the towns of the Ukraine. In time, of course, they will acquire Ukrainian culture, but I don't see what harm it will do if II read now in Russian—everyone understands me. Come here tomorrow and you will hear us reading an article from the newspaper Visit, in Ukrainian. You are quite welcome."

"Enough of that waffle! You're too young for that! Before you start teaching, you had better learn the state language."

"Before you start making your remarks and interrupting our studies, you had better say who you are!" Nikita retorted in purest Ukrainian, to prove that he knew it perfectly.

"Perhaps you will ask me to leave the room, young man?" the stranger inquired, grinning slyly.

"Yes, I will!" Nikita shouted unexpectedly. "Listen to me! Either you tell me who you are, or the whole class will show you the quickest way out of here!" And red in the face, Nikita nodded at the window.

"I am afraid you will soon have to apologize to me for that!" the man with the moustache said ominously, and with a proud toss of his ginger mane, he walked out of the room.

"Yes, that's the best way!" Nikita shouted after him, and lowering his voice at once to a normal tone, went on reading the paper.

It turned out that this was the notorious Pecheritsa.

A few days before his visit, Kartamyshev had come to the school. The Secretary of the District Party Committee had gone round all the workshops examining everything with genuine care. He talked for a long time with the trainees, told the foreman off because there was no drinking water in the hot shop and the chaps' gauntlets were torn, then he came down to the foundry himself. It was he who insisted the shell hole in the ceiling should be patched up before the autumn rains began, and a ventilator installed.