Владимир Беляев - The Town By The Sea

"What do I think?" Golovatsky repeated, then deciding to bide his time a little before answering the question, he said: "All right, I'll tell you, but before I do so, you must answer a question that interests me."

"I will," Tiktor replied firmly.

"You'll answer everything I ask you?"

"Yes."

That "yes" sounded very sincere.

"Why did you do private jobs when you were studying at the factory-training school?"

"So you know about that too? ... All right, I'll tell you... To earn money!"

"But weren't your parents helping you?"

"Like hell they were! After my mother died, my Dad got married to another woman. She got him right under her thumb and set him against me."

"Is that the truth, Tiktor?" Golovatsky asked very seriously.

"Why should I lie to you? I can tell you more. Dad would go off on a long run and my stepmother used to nag at me every day. I put up with it because there was nowhere else to go. It was a long time before the chaps who were living with their parents got any grants, you know."

"But you could have told the other lads what was going on at home," Golovatsky remarked.

"I was too ashamed..." Tiktor confessed. "I didn't want to let the whole school know about our bickering. So I had to get by as best I could. I even took work from profiteers, so as not to be dependent on my stepmother."

"I want to believe that's true, Tiktor," Golovatsky said. "Why do you think I brought all this up? We are very interested in your future, Tiktor, just as we're interested in the future of any other young fellow. I want your hands to work for the good of society. How can that be brought about? Team up with the rest of the chaps! Take an interest in what they're interested in. Think less of yourself and as much as possible of others. But you're a lone wolf, so they tell me, you scowl at everyone as if we were all against you. But

we only want one thing—that you shouldn't waver between the two sides. Sooner or later such people get caught out. And I certainly don't want to see that happen to you. Train yourself to love your work, to get on with the other chaps. Crush that pride which is eating away at you like rust, and believe me, you'll become a different man."

"Well, if you really want to give me a chance, I'll try," Tiktor said after a pause, and in his voice there was no longer that scornful malice with which he usually spoke to people.

They walked away in the direction of the town, disappearing quickly in the darkness.

Petka said to me: "It's true about Tiktor's Dad whopping him, you know. Do you remember how Yasha came to school once all bruises, and pretended that he'd got beaten up by tramps after a wedding party? And afterwards we found out that it was his Dad who'd made such a sight of him."

"He didn't tell us because he was afraid we'd laugh. We were living independently and he had to rely on his father. He was ashamed of being tanned like a kid," I said, feeling genuinely sorry that we had not found out about Tikor's family troubles in time. Had we known about it before, we could have talked to him in quite a different way.

The weather was getting hotter and hotter. Except for an occasional storm, there was no wind. But the stifling, sultry days could not stop us from carrying out our plans. Our success in making the five reapers for the youth commune seemed to spur us on.

At first we thought that the chief engineer would at least condescend to read the second issue of our wall newspaper, particularly the article by Zakabluk. But not a bit of it! When Andrykhevich came into the foundry, he never so much as glanced at the newspaper.

But we went on thinking about the future of the foundry and, supported by the Party organization, appealed to the young workers of the foundry to do a voluntary job on Sunday.

As Petka, Sasha, and I walked to work on the following Sunday, I thought over all that had happened in the past few days: the long searches for spare parts and models to fit the twelve new machines that we were planning to install in the foundry; the drawings we had made of the new row (we had decided in advance to call it "'Komsomol Row"); the distribution of key jobs among our most active members; the furious wrangling in the chief engineer's office, where our project had been condemned on all sides; and finally, my first report to the foundry Party committee.

At first I had tried to get out of making the report. As Komsomol secretary and an ex-foundry worker, Golovatsky seemed to be the best man to explain our idea. But Golovatsky would not hear of such a thing.

"Don't be shy, Vasil," he said. "The idea started in the foundry, didn't it? It's you who ought to tell the Party organization about it."

Our young draftsmen managed to produce several copies of the project for the future "Komsomol Row" in time for the meeting, and before I started making my report I handed them out to the members of the committee.

While I was speaking, Flegontov studied the drawing intently and kept looking up to glance through the dusty office windows into the foundry.

By one of the smoke-stained walls there were several piles of dry, unused sand, "old regime" sand, as we called it. Under this sand lay the concrete bases for the moulding machines, which the world war had

prevented the old owner from installing. In those days, the works had stopped making reapers, some of the workers had been called into the army, and the moulders who remained behind were all put on one job—the casting of hand-grenades. The works turned out hundreds of thousands of those little pineapple-shaped missiles. The moulding was done fast and no one objected to the workers' throwing away scrap, cinder, burnt sand, and all sorts of rubbish on to the unfinished furnace. It was this foundry rubbish dump that we had decided to get rid of.

"It's a first-class idea, Komsomols!" said Flegontov. "And you've worked it all out properly. Twelve new machines—that will mean hundreds of reapers above plan! It'll mean jobs for the workers who are still waiting their turn at the labour exchange..."

We parted at the plant gates. Petka went to the joiners' shop, Sasha disappeared into the store, where his mates were fitting out the new machines, and I went off to my "sand brigade."

The first thing I noticed in the foundry was Tiktor's broad back. Yasha was standing by his machine pulling off his blue blouse.

"So you've come!" I thought with a thrill of pleasure.

On Flegontov's advice and carrying out a promise I had given Golovatsky, I had gone over to Tiktor after work on Saturday and said: "We're doing some voluntary work tomorrow, Yasha. Feel like coming along?"

"I've heard about it!..." Tiktor had grunted without looking at me, and had gone on piling his empty mould-boxes.

From such an answer I had been unable to tell whether he would come or not, and now I was very glad to see him.

When we began to hand out spare shovels to chaps from the other shops, Tiktor strode up to me in his singlet and said gruffly: "Well, where's my job?"

"Take your choice," I suggested. "Either you can stay here and clear the moulding floor, or you can carry sand. Or perhaps you'd rather sift it over on the other side?"

"I'll stay here," Tiktor decided. "Let's get hold of a shovel."

"You'd better put a cap on," I advised, glancing at his flowing hair. "You'll never wash the dust out, if you don't."

"Who cares!" Tiktor said with an obstinate shake of his head.

A few minutes later he was one of the first to plunge his gleaming shovel into the dry, caked sand.

Soon there was such a dust in the place that we seemed to see each other through a fog. The shovels soon grew blunt from grinding on the iron cinder and broken mould-boxes buried in the sand.