Владимир Беляев - The Town By The Sea

"Like it? That's hardly the word! As soon as I see a compass dial in front of me, I feel on top of the world. The waves slap against the bows, the engine- chugs down below, and I keep watch knowing that the lives of our passengers are in my hands. They sleep peacefully in their cabins, confident that I know my job, and it's my duty to steer the ship on a safe course!... And there are enough seas to last my lifetime. And stars to reckon by. . . Now let's get to sleep, Vasil! I'm due on watch at four." And Yuzik put out the light.

The waves kept heaving the ship up on their great crests, then letting her down into yawning troughs. Creaking and groaning she reared and fell over the oncoming seas, beating them into submission with her paddles. The engine thudded steadily below. It was powerful enough, as Yuzik had explained to me, to light our town and all the surrounding villages as well.

As the ship steamed on its course, I listened to the steady beat of the engine and thought how fine it was that we, chaps, had not been mistaken about our path in life. My father had said something good about that in his last letter to me from Cherkassy. He told me how he had once had to dissuade my aunt from the absurd idea of taking me with her to Cherkassy. "But I thought, Vasil," my father wrote, "that it would be better to let you stay at the factory-training school. Now your hands know a good trade, and although you had a lot of difficulty learning it, it's better than being tied to your aunt's apron strings. I am sure that now you are on a true, independent path of your own, you won't let anyone budge you from it. I also approve of your decision to go and study at the workers' evening university. Good lad! Soviet power is giving you, young people, things that we of the older generation didn't even dare dream about. And it would be wrong if you didn't take advantage of what we've gained by the Revolution. Learn and study, son, don't waste your life on trifles, remember that communist society can only be built by educated people with firm characters and a clear idea of what they are striving for."

Mariupol came up at dawn, wonderfully white and clean in the rays of the morning sun.

When I opened my eyes sleepily and saw the pink light of dawn filtering through the porthole, I jumped out of my bunk. Yuzik's couch was empty and the bedding gone. When he went on watch, Yuzik had left the cabin silently, without even waking me.

I washed my face quickly over the basin and feeling fresher slipped out of the cabin. Swabs were swishing up and down the deck and water was hissing out of hoses. Stalwart sailors, barefoot and with their trousers rolled up to their knees, were washing down the forecastle head. The deck gleamed wetly under my feet. Its clean boards smelt fresh. A bright pennant fluttered at the mast.

The white horses riding from the east were flushed pink in the windy dawn. But what were they to compare with the mountainous foam-capped waves of yesterday! Weasel had been right; the wind blowing from Rostov had not only tamed the storm, it had brought down a lot of fresh water from the Don. The sea had become even yellower and in some places looked like the sandy shores of Tavria.

Mariupol spread out before us. The chimneys of a big plant were smoking in the background. Flame-flecked clouds of smoke belched from the black, dumpy blast-furnaces. "That must be Sartana!" I

thought.

The railway station of Sartana outside the town was the place where the Ilyich plants were situated. Before the Revolution they had belonged to the Providence Company. Probably most of the delegates to the conference would be from these plants, for they were the biggest on the Azov coast. They had more Komsomol members in one of their shops than we had in the whole works.

And as soon as I thought of the conference, I began to feel worried. What should I say in my speech?

"Mind you speak, Mandzhura!" Golovatsky had advised me when he handed me my mandate the day before I left. "Tell them about your working experience. But don't get nervous. Think out what you are going' to say on the journey."

I had thought of everything but that!. . .

"Awake already, Vasil? Come up here!" Yuzik called out.

He was standing on the captain's bridge in a tunic with little gold chevrons on the sleeves and a peaked cap. A pair of binoculars dangled on his chest.

"How did you sleep? All right?"

"It was all right for me, but you didn't have much."

"We mustn't get into the habit. Our job's like that— sailors always sleep with one eye open."

"It's a lovely day," I said. "You were right with your forecast."

"But it's clouding up again in the East," Weasel answered, nodding towards la cloud that had crept up over the horizon. "There'll be another gale by the evening. But by that time we shall be safe up the Don. .

. What are we steering, Vanya?"

"North-East by North!" the helmsman shouted.

Everything was new to me in this long, passage-like room panelled with fumed oak: the telegraph with its arrows and instructions written on the white dial, "Full Speed Ahead," "Stop," "Full Speed Astern"; the polished speaking tubes leading down to the engine-room; the sensitive compass floating like a huge eye-ball under its glass cover.

Yuzik showed me his domain. Now and then he would go over to the wheel and check the course shown on the compass. He kept glancing from side to side where buoys were bobbing on the yellow waves, as if wishing us "good morning." They showed us the way into the harbour, and then, bowing politely, dropped away astern.

I listened to my friend, looked through the spotlessly clean windows of the bridge at the town rising up out of the sea, and thought over my speech. What if I begin with the story of three friends who came here, to the Azov Sea, from distant Podolia, and became active members of the Komsomol?

I'll tell the delegates how ever since we were children we have hated the Petlura men and other scoundrels who try to prevent the Soviet Ukraine growing and developing. . . I'll tell them about Petka Maremukha, about Weasel, about the vow we made under the green bastion of the Old Fortress... Perhaps I'll say something about how we studied and what our aim is in life?... After all, our three small lives are very typical; the whole working youth of the Ukraine has been through the kind of thing we experienced. Then I must swear to continue being loyal to the behests of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And say that we have the Party and the Komsomol to thank for everything we have achieved. I'll make a solemn promise to the delegates that we three, friends, will go on fighting for every young chap at our works, to win him over from the old world and teach him to serve the people and those fine, noble ideas that the Communist Party has pointed out to us.

The dazzling sun rose higher and higher, gilding the tops of the waves. The white town, with the strong

salty east wind blowing round it, spread out before me in the faint mist of the July morning.

Twenty years have passed since that sunny morning when the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamed into the port of Mariupol.

The sailors darted about round the windlass preparing to drop anchor, the passengers came out of their cabins, and we, gathering on the upper deck, sang loudly: O'erthrown the night. The sun is rising

What a fine song that is! It has engraved itself on my memory for ever.

Even now, twenty years later, as I sit in this little room reading some old newspapers and listening to the rain lashing on the windows, that song is still ringing in my ears.

I can see wet chestnut-trees through the window. Their big, broad leaves are drooping dejectedly. The rain has knocked all the blossom out of them and exposed their little prickly pods.