HOW THE STEEL WAS TEMPERED - Nikolai Ostrovsky (Thép đã tôi thế đấy)

Gently he laid his hand on her shoulder.
"Tonya, cut yourself loose and come to us. Let''s work together to finish with the bosses. There are many splendid girls among us who are sharing the burden of this bitter struggle, enduring all the hardships and privation. They may not be so well educated as you are, but why, oh why, don''t you want to join us? You say Chuzhanin tried to seduce you, but he is a degenerate, not a fighter. You say the comrades were unfriendly toward you. Then why did you have to dress up as if you were going to a bourgeois ball? It''s your silly pride that''s to blame: why should I wear a dirty old army tunic just because everybody else does? You had the courage to love a workingman, but you cannot love an idea. I am sorry to have to part with you, and I should like to cherish your memory."
He said no more.
The next day he saw an order posted up in the street signed by Zhukhrai, chairman of the regional Cheka. His heart leapt. It was with great difficulty that he gained admission to the sailor''s office. The sentries would not let him in and he raised such a fuss that he was very nearly arrested, but in the end he had his way.
Fyodor gave him a very warm welcome. The sailor had lost an arm; it had been torn off by a shell.
The conversation turned at once to work. "You can help me crush the counter-revolution here until you''re fit for the front again. Start tomorrow," said Zhukhrai.
The struggle with the Polish Whites came to an end. The Red armies pursued the enemy almost to the very walls of Warsaw, but with their material and physical strength expended and their supply bases left far behind, they were unable to take this final stronghold and so fell back. Thus the "miracle on the Vistula", as the Poles called the withdrawal of the Red forces from Warsaw, came to pass, and the Poland of the gentry received a new lease of life. The dream of the Polish Soviet Socialist Republic was not yet to be fulfilled.
The blood-drenched land demanded a respite.
Pavel was unable to see his people, for Shepetovka was again in Polish hands and had become a temporary frontier outpost. Peace talks were in progress.
Pavel spent days and nights in the Cheka carrying out diverse assignments. He was much upset when he learned that his hometown was occupied by the Poles.
"Does that mean my mother will be on the other side of the border if the armistice is signed now?" he asked Zhukhrai.
But Fyodor calmed his fears.
"Most likely the frontier will pass through Goryn along the river, which means that your town will be on our side," he said. "In any case we''ll know soon enough."
Divisions were being transferred from the Polish front to the South. For while the republic had been straining every effort on the Polish front, Wrangel had taken advantage of the respite to crawl out of his Crimean lair and advance northward along the Dnieper with Yekaterinoslav Gubernia as his immediate objective.
Now that the war with the Poles was over, the republic rushed its armies to the Crimea to wipe out the last hotbed of counter-revolution.
Trainloads of troops, carts, field kitchens and guns passed through Kiev en route to the South. The Cheka of the regional transport services worked at fever pitch these days coping with the bottlenecks caused by the huge flood of traffic. Stations were jammed with trains and frequently traffic would be held up for lack of free tracks. Telegraph operators tapped out countless messages ordering the line cleared for this or that division. The tickers spilled out endless ribbons of tape covered with dots and dashes and each of them demanding priority: "Precedence above all else . .. this is a military order . . . clear line immediately. . . ." And nearly every message included a reminder that failure to carry out the order would entail prosecution by a revolutionary military tribunal.
The local transport Cheka was responsible for keeping traffic moving without interruption.
Commanders of army units would burst into its headquarters brandishing revolvers and demanding that their trains be dispatched at once in accordance with telegram number so-and-so signed by the commander of the army. And none of them would accept the explanation that this was impossible. "You''ll get that train off if you croak doing it!" And a string of frightful curses would follow. In particularly serious cases Zhukhrai would be urgently sent for, and then the excited men who were ready to shoot each other on the spot would calm down at once. At the sight of this man of iron with his quiet icy voice that brooked no argument revolvers were thrust back into their holsters.
At times Pavel would stagger out of his office onto the platform with a stabbing pain in his head. Work in the Cheka was having a devastating effect on his nerves.
One day he caught sight of Sergei Bruzzhak on a truck loaded with ammunition crates. Sergei jumped down, nearly knocking Pavel off his feet, and flung his arms round his friend.
"Pavka, you devil! I knew it was you the minute I laid eyes on you."
The two young men had so much news to exchange that they did not know where to begin. So much had happened to both of them since they had last met. They plied each other with questions, and talked on without waiting for answers. They did not hear the engine whistle and it was only when the train began to move out of the station that they became aware of their surroundings.
They still had much to say to each other, but the train was already gathering speed and Sergei, shouting something to his friend, raced along the platform and caught on to the open door of one of the box cars. Several hands snatched him up and drew him inside. As Pavel stood watching him go he suddenly remembered that Sergei knew nothing about Valya''s death. For he had not visited Shepetovka since he left it, and in the unexpectedness of this encounter Pavel had forgotten to tell him.
"It''s a good thing he does not know, his mind will be at ease," thought Pavel. He did not know that he was never to see his friend again. Nor did Sergei, standing on the roof of the box car, his chest exposed to the autumn wind, know that he was going to his death.
"Get down from there, Seryozha," urged Doroshenko, a Red Army man wearing a coat with a hole burnt in the back.
"That''s all right," said Sergei laughing. "The wind and I are good friends."
A week later he was struck by a stray bullet in his first engagement. He staggered forward, his chest rent by a tearing pain, clutched at the air, and pressing his arms tightly against his chest, he swayed and dropped heavily to the ground and his sightless blue eyes stared out over the boundless Ukrainian steppe.
His nerve-wracking work in the Cheka began to tell on Pavel''s weakened con***ion. His violent headaches became more frequent, but it was not until he fainted one day after two sleepless nights that he finally decided to take the matter up with Zhukhrai.
"Don''t you think I ought to try some other sort of work, Fyodor? I would like best of all to work at my own trade at the railway shops. I''m afraid there''s something wrong with my head. They told me in the medical commission that I was unfit for army service. But this sort of work is worse than the front. The two days we spent rounding up Sutyr''s band have knocked me out completely. I must have a rest from all this shooting. You see, Fyodor, I shan''t be much good to you if I can barely stand on my feet."
Zhukhrai studied Pavel''s face with concern.
"Yes, you don''t look so good. It''s all my fault. I ought to have let you go long before this. But I''ve been too busy to notice."
Shortly after the above conversation Pavel presented himself at the Regional Committee of the Komsomol with a paper certifying that he was being placed at the Committee''s disposal. An officious youngster with his cap perched jauntily over his nose ran his eyes rapidly over the paper and winked to Pavel:
"From the Cheka, eh? A jolly organisation that. We''ll find work for you here in a jiffy. We need everybody we can get. Where would you like to go? Commissary department? No? All right. What about the agitation section down at the waterfront? No? Too bad. Nice soft job that, special rations too."
Pavel interrupted him.
"I would prefer the railway repair shops," he said. The lad gaped. "Mm. . . . I don''t think we need anybody there. But go to Ustinovich. She''ll fit you in somewhere."
After a brief interview with the dark-eyed girl it was decided to assign Pavel as secretary of the Komsomol organisation in the railway shops where he was to work.
Meanwhile the Whites had been fortifying the gates of the Crimea, and now on this narrow neck of land that once had been the frontier between the Crimean Tatars and the Zaporozhye Cossack settlements stood the modernised fortified line of Perekop.
And behind Perekop in the Crimea, the old, doomed world which had been driven here from all corners of the land, feeling quite secure, lived in wine-fuddled revelry.
One chill dank autumn night tens of thousands of sons of the toiling people plunged into the icy waters of the Sivash to cross the bay under the cover of darkness and strike from behind at the enemy entrenched in their forts. Among the thousands waded Ivan Zharky, carrying his machine gun on his head to prevent it from getting wet.
And when dawn found Perekop seething in a wild turmoil, its fortifications attacked in a frontal assault, the first columns of men that had crossed the Sivash climbed ashore on Litovsky Peninsula to take the Whites from the rear. And among the first to clamber onto that rock coast was Ivan Zharky.
A battle of unprecedented ferocity ensued. The White cavalry bore down savagely on the Red Army men as they emerged from the water. Zharky''s machine gun spewed death, never ceasing its lethal tattoo. Men and horses fell in heaps under the leaden spray. Zharky fed new magazines into the gun with feverish speed.
Perekop thundered back through the throats of hundreds of guns. The very earth seemed to have dropped into a bottomless abyss, and death carried by thousands of shells pierced the heavens with ear-splitting screams and exploded, scattering myriads of minute fragments far and wide. The torn and lacerated earth spouted up in black clouds that blotted out the sun.
The monster''s head was crushed, and into the Crimea swept the Red flood of the First Cavalry Army to deliver the final, smashing blow. Frantic with terror, the White-guards rushed in a panic to board the ships leaving the ports.
And the Republic pinned the golden badge of the Order of the Red Banner to many a faded Red Army tunic, and one of these tunics was Ivan Zharky''s, the Komsomol machine gunner.
Peace was signed with the Poles and, as Zhukhrai had predicted, Shepetovka remained in Soviet Ukraine. A river thirty-five kilometres outside the town now marked the frontier.
One memorable morning in December 1920 Pavel arrived in his native town. He stepped onto the snowy platform, glanced up at the sign Shepetovka I, then turned left, and went straight to the railway yards and asked for Artem. But his brother was not there. Drawing his army coat tighter about him, Pavel strode off through the woods to the town.
Maria Yakovlevna turned when the knock came at the door and said, "Come in." A snow-covered figure pushed into the house and she saw the dear face of her son. Her hand flew to her heart, joy robbed her of speech.
She fell on her son''s breast and smothered his face with kisses, and tears of happiness streamed down her cheeks. And Pavel, pressing the spare little body close, gazed silently down at the careworn face of his mother furrowed with deep lines of pain and anxiety, and waited for her to grow calmer.
Once again the light of happiness shone in the eyes of this woman who had suffered so much. It seemed she would never have her fill of gazing at this son whom she had lost all hope of ever seeing again. Her joy knew no bounds when three days later Artem too burst into the tiny room late at night with his kit-bag over his shoulders.
Now the Korchagin family was reunited. Both brothers had escaped death, and after harrowing ordeals and trials they had met again.
"What are you going to do now?" the mother asked her sons.
"It''s back to the repair shops for me, Mother!" replied Artem gaily.
As for Pavel, after two weeks at home he went back to Kiev where his work was awaiting him.

PART TWO
Chapter One
Midnight. The last tramcar has long since dragged its battered carcass back to the depot. The moon lays its cold light on the windowsill and spreads a luminous coverlet on the bed, leaving the rest of the room in semi-darkness. At the table in the corner under a circle of light shed by the desk lamp sits Rita bent over a thick notebook, her diary. The sharp point of her pencil traces the words:
May 24
"I am making another attempt to jot down my impressions. Again there is a big gap. Six weeks have passed since I made the last entry. But it cannot be helped.
"How can I find time for my diary? It is past midnight now, and here I am still writing. Sleep eludes me. Comrade Segal is leaving us: he is going to work in the Central Committee. We were all very much upset by the news. He is a wonderful person, our Lazar Alexandrovich. I did not realise until now how much his friendship has meant to us all. The dialectical materialism class is bound to go to pieces when he leaves. Yesterday we stayed at his place until the wee hours verifying the progress made by our ''pupils''. Akim, the Secretary of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee, came and that horrid Tufta as well. I can''t stand that Mr. Know-All! Segal was delighted when his pupil Korchagin brilliantly defeated Tufta in an argument on Party history. Yes, these two months have not been wasted. You don''t begrudge your efforts when you see such splendid results. It is rumoured that Zhukhrai is being transferred to the Special Department of the Military Region. I wonder why.
"Lazar Alexandrovich turned his pupil over to me. ''You will have to complete what I have begun,'' he said. ''Don''t stop halfway. You and he, Rita, can learn a great deal from each other. The lad is still rather disorganised. His is a turbulent nature and he is apt to be carried away by his emotions. I feel that you will be a most suitable guide for him, Rita. I wish you success. Don''t forget to write me in Moscow.''
"Today a new secretary for the Solomensky District Committee was sent down from the Central Committee. His name is Zharky. I knew him in the army.
"Tomorrow Dmitri Dubava will bring Korchagin. Let me try to describe Dubava. Medium height, strong, muscular. Joined the Komsomol in 1918, and has been a Party member since 1920. He was one of the three who were expelled from the Komsomol Gubernia Committee for having belonged to the ''Workers'' Opposition''. Instructing him has not been easy. Every day he upset the programme by asking innumerable questions and making us digress from the subject. He and Olga Yureneva, my other pupil, did not get along at all. At their very first meeting he looked her up and down and remarked: ''Your get-up is all wrong, old girl. You ought to have trousers with leather seats, spurs, a Budyonny hat and a sabre. This way you''re neither fish nor fowl.''
"Olga wouldn''t stand for that, of course, and I had to interfere. I believe Dubava is a friend of Korchagin''s. Well enough for tonight. It''s time for bed."
The earth wilted under the scorching sun. The iron railing of the footbridge over the railway platforms was burning to the touch. People, limp and exhausted from the heat, climbed the bridge wearily; most of them were not travellers, but residents of the railway district who used the bridge to get to the town proper.
As he came down the steps Pavel caught sight of Rita. She had reached the station before him and was watching the people coming off the bridge.
Pavel paused some three paces away from her. She did not notice him, and he studied her with new-found interest. She was wearing a striped blouse and a short dark-blue skirt of some cheap material. A soft leather jacket was slung over her shoulder. Her sun-tanned face was framed in a shock of unruly hair and as she stood there with her head thrown slightly back and her eyes narrowed against the sun''s glare, it struck Korchagin for the first time that Rita, his friend and teacher, was not only a member of the bureau of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee, but.... Annoyed with himself for entertaining such "sinful" thoughts, he called to her.
"I''ve been staring at you for a whole hour, but you didn''t notice me," he laughed. "Come along, our train is already in."
They went over to the service door leading to the platform.
The previous day the Gubernia Committee had appointed Rita as its representative at a district conference of the Komsomol, and Korchagin was to go as her assistant. Their immediate problem was to board the train, which was by no means a simple task. The railway station on those rare occasions when the trains ran was taken over by an all-powerful Committee of Five in charge of boarding and without a permit from this body no one was allowed on the platform. All exits and approaches to the platform were guarded by the Committee''s men. The overcrowded train could take on only a fraction of the crowd anxious to leave, but no one wanted to be left behind to spend days waiting for a chance train to come through. And so thousands stormed the platform doors in an effort to break through to the unattainable carriages. In those days the station was literally besieged and sometimes pitched battles were fought.
After vainly attempting to push through the crowd collected at the platform entrance, Pavel, who knew all the ins and outs at the station, led Rita through the luggage room. With difficulty they made their way to coach No. 4. At the carriage door a Cheka man, sweating profusely in the heat, was trying to hold back the crowd, and repeated over and over again:
"The carriage''s full, and it''s against the rules to ride on the buffers or the roof."
Irate people bore down on him, waving tickets issued by the Committee under his nose. There were angry curses, shouts and violent jostling at every carriage. Pavel saw that it would be impossible to board the train in the conventional manner. Yet board it they must, otherwise the conference would have to be called off.
Taking Rita aside, he outlined his plan of action: he would push his way inside, open a window and help her to climb in. There was no other way.
"Let me have that jacket of yours. It''s better than any credential."
He slipped on the jacket and stuck his revolver into the pocket so that the grip and cord showed. Leaving the bag with Rita, he went over to the carriage, elbowed through the knot of excited passengers at the entrance and gripped the handrail.
"Hey, Comrade, where you going?"
Pavel glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder at the stocky Cheka man.
"I''m from the Special Department. I want to see whether all the passengers in this carriage have tickets issued by the Committee," he said in a tone that left no doubt as to his authority.
The Cheka man glanced at Pavel''s pocket, wiped his perspiring brow with his sleeve and said wearily:
"Go ahead if you can shove yourself in."
Working with his hands, shoulders, and here and there with his fists, holding on to the ledges of the upper berths to climb over the passengers who had planted themselves on their belongings in the middle of the passage, Pavel made his way through to the centre of the carriage, ignoring the torrent of abuse that rained down on him from all sides.
"Can''t you look where you''re going, curse you!" screamed a stout woman when Pavel accidentally brushed her knee with his foot, as he lowered himself to the floor. She had contrived to wedge her 18-stone bulk onto the edge of a seat and had a large vegetable oil can between her knees. All the shelves were stuffed with similar cans, hampers, sacks and baskets. The air in the carriage was suffocating.
Paying no heed to the abuse, Pavel demanded: "Your ticket, please!"
"My what!" the woman snapped back at the unwelcome ticket-collector.
A head appeared from the uppermost berth and an ugly voice boomed out: "Vaska, what''s this ''ere mug want. Give ''im a ticket to kingdom come, will ya?"
The huge frame and hairy chest of what was obviously Vaska swung into view right above Pavel''s head and a pair of bloodshot eyes fixed him with a bovine stare.
"Leave the lady alone, can''t ya? What d''ye want tickets for?"
Four pairs of legs dangled from an upper side berth; their owners sat with their arms around one another''s shoulders noisily cracking sunflower seeds. One glance at their faces told Pavel who they were: a gang of food sharks, hardened crooks who travelled up and down the country buying up food and selling it at speculative prices. Pavel had no time to waste with them. He had to get Rita inside somehow.
"Whose box is this?" he inquired of an elderly man in railway uniform, indicating a wooden chest standing under the window.
"Hers," replied the other, pointing to a pair of thick legs in brown stockings.
The window had to be opened and the box was in the way. Since there was nowhere to move it Pavel picked it up and handed it to its owner who was seated on an upper berth.
"Hold it a moment, please, I''m going to open the window."
"Keep your hands off my things!" screamed the flat-nosed wench when he placed the box on her knees.
"Motka, what''s this feller think he''s doin''?" she said to the man seated beside her. The latter gave Pavel a kick in the back with his sandalled foot.
"Lissen ''ere, you! Clear out of here before I punch your nose!"
Pavel endured the kick in silence. He was too busy unfastening the window.
"Move aside, please," he said to the railwayman.
Shifting another can out of the way Pavel cleared a space in front of the window. Rita was on the platform below. Quickly she handed him the bag. Throwing it onto the knees of the stout woman with the vegetable oil can, Pavel bent down, seized Rita''s hands and drew her in. Before the guard had time to notice this infringement of the rules, Rita was inside the carriage, leaving the guard swearing belatedly outside. The gang of toughs met Rita''s appearance with such an uproar that she was taken aback. Since there was not even standing room on the floor, she found a place for her feet on the very edge of the lower berth and stood there holding on to the upper berth for support. Foul curses sounded on all sides. From above the ugly bass voice croaked:
"Look at the swine, gets in himself and drags his broad in after ''im!"
A voice from above squeaked: "Motka, poke him one between the eyes!"
The woman was doing her best to stand her wooden box on Pavel''s head. The two newcomers were surrounded by a ring of evil, brutish faces. Pavel was sorry that Rita had to be exposed to this but there was nothing to be done but to make the best of it.
"Move your sacks and make room for the comrade," he said to the one they called Motka, but the answer was a curse so foul that he boiled with rage. The pulse over his right eyebrow began to throb painfully. "Just wait, you scoundrel, you''ll answer for this," he said to the ruffian, but received a kick on the head from above.
"Good for you, Vaska, fetch ''im another!" came approving cries from all sides.
Pavel''s self-control gave way at last, and as always in such moments his actions became swift and sure.
"You speculating bastards, you think you can get away with it?" he shouted, and hoisting himself agilely on to the upper berth, he sent his fist smashing against Motka''s leering face. The speculator went tumbling onto the heads of the other passengers.
"Clear out of here, you swine, or I''ll shoot down the whole lot of you!" Pavel yelled, waving his revolver under the noses of the four.
The tables were turned. Rita watched closely, ready to shoot if anyone attacked Korchagin. The upper berth-quickly cleared. The gang hastily withdrew to the neighbouring compartment.
As he helped Rita up to the empty berth, Pavel whispered:
"You stay here, I''m going to see about those fellows."
Rita tried to stop him. "You''re not going to fight them, are you?"
"No," he reassured her. "I''ll be back soon."
He opened the window again and climbed out onto the platform. A few minutes later he was talking to Burmeister of the Transport Cheka, his former chief. The Lett heard him out and then gave orders to have the entire carriage cleared and the passengers'' papers checked.
"It''s just as I said," growled Burmeister. "The trains are full of speculators before they get here."
A detail of ten Cheka men cleared the carriage. Pavel, assuming his old duties, helped to examine the documents of the passengers. He had not broken all ties with his former Cheka comrades and in his capacity as secretary of the Komsomol he had sent some of the best Komsomol members to work there. When the screening was over, Pavel returned to Rita. The carriage was now occupied by a vastly different type of passenger: Red Army men and factory and office workers travelling on business.
Rita and Pavel had the top berth in one corner of the carriage, but so much of it was taken up with bundles of newspapers that there was only room for Rita to lie down.
"Never mind," she said, "we''ll manage somehow."
The train began to move at last. As it slid slowly out of the station they caught a brief glimpse of the fat woman seated on a bundle of sacks on the platform and heard her yelling:
"Hey Manka, where''s my oil can gone?"
Sitting in their cramped quarters with the bundles of newspapers shielding them from their neighbours, Pavel and Rita munched bread and apples and laughingly recalled the far from laughable episode with which their journey had begun.
The train crawled along. The old, battered and overloaded carriage creaked and groaned and trembled violently at every joint in the track. The deep blue twilight looked in at the windows. Then night came, folding the carriage in darkness.
Rita was tired and she dozed with her head resting on the bag. Pavel sat on the edge of the berth and smoked. He too was tired but there was no room to lie down. The fresh night breeze blew through the open window.
Rita, awakened by a sudden jolt, saw the glow of Pavel''s cigarette in the darkness. It was just like him to sit up all night rather than cause her discomfort.
"Comrade Korchagin! Drop those bourgeois conventions and lie down," she said lightly.
Pavel obediently lay down beside her and stretched his stiff legs luxuriously.
"We have heaps of work tomorrow. So try and get some sleep, you rowdy." She put her arm trustingly around his neck and he felt her hair touching his cheek.
To Pavel, Rita was sacred. She was his friend and comrade, his political guide. Yet she was a woman as well. He had first become aware of this over there at the footbridge, and that was why her embrace stirred him so much now. He felt her deep even breathing; somewhere quite close to him were her lips. Proximity awoke in him a powerful desire to find those lips, and it was only with a great effort of will that he suppressed the impulse.
Rita, as if divining his feelings, smiled in the darkness. She had already known the joy of passion and the pain of loss. She had given her love to two Bolsheviks. Whiteguard bullets had robbed her of both. One had been a splendid giant of a man, a Brigade Commander; the other, a lad with clear blue eyes.
Soon the regular rhythm of the wheels rocked Pavel to sleep and he did not wake until the engine whistled shrilly the next morning.
Work kept Rita occupied every day until late at night and she had little time for her diary. After an interval a few more brief entries appeared:
August 11

"The gubernia conference is over. Akim, Mikhailo and several others have gone to Kharkov for the all-Ukraine conference, leaving all the paper work to me. Dubava and Pavel have been sent to work at the Gubernia Committee. Ever since Dmitri was made secretary of the Pechorsk District Committee he has stopped coming to lessons. He is up to his neck in work. Pavel tries to do some studying, but we don''t get much done because either I am too busy or else he is sent off on some assignment. With the present tense situation on the railways the Komsomols are constantly being mobilised for work. Zharky came to see me yesterday. He complained about the boys being taken away from him, says he needs them badly himself."
August 23
"I was going down the corridor today when I saw Korchagin standing outside the manager''s office with Pankratov and another man. As I came closer I heard Pavel say:
" ''Those fellows sitting there ought to be shot. "You''ve no right to countermand our orders," he says. "The Railway Firewood Committee is the boss here and you Komsomols had better keep out of it." You ought to have seen his mug.... And the place is infested with parasites like him!'' He followed this up with some shocking language. Pankratov caught sight of me and nudged him. Pavel swung round and when he saw me he turned pale and walked off without meeting my eyes. He won''t be coming around for a long while now. He knows I will not tolerate bad language."
August 27
"We had a closed meeting of the bureau. The situation is becoming serious. I cannot write about it in detail just yet. Akim came back from the regional conference looking very worried. Yesterday another supply train was derailed. I don''t think I shall try to keep this diary any more. It is much too haphazard anyway. I am expecting Korchagin. I saw him the other day and he told me he and Zharky are organising a commune of five."
One day while at work in the railway shops Pavel was called to the telephone. It was Rita. She happened to be free that evening and suggested that they finish the chapter they had been studying ?" the reasons for the fall of the Paris Commune.
As he approached Rita''s house on University Street that evening, Pavel glanced up and saw a light in her window. He ran upstairs, gave his usual brief knock on the door and went in.
There on the bed, where none of the young comrades were allowed even to sit for a moment, lay a man in uniform. A revolver, knapsack and cap with the red star lay on the table. Rita was sitting beside the stranger with her arms clasped tightly around him. The two were engaged in earnest conversation and as Pavel entered Rita looked up with a radiant face.
The man freed himself from her embrace and rose.
"Pavel," said Rita shaking hands with him, "this is ...."
"David Ustinovich," the man said, clasping Korchagin''s hand warmly.
"He turned up quite unexpectedly," Rita explained with a happy laugh.
Pavel shook hands coldly with the newcomer and a gleam of resentment flashed in his eyes. He noticed the four squares of a Company Commander on the sleeve of the man''s uniform.
Rita was about to say something but Pavel interrupted her. "I just dropped in to tell you that I shall be busy loading wood down at the wharves this evening," he said. "And anyhow you have a visitor. Well, I''ll be off, the boys are waiting for me downstairs."
And he disappeared through the door as suddenly _ as he had come. They heard him hurrying down the stairs. Then the outside door slammed and all was quiet.
"There''s something the matter with him," Rita faltered in answer to David''s questioning look.
Down below under the bridge an engine heaved a deep sigh, exhaling a shower of golden sparks from its mighty lungs. They soared upward executing a fantastic dance and were lost in the smoke.
Pavel leaned against the railing and stared at the coloured signal lights winking on the switches. He screwed up his eyes.
"What I don''t understand, Comrade Korchagin, is why it should hurt so much to discover that Rita has a husband? Has she ever told you she hadn''t? And even if she has, what of it? Why should you take it like that? You thought, Comrade, it was all platonic friendship and nothing else. ... How could you have let this happen?" he asked himself with bitter irony. "But what if he isn''t her husband? David Ustinovich might be her brother or her uncle.... In which case you''ve done the chap an injustice, you fool. You''re no better than any other swine. It''s easy enough to find out whether he''s her brother or not. Suppose he turns out to be a brother or an uncle, how are you going to face her after the way you''ve behaved? No, you''ve got to stop seeing her!"
The scream of an engine whistle interrupted his reflections.
"It''s getting late. Time to be going home. Enough of this nonsense."
At Solomenka, as the district where the railway workers lived was called, five young men set up a miniature commune. They were Zharky, Pavel, Klavicek, a jolly fair-haired Czech, Nikolai Okunev, secretary of the railway-yards Komsomol, and Stepan Artyukhin, a boiler repairman who was now working for the railway Cheka.
They found a room and for three days spent all their free time cleaning, painting and whitewashing. They dashed back and forth with pails so many times that the neighbours thought the house was on fire. They made themselves bunks, and mattresses filled with maple leaves gathered in the park, and on the fourth day the room, with a portrait of Petrovsky and a huge map on the wall, literally shone with cleanliness.
Between the windows was a shelf piled high with books. Two crates covered with cardboard served for chairs, another larger crate did duty as a cupboard. In the middle of the room stood a huge billiard table, minus the cloth, which the room''s inmates had carried on their shoulders from the warehouse. By day it was used as a table and at night Klavicek slept on it. The five lads fetched all their belongings, and the practical-minded Klavicek made an inventory of the commune''s possessions. He wanted to hang it up on the wall but the others objected. Everything in the room was declared common property. Earnings, rations and occasional parcels from home were all divided equally; the sole items of personal property were their weapons. It was unanimously decided that any member of the commune who violated the law of communal ownership or who betrayed his comrades'' trust would be expelled from the commune. Okunev and Klavicek insisted that expulsion should be followed by eviction from the room, and the motion was carried.
All the active members of the District Komsomol came to the commune''s house-warming party. A gigantic samovar was borrowed from the next-door neighbour. The tea party consumed the commune''s entire stock of saccharine. After tea, they sang in chorus and their lusty young voices rocked the rafters:
The whole wide world is drenched with tears,
In bitter toil our days are passed,
But, wait, the radiant dawn appears....
Talya Lagutina, the girl from the tobacco factory, led the singing. Her crimson kerchief had slipped to one side of her head and her eyes, whose depths none as yet had fathomed, danced with mischief. Talya had a most infectious laugh and she looked at the world from the radiant height of her eighteen years. Now her arm swept up and the singing poured forth like a fanfare of trumpets:
Spread, our song, o''er the world like a flood,
Proudly our flag waves unfurled.
It burns and glows throughout the world,
On fire from our heart''s blood.
The party broke up late and the silent streets awoke to the echo of their young voices.
The telephone rang and Zharky reached for the receiver.
"Keep quiet, I can''t hear anything!" he shouted to the noisy Komsomols who had crowded in the Secretary''s office.
The hubbub subsided somewhat.
"Hullo! Ah, it''s you. Yes, right away. What''s on the agenda? Oh, the same old thing, hauling firewood from the wharves. What''s that? No, he''s not been sent anywhere. He''s here. Want to speak to him? Just a minute."
Zharky beckoned to Pavel.
"Comrade Ustinovich wants to speak to you," he said and handed him the receiver.
"I thought you were out of town," Pavel heard Rita''s voice say. "I happen to be free this evening. Why don''t you come over? My brother has gone. He was just passing through town and decided to look me up. We haven''t seen each other for two years."
Her brother!
Pavel did not hear any more. He was recalling that unfortunate evening and the resolve he had taken that night down on the bridge. Yes, he must go to her this evening and put an end to this. Love brought too much pain and anxiety with it. Was this the time for such things?
The voice in his ear said: "Can''t you hear me?"
"Yes, yes. I hear you. Very well. I''ll come over after the Bureau meeting." And he hung up.
He looked her straight in the eyes and, gripping the edge of the oak table, he said: "I don''t think I''ll be able to come and see you any more." He saw her thick eyelashes sweep upward at his words. Her pencil paused in its flight over the page and then lay motionless on the open pad.
"Why not?"
"It''s very hard for me to find the time. You know yourself we''re not having it so easy just now. I''m sorry, but I''m afraid we''ll have to call it off...."
He was conscious that the last few words sounded none too firm.
"What are you beating about the bush for?" he raged inwardly. "You haven''t the courage to strike out with both fists."
Aloud he went on: "Besides, I''ve been wanting to tell you for some time ?" I have difficulty in grasping your explanations. When we studied with Segal what I learned stayed in my head somehow, but with you it doesn''t. I''ve always had to go to Tokarev after our lessons and get him to explain things properly. It''s my fault ?" my noodle just can''t take it. You''ll have to find some pupil with a bit more brains."
He turned away from her searching gaze, and, deliberately burning all his bridges, added doggedly: "So you see it would just be a waste of time for us to continue."
Then he got up, moved the chair aside carefully with his foot and looked at the bowed head and the face that turned pale in the light of the lamp. He put on his cap.
"Well, good-bye, Comrade Rita. Sorry I''ve wasted so much of your time. I ought to have told you long before this. That''s where I''m to blame."
Rita mechanically gave him her hand, but she was too stunned by his sudden coldness to say more than a few words.
"I don''t blame you, Pavel. If I haven''t succeeded in finding some way of making things clear to you I deserve this."
Pavel walked heavily to the door. He closed it after him softly. Downstairs he paused for a moment ?" it was not too late to go back and explain.... But what was the use? For what? To hear her scornful response and find himself outside again? No.
Graveyards of dilapidated railway carriages and abandoned engines grew on the sidings. The wind whirled and scattered the dry sawdust in the deserted woodyards.
And all around the town in the forest thickets and deep ravines lurked Orlik''s band. By day they lay low in surrounding hamlets or in wooded tracts, but at night they crept out onto the railway tracks, tore them up ruthlessly and, their evil work done, crawled back again into their lair.
And many an iron steed went crashing down the railway embankment. Boxcars were smashed to smithereens, sleepy humans were flattened like pancakes beneath the wreckage, and precious grain mingled with blood and earth.
The band would swoop down suddenly on some small town scattering the frightened, clucking hens in all directions. A few shots would be fired at random. Outside the building of the Volost Soviet there would be a brief crackle of rifle fire, like the sound of bracken underfoot, and the ban***s would dash about the village on their well-fed horses cutting down everyone who crossed their path. They hacked at their victims as calmly as if they were splitting logs. Rarely did they shoot, for bullets were scarce.
The band would be gone as swiftly as it had come. It had its eyes and ears everywhere. Those eyes saw through the walls of the small white building that housed the Volost Soviet, for invisible threads led from the priest''s house and the kulaks'' cottages to the forest thickets. Cases of ammunition, chunks of fresh pork, bottles of bluish raw spirit went the same way, also news that was whispered into the ears of the lesser atamans and then passed on by devious routes to Orlik himself.
Though it consisted of no more than two or three hundred cutthroats, the band had so far eluded capture. It would split up into several small units and operate in two or three districts simultaneously. It was impossible to catch all of them. Last night''s ban*** would next day appear as a peaceful peasant pottering in his garden, feeding his horse or standing at his gate puffing smugly at his pipe and watching the cavalry patrols ride by with a sly look in his eyes.
Alexander Puzyrevsky with his regiment chased the ban***s up and down the three districts with dogged persistence. Occasionally he did succeed in treading on their tail; a month later Orlik was obliged to withdraw his gangs from two of the districts, and now he was hemmed in on a narrow strip of territory.
Life in the town jogged along at its customary pace. Noisy crowds swarmed its five markets. Two impulses dominated the milling throngs ?" to grab as much as possible, and to give as little as possible. This environment offered unlimited scope for the energy and abilities of all manner of sharks and swindlers. Hundreds of slippery individuals with eyes that expressed everything but honesty snooped about among the crowds. All the scum of the town gathered here like flies on a dunghill, moved by a single purpose: to hoodwink the gullible. The few trains that came this way spewed out gobs of sack-laden people who made at once for the markets.
At night the market places were deserted, and the dark rows of booths and stalls looked sinister and menacing.
It was the bold man who would venture after dark into this desolate quarter where danger lurked behind every stall. And often by night a shot would ring out like the clang of a hammer on iron, and some throat would choke on its own blood. And by the time the handful of militiamen from the nearest beats would reach the spot (they did not venture out alone) they would find nothing but the mutilated corpse. The killers had taken to their heels and the commotion had swept away the few nocturnal habitués of the market square like a gust of wind.
Opposite the market place was the "Orion" cinema. The street and pavement were flooded with electric light and people crowded around the entrance. Inside the hall the movie projector clicked, flashing melodramatic love scenes onto the screen; now and then the film snapped and the operator stopped the projector amid roars of disapproval from the audience.

In the centre of the town and on the outskirts life appeared to be taking its usual course. Even in the Gubernia Committee of the Party, the nerve centre of revolutionary authority, everything was quiet. But this was merely an outward calm.
A storm was brewing in the town. Many of those who came there from various directions, with their army rifles plainly visible under their long peasant overcoats, were aware of its coming. So did those who under the guise of food speculators arrived on the roofs of trains, but instead of carrying their sacks to the market took them to carefully memorised addresses.
These knew. But the workers'' districts, and even Bolsheviks, had no inkling of the approaching storm.
Only five Bolsheviks in town knew what was being plotted.
Closely co-operating with foreign missions in Warsaw, the remnants of Petlyura''s bands which the Red Army had driven into White Poland were preparing to take part in the uprising. A raiding force was being formed of what remained of Petlyura''s regiments.
The central committee of the insurgents had an organisation in Shepetovka; it consisted of forty-seven members, most of them former active counter-revolutionaries whom the local Cheka had trustingly left at liberty.
Father Vasili, Ensign Vinnik, and Kuzmenko, a Petlyura officer, were the leaders of the organisation. The priest''s daughters, Vinnik''s father and brother, and a man named Samotinya who had wormed his way into the office of the Executive Committee did the spying.
The plan was to attack the frontier Special Department by night with hand grenades, release the prisoners and, if possible, seize the railway station.
Meanwhile officers were being secretly concentrated in the city which was to be the hub of the uprising, and ban*** gangs were being moved into the neighbouring forests. From here, contact with Rumania and with Petlyura himself was maintained through trusted agents.
Fyodor Zhukhrai, in his office at the Special Department, had not slept for six nights. He was one of the five Bolsheviks who were aware of what was brewing. The ex-sailor was now experiencing the sensation of the big game hunter who has tracked down his prey and is now waiting for the beast to spring.
He dare not shout or raise the alarm. The bloodthirsty monster must be slain. Then and then only would it be possible to work in peace, without having to glance fearfully behind every bush. The beast must not be scared away. In a life and death struggle such as this it is endurance and firmness that win the day.
The crucial moment was at hand. Somewhere in the town amidst the labyrinth of conspiratorial hide-outs the time had been set: tomorrow night.
But the five Bolsheviks who knew decided to strike first. The time was tonight.
The same evening an armoured train slid quietly out of the railway yards and the massive gates closed as quietly behind it.
Coded telegrams flew over the wires and in response to their urgent summons the alert and watchful men to whom the republic''s security had been entrusted took immediate steps to stamp out the hornet''s nests.
Akim telephoned to Zharky.
"Cell meetings in order? Good. Come over here at once for a conference and bring the Party District Committee Secretary with you. The fuel problem is worse than we thought. We''ll discuss the details when you get here." Akim spoke in a firm, hurried voice.
"This firewood business is driving us all potty," Zharky growled back into the receiver.
Litke drove the two secretaries over to headquarters at breakneck speed. As they ascended the stairs to the first floor they saw at once that they had not been summoned here to talk about firewood.
On the office manager''s desk stood a machine-gun and gunners from the Special Task Unit were busy beside it. Silent guards from the town''s Party and Komsomol organisations stood in the corridors. Behind the wide doors of the Secretary''s office an emergency session of the Bureau of the Party Gubernia Committee was drawing to a close.
Through a fanlight giving onto the street wires led to two field telephones. There was a subdued hum of conversation in the room. Akim, Rita and Mikhailo were there, Rita in a Red Army helmet, khaki skirt, leather jacket with a heavy Mauser strapped on to it â?" the uniform she used to wear at the front when she had been Company Political Instructor.
"What''s all this about?" Zharky asked her in surprise.
"Alert drill, Vanya. We''re going to your district right away. We are to meet at the Fifth Infantry School. The Komsomols are going there straight from their cell meetings. The main thing is to get there without attracting attention."
The grounds of the old military school with its giant old oaks, its stagnant pond overgrown with burdock and nettles and its broad unswept paths were wrapped in silence.
In the centre of the grounds behind a high white wall stood the school building, now the premises of the Fifth Infantry School for Red Army commanders. It was late at night. The upper floor of the building was dark. Outwardly all was serene, and the chance passerby would have thought that the school''s inmates were asleep. Why, then, were the iron gates open, and what were those two dark shapes like monster toads standing by the entrance? The people who gathered here from all parts of the railway district knew that the school''s inmates could not be asleep, once a night alert had been given. They were coming straight from their Komsomol and Party cell meetings where the brief announcement had been made; they came quietly, individually, in pairs, never more than three together, and each of them carried the Communist Party or Komsomol membership card, without which no one could pass through the iron gates.
The assembly hall, where a large crowd had already gathered, was flooded with light. The windows were heavily curtained with thick canvas tenting. The Bolsheviks who had been summoned here stood about calmly smoking their homemade cigarettes and cracking jokes about the precautions taken for a drill. No one felt this was a real alert; it was being done to maintain discipline in the special task detachments. The seasoned soldier, however, recognised the signs of a genuine alert as soon as he entered the schoolyard. Far too much caution was being displayed. Platoons of students were lining up outside to whispered commands. Machine-guns were being carried quietly into the yard and not a chink of light showed in any of the windows of the building.
"Something serious in the wind, Mityai?" Pavel Korchagin inquired of Dubava, who was sitting on a windowsill next to a girl Pavel remembered seeing a couple of days before at Zharky''s place.
Dubava clapped Pavel good-humouredly on the shoulder.
"Getting cold feet, eh? Never mind, we''ll teach you fellows how to fight. You don''t know each other, do you?" he nodded toward the girl. "This is Anna, don''t know her second name, she''s in charge of the agitation and propaganda centre."
The girl thus introduced regarded Korchagin with interest and pushed back a wisp of hair that had escaped from under her violet kerchief. Korchagin''s eyes met hers and for a moment or two a silent contest ensued. Her sparking jet-black eyes under their sweeping lashes challenged his. Pavel shifted his gaze to Dubava. Conscious that he was blushing, he scowled.
"Which of you does the agitating?" he inquired forcing a smile.
At that moment there was a stir in the hall. A Company Commander climbed onto a chair and shouted: "Members of the first company, line up. Hurry, Comrades, hurry!"
Zhukhrai entered with the Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee and Akim. They had just arrived. The hall was now filled from end to end with people lined up in formation.
The Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee stepped onto the mounting of a training machine-gun and raised his hand.
"Comrades," he said, "you have been summoned here on an extremely serious and urgent matter. What I am going to tell you now could not have been told even yesterday for security reasons. Tomorrow night a counterrevolutionary uprising is scheduled to break out in this and other towns of the Ukraine. The town is full of Whiteguard officers. Ban*** units have been concentrated all around the town. Part of the conspirators have penetrated into the armoured car detachment and are working there as drivers. But the Cheka has uncovered the plot in good time and we are putting the entire Party and Komsomol organisations under arms. The first and second Communist battalions will operate together with the military school units and Cheka detachments. The military school units have already gone into action. It is now your turn, Comrades. You have fifteen minutes to get your weapons and line up. Comrade Zhukhrai will be in command of the operation. The unit commanders will take their orders from him. I need hardly stress the gravity of the situation. Tomorrow''s insurrection must be averted today."
A quarter of an hour later the armed battalion was lined up in the schoolyard.
Zhukhrai ran his eye over the motionless ranks. Three paces in front of them stood two men girded with leather belts: Battalion Commander Menyailo, a foundry worker, a giant of a man from the Urals, and beside him Commissar Akim. To the left were the platoons of the first company, with the company commander and political instructor two paces in front. Behind them stood the silent ranks of the Communist battalion, three hundred strong. Fyodor gave the signal. "Time to begin."
The three hundred men marched through the deserted streets.
The city slept.
On Lvovskaya Street, opposite Dikaya, the battalion broke ranks.
Noiselessly they surrounded the buildings. Headquarters was set up on the steps of a shop.
An automobile came speeding down Lvovskaya Street from the direction of the centre, its headlights cutting a bright path before it. It pulled up sharply in front of the battalion command post.
Hugo Litke had brought his father this time. The commandant sprang out of the car, throwing a few clipped Lettish sentences over his shoulder to his son. The car leapt forward and disappeared in a flash around the bend of the road. Litke, his hands gripping the steering wheel as though part of it, his eyes glued to the road, drove like a devil.
Yes, there was need of Litke''s wild driving tonight. He was hardly likely to get two nights in the guardhouse for speeding now!
And Hugo flew down the streets like a meteor.
Zhukhrai, whom young Litke drove from one end of town to the other in the twinkling of an eye, remarked approvingly: "If you don''t knock anyone down tonight you''ll get a gold watch tomorrow."
Hugo was jubilant. "I thought I''d get ten days in jail for that corner...."
The first blows were struck at the conspirators'' headquarters. Before long groups of prisoners and batches of documents were being delivered to the Special Department.
In house No. 11 on Dikaya Street lived one Zurbert who, according to information in possession of the Cheka, had played no small part in the Whiteguard plot. The lists of the officers'' units that were to operate in the Podol area were in his keeping.
Litke senior himself came to Dikaya Street to make the arrest. The windows of Zurbert''s apartment looked out onto a garden which was separated from a former nunnery by a high wall. Zurbert was not at home. The neighbours said that he had not been seen at all that day. A search was made and, the lists of names and addresses were found, together with a case of hand grenades. Litke, having ordered an ambush to be set, lingered for a moment in the room to examine the papers.
The young military school student on sentry duty in the garden below could see the lighted window from the corner of the garden where he was stationed. It was a little frightening to stand there alone in the dark. He had been told to keep an eye on the wall. The comforting light seemed very far from his post. And to make matters worse, the moon kept darting behind the clouds. In the night the bushes seemed to be invested with a sinister life of their own. The young soldier stabbed at the darkness around him with his bayonet. Nothingness.
"Why did they put me here? No one could climb that wall anyhow, it''s far too high. I think I''ll go over to the window and peep in." Glancing up again at the wall, he emerged from his dank, fungus-smelling corner. As he came up to the window, Litke picked up the papers from the table. At that moment a shadow appeared on top of the wall whence both the sentry by the window and the man inside the room were clearly visible. With catlike agility the shadow swung itself onto a tree and dropped down to the ground. Stealthily it crept up to its victim. A single blow and the sentry was sprawled on the ground with a naval dirk driven up to the hilt into his neck.
A shot rang out in the garden galvanising the men surrounding the block. Six of them ran toward the house, their steps ringing loudly in the night. Litke sat slumped forward over the table, the blood pouring from the wound in his head. He was dead. The window pane was shattered. But the assassin had not had time to seize the documents.
Several more shots were heard behind the nunnery wall. The murderer had climbed over the wall to the street and was now shooting his way out, trying to escape by way of the Lukyanov vacant lot. But a bullet cut short his flight.
All night long the searches continued. Hundreds of people not registered in the books of the house committees and found in possession of suspicious documents and carrying weapons were dispatched to the Cheka, where a commission was at work screening the suspects.
Here and there the conspirators fought back. During the search in a house on Zhilyanskaya Street Anton Lebedev was killed by a shot fired point-blank.
The Solomenka battalion lost five men that night, and the Cheka lost Jan Litke, that staunch Bolshevik and faithful guardian of the republic.
But the Whiteguard uprising was nipped in the bud.
That same night Father Vasili with his daughters and the rest of the gang were arrested in Shepetovka.
The tension relaxed. But soon a new enemy threatened the town: paralysis of the railways, which meant starvation and cold in the coming winter.
Everything now depended on grain and firewood.

Chapter Two
Fyodor took his short-stemmed pipe out of his mouth and poked reflectively at the ash in the bowl with a cautious finger; the pipe was out.
A dense cloud of grey smoke from a dozen cigarettes hovered below the ceiling and over the chair where sat the Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee. From the corners of the room the faces of the people seated around the table were only dimly visible through the haze.
Tokarev, sitting next to the Chairman, leaned forward and plucked irritably at his sparse beard, glancing now and again out of the corner of his eye at a short, bald-headed man whose high-pitched voice went on endlessly stringing out phrases that were as empty and meaningless as a sucked egg.
Akim caught the look in the old worker''s eye and was reminded of a fighting **** back in his childhood days in the village who had had the same wicked look in his eye just before pouncing on his adversary.
The Gubernia Party Committee had been in conference for more than an hour. The bald man was Chairman of the Railway Firewood Committee.
Leafing with nimble fingers through the heap of papers before him, the bald man rattled on: ".. .Under these circumstances it is clearly impossible to carry out the decision of the Gubernia Committee and the railway management. I repeat, even a month from now we shall not be able to give more than four hundred cubic metres of firewood. As for the one hundred and eighty thousand cubic metres required, well, that''s sheer..." the speaker fumbled for the right word, "er... sheer utopia!" he wound up and his small mouth pursed itself up into an expression of injury.
There was a long silence.
Fyodor tapped his pipe with his fingernail and knocked out the ashes. It was Tokarev who finally broke the silence.
"There''s no use wasting our breath," he began in his rumbling bass. "The Railway Firewood Committee hasn''t any firewood, never had any, and doesn''t expect any in the future.... Right?"
The bald man shrugged a shoulder.
"Excuse me, Comrade, we did stock up firewood, but the shortage of road transport...." He swallowed, wiped his polished pate with a checkered handkerchief; he made several fruitless attempts to stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket, and finally shoved it nervously under his portfolio.
"What have you done about delivering the wood? After all, a good many days have passed since the leading specialists mixed up in the conspiracy were arrested," Denekko observed from his corner.
The bald man turned to him. "I wrote the railway administration three times stating that unless we had the proper transport facilities it would be impossible...."
Tokarev stopped him. "We''ve heard that already," he said coldly, eyeing the bald man with hostility. "Do you take us for a pack of fools?"
The bald man felt a chill run down his spine at these words.
"I cannot answer for the actions of counter-revolutionaries," he replied in a low voice.
"But you knew, didn''t you, that the timber was being felled a long distance from the railway line?"
"I heard about it, but I could not bring the attention of my superiors to irregularities on a sector outside my province."
"How many men have you on the job?" the chairman of the trade union council demanded.
"About two hundred," the bald man replied.
"That makes a cubic metre a year for every parasite!" fumed Tokarev.
"The Railway Firewood Committee has been allotted special rations, food the workers ought to be getting, and look what you''re doing? What happened to those two carriages of flour you received for the workers?" the trade union chairman persisted.
Similar pointed questions rained down on the bald man from all sides and he answered them in the harassed manner of a man trying to ward off annoying cre***ors. He twisted and turned like an eel to avoid direct answers, but his eyes darted nervously about him. He sensed danger and his cowardly soul craved but one thing: to get away from here as quickly as possible and slink off to his cosy nest, to his supper and his still youthful wife who was probably cosily whiling away the time with a Paul de Kock novel.
Lending an attentive ear to the bald man''s replies, Fyodor scribbled in his notebook: "I believe this man ought to be checked up on properly. This is more than mere incompetence. I know one or two things about him.... Stop the discussion and let him go so we can get down to business."
The Chairman read the note and nodded to Fyodor.
Zhukhrai rose and went out into the corridor to make a telephone call. When he returned the Chairman was reading the resolution:
". . .to remove the management of the Railway Firewood Committee for downright sabotage, the matter of the timber workings to be turned over to the investigation authorities."
The bald man had expected worse. True, to be removed from his post for downright sabotage would raise the question of his reliability in general, but that was a mere trifle. As for the Boyarka business, he was not worried, that was not his province after all. "A close shave, though," he said to himself, "I thought they had really dug up something. ..."
Now almost reassured, he remarked as he put his papers back into his portfolio: "Of course, I am a non-Party specialist and you are at liberty to distrust me. But my conscience is clear. If I have failed to do what was required of me that was because it was impossible."
No one made any comment. The bald man went out, hurried downstairs, and opened the street door with a feeling of intense relief.
"Your name, please?" a man in an army coat accosted him.
With a sinking heart the baldhead stammered: "Cher. . . vinsky...."
Upstairs as soon as the outsider was gone, thirteen heads bent closer over the large conference table.
"See here," Zhukhrai''s finger jabbed the unfolded map. "That''s Boyarka station. The timber felling is six versts away. There are two hundred and ten thousand cubic metres of wood stacked up at this point: a whole army of men worked hard for eight months to pile up all that wood, and what''s the result? Treachery. The railway and the town are without firewood. To haul that timber six versts to the station would take five thousand carts no less than one month, and that only if they made two trips a day. The nearest village is fifteen versts away. What''s more, Orlik and his band are prowling about in those parts. You realise what this means? Look, according to the plan the felling was to have been started right here and continued in the direction of the station, and those scoundrels carried it right into the depths of the forest. The purpose was to make sure we would not be able to haul the firewood to the railway line. And they weren''t far wrong â?" we can''t even get a hundred carts for the job. It''s a foul blow they''ve struck us. The uprising was no more serious than this."
Zhukhrai''s clenched fist dropped heavily onto the waxed paper of the map. Each of the thirteen clearly visualised the grimmer aspects of the situation which Zhukhrai had omitted to mention. Winter was in the offing. They saw hospitals, schools, offices and hundreds of thousands of people caught in the icy grip of the frost; the railway stations swarming with people and only one train a week to handle the traffic.
There was deep silence as each man pondered the situation.
At length Fyodor relaxed his fist.
"There is one way out, Comrades," he said.
"We must build a seven-verst narrow-gauge line from the station to the timber tract in three months. The first section leading to the beginning of the tract must be ready in six weeks. I''ve been working on this for the past week. We''ll need," Zhukhrai''s voice cracked in his dry throat, "three hundred and fifty workers and two engineers. There is enough rails and seven engines at Pushcha-Vo***sa. The Komsomols dug them up in the warehouses. There was a project to lay a narrow-gauge line from Pushcha-Vo***sa to the town before the war. The trouble is there are no accommodations in Boyarka for the workers, the place is in ruins. We''ll have to send the men in small groups for a fortnight at a time, they won''t be able to hold out any longer than that. Shall we send the Komsomols, Akim?" And without waiting for an answer, he went on: "The Komsomol will rush as many of its members to the spot as possible. There''s the Solomenka organisation to begin with, and some from the town. The-task is hard, very hard, but if the youngsters are told what is at stake I''m certain they''ll do it."
The chief of the railway shook his head dubiously.
"I''m afraid it''s no use. To lay seven versts of track in the woods under such con***ions, with the autumn rains due and the frosts coming..." he began wearily. But Zhukhrai cut him short.
"You ought to have paid more attention to the firewood problem, Andrei Vasilievich. That line has got to be built and we''re going to build it. We''re not going to fold our hands and freeze to death, are we?"
The last crates of tools were loaded onto the train. The train crew took their places. A fine drizzle was falling. Crystal raindrops rolled down Rita''s glistening leather jacket.
Rita shook hands warmly with Tokarev. "We wish you luck," she said softly.
The old man regarded her affectionately from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows.
"Yes, they''ve given us a peck of trouble, blast ''em," he growled in answer to his own thoughts. "You here had better look to things, so that if there''s any hitch over there you can put a bit of pressure on where it''s needed. These good-for-nothings here can''t do anything without a lot of red tape. Well, time I was getting aboard, daughter."
The old man buttoned up his jacket. At the last moment Rita inquired casually: "Isn''t Korchagin going along? I didn''t notice him among the boys."
"No, he and the job superintendent went out there yesterday by handcar to prepare for our coming."
At that moment Zharky, Dubava, and Anna Borhart with her jacket thrown carelessly across her shoulders and a cigarette between her slender fingers, came hurrying down the platform toward them.
Rita had time to ask Tokarev one more question before the others joined them.
"How are your studies with Korchagin getting along?"
The old man looked at her in surprise.
"What studies? The lad''s under your wing, isn''t he? He''s told me a lot about you. Thinks the world of you."
Rita looked sceptical. "Are you quite sure, Comrade Tokarev? Didn''t he always go to you for a proper explanation after his lessons with me?"
The old man burst out laughing. "To me? Why, I never saw hide or hair of him."
The engine shrieked. Klavicek shouted from one of the carriages:
"Hey, Comrade Ustinovich, give us our daddy back! What''d we do without him?"
The Czech was about to say something else, but catching sight of the three late-comers he checked himself. He noticed the anxious look in Anna''s eyes, caught with a pang her parting smile to Dubava and turned quickly away from the window.
The autumn rain lashed the face. Low clouds, leaden-hued and swollen with moisture, crawled over the earth. Late autumn had stripped the woods bare; and the old hornbeams looked gaunt and downcast, their wrinkled trunks hidden under the brown moss. Remorseless autumn had robbed them of their luxuriant garments, and they stood there naked and pitiful.
The little station building huddled forlornly in the midst of the forest. A strip of freshly dug earth ran from the stone freight platform into the woods. Around this strip men swarmed like ants.
The clayey mud squelched unpleasantly underfoot. There was a ringing of crowbars and a grating of spades on stone over by the embankment where the men were furiously digging.
The rain came down as if through a fine sieve and the chill drops penetrated the men''s clothing. The rain threatened to wash away what their labour had accomplished, for the clay slid down the embankment in a soggy mass.
Soaked to the skin, their clothing chill and sodden, the men worked on until long after dark.
And with every day the strip of upturned earth penetrated farther and farther into the forest.
Not far from the station loomed the grim skeleton of what had once been a brick building. Everything that could be removed bodily, torn out or blasted loose had long since been carried off by marauders. There were gaping holes in place of windows and doors; black gashes where stove doors had once been. Through the holes in the tattered roof the rafters showed like the ribs of a skeleton.
Only the concrete floor in the four large rooms remained intact. At night four hundred men slept on this floor in their damp, mud-caked clothing. Muddy water streamed from their clothes when they wrung them out at the doorway. And the men heaped bitter curses on the rain and the boggy soil. They lay in compact rows on the concrete floor with its thin covering of straw, huddling together for warmth. The steam rose from their clothing but it did not dry. And the rain seeped through the sacks that were nailed over the empty window frames and trickled down onto the floor. It drummed loudly on the remnants of sheet metal roofing, and the wind whistled through the great cracks in the door.
In the morning they drank tea in the tumbledown barracks that served for a kitchen, and went off to their work. Dinner, day after day with sickening monotony, consisted of plain boiled lentils, and there was a daily allowance of a pound and a half of bread as black as coal.
That was all the town could provide. The job superintendent, Valerian Nikodimovich Patoshkin, a tall spare old man with two deep lines at his mouth, and technician Vakulenko, a thickset man with a coarse-featured face and a fleshy nose, had put up at the station master''s house.
Tokarev shared the tiny room occupied by the station Cheka agent, a small, volatile man named Kholyava.
The men endured the hardships with dogged fortitude, and the railway embankment reached farther into the forest from day to day.
True, there had been some desertions: at first nine, and a few days later, another five.
The first major calamity occurred a week after the work started, when the bread supply failed to arrive with the night train.
Dubava woke Tokarev and told him the news. The secretary of the Party group swung his hairy legs over the side of the bed and scratched himself furiously under the armpit.
"The fun''s beginning!" he growled and began hastily to dress.
Kholyava waddled in on his short legs.
"Run down to the telephone and call the Special Department," Tokarev instructed him, and turning to Dubava added, "and not a word to anybody about the bread, mind."
After berating the railway telephone operators for a full half hour, the irrepressible Kholyava succeeded in getting Zhukhrai, the assistant chief of the Special Department, on the line, while Tokarev stood by fidgeting with impatience.
"What! Bread not delivered? I''ll find out who''s responsible for that!" Zhukhrai''s voice coming over the wire had an ominous ring.
"What are we going to give the men to eat tomorrow?" Tokarev shouted back angrily.
There was a long pause; Zhukhrai was evidently considering some plan of action. "You''ll get the bread tonight," he said at last. "I''ll send young Litke with the car. He knows the way. You''ll have the bread by morning."
At dawn a mud-spattered car loaded with sacks of bread drove up to the station. Litke, his face white and strained after a sleepless night at the wheel, climbed out wearily.
Work on the railway line became a struggle against increasing odds. The railway administration announced that there were no sleepers to be had. The town authorities could find no means of shipping the rails and engines to the railway job, and the engines themselves turned out to be in need of substantial repairs. No workers were forthcoming to replace the first batch who had done their share and were now so completely worn out that there could be no question of detaining them.
The leading Party members met in the tumbledown shed dimly lit by a wick lamp and sat up late into the night discussing the situation.
The following morning Tokarev, Dubava and Klavicek went to town, taking six men with them to repair the engines and speed up the shipment of the rails. Klavicek, who was a baker by trade, was sent as inspector to the supply department, while the rest went on to Pushcha-Vo***sa.
The rain poured down without ceasing.

Pavel Korchagin pulled his foot out of the sticky slime with an effort. A sharp sensation of cold told him that the worn sole of his boot had finally parted from the uppers. His torn boots had been a source of keen discomfort to Pavel ever since he had come to the job. They were never dry and the mud that filtered in squelched when he walked. Now one sole was gone altogether and the icy mire cut into his bare foot. Pavel pulled the sole out of the mud and regarded it with despair and broke the vow he had given himself not to swear. He could not go on working with one foot exposed, so he hobbled back to the barracks, sat down beside the field kitchen, took off his muddy footcloth and stretched out his numb foot to the fire.
Odarka, the lineman''s wife who worked as cook''s helper, was busy cutting up beetroots at the kitchen table. A woman of generous proportions, still youthful, with broad almost masculine shoulders, an ample bosom and massive hips, she wielded the kitchen knife with vigour and the mountain of sliced vegetables grew rapidly under her nimble fingers.
Odarka threw a careless glance at Pavel and snapped at him:
"If it''s dinner you''re hankering after you''re a bit early, my lad. Ought to be ashamed of yourself sneaking away from work like that! Take your feet off that stove. This is a kitchen, not a bathhouse!"
The cook came in at that point.
"My blasted boot has gone to pieces," Pavel said, explaining his untimely presence in the kitchen.
The elderly cook looked at the battered boot and nodding toward Odarka he said: "Her husband might be able to do something with it, he''s a bit of a cobbler. Better see to it or you''ll be in a bad way. You can''t get along without boots."
When she heard this, Odarka took another look at Pavel.
"I took you for a loafer," she admitted.
Pavel smiled to show that there were no hard feelings. Odarka examined the boot with the eye of an expert.
"There''s no use trying to patch it," she concluded.
"But I''ll tell you what I can do. I''ll bring you an old galosh we''ve got lying around at home and you can wear it on top of the boot. You can''t go around like that, you''ll kill yourself! The frosts will start any day now!"
And Odarka, now all sympathy, laid down her knife and hurried out, returning shortly with a deep galosh and a strip of stout linen.
As he wrapped his foot, now warm and dry, in the thick linen and put it into the galosh, Pavel rewarded Odarka with a grateful look.
Tokarev came back from town fuming. He called a meeting of the leading Communists in Kholyava''s room and told them the unpleasant news.
"Nothing but obstacles all along the line. Wherever you go the wheels seem to be turning but they don''t get anywhere. Far too many of those White rats about, and it looks as if there''ll be enough to last our lifetime anyway. I tell you, boys, things look bad. There are no replacements for us yet and no one knows how many there will be. The frosts are due any day now, and we must get through the marsh before then at all costs, because when the ground freezes it''ll be too late. So while they''re shaking up those fellows in town who''re making a mess of things, we here have to double our speed. That line has got to be built and we''re going to build it if we die doing it. Otherwise it isn''t Bolsheviks we''ll be but jelly-fish." There was a steely note in Tokarev''s hoarse bass voice, and his eyes under their bushy brows had a stubborn gleam.
"We''ll call a closed meeting today and pass on the news to our Party members and tomorrow we''ll all get down to work. In the morning we''ll let the non-Party fellows go; the rest of us will stay. Here''s the Gubernia Committee decision," he said, handing Pankratov a folded sheet of paper.
Pavel Korchagin, peering over Pankratov''s shoulder, read: "In view of the emergency all members of the Komsomol are to remain on the job and are not to be relieved until the first consignment of firewood is forthcoming. Signed R. Ustinovich, on behalf of the Secretary of the Gubernia Committee."
The kitchen barracks was packed. One hundred and twenty men had squeezed themselves into its narrow confines. They stood against the walls, climbed on the tables and some were even perched on top of the field kitchen.
Pankratov opened the meeting. Then Tokarev made a brief speech winding up with an announcement that had the effect of a bombshell:
"The Communists and Komsomols will not leave the job tomorrow."
The old man accompanied his statement with a gesture that stressed the finality of the "decision. It swept away all cherished hopes of returning to town, going home, getting away from this hole.
A roar of angry voices drowned out everything else for a few moments. The swaying bodies caused the feeble oil light to flicker fitfully. In the semidarkness the commotion increased. They wanted to go "home"; they protested indignantly that they had had as much as they could stand. Some received the news in silence. And only one man spoke of deserting.
"To hell with it all!" he shouted angrily from his corner, loosing an ugly stream of invective. "I''m not going to stay here another day. It''s all right to do hard labour if you''ve committed a crime. But what have we done? We''re fools to stand for it. We''ve had two weeks of it, and that''s enough. Let those who made the decision come out and do the work themselves. Maybe some folks like poking around in this muck, but I''ve only one life to live. I''m leaving tomorrow."
The voice came from behind Okunev and he lit a match to see who it was. For an instant the speaker''s rage-distorted face and open mouth were snatched out of the darkness by the match''s flame. But that instant was enough for Okunev to recognise the son of a gubernia food commissariat bookkeeper.
"Checking up, eh?" he snarled. "Well, I''m not afraid, I''m no thief."
The match flickered out. Pankratov rose and drew himself up to his full height.
"What kind of talk is that? Who dares to compare a Party task to a hard-labour sentence?" he thundered, running his eyes menacingly over the front rows. "No, Comrades, there''s no going to town for us, our place is here. If we clear out now folks will freeze to death. The sooner we finish the job the sooner we get back home. Running away like that whiner back there suggests doesn''t fit in with our ideas or our discipline."
Pankratov, a stevedore, was not fond of long speeches but even this brief statement was interrupted by the same irate voice.
"The non-Party fellows are leaving, aren''t they?"
"Yes."
A lad in a short overcoat came elbowing his way to the front. A Komsomol card flew up, struck against Pankratov''s chest, dropped onto the table and stood on edge.
"There, take your card. I''m not going to risk my health for a bit of cardboard!"
His last words were drowned out by a roar of angry voices:
"What do you think you''re throwing around!"
"Treacherous bastard!"
"Got into the Komsomol because he thought he''d have it easy."
"Chuck him out!"
"Let me get at the louse!"
The deserter, his head lowered, made his way to the exit. They let him pass, shrinking away from him as from a leper. The door closed with a creak behind him.
Pankratov picked up the discarded membership card and held it to the flame of the oil lamp.
The cardboard caught alight and curled up as it burned.
A shot echoed in the forest. A horseman turned from the tumbledown barracks and dived into the darkness of the forest. A moment later men came pouring out of the barracks and school building. Someone discovered a piece of plywood that had been stuck into the door. A match flared up and shielding the unsteady flame from the wind they read the scrawled message: "Clear out of here and go back where you came from. If you don''t, we will shoot every one of you. I give you till tomorrow night to get out. Ataman Chesnok."
Chesnok belonged to Orlik''s band.
An open diary lies on the table in Rita''s room.
December 2
"We had our first snow this morning. The frost is severe. I met Vyacheslav Olshinsky on the stairs and we walked down the street together.
" ''I always enjoy the first snowfall,'' he said. ''Particularly when it is frosty like this. Lovely, isn''t it?''
"But I was thinking of Boyarka and I told him that the frost and snow do not gladden me at all. On the contrary they depress me. And I told him why.
" ''That is a purely subjective reaction,'' he said. ''If one argues on that premise all merriment or any manifestation of joy in wartime, for example, would have to be banned. But life is not like that. The tragedy is confined to the strip of front line where the battle is being fought. There life is overshadowed by the proximity of death. Yet even there people laugh. And away from the front, life goes on as always: people laugh, weep, suffer, rejoice, love, seek amusement, entertainment, excitement.''
"It was difficult to detect any shade of irony in Olshinsky''s words. Olshinsky is a representative of the People''s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. He has been in the Party since 1917. He dresses well, is always cleanly shaven with a faint scent of perfume about him. He lives in our house, in Segal''s apartment. Sometimes he drops in to see me in the evenings. He is very interesting to talk to, he knows a lot about Europe, lived for many years in Paris. But I doubt whether he and I could ever be good friends. That is because for him I am primarily a woman; the fact that I am his Party comrade is a secondary consideration. True, he does not attempt to disguise his sentiments and opinions on this score, he has the courage of his convictions and there is nothing coarse about his attentions. He has the knack of investing them with a sort of beauty. Yet I do not like him.
"The gruff simplicity of Zhukhrai is far more to my taste than all Olshinsky''s polished European manners.
"News from Boyarka comes in the form of brief reports. Each day another two hundred yards laid. They are laying the sleepers straight on the frozen earth, hewing out shallow beds for them. There are only two hundred and forty men on the job. Half of the replacements deserted. The con***ions there are truly frightful. I can''t imagine how they will be able to carry on in the frost. Dubava has been gone a week now. They were only able to repair five of the eight engines at Pushcha-Vo***sa, there were not enough parts for the others.
"Dmitri has had criminal charges laid against him by the tramcar authorities. He and his brigade held up all the flatcars belonging to the tram system running to town from Pushcha-Vo***sa, cleared off the passengers and loaded the cars with rails for the Boyarka line. They brought 19 carloads of rails along the tram tracks to the railway station in town. The tram crews were only too glad to help.
"The Solomenka Komsomols still in town worked all night loading the rails onto railway cars and Dmitri and his brigade went off with them to Boyarka.
"Akim refused to have Dubava''s action taken up at the Komsomol Bureau. Dmitri has told us about the outrageous bureaucracy and red tape in the tramcar administration. They flatly refused to give more than two cars for the job.
"Tufta, however, privately reprimanded Dubava. ''It''s time to drop these partisan tactics,'' he said, ''or you''ll find yourself in jail before you know it. Surely you could have come to some agreement without resorting to force of arms?''
"I had never seen Dubava so furious.
" ''Why didn''t you try talking to them yourself, you rotten pen-pusher?'' he stormed. ''All you can do is sit here warming your chair and wagging your tongue. How do you think I could go back to Boyarka without those rails? Instead of hanging around here and getting in everybody''s hair you ought to be sent out there to do some useful work. Tokarev would knock some sense into you!'' Dmitri roared so loudly he could be heard all over the building.
"Tufta wrote a complaint against Dubava, but Akim asked me to leave the room and talked to him alone for about ten minutes, after which Tufta stamped out red and fuming."
December 3
"The Gubernia Committee has received another complaint, this time from the Transport Cheka. It appears that Pankratov, Okunev and several other comrades went to Motovilovka station and removed all the doors and window frames from the empty buildings. When they were loading all this onto a freight train the station Cheka man tried to arrest them. They disarmed him, emptied his revolver and returned it to him only after the train was in motion. They got away with the doors and window frames.
"Tokarev is charged by the supply department of the railway for taking twenty poods of nails from the Boyarka railway stocks. He gave the nails to the peasants in payment for their help in hauling the timber they are using for sleepers.
"I spoke to Comrade Zhukhrai about all these complaints. But he only laughed. ''We''ll take care of all that,'' he said.
"The situation at the railway job is very tense and now every day is precious. We have to bring pressure to bear here for every trifle. Every now and then we have *****mmon hinderers to the Gubernia Committee. And over at the job the boys are overriding all formalities more and more often.
"Olshinsky has brought me a little electric stove. Olga Yureneva and I warm our hands over it, but it doesn''t make the room any warmer. I wonder how those men in the woods are faring this bitter cold night? Olga tells me that it is so cold in the hospital that the patients shiver under their blankets. The place is heated only once in two days.
"No, Comrade Olshinsky, a tragedy at the front is a tragedy in the rear too!"
December 4
"It snowed all night. From Boyarka they write that everything is snowbound and they have had to stop working to clear the track. Today the Gubernia Committee passed a decision that the first section of the railway, up to where the wood was being cut, is to be ready not later than January 1, 1922. When this decision reached Boyarka, Tokarev is said to have remarked: ''We''ll do it, if we don''t croak by then.''
"I hear nothing at all about Korchagin. I''m rather surprised that he hasn''t been mixed up in something like the Pankratov ''case''. I still don''t understand why he avoids me."
December 5
"Yesterday there was a ban*** raid on the railway job."

The horses trod warily in the soft, yielding snow. Now and then a twig hidden under the snow would snap under a hoof and the horse would snort and shy, but a sharp rap over its laid-back ears would send it galloping after the others.
Some dozen horsemen crossed the hilly ridge beyond which lay a strip of dark earth not yet blanketed with snow. Here the riders reined in their horses. There was a faint clink as stirrup met stirrup. The leader''s stallion, its coat glossy with sweat after the long run, shook itself noisily.
"There''s a hell of a lot of them here," said the head rider in Ukrainian. "But we''ll soon put the fear of God into ''em. The ataman said the bastards were to be chased out of here by tomorrow. They''re getting too damned close to the firewood."
They rode up to the station single file, hugging the sides of the narrow-gauge line. In sight of the clearing near the old school building they slowed down to a walking pace and came to a halt behind the trees, not venturing out into the open.
A volley rent the silence of the night. A layer of snow dropped squirrel-like off the branch of a birch that gleamed like silver in the light of the moon. Gunfire flashed among the trees, bullets bored into crumbling plaster and there was a tinkling of broken glass as Pan-kratov''s window panes were smashed to smithereens.
The men on the concrete floor leapt up at the shooting only to drop back again on top of one another when the lethal insects began to fly about the room.
"Where you going?" Dubava seized Pavel by the coat tail.
"Outside."
"Get down, you idiot!" Dmitri hissed. "They''ll get you the moment you stick your head out."
They lay side by side next to the door. Dubava was flattened against the floor, with his revolver pointing toward the door. Pavel sat on his haunches nervously fingering the drum of his revolver. There were five rounds in it â?" one chamber was empty. He turned the cylinder another notch.
The shooting ceased suddenly. The silence that followed was weighted with tension.
"All those who have weapons come this way," Dubava commanded in a hoarse whisper.
Pavel opened the door cautiously. The clearing was deserted. Snowflakes were falling softly.
In the forest ten horsemen were whipping their mounts into a gallop.
The next day a trolley arrived from town. Zhukhrai and Akim alighted and were met by Tokarev and Kholyava. A machine-gun, several crates of cartridge belts and two dozen rifles were unloaded onto the platform.
They hurried over to the railway line. The tails of Fyodor''s long greatcoat trailed a zigzag pattern in the snow behind him. He still walked with the clumsy rolling gait of the seaman, as if he were pacing the pitching deck of a destroyer. Long-legged Akim walked in step with Fyodor, but Tokarev had to break into a trot now and again to keep up with them.
"The ban*** raid is not our worst trouble. There''s a nasty rise in the ground right in the path of the line. Just our bad luck. It''ll mean a lot of extra digging."
The old man stopped, turned his back to the wind and lit a cigarette, cupping his hand over the match. After blowing out a few puffs of smoke he hurried to catch up with the others. Akim had stopped to wait for him, but Zhukhrai strode on ahead.
"Do you think you''ll be able to finish the line on time?" Akim asked Tokarev.
Tokarev paused a while before replying.
"Well, it''s like this, son," he said at last. "Generally speaking it can''t be done. But it''s got to be done, so there you are."
They caught up with Fyodor and continued abreast.
"Here''s how it is," Tokarev began earnestly. "Only two of us here, Patoshkin and I, know that it''s impossible to build a line under these con***ions, with the scanty equipment and labour power we have. But all the others, every last man of them, know that the line has got to be built at all costs. So you see that''s why I said if we don''t freeze to death, it''ll be done. Judge for yourselves: we''ve been digging here for over a month, the fourth batch of replacements are due for a rest, but the main body of workers have been on the job all the time. It''s only their youth that keeps them going. But half of them are badly chilled. Makes your heart bleed to look at them. These lads are worth their weight in gold. But this cursed hole will be the death of more than one of them."
The ready narrow-gauge track came to an end a kilometre from the station. Beyond that, for a stretch of about one and a half kilometres, the levelled roadbed was covered by what looked like a log palisade blown down by wind â?" these were the sleepers, all firmly planted in place. And beyond them, all the way to the rise, there was only a level road.
Pankratov''s building crew No. 1 was working at this section. Forty men were laying ties, while a carroty-bearded peasant wearing a new pair of bast shoes was unhurriedly emptying a load of logs on the roadbed. Several more sleds were being unloaded a little farther away. Two long iron bars lay on the ground â?" these were used to level up the sleepers properly. Axes, crowbars and shovels were all used to tamp down the ballast.
Laying railway sleepers is slow, laborious work. The sleepers must be firmly imbedded in the earth so that the rails press evenly on each of them.
Only one man in the group knew the technique of laying sleepers. That was Talya''s father, the line foreman Lagutin, a man of 54 with a pitch-black beard parted in the middle and not a grey hair in his head. He had worked at Boyarka since the beginning of the job, sharing all the hardships with the younger men and had earned the respect of the whole detachment. Although he was not a Party member, Lagutin invariably held a place of honour at all Party conferences. He was very proud of this and had given his word not to leave until the job was finished.
"How can I leave you to carry on by yourselves? Something''s bound to go wrong without an experienced man to keep an eye on things. When it comes to that, I''ve hammered in more of these here sleepers up and down the country in my time than I can remember," he would say good-humouredly each time the question of replacements came up. And so he stayed.
Patoshkin saw that Lagutin knew his job and rarely inspected his sector. When Tokarev with Akim and Zhukhrai came over to where they were working, Pankratov, flushed and perspiring with exertion, was hewing out a hollow for a sleeper. Akim hardly recognised the young stevedore. Pankratov had lost much weight, his broad cheekbones protruded sharply in his grimy face which was sallow and sunken.
"Well, well," he said as he gave Akim a hot, damp hand, "the big chiefs have come!"
The ringing of spades ceased. Akim surveyed the pale worn faces of the men around him. Their coats and jackets lay in a careless heap on the snow.
After a brief talk with Lagutin, Tokarev took the party to the excavation site, inviting Pankratov to join them. The stevedore walked alongside Zhukhrai.
"Tell me, Pankratov, what happened at Motovilovka? Don''t you think you overdid it disarming that Cheka man?" Fyodor asked the taciturn stevedore sternly.
Pankratov grinned sheepishly.
"It was all done by mutual consent," he explained. "He asked us to disarm him. He''s a good lad. When we explained what it was all about, he says: ''I see your difficulty, boys, but I haven''t the right to let you take those windows and doors away. We have orders from Comrade Dzerzhinsky to put a stop to the plunder of railway property. The station master here has his knife in me. He''s stealing stuff, the bastard, and I''m in his way. If I let you get away with it he''s bound to report me and I''ll be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. But you can disarm me and clear off. And if the station master doesn''t report the matter that will be the end of it.'' So that''s what we did. After all, we weren''t taking those doors and windows for ourselves, were we?"
Noting the twinkle in Zhukhrai''s eye, he went on: "You can punish us for it if you want to, but don''t be hard on that lad, Comrade Zhukhrai."
"That''s all over and done with. But see there''s no more of that in the future, it''s bad for discipline. We are strong enough now to smash bureaucracy in an organised way. Now let''s talk about something more important." And Fyodor proceeded to inquire about the details of the ban*** raid.
About four and a half kilometres from Boyarka station a group of men were digging furiously into a rise in the ground that stood in the path of the line. Seven men armed with all the weapons the detachment possessed â?" Kholyava''s rifle and the revolvers belonging to Korchagin, Pankratov, Dubava and Khomutov â?" stood on guard.
Patoshkin was sitting on top of the rise jotting down figures in his notebook. He was the only engineer on the job. Vakulenko, the technician, preferring to stand trial for desertion rather than death at a ban***''s hand, had fled that morning.
"It will take two weeks to clear this hill out of the way. The ground''s frozen hard," Patoshkin remarked in a low voice to the gloomy Khomutov standing beside him.
"We''ve been given twenty-five days to finish the whole line, and you''re figuring fifteen for this," Khomutov growled, chewing the tip of his moustache.
"Can''t be done, I''m afraid. Of course, I''ve never built anything before under such con***ions and with workers like these. I may be mistaken. As a matter of fact I have been mistaken twice before."
At that moment Zhukhrai, Akim and Pankratov were seen approaching the slope.
"Look, who''s that down there?" cried Pyotr Trofimov, a young mechanic from the railway workshops in an old sweater torn at the elbows. He nudged Korchagin and pointed to the newcomers. The next moment Korchagin, spade in hands, was dashing down the hill. His eyes under the peak of his helmet smiled a warm greeting and Fyodor lingered over their handshake.
"Hallo there, Pavel! Hardly recognised you in this rig-out."
Pankratov laughed drily: "Rig-out isn''t the word for it. Plenty of ventilation holes anyway. The deserters pinched his overcoat, Okunev gave him that jacket â?" they''ve got a commune, you know. But Pavel''s all right, he''s got warm blood in his veins. He''ll warm himself for a week or two more on the concrete floor â?" the straw doesn''t make much difference â?" and then he''ll be ready for a nice pine-wood coffin," the stevedore wound up with grim humour.
Dark-browed, snub-nosed Okunev narrowed his mischievous eyes and objected: "Never mind, we''ll take care of Pavel. We can vote him a job in the kitchen helping Odarka. If he isn''t a fool he can get himself a bit of extra grub and snuggle up to the stove or to Odarka herself."
A roar of laughter met this remark; it was the first time they had laughed that day.
Fyodor inspected the rise, then drove out with Tokarev and Patoshkin by sled to the timber felling. When he returned, the men were still digging with dogged persistence into the hill. Fyodor noted the rapid movement of the spades, and the backs of the workers bent under the strain. Turning to Akim, he said in an undertone:
"No need of meetings. No agitation required here. You were right, Tokarev, when you said these lads are worth their weight in gold. This is where the steel is tempered."
Zhukhrai gazed at the diggers with admiration and stern, yet tender pride. Some of them only a short time back had stood before him bristling with the steel of their bayonets. That was on the night before the insurrection. And now, moved by a single impulse, they were toiling in order that the steel arteries of the railway might reach out to the precious source of warmth and life.
Politely but firmly Patoshkin showed Fyodor that it was impossible to dig through the rise in less than two weeks. Fyodor listened to his arguments with a preoccupied air, his mind clearly busy with some problem of its own.
"Stop all work on the cut and carry on farther up the line. We''ll tackle that hill in a different way," he said finally.
Down at the station he spent a long time at the telephone. Kholyava, on guard outside the door, heard Fyodor''s hoarse bass from within.
"Ring up the chief of staff of the Military Area and tell him in my name to transfer Puzyrevsky''s regiment to the railway job at once. The ban***s must be cleared out of the area without delay. Send an armoured train over with demolition men. I''ll take care of the rest myself. I''ll be back late. Tell Litke to be at the station with the car by midnight."
In the barracks, after a short speech by Akim, Zhukhrai took the floor and an hour fled by in comradely discussion. Fyodor told the men there could be no question of extending the January 1 time limit allotted for the completion of the job.
"From now on we are putting the work on a military footing," he said. "The Party members will form a special task company with Comrade Dubava in command. All six work teams will receive definite assignments. The remainder of the job will be divided into six equal sectors, one for each team. By January 1 all the work must be completed. The team that finishes first will be allowed to go back to town. Also, the Presidium of the Gubernia Executive Committee is asking the Government to award the Order of the Red Banner to the best worker in the team that comes out first."
The leaders of the various teams were appointed as follows: No. 1, Comrade Pankratov, No. 2, Comrade Dubava, No. 3, Comrade Khomutov, No. 4, Comrade Lagutin, No. 5, Comrade Korchagin, No. 6, Comrade Okunev.
"The chief of the job, its political and administrative leader will, as before, be Anton Nikiforovich Tokarev," Zhukhrai wound up with an oratorical flourish.
Like a flock of birds suddenly taking wing, the hand-clapping burst forth and stern faces relaxed in smiles. The warm whimsical conclusion to the speech relieved the strained attention of the meeting in a gust of laughter.
Some twenty men trooped down to the station to see Akim and Fyodor off.
As he shook hands with Korchagin, Fyodor glanced down at Pavel''s snow-filled galosh.
"I''ll send you a pair of boots," he said in a low voice. "You haven''t frozen your feet yet, I hope?"
"They''ve begun to swell a bit," Pavel replied, then remembering something he had asked for a long time ago, he caught Fyodor by the arm. "Could you let me have a few cartridges for my revolver? I believe I only have three good ones left."
Zhukhrai shook his head in regret, but catching Pavel''s disappointed look, he quickly unstrapped his own Mauser. "Here''s a present for you."
Pavel could not believe at first that he was really getting something he had set his heart on for so long, but Zhukhrai threw the leather strap over his shoulder saying: "Take it, take it! I know you''ve had your eye on it for a long time. But take care you don''t shoot any of our own men with it. Here are three full clips to go with it." Pavel felt the envious eyes of the others upon him. "Hey, Pavka," someone yelled, "I''ll swap with you for a pair of boots and a sheepskin thrown in."
Pankratov nudged Pavel provokingly in the back.
"Come on, I''ll give you a pair of felt boots for it. Anyway you''ll be dead before Christmas with that galosh of yours."
With one foot on the step of the trolley for support, Zhukhrai wrote out a permit for the Mauser.
Early the next morning an armoured train clattered over the switches and pulled up at the station. The engine spouted plumes of steam as white as swansdown that vanished in the crystal-clear frosty air. Leather-clad figures emerged from the steel cars. A few hours later three demolition men from the train had planted in the earth of the hill two large black pumpkin-like objects with long fuses attached. They fired a few warning shots and the men scattered in all directions away from the now deadly hill. A match was put to the end of the fuse which flared up with a tiny phosphorescent flame.
For a while the men held their breath. One or two moments of suspense, and then the earth trembled, and a terrific force rent the hill asunder, tossing huge chunks of earth skywards. The second explosion was more powerful than the first. The thunder of it reverberated over the surrounding forest, filling it with a confusion of sound.
When the smoke and dust cleared a deep pit yawned where the hill had just stood, and the sugary snow was sprinkled with earth for dozens of paces all around.
Men with picks and shovels rushed to the cavity formed by the explosion.

After Zhukhrai''s departure, a stubborn contest for the honour of being the first to finish the job commenced among the teams.
Long before dawn Korchagin rose quietly, taking care not to wake the others, and stepping cautiously on numb feet over the chilly floor made his way to the kitchen. There he heated the water for tea and went back to wake up his team.
By the time the others were up it was broad daylight.
That morning Pankratov elbowed his way through the crowded barracks to where Dubava and his group were having their breakfast.
"Hear that, Mityai?" he said heatedly. "Pavka went and got his lads up before daylight. I bet they''ve got a good twenty yards laid out by now. The fellows say he''s got those railway repair shop boys all worked up to finish their section by the twenty-fifth. Wants to beat the rest of us hollow. But I say nothing doing!"
Dubava gave a sour smile. He could understand why the secretary of the river-port Komsomol had been touched on the raw by what the railway repair shopmen had done. As a matter of fact his friend Pavel had stolen a march on him, Dubava, as well. Without saying a word to anyone he had simply challenged the whole company.
"Friends or no friends, it''s the best man who wins," Pankratov said.
Around midday Korchagin''s team was hard at work when an unexpected interruption occurred. The sentry standing guard over the rifles caught sight of a group of horsemen approaching through the trees and fired a warning shot.
"To arms, lads! Ban***s!" cried Pavel. He flung down his spade and rushed over to the tree where his Mauser hung.
Snatching their rifles the others dropped down straight in the snow by the edge of the line. The leading horsemen waved their caps.
"Steady there, Comrades, don''t shoot!" one of them shouted.
Some fifty cavalrymen in Budyonny caps with bright red stars came riding up the road.
A unit of Puzyrevsky''s regiment had come on a visit to the job. Pavel noticed that the commander''s horse, a handsome grey mare with a white blaze on her forehead, had the tip of one ear missing. She pranced restlessly under her rider, and when Pavel rushed forward and seized her by the bridle, she shied away nervously.
"Why, Lyska old girl, I never thought we''d meet again! So the bullets didn''t get you, my one-eared beauty."
He embraced her slender neck tenderly and stroked her quivering nostrils.
The commander stared at Pavel for a moment, then cried out in amazement: "Well, if it isn''t Korchagin! You recognise the mare but you don''t see your old pal Sereda. Greetings, lad!"
In the meantime back in town pressure was being exerted in all quarters to expe***e the building of the line, and this was felt at once at the job. Zharky had literally stripped the Komsomol District Committee of all the male personnel and sent them out to Boyarka. Only the girls were left at Solomenka. He got the railway school to send out another batch of students.
"I''m left here with the female proletariat," he joked, reporting the results of his work to Akim. "I think I''ll put Talya Lagutina in my place, hang out the sign ''Women''s Department'' on the door and clear out to Boyarka myself. It''s awkward for me here, the only man among all these women. You ought to see the nasty looks they give me. I''m sure they''re saying: ''Look, the sly beggar sent everybody off, but stays on himself.'' Or something worse still. You must let me go."
But Akim merely laughed at his words.
New workers continued to arrive at Boyarka, among them sixty students from the railway school.
Zhukhrai induced the railway administration to send four passenger carriages to Boyarka to house the newcomers.
Dubava''s team was released from work and sent to Pushcha-Vo***sa to bring back the engines and sixty-five narrow-gauge flatcars. This assignment was to be counted as part of the work on their section.
Before leaving, Dubava advised Tokarev to recall Klavicek from town and put him in charge of one of the newly-organised work teams at Boyarka. Tokarev did so. He did not know the real reason for Dubava''s request: a note from Anna which the newcomers from Solomenka had brought.
"Dmitri!" Anna wrote. "Klavicek and I have prepared a pile of books for you. We send our warmest greetings to you and all the other Boyarka shock workers. You are all wonderful! We wish you strength and energy to carry on. Yesterday the last stocks of wood were distributed. Klavicek asks me to send you his greetings. He is wonderful. He bakes all the bread for Boyarka, sifts the flour and kneads the dough high himself. He doesn''t trust anyone in the bakery to do it. He managed to get excellent flour and his bread is good, much better than the kind I get. In the evenings our friends gather in my place â?" Lagutina, Artyukhin, Klavicek, and sometimes Zharky. We do a bit of reading but mostly we talk about everybody and everything, chiefly about you in Boyarka. The girls are furious with Tokarev for refusing to let them work on the railway. They say they can endure hardships as well as anyone. Talya declares she''s going to dress up in her father''s clothes and go out to Boyarka by herself. ''Let him just try to kick me out,'' she says.
"I wouldn''t be surprised if she kept her word. Please give my regards to your dark-eyed friend.
"Anna."
The blizzard came upon them suddenly. Low grey clouds spread themselves over the sky and the snow fell thickly. When night came the wind howled in the chimneys and moaned in the trees, chasing the whirling snow-flakes and awakening the forest echoes with its malevolent whine.
All night long the storm raged in a wild fury, and although the stoves were kept warm throughout the night the men shivered; the wrecked station building could not hold the warmth.
In the morning they had to plough through the deep snow to reach their sections. High above the trees the sun shone in a blue sky without a single cloudlet to mar its clear expanse.
Korchagin and his men went to work to clear the snowdrifts from their section. Only now did Pavel realise how much a man could suffer from the cold. Okunev''s threadbare jacket gave him scant protection and his galosh was constantly full of snow. He kept losing it in the snow, and now his other boot was threatening to fall apart. Two enormous boils had broken out on his neck â?" the result of sleeping on the cold floor. Tokarev had given him his towel to wear in place of a scarf.
Gaunt and red-eyed, Pavel was furiously plying his wooden snow shovel when a passenger train puffed slowly into the station. Its expiring engine had barely managed to haul it this far; there was not a single log of wood in the tender and the last embers were burning low in the firebox.
"Give us fuel and we''ll go on, or else shunt us onto a siding while we still have the power to move!" the engine driver yelled to the station master.
The train was switched onto a siding. The reason for the halt was explained to the disgruntled passengers and a storm of complaints and curses broke out in the crowded carriages.
"Go and talk to that old chap," the station master advised the train guards, pointing to Tokarev who was walking down the platform.
"He''s the chief of the job here. Maybe he can get wood brought down by sled to the engine. They''re using the logs for sleepers."
"I''ll give you the wood, but you''ll have to work for it," said Tokarev when" the conductors applied to him. "After all, it''s our building material. We''re being held up at the moment by the snow. There must be about six or seven hundred passengers inside your train. The women and children can stay inside but let the men come and lend a hand clearing the snow until evening and I''ll give you firewood. If they refuse they can stay where they are till New Year''s."
"Look at the crowd coming this way! Look, women too!" Korchagin heard a surprised exclamation at his back. He turned round. Tokarev came up.
"Here are a hundred helpers for you," he said. "Give them work and see none of them is idle."
Korchagin put the newcomers to work. One tall man in a smart railway uniform with a fur collar and a warm caracul cap indignantly twirled the shovel in his hands and turned to his companion, a young woman wearing a sealskin hat with a fluffy pompon on top.
"I am not going to shovel snow and nobody has the right to force me to do it. As a railway engineer I could take charge of the work if they ask me to, but neither you nor I need to shovel snow. It''s contrary to the regulations. That old man is breaking the law. I can have him prosecuted. Where is your foreman?" he demanded of the worker nearest him.
Korchagin came over.
"Why aren''t you working?"
The man examined Pavel contemptuously from head to foot.
"And who may you be?"
"I am a worker."
"Then I have nothing to say to you. Send me your foreman, or whatever you call him...."
Korchagin scowled.
"You needn''t work if you don''t want to. But you won''t get back on that train unless your ticket is countersigned by us. That''s the construction chief''s orders."
"What about you?" Pavel turned to the woman and was struck dumb with surprise. Before him stood Tonya Tumanova!
Tonya could hardly believe that this tramp who stood before her in his tattered clothing and incredible footwear, with a filthy towel around his neck and a face that had not been washed for many a day, was the Korchagin she once knew. Only his eyes blazed as fiercely as ever. The eyes of the Pavel she remembered. And to think that only a short while ago she had given her love to this ragged creature. How everything had changed!
She had recently married, and she and her husband were on their way to the city where he held an important position in the railway administration. Who could have thought that she would meet the object of her girlish affections in this way? She even hesitated to give him her hand. What would Vasili think? How awful of Korchagin to have fallen so low. Evidently the young stoker had not been able to rise above navvy work.
She stood hesitating, her cheeks burning. Meanwhile the railway engineer, infuriated by what he considered the insolence of this tramp who stood staring at his wife, flung down his shovel and went over to her side.
"Let us go, Tonya, I can''t stand the sight of this lazzarone."
Korchagin had read Giuseppe Garibaldi and he knew what that word meant.
"I may be a lazzarone, but you''re no more than a rotten bourgeois," he said hoarsely, and turning to Tonya, added curtly: "Take a shovel, Comrade Tumanova, and get into line. Don''t take an example from this prize bull here. . .. Excuse me if he is any relation of yours."
Pavel glanced at Tonya''s fur boots and smiled grimly, adding casually:
"I wouldn''t advise you to stop over here. The other night we were attacked by ban***s."
With that he turned on his heel and walked off, his galosh flapping as he went.
His last words impressed the railway engineer, and Tonya succeeded in persuading him to stay and work.
That evening, when the day''s work was over, the crowd streamed back to the station. Tonya''s husband hurried ahead to make sure of a seat in the train. Tonya, stopping to let a group of workers pass, saw Pavel trudging wearily behind the others, leaning heavily on his shovel.
"Hello, Pavlusha," she said and fell into step beside him. "I must say I never expected to find you in such straits. Surely the authorities ought to know you deserve something better than navvy''s work? I thought you''d be a commissar or something like that by now. What a pity life has been so unkind to you...."
Pavel halted and surveyed Tonya with surprise.
"Nor did I expect to find you ... so stuffy," he said, choosing the most polite word he could think of to express his feelings.
The tips of Tonya''s ears burned.
"You''re just as rude as ever!"
Korchagin hoisted his shovel onto his shoulder and strode off. After a few steps he stopped.
"My rudeness, Comrade Tumanova," he said, "is not half as offensive as your so-called politeness. And as for my life, please don''t worry about that. There''s nothing wrong with it. It''s your life that''s all wrong, ever so much worse than I expected. Two years ago you were better, you wouldn''t have been ashamed to shake hands with a workingman. But now you reek of moth balls. To tell the truth, you and I have nothing more to say to each other."
Pavel had a letter from Artem announcing that he was going to be married and urging Pavel to come to the wedding without fail.
The wind tore the sheet of paper out of Pavel''s hand and it flew off into the air. No wedding parties for him. How could he leave now? Only yesterday that bear Pankratov had outstripped his team and spurted forward at a pace that amazed everyone. The stevedore was making a desperate bid for first place in the contest. His usual nonchalance had forsaken him and he was whipping up his "water-fronters" to a furious tempo.
Patoshkin, noting the silent intensity with which the men worked, scratched his head perplexedly. "Are these men or giants?" he marvelled. "Where do they get their incredible strength? If the weather holds out for only eight more days we''ll reach the timber! Well, live and learn! These men are breaking all records and estimates." Klavicek came from town bringing the last batch of bread he had baked. He had a talk with Tokarev and then went off to hunt for Korchagin. The two men shook hands warmly. Klavicek with a broad smile dived into his knapsack and produced a handsome fur-lined leather jacket of Swedish make.
"This is for you!" he said stroking the soft leather. "Guess from whom? What! You don''t know? You are dense, man! It''s from Comrade Ustinovich. So you shouldn''t catch cold. Olshinsky gave it to her. She took it from him and handed it straight to me with orders to take it to you. Akim told her you''ve been going about in the frost with nothing but a thin jacket. Olshinsky''s nose was put out of joint a bit. ''I can send the comrade an army coat,'' he says. But Rita only laughed. ''Never mind,'' she said, ''he''ll work better in this jacket.'' "
The astonished Pavel took the luxurious-looking jacket and after some hesitation slipped it on. Almost at once he felt the warmth from the soft fur spreading over his shoulders and chest.
Rita wrote in her diary:
December 20
"We have been having a bout of blizzards. Snow and wind. Out at Boyarka they had almost reached their goal when the frosts and storms halted them. They are up to their necks in snow and the frozen earth is not easy to dig. They have only three-quarters of a kilometre to go, but this is the hardest lap of all.
"Tokarev reports an outbreak of typhoid fever. Three men are down with it."
December 22
"There was a plenary session of the Komsomol Guber-nia Committee but no one from Boyarka attended. Ban***s derailed a trainload of grain seventeen kilometres from Boyarka, and the Food Commissariat representative ordered all the construction workers to be sent to the spot."

December 23
"Another seven typhoid cases have been brought to town from Boyarka. Okunev is one of them. I went down to the station and saw frozen corpses of people who had been riding the buffers taken off a Kharkov train. The hospitals are unheated. This accursed blizzard, when will it end?"
December 24
"Just seen Zhukhrai. He confirmed the rumour that Orlik and his band attacked Boyarka last night. The fight lasted two hours. Communications were cut and Zhukhrai did not get the exact report until this morning. The band was beaten back but Tokarev has been wounded, a bullet went right through his chest. He will be brought to town today. Franz Klavicek, who was in charge of the guard that night, was killed. He was the one who spotted the band and raised the alarm. He started shooting at the raiders but they were on him before he had time to reach the school building. He was cut down by a sabre blow. Eleven of the builders were wounded. Two cavalry squadrons and an armoured train are there by now.
"Pankratov has taken charge of the job. Today Puzyrevsky caught up with part of the band in Gluboky village and wiped it out. Some of the non-Party workers started out for town without waiting for a train; they are walking along the track."
December 25
"Tokarev and the other wounded men arrived, and were placed in hospital. The doctors promised to save the old man. He is still unconscious. The lives of the others are not in danger.
"A telegram came from Boyarka addressed to us and the Gubernia Party Committee. ''In reply to the ban*** assault, we builders of the narrow-gauge line gathered at this meeting together with the crew of the armoured train For Soviet Power and the Red Army men of the cavalry regiment, vow to you that notwithstanding all obstacles the town shall have firewood by January 1. Mustering all our strength we are setting to work. Long live the Communist Party, which sent us here! Korchagin, chairman of the meeting. Berzin, secretary.''
"Klavicek was buried with military honours at Solomenka."
The cherished goal was in sight, but the advance toward it was agonisingly slow, for every day typhoid fever tore dozens of badly needed hands from the builders'' ranks.
One day Korchagin, returning from work to the station, staggered along like a drunkard, his legs ready to give way beneath him. He had been feverish for quite some time, but today it gripped him more fiercely than usual.
Typhoid fever, which had thinned the ranks of the building detachment, had claimed a new victim. But Pavel''s sturdy constitution resisted the disease and for five days in succession he had found the strength to pick himself up from his straw pallet on the concrete floor and join the others at work. But the fever had taken possession of him and now neither the warm jacket nor the felt boots, Fyodor''s gift, worn over his already frostbitten feet, helped.
A sharp pain seared his chest with each step he took, his teeth chattered, and his vision was blurred so that the trees seemed to be whirling around in a strange merry-go-round.
With difficulty he dragged himself to the station. An unusual commotion there caused him to halt, and straining his fever-hazed eyes, he saw a long train of flatcars stretching the entire length of the platform. Men who had come with the train were busy unloading narrow-gauge engines, rails and sleepers. Pavel staggered forward and lost his balance. He felt a dull pain as his head hit the ground and the pleasant coolness of the snow against his burning cheek.
Several hours later he was found and carried back to the barracks. He was breathing heavily, quite unconscious of his surroundings. A doctor''s assistant summoned from the armoured train examined him and diagnosed pneumonia and typhoid fever. His temperature was over 106Â. The doctor''s assistant noted the inflammation of the joints and the ulcers on the neck but said they were trifles compared with the pneumonia and typhoid which alone were enough to kill him.
Pankratov and Dubava, who had arrived from town, did all they could to save Pavel.
Alyosha Kokhansky, who came from the same town as Pavel, was entrusted with taking him home to his people.
With the help of all the members of Korchagin''s team, and mainly with Kholyava acting as battering ram, Pankratov and Dubava managed to get Alyosha and the unconscious Korchagin into the packed railway carriage. The passengers, suspecting typhus, resisted violently and threatened to throw the sick man out of the train en route.
Kholyava waved his gun under their noses and roared: "His illness is not infectious! And he''s going on this train even if we have to throw out the whole lot of you! And remember, you swine, if anyone lays a finger on him, I''ll send word down the line and you''ll all be taken off the train and put behind the bars. Here, Alyosha, take Pavel''s Mauser and shoot the first man who tries to put him off," Kholyava wound up for ad***ional emphasis.
The train puffed out of the station. Pankratov went over to Dubava standing on the deserted platform.
"Do you think he''ll pull through?"
The question remained unanswered.
"Come along, Mityai, it can''t be helped. We''ve got to answer for everything now. We must get those engines unloaded during the night and in the morning we''ll try to start them going."
Kholyava telephoned to all his Cheka friends along the line urging them to make sure that the sick Korchagin was not taken off the train anywhere. Not until he had been given a firm assurance that this would be done did he finally go to bed.
At a railway junction farther down the line the body of an unknown fair-haired young man was carried out of one of the carriages of a passenger train passing through and set down on the platform. Who he was and what he had died of no one knew. The station Cheka men, remembering Kholyava''s request, ran over to the carriage, but when they saw that the youth was dead, gave instructions for the corpse to be removed to the morgue, and immediately telephoned to Kholyava at Boyarka informing him of the death of his friend whose life he had been so anxious to save.
A brief telegram was sent from Boyarka to the Gubernia Committee of the Komsomol announcing Korchagin''s death.
In the meantime, however, Alyosha Kokhansky delivered the sick Korchagin to his people and came down himself with the fever.
January 9
"Why does my heart ache so? Before I sat down to write I wept bitterly. Who would have believed that Rita could weep and with such anguish? But are tears always a sign of weakness? Today mine are tears of searing grief. Why did grief come on this day of victory when the horrors of cold have been overcome, when the railway stations are piled high with precious fuel, when I have just returned from the celebration of the victory, an enlarged plenary meeting of the Town Soviet where the heroes of the railway job were accorded all honours. This is victory, but two men lost their lives â?" Klavicek and Korchagin.
"Pavel''s death has opened my eyes to the truth â?" he was far dearer to me than I had thought.
"And now I shall close this diary. I doubt whether I shall ever return to it. Tomorrow I am writing to Kharkov to accept the job offered me in the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Komsomol."
Chapter Three
But youth triumphed. Pavel did not succumb to the typhoid fever. For the fourth time he crossed the border line of death and came back to life. It was a whole month, however, before he was able to rise from his bed. Gaunt and pale, he tottered feebly across the room on his shaky legs, clinging to the wall for support. With his mother''s help he reached the window and stood there for a long time looking out onto the road where pools of melted snow glittered in the early spring sunshine. It was the first thaw of the year.
Just in front of the window a grey-breasted sparrow perched on the branch of a cherry-tree was preening its feathers, stealing quick uneasy glances at Pavel.
"So you and I got through the winter, eh?" Pavel said, softly tapping on the window pane.
His mother looked up startled.
"Who are you talking to out there?"
"A sparrow.... There now, he''s flown away, the little rascal." And Pavel gave a wan smile.
By the time spring was at its height Pavel began to think of returning to town. He was now strong enough to walk, but some mysterious disease was undermining his strength. One day as he was walking in the garden a sudden excruciating pain in his spine knocked him off his feet. With difficulty he got up and dragged himself back to his room. The next day he submitted to a thorough medical examination. The doctor, examining Pavel''s back, discovered a deep depression in his spine.
"How did you get this?" he asked.
"That was in the fighting near Rovno. A three-inch gun tore up the highway behind us and a stone hit me in the back."
"But how did you manage to walk? Hasn''t it ever bothered you?"
"No. I couldn''t get up for an hour or two after it happened, but then it passed and I got into the saddle again. It has never troubled me till now,"
The doctor''s face was very grave as he carefully examined the depression.
"Yes, my friend, a very nasty business. The spine does not like to be shaken up like that. Let us hope that it will pass."
The doctor looked at his patient with undisguised concern.
One day Pavel went to see his brother. Artem lived with his wife''s people. His wife Styosha was a plain-featured young peasant woman who came from a poverty-stricken family. A grimy slant-eyed urchin playing in the small, filthy yard stared fixedly at Pavel, picking his nose stolidly.
"What d''ye want?" he demanded. "Maybe you''re a thief? You''d better clear off or you''ll get it from my Ma!"
A tiny window was flung open in the shabby old cottage and Artem looked out.
"Come on in, Pavel!" he called.
An old woman with a face like yellowed parchment was busy at the stove. She flung Pavel an unfriendly look as he passed her and resumed her clattering with the pots.
Two girls with stringy pigtails clambered onto the stove ledge and stared down from there at the newcomer with the gaping curiosity of little savages.
Artem, sitting at the table, looked somewhat uncomfortable. He was aware that neither his mother nor his brother approved of his marriage. They could not understand why Artem, whose family had been proletarian for generations, had broken off with Galya, the stonemason''s pretty daughter and a seamstress by trade whom he had been courting for three years, to go and live with a dull, ignorant woman like Styosha and be the breadwinner in a family of five. Now, after a hard day''s work at the railway yard he had to toil at the plough in an effort to revive the run-down farm.
Artem knew that Pavel disapproved of his desertion to what he called the "petty-bourgeois elements", and he now watched his brother take stock of his surroundings.
They sat for a while exchanging a few casual remarks. Presently Pavel rose to go, but Artem detained him.
"Wait a bit, and have a bite with us. Styosha will bring the milk in soon. So you''re going away again tomorrow? Are you sure you''re quite strong enough, Pavka?"
Styosha came in. She greeted Pavel, and asked Artem to go with her to the barn and help her carry something. Pavel was left alone with the dour old woman. Through the window came the sound of church bells. The old woman laid down her pothook and began to mutter sourly:
"Lord above, with all this cursed housework a body can scarce find time to pray!" She took off her shawl and, eyeing the newcomer askance, went over to the corner where hung the holy images, dreary and tarnished with age. Pressing together three bony fingers she crossed herself.
"Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name!" she whispered through withered lips.
The urchin playing outside in the yard leapt astride a black lop-eared hog. He dug his small bare heels smartly into its sides, clung to its bristles and shouted to the running, snorting beast: "Gee-up, gee-up! Whoa! Whoa!"
The hog with the boy on its back dashed madly about the yard in a desperate effort to throw him, but the slant-eyed imp kept his seat firmly.
The old woman stopped praying and stuck her head out of the window.
"Get off that pig this minute, you little beast, or I''ll wring your neck!"
The hog finally succeeded in shaking his tormentor off his back, and the old woman, mollified, returned to her icons, composed her features into a pious expression and continued:
"Thy kingdom come. . . ."
At that moment the boy appeared in the doorway, his face grimy with tears. Wiping his smarting nose with his sleeve and sobbing with pain, he whined:
"Gimme a pancake, Mummy!"
The old woman turned on him in a fury.
"Can''t you see I''m praying, you cross-eyed devil, you? I''ll give you pancakes, you limb of satan!..." And she snatched a whip from the bench. The boy was gone in a flash. The two little girls on top of the stove snickered.
The old woman returned to her devotions for the third time.
Pavel got up and went out without waiting for his brother. As he closed the gate behind him he noticed the old woman peering suspiciously out at him through the end window of the house.
"What evil spirit lured Artem out here?" he thought bitterly. "Now he''s tied down for the rest of his life. Styosha will have a baby every year. And Artem will be stuck like a beetle on a dunghill. He may even give up his work at the railway." Thus Pavel reflected gloomily as he strode down the deserted streets of the little town. "And I had hoped to be able to interest him in political work."
Pavel rejoiced at the thought that tomorrow he would be leaving this place and going to the big town to join his friends and comrades, all those dear to his heart. The big city with its bustling life and activity, its endless stream of humanity, its clattering trams and hooting automobiles drew him like a magnet. But most of all he yearned for the large brick factory buildings, the sooty workshops, the machines, the low hum of transmission belts. He yearned for the mad spinning of the giant flywheels, for the smell of machine oil, for all that had become so much a part of him. This quiet provincial town whose streets he now roamed filled him with a vague feeling of depression. He was not surprised that he felt a stranger here now. Even to take a stroll through the town in daytime had become an ordeal. Passing by the gossiping housewives sitting on their stoops, he could not help overhearing their idle chatter.
"Now who could that scarecrow be?"
"Looks like he had the consumption, lung trouble, that is."
"A fine jacket he''s got on. Stolen, I''ll be bound."
And plenty more in the same vein. Pavel was disgusted with it all.

He had torn himself away from all this long ago. He felt a far closer kinship now with the big city to which he was bound by the strong, vitalising bonds of comradeship and labour.
By now he had reached the pine woods, and he paused a moment at the road fork. To his right stood the old prison cut off from the woods by a high spiked fence, and beyond it the white buildings of the hospital.
It was here on this broad common that the hangman''s noose had choked the warm life out of Valya and her comrades. Pavel stood in silence on the spot where the gallows had been, then walked over to the bluff and down to the little cemetery where the victims of the Whiteguard terror lay in their common graves. Loving hands had laid spruce branches on the graves and built a neat green fence around the graveyard. The pines grew straight and slender on the top of the bluff and the young grass spread a silky green carpet over the slopes.
There was a melancholy hush here on the outskirts of the town. The trees whispered gently and the fresh scent of spring rose from the regenerated earth. On this spot Pavel''s comrades had gone bravely to their deaths that life might be beautiful for those born in poverty.
Slowly Pavel raised his hand and removed his cap, his heart filled with sadness.
Man''s dearest possession is life. It is given to him but once, and he must live it so as to feel no torturing regrets for wasted years, never know the burning shame of a mean and petty past; so live that, dying, he might say: all my life, all my strength were given to the finest cause in all the world â?" the fight for the Liberation of Mankind. And one must make use of every moment of life, lest some sudden illness or tragic accident cut it short.
With these reflections, Korchagin turned away from the cemetery.
At home his mother was unhappily preparing for her son''s departure. Watching her, Pavel saw that she was hiding her tears from him.
"Perhaps you''ll stay, Pavel dear?" she ventured. "It''s hard for me to be left alone in my old age. It doesn''t matter how many children you have, they all grow up and leave you. Why must you run off to the city? You can live here just as well. Or perhaps some bob-haired magpie there has caught your fancy? You boys never tell your old mother anything. Artem went and got married without a word to me and you''re worse than him in that respect. I only see you when you get yourself crippled," his mother grumbled softly as she packed his meagre belongings into a clean bag.
Pavel took her by the shoulders and drew her towards him.
"No magpies for me, Mother! Don''t you know that birds choose mates of their own species? And would you say I was a magpie?"
His mother smiled in spite of herself.
"No, Mother, I''ve given my word to keep away from the girls until we''ve finished with all the bourgeois in the world. Bit long to wait, you say? No, Mother, the bourgeoisie can''t hold out very long now. Soon there will be one big republic for all men, and you old folk who''ve worked all your lives will go to Italy, a beautiful warm country by the sea. There is no winter there, Mother. We''ll install you in the rich men''s palaces, and you''ll lie about in the sun warming your old bones while we''ll go and finish off the bourgeois in America."
"That''s a lovely fairy-tale, Son, but I shan''t live to see it come true. . . . You''re just like your grandad, the sailor, always full of ideas he was. A regular brigand, God forgive him! Finished up at Sevastopol and came home with one arm and one leg missing and two crosses and two silver medals on his chest. But he died poor. Bad-tempered too, he was. Hit some official over the head with his crutch once and was sent to jail for about a year. Even his military crosses didn''t help him then. Yes, it''s your grandad you take after and no mistake."
"Now then, Ma, we can''t have such a sorrowful farewell, can we? Let me have my accordion. I haven''t touched it for a long time."
He bent his head over the mother-of-pearl rows of keys and began to play. His mother, listening, caught a new quality in his music. He never used to play like this. The dashing, rollicking tunes with the trills and runs, the intoxicating rhythms for which the young accordionist had once been famed, were gone. His fingers had lost none of their power or skill, but the melody that flowed from under them now was richer and deeper.
Pavel went to the station alone.
He had persuaded his mother to stay at home for he knew that the final parting would upset her too much.
The waiting crowd piled pell-mell into the train. Pavel climbed onto one of the topmost shelves and sat there watching the shouting, excited passengers arguing and gesticulating down below.
As usual everyone carried packs and bundles which they shoved under the seats.
As soon as the train got into motion the hubbub subsided somewhat and the passengers settled down to the business of stuffing themselves with food.
Pavel soon fell asleep.
On his arrival in Kiev, Pavel set out at once for Kreshchatik Street in the heart of the city. Slowly he climbed onto the bridge. Everything was as it had been, nothing had changed. He walked across the bridge, sliding his hand over the smooth railings. There was not a soul on the bridge. He paused before descending to admire the majesty of the scene. The horizon was wrapped in the velvety folds of darkness, the stars sparkled and glittered with a phosphorescent glow. And down below, where the earth merged with the sky at some invisible point, the city scattered the darkness with a million lights. . . .
Voices raised in argument invaded the stillness of the night and roused Pavel from his reverie. Someone was coming this way. Pavel tore his eyes away from the city lights and descended the stairs.
At the Area Special Department the man on duty informed Pavel that Zhukhrai had left town a long time ago.
He questioned Pavel searchingly and, satisfied that the young man really was a personal friend of Zhukhrai, finally told him that Fyodor had been sent to work in Tashkent on the Turkestan front. Pavel was so upset by the news that he turned and walked out without asking for further details. A sudden weariness made him sink down onto the doorstep to rest.
A tramcar clattered by, filling the street with its din. An endless stream of people flowed past him. Pavel caught snatches of gay women''s laughter, a rumbling bass, the high-pitched treble of a youth, the wheezy falsetto of an old man. The ebb and flow of hurrying crowds never ceased. Brightly-lit trams, glaring automobile headlights, electric lights ablaze over the entrance to a cinema near by.... And everywhere â?" people, filling the street with their incessant hum of conversation.
The noise and bustle of the avenue dulled the edge of the pain caused by the news of Fyodor''s departure. Where was he to go now? It was a long way to Solo-menka where his friends lived. Suddenly he remembered the house on University Street. It was not far from here. Of course he would go there! After all, the first person he longed to see, after Fyodor, was Rita. And perhaps he could arrange to spend the night at Akim''s place.
He saw a light in the end window from afar. Controlling his emotion with an effort he pulled open the heavy oaken outer door. For a few seconds he paused on the landing. Voices issued from Rita''s room and someone was strumming on a guitar.
"Oho, so she allows guitars nowadays. Must have relaxed the regime," he said to himself. He tapped lightly on the door, biting his lip to quell his inner excitement.
The door was opened by a young woman with corkscrew curls. She looked questioningly at Korchagin.
"Whom do you want?"
She held the door ajar and a brief glance within told Pavel that his errand was fruitless.
"May I see Rita Ustinovich?"
"She''s not here. She went to Kharkov last January and I hear she''s in Moscow now."
"Does Comrade Akim still live here or has he left as well?"
"No, he isn''t here either. He is Secretary of the Odessa Gubernia Komsomol now."
There was nothing to do but turn back. The joy of his return to the city had faded.
The problem now was to find somewhere to spend the night.
"You can walk your legs off trying to look up old friends who aren''t there," he grumbled to himself, swallowing his disappointment. Nevertheless he decided to try his luck once more and see whether Pankratov was still in town. The stevedore lived in the vicinity of the wharves and that was nearer than Solomenka.
By the time he reached Pankratov''s place he was utterly exhausted. "If he isn''t here either I''ll give up the search," Pavel vowed to himself as he knocked at a door that had once been painted yellow. "I''ll crawl under a boat and spend the night there."
The door was opened by an old woman with a kerchief tied under her chin. It was Pankratov''s mother.
"Is Ignat home, Mother?"
"He''s just come in."
She did not recognise Pavel, and turned round to call: "Ignat, someone to see you!"
Pavel followed her into the room and laid his knapsack on the floor. Pankratov, sitting at the table eating his supper, glanced quickly at the newcomer over his shoulder.
"If it''s me you want, sit down and fire away, while I get some borshch into my system," he said. "Haven''t had a bite since morning." And he picked up a giant wooden spoon.
Pavel sat on a rickety chair to one side. He took off his cap and, relapsing into an old habit, wiped his forehead with it.
"Have I really changed so much that even Ignat doesn''t recognise me?" he asked himself.
Pankratov dispatched a spoon or two of borshch, but since his visitor said nothing, he turned his head to look at him.
"Well, come on! What''s on your mind?"
His hand with the piece of bread remained suspended in mid air. He stared at his visitor blinking with astonishment.
"Hey.... What''s this? ... Well, of all the! ..."
The sight of the confusion and bewilderment on Pankratov''s red face was too much for Pavel and he burst out laughing.
"Pavka!" cried the other. "But we all thought you were a goner! Wait a minute, now? What''s your name again?"
Pankratov''s elder sister and his mother came running in from the next room at his shouts. All three began showering Pavel with questions until at last they finally satisfied themselves that it really was Pavel Korchagin and none other.
Long after everyone in the house was fast asleep Pankratov was still giving Pavel an account of all that had happened during the past four months.
"Zharky and Mityai went off to Kharkov last winter. And where do you think they went, the beggars? To the Communist University! Got into the preparatory course. There were fifteen of us at first. I also got into the spirit of the thing and applied. About time I got rid of some of the sawdust in my noodle, I thought. And would you believe it, that examination board flunked me!" Pankratov snorted at the memory and went on: "At first everything was fine. I fitted in on all counts: I had my Party card, I''d been in the Komsomol long enough, nothing wrong with my background and antecedents, but when it came to political knowledge I got into hot water.
"I got into an argument with one of the chaps on the examining board. He comes at me with a nasty little question like this: ''Tell me, Comrade Pankratov, what do you know about philosophy?'' Well, the fact is I didn''t know a damned thing about philosophy. But there was a fellow used to work with us at the wharves, a grammar school student turned tramp, who had taken a job as a stevedore for the fun of it. Well, I remember him telling us about some brainy fellows in Greece who knew all the answers to everything, philosophers they called them, he said. Well, there was one chap, can''t remember his name now, Diogineez or something like that, he lived all his life in a barrel. .. . The smartest of them all was the one who could prove forty times over that black was white and white was black. A lot of spoofers, you see? So I remembered what that student told me and I says to myself: ''Aha, he''s trying to trip me up.'' I see that examiner looking at me with a twinkle in his eye and I let him have it. ''Philosophy,'' I says, ''is just poppy****, and I''m not going to have any truck with it, Comrades. The history of the Party, now, that''s another matter. I''ll be only too glad to have a crack at that.'' Well, they went for me good and proper, wanted to know where I''d gotten those queer ideas of mine. So I told them about that student fellow and some of the things he''d said and the whole commission nearly split their sides. The laugh was on me all right. But I got sore and walked out.
"Later on that examiner fellow got hold of me in the Gubernia Committee and lectured me for a good three hours. It turns out that the student down at the docks had got things mixed up. It seems philosophy is all right, dashed important, as a matter o'' fact.
"Dubava and Zharky passed the exams. Mityai was always good at studies, but Zharky isn''t much better than me. Must have been his Order that got him by. Anyway I was left back here. After they went I was given a managing job at the wharves â?" assistant chief of the freight wharves. I always used to be scrapping with the managers about the youth and now I''m a manager myself. Nowadays if I come across some slacker or nitwit I haul him over the coals both as manager and Komsomol secretary. He can''t throw dust in my eyes! Well, enough about me. What else is there to tell you? You know about Akim already; Tufta is the only one of the old crowd left on the Gubernia Committee. Still on his old job. Tokarev is Secretary of the District Committee of the Party at Solomenka. Okunev, your fellow commune member, is on the Komsomol District Committee. Talya works in the Political Education Department. Tsvetayev has your job down in the repair shops. I don''t know him very well. We only meet occasionally in the Gubernia Committee; he seems to be quite a brainy fellow, but a bit standoffish. Remember Anna Borhart? She''s at Solomenka too, head of the Women''s Department of the District Party Committee. I''ve told you about all the others. Yes, Pavel, the Party''s sent lots of folk off to study. All the old activists attend the Gubernia Soviet and Party School. They promise to send me too next year."
It was long past midnight when they retired for the night. By the time Pavel awoke the next morning, Pankratov had gone to the wharves. Dusya, his sister, a strapping lass closely resembling her brother, served Pavel tea, keeping up a lively patter of talk all the while. Pankratov the elder, a ship''s engineer, was away from home.
As Pavel was preparing to go out, Dusya reminded him:
"Don''t forget now, we''re expecting you for dinner."
The Gubernia Committee of the Party presented the usual scene of bustling activity. The front door opened and closed incessantly. The corridors and offices were crowded, and the muffled clicking of typewriters issued from behind the door of the Administration Department.
Pavel lingered in the corridor for a while in search of a familiar face, but finding no one he knew, went straight in to see the secretary. The latter, dressed in a blue Russian shirt, was seated behind a large desk. He looked up briefly as Pavel entered and went on writing.
Pavel took a seat opposite him and studied the features of Akim''s successor.
"What can I do for you?" the secretary in the Russian shirt asked as he finished his writing.
Pavel told him his story.
"I want you to restore my membership and send me to the railway workshops," he wound up. "Please issue the necessary instructions."
The secretary leaned back in his chair.
"Well put you back on the lists, of course, that goes without saying," he replied with some hesitation. "But it''ll be a bit awkward to send you to the workshops. Tsvetayev is there. He''s a member of the Gubernia Committee. We''ll have to find something else for you to do."
Korchagin narrowed his eyes.
"I don''t intend to interfere with Tsvetayev''s work," he said. "I''m going to work at my trade and not as secretary. And since my health is rather poor I would ask you not to assign me to any other job."