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

"Comrades!" the word rang out as the speaker took up a position at the very edge of the platform. "Comrades! For nine days we have listened to the speeches of the opposition, and I must say quite frankly that they spoke here not as fellow fighters, revolutionaries, our comrades in the class struggle. Their speeches were hostile, implacable, malicious and slanderous. Yes, Comrades, slanderous! They have tried to represent us Bolsheviks as supporters of a mailed-fist regime in the Party, as people who are betraying the interests of their class and the Revolution. They have attempted to brand as Party bureaucrats the best, the most tried and trusty section of our Party, the glorious old guard of Bolsheviks, men who built up the Russian Communist Party, men who suffered in tsarist prisons, men who with Comrade Lenin at their head have waged a relentless struggle against world Menshevism and Trotsky. Could anyone but an enemy make such statements? Is the Party and its functionaries not one single whole? Then what is this all about, I want to know? What would we say of men who would try to incite young Red Army men against their commanders and commissars, against army headquarters â?" and at a time when the unit was surrounded by the enemy? According to the Trotskyites, so long as I am a mechanic I''m ''all right'', but if tomorrow I should become the secretary of a Party Committee I would be a ''bureaucrat'' and a ''chairwarmer''! Isn''t it a bit strange, Comrades, that among the oppositionists who are fighting against bureaucracy and for democracy there should be men like Tufta, for example, who was recently removed from his job for being a bureaucrat? Or Tsvetayev, who is well known to the Solomenka folks for his ''democracy''; or Afanasyev, who was taken off the job three times by the Gubernia Committee for his highhanded way of running things in Podolsk District? It turns out that all those whom the Party has punished have united to fight the Party. Let the old Bolsheviks tell us about Trotsky''s ''Bolshevism''. It is very important for the youth to know the history of Trotsky''s struggle against the Bolsheviks, about his constant shifting from one camp to another. The struggle against the opposition has welded our ranks and it has strengthened the youth ideologically. The Bolshevik Party and the Komsomol have become steeled in the fight against petty-bourgeois trends. The hysterical panic-mongers of the opposition are predicting complete economic and political collapse. Our tomorrow will show how much these prophecies are worth. They are demanding that we send old Bolsheviks like Tokarev, for instance, back to the bench and replace him by some weather-vane like Dubava who imagines his struggle against the Party to be a sort of heroic feat. No, Comrades, we won''t agree to that. The old Bolsheviks will get replacement, but not from among those who violently attack the Party line whenever we are up against some difficulty. We shall not permit the unity of our great Party to be disrupted. Never will the old and young guard be split. Under the banner of Lenin, in unrelenting struggle against petty-bourgeois trends, we shall march to victory!"
Pankratov descended the platform amid thunderous applause.
The following day a group of ten met at Tufta''s place.
"Shumsky and I are leaving today for Kharkov," Dubava said. "There is nothing more for us to do here. You must try to keep together. All we can do now is to wait and see what happens. It is obvious that the All-Russia Conference will condemn us, but it seems to me that it is too soon to expect any repressive measures to be taken against us. The majority has decided to give us another chance. To carry on the struggle openly now, especially after the conference, means getting kicked out of the Party, and that does not enter into our plans. It is hard to say what the future holds for us. I think that''s all there is to be said." Dubava got up to go.
The gaunt, thin-lipped Staroverov also rose.
"I don''t understand you, Mityai," he said, rolling his r''s and slightly stammering. "Does that mean that the conference decision is not binding on us?"
"Formally, it is," Tsvetayev cut him short. "Otherwise you''ll lose your Party card. But we''ll wait and see which way the wind blows and in the meantime we''ll disperse."
Tufta stirred uneasily in his chair. Shumsky, pale and downcast, with dark circles under his eyes, sat by the window biting his nails. At Tsvetayev''s words he abandoned his depressing occupation and turned to the meeting.
"I''m opposed *****ch manoeuvres," he said in sudden anger. "I personally consider that the decision of the conference is binding on us. We have fought for our convictions, but now we must submit to the decision that has been taken."
Staroverov looked at him with approval.
"That is what I wanted to say," he lisped.
Dubava fixed Shumsky with his eyes and said with a sneer:
"Nobody''s suggesting that you do anything. You still have a chance to ''repent'' at the Gubernia Conference."
Shumsky leapt to his feet.
"I resent your tone, Dmitri! And to be quite frank, what you say disgusts me and forces me to reconsider my position."
Dubava waved him away.
"That''s exactly what I thought you''d do. Run along and repent before it is too late." With that Dubava shook hands with Tufta and the others and left. Shumsky and Staroverov followed soon after.
Cruel cold marked the advent in history of the year one thousand nine hundred and twenty-four. January fastened its icy grip on the snowbound land, and from the second half of the month howling storms and blizzards raged.
The Southwestern Railway was snowed up. Men fought the maddened elements. The steel screws of snowploughs cut into the drifts, clearing a path for the trains. Telegraph wires weighted down with ice snapped under the impact of frost and blizzard, and of the twelve lines only three functioned â?" the Indo-European and two government lines.
In the telegraph office at Shepetovka station three apparatuses continued their unceasing chatter understandable only to the trained ear.
The girl operators were new at the job; the length of the tape they had tapped out would not have exceeded twenty kilometres, but the old telegrapher who worked beside them had already passed the two-hundred-kilometre mark. Unlike his younger colleagues he did not need to read the tape in order to make out the message, nor did he puzzle with wrinkled brow over difficult words or phrases. Instead he wrote down the words one after the other as the apparatus ticked them out. Now his ear caught the words "To all, to all, to all!"
"Must be another of those circulars about clearing away the snow," the old telegrapher thought to himself as he wrote down the words. Outside, the blizzard raged, hurling the snow against the window. The telegrapher thought someone was knocking at the window, his eyes strayed in the direction of the sound and for a moment were arrested by the intricate pattern the frost had traced on the panes. No engraver could ever match that exquisite leaf-and-stalk design!
His thoughts wandered and for a while he stopped listening to the telegraph. But presently he looked down and reached for the tape to read the words he had missed.
The telegraph had tapped out these words:
"At 6.50 in the afternoon of January 21. . .." Quickly writing down the words, the telegrapher dropped the tape and resting his head on his hand returned to listening.
"Yesterday in Gorki the death occurred...." Slowly he put the letters down on paper. How many messages had he taken down in his long life, joyous messages as well as tragic ones, how often had he been the first to hear of the sorrows or happiness of others! He had long since ceased to ponder over the meaning of the terse, clipped phrases, he merely caught the sounds and mechanically set them down on paper.
Now too someone had died, and someone was being notified of the fact. The telegrapher had forgotten the initial words: "To all, to all, to all." The apparatus clicked out the letters "V-1-a-d-i-m-i-r I-1-y-i-c-h '', and the old telegrapher translated the hammer taps into words. He sat there unperturbed, a trifle weary. Someone named Vladimir Ilyich had died somewhere, someone would receive the message with the tragic tidings, a cry of grief and anguish would be wrung from someone, but it was no concern of his, for he was only a chance witness. The apparatus tapped out a dot, a dash, more dots, another dash, and out of the familiar sounds he caught the first letter and set it down on the telegraph form. It was the letter "L". Then came the second letter, "E"; next to it he inscribed a neat "N", drawing a heavy slanting line between the two uprights, hastily added an "I" and absently picked up the last letter â?" "N".
The apparatus tapped out a pause, and for the fraction of a second the telegrapher''s eye rested on the word he had written: "LENIN".
The apparatus went on tapping, but the familiar name now pierced the telegrapher''s consciousness. He glanced once more at the last words of the message â?" "LENIN". What? Lenin? The entire text of the telegram flashed before his mind''s eye. He stared at the telegraph form, and for the first time in all his thirty-two years of work he could not believe what he had written.
He ran his eye swiftly thrice over the lines, but the words obstinately refused to change: "the death occurred of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin." The old man leapt to his feet, snatched up the spiral of tape and bored it with his eyes. The two-metre strip confirmed that which he refused to believe! He turned a deathlike face to his fellow workers, and his frightened cry fell on their ears: "Lenin is dead!"
The terrible news slipped through the wide open door of the telegraph office and with the speed of a hurricane swept over the station and into the blizzard, whipped over the tracks and switches and along with the icy blast tore through the ironbound gates of the railway shops.
A current repair crew was busy overhauling an engine standing over the first pit. Old Polentovsky himself had crawled down under the belly of his engine and was pointing out the ailing spots to the mechanics. Zakhar Bruzzhak and Artem were straightening out the bent bars of the fire grate. Zakhar held the grating on the anvil and Artem wielded the hammer.
Zakhar had aged. The past few years had left a deep furrow on his forehead and touched his temples with silver. His back was bent and there were shadows in his sunken eyes.
The figure of a man was silhouetted for a moment in the doorway, and then the evening shadows swallowed him up. The blows of the hammer on iron drowned out his first cry, but when he reached the men working at the engine Artem paused with his hammer poised to strike.
"Comrades! Lenin is dead!"
The hammer slid slowly from Artem''s shoulder and his hands lowered it noiselessly onto the concrete floor.
"What''s that? What did you say?" Artem''s hand clutched convulsively at the sheepskin of the man who had brought the fearful tidings.
And he, gasping for breath, covered with snow, repeated in a low, broken voice:
"Yes, Comrades, Lenin is dead."
And because the man did not shout, Artem realised that the terrible news was true. Only now did he recognise the man â?" it was the secretary of the local Party organisation.
Men climbed out of the pit and heard in silence of the death of the man with whose name the whole world had rung.
Somewhere outside the gates an engine shrieked, sending a shudder through the group of men. The anguished sound was echoed by another engine at the far side of the station, then by a third. Their mighty chorus was joined by the siren of the power station, high-pitched and piercing like the flight of shrapnel. Then all was drowned out by the deep sonorous voice of the handsome engine of the passenger train about to leave for Kiev.
A GPU agent started in surprise when the driver of the Polish engine of the Shepetovka-Warsaw express, on learning the reason for the alarming whistles, listened for a moment, then slowly raised his hand and pulled at the whistle cord. He knew that this was the last time he would do so, that he would never be allowed to drive this train again, but his hand did not let go of the cord, and the shriek of his engine roused the startled Polish couriers and diplomats from their soft couches.
People crowded into the railway shops. They poured through all the gates and when the vast building was filled to overflowing the funeral meeting opened amid heavy silence. The old Bolshevik Sharabrin, Secretary of the Shepetovka Regional Committee of the Party, addressed the gathering.
"Comrades! Lenin, the leader of the world proletariat, is dead. The Party has suffered an irreparable loss, for the man who created the Bolshevik Party and taught it to be implacable to its enemies is no more.... The death of the leader of our Party and our class is a summons to the best sons of the proletariat to join our ranks...."
The strains of the funeral march rang out, the men bared their heads, and Artem, who had not wept for fifteen years, felt a lump rising in his throat and his powerful shoulders shook.
The very walls of the railwaymen''s club seemed to groan under the pressure of the human mass. Outside it was bitterly cold, the two tall fir-trees at the entrance to the hall were garbed in snow and icicles, but inside it was suffocating from the heated stoves and the breath of six hundred people who had gathered to the memorial meeting arranged by the Party organisation.
The usual hum of conversation was stilled. Overpowering grief muffled men''s voices and they spoke in whispers, and there was sorrow and anxiety in the eyes of many. They were like the crew of a ship that had lost her helmsman in a storm.
Silently the members of the bureau took their seats on the platform. The stocky Sirotenko carefully lifted the bell, rang it gently and replaced it on the table. This was enough for an oppressive hush to settle over the hall.
When the main speech had been delivered, Sirotenko, the Secretary of the Party organisation, rose to speak. And although the announcement he made was unusual for a memorial meeting, it surprised no one.
"A number of workers," he said, "have asked this meeting to consider an application for membership in the Party. The application is signed by thirty-seven comrades." And he read out the application:
"To the railway organisation of the Bolshevik Party at Shepetovka Station, Southwestern Railway.
"The death of our leader is a summons to us to join the ranks of the Bolsheviks, and we ask that this meeting judge of our worthiness to join the Party of Lenin."
Two columns of signatures were affixed to this brief statement.
Sirotenko read them aloud, pausing a few seconds after each name to allow the meeting to memorise them.
"Stanislav Zigmundovich Polentovsky, engine driver, thirty-six years of service."
A murmur of approval rippled over the hall.
"Artem Andreyevich Korchagin, mechanic, seventeen years of service."
"Zakhar Filippovich Bruzzhak, engine driver, twenty-one years of service."
The murmur increased in volume as the man on the platform continued to call out the names of veteran members of the horny-palmed fraternity of railwaymen.
Silence again reigned when Polentovsky, whose name headed the list, stood before the meeting.
The old engine driver could not but betray his agitation as he told the story of his life.
". . . What can I tell you, Comrades? You all know what the life of a workingman was like in the old days. Worked like a slave all my life and remained a beggar in my old age. When the Revolution came, I confess I considered myself an old man burdened down by family cares, and I did not see my way into the Party. And although I never sided with the enemy I rarely took part in the struggle myself. In nineteen hundred and five I was a member of the strike committee in the Warsaw railway shops and I was on the side of the Bolsheviks. I was young then and full of fight. But what''s the use of recalling the past! Ilyich''s death has struck right at my heart; we''ve lost our friend and champion, and it''s the last time I''ll ever speak about being old. I don''t know how to put it, for I never was much good at speech making. But let me say this: my road is the Bolsheviks'' road and no other."
The engine driver tossed his grey head and his eyes under his white brows looked out steadily and resolutely at the audience as if awaiting its decisive words.
Not a single voice was raised in opposition to the little grey-haired man''s application, and no one abstained during the voting in which the non-Party people too were invited to take part.

Polentovsky walked away from the presidium table a member of the Communist Party.
Everyone was conscious that something momentous was taking place. Now Artem''s great bulk loomed where the engine driver had just stood. The mechanic did not know what to do with his hands, and he nervously gripped his shaggy fur cap. His sheepskin jacket, threadbare at the edges, was open, but the high-necked collar of his grey army tunic was fastened on two brass buttons lending his whole figure a holiday neatness. Artem turned to face the hall and caught a fleeting glimpse of a familiar woman''s face. It was Galina, the stonemason''s daughter, sitting with her workmates from the tailor shop. She was gazing at him with a forgiving smile, and in that smile he read approval and something he could not have put into words.
"Tell them about yourself, Artem!" he heard Sirotenko say.
But it was not easy for Artem to begin his tale. He was not accustomed to addressing such a large audience, and he suddenly felt that to express all that life had stored within him was beyond his powers. He fumbled painfully for words, and his nervousness made it all the harder for him. Never had he experienced the like. He felt that this was a vital turning point for him, that he was about to take a step that would bring warmth and meaning into his harsh, warped life.
"There were four of us," Artem began.
The hall was hushed. Six hundred people listened eagerly to this tall worker with the beaked nose and the eyes hidden under the dark fringe of eyebrows.
"My mother worked as cook for the rich folk. I hardly remember my father; he and mother didn''t get along. He drank too much. So mother had to take care of us kids. It was hard for her with so many mouths to feed. She slaved from morning till night and got four rubles a month and her grub. I was lucky enough to get two winters of school. They taught me to read and write, but when I turned nine my mother had to send me to work as an apprentice in a machine shop. I worked for three years for nothing but my grub. . .. The shop owner was a German named Foerster. He didn''t want to take me at first, said I was too young. But I was a sturdy lad, and my mother added on a couple of years. I worked three years for that German, but instead of learning a trade I had to do odd jobs around the house, and run for vodka. The boss drank like a fish. . . . He''d send me to fetch coal and iron too.. . . The mistress made a regular slave out of me: I had to peel potatoes and scour pots. I was always getting kicked and cuffed, most times for no reason, just out of habit. If I didn''t please the mistress â?" and she was always on the rampage on account of her husband''s drinking â?" she would beat me. I''d run away from her out into the street, but where could I go, who was there to complain to? My mother was forty miles away, and she couldn''t keep me anyway.... And in the shop it wasn''t any better. The master''s brother was in charge, a swine of a man who used to enjoy playing tricks on me. ''Here boy,'' he''d say, ''fetch me that washer from over there,'' and he''d point to the corner by the forge. I''d run over and grab the washer and let out a yell. It had just come out of the forge; and though it looked black lying there on the ground, when you touched it, it burned right through the flesh. I''d stand there screaming with the pain and he''d burst his sides laughing. I couldn''t stand any more of this and I ran away home to mother. But she didn''t know what to do with me, so she brought me back. She cried all the way there, I remember. In my third year they began to teach me something about the trade, but the beatings continued. I ran away again, this time to Starokonstantinov. I found work in a sausage factory and wasted more than a year and a half washing casings. Then our boss gambled away his factory, didn''t pay us a kopek for four months and disappeared. I got out of that hole, took a train to Zhmerinka and went to look for work. I was lucky enough to meet a railwayman there who took pity on me. When I told him I was a mechanic of sorts, he took me to his boss and said I was his nephew and asked him to find some work for me. By my size they took me for seventeen, and so I got a job as a mechanic''s helper. As for my present job, I''ve been working here for more than eight years. That is all I can tell you about my past. You all know about my present life here."
Artem wiped his brow with his cap and heaved a deep sigh. He had not yet said the chief thing. This was the hardest thing of all to say, but he had to say it before anyone asked the inevitable question. And knitting his bushy eyebrows, he went on with his story:
"Why did I not join the Bolsheviks before? That is a question you all have the right to ask me. How can I answer? After all, I''m not an old man yet. How is it I didn''t find the road here until today? I''ll tell you straight, for I''ve nothing to hide. I missed that road, I ought to have taken it back in nineteen eighteen when we rose against the Germans. Zhukhrai, the sailor, told me so many a time. It wasn''t until 1920 that I took up a rifle. When the storm was over and we had driven the Whites into the Black Sea, we came back home. Then came the family, children. ... I got all tied up in family life. But now that our Comrade Lenin is gone and the Party has issued its call, I have looked back at my life and seen what was lacking. It''s not enough to defend your own power, we have to stick together like one big family, in Lenin''s place, so that the Soviet power should stand solid like a mountain of steel. We must become Bolsheviks. It''s our Party, isn''t it?"
When he finished, a little abashed at having made such a long speech, he felt as though a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders, and, pulling himself up to his full height, he stood waiting for the questions to come.
"Any questions?" Sirotenko''s voice broke the ensuing silence.
A stir ran over the gathering, but no one responded at first to the chairman''s call. Then a stoker, straight from his engine and black as a beetle, said with finality:
"What''s there to ask? Don''t we know him? Vote him in and be done with it!"
Gilyaka, the smith, his face scarlet from the heat and the excitement, cried out hoarsely:
"This comrade''s the right sort, he won''t jump the rails, you can depend on him. Vote him, Sirotenko!"
At the very back of the hall where the Komsomols were sitting, someone, invisible in the semidarkness, rose and said:
"Let Comrade Korchagin explain why he has settled on the land and how he reconciles his peasant status with his proletarian psychology."
A light rustle of disapproval passed over the hall and a voice rose in protest:
"Why don''t you talk so us plain folks can understand? A fine time to show off...."
But Artem was already replying:
"That''s all right, Comrade. The lad is right about my having settled on the land. That''s true, but I havenâ?Tt betrayed my working-class conscience. Anyhow, that''s over and done with from today. I''m moving my family closer to the sheds. It''s better here. That cursed bit of land has been sticking in my throat for a long time."
Once again Artem''s heart trembled when he saw the forest of hands raised in his favour, and with head held high he walked back to his seat. Behind him he heard Sirotenko announce:
"Unanimous."
The third to take his place at the presidium table was Zakhar Bruzzhak, Polentovsky''s former helper. The taciturn old man had been an engine driver himself now for some time. When he finished his account of a lifetime of labour and brought his story up to the present, his voice dropped and he spoke softly but loud enough for all to hear:
"It is my duty to finish what my children began. They wouldn''t have wanted me to hide away in a corner with my grief. That isn''t what they died for. I haven''t tried to fill the gap left by their death, but now the death of our leader has opened my eyes. Don''t ask me to answer for the past. From today our life starts anew."
Zakhar''s face clouded and looked stern as painful memories stirred within him. But when a sea of hands swept up, voting for his acceptance into the Party, his eyes lit up and his greying head was no longer bowed.
Far into the night continued this review of the new Party replacements. Only the best were admitted, those whom everyone knew well, whose lives were without blemish.
The death of Lenin brought many thousands of workers into the Bolshevik Party. The leader was gone but the Party''s ranks were unshaken. A tree that has thrust its mighty roots deep into the ground does not perish if its crown is severed.

Chapter Six
Two men stood at the entrance to the hotel concert hall. The taller of the two wore pince-nez and a red armband marked "Commandant".
"Is the Ukrainian delegation meeting here?" Rita inquired.
"Yes," the tall man replied coldly. "Your business, Comrade?"
The tall man blocked the entrance and examined Rita from head to foot.
"Have you a delegate''s mandate?"
Rita produced her card with the gilt-embossed words "Member of the Central Committee" and the man unbent at once.
"Pass in, Comrade," he said cordially. "You''ll find some vacant seats over to the left."
Rita walked down the aisle, saw a vacant seat and sat down.
The meeting was evidently drawing to a close, for the chairman was summing up. His voice struck Rita as familiar.
"The council of the All-Russia Congress has now been elected. The Congress opens in two hours'' time. In the meantime permit me to go over the list of delegates once more."
It was Akim! Rita listened with rapt attention as he hurriedly read out the list. As his name was called, each delegate raised his hand showing his red or white pass.
Suddenly Rita caught a familiar name: Pankratov.
She glanced round as a hand shot up but through the intervening rows she could not glimpse the stevedore''s face. The names ran on, and again Rita heard one she knew â?" Okunev, and immediately after that another, Zharky.
Scanning the faces of the delegates she caught sight of Zharky. He was sitting not far away with Kis face half turned towards her. Yes, it was Vanya all right. She had almost forgotten that profile. After all, she had not seen him for several years.
The roll-call continued. And then Akim read out a name that caused Rita to start violently:
"Korchagin."
Far away in one of the front rows a hand rose and fell, and, strange to say, Rita was seized with a painful longing to see the face of the man who bore the same name as her lost comrade. She could not tear her eyes away from the spot where the hand had risen, but all the heads in the rows before her seemed all alike. She got up and went down the aisle toward the front rows. At that moment Akim finished reading. Chairs were pushed back noisily and the hall was filled with the hum of voices and young laughter. Akim, trying to make himself heard above the din, shouted":
"Bolshoi Theatre ... seven o''clock. Don''t be late!"
The delegates crowded to the single exit. Rita saw that she would never be able to find any of her old friends in this throng. She must try to catch Akim before he left; he would help her find the others. Just then a group of delegates passed her in the aisle on their way to the exit and she heard someone say:
"Well, Korchagin old man, we''d better be pushing off too!"
And a well-remembered voice replied: "Good, let''s go."
Rita turned quickly. Before her stood a tall, dark-complexioned young man in a khaki tunic with a slender Caucasian belt, and blue riding breeches.
Rita stared at him. Then she felt his arms around her and heard his trembling voice say softly: "Rita", and she knew that it was Pavel Korchagin. "So you''re alive?"
These words told him all. She had not known that his reported death was a mistake.
The hall had emptied out long since, and the din and bustle of Tverskaya, that mighty artery of the city, poured through the open window. The clock struck six, but to both of them it seemed that they had met only a moment ago. But the clock summoned them to the Bolshoi Theatre. As they walked down the broad staircase to the exit she surveyed Pavel once more. He was a head taller than her now and more mature and self-possessed. But otherwise he was the Pavel she had always known.
"I haven''t even asked you where you are working," she said.
"I am Secretary of the Regional Committee of the Komsomol, what Dubava would call a ''penpusher''," Pavel replied with a smile.
"Have you seen him?"
"Yes, and I have the most unpleasant memories of that meeting."
They stepped into the street. Automobiles hooted, noisy bustling througs filled the pavements. They hardly exchanged a word on the way to the theatre, their minds full of the same thoughts. They found the theatre besieged by a surging, tempestuous sea of people which tossed itself against the stone bulk of the theatre building in an effort to break through the line of Red Army men guarding the entrances. But the sentries gave admittance only to delegates, who passed through the cordon, their credentials proudly displayed.
It was a Komsomol sea that surrounded the theatre, a sea of young people who had been unable to obtain tickets to the opening of the Congress but who were determined to get in at all costs. Some of the more agile youngsters managed to work their way into the midst of groups of delegates and by presenting some slip of red paper sometimes contrived to get as far as the entrance.
A few even managed to slip through the doors only to be stopped by the Central Committee man on duty, or the commandant who directed the guests and delegates to their appointed places. And then, to the infinite satisfaction of all the rest of the "ticketless" fraternity, they were unceremoniously ejected.
The theatre could not hold a fraction of all who wished to be present.
Rita and Pavel pushed their way with difficulty to the entrance. The delegates continued to pour in, some arriving by tram, others by car. A large knot of them gathered at the entrance and the Red Army men, Komsomols themselves, were pressed back against the wall. At that moment a mighty shout arose from the crowd near the entrance:
"Bauman District, here goes!"
"Come on, lads, our side''s winning!"
"Hurray!"
Through the doorway along with Pavel and Rita slipped a sharp-eyed youngster wearing a Komsomol badge, and eluding the commandant, made a beeline for the foyer. A moment later he was swallowed up by the crowd.
"Let''s sit here," Rita said, indicating two seats in a corner at the back of the stalls.
"There is one question I must ask you," said Rita when they were seated. "It concerns bygone days, but I am sure you will not refuse to answer it. Why did you break off our studies and our friendship that time?"
And though Pavel had been expecting this question ever since they had met, it disconcerted him. Their eyes met and Pavel saw that she knew.
"I think you know the answer yourself, Rita. That happened three years ago, and now I can only condemn Pavel for what he did. As a matter of fact Korchagin has committed many a blunder, big and small, in his life. That was one of them."
Rita smiled.
"An excellent preamble. Now for the answer!"
"It is not only I who was to blame," Pavel began in a low voice. "It was the Gadfly''s fault too, that revolutionary romanticism of his. In those days I was very much influenced by books with vivid descriptions of staunch, courageous revolutionaries consecrated to our cause. Those men made a deep impression on me and I longed to be like them. I allowed The Gadfly to influence my feeling for you. It seems absurd to me now, and I regret it more than I can say."
"Then you have changed your mind about The Gadfly?"
"No, Rita, not fundamentally. I have only discarded the needless tragedy of that painful process of testing one''s will. I still stand for what is most important in the Gadfly, for his courage, his supreme endurance, for the type of man who is capable of enduring suffering without exhibiting his pain to all and sundry. I stand for the type of revolutionary whose personal life is nothing as compared with the life of society as a whole."
"It is a pity, Pavel, that you did not tell me this three years ago," said Rita with a smile that showed her thoughts to be far away.
"A pity, you mean, because I have never been more to you than a comrade, Rita?"
"No, Pavel, you might have been more."
"But surely that can be remedied."
"No, Comrade Gadfly, it is too late for that. You see, I have a little daughter now," Rita smilingly explained. "I am very fond of her father. In general, the three of us are very good friends, and so far our trio is inseparable."
Her fingers brushed Pavel''s hand. The gesture was prompted by anxiety for him, but she realised at once that it was unnecessary. Yes, he had matured in these three years, and not only physically. She could tell by his eyes that he was deeply hurt by her confession, but all he said was:
"What I have left is still incomparably more than what I have just lost." And Rita knew that this was not merely an empty phrase, it was the simple truth.
It was time to take their places nearer to the stage. They got up and went forward to the row occupied by the Ukrainian delegation. The band struck up. Scarlet streamers flung across the hall were emblazoned with the words: "The Future Is Ours!" Thousands filled the stalls, the boxes and the tiers of the great theatre. These thousands merged here in one mighty organism throbbing with inexhaustible energy. The flower of the young guard of the country''s great industrial brotherhood was gathered here. Thousands of pairs of eyes reflected the glow of those words traced in burning letters over the heavy curtain: "The Future Is Ours!" And still the human tide rolled in. Another few moments and the heavy velvet curtain would move aside, and the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Russian Young Communist League, overwhelmed for a moment by the solemnity of the occasion, would announce with a tremor in his voice:
"I declare the Sixth Congress of the Russian Young Communist League open."
Never before had Pavel Korchagin been so profoundly, so stirringly conscious of the grandeur and might of the Revolution, and an indescribable surge of pride and joy swept over him at the thought that life had brought him, a fighter and builder, to this triumphant rally of the young guard to Bolshevism.
The Congress claimed all of his time from early morning until late at night, so that it was not until one of the final sessions that Pavel met Rita again. She was with a group of Ukrainians.
"I am leaving tomorrow as soon as the Congress closes," she told him. "I don''t know whether we will have another chance for a talk, and so I have prepared two old notebooks of my diary for you, and a short note. Read them and send them back to me by post. They will tell you all that I have not told you."
He pressed her hand and gave her a long look as if committing her features to memory.
They met as agreed the following day at the main entrance and Rita handed him a package and a sealed letter. There were people all around and so their leave-taking was restrained, but in her slightly misted eyes Pavel read a deep tenderness tinged with sadness.
The next day their trains bore them away in different directions. The Ukrainian delegation occupied several carriages of the train in which Pavel travelled. He shared a compartment with some delegates from Kiev. In the evening, when the other passengers had retired and Okunev on the neighbouring berth was snoring peacefully, Pavel moved the lamp closer and opened the letter.
"Pavel, my darling! I might have told you all this when we were together, but it is better this way. I wish only one thing: that what we spoke of before the Congress should leave no scar on your life. I know you are strong and I believe that you meant what you said. I do not take a formal attitude to life, I feel that one may make exceptions â?" though rarely â?" in one''s personal relationships, provided they are founded on a genuine and deep attachment. For you I would have made that exception, but I rejected my impulse to pay tribute to our youth. I feel that there would be no true happiness in it for either of us. Still, you ought not to be so harsh to yourself, Pavel. Our life is not all struggle, there is room in it for the happiness that real love brings.
"As for the rest, the main purport of your life, I have no fears for you. I press your hand warmly.
"Rita."
Pavel tore up the letter reflectively; he thrust his hand out of the window and felt the wind tearing the scraps of paper out of his hand.
By morning he had read both notebooks of Rita''s diary, wrapped them up and tied them ready for posting. At Kharkov he left the train with Okunev and Pankratov and several other delegates. Okunev was going to Kiev to fetch Talya, who was staying with Anna. Pankratov, who had been elected member of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Komsomol, also had business in Kiev. Pavel decided to go on with them to Kiev and pay a visit to Dubava and Anna.
By the time he emerged from the post-office at the Kiev station after sending off the parcel to Rita, the others had gone, so he set off alone. The tram stopped outside the house where Anna and Dubava lived. Pavel climbed the stairs to the second floor and knocked at the door on the left, Anna''s room. No one answered. It was too early for her to have gone to work. "She must be sleeping," he thought. The door of the neighbouring room opened and a sleepy-eyed Dubava came out on the landing. His face was ashen and there were dark circles under his eyes. He exuded a strong smell of onions and Pavel''s sharp nose caught a whiff of alcohol. Through the half-open door he caught a glimpse of the fleshy leg and shoulders of some woman on the bed.
Dubava, noticing the direction of his glance, kicked the door shut.
"You''ve come to see Comrade Borhart, I suppose?" he inquired hoarsely, evading Pavel''s eyes. "She doesn''t live here any more. Didn''t you know that?"
Korchagin, his face stern, looked searchingly at Dubava.
"No, I didn''t. Where has she gone?"
Dubava suddenly lost his temper.
"That''s no concern of mine!" he shouted. He belched and added with suppressed malice: "Come to console her, eh? You''re just in time to fill the vacancy. Here''s your chance. Don''t worry, she won''t refuse you. She told me many a time how much she liked you ... or however those silly women put it. Go on, strike the iron while it''s hot. It will be a true communion of soul and body."
Pavel felt the blood rushing to his cheeks. Restraining himself with difficulty, he said in a low voice:
"What are you doing to yourself, Mityai! I never thought you''d fall so low. You weren''t a bad fellow once. Why are you letting yourself go to the dogs?"
Dubava leaned back against the wall. The cement floor evidently felt cold to his bare feet, for he shivered.
The door opened and a woman''s face with swollen eyes and puffy cheeks appeared.
"Come back in, duckie, what''re you standing out there for?"
Before she could say any more, Dubava slammed the door to and stood against it.
"A fine beginning," Pavel observed. "Look at the company you''re keeping. Where will it all end?"
But Dubava would hear no more.
"Are you going to tell me who I should sleep with?" he shouted. "I''ve had enough of your preaching. Now get back where you came from! Run along and tell them all that Dubava has taken to drinking and whoring."
Pavel went up to him and said in a voice of suppressed emotion:
"Mityai, get rid of that woman. I want to talk to you, for the last time...."
Dubava''s face darkened. He turned on his heel and went back into the room without another word.
"The swine!" Pavel muttered and walked slowly down the stairs.
Two years went by. Time counted off the days and months, but the swift colourful pageant of life filled its seeming monotony with novelty, so that no two days were alike. The great nation of one hundred and sixty million people, the first people in the world to have taken the destiny of their vast land with its untold riches into their own hands, were engaged in the Herculean task of reviving their war-ravaged economy. The country grew stronger, new vigour flowed into its veins, and the dismal spectacle of smokeless abandoned factories was no longer to be seen.

For Pavel those two years fled by in ceaseless activity. He was not one to take life calmly, to greet each day with a leisurely yawn and retire at the stroke of ten. He lived at a swift tempo, grudging himself and others every wasted moment.
He allowed a bare minimum of time for sleep. Often the light burned in his window late into the night, and within, a group of people would be gathered around the table engrossed in study. They had made a thorough study of Volume III of Capital in these two years and the subtle mechanics of capitalist exploitation were now revealed to them.
Razvalikhin had turned up in the area where Korchagin now worked. He had been sent by the Gubernia Committee with the recommendation that he be appointed Secretary of a district Komsomol organisation. Pavel happened to be away when Razvalikhin arrived and in his absence the Bureau had sent the newcomer to one of the districts. Pavel received the news on his return without comment.
A month later Pavel made an unexpected visit to Razvalikhin''s district. There was not much evidence, but what there was turned out to be sufficiently damning: the new secretary drank, he had surrounded himself with toadies and was suppressing the initiative of the conscientious members. Pavel submitted the evidence to the Bureau, and when the meeting voted administering Razvalikhin a severe reprimand, Pavel surprised everyone by getting up and saying:
"I move that he be expelled and that his expulsion be final."
The others were taken aback by the motion. It seemed too severe a measure under the circumstances. But Pavel insisted.
"The scoundrel must be expelled. He had every chance to become a decent human being, but he has remained an outsider in the Komsomol." And Pavel told the Bureau about the Berezdov incident.
"I protest!" Razvalikhin shouted. "Korchagin is simply trying to settle personal scores. What he says is nothing but idle gossip. Let him back up his charges with facts and documents. Suppose I were to come to you with a story that Korchagin had gone in for smuggling, would you expel him on the strength of that? He''s got *****bmit written proof."
"Don''t worry, I''ll submit all the proofs necessary," Korchagin replied.
Razvalikhin left the room. Half an hour later Pavel persuaded the Bureau to adopt a resolution expelling Razvalikhin from the Komsomol as an alien element.
Summer came and with it the vacation season. Pavel''s fellow workers left for their well-earned holiday one after another. Those whose health demanded it went to the seaside and Pavel helped them to secure sanatorium accommodations and financial assistance. They went away pale and worn, but elated at the prospect of their coming holiday. The burden of their work fell on Pavel''s shoulders and he bore the added load without a murmur. In due time they returned sunburned and full of life and energy, and others went off. Throughout the summer the office was short-handed. But life did not lessen its swift pace, and Pavel could not afford to miss a single day''s work.
The summer passed. Pavel dreaded the approach of autumn and winter for they invariably brought him much physical distress.
He had looked forward with particular eagerness to the coming of summer that year. For painful though it was for him to admit it even to himself he felt his strength waning from year to year. There were only two alternatives: to admit that he could not endure the intensive effort his work demanded of him and declare himself an invalid, or remain at his post as long as he could. He chose the latter course.
One day at a meeting of the Bureau of the Regional Committee of the Party Dr. Bartelik, an old Party underground worker now in charge of public health in the region, came over and sat down beside him.
"You''re looking rather seedy, Korchagin. How''s your health? Have you been examined by the Medical Commission? You haven''t? I thought as much. But you look as if you were in need of an overhauling, my friend. Come over on Thursday evening and we''ll have a look at you."
Pavel did not go. He was too busy. But Bartelik did not forget him and some time later he came for Pavel and took him to the commission in which he participated as neuropathologist. The Medical Commission recommended "an immediate vacation with prolonged treatment in the Crimea, to be followed by regular medical treatment. Unless this is done serious consequences are unavoidable."
From the long list of ailments in Latin that preceded this recommendation Pavel understood only one thing â?" the main trouble was not in his legs, but in his central nervous system, which was seriously impaired.
Bartelik put the commission''s decision before the Bureau, and the motion that Korchagin be released at once from work evoked no opposition. Korchagin himself, however, suggested that his vacation be postponed until the return of Sbitnev, Chief of the Organisational Department. He did not want to leave the Committee without leadership. The Bureau agreed, although Bartelik objected to the delay.
And so in three weeks'' time Pavel was to leave for his holiday, the first in his life. Accommodation had already been reserved for him in a Yevpatoria sanatorium and a paper to that effect lay in his desk drawer.
He worked at even greater pressure in this period; he held a plenary meeting of the Regional Komsomol and drove himself relentlessly to tie up all loose ends so as to be able to leave with his mind at rest.
And on the very eve of his departure for his first glimpse of the sea, a revolting, unbelievable thing happened.
Pavel had gone to the Party propaganda section after work that day to attend a meeting. There was no one in the room when he arrived and so he had sat down on the windowsill by the open window behind the bookcase to wait for the others to assemble. Before long several people came in. He could not see them from behind the bookcase but he recognised one voice. It belonged to Failo, the man in charge of the Regional Economic Department, a tall, handsome fellow with a dashing military bearing, who had earned himself a reputation for drinking and running after women.
Failo had once been a partisan and never missed an opportunity to brag laughingly of the way he had sliced off the heads of Makhno men by the dozen. Pavel could not stand the man. One day a Komsomol girl had come weeping to Pavel with the story that Failo had promised to marry her, but after living with her for a week had left her and now did not even greet her when they met. When the matter came up before the Control Commission, Failo wriggled out of it since the girl could give no proofs. But Pavel had believed her. He now listened while the others, unaware of his presence, talked freely.
"Well, Failo, how goes it? What have you been up to lately?"
The speaker was Gribov, one of Failo''s boon companions. For some reason Gribov was considered a propagandist although he was ignorant, narrow-minded and stupid. Nevertheless he prided himself on being called a propaganda worker and made a point of reminding everyone of the fact on all and every occasion.
"You can congratulate me, my boy. I made another conquest yesterday. Korotayeva. You said nothing would come of it. That''s where you were mistaken, my lad. If I go after a woman you may be sure I''ll get her sooner or later," Failo boasted, adding some obscenities.
Pavel felt the nervous chill that always seized him when he was deeply roused. Korotayeva was in charge of the Women''s Department and had come to the Regional Committee at the same time as he had. Pavel knew her for a pleasant, earnest Party worker, kind and considerate to the women who came to her for help and advice, and respected by her fellow workers in the Committee. Pavel knew that she was not married, and he had no doubt that it was of her that Failo had spoken.
"Go on, Failo, you''re making it up! It doesn''t sound like her."
"Me, making it up? What do you take me for? I''ve broken in harder cases than that. You only have to know how. Got to have the right approach. Some of them will give in right away, but that kind aren''t worth the trouble. Others take a whole month to come to heel. The important thing is to understand their psychology. The right approach, that''s the thing. Why, man, it''s a whole science, but I''m a regular professor in such matters. Ho! Ho! Ho!"
Failo was positively slobbering with self-satisfaction. His listeners egged him on, all agog for more juicy details.
Korchagin got up. He clenched his fists, feeling his heart pounding wildly in his chest.
"I knew there wasn''t much hope of catching Korotayeva with the usual bait, but I didn''t want to give up the game, especially since I''d wagered Gribov a dozen of port wine that I''d do it. So I tried subversive tactics, so to speak. I dropped into her office once or twice, but I could see I wasn''t making much of an impression. Besides, there''s all sorts of silly talk going on about me and some of it must have reached her ears.... Well, to cut a long story short, the frontal attack failed, so I tried flanking tactics. Ho! Ho! Pretty good that, eh! Well, I told her my sad story, how I''d fought at the front, wandered about the earth and had plenty of hard knocks, but I''d never been able to find the right sort of woman and so here I was a lonely cuss with nobody to love me. ... And plenty more of the same sort of tripe. I was striking at her weak spots, see? I must admit I had a lot of trouble with her. At one point I thought I''d send her to hell and drop the whole silly business. But by now it was a matter of principle, and so out of principle I had to stick it out. And finally I broke down her resistance, and what do you think? She turned out to be a virgin! Ha! Ha! What a lark!"
And Failo went on with his revolting story.
Pavel, seething with rage, found himself beside Failo.
"You swine!" he roared.
"Oh, I''m a swine, am I, and what about you eavesdropping?"
Pavel evidently said something else, because Failo who was a bit tipsy seized him by the front of his tunic.
"Insult me, eh?" He shouted and struck Pavel with his fist.
Pavel snatched a heavy oak stool and knocked the other down with one blow. Fortunately for Failo, Pavel did not happen to have his revolver on him, or he would have been a dead man.
But the senseless, incredible thing had happened, and on the day scheduled for his departure to the Crimea, Pavel stood before a Party court.
The whole Party organisation had assembled in the town theatre. The incident had aroused much feeling, and the hearing developed into a serious discussion of Party ethics, morals and personal relationships. The case served as a signal for the discussion of the general issues involved, and the incident itself was relegated to the background. Failo behaved in the most insolent manner, smiling sardonically and declaring that he would take the case to the People''s Court and that Korchagin would get a hard labour sentence for assaulting him. He refused categorically to answer any questions.
"You want to have a nice little gossip at my expense? Nothing doing. You can accuse me of anything you like, but the fact remains that the women here have their knife in me because I don''t pay any attention to them. And this whole case of yours isn''t worth a damn. If this was 1918 I''d settle scores with that madman Korchagin in my own way. And now you can carry on without me." And he left the hall.
The chairman then asked Pavel to tell what had happened. Pavel began calmly enough, though he restrained himself with difficulty.
"The whole thing happened because I was unable to control myself. But the days when I worked more with my hands than with my head are long since gone. What happened this time was an accident. I knocked Failo down before I knew what I was doing. This is the only instance of ''partisan'' action I have been guilty of in the past few years, and I condemn it, although I think that the blow was well deserved. Failo''s type is a disgusting phenomenon. I cannot understand, I shall never believe that a revolutionary, a Communist, can be at the same time a dirty beast and a scoundrel. The only positive aspect of the whole business is that it has focussed our attention on the behaviour of our fellow Communists in private life."
The overwhelming majority of the membership voted in favour of expelling Failo from the Party. Gribov was administered a severe reprimand for giving false evidence and a warning that the next offence would mean expulsion. The others who had taken part in the conversation admitted their mistake and got off with a word of censure.
Bartelik then told the gathering about the state of Pavel''s nerves and the meeting protested violently when the comrade who had been appointed by the Party to investigate the case moved that Korchagin be reprimanded. The investigator withdrew his motion and Pavel was acquitted.
A few days later Pavel was on his way to Kharkov. The Regional Committee of the Party had finally granted his insistent request to be released from his job and placed at the disposal of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Komsomol. He had been given a good testimonial. Akim was one of the secretaries of the Central Committee. Pavel went to see him as soon as he arrived in Kharkov and told him the whole story.
Akim looked over Pavel''s testimonial. It declared him to be "boundlessly devoted to the Party", but added: "A levelheaded Party worker, on the whole, he is, however, on rare occasions apt to lose his self-control. This is due to the serious con***ion of his nervous system."
"Spoiled a good testimonial with that fact, Pavel," said Akim. "But never mind, boy, such things happen to the strongest of us. Go south and build up your health and when you come back we''ll talk about work."
And Akim gave him a hearty handshake.
The Kommunar Sanatorium of the Central Committee. White buildings overgrown with vines set amid gardens of rose bushes and sparkling fountains, and vacationers in white summer clothes and bathing suits.... A young woman doctor entered his name in the register and he found himself in a spacious room in the corner building. Dazzling white bed linen, virginal cleanliness and peace, blessed undisturbed peace.
After a refreshing bath and a change of clothes, Pavel hurried down to the beach.
The sea lay before him calm, majestic, a blue-black expanse of polished marble, spreading all the way to the horizon. Far away in the distance where sea met sky a bluish haze hovered and a molten sun was reflected in a ruddy glow on its surface. The massive contours of a mountain range were dimly seen through the morning mist. Pavel breathed the invigorating freshness of the sea breeze deep into his lungs and feasted his eyes on the infinite calm of the blue expanse.
A wave rolled lazily up to his feet, licking the golden sand of the beach.

Chapter Seven
The garden of the central poly clinic adjoined the grounds of the Central Committee Sanatorium. The patients used it as a short cut on their way home from the beach. Pavel loved to rest here in the shade of a spreading plane tree which grew beside a high limestone wall. From this quiet nook he could watch the lively movement of the crowd strolling along the garden paths and listen to the music of the band in the evenings without being jostled by the gay throngs of the large health resort.
Today too he had sought his favourite retreat. Drowsy from the sunshine and the bath he had just taken, he stretched himself out luxuriously on the chaise-lounge and fell into a doze. His bath towel and the book he was reading, Furmanov''s Insurrection, lay on the chair beside him. His first days in the sanatorium had brought no relief to his nerves and his headaches continued. His ailment had so far baffled the sanatorium doctors, who were still trying to get to the root of the trouble. Pavel was sick of the perpetual examinations. They wearied him and he did his best to avoid his ward doctor, a pleasant woman with the curious name of Yerusalimchik, who had a difficult time hunting for her unwilling patient and persuading him to let her take him to some specialist or other.
"I''m tired of the whole business," Pavel would plead with her. "Five times a day I have to tell the same story and answer all sorts of silly questions: was your grandmother insane, or did your great-grandfather suffer with rheumatism? How the devil should I know what he suffered from? I never saw him in my life! Every doctor tries to induce me to confess that I had gonorrhea or something worse, until I swear I''m ready to punch their bald heads. Give me a chance to rest, that''s all I want. If I''m going to let myself be diagnosed all the six weeks of my stay here I''ll become a danger to society."
Yerusalimchik would laugh and joke with him, but a few minutes later she would take him gently by the arm and lead him to the surgeon, chattering volubly all the way.
But today there was no examination in the offing, and dinner was an hour away. Presently, through his doze, he heard steps approaching. He did not open his eyes. "They''ll think I''m asleep and go away," he thought. Vain hope! He heard the chair beside him creak as someone sat down. A faint whiff of perfume told him it was a woman. He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a dazzling white dress and a pair of bronzed feet encased in soft leather slippers, then a boyish bob, two enormous eyes, and a row of white teeth as sharp as a mouse''s. She gave him a shy smile.
"I haven''t disturbed you, I hope?"
Pavel made no reply, which was not very polite of him, but he still hoped that she would go.
"Is this your book?" She was turning the pages of Insurrection.
"It is."
There was a moment of silence.
"You''re from the Kommunar Sanatorium, aren''t you?"
Pavel stirred impatiently. Why couldn''t she leave him in peace? Now she would start asking about his illness. He would have to go.
"No," he replied curtly.
"I was sure I had seen you there."
Pavel was on the point of rising when a deep, pleasant woman''s voice behind him said:
"Why, Dora, what are you doing here?''''
A plump, sunburned, fair-haired girl in a beach costume seated herself on the edge of a chair. She glanced quickly at Korchagin.
"I''ve seen you somewhere, Comrade. You''re from Kharkov, aren''t you?"
"Yes."
"Where do you work?"
Pavel decided to put an end to the conversation.
"In the garbage disposal department," he replied. The laugh this sally evoked made him jump.
"You''re not very polite, are you, Comrade?"
That is how their friendship began. Dora Rodkina turned out to be a member of the Bureau of the Kharkov City Committee of the Party and later, when they came to know each other well, she often teased him about the amusing incident with which their acquaintance had started.
One afternoon at an open-air concert in the grounds of the Thalassa Sanatorium Pavel ran across his old friend Zharky. And curious to relate, it was a foxtrot that brought them together.
After the audience had been treated to a highly emotional rendering of Oh, Nights of Burning Passion by a buxom soprano, a couple sprang onto the stage. The man, half-naked but for a red top hat, some shiny spangles on his hips, a dazzling white shirt front and bow tie, in feeble imitation of a savage, and his doll-faced partner in voluminous skirts. To the accompaniment of a delighted buzz from the crowd of beefy-necked shopowners standing behind the armchairs and cots occupied by the sanatorium patients, the couple gyrated about the stage in the intricate figures of a foxtrot. A more revolting spectacle could scarcely be imagined. The fleshy man in his idiotic top hat, with his partner pressed tightly to him, writhed on the stage in suggestive poses. Pavel heard the stertorous breathing of some fat carcass at his back. He turned to go when someone in the front row got up and shouted:
"Enough of this brothel show! To hell with it!"
It was Zharky.
The pianist stopped playing and the violin subsided with a squeak. The couple on the stage ceased writhing. The crowd at the back set up a vicious hissing.
"What impudence to interrupt a number!"
"All Europe is dancing foxtrot!"
"Outrageous!"
But Seryozha Zhbanov, Secretary of the Cherepovets Komsomol organisation and one of the Kommunar patients, put four fingers into his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Others followed his example and in an instant the couple vanished from the stage, as if swept off by a gust of wind. The obsequious compere who looked like nothing so much as an old-time flunkey, announced that the concert troupe was leaving.
"Good riddance to bad rubbish!" a lad in a sanatorium bathrobe shouted amid general laughter.
Pavel went over to the front rows and found Zharky. The two friends had a long chat in Pavel''s room. Zharky told Pavel that he was working in the propaganda section of one of the Party''s regional committees.
"You didn''t know I was married, did you?" said Zharky. "I''m expecting a son or a daughter before long."
"Married, eh?" Pavel was surprised. "Who is your wife?"
Zharky took a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to Pavel.
"Recognise her?"
It was a photo of himself and Anna Borhart.
"What happened to Dubava?" Pavel asked in still greater surprise.
"He''s in Moscow. He left the university after he was expelled from the Party. He''s at the Bauman Technical Institute now. I hear he''s been reinstated. Too bad, if it''s true. He''s rotten through and through. ... Guess what Pankratov is doing? He''s assistant director of a shipyard. I don''t know much about the others. We''ve lost touch lately. We all work in different parts of the country. But it''s nice to get together occasionally and recall the old times."
Dora came in bringing several other people with her. She glanced at the decoration on Zharky''s jacket and asked Pavel:
"Is your comrade a Party member? Where does he work?"
Puzzled, Pavel told her briefly about Zharky.
"Good," she said. "Then he can remain. These comrades have just come from Moscow. They are going to give us the latest Party news. We decided to come to your room and hold a sort of closed Party meeting," she explained.
With the exception of Pavel and Zharky all the newcomers were old Bolsheviks. Bartashev, a member of the Moscow Control Commission, told them about the new opposition headed by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev.
"At this critical moment we ought to be at our posts," Bartashev said in conclusion. "I am leaving tomorrow."
Three days after that meeting in Pavel''s room the sanatorium was deserted. Pavel too left shortly afterward, before his time was up.
The Central Committee of the Komsomol did not detain him. He was given an appointment as Komsomol Secretary in one of the industrial regions, and within a week he was already addressing a meeting of the local town organisation.
Late that autumn the car in which Pavel was travelling with two other Party workers to one of the remote districts, skidded into a ***ch and overturned.
All the occupants were injured. Pavel''s right knee was crushed. A few days later he was taken to the surgical institute in Kharkov. After an examination and X-ray of the injured limb the medical commission advised an immediate operation.
Pavel gave his consent.
"Tomorrow morning then," said the stout professor, who headed the commission. He got up and the others filed out after him.
A small bright ward with a single cot. Spotless cleanliness and the peculiar hospital smell he had long since forgotten. He glanced about him. Beside the cot stood a small table covered with a snow-white cloth and a white-painted stool. And that was all.
The nurse brought in his supper. Pavel sent it back. Half-sitting in his bed, he was writing letters. The pain in his knee interfered with his thoughts and robbed him of his appetite.
When the fourth letter had been written the door opened softly and a young woman in a white smock and cap came over to his bed.
In the twilight he made out a pair of arched eyebrows and large eyes that seemed black. In one hand she held a portfolio, in the other, a sheet of paper and a pencil.
"I am your ward doctor," she said. "Now I am going to ask you a lot of questions and you will have to tell me all about yourself, whether you like it or not."
She smiled pleasantly and her smile took the edge off her "cross-examination". Pavel spent the better part of an hour telling her not only about himself but about all his relatives several generations back.
... The operating theatre. People with gauze masks over noses and mouths. Shining nickel instruments, a long narrow table with a huge basin beneath it.
The professor was still washing his hands when Pavel lay down on the operating table. Behind him swift preparations were being made for the operation. He turned his head. The nurse was laying out pincets and lancets.
"Don''t look, Comrade Korchagin," said Bazhanova, his ward doctor, who was unbandaging his leg. "It is bad for the nerves."
"For whose nerves, doctor?" Pavel asked with a mocking smile.
A few minutes later a heavy mask covered his face and he heard the professor''s voice saying:
"We are going to give you an anaesthetic. Now breathe in deeply through your nose and begin counting."
"Very well," a calm voice muffled by the mask replied. "I apologise in advance for any unprintable remarks I am liable to make."
The professor could not suppress a smile.
The first drops of ether. The suffocating loathsome smell.
Pavel took a deep breath and making an effort to speak distinctly began counting. The curtain had risen on the first act of his tragedy.
Artem tore open the envelope and trembling inwardly unfolded the letter. His eyes bored into the first few lines, then ran quickly over the rest of the page.
"Artem! We write to each other so seldom, once, or at best twice a year! But is it quantity that matters? You write that you and your family have moved from Shepetovka to Kazatin railway yards because you wished to tear up your roots. I know that those roots lie in the backward, petty-proprietor psychology of Styosha and her relatives. It is hard to remake people of Styosha''s type, and I am very much afraid you will not succeed. You say you are finding it hard to study ''in your old age'', yet you seem to be doing not so badly. You are wrong in your stubborn refusal to leave the factory and take up work as Chairman of the Town Soviet. You fought for the Soviet power, didn''t you? Then take it! Take over the Town Soviet tomorrow and get to work!
"Now about myself. Something is seriously wrong with me. I have become a far too frequent inmate in hospitals. They have cut me up twice. I have lost quite a bit of blood and strength, but nobody can tell me yet when it will all end.
"I am no longer fit for work. I have acquired a new profession, that of ''invalid''. I am enduring much pain, and the net result of all this is loss of movement in the joint of my right knee, several scars in various parts of my body, and now the latest medical discovery: seven years ago I injured my spine and now I am told that this injury may cost me dearly. But I am ready to endure anything so long as I can return to the ranks.
"There is nothing more terrible to me in life than to fall out of the ranks. That is a possibility I refuse to contemplate. And that is why I let them do anything they like with me. But there is no improvement and the clouds grow darker and thicker all the time. After the first operation I returned to work as soon as I could walk, but before long they brought me back again. Now I am being sent to a sanatorium in Yevpatoria. I leave tomorrow. But don''t be downhearted, Artem, you know I don''t give in easily. I have life enough in me for three. You and I will do some good work yet, brother. Now take care of your health, don''t try to overtax your strength, because health repairs cost the Party far too much. All the experience we gain in work, and the knowledge we acquire by study is far too precious to be wasted in hospitals. I shake your hand.
"Pavel."
While Artem, his heavy brows knitted, was reading his brother''s letter, Pavel was taking leave of Dr. Bazhanova in the hospital.
"So you are leaving for the Crimea tomorrow?" she said as she gave him her hand. "How are you going to spend the rest of the day?"
"Comrade Rodkina is coming here soon," Pavel replied. "She is taking me to her place to meet her family. I shall spend the night there and tomorrow she will take me to the station."
Bazhanova knew Dora for she had often visited Pavel in the hospital.
"But, Comrade Korchagin, have you forgotten your promise to let my father see you before you go? I have given him a detailed account of your illness and I should like him to examine you. Perhaps you could manage it this evening."
Pavel agreed at once.
That evening Bazhanova showed Pavel into her father''s spacious office.
The famous surgeon gave Pavel a careful examination. His daughter had brought all the X-ray pictures and analyses from the clinic. Pavel could not help noticing how pale she turned when her father made some lengthy remark in Latin. Pavel stared at the professor''s large bald head bent over him and searched his keen eyes, but Bazhanov''s expression was inscrutable.
When Pavel had dressed, the professor took leave of him cordially, explaining that he was due at a conference, and left his daughter to inform Pavel of the result of his examination.
Pavel lay on the couch in Bazhanova''s tastefully furnished room waiting for the doctor to speak. But she did not know how to begin. She could not bring herself to repeat what her father had told her â?" that medicine was so far unable to check the disastrous inflammatory process at work in Pavel''s organism. The professor had been opposed to an operation. "This young man is fated to lose the use of his limbs and we are powerless to avert the tragedy."

She did not consider it wise either as doctor or friend to tell him the whole truth and so in carefully chosen words she told him only part of the truth.
"I am certain, Comrade Korchagin, that the Yevpatoria mud will put you right and that by autumn you will be able to return to work."
But she had forgotten that his sharp eye had been watching her all the time.
"From what you say, or rather from what you have not said, I see that the situation is grave. Remember I asked you always to be perfectly frank with me. You need not hide anything from me, I shan''t faint or try to cut my throat. But I very much want to know what is in store for me."
Bazhanova evaded a direct answer by making some cheerful remark and Pavel did not learn the truth about his future that night.
"Do not forget that I am your friend, Comrade Korchagin," the doctor said softly in parting. "Who knows what life has in store for you. If ever you need my help or my advice please write to me. I shall do everything in my power to help you."
Through the window she watched the tall leather-clad figure, leaning heavily on a stick, move painfully from the door to the waiting cab.
Yevpatoria again. The hot southern sun. Noisy sunburned people in embroidered skullcaps. A ten-minute drive brought the new arrivals to a two-storey grey limestone building â?" the Mainak Sanatorium.
The doctor on duty, learning that Pavel''s accommodation had been reserved by the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, took him up to room No. 11.
"I shall put you in with Comrade Ebner. He is a German and he has asked for a Russian room-mate," he explained as he knocked at the door. A voice with a heavy German accent sounded from within. "Come in."
Pavel put down his travelling bag and turned to the fair-haired man with the lively blue eyes who was lying on the bed. The German met him with a warm smile.
"Guten Morgen, Genosse. I mean, good day," he corrected himself, stretching a pale, long-fingered hand to Pavel.
A few moments later Pavel was sitting by his bed and the two were engrossed in a lively conversation in that "international language" in which words play a minor role, and imagination, gestures and mimicry, all the media of the unwritten Esperanto, fill in the gaps.
Pavel learned that Ebner was a German worker who had been wounded in the hip during the Hamburg uprising of 1923. The old wound had re-opened and he was confined to his bed. But he bore his sufferings cheerfully and that won Pavel''s respect for him at once.
Pavel could not have wished for a better room-mate. This one would not talk about his ailments from morning till night and bemoan his lot. On the contrary, with him one could forget one''s own troubles.
"Too bad I don''t know any German, though," Pavel thought ruefully.
In a corner of the sanatorium grounds stood several rocking-chairs, a bamboo table and two bath-chairs. It was here that the five patients whom the others referred to as the "Executive of the Comintern" were in the habit of spending their time after the day''s medical treatments were over.
Ebner half reclined in one of the bath-chairs. Pavel, who had also been forbidden to walk, in the other. The three other members of the group were Weiman, a thickset Estonian, who worked at a Republican Commissariat of Trade, Marta Laurin, a young, brown-eyed Lettish woman who looked like a girl of eighteen, and Ledenev, a tall, powerfully-built Siberian with greying temples. This small group indeed represented five different nationalities â?" German, Estonian, Lettish, Russian and Ukrainian. Marta and Weiman spoke German and Ebner used them as interpreters. Pavel and Ebner were friends because they shared the same room; Marta, Weiman and Ebner, because they shared a common language. The bond between Ledenev and Korchagin was chess.
Before Ledenev arrived, Korchagin had been the sanatorium chess "champion". He had won the title from Weiman after a stiff struggle. The phlegmatic Estonian had been somewhat shaken by his defeat and for a long time he could not forgive Korchagin for having worsted him. But one day a tall man, looking remarkably young for his fifty years, turned up at the sanatorium and suggested a game of chess with Korchagin. Pavel, having no inkling of danger, calmly began with a Queen''s Gambit, which Ledenev countered by advancing his central pawns. As "champion", Pavel was obliged to play all new arrivals, and there was always a knot of interested spectators around the board. After the ninth move Pavel realised that his opponent was cramping him by steadily advancing his pawns. Pavel saw now that he had a dangerous opponent and began to regret that he had treated the game so lightly at the start.
After a three-hour struggle during which Pavel exerted all his skill and ingenuity he was obliged to give up. He foresaw his defeat long before any of the onlookers. He glanced up at his opponent and saw Ledenev looking at him with a kindly smile. It was clear that he too saw how the game would end. The Estonian, who was following the game tensely and making no secret of his desire to see Korchagin defeated, was still unaware of what was happening.
"I always hold out to my last pawn," Pavel said, and Ledenev nodded approvingly.
Pavel played ten games with Ledenev in five days, losing seven, winning two and drawing one. Weiman was jubilant.
"Thank you, Comrade Ledenev, thank you! That was a wonderful thrashing you gave him! He deserved it! He knocked out all of us old chess players and now he''s been paid back by an old man himself. Ha! Ha!"
"How does it feel to be the loser, eh?" he teased the now vanquished victor.
Pavel lost the title of "champion" but won in Ledenev a friend who was later to become very precious to him. He saw now that his defeat on the chessboard was only to have been expected. His knowledge of chess strategy had been purely superficial and he had lost to an expert who knew all the secrets of the game.
Korchagin and Ledenev found that they had one important date in common: Pavel was born the year Ledenev joined the Party. Both were typical representatives of the young and old guard of Bolsheviks. The one had behind him a long life of intensive political activity, years of work in the underground movement and tsarist imprisonment, followed by important government work; the other had his flaming youth and only eight years of struggle, but years that could have burnt up more than one life. And both of them, the old man and the young, were avid of life and broken in health.
In the evenings the room shared by Ebner and Korchagin became a sort of club. All the political news emanated from here. The room rang with laughter and talk. Weiman usually tried to insert a bawdy anecdote into the conversation but invariably found himself attacked from two sides, by Marta and Korchagin. As a rule Marta was able to restrain him by some sharp sarcastic remark, but when this did not help Korchagin would intervene.
"Your particular brand of ''humour'' is not exactly to our taste, you know, Weiman," Marta would say.
"I can''t understand how you can stoop to that sort of thing," Korchagin would begin.
Weiman would stick out his thick underlip and survey the gathering with a mocking glint in his small eyes.
"We shall have to set up a department of morals under the Political Enlightenment Department and recommend Korchagin as chief inspector. I can understand why Marta objects, she is the professional feminine opposition, but Korchagin is just trying to pose as a young innocent, a sort of Komsomol babe-in-arms. . . . What''s more, I object to the egg trying to teach the hen."
After one heated debate on the question of communist ethics, the matter of obscene jokes was discussed from the standpoint of principle. Marta translated to Ebner the various views expressed.
"Die erotische Anekdote" he said, "is no good. I agree with Pavel."
Weiman was obliged to retreat. He laughed the matter off as best he could, but told no more smutty stories.
Pavel had taken Marta for a Komsomol member, judging her to be no more than nineteen. He was much surprised when he learned that she had been in the Party since 1917, that she was thirty-one and an active member of the Latvian Communist Party. In 1918 the Whites had sentenced her to be shot, but she had eventually been turned over to the Soviet Government along with some other comrades in an exchange of prisoners. She was now working on the e***orial staff of the Pravda and taking a university course at the same time.
Before Pavel was aware of it, a friendship sprang up between them, and the little Lettish woman who often dropped in to see Ebner, became an inseparable member of the "five".
Eglit, a Latvian underground worker, liked to tease her on this score. "What about poor Ozol pining away at home in Moscow? Oh Marta, how can you?"
Every morning, just before the bell to rise sounded, a lusty ****crow would ring out over the sanatorium. The puzzled attendants would run hither and thither in search of the errant bird. It never occurred to them that Ebner, who could give a perfect imitation of a ****crow, was having a little joke at their expense. Ebner enjoyed himself immensely.
Toward the end of his month''s stay in the sanatorium Pavel''s con***ion took a turn for the worse. The doctors ordered him to bed. Ebner was much upset. He had grown very fond of this courageous young Bolshevik, so full of life and energy, who had lost his health so early in life. And when Marta told him of the tragic future the doctors predicted for Korchagin, Ebner was deeply distressed.
Pavel was confined to his bed for the remainder of his stay in the sanatorium. He managed to hide his suffering from those around him, and Marta alone guessed by his ghastly pallor that he must be in pain. A week before his departure Pavel received a letter from the Ukrainian Central Committee informing him that his leave had been prolonged for two months on the advice of the sanatorium doctors who declared him unfit for work. Money to cover his expenses arrived along with the letter.
Pavel took this first blow as years before during his boxing lessons he had taken Zhukhrai''s punches. Then too he had fallen only to rise again at once.
A letter came from his mother asking him to go and see an old friend of hers, Albina Kyutsam, who lived in a small port town not far from Yevpatoria. Pavel''s mother had not seen her friend for fifteen years and she begged him to pay her a visit while he was in the Crimea. This letter was to play an important role in Pavel''s life.
A week later his sanatorium friends gave him a warm send-off at the pier. Ebner embraced him and kissed him like a brother. Marta was away at the time and Pavel left without saying good-bye to her.
The next morning the horse cab which brought Pavel from the pier drove up to a little house fronted by a small garden.
The Kyutsam family consisted of five people: Albina the mother, a plump elderly woman with dark, mournful eyes and traces of beauty on her aging face, her two daughters, Lola and Taya, Lola''s little son, and old Kyutsam, the head of the house, a burly, unpleasant old man resembling a boar.
Old Kyutsam worked in a co-operative store. Taya, the younger girl, did any odd job that came along, and Lola, who had been a typist, had recently separated from her husband, a drunkard and a bully, and now stayed at home to look after her little boy and help her mother with the housework.
Besides the two daughters, there was a son named George, who was away in Leningrad at the time of Pavel''s arrival.
The family gave Pavel a warm welcome. Only the old man eyed the visitor with hostility and suspicion.
Pavel patiently told Albina all the family news, and in his turn learned a good deal about the life of the Kyutsams.
Lola was twenty-two. A simple girl, with bobbed brown hair and a broad-featured, open face, she at once took Pavel into her confidence and initiated him into all the family secrets. She told him that the old man ruled the whole family with a despotic hand, suppressing the slightest manifestation of independence on the part of the others. Narrow-minded, bigoted and captious, he kept the family in a permanent state of terror. This had earned him the deep dislike of his children and the hatred of his wife who had fought vainly against his despotism for twenty-five years. The girls always took their mother''s side. These incessant family quarrels were poisoning their lives. Days passed in endless bickering and strife.
Another source of family trouble, Lola told Pavel, was her brother George, a typical good-for-nothing, boastful, arrogant, caring for nothing but good food, strong drink and smart clothes. When he finished school, George, who had been his mother''s favourite, announced that he was going to the university and demanded money for the trip.
"Lola can sell her ring and you''ve got some things you can raise money on too. I need the money and I don''t care how you get it."
George knew very well that his mother would refuse him nothing and he shamelessly took advantage of her affection for him. He looked down on his sisters. The mother sent her son all the money she could wheedle out of her husband, and whatever Taya earned besides. In the meantime George, having flunked the entrance examinations, had a pleasant time in Leningrad staying with his uncle and terrorising his mother by frequent telegraphic demands for more money.
Pavel did not meet Taya until late in the evening of his arrival. Her mother hurried out to meet her in the hallway and Pavel heard her whispering the news of his coming. The girl shook hands shyly with the strange young man, blushing to the tips of her small ears, and Pavel held her strong, calloused little hand for a few moments before releasing it.
Taya was in her nineteenth year. She was not beautiful, yet with her large brown eyes, and her slanting, Mongolian brows, fine nose and full fresh lips she was very attractive. Her firm young breasts stood out under her striped blouse.
The sisters had two tiny rooms to themselves. In Taya''s room there was a narrow iron cot, a chest of drawers covered with knick-knacks, a small mirror, and dozens of photographs and postcards on the walls. On the windowsill stood two flower pots with scarlet geraniums and pale pink asters. The lace curtain was caught up by a pale blue ribbon.
"Taya does not usually admit members of the male *** to her room. She is making an exception for you," Lola teased her sister.
The next evening the family was seated at tea in the old couple''s half of the house. Kyutsam stirred his tea busily, casting hostile glances over his spectacles at the visitor.
"I don''t think much of the marriage laws nowadays," he said. "Married one day, unmarried the next. Just as you please. Complete freedom."
The old man choked and spluttered. When he recovered his breath he pointed to Lola.
"Look at her, she and that fine fellow of hers got married without asking anyone''s permission and separated the same way. And now it''s me who''s got to feed her and her brat. An outrage I call it!"
Lola blushed painfully and hid her tear-filled eyes from Pavel.
"So you think she ought to live with that scoundrel?" Pavel asked, his eyes flashing.
"She should have known whom she was marrying."
Albina intervened. Barely repressing her wrath, she said quickly: "Why must you discuss such things before a stranger? Can''t you find anything else to talk about?"
The old man turned and pounced on her:
"I know what I''m talking about! Since when have you begun to tell me what to do!"
That night Pavel lay awake for a long time thinking about the Kyutsams. Brought here by chance, he had unwittingly become a participant in this family drama. He wondered how he could help the mother and daughters to free themselves from this bondage. His own life was far from settled, many problems remained to be solved and it was harder than ever before to take resolute action.
There was clearly but one way out: the family had to break up, the mother and daughters must leave the old man. But this was not so simple. Pavel was in no position to undertake this family revolution, for he was due to leave in a few days and he might never see these people again. Was it not better to let things take their course instead of trying to stir these turbid backwaters? But the repulsive image of the old man gave him no rest. Several plans occurred to Pavel but on second thoughts he discarded them all as impracticable.

Chapter Eight
Down below, the sea broke on the jagged chaos of rock. A stiff dry breeze blowing from distant Turkey fanned his face. The harbour, protected from the sea by a concrete mole, thrust itself in an irregular arc into the shore-line. And overlooking it all were the tiny white cottages of the town''s outskirts perched on the slopes of the mountain range which broke off abruptly at the sea.
It was quiet here in the old park outside of the town. Yellow maple leaves floated slowly down onto its grass-grown paths.
The old Persian cabby who had driven Pavel out here from town could not help asking as his strange fare alighted:
"Why come here of all places? No young ladies, no amusements. Nothing but the jackals. . . . What will you do here? Better let me drive you back to town, mister tovarish!"
Pavel paid him and the old man drove away.
The park was indeed a wilderness. Pavel found a bench on a cliff overlooking the sea, and sat down, lifting his face to the now mild autumn sun.
He had come to this quiet spot to think things over and consider what to do with his life. The time had come to review the situation and take some decision.
His second visit to the Kyutsams had brought the family strife to a head. The old man on learning of his arrival had flown into a rage. It fell naturally to Korchagin to lead the resistance. The old man unexpectedly encountered a vigorous rebuff from his wife and daughters, and from the first day of Pavel''s arrival the house split into two hostile camps. The door leading to the parents'' half of the house was locked and one of the small side rooms was rented to Korchagin. Pavel paid the rent in advance and the old man was somewhat mollified by the arrangement; now that his daughters had cut themselves off from him he would no longer be expected *****pport them.
For diplomatic reasons Albina remained with her husband. As for the old man, he kept strictly to his side of the house and avoided meeting the man he so heartily detested. But outside in the yard he made as much noise as possible to show that he was still the master.
Before he went to work in the co-operative shop, old Kyutsam had earned his living by shoemaking and carpentry and had built himself a small workshop in the backyard. To annoy his lodger, he shifted his work bench from the shed to a spot in the yard right under Pavel''s window where he hammered furiously for hours on end, deriving a malicious satisfaction from the knowledge that he was interfering with Korchagin''s reading.
"Just you wait," he hissed to himself, "I''ll get you out of here. .. ."
Far away a steamer laid a small dark trail of smoke over the sea at the very horizon. A flock of gulls skimmed the waves with piercing cries.
Pavel, his chin resting in his hand, sat lost in thought. His whole life passed swiftly before his mind''s eye, from his childhood to the present. How had these twenty-four years of his been lived? Worthily or unworthily? He went over them again, year by year, subjecting them to sober, impartial judgement, and he found to his immense relief that he had not done so badly with his life. Mistakes there had been, the mistakes of youth, and chiefly of ignorance. But in the stormy days of struggle for Soviet power he had been in the thick of the fighting and on the crimson banner of Revolution there were a few drops of his own life''s blood.
He had remained in the ranks until his strength had failed him. And now, struck down and unable to hold his place in the firing lines, there was nothing left for him but the field hospital. He remembered the time when they had stormed Warsaw and how, at the height of battle, one of the men had been hit. He fell to the ground under his horse''s hooves. His comrades quickly bandaged his wounds, turned him over to the stretcher-bearers and sped onward in pursuit of the enemy. The squadron had not halted its advance for the sake of one fallen soldier. Thus it was in the fight for a great cause and thus it had to be. True, there were exceptions. He had seen legless machine-gunners on gun carriages in battle. These men had struck terror into the enemy''s ranks, their guns had sown death and destruction, and their steel-like courage and unerring eye had made them the pride of their units. But such men were few.
What was he to do now that defeat had overtaken him and there was no longer any hope of returning to the ranks? Had he not extracted from Bazhanova the admission that the future held even worse torment in store for him? What was to be done? The question was like a yawning abyss spreading at his feet.
What was there to live for now that he had lost what he prized most â?" the ability to fight? How was he to justify his existence today and in the cheerless tomorrow? How was he to fill his days? Exist merely to breathe, to eat and to drink? Remain a helpless bystander watching his comrades fight their way forward? Be a burden to the detachment? No, better to destroy his treacherous body! A bullet in the heart â?" and be done with it! A timely end to a life well lived. Who would condemn the soldier for putting himself out of his agony?
He felt the flat body of his Browning in his pocket. His fingers closed over the grip, and slowly he drew out the weapon.
"Who would have thought that you would come to this?"
The muzzle stared back at him with cold contempt. Pavel laid the pistol on his knee and cursed bitterly.
"Cheap heroics, my lad! Any fool can shoot himself. That is the easiest way out, the coward''s way. You can always put a bullet through your head when life hits you too hard. But have you tried getting the better of life? Are you sure you have done everything you can to break out of the steel trap? Have you forgotten the fighting at Novograd-Volynsky when we went into the attack seventeen times in one day until finally, in spite of everything, we won through? Put away that gun and never breathe a word of this to anyone. Learn how to go on living when life becomes unbearable. Make your life useful."
He got up and went down to the road. A passing mountaineer gave him a lift on his cart. When they reached town he got off and bought a newspaper and read the announcement of a meeting of the city Party group in the Demyan Bedny Club. It was very late when he returned home that night. He had made a speech at the meeting, little suspecting that it was the last he was ever to make at a large public gathering.
Taya was still awake when he got home. She had been worried at Pavel''s prolonged absence. What had happened to him? She remembered the grim, cold look she had observed that morning in his eyes, always so live and warm. He never liked to talk about himself, but she felt that he was under some severe mental strain.
As the clock in her mother''s room chimed two she heard the gate creak and, slipping on her jacket, she went to open the door. Lola, asleep in her own room, murmured restlessly as Taya passed her.
"I was beginning to get worried," Taya whispered with relief when Pavel came in.
"Nothing is going to happen to me as long as I live, Taya," he whispered. "Lola''s asleep? I am not the least bit sleepy for some reason. I have something to tell you. Let''s go to your room so as not to wake Lola."
Taya hesitated. It was very late. How could she let him come to her room at this late hour? What would mother think? But she could not refuse for fear of offending him. What could he have to say to her, she wondered, as she led the way to her room.
"This is how it is, Taya," Pavel began in a low voice. He sat down opposite her in the dimly-lighted room, so close that she could feel his breath. "Life takes such strange turns that you begin to wonder sometimes. I have had a bad time of it these past few days. I did not know how I could go on living. Life had never seemed so black. But today I held a meeting of my own private ''political bureau'' and adopted a decision of tremendous importance. Don''t be surprised at what I have to say."
He told her what he had gone through in the past few months and much of what had passed through his mind during his visit to the park.
"That is the situation. Now for the most important thing. The storm in this family is only beginning. We must get out of here into the fresh air and as far away from this hole as possible. We must start life afresh. Once I have taken a hand in this fight I''m going to see it through. Our life, yours and mine, is none too happy at present. I have decided to breathe some warmth into it. Do you know what I mean? Will you be my life''s companion, my wife?"
Taya was deeply moved by his confession, but these last words startled her.
"I am not asking you for an answer tonight," he went on. "You must think it over carefully. I suppose you cannot understand how such things can be put so bluntly without the usual courting. But you and I have no need of all that nonsense. I give you my hand, little girl, here it is. If you will put your trust in me you will not be mistaken. We can both give each other a great deal. Now, here is what I have decided: our compact will be in force until you grow up to be a real human being, a true Bolshevik. If I can''t help you in that I am not worth a kopek. We must not break our compact until then. But when you grow up you will be freed of all obligations. Who knows what may happen? I may become a complete physical wreck, and in that case, remember, you must not consider yourself bound to me in any way."
He fell silent for a few moments, then he went on in tender, caressing voice: "And for the present, I offer you my friendship and my love."
He held her fingers in his, feeling at peace, as if she had already given her consent.
"Do you promise never to leave me?" "I can only give you my word, Taya. It is for you to believe that men like me do not betray their friends. . . . I only hope they will not betray me," he added bitterly. "I can''t give you an answer tonight. It is all very sudden," she replied. Pavel got up.
"Go to bed, Taya. It will soon be morning." He went to his own room and lay down on the bed without undressing and was asleep as soon as his head touched the pillow.
The desk by the window in Pavel''s room was piled high with books from the Party library, newspapers and several notebooks filled with notes. A bed, two chairs and a huge map of China dotted with tiny black and red flags pinned up over the door between his room and Taya''s, completed the furnishings. The people in the local Party Committee had agreed *****pply Pavel with books and periodicals and had promised to instruct the manager of the biggest public library in town to send him whatever he needed. Before long large parcels of books began to arrive. Lola was amazed at the way he would sit over his books from early morning, reading and making notes all day long with only short breaks for breakfast and dinner. In the evenings, which he always spent with the two sisters, he would relate to them what he had read.
Long past midnight old Kyutsam would see a chink of light between the shutters of the room occupied by his unwelcome lodger. He would creep over to the window on tiptoe and peer in through the crack at the head bent over the books.
"Decent folks are in their beds at this hour but he keeps the light burning all night long. He behaves as if he were the master here. The girls have got altogether out of hand since he came," the old man would grumble to himself as he retired to his own quarters.
For the first time in eight years Pavel found himself with plenty of time on his hands, and no duties of any kind to attend to. He made good use of his time, reading with the avid eagerness of the newly-enlightened. He studied eighteen hours a day. How much longer his health could have withstood the strain is hard to say, but a seemingly casual remark from Taya one day changed everything.
"I have moved the chest of drawers away from the door leading to your room. If ever you want to talk to me you can come straight in. You don''t need to go through Lola''s room."
The blood rushed to Pavel''s cheeks. Taya smiled happily. Their compact was sealed.
The old man no longer saw the chink of light through the shuttered window of the corner room, and Taya''s mother began to notice a glow in her daughter''s eyes that betrayed a happiness she could not conceal. The faint shadows under her eyes spoke of sleepless nights. Often now Taya''s singing and the strumming of a guitar echoed through the little house.
Yet Taya''s happiness was not unmarred; her awakened womanhood rebelled against the clandestine relationship. She trembled at every sound, fancying that she heard her mother''s footsteps. What if they asked her why she had taken to closing her door on the latch at night? The thought tormented her. Pavel noticed her fears and tried to comfort her.
"What are you afraid of?" he would say tenderly. "After all, you and I are grown-up people. Sleep in peace. No one shall intrude on our lives."
Comforted, she would press her cheek against his breast, and fall asleep, her arms around her loved one. And he would lie awake, listening to her steady breathing, keeping quite still lest he disturb her slumber, his whole being flooded with a deep tenderness for this girl who had entrusted her life to him.
Lola was the first to discover the reason for the shining light in Taya''s eyes, and from that day the shadow of estrangement fell between the two sisters. Soon the mother too found out, or rather, guessed. And she was troubled. She had not expected it of Korchagin.
"Taya is not the wife for him," she remarked to Lola. "What will come of it, I wonder?"
Alarming thoughts beset her but she could not muster the courage to speak to Korchagin.
Young people began visiting Pavel, and sometimes his little room could barely hold them all. The sound of their voices like the beehive''s hum reached the old man''s ears and often he could hear them singing in chorus:
Forbidding is this sea of ours,
Night and day its angry voice is heard. . .
and Pavel''s favourite:
The whole wide world is drenched with tears....
It was the study circle of young workers which the Party Committee had assigned to Pavel in response to his insistent request for propaganda work.
Once more he had gripped the helm firmly with both hands, and the ship of life, having veered dangerously a few times, was now steering a new course. His dream of returning to the ranks through study and learning was on the way to being realised.
But life continued to heap obstacles in his path, and bitterly he saw each obstacle as a further delay to the attainment of his goal.
One day the ill-starred student George turned up from Moscow, bringing a wife with him. He put up at the house of his father-in-law, a lawyer, and from there continued to pester his mother with demands for money.
George''s coming widened the rift in the Kyutsam family. George at once sided with his father, and together with his wife''s family, which was inclined to be anti-Soviet, he sought by underhand means to drive Korchagin out of the house and induce Taya to break with him.
Two weeks after George''s arrival Lola got a job in another town and she left, taking her mother and her little son with her. Soon afterward, Pavel and Taya moved to a distant seaside town.
Artem did not often receive letters from his brother and the sight of an envelope with the familiar handwriting waiting for him on his desk in the City Soviet always made his heart beat faster. Today too as he opened the envelope he thought tenderly:
"Ah, Pavel! If only you lived nearer to me. I could do with your advice, lad."

"Artem," he read. "I am writing to tell you all that has happened to me lately. I do not write such things to anyone but you. But I know I can confide in you because you know me well and you will understand.
"Life continues to press down on me on the health front, dealing me blow upon blow. I hardly managed to struggle to my feet after one blow when another, more merciless than the last, lays me low. The most terrible thing is that I am powerless to resist. First I lost the power of my left arm. And now, as if that were not enough, my legs have failed me. I could barely move about (within the limits of the room, of course) as it was, but now I have difficulty in crawling from bed to table. And I daresay there is worse to come. What tomorrow will bring me no one knows.
"I never leave the house now, and only a tiny fragment of the sea is visible from my window. Can there be a greater tragedy than that of a man who combines in himself a treacherous body that refuses to obey him, and the heart of a Bolshevik, a Bolshevik who passionately yearns to work, to be with all of you in the ranks of the fighters advancing along the whole front in the midst of the stormy avalanche?
"I still believe that I shall return to the ranks, that in time my bayonet will take its place in the attacking columns. I must believe that, I have no right not to. For ten years the Party and the Komsomol taught me to fight, and the leader''s words, spoken to all of us, apply equally to me: ''There are no fortresses Bolsheviks cannot take.''
"My life now is spent entirely in study. Books, books and more books. I have accomplished a great deal, Artem. I have read and studied all the classics, and have passed my examinations in the first year of the correspondence course at the Communist University. In the evenings I lead a study circle of Communist youth. These young comrades are my link with the practical life of the Party organisation. Then there is Taya''s education, and of course love, and the tender caresses of my little wife. Taya and I are the best of friends. Our household is very simply run â?" with my pension of thirty-two rubles and Taya''s earnings we get along quite well. Taya is following the path I myself took to the Party: for a time she worked as a domestic servant, and now has a job as a dishwasher in a canteen (there is no industry in this town).
"The other day she proudly showed me her first delegate''s credentials issued by the Women''s Department. This is not simply a strip of cardboard to her. In her I see the birth of the new woman, and I am doing my best to help in this birth. The time will come when she will work in a big factory, where as part of a large working community she will become politically mature. But she is taking the only possible course open to her here.
"Taya''s mother has visited us twice. Unconsciously she is trying to drag Taya back to a life of petty, personal selfish cares. I tried to make Albina see that she ought not to allow the shadow of her own unhappy past to darken the path her daughter has chosen. But it was no use. I feel that one day the mother will try to stand in her daughter''s way and then a clash will be unavoidable. I shake your hand.
"Your Pavel."
Sanatorium No. 5 in Old Matsesta.... A three-storey brick building standing on a ledge hewed into the mountain-side. Thick woods all around and a road winding down to the sea. The windows are open and the breeze carries the smell of the sulphur springs into the room. Pavel Korchagin is alone in the room. Tomorrow new patients will arrive and then he will have a room-mate. He hears steps outside the window and the sound of a familiar voice. Several people are talking. But where has he heard that deep bass voice before? From the dim recesses of his memory, hidden away but not forgotten, comes the name: "Ledenev. He and none other."
Pavel confidently called to his friend, and a moment later Ledenev was beside his bed shaking his hand warmly.
"So Korchagin is still going strong? Well, and what have you got to say for yourself? Don''t tell me you have decided to get sick in real earnest? That will never do! You should take an example from me. The doctors have tried to put me on the shelf too, but I keep going just to spite them." And Ledenev laughed merrily.
But Pavel felt the sympathy and distress hidden behind that laughter.
They spent two hours together. Ledenev told Pavel all the latest news from Moscow. From him Pavel first heard of the important decisions taken by the Party on the collectivisation of agriculture and the reorganisation of life in the village and he eagerly drank in every word.
"Here I was thinking you were busy stirring things up somewhere at home in the Ukraine," said Ledenev. "You disappoint me. But never mind, I was in an even worse way. I thought I''d be tied to my bed for good, and now you see I''m still on my feet. There''s no taking life easy nowadays. It simply won''t work! I must confess I find myself thinking sometimes how nice it would be to take a little rest, just to catch your breath. After all, I''m not as young as I was, and ten and twelve hours'' work a day is a bit hard on me at times. Well, I think about it for a while and even try to ease the load a little, but it''s no use. Before you know it, you''re up to your ears again, never getting home before midnight. The more powerful the machine, the faster the wheels run, and with us the speed increases every day, so that we old folk simply have to stay young."
Ledenev passed a hand over his high forehead and said in a kindly manner:
"And now tell me about yourself."
Pavel gave Ledenev an account of his life since they had last met, and as he talked he felt his friend''s warm approving glance on him.
Under the shade of spreading trees in one corner of the terrace a group of sanatorium patients were seated around a small table. One of them was reading the Pravda, his bushy eyebrows knitted. The black Russian shirt, the shabby old cap and the unshaved face with deep-sunken blue eyes all bespoke the veteran miner. It was twelve years since Khrisanf Chernokozov had left the mines to take up an important post in the government, yet he seemed to have just come up from the pit. Everything about him, his bearing, his gait, his manner of speaking, betrayed his profession.
Chernokozov was a member of the Territorial Party Bureau besides. A painful disease was sapping his strength: Chernokozov hated his gangrenous leg which had kept him tied to his bed for nearly half a year now.
Opposite him, puffing thoughtfully on her cigarette, was Zhigareva â?" Alexandra Alexeyevna Zhigareva, who had been a Party member for nineteen of her thirty-seven years. "Shurochka the metalworker", as her comrades in the Petersburg underground movement used to call her, had been hardly more than a girl when she was exiled to Siberia.
The third member of the group was Pankov. His handsome head with the sculptured profile was bent over a German magazine, and now and then he raised his hand to adjust his enormous horn-rimmed spectacles. It was painful to see this thirty-year-old man of athletic build dragging his paralysed leg after him. An e***or and writer, Pankov worked in the People''s Commissariat of Education. He was an authority on Europe and knew several foreign languages. He was a man of considerable eru***ion and even the reserved Chernokozov treated him with great respect.
"So that is your room-mate?" Zhigareva whispered to Chernokozov, nodding toward the chair in which Pavel Korchagin was seated.
Chernokozov looked up from his newspaper and his brow cleared at once.
"Yes! That''s Korchagin. You ought to know him, Shura. It''s too bad illness has put many a spoke in his wheel, otherwise that lad would be a great help to us in tight spots. He belongs to the first Komsomol generation. I am convinced that if we give him our support â?" and that''s what I have decided to do â?" he will still be able to work."
Pankov too listened to what Chernokozov was saying.
"What is he suffering from?" Shura Zhigareva asked softly.
"The aftermath of the Civil War. Some trouble with his spine. I spoke to the doctor here and he told me there is a danger of total paralysis. Poor lad!"
"I shall go and bring him over here," said Shura.
That was the beginning of their friendship. Pavel did not know then that Zhigareva and Chernokozov were to become very dear to him and that in the years of illness ahead of him they were to be his mainstays.
Life flowed on as before. Taya worked and Pavel studied. Before he had time to resume his work with the study groups another disaster stole upon him unawares. Both his legs were completely paralysed. Now only his right hand obeyed him. He bit his lips until the blood came when after repeated efforts he finally realised that he could not move. Taya bravely hid her despair and bitterness at being powerless to help him. But he said to her with an apologetic smile:
"You and I must separate, Taya. After all, this was not in our compact. I shall think it over properly today, little girl!"
She would not let him speak. The sobs burst forth and she hid her face against his chest in a paroxysm of weeping.
When Artem learned of his brother''s latest misfortune he wrote to his mother. Maria Yakovlevna left everything and went at once to her son. Now the three lived together. Taya and the old lady took to each other from the first.
Pavel carried on with his studies in spite of everything.
One winter''s evening Taya came home to report her first victory â?" she had been elected to the City Soviet. After that Pavel saw very little of her. When her day''s work in the sanatorium kitchen was over Taya would go straight to the Soviet, returning home late at night weary but full of impressions. She was about to apply for candidate membership in the Party and was preparing for the long-awaited day with eager anticipation. And then misfortune struck another blow. The steadily progressing disease was doing its work. A burning excruciating pain suddenly seared Pavel''s right eye, spreading rapidly to the left. A black curtain fell, blotting out all about him, and for the first time in his life Pavel knew the horror of total blindness.
A new obstacle had moved noiselessly onto his path barring his way. A terrifying, seemingly insurmountable obstacle. It plunged Taya and his mother into despair. But he, frigidly calm, resolved:
"I must wait and see what happens. If there is really no possibility of advancing, if everything I have done to return to the ranks has been swept away by this blindness I must put an end to it all."
Pavel wrote to his friends and they wrote back urging him to take courage and carry on the fight.
It was in these days of grim struggle for him that Taya came home radiant and announced:
"I am a candidate to the Party, Pavel!"
Pavel listened to her excited account of the meeting at which her application was accepted and remembered his own initial steps in the Party.
"Well, Comrade Korchagina, you and I are a Communist faction now," he said, squeezing her hand.
The next day he wrote to the secretary of the District Party Committee asking the latter to come and see him. The same evening a mud-spattered car drew up outside the house and in a few moments Volmer, a middle-aged Lett with a spreading beard that reached to his ears, was pumping Pavel''s hand.
"Well, how goes it? What do you mean by behaving like this, eh? Up with you and we''ll send you off to work in the village at once," he said with a breezy laugh. He stayed for two hours, forgetting all about the conference he was to have attended. He paced up and down the room, listening to Pavel''s impassioned appeal for work.
"Stop talking about study groups," he said when Pavel had finished. "You''ve got to rest. And we must see about your eyes. It may still be possible to do something. What about going to Moscow and consulting a specialist? You ought to think it over.. . ." But Pavel interrupted him:
"I want people, Comrade Volmer, live, flesh-and-blood people! I need them now more than ever before. I cannot go on living alone. Send the youth to me, those with the least experience. They''re veering too much to the left out there in the villages, the collective farms don''t give them enough scope, they want to organise communes. You know the Komsomols, if you don''t hold them back they''re liable to try and dash forward ahead of the lines. I was like that myself." Volmer stopped in his tracks.
"How do you come to know about that? They only brought the news in today from the district." Pavel smiled.
"My wife told me. Perhaps you remember her? She was admitted to the Party yesterday."
"Korchagina, the dishwasher? So that''s your wife! I didn''t know that!" He fell silent for a few moments, then he slapped his forehead as an idea occurred to him. "I know whom we''ll send you. Lev Bersenev. You couldn''t wish for a better comrade. He''s a man after your own heart, the two of you ought to get along famously. Like two high-voltage transformers. I was an electrician once, you know. Lev will rig up a wireless for you, he''s an expert at that sort of thing. I often sit up till two in the morning at his place with those earphones. The wife actually got suspicious. Wanted to know what I meant by coming home so late." Korchagin smiled. "Who is Bersenev?" he asked. Volmer ceased his pacing and sat down. "He''s our notary public, although he''s no more notary public really than I am a ballet dancer. He held an important post until quite recently. Been in the movement since 1912 and a Party member since the Revolution. Served in the Civil War on the revolutionary tribunal of the Second Cavalry Army; that was the time they were combing out the Whiteguard lice in the Caucasus. He was in Tsaritsyn too, and on the Southern Front as well. Then for a time he was a member of the Supreme Military Court of the Far Eastern Republic. Had a very tough time of it there. Finally tuberculosis got him. He left the Far East and came down here to the Caucasus. At first he worked as chairman of a gubernia court, and vice-chairman of a territorial court. And then his lung trouble knocked him out completely. It was a matter of coming down here and taking it easy or giving up the ghost. So that''s how we come to have such a remarkable notary. It''s a nice quiet job too, just the thing for him. Well, gradually the people here got him to take up a group. After that he was elected to the District Committee, then, before he knew it, he had charge of a political school, and now they''ve put him on the Control Commission. He''s a permanent member on all important commissions appointed to unravel nasty tangles. Apart from all that he goes in for hunting, he''s a passionate radio fan, and although he has only one lung, you wouldn''t believe it to look at him. He is simply bursting with energy. When he dies it''ll be somewhere on the way between the District Committee and the court."
Pavel cut him short.
"Why do you load him down like that?" he asked sharply. "He is doing more work here than before!"
Volmer gave him a quizzical look:
"And if I give you a study circle and something else Lev would be sure to say: ''Why must you load him down like that?'' But he himself says he''d rather have one year of intensive work than five years on his back in hospital. It looks as if we''ll have to build socialism before we can take proper care of our people."
"That''s true. I too prefer one year of life to five years of stagnation, but we are sometimes criminally wasteful of our energies. I know now that this is less a sign of heroism than of inefficiency and irresponsibility. Only now have I begun to see that I had no right to be so stupidly careless about my own health. I see now that there was nothing heroic about it at all. I might have held out a few more years if it hadn''t been for that misguided Spartanism. In other words, the infantile disease of leftism is one of the chief dangers."
"That''s what he says now," thought Volmer, "but let him get back on his feet and he''ll forget everything but work." But he said nothing.
The following evening Lev Bersenev came. It was midnight before he left Pavel. He went away feeling as if he had found a brother.
In the morning a wireless antenna was set up on the roof of Korchagin''s house, while Lev busied himself inside the house with the receiving set, regaling Pavel the while with interesting stories from his past. Pavel could not see him, but from what Taya had told him he knew that Lev was a tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed young man with impulsive gestures, which was exactly as Pavel had pictured him the moment they had first met.

When evening came three valves began to glow in the room. Lev triumphantly handed Pavel the earphones. A chaos of sounds filled the ether. The transmitters in the port chirped like so many birds, and somewhere not far out at sea a ship''s wireless was sending out an endless stream of dots and dashes. But in this vortex of noises and sounds jostling one another the tuning coil picked out and clung to a calm and confident voice:
"This is Moscow calling...."
The tiny wireless set brought sixty broadcasting stations in different parts of the world within Pavel''s reach. The life from which he had been debarred broke through to him from the earphone membranes, and once again he felt its mighty pulse.
Noticing the glow of pleasure in Pavel''s eyes, the weary Bersenev smiled with satisfaction.
The big house was hushed. Taya murmured restlessly in her sleep. Pavel saw little of his wife these days. She came home late, worn out and shivering from cold. Her work claimed more and more of her time and seldom did she have a free evening. Pavel remembered what Bersenev had told him on this score:
"If a Bolshevik has a wife who is his Party comrade they rarely see one another. But this has two advantages: they never get tired of each other, and there''s no time to quarrel!"
And indeed, how could he object? It was only to be expected. There was a time when Taya had devoted all her evenings to him. There had been more warmth and tenderness in their relationship then. But she had been only a wife, a mate to him; now she was his pupil and his Party comrade.
He knew that the more Taya matured politically, the less time she would be able to give him, and he bowed to the inevitable.
He was given a study group to lead and once again a noisy hum of voices filled the house in the evenings. These hours spent with the youth infused Pavel with new energy and vigour.
The rest of the time went in listening to the radio, and his mother had difficulty in tearing him away from the earphones at mealtimes.
The radio gave him what his blindness had taken from him â?" the opportunity to acquire knowledge, and this consuming passion for learning helped him to forget the pain that racked his body, the fire that seared his eyes and all the misery an unkind fate had heaped upon him.
When the radio brought the news from Magnitostroi of the exploits of the Komsomols who had succeeded Pavel''s generation he was filled with happiness.
He pictured the cruel blizzards, the bitter Urals frosts as vicious as a pack of hungry wolves. He heard the howling of the wind and saw amid the whirling of the snow a detachment of second-generation Komsomols working in the light of arc lamps on the roof of the giant factory buildings to save the first sections of the huge plant from the ravages of snow and ice. Compared to this, how tiny seemed the forest construction job on which the first generation of Kiev Komsomols had battled with the elements! The country had grown, and with it, the people.
And on the Dnieper, the water had burst through the steel barriers and swept away men and machines. And again the Komsomol youth had hurled themselves into the breach, and after a furious two-day battle had brought the unruly torrent back under control. A new Komsomol generation marched in the van of this great struggle. And among the heroes Pavel heard with pride the name of his old comrade Ignat Pankratov.
Chapter Nine
They spent the first few days in Moscow with a friend who was arranging for Pavel to enter a special clinic.
Only now did Pavel realise how much easier it had been to be brave when he had his youth and a strong body. Now that life held him in its iron grip to hold out was a matter of honour.
It was a year and a half since Pavel Korchagin had come to Moscow. Eighteen months of indescribable anguish.
In the eye clinic Professor Averbach had told Pavel quite frankly that there was no hope of recovering his sight. Some time in the future, when the inflammation disappeared it might be possible to operate on the pupils. In the meantime he advised an operation to halt the inflammatory process.
Pavel gave his consent; he told his doctors to do everything they thought necessary.
Three times he felt the touch of Death''s bony fingers as he lay for hours at a time on the operating table with lancets probing his throat to remove the parathyroid gland. But he clung tenaciously to life and, after long hours of anguished suspense, Taya would find him deathly pale but alive and as calm and gentle as always.
"Don''t worry, little girl, it''s not so easy to kill me. I''ll go on living and kicking up a fuss if only to upset the calculations of the learned doctors. They are right in everything they say about my health, but they are gravely mistaken when they try to write me off as totally unfit for work. I''ll show them yet."
Pavel was determined to resume his place in the ranks of the builders of the new life. He knew now what he had to do.
Winter was over, spring had burst through the open windows, and Pavel, having survived another operation, resolved that, weak as he was, he would remain in hospital no longer. To live so many months in the midst of human suffering, to have to listen to the groans of the incurably sick was far harder for him than to endure his own anguish.
And so when another operation was proposed, he refused.
"No," he said firmly. "I''ve had enough. I have shed enough blood for science. I have other uses for what is left."
That day Pavel wrote a letter to the Central Committee, explaining that since it was now useless for him to continue his wanderings in search of medical treatment, he wished to remain in Moscow where his wife was now working. It was the first time he had turned to the Party for help. His request was granted and the Moscow Soviet gave him living quarters. Pavel left the hospital with the fervent hope that he might never return.
The modest room in a quiet side lane off Kropotkinskaya Street seemed to him the height of luxury. And often, waking at night, Pavel would find it hard to believe that hospital was indeed a thing of the past for him now.
Taya was a full-fledged Party member by now. She was an excellent worker, and in spite of the tragedy of her personal life, she did not lag behind the best shock workers at the factory. Her fellow workers soon showed their respect for this quiet, unassuming young woman by electing her a member of the factory trade-union committee. Pride for his wife, who was proving to be a true Bolshevik, made Pavel''s sufferings easier to bear.
Bazhanova came to Moscow on business and paid him a visit. They had a long talk. Pavel grew animated as he told her of his plans to return in the near future to the fighting ranks.
Bazhanova noticed the wisp of silver on Pavel''s temples and she said softly:
"I see that you have gone through a great deal. Yet you have lost none of your enthusiasm. And that is the main thing. I am glad that you have decided to begin the work for which you have been preparing these past five years. But how do you intend to go about it?"
Pavel smiled confidently.
"Tomorrow my friends are bringing me a sort of cardboard stencil, which will enable me to write without getting the lines mixed up. I couldn''t write without it. I hit upon the idea after much thought. You see, the stiff edges of the cardboard will keep my pencil from straying off the straight line. Of course, it is very hard to write without seeing what you are writing, but it is not impossible. I have tried it and I know. It took me some time to get the knack of it, but now I have learned to write more slowly, taking pains with every letter and the result is quite satisfactory."
And so Pavel began to work.
He had conceived the idea of writing a novel about the heroic Kotovsky Division. The title came of itself: Born of the Storm.
His whole life was now geared to the writing of his book. Slowly, line by line, the pages emerged. He worked oblivious to his surroundings, wholly immersed in the world of images, and for the first time he suffered the throes of creation, knew the bitterness the artist feels when vivid, unforgettable scenes so tangibly perceptible turn pallid and lifeless on paper.
He had to remember everything he wrote, word by word. The slightest interruption caused him to lose the thread of his thoughts and retarded his work.
Sometimes he had to recite aloud whole pages and even chapters from memory, and there were moments when his mother feared that he was losing his mind. She did not dare approach him while he worked, but as she picked up the sheets that had fallen on the floor she would say timidly:
"I do wish you would do something else, Pavlusha. It can''t be good for you to keep writing all the time like this. ..."
He would laugh heartily at her fears and assure the old lady that she need not worry, he hadn''t "gone crazy yet".
Three chapters of the book were finished. Pavel sent them to Odessa to his old fighting comrades from the Kotovsky Division for their opinion, and before long he received a letter praising his work. But on its way back to him the manuscript was lost in the mails. Six months'' work was gone. It was a terrible blow to him. Bitterly he regretted having sent off the only copy he possessed. Ledenev scolded him roundly when he heard what had happened.
"How could you have been so careless? But never mind, it''s no use crying over spilt milk. You must begin over again."
"But I have been robbed of six months'' work. Eight hours of strenuous labour every day. Curse the parasites!"
Ledenev did his best to console his friend.
There was nothing for it but to start afresh. Ledenev supplied him with paper and helped him to get the manuscript typed. Six weeks later the first chapter was rewritten.
A family by the name of Alexeyev lived in the same apartment as the Korchagins. The eldest son, Alexander, was secretary of one of the district committees of the Komsomol. His sister Galya, a lively girl of eighteen, had finished a factory training school. Pavel asked his mother to speak to Galya and find out whether she would agree to help him with his work in the capacity of "secretary". Galya willingly agreed. She came in one day, smiling pleasantly, and was delighted when she learned that Pavel was writing a novel.
"I shall be very glad to help you, Comrade Korchagin," she said. "It will be so much more fun than writing those dull circular letters for father about the maintenance of hygiene in communal apartments."
From that day Pavel''s work progressed with doubled speed. Indeed so much was accomplished in one month that Pavel was amazed. Galya''s lively participation and sympathy were a great help to him. Her pencil rustled swiftly over the paper, and whenever some passage particularly appealed to her she would read it over several times, taking sincere delight in Pavel''s success. She was almost the only person in the house who believed in his work, the others felt that nothing would come of it and that Pavel was merely trying to fill in the hours of enforced idleness.
Ledenev, returning to Moscow after a business trip out of town, read the first few chapters and said:
"Carry on, my friend. I have no doubt that you will win. You have great happiness in store for you, Pavel. I firmly believe that your dream of returning to the ranks will soon materialise. Don''t lose hope, my son."
The old man went away deeply satisfied to have found Pavel so full of energy.
Galya came regularly, her pencil raced over the pages reviving scenes from the unforgettable past. In moments when Pavel lay lost in thought, overwhelmed by a flood of memory, Galya would watch his lashes quivering, and see his eyes reflecting the swift passage of thought. It seemed incredible that those eyes could not see, so alive were the clear, unblemished pupils.
When the day''s work was over she would read what she had written and he would listen tensely, his brow wrinkled.
"Why are you frowning, Comrade Korchagin? It is good, isn''t it?"
"No, Galya, it is bad."
The pages he did not like he rewrote himself. Hampered by the narrow strip of the stencil he would sometimes lose his patience and fling it from him. And then, furious with life for having robbed him of his eyesight, he would break his pencils and bite his lips until the blood came.
As the work drew to a close, forbidden emotions began more often to burst the bonds of his ever-vigilant will: sadness and all those simple human feelings, warm and tender, to which everyone but himself had the right. But he knew that were he *****ccumb to a single one of them the consequences would be tragic.
At last the final chapter was written. For the next few days Galya read the book aloud to Pavel.
Tomorrow the manuscript would be sent to Leningrad, to the Cultural Department of the Regional Party Committee. If the book was approved there, it would be turned over to the publishers â?" and then. . . .
His heart beat anxiously at the thought. If all was well, the new life would begin, a life won by years of weary, unremitting toil.
The fate of the book would decide Pavel''s own fate. If the manuscript was rejected that would be the end for him. If, on the other hand, it was found to be bad only in part, if its defects could be remedied by further work, he would launch a new offensive.
His mother took the parcel with the manuscript to the post office. Days of anxious waiting began. Never in his life had Pavel waited in such anguished suspense for a letter as he did now. He lived from the morning to the evening post. But no news came from Leningrad.
The continued silence of the publishers began to look ominous. From day to day the presentiment of disaster mounted, and Pavel admitted to himself that total rejection of his book would finish him. That, he could not endure. There would be no longer any reason to live.
At such moments he remembered the park on the hill overlooking the sea, and he asked himself the same question over and over again:
"Have you done everything you can to break out of the steel bonds and return to the ranks, to make your life useful?"
And he had to answer: "Yes, I believe I have done everything!"
At last, when the agony of waiting had become well-nigh unbearable, his mother, who had been suffering from the suspense no less than her son, came running into the room with the cry:
"News from Leningrad!"
It was a telegram from the Regional Committee. A terse message on a telegraph form: "Novel heartily approved. Turned over to publishers. Congratulations on your victory."
His heart beat fast. His cherished dream was realised! The steel bonds have been burst, and now, armed with a new weapon, he had returned to the fighting ranks and to life.
1930-1934