The Town By The Sea

AN UNEXPECTED TRAVELLING COMPANION

No one came to see me off at the station, not even Pet-ka. That evening there was to be a pupils' conference. Pecheritsa was expected to attend. After two invitations, he had condescended to "drop in." Everyone wanted to hear what this ginger-moustached bureaucrat had to say besides what was in his order. Well over half the school's pupils were preparing to speak. They intended to give Pecheritsa a real fight and demand that he cancel the order. But the train left at seven fifteen in the evening. I had told the

chaps myself not to see me off. They had better stick together and give that bureaucrat a hiding.

I arrived at the station half an hour before the train was due to leave and saw that no one was being allowed on the platform yet. With one hand in my pocket feeling the hard little ticket that we had clubbed together to buy, and the other gripping a brief case, I strolled about the station, glancing up at the clock.

Firmly pinned with two safety-pins in the inside pocket of my jacket were forty-three rubles sixty kopeks. At dinner-time we had been given our grants and most of the chaps at school had contributed a ruble each for my journey. That was how I had come to possess such a large sum, I had never had so much money before in my life. My papers for the journey were in the brief case that Nikita had forced on me. He had gone specially to the District Komsomol Committee and borrowed it from Dmitry Panchenko, the head of the instructors' department. Afraid of being laughed at, I tried to refuse it, but Nikita was adamant.

"Try to understand, old chap," he said persuasively, "when a brief case is necessary, it's nothing to be ashamed of. There's no reason why it should be a sign that you've turned into a bureaucrat. If you haven't got a brief case, what will you do with all your papers, the school estimate, the lists of pupils? Stuff them in your pockets? You'll get everything crumpled. And where will you put your towel, soap, tooth-brush? There's nowhere, is there? But it all goes fine into a brief case. Suppose you go in to see the chief of education himself. Do you want to fish a lot of crumpled papers out of your pocket?... You'll feel much better with a brief case."

I tried every excuse I could think of to get out of taking the brief case, for I knew that the Komsomol members who carried brief cases were called bureaucrats. And if one of these brief case owners went so far as to put a tie round his neck, he was sure to be dubbed a petty bourgeois or an upstart. Before I left the hostel, I wrapped the brief case in old newspapers and carried it under my arm, like a parcel. Not until I reached the station did I glance round and throw the newspaper into the ditch.

There was no one I knew at the station. In the buffet a samovar was steaming and an elderly waiter with a white overall over his fur jacket was pouring the hot water into thick glasses. In the luggage department customs men were checking the passengers' luggage for contraband.

I strolled along the corridors, crossed the entrance-hall several times and surveyed the passengers, trying to guess who would be with me in my compartment. Then I went out on the platform. Soon the platform grew empty as the passengers took their seats in the train. Only the stationmaster paced slowly over the ice-coated platform, glancing at his watch. At last, he straightened up, assumed a dignified air, put his watch away in his pocket and struck three ringing notes on a brass bell.

I showed the conductor my ticket and scrambled up the steep steps into the warm sooty-smelling carriage. It looked as if no one else would get in and I should have to travel alone. !l walked through the empty carriage to the last compartment and took a seat by the window.

Behind the wooden wall, in the toilet, I thought I heard someone cough, but paying no attention to it, I started examining the cosy compartment, which reeked of tobacco smoke.

What a thrill it had been a few years ago, when we were kids, to climb into the long, green carriages like these standing in the sidings! Why, only a few days ago, if someone had told me that I should soon enter such a carriage as a real passenger, I should never have believed him.

In the hush before the train started I could hear two greasers talking to each other by the station warehouse, then behind the wall someone coughed again, more clearly this time, and at last, from the head of the train came the cheerful whistle of the engine.

It had given a similar cheerful whistle several years ago, when Petka and I had seen Yuzik Starodomsky, "Weasel," off to Kiev from this same station. How we had envied Yuzik his long train journey! And now I, Vasily Mandzhura, was setting out on a long journey too!... A jerk.

Gazing out of the window, T watched the places I knew gliding past. How many times had I run barefoot over those paths and tracks! The willow pond near the candle factory flashed by. How dismal it looked in the snow! Nothing like as good as in summer. What big crayfish you could catch under its steep banks with a bit of old meat or a dead frog. Half the pond was overgrown with tall bul-rushes with brown cat's tails on their slender stems.. .

The door behind me gave a loud click.

I turned round.

Within two paces of me, holding a little suit-case, stood —Pecheritsa.

"Now it's all up," I thought. "Pecheritsa's found out everything, he knows I'm going to the centre, and he's decided to beat me to it. Now, of course, he'll try to scare me. He may even order me to go back at once."

In the first shock of meeting, I had not noticed that Pecheritsa had shaved off his moustache. Clean-shaven, he looked younger and not quite so bad-tempered as before. I was very: surprised to see that Pecheritsa was not dressed in his usual clothes. He was wearing an old Budyonny hat with the star taken off and a long cavalry . great-coat that reached to his ankles.

I hadn't the courage to look straight at Pecheritsa for long, so I turned away and pretended to be looking out of the window, now and then glancing at him from the tail of my eye. Huddling against the wall of the compartment, I waited for the questioning that I was sure would come. But glancing over his shoulder, Pecheritsa said kindly, and what was more, in Russian: "Going far, lad?"

"To 'Kiev," I lied, making up my mind not to confess on any account. "Here's a swindler," I thought to myself. "He sacks other people for speaking Russian, but as soon as he gets in the train, he goes over to Russian himself! Why should he be allowed to when others aren't?"

"So we're travelling together," Pecheritsa said calmly.

He raised the top bunk and tossed his little suit-case on to it. Wiping the bunk with his finger to see if it was dusty, Pecheritsa asked:

"Who sent you alone on such a long journey?"

Noticing that he was paying rather a lot of attention to my brief case, I lounged back and, without appearing to do so on purpose, covered it with my elbow.

"I'm going to see my aunt. I've got an aunt in Kiev who's ill."

"Everyone's getting ill now," Pecheritsa agreed readily. "It's a rotten time of the year—spring's coming. I'm not well myself, shivering and coughing all the time. I just don't want to do anything but sleep." And he coughed.

I realized that it was he who had been coughing and fiddling about there, behind the carriage wall, before the train started.

When his spell of coughing was over, Pecheritsa leaned towards me and asked in an even more friendly tone: "You're not going to sleep yet, are you, laddie?"

"No, I want to read for a bit."

"Then I'll ask you a favour, old chap. Here's my ticket and travel warrant. If they come round to check up, just show it to them, will you? I'll get up on my bunk now and have a snooze. Don't let them wake me. If they ask anything, just tell them I'm your uncle and I'm ill and you've got my ticket. Understand?"

"All right," I said, and taking Pecheritsa's ticket and the travel warrant wrapped round it, I put it away in my jacket pocket.

Pecheritsa climbed on to the bunk, turned his face to the wall and, placing the little case under his head, quickly fell asleep with one hand thrust into the pocket of his long great-coat.

And thus we travelled, my new "uncle" and I.

Needless to say, I was even rather pleased things had turned out as they had. I congratulated myself for tricking Pecheritsa so cleverly. I had expected him to worry me and keep asking whether I was the delegate from the factory-training school who had been sent to Kharkov; but it had not been like that at all, we had just come to a quiet family agreement. "Where's he going to, then, the old blighter?" I wondered, glancing up at the belt of Pecheritsa's great-coat dangling from the bunk.

I opened my brief case and took out Voinich's wonderful novel The Gadfly. I had promised myself I would read this book in the train and even make a summary of it, so that I should be able to speak about it at the next "What new books have we read?" evening at school.

Our Komsomol group often held such meetings. And mock trials were even more popular. Whom didn't we put on trial in those days! There was Vanderwelde, the tricky Belgian Foreign Minister, and Don Quixote who wasted his time fighting windmills, and Lord Curzon who sent all those haughty notes and ultimatums to the young Soviet land...

... I could not read properly. The noise of the wheels put me off. The pencil I was using to make notes kept jumping all over the place. And Pecheritsa's presence did not make things any easier. I wanted to have a peep at his travel warrant, but I was afraid he had not fallen properly asleep.

The inspector did not come round until it was quite dark, after we had passed Dunayevtsy, and as if to show that he was not to be wakened, Pecheritsa started snoring so loud that the inspector could hardly make his voice heard.

The candles had not yet been lighted and only the feeble gleam of the inspector's lantern reached my corner. The inspector pulled out his key and was about to tap on the bunk to wake Pecheritsa, when I said hastily: "Don't wake him up, he's ill. I've got his ticket. Here you are."

"Pretty loud snorer for a sick man," grunted the inspector, checking the tickets.

The conductor standing behind him stared at Pecheritsa's boots.

"Where did he get in?" he said in surprise. "I don't remember him. I thought you were my only passenger, young fellow. Where did he come from?"

"We've been here all the time," I mumbled.

"Change at Kiev," the inspector said curtly and handed me the tickets.

Thinking that there might be a bilker hiding on the upper banks, he swung his lantern up to the luggage rack. The light flickered on the ceiling. There was no one else in the compartment. Having set his mind at rest, the inspector went on down the carriage.

Lulled by the monotonous drumming of the wheels. I dozed off...

A hoarse voice wakened me. "Have they checked the tickets?"

The train had stopped. A lamp hanging from a post outside shed a greenish light through the carriage window and I could see Pecheritsa's head above me.

"Yes."

"Then I'll have a bit more sleep. If they come round again, just show them the tickets, old chap."

I nodded silently, looked at the window for a minute and closed my eyes. It was warm and cosy. The gentle swaying was nice. I lay down on the seat in my chumarka and, putting the brief case under my head for a pillow, soon fell asleep. How long I slept, I don't know. I was awakened by the light of a

torch shining on my face.

"Tickets!"

"There's two here, mine and his. . ." I muttered, groping in my pockets. "He's in the bunk on top. He's not well."

The inspector turned the beam away and took the tickets. Behind him stood a man in a wadded jacket, who also looked at the tickets.

"Shall I wake him?" the inspector asked quietly and flashed the torch on Pecheritsa's back. Pecheritsa had rolled himself in a ball and was still fast asleep.

"We'll have to," said the man in the wadded jacket, but then checked himself: "Wait, here's the travel warrant!" And detaching the long white slip of paper from the tickets, he started examining it intently.

Blinking at them sleepily, I could not make out what it was all about. I wished they would go away.

"You needn't wake him," the man in the wadded jacket said quietly, folding the warrant and handing it back to the inspector. "He's not the one. . . Let's go on."

The inspector gave me back both tickets wrapped in the warrant. The two men went away. I fell asleep at once, and so soundly that by the time I awoke we had reached a big station. A truck rumbled along the brightly-lit platform, people were running about with bottles and tea-pots.

The station lamps shed their light right into the compartment. I noticed that the upper bunk was empty—Pecheritsa had gone.

Pressing my face to the window, I read the name-board on front of the station:

ZHMERINKA

We had come a good way!

Knocking the legs of sleeping passengers, I walked to the door.

The carriage had filled up and the air was heavy with the smell of sheepskin and makhorka tobacco.

What had become of Pecheritsa? Perhaps he had gone to the buffet?. . . Fine chap to travel with! Couldn't even wake me up. And afraid to leave his case behind! Must think I'm a thief.

At the end of the corridor I felt the tang of the frosty night. The puddles on the platform were iced over. Stars twinkled below the rim of the station roof.

A new conductor in a leather cap with a smart badge on it was walking up and down beside the carriage with a rolled flag in his hand.

"Will we be here much longer, Comrade Conductor?" I asked.

"That we shall!" the conductor replied cheerfully. "A long time yet. The Odessa express has got to come through."

"Have I got time to go to the station?"

"Plenty. We shan't be moving for over an hour."

"Nobody will take my place, will they?"

"If they do, we'll make them give it back to you. You've got a seat ticket, haven't you?..."

I walked all over Zhmerinka Station. Huge and clean, in those days it was spoken of as the best station in the Soviet Ukraine. I even went down the famous white-tiled tunnel.

Passing the first-class buffet, I glanced at the pink hams, at the white sucking pig that lay spread-eagled on a bed of buckwheat porridge, at the fried chickens and green peas, at the plump, glistening pies stuffed with meat arid rice, at the dark-red slices of smoked tongue, at the stuffed perch that seemed to be swimming in its trembling coating ofjelly. I was so anxious for just a taste of these delicacies that I lost all self-control, I had a slice of cold pork and a salted cucumber, drank three glasses of cold rich milk with fresh pies, then I ate two custard tarts and washed it all down with a glass of dried-fruit salad.

But as soon as I came out of the station into the fresh air, I began to repent. Fancy throwing money away like that! With an appetite that size I'd never get to Kiev. And I felt specially ashamed because 'I had allowed myself such a bourgeois feast at a time when our chaps had so little to eat. Cabbage soup and lentils—that was the usual dinner at our hostel. And beans, beans, beans! Beans for supper, beans for breakfast. Even the afters on Sundays was beans with a kind of sickly treacle sauce. Nikita Kolomeyets tried to console us by saying that there was a lot of phosphorus in beans and they would make us much cleverer, but there wasn't a single one among us who wouldn't have given all his rotten beans for a portion of good meat rissoles or a peppery goulash and fried potatoes. Tortured by remorse, I climbed into the carriage and returned to my seat.

Pecheritsa was not there.

After my meal the warmth of the compartment made me sleepy and I did not feel like going outside again. I just felt like sitting back on the hard seat and dozing.

The express from Moscow rumbled in on the main line amid clouds of steam. The station became noisy. Fighting with sleep, I peered at the lighted windows of the carriage that had stopped by us. Covered with sheets and blankets the passengers lay in their comfortable bunks. "Made themselves at home, haven't they!" I thought enviously.

The express only stopped for a few minutes, then moved on smoothly. The red light on the end carriage flashed past the window and again I found myself staring at the yellow walls of the station.

Soon we moved on too.

Pecheritsa had not returned. I still had his ticket and travel warrant.

When it got light, I took a look at the warrant. The first thing I noticed was that it had been made out not for Pecheritsa, but for a second-year student at the agricultural institute, Prokopy Shevchuk. Across the bottom of the warrant ran the flowery signature of the director of district education Pecheritsa. Hum, something underhand about that! Pecheritsa was the only man in our town who had the right to issue warrants for free travel on the railways. I remembered how even before Pecheritsa had ordered the closing of the factory-training school, we had asked him to send a few of the very best pupils for a trip round the factories of the Donbas during the holidays. Pecheritsa had refused. "The factory-training school won't get a single warrant out of me. They are only for students." And the blighter was travelling with one himself! I made up my mind that as soon as I got back I would show Pecheritsa up, if only on this score.

But where had he got to! The destination on the warrant was Millerovo. . . If I was not mistaken, that was the other side of Kharkov. He couldn't have missed the train— we had stopped too long in Zhmerinka. There had been time to have breakfast and dinner as well. All I could think of was that Pecheritsa had bought a fresh ticket and changed on to the express.