The Town By The Sea

BY TORCH-LIGHT

Swaying torches blaze in the spring breeze. Tails of sooty smoke weave above the heads of the Komsomol column marching down the cobbled road leading from the station into town. Beyond the roadside ditches filled with the water of the thaw stretch black, desolate allotments. How quickly the snow has vanished while I have been away in Kharkov! Very likely the deep gullies that run down to the Dniester, right on the border, are the only places where the last, dirty snowdrifts remain.

At the head of the column a taut canvas sheet strains in the wind. The marchers' feet strike firmly on the cobblestones. A single clear voice is singing in the front rank:

In the storm ofOctober

An army was born

Ofthe Komsomol, daring and brave and young.. .

Then the ranks pick up the familiar chorus:

The oppressors to crush,

The oppressors to crush...

The fresh spring air helps on the song. I sing, too, hugging my brief case, which is now once again wrapped in newspaper.

... The young railwaymen's Komsomol group had already formed up with lighted torches on Station Square when the train steamed in to the platform and I, jumping off before the train stopped, ran out on to the station steps. Panchenko of the District Committee, in a sheepskin hat, was pacing about with the group secretary in front of the ranks.

"Hullo, Mandzhura!" he said as he passed. "Got back? Fall in with us. We're holding a demonstration to get Kabakchiev, the Bulgarian Communist, out ofjail. Hurry up—we're late!"

I fell in quickly and we stepped off at once, carrying a red calico banner on which was written:

WE DEMAND THAT THE BULGARIAN FASCISTS LIBERATE THE HEROIC REVOLUTIONARY FIGHTER KHRISTO KABAKCHIEV

"I'll march with them as far as Soviet Square and join up with my own chaps there," I thought, picking up the song.

White cottages, the first buildings of the town, loomed out of the darkness.

My home town! I felt its evening stillness shattered by the boisterous songs of the marchers. They were songs that frightened the musty representatives of the old world who still lived among us—former tsarist officials, priests, private traders and all those who hoped for the return of the tsarist regime one day.

Lowering storm-clouds gather above us,

Sinister forces threaten us still. . .

the marchers struck up a fresh song.

How I longed to tell the fellows beside me that I had just come back from Kharkov where I had talked with no less a person than the Secretary of the Central Committee himself. How I longed to tell everyone that the secretary had called Pecheritsa a "landscape-painter." If only I could have related how I had seen Saksagansky acting in a play called Vanity! But my neighbours went on singing and took no notice of me.

Even Panchenko had not asked about my trip. From the way he had greeted me you would think I had been to the next village, not the capital... Panchenko was marching at the side of the column. I could make out his deep, soft voice among the other voices.

Along the other side of Hospital Square, near the dark building of the factory-training school, another torch-light column was moving towards the centre of the town.

Was it the factory-school chaps? Of course it was! Only our group had such bright torches.

"Cheerio, chaps! Thanks for your company! I'm off to my own group!" I shouted to the railwaymen and, breaking away from the column, I sped across the square.

My feet dragged in the muddy clay. What a fuss Sasha would make if I lost his galoshes! Splashes of ice-cold water flew out on all sides. My trouser-legs were wet through already. Nearer and nearer came the light of the torches. I gasped for breath. Everything would be all right as long as I didn't get caught on the barbed wire! There was a gap in it somewhere round here. Yes, here it was. . . One last spurt and I was running along the firm road, overtaking the rear of the column.

"Hey there, chaps! Hurrah!" I shouted, waving the heavy brief case so joyfully that the paper flew off. But who cared! No one would call me a bureaucrat now. "Pugu!" I shouted like a Cossack, spotting Sasha's ginger mop. "Take your galoshes, Sasha!"

"Vasil's back. . . Mandzhura's here!" came excited voices.

"Fall in here, with me," Nikita shouted from the head of the column.

I pushed into the front rank and gripped our secretary's hand firmly.

There were familiar faces all round me—Sasha Bobir, fatty Maremukha, Furman the know-all. I glanced back and saw the dejected face of Yasha Tiktor in the rear.

"Well, what's the news?" Nikita said, glancing into my face.

"Everything's all right, Nikita!" I answered simply. "We'll be going to the Donbas. Listen..." Choking with excitement and trying not to trip over, I told Nikita hurriedly about my visit to the Central Committee. A drop of tar from a torch dripped on my nose. I rubbed it off with my fist and gasped out my story in bits and pieces. The ranks were very close together and it was difficult to march. Trying to hear what I was saying, the chaps kept treading on my heels and pushing me from behind.

"Is that what he said, 'your dreams will come true'?" Nikita interrupted me.

"That's right. And then the secretary said: 'Very soon young intelligent workers like you will be needed everywhere—both in Yekaterinoslav and in the Donbas.' "

"Splendid! So there's justice in the world after all Polevoi was right, wasn't he? See what a clever bloke h is?" Nikita said triumphantly, and turning to the rest o| the column, he shouted: "We'll soon be going to the Don-f bas, chaps! What did I say? Let's have a song to mark the occasion—our school song!" In one voice we struck up with the trainees song composed by a young worker-poet Teren Masenko. "We'd toss you, Vasil, but it's a bit too muddy," Nikita shouted. "We're so grateful, we might drop you—you'd get yourself dirty if you fell, you know." Proud and happy, I sang with the others. "Is Pecheritsa back yet?" I asked Nikita. "Try and find him!" Nikita flung back grimly. "What, have they

sacked him already? By telegraph, I suppose?"

"He's sacked himself." "When I was with him in the train..." "Where?" Nikita exclaimed, fixing his eyes on me. "Where? Why, we travelled together as far as Zhmerinka, then..."

"What's that?" Nikita snapped, very alert suddenly. "You went as far as Zhmerinka with Pecheritsa?"

Before I had time to tell how I had met Pecheritsa in the train, Nikita swung round and shouted right in my face: "You ass! Don't you realize this is very important! Why didn't you say anything about it before? Come with me... Furman, take charge of the column!"

We slipped out of the ranks. The group marched on with their blazing torches towards the stands on Soviet Square carrying a big portrait of Kabakchiev. Nikita and I dashed off at top speed to the house in Seminary Street.