The Town By The Sea

CLEARED!

The committee assembled the following evening in the locksmiths' shop at school. The long room seemed much too large for such a small meeting, specially in the evening, when the school was so quiet.

We seated ourselves on the benches. Tiktor, whistling quietly, sat, or rather lounged on the bench opposite me. There was a triumphant sneer on his face, his blonde locks hung luxuriantly over his big forehead. He felt good.

"Let's start, comrades!" Nikita nodded his head and walked forward between the benches. "There's not much on the agenda today, so we'll have time to prepare for the tests as well. We have two questions to discuss. The first concerns the conduct of Komsomol member Yasha Tiktor, the second is to investigate Tiktor's report on the conduct of Komsomol member Vasily Mandzhura, who is also a

member of our committee. If anybody's got anything else they want to bring up, we'll 'discuss that as well of course. Are there any objections?"

"I want my report to be discussed first," Tiktor grunted.

"Why?"

"Because I gave it in two days ago."

"What difference does that make?"

"I write a report and you want to discuss my conduct! What do you mean by it? What grounds have you got for that?"

"What grounds?" Nikita frowned, knitting his thick black brows. "All right then, Yasha, you and I will go along to Central Square and I'll show you the broken window in the pub—it still hasn't any glass in it—and the chaps will wait for us here.. . How about it, chaps, do you agree? Will you wait for us?"

The chaps laughed and Tiktor's face fell. "Don't try your games on me!" he said threateningly to Nikita. "Let's take a vote on it."

"That's always possible," Nikita replied with surprising calm. "All we have to decide is what we are going to vote about. I think we should discuss these questions in order, in chronological order, so to speak."

Tiktor looked bewildered. "What d'ye mean?" "Just this. On the evening of the twenty-first of February, Komsomol member Yasha Tiktor went to Barenboim's pub, got himself roaring drunk, started a fight, smashed a window, failed to turn up after an alarm from Special Detachment Headquarters..."

"There's no more special detachments, so that doesn't matter!" Tiktor interrupted.

"It does matter, a lot!" Nikita said sharply. "There are no more special detachments, they've been combined with the other security organizations, that's true, but we have always had, and we still have, strict military discipline, which is obligatory for every Communist and Komsomol member. I repeat, on the evening of the twenty-first, of February, Komsomol member Yasha Tiktor did not act as befits a member of 'the Komsomol. That's the first point. The second is this. On the night of the fifth of March, Komsomol member Vasily Mandzhura travelled in the same carriage as the escaping counter-revolutionary Pecheritsa and, in Tiktor's opinion, intentionally refrained from detaining him. Let us discuss both questions in that order."

Nikita's harsh words rang out with terrible suddenness in the quiet, dimly-lit room: "... travelled in the same carriage as the escaping counter-revolutionary Pecheritsa and, in Tiktor's opinion, intentionally refrained from detaining him."

So that was the trap Tiktor had laid for me! "The rotten scoundrel!" I nearly shouted the words aloud.

"Let's vote," Nikita continued. "Who is for Tiktor's proposal to discuss his report first?"

The members of the committee sat in silence. Their faces were stern and thoughtful.

"Who is for the proposed order of discussion?"

"Why bother to vote, Comrade Kolomeyets!" Galya called out. "It's quite clear!"

"Perhaps someone has refrained from voting?" said Nikita and started counting hands.

Petka, who had been about to raise his hand, suddenly remembered that he was only a candidate for the committee and had no right to vote. He snatched his plump hand away behind his back, as if he had burnt it.

"The majority, I think .. . Shall we proceed?"

"Ganging up on me, as usual! ... All pals together, aren't you?" Tiktor mumbled, lowering at Nikita.

"Did you say something, Yasha?" Nikita asked, going pale.

"He meant ... he meant to say he ought to be called to order!" Petka suddenly blurted out in a very squeaky, excited voice.

"Quiet there, Maremukha, I didn't give you permission to speak," Nikita said, and turning to Tiktor, he went on quietly and very calmly: "Speak up, Tiktor, say all you've got to say, don't be afraid, speak so- that you needn't complain afterwards that Kolomeyets suppressed your criticism. I believe you'd even go to that length too..."

"What's the use of me saying anything—you've got it all pat like an exercise-book. Get on with it and start running me down'!" Tiktor flung out idly, lounging back on the bench kicking his legs.

Keeping a firm grip on himself, Nikita ignored Tiktor's last words and began quietly:

"When a Komsomol member drinks and acts like a hooligan, he..."

"What I drank I paid for with my own money and that's none of your business!" Tiktor shouted.

And then something happened that startled everyone. Never in all our school life had we seen Nikita Kolomeyets blaze up as he did on that quiet evening in the locksmiths' shop.

"Scoundrel!" Nikita shouted so loudly that he could have been heard in the turners' shop next door. "You've got the nerve to boast that you drank on your own money! Who gave you that money you call your own? Who taught you a trade? Who's making you into a citizen? Who's trying to make you live your life decently, for the good of society? Did our fathers fight for your freedom so that you could disgrace the name of the Komsomol in the first pot-house you could find, so that you could hobnob with all kinds of scum—profiteers who only live for the day when we'll be dead? People who ought to have been in jail long ago! They try to get you in their clutches and you drink with them and kow-tow to them. Where's Bortanovsky now, your client, that 'honest craftsman,' as you called him? In jail for smuggling. Go and see the Komsomol members in the militia, talk to Granat, the criminal investigation man, about your friend. He's in charge of that case. Did the best people in Russia die in exile, in tsarist prisons, on the gallows, so that a working man's son, Yasha Tiktor, should sleep in a puddle in Proreznaya Street, when his mates, with rifles in their hands, were defending their town from Petlura's thugs! 'And even that wasn't enough. You acted like a pig yourself and now you've tried to smear your dirt on someone else. 'Let's see if I can stir up a bit of trouble,' you thought. 'Perhaps it'll help me to save my own skin.' You poor fool! Do you think we can't see why you made that re port against Mandzhura? What do you think we are—kids? Couldn't we guess why you suddenly found the energy to write a report of three pages. And with eleven spelling mistakes in it! Yasha, Yasha, it was a crude bit of work, that's a fact..." Nikita paused and his voice became softer. "We haven't come here to punish you. You're our comrade and we want to say this to you: Think what you're doing, Tiktor! You can live a fine life, a life with sense in it. Clean off that scum of the past! Don't wallow in dirt!" Growing visibly calmer, Nikita went on: "Another chap in your place would have said, 'Yes, I made a mistake, I got tied up in that rotten spider's web. I'll try and see it never happens again.' And that would be the end of it. But you kick up a row and try to make out you're in the right and all the other Komsomol members want to put you wrong..."

"Don't start your propaganda, we've heard if all before!" Tiktor growled.

"What did you say?" Nikita asked. "I didn't quite hear. Do you mind repeating it?"

"Ask the cuckoo in Proreznaya Street to repeat it, there's one been flying round there a lot lately. I'm not going to cuckoo for you!" And Tiktor tossed his hair back challengingly.

Pale and tight-lipped, Nikita looked Tiktor straight in the eye.

Tiktor sneered.

"Let me speak, Nikita," said Galya Kushnir with a catch in her voice..

I thought Galya was going to reason with Tiktor. Everyone thought so.

"Go on, Galya," Nikita said.

"I think the best thing, comrades, would be for Tiktor to put his Komsomol card on the table here and now," Galya said clearly. "I am very ashamed he still has a card in his pocket." And she looked at Yasha with such contempt that he quailed under her glance and, lowering his eyes, started fumbling in the breast-pocket of his blouse.

"Here you are, Miss," he said, pulling out his 'Komsomol card in a cardboard cover, and offered it to Galya.

"Wait a moment, Kushnir," said Nikita, and put the question to the vote: "Who is in favour of relieving Tiktor of this document?"

All hands were raised. And, then Yasha, it seemed, saw that he had gone too far.

"We'll see what the general meeting has to say about that," he said, trying to sound hopeful.

"Of course we shall, Tiktor," Nikita responded. "Let's go on to the next question."

Yasha jumped noisily off the bench. Straightening his leather jerkin, and dusting off the shavings, he made for the door.

"Where are you off to, Tiktor? We're just going to discuss your report," Nikita called out.

"You can do without me. What's the good of telling you anything! You wouldn't believe me anyway." And Tiktor shrugged his shoulders.

"You can stay at the meeting while we go into your report," said Nikita.

"Thanks a lot! I'd rather take a walk—the air's fresher outside!" And with a show of cheerfulness, Tiktor left the room.

In case we should think he was frightened, Tiktor struck up a song as he clumped away through the dark turners' shop.

Gay nights of Marseilles In the Vagabond Inn...

We waited until the outside door slammed shut behind him, then Nikita looked at us and sighed.

"Yes... Let's go on to the next question," he said bitterly.

But the question no longer existed now that Yasha had gone. No one thought of supporting his accusation against me.

After the meeting I drew Nikita aside.

"Look here, Nikita," I said, "why did you hide that report from me? I've been so worried. . ."

"Me hide it from you? You're very much mistaken.''

"Am I! You didn't tell me a thing."

"Why talk about a lot of tripe before it's necessary. I didn't want to worry you over anything. The point is that Tiktor showed himself up with that report. I kept it back for a bit so that all the chaps should understand just how low Tiktor has sunk. It happens like that sometimes. Father a proletarian, a railway worker, but the son gets infected by the petty-bourgeois atmosphere in our town..."