The Town By The Sea

NO MORE WORRIES

The "two-storey house of her own" turned out in fact to be a little yellow-tiled cottage standing in a small yard planted with flowers. Farther back, behind the cottage, we noticed the trees of the park and a blue-painted bandstand.

A small dark kitchen and a clean, whitewashed bedroom, the 'door of which led straight into the front passage, made up the whole of the "mansion's" first floor.

From the front passage, which was cluttered with baskets, wooden tubs, and kitchen things, a rather steep and creaky ladder without any rail led up into what appeared to be an attic.

As we climbed up the ladder after the mistress of the house, I expected the two sloping beams that held the rungs to collapse at any moment and send the five of us tumbling down amid the lumber in the passage.

The one and only room upstairs took our fancy at once. Some time ago, by the look of it, it had been converted from an ordinary loft. The ceiling was sloping and the window led straight out on to the roof.

Volodya stood his whip in the corner and, as if he were the owner of the place, flicked back the catch on the window. The dusty little window opened with a creak.

"If you climb out here," said Volodya, "you'll see the screen as well as in the front row, even better. I saw Beast of the Forests last week. No queuing, no charge, and a nice breeze to keep you cool! What more do you want?"

And indeed, even without climbing out of the window, we had a very good view of the white cinema screen in the town park. I leaned farther out of the window and saw the roof sloping away below me, the neighbour's garden on the other side of the fence, and farther away still, beyond the railway line—the sea.

The driver had not mislead us; the Azov Sea, large as life, and pretty dirty near the shore because of the storm, pounded the beach not more than a hundred paces from Maria Trofimovna's cottage. From the window I could see the white caps on the waves. A fishing smack with bare mast was tossing in the bay.

The old lady watched us anxiously as we examined her room. She seemed very willing to let it and Sasha Bobir accordingly acted like an experienced lodger. Where he learnt his tricks, I don't know.

He swaggered about the room, stamping on the cracked floor-boards and poking his nose into every nook and cranny. For some reason he even opened the door in the chimney of the little stove. Noticing a cross outlined with candle smoke above the door, he ran his finger over it with an air of stern disapproval. Finally he examined the ladder; from above, it looked even more steep and dangerous.

"Why no hand-rail?" Sasha asked severely. "If you have to get out of bed in the night, you might break your neck going down there."

"I keep an icon-lamp burning all night in the passage," the old lady answered obligingly.

"What?. . . An icon-lamp? They cause fires!" Sasha said impressively.

"Oh, surdy not, dear! Heaven forbid!" The old lady looked worried.

"What about fuel in winter?" Sasha went on relentlessly.

"Well, if you'll be working at the factory," the old lady said, "you'll have enough fuel. The factory workers always get a ration of coal. Volodya will bring it here for you and we'll store it in the shed where I keep the goat."

"But suppose we aren't working at the factory," I thought. "Suppose they don't take us on and we have to go away altogether?"

"This little attic suits me down to the ground, chaps!" said Sasha emphatically, as if his opinion clinched matters. "Pity it's rather bare, of course."

"But I told you, lads," the driver put in hastily, "buy yourselves tropical furniture for the time being, and later on, when winter's getting near and you've made some money, you'll be able to have all the luxury you want."

"But what are we going to sleep on?" Sasha objected. "You can't get much sleep on an orange box."

"You can buy 'put-you-ups'—camp-beds—but they're a bit dearer, of course," Volodya suggested not quite so confidently.

"But can't we just sleep on the floor?" Petka broke in suddenly. "I like sleeping on the floor in summer. It's good for you. Haven't you got any straw, Gran?"

"I can let you have some hay. There's some left over from what I bought for the goat last winter."

"Hay breeds flees," Sasha said, wrinkling his nose. "Hay and sawdust. Let General Denikin sleep on hay. We'll buy ourselves 'put-you-ups.' Now..."

"Hold on, Sasha," I cut in. "You've done enough talking." And turning to Maria Trofimovna, I said: "If you're willing, I think we'll be staying here. But what about the deposit—do you want us to pay now or later?"

"I don't know, I'm sure. . ." The old lady said helplessly. "Perhaps Volodya could say."

"Listen to me, lads!" said Volodya, thumping the floor with the handle of his whip. "We're all friends together, aren't we? No one wants to diddle you. I've introduced you to my aunt, now you stick to her. She'll be a mother to you. A bit of washing, a bit of cooking when you need it—she'll do it for you. You'll be your own masters entirely, and Auntie, here, will get her keep out of it, won't she? You can discuss the cash later. Now, listen to me, I'm a man of experience. You pop off now to the works, show them those passes you've got from Comrade Dzerzhinsky and find out how you stand. Otherwise you're all in the dark, so to speak. Do you know what grade they'll give you, how much they'll pay you? You don't know anything, do you? But when you've been to the works, you'll be a lot wiser. And in the meantime, Auntie, here, will put her thinking cap on and work out how much to charge you, so that she won't feel the pinch and her nephew, Volodya, will have something to wet the bargain with. Well, shall we be getting a move on?. . ."

Of course, we shouldn't have wasted a minute on this first day of our arrival in the new town. We ought to have taken Volodya's advice and rushed off at once to the works. But we were very keen to discover what the sea looked like at close quarters. We had never seen it before, except in pictures.

The biggest river we had ever seen back home was the Dniester, and that was a good fifteen versts away, along country roads. And in the Dniester, you could only bathe near the bank—if you swam out to the middle, you might get potted at by a Rumanian gendarme.

Leaving the cottage, we turned down a lane leading to the sea, crossed the harbour railway lines, and stopped at the sea wall.

This strange sea that we had never seen before was hurling itself furiously at the shore. Foaming waves thundered against the foot of the wall, then rolled back defeated carrying away pebbles, shells and dead seaweed and making room for fresh waves to repeat the assault. The sea was all hills and dales, and not a calm patch anywhere.

A cloud of cold spray swept over us. With a grimace of distaste, Sasha wiped his freckled face and stepped back.

I must say I had not imagined the sea was like this. What I had expected to see was a great calm expanse of clear blue water.

Once I had given Galya a photograph of myself with the inscription: "My love, boundless as the sea, the shores of life o'erflows."

I had heard these words at the theatre, in a play about seven prisoners who were hung by the tsarist police. I had learnt them by heart and often thought of them. Galya asked me once, I remember, if I had composed them myself. It was a bit too much to tell a lie and say "yes" straight out. So I had to put her off by replying: "What, don't you like them?"

Now, as I gazed at the sea, I remembered the time, not so long ago, when we were still at school. I remembered my friend, Galya; and the line about love being "boundless as the sea" took me back to our far-off town.

Another thing that disappointed me was that the sea here was not boundless by any means. On the left it was bounded by a narrow spit of sand curving to the south-west. At the end of the spit, straight ahead of us, there were some buildings, and farther out stood a sort of pyramid rising quite high out of the water, probably a lighthouse.

The harbour gates to our right were protected by a grey stone breakwater. It seemed to run out of the harbour mole and, from where we were, looked very low, though it must have been quite high really. Only now and then did a wave foam over the massive stone slabs, and these were waves from the open sea, even fiercer than those that thundered on the shore below us.

Buffeted by the damp sea wind and salty spray, deafened by the roar of the waves, we did not hear a girl come up behind us.

We only saw her when she took a running jump on to the wall. The wind wrapped the hem of her blue, white-flowered dressing-gown tightly round her legs. On her feet she wore little pink beach-shoes.

We stared at the stranger.

Taking no notice of us, she stood on the concrete parapet, slim and supple, taking in deep breaths of the stormy air. After a little, she turned and, surveying us keenly, asked loudly:

"Will you be staying here for a while, boys?"

"Yes, just for a bit," Sasha replied awkwardly.

"In that case, do you mind looking after my things for me, please!" And without waiting for a reply, the girl took a jewelled tortoise-shell comb out of her thick hair, thrust it into her dressing-gown pocket, and dropped the dressing-gown on the top of the wall, just in front of Sasha.

Now wearing only a bathing costume, the girl put her foot on the steps and started to go down.

We thought the girl would just take a dip in the surf at the bottom of the wall then run back shivering with cold. That was how most of the women bathed back home, in the Smotrich. But this girl plunged headlong into an oncoming wave, as if she had been doing it all her life. In a minute or two we saw the unknown girl far out at sea. Now her yellow costume showed above the waves, now it disappeared altogether. Instead of turning away from the advancing waves, the girl thrust into them headfirst. Huge walls of water towered over her, but she plunged boldly under them, only coming up again for a second to take breath before meeting another attack of the pounding sea. Now and then she turned towards us and languidly swept the hair back from her face. It was thick and wet and kept getting in her eyes.

"Gosh, a real circus princess!" Sasha exclaimed delightedly. "The way she dives into those waves! ... Could you do that, Petka?" And Sasha sat down on the top of the wall beside the girl's dressing-gown, his eyes fixed on the sea.

"I'd have to find out what the water was like first," Petka replied evasively: "If it's really salty, why not! They say it's easy to swim in salt water; it holds you up."

"It may hold you up, but look at the waves! Can't you see them?" I-said. "If a wave like that hit you, you'd go to the bottom like a stone... How will she get out, I wonder?"

"She'll have a hard time getting to the shore!" Sasha agreed.

"Where is she, chaps?" Petka shouted suddenly. "I can't see her."

The girl seemed to have vanished.

"Perhaps she's on the breakwater already," Sasha said dubiously.

"She couldn't have got there so soon," I said, then heaved a sigh of relief: "There she is, you asses!"

Gripping the anchor chain of the fishing smack, the unknown girl was climbing aboard. A wave threw her up and with a final pull she jumped on to the heaving deck. Clinging to the mast with one hand, she straightened her hair with the other, then, like a cabman out in a sharp frost, started flapping her arms round her body. She seemed to be enjoying her rest out there. But now I began to take a less favourable view of her bathing. She had asked us to look after her clothes for a bit, and now, by the look of things she would be swimming right out to the breakwater!

"You're an ass, you know, Sasha!" I said to Bobir. "What made you say we'd stay here! There she is out there, enjoying herself, and we ought to be at the factory. A fine volunteer!. . ."

"All right, then, let's go," Sasha suggested glancing round.

"If we go now, someone may pinch her dressing-gown and she'll think it was us," Petka remarked thoughtfully.

"Come on, Petka, let's go and leave this ladies' man to stand guard!" I threatened Sasha

"I'm not staying here alone. Catch me!" Sasha grunted and hastily moved away from the dressing-gown.

As if sensing our impatience, the girl dived neatly off the smack into the foaming sea. Re-appearing on the crest of a wave, she struck out firmly for the shore. The sea helped her on, pushing her from behind. But near the shore the girl was caught in the backwash of the waves. The foaming rubbish-strewn water rolling back from the foot of the wall swept her to and fro without letting her get any nearer. The girl looked tired. She was swimming slowly to recover her strength.

But just at that moment a huge breaker came roaring towards the beach. As it swept her forward, the girl made a grab for the iron steps, which nearly gave way under the force of the wave.

Somehow the girl climbed up on to the sea wall. She swayed on her feet. Her hair was stuck together and hung down like wet rope. Specks of dirt marked her sunburnt legs.

"Merci for looking after my things," she said breathlessly.

And catching up her dressing-gown she darted away, leaving little wet foot-marks on the concrete.

"Let's go, chaps," I said, turning away from the wall.

When saying good-bye to us, Volodya had pointed out a tall brick chimney rising at the foot of a distant hill with a red flag flying from the lightning conductor.

"That's the Lieutenant Schmidt Works," he said. "Keep on towards that chimney and you'll come straight to the office."

The town was very clean and surprisingly flat, not a bit like our home town with its steep cliffs and gullies.

"Pretty good swimmer, that princess, chaps," said Sasha with envy in his voice. "I wouldn't have gone into the sea in a storm like that. I can still hear it roaring in my ears."

"That's just because you're not used to it," said Petka. "Wait until we get fixed up here. We'll be bathing all the summer. This storm's nothing to the ones we'll be swimming in. One day we'll be swimming out to that lighthouse!"

"Some hopes!" I- said. "It's a good ten versts away."

"But I'm glad we've got a place right by the sea, aren't you!" Petka said, finding it hard to keep up with us. "Think how fine it'll be in the morning. Just run down to the beach and straight into the sea! Then off to work. We shan't even have to wash. Tiktor will be sorry he didn't come with us."

"Don't count your chickens before they're hatched, Petka," I said, remembering what the driver had told us about people without work in the town. " 'Straight into the sea!' Mind you're not mistaken. We don't know yet how they'll greet us at the factory."

"How do you think they'll greet us? What's wrong!" Sasha exclaimed. "We've been sent there!"

"All this guessing's no good anyway!" I said. "Let's ' walk faster!" And just then I caught myself thinking about that girl in the flowery dressing-gown.

Some pluck!