The Town By The Sea

AT THE ENGINEER’S

Boats were moored along both sides of the wooden pier. Lika bent down and unlocked a chain.

"Jump!" she commanded, hauling the boat up to the pier.

I jumped without hesitating. As my feet struck the bottom of the boat it pitched so violently that I nearly fell overboard.

"Take a life-belt, Lika!" came a voice from above.

It was the Life-Saving Society man. He was standing on the pier in shorts and a yachting cap with a white flag on the band. A whistle dangled on his muscular chest.

"What for, Kolya?" said Lika, pushing off with an oar. "I think my hidalgo can swim. But if anything goes wrong, I'll save him myself without a life-belt."

"Up to you!" the sailor replied with a chuckle. "Wave if you're in trouble." And he tossed the life-belt back on to the pier.

I listened to them with a frown. My companion seemed determined to appear better than me in everything! Even in this phrase to the sailor there had been a scornful hint that I couldn't swim and would go to bottom like a kitten, if she didn't save me.

Angelika plied the oars easily and we drew away from the shore. Already the pier looked quite small, like two matches stuck to the shore in the shape of a "T."

"Let me take over for a bit."

"You can try," Lika consented, and we changed places.

The purple ball of the sun sinking somewhere beyond Kerch blinded me and stained the calm waters of the bay a reddish brown. I plunged my oars deep into the water and yanked at them with all my strength. One of the rowlocks jumped out of its socket and nearly fell into the sea.

"I know you're strong, Vasil, but why break the boat? Take it easy, as if you didn't care. The boat will go faster."

And indeed, as soon as I relaxed and stopped digging my oars in so deeply, the boat skated across the water like a flat pebble thrown from the shore, leaving a faint, trembling wake at its stern.

"Turn a bit to the left, towards the breakwater!"

"You want to go there?"

"Don't you?"

"It's a long way."

"You don't know what 'a long way' means! If we were making for the sand-bank at this time in the evening, it'd be different. But the breakwater's only a paddle."

The harbour with its hump-backed warehouses was far away by now and the high granite walls of the breakwater rose above us almost as soon as we passed the signal bell.

"Yes, quite near really," I agreed. "Is it two versts?"

"One and a half."

I was not used to rowing and at each pull I bunched my muscles and pressed my lips tightly together. My expression must have been rather unnatural. Angelika was now surveying me quite openly.

"You know, Vasil, your glance is like a touch. Like Lieutenant Glan's!" she said suddenly.

"What do you mean?" I grunted.

"Lieutenant Glan was the favourite hero of a Scandinavian writer. He was unlucky in love, so he went away and lived in a little hut in the forest, and to hurt the girl he loved sent her the head of his dog as a present... "

"Sounds like a savage!" I remarked. "Real men don't run away from people."

"Not from people, but from misfortune in love! He was tired of civilization."

"It's the same thing," I said, already deeply prejudiced against the hermit. "And what sort of glance has your Trituzny got? Like a touch, too?"

Missing the sarcasm in my question, Angelika replied eagerly:

"Oh, quite an ordinary glance, but a terrific kick! What a pity you missed the match with Enika!. That was a game! Zuzya made a break-through from the centre of the field and knocked the goal-keeper over with the ball. Our supporters simply screamed with delight!"

"What of it!" I said rudely, tugging at the oars. "We played the Berdichev youth team once with Bobir as goalkeeper. Both our backs were knocked out and three of their players came down on Sasha who was all alone. Do you think Sasha let the ball through?... Not him! Of course, I had to give one of their insides a smack on the jaw for trying to trip me. The ref stopped the game and gave Berdichev a penalty: Right in front of the goal. And Sasha stopped it again, and that dirty dog went off the field with a crease in his mug!"

"Oh, Vasil, Vasil, you must learn how to talk properly. . ." Lika said reprovingly. "If only you knew how those slang expressions of yours appal me! You're a nice boy, but sometimes you sound so unpolished."

For a start I didn't know what she meant by that fancy word "appal." But even without that, her cold, edifying tone would have made me furious.

I said sharply: "It was unpolished men that made the Revolution, you ought to remember that sometimes!"

Angelika could not find an answer to this or perhaps she did not want to continue the conversation.

Only the purple crown of the dying sun showed above the horizon, tinting the water with an ominous fiery glow. Behind us the sea was already an oily black. The faint swell caught the last pink reflections of the sunset and the shadow of the breakwater running back to the harbour wall.

Patting her hair carelessly, Lika said: "How calm it is! I like the sea best of all as it is now."

"I thought you liked storms best. The sea was very rough when you dived into it that time."

"I was brought up by the sea and I can't live a day without bathing. It's a habit. But to me the best thing in the world is calm, stillness. And to have a cat purring beside me... To sit on a swing and just

stroke a little cat. With electricity crackling in its fur... What could be better!"

How could I listen calmly to such talk!

I said: "But that's bourgeois petty-mindedness! You haven't started life yet, and you want peace and quiet already."

"Oho!" Lika puckered her eyes. "The quiet boy starts to show his little claws. How interesting! I didn't know you were so fond of arguing. My admirers usually listen to me without a word of objection."

What cheek! Who said she could count me as one of her admirers!

"No, seriously, Vasil, I'm naughty. I like to mope on my own, to get away from the cares of the world. I love to dream. . ."

And quite unexpectedly Lika began singing in a soft, pleasant voice:

In a little grey house on the edge of the town,

In a little grey house where sadness abides. . .

"Specially in winter," she went on. "When twilight comes and day still lingers among the purple shadows, I like to be alone and talk to yearning. . . She comes out from behind the curtain over the door—a kind, sad fairy, with ash-grey hair, just like the colour of the sea now, and she soothes me.. ."

"It's the life of luxury her father gives her that makes her have all these daft ideas!" I thought. This was the first time I had met such an outspoken philistine at close quarters.

"What do you live for then?"

"By inertia. I'm waiting for a lucky chance. Perhaps some strong man will turn up and change everything for me."

"Why not do it yourself, without a nurse?"

"I've never tried."

"You ought to."

"Oh, I'm too bored!"

"What's the sense in living then? If you just wait for someone strong to turn up and moan: 'I'm bored, I'm bored. . .' "

I could see my words had stung Angelika sharply. Again an angry little spark leapt into her eyes, as it had done a short while ago, in Rogale-Piontkovskaya's saloon.

"And what do you live for, my dear sir? Do you enjoy your monotonous work in the foundry?"

"Monotonous?" I exclaimed indignantly. "That's just what it isn't! Today I make one kind of mould, tomorrow another. I turn out thousands of new parts. It makes me glad to think that I'm working for my people and not swindling anyone. Isn't that worth doing? Monotonous, my foot! There aren't any boring jobs, but there are boring, hopeless people."

"All right, suppose you've found out everything, experienced everything, what then?"

"Study!"

"But it's so difficult to study. Never any time to rest after dinner, always having to jump up and rush off to lectures."

"Who will study if we don't? Your grey fairy?"

"There's another way out. If you like, I'll ask Daddy and he'll give you an easy job. In the office, for instance?"

"What good is that to me? I don't want to be an office worker."

"You are funny, Vasil! I want to help you, and you bristle up like a hedgehog."

"Your Zuzya can go out for the easy jobs, I don't want them."

"Why are you so much against Zuzya? He's quite a nice, harmless boy..."

"Boy? Strong as a bull, and messing about with papers all day! It makes you sick to look at him!"

"What makes you so intolerant towards people, Vasil? Such a terrible temper!"

"When people are on the wrong path, what are you supposed to do—praise them for it? How can we remake the world with such people?" I said, getting really angry.

"Who's asking you to remake the world? Let it stay as it is."

" 'Who's asking! '... Perhaps you like the old world? Perhaps you'd like to live under the tsar or old man Makhno?"

I thought Angelika would either deny my accusation or change the subject. But she said with surprising calm:

"My father lived very well under the tsar too. Caiworth had a great respect for Daddy. He said himself such engineers were hard to come by."

"And how did the workers live?"

"That's nothing to do with me... And it's all such a bore anyway... Look how quickly the moon has risen! Isn't it beautiful?"

A shimmering bar of moonlight stretched across the calm bay almost to the sand-bank, where the lighthouse was already blinking. The water was silver.

"When the moon shines on a strip of water like that, people call it 'the path to happiness,' " Angelika said. "Two years ago I believed in that saying, so I took a boat out and followed the moonlight across the sea. I got as far as the sand-bank, then a north-easter sprang up and the sea got rough and I couldn't go back. I pulled the boat up on the sand, spread out some seaweed and made a place to sleep in under the boat. How frightened I was!"

"Fancy being frightened of the wind!" As I spoke, I unconsciously drew my hand across my forehead.

Lika noticed my gesture and asked quickly:

"What's that scar on your forehead?"

"Oh, nothing."

"Tell me."

"A scratch from a grenade splinter."

"A grenade splinter? Who did that to you?"

I had to tell the story of my encounter with the bandits at the state farm on the bank of the Dniester.

"How terrible and thrilling it all sounds!" Lika said. "Only I don't like politics," she pouted. "Politics are so boring. But what you've just been telling me is very interesting."

"You can't remake the world without politics." "Now you're at it again, Vasil! You're simply unbearable! ... Let's go home, or we'll have a real row."

Only when we tied up at the pier did I feel how tired I was. My hands were sore from the rub of the oars. At the gate I wanted to say good-bye and get away, but Angelika put her hands behind her back and said: "You'll do no such thing... Today you're going to spend the whole evening with me. Come to our house. I'll introduce you to Daddy."

Angelika's father was sitting in the big dining-room laying out cards on the dinner table. He was so absorbed that he did not even turn round when we entered.

"Daddy! We have a guest!" Angelika cried and touched his shoulder.

Andrykhevich turned round. Tossing the pack of cards on the table he rose to greet us. He was tall and big-boned. His head nearly reached the heavy chandelier that hung from the ceiling. I was struck at once by his bushy, knitted eyebrows and curved, hawk-like, nose.

"With whom have I the honour?" he said, offering me a big wrinkled hand.

"Vasily Mandzhura," I said.

"He's our new neighbour, Daddy. I told you Maria Trofimovna had some new lodgers. Vasily's one of them. I hope you'll like him. He's a tremendous arguer."

"I like to meet young people thirsting for argument. It was the great art of argument that gave ancient Greece her culture. Those arguments revealed many truths that are still alive today." And motioning to a chair: "Sit down, Vasily."

"Mironovich," I said, giving him my patronymic, and pulled my chair up to the massive table.

"Do you know what we have for supper, my dear? Crayfish! Just think of it, Kuzma brought me a whole pailful from Alekseyevka! I've just sent Dasha for beer."

"Daddy's a devoted crayfish-eater," Lika explained. "He often gets the train attendants to bring him crayfish all the way from Ekaterinoslav."

The engineer glanced at me very keenly and said: "You entertain our guest, Lika, and I'll go and cook these creatures." And he went out to the kitchen.

"Now Daddy will perform his rites! He boils the crayfish in a special way—with caraway and laurel leaves and parsley. He loves cooking them. Even when Mummy's at home, he doesn't let her have anything to do with it. Mummy's still away at Uncle's. She hasn't come back since she went at Easter... Would you like me to show you my little nest?" '

Once you let yourself in for a thing, you have to go through with it. Now that I had consented to come in, I had to agree to the wishes of my hostess.

Lika and I went into a small room with windows looking out into the garden. The room was draped from floor to ceiling with Persian carpets. On one of the carpets hung a little icon and before it, suspended in a brass holder, burned a red-glass lamp. "Oho! Religious into the bargain!" I thought.

Angelika touched a switch and turned on the ceiling lamp, flooding the room with light. The dazzling shafts from the windows shone on a piece of flower-bed and a sandy path edged with broken tiles.

"Is this where you talk to your fairies?" I asked with a grin.

"Yes. This is where I tell my secrets to my kind grey princess, and study the horoscopes of great people... By the way, Vasil, which month were you born in?"

"April. What about it?"

"In April? Under the Ram?"

"What Ram?. . ." I exclaimed, not troubling to hide my impatience.

"No need to get offended! The 'Ram is the first zodiacal constellation. Sit down here and listen. I'll tell you everything about your personality."

She rustled the pages of a book and sweeping back her long chestnut hair, began to read.

" The sign of the Ram endows people with many talents: perseverance, courage, an unquenchable thirst for action, bordering sometimes on madness. People born under the Ram are always ready to fight fanatically for the cause to which they have devoted themselves, even in the after-life and in the service of Beelzebub. It is to be regretted, however, that owing to their immense impulsiveness they sometimes dedicate themselves to causes unworthy of such zealous devotion. It is this heightened impulsiveness and lack of forethought that makes them rash at times and leads them to deeds of madness. A man born

under the Ram may show a tendency to martyrdom, thus becoming a Lamb of Sacrifice. . ......Well!" said

Angelika, drawing a deep breath. "And that's you! Amazing, isn't it? Your whole character spread out before you. What have you got to say to that, Vasil?"

"It's all a lot of superstition."

"Why superstition, Vasil? Don't be silly! Listen to what it says now: 'The Ram endows people with a leaning for technical matters and industry. It gives birth to people for professions connected with fire and iron, it develops a talent for organization and leadership...' Isn't that exactly about you and your ideals?"

"Prophecies like that can be made to fit anyone... And what's this after-life got to do with it?"

"But not everyone is born in April. And just listen to this: 'He should seek friends born between twenty-fourth of July and the twenty-fourth of August, under the Lion.' And did you know, my birthday's on the twenty-fifth of July? We were made for each other by Providence!"

"What's she getting at with all her cunning flattery?" I thought in alarm. "That would be a fine thing! To get tied up with this mademoiselle with her carpets and fairies!

Br-r-r! That'd just about finish a fellow off!" I shuddered at the thought.

"Why don't you say something, Vasil?... Don't look at me in that awful way, you'll make me faint."

"It's all rubbish ... superstition, drivel!" I said with conviction. "Only people who haven't got anything left in this life invent another world."

"Why is it drivel? Oh, you are so intolerant! My father has engineers round for spiritualist seances. They turn a little table in the dark and call up spirits. They've already had messages from the spirit of Napoleon, and even Navuchodonosor has spoken to them!"

"I know all about those tricks!" I said and began to laugh heartily. "Back home in Podolia, not far from our town, people suddenly started talking about the Kalinovskoe miracle. The local women thought they had seen blood flowing out of the wounds of a figure of Christ on a roadside cross. Crowds of people came to see it, like at a fair. And what do you think? A special commission came down and checked up on everything and found out that it was some priests who had faked the whole thing to stir the people up against Soviet power. They made a lot of money out of it too!"

"Oh you disbelieving Thomas!" she said vexedly. "I. don't know anything about your miracle, but we all heard the voice of Navuchodonosor quite distinctly."

"He didn't give you a message of greetings from Rogale-Piontkovskaya's daughter in London, did he, by any chance?" I jeered. "Or from her husband in the other world? What did he say, is the Charleston in fashion up there?"

At that moment Andrykhevich appeared at the door of Angelika's "nest."

"Be so kind!" he said and waved us into the dining-room with a sweeping gesture.

The table was kid. Thick dark beer foamed in delicate jugs that stood on an embroidered table-cloth. For every person there was a slender cut-glass goblet and a serviette. A little pot-bellied decanter of the same thick red glass as the icon-lamp that burnt in Lika's room nestled beside one of the beer jugs. And in the middle of the table rose a heaped dish of crimson steaming crayfish with long, drooping whiskers.

"There are crayfish for you!" I thought, sitting down. "Not like the little midgets we used to catch by the candle factory."

"While these creatures cool off, I suggest we have some sturgeon," Andrykhevich said, seating himself opposite me.

I noticed another dish with a long slab of white fish on it bathed in thick yellow sauce and trimmed with slices of lemon.

Spearing a piece of fish with a fork, I began to cut it with my knife. Suddenly I noticed Andrykhevich and his daughter exchange glances. I must have done something wrong.. Looking at her father, Angelika put her finger quickly to her lips. He smirked silently and raised his eyebrows. The appetite that I had begun to feel after rowing vanished at once. What had I done?

"A little vodka with your sturgeon, young man?" the engineer suggested, holding up the decanter.

"No, thanks. I don't drink vodka," I said, and feeling that this would lead to no good, put my fork down on the table-cloth.

"Praiseworthy!" said Andrykhevich. "Young people should not drink vodka, it's poison!" Whereupon, bunching his shaggy eyebrows, he poured himself a full glass of "poison" and drank it down in one gulp.

Recovering his breath, the engineer noticed my hesitation.

"People eat crayfish with their fingers, young man," he advised. "Drop your knife and fork and tackle the job boldly. Don't be afraid of them."

Now for it! I reached out and took the biggest crayfish out of the dish, but before I could put it on my plate, a maid appeared from nowhere and changed my plate for a clean one. "Is she in the foodworkers' trade union, or do they exploit her on the quiet, without a contract?" I wondered.

Before me lay a huge crayfish, but how I was supposed to eat it in "polite society" I had not the faintest idea. It had been a different matter feasting on crayfish in the field by the candle factory. You would just flick one of those crayfish out of the boiling water with a couple of twigs and sit there breaking bits off it and throwing the red scales into the fire.

Andrykhevich ate with a kind of solemn triumph, as if he really were performing some sort of holy rite, as Lika had suggested. Anyone could see that food held a prominent place in his life.

"Crayfish are a weakness of mine!" Andrykhevich said, cracking a claw. "Good beer and crayfish make a perfect combination." And he filled my glass with beer that was black as tar. "What have you been arguing about with the young man, my dear?" he asked.

"Vasil wants to remake the world and I've been persuading him against it."

"Indeed! That is interesting. He who was nothing shall become everything? From pauper to prince? Is that the idea?" And Andrykhevich glanced at me, screwing up his eyes.

"Yes!" I said, pushing the crayfish aside and trying to appear calm. "And I suppose you'd like to have everything as it was of old—a hundred capitalists enriching themselves on the labour of millions ... Is that it?"

"Those who have become everything are completely lacking in two things—ability and knowledge."

"No need to worry yourself about that! We'll learn. We'll fight for the knowledge we need."

"But ability is a gift from God. Ability is given to a man at birth and passed on from generation to generation!" the engineer retorted sharply.

"Do you think the working class hasn't any ability?"

Lika burst out laughing. "I told you he was a terrible arguer, Daddy. Our guest's sense of contradiction is developed to an extraordinary degree."

"Just a moment, dear! That is really quite interesting. So you asked me, sir, whether the working class has any ability? Not the slightest doubt of it! If 'Russian craftsmen had no ability, I should have chosen a different profession. What would be the use of working as an engineer, if there were no one capable of putting your ideas into practice! But try and understand this: for the natural, original talent of the working class to develop, the working class must have a technical intelligentsia. And where are you going to get it from?"

"Where from? What about the working class itself? The class that made the Revolution?"

"Don't tell me those fairy-tales!" Andrykhevich exclaimed with visible annoyance. "It's the easiest thing in the world to destroy everything that generations have built up before you. But just try to raise the ruins, to build it all up again. Where can you find the educated people to carry out all these fantastic plans of remaking, the world? Especially when all the countries are against us!"

"We're doing it now ourselves and we'll go on doing it! We're not afraid! With a leader like our Party, the working class needn't be afraid of any difficulties," I said with growing inspiration, looking at Andrykhevich fierily.

"By yourselves? 'One, two—heave! See how she goes!' Like that, eh?"

"Never mind that old song, we'll manage without that," I answered, feeling a great truth on my side.

"In a few years' time we'll have thousands of our own, Soviet experts. They'll work not just for their own gain, but for the general good, to build communism with all the working people. And then those who aren't backing us up now will be sorry for themselves."

"Whom do you have in mind, young man?" Andrykhevich asked and gave me an angry look.

"Who do you think? Don't you know yourself that any man who goes against the will of the whole people is bound sooner or later to be brought out into the open and thrown overboard? Do you think the working class will let people sneer at it and doubt its strength, and at the same time eat its bread? We don't need spongers. We need friends. You sit here laughing at what we are doing now. And what were you saying, I wonder, when the old owners ran away abroad? Thought everything would go smash, I expect. But look how things are going now—the works is turning out more reapers than it was before the war. Isn't that a fact? And how many other factories in our country are doing the same! And how many more shall we build in time!"

"Time will tell..." the engineer grunted meaningfully.

And much was the distrust and hidden resentment in those laconic words ...