The Town By The Sea

A CABIN ON DRY LAND

Golovatsky lived in a little house in People's Vengeance Square.

We passed through a long, untidy yard. Golovatsky felt under the door-step and found the key. The padlock on the door squeaked as he opened it.

Switching on the light in the passage, Tolya stood aside and let me enter first. The end-wall of the passage was stacked from top to bottom with books. There were books all over the room too—on shelves, on stands, even on the wooden stools.

"Don't be surprised at some of my whims, will you," Golovatsky said in an apologetic tone. "You see, I'm dead keen on the sea..."

The furniture of the small room consisted of a narrow bunk covered with a fluffy green blanket, a desk, and a round dinner table over which hung a lamp in a green shade. I noticed at once that the two windows looking out into the yard were round, like ship's portholes. A life-buoy with the name, Ochakov printed on it added to the cabin-like appearance of the room. The only chair was of heavy oak, like those in a ship's chart room.

"Surprised at the windows?" Golovatsky asked. "If only you knew what a battle I had with my landlady before she'd let me remake them like that!"

"But you've got them fixed tight in the wall. There's nowhere for air to come in."

"Oh yes, there is!"

And Golovalsky, evidently anxious to justify his eccentricity, turned a fastening that I had not noticed before. Then he pulled open the round "porthole." The scent ofjasmine blossom floated up from the yard.

"My own design," Tolya said, opening the other window. "I did the brickwork and some chaps in the joiner's shop made the frame from my plan. Unusual, eh? But I like it! You feel as if you're at sea. It gives

you a sense of movement. Those square peep-holes that people call windows are too restful."

"But most people have square windows, don't they?"

"Of course they do. They've got used to dull monotony," Tolya replied halfjoking, half serious. "Take a thing like this, for example. Black, the colour of the past, is still the predominant colour in our clothes—black caps, black suits, black shawls for grandmothers, even black party frocks for girls. Isn't it time we started a fight against this perpetual mourning in our everyday life? Nature's so rich in colours! What beautiful colours there are in a rainbow, in sky and sea! We ought to make a firm break with the past over things like that!" And Golovatsky banged his fist on the table.

"All right, don't get worked up, Tolya," I hastened to assure the owner of the strange room, and went over to one of the bookshelves.

The number of books he had! On geography, on biochemistry, on logic... An ancient chart of the Azov Sea kept company with text-books on astronomy and navigation. Over the shelves hung drawings of fish, sailor's knots, running lights, and even a diagram of a two-masted sailing ship.

"You must want to be a sailor?"

Tolya gave me a keen glance. "What makes you think that?"

"All the books you've got about the sea!" I said, and nodded at three tightly-packed shelves.

"Besides knowing the land on which you live, old chap, you've got to know the sea that lies ten paces from your door. One day you may have to sail on it. We, Komsomol members, have work to do in the navy as well, you know."

"That officer—who's he?" I asked rather suspiciously, examining the carefully framed photograph of a naval officer wearing a black cloak, a dirk, and a very high peak-cap.

"Lieutenant Pyotr Schmidt," Golovatsky explained.

"What, the man the works is named after?"

"That's right. The one who raised the signal 'I am in command of the fleet. Schmidt!' during the uprising of the Black Sea fleet in 1905. He was against tsarism, he loved the working people. Schmidt played a part in the Revolution, you know. It wasn't for nothing the workers of Sevastopol elected him to their Soviet!"

"When did they name the works after him?" "Soon after the Revolution. Do you think it was just a matter of chance?" "I don't know..."

"Listen then.. .The point is that Schmidt worked for a short time at our plant..." "What? An officer?"

"Yes, when he was a midshipman. His family used to live in this town. I suppose he wanted to see for himself how the working people lived, so when he came on leave he changed his midshipman's tunic for a worker's blouse... And do you know how I found his photograph?" Golovatsky continued, warming to his subject. "As soon as I heard all this about Lieutenant Schmidt from the old workers, I started trying to trace his history. Very interesting it was, too. I read all the old newspapers of those years, I went all over the house where his family used to live. But unfortunately, there was nothing left! After all, twenty years had passed. Three wars, three revolutions, famine... And then I thought to myself, surely Schmidt couldn't have lived in our town without having his photograph taken once when he was on leave! I looked through the negatives of all the private photographers I could find—and there you are, that's what I found. I ordered the enlargement myself."

"But you ought to send it to a museum, so that everyone can see it!"

"Surely you don't think I'm as mean as all that? I sent the negative to the Historical Museum in Moscow the very same day. They wrote me a letter of thanks." "And where does the life-buoy come

from?" "A cabman gave me the tip. A chap called Volodya." "Used to be a partisan? Crippled arm?" "That's him. He happened to mention that there was a man from Sevastopol living in Matrosskaya Settlement who'd as good as taken part in the uprising. So off I went to see him. It turned out that he hadn't been on the Ochakov himself, but he'd kept a life-buoy from the ship that started the mutiny. It's a precious relic! Had a hard job wheedling it out of him."

The coffee that Golovatsky had put on came to the boil. Golovatsky lifted the copper saucepan and placed a strip of metal over the blue flame of the spirit stove, so that the brew would simmer.

"Now look at this photograph, Mandzhura," Tolya said, striding across the room. "He comes from round our way too."

The photograph was of a smart-looking naval officer in tsarist uniform. He was sitting facing the camera, in a white tunic hung with medals, and a white cap with a dark band, his hands resting on his knees.

"Why are you so keen on Whiteguard officers?"

"In the first place, he was never a Whiteguard," Golovatsky corrected me. "And secondly, if all the tsarist officers had done as much in life as he did, and known so much trouble, I don't suppose the White generals would have been able to make them fight against the Revolution. They simply wouldn't have obeyed them. . . For your information, that is Georgy Sedov, the famous Arctic explorer, who died of scurvy on an ice-floe near the North Pole."

"Was he from the Azov Sea too?"

"Of course! From Krivaya Kosa. You see, not all officers are the same. If Lieutenant Schmidt, besides his sincere desire to overthrow the autocracy, had possessed the character of Georgy Sedov—who knows how the uprising on the Ochakov might have ended!"

"So Sedov was a good man?" I asked cautiously, completely at a loss.

"He came from the people and he loved his country," Golovatsky said with great feeling and reached down a book from one of the shelves. "Listen to what Sedov said in his last order" of the day, written before setting out for the Pole. He wrote this order on February the second, 1914, when he was already very ill. '... Today we are setting out for the Pole. This is an event for us and for our country. Discovery of the Pole has been the dream of great Russians for centuries—Lomonosov, Mendeleyev, and others. We, ordinary people, have the honour to realize their dream, and to do our best in polar discovery for the benefit and pride of our dear Motherland. I do not want to say "good-bye" to you, dear companions, I want to say "till we meet again," so that I may embrace you once more, and rejoice with you over our common success, and return with you to our country........And did he return?" I asked.

"He was buried out there, in the Arctic, on the road to his goal. He gave his life for the good of his people, and all the time the tsarist ministers were pouring abuse on him in the newspapers..."

"Yes, a man like him would have supported Soviet power unhesitatingly. He wouldn't have sneered and picked holes like Andrykhevich!" I flashed out suddenly.

"Well, that is comparing a lion to a mouse..." Golovatsky looked at me with reproach. "That fellow is just a philistine with a university education. Do you know Andrykhevich personally?"

"Happened to meet him the other day," I replied. "Strange how a man could betray a tradition that had-been in the family for generations. His parents took part in the Polish uprising against the Russian emperor. They were exiled to Siberia for it. But their son has served the tsar and the capitalists and treats the Revolution as a great personal misfortune."

"But he doesn't say that openly, does he?" "Sometimes he likes to play the democrat, comes out of his little mansion and takes a trip round the town. On Sundays mostly. He goes into the pubs and The Little

Nook,' listens to the blind bayan players. Drinks beer and talks a lot. One or two of the foremen are under his influence. Can't hear a word spoken against him."

"But on the whole, he's a clever man, he's useful, isn't he?"

"He has to work, there's no way out. But I can very easily imagine what Andrykhevich would do if there was a war. As for how useful he is—well, a man can be just a little bit useful, just for form's sake, or he can give the job everything he's got. That member of the gentry only does what he's told to do. You've probably heard about the owners taking a lot of production secrets away with them, or hiding them before they went. Well, Ivan Fyodorovich is doing his best, but so far the results aren't very great. And the chief engineer just hangs around and waggles his eyebrows, laughing up his sleeve all the time. Now, I ask you, do you think Caiworth kept any technical secrets from his chief engineer? All that about the drawings being messed up is just an excuse. A good, experienced engineer keeps his knowledge stored up in his mind without any drawings. It's simply that Andrykhevich doesn't want to tell us —that's the point!"

"He's waiting for a turn of the tide. Thinks everything will change," I assented, and told Golovatsky about my argument with the engineer.

"There you are! What more do you want? How much more open do you expect him to be?" Golovatsky exclaimed, and seeing that the coffee was boiling over, turned down the spirit lamp. "He doesn't like us. People like Andrykhevich don't help our cause; they're lying in wait for us. You understand what that means, Vasil—lying in wait for us!. . . They note every blunder, every slip we make, so that they'll be able to gloat over it afterwards... Why, if we ever let Denikin and the foreigners get back here, Andrykhevich would be the first to throw open his gates to them!" '

"And is his 'daughter the same?" I asked, having waited until Tolya had expended all his wrath on the old engineer.

"Angelika? Growing up to be a grebe. Gorky described people like her perfectly when he wrote:

'And the grebes are also moaning. Not for them the rapture of life's struggle. They are frightened by the crash of blows!' "

Golovatsky poured out the thick steaming coffee into little purple cups covered with black spots that made them look like lady-birds. Then he went out into the passage, drew water from a tub and filled two glasses.

"You drink the coffee in sips," he said, "a sip of coffee, then a sip of water. Otherwise it makes your heart race. Strong stuff."

I did not leave Tolya's "cabin" until midnight.

The streets of the town were deserted. Bats flitted silently above my head as I walked past the park, which was now locked up for the night.