torch shining on my face.
'Tickets!'
'There's two here, mine and his. . .' I muttered, groping in my pockets. 'He's in the bunk on top. He's not well.'
The inspector turned the beam away and took the tickets. Behind him stood a man in a wadded jacket, who also looked at the tickets.
'Shall I wake him?' the inspector asked quietly and flashed the torch on Pecheritsa's back. Pecheritsa had rolled himself in a ball and was still fast asleep.
'We'll have to,' said the man in the wadded jacket, but then checked himself: 'Wait, here's the travel warrant!' And detaching the long white slip of paper from the tickets, he started examining it intently.
Blinking at them sleepily, I could not make out what it was all about. I wished they would go away.
'You needn't wake him,' the man in the wadded jacket said quietly, folding the warrant and handing it back to the inspector. 'He's not the one. . . Let's go on.'
The inspector gave me back both tickets wrapped in the warrant. The two men went away. I fell asleep at once, and so soundly that by the time I awoke we had reached a big station. A truck rumbled along the brightly-lit platform, people were running about with bottles and tea-pots.
The station lamps shed their light right into the compartment. I noticed that the upper bunk was empty— Pecheritsa had gone.
Pressing my face to the window, I read the name-board on front of the station:
ZHMERINKA
We had come a good way!
Knocking the legs of sleeping passengers, I walked to the door.
The carriage had filled up and the air was heavy with the smell of sheepskin and makhorka tobacco.
What had become of Pecheritsa? Perhaps he had gone to the buffet?. . . Fine chap to travel with! Couldn't even wake me up. And afraid to leave his case behind! Must think I'm a thief.
At the end of the corridor I felt the tang of the frosty night. The puddles on the platform were iced over. Stars twinkled below the rim of the station roof.
A new conductor in a leather cap with a smart badge on it was walking up and down beside the carriage with a rolled flag in his hand.
'Will we be here much longer, Comrade Conductor?' I asked.
'That we shall!' the conductor replied cheerfully. 'A long time yet. The Odessa express has got to come through.'
'Have I got time to go to the station?'
'Plenty. We shan't be moving for over an hour.'
'Nobody will take my place, will they?'
'If they do, we'll make them give it back to you. You've got a seat ticket, haven't you?...'
I walked all over Zhmerinka Station. Huge and clean, in those days it was spoken of as the best station in the Soviet Ukraine. I even went down the famous white-tiled tunnel.
Passing the first-class buffet, I glanced at the pink hams, at the white sucking pig that lay spread-eagled on a bed of buckwheat porridge, at the fried chickens and green peas, at the plump, glistening pies stuffed with meat arid rice, at the dark-red slices of smoked tongue, at the stuffed perch that seemed to be swimming in its trembling coating ofjelly. I was so anxious for just a taste of these delicacies that I lost all self-control, I had a slice of cold pork and a salted cucumber, drank three glasses of cold rich milk with fresh pies, then I ate two custard tarts and washed it all down with a glass of dried-fruit salad.
But as soon as I came out of the station into the fresh air, I began to repent. Fancy throwing money away like that! With an appetite that size I'd never get to Kiev. And I felt specially ashamed because 'I had allowed myself such a bourgeois feast at a time when our chaps had so little to eat. Cabbage soup and lentils—that was the usual dinner at our hostel. And beans, beans, beans! Beans for supper, beans for breakfast. Even the afters on Sundays was beans with a kind of sickly treacle sauce. Nikita Kolomeyets tried to console us by saying that there was a lot of phosphorus in beans and they would make us much cleverer, but there wasn't a single one among us who wouldn't have given all his rotten beans for a portion of good meat rissoles or a peppery goulash and fried potatoes. Tortured by remorse, I climbed into the carriage and returned to my seat.
Pecheritsa was not there.
After my meal the warmth of the compartment made me sleepy and I did not feel like going outside again. I just felt like sitting back on the hard seat and dozing.
The express from Moscow rumbled in on the main line amid clouds of steam. The station became noisy. Fighting with sleep, I peered at the lighted windows of the carriage that had stopped by us. Covered with sheets and blankets the passengers lay in their comfortable bunks. 'Made themselves at home, haven't they!' I thought enviously.
The express only stopped for a few minutes, then moved on smoothly. The red light on the end carriage flashed past the window and again I found myself staring at the yellow walls of the station.
Soon we moved on too.
Pecheritsa had not returned. I still had his ticket and travel warrant.
When it got light, I took a look at the warrant. The first thing I noticed was that it had been made out not for Pecheritsa, but for a second-year student at the agricultural institute, Prokopy Shevchuk. Across the bottom of the warrant ran the flowery signature of the director of district education Pecheritsa. Hum, something underhand about that! Pecheritsa was the only man in our town who had the right to issue warrants for free travel on the railways. I remembered how even before Pecheritsa had ordered the closing of the factory-training school, we had asked him to send a few of the very best pupils for a trip round the factories of the Donbas during the holidays. Pecheritsa had refused. 'The factory-training school won't get a single warrant out of me. They are only for students.' And the blighter was travelling with one himself! I made up my mind that as soon as I got back I would show Pecheritsa up, if only on this score.
But where had he got to! The destination on the warrant was Millerovo. . . If I was not mistaken, that was the other side of Kharkov. He couldn't have missed the train— we had stopped too long in Zhmerinka. There had been time to have breakfast and dinner as well. All I could think of was that Pecheritsa had bought a fresh ticket and changed on to the express.
IN KHARKOV
The line was snowed up in places and our train did not reach Kharkov until evening, ten hours late. Crossing the street with some care, H walked down Yekaterinoslav Street towards the centre of the
city.
Lighted trams rolled past, scattering greenish sparks from their collector-arms.
'Evening Radio! Evening Radio! Latest report - from Rome! Mussolini still alive!' a little news-boy was shouting at the top of his voice.
The shop signs dazzled me. The windows were heaped with nuts, ginger, heaps of pastila, baskets of Caucasian salad, sultanas, dates, Antonovka apples, oranges and lemons wrapped in tissue-paper. On the door of a shabby two-storey house I noticed a wooden placard: Eva Kapulskaya's Delicious Dinners Home-Cooked in Pure Butter. Tasty. Simple. Cheap!!!
Delicious odours of roast lamb and garlic steamed through the open window of the cook-shop.
'O for some dinner!' I thought, and licked my lips. It was two days since I had eaten a hot meal. All the journey ;I had fed on sausage and cold milk—except for my little treat at Zhmerinka, of course.
Today I had hardly had anything to eat since morning... But on the very threshold of Eva Kapulskaya's fairyland I changed my mind. I didn't know yet what 'cheap' meant. What was cheap for her, a private restaurant- keeper, might not be at all cheap for me. I must not waste public money. Who could tell how many days I might have to stay here!
