What a good chap Petka was, when you came to think of it! Saving lunch for me like this. Really generous. Not like Tiktor, chewing sausage in a corner and looking round all the time afraid that someone might ask him for a bite! Petka always shared what he had.
The well-baked bread was crisp and fresh, one of the special rolls that Madame Podnebesnaya, widow of the former inspector of taxes, used to sell at the school gates for the first day or two after we had been given our monthly grants.
The bits of sausage—'dog's joy'—we bought at the grocery stall. Those odd scraps of sausage—with the posh co-operative store name 'Prime Assorted'—were the goods! They were very cheap and just about as tasty as anything you could buy. The point was that in a quarter of a pound, say, you got so many different sorts—nobs of liver, fat rings of Cracow sausage, ends of salame with the string round them. One day Sasha Bobir even got a great lump of the best ham.
Munching roll and sausage, I watched Petka. How had he learnt to work so fast?... Suddenly Petka stopped his lathe and said solemnly:
'You and I, Vasil, are old friends, aren't we? Remember the vow we made in the Old Fortress over the grave of Sergushin? There can never be any secrets between us, can there? Well, I must tell you this then: Tiktor is trying to get you into trouble.'
'As if I'd never heard that before! What trouble?'
'You needn't laugh. It's no laughing matter. Yesterday he reported you to the Komsomol committee.'
'Don't try to scare me, Petka. What could he have reported me for?'
'I'm not trying to scare you, Vasil. I'm telling you the truth. In his report Tiktor wrote that you should be expelled from the Komsomol.'
'Me? Expelled from the Komsomol?... Petka!... You can't pull my leg like that. I'm not Bunya Khokh...' (Bunya Khokh was the town half-wit.)
'Vasil,' said Petka in a thick voice, 'people don't joke about things like that. I'm giving you a friendly warning, as an old comrade, and you think I'm playing the fool like a kid!'
'Hold on, Petka, what does he say about me in his report?'
'Do you think I know? I never read it myself, but I saw Tiktor give it to Kolomeyets.'
'To Kolomeyets? To Nikita?... But what makes you think it was about me?'
'Listen. Yesterday I slipped in to get a magazine off Nikita, and Tiktor was with him. This is what I heard him say to Nikita. 'I didn't want to get mixed up in this dirty business, but when you're a worker like me your conscience won't let you stand aside. This is important. I've put it all down on paper. Read it. I don't know what you'll think, but I think Mandzhura ought to be chucked out of the Komsomol for it. People like him only stain our fine reputation!' '
'And you actually heard Tiktor mention my name?'
'I'm not deaf, Vasil... Then he gave Nikita a sheet of paper. What did I do? I tried to have a look, of course, but Tiktor noticed and covered it with his hand. 'What do you want, young fellow?' he says. 'When we need you we'll ask for you.' I didn't know what to do, so I took the magazine and went away.'
'And you didn't read the report?'
'But how could I? I say, Vasil,' Petka looked at me sharply, 'you haven't done anything, well, suspicious- looking, lately, have you?'
'What could I have done? You're an ass, Petka!'
'But there are all kinds of things... Perhaps you recommended some rotter for the Komsomol...'
'Since I seconded Sasha's application last year, I haven't recommended anybody.'
'What about Kharkov?'
'Kharkov? But I've told you about that!'
'Perhaps you did something, you know...'
'But what? What could I have done? I can't make it out!'
'Well, you know ... perhaps you started a row somewhere. . . Or got drunk, God forbid ... or
clipped someone on the ear.., Perhaps you broke a shop-window?'
'What are you talking about, Petka? I'm not Tiktor... I bought some flachkies off a profiteer at the market, I'll admit that, and I got robbed, and I saw that American, picture Sharks of New York, darn the rotten thing, but there wasn't anything else.'
'Nothing at all?'
'Not a thing!'
'I wonder what that twerp has got against you?'
'I don't know.'
'Look here, Vasil,' Petka said solemnly, 'go and see Nikita and ask him straight out what you've been accused of.'
'Nikita?... Why go and ask Nikita? I won't go of my own accord. If I start asking questions myself, it'll look as if I know I've done something wrong and am afraid. What have I got to be afraid of? It's daft!'
'Yes, perhaps you're right,' Petka said slowly.
'You could ask if you wanted to, Petka.'
'Do you think I haven't already?' Petka answered quickly. 'As soon as Tiktor left, I went up to Nikita. 'What was that complaint Tiktor handed in?' I said. 'It's an accusation, an accusation on a pretty big scale,' says Nikita. So I asked him what it was about. 'It's a report of a political nature against Mandzhura,' says Nikita. 'But for the time being,' he says, 'let's keep quiet about it, Maremukha. Not a word about this until the next committee meeting!' Well, I wouldn't let it go at that, so I kept on at him, 'Must be something very important,' I said. 'Well, how should I put it?' says Nikita. 'A dirty trick of the first water. Human nature at its worst, I should call it.' '
'Eh?'
'Human nature at its worst!' Petka repeated.
'Who does he mean by that?' I asked, my voice trembling.
'Do you think I understood? You know our philosopher! He likes words no one else can understand... I advise you to speak to him personally all the same.'
'But I can't, you know! ...'
At that very unsuitable moment Galya Kushnir ran into the shop. She was wearing a blue working overall and her hair was tied up under a white-spotted kerchief.
Before the factory-training school started, I had been very much in love with Galya, and had even kissed her on the wall of the Old Fortress one cold autumn day. I had written letters to her from the farm on the Dniester. I was still in love with Galya when we started at the factory-training school. When some of the other chaps began taking an interest in her, I felt very bad about it. Someone noticed this and chalked a notice up in the forge: 'Vasil Mandzhura is pining for Galya Kushnir something terrible!' Under the inscription there was a drawing of a heart— more like a cabbage than anything else. It was pierced with an arrow, and from it poured a stream of blood like molten metal pouring from the furnace. This notice certainly lowered my authority as a member of the committee in the eyes of the other chaps. It's very bad when your personal feelings become public property. 'Love should be the greatest secret in the world!' I had learnt the phrase by heart from a novel I had read, and even written it down on the margin of my political lecture notes. When he was checking my notes, Nikita spotted it. 'Where did you get that middle-class twaddle from, Vasil?' he asked. I could not bring myself to say that the words had been spoken by a tsarist general, so I avoided the point. 'It's from Comrade Kollontai's book,' I said. 'Well,
it's a middle-class prejudice all the same,' Nikita retorted, and I had to tear the page out of the notes. But I could have forgotten even the notice in the forge and gone on loving Galya as before, had it not been for her own conduct.
She took sides with Tiktor in the row about my casting of Francis Joseph! I told her Tiktor had dubbed me a 'monarchist' and Galya answered coldly:
'Do you think it's the right thing for a Komsomol member to portray tyrants and despots?'
'But I did it for practice, Galya! ...' I said in a voice full of reproach, thinking that she would take her words back.
But this time her reply was even colder, as though I were a complete stranger to her:
'If it were practice you wanted, you could have cast a model of a bird or something. There's a brass hawk on Dad's inkstand. If you had asked me, I would have taken it off and brought it to you.'
