Gay nights of Marseilles In the Vagabond Inn...
We waited until the outside door slammed shut behind him, then Nikita looked at us and sighed.
'Yes... Let's go on to the next question,' he said bitterly.
But the question no longer existed now that Yasha had gone. No one thought of supporting his accusation against me.
After the meeting I drew Nikita aside.
'Look here, Nikita,' I said, 'why did you hide that report from me? I've been so worried. . .'
'Me hide it from you? You're very much mistaken.''
'Am I! You didn't tell me a thing.'
'Why talk about a lot of tripe before it's necessary. I didn't want to worry you over anything. The point is that Tiktor showed himself up with that report. I kept it back for a bit so that all the chaps should understand just how low Tiktor has sunk. It happens like that sometimes. Father a proletarian, a railway worker, but the son gets infected by the petty-bourgeois atmosphere in our town...'
MAP WANTED
Our town's a pretty place, specially in spring, when the willows blossom on Old Boulevard, and the town gateways, the ancient, mossy walls of the Old Fortress, and the watch-towers perched on the cliffs above the river wear a mantle of leaves and flowers. From every crack young shoots reach out towards the sun; on every ledge, where the winds of centuries have piled soil in plenty, the colza blooms, and tender, tousled dandelions sway on their thin hollow stems; here and there festoons of bluish ivy cling stubbornly to the overhanging walls. Sweet, juicy grass grows even on the battlemented tops of the towers, where no one goes, except perhaps a stray goat which has climbed up there by way of the fortress wall and crops the green shoots, heedless of the precipice below.
When you go through the gates, even if the day is sunny, there is often a cutting wind. You look round and there, above you, rise the mighty walls of the Stephen Bathori Tower built at the order of the king of Poland. How gloomy it looks, specially on the shady side. Surely nothing grows there. But no—look, on a ledge four stories up, by some miracle there's a bush of sloe, or is it hawthorn? And swaying on its branches two robins are chirping merrily—and so they should too, with all the town spread out below them. On the river-banks, still muddy from the spring floods, the pussy willows are the first to bloom. Their golden catkins appear on the branches long before the sticky buds throw out their first glistening leaves. And when the willow has bloomed, it is nice to wander along Old Boulevard of an afternoon and listen to the cones cracking on the fuzzy branches of the pines.
You walk along the avenues of Old Boulevard and all the time, now here, now there, you hear that faint snapping sound, as if a bushy-tailed squirrel is scraping away somewhere in the tree-tops, and suddenly a brown cone comes tumbling down from a branch, bounces once or twice on the gravel path and rolls into the young grass. Now and then the warm breeze shakes a cloud of yellow pollen from the trees.
And if you get tired of walking about under the pines, you can sit down and gaze at the yellow clusters of dandelions on the fortress bastions, or the bright patches of colza on the battered rounded walls of the defence towers that once withstood the siege of Turkish raiders from Constantinople. And just by the end of the bridge it looks as if someone has hung out a lot of gay flags on the bridge rail. But they are not flags, they are the bunches of flowers that the cottagers of Privorotye have come out to sell to the townsfolk. Their baskets are full of tulips—red, white, yellow, pale-pink; and they have bunches of white lilies of the valley too, wrapped in damp cloths to keep them fresh. Young shoots of pale-blue periwinkle have long since appeared on the gravestones of the ancient cemeteries; the allotments round the clay-walled cottages of Podzamche are green already and the first soft tendrils of beans, sweet peas, and mauve bindweed are curling round the wicker fences, so that by June they will be able to look out into the street.
It is sad to think that in the midst of such a wonderful spring-time we shall be leaving our home town...
As yet, however, there had been no news from Kharkov.
Sometimes I would wake up at nights and lie in the moonlit dormitory listening to the steady snoring of my neighbours and thinking worriedly about the end of term.
Kharkov was silent.
At times I began to think I had never been there at all, that instead of talking to the General Secretary in his office in Karl Liebknecht Street, I had only seen his picture in a magazine.
One of my troubles had been disposed of on the evening of the committee meeting. How wrong I had been to suppose that Nikita thought badly of me and was planning something against me. When he had read Tiktor's report out to the meeting, Nikita had said for everyone to hear:
'This is what Tiktor writes: 'In view of the fact that Vasily Mandzhura helped Pecheritsa to escape, I, as a politically-conscious young worker, consider that the only thing for us to do is to expel Mandzhura from the Komsomol.' Well, chaps, I think you know what value to put on accusations of that kind. Mandzhura let Pecheritsa get away, not because he wanted him to escape, but because he did not know what type of fellow Pecheritsa was, and why he was leaving town. I don't know about you, but personally I trust Mandzhura completely.'
And two days later, at an open meeting of the Komsomol, Nikita had said:
'Mandzhura did his duty. He has been to Kharkov and fixed things up so that when we finish our training we shall go and work at factories.'
'But we haven't gone yet, have we!' came Tiktor's surly voice from the back of the hall.
'As I was saying, we trust Mandzhura!' Nikita shouted. 'So far, all we have seen of you has shown that you aren't to be trusted!'
But although Nikita had said in front of everyone that he trusted me, that he believed we should go to the big factories of the Ukraine, I was very much afraid that he might have to say something else later on.
'Of course we'll go!' Furman said to Petka one day, not realizing that I was standing behind him. 'We'll go and cart dung in some village or other!'
One more week till the end of term.
It was Saturday and we had no home-work that evening. Some of the chaps and I were walking through the town towards the waterfall. The river had long since returned to its green banks and now that the rubbish had gone was already attracting swimmers.
We wanted to see the last of the chestnuts in bloom on Old Boulevard and, added to that, Sasha had boasted at dinner today that he might go for a swim. Of course, we knew that Sasha would not jump off the wooden bridge over the waterfall, as some of the early bathers did; he wasn't that crazy. Sasha would creep in at the calmest spot he could find. Even so, he had tried hard to go back on his word, but Petka and I weren't having any. Now it was decided: Sasha was to go for a swim while we watched him.
That Saturday evening the old part of the town was very crowded. There were so many people about in Post Street that it was hard to make your way along the pavement.
Not long ago Petka had bought a new blue shirt with a pocket in front. Today he was wearing it for the first time. The blue sateen fitted well over his broad chest.
In his last parcel, Father had sent me a fawn shirt with a high, embroidered collar, and a pair of striped trousers. I had decided to try out my new clothes too.
Sasha Bobir, who had been saving up for a long time, and had not eaten white bread for two months, had at last splashed out and bought a grey suit—coat, vest and trousers in Cheviot tweed. The first time he saw Sasha in this outfit, Nikita said:
'Do you know what's missing, Sasha, old boy? First you need la gold watch-chain to give you a solid appearance, and then you need a tie. You can't run to a gold chain, of course, and I don't think you'd take a tie if it was offered to you free. You know the difference between real culture and petty-bourgeois snobbery, and you don't want us to put you through it at the next self-criticism meeting. That's so, isn't it, Sasha, old chap, our dearly beloved Comrade Bobir? ...'
From the street vendor by the fortress bridge we bought pop-corn and strode on gaily down the middle of the road. Banishing my gloomy thoughts, I too began to smile, as I thought of our Sasha creeping into the icy water.
