Somewhere near by we could hear a motor chugging. The street lined, with yellow acacias along which we were walking, led into another street running across it. As we turned into this new street, we saw that it was blocked at one end by a green fence. In the middle of the fence there was a similar, green-boarded gate. Above it hung a smart semi-circular sign in iron lettering.
LIEUTENANT P. P. SCHMIDT
ENGINEERING WORKS
As we stood at the corner of the street, the gates suddenly opened and a long line of reapers drove out of the yard. The drivers sat on springy side-seats, urging on their horses. The windmill-like sails of the reapers were motionless. All the reapers were brand new. We could see they had only just been painted with red and black enamel.
As I listened to the rattle of the reapers' broad iron wheels on the hard road and watched the sunburnt drivers in stiff tarpaulin jackets bobbing up and down on their high seats, I could not help remembering the distant state farm above the Dniester, where I had worked three years ago. We had harvested the farm's wheat with just such machines as these.
The machines that we had used on the state farm, however, had been old and rickety, with foreign trade- marks on them; the state farm had taken them over from the former landlords. But these that were driving past us now were new, Soviet ones. Though the sun was still hidden in the clouds, these reapers shone. Their broad sails were glossy with paint. Now their sharp blades were clicking to and fro like hairclippers, with nothing to cut, but you felt that if any wheat or rye got in their path, they would slash it down in no time.
'Do they make them here?' Petka exclaimed in a thrilled voice. 'Look how big they are! A bit different from our straw-cutters!'
'Of course they were made here. Can't you see the trade-mark!' And the sharp-eyed Sasha showed Petka the works trade-mark on the side of one of the reapers: 'UAMT Lieutenant P. P. Schmidt Engineering Works.'
'But what does UAMT mean?' Petka asked. 'Is that the station where they're being sent?'
'Can't you guess!' I said, remembering the same letters on our passes. 'UAMT means 'Ukrainian Agricultural Machinery Trust.''
'What machines!' Sasha crowed. 'They take some putting together, I bet. Trickier than a motor-bike engine! I am glad they sent us here!...'
The gate-keeper directed us to a little house at the back of the works yard. We stopped hesitatingly at a black oilcloth-covered door marked 'Personnel Department.'
'Who's goingA to do the talking?' Sasha asked, glancing at us.
It was a decisive moment and he looked worried.
'Vasil's our team-leader, let him speak,' Petka muttered hastily.
'Give me the passes,' I said.
A typewriter was clattering in the long, low-ceilinged room. Beside a typist with blonde wavy hair stood a young man in a grey checked suit, chewing a cigarette and dictating. His hair was glossy with hair-cream. I was struck at once by his huge lemon-coloured shoes, with long pointed toes. In the stiff collar of his starched shirt he wore a black bow-tie. His trousers were modishly narrow, well pressed and so short that his ankles showed. Many other people besides me must have thought, 'Here's a dandy!' and felt accordingly suspicious of this dressed-up young man.
'... Thus the number of personnel at the plant is gradually increasing,' the hair-creamed young man was dictating nasally to the typist. Then, seeing us, he asked in surprise: 'What do you want?'
'Good morning!' I said, striding up to the dandy. 'Here!' And I held out the passes to him.
He frowned, took the mangled cigarette out of his mouth, silently read all the passes and, returning them to me, said in an affectedly deep voice:
'Altez!'
'What?' I said.
'Not needed,' the dandy replied, making a scornful face.
'They were given to us by the Supreme Council of National Economy,' Sasha burst out.
'I can read,' said the young man with a sidelong glance at Bobir. 'And I repeat: we do not need workers with your qualifications.'
'But we've been sent to your plant, comrade!' I said, looking the dandy straight in the eye.
'Well, I didn't invite you!' And he spread his arms like an actor. 'How can you complain! I don't understand! Why, only a half an hour ago, I accepted a student from your place. Leokadia Andreyevna, what was that blonde fellow's name? You know, the one you said was like your friend, Comrade Kuchkov.'
'Tiktor,' the typist replied languidly, glancing at a sheet of paper. 'He wasn't like my friend, he was like the Don Cossack Kuzma Kuchkov!' And so saying, the typist turned away from the dandified young man and stared indifferently out of the window.
'You see, there was room for one, so I took Tiktor on. And incidentally, I did so at my own risk, because if the town labour exchange gets to know about it, I may collect a nice raspberry. We've got enough local people queuing up, as it is. Even footballers!... But you, young people... Alas!' And again he made that theatrical gesture with his arms.
'We're fifth graders!' Petka exclaimed. 'We've been studying a long time and. . .'
'I know and I understand,' the young man interrupted Petka and tossed his cigarette out of the window. 'I come from the working class myself and I quite understand your awkward position, but there's nothing we can do about it!'
Encouraged by the sympathetic tone the young man had adopted, I asked:
'What shall we do?'
He shrugged his shoulders.
'Take the train to Kharkov. You'll get there tomorrow morning. Get the Supreme Council of National Economy to send you somewhere else. To the Don has perhaps. It's all the same to you.'
'What do you mean—'all the same to us!' ' Petka burst out indignantly. 'Where do you think we'll find the money to go to Kharkov? It cost us the last of our grants to come here.'
'Well, I can't help it,' the dandy replied, and looked out of the window, obviously anxious to finish this unpleasant conversation. I looked at the carefully pressed lapels of his waisted jacket, at his tough, sunburnt, bull neck, and at the fastidiously knotted bow and thought: 'What can we do? What else can I' say to this dressed-up noodle? He simply doesn't want to understand what a hole we're in.'
Realizing-, however, that it was foolish and pointless to say anything, I turned to my friends and muttered:
'Well... Let's get going, if that's the way things are...' 'Au revoir,' the dandy called and moved closer to the typist to continue his dictating.
Coming out into the yard, I sat down on the cold stone step. Two workers in rust-stained tarpaulin jackets were pushing a truck of small but for some reason rusty castings along a railway line. I gazed at the workers with envy, although the work they were doing was rough and demanded very little skill.
'What shall we do, eh, Vasil? What are you sitting there for? Can't you hear?' Petka mumbled, standing over me. 'We were fools to go with that cabman! That was my fault! We ought to have come straight here with Tiktor. And now he's been taken on and we're left out in the cold,' Sasha admitted, very upset.
Sasha's words, his distressed, frightened face spotted with freckles, brought me to my senses.
'The driver's got nothing to do with it, Sasha. Suppose we had all four come here together? There was only one place going. Then what? They might have taken you on, but what about us?'
'Don't get peeved, Vasil! Think of something. You went to Kharkov, you got these passes...' Sasha said very peacefully.
Suddenly I remembered the farewell words of our director at the factory-training school Polevoi: 'Don't give up when you meet with failure. Don't take it lying down. Clench your teeth and go on ahead again!'
These words and the memory of all the other things Polevoi had said made me even more furious with that hair-creamed bureaucrat in the office.
'We'll have to go to the very top... That's what we must do!... To the director... And if he doesn't help us— to the Party Committee!' I said firmly.
... The director of the works turned out to be a short grey-haired man in blue overalls. At first we did not
