In the centre of the town, near the market, several buildings stood jammed together in a small square. This was the place where every evening the youth of the town took their walks. And although all four pavements belonged to different streets, the aimless wandering round and round the square was known as 'strolling down the avenue.' The strollers dawdled along past the lighted shop-windows, just as they did back home, down Post Street! And as soon as we mingled with the idle stream, II realized that every town has its Post Street. True, the evenings in this seaside town were much warmer than back home, in Podolia. Bronzed young men sauntered along the pavements in white, loose-fitting 'apache' shirts, light trousers, and with sandals on their bare feet.
Ht was very stuffy, and Bobir, who had decided to cut a dash in his Cheviot tweed, soon discarded his jacket and carried it on his arm.
Several times we stopped by the brightly-lighted entrance to the watermen's club, where a comic film The Cigarette Girl, starring Yulia Solntseva and Igor Ilyinsky, was being shown. But every time we talked each other out of it and turned back. We considered that we could not afford to spend money on the cinema yet.
Today Petka had earned three rubles forty kopeks, I, two ninety, and Sasha, though his boasts reached the five-ruble figure, seemed uncertain just how much was due to him. But in any case we should not get the money until pay-day. .
We had finally decided to take the cheapest seats, when I overheard someone near the box-office
say that the film would be shown next week in the open-air cinema in the town park. And that put our minds at rest. Fine! We would go out on the roof and see it free.
'Hi, lads, come over here!' a familiar voice shouted from the boulevard that ran along the other side of the street, in front of the watermen's club.
We crossed the street and caught sight of Volodya the cabman. He was sitting on a bench with two other people, smoking. Volodya was wearing a worn pea-jacket and a broad-brimmed straw hat. When we drew nearer, I saw that his companions were the men who worked on the machine next to me—Luka Turunda and Gladyshev.
'Move up!' Volodya ordered his companions and they made room for us on the bench. 'Sit down and tell us all about it. Well, did they take you on at the works?'
'You're behind the times, old man,' Luka remarked, as he moved down the bench. 'Vasil is our next-door neighbour on the machines, so to speak.'
'Which of you is called Vasil?' Volodya asked. I pointed at my chest.
'Were the others taken on as well?' the driver inquired. 'Of course!' Petka said, for all the world as if the question had never been in doubt.
'So I'm in luck, eh!' Volodya exclaimed cheerfully. 'Come on, lads, get ready to wet that bargain of ours!'
'Wetting the bargain can wait,' Sasha cut in firmly. 'Where did you get to yesterday? Why didn't you turn up at the station as you said you would?'
'I went to Mariupol,' said Volodya, 'an engineer asked me to take him there. I went off with him straightaway after I introduced you to Auntie.'
'Can't you go there by train?' I said in surprise. 'You can, but there's an awkward change at Volnovakh. You have to wait all day for the train. This engineer had to get to Mariupol quick, so off we went for a long ride.'
'And empty all the way back?' Petka asked.
'Very nearly,' Volodya replied, warming to his tale. 'I'd just fed Sultan and had a bite to eat myself in the inn there. 'Well,' I thought to myself, 'we'll take it easy on the way back.' Suddenly up pops a cove with a suit-case and says: 'Won't you take me with you?' 'Why not?' I says. 'I'll take you anywhere for a couple of tens.' I thought he'd start bargaining, but no, he didn't—fishes out the money without a murmur! 'That's all right,' he says, 'but make it quick.' Well, for a sum like that I didn't mind raising the dust.'
'Did you really get twenty rubles?' Gladyshev inquired.
'Think I'm having you on? Two crisp and crackly tens, here they are, the darlings.' And Volodya tapped his breast pocket tenderly. 'Lovely journey! Sang songs all the way.'
'Profitable job you've got, Volodya,' Luka said. 'Money and songs at the same time!'
'Oh yes, to be sure!' Volodya retorted. 'I've got more money than a frog's got feathers. Comes in one pocket and goes out the other... I shouldn't feel envious if I were you though. That was just a bit of luck today. Sometimes you stand about outside that station and feel as if you'd do anything to get a passenger.'
'But you are out in the fresh air,' Gladyshev said. 'You don't swallow dust all the time, like us in the foundry.'
'Never mind, Artem, when they make our roof higher, we won't have so much trouble from dust,' Luka remarked, and I realized that everyone in the foundry was looking forward to the day when the roof would be raised.
'You talk about fresh air, Artem,' Volodya murmured, half to himself, 'but I'd give up all my fresh air for a job at the works any day, if it wasn't for my hand.'
'Did you work at the plant too?' I said in such a frank tone of surprise that Luka and Artem burst out laughing.
'What do you think!' Volodya said hotly, and I saw that my incredulity had touched him on the raw.
'I haven't always been a cabman, my lad. II did twelve years at the works, starting as a boy. The foreign owners squeezed what they could out of me. If it wasn't for my hand, who knows, I might be a foreman by now.'
'What's wrong with your hand?' Sasha asked quickly, staring at Volodya's sunburnt hands resting on his knees. They looked sound enough at first glance.
'Well, it was a silly business really,' Volodya said. 'My friends here know it (he nodded at Luka and Gladyshev). Perhaps it might do you, new lads, a bit of good to know it too. Just as a bit of instruction for you.
'In 1922, when that bandit Makhno pushed off to Rumania, quite a few of his cronies were left behind here, in this town, I don't know whether it was because they were afraid to run away to strange parts with that shaggy blighter they had for a leader, or whether he left them here, in Tavria, to stir up trouble—but the fact remains, the place was swarming with them, specially in the colony behind the station. There was hardly a house in that' colony that wasn't owned by kulaks. Well off they were too—good, brick houses, big vineyards, private boats in the harbour, and nets drying on the shore all the way from the lighthouse to Matrosskaya Settlement. If it was a bad year for the grapes, they made their money out of fishing. Well, when the famine started, we, armed workers, were off right-away to have a look in those kulaks' cellars and see if they were hiding any grain. And quite right we were too. There was real famine in the town. The children were all swollen, every nettle from the streets, every bit of grass from the cemetery had been plucked for food. But when you crossed the railway line—it was another world. Plenty of everything in the colony, even smoked ham and vodka on holidays. You'd walk along the street, ready to drop from hunger, and when you got a whiff from their kitchens in your nostrils, it'd make you feel like tearing those bloodsuckers to pieces! The whole people stricken with hunger while they made merry with their gramophones blaring out 'two-steps' for them to dance to!
'Of course, those kulaks didn't like us coming round searching their cellars and taking over their stores. They started shooting at us. And on top of that there were still some foreigners left at the works. John Caiworth and his family had hopped it straightaway, but he'd left his overseers behind. They were still in his pay and they used to get arms from somewhere and smuggle them into the colony secretly at night.
'Well, one evening we went to the house of a local merchant. Buchilo, his name was. No sooner had we shut the door behind us than we heard footsteps and two of his neighbours came in after us. The Varfolomeyev brothers— kulaks 'from the colony too. Both of 'em were wearing leather jerkins, Kuban hats, purple velvet trousers. And they were both keeping their hands in their pockets. 'Well,' I thinks to myself, 'we're going to have a hot time of it!' I knew almost for certain that both brothers had served under Makhno. Then another came in, one of their servants, by the look of him. Kashket they used to call him, he. . .'
'Just a sec', Volodya,' I interrupted the cabman, 'doesn't he work in the foundry now? Wears a red kerchief on his head?'
'That's the fellow!' Volodya affirmed readily. 'Well... I looked round and there's the merchant himself standing by his bed, grinning. He wasn't afraid of a search now that he'd got a body-guard. Well, those Varfolomeyev brothers, his neighbours, stationed Kashket at the door and came up to me. And II was alone, or very nearly. My mate, Kolya Smorgunov, was a smart lad and he knew how to use a carbine,
but the famine had drained all the strength out of his body. He couldn't even have handled the younger
