his desk. 'A few years ago she used to run a cafe called The Little Nook.' Then when Madame got tired of paying taxes, she started her own dancing-class. Madame's daughter got married to an Englishman, one of the shop foremen, in the time of the Whites, and went off to London. But her mother's stayed behind, and now she's luring our youth into her net.'
Straining my memory, I asked: 'Has this Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya been living here long?'
'Ever since the Revolution. She came here with her daughter. From somewhere near Uman.'
'What about her husband?'
'No one's ever seen her husband. She must have buried him back there in Uman, or else he's run away.'
'And the chaps from the foundry go to her classes?'
'I wish it was only the foundry chaps! They go there from the other shops too. Our Komsomol organization hasn't succeeded in organizing any recreation for them and Madame takes advantage of it. And bear this in mind, Mandzhura, some of the chaps in your shop have very little education. No more of this standing aloof! It's time you made friends with some good chaps and got into harness with them. Grisha Kanyuk, for instance, or Kolya Ziakabluk...'
'I'll do everything, Tolya,' I promised.
'Everything's about half what you've got to do,' Golovatsky said with a grin, and gripping my hand he said: 'Off you go, you've only got three minutes before the hooter...'
Back in the days of the tsar, when we lived in Zarechye, under the walls of the Old Fortress, the estate of the Countess Rogale-Piontkovskaya had covered a whole district on the outskirts of the town. The yellow mansion with its columned portico lay half-hidden among trees in a large, shady garden. A gravel drive bordered with flowers led up to the house from tall wrought-iron gates, on which hung a heavy, rusty padlock that was hardly ever opened.
One day, however, the gates of the mansion were flung open with the willing consent of its owner. That was in 1919, when Ataman Petlura and his men seized our town. The remnants of his forces were clinging to the railway. Only a few small towns and villages of Podolia and Volyn remained in their hands. But although the Petlura front was crumbling on all sides, the ataman ceremonially declared our town the capital of 'Petluria,' and chose as his residence the half-empty mansion of the Countess Rogale-Piontkovskaya.
Petlura’s car was greeted at the gates by the countess herself, a gaunt woman in a black flounced dress who held a lorgnette to her eyes all the time. Peeping over the wall of the neighbouring churchyard, we, youngsters, saw the blue-uniformed Petlura alight from his car, kiss the countess's thin, bejewelled fingers and walk up the drive with her to the yellow mansion.
While he lived at the mansion Petlura held conferences with officers from Konovalets's Galician rifle corps and from Denikin's forces. Later, foreign military missions took up their residence with the countess. These officers of the Entente, which was helping Petlura, paced the shady avenues of the countess's garden in uniforms we had never seen before. We never had a chance to look at them very closely, however, for the gaiduks who guarded Petlura and his suite drove all passers-by away from the gates.
Only once my friends and I climbed on to the stone coping of the railings and tried to see what was going on round the mansion. As we stood barefoot on the rough sun-warmed granite, pressing our faces against the iron railings, a tall, gaunt man in a long grey jacket popped up out of the garden and lashed at me with a black silver- embossed walking-stick.
We scattered like frightened sparrows, afraid that the tall man might call up the Petlura guards to deal with us. They would give us a taste of something worse than a walking-stick—their long whips tipped with bits, of lead.
I well remembered the face of the stranger—cruel and scraggy and covered with yellow wrinkles. He was said to be the brother of the countess, who had fled from somewhere near Kiev, to escape the Bolsheviks.
So it was not for nothing that the Extraordinary Commission for Combating Counter-Revolutionary Activities had arrested the countess when Petlura was driven out of the town. What happened to her after that, I did not know.
Perhaps her brother was the husband of the local Rogale-Piontkovskaya, who, as Golovatsky put it, was 'luring the youth into her net...'
The day was still sultry, but there were many people about on the avenue. Holiday-makers in skull-caps, broad-brimmed straw hats, or simply with wet towels wound round their heads, were wandering home from the beach, bemused and exhausted by the heat. Some of them clustered round the kiosks to buy cool buza, iced lemonade, and mineral waters. Others, mostly men, slipped into the co-operative wine-shop on the corner, where they quenched their thirst with glasses of Azov wine.
Peering into the shops and lingering in front of their smart windows, I walked down the avenue, my heels sinking into' the soft asphalt. Before knocking-off time I had found out from Gladyshev that Rogale-Piontkovskaya's saloon was at 25, Genoa Street.
Suddenly I lost interest in all other passers-by except one who had popped up in front of me, as if from nowhere. The soldierly bearing of the man in front struck me as being very familiar. But for his light summer suit and soft panama hat with a broad blue ribbon, I should have rushed up to him at once and greeted him as an old friend.
'But I've never seen him in civilian clothes before... His walk's the same though, and the way he holds his head up!... He must have come here for a holiday! Yes, that's it! Why didn't I think of it before!'
Overtaking the man in the light suit, who had stopped in front of a chemist's shop-window stacked with bottles and jars, I peered into his face.
Yes, it was him!
I stepped forward and touching his elbow said: 'Hullo, Comrade Vukovich! How did you get here?'
With surprising coolness, as if he had been expecting me to approach him, the man with the face of Vukovich turned round and said: 'You must be mistaken, young man. . .' And he gave me a mocking glance, as if pitying me for my foolish error.
I don't remember what I muttered in reply. It was not an apology. I must have said 'Gosh!' or something like that. And utterly confused, I walked quickly away, so as not to attract the attention of bystanders. 'Well, some people are alike, aren't they!' I thought. That man was just like Vukovich... If it had been Vukovich, he would have been sure to say 'hullo' to me. Specially after that long talk we had in his office, when Nikita and I went to see him. Coming home, I decided not to tell the boys about my blunder.
25, Genoa Street turned out to be quite an ordinary-looking house. From the ticket-seller in a plaid frock who was laying out little books of tickets on her table I learnt that the dancing would begin in an hour. Well, I wasn't going to hang about here all that time just to see their capers! I wandered slowly down Genoa Street, towards the outskirts.
The street led me to a. district of little cottages, known as the Liski. All round me there were allotments. I made my way along the edge of the settlement to the beach.
Tarred fishing smacks with lowered sails heaved at anchor near the shore. Nets were drying on the seaweed-strewn sand. I felt the breeze from the open sea on my face mingled with the smells of smoked fish, seaweed, and tar.
The deserted sandy beach stretched away towards Nogaisk. At the mouth of a ravine that ran down to the sea stood a large villa with a red-tiled roof. The purple glow of the setting sun was reflected in the windows that looked on to the Liski and the glass seemed to flame in the sun's nays. It was as if a fire were raging inside the villa. I remembered the foundry men's tales about the former owner of the works, John Caiworth, who had gone back to his home abroad, and decided that it must !be his villa I could see in the distance. You had only to compare it with the little white cottages scattered along the sea shore to realize that it had once been the home of a rich man.
Crossing the soft sand, I went down to the sea and, scooping up the clear water in my hands, washed my perspiring forehead and wetted my hair.
'Hey, lad, come over here!' I heard a voice in the distance.
'That's not for me,' I thought without turning round. 'Who would know me here?' And I started walking back towards Genoa Street. But the voice went on shouting:
'Vasily Stepanovich! Comrade Mandzhura!'
Luka Turunda, my neighbour on the machines, was walking quickly towards me from one of the little
