cottages. He had changed into blue sun-bleached overalls.
'You are getting high and mighty,' Luka said as he ran up. 'I might as well be shouting at a brick wall. I saw you as you were going down to the sea. Surely, I thought, the lad isn't going to drown himself because Naumenko gives him such a hot time!'
'Hullo.'
'Let's go to my cottage,' Turunda suggested.
I hesitated.
'I ought to be getting back to town,' I said. 'Perhaps we could make it another time.'
'Well, I'm not inviting you to a wedding, you know. We'll just sit down for a bit, then go off together.'
Turunda's cottage stood right by the sea.
'Don't you get flooded, when there's a storm?' I asked as we walked into the yard.
'Sometimes. Last autumn the maistra started blowing and the waves were so big they knocked out one of the window-panes. My wife had to put the chickens up in the attic.'
It was cool in the low-ceilinged parlour. All the windows except one that stood wide open were hung with muslin to keep the flies out. Pots of geraniums and fig-plants and bottles of cherry-wine stood on the window- sills.
'Make yourself at home,' Luka said. 'This is my father and this is. my wife. This is Vasily Stepanovich. He's come to help us in the foundry... Where are you from, Vasil?'
'From Podolia,' I said,' shaking hands with Luka's father and his wife. 'But I'm not Stepanovich, I'm Mironovich.'
'Is that so?' Luka said in surprise. 'I must have got you mixed up with your mate; he's a Stepanovich. Now sit down here, by the window; it looks as if we're going to get a breeze from the sea.'
I squeezed behind the spotless table and sat down by the window. Luka's father, a sunburnt old man, just as lean as his son, sat down facing me, while my host's wife, a pleasant-looking woman of about twenty-five, bustled about round the stove, which could be seen on the other side of the passage. Dark and sturdy, with her plaits arranged in a crown on the top of her head, she moved silently about the kitchen, now appearing at the stove, now vanishing behind the partition.
'Dad and I have been talking about a little family matter,' Luka said. 'As you probably know, for over two months now one per cent of our pay has been deducted for the workers of Britain, who're on strike. Well, whenever I bring my pay-book home, my family here makes a fuss. 'What,' they say, 'those B.W.s, again! What are they, your own kith and kin? You'd do better to buy a dress for the wife, or something that's needed in the house, than waste your money on them...' '
'What have dresses got to do with it!' Old Turunda interrupted his son, and as he spoke I noticed his sparse yellow teeth stained dark with tobacco. 'Those B.W.s, did they help us in 1905, when the Potemkin blew the red flag? Not a bit of it! Old Caiworth called in a regiment of Cossacks from
Melitopol to put down the strikers. Do you think anyone abroad helped us then? Never on your life! We had to live on whiting all the summer. Why should we help their strikers now?'
'Because we're the Motherland of all the workers of the world,' I said cautiously, reluctant to anger the grumpy old man. 'We've got the Soviets in power, but they haven't...'
'That's no answer,' the old man grunted. 'Don't you try to talk politics to me. You go to the root of things.'
Old Turunda's words touched me on the raw. I remembered our discussions on international affairs at the factory-training school, and just as fierily as I used to then, I said: 'Why isn't it an answer? Anybody can see that we're in la better position than the British miners, who have to swallow coal dust so that the capitalists can make their profits.'
'We swallowed plenty o' dustunder tsarism to give that British capitalist a mansion to live in and a yacht of his own to cruise around in, didn't we?' The old man jerked his thumb in the direction of the villa that I had seen from the shore. 'He could afford to hold garden parties in the fresh air, but all we had was a dingy little pub to amuse ourselves in, and even that ran us into debt!'
'It's no good trying to argue with my old man,' Luka said. 'He's just like one of those high-ups in the church. You talk about one thing and he talks about another. All at cross purposes. I've been telling him the same thing: since we've got a workers' government we ought to help every worker that's in need.'
At that moment Luka's wife entered the room, making no sound on the clay floor with her bare sunburnt feet. She was carrying a blackened baking-pan. When she set it down on two wooden blocks, I saw that it contained four large, fat fish. The strong scent of garlic struck my nostrils.
'Ever eaten this before?' Luka asked.
I shook my head.
'Fisherman's chebak!' Luka announced. 'Fresh from the morning's catch. Dad collared 'em land now we're going to taste 'em.' And pronging a large fish with his fork, he placed it on a plate in front of me.
Then I noticed that the chebak had not even been cleaned of its scales. Curled by the heat of the oven, they were standing up as if someone had stroked them the wrong way.
As I followed my host's example and took the skin off the fish, I soon realized the simple method of cooking this tasty dish. Before putting the fish in the hot oven, you had to stuff it with lumps of garlic. The fish were baked whole, in their own fat. Their white flesh came away from the bones easily and gave off a smell that made your mouth water. 'But fish can't swim on dry land, can they, Vasil?' And winking at me, Luka fetched a heavy jug from a dark corner and poured us glasses of wonderfully clear wine.
'That's enough!' I said to Luka when my glass was only half full.
'What's the matter?' Luka's quick eyes glanced up sharply. 'Do you think it's strong? It's only 'beryozka.' Weak stuff. Little children round here drink it instead of water.'
'All the same, that's enough. I'm not used to it.' 'You'll have to get used to it,' Luka's father remarked. 'If you live by the Azov Sea, a 'beryozka'-drinker you must be!'
'Well, here's to your success, Vasil!' Luka said. 'To your becoming a good foundry man. Good luck to you in your young life!' And we clinked glasses.
Pushing her dark crown of hair into place with a plump hand, his wife raised her glass too. Her kind deep-set eyes, dark as olives, seemed to radiate good feeling. I felt as if I had known the kindly owners of this little cottage, perched on the sandy shore of the Azov Sea, for a very long time. The wine was cool and fragrant, with a faint bitterish tang in it. And it wasn't strong at all.
I put down my empty glass and shot a glance at the clock hanging on the wall, by the stove. Luka
noticed it and said reassuringly: 'Don't worry, lad, I've got to go out too, to the university.'
'What university?' I asked in surprise.
'He's a student,' Luka's wife answered for him, and glancing at Luka very affectionately, put her brown arm round his shoulders.
'I've been attending since last year. In the evenings,' Luka said. 'When Katya and I got married I thought to myself, 'I'd better do some studying, I've been wasting my leisure time long enough.' So I started on the preliminary courses. I remembered all they'd taught me at the parish school and mastered algebra, and then the workers' evening university opened. That was a chance that was too good to miss!'
'Do you like it?' I asked, feeling a warm glow from the wine spread through me.
Luka nodded cheerfully.
'No question about it! A lot better than before. You'd knock off and spruce yourself up a bit, then off to the avenue. And from the avenue where would you go? To The Little Nook.' And after that you'd stagger home with your knees sagging. Sometimes you'd give yourself such a sousing that you'd just plunk into bed in your cap and boots. And as soon as you shut your eyes—the hooter was going. Well, what sort of work can you do with a hang- over? You'd crawl about like a fly in autumn, and your mate would curse you up hill and down dale because you were holding him up. I'm real thankful to Ivan Fyodorovich, it was him got the university started.'
'The director?'
'Yes, the director. He twigged there were a lot of teachers knocking about the town—chemistry teachers, astronomy teachers... So he got them all together and says: 'Here, you fellows, what about teaching the lads of an evening, I'll find the money to pay you!' And that started the ball rolling. Since I've been attending those evening classes, I've felt myself a different man. While the furnace hums away up at the end of the shop, there am I going
