changing. It was becoming lined and bad-tempered and gradually acquiring a grey beard and shaggy eyebrows. But I still went on dancing and getting as thin as a lath. Great big crayfish were crawling towards me across the dirty parquet floor, hissing at me, and opening and closing their long claws: 'Lout! Lout! Dirty lout! Where are you trying to get to? From pauper to prince, eh? Get out of here!' And then Sasha and Petka, still very young, popped up beside one of the columns and stared at me with contempt. And I heard Sasha whisper: 'See that, Petka? There he is! Danced all his life away and never learnt anything!'
Breaking into a cold sweat, I opened my lips to make an excuse, but my voice was drowned by the hissing of the crayfish, which grew louder and louder until I wanted to stuff my fingers in my ears...
I turned over on to my other side—and woke up.
The alarm was clattering beside me.
Although the young, yellow moon was still looking in at the window, it was time to get up. The foundry started work much earlier than any of the other shops.
'What rubbish you dream sometimes!' I thought and stepped carefully over my sleeping friends. 'I mustn't forget to wind up the alarm, in case they oversleep. . .'
Anyone who has lived for long in seaside towns knows that they are always beautiful.
In our town, the quiet, cloudless sunsets when the pink-tinted sun sank unhurriedly into the sea were wonderful.
And no less wonderful were the times when the sun set behind a bank of clouds and the raging sea battered the wall with mighty waves that sent clouds of spray flying over the near-by railway line. The bora whirled in from the steppes, bringing with it dust and the scent of wormwood, tearing off the hats of passers-by, stirring up dust- spouts on the embankment, chasing bits of paper, dry seaweed and dung down the streets. Even in the little roadside ditches far away from the sea, near Kobazovaya Hill, the yellow muddy water tossed and foamed like the open sea. And yet, even amid the terrible thunder of the storm, which could be heard far inland, the town in the grip of the bora was still beautiful. Perched on the headland at the foot of the hill, it was like a ship that at any moment might cast off from the shore and together with its inhabitants, its houses, its market, its church, sail away before the howling north-easter on a long dangerous voyage across the foaming waves. And the wailing cry of the siren on the lighthouse seemed like the last blast of the ship's siren as it started out on its adventurous voyage.
But the beauty of this new town on the shore of the Azov Sea impressed me most just before dawn in summer.
Three o'clock in the morning. The port bells have just sounded the hour and their pleasant chimes have died away somewhere on the hill. The garden gate creaks as I push it open. I hook it shut and set off along the railway by the sea-shore.
The coal-black sea, only near the port furrowed with yellow gleams from the signal lights, nestles quietly in the bay. It seems to be asleep too, sighing from time to time as a wave rustles on the beach.
It is so quiet you feel you could melt away into the silence of the sleeping streets. Not a single light in the windows. Street lamps are burning only at the main crossings, casting pools of yellow light on the roadway. Clouds of white, grey and cream-coloured moths hover round the lamps, battering them with their silky wings as if they want to break the hot glass.
Passing from one deserted cross-road to another, you plunge into the darkness of the neat rows of houses, make your way along the acacia avenues, and gradually shake off the last traces of sleep.
The drowsy watchman at the factory gate glances at your pass and nods his head. Your workers' number- disc makes a nice ring as it drops to the bottom of the green box. And you know your disc won't appear in the foundry until after sunrise, when everybody else has arrived at work. The foundry time-keeper will hang it on a nail in a frame covered with wire netting. And every time you run past it on your way to the heater, you will see your number gleaming on the disc and think to yourself with satisfaction: 'Another day without being late or missing work!'
During my first weeks at work, the thing that had worried me most was the fear of being late. And this was not because I might be fined or reprimanded by the foreman. It simply made me ashamed to think of walking through the busy foundry, knowing that you were late and that everyone was looking down on you. People would already be at work, there would be finished moulds standing behind the machines,
ready for filling. And the other foundry men would look at you and think: 'Here's a fine time to turn up at work, the slacker! Everybody started long ago, but he's been taking life easy on his feather-bed, the lazy good-for- nothing!'
It was even hard to imagine how I could turn up late in front of my mate Naumenko and say to him calmly: 'Hullo, Uncle Vasya!' What sort of conscience had a man who could come to work late and then share wages with his mate!
And something else might happen. Suppose you had just dropped your disc into the box after it had been emptied and were dashing across the yard towards the foundry, when suddenly you bumped into Ivan Fyodorovich, the director. 'Hullo, Mandzhura!' he says. 'Where are you off to in such a hurry? And why are you here when all your mates have been at work for I don't know how long?' What would I say to the director then? 'I'm late, Ivan Fyodorovich?' Could I say that to him after our pledge to carry out our duties honestly and well?...
When our shift foreman had warned me that we should be starting work at four instead of at the usual time with all the others, I felt shivers running down my spine. Would I be able to get up so early? Wouldn't I be late?
But my doubts were banished by a reasonable argument. How else can we manage? If you tell the foundry men to start work with the rest, at the sound of the hooter, that'll mean casting will start about midday. The sun will be at its zenith and the midday heat combined with the waves of heat from the molten metal will make the foundry into a blazing hell. No, the director's quite right to arrange a special time-table for the foundry—at least until we've got the roof raised.
Usually I managed to be one of the first to arrive in the foundry. Today, as I came up to the furnace, I heard voices in the semi-darkness of the shed. Naumenko had arrived already. Hot slabs were glowing under our machines. My partner had put them there to warm up the babbitt that had cooled during the night.
The engineer's salty crayfish and strong beer had given me a terrible thirst. I drank from the tap and went to get the shovels. We used to keep them under the foundations of the blast-furnace that the old owner had not had time to build.
Bending down, I slipped into the vaulted tunnel under the blast-furnace and found the two well-rosined shovels. A pair of green eyes gleamed in the darkness and vanished—there were several stray cats living here underground. They kept hidden during the day, only coming out into the foundry in the evening, when the iron had cooled in the moulds and there was no risk of burning their tender paws on drops of molten metal. What they found to eat in our hot shop, I could not understand. There was nothing here to attract mice or rats. Perhaps they lived on the scraps the workers left from their lunches.
It was fine to stride over the soft sand of the foundry at dawn, with a couple of shovels on your shoulder, feeling strong and cheerful and ready to start moulding.
The workers whose voices I had heard when I entered the foundry had gathered round the machines of Kashket and Tiktor. Artem Gladyshev was among them, and my mate Naumenko was there too, tongs in hand.
'They've done it this time, the navvies!'
'No need to insult the navvies! A good navvy wouldn't disgrace himself like that!'
'And it's not the lad's fault. Pupils take after their teachers.'
'Kashket was always moaning he hadn't got enough money to buy himself a drink. 'Faster! Faster!' he kept shouting. Well, this is a 'fast one' all right.'
At first I did not realize what had happened. But as soon as I glanced at the pile of empty moulds,
everything became clear.
On one of the mould-boxes were chalked the figures '115—605.' They indicated the results of the previous day's work. When the castings were inspected, the examiners chalked up the results on the mould-boxes. These figures meant that out of the 605 moulds Kashket and Tiktor had made, only 115 were any use.
I heard someone breathing heavily behind me.
'Enjoying yourself?' said a familiar voice.
I glanced round. It was Tiktor. His collar was unbuttoned, his forelock dangled.
'I'm not such an egoist as you,' I said very quietly. 'I don't gloat over other people's failures. But it's a pity so
