eyebrows, laughing up his sleeve all the time. Now, I ask you, do you think Caiworth kept any technical secrets from his chief engineer? All that about the drawings being messed up is just an excuse. A good, experienced engineer keeps his knowledge stored up in his mind without any drawings. It's simply that Andrykhevich doesn't want to tell us —that's the point!'
'He's waiting for a turn of the tide. Thinks everything will change,' I assented, and told Golovatsky about my argument with the engineer.
'There you are! What more do you want? How much more open do you expect him to be?' Golovatsky exclaimed, and seeing that the coffee was boiling over, turned down the spirit lamp. 'He doesn't like us. People like Andrykhevich don't help our cause; they're lying in wait for us. You understand what that means, Vasil—lying in wait for us!. . . They note every blunder, every slip we make, so that they'll be able to gloat over it afterwards... Why, if we ever let Denikin and the foreigners get back here, Andrykhevich would be the first to throw open his gates to them!' '
'And is his 'daughter the same?' I asked, having waited until Tolya had expended all his wrath on the old engineer.
'Angelika? Growing up to be a grebe. Gorky described people like her perfectly when he wrote:
'And the grebes are also moaning. Not for them the rapture of life's struggle. They are frightened by the crash of blows!' '
Golovatsky poured out the thick steaming coffee into little purple cups covered with black spots that made them look like lady-birds. Then he went out into the passage, drew water from a tub and filled two glasses.
'You drink the coffee in sips,' he said, 'a sip of coffee, then a sip of water. Otherwise it makes your heart race. Strong stuff.'
I did not leave Tolya's 'cabin' until midnight.
The streets of the town were deserted. Bats flitted silently above my head as I walked past the park, which was now locked up for the night.
EVERYTHING IS FOR THE BEST
What a success we'd had with those rollers for nearly a whole week! Out of about six hundred we had spoiled only six or seven. We could stand that. It was an allowable percentage of waste considering the speed of our' work. We were turning out far more rollers than anyone else, and all because Uncle Vasya did not spare the trouble to grease the moulds and sharpen the cores beforehand. According to
him it was better to spend an extra half hour in the heat and dust by the glowing moulds, and prepare everything for the next day, than to bother about getting things ready in the early morning, when you wanted to work up a good speed on the job.
The day my period of probation ended Uncle Vasya did not turn up for work. I could not make out why he was late. Nearly all the workers were at their machines. Some were spreading fresh sand, others were warming up their models, yet others were preparing their moulding floor, smoothing the dry sand to make it easier to set the moulds later on. Unexpectedly the foreman appeared.
'I'm giving you another mate today, Mandzhura. Your Naumenko has asked for two days off. He's got to take his wife to Mariupol for an operation.'
A few minutes later, who should turn up at the machines but—Kashket! He was carrying his own tamper.
Kashket swaggered up to Uncle Vasya's machine and tested the frame to see that it was tight. Then he lit a cigarette. I looked at him and thought: 'What a partner! I'd rather catch a stray cat under the blast-furnace and put it on the machine. At least a cat would do less harm...' True, after his fantastic record spoilage Kashket had become more careful, but though he made a great show of shouting and running about, to impress people, we had been beating him and Tiktor by a good forty moulds every day.
Turunda saw the mate I had been given and shook his head, as if telling me to refuse.
But how could I refuse? If I had been working here for a year or two, it would have been different; I could have objected and asked for someone else. But I was raw on the job. Besides, perhaps the foreman had separated Kashket and Tiktor on purpose.
'Why is the model badly heated?' Kashket asked pompously.
'Get some slabs and warm it up to your liking.'
'You're younger—you go for them!' Kashket lisped.
'Do your own work!' I flung out, and hearing the bell for work to begin, I started packing sand into a mould.
Kashket dithered about, then picked up the tongs and went off to the heater.
By the time he came back I had two lower halves ready. I had inserted the cores myself and cleared a space for fresh moulds. Somehow or other we managed to finish ten moulds. Then Kashket began to tire. He went off for a smoke by the furnace and got stuck there gossiping with the furnace men.
I lost my temper. Finishing off my last mould for my partner, I ran over to the furnace.
'Look here, when are you...' I began, topping Kashket on the shoulder.
'That was last year,' he said, thinking that I was asking about his story.
'I'm asking you when you're going to stop jawing and do some work?' I shouted in his face.
'Am I interfering with you?' Kashket answered calmly and turned his back on me to continue his story.
'Yes, you are!' I bawled in his ear.
'Interfering with you?'
'Not me personally, but the whole works. The working class! Everybody!' I shouted furiously.
Kashket seemed to cower back for a moment.
'Drop in and see me, Arkhip, I'll tell you the rest there,' he said to the furnace man, tossing his cigarette away. 'You see what a wild cat they've put on me. . . one of those Komsomolites...'
I said nothing and strode back to the machines. I could hear Kashket padding along behind me and I thought to myself: 'We'll see who's been put on whom, you Makhno scum! I can do without you!'
When he got back, Kashket fiddled around, rattled the lever of his machine and, to do him justice, put in thirty minutes' real hard work. Luka and Artem goggled at the sight of Kashket, the lounger, working at such speed. They had not heard our argument at the furnace. I decided to let the matter drop altogether.
But 'Kashket was of a different opinion. Presently he started again.
'Just what am I doing that interferes with the working class?' he lisped.
Without a second thought, I answered: 'Millions of peasants are waiting for our reaping machines and you are holding up the programme. The working class is trying to raise its productivity and you just play the fool. Looks as if you're for them, not for us.'
'I'm one of the working class myself! What are you babbling about. Who do you mean—them?'
'I mean the Whiteguards and the capitalists, all that scum which you helped in 1919!'
'Me? ... Helped them? ... Oh no, Lad. That's a silly thing to say!'
He suddenly quietened down and became very meek. He even started going for slabs out of turn. As I watched him slink away to the distant heater, I wondered whether I had acted right. Kashket was a lot older than me, and he had been in the foundry for a long time—was I going too far?
As though guessing my doubts, Turunda called over to me: 'That's right, Vasil! You took the right line with him! Where does he think he is—in a nursing home? There's a limit to what we can put up with.'
'He ought to have got the boot long ago!' Gladyshev added. 'Pity Fedorko's so soft-hearted! Go and put it to him at lunch-time. Tell him he'd better get rid of that slacker and leave you to mould alone until Naumenko comes back.'
The older workers' sympathy encouraged me. But I decided not to follow Gladyshev's advice. 'I'll stick out these two days somehow with Kashket,' I thought, 'then my partner will come back and everything will be all right.'
It was not long, however, before I regretted my decision. My turn came to go for slabs. When I returned—
