and consider what I shall be reading to the young people of the village who attend our club at the state farm.
That summer, Polevoi had given me the job of reading the papers aloud on Sundays. At first I refused. I could not even imagine myself telling the be-ribboned young girls and their boy friends from the village about the news in the papers. And my first session certainly was an ordeal. I could not take my eyes off the page and all the time I wanted to look up and see what impression I was making on my listeners. At last I made a break and, running my fingers through my hair, took a calm look at the lads and lassies gathered round me. After that everything went swimmingly. I even managed to answer their questions.
And now I was very glad to hear that a youth commune would be set up in the village I knew so well. That really was good news!
Every day the cheerful songs of young people would float across the Dniester into landowner-ruled Bessarabia. The members of the commune would certainly build a new power station to replace the little petrol engine that only supplied current until ten in the evening. Who could tell, perhaps what they wrote in the newspapers about milking cows with electricity would come true at the commune!
I imagined the former landowner's mansion given over to our young people, gleaming with electric light, ringing with songs and cheerful talk. How many young Bessarabians would be drawn across the river by those lights! After all, whom had those people to turn to in their trouble, if not to us! This was their only hope—our happiness, which might one day, like the flames of a blazing fire, leap across into Bessarabia...
But it was all very well to think about such things as I went to Golovatsky's; it was quite a different matter, however, to come down from dreams of the future to the present day and carry out Nikita's request.
Golovatsky, too, was rather taken aback when he heard the news.
'Your friend is a little bit naive,' Tolya said as he finished reading the letter. 'He thinks you've just got to wave your hand and you'll have five reapers ready and waiting for him! But of course, a commune on the border like that is an important job for the Komsomol. We certainly can't leave your friends' letter unanswered... You know what? Let's go and see the director.' 'He won't be at the works now, will he?' 'We'll call on him at home,' Golovatsky said. 'At home?' I repeated. 'Is that all right?' 'Why not! This is a matter of public importance. Ivan Fyodorovich isn't one of those bourgeois specialists, like Andrykhevich. Besides he's attached to our Komsomol organization as a Party member. Come on, there's nothing to be scared of.'
Golovatsky's resolute tone reassured me. But when we turned off the avenue to the left I was again puzzled.
'Doesn't Rudenko live in the centre?'
'He lives in Matrosskaya Settlement. Open to all the winds that blow! The craftsmen from the works have always lived there. You knew Rudenko used to work in the foundry before the Revolution, didn't you?'
'But couldn't he have moved into the centre of the town?'
'Of course, he could,' Golovatsky replied, 'specially as the old director's house was empty in those days. But he didn't want to. 'What's the use of all those halls and passages to me?' he said. 'Three rooms are all I want. And it's more free and easy down by the seaside!' ' Golovatsky waved his arm in the direction of the shore, which we were approaching along a broad, dirt road with burdock and steppe grass growing in the ditches. 'And Rudenko was quite right,' Tolya went on. 'He got the old owner's house made into a night sanatorium for the workers at our plant. If a worker doesn't feel too good, as soon as he knocks off work, he goes up there. There are lockers in the entrance-hall. As soon as he gets inside he can take off his working clothes and go under a shower. Then he goes to another locker where there's clean underwear, a dressing-gown and bedroom slippers ready for him. Everything's spick and span, the food's good, there's peace and quiet, everybody sleeps with his window open winter and summer, amusements in the evening. And in the morning, at the sound of the hooter, everyone goes straight off to work.'
'Has the director got a big family?' I asked.
'Only himself and his wife.'
'No children?'
'One of his sons was killed by Makhno's men. The other's an airman, a squadron commissar. He's home on leave now.'
'Bobir was telling me that a flyer called Rudenko had brought a training aircraft to the flying club....'
'Yes, that's the director's son,' Golovatsky explained. 'He's a daring chap. He spent his leave here last year too. Paddled all the way to Mariupol in a canoe. It's a terrific distance, you know. Suppose a storm had caught him coming round Belorechenskaya Kosa? It'd have been good-bye to him then.'
I realized why Sasha had been so thrilled when he told us about the airman.
'I wonder if we'll find Ivan Fyodorovich at home?' said Golovatsky, crossing a plank over the ditch at the side of the road.
In an orchard of apple-trees surrounded by a rough-cast wall stood a small cottage. We went up to one of the open windows. Quiet voices and the clattering of crockery could be heard from inside.
'Must be having dinner!' Tolya whispered and tapped on the window-frame with his finger. 'Is Ivan Fyodorovich at home?'
The lace curtains parted and we saw the sun-tanned face of our director.
'Hullo, you young people! Just at the right time! I've been wanting to tell you off for a long while, Tolya.'
'Me? What for?' Golovatsky exclaimed.
'For a good reason!' the director said. 'But come in and have something to eat first.'
'We've had our dinner, thanks,' Golovatsky said hastily. 'You finish yours, we'll wait for you down on the beach.'
'Come in and make yourself at home!' the director insisted.
But Golovatsky refused. 'We'll be down there,' he said, waving in the direction of the sea.
The shore behind the little dwarf apple-trees was covered with greyish-green steppe grass and
stinging nettles. All round there was an abundance of spurge, meadow-sweet, and even the bushy, yellow- flowering garmala. Not far from the water's edge, in the midst of the pale-green steppe foliage, stood an oak bench. It must have been under water many a time during storms.
Golovatsky sat down on the bench, and turning his smooth, oval face towards me, asked: 'What does he want to tell me off about, I wonder?'
'Perhaps he was joking and you're getting windy for nothing,' I consoled him.
'No, he's angry about something.'
At that moment we heard footsteps behind us. The director was striding across the soft sand. He was wearing a pair of slippers on his bare feet, and blue working trousers. His sleeves were rolled up revealing brown, muscular arms with a thick growth of grey hair on them.
'Well, my fine friend, why don't you and your Komsomol pals ever show yourselves in the works dining-hall?' the director challenged Golovatsky and, sitting down on the bench, put his arm round his shoulder,
'But Ivan Fyodorovich!...' Golovatsky protested.
'I know I'm Ivan Fyodorovich. They've been calling me that for fifty years or more. But what about those pledges you made when we opened the dining-hall. You said that while the workers were having their meals in the break you, Komsomol members, would give political talks—about workers' conditions in Britain, and about China, and about that humbug Chang Tso-lin... And what's been done? Yesterday I went round there—not a sign of Chang Tso-lin. Today I went there—workers from every shop in the dining-room, but not a murmur from you... Surely you aren't going to let me down like that!...'
'Yes, it's my fault... I'm sorry, Ivan Fyodorovich,' Golovatsky admitted and, pulling off his checked cap, bowed his head until a lock of his auburn hair touched the bench. 'You know why it happened? We've been preparing for a big campaign against those dances. All our people are working on that.'
'Dances aren't the main thing, Tolya, they're a side-line. The main thing for us is production, industrialization, agriculture, education. We've got to get all the efforts of the working class focussed on those things.'
'That's just what we've come to see you about, Ivan Fyodorovich,' said Golovatsky hastily, and whispered to me: 'Give him your letter, Vasil.'
I handed Nikita's letter to the director and felt my chest tighten with excitement. The fate of our request hung in the balance!
Ivan Fyodorovich pulled an ancient, metal-rimmed pair of spectacles out of his pocket, and perching them on his aquiline nose, started to read Nikita's flowing handwriting. As he read, the expression of his tired eyes grew
