kinder.
'It's a grand idea, lads,' he said at last. 'Communes like that are just the place for training leaders of the peasantry. And the men who are trained there will lead the peasant masses on to a broad transformation of agriculture. But what can I do to help—that's the question. I've been expressly forbidden to sell the stuff we produce. The works isn't an agricultural machinery shop.'
'Couldn't you make an exception?' Tolya asked cautiously.
'Don't be silly, lad, how can I make exceptions! For a thing like that I'd get expelled from the Party and the trust manager would sue me. We're not fulfilling our plan, as it is!'
'Suppose we make the reapers ourselves?' Tolya asked.
'Who? You and him?' The director nodded at me.
Tolya looked offended. 'Of course not. All the Komsomol members at the works. In their spare time
the young foundry men will cast five sets of parts, then the Komsomol members and young workers in the other shops will assemble them in relays. Those reapers won't be any worse than the ones the old men turn out. I'll work at the furnace myself and do the best annealing you've ever seen.'
'You're a good enough hand at annealing, I know that, but where's the iron coming from? You know, as well as I do, Tolya, it's iron that's holding us up, holding up the whole country, in fact. If our blast-furnaces were turning out more iron, how many more plants like ours could be built! Our future is based on heavy industry, and heavy industry isn't going full blast yet. That's one of our difficulties.'
'Ivan Fyodorovich! What about that scrap-metal we, Komsomol members, collected? You haven't used all that, have you?'
'Used it all up ages ago. Not a bit of it left!'
My thoughts turned to my home town perched on its rocky cliffs amid the rolling Dniester countryside. Many were the old Turkish guns and cannon-balls and other kinds of scrap-metal that we :had found in the yards of the old mansions, on the banks of the Smotrich, under the bastions of the Old Fortress. And how much scrap-metal of a later date was lying about in the yard of the military court, in the old seminary and the ecclesiastical college! At one time we had started bringing all that metal up to the Motor Factory, but we had given up the idea because the yard simply wasn't big enough to hold it all. And then a daring thought occurred to me.
'What if we get you the iron, Comrade Director?' I said firmly. 'Will you let us make the reapers?'
'If you get the iron, Comrade Foundry Man, I'll gladly co-operate,' the director said smilingly.
... Half an hour later I was at the central post-office sending Nikita Kolomeyets a telegram:
CAN MAKE REAPERS IF YOU SEND SCRAP IRON STOP GET KOMSOMOL COLLECT SAME IMMEDIATELY STOP ADDRESS OUR WORKS STOP ALL THE BEST ANATOLY GOLOVATSKY VASILY MANDZHURA SASHA BOBIR PETKA MAREMUKHA
PAY-DAY
Pay-day was a day every worker in the foundry looked forward to. Our pay-books, which Kolya Zakabluk, the foundry time-keeper, brought round in the morning, told us how much we had earned in the past fortnight, and all day the foundry men were thinking what new things they would buy for their families, or how much money to pay into the mutual assistance fund if they were in debt to it.
I, who had only recently been a factory-school pupil, was very surprised at the figures my book contained. Just think! I had only been working a short time in the foundry and I was already earning not less than seventy rubles a month. I felt as if I was rolling in wealth.
On pay-days Kashket got particularly excited. As soon as he came to work, he was rubbing his hands at the thought of splashing money about in the pub that evening. He never thought of the next morning when he would again wake up on the seaweed-strewn beach with a splitting headache and empty pockets.
Today, even before sunrise, Kashket was capering round his machine with his red kerchief wound round his bristly head, singing hoarsely:
I am bound for a city fair,
And a black velvet hat shall I wear,
And I'll sit on the shore and repine At a grief that I cannot define...
We were moulding gear-wheels. It was a tricky job. If you used the tamper too hard, you might break one of the teeth, and then you had to turn the whole mould out. Uncle Vasya and I worked on jobs like this in silence, scarcely exchanging a word with each other. But today my partner, who hated wasters and drones like Kashket from the bottom of his soul, could not restrain himself.
'He'll put on a black hat, will he! I'd like to see him! Wastes all his money on drink, can't even scrape up enough to buy himself an ordinary cap, and now he's singing about a black hat!'
Gladyshev and Turunda were still working on the next machine. And now with a nod in Kashket's direction Turunda winked at me and said: 'He'll change his tune in a minute.'
Turunda glanced towards the entrance, where Kolya Zakabluk, helped by one of the messenger-girls, was hanging up a board. Turunda, who was attached to the foundry Komsomol organization as a Party member, knew what the Komsomol members had planned.
The other workers in the foundry, apparently thinking that it was only another notice-board being put up, paid no attention to what Zakabluk was doing. Kashket must have thought the same and went on singing in his hoarse, throaty voice:
0 waves of the deep enfold A man of beauty untold,
Who would sit on the shore and repine At a grief he could never define.
The black velvet hat will be there,
And so will the city fair,
And the shore of the sea will repine At the grief it could never define.
'Those bright sparks will give us some spoilage today!' Gladyshev remarked dusting his machine with compressed air.
The stream of air fanned my face and I felt refreshed by it.
'How come that you, chaps, brought up a partner to suit our Kashket back in Podolia?' Turunda said as he ran past. 'He's not a bad fellow to look at—good pair of shoulders on him. We thought at first he would keep Kashket in order, but it's turned out the other way round. He plays up to Kashket all along the line.'
1 realized that Turunda was talking about Tiktor. 'Look here, Comrade Turunda,' I said vexedly, 'if you put together all the words we addressed to Tiktor on that subject, you could reform a whole school ofjuvenile delinquents.'
'But what made him into such a crab?' Gladyshev asked.
'A crab?' I said, surprised at the comparison. 'Yes, a crab,' Gladyshev repeated, 'but not the kind of
crab you think I mean. What we call crabs are those little lumps of iron that don't melt properly with the rest of the iron. Suppose you get one of those crabs in the tooth of a gear-wheel. No one notices it and that wheel becomes part of a machine. What happens? Just at the moment of greatest strain that tooth is going to break, and all because of a little drop of unmelted iron!'
'Yes, and suppose the machine happens to be an aeroplane engine, in war-time,' Turunda put in. 'The plane's done for and so is the pilot! ... You know what I think, Vasil? Maybe that Tiktor of yours comes from a family of 'has-beens.' Maybe he's the son of an aristocrat or a police officer? Or maybe a priest's son?'
'But he isn't, that's the queer thing about it,' I grunted. 'His record's fine in that way. He's the son of a railwayman, an engine-driver. Tiktor's Dad did a good job on the railway,' I added, wishing to be as fair to my enemy as I could.
Glowing iron was cooling in the moulds. The cleaners were going round the foundry picking up scraps of metal that might otherwise get in the moulding sand. Uncle Vasya and I, and many of our neighbours, were smearing our machines with graphite grease to stop them from rusting. Kolya Zakabluk came out of the office.
I must admit that at first I did not like Kolya much, just as I did not like other young chaps who only wanted to be office-workers. And I had been very surprised when I learnt that this 'pen-pusher' was an old Komsomol
