.. . Sasha and Petka had been silent for some time. Sasha was breathing heavily. A yellow moon, like a thin slice of pumpkin, peeped in at the wide-open window. A light wind blew from the east. It being Saturday, there was still much noise coming from the park. As I lay listening to the sounds of the evening, I heard the gate click. Footsteps crunched on the gravel path leading from the gate to the house. Who could it be? The landlady had gone to bed long ago. She was rarely disturbed by visitors so late at night.
I called out of the window at the man coming up the path.
'Telegram! For Vasily Mandzhura,' came the reply.
I dashed down the stairs. While I signed for the telegram and climbed back into the attic, my awakened friends had put the light on. Their faces were sleepy and impatient.
By the light of the lamp I read the sender's address: 'Sinelnikovo.' But that didn't make sense! I didn't know anyone in Sinelnikovo. Perhaps my father had decided to pay me a visit and was on his way from Cherkassy to spend a holiday by the sea?
'Open it, can't you! Don't keep us on edge!' Sasha groaned.
The printed letters danced before my eyes. At first I could scarcely piece them together, then I shouted:
'Chaps! Nikita's coming here!'
'Nikita coming to see us? You're joking? It's a mistake!' Petka cried, standing on tip-toe and peering at the telegram over my shoulder.
'No, it isn't! Listen!' And I read the message out loud:
ARRIVING GOODS TRAIN TOMORROW MIDDAY MEET ARRANGE IMMEDIATE RECEPTION OF FREIGHT STOP KOLOMEYETS
'What a pity I can't be there!'
'Are you crazy?' I swung round on Sasha. 'Aren't you going to meet Nikita?'
'I can't, Vasya. I've got an important job to do,' Sasha answered plaintively.
'How can there be anything important on Sunday?' Petka chimed in, backing me up.
But Sasha would not give in.
'Well, there is something,' he said mysteriously. 'But for the time being it's a secret.'
'You won't come to meet Nikita, your old Komsomol secretary? But he's bringing us iron, you mut!...
You've got to be at the station! It's a matter of Komsomol discipline, understand?' Petka shouted, as if it were an order.
'Well, I can't!' Sasha insisted firmly. 'Midday's just when I've got to.. .''
And nothing would move him. No matter how we reproached him for keeping a date instead of meeting his old friend and teacher, Sasha could not be persuaded.
The next day, taking Golovatsky with us, Petka and I went to the station. The passenger train from Ekaterinoslav had arrived in the morning and its empty green carriages had long ago been shunted into a siding. Weighers, pointsmen, stall-keepers—everyone had taken refuge from the midday heat in the cool station building which only a short time ago had seemed so new and strange to us. Today this seaside terminus with its hot rails gleaming in the sun seemed as if we had known it for ages. How quickly you get used to a new town if you meet good people there! I found myself regarding the young freckled stationmaster, like a toadstool in his red railwayman's cap, as an old acquaintance.
The steel wires beside the rails hummed faintly, and far away up the line the signals clicked to 'Go Ahead.' We heard the distant whistle of an engine.
'What's Nikita like now?' I thought, fixing my eyes on the growing billow of smoke in the distance. 'Will he still talk down to us, or will he treat us as equals?'
The goods train hauled by a massive engine charged out of the steppe towards the sea. At last, belching clouds of hot steam over the already sun-scorched platform, it rumbled into the station, a great mass of oily, glistening iron with la grimy young engine-driver hanging out of the cab window.
Brown trucks loaded with timber, crates, potash, and coal lumbered past us until I thought there would be no end to them. Suddenly on one of the trucks I caught sight of a figure in a straw hat who did not look like a guard. The next second I recognized Kolomeyets. Dressed in blue overalls, he was standing on what looked like a huge lathe.
As our eyes met, Nikita ripped off his hat and waved it in greeting. Thin and amazingly sunburnt, his hair flying in the wind, he shouted something to us but his voice was drowned by the rumble of the wheels. Before the train stopped, Nikita had leapt agilely on to the platform.
'Hullo there, chaps!' he shouted.
At first Nikita simply shook hands with me, but then, after a moment's hesitation, he took me in his arms and kissed me on both cheeks. He smelt of the open steppes, of wormwood and meadow-sweet. Nikita embraced Petka too. Then I introduced him to Golovatsky.
Nikita glanced at Tolya merrily, gripping his hand.
'I've heard of you, of course! Vasil wrote me about you. Thanks for making our chaps welcome... What about the reapers, can you do them?'
'What about the iron, can you do that?' Tolya said with an answering smile.
Nikita turned and pointed to three trucks at the end of the train.
'Won't that be enough?' he said with a touch of pride.
'More than enough!' Tolya decided. 'But I see Dzerzhinsky's words haven't reached your parts yet. 'Treat iron as gold.' Looks as if you've got a whole ironfield there. I must say, I thought Vasil was exaggerating a bit.'
'Until we got your telegram, we somehow never thought of collecting it all,' Nikita replied. 'Thanks
for giving us the tip.'
'But how quick you were about doing it!' Petka chimed in.
'We had to be. Harvests don't wait for you. We even collected at night by torch-light. Now everything rests with you!'
'What's that thing, Nikita?' I asked, pointing at a broken metal hulk in one of the trucks.
'It's not a 'thing,' my lad, it's a machine for printing money!'
'Not the one they used to have in the seminary?' I said, remembering the old days.
'The very same!' Nikita affirmed, and turning to Golovatsky, he explained: 'At one time, you know, Petlura took over our town. This is the machine that the Germans sent him from Berlin for printing his currency. Petlura printed so many bank-notes on it that the local people are still using them to paper their rooms with. Afterwards, it was left lying in the cellar of the agricultural institute. When we got Vasil's telegram, we searched every cellar in the town. Our Komsomol chaps found this beauty behind a pile of wood. Can you use it?'
'Isn't it a pity to break up a machine like that for scrap?' Golovatsky said slowly. 'Couldn't one of our print- shops make use of it?'
'We thought of that, but it would be wasted labour!' Nikita replied. 'The German instructors who ran away with Petlura took all the valuable parts with them and wrecked what was left. It'd be easier to make a new one than repair this.'
Golovatsky went to the stationmaster and asked him to uncouple the trucks of scrap-iron and send them over to the works.
'Take your guest home, lads. He's hungry, I expect. And it wouldn't do him any harm to have a wash,' Tolya said, taking the bills from Nikita. 'I'll fix things up here by myself.'
'Yes, I could do with a wash,' Nikita remarked and ran his hand over his sunburnt neck.
'Surely you didn't come all the way in an open truck,' Petka asked as we went out on to the station square.
'Lovely trip!' Nikita exclaimed, throwing back his dark locks. 'Like Jack London's hobo! The only difference was that no one tried to kick me off the train. At night, during the long runs, the guards used to gather in my truck as if it was a club.'
'Had a good time, did you?' I asked, with a touch of envy.
'I should say! A real holiday on wheels! As soon as the sun got up, I'd take off my overalls and do a spot of sunbathing. A pleasant breeze to keep you cool and the chance of seeing the whole Ukraine—rivers, villages, fields, everything. . . Gosh, ours is a rich country! When we were nearing Ekaterinoslav the glare from the furnaces spread right across the sky! Talk about industry—it just takes your breath away! Yes, I had a wonderful trip. Never enjoyed anything so much in my life!'
