'Read this, Petka. Recognize the handwriting?' I said, handing him the paper.
'His! Of course it's his!' Petka exclaimed pointing at Sasha.
Peering at the paper that Petka kindly thrust under his nose, Sasha gave a groan.
'Gosh, what a memory!... Why didn't I burn it!' 'Come on, out with your story! We're your pals, aren't we?' I said.
'What is there to tell? You know yourselves. . . You wouldn't believe me when I said I'd seen Pecheritsa. You laughed at me. But I thought to myself: 'Let them laugh, but my eyes can see all right.' And I reported it. Pity I didn't destroy the copy... There's no need for you to laugh!'
'Who's laughing? You are a funny bloke! It was the right thing to do!. . . Do you think we ought to go stargazing while they plant mines under us?' I said to Sasha.
That night I was the last to go to sleep. Listening to the steady breathing of my friends I thought over everything I had seen during the day until my head ached.
The quiet, sunny seaside town seemed a very different place to me now. A desperate, struggle between the new and the old was being waged behind its facade of blissful calm. The signs of this struggle came to light suddenly, like the anonymous letter from one of Makhno's men, or the hidden fuse that Tiktor had discovered today. Our hidden class enemies were still hoping to recover the power of
which the 'Revolution had deprived them for ever. In order to hinder our progress, they would sink to any depths.
'They are on the watch for every mistake, every blunder we make,' I thought. 'And they are still hoping to take advantage of our carelessness and good-nature. They are hoping that we shall collapse; if we live and prosper, sooner or later we shall rid the whole world of them... They realize that and will stoop to anything to prevent it. But if that's the way things are, don't be caught out, you of the Komsomol! Have ears like axe-blades, as Polevoi used to say. Wherever you are, wherever you go, always be on the alert.'
WE ATTACK!
Although we made every effort to keep our plan of attack on Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya's saloon a secret and held all our rehearsals behind locked doors, the rumour of it spread round the town. Even the old men began to ask how much longer it would be before we put on our Komsomol show.
Two Leningrad musical-hall artistes, an Arkady Ignatievich and his wife, had come to our town for a seaside holiday.
Arkady Ignatievich often brought his guitar down to the beach with him. When he grew tired of the silent occupation of sun-bathing, he would sit on the edge of the pier with his legs dangling above the water and start parodying the variety singers who made money out of their public with all sorts of rubbish.
He composed his own parodies on the widely-known ditties of those early days. What a trouncing 'Klavochka,' beloved of all kinds of profiteers and sugar-daddies, got from him, with her 'fancy ways and bursting stays!' Arkady Ignatievich did not even spare a new romance that many undiscerning people were fond of: 'He was a miner, a working man...' Arkady Ignatievich spotted something in this highly romantic ballad that many people had failed to notice—the banality of it. And banal it was —a miner, who for twenty years 'in gloomy mine had toiled,' falling in love and pining away like an idle, good-for-nothing of high society!
The visitor from Leningrad also brought with him a gleaming nickel-plated saxophone. In the mornings, when he practised the high notes on this strange and unheard-of instrument, our landlady's pensive-looking goat would start bleating plaintively and the chickens would scatter in all directions squawking as if a hawk were lurking overhead.
The Leningrad artistes took lodgings two doors away from us, near the brine baths in Primorskaya Street. We decided to ask them for help in our enterprise.
Arkady Ignatievich listened to my stumbling request and said weightily: 'In other words, local manners are to be parodied? Very well, let us stir up this bog of petty-bourgeois sentiment!'
.. .Sometimes after that I peeped into the rehearsal room where the people from Leningrad and Tolya Golovatsky were selecting performers for the show. Arkady Ignatievich was usually leaning back in his chair with a guitar in his hands. He had a long, gaunt face with a jutting chin and clean-cut profile. His wife, the frail, graceful Ludmilla, in a blue sports frock with red pockets and an anchor on the front, would sit beside him, tapping her foot in time with the music. Golovatsky paced about behind them, stern and important-looking.
At one of the rehearsals I saw Osaulenko, the lad who had changed his name. He had dropped in at the club on Golovatsky's invitation and was rather worried, thinking that Tolya might want to have another chat with him [about his tattooing. When he learnt what was afoot, however, Misha, still
nicknamed 'Edouarde,' readily agreed to take part in our scheme. There was some hidden power in this tousle-headed lad, who was decorated from top to toe with mermaids, monkeys, and old-time frigates. He wanted to do everything at the show—dance, and juggle with ten-pound dumb-bells, and even sing, although 'Edouarde's' voice was not exactly tuneful and often cracked on the high notes. When I glanced into the rehearsal room, Misha was dancing. He was hopping about wriggling every part of his body and kicking his legs wide. From time to time he would crouch down nearly touching the floor, then straighten up wagging his finger and shuffling his feet in a kind of scissors movement.
'What do you call that dance?' Golovatsky asked dubiously.
'Black Bottom!' Misha replied, panting for breath.
'Where did you learn that?' Tolya went on.
'A sailor was dancing it at the 'Little Nook.' The chaps who've been overseas say it's all the rage abroad nowadays.'
'Do you know what 'black bottom' means?' Golovatsky asked.
'Well, it's the name of the thing . . . like 'waltz,' for instance.'
'But what does the name actually mean? Do you know that?' And Tolya winked across at Arkady Ignatievich.
'Can't say I do...' Misha replied hesitantly.
'Well, you are a coon, aren't you! Just repeating other people's words like a parrot and not even troubling to find out what they mean! Are you really going to live your whole life in such a dull, lazy fashion? 'Black bottom,' in Russian, means 'chornoyedno,' the lower depths. Do you want to sink to the lower depths?'
Misha grinned flashing his silver teeth: 'N-n-no, I don't!'
'I should think not either! Let those who think that dance fashionable do that, we'll find something a bit more cheerful. We've got to stride on towards the light, not sink to the lower depths!'
... When tickets for our youth show were distributed at the works, I took two extra tickets and sent them by post to Angelika Andrykhevich. Instead of writing my own address on the bottom of the envelope, I wrote: 'From Lieutenant Glan.' What gave me the idea, I don't know. I suppose I just did it out of devilment.
As I had expected, Angelika turned up at the show with Zuzya Trituzny. He sat in the third row, oozing with self-importance. Now and then he offered Angelika fruit drops out of a blue tin and whispered in her ear, grinning at his own jokes.
As I watched him paying his attentions to Angelika, I thought to myself: 'Wait a bit, Zuzya, old chap! You can't imagine what a treat's in store for you!'
In spite of Zuzya's attempts to amuse her, Angelika was glum and gazed at the stage with a far-away look in her eyes. From time to time she pushed her hair back carelessly in a way that suggested she would be only too glad to be rid of her tiresome companion. She did not even smile, as many did, when Golovatsky began his introductory speech.
'People who don't realize that youth can get fun and pleasure out of doing something useful are downright stupid!' were Golovatsky's opening words. What the audience was to see he called 'only our first attempt to show in its true light the depravity of the old life that still surrounds us, and to brand for ever the aping of things foreign.'
'The decadent music of the dancing-saloon and night club,' said Golovatsky, 'gives rise to feelings of
