and pander to all his whims.'
'And you're quite right. But now tell me this, are you really convinced that I'm hopeless.'
I could see she had been leading up to that question for a long time. She asked it with a slight laugh, then looked at me with her deep, attentive eyes.
'No one thinks that, but it seems to me.. .'
'Don't beat about the bush! Say what you think,' Angelika challenged me.
I said it: 'Won't you be sorry to leave your comfortable home with your carpets and fairies? You've got rather used to them, haven't you?'
She replied: 'Believe me, if I see so much as a gleam of light ahead, I'll find a way out. I'll break with it all for ever.'
'Are you quite sure of that?' I asked quickly.
'Absolutely! How utterly fed up with it I am, if you only knew! I used to be a tomboy and now I'm supposed to be a young lady. My mother nearly asked Father Pimen up to the house to teach me the law of God. But what law of God can there be, when millions of people are living by new laws!'
I found it hard to conceal my joy. 'So you don't believe in religion?' I said with relief.
She laughed gaily and smacked my arm.
'You are funny sometimes, Vasil. And naive too. Surely you don't think I'm such a hopeless fool? Of course I don't believe in it!'
'Why do you have an icon-lamp in your room then?'
Still smiling, she answered simply: 'While I go on living in my parents' house, I can't have rows every day.'
'Give them up! Say to hell with all those icon-lamps and gossiping women and fairies. Go and study. And it would be better if you went to another town. Listen, Angelika, I'll tell you something. There used to be a girl at our factory school called Galya Kushnir. She studied with us for two years and never got behind in anything, though she did find it pretty hard sometimes to work the cutters on . a lathe. When we finished at school, she was sent away like the rest of us. And she had a mother and father, and no one would have said anything against her if she had wanted to stay behind. But Galya. did the right thing. 'Aren't I as good as the boys?' she said. Our Galya had guts. She went off with the rest of us. To Odessa. I've just had a letter from her. She's fixed up all right and very glad about it. She earns her own wages and she's not dependent on anyone...'
Lika looked at me questioningly.
'You think I ought to throw everything up? I'd be frightened.'
'Why should you be? We had chaps at school who were complete orphans, whose parents had been killed by Petlura. But do you think those chaps came to any harm? They made the grade fine! They're craftsmen now! Of course it was hard to live on a grant of eighteen rubles a month, that's a fact. We had to make do with lentils and hominy for weeks on end. But we got through it. And why can't you live independently, without your father and mother? I honestly advise you to chuck this rotten life and go and
study.'
She sat without speaking, tapping her heels on the sea wall. Her gaze rested on the lighthouse that was sweeping the sea with its silvery beam. There was something very pleasant in her thoughtful face at that moment.
'Yes, Vasil, I've made up my mind!' she said turning sharply towards me. 'It's a promise. But there's one thing that I'm not going to chuck up—that's music. I want to go and study at the conservatoire. I've got an aunt in Leningrad, I'll go and live with her. She invited me once when she came here.'
'Fine!' I said, very moved. 'You seem to be a good sort after all!'
'Perhaps.. . I don't know. . .' she answered simply.
I helped her to jump down from the wall and we walked quickly towards the club. The faint sound of music floated to us along the shore.
'Tell me frankly,' Lika said falling into step with me. 'Were you very offended with my father because of his sarcastic tone?'
'I was more offended about something else.'
'Why, have you seen him since?'
'Plenty of times. We had a real tussle over one thing. He wanted to scrap my idea...'
'Daddy did?' Lika exclaimed, as if her father could do no wrong.
'Yes, your father! I had an idea ... it was about heating the moulding slabs automatically... My suggestion was put forward at a foundry production meeting and supported by both the Party organization and the older workers. Then they sent it to your father, as the chief engineer. And do you know what he wrote on my suggestion?'
'He doesn't tell me much about his affairs,' Lika said.
'He could just have written 'no' and left it at that. I'd have tried somewhere else. But he put in a crack with it: This young spark is hot enough without heating.' What do you think of that?'
'I recognize Daddy's style,' said Lika. 'But don't let that worry you. He's got all sorts of cranky ideas. He even eats apples with maggots in them and says: I’ll eat this maggot while I've got the chance, or one day it'll eat me.' '
'But he was just making fun of me!'
'I can tell you this quite frankly, my father's a great egoist and very fond of himself. Very often he enjoys seeing other people's failures. The worse, the better!' that's what he says. Would you like me to try and persuade him to change his decision?' Lika suggested eagerly, and I saw sympathy in her eyes.
'No, don't bother. I'll manage without that.'
A band was playing loudly when we walked into the brightly lit entrance-hall of the metal-workers' club. I recognized the old waltz A Forest Tale.
The first thing that struck me when we got near the dancers was the old men waltzing round the hall. They had not gone home, nor had they dropped in at 'The Little Nook,' as they usually did. Their visit to the youth of the works seemed to have restored their own youth. Even the close-cropped Gladyshev was waltzing gaily, if not very gracefully, with his wife. And the young people were-breaking all records.
There were far more of them here than at Madame's saloon, even on the most popular evenings. A glance at the faces of young workers was enough to tell me that they all felt themselves far more at ease than in the Genoa Street saloon.
Luka Turunda in a blue and white sailor's suit whirled past with his wife, who was wearing an amber
necklace. He winked at me, and then, noticing the engineer's daughter with me, opened his eyes wide in surprise. He knew about the offensive remark Andrykhevich had made on my plan. Luka's comment had been that the engineer was a 'devil of the old regime,' no wonder he could not understand why I was talking so peaceably to Angelika.
The band struck up a polka. I was about to invite Lika to dance, when I started as if I had been pricked with a pin. On the other side of the hall, not far from Petka, stood Golovatsky, arms folded and watching us intently. Apparently Tolya had not forgotten his joking advice to me 'not to get tied up with the neighbours.' Now, seeing us together, he was lost in speculation.
'Who cares!' I thought. 'I'll tell you all about it afterwards, Tolya.' And taking Lika's elbow, I led her on to the floor.
Before we had finished the polka, however, Grisha Kanuk appeared at the entrance. His sweat-stained face showed that he had only just finished work in the foundry.
I wondered why Grisha had not gone home to change, instead of coming to the club in his dirty working clothes. The moment he caught sight of me, he started beckoning me out of the hall.
'Somebody wants to see me, Lika, excuse me,' I said and after finding her a seat went straight over to Grisha.
'Golovatsky, you and all the active members of the Komsomol are wanted at the works at once,' Kanuk whispered panting. He must have run all the way from the works.
'But there's no one there...' I began bewilderedly.
Luka Turunda touched my elbow as he ran past.
''Hurry, Mandzhura,' he said. 'It's a meeting with Rudenko.'
