horizon. 'There'll be another gale by the evening. But by that time we shall be safe up the Don. .
. What are we steering, Vanya?'
'North-East by North!' the helmsman shouted.
Everything was new to me in this long, passage-like room panelled with fumed oak: the telegraph with its arrows and instructions written on the white dial, 'Full Speed Ahead,' 'Stop,' 'Full Speed Astern'; the polished speaking tubes leading down to the engine-room; the sensitive compass floating like a huge eye-ball under its glass cover.
Yuzik showed me his domain. Now and then he would go over to the wheel and check the course shown on the compass. He kept glancing from side to side where buoys were bobbing on the yellow waves, as if wishing us 'good morning.' They showed us the way into the harbour, and then, bowing politely, dropped away astern.
I listened to my friend, looked through the spotlessly clean windows of the bridge at the town rising up out of the sea, and thought over my speech. What if I begin with the story of three friends who came here, to the Azov Sea, from distant Podolia, and became active members of the Komsomol?
I'll tell the delegates how ever since we were children we have hated the Petlura men and other scoundrels who try to prevent the Soviet Ukraine growing and developing. . . I'll tell them about Petka Maremukha, about Weasel, about the vow we made under the green bastion of the Old Fortress... Perhaps I'll say something about how we studied and what our aim is in life?... After all, our three small lives are very typical; the whole working youth of the Ukraine has been through the kind of thing we experienced. Then I must swear to continue being loyal to the behests of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And say that we have the Party and the Komsomol to thank for everything we have achieved. I'll make a solemn promise to the delegates that we three, friends, will go on fighting for every young chap at our works, to win him over from the old world and teach him to serve the people and those fine, noble ideas that the Communist Party has pointed out to us.
The dazzling sun rose higher and higher, gilding the tops of the waves. The white town, with the strong
salty east wind blowing round it, spread out before me in the faint mist of the July morning.
EPILOGUE TWENTY YEARS AFTER
Twenty years have passed since that sunny morning when the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamed into the port of Mariupol.
The sailors darted about round the windlass preparing to drop anchor, the passengers came out of their cabins, and we, gathering on the upper deck, sang loudly: O'erthrown the night. The sun is rising
What a fine song that is! It has engraved itself on my memory for ever.
Even now, twenty years later, as I sit in this little room reading some old newspapers and listening to the rain lashing on the windows, that song is still ringing in my ears.
I can see wet chestnut-trees through the window. Their big, broad leaves are drooping dejectedly. The rain has knocked all the blossom out of them and exposed their little prickly pods.
I arrived here last night from Leningrad. When I went to bed, I had made up my mind to go into town and visit the Old Fortress first thing in the morning.
My hostess, Elena Lukyanovna, is a nerve specialist. She lost all her family in Leningrad, during the first winter of the blockade, and after demobilization came to work in my home district. We got talking on the train. The mere fact that we had both lived for ten years in Leningrad at once drew me towards this thoughtful, prematurely grey-haired woman in a green army tunic with the marks of shoulder-straps that had only recently been discarded. My father had suffered the same fate as her parents. Not long before the war he had come to Leningrad from Cherkassy to work at the Printing-House. He died in my arms of starvation, in December 1941.
'I'm afraid you won't find anywhere to live,' said Elena Lukyanovna towards the end of the journey. 'The town's just a heap of ruins... If you like, you can stay with me.' Since I had no longer any relatives in the town, I gladly accepted her invitation.
And overnight it started raining. The rain is still pelting down now, although it is four o'clock in the afternoon and high time I went out to see the town I have not seen for over twenty years.
When Elena Lukyanovna went out to the hospital, I asked her if she could let me have something to read.
'All my books are about medicine,' she said. 'My library hasn't arrived yet.. . But there are some books and magazines up in the attic. They've been there ever since the occupation. Have a look through them. Perhaps they need burning.'
And now for two hours I have been turning the gaudy pages of Die Woche, Signal, and other Nazi magazines. Hitler's frenzied face glares at me from every page—meeting Mussolini, receiving the Spanish ambassador, admiring Warsaw destroyed by German bombs. Petrified ranks of Hitlerite troops line the deserted squares, banners with the sign of the swastika wave over the stricken city. . . But what is this?. .
I pull a heavy bundle of newspapers out of the bottom of the basket. Its title, the Podolian, sends my thoughts racing back to the days of my childhood. The Russian newspaper that was published in our provincial town in the time of the tsar used to be called the Podolian. But why is it in Ukrainian?
I look for the date: 1942. As I turn the pages of this Nazi Podolian, I seem to see the invaders' chronicle of the war turned inside out. I see Hitlerites driving through the deserted streets of Kiev, I read the screaming head- lines about the inevitable fall of Leningrad and Moscow, and other Nazi announcements. One reads them now with the laughing contempt that one feels after a bad dream. And suddenly a familiar name leaps to my eye —'Grigorenko.' I read hastily: 'On the 12th of this month, by order of the District Commissar Baron von Reindel, a Ukrainian Committee was set up in the town. It is composed of the following persons: Evgen Vikul, Tser (interpreter), Yuri Ksezhonok (chairman of the committee), Kost Grigorenko. The committee will supervise collection of taxes and help the German authorities to levy contingents. The committee is an organ of the District Commissar and acts under the Commissar's orders.'
Grigorenko! The Petlura boy scout, the doctor's son, serving Petlura and the Germans! So this was where he had turned up again!
'I see you've found an interesting pastime?' Elena Lukyanovna says entering the room.
'I've just traced some old acquaintances, Elena Lukyanovna, and there are one or two whom I wish I had handed over to justice when I was young.'
'Yes, I met some old acquaintances today, too,' Elena Lukyanovna replied, missing the point of my remark. 'One of them was a boy from Siberia, Dima. He was wounded in the fighting' when our town was liberated. He's a very difficult case. For over a year now he hasn't been able to say a single word. We've got to decide whether to operate on him or not,' she went on, seeming to think aloud as she took off the hospital gown she has been wearing under her great-coat. 'Today I called up Lvov and asked them to send a consultant. There's an old friend of mine working there, a professor of neuropathology from Leningrad. . .'
' 'I called up a professor in Lvov!' ' I repeated. 'It sounds so simple nowadays, Elena Lukyanovna. But if only you knew how much that phrase means to a person like me, who was born here! It sums up the immense changes that have taken place in the Ukraine. Twenty years ago Lvov was very far away from us, like Paris, London, or Madrid. Now it will take your professor only two hours to fly here.'
'Yes, not more than that,' Elena Lukyanovna agreed.
It is the second morning of my stay. I open my eyes. Good! Blue sky is shining through the window and the dark green leaves of the chestnut-trees, still dripping with last night's rain, are looking up to greet the sun.
I dress quickly and dash off to the town.
Weeds and flowers are sprouting everywhere from the stone walls at the side of the road. Rattling the old tin cans that have been tied round their necks instead of bells, the goats are having a fine time in this profusion of green. That is familiar enough, I remember that from the days when I was a boy.
But I can't understand why the road leading down to the New Bridge is overgrown with weeds. Surely people still drive over these cobble-stones! This used to be the main road through town to the Dniester.
A sorry picture confronts me as I reach the cliffs. All that remains of the beautiful New Bridge are the tall stone piles at the foot of which the Smotrich gleams in the sunlight. They are spanned by a narrow wooden strip
