COMMLIN - Literature

PART TWO

Chapter Seven

The garden of the central poly clinic adjoined the grounds of the Central Committee Sanatorium. The patients used it as a short cut on their way home from the beach. Pavel loved to rest here in the shade of a spreading plane tree which grew beside a high limestone wall. From this quiet nook he could watch the lively movement of the crowd strolling along the garden paths and listen to the music of the band in the evenings without being jostled by the gay throngs of the large health resort.

Today too he had sought his favourite retreat. Drowsy from the sunshine and the bath he had just taken, he stretched himself out luxuriously on the chaise-lounge and fell into a doze. His bath towel and the book he was reading, Furmanov's Insurrection, lay on the chair beside him. His first days in the sanatorium had brought no relief to his nerves and his headaches continued. His ailment had so far baffled the sanatorium doctors, who were still trying to get to the root of the trouble. Pavel was sick of the perpetual examinations. They wearied him and he did his best to avoid his ward doctor, a pleasant woman with the curious name of Yerusalimchik, who had a difficult time hunting for her unwilling patient and persuading him to let her take him to some specialist or other.

"I'm tired of the whole business," Pavel would plead with her. "Five times a day I have to tell the same story and answer all sorts of silly questions: was your grandmother insane, or did your great-grandfather suffer with rheumatism? How the devil should I know what he suffered from? I never saw him in my life! Every doctor tries to induce me to confess that I had gonorrhea or something worse, until I swear I'm ready to punch their bald heads. Give me a chance to rest, that's all I want. If I'm going to let myself be diagnosed all the six weeks of my stay here I'll become a danger to society."

Yerusalimchik would laugh and joke with him, but a few minutes later she would take him gently by the arm and lead him to the surgeon, chattering volubly all the way.

But today there was no examination in the offing, and dinner was an hour away. Presently, through his doze, he heard steps approaching. He did not open his eyes. "They'll think I'm asleep and go away," he thought. Vain hope! He heard the chair beside him creak as someone sat down. A faint whiff of perfume told him it was a woman. He opened his eyes. The first thing he saw was a dazzling white dress and a pair of bronzed feet encased in soft leather slippers, then a boyish bob, two enormous eyes, and a row of white teeth as sharp as a mouse's. She gave him a shy smile.

"I haven't disturbed you, I hope?"

Pavel made no reply, which was not very polite of him, but he still hoped that she would go.

"Is this your book?" She was turning the pages of Insurrection.

"It is."

There was a moment of silence.

"You're from the Kommunar Sanatorium, aren't you?"

Pavel stirred impatiently. Why couldn't she leave him in peace? Now she would start asking about his illness. He would have to go.

"No," he replied curtly.

"I was sure I had seen you there."

Pavel was on the point of rising when a deep, pleasant woman's voice behind him said:

"Why, Dora, what are you doing here?''

A plump, sunburned, fair-haired girl in a beach costume seated herself on the edge of a chair. She glanced quickly at Korchagin.

"I've seen you somewhere, Comrade. You're from Kharkov, aren't you?"

"Yes."

"Where do you work?"

Pavel decided to put an end to the conversation.

"In the garbage disposal department," he replied. The laugh this sally evoked made him jump.

"You're not very polite, are you, Comrade?"

That is how their friendship began. Dora Rodkina turned out to be a member of the Bureau of the Kharkov City Committee of the Party and later, when they came to know each other well, she often teased him about the amusing incident with which their acquaintance had started.

One afternoon at an open-air concert in the grounds of the Thalassa Sanatorium Pavel ran across his old friend Zharky. And curious to relate, it was a foxtrot that brought them together.

After the audience had been treated to a highly emotional rendering of Oh, Nights of Burning Passion by a buxom soprano, a couple sprang onto the stage. The man, half-naked but for a red top hat, some shiny spangles on his hips, a dazzling white shirt front and bow tie, in feeble imitation of a savage, and his doll-faced partner in voluminous skirts. To the accompaniment of a delighted buzz from the crowd of beefy-necked shopowners standing behind the armchairs and cots occupied by the sanatorium patients, the couple gyrated about the stage in the intricate figures of a foxtrot. A more revolting spectacle could scarcely be imagined. The fleshy man in his idiotic top hat, with his partner pressed tightly to him, writhed on the stage in suggestive poses. Pavel heard the stertorous breathing of some fat carcass at his back. He turned to go when someone in the front row got up and shouted:

"Enough of this brothel show! To hell with it!"

It was Zharky.

The pianist stopped playing and the violin subsided with a squeak. The couple on the stage ceased writhing. The crowd at the back set up a vicious hissing.

"What impudence to interrupt a number!"

"All Europe is dancing foxtrot!"

"Outrageous!"

But Seryozha Zhbanov, Secretary of the Cherepovets Komsomol organisation and one of the Kommunar patients, put four fingers into his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Others followed his example and in an instant the couple vanished from the stage, as if swept off by a gust of wind. The obsequious compere who looked like nothing so much as an old-time flunkey, announced that the concert troupe was leaving.

"Good riddance to bad rubbish!" a lad in a sanatorium bathrobe shouted amid general laughter.

Pavel went over to the front rows and found Zharky. The two friends had a long chat in Pavel's room. Zharky told Pavel that he was working in the propaganda section of one of the Party's regional committees.

"You didn't know I was married, did you?" said Zharky. "I'm expecting a son or a daughter before long."

"Married, eh?" Pavel was surprised. "Who is your wife?"

Zharky took a photograph out of his pocket and showed it to Pavel.

"Recognise her?"

It was a photo of himself and Anna Borhart.

"What happened to Dubava?" Pavel asked in still greater surprise.

"He's in Moscow. He left the university after he was expelled from the Party. He's at the Bauman Technical Institute now. I hear he's been reinstated. Too bad, if it's true. He's rotten through and through. ... Guess what Pankratov is doing? He's assistant director of a shipyard. I don't know much about the others. We've lost touch lately. We all work in different parts of the country. But it's nice to get together occasionally and recall the old times."

Dora came in bringing several other people with her. She glanced at the decoration on Zharky's jacket and asked Pavel:

"Is your comrade a Party member? Where does he work?"

Puzzled, Pavel told her briefly about Zharky.

"Good," she said. "Then he can remain. These comrades have just come from Moscow. They are going to give us the latest Party news. We decided to come to your room and hold a sort of closed Party meeting," she explained.

With the exception of Pavel and Zharky all the newcomers were old Bolsheviks. Bartashev, a member of the Moscow Control Commission, told them about the new opposition headed by Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev.

"At this critical moment we ought to be at our posts," Bartashev said in conclusion. "I am leaving tomorrow."

Three days after that meeting in Pavel's room the sanatorium was deserted. Pavel too left shortly afterward, before his time was up.

The Central Committee of the Komsomol did not detain him. He was given an appointment as Komsomol Secretary in one of the industrial regions, and within a week he was already addressing a meeting of the local town organisation.

Late that autumn the car in which Pavel was travelling with two other Party workers to one of the remote districts, skidded into a ditch and overturned.

All the occupants were injured. Pavel's right knee was crushed. A few days later he was taken to the surgical institute in Kharkov. After an examination and X-ray of the injured limb the medical commission advised an immediate operation.

Pavel gave his consent.

"Tomorrow morning then," said the stout professor, who headed the commission. He got up and the others filed out after him.

A small bright ward with a single cot. Spotless cleanliness and the peculiar hospital smell he had long since forgotten. He glanced about him. Beside the cot stood a small table covered with a snow-white cloth and a white-painted stool. And that was all.

The nurse brought in his supper. Pavel sent it back. Half-sitting in his bed, he was writing letters. The pain in his knee interfered with his thoughts and robbed him of his appetite.

When the fourth letter had been written the door opened softly and a young woman in a white smock and cap came over to his bed.

In the twilight he made out a pair of arched eyebrows and large eyes that seemed black. In one hand she held a portfolio, in the other, a sheet of paper and a pencil.

"I am your ward doctor," she said. "Now I am going to ask you a lot of questions and you will have to tell me all about yourself, whether you like it or not."

She smiled pleasantly and her smile took the edge off her "cross-examination". Pavel spent the better part of an hour telling her not only about himself but about all his relatives several generations back.

... The operating theatre. People with gauze masks over noses and mouths. Shining nickel instruments, a long narrow table with a huge basin beneath it.

The professor was still washing his hands when Pavel lay down on the operating table. Behind him swift preparations were being made for the operation. He turned his head. The nurse was laying out pincets and lancets.

"Don't look, Comrade Korchagin," said Bazhanova, his ward doctor, who was unbandaging his leg. "It is bad for the nerves."

"For whose nerves, doctor?" Pavel asked with a mocking smile.

A few minutes later a heavy mask covered his face and he heard the professor's voice saying:

"We are going to give you an anaesthetic. Now breathe in deeply through your nose and begin counting."

"Very well," a calm voice muffled by the mask replied. "I apologise in advance for any unprintable remarks I am liable to make."

The professor could not suppress a smile.

The first drops of ether. The suffocating loathsome smell.

Pavel took a deep breath and making an effort to speak distinctly began counting. The curtain had risen on the first act of his tragedy.

Artem tore open the envelope and trembling inwardly unfolded the letter. His eyes bored into the first few lines, then ran quickly over the rest of the page.

"Artem! We write to each other so seldom, once, or at best twice a year! But is it quantity that matters? You write that you and your family have moved from Shepetovka to Kazatin railway yards because you wished to tear up your roots. I know that those roots lie in the backward, petty-proprietor psychology of Styosha and her relatives. It is hard to remake people of Styosha's type, and I am very much afraid you will not succeed. You say you are finding it hard to study 'in your old age', yet you seem to be doing not so badly. You are wrong in your stubborn refusal to leave the factory and take up work as Chairman of the Town Soviet. You fought for the Soviet power, didn't you? Then take it! Take over the Town Soviet tomorrow and get to work!

"Now about myself. Something is seriously wrong with me. I have become a far too frequent inmate in hospitals. They have cut me up twice. I have lost quite a bit of blood and strength, but nobody can tell me yet when it will all end.

"I am no longer fit for work. I have acquired a new profession, that of 'invalid'. I am enduring much pain, and the net result of all this is loss of movement in the joint of my right knee, several scars in various parts of my body, and now the latest medical discovery: seven years ago I injured my spine and now I am told that this injury may cost me dearly. But I am ready to endure anything so long as I can return to the ranks.

"There is nothing more terrible to me in life than to fall out of the ranks. That is a possibility I refuse to contemplate. And that is why I let them do anything they like with me. But there is no improvement and the clouds grow darker and thicker all the time. After the first operation I returned to work as soon as I could walk, but before long they brought me back again. Now I am being sent to a sanatorium in Yevpatoria. I leave tomorrow. But don't be downhearted, Artem, you know I don't give in easily. I have life enough in me for three. You and I will do some good work yet, brother. Now take care of your health, don't try to overtax your strength, because health repairs cost the Party far too much. All the experience we gain in work, and the knowledge we acquire by study is far too precious to be wasted in hospitals. I shake your hand.

"Pavel."

While Artem, his heavy brows knitted, was reading his brother's letter, Pavel was taking leave of Dr. Bazhanova in the hospital.

"So you are leaving for the Crimea tomorrow?" she said as she gave him her hand. "How are you going to spend the rest of the day?"

"Comrade Rodkina is coming here soon," Pavel replied. "She is taking me to her place to meet her family. I shall spend the night there and tomorrow she will take me to the station."

Bazhanova knew Dora for she had often visited Pavel in the hospital.

"But, Comrade Korchagin, have you forgotten your promise to let my father see you before you go? I have given him a detailed account of your illness and I should like him to examine you. Perhaps you could manage it this evening."

Pavel agreed at once.

That evening Bazhanova showed Pavel into her father's spacious office.

The famous surgeon gave Pavel a careful examination. His daughter had brought all the X-ray pictures and analyses from the clinic. Pavel could not help noticing how pale she turned when her father made some lengthy remark in Latin. Pavel stared at the professor's large bald head bent over him and searched his keen eyes, but Bazhanov's expression was inscrutable.

When Pavel had dressed, the professor took leave of him cordially, explaining that he was due at a conference, and left his daughter to inform Pavel of the result of his examination.

Pavel lay on the couch in Bazhanova's tastefully furnished room waiting for the doctor to speak. But she did not know how to begin. She could not bring herself to repeat what her father had told her — that medicine was so far unable to check the disastrous inflammatory process at work in Pavel's organism. The professor had been opposed to an operation. "This young man is fated to lose the use of his limbs and we are powerless to avert the tragedy."

She did not consider it wise either as doctor or friend to tell him the whole truth and so in carefully chosen words she told him only part of the truth.

"I am certain, Comrade Korchagin, that the Yevpatoria mud will put you right and that by autumn you will be able to return to work."

But she had forgotten that his sharp eye had been watching her all the time.

"From what you say, or rather from what you have not said, I see that the situation is grave. Remember I asked you always to be perfectly frank with me. You need not hide anything from me, I shan't faint or try to cut my throat. But I very much want to know what is in store for me."

Bazhanova evaded a direct answer by making some cheerful remark and Pavel did not learn the truth about his future that night.

"Do not forget that I am your friend, Comrade Korchagin," the doctor said softly in parting. "Who knows what life has in store for you. If ever you need my help or my advice please write to me. I shall do everything in my power to help you."

Through the window she watched the tall leather-clad figure, leaning heavily on a stick, move painfully from the door to the waiting cab.

Yevpatoria again. The hot southern sun. Noisy sunburned people in embroidered skullcaps. A ten-minute drive brought the new arrivals to a two-storey grey limestone building — the Mainak Sanatorium.

The doctor on duty, learning that Pavel's accommodation had been reserved by the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Party, took him up to room No. 11.

"I shall put you in with Comrade Ebner. He is a German and he has asked for a Russian room-mate," he explained as he knocked at the door. A voice with a heavy German accent sounded from within. "Come in."

Pavel put down his travelling bag and turned to the fair-haired man with the lively blue eyes who was lying on the bed. The German met him with a warm smile.

"Guten Morgen, Genosse. I mean, good day," he corrected himself, stretching a pale, long-fingered hand to Pavel.

A few moments later Pavel was sitting by his bed and the two were engrossed in a lively conversation in that "international language" in which words play a minor role, and imagination, gestures and mimicry, all the media of the unwritten Esperanto, fill in the gaps.

Pavel learned that Ebner was a German worker who had been wounded in the hip during the Hamburg uprising of 1923. The old wound had re-opened and he was confined to his bed. But he bore his sufferings cheerfully and that won Pavel's respect for him at once.

Pavel could not have wished for a better room-mate. This one would not talk about his ailments from morning till night and bemoan his lot. On the contrary, with him one could forget one's own troubles.

"Too bad I don't know any German, though," Pavel thought ruefully.

In a corner of the sanatorium grounds stood several rocking-chairs, a bamboo table and two bath-chairs. It was here that the five patients whom the others referred to as the "Executive of the Comintern" were in the habit of spending their time after the day's medical treatments were over.

Ebner half reclined in one of the bath-chairs. Pavel, who had also been forbidden to walk, in the other. The three other members of the group were Weiman, a thickset Estonian, who worked at a Republican Commissariat of Trade, Marta Laurin, a young, brown-eyed Lettish woman who looked like a girl of eighteen, and Ledenev, a tall, powerfully-built Siberian with greying temples. This small group indeed represented five different nationalities — German, Estonian, Lettish, Russian and Ukrainian. Marta and Weiman spoke German and Ebner used them as interpreters. Pavel and Ebner were friends because they shared the same room; Marta, Weiman and Ebner, because they shared a common language. The bond between Ledenev and Korchagin was chess.

Before Ledenev arrived, Korchagin had been the sanatorium chess "champion". He had won the title from Weiman after a stiff struggle. The phlegmatic Estonian had been somewhat shaken by his defeat and for a long time he could not forgive Korchagin for having worsted him. But one day a tall man, looking remarkably young for his fifty years, turned up at the sanatorium and suggested a game of chess with Korchagin. Pavel, having no inkling of danger, calmly began with a Queen's Gambit, which Ledenev countered by advancing his central pawns. As "champion", Pavel was obliged to play all new arrivals, and there was always a knot of interested spectators around the board. After the ninth move Pavel realised that his opponent was cramping him by steadily advancing his pawns. Pavel saw now that he had a dangerous opponent and began to regret that he had treated the game so lightly at the start.

After a three-hour struggle during which Pavel exerted all his skill and ingenuity he was obliged to give up. He foresaw his defeat long before any of the onlookers. He glanced up at his opponent and saw Ledenev looking at him with a kindly smile. It was clear that he too saw how the game would end. The Estonian, who was following the game tensely and making no secret of his desire to see Korchagin defeated, was still unaware of what was happening.

"I always hold out to my last pawn," Pavel said, and Ledenev nodded approvingly.

Pavel played ten games with Ledenev in five days, losing seven, winning two and drawing one. Weiman was jubilant.

"Thank you, Comrade Ledenev, thank you! That was a wonderful thrashing you gave him! He deserved it! He knocked out all of us old chess players and now he's been paid back by an old man himself. Ha! Ha!"

"How does it feel to be the loser, eh?" he teased the now vanquished victor.

Pavel lost the title of "champion" but won in Ledenev a friend who was later to become very precious to him. He saw now that his defeat on the chessboard was only to have been expected. His knowledge of chess strategy had been purely superficial and he had lost to an expert who knew all the secrets of the game.

Korchagin and Ledenev found that they had one important date in common: Pavel was born the year Ledenev joined the Party. Both were typical representatives of the young and old guard of Bolsheviks. The one had behind him a long life of intensive political activity, years of work in the underground movement and tsarist imprisonment, followed by important government work; the other had his flaming youth and only eight years of struggle, but years that could have burnt up more than one life. And both of them, the old man and the young, were avid of life and broken in health.

In the evenings the room shared by Ebner and Korchagin became a sort of club. All the political news emanated from here. The room rang with laughter and talk. Weiman usually tried to insert a bawdy anecdote into the conversation but invariably found himself attacked from two sides, by Marta and Korchagin. As a rule Marta was able to restrain him by some sharp sarcastic remark, but when this did not help Korchagin would intervene.

"Your particular brand of 'humour' is not exactly to our taste, you know, Weiman," Marta would say.

"I can't understand how you can stoop to that sort of thing," Korchagin would begin.

Weiman would stick out his thick underlip and survey the gathering with a mocking glint in his small eyes.

"We shall have to set up a department of morals under the Political Enlightenment Department and recommend Korchagin as chief inspector. I can understand why Marta objects, she is the professional feminine opposition, but Korchagin is just trying to pose as a young innocent, a sort of Komsomol babe-in-arms. . . . What's more, I object to the egg trying to teach the hen."

After one heated debate on the question of communist ethics, the matter of obscene jokes was discussed from the standpoint of principle. Marta translated to Ebner the various views expressed.

"Die erotische Anekdote" he said, "is no good. I agree with Pavel."

Weiman was obliged to retreat. He laughed the matter off as best he could, but told no more smutty stories.

Pavel had taken Marta for a Komsomol member, judging her to be no more than nineteen. He was much surprised when he learned that she had been in the Party since 1917, that she was thirty-one and an active member of the Latvian Communist Party. In 1918 the Whites had sentenced her to be shot, but she had eventually been turned over to the Soviet Government along with some other comrades in an exchange of prisoners. She was now working on the editorial staff of the Pravda and taking a university course at the same time.

Before Pavel was aware of it, a friendship sprang up between them, and the little Lettish woman who often dropped in to see Ebner, became an inseparable member of the "five".

Eglit, a Latvian underground worker, liked to tease her on this score. "What about poor Ozol pining away at home in Moscow? Oh Marta, how can you?"

Every morning, just before the bell to rise sounded, a lusty cockcrow would ring out over the sanatorium. The puzzled attendants would run hither and thither in search of the errant bird. It never occurred to them that Ebner, who could give a perfect imitation of a cockcrow, was having a little joke at their expense. Ebner enjoyed himself immensely.

Toward the end of his month's stay in the sanatorium Pavel's condition took a turn for the worse. The doctors ordered him to bed. Ebner was much upset. He had grown very fond of this courageous young Bolshevik, so full of life and energy, who had lost his health so early in life. And when Marta told him of the tragic future the doctors predicted for Korchagin, Ebner was deeply distressed.

Pavel was confined to his bed for the remainder of his stay in the sanatorium. He managed to hide his suffering from those around him, and Marta alone guessed by his ghastly pallor that he must be in pain. A week before his departure Pavel received a letter from the Ukrainian Central Committee informing him that his leave had been prolonged for two months on the advice of the sanatorium doctors who declared him unfit for work. Money to cover his expenses arrived along with the letter.

Pavel took this first blow as years before during his boxing lessons he had taken Zhukhrai's punches. Then too he had fallen only to rise again at once.

A letter came from his mother asking him to go and see an old friend of hers, Albina Kyutsam, who lived in a small port town not far from Yevpatoria. Pavel's mother had not seen her friend for fifteen years and she begged him to pay her a visit while he was in the Crimea. This letter was to play an important role in Pavel's life.

A week later his sanatorium friends gave him a warm send-off at the pier. Ebner embraced him and kissed him like a brother. Marta was away at the time and Pavel left without saying good-bye to her.

The next morning the horse cab which brought Pavel from the pier drove up to a little house fronted by a small garden.

The Kyutsam family consisted of five people: Albina the mother, a plump elderly woman with dark, mournful eyes and traces of beauty on her aging face, her two daughters, Lola and Taya, Lola's little son, and old Kyutsam, the head of the house, a burly, unpleasant old man resembling a boar.

Old Kyutsam worked in a co-operative store. Taya, the younger girl, did any odd job that came along, and Lola, who had been a typist, had recently separated from her husband, a drunkard and a bully, and now stayed at home to look after her little boy and help her mother with the housework.

Besides the two daughters, there was a son named George, who was away in Leningrad at the time of Pavel's arrival.

The family gave Pavel a warm welcome. Only the old man eyed the visitor with hostility and suspicion.

Pavel patiently told Albina all the family news, and in his turn learned a good deal about the life of the Kyutsams.

Lola was twenty-two. A simple girl, with bobbed brown hair and a broad-featured, open face, she at once took Pavel into her confidence and initiated him into all the family secrets. She told him that the old man ruled the whole family with a despotic hand, suppressing the slightest manifestation of independence on the part of the others. Narrow-minded, bigoted and captious, he kept the family in a permanent state of terror. This had earned him the deep dislike of his children and the hatred of his wife who had fought vainly against his despotism for twenty-five years. The girls always took their mother's side. These incessant family quarrels were poisoning their lives. Days passed in endless bickering and strife.

Another source of family trouble, Lola told Pavel, was her brother George, a typical good-for-nothing, boastful, arrogant, caring for nothing but good food, strong drink and smart clothes. When he finished school, George, who had been his mother's favourite, announced that he was going to the university and demanded money for the trip.

"Lola can sell her ring and you've got some things you can raise money on too. I need the money and I don't care how you get it."

George knew very well that his mother would refuse him nothing and he shamelessly took advantage of her affection for him. He looked down on his sisters. The mother sent her son all the money she could wheedle out of her husband, and whatever Taya earned besides. In the meantime George, having flunked the entrance examinations, had a pleasant time in Leningrad staying with his uncle and terrorising his mother by frequent telegraphic demands for more money.

Pavel did not meet Taya until late in the evening of his arrival. Her mother hurried out to meet her in the hallway and Pavel heard her whispering the news of his coming. The girl shook hands shyly with the strange young man, blushing to the tips of her small ears, and Pavel held her strong, calloused little hand for a few moments before releasing it.

Taya was in her nineteenth year. She was not beautiful, yet with her large brown eyes, and her slanting, Mongolian brows, fine nose and full fresh lips she was very attractive. Her firm young breasts stood out under her striped blouse.

The sisters had two tiny rooms to themselves. In Taya's room there was a narrow iron cot, a chest of drawers covered with knick-knacks, a small mirror, and dozens of photographs and postcards on the walls. On the windowsill stood two flower pots with scarlet geraniums and pale pink asters. The lace curtain was caught up by a pale blue ribbon.

"Taya does not usually admit members of the male sex to her room. She is making an exception for you," Lola teased her sister.

The next evening the family was seated at tea in the old couple's half of the house. Kyutsam stirred his tea busily, casting hostile glances over his spectacles at the visitor.

"I don't think much of the marriage laws nowadays," he said. "Married one day, unmarried the next. Just as you please. Complete freedom."

The old man choked and spluttered. When he recovered his breath he pointed to Lola.

"Look at her, she and that fine fellow of hers got married without asking anyone's permission and separated the same way. And now it's me who's got to feed her and her brat. An outrage I call it!"

Lola blushed painfully and hid her tear-filled eyes from Pavel.

"So you think she ought to live with that scoundrel?" Pavel asked, his eyes flashing.

"She should have known whom she was marrying."

Albina intervened. Barely repressing her wrath, she said quickly: "Why must you discuss such things before a stranger? Can't you find anything else to talk about?"

The old man turned and pounced on her:

"I know what I'm talking about! Since when have you begun to tell me what to do!"

That night Pavel lay awake for a long time thinking about the Kyutsams. Brought here by chance, he had unwittingly become a participant in this family drama. He wondered how he could help the mother and daughters to free themselves from this bondage. His own life was far from settled, many problems remained to be solved and it was harder than ever before to take resolute action.

There was clearly but one way out: the family had to break up, the mother and daughters must leave the old man. But this was not so simple. Pavel was in no position to undertake this family revolution, for he was due to leave in a few days and he might never see these people again. Was it not better to let things take their course instead of trying to stir these turbid backwaters? But the repulsive image of the old man gave him no rest. Several plans occurred to Pavel but on second thoughts he discarded them all as impracticable.

The next day was Sunday and when Pavel returned from a walk in town he found Taya alone at home. The others were out visiting relatives.

Pavel went to her room and dropped wearily onto a chair.

"Why don't you ever go out and enjoy yourself?" he asked her.

"I don't want to go anywhere," she replied in a low voice.

He remembered the plans he had thought of during the night and decided to put them before her.

Speaking quickly so as to finish before the others returned, he went straight to the point.

"Listen, Taya, you and I are good friends. Why should we stand on ceremony with each other? I am going away soon. It is a pity that I should have come to know your family just at the time when I myself am in trouble, otherwise things might have turned out differently. If this happened a year ago we could all leave here together. There is plenty of work everywhere for people like you and Lola. It's useless to expect the old man to change. The only way out is for you to leave home. But that is impossible at present. I don't know yet what is going to happen to me. I am going to insist on being sent back to work. The doctors have written all sorts of nonsense about me and the comrades are trying to make me cure myself endlessly. But we'll see about that.... I shall write to mother and get her advice about your trouble here. I can't let things go on this way. But you must realise, Taya, that this will mean wrenching yourself loose from your present life. Would you want that, and would you have the strength to go through with it?"

Taya looked up.

- "I do want it," she said softly. "As for the strength, I don't know."

Pavel could understand her uncertainty.

"Never mind, Taya! So long as the desire is there everything will be all right. Tell me, are you very much attached to your family?"

Taya hesitated for a moment.

"I am very sorry for mother," she said at last. "Father has made her life miserable and now George is torturing her. I'm terribly sorry for her, although she never loved me as much as she does George...."

" They had a long heart to heart talk. Shortly before the rest of the family returned, Pavel remarked jokingly:

"It's surprising the old man hasn't married you off to someone by now."

Taya threw up her hands in horror at the thought.

"Oh no, I'll never marry. I've seen what poor Lola has been through. I shan't get married for anything."

Pavel laughed.

"So you've settled the matter for the rest of your life? And what if some fine, handsome young fellow comes along, what then?"

"No, I won't. They're all fine while they're courting."

Pavel laid his hand conciliatingly on her shoulder.

"That's all right, Taya. You can get along quite well without a husband. But you needn't be so hard on the young men. It's a good thing you don't suspect me of trying to court you, or there'd be trouble," and he patted her arm in brotherly fashion.

"Men like you marry girls of a different sort," she said softly.

A few days later Pavel left for Kharkov. Taya, Lola and Albina with her sister Rosa came to the station to see him off. Albina made him promise not to forget her daughters and to help them all to find some way out of their plight. They took leave of him as of someone near and dear to them, and there were tears in Taya's eyes. From the window of his carriage Pavel watched Lola's white kerchief and Taya's striped blouse grow smaller and smaller until they finally disappeared.

In Kharkov he put up at his friend Petya Novikov's place, for he did not want to disturb Dora. As soon as he had rested from the journey he went to the Central Committee. There he waited for Akim, and when at last the two were alone, he asked to be sent at once to work. Akim shook his head.

"Can't be done, Pavel! We have the decision of the Medical Commission and the Central Committee says your condition is serious. You're to be sent to the Neu-ropathological Institute for treatment and not to be permitted to work."

"What do I care what they say, Akim! I am appealing to you. Give me a chance to work! This moving about from one hospital to another is killing me."

Akim tried to refuse. "We can't go against the decision. Don't you see it's for your own good, Pavel?" he argued. But Pavel pleaded his cause so fervently that Akim finally gave in.

The very next day Pavel was working in the Special Department of the Central Committee Secretariat. He believed that he had only to begin working for his lost strength to return to him. But he soon saw that he had been mistaken. He sat at his desk for eight hours at a stretch without pausing for lunch simply because the effort of going down three flights of stairs to the canteen across the way was too much for him. Very often his hand or his leg would suddenly go numb, and at times his whole body would be paralysed for a few moments. He was nearly always feverish. On some mornings he found himself unable to rise from his bed, and by the time the attack passed, he realised in despair that he would be a whole hour late for work. Finally the day came when he was officially reprimanded for reporting late for work and he saw that this was the beginning of what he dreaded most in life — he was falling out of the ranks.

Twice Akim helped him by shifting him to other work, but the inevitable happened. A month after his return to work he was confined to his bed again. It was then that he remembered Bazhanova's parting words. He wrote to her and she came the same day. She told him what he had wanted to know: that hospitalisation was not imperative.

"So I don't need any more treatment? That's fine!" he said cheerfully, but the joke fell flat.

As soon as he felt a little stronger he went back to the Central Committee. This time Akim was adamant. He insisted on Pavel's going to the hospital.

"I'm not going," Pavel said wearily. "It's useless. I have it on excellent authority. There is only one thing left for me — to retire on pension. But that I shall never do! You can't make me give up my work. I am only twenty-four and I'm not going to be a labour invalid for the rest of my life, moving from hospital to hospital, knowing that it won't do me any good. You must give me something to do, some work suitable to my condition. I can work at home, or I can live in the office. Only don't give me any paper work. I've got to have work that will give me the satisfaction of knowing that I can still be useful."

Pavel's voice, vibrant with emotion, rose higher and higher.

Akim felt keenly for Pavel. He knew what a tragedy it was for this passionate-hearted youth, who had given the whole of his short life to the Party, to be torn from the ranks and doomed to a life far from the battlefront. He resolved to do all he could to help him.

"All right, Pavel, calm yourself. There will be a meeting of the Secretariat tomorrow and I'll put your case before the comrades. I promise to do all I can."

Pavel rose heavily and seized Akim's hand.

"Do you really think, Akim, that life can drive me into a corner and crush me? So long as my heart beats here" — and he pressed Akim's hand to his chest so that he could feel the dull pounding of his heart — "so long as it beats, no one will be able to tear me away from the Party. Death alone can put me out of the ranks. Remember that, my friend."

Akim said nothing. He knew that this was not an empty phrase. It was the cry of a soldier mortally wounded in battle. He knew that men like Korchagin could not speak or feel otherwise.

Two days later Akim told Pavel that he was to be given an opportunity to work on the staff of a big newspaper, provided, of course, it was found that he could be used for literary work. Pavel was courteously received at the editorial office and was interviewed by the assistant editor, an old Party worker, and member of the Presidium of the Central Control Committee of the Ukraine.

"What education have you had, Comrade?" she asked him.

"Three years of elementary school."

"Have you been to any of the Party political schools?"

"No."

"Well, one can be a good journalist without all that. Comrade Akim has told us about you. We can give you work to do at home, and in general, we are prepared to provide you with suitable conditions for work. True, work of this kind requires considerable knowledge. Particularly in the sphere of literature and language."

This was by no means encouraging. The half-hour interview showed Pavel that his knowledge was inadequate, and the trial article he wrote was returned to him with some three dozen stylistic and spelling mistakes marked in red pencil.

"You have considerable ability, Comrade Korchagin," said the editor, "and with some hard work you might learn to write quite well. But at the present time your grammar is faulty. Your article shows that you do not know the Russian language well enough. That is not surprising considering that you have had no time to learn it. Unfortunately we can't use you, although as I said before, you have ability. If your article were edited, without altering the contents, it would be excellent. But, you see, we haven't enough editors as it is."

Korchagin rose, leaning heavily on his stick. His right eyebrow twitched.

"Yes, I see your point. What sort of a journalist would I make? I was a good stoker once, and not a bad electrician. I rode a horse well, and I knew how to stir up the Komsomol youth, but I can see I would cut a sorry figure on your front."

He shook hands and left.

At a turning in the corridor he stumbled and would have fallen had he not been caught by a woman who happened to be passing by.

"What's the matter, Comrade? You look quite ill!"

It took Pavel several seconds to recover. Then he gently released himself and walked on, leaning heavily on his stick.

From that day Pavel felt that his life was on the decline. Work was now out of the question. More and more often he was confined to his bed. The Central Committee released him from work and arranged for his pension. In due time the pension came together with the certificate of a labour invalid. The Central Committee gave him money and issued him his papers, giving him the right to go wherever he wished.

He received a letter from Marta inviting him to come to visit her in Moscow and have a rest. Pavel had intended going to Moscow in any case, for he cherished the dim hope that the All-Union Central Committee would help him to find work that would not require moving around. But in Moscow too he was advised to take medical treatment and offered accommodation in a good hospital. He refused.

The nineteen days spent in the flat Marta shared with her friend Nadya Peterson flew quickly by. Pavel was left a great deal to himself, for the two young women left the house in the morning for work and did not return till evening. Pavel spent his time reading books from Marta's well-stocked library. The evenings passed pleasantly in the company of the girls and their friends.

Letters came from the Kyutsams inviting him to come and visit them. Life there was becoming unendurable and his help was wanted.

And so one morning Korchagin left the quiet little flat on Gusyatnikov Street. The train bore him swiftly south to the sea, away from the damp rainy autumn to the warm shores of the southern Crimea. He sat at the window watching the telegraph poles fly past. His brows were knit and there was an obstinate gleam in his dark eyes.