NIKOLAI OSTROVSKY - How the Steel Was Tempered 

PART TWO

Chapter Nine

They spent the first few days in Moscow with a friend who was arranging for Pavel to enter a special clinic.

Only now did Pavel realise how much easier it had been to be brave when he had his youth and a strong body. Now that life held him in its iron grip to hold out was a matter of honour.

It was a year and a half since Pavel Korchagin had come to Moscow. Eighteen months of indescribable anguish.

In the eye clinic Professor Averbach had told Pavel quite frankly that there was no hope of recovering his sight. Some time in the future, when the inflammation disappeared it might be possible to operate on the pupils. In the meantime he advised an operation to halt the inflammatory process.

Pavel gave his consent; he told his doctors to do everything they thought necessary.

Three times he felt the touch of Death's bony fingers as he lay for hours at a time on the operating table with lancets probing his throat to remove the parathyroid gland. But he clung tenaciously to life and, after long hours of anguished suspense, Taya would find him deathly pale but alive and as calm and gentle as always.

"Don't worry, little girl, it's not so easy to kill me. I'll go on living and kicking up a fuss if only to upset the calculations of the learned doctors. They are right in everything they say about my health, but they are gravely mistaken when they try to write me off as totally unfit for work. I'll show them yet."

Pavel was determined to resume his place in the ranks of the builders of the new life. He knew now what he had to do.

Winter was over, spring had burst through the open windows, and Pavel, having survived another operation, resolved that, weak as he was, he would remain in hospital no longer. To live so many months in the midst of human suffering, to have to listen to the groans of the incurably sick was far harder for him than to endure his own anguish.

And so when another operation was proposed, he refused.

"No," he said firmly. "I've had enough. I have shed enough blood for science. I have other uses for what is left."

That day Pavel wrote a letter to the Central Committee, explaining that since it was now useless for him to continue his wanderings in search of medical treatment, he wished to remain in Moscow where his wife was now working. It was the first time he had turned to the Party for help. His request was granted and the Moscow Soviet gave him living quarters. Pavel left the hospital with the fervent hope that he might never return.

The modest room in a quiet side lane off Kropotkinskaya Street seemed to him the height of luxury. And often, waking at night, Pavel would find it hard to believe that hospital was indeed a thing of the past for him now.

Taya was a full-fledged Party member by now. She was an excellent worker, and in spite of the tragedy of her personal life, she did not lag behind the best shock workers at the factory. Her fellow workers soon showed their respect for this quiet, unassuming young woman by electing her a member of the factory trade-union committee. Pride for his wife, who was proving to be a true Bolshevik, made Pavel's sufferings easier to bear.

Bazhanova came to Moscow on business and paid him a visit. They had a long talk. Pavel grew animated as he told her of his plans to return in the near future to the fighting ranks.

Bazhanova noticed the wisp of silver on Pavel's temples and she said softly:

"I see that you have gone through a great deal. Yet you have lost none of your enthusiasm. And that is the main thing. I am glad that you have decided to begin the work for which you have been preparing these past five years. But how do you intend to go about it?"

Pavel smiled confidently.

"Tomorrow my friends are bringing me a sort of cardboard stencil, which will enable me to write without getting the lines mixed up. I couldn't write without it. I hit upon the idea after much thought. You see, the stiff edges of the cardboard will keep my pencil from straying off the straight line. Of course, it is very hard to write without seeing what you are writing, but it is not impossible. I have tried it and I know. It took me some time to get the knack of it, but now I have learned to write more slowly, taking pains with every letter and the result is quite satisfactory."

And so Pavel began to work.

He had conceived the idea of writing a novel about the heroic Kotovsky Division. The title came of itself: Born of the Storm.

His whole life was now geared to the writing of his book. Slowly, line by line, the pages emerged. He worked oblivious to his surroundings, wholly immersed in the world of images, and for the first time he suffered the throes of creation, knew the bitterness the artist feels when vivid, unforgettable scenes so tangibly perceptible turn pallid and lifeless on paper.

He had to remember everything he wrote, word by word. The slightest interruption caused him to lose the thread of his thoughts and retarded his work.

Sometimes he had to recite aloud whole pages and even chapters from memory, and there were moments when his mother feared that he was losing his mind. She did not dare approach him while he worked, but as she picked up the sheets that had fallen on the floor she would say timidly:

"I do wish you would do something else, Pavlusha. It can't be good for you to keep writing all the time like this. ..."

He would laugh heartily at her fears and assure the old lady that she need not worry, he hadn't "gone crazy yet".

Three chapters of the book were finished. Pavel sent them to Odessa to his old fighting comrades from the Kotovsky Division for their opinion, and before long he received a letter praising his work. But on its way back to him the manuscript was lost in the mails. Six months' work was gone. It was a terrible blow to him. Bitterly he regretted having sent off the only copy he possessed. Ledenev scolded him roundly when he heard what had happened.

"How could you have been so careless? But never mind, it's no use crying over spilt milk. You must begin over again."

"But I have been robbed of six months' work. Eight hours of strenuous labour every day. Curse the parasites!"

Ledenev did his best to console his friend.

There was nothing for it but to start afresh. Ledenev supplied him with paper and helped him to get the manuscript typed. Six weeks later the first chapter was rewritten.

A family by the name of Alexeyev lived in the same apartment as the Korchagins. The eldest son, Alexander, was secretary of one of the district committees of the Komsomol. His sister Galya, a lively girl of eighteen, had finished a factory training school. Pavel asked his mother to speak to Galya and find out whether she would agree to help him with his work in the capacity of "secretary". Galya willingly agreed. She came in one day, smiling pleasantly, and was delighted when she learned that Pavel was writing a novel.

"I shall be very glad to help you, Comrade Korchagin," she said. "It will be so much more fun than writing those dull circular letters for father about the maintenance of hygiene in communal apartments."

From that day Pavel's work progressed with doubled speed. Indeed so much was accomplished in one month that Pavel was amazed. Galya's lively participation and sympathy were a great help to him. Her pencil rustled swiftly over the paper, and whenever some passage particularly appealed to her she would read it over several times, taking sincere delight in Pavel's success. She was almost the only person in the house who believed in his work, the others felt that nothing would come of it and that Pavel was merely trying to fill in the hours of enforced idleness.

Ledenev, returning to Moscow after a business trip out of town, read the first few chapters and said:

"Carry on, my friend. I have no doubt that you will win. You have great happiness in store for you, Pavel. I firmly believe that your dream of returning to the ranks will soon materialise. Don't lose hope, my son."

The old man went away deeply satisfied to have found Pavel so full of energy.

Galya came regularly, her pencil raced over the pages reviving scenes from the unforgettable past. In moments when Pavel lay lost in thought, overwhelmed by a flood of memory, Galya would watch his lashes quivering, and see his eyes reflecting the swift passage of thought. It seemed incredible that those eyes could not see, so alive were the clear, unblemished pupils.

When the day's work was over she would read what she had written and he would listen tensely, his brow wrinkled.

"Why are you frowning, Comrade Korchagin? It is good, isn't it?"

"No, Galya, it is bad."

The pages he did not like he rewrote himself. Hampered by the narrow strip of the stencil he would sometimes lose his patience and fling it from him. And then, furious with life for having robbed him of his eyesight, he would break his pencils and bite his lips until the blood came.

As the work drew to a close, forbidden emotions began more often to burst the bonds of his ever-vigilant will: sadness and all those simple human feelings, warm and tender, to which everyone but himself had the right. But he knew that were he to succumb to a single one of them the consequences would be tragic.

At last the final chapter was written. For the next few days Galya read the book aloud to Pavel.

Tomorrow the manuscript would be sent to Leningrad, to the Cultural Department of the Regional Party Committee. If the book was approved there, it would be turned over to the publishers — and then. . . .

His heart beat anxiously at the thought. If all was well, the new life would begin, a life won by years of weary, unremitting toil.

The fate of the book would decide Pavel's own fate. If the manuscript was rejected that would be the end for him. If, on the other hand, it was found to be bad only in part, if its defects could be remedied by further work, he would launch a new offensive.

His mother took the parcel with the manuscript to the post office. Days of anxious waiting began. Never in his life had Pavel waited in such anguished suspense for a letter as he did now. He lived from the morning to the evening post. But no news came from Leningrad.

The continued silence of the publishers began to look ominous. From day to day the presentiment of disaster mounted, and Pavel admitted to himself that total rejection of his book would finish him. That, he could not endure. There would be no longer any reason to live.

At such moments he remembered the park on the hill overlooking the sea, and he asked himself the same question over and over again:

"Have you done everything you can to break out of the steel bonds and return to the ranks, to make your life useful?"

And he had to answer: "Yes, I believe I have done everything!"

At last, when the agony of waiting had become well-nigh unbearable, his mother, who had been suffering from the suspense no less than her son, came running into the room with the cry:

"News from Leningrad!"

It was a telegram from the Regional Committee. A terse message on a telegraph form: "Novel heartily approved. Turned over to publishers. Congratulations on your victory."

His heart beat fast. His cherished dream was realised! The steel bonds have been burst, and now, armed with a new weapon, he had returned to the fighting ranks and to life.

      1930-1934