NIKOLAI OSTROVSKY - How the Steel Was Tempered 

PART TWO

Chapter One

Midnight. The last tramcar has long since dragged its battered carcass back to the depot. The moon lays its cold light on the windowsill and spreads a luminous coverlet on the bed, leaving the rest of the room in semi-darkness. At the table in the corner under a circle of light shed by the desk lamp sits Rita bent over a thick notebook, her diary. The sharp point of her pencil traces the words:

May 24

"I am making another attempt to jot down my impressions. Again there is a big gap. Six weeks have passed since I made the last entry. But it cannot be helped.

"How can I find time for my diary? It is past midnight now, and here I am still writing. Sleep eludes me. Comrade Segal is leaving us: he is going to work in the Central Committee. We were all very much upset by the news. He is a wonderful person, our Lazar Alexandrovich. I did not realise until now how much his friendship has meant to us all. The dialectical materialism class is bound to go to pieces when he leaves. Yesterday we stayed at his place until the wee hours verifying the progress made by our 'pupils'. Akim, the Secretary of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee, came and that horrid Tufta as well. I can't stand that Mr. Know-All! Segal was delighted when his pupil Korchagin brilliantly defeated Tufta in an argument on Party history. Yes, these two months have not been wasted. You don't begrudge your efforts when you see such splendid results. It is rumoured that Zhukhrai is being transferred to the Special Department of the Military Region. I wonder why.

"Lazar Alexandrovich turned his pupil over to me. 'You will have to complete what I have begun,' he said. 'Don't stop halfway. You and he, Rita, can learn a great deal from each other. The lad is still rather disorganised. His is a turbulent nature and he is apt to be carried away by his emotions. I feel that you will be a most suitable guide for him, Rita. I wish you success. Don't forget to write me in Moscow.'

"Today a new secretary for the Solomensky District Committee was sent down from the Central Committee. His name is Zharky. I knew him in the army.

"Tomorrow Dmitri Dubava will bring Korchagin. Let me try to describe Dubava. Medium height, strong, muscular. Joined the Komsomol in 1918, and has been a Party member since 1920. He was one of the three who were expelled from the Komsomol Gubernia Committee for having belonged to the 'Workers' Opposition'. Instructing him has not been easy. Every day he upset the programme by asking innumerable questions and making us digress from the subject. He and Olga Yureneva, my other pupil, did not get along at all. At their very first meeting he looked her up and down and remarked: 'Your get-up is all wrong, old girl. You ought to have trousers with leather seats, spurs, a Budyonny hat and a sabre. This way you're neither fish nor fowl.'

"Olga wouldn't stand for that, of course, and I had to interfere. I believe Dubava is a friend of Korchagin's. Well enough for tonight. It's time for bed."

The earth wilted under the scorching sun. The iron railing of the footbridge over the railway platforms was burning to the touch. People, limp and exhausted from the heat, climbed the bridge wearily; most of them were not travellers, but residents of the railway district who used the bridge to get to the town proper.

As he came down the steps Pavel caught sight of Rita. She had reached the station before him and was watching the people coming off the bridge.

Pavel paused some three paces away from her. She did not notice him, and he studied her with new-found interest. She was wearing a striped blouse and a short dark-blue skirt of some cheap material. A soft leather jacket was slung over her shoulder. Her sun-tanned face was framed in a shock of unruly hair and as she stood there with her head thrown slightly back and her eyes narrowed against the sun's glare, it struck Korchagin for the first time that Rita, his friend and teacher, was not only a member of the bureau of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee, but.... Annoyed with himself for entertaining such "sinful" thoughts, he called to her.

"I've been staring at you for a whole hour, but you didn't notice me," he laughed. "Come along, our train is already in."

They went over to the service door leading to the platform.

The previous day the Gubernia Committee had appointed Rita as its representative at a district conference of the Komsomol, and Korchagin was to go as her assistant. Their immediate problem was to board the train, which was by no means a simple task. The railway station on those rare occasions when the trains ran was taken over by an all-powerful Committee of Five in charge of boarding and without a permit from this body no one was allowed on the platform. All exits and approaches to the platform were guarded by the Committee's men. The overcrowded train could take on only a fraction of the crowd anxious to leave, but no one wanted to be left behind to spend days waiting for a chance train to come through. And so thousands stormed the platform doors in an effort to break through to the unattainable carriages. In those days the station was literally besieged and sometimes pitched battles were fought.

After vainly attempting to push through the crowd collected at the platform entrance, Pavel, who knew all the ins and outs at the station, led Rita through the luggage room. With difficulty they made their way to coach No. 4. At the carriage door a Cheka man, sweating profusely in the heat, was trying to hold back the crowd, and repeated over and over again:

"The carriage's full, and it's against the rules to ride on the buffers or the roof."

Irate people bore down on him, waving tickets issued by the Committee under his nose. There were angry curses, shouts and violent jostling at every carriage. Pavel saw that it would be impossible to board the train in the conventional manner. Yet board it they must, otherwise the conference would have to be called off.

Taking Rita aside, he outlined his plan of action: he would push his way inside, open a window and help her to climb in. There was no other way.

"Let me have that jacket of yours. It's better than any credential."

He slipped on the jacket and stuck his revolver into the pocket so that the grip and cord showed. Leaving the bag with Rita, he went over to the carriage, elbowed through the knot of excited passengers at the entrance and gripped the handrail.

"Hey, Comrade, where you going?"

Pavel glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder at the stocky Cheka man.

"I'm from the Special Department. I want to see whether all the passengers in this carriage have tickets issued by the Committee," he said in a tone that left no doubt as to his authority.

The Cheka man glanced at Pavel's pocket, wiped his perspiring brow with his sleeve and said wearily:

"Go ahead if you can shove yourself in."

Working with his hands, shoulders, and here and there with his fists, holding on to the ledges of the upper berths to climb over the passengers who had planted themselves on their belongings in the middle of the passage, Pavel made his way through to the centre of the carriage, ignoring the torrent of abuse that rained down on him from all sides.

"Can't you look where you're going, curse you!" screamed a stout woman when Pavel accidentally brushed her knee with his foot, as he lowered himself to the floor. She had contrived to wedge her 18-stone bulk onto the edge of a seat and had a large vegetable oil can between her knees. All the shelves were stuffed with similar cans, hampers, sacks and baskets. The air in the carriage was suffocating.

Paying no heed to the abuse, Pavel demanded: "Your ticket, please!"

"My what!" the woman snapped back at the unwelcome ticket-collector.

A head appeared from the uppermost berth and an ugly voice boomed out: "Vaska, what's this 'ere mug want. Give 'im a ticket to kingdom come, will ya?"

The huge frame and hairy chest of what was obviously Vaska swung into view right above Pavel's head and a pair of bloodshot eyes fixed him with a bovine stare.

"Leave the lady alone, can't ya? What d'ye want tickets for?"

Four pairs of legs dangled from an upper side berth; their owners sat with their arms around one another's shoulders noisily cracking sunflower seeds. One glance at their faces told Pavel who they were: a gang of food sharks, hardened crooks who travelled up and down the country buying up food and selling it at speculative prices. Pavel had no time to waste with them. He had to get Rita inside somehow.

"Whose box is this?" he inquired of an elderly man in railway uniform, indicating a wooden chest standing under the window.

"Hers," replied the other, pointing to a pair of thick legs in brown stockings.

The window had to be opened and the box was in the way. Since there was nowhere to move it Pavel picked it up and handed it to its owner who was seated on an upper berth.

"Hold it a moment, please, I'm going to open the window."

"Keep your hands off my things!" screamed the flat-nosed wench when he placed the box on her knees.

"Motka, what's this feller think he's doin'?" she said to the man seated beside her. The latter gave Pavel a kick in the back with his sandalled foot.

"Lissen 'ere, you! Clear out of here before I punch your nose!"

Pavel endured the kick in silence. He was too busy unfastening the window.

"Move aside, please," he said to the railwayman.

Shifting another can out of the way Pavel cleared a space in front of the window. Rita was on the platform below. Quickly she handed him the bag. Throwing it onto the knees of the stout woman with the vegetable oil can, Pavel bent down, seized Rita's hands and drew her in. Before the guard had time to notice this infringement of the rules, Rita was inside the carriage, leaving the guard swearing belatedly outside. The gang of toughs met Rita's appearance with such an uproar that she was taken aback. Since there was not even standing room on the floor, she found a place for her feet on the very edge of the lower berth and stood there holding on to the upper berth for support. Foul curses sounded on all sides. From above the ugly bass voice croaked:

"Look at the swine, gets in himself and drags his broad in after 'im!"

A voice from above squeaked: "Motka, poke him one between the eyes!"

The woman was doing her best to stand her wooden box on Pavel's head. The two newcomers were surrounded by a ring of evil, brutish faces. Pavel was sorry that Rita had to be exposed to this but there was nothing to be done but to make the best of it.

"Move your sacks and make room for the comrade," he said to the one they called Motka, but the answer was a curse so foul that he boiled with rage. The pulse over his right eyebrow began to throb painfully. "Just wait, you scoundrel, you'll answer for this," he said to the ruffian, but received a kick on the head from above.

"Good for you, Vaska, fetch 'im another!" came approving cries from all sides.

Pavel's self-control gave way at last, and as always in such moments his actions became swift and sure.

"You speculating bastards, you think you can get away with it?" he shouted, and hoisting himself agilely on to the upper berth, he sent his fist smashing against Motka's leering face. The speculator went tumbling onto the heads of the other passengers.

"Clear out of here, you swine, or I'll shoot down the whole lot of you!" Pavel yelled, waving his revolver under the noses of the four.

The tables were turned. Rita watched closely, ready to shoot if anyone attacked Korchagin. The upper berth-quickly cleared. The gang hastily withdrew to the neighbouring compartment.

As he helped Rita up to the empty berth, Pavel whispered:

"You stay here, I'm going to see about those fellows."

Rita tried to stop him. "You're not going to fight them, are you?"

"No," he reassured her. "I'll be back soon."

He opened the window again and climbed out onto the platform. A few minutes later he was talking to Burmeister of the Transport Cheka, his former chief. The Lett heard him out and then gave orders to have the entire carriage cleared and the passengers' papers checked.

"It's just as I said," growled Burmeister. "The trains are full of speculators before they get here."

A detail of ten Cheka men cleared the carriage. Pavel, assuming his old duties, helped to examine the documents of the passengers. He had not broken all ties with his former Cheka comrades and in his capacity as secretary of the Komsomol he had sent some of the best Komsomol members to work there. When the screening was over, Pavel returned to Rita. The carriage was now occupied by a vastly different type of passenger: Red Army men and factory and office workers travelling on business.

Rita and Pavel had the top berth in one corner of the carriage, but so much of it was taken up with bundles of newspapers that there was only room for Rita to lie down.

"Never mind," she said, "we'll manage somehow."

The train began to move at last. As it slid slowly out of the station they caught a brief glimpse of the fat woman seated on a bundle of sacks on the platform and heard her yelling:

"Hey Manka, where's my oil can gone?"

Sitting in their cramped quarters with the bundles of newspapers shielding them from their neighbours, Pavel and Rita munched bread and apples and laughingly recalled the far from laughable episode with which their journey had begun.

The train crawled along. The old, battered and overloaded carriage creaked and groaned and trembled violently at every joint in the track. The deep blue twilight looked in at the windows. Then night came, folding the carriage in darkness.

Rita was tired and she dozed with her head resting on the bag. Pavel sat on the edge of the berth and smoked. He too was tired but there was no room to lie down. The fresh night breeze blew through the open window.

Rita, awakened by a sudden jolt, saw the glow of Pavel's cigarette in the darkness. It was just like him to sit up all night rather than cause her discomfort.

"Comrade Korchagin! Drop those bourgeois conventions and lie down," she said lightly.

Pavel obediently lay down beside her and stretched his stiff legs luxuriously.

"We have heaps of work tomorrow. So try and get some sleep, you rowdy." She put her arm trustingly around his neck and he felt her hair touching his cheek.

To Pavel, Rita was sacred. She was his friend and comrade, his political guide. Yet she was a woman as well. He had first become aware of this over there at the footbridge, and that was why her embrace stirred him so much now. He felt her deep even breathing; somewhere quite close to him were her lips. Proximity awoke in him a powerful desire to find those lips, and it was only with a great effort of will that he suppressed the impulse.

Rita, as if divining his feelings, smiled in the darkness. She had already known the joy of passion and the pain of loss. She had given her love to two Bolsheviks. Whiteguard bullets had robbed her of both. One had been a splendid giant of a man, a Brigade Commander; the other, a lad with clear blue eyes.

Soon the regular rhythm of the wheels rocked Pavel to sleep and he did not wake until the engine whistled shrilly the next morning.

Work kept Rita occupied every day until late at night and she had little time for her diary. After an interval a few more brief entries appeared:

August 11

"The gubernia conference is over. Akim, Mikhailo and several others have gone to Kharkov for the all-Ukraine conference, leaving all the paper work to me. Dubava and Pavel have been sent to work at the Gubernia Committee. Ever since Dmitri was made secretary of the Pechorsk District Committee he has stopped coming to lessons. He is up to his neck in work. Pavel tries to do some studying, but we don't get much done because either I am too busy or else he is sent off on some assignment. With the present tense situation on the railways the Komsomols are constantly being mobilised for work. Zharky came to see me yesterday. He complained about the boys being taken away from him, says he needs them badly himself."

August 23

"I was going down the corridor today when I saw Korchagin standing outside the manager's office with Pankratov and another man. As I came closer I heard Pavel say:

"Those fellows sitting there ought to be shot. "You've no right to countermand our orders," he says. "The Railway Firewood Committee is the boss here and you Komsomols had better keep out of it." You ought to have seen his mug.... And the place is infested with parasites like him!' He followed this up with some shocking language. Pankratov caught sight of me and nudged him. Pavel swung round and when he saw me he turned pale and walked off without meeting my eyes. He won't be coming around for a long while now. He knows I will not tolerate bad language."

August 27

"We had a closed meeting of the bureau. The situation is becoming serious. I cannot write about it in detail just yet. Akim came back from the regional conference looking very worried. Yesterday another supply train was derailed. I don't think I shall try to keep this diary any more. It is much too haphazard anyway. I am expecting Korchagin. I saw him the other day and he told me he and Zharky are organising a commune of five."

One day while at work in the railway shops Pavel was called to the telephone. It was Rita. She happened to be free that evening and suggested that they finish the chapter they had been studying — the reasons for the fall of the Paris Commune.

As he approached Rita's house on University Street that evening, Pavel glanced up and saw a light in her window. He ran upstairs, gave his usual brief knock on the door and went in.

There on the bed, where none of the young comrades were allowed even to sit for a moment, lay a man in uniform. A revolver, knapsack and cap with the red star lay on the table. Rita was sitting beside the stranger with her arms clasped tightly around him. The two were engaged in earnest conversation and as Pavel entered Rita looked up with a radiant face.

The man freed himself from her embrace and rose.

"Pavel," said Rita shaking hands with him, "this is ...."

"David Ustinovich," the man said, clasping Korchagin's hand warmly.

"He turned up quite unexpectedly," Rita explained with a happy laugh.

Pavel shook hands coldly with the newcomer and a gleam of resentment flashed in his eyes. He noticed the four squares of a Company Commander on the sleeve of the man's uniform.

Rita was about to say something but Pavel interrupted her. "I just dropped in to tell you that I shall be busy loading wood down at the wharves this evening," he said. "And anyhow you have a visitor. Well, I'll be off, the boys are waiting for me downstairs."

And he disappeared through the door as suddenly _ as he had come. They heard him hurrying down the stairs. Then the outside door slammed and all was quiet.

"There's something the matter with him," Rita faltered in answer to David's questioning look.

Down below under the bridge an engine heaved a deep sigh, exhaling a shower of golden sparks from its mighty lungs. They soared upward executing a fantastic dance and were lost in the smoke.

Pavel leaned against the railing and stared at the coloured signal lights winking on the switches. He screwed up his eyes.

"What I don't understand, Comrade Korchagin, is why it should hurt so much to discover that Rita has a husband? Has she ever told you she hadn't? And even if she has, what of it? Why should you take it like that? You thought, Comrade, it was all platonic friendship and nothing else. ... How could you have let this happen?" he asked himself with bitter irony. "But what if he isn't her husband? David Ustinovich might be her brother or her uncle.... In which case you've done the chap an injustice, you fool. You're no better than any other swine. It's easy enough to find out whether he's her brother or not. Suppose he turns out to be a brother or an uncle, how are you going to face her after the way you've behaved? No, you've got to stop seeing her!"

The scream of an engine whistle interrupted his reflections.

"It's getting late. Time to be going home. Enough of this nonsense."

At Solomenka, as the district where the railway workers lived was called, five young men set up a miniature commune. They were Zharky, Pavel, Klavicek, a jolly fair-haired Czech, Nikolai Okunev, secretary of the railway-yards Komsomol, and Stepan Artyukhin, a boiler repairman who was now working for the railway Cheka.

They found a room and for three days spent all their free time cleaning, painting and whitewashing. They dashed back and forth with pails so many times that the neighbours thought the house was on fire. They made themselves bunks, and mattresses filled with maple leaves gathered in the park, and on the fourth day the room, with a portrait of Petrovsky and a huge map on the wall, literally shone with cleanliness.

Between the windows was a shelf piled high with books. Two crates covered with cardboard served for chairs, another larger crate did duty as a cupboard. In the middle of the room stood a huge billiard table, minus the cloth, which the room's inmates had carried on their shoulders from the warehouse. By day it was used as a table and at night Klavicek slept on it. The five lads fetched all their belongings, and the practical-minded Klavicek made an inventory of the commune's possessions. He wanted to hang it up on the wall but the others objected. Everything in the room was declared common property. Earnings, rations and occasional parcels from home were all divided equally; the sole items of personal property were their weapons. It was unanimously decided that any member of the commune who violated the law of communal ownership or who betrayed his comrades' trust would be expelled from the commune. Okunev and Klavicek insisted that expulsion should be followed by eviction from the room, and the motion was carried.

All the active members of the District Komsomol came to the commune's house-warming party. A gigantic samovar was borrowed from the next-door neighbour. The tea party consumed the commune's entire stock of saccharine. After tea, they sang in chorus and their lusty young voices rocked the rafters:  

Talya Lagutina, the girl from the tobacco factory, led the singing. Her crimson kerchief had slipped to one side of her head and her eyes, whose depths none as yet had fathomed, danced with mischief. Talya had a most infectious laugh and she looked at the world from the radiant height of her eighteen years. Now her arm swept up and the singing poured forth like a fanfare of trumpets:

The party broke up late and the silent streets awoke to the echo of their young voices.

The telephone rang and Zharky reached for the receiver.

"Keep quiet, I can't hear anything!" he shouted to the noisy Komsomols who had crowded in the Secretary's office.

The hubbub subsided somewhat.

"Hullo! Ah, it's you. Yes, right away. What's on the agenda? Oh, the same old thing, hauling firewood from the wharves. What's that? No, he's not been sent anywhere. He's here. Want to speak to him? Just a minute."

Zharky beckoned to Pavel.

"Comrade Ustinovich wants to speak to you," he said and handed him the receiver.

"I thought you were out of town," Pavel heard Rita's voice say. "I happen to be free this evening. Why don't you come over? My brother has gone. He was just passing through town and decided to look me up. We haven't seen each other for two years."

Her brother!

Pavel did not hear any more. He was recalling that unfortunate evening and the resolve he had taken that night down on the bridge. Yes, he must go to her this evening and put an end to this. Love brought too much pain and anxiety with it. Was this the time for such things?

The voice in his ear said: "Can't you hear me?"

"Yes, yes. I hear you. Very well. I'll come over after the Bureau meeting." And he hung up.

He looked her straight in the eyes and, gripping the edge of the oak table, he said: "I don't think I'll be able to come and see you any more." He saw her thick eyelashes sweep upward at his words. Her pencil paused in its flight over the page and then lay motionless on the open pad.

"Why not?"

"It's very hard for me to find the time. You know yourself we're not having it so easy just now. I'm sorry, but I'm afraid we'll have to call it off...."

He was conscious that the last few words sounded none too firm.

"What are you beating about the bush for?" he raged inwardly. "You haven't the courage to strike out with both fists."

Aloud he went on: "Besides, I've been wanting to tell you for some time — I have difficulty in grasping your explanations. When we studied with Segal what I learned stayed in my head somehow, but with you it doesn't. I've always had to go to Tokarev after our lessons and get him to explain things properly. It's my fault — my noodle just can't take it. You'll have to find some pupil with a bit more brains."

He turned away from her searching gaze, and, deliberately burning all his bridges, added doggedly: "So you see it would just be a waste of time for us to continue."

Then he got up, moved the chair aside carefully with his foot and looked at the bowed head and the face that turned pale in the light of the lamp. He put on his cap.

"Well, good-bye, Comrade Rita. Sorry I've wasted so much of your time. I ought to have told you long before this. That's where I'm to blame."

Rita mechanically gave him her hand, but she was too stunned by his sudden coldness to say more than a few words.

"I don't blame you, Pavel. If I haven't succeeded in finding some way of making things clear to you I deserve this."

Pavel walked heavily to the door. He closed it after him softly. Downstairs he paused for a moment — it was not too late to go back and explain.... But what was the use? For what? To hear her scornful response and find himself outside again? No.

Graveyards of dilapidated railway carriages and abandoned engines grew on the sidings. The wind whirled and scattered the dry sawdust in the deserted woodyards.

And all around the town in the forest thickets and deep ravines lurked Orlik's band. By day they lay low in surrounding hamlets or in wooded tracts, but at night they crept out onto the railway tracks, tore them up ruthlessly and, their evil work done, crawled back again into their lair.

And many an iron steed went crashing down the railway embankment. Boxcars were smashed to smithereens, sleepy humans were flattened like pancakes beneath the wreckage, and precious grain mingled with blood and earth.

The band would swoop down suddenly on some small town scattering the frightened, clucking hens in all directions. A few shots would be fired at random. Outside the building of the Volost Soviet there would be a brief crackle of rifle fire, like the sound of bracken underfoot, and the bandits would dash about the village on their well-fed horses cutting down everyone who crossed their path. They hacked at their victims as calmly as if they were splitting logs. Rarely did they shoot, for bullets were scarce.

The band would be gone as swiftly as it had come. It had its eyes and ears everywhere. Those eyes saw through the walls of the small white building that housed the Volost Soviet, for invisible threads led from the priest's house and the kulaks' cottages to the forest thickets. Cases of ammunition, chunks of fresh pork, bottles of bluish raw spirit went the same way, also news that was whispered into the ears of the lesser atamans and then passed on by devious routes to Orlik himself.

Though it consisted of no more than two or three hundred cutthroats, the band had so far eluded capture. It would split up into several small units and operate in two or three districts simultaneously. It was impossible to catch all of them. Last night's bandit would next day appear as a peaceful peasant pottering in his garden, feeding his horse or standing at his gate puffing smugly at his pipe and watching the cavalry patrols ride by with a sly look in his eyes.

Alexander Puzyrevsky with his regiment chased the bandits up and down the three districts with dogged persistence. Occasionally he did succeed in treading on their tail; a month later Orlik was obliged to withdraw his gangs from two of the districts, and now he was hemmed in on a narrow strip of territory.

Life in the town jogged along at its customary pace. Noisy crowds swarmed its five markets. Two impulses dominated the milling throngs — to grab as much as possible, and to give as little as possible. This environment offered unlimited scope for the energy and abilities of all manner of sharks and swindlers. Hundreds of slippery individuals with eyes that expressed everything but honesty snooped about among the crowds. All the scum of the town gathered here like flies on a dunghill, moved by a single purpose: to hoodwink the gullible. The few trains that came this way spewed out gobs of sack-laden people who made at once for the markets.

At night the market places were deserted, and the dark rows of booths and stalls looked sinister and menacing.

It was the bold man who would venture after dark into this desolate quarter where danger lurked behind every stall. And often by night a shot would ring out like the clang of a hammer on iron, and some throat would choke on its own blood. And by the time the handful of militiamen from the nearest beats would reach the spot (they did not venture out alone) they would find nothing but the mutilated corpse. The killers had taken to their heels and the commotion had swept away the few nocturnal habitués of the market square like a gust of wind.

Opposite the market place was the "Orion" cinema. The street and pavement were flooded with electric light and people crowded around the entrance. Inside the hall the movie projector clicked, flashing melodramatic love scenes onto the screen; now and then the film snapped and the operator stopped the projector amid roars of disapproval from the audience.

In the centre of the town and on the outskirts life appeared to be taking its usual course. Even in the Gubernia Committee of the Party, the nerve centre of revolutionary authority, everything was quiet. But this was merely an outward calm.

A storm was brewing in the town. Many of those who came there from various directions, with their army rifles plainly visible under their long peasant overcoats, were aware of its coming. So did those who under the guise of food speculators arrived on the roofs of trains, but instead of carrying their sacks to the market took them to carefully memorised addresses.

These knew. But the workers' districts, and even Bolsheviks, had no inkling of the approaching storm.

Only five Bolsheviks in town knew what was being plotted.

Closely co-operating with foreign missions in Warsaw, the remnants of Petlyura's bands which the Red Army had driven into White Poland were preparing to take part in the uprising. A raiding force was being formed of what remained of Petlyura's regiments.

The central committee of the insurgents had an organisation in Shepetovka; it consisted of forty-seven members, most of them former active counter-revolutionaries whom the local Cheka had trustingly left at liberty.

Father Vasili, Ensign Vinnik, and Kuzmenko, a Petlyura officer, were the leaders of the organisation. The priest's daughters, Vinnik's father and brother, and a man named Samotinya who had wormed his way into the office of the Executive Committee did the spying.

The plan was to attack the frontier Special Department by night with hand grenades, release the prisoners and, if possible, seize the railway station.

Meanwhile officers were being secretly concentrated in the city which was to be the hub of the uprising, and bandit gangs were being moved into the neighbouring forests. From here, contact with Rumania and with Petlyura himself was maintained through trusted agents.

Fyodor Zhukhrai, in his office at the Special Department, had not slept for six nights. He was one of the five Bolsheviks who were aware of what was brewing. The ex-sailor was now experiencing the sensation of the big game hunter who has tracked down his prey and is now waiting for the beast to spring.

He dare not shout or raise the alarm. The bloodthirsty monster must be slain. Then and then only would it be possible to work in peace, without having to glance fearfully behind every bush. The beast must not be scared away. In a life and death struggle such as this it is endurance and firmness that win the day.

The crucial moment was at hand. Somewhere in the town amidst the labyrinth of conspiratorial hide-outs the time had been set: tomorrow night.

But the five Bolsheviks who knew decided to strike first. The time was tonight.

The same evening an armoured train slid quietly out of the railway yards and the massive gates closed as quietly behind it.

Coded telegrams flew over the wires and in response to their urgent summons the alert and watchful men to whom the republic's security had been entrusted took immediate steps to stamp out the hornet's nests.

Akim telephoned to Zharky.

"Cell meetings in order? Good. Come over here at once for a conference and bring the Party District Committee Secretary with you. The fuel problem is worse than we thought. We'll discuss the details when you get here." Akim spoke in a firm, hurried voice.

"This firewood business is driving us all potty," Zharky growled back into the receiver.

Litke drove the two secretaries over to headquarters at breakneck speed. As they ascended the stairs to the first floor they saw at once that they had not been summoned here to talk about firewood.

On the office manager's desk stood a machine-gun and gunners from the Special Task Unit were busy beside it. Silent guards from the town's Party and Komsomol organisations stood in the corridors. Behind the wide doors of the Secretary's office an emergency session of the Bureau of the Party Gubernia Committee was drawing to a close.

Through a fanlight giving onto the street wires led to two field telephones. There was a subdued hum of conversation in the room. Akim, Rita and Mikhailo were there, Rita in a Red Army helmet, khaki skirt, leather jacket with a heavy Mauser strapped on to it — the uniform she used to wear at the front when she had been Company Political Instructor.

"What's all this about?" Zharky asked her in surprise.

"Alert drill, Vanya. We're going to your district right away. We are to meet at the Fifth Infantry School. The Komsomols are going there straight from their cell meetings. The main thing is to get there without attracting attention."

The grounds of the old military school with its giant old oaks, its stagnant pond overgrown with burdock and nettles and its broad unswept paths were wrapped in silence.

In the centre of the grounds behind a high white wall stood the school building, now the premises of the Fifth Infantry School for Red Army commanders. It was late at night. The upper floor of the building was dark. Outwardly all was serene, and the chance passerby would have thought that the school's inmates were asleep. Why, then, were the iron gates open, and what were those two dark shapes like monster toads standing by the entrance? The people who gathered here from all parts of the railway district knew that the school's inmates could not be asleep, once a night alert had been given. They were coming straight from their Komsomol and Party cell meetings where the brief announcement had been made; they came quietly, individually, in pairs, never more than three together, and each of them carried the Communist Party or Komsomol membership card, without which no one could pass through the iron gates.

The assembly hall, where a large crowd had already gathered, was flooded with light. The windows were heavily curtained with thick canvas tenting. The Bolsheviks who had been summoned here stood about calmly smoking their homemade cigarettes and cracking jokes about the precautions taken for a drill. No one felt this was a real alert; it was being done to maintain discipline in the special task detachments. The seasoned soldier, however, recognised the signs of a genuine alert as soon as he entered the schoolyard. Far too much caution was being displayed. Platoons of students were lining up outside to whispered commands. Machine-guns were being carried quietly into the yard and not a chink of light showed in any of the windows of the building.

"Something serious in the wind, Mityai?" Pavel Korchagin inquired of Dubava, who was sitting on a windowsill next to a girl Pavel remembered seeing a couple of days before at Zharky's place.

Dubava clapped Pavel good-humouredly on the shoulder.

"Getting cold feet, eh? Never mind, we'll teach you fellows how to fight. You don't know each other, do you?" he nodded toward the girl. "This is Anna, don't know her second name, she's in charge of the agitation and propaganda centre."

The girl thus introduced regarded Korchagin with interest and pushed back a wisp of hair that had escaped from under her violet kerchief. Korchagin's eyes met hers and for a moment or two a silent contest ensued. Her sparking jet-black eyes under their sweeping lashes challenged his. Pavel shifted his gaze to Dubava. Conscious that he was blushing, he scowled.

"Which of you does the agitating?" he inquired forcing a smile.

At that moment there was a stir in the hall. A Company Commander climbed onto a chair and shouted: "Members of the first company, line up. Hurry, Comrades, hurry!"

Zhukhrai entered with the Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee and Akim. They had just arrived. The hall was now filled from end to end with people lined up in formation.

The Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee stepped onto the mounting of a training machine-gun and raised his hand.

"Comrades," he said, "you have been summoned here on an extremely serious and urgent matter. What I am going to tell you now could not have been told even yesterday for security reasons. Tomorrow night a counterrevolutionary uprising is scheduled to break out in this and other towns of the Ukraine. The town is full of Whiteguard officers. Bandit units have been concentrated all around the town. Part of the conspirators have penetrated into the armoured car detachment and are working there as drivers. But the Cheka has uncovered the plot in good time and we are putting the entire Party and Komsomol organisations under arms. The first and second Communist battalions will operate together with the military school units and Cheka detachments. The military school units have already gone into action. It is now your turn, Comrades. You have fifteen minutes to get your weapons and line up. Comrade Zhukhrai will be in command of the operation. The unit commanders will take their orders from him. I need hardly stress the gravity of the situation. Tomorrow's insurrection must be averted today."

A quarter of an hour later the armed battalion was lined up in the schoolyard.

Zhukhrai ran his eye over the motionless ranks. Three paces in front of them stood two men girded with leather belts: Battalion Commander Menyailo, a foundry worker, a giant of a man from the Urals, and beside him Commissar Akim. To the left were the platoons of the first company, with the company commander and political instructor two paces in front. Behind them stood the silent ranks of the Communist battalion, three hundred strong. Fyodor gave the signal. "Time to begin."

The three hundred men marched through the deserted streets.

The city slept.

On Lvovskaya Street, opposite Dikaya, the battalion broke ranks.

Noiselessly they surrounded the buildings. Headquarters was set up on the steps of a shop.

An automobile came speeding down Lvovskaya Street from the direction of the centre, its headlights cutting a bright path before it. It pulled up sharply in front of the battalion command post.

Hugo Litke had brought his father this time. The commandant sprang out of the car, throwing a few clipped Lettish sentences over his shoulder to his son. The car leapt forward and disappeared in a flash around the bend of the road. Litke, his hands gripping the steering wheel as though part of it, his eyes glued to the road, drove like a devil.

Yes, there was need of Litke's wild driving tonight. He was hardly likely to get two nights in the guardhouse for speeding now!

And Hugo flew down the streets like a meteor.

Zhukhrai, whom young Litke drove from one end of town to the other in the twinkling of an eye, remarked approvingly: "If you don't knock anyone down tonight you'll get a gold watch tomorrow."

Hugo was jubilant. "I thought I'd get ten days in jail for that corner...."

The first blows were struck at the conspirators' headquarters. Before long groups of prisoners and batches of documents were being delivered to the Special Department.

In house No. 11 on Dikaya Street lived one Zurbert who, according to information in possession of the Cheka, had played no small part in the Whiteguard plot. The lists of the officers' units that were to operate in the Podol area were in his keeping.

Litke senior himself came to Dikaya Street to make the arrest. The windows of Zurbert's apartment looked out onto a garden which was separated from a former nunnery by a high wall. Zurbert was not at home. The neighbours said that he had not been seen at all that day. A search was made and, the lists of names and addresses were found, together with a case of hand grenades. Litke, having ordered an ambush to be set, lingered for a moment in the room to examine the papers.

The young military school student on sentry duty in the garden below could see the lighted window from the corner of the garden where he was stationed. It was a little frightening to stand there alone in the dark. He had been told to keep an eye on the wall. The comforting light seemed very far from his post. And to make matters worse, the moon kept darting behind the clouds. In the night the bushes seemed to be invested with a sinister life of their own. The young soldier stabbed at the darkness around him with his bayonet. Nothingness.

"Why did they put me here? No one could climb that wall anyhow, it's far too high. I think I'll go over to the window and peep in." Glancing up again at the wall, he emerged from his dank, fungus-smelling corner. As he came up to the window, Litke picked up the papers from the table. At that moment a shadow appeared on top of the wall whence both the sentry by the window and the man inside the room were clearly visible. With catlike agility the shadow swung itself onto a tree and dropped down to the ground. Stealthily it crept up to its victim. A single blow and the sentry was sprawled on the ground with a naval dirk driven up to the hilt into his neck.

A shot rang out in the garden galvanising the men surrounding the block. Six of them ran toward the house, their steps ringing loudly in the night. Litke sat slumped forward over the table, the blood pouring from the wound in his head. He was dead. The window pane was shattered. But the assassin had not had time to seize the documents.

Several more shots were heard behind the nunnery wall. The murderer had climbed over the wall to the street and was now shooting his way out, trying to escape by way of the Lukyanov vacant lot. But a bullet cut short his flight.

All night long the searches continued. Hundreds of people not registered in the books of the house committees and found in possession of suspicious documents and carrying weapons were dispatched to the Cheka, where a commission was at work screening the suspects.

Here and there the conspirators fought back. During the search in a house on Zhilyanskaya Street Anton Lebedev was killed by a shot fired point-blank.

The Solomenka battalion lost five men that night, and the Cheka lost Jan Litke, that staunch Bolshevik and faithful guardian of the republic.

But the Whiteguard uprising was nipped in the bud.

That same night Father Vasili with his daughters and the rest of the gang were arrested in Shepetovka.

The tension relaxed. But soon a new enemy threatened the town: paralysis of the railways, which meant starvation and cold in the coming winter.

Everything now depended on grain and firewood.