COMMLIN - Literature

PART TWO

Chapter Two

Fyodor took his short-stemmed pipe out of his mouth and poked reflectively at the ash in the bowl with a cautious finger; the pipe was out.

A dense cloud of grey smoke from a dozen cigarettes hovered below the ceiling and over the chair where sat the Chairman of the Gubernia Executive Committee. From the corners of the room the faces of the people seated around the table were only dimly visible through the haze.

Tokarev, sitting next to the Chairman, leaned forward and plucked irritably at his sparse beard, glancing now and again out of the corner of his eye at a short, bald-headed man whose high-pitched voice went on endlessly stringing out phrases that were as empty and meaningless as a sucked egg.

Akim caught the look in the old worker's eye and was reminded of a fighting cock back in his childhood days in the village who had had the same wicked look in his eye just before pouncing on his adversary.

The Gubernia Party Committee had been in conference for more than an hour. The bald man was Chairman of the Railway Firewood Committee.

Leafing with nimble fingers through the heap of papers before him, the bald man rattled on: ".. .Under these circumstances it is clearly impossible to carry out the decision of the Gubernia Committee and the railway management. I repeat, even a month from now we shall not be able to give more than four hundred cubic metres of firewood. As for the one hundred and eighty thousand cubic metres required, well, that's sheer..." the speaker fumbled for the right word, "er... sheer utopia!" he wound up and his small mouth pursed itself up into an expression of injury.

There was a long silence.

Fyodor tapped his pipe with his fingernail and knocked out the ashes. It was Tokarev who finally broke the silence.

"There's no use wasting our breath," he began in his rumbling bass. "The Railway Firewood Committee hasn't any firewood, never had any, and doesn't expect any in the future.... Right?"

The bald man shrugged a shoulder.

"Excuse me, Comrade, we did stock up firewood, but the shortage of road transport...." He swallowed, wiped his polished pate with a checkered handkerchief; he made several fruitless attempts to stuff the handkerchief back into his pocket, and finally shoved it nervously under his portfolio.

"What have you done about delivering the wood? After all, a good many days have passed since the leading specialists mixed up in the conspiracy were arrested," Denekko observed from his corner.

The bald man turned to him. "I wrote the railway administration three times stating that unless we had the proper transport facilities it would be impossible...."

Tokarev stopped him. "We've heard that already," he said coldly, eyeing the bald man with hostility. "Do you take us for a pack of fools?"

The bald man felt a chill run down his spine at these words.

"I cannot answer for the actions of counter-revolutionaries," he replied in a low voice.

"But you knew, didn't you, that the timber was being felled a long distance from the railway line?"

"I heard about it, but I could not bring the attention of my superiors to irregularities on a sector outside my province."

"How many men have you on the job?" the chairman of the trade union council demanded.

"About two hundred," the bald man replied.

"That makes a cubic metre a year for every parasite!" fumed Tokarev.

"The Railway Firewood Committee has been allotted special rations, food the workers ought to be getting, and look what you're doing? What happened to those two carriages of flour you received for the workers?" the trade union chairman persisted.

Similar pointed questions rained down on the bald man from all sides and he answered them in the harassed manner of a man trying to ward off annoying creditors. He twisted and turned like an eel to avoid direct answers, but his eyes darted nervously about him. He sensed danger and his cowardly soul craved but one thing: to get away from here as quickly as possible and slink off to his cosy nest, to his supper and his still youthful wife who was probably cosily whiling away the time with a Paul de Kock novel.

Lending an attentive ear to the bald man's replies, Fyodor scribbled in his notebook: "I believe this man ought to be checked up on properly. This is more than mere incompetence. I know one or two things about him.... Stop the discussion and let him go so we can get down to business."

The Chairman read the note and nodded to Fyodor.

Zhukhrai rose and went out into the corridor to make a telephone call. When he returned the Chairman was reading the resolution:

". . .to remove the management of the Railway Firewood Committee for downright sabotage, the matter of the timber workings to be turned over to the investigation authorities."

The bald man had expected worse. True, to be removed from his post for downright sabotage would raise the question of his reliability in general, but that was a mere trifle. As for the Boyarka business, he was not worried, that was not his province after all. "A close shave, though," he said to himself, "I thought they had really dug up something. ..."

Now almost reassured, he remarked as he put his papers back into his portfolio: "Of course, I am a non-Party specialist and you are at liberty to distrust me. But my conscience is clear. If I have failed to do what was required of me that was because it was impossible."

No one made any comment. The bald man went out, hurried downstairs, and opened the street door with a feeling of intense relief.

"Your name, please?" a man in an army coat accosted him.

With a sinking heart the baldhead stammered: "Cher. . . vinsky...."

Upstairs as soon as the outsider was gone, thirteen heads bent closer over the large conference table.

"See here," Zhukhrai's finger jabbed the unfolded map. "That's Boyarka station. The timber felling is six versts away. There are two hundred and ten thousand cubic metres of wood stacked up at this point: a whole army of men worked hard for eight months to pile up all that wood, and what's the result? Treachery. The railway and the town are without firewood. To haul that timber six versts to the station would take five thousand carts no less than one month, and that only if they made two trips a day. The nearest village is fifteen versts away. What's more, Orlik and his band are prowling about in those parts. You realise what this means? Look, according to the plan the felling was to have been started right here and continued in the direction of the station, and those scoundrels carried it right into the depths of the forest. The purpose was to make sure we would not be able to haul the firewood to the railway line. And they weren't far wrong — we can't even get a hundred carts for the job. It's a foul blow they've struck us. The uprising was no more serious than this."

Zhukhrai's clenched fist dropped heavily onto the waxed paper of the map. Each of the thirteen clearly visualised the grimmer aspects of the situation which Zhukhrai had omitted to mention. Winter was in the offing. They saw hospitals, schools, offices and hundreds of thousands of people caught in the icy grip of the frost; the railway stations swarming with people and only one train a week to handle the traffic.

There was deep silence as each man pondered the situation.

At length Fyodor relaxed his fist.

"There is one way out, Comrades," he said.

"We must build a seven-verst narrow-gauge line from the station to the timber tract in three months. The first section leading to the beginning of the tract must be ready in six weeks. I've been working on this for the past week. We'll need," Zhukhrai's voice cracked in his dry throat, "three hundred and fifty workers and two engineers. There is enough rails and seven engines at Pushcha-Voditsa. The Komsomols dug them up in the warehouses. There was a project to lay a narrow-gauge line from Pushcha-Voditsa to the town before the war. The trouble is there are no accommodations in Boyarka for the workers, the place is in ruins. We'll have to send the men in small groups for a fortnight at a time, they won't be able to hold out any longer than that. Shall we send the Komsomols, Akim?" And without waiting for an answer, he went on: "The Komsomol will rush as many of its members to the spot as possible. There's the Solomenka organisation to begin with, and some from the town. The-task is hard, very hard, but if the youngsters are told what is at stake I'm certain they'll do it."

The chief of the railway shook his head dubiously.

"I'm afraid it's no use. To lay seven versts of track in the woods under such conditions, with the autumn rains due and the frosts coming..." he began wearily. But Zhukhrai cut him short.

"You ought to have paid more attention to the firewood problem, Andrei Vasilievich. That line has got to be built and we're going to build it. We're not going to fold our hands and freeze to death, are we?"

The last crates of tools were loaded onto the train. The train crew took their places. A fine drizzle was falling. Crystal raindrops rolled down Rita's glistening leather jacket.

Rita shook hands warmly with Tokarev. "We wish you luck," she said softly.

The old man regarded her affectionately from beneath his bushy grey eyebrows.

"Yes, they've given us a peck of trouble, blast 'em," he growled in answer to his own thoughts. "You here had better look to things, so that if there's any hitch over there you can put a bit of pressure on where it's needed. These good-for-nothings here can't do anything without a lot of red tape. Well, time I was getting aboard, daughter."

The old man buttoned up his jacket. At the last moment Rita inquired casually: "Isn't Korchagin going along? I didn't notice him among the boys."

"No, he and the job superintendent went out there yesterday by handcar to prepare for our coming."

At that moment Zharky, Dubava, and Anna Borhart with her jacket thrown carelessly across her shoulders and a cigarette between her slender fingers, came hurrying down the platform toward them.

Rita had time to ask Tokarev one more question before the others joined them.

"How are your studies with Korchagin getting along?"

The old man looked at her in surprise.

"What studies? The lad's under your wing, isn't he? He's told me a lot about you. Thinks the world of you."

Rita looked sceptical. "Are you quite sure, Comrade Tokarev? Didn't he always go to you for a proper explanation after his lessons with me?"

The old man burst out laughing. "To me? Why, I never saw hide or hair of him."

The engine shrieked. Klavicek shouted from one of the carriages:

"Hey, Comrade Ustinovich, give us our daddy back! What'd we do without him?"

The Czech was about to say something else, but catching sight of the three late-comers he checked himself. He noticed the anxious look in Anna's eyes, caught with a pang her parting smile to Dubava and turned quickly away from the window.

The autumn rain lashed the face. Low clouds, leaden-hued and swollen with moisture, crawled over the earth. Late autumn had stripped the woods bare; and the old hornbeams looked gaunt and downcast, their wrinkled trunks hidden under the brown moss. Remorseless autumn had robbed them of their luxuriant garments, and they stood there naked and pitiful.

The little station building huddled forlornly in the midst of the forest. A strip of freshly dug earth ran from the stone freight platform into the woods. Around this strip men swarmed like ants.

The clayey mud squelched unpleasantly underfoot. There was a ringing of crowbars and a grating of spades on stone over by the embankment where the men were furiously digging.

The rain came down as if through a fine sieve and the chill drops penetrated the men's clothing. The rain threatened to wash away what their labour had accomplished, for the clay slid down the embankment in a soggy mass.

Soaked to the skin, their clothing chill and sodden, the men worked on until long after dark.

And with every day the strip of upturned earth penetrated farther and farther into the forest.

Not far from the station loomed the grim skeleton of what had once been a brick building. Everything that could be removed bodily, torn out or blasted loose had long since been carried off by marauders. There were gaping holes in place of windows and doors; black gashes where stove doors had once been. Through the holes in the tattered roof the rafters showed like the ribs of a skeleton.

Only the concrete floor in the four large rooms remained intact. At night four hundred men slept on this floor in their damp, mud-caked clothing. Muddy water streamed from their clothes when they wrung them out at the doorway. And the men heaped bitter curses on the rain and the boggy soil. They lay in compact rows on the concrete floor with its thin covering of straw, huddling together for warmth. The steam rose from their clothing but it did not dry. And the rain seeped through the sacks that were nailed over the empty window frames and trickled down onto the floor. It drummed loudly on the remnants of sheet metal roofing, and the wind whistled through the great cracks in the door.

In the morning they drank tea in the tumbledown barracks that served for a kitchen, and went off to their work. Dinner, day after day with sickening monotony, consisted of plain boiled lentils, and there was a daily allowance of a pound and a half of bread as black as coal.

That was all the town could provide. The job superintendent, Valerian Nikodimovich Patoshkin, a tall spare old man with two deep lines at his mouth, and technician Vakulenko, a thickset man with a coarse-featured face and a fleshy nose, had put up at the station master's house.

Tokarev shared the tiny room occupied by the station Cheka agent, a small, volatile man named Kholyava.

The men endured the hardships with dogged fortitude, and the railway embankment reached farther into the forest from day to day.

True, there had been some desertions: at first nine, and a few days later, another five.

The first major calamity occurred a week after the work started, when the bread supply failed to arrive with the night train.

Dubava woke Tokarev and told him the news. The secretary of the Party group swung his hairy legs over the side of the bed and scratched himself furiously under the armpit.

"The fun's beginning!" he growled and began hastily to dress.

Kholyava waddled in on his short legs.

"Run down to the telephone and call the Special Department," Tokarev instructed him, and turning to Dubava added, "and not a word to anybody about the bread, mind."

After berating the railway telephone operators for a full half hour, the irrepressible Kholyava succeeded in getting Zhukhrai, the assistant chief of the Special Department, on the line, while Tokarev stood by fidgeting with impatience.

"What! Bread not delivered? I'll find out who's responsible for that!" Zhukhrai's voice coming over the wire had an ominous ring.

"What are we going to give the men to eat tomorrow?" Tokarev shouted back angrily.

There was a long pause; Zhukhrai was evidently considering some plan of action. "You'll get the bread tonight," he said at last. "I'll send young Litke with the car. He knows the way. You'll have the bread by morning."

At dawn a mud-spattered car loaded with sacks of bread drove up to the station. Litke, his face white and strained after a sleepless night at the wheel, climbed out wearily.

Work on the railway line became a struggle against increasing odds. The railway administration announced that there were no sleepers to be had. The town authorities could find no means of shipping the rails and engines to the railway job, and the engines themselves turned out to be in need of substantial repairs. No workers were forthcoming to replace the first batch who had done their share and were now so completely worn out that there could be no question of detaining them.

The leading Party members met in the tumbledown shed dimly lit by a wick lamp and sat up late into the night discussing the situation.

The following morning Tokarev, Dubava and Klavicek went to town, taking six men with them to repair the engines and speed up the shipment of the rails. Klavicek, who was a baker by trade, was sent as inspector to the supply department, while the rest went on to Pushcha-Voditsa.

The rain poured down without ceasing.

Pavel Korchagin pulled his foot out of the sticky slime with an effort. A sharp sensation of cold told him that the worn sole of his boot had finally parted from the uppers. His torn boots had been a source of keen discomfort to Pavel ever since he had come to the job. They were never dry and the mud that filtered in squelched when he walked. Now one sole was gone altogether and the icy mire cut into his bare foot. Pavel pulled the sole out of the mud and regarded it with despair and broke the vow he had given himself not to swear. He could not go on working with one foot exposed, so he hobbled back to the barracks, sat down beside the field kitchen, took off his muddy footcloth and stretched out his numb foot to the fire.

Odarka, the lineman's wife who worked as cook's helper, was busy cutting up beetroots at the kitchen table. A woman of generous proportions, still youthful, with broad almost masculine shoulders, an ample bosom and massive hips, she wielded the kitchen knife with vigour and the mountain of sliced vegetables grew rapidly under her nimble fingers.

Odarka threw a careless glance at Pavel and snapped at him:

"If it's dinner you're hankering after you're a bit early, my lad. Ought to be ashamed of yourself sneaking away from work like that! Take your feet off that stove. This is a kitchen, not a bathhouse!"

The cook came in at that point.

"My blasted boot has gone to pieces," Pavel said, explaining his untimely presence in the kitchen.

The elderly cook looked at the battered boot and nodding toward Odarka he said: "Her husband might be able to do something with it, he's a bit of a cobbler. Better see to it or you'll be in a bad way. You can't get along without boots."

When she heard this, Odarka took another look at Pavel.

"I took you for a loafer," she admitted.

Pavel smiled to show that there were no hard feelings. Odarka examined the boot with the eye of an expert.

"There's no use trying to patch it," she concluded.

"But I'll tell you what I can do. I'll bring you an old galosh we've got lying around at home and you can wear it on top of the boot. You can't go around like that, you'll kill yourself! The frosts will start any day now!"

And Odarka, now all sympathy, laid down her knife and hurried out, returning shortly with a deep galosh and a strip of stout linen.

As he wrapped his foot, now warm and dry, in the thick linen and put it into the galosh, Pavel rewarded Odarka with a grateful look.

Tokarev came back from town fuming. He called a meeting of the leading Communists in Kholyava's room and told them the unpleasant news.

"Nothing but obstacles all along the line. Wherever you go the wheels seem to be turning but they don't get anywhere. Far too many of those White rats about, and it looks as if there'll be enough to last our lifetime anyway. I tell you, boys, things look bad. There are no replacements for us yet and no one knows how many there will be. The frosts are due any day now, and we must get through the marsh before then at all costs, because when the ground freezes it'll be too late. So while they're shaking up those fellows in town who're making a mess of things, we here have to double our speed. That line has got to be built and we're going to build it if we die doing it. Otherwise it isn't Bolsheviks we'll be but jelly-fish." There was a steely note in Tokarev's hoarse bass voice, and his eyes under their bushy brows had a stubborn gleam.

"We'll call a closed meeting today and pass on the news to our Party members and tomorrow we'll all get down to work. In the morning we'll let the non-Party fellows go; the rest of us will stay. Here's the Gubernia Committee decision," he said, handing Pankratov a folded sheet of paper.

Pavel Korchagin, peering over Pankratov's shoulder, read: "In view of the emergency all members of the Komsomol are to remain on the job and are not to be relieved until the first consignment of firewood is forthcoming. Signed R. Ustinovich, on behalf of the Secretary of the Gubernia Committee."

The kitchen barracks was packed. One hundred and twenty men had squeezed themselves into its narrow confines. They stood against the walls, climbed on the tables and some were even perched on top of the field kitchen.

Pankratov opened the meeting. Then Tokarev made a brief speech winding up with an announcement that had the effect of a bombshell:

"The Communists and Komsomols will not leave the job tomorrow."

The old man accompanied his statement with a gesture that stressed the finality of the "decision. It swept away all cherished hopes of returning to town, going home, getting away from this hole.

A roar of angry voices drowned out everything else for a few moments. The swaying bodies caused the feeble oil light to flicker fitfully. In the semidarkness the commotion increased. They wanted to go "home"; they protested indignantly that they had had as much as they could stand. Some received the news in silence. And only one man spoke of deserting.

"To hell with it all!" he shouted angrily from his corner, loosing an ugly stream of invective. "I'm not going to stay here another day. It's all right to do hard labour if you've committed a crime. But what have we done? We're fools to stand for it. We've had two weeks of it, and that's enough. Let those who made the decision come out and do the work themselves. Maybe some folks like poking around in this muck, but I've only one life to live. I'm leaving tomorrow."

The voice came from behind Okunev and he lit a match to see who it was. For an instant the speaker's rage-distorted face and open mouth were snatched out of the darkness by the match's flame. But that instant was enough for Okunev to recognise the son of a gubernia food commissariat bookkeeper.

"Checking up, eh?" he snarled. "Well, I'm not afraid, I'm no thief."

The match flickered out. Pankratov rose and drew himself up to his full height.

"What kind of talk is that? Who dares to compare a Party task to a hard-labour sentence?" he thundered, running his eyes menacingly over the front rows. "No, Comrades, there's no going to town for us, our place is here. If we clear out now folks will freeze to death. The sooner we finish the job the sooner we get back home. Running away like that whiner back there suggests doesn't fit in with our ideas or our discipline."

Pankratov, a stevedore, was not fond of long speeches but even this brief statement was interrupted by the same irate voice.

"The non-Party fellows are leaving, aren't they?"

"Yes."

A lad in a short overcoat came elbowing his way to the front. A Komsomol card flew up, struck against Pankratov's chest, dropped onto the table and stood on edge.

"There, take your card. I'm not going to risk my health for a bit of cardboard!"

His last words were drowned out by a roar of angry voices:

"What do you think you're throwing around!"

"Treacherous bastard!"

"Got into the Komsomol because he thought he'd have it easy."

"Chuck him out!"

"Let me get at the louse!"

The deserter, his head lowered, made his way to the exit. They let him pass, shrinking away from him as from a leper. The door closed with a creak behind him.

Pankratov picked up the discarded membership card and held it to the flame of the oil lamp.

The cardboard caught alight and curled up as it burned.

A shot echoed in the forest. A horseman turned from the tumbledown barracks and dived into the darkness of the forest. A moment later men came pouring out of the barracks and school building. Someone discovered a piece of plywood that had been stuck into the door. A match flared up and shielding the unsteady flame from the wind they read the scrawled message: "Clear out of here and go back where you came from. If you don't, we will shoot every one of you. I give you till tomorrow night to get out. Ataman Chesnok."

Chesnok belonged to Orlik's band.

An open diary lies on the table in Rita's room.

December 2

"We had our first snow this morning. The frost is severe. I met Vyacheslav Olshinsky on the stairs and we walked down the street together.

" 'I always enjoy the first snowfall,' he said. 'Particularly when it is frosty like this. Lovely, isn't it?'

"But I was thinking of Boyarka and I told him that the frost and snow do not gladden me at all. On the contrary they depress me. And I told him why.

" 'That is a purely subjective reaction,' he said. 'If one argues on that premise all merriment or any manifestation of joy in wartime, for example, would have to be banned. But life is not like that. The tragedy is confined to the strip of front line where the battle is being fought. There life is overshadowed by the proximity of death. Yet even there people laugh. And away from the front, life goes on as always: people laugh, weep, suffer, rejoice, love, seek amusement, entertainment, excitement.'

"It was difficult to detect any shade of irony in Olshinsky's words. Olshinsky is a representative of the People's Commissariat of Foreign Affairs. He has been in the Party since 1917. He dresses well, is always cleanly shaven with a faint scent of perfume about him. He lives in our house, in Segal's apartment. Sometimes he drops in to see me in the evenings. He is very interesting to talk to, he knows a lot about Europe, lived for many years in Paris. But I doubt whether he and I could ever be good friends. That is because for him I am primarily a woman; the fact that I am his Party comrade is a secondary consideration. True, he does not attempt to disguise his sentiments and opinions on this score, he has the courage of his convictions and there is nothing coarse about his attentions. He has the knack of investing them with a sort of beauty. Yet I do not like him.

"The gruff simplicity of Zhukhrai is far more to my taste than all Olshinsky's polished European manners.

"News from Boyarka comes in the form of brief reports. Each day another two hundred yards laid. They are laying the sleepers straight on the frozen earth, hewing out shallow beds for them. There are only two hundred and forty men on the job. Half of the replacements deserted. The conditions there are truly frightful. I can't imagine how they will be able to carry on in the frost. Dubava has been gone a week now. They were only able to repair five of the eight engines at Pushcha-Voditsa, there were not enough parts for the others.

"Dmitri has had criminal charges laid against him by the tramcar authorities. He and his brigade held up all the flatcars belonging to the tram system running to town from Pushcha-Voditsa, cleared off the passengers and loaded the cars with rails for the Boyarka line. They brought 19 carloads of rails along the tram tracks to the railway station in town. The tram crews were only too glad to help.

"The Solomenka Komsomols still in town worked all night loading the rails onto railway cars and Dmitri and his brigade went off with them to Boyarka.

"Akim refused to have Dubava's action taken up at the Komsomol Bureau. Dmitri has told us about the outrageous bureaucracy and red tape in the tramcar administration. They flatly refused to give more than two cars for the job.

"Tufta, however, privately reprimanded Dubava. 'It's time to drop these partisan tactics,' he said, 'or you'll find yourself in jail before you know it. Surely you could have come to some agreement without resorting to force of arms?'

"I had never seen Dubava so furious.

" 'Why didn't you try talking to them yourself, you rotten pen-pusher?' he stormed. 'All you can do is sit here warming your chair and wagging your tongue. How do you think I could go back to Boyarka without those rails? Instead of hanging around here and getting in everybody's hair you ought to be sent out there to do some useful work. Tokarev would knock some sense into you!' Dmitri roared so loudly he could be heard all over the building.

"Tufta wrote a complaint against Dubava, but Akim asked me to leave the room and talked to him alone for about ten minutes, after which Tufta stamped out red and fuming."

December 3

"The Gubernia Committee has received another complaint, this time from the Transport Cheka. It appears that Pankratov, Okunev and several other comrades went to Motovilovka station and removed all the doors and window frames from the empty buildings. When they were loading all this onto a freight train the station Cheka man tried to arrest them. They disarmed him, emptied his revolver and returned it to him only after the train was in motion. They got away with the doors and window frames.

"Tokarev is charged by the supply department of the railway for taking twenty poods of nails from the Boyarka railway stocks. He gave the nails to the peasants in payment for their help in hauling the timber they are using for sleepers.

"I spoke to Comrade Zhukhrai about all these complaints. But he only laughed. 'We'll take care of all that,' he said.

"The situation at the railway job is very tense and now every day is precious. We have to bring pressure to bear here for every trifle. Every now and then we have to summon hinderers to the Gubernia Committee. And over at the job the boys are overriding all formalities more and more often.

"Olshinsky has brought me a little electric stove. Olga Yureneva and I warm our hands over it, but it doesn't make the room any warmer. I wonder how those men in the woods are faring this bitter cold night? Olga tells me that it is so cold in the hospital that the patients shiver under their blankets. The place is heated only once in two days.

"No, Comrade Olshinsky, a tragedy at the front is a tragedy in the rear too!"

December 4

"It snowed all night. From Boyarka they write that everything is snowbound and they have had to stop working to clear the track. Today the Gubernia Committee passed a decision that the first section of the railway, up to where the wood was being cut, is to be ready not later than January 1, 1922. When this decision reached Boyarka, Tokarev is said to have remarked: 'We'll do it, if we don't croak by then.'

"I hear nothing at all about Korchagin. I'm rather surprised that he hasn't been mixed up in something like the Pankratov 'case'. I still don't understand why he avoids me."

December 5

"Yesterday there was a bandit raid on the railway job."

The horses trod warily in the soft, yielding snow. Now and then a twig hidden under the snow would snap under a hoof and the horse would snort and shy, but a sharp rap over its laid-back ears would send it galloping after the others.

Some dozen horsemen crossed the hilly ridge beyond which lay a strip of dark earth not yet blanketed with snow. Here the riders reined in their horses. There was a faint clink as stirrup met stirrup. The leader's stallion, its coat glossy with sweat after the long run, shook itself noisily.

"There's a hell of a lot of them here," said the head rider in Ukrainian. "But we'll soon put the fear of God into 'em. The ataman said the bastards were to be chased out of here by tomorrow. They're getting too damned close to the firewood."

They rode up to the station single file, hugging the sides of the narrow-gauge line. In sight of the clearing near the old school building they slowed down to a walking pace and came to a halt behind the trees, not venturing out into the open.

A volley rent the silence of the night. A layer of snow dropped squirrel-like off the branch of a birch that gleamed like silver in the light of the moon. Gunfire flashed among the trees, bullets bored into crumbling plaster and there was a tinkling of broken glass as Pan-kratov's window panes were smashed to smithereens.

The men on the concrete floor leapt up at the shooting only to drop back again on top of one another when the lethal insects began to fly about the room.

"Where you going?" Dubava seized Pavel by the coat tail.

"Outside."

"Get down, you idiot!" Dmitri hissed. "They'll get you the moment you stick your head out."

They lay side by side next to the door. Dubava was flattened against the floor, with his revolver pointing toward the door. Pavel sat on his haunches nervously fingering the drum of his revolver. There were five rounds in it — one chamber was empty. He turned the cylinder another notch.

The shooting ceased suddenly. The silence that followed was weighted with tension.

"All those who have weapons come this way," Dubava commanded in a hoarse whisper.

Pavel opened the door cautiously. The clearing was deserted. Snowflakes were falling softly.

In the forest ten horsemen were whipping their mounts into a gallop.

The next day a trolley arrived from town. Zhukhrai and Akim alighted and were met by Tokarev and Kholyava. A machine-gun, several crates of cartridge belts and two dozen rifles were unloaded onto the platform.

They hurried over to the railway line. The tails of Fyodor's long greatcoat trailed a zigzag pattern in the snow behind him. He still walked with the clumsy rolling gait of the seaman, as if he were pacing the pitching deck of a destroyer. Long-legged Akim walked in step with Fyodor, but Tokarev had to break into a trot now and again to keep up with them.

"The bandit raid is not our worst trouble. There's a nasty rise in the ground right in the path of the line. Just our bad luck. It'll mean a lot of extra digging."

The old man stopped, turned his back to the wind and lit a cigarette, cupping his hand over the match. After blowing out a few puffs of smoke he hurried to catch up with the others. Akim had stopped to wait for him, but Zhukhrai strode on ahead.

"Do you think you'll be able to finish the line on time?" Akim asked Tokarev.

Tokarev paused a while before replying.

"Well, it's like this, son," he said at last. "Generally speaking it can't be done. But it's got to be done, so there you are."

They caught up with Fyodor and continued abreast.

"Here's how it is," Tokarev began earnestly. "Only two of us here, Patoshkin and I, know that it's impossible to build a line under these conditions, with the scanty equipment and labour power we have. But all the others, every last man of them, know that the line has got to be built at all costs. So you see that's why I said if we don't freeze to death, it'll be done. Judge for yourselves: we've been digging here for over a month, the fourth batch of replacements are due for a rest, but the main body of workers have been on the job all the time. It's only their youth that keeps them going. But half of them are badly chilled. Makes your heart bleed to look at them. These lads are worth their weight in gold. But this cursed hole will be the death of more than one of them."

The ready narrow-gauge track came to an end a kilometre from the station. Beyond that, for a stretch of about one and a half kilometres, the levelled roadbed was covered by what looked like a log palisade blown down by wind — these were the sleepers, all firmly planted in place. And beyond them, all the way to the rise, there was only a level road.

Pankratov's building crew No. 1 was working at this section. Forty men were laying ties, while a carroty-bearded peasant wearing a new pair of bast shoes was unhurriedly emptying a load of logs on the roadbed. Several more sleds were being unloaded a little farther away. Two long iron bars lay on the ground — these were used to level up the sleepers properly. Axes, crowbars and shovels were all used to tamp down the ballast.

Laying railway sleepers is slow, laborious work. The sleepers must be firmly imbedded in the earth so that the rails press evenly on each of them.

Only one man in the group knew the technique of laying sleepers. That was Talya's father, the line foreman Lagutin, a man of 54 with a pitch-black beard parted in the middle and not a grey hair in his head. He had worked at Boyarka since the beginning of the job, sharing all the hardships with the younger men and had earned the respect of the whole detachment. Although he was not a Party member, Lagutin invariably held a place of honour at all Party conferences. He was very proud of this and had given his word not to leave until the job was finished.

"How can I leave you to carry on by yourselves? Something's bound to go wrong without an experienced man to keep an eye on things. When it comes to that, I've hammered in more of these here sleepers up and down the country in my time than I can remember," he would say good-humouredly each time the question of replacements came up. And so he stayed.

Patoshkin saw that Lagutin knew his job and rarely inspected his sector. When Tokarev with Akim and Zhukhrai came over to where they were working, Pankratov, flushed and perspiring with exertion, was hewing out a hollow for a sleeper. Akim hardly recognised the young stevedore. Pankratov had lost much weight, his broad cheekbones protruded sharply in his grimy face which was sallow and sunken.

"Well, well," he said as he gave Akim a hot, damp hand, "the big chiefs have come!"

The ringing of spades ceased. Akim surveyed the pale worn faces of the men around him. Their coats and jackets lay in a careless heap on the snow.

After a brief talk with Lagutin, Tokarev took the party to the excavation site, inviting Pankratov to join them. The stevedore walked alongside Zhukhrai.

"Tell me, Pankratov, what happened at Motovilovka? Don't you think you overdid it disarming that Cheka man?" Fyodor asked the taciturn stevedore sternly.

Pankratov grinned sheepishly.

"It was all done by mutual consent," he explained. "He asked us to disarm him. He's a good lad. When we explained what it was all about, he says: 'I see your difficulty, boys, but I haven't the right to let you take those windows and doors away. We have orders from Comrade Dzerzhinsky to put a stop to the plunder of railway property. The station master here has his knife in me. He's stealing stuff, the bastard, and I'm in his way. If I let you get away with it he's bound to report me and I'll be tried by the Revolutionary Tribunal. But you can disarm me and clear off. And if the station master doesn't report the matter that will be the end of it.' So that's what we did. After all, we weren't taking those doors and windows for ourselves, were we?"

Noting the twinkle in Zhukhrai's eye, he went on: "You can punish us for it if you want to, but don't be hard on that lad, Comrade Zhukhrai."

"That's all over and done with. But see there's no more of that in the future, it's bad for discipline. We are strong enough now to smash bureaucracy in an organised way. Now let's talk about something more important." And Fyodor proceeded to inquire about the details of the bandit raid.

About four and a half kilometres from Boyarka station a group of men were digging furiously into a rise in the ground that stood in the path of the line. Seven men armed with all the weapons the detachment possessed — Kholyava's rifle and the revolvers belonging to Korchagin, Pankratov, Dubava and Khomutov — stood on guard.

Patoshkin was sitting on top of the rise jotting down figures in his notebook. He was the only engineer on the job. Vakulenko, the technician, preferring to stand trial for desertion rather than death at a bandit's hand, had fled that morning.

"It will take two weeks to clear this hill out of the way. The ground's frozen hard," Patoshkin remarked in a low voice to the gloomy Khomutov standing beside him.

"We've been given twenty-five days to finish the whole line, and you're figuring fifteen for this," Khomutov growled, chewing the tip of his moustache.

"Can't be done, I'm afraid. Of course, I've never built anything before under such conditions and with workers like these. I may be mistaken. As a matter of fact I have been mistaken twice before."

At that moment Zhukhrai, Akim and Pankratov were seen approaching the slope.

"Look, who's that down there?" cried Pyotr Trofimov, a young mechanic from the railway workshops in an old sweater torn at the elbows. He nudged Korchagin and pointed to the newcomers. The next moment Korchagin, spade in hands, was dashing down the hill. His eyes under the peak of his helmet smiled a warm greeting and Fyodor lingered over their handshake.

"Hallo there, Pavel! Hardly recognised you in this rig-out."

Pankratov laughed drily: "Rig-out isn't the word for it. Plenty of ventilation holes anyway. The deserters pinched his overcoat, Okunev gave him that jacket — they've got a commune, you know. But Pavel's all right, he's got warm blood in his veins. He'll warm himself for a week or two more on the concrete floor — the straw doesn't make much difference — and then he'll be ready for a nice pine-wood coffin," the stevedore wound up with grim humour.

Dark-browed, snub-nosed Okunev narrowed his mischievous eyes and objected: "Never mind, we'll take care of Pavel. We can vote him a job in the kitchen helping Odarka. If he isn't a fool he can get himself a bit of extra grub and snuggle up to the stove or to Odarka herself."

A roar of laughter met this remark; it was the first time they had laughed that day.

Fyodor inspected the rise, then drove out with Tokarev and Patoshkin by sled to the timber felling. When he returned, the men were still digging with dogged persistence into the hill. Fyodor noted the rapid movement of the spades, and the backs of the workers bent under the strain. Turning to Akim, he said in an undertone:

"No need of meetings. No agitation required here. You were right, Tokarev, when you said these lads are worth their weight in gold. This is where the steel is tempered."

Zhukhrai gazed at the diggers with admiration and stern, yet tender pride. Some of them only a short time back had stood before him bristling with the steel of their bayonets. That was on the night before the insurrection. And now, moved by a single impulse, they were toiling in order that the steel arteries of the railway might reach out to the precious source of warmth and life.

Politely but firmly Patoshkin showed Fyodor that it was impossible to dig through the rise in less than two weeks. Fyodor listened to his arguments with a preoccupied air, his mind clearly busy with some problem of its own.

"Stop all work on the cut and carry on farther up the line. We'll tackle that hill in a different way," he said finally.

Down at the station he spent a long time at the telephone. Kholyava, on guard outside the door, heard Fyodor's hoarse bass from within.

"Ring up the chief of staff of the Military Area and tell him in my name to transfer Puzyrevsky's regiment to the railway job at once. The bandits must be cleared out of the area without delay. Send an armoured train over with demolition men. I'll take care of the rest myself. I'll be back late. Tell Litke to be at the station with the car by midnight."

In the barracks, after a short speech by Akim, Zhukhrai took the floor and an hour fled by in comradely discussion. Fyodor told the men there could be no question of extending the January 1 time limit allotted for the completion of the job.

"From now on we are putting the work on a military footing," he said. "The Party members will form a special task company with Comrade Dubava in command. All six work teams will receive definite assignments. The remainder of the job will be divided into six equal sectors, one for each team. By January 1 all the work must be completed. The team that finishes first will be allowed to go back to town. Also, the Presidium of the Gubernia Executive Committee is asking the Government to award the Order of the Red Banner to the best worker in the team that comes out first."

The leaders of the various teams were appointed as follows: No. 1, Comrade Pankratov, No. 2, Comrade Dubava, No. 3, Comrade Khomutov, No. 4, Comrade Lagutin, No. 5, Comrade Korchagin, No. 6, Comrade Okunev.

"The chief of the job, its political and administrative leader will, as before, be Anton Nikiforovich Tokarev," Zhukhrai wound up with an oratorical flourish.

Like a flock of birds suddenly taking wing, the hand-clapping burst forth and stern faces relaxed in smiles. The warm whimsical conclusion to the speech relieved the strained attention of the meeting in a gust of laughter.

Some twenty men trooped down to the station to see Akim and Fyodor off.

As he shook hands with Korchagin, Fyodor glanced down at Pavel's snow-filled galosh.

"I'll send you a pair of boots," he said in a low voice. "You haven't frozen your feet yet, I hope?"

"They've begun to swell a bit," Pavel replied, then remembering something he had asked for a long time ago, he caught Fyodor by the arm. "Could you let me have a few cartridges for my revolver? I believe I only have three good ones left."

Zhukhrai shook his head in regret, but catching Pavel's disappointed look, he quickly unstrapped his own Mauser. "Here's a present for you."

Pavel could not believe at first that he was really getting something he had set his heart on for so long, but Zhukhrai threw the leather strap over his shoulder saying: "Take it, take it! I know you've had your eye on it for a long time. But take care you don't shoot any of our own men with it. Here are three full clips to go with it." Pavel felt the envious eyes of the others upon him. "Hey, Pavka," someone yelled, "I'll swap with you for a pair of boots and a sheepskin thrown in."

Pankratov nudged Pavel provokingly in the back.

"Come on, I'll give you a pair of felt boots for it. Anyway you'll be dead before Christmas with that galosh of yours."

With one foot on the step of the trolley for support, Zhukhrai wrote out a permit for the Mauser.

Early the next morning an armoured train clattered over the switches and pulled up at the station. The engine spouted plumes of steam as white as swansdown that vanished in the crystal-clear frosty air. Leather-clad figures emerged from the steel cars. A few hours later three demolition men from the train had planted in the earth of the hill two large black pumpkin-like objects with long fuses attached. They fired a few warning shots and the men scattered in all directions away from the now deadly hill. A match was put to the end of the fuse which flared up with a tiny phosphorescent flame.

For a while the men held their breath. One or two moments of suspense, and then the earth trembled, and a terrific force rent the hill asunder, tossing huge chunks of earth skywards. The second explosion was more powerful than the first. The thunder of it reverberated over the surrounding forest, filling it with a confusion of sound.

When the smoke and dust cleared a deep pit yawned where the hill had just stood, and the sugary snow was sprinkled with earth for dozens of paces all around.

Men with picks and shovels rushed to the cavity formed by the explosion.

After Zhukhrai's departure, a stubborn contest for the honour of being the first to finish the job commenced among the teams.

Long before dawn Korchagin rose quietly, taking care not to wake the others, and stepping cautiously on numb feet over the chilly floor made his way to the kitchen. There he heated the water for tea and went back to wake up his team.

By the time the others were up it was broad daylight.

That morning Pankratov elbowed his way through the crowded barracks to where Dubava and his group were having their breakfast.

"Hear that, Mityai?" he said heatedly. "Pavka went and got his lads up before daylight. I bet they've got a good twenty yards laid out by now. The fellows say he's got those railway repair shop boys all worked up to finish their section by the twenty-fifth. Wants to beat the rest of us hollow. But I say nothing doing!"

Dubava gave a sour smile. He could understand why the secretary of the river-port Komsomol had been touched on the raw by what the railway repair shopmen had done. As a matter of fact his friend Pavel had stolen a march on him, Dubava, as well. Without saying a word to anyone he had simply challenged the whole company.

"Friends or no friends, it's the best man who wins," Pankratov said.

Around midday Korchagin's team was hard at work when an unexpected interruption occurred. The sentry standing guard over the rifles caught sight of a group of horsemen approaching through the trees and fired a warning shot.

"To arms, lads! Bandits!" cried Pavel. He flung down his spade and rushed over to the tree where his Mauser hung.

Snatching their rifles the others dropped down straight in the snow by the edge of the line. The leading horsemen waved their caps.

"Steady there, Comrades, don't shoot!" one of them shouted.

Some fifty cavalrymen in Budyonny caps with bright red stars came riding up the road.

A unit of Puzyrevsky's regiment had come on a visit to the job. Pavel noticed that the commander's horse, a handsome grey mare with a white blaze on her forehead, had the tip of one ear missing. She pranced restlessly under her rider, and when Pavel rushed forward and seized her by the bridle, she shied away nervously.

"Why, Lyska old girl, I never thought we'd meet again! So the bullets didn't get you, my one-eared beauty."

He embraced her slender neck tenderly and stroked her quivering nostrils.

The commander stared at Pavel for a moment, then cried out in amazement: "Well, if it isn't Korchagin! You recognise the mare but you don't see your old pal Sereda. Greetings, lad!"

In the meantime back in town pressure was being exerted in all quarters to expedite the building of the line, and this was felt at once at the job. Zharky had literally stripped the Komsomol District Committee of all the male personnel and sent them out to Boyarka. Only the girls were left at Solomenka. He got the railway school to send out another batch of students.

"I'm left here with the female proletariat," he joked, reporting the results of his work to Akim. "I think I'll put Talya Lagutina in my place, hang out the sign 'Women's Department' on the door and clear out to Boyarka myself. It's awkward for me here, the only man among all these women. You ought to see the nasty looks they give me. I'm sure they're saying: 'Look, the sly beggar sent everybody off, but stays on himself.' Or something worse still. You must let me go."

But Akim merely laughed at his words.

New workers continued to arrive at Boyarka, among them sixty students from the railway school.

Zhukhrai induced the railway administration to send four passenger carriages to Boyarka to house the newcomers.

Dubava's team was released from work and sent to Pushcha-Voditsa to bring back the engines and sixty-five narrow-gauge flatcars. This assignment was to be counted as part of the work on their section.

Before leaving, Dubava advised Tokarev to recall Klavicek from town and put him in charge of one of the newly-organised work teams at Boyarka. Tokarev did so. He did not know the real reason for Dubava's request: a note from Anna which the newcomers from Solomenka had brought.

"Dmitri!" Anna wrote. "Klavicek and I have prepared a pile of books for you. We send our warmest greetings to you and all the other Boyarka shock workers. You are all wonderful! We wish you strength and energy to carry on. Yesterday the last stocks of wood were distributed. Klavicek asks me to send you his greetings. He is wonderful. He bakes all the bread for Boyarka, sifts the flour and kneads the dough high himself. He doesn't trust anyone in the bakery to do it. He managed to get excellent flour and his bread is good, much better than the kind I get. In the evenings our friends gather in my place — Lagutina, Artyukhin, Klavicek, and sometimes Zharky. We do a bit of reading but mostly we talk about everybody and everything, chiefly about you in Boyarka. The girls are furious with Tokarev for refusing to let them work on the railway. They say they can endure hardships as well as anyone. Talya declares she's going to dress up in her father's clothes and go out to Boyarka by herself. 'Let him just try to kick me out,' she says.

"I wouldn't be surprised if she kept her word. Please give my regards to your dark-eyed friend.

"Anna."

The blizzard came upon them suddenly. Low grey clouds spread themselves over the sky and the snow fell thickly. When night came the wind howled in the chimneys and moaned in the trees, chasing the whirling snow-flakes and awakening the forest echoes with its malevolent whine.

All night long the storm raged in a wild fury, and although the stoves were kept warm throughout the night the men shivered; the wrecked station building could not hold the warmth.

In the morning they had to plough through the deep snow to reach their sections. High above the trees the sun shone in a blue sky without a single cloudlet to mar its clear expanse.

Korchagin and his men went to work to clear the snowdrifts from their section. Only now did Pavel realise how much a man could suffer from the cold. Okunev's threadbare jacket gave him scant protection and his galosh was constantly full of snow. He kept losing it in the snow, and now his other boot was threatening to fall apart. Two enormous boils had broken out on his neck — the result of sleeping on the cold floor. Tokarev had given him his towel to wear in place of a scarf.

Gaunt and red-eyed, Pavel was furiously plying his wooden snow shovel when a passenger train puffed slowly into the station. Its expiring engine had barely managed to haul it this far; there was not a single log of wood in the tender and the last embers were burning low in the firebox.

"Give us fuel and we'll go on, or else shunt us onto a siding while we still have the power to move!" the engine driver yelled to the station master.

The train was switched onto a siding. The reason for the halt was explained to the disgruntled passengers and a storm of complaints and curses broke out in the crowded carriages.

"Go and talk to that old chap," the station master advised the train guards, pointing to Tokarev who was walking down the platform.

"He's the chief of the job here. Maybe he can get wood brought down by sled to the engine. They're using the logs for sleepers."

"I'll give you the wood, but you'll have to work for it," said Tokarev when" the conductors applied to him. "After all, it's our building material. We're being held up at the moment by the snow. There must be about six or seven hundred passengers inside your train. The women and children can stay inside but let the men come and lend a hand clearing the snow until evening and I'll give you firewood. If they refuse they can stay where they are till New Year's."

"Look at the crowd coming this way! Look, women too!" Korchagin heard a surprised exclamation at his back. He turned round. Tokarev came up.

"Here are a hundred helpers for you," he said. "Give them work and see none of them is idle."

Korchagin put the newcomers to work. One tall man in a smart railway uniform with a fur collar and a warm caracul cap indignantly twirled the shovel in his hands and turned to his companion, a young woman wearing a sealskin hat with a fluffy pompon on top.

"I am not going to shovel snow and nobody has the right to force me to do it. As a railway engineer I could take charge of the work if they ask me to, but neither you nor I need to shovel snow. It's contrary to the regulations. That old man is breaking the law. I can have him prosecuted. Where is your foreman?" he demanded of the worker nearest him.

Korchagin came over.

"Why aren't you working?"

The man examined Pavel contemptuously from head to foot.

"And who may you be?"

"I am a worker."

"Then I have nothing to say to you. Send me your foreman, or whatever you call him...."

Korchagin scowled.

"You needn't work if you don't want to. But you won't get back on that train unless your ticket is countersigned by us. That's the construction chief's orders."

"What about you?" Pavel turned to the woman and was struck dumb with surprise. Before him stood Tonya Tumanova!

Tonya could hardly believe that this tramp who stood before her in his tattered clothing and incredible footwear, with a filthy towel around his neck and a face that had not been washed for many a day, was the Korchagin she once knew. Only his eyes blazed as fiercely as ever. The eyes of the Pavel she remembered. And to think that only a short while ago she had given her love to this ragged creature. How everything had changed!

She had recently married, and she and her husband were on their way to the city where he held an important position in the railway administration. Who could have thought that she would meet the object of her girlish affections in this way? She even hesitated to give him her hand. What would Vasili think? How awful of Korchagin to have fallen so low. Evidently the young stoker had not been able to rise above navvy work.

She stood hesitating, her cheeks burning. Meanwhile the railway engineer, infuriated by what he considered the insolence of this tramp who stood staring at his wife, flung down his shovel and went over to her side.

"Let us go, Tonya, I can't stand the sight of this lazzarone."

Korchagin had read Giuseppe Garibaldi and he knew what that word meant.

"I may be a lazzarone, but you're no more than a rotten bourgeois," he said hoarsely, and turning to Tonya, added curtly: "Take a shovel, Comrade Tumanova, and get into line. Don't take an example from this prize bull here. . .. Excuse me if he is any relation of yours."

Pavel glanced at Tonya's fur boots and smiled grimly, adding casually:

"I wouldn't advise you to stop over here. The other night we were attacked by bandits."

With that he turned on his heel and walked off, his galosh flapping as he went.

His last words impressed the railway engineer, and Tonya succeeded in persuading him to stay and work.

That evening, when the day's work was over, the crowd streamed back to the station. Tonya's husband hurried ahead to make sure of a seat in the train. Tonya, stopping to let a group of workers pass, saw Pavel trudging wearily behind the others, leaning heavily on his shovel.

"Hello, Pavlusha," she said and fell into step beside him. "I must say I never expected to find you in such straits. Surely the authorities ought to know you deserve something better than navvy's work? I thought you'd be a commissar or something like that by now. What a pity life has been so unkind to you...."

Pavel halted and surveyed Tonya with surprise.

"Nor did I expect to find you ... so stuffy," he said, choosing the most polite word he could think of to express his feelings.

The tips of Tonya's ears burned.

"You're just as rude as ever!"

Korchagin hoisted his shovel onto his shoulder and strode off. After a few steps he stopped.

"My rudeness, Comrade Tumanova," he said, "is not half as offensive as your so-called politeness. And as for my life, please don't worry about that. There's nothing wrong with it. It's your life that's all wrong, ever so much worse than I expected. Two years ago you were better, you wouldn't have been ashamed to shake hands with a workingman. But now you reek of moth balls. To tell the truth, you and I have nothing more to say to each other."

Pavel had a letter from Artem announcing that he was going to be married and urging Pavel to come to the wedding without fail.

The wind tore the sheet of paper out of Pavel's hand and it flew off into the air. No wedding parties for him. How could he leave now? Only yesterday that bear Pankratov had outstripped his team and spurted forward at a pace that amazed everyone. The stevedore was making a desperate bid for first place in the contest. His usual nonchalance had forsaken him and he was whipping up his "water-fronters" to a furious tempo.

Patoshkin, noting the silent intensity with which the men worked, scratched his head perplexedly. "Are these men or giants?" he marvelled. "Where do they get their incredible strength? If the weather holds out for only eight more days we'll reach the timber! Well, live and learn! These men are breaking all records and estimates." Klavicek came from town bringing the last batch of bread he had baked. He had a talk with Tokarev and then went off to hunt for Korchagin. The two men shook hands warmly. Klavicek with a broad smile dived into his knapsack and produced a handsome fur-lined leather jacket of Swedish make.

"This is for you!" he said stroking the soft leather. "Guess from whom? What! You don't know? You are dense, man! It's from Comrade Ustinovich. So you shouldn't catch cold. Olshinsky gave it to her. She took it from him and handed it straight to me with orders to take it to you. Akim told her you've been going about in the frost with nothing but a thin jacket. Olshinsky's nose was put out of joint a bit. 'I can send the comrade an army coat,' he says. But Rita only laughed. 'Never mind,' she said, 'he'll work better in this jacket.' "

The astonished Pavel took the luxurious-looking jacket and after some hesitation slipped it on. Almost at once he felt the warmth from the soft fur spreading over his shoulders and chest.

Rita wrote in her diary:

December 20

"We have been having a bout of blizzards. Snow and wind. Out at Boyarka they had almost reached their goal when the frosts and storms halted them. They are up to their necks in snow and the frozen earth is not easy to dig. They have only three-quarters of a kilometre to go, but this is the hardest lap of all.

"Tokarev reports an outbreak of typhoid fever. Three men are down with it."

December 22

"There was a plenary session of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee but no one from Boyarka attended. Bandits derailed a trainload of grain seventeen kilometres from Boyarka, and the Food Commissariat representative ordered all the construction workers to be sent to the spot."

December 23

"Another seven typhoid cases have been brought to town from Boyarka. Okunev is one of them. I went down to the station and saw frozen corpses of people who had been riding the buffers taken off a Kharkov train. The hospitals are unheated. This accursed blizzard, when will it end?"

December 24

"Just seen Zhukhrai. He confirmed the rumour that Orlik and his band attacked Boyarka last night. The fight lasted two hours. Communications were cut and Zhukhrai did not get the exact report until this morning. The band was beaten back but Tokarev has been wounded, a bullet went right through his chest. He will be brought to town today. Franz Klavicek, who was in charge of the guard that night, was killed. He was the one who spotted the band and raised the alarm. He started shooting at the raiders but they were on him before he had time to reach the school building. He was cut down by a sabre blow. Eleven of the builders were wounded. Two cavalry squadrons and an armoured train are there by now.

"Pankratov has taken charge of the job. Today Puzyrevsky caught up with part of the band in Gluboky village and wiped it out. Some of the non-Party workers started out for town without waiting for a train; they are walking along the track."

December 25

"Tokarev and the other wounded men arrived, and were placed in hospital. The doctors promised to save the old man. He is still unconscious. The lives of the others are not in danger.

"A telegram came from Boyarka addressed to us and the Gubernia Party Committee. 'In reply to the bandit assault, we builders of the narrow-gauge line gathered at this meeting together with the crew of the armoured train For Soviet Power and the Red Army men of the cavalry regiment, vow to you that notwithstanding all obstacles the town shall have firewood by January 1. Mustering all our strength we are setting to work. Long live the Communist Party, which sent us here! Korchagin, chairman of the meeting. Berzin, secretary.'

"Klavicek was buried with military honours at Solomenka."

The cherished goal was in sight, but the advance toward it was agonisingly slow, for every day typhoid fever tore dozens of badly needed hands from the builders' ranks.

One day Korchagin, returning from work to the station, staggered along like a drunkard, his legs ready to give way beneath him. He had been feverish for quite some time, but today it gripped him more fiercely than usual.

Typhoid fever, which had thinned the ranks of the building detachment, had claimed a new victim. But Pavel's sturdy constitution resisted the disease and for five days in succession he had found the strength to pick himself up from his straw pallet on the concrete floor and join the others at work. But the fever had taken possession of him and now neither the warm jacket nor the felt boots, Fyodor's gift, worn over his already frostbitten feet, helped.

A sharp pain seared his chest with each step he took, his teeth chattered, and his vision was blurred so that the trees seemed to be whirling around in a strange merry-go-round.

With difficulty he dragged himself to the station. An unusual commotion there caused him to halt, and straining his fever-hazed eyes, he saw a long train of flatcars stretching the entire length of the platform. Men who had come with the train were busy unloading narrow-gauge engines, rails and sleepers. Pavel staggered forward and lost his balance. He felt a dull pain as his head hit the ground and the pleasant coolness of the snow against his burning cheek.

Several hours later he was found and carried back to the barracks. He was breathing heavily, quite unconscious of his surroundings. A doctor's assistant summoned from the armoured train examined him and diagnosed pneumonia and typhoid fever. His temperature was over 106°. The doctor's assistant noted the inflammation of the joints and the ulcers on the neck but said they were trifles compared with the pneumonia and typhoid which alone were enough to kill him.

Pankratov and Dubava, who had arrived from town, did all they could to save Pavel.

Alyosha Kokhansky, who came from the same town as Pavel, was entrusted with taking him home to his people.

With the help of all the members of Korchagin's team, and mainly with Kholyava acting as battering ram, Pankratov and Dubava managed to get Alyosha and the unconscious Korchagin into the packed railway carriage. The passengers, suspecting typhus, resisted violently and threatened to throw the sick man out of the train en route.

Kholyava waved his gun under their noses and roared: "His illness is not infectious! And he's going on this train even if we have to throw out the whole lot of you! And remember, you swine, if anyone lays a finger on him, I'll send word down the line and you'll all be taken off the train and put behind the bars. Here, Alyosha, take Pavel's Mauser and shoot the first man who tries to put him off," Kholyava wound up for additional emphasis.

The train puffed out of the station. Pankratov went over to Dubava standing on the deserted platform.

"Do you think he'll pull through?"

The question remained unanswered.

"Come along, Mityai, it can't be helped. We've got to answer for everything now. We must get those engines unloaded during the night and in the morning we'll try to start them going."

Kholyava telephoned to all his Cheka friends along the line urging them to make sure that the sick Korchagin was not taken off the train anywhere. Not until he had been given a firm assurance that this would be done did he finally go to bed.

At a railway junction farther down the line the body of an unknown fair-haired young man was carried out of one of the carriages of a passenger train passing through and set down on the platform. Who he was and what he had died of no one knew. The station Cheka men, remembering Kholyava's request, ran over to the carriage, but when they saw that the youth was dead, gave instructions for the corpse to be removed to the morgue, and immediately telephoned to Kholyava at Boyarka informing him of the death of his friend whose life he had been so anxious to save.

A brief telegram was sent from Boyarka to the Gubernia Committee of the Komsomol announcing Korchagin's death.

In the meantime, however, Alyosha Kokhansky delivered the sick Korchagin to his people and came down himself with the fever.

January 9

"Why does my heart ache so? Before I sat down to write I wept bitterly. Who would have believed that Rita could weep and with such anguish? But are tears always a sign of weakness? Today mine are tears of searing grief. Why did grief come on this day of victory when the horrors of cold have been overcome, when the railway stations are piled high with precious fuel, when I have just returned from the celebration of the victory, an enlarged plenary meeting of the Town Soviet where the heroes of the railway job were accorded all honours. This is victory, but two men lost their lives — Klavicek and Korchagin.

"Pavel's death has opened my eyes to the truth — he was far dearer to me than I had thought.

"And now I shall close this diary. I doubt whether I shall ever return to it. Tomorrow I am writing to Kharkov to accept the job offered me in the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Komsomol."