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a fellow working in the foundry who during the Civil War wobbled about between Old Man Makhno and
General Denikin. And that fellow's lasted out till the present time, when we're rebuilding everything. He's
been given a partner to work with, a young fellow who doesn't yet know the way we do things here.
Anyone can see that this lad could take an intelligent attitude towards production, and work well not from
fear of the big stick, but because his conscience tells him he ought to work well, and you'd think the older
worker would help him on that path. But in this case the opposite's happened. The fellow I'm talking
about instigates the new lad to follow quite a different path, the path of bad work, and slacking, and
indifference to our Soviet production. And what does such instigation lead to? Hundreds of castings are
written off as spoilage, and somewhere out there, in his village, the peasant waits in vain for the reaper
he's ordered and says that co-operation between town and country is just a swindle. . . Do you see what
I mean?"
Laughter was heard all through the hall. The men looked at Kashket, who had buried his nose in his
enamel mug and was pretending to drink tea.
"Well, if there are no more questions, we'll go on with the reading," Flegontov said and with a nod to
Petka walked back to his corner.
Petka looked at Flegontov with gratitude, cleared his throat and went on reading.
The bright midday sun dazzled me when a few minutes before the end of the lunch-hour I followed
Flegontov out of the dining-hall. Trucks piled high with oily bolts fresh from the finishing shops stood in
the yard, left there by the workers during their break.
"That was one of your mates reading, wasn't it?" Flegontov asked me.
"That's right! We used to study at the same factory school."
"He's a good chap. He didn't get rattled."
But I was wrestling with a problem: should I tell Flegontov, the secretary of the Party organization,
that he had been wrong about one thing?
I said cautiously: "But there are one or two things I don't agree with you about, Comrade Flegontov."
"What exactly?" His big sunburnt, slightly pock-marked face turned towards me.
I noticed that the peak of his old army cap gleamed with graphite. He must have been wearing it ever
since the Civil War.
"When you hinted that Kashket is inciting his partner to turn out bad work, you seemed to be
protecting Tiktor. What you seemed to be saying was, Kashket's a spoiler and a slacker, but Tiktor's as
pure as a lamb. That's not true, Comrade Flegontov! If only you knew..."
Flegontov interrupted me.
"How old is Tiktor?"
"About eighteen."
"I see. Well, what ought I to know?"
In clumsy, stumbling phrases I told the secretary how Tiktor had acted at school, how he had stuck
out against the collective, how he had failed to respond to the security alarm because he was drunk.
"And is that all?" Flegontov asked.
"But we expelled him from the Komsomol! He's a hopeless case."
"You're making a mistake, Mandzhura," Flegontov said calmly. "We can't throw people away like
that. As far as I can make out from my own observations, your mate Tiktor is an obstinate, stuck-up sort
of fellow. But such people can be re-educated. Don't you see, Mandzhura, that we've got to fight for
every man, especially the young man? I'm sure that expulsion from the Komsomol has turned your mate
sour. You must try and make him understand that everything is not lost. I don't want you, a Komsomol
organizer, to wash your hands of people like Tiktor. That won't do us any good. If he's stubborn, go at
him with good, principled arguments. It's the easiest thing in the world to say a man's a hopeless case and
leave it at that. But sometimes, you know, even a criminal can be reformed and put on the right path by
the strength of our convictions. We've got the truth on our side!. . ."
That evening a north wind sprang up and the bay was flecked with white-capped waves. The strong
steppe wind lashed them furiously and clouds of spray gleamed pink in the bleak light of the setting sun.
For a few minutes our faces turned a deep ruddy bronze in the sunset. Petka and I were sitting on a
bench near the harbour restaurant.
Night approached imperceptibly. As the blue shadows crept over the earth, a faint smell of baking
bread reached us on the little mound where we sat.
Knowing that Petka had no rehearsal at the club this evening, I had suggested a walk along the
sea-shore. Petka had agreed willingly, and when we sat down on the bench, he said with a sigh of relief:
"Flegontov did me a good turn today, didn't he? He must have known I wasn't very well up in my
knowledge of Britain. You see, I had picked on China as my subject. The number of notes I'd made
about it colossal! And then Golovatsky made me read about our relations with Britain.. ." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]