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gain, but for the general good, to build communism with all the working people. And then those who
aren't backing us up now will be sorry for themselves."
"Whom do you have in mind, young man?" Andrykhevich asked and gave me an angry look.
"Who do you think? Don't you know yourself that any man who goes against the will of the whole
people is bound sooner or later to be brought out into the open and thrown overboard? Do you think the
working class will let people sneer at it and doubt its strength, and at the same time eat its bread? We
don't need spongers. We need friends. You sit here laughing at what we are doing now. And what were
you saying, I wonder, when the old owners ran away abroad? Thought everything would go smash, I
expect. But look how things are going now the works is turning out more reapers than it was before the
war. Isn't that a fact? And how many other factories in our country are doing the same! And how many
more shall we build in time!"
"Time will tell..." the engineer grunted meaningfully.
And much was the distrust and hidden resentment in those laconic words ...
THE ROLLERS
I was to remember that conversation at the big table in the soft light of the heavy chandelier all my life.
As if it were yesterday, I can see the engineer's contemptuous glance, his puckered slanting eyes, and
hear his ironical, condescending voice. It was not the voice of an older man with far more knowledge and
experience than myself. Had it been that, I should, perhaps, have felt differently when I left the
Andrykheviches' house amid its ivy and sweet-scented roses that evening. But no, there had been
something quite different concealed beneath the contempt he had shown towards me. I had argued with a
man of that old decaying world of which Polevoi, the director of our factory-training school, had talked
so much. The engineer was sneering quietly to himself at my fieriness, at my sincere belief in the future.
He did not throw words away, he used them sparingly, thoughtfully, concealing his real intention. He did
not put all his cards on the table, so that I could say to his face: "You're a traitor to the Revolution and a
servant to exploiters like Caiworth who've run away abroad. Go and follow them, get out of this country
whose people you don't believe in!"
No, he talked very cunningly and sometimes, to find out what I was thinking, even seemed to ask my
advice. My advice! The advice of a pupil from a factory-training school who had not been at the plant
even a month. . . and he an old, grey-haired chief engineer!
He was still talking when we left the table with the crayfish lying unfinished in their dish.
"Where do you intend building these new factories? I wonder."
"Wherever they're needed!" I replied boldly, remembering the words the Secretary of the Central
Committee had used in his conversation with me in Kharkov.
"Just a little hasty, aren't you, young man? You plan to build factories here, there and everywhere, but
you haven't yet learnt how to hold a knife properly. It's little things you ought to start with, tiny little
things."
I twisted and turned for a long time that night on my prickly mattress by the open window. As I
listened to the snores of the other chaps, I remembered the cutting remarks of the tall, bony engineer, and
particularly that last dig about the knife I had used to cut the sturgeon.
How simple and good and warm-hearted it had been at Luka Turunda's, in his little cottage on the sea
shore! And Luka himself and his father and Katerina what real, hospitable people they were!
I went to sleep with a warm feeling of gratitude towards the Turunda family and a convinced hatred of
my neighbours in the house with the ivy, a hatred born of the knowledge that they harboured the bad old
past against which both Polevoi and Nikita Kolomeyets had so often warned me. And then I had the
devil's own nightmare.. .
I dreamed I was wearing a long dress-coat like the pianist at Madame Piontkovskaya's and dancing
the Charleston. I danced tirelessly, jerking my arms and legs about, like the beggar with St. Vitus's Dance
who used to stand outside the Catholic church at home. I was dancing and looking at myself in a mirror.
And I could see my face changing. It was becoming lined and bad-tempered and gradually acquiring a
grey beard and shaggy eyebrows. But I still went on dancing and getting as thin as a lath. Great big
crayfish were crawling towards me across the dirty parquet floor, hissing at me, and opening and closing
their long claws: "Lout! Lout! Dirty lout! Where are you trying to get to? From pauper to prince, eh? Get
out of here!" And then Sasha and Petka, still very young, popped up beside one of the columns and
stared at me with contempt. And I heard Sasha whisper: "See that, Petka? There he is! Danced all his life
away and never learnt anything!" [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]