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would he respond to our call, our dear Yuzik...
Where their cottage had once stood a grey enemy blockhouse, quite recently built, rose from a deep
clay pit. Twisted wire protruded from the concrete. The narrow horizontal embrasure of the blockhouse
looked out to the East.
Evidently it had been one of the strong points built by the enemy on the Volyno-Podelian plateau.
Neither this blockhouse, nor hundreds of others like it had been able to save the Nazis!
Maremukha climbed on to the roof of the blockhouse, glanced down the ventilator that stuck out of
the top like a railway engine's whistle, spat down it, and tapping his heel on the concrete, said: "Our guns
have blasted out bigger things than this. Ever seen tree stumps being stubbed in the woods? That's just
about what they did with these blockhouses."
Depressed by the sight of the ruins that surrounded us, we wandered in silence back to the Old
Fortress through the suburb of Tatariski. It was guarded by a tall watch-tower rising on the bank of the
Smotrich.
In the purple light of the sunset the Old Fortress looked particularly impressive silhouetted against the
evening sky. Half way across the bridge we stopped. Resting his elbows on the oak rail, Maremukha
gazed down at Zarechye. From this high point the grey blockhouse looked quite small, like the turret of a
tank buried in the earth.
"I say, Vasya," Petka said suddenly. "Do you remember our neighbour, the daughter of the chief
engineer at the works? You were rather interested in her at one time... She went away to Leningrad,
didn't she? You didn't see anything of her there, I suppose?"
"Of course I did, Petka!" I replied, " I don't mind admitting to you frankly that after I had got to know
Angelika I did everything I could to help her become a new person. In the days when she broke with her
family and went away to Leningrad against their will, I helped her. When H went into the army, we wrote
to each other. In her letters she suggested I should come to Leningrad when my service was over. And
that's what I did. I took a job at a plant there and' settled down. We met as friends. I remember it as if it
were yesterday; we went to the Philharmonic Hall together and heard Chaikovsky's Sixth Symphony.
Angelika had nearly finished at the conservatoire at that time. She married just before the war."
"Is her father still alive?"
"You know he was transferred from our place to the Agricultural Machinery Works in Rostov. She
told me he had been arrested in Rostov for having contact with the industrial party, but he was released
soon afterwards. He atoned for his guilt towards the country by good work. When war broke out, he
was evacuated with his plant to the Urals. All through the war he worked as an engineer in the mortar
shop. He's a very old man now."
"Perhaps he had Polevoi as his director?" Petka said. "You know Polevoi went to the Urals to
manage a very big works after graduating from the Industrial Academy."
"I saw his name in the papers once or twice. I meant to write to him, but couldn't find out his exact
address."
"Did Lika survive the starvation in Leningrad, do you know?" Maremukha asked.
"Of course she did!" I exclaimed. "Do you know where I met her during that winter of the siege? It
makes me shudder to remember it. In the Wiedeman Hospital, on Vasilevsky Island! I was being treated
there for starvation. One day 'I heard someone in the corridor say quietly: 'Vasya!' I looked round and
there was Angelika! She was terribly thin. There were black circles under her eyes. Her hands were so
thin you could nearly see through them... 'Lika, dear, haven't you left?' I shouted. And she said, quietly:
'How can I leave my own city? My husband is still here, fighting on the Pulkovo Heights.' And she told
me how she had refused to be evacuated with the Philharmonia... I remember how she looked at me and
whispered: 'Heavens, Vasil, how you've changed! You must be having a bad time too, dear?' I was
ashamed to say yes, because II was a man. So I passed it off with a joke: 'You'll be telling me next I
haven't got the same look in my eye as Lieutenant Glan?' I said. 'What's Lieutenant Glan got to do with
it!' she exclaimed. 'Don't you remember,' I said, 'one evening you compared me with a chap called Glan?
And because I didn't know much about literature I asked you whether this Lieutenant Glan was a
Whiteguard, by any chance. I wasn't far wrong, you know. At any rate, the man who wrote about him
has become an out-and-out fascist...' We had a long talk. It was there, Petka, that 'I realized Angelika
had changed right through and become a new person. And do you remember at one time we used to
think her a useless creature?"
"Yes, time and environment change people," Maremukha said and glanced down over the bridge rail.
Below us, harnessed to the turbines of a power station, roared the fortress waterfall. It was calmer
now that it gave most of its force to the machines housed in the white power house under the fortress
cliffs. Soon so we had learnt from one of the local people some of the station's power would be used
to supply a new trade school for metal workers. The new school was being built on the spot where our
factory-training school had stood until it was blown up by the Germans.
I looked down and remembered my childhood years in this town. How many times after the spring
floods had we searched the muddy banks of the river hoping to find the crown of some Turkish vizir, or
at least a few gold ducats!
We had found no gold, but we had found great happiness, the happiness of having a country to live in
that is the envy of honest working people throughout the world.
"Yes, time and environment change people. Those are true words of yours, Petka!" I said after a
thoughtful pause. "And I'm sincerely glad that not only people like us who were brought up by the
Komsomol and the Party, but even those like Angelika, who in the twenties were still wavering over what
path to take, have found the experience of the past twenty-five years so beneficial."
"Is Angelika's husband alive?" Petka asked.
"Killed at Gatchina, when the siege of Leningrad was broken. He never came back after volunteering
for the front in the first months of the war. He was a major when he was killed... By the way, you can
hear her playing the piano on the radio sometimes from Leningrad. If you like it, write to her. Tell her, Tm
Petka, that neighbour of yours whom Vasil introduced to you on the shore of the Azov Sea.' She'll be so
glad to hear from you. She often speaks of that meeting. You see, it's our youth, Petka, those fine stirring
days of our youth!..."
"How grateful we should feel to our Party and the Komsomol for that youth!" said Maremukha,
gazing at our ancient town spread out before us, so small but still so pretty even now amid its green [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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