[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
the end of the shop, there am I going over the formulas that our instructor has explained to us, and
thinking out the reasons for everything why the iron melts, how steel is made, what the temperature
ought to be... And the result is that instead of looking at the world out of a little window, you start looking
out of a great big one..
"But you're going to be late for your classes today," his wife said very softly, almost in a whisper.
"Late for classes? No fear!" Luka jumped up and, running over to the bookshelf, started gathering up
his books.
"Just call on us when you feel like it," Katerina said when I was leaving. "And if you feel like going out
in a boat, the old man will take you fishing."
I thanked my hosts for their hospitality and said that next time I came I would bring my friends.
Luka and I walked down Genoa Street together.
"Prickly old chap, my Dad, isn't he? He'll snap your head off if you give him half a chance. He used to
work in the foundry too, before the Revolution."
"Why doesn't he go back there now?"
"When the Civil War started and the works closed down, he took to fishing. Got real keen on it, he
did. One day, near the end of winter, he went out to sea with his crew to fish under the ice for big fish.
The wind had been blowing from the west all the time, then suddenly a levant sprung up from the east.
The ice broke away from the shore and was carried out to sea. That levant took my Dad well nigh over
to the Kuban shore. Half the crew were drowned, and the rest just managed to escape by wading
through the shallows. And the water was icy, you know. It froze Dad's legs right to the bone. Now, when
there's a change in the weather, Dad's properly crocked up. It's a good thing the sanatorium's near by.
The wife goes down there and brings him back that stinking mud from the estuary. She warms it up on
the stove and then puts the old man in a tub and plasters him with it. The pain lets up a bit, and again Dad
puts his nets in the boat and off he goes to sea. Sometimes for rybets, sometimes for puzanok, sometimes
for taran.
There's tons of fish in this little puddle!" And Luka nodded towards the sea.
"I say, Luka, who are the people that go for treatment in those sanatoriums?"
"People come here from all over the place. Suppose you were still living in your Podolia, or perhaps
even further away. One night you wake up and feel your legs aching fit to drive you crackers. Off you go
to the polyclinic. The doctor gives you the once over and tells you you've got chronic rheumatism. They
give you a free pass at work and you're here..."
"Then perhaps it was Vukovich I met in the avenue?" I thought to myself when we parted. "Now he's
on holiday and out of uniform, he doesn't want to have anything to do with me." But the idea seemed
absurd.
ALL RIGHT, MADAME!
Even from a distance young people could be seen crowding round Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya's
establishment. Some lazily nibbled sunflower seeds as they watched the lucky ones who strode in through
the open doors without bothering about the price. Others, more impatient, stepped, back to the fence on
the other side of the road and stood on tip-toe to see through the high windows into the hall, whence
came the sound of music and the shuffle of dancing feet.
After paying the ticket-seller in the plaid frock a whole fifty kopeks, I entered a long hall with cracked
papier mache columns. The air was stuffy and reeked of powder and cheap scent.
A few couples were moving stiffly up and down the middle of the hall in a sort of march, which I
afterwards discovered was called a "fox-trot."
Young men with blank, pompous faces, now rising on their toes and stepping forward, now taking
two steps back piloted their wilting girl friends round the stuffy hall. They seemed very proud of being
able to walk round like this, keeping up the monotonous rhythm and performing a few simple steps
before an audience of resting dancers and people like myself who had merely come to look on. I could
not see anyone who looked like the owner of the establishment and I waited impatiently for Madame
Rogale-Piontkovskaya to appear.
As I watched Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya's clients amusing themselves, I could not help
remembering the dances that used to be held at the Party School in our town. I often used to go to them
before I joined the factory-training school. They were quite different.
The student musicians would take their places on the platform and their brass band would rock the
lofty ceiling of the former convent chapel, which had now been made into a club. Everything was so jolly
and gay that even the saints whose faces still adorned the walls seemed to enjoy the blaring music, while
the Lord of Sabaoth, standing in his sandaled feet above the slogan "Peace to the cottage, war to the
palace!" looked ready to bound into the dance himself, together with his winged angels and Moses the
Prophet.
The students and their girl friends from the suburbs danced the mazurka in proper ballroom style and
no one, of course, paid any particular attention to the patched, down-at-heel boots of the men and the
wooden clogs that some of the girls were wearing.
There were swift Hungarian dances and smooth graceful waltzes. Gay Cracoviennes followed the Pas
d'Espagne, and if Boiko, the natural history lecturer, asked the band to play his favourite "Chinese
polka," with its crouching down and other antics, there was not a person in the hall who would not join
the line of dancers.
I, too, joined in that dance, bending my knees and waddling across the hall, with my fingers pointing
now to the right, now to the left.
Once I found myself paired up with the old cook Makhteich. He had come to ask the duty man when
to ring the bell for supper and Boiko had dragged him into the dance. To the tap of the kettle-drums,
Makhteich and I whirled round the hall, nearly cannoning into the platform with its glittering array of brass
trumpets. I noticed the smell of buckwheat porridge, fried meat and onions coming from my "lady" and
guessed for certain what the students were going to have for supper.
There was much fun and Laughter at those student dances. Friendly land unrestrained, they made you
feel gay. They bubbled with youth. They were the dances of a brave, active body of men who wanted to
relax and have a good time.
But what was it here? Could you call this a dance? These people were like a lot of statues walking
about! No one had anything to do with his neighbour and they all seemed to think they were dancing
better than anyone else. But there wasn't any real dancing at all!
Suddenly I burst out laughing. One of the dancers a sallow-faced man with la pointed black
moustache seemed to think I was laughing at him and glanced threateningly in my direction.
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]