"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 orchards and boulevards.
The west wind was bringing up a great grey-black cloud from the Dniester forests. Slowly it mounted to a peak, like the smoke of a distant fire, and its summit was purple and threatening in the light of the setting sun.
"How did that get here!" I said in surprise. "It was so sunny this morning... You know what that cloud reminds me of? The smoke from the fire of the Badayev warehouses in Leningrad. That was the biggest and, I think, about the worst raid we had. The smoke was so thick and heavy we thought at first it was a bank of cloud. Perhaps we'd better make a move, Petka? It looks like a storm."
"No hurry," Petka said, smiling and glancing westwards. "Rain's nothing to be afraid of! We've seen worse storms than this. They can't frighten us now. We're grown up..."
March 1935, Leningrad October 1951, Lvov
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
End