And thus we travelled, my new "uncle" and I.
Needless to say, I was even rather pleased things had turned out as they had. I congratulated myself for tricking Pecheritsa so cleverly. I had expected him to worry me and keep asking whether I was the delegate from the factory-training school who had been sent to Kharkov; but it had not been like that at all, we had just come to a quiet family agreement. "Where's he going to, then, the old blighter?" I wondered, glancing up at the belt of Pecheritsa's great-coat dangling from the bunk.
I opened my brief case and took out Voinich's wonderful novel The Gadfly. I had promised myself I would read this book in the train and even make a summary of it, so that I should be able to speak about it at the next "What new books have we read?" evening at school.
Our Komsomol group often held such meetings. And mock trials were even more popular. Whom didn't we put on trial in those days! There was Vanderwelde, the tricky Belgian Foreign Minister, and Don Quixote who wasted his time fighting windmills, and Lord Curzon who sent all those haughty notes and ultimatums to the young Soviet land...
... I could not read properly. The noise of the wheels put me off. The pencil I was using to make notes kept jumping all over the place. And Pecheritsa's presence did not make things any easier. I wanted to have a peep at his travel warrant, but I was afraid he had not fallen properly asleep.
The inspector did not come round until it was quite dark, after we had passed Dunayevtsy, and as if to show that he was not to be wakened, Pecheritsa started snoring so loud that the inspector could hardly make his voice heard.
The candles had not yet been lighted and only the feeble gleam of the inspector's lantern reached my corner. The inspector pulled out his key and was about to tap on the bunk to wake Pecheritsa, when I said hastily: "Don't wake him up, he's ill. I've got his ticket. Here you are."
"Pretty loud snorer for a sick man," grunted the inspector, checking the tickets.
The conductor standing behind him stared at Pecheritsa's boots.
"Where did he get in?" he said in surprise. "I don't remember him. I thought you were my only passenger, young fellow. Where did he come from?"
"We've been here all the time," I mumbled.
"Change at Kiev," the inspector said curtly and handed me the tickets.
Thinking that there might be a bilker hiding on the upper banks, he swung his lantern up to the luggage rack. The light flickered on the ceiling. There was no one else in the compartment. Having set his mind at rest, the inspector went on down the carriage.
Lulled by the monotonous drumming of the wheels. I dozed off...
A hoarse voice wakened me. "Have they checked the tickets?"
The train had stopped. A lamp hanging from a post outside shed a greenish light through the carriage window and I could see Pecheritsa's head above me.
"Yes."
"Then I'll have a bit more sleep. If they come round again, just show them the tickets, old chap."
I nodded silently, looked at the window for a minute and closed my eyes. It was warm and cosy. The gentle swaying was nice. I lay down on the seat in my chumarka and, putting the brief case under my head for a pillow, soon fell asleep. How long I slept, I don't know. I was awakened by the light of a
torch shining on my face.
"Tickets!"
"There's two here, mine and his. . ." I muttered, groping in my pockets. "He's in the bunk on top. He's not well."
The inspector turned the beam away and took the tickets. Behind him stood a man in a wadded jacket, who also looked at the tickets.
"Shall I wake him?" the inspector asked quietly and flashed the torch on Pecheritsa's back. Pecheritsa had rolled himself in a ball and was still fast asleep.
"We'll have to," said the man in the wadded jacket, but then checked himself: "Wait, here's the travel warrant!" And detaching the long white slip of paper from the tickets, he started examining it intently.
Blinking at them sleepily, I could not make out what it was all about. I wished they would go away.
"You needn't wake him," the man in the wadded jacket said quietly, folding the warrant and handing it back to the inspector. "He's not the one. . . Let's go on."
The inspector gave me back both tickets wrapped in the warrant. The two men went away. I fell asleep at once, and so soundly that by the time I awoke we had reached a big station. A truck rumbled along the brightly-lit platform, people were running about with bottles and tea-pots.
The station lamps shed their light right into the compartment. I noticed that the upper bunk was empty—Pecheritsa had gone.
Pressing my face to the window, I read the name-board on front of the station:
ZHMERINKA
We had come a good way!
Knocking the legs of sleeping passengers, I walked to the door.
The carriage had filled up and the air was heavy with the smell of sheepskin and makhorka tobacco.
What had become of Pecheritsa? Perhaps he had gone to the buffet?. . . Fine chap to travel with! Couldn't even wake me up. And afraid to leave his case behind! Must think I'm a thief.
At the end of the corridor I felt the tang of the frosty night. The puddles on the platform were iced over. Stars twinkled below the rim of the station roof.
A new conductor in a leather cap with a smart badge on it was walking up and down beside the carriage with a rolled flag in his hand.
"Will we be here much longer, Comrade Conductor?" I asked.
"That we shall!" the conductor replied cheerfully. "A long time yet. The Odessa express has got to come through."
"Have I got time to go to the station?"
"Plenty. We shan't be moving for over an hour."
"Nobody will take my place, will they?"
"If they do, we'll make them give it back to you. You've got a seat ticket, haven't you?..."
I walked all over Zhmerinka Station. Huge and clean, in those days it was spoken of as the best station in the Soviet Ukraine. I even went down the famous white-tiled tunnel.
Passing the first-class buffet, I glanced at the pink hams, at the white sucking pig that lay spread-eagled on a bed of buckwheat porridge, at the fried chickens and green peas, at the plump, glistening pies stuffed with meat arid rice, at the dark-red slices of smoked tongue, at the stuffed perch that seemed to be swimming in its trembling coating ofjelly. I was so anxious for just a taste of these delicacies that I lost all self-control, I had a slice of cold pork and a salted cucumber, drank three glasses of cold rich milk with fresh pies, then I ate two custard tarts and washed it all down with a glass of dried-fruit salad.
But as soon as I came out of the station into the fresh air, I began to repent. Fancy throwing money away like that! With an appetite that size I'd never get to Kiev. And I felt specially ashamed because 'I had allowed myself such a bourgeois feast at a time when our chaps had so little to eat. Cabbage soup and lentils—that was the usual dinner at our hostel. And beans, beans, beans! Beans for supper, beans for breakfast. Even the afters on Sundays was beans with a kind of sickly treacle sauce. Nikita Kolomeyets tried to console us by saying that there was a lot of phosphorus in beans and they would make us much cleverer, but there wasn't a single one among us who wouldn't have given all his rotten beans for a portion of good meat rissoles or a peppery goulash and fried potatoes. Tortured by remorse, I climbed into the carriage and returned to my seat.
Pecheritsa was not there.
After my meal the warmth of the compartment made me sleepy and I did not feel like going outside again. I just felt like sitting back on the hard seat and dozing.
The express from Moscow rumbled in on the main line amid clouds of steam. The station became noisy. Fighting with sleep, I peered at the lighted windows of the carriage that had stopped by us. Covered with sheets and blankets the passengers lay in their comfortable bunks. "Made themselves at home, haven't they!" I thought enviously.