Just then we heard voices behind us.
"There's someone sitting over there!" I heard Golovatsky say loudly. "This will do, there's an empty bench here. You can go to the restaurant later."
And suddenly I felt as if a bucket of cold water had been tipped over me—Tiktor's harsh, stubborn voice replied: "What do you want to talk to me for? I'm not a Komsomol member..."
"So you think if I'm secretary of the Komsomol organization there's nothing for us to talk about?"
"Yes, I do. . . You caricatured me in your newspaper as if I was a saboteur..."
We were sitting on the lee side of them and could hear every word, but at that moment the lights of an engine showed up from behind the warehouses.
A shunting engine rolled past hauling a long line of empty trucks. For a minute the air was filled with the hiss of steam, the clank of wheels, the piercing whistles of the guards waving their lanterns from the trucks.
What Tolya and Tiktor said to each other amid the noise of the passing train, I don't know, but when the last truck winked its red light and vanished into the darkness, the wind again brought us Golovatsky's excited voice.
"You've got youth, strength, you've got a good pair of hands, Tiktor," Golovatsky was saying feelingly. "I won't believe that you can't work well. I just can't believe it! But you keep on turning out bad work, careless work, work that's done any old how. And don't talk to me about bad models. I know a bit about foundry work and I won't believe that under existing conditions you can't turn out a decent job."
"If you give me a different partner, I'll show them..."
"Who do you mean by 'them,' Tiktor?"
"Don't you know yourself? The chaps from my town! I suppose they've been complaining to you about me, haven't they?"
"If you are thinking of Maremukha and Bobir, you're quite wrong, Tiktor. I've never heard them say a word about you. As for Mandzhura, he gave you up as a bad job long ago. He and I even had a bit of an argument about you."
"An argument?" Tiktor asked in surprise.
"Yes, that surprises you, doesn't it? Mandzhura thinks you're a hopeless case, and I say you aren't. He'd be glad to have a decent chat with you and forget the past, but he's sure you'll give him the cold shoulder."
"And what do you think?" A fresh note of interest had' crept into Tiktor's voice, and it was not so proud.
Golovatsky was silent.
And in that silence, broken only by the distant whistle of the engine, the twanging of an orchestra in the harbour restaurant, and the moaning of the wind, I realized that Flegontov had told Golovatsky what I had said against Tiktor that day.
"What do I think?" Golovatsky repeated, then deciding to bide his time a little before answering the question, he said: "All right, I'll tell you, but before I do so, you must answer a question that interests me."
"I will," Tiktor replied firmly.
"You'll answer everything I ask you?"
"Yes."
That "yes" sounded very sincere.
"Why did you do private jobs when you were studying at the factory-training school?"
"So you know about that too? ... All right, I'll tell you... To earn money!"
"But weren't your parents helping you?"
"Like hell they were! After my mother died, my Dad got married to another woman. She got him right under her thumb and set him against me."
"Is that the truth, Tiktor?" Golovatsky asked very seriously.
"Why should I lie to you? I can tell you more. Dad would go off on a long run and my stepmother used to nag at me every day. I put up with it because there was nowhere else to go. It was a long time before the chaps who were living with their parents got any grants, you know."
"But you could have told the other lads what was going on at home," Golovatsky remarked.
"I was too ashamed..." Tiktor confessed. "I didn't want to let the whole school know about our bickering. So I had to get by as best I could. I even took work from profiteers, so as not to be dependent on my stepmother."
"I want to believe that's true, Tiktor," Golovatsky said. "Why do you think I brought all this up? We are very interested in your future, Tiktor, just as we're interested in the future of any other young fellow. I want your hands to work for the good of society. How can that be brought about? Team up with the rest of the chaps! Take an interest in what they're interested in. Think less of yourself and as much as possible of others. But you're a lone wolf, so they tell me, you scowl at everyone as if we were all against you. But
we only want one thing—that you shouldn't waver between the two sides. Sooner or later such people get caught out. And I certainly don't want to see that happen to you. Train yourself to love your work, to get on with the other chaps. Crush that pride which is eating away at you like rust, and believe me, you'll become a different man."
"Well, if you really want to give me a chance, I'll try," Tiktor said after a pause, and in his voice there was no longer that scornful malice with which he usually spoke to people.
They walked away in the direction of the town, disappearing quickly in the darkness.
Petka said to me: "It's true about Tiktor's Dad whopping him, you know. Do you remember how Yasha came to school once all bruises, and pretended that he'd got beaten up by tramps after a wedding party? And afterwards we found out that it was his Dad who'd made such a sight of him."
"He didn't tell us because he was afraid we'd laugh. We were living independently and he had to rely on his father. He was ashamed of being tanned like a kid," I said, feeling genuinely sorry that we had not found out about Tikor's family troubles in time. Had we known about it before, we could have talked to him in quite a different way.
A DISCOVERY
The weather was getting hotter and hotter. Except for an occasional storm, there was no wind. But the stifling, sultry days could not stop us from carrying out our plans. Our success in making the five reapers for the youth commune seemed to spur us on.
At first we thought that the chief engineer would at least condescend to read the second issue of our wall newspaper, particularly the article by Zakabluk. But not a bit of it! When Andrykhevich came into the foundry, he never so much as glanced at the newspaper.
But we went on thinking about the future of the foundry and, supported by the Party organization, appealed to the young workers of the foundry to do a voluntary job on Sunday.
As Petka, Sasha, and I walked to work on the following Sunday, I thought over all that had happened in the past few days: the long searches for spare parts and models to fit the twelve new machines that we were planning to install in the foundry; the drawings we had made of the new row (we had decided in advance to call it "'Komsomol Row"); the distribution of key jobs among our most active members; the furious wrangling in the chief engineer's office, where our project had been condemned on all sides; and finally, my first report to the foundry Party committee.
At first I had tried to get out of making the report. As Komsomol secretary and an ex-foundry worker, Golovatsky seemed to be the best man to explain our idea. But Golovatsky would not hear of such a thing.
"Don't be shy, Vasil," he said. "The idea started in the foundry, didn't it? It's you who ought to tell the Party organization about it."
Our young draftsmen managed to produce several copies of the project for the future "Komsomol Row" in time for the meeting, and before I started making my report I handed them out to the members of the committee.
While I was speaking, Flegontov studied the drawing intently and kept looking up to glance through the dusty office windows into the foundry.