The Case of Comrade Tulayev (50 page)

“Except to the Chief of the Party?”

“It is painful to me to insist: To anyone whomsoever. It is not impossible, in any case, that your line has been cut.”

When Gordeyev was gone, Popov did not stir. The room grew darker. Rain began falling on the firs. Shadows lengthened across the forest roads. There in his armchair, Popov became one with the darkness of things. His wife entered — stooped, gray-haired, walking noiselessly, she too a shadow.

“Shall I turn on the light, Vassili? How do you feel?”

Old Popov answered in a very low voice:

“All right. Xenia is under arrest. We are both under arrest, you and I. I am infinitely tired. Don't turn on the light.”

The life of the “Road to the Future” kolkhoze was really like an obstacle race. Definitely set up in 1931, after two purges of the village — marked by the deportation (God knows where!) of the well-to-do families and a few poor families who had shown a wrong spirit — by the following year the kolkhoze was without cattle and horses, since the farmers had contrived to destroy their livestock rather than turn it over to collective enterprise. The fodder shortage, carelessness, and epizootic diseases carried off the last horses just at the moment when a Machine and Tractor Station (M.T.S.) was finally set up at Molchansk. The arrest of the township veterinary, probably guilty because he belonged to the Baptist sect, caused no improvement. The difficulties of travel by road between Molchansk and the regional center immediately caused the M.T.S. to suffer from lack of motor fuel and parts for repairs. Situated on the Syeroglazaya (the Gray-eyed River), the old village of Pogoryeloye (so named to perpetuate the memory of ancient fires), being one of the farthest villages from the M.T.S., was one of the last to be served. The village, consequently, was without motors; and the muzhiks put little effort into sowing fields which they no longer considered to be their own, under the supervision of the president of a Communist kolkhoze, a workman from the bicycle factory at Penza who had been mobilized by the Party and sent by the Regional Center. They strongly suspected that the State would take almost all of the harvest away from them. Three harvests were short. Famine came nearer and nearer, a considerable group of men took refuge in the woods, where they were fed by relatives whom, this time, the authorities did not dare to deport. The famine carried off the small children, half the old men, and even a few adults. A president of the kolkhoze was drowned in the Syeroglazaya with a stone around his neck. The new law, several times revised by the C.C., restored a precarious peace by re-establishing family properties in the collective enterprise. The kolkhoze was inspected by a good agronomist and received selected seed and chemical fertilizers, there was an unusually hot and wet summer, and magnificent wheat flourished despite the rages and quarrels of men; there was a shortage of hands at harvesttime, and half the crop rotted in the fields. The bicycle-factory worker, tried for carelessness, incapacity, and abuse of power, was sentenced to three years at hard labor. “I hope my successor has a very good time,” he said simply. The management of the kolkhoze passed to President Vaniuchkin, a native of the village and a Communist recently demobilized from military service. In 1934-35 the kolkhoze rose from the depths of famine to a state of convalescence, thanks to the new C.C. directives, to the beneficent rhythm of rain and snow, to mild seasons, to the energy of the Young Communists, and — in the opinion of the old women and two or three bearded Believers — thanks to the return of the man of God, Father Guerassim, amnestied after three years of deportation. The seasonal crisis continued nevertheless, although it could not be denied that the sowing cycle, the selected seed, and the use of machines markedly increased the productivity of the soil. To retrieve the situation “definitely,” there appeared on the scene, first, Agronomist Kostiukin, a curious character; then a militant from the Young Communists, who had been sent by the Regional Committee, and whom everyone was soon familiarly calling “Kostia.” Not long before the autumn sowing, Agronomist Kostiukin observed that a parasite had attacked the seed (a part of which had been previously stolen). The M. and T. Station delivered only one tractor instead of the two which had been promised and the three which were absolutely necessary; and for the one and only tractor there was no gasoline. When the gasoline arrived, there was a breakdown. The plowing was done with horses, laboriously and late, but since the horses now could not be used to bring supplies from the township cooperatives to the kolkhoze with any regularity, the kolkhoze suffered from a shortage of manufactured articles. Half the trucks in the district were immobilized by lack of gasoline. The women began muttering that we were heading for a new famine and that it would be the just punishment for our sins.

It is a flat, slightly rolling country, severe in line under the clouds, among which you can distinctly see troops of white archangels pursuing one another from horizon to horizon. By the soft roads, muddy or dusty according to the season, Molchansk, the township, is some thirty-eight miles away; the railroad station is ten miles from the township; the nearest large city, the regional center, a hundred miles by rail. In short, a rather privileged location with regard to means of communication. The sixty-five houses (several of them unoccupied) are made of logs or planks, roofed with gray thatch, set in a half circle on a hill at a bend in the river: surrounded by little yards, they straggle out like a procession of tottering old women. Their windows look out on the clouds, the soft gray water, the fields on the farther shore, the somber mauve line of the forests on the horizon. On the paths that lead down to the river there are always children or young women carrying water in battered little casks hung from the two ends of a yoke which they carry on their shoulders. To keep the motion from spilling too much of the water, you float a disk of wood in each cask.

Noon. The rusty fields are hot under the sun. They are hungry for seed. You cannot look at them without thinking of it. Give us seed or you will go hungry. Hurry, the bright days will soon be over, hurry, the earth is waiting … The silence of the fields is a continual lament … Flakes of white cloud wander lazily across an indifferent sky. Two mechanics are exchanging advice and despairing oaths over a disabled tractor behind the house. President Vaniuchkin yawns furiously. The waiting fields cause him pain, the thought of the Plan harasses him, it keeps him awake at night, he has nothing to drink, the stock of vodka being exhausted. The messengers he sends to Molchansk come back covered with dust, exhausted and crestfallen, bringing slips of paper with penciled messages: “Hold out, Comrade Vaniuchkin. The first available truck will go to you. Communist greetings. Petrikov.” It means exactly nothing. I'd like to see what he'll do with the first available truck, when every kolkhoze in the township is hounding him for the same thing! Besides: Will there be a first available truck? — The only piece of furniture in his office was a bare table, littered with papers which were turning yellow like dead leaves. The open windows gave onto the fields. At the other end of the room a portrait of the Chief contemplated a sooty samovar perched on the stove. Under it slumped sacks, piled one on another like exhausted animals and not one containing the prescribed amount of seed. It was contrary to the instructions of the regional Directorate for Kolkhozes, and Kostia, checking the weight of the sacks, emphasized the fact with a sneer. “It's not worth putting a crick in my back to find out whether somebody's been sending out short-weight sacks, Yefim Bogdanovich! If you think the muzhiks won't know it just because they haven't a pair of scales! You don't know them, the devils, they can weigh a sack by looking at it — and you'll see what a howl they'll set up …”

Vaniuchkin chewed on an extinguished cigarette:

“And what do you think you can do about it, know-it-all? All right, we'll make a little trip to the township tribunal. It's not up to me …”

And they saw Agronomist Kostiukin coming across the fields in their direction, walking with a springy stride, his long arms swinging as if they were flapping in the wind. “Here he comes again!”

“Like me to tell you everything he's going to say to you, Yefim Bogdanovich?” Kostia proposed sarcastically.

“Shut up!”

Kostiukin entered. His yellow cap was pulled down over his eyes; drops of sweat stood on his sharp red nose; there were wisps of straw in his beard. He began complaining immediately. “We're five days behind the Plan.” No trucks to bring the clean seed that had been promised from Molchansk. The M. and T. Station had given their word, but they would not keep it. “You've seen how they keep their promises, haven't you?” As for the spare parts for emergency repairs, the Station would not receive them for ten days, in view of the congestion on the railroad — “I'm sure of that. And there we are! It's all up with the sowing plan … just as I told you it would be. We'll be short 40 per cent if everything goes well. Fifty or 60 if the frost…”

Vaniuchkin's small red face, which looked like a clenched fist flattened by a collision, wrinkled in circles. He looked at the agronomist with hatred, as if he wanted to cry at him: “Are you happy now?” Agronomist Kostiukin gesticulated too much: when he talked he looked as if he were catching flies; his watery eyes became too bright; his tart voice sank and sank. But just when you thought it would become quite inaudible, it revived harshly. The kolkhoze directors were rather afraid of him, because he was always making scenes and prophesying misfortunes, and his very clear-sightedness seemed to evoke the calamities it foresaw. And what was one to think of him? Released from a concentration camp, an exsaboteur who had once allowed a whole crop to rot in the fields — for lack of hands to harvest it, if you believed his story! He had been released before his time was up, on account of his admirable work on the penitentiary farms, he had been mentioned in the newspapers for an essay he had written on new methods of clearing land in cold regions, finally he had been awarded the Labor Medal of Honor for having set up an ingenious irrigation system for the Votiak kolkhozes during a dry season … In short, then: an extremely able technician, a counterrevolutionary who perhaps might have sincerely repented or who might equally well be remarkably clever and remarkably well camouflaged. You had to be on your guard with him; however, he had a right to be respected, you had to listen to him — and consequently be doubly on your guard. President Vaniuchkin, himself a former seasonal mason and former elite infantryman, whose knowledge of agriculture had been derived from one of the short courses established for the executive personnel of collective farms, really did not know which way to turn. Kostiukin continued: The peasants saw everything. “At it again, working in order to die of starvation this winter!” Who is sabotaging? They wanted to write to the regional center, denounce the township. “We must call a meeting, explain things.” Kostia was chewing his nails. He asked:

“How far from here to the township?”

“Thirty-four miles by the plain.”

The agronomist and Kostia instantly understood each other: they had had the same idea. Seed, provisions, matches, the calicoes that the women had been promised — why shouldn't the people of the kolkhoze bring them from Molchansk on their own backs? It could be done in three or four days if the able-bodied women and the sixteen-year-old boys were mobilized to relieve the bearers. Days and nights of work would count double. We'll promise a special distribution of soap, cigarettes, and sewing thread by the Co-op. If the Co-op objects, Vaniuchkin, I'll go to the Party Committee, I'll say, “Either that or the Plan is sunk!” They can't refuse — we know what they have on hand. They'd prefer to keep the things for the Party cadres, the technicians, and so on — naturally; but they'll have to give in, we'll all go to see them together! They might even let us have some needles; we know they've received some, though they'll deny it. The agronomist and Kostia flung the firm sentences back and forth as if they had been throwing stones. Kostiukin wriggled in his gray blouse, the pockets of which were stuffed with papers. Kostia took him by the elbows, they were face to face: the young, energetic profile, the old, sharp-nosed face with the cracked lips half open, the gaps in the rows of teeth. “We'll call a meeting. We can mobilize as many as a hundred and fifty bearers if the Iziumka people come!”

“Shall we get the priest to speak?” President Vaniuchkin proposed.

“If the devil himself would make us a good stirring speech, I'd ask him,” Kostia cried. “We'd see his cloven hoofs sticking out through his boots, there'd be a smell of burning, he'd dart out his flaming tongue — to accomplish the sowing plan, citizens! I'm willing — let the old devil sell us his soul!”

Their laughter relaxed them all. The russet earth laughed too, in its own way, perceptible to them alone; the horizon swayed a little, a comical cloud drifted across the sky.

The meeting was held in the administration farmyard at twilight, at the hour when the gnats become a torment. Many came, for the kolkhoze felt that it was in danger; the women were pleased that Father Guerassim was going to speak. Benches were set out for the women, the men listened standing. President Vaniuchkin spoke first, frightened to the depths of his soul by two hundred indistinct and murmuring faces. Someone shouted to him from the back: “Why did you have the Kibotkins arrested? Anathema!” He pretended not to have heard. Duty — Plan — the honor of the kolkhoze — the powers demand — children — hunger this winter — he rolled out the great cloudy words toward the red ball which was sinking to the dark horizon through a threatening haze. “I now give the floor to Citizen Guerassim!” Compact as a single obscure creature, the crowd stirred. Father Guerassim hoisted himself onto the table.