[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
promise to the delegates that we three, friends, will go on fighting for every young chap at our works, to
win him over from the old world and teach him to serve the people and those fine, noble ideas that the
Communist Party has pointed out to us.
The dazzling sun rose higher and higher, gilding the tops of the waves. The white town, with the strong
salty east wind blowing round it, spread out before me in the faint mist of the July morning.
EPILOGUE
TWENTY YEARS AFTER
Twenty years have passed since that sunny morning when the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamed into the port
of Mariupol.
The sailors darted about round the windlass preparing to drop anchor, the passengers came out of
their cabins, and we, gathering on the upper deck, sang loudly: O'erthrown the night. The sun is rising
...
What a fine song that is! It has engraved itself on my memory for ever.
Even now, twenty years later, as I sit in this little room reading some old newspapers and listening to
the rain lashing on the windows, that song is still ringing in my ears.
I can see wet chestnut-trees through the window. Their big, broad leaves are drooping dejectedly.
The rain has knocked all the blossom out of them and exposed their little prickly pods.
I arrived here last night from Leningrad. When I went to bed, I had made up my mind to go into town
and visit the Old Fortress first thing in the morning.
My hostess, Elena Lukyanovna, is a nerve specialist. She lost all her family in Leningrad, during the
first winter of the blockade, and after demobilization came to work in my home district. We got talking
on the train. The mere fact that we had both lived for ten years in Leningrad at once drew me towards
this thoughtful, prematurely grey-haired woman in a green army tunic with the marks of shoulder-straps
that had only recently been discarded. My father had suffered the same fate as her parents. Not long
before the war he had come to Leningrad from Cherkassy to work at the Printing-House. He died in my
arms of starvation, in December 1941.
"I'm afraid you won't find anywhere to live," said Elena Lukyanovna towards the end of the journey.
"The town's just a heap of ruins... If you like, you can stay with me." Since I had no longer any relatives in
the town, I gladly accepted her invitation.
And overnight it started raining. The rain is still pelting down now, although it is four o'clock in the
afternoon and high time I went out to see the town I have not seen for over twenty years.
When Elena Lukyanovna went out to the hospital, I asked her if she could let me have something to
read.
"All my books are about medicine," she said. "My library hasn't arrived yet.. . But there are some
books and magazines up in the attic. They've been there ever since the occupation. Have a look through
them. Perhaps they need burning."
And now for two hours I have been turning the gaudy pages of Die Woche, Signal, and other Nazi
magazines. Hitler's frenzied face glares at me from every page meeting Mussolini, receiving the Spanish
ambassador, admiring Warsaw destroyed by German bombs. Petrified ranks of Hitlerite troops line the
deserted squares, banners with the sign of the swastika wave over the stricken city. . . But what is this?. .
.
I pull a heavy bundle of newspapers out of the bottom of the basket. Its title, the Podolian, sends my
thoughts racing back to the days of my childhood. The Russian newspaper that was published in our
provincial town in the time of the tsar used to be called the Podolian. But why is it in Ukrainian?
I look for the date: 1942. As I turn the pages of this Nazi Podolian, I seem to see the invaders'
chronicle of the war turned inside out. I see Hitlerites driving through the deserted streets of Kiev, I read
the screaming head-lines about the inevitable fall of Leningrad and Moscow, and other Nazi
announcements. One reads them now with the laughing contempt that one feels after a bad dream. And
suddenly a familiar name leaps to my eye "Grigorenko." I read hastily: "On the 12th of this month, by
order of the District Commissar Baron von Reindel, a Ukrainian Committee was set up in the town. It is
composed of the following persons: Evgen Vikul, Tser (interpreter), Yuri Ksezhonok (chairman of the
committee), Kost Grigorenko. The committee will supervise collection of taxes and help the German
authorities to levy contingents. The committee is an organ of the District Commissar and acts under the
Commissar's orders."
Grigorenko! The Petlura boy scout, the doctor's son, serving Petlura and the Germans! So this was
where he had turned up again!
"I see you've found an interesting pastime?" Elena Lukyanovna says entering the room.
"I've just traced some old acquaintances, Elena Lukyanovna, and there are one or two whom I wish I
had handed over to justice when I was young." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl szamanka888.keep.pl
promise to the delegates that we three, friends, will go on fighting for every young chap at our works, to
win him over from the old world and teach him to serve the people and those fine, noble ideas that the
Communist Party has pointed out to us.
The dazzling sun rose higher and higher, gilding the tops of the waves. The white town, with the strong
salty east wind blowing round it, spread out before me in the faint mist of the July morning.
EPILOGUE
TWENTY YEARS AFTER
Twenty years have passed since that sunny morning when the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamed into the port
of Mariupol.
The sailors darted about round the windlass preparing to drop anchor, the passengers came out of
their cabins, and we, gathering on the upper deck, sang loudly: O'erthrown the night. The sun is rising
...
What a fine song that is! It has engraved itself on my memory for ever.
Even now, twenty years later, as I sit in this little room reading some old newspapers and listening to
the rain lashing on the windows, that song is still ringing in my ears.
I can see wet chestnut-trees through the window. Their big, broad leaves are drooping dejectedly.
The rain has knocked all the blossom out of them and exposed their little prickly pods.
I arrived here last night from Leningrad. When I went to bed, I had made up my mind to go into town
and visit the Old Fortress first thing in the morning.
My hostess, Elena Lukyanovna, is a nerve specialist. She lost all her family in Leningrad, during the
first winter of the blockade, and after demobilization came to work in my home district. We got talking
on the train. The mere fact that we had both lived for ten years in Leningrad at once drew me towards
this thoughtful, prematurely grey-haired woman in a green army tunic with the marks of shoulder-straps
that had only recently been discarded. My father had suffered the same fate as her parents. Not long
before the war he had come to Leningrad from Cherkassy to work at the Printing-House. He died in my
arms of starvation, in December 1941.
"I'm afraid you won't find anywhere to live," said Elena Lukyanovna towards the end of the journey.
"The town's just a heap of ruins... If you like, you can stay with me." Since I had no longer any relatives in
the town, I gladly accepted her invitation.
And overnight it started raining. The rain is still pelting down now, although it is four o'clock in the
afternoon and high time I went out to see the town I have not seen for over twenty years.
When Elena Lukyanovna went out to the hospital, I asked her if she could let me have something to
read.
"All my books are about medicine," she said. "My library hasn't arrived yet.. . But there are some
books and magazines up in the attic. They've been there ever since the occupation. Have a look through
them. Perhaps they need burning."
And now for two hours I have been turning the gaudy pages of Die Woche, Signal, and other Nazi
magazines. Hitler's frenzied face glares at me from every page meeting Mussolini, receiving the Spanish
ambassador, admiring Warsaw destroyed by German bombs. Petrified ranks of Hitlerite troops line the
deserted squares, banners with the sign of the swastika wave over the stricken city. . . But what is this?. .
.
I pull a heavy bundle of newspapers out of the bottom of the basket. Its title, the Podolian, sends my
thoughts racing back to the days of my childhood. The Russian newspaper that was published in our
provincial town in the time of the tsar used to be called the Podolian. But why is it in Ukrainian?
I look for the date: 1942. As I turn the pages of this Nazi Podolian, I seem to see the invaders'
chronicle of the war turned inside out. I see Hitlerites driving through the deserted streets of Kiev, I read
the screaming head-lines about the inevitable fall of Leningrad and Moscow, and other Nazi
announcements. One reads them now with the laughing contempt that one feels after a bad dream. And
suddenly a familiar name leaps to my eye "Grigorenko." I read hastily: "On the 12th of this month, by
order of the District Commissar Baron von Reindel, a Ukrainian Committee was set up in the town. It is
composed of the following persons: Evgen Vikul, Tser (interpreter), Yuri Ksezhonok (chairman of the
committee), Kost Grigorenko. The committee will supervise collection of taxes and help the German
authorities to levy contingents. The committee is an organ of the District Commissar and acts under the
Commissar's orders."
Grigorenko! The Petlura boy scout, the doctor's son, serving Petlura and the Germans! So this was
where he had turned up again!
"I see you've found an interesting pastime?" Elena Lukyanovna says entering the room.
"I've just traced some old acquaintances, Elena Lukyanovna, and there are one or two whom I wish I
had handed over to justice when I was young." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]