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VSEVOLOD IVANOV

p Vsevolod Ivanov (1895-1963) was a native of Siberia. He spent his youth moving about the towns and villages of that huge country, frequently changing his occupation—shop assistant, sailor, member of ’a troupe of wandering actors, circus artist and type-setter. He fought in the Civil War and began writing in the early years after the revolution under the guidance of Maxim Gorky, who was then mustering and organising the Russian intelligentsia.

p Ivanov became widely known when he published his Partisan Tales and later his novel Parkhomcnko, the story of an outstanding Red Army commander of the Civil War. The Moscow Art Theatre staged the play Armoured Train 14-69 based on one of Ivanov’s stories and it has since found a permanent place in the Soviet classic repertoire.

The short story Letter T tells an episode of the Civil War.

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p In his usual carefree manner, Ivan Pankratov was fond of repeating that he would die standing at the type fount and that his body would be carried out of the composing room as a letter is taken from the galley—face to the wall and not to the ceiling. His workmates admired him for his carefree ways, for his liveliness and his cheerful greying head, and also for those five wrinkles that cut across his rosy face like so many scars, telling the world that this was a man who had seen many winds and much sun.

p Ivan had long been aware that his sight was beginning to fail—the bright sky with its jolly clouds was not so bright any more and the grey of evening set in earlier. He was transferred from letter-press to theatre bills, but he still made too many mistakes. The management begged his pardon when they transferred him to the job of taking copy round to other compositors and of distributing used type. Ivan was not down-hearted even at this, and only said that his hands probably shook because of his age; he said nothing about his eyes—he seemed to have kept quiet about many things in the course of his life.

p And because of his optimism and his fine spirit, and because they were sorry for him, his fellow workers put pieces of black paper in the type boxes before he began distributing type from a used form. Ivan would distribute his stint for the day and next morning the others would lift out the paper and put the letters in the proper boxes; for Ivan had grown so blind that letters went into neighbouring boxes —“k” into “l”, for instance. Ivan was afraid of newcomers to the printing works, it was difficult for 103 him to get used to them, their faces seemed to merge into a blue haze. . . .

p On the day our story begins Mishka Blagoveshchensky started work in the shop. He was young, no more than sixteen, but with a wealth of experience behind him. In his short, homeless life he had travelled the length and breadth of Russia and had been in most of the big cities. Mishka was in a bad mood when he came to work; furthermore, there were rumours in the town that the basmachi  [103•*  and Whiteguards were advancing from the desert. It was said that they were led by Ataman Kashimirov, a Cossack officer notorious for his cruelty—and Mishka was a coward, he boasted of his cowardice, and so nobody believed in it. He arrived at the printing works early in the morning. A boy apprentice was already re-sorting Ivan Pankratov’s mixed letters and was complaining of his degrading job, so Mishka greeted Ivan with malicious laughter. Ivan walked with a light, confident step and when he stopped in the doorway, his white forelock was above the lintel.

p Yershov, the make-up man, called Mishka behind a printing-press, where he was out of sight, and brought his turpentine-soaked fist within an inch of the lad’s nose, drawing his short, angrylooking eyebrows together in a frown. Mishka said no more after that and Ivan realised that the others had not allowed him to speak.

p It was a dull day with clouds hanging low after two weeks of rain. Clay oozed from under the sand, giving off a sickening smell of rot. The steamer Volna Revolyutsii was moving slowly down the Amu Darya towards the small town of X, carrying two companies of Red Army troops, some field-guns and 104 munitions. The steamer was coming to the aid of the town for it was a fact, and no rumour, that the basmachi were advancing on the town from the desert. It was making slow progress because the Amu Darya flows through sandy desert and frequently changes its course; it has numerous sand-bars and shallows and its waters are swift-flowing and dangerous. There had been buoys marking the bars but the basmachi had destroyed them—and, even if they hadn’t, there would have been no one left to look after them, anyway. Every night the steamer dropped anchor and every night there was cursing, because the soldiers wanted the vessel to keep going at night! ... In their way they were right; it was more dangerous to sleep than to keep moving. The little flat-bottomed boats of the basmachi could not be heard on account of the rustling of the reeds in the wind. ... All lights were doused on the boat and the crew kept their rifles at the ready. At last the time came when the soldiers were informed that it was no more than ten or fifteen versts to the town. But heavy rain began to fall and the sky was completely overcast. The raging waters of the Amu Darya were shut in on both sides by brownishyellow sand-hills.

p On one of the hills stood a huge, bare tree, crowned with a raven’s nest. The sailors went ashore and climbed the hill. The raven would not let them climb the tree and attacked them several times ( under the tree lay the shells of young tortoises that the young ravens apparently fed on). There came a flash of lightning and a careful sailor shot at the raven, the thunder drowning the sound of the shot. Before them lay an endless bluish-brown plain covered with gravel. In the distance they could see some purple hills but nothing that looked like a town. The crew were beginning to lose heart. They argued softly for a long time and eventually decided 105 to drop anchor. Then the odour of rot reached them from the banks. The tightly strained anchor chain vibrated in the tiny, savage waves. The river, a dirty yellow, heavy and cold, raced past the vessel—-

p In the town the Revolutionary Committee had been expecting the steamer for a long time and for two days already the landing-stage has been decorated with small red pennants (they were already fading and the fierce rain had torn some of them down). Half the town was inhabited by Cossacks and the Revolutionary Committee feared many of them would take sides with the basmachi and the Whiteguards, and was afraid to call on the Cossacks to defend the town although the rest of the population had been mobilised. Despite the rain the Cossacks went about fully armed, singing and playing their mouth-organs brought from the front; this all served to intensify the anxiety. Those occupying the trenches outside the town on the desert side looked mostly towards the town, listening gloomily to its noises. The desert was dark and damp.

p Farther away, some twenty versts or so from the town, the basmachi had made a camp in the hills by tying together the tops of bushes and covering them with horse rugs and saddle cloths; in these shelters they slept, the Ataman, General Kashimirov, among them. They had traversed almost the entire Kyzyl Kum desert, the town was not far away and beyond it the Amu Darya, and beyond the Amu Darya was holy, fragrant Khiva! The basmachi and the Ataman, however, believed that the town was strong! At last they caught a Kirghiz uyanchi, a wandering minstrel, on his way from Khiva to Bukhara; this minstrel told them that the Russians had been diverting the waters of the Amu Darya for the last three days, that the Russians possessed a strength that could not be described even 106 in song, that the Russians were great titans; at this point Ataman Kashimirov shot the minstrel in the mouth. Then the basmachi decided that the uyanchi had been sent to them as a spy; wet whips flashed and there was a jingle of stirrups. The basmachi were riding towards the town.

p In the town they really were digging a canal, standing in mud and slush in the pouring rain. The night the steamer Volna Revolyutsii dropped anchor some fifteen versts from the town, it had suddenly given a lurch. The sleepy crew were about to fire, then realised that the plash of the water around them had ceased. And through the rain next morning the soldiers saw that the river had moved about two hundred yards from the ship. The steamer was perched clumsily on the mud of the river-bed. The sailors, up to their knees in mud, dragged a boat to the river. Old tree stumps, black and slimy, jutted up on all sides. Huge fish that had not had time to get away were thrashing about in little puddles in the rain. The sailors rowed their boat to the town, and there the Revolutionary Committee ordered a further mobilisation and requisitioned picks and shovels.

p Contingents fell in awkwardly and marched away to dig a canal that would carry water to the steamer. There was still a drizzle of rain, with low, grey clouds. . . .

p It was cold in the printing works, the type was sticky because there was nothing to wash it with, no turpentine and no kerosene. The ink dried and the platens in the printing-presses passed over the type without making an impression on the paper. Tire printers had been mobilised to dig the canal and only Ivan Pankratov and Mishka remained behind.

p Ivan walked back and forth among the type cases as briskly as usual, his hands behind him, coughing 107 as he walked and feeling sorry because he had just remembered an interesting story and there was no one to tell it to. Mishka, to avoid mobilisation, had scratched his foot on the instep with a nail and was limping and cursing; he was cutting narrow strips of paper to be pasted crosswise on the windows so that the glass would not be broken by gun-fire. Ivan Pankratov wandered back and forth, looked at the window panes and said that they ought to have been cleaned long ago, they did not let any light through. Mishka snapped back at him—they had been cleaned that very morning—and the rain had washed them after that. The old man merely went on staring with untroubled gaze at the windows he could scarcely see. Suddenly Tulumbayev, the Military Commandant of the town, appeared in the doorway.

p Tulumbayev, a stooped, determined-looking man, was holding a sheet of paper covered with neat handwriting; he said that information had been received that the basmachi and the Ataman’s forces, led by General Kashimirov, were approaching the town from the desert and would reach the trenches in an hour and a half or two hours. The Revolutionary Committee informed the printing workers that the fate of the town was in their hands. A meeting had been called in the Cossack club, but the Cossacks would not come to it unless a manifesto was posted up all over the town; this manifesto contained the text of a telegram from the Centre which gave the Cossacks and Turkmenians equal rights to pastures and meadowlands. There was no time to get to the steamer and recall the printers. And there was nobody to send; they had to talk now, to act now! Tulumbayev gave the old printer the original of the manifesto.

p “When shall I come for them?" he asked.

p “In forty minutes!" answered Ivan Pankratov.

p The commandant shook hands with him, touched 108 the peak ot his cap and went rapidly away, displaying resolution in his every movement. It was still drizzling outside, it seemed quiet, but confusion was beginning in the town; they did not know where to take the machine-guns—to the Executive Committee building or to the trenches outside the town. Wire was being put up across the roads.

p Ivan Pankratov stood with the manifesto in his hands and saw before him a solid grey sheet with even lines on it. His neck ached unaccountably and there was a sharp pain at the temples, so sharp that it hurt him to turn round. Mishka fidgeted about in front of him, whining, and, frightened by his own cries, began stamping his feet. He shouted that he did not want to be shot because of this old devil who had always pretended he could set type. He was sorry he had not learned something of the trade himself, he was suffering because of it—if only he knew something about the type fount in its case! Gasping with anger, Mishka seized Ivan Pankratov by the arm, by that long and heavy hand. He led the old man to the type case, ran round the table till he stood opposite him, rested his elbows on the inkstained wood and then fell forward on to it.

p ’We’ll be shot because of you! Our own people will shoot us.... Set it up!”

p The paper rolled up in Ivan’s hand. The lines of writing disappeared. Suddenly he remembered about his old woman who had died shortly before. At the very last moment she had looked pitifully at him. “You, Ivan Pankratov,” she had said, "are like a gadfly; you fly like a bird, you roar like an ox.. . .” She would have said more but tears filled her eyes. At the time Ivan had been really amazed at those tears and he had decided that they meant that the old woman did not want to die, that she was sorry to part with her life. And now, as he stood there, with the copy he could not see in his hands, he 109 realised that for a long time he had been deceiving himself and that others had deceived him and been sorry for him. He understood the meaning of many snatches of talk he had heard and realised why there had always been very little type to distribute, and why the compositors had said that there was little work and that he, Ivan Pankratov, could take a rest, could even go home. Ivan Pankratov had gone out sometimes, and walked around the town thinking that he was enjoying an easy and worthy old age. And now it turned out that they had kept him on at the printing works, him the chatterbox and boaster, for no reason at all, tha^t they had worked for him and fed him.... And now, because of his helplessness, because of him.... His heart palpitated wearily. Surely the town could not be allowed to fall because of him!

p Mishka kept screaming at him.

p “Get it set! ...” There was no limit to Mishka’s curses.

p Ivan Pankratov pulled frantically at the type case—the third box from the top. The table gave a jerk. Ivan set his stick to the width pf the handbill and pulled the type case down on. the table with a crash. He immediately picked out the letter “T”— all manifestoes began with the letter “T”, but then it seemed to him that he had not got that letter but another, either the one before or the one after it. He glanced at the letter. It felt cold, heavy and dull, as though it was completely worn down, rubbed out. He glanced helplessly at the window and that, too, seemed to have been rubbed into a pink mist of cobwebs. He held the letter closer to his eyes. The indistinct and unreadable outline of the letter gleamed between his fingers; in the mist that surrounded them they looked oddly smooth and young. But he could not tell what letter it was, he had absolutely no idea! ... The stick trembled in his hand.

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p No idea? ... That meant there was nothing he could do, no way he, a printer, an old worker, could help the working class and the poor peasantry, who were defending the socialist revolution—-Was it possible that he, an old worker, could not muster enough strength to see the letters? Was it possible that in these minutes, when the fate of many Soviet people was being decided, he would be incapable of doing anything? Had he really become so weakwilled? That could not, must not, be!

p His mind was working feverishly. He felt a shiver of cold in his toes. His head was burning. His throat was dry. He would do his job, he would manage somehow, he would make himself see the letters!

p Then his brain suddenly seemed to catch fire. The joy of creative effort suddenly made him straighten his back. Tears streamed from his eyes, and seemed to sweep away the mist that had veiled them. He could see the type case and the letters quite clearly.. ..

p “Tovarishchi!" (Comrades). This was the first word he would set on his stick, using the biggest type he had.

p The letter he had held in the palm of his hand now returned to his fingers; they had become more flexible, and looking at them, it struck him that he had not noticed the wrinkles on his fingers for a long time. But there was no time to think about wrinkles now. When he could not see properly he had taken the letter “S” from the next box instead of the letter “T”. He threw the “S” back into its box.

p “That was a mistake,” he said. His hand described a semicircle between the type case and the stick as his fingers firmly grasped the letter “T”, then "0" and then “V”....

p Mishka walked slowly away from the type case, looked round the shop fearfully, for some unknown reason smoothed his hair down, and then began to 111 get the form ready to take the type from Ivan’s galley; the form, with the type, is placed in the printing-press, and then the printing can begin. At first Mishka took the cleanest form he could find, then he grew bolder and winked maliciously to himself—I know that old man’s just lazy, he seemed to say, he’s been fooling them all the time. So, he took up the dirtiest and rustiest of the forms. Ivan Pankratov, still filled with this extraordinary sense of joy and even aching with it (there was a sharp pain in his chest and his temples throbbed), hurriedly shot one stick of type after another into the galley. He thought he had missed out a word; he checked it, re-read the text and found everything correct. He began putting type in the stick again, and again it seemed to him that he had missed some very important word. He spat, tied up the type in the galley, put it into the hand press and pulled the handle, so that the roller would run over the type and ink it. His hands were wet with sweat, his face was steaming.

p “Let her go!" shouted Mishka, putting a sheet of wallpaper into the press (they had only wallpaper to print the manifesto on).

p Ivan Pankratov saw a galley proof of his own setting for the first time in—how many years? But he had no time for reminiscences, for Mishka was shouting at him.

p “Read the proofs, Uncle Ivan!”

p He found a misprint, an “E” instead of an “I”, and wanted to dig it out with a pick and change it, but suddenly he could not see the sharp end of the pick; the lever of the hand press disappeared from his sight, and first his fingers, then his arm retreated into the haze. He dropped the pick and grasping the lever of the press firmly looked round the shop. There was no shop any more. A dull reddish mist was his whole world.

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p “Put the paper in, Mishka,” he said.

p Mishka whistled, and told him to set the press going. Soon some soldiers came running to the printing works for the manifestoes and they handed them the lot—seventy copies—forgetting to leave one for themselves. Half an hour later the Cossacks filled the trenches. Machine-guns were aimed into the desert. The basmachi retreated. And another five hours later the steamer reached the Amu Darya through the newly dug canal. The whole town greeted the steamer. People took Ivan Partkratov by the arms and led him out to meet it (why they were leading him and how he did not notice). The Cossacks roared a united and somewhat boastful “Hurrah!" at it. It was still raining and the tiny drops were falling on Ivan’s face.

p “See what a big ship it is?" someone asked him.

p “Yes, I do,” he answered, although before him there stretched an endless sea of fog with a tiny, gleaming circle in the middle—the sun.

Translated by George H. Hanna