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VEBA PANOVA

p Vera Panova was born in 1905. She has written novels, plays, stories and film scripts (Fellow Travellers, Seryozha, Time Walks, A Sentimental Novel) and has three times been awarded a State Prize.

A Leningrad woman to the core, Panova knows and loves her city, the "cradle of the revolution”. She has written several stories about its revolutionary past. The story included in this volume is about young people and the traditions they have inherited from their forefathers who made the revolution.

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p Three boys stand at the gate of a fine house. One of those old mansions with yellow walls and white pillars that stand on the edge of the Field of Mars. It’s hot August day, the last week of the holidays, of do-as-you-please, of hunting for checkerboard butterflies. Yes, it was a good summer, but it’s over now.

p “Let’s have a smoke,” Vitka says thoughtfully and hands round a packet of Belomors.

p Sashka takes one.

p “What about you?" Vitka asks Yurchik.

p “No, thanks,” Yurchik replies, “I’ve given it up.”

p “Really given it up for good?”

p “Yes, for good.”

p He’s a pale, puny little fellow in spectacles. Hardly comes up to Vitka and Sashka’s shoulders. When his mother found out he had started smoking—they were living out in the country in summer and she saw the smoke rising over the bushes—she started sobbing her heart out, as if he had tried to commit suicide. It was more than he could bear and he decided to sacrifice his pleasure, just so that she wouldn’t sob in that terrible way.

p “Don’t tempt him,” Sashka says to Vitka. “If he’s given it up, he’s given it up.”

p “I’m not tempting him. I only offered.”

p “Well, don’t. The man used to smoke and now he’s given it up. That’s not so easy. You’ve got to have strength of character.”

p These two great toughs are rather sorry for Yurchik for having such a dotty mother, but they respect him. And not just for his strength of character. In their eyes he is a miracle of book-learning and omniscience. You can ask him anything and he’ll answer it. If not at once, by the 344 following day at the latest. They are very fond of him and they call him “Goggles”.

p There are tram-lines along the narrow road in front of the house, and beyond the tram-lines the pleasant, spacious park spreads its avenues of neat round-topped lime-trees, its stumpy little bushes and emerald patches of grass. The little lawns are dotted with silvery dandelion clocks. And over the park towers the deep-blue sky with its plump white clouds___From the gate the boys can see the broad approach to Kirov Bridge and the Neva. That’s where the monument to Suvorov is—a handsome young man in a helmet and tunic with bare, muscular calves. Vitka and Sashka used to think this was a sculpture of Generalissimo Suvorov, but Yurchik says it’s Mars, the God of War. And the park, he says, is called the Field of Mars because it used to be a place for drilling and parades and there wasn’t a thing growing here, not one little tree, not even a blade of grass; the soldiers’ boots had stamped the ground as hard as rock and there used to be tornadoes of dust whirling over it.

p The boys didn’t arrive in time for anything like that. For as long as they can remember the Field of Mars has always been green and blossoming. Roses and other flowers in bloom, grannies and nurses sitting on the benches, children playing on the sandy paths. There are some special women there to keep order, and if they see anything wrong they blow their whistles. They watch the bigger boys like hawks because they always think the big ones have come to break the rules.

All that remains of the past on the Field of Mars are the sixteen old lamp-posts. Their lanterns are a funny shape, with dark glass windows. In the evening, when the whole field is lighted by little electric bulbs that glow like luminous pearls, the sixteen old lanterns shine with a dim, feeble, 345 obsolete sort of light, as if they were shining from some other world. The lanterns stand in the middle of the field, round the common graves.

p These graves are surrounded by a low granite wall and there are inscriptions cut in the grey granite. They are long inscriptions, of several lines each, some of which are in big letters, others in smaller ones.

p The wall has openings on all four sides, providing entrance to the graves. Here are buried the martyrs of the revolution—but that was all a very long time ago, before these boys, or even their parents were born.

p An eternal flame burns over the graves. It’s a flame of gas, carried by an underground pipe with a burner at the end. The Leningrad gasmen inspect the burner to keep it-working properly.

p It’s quite an ordinary thing really, nothing very special. These boys live in a city that has built a nuclear-powered ice-breaker. They are interested in outer space and artificial satellites. For them a gas burner is just a gas burner and nothing more. As far as they can see, the “eternal flame" merely means that the Leningrad gasmen are doing their job properly.

p Those long inscriptions on the wall, so Yurchik once told them, were composed by Lunacharsky, by Comrade Lunacharsky, a People’s Commissar. Yes, that was a long time ago, too. And in those days we didn’t have any railway engines. They were all old and broken, and the Americans offered us a hundred new engines if we’d give them the grille round the Summer Gardens.

p “Yes, that grille. You know it, don’t you? Yes, for a hundred engines.”

p “I’d have, swopped it,” Vitka said.

p “You would?”

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p “Well, it was a fair offer, wasn’t it?”

p “So you think that was a very good price—a hundred railway engines??’

p “Well, wasn’t it?”

p “What a blockhead!”

p “Why am I a blockhead?" Vitka asked.

p “Because we’re making as many engines as we want, and not just steam engines but diesels and electric ones. But that grille is the only one in the world!”

p Lunacharsky had been of the same opinion. And he had persuaded the Council of People’s Commissars not to give up the grille.

“You mean there’s really not another one like it in the whole world?" Sashka asked.

p On one side are the Summer Gardens with their grille that is worth more than a hundred locomotives; on the other are the Mikhailovsky Gardens. If you turn left out of the gate, it’s only a few steps to the Power Workers’ Club, where they have a film show every evening. And farther on, across the bridge is the Peter and Paul Fortress. There’s a sandy beach between the fortress and the river, just a narrow one. It is sheltered from the north winds by the fortress wall. People swim there and sunbathe. Vitka starts sun-bathing there in April—when there is any sun, of course. In April, even on sunny days the sand is cold as ice. You mustn’t lie on it—you’d catch your death of cold. All the men,, young and old, strip to the waist and sunbathe standing up. A patient, valiant crowd.

p While you’re still a kid, you can’t imagine what a man’s life is like. You think when your Dad’s done his seven or eight hours he’s finished for the day. Apart from a bit of voluntary work he may have to do, of course, or a meeting or two. But 347 when you begin to grow up and go out on your own, to the left and right of the gate, then you see what a mass of different things men have to occupy their time. Take the motor-cyclists every day in Stable Square, for instance, taking their driving tests. There’s the examiner, a lieutenant of tht militia, watching someone doing figures of eight on his motorbike. And there’s a regular crowd of men, young and old, standing round. Rooted to the spot they are, won’t move an inch. Just stand there looking on, criticising. One or two are on their way from work, still in overalls stained with whitewash or engine grease. Someone else has been round to the baker’s for mother and is carrying a loaf in a string bag. Mother’s waiting for her bread but he is lost to the world.

p Sashka often goes to a shop on the Nevsky where they sell collector’s stamps and that is always full of grown-up men, too. They jostle and push in the shop, then go outside for a smoke. They swop stamps with schoolboys, discuss the changes that are going on in the world and work out how many new states have appeared in Africa. They know as much about such things as any professor of geography, says Sashka.

p On the avenue of the Mikhailovsky Gardens that runs along by the Moika Canal some men have organised a chess club. They bring along their own chess sets and play there. They get quite a crowd of fans round them. They hold tournaments. They have their Botvinniks and Tahls.

p And here is yet another reason for respecting Yurchik. These serious people wanted him to play with them, actually invited him to compete in a tournament. And he would have done, too, if his mother hadn’t taken him away to the country for he summer.

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p So, the three boys are standing there, at the gate, looking across at the Field of Mars. People stroll along the paths, the grannies and nurses sit and talk.

p A tiny little girl in a red frock and a little boy in a white shirt are picking the dandelion clocks on the green lawn. The yard cleaner, who has just got the hose out to wash down the street, stands lost in admiration, shading her eyes from the sun and forgetting to turn on the water, as she peers at several black ZILs that have come sweeping round the bend, showing off their perfect suspension. A whole convoy of them, one after the other.

p “What a lot!" Sashka remarks.

p The ZILs slow down and more and more close up behind them till there’s hardly room for them in the narrow street. Nose to tail, they climb cautiously over the tram-lines like large beetles and an approaching tram has to stop.

p “Must be the Poles,” Yurchik says.

p “What makes you think that?" Vitka asks.

p “It was in the paper.”

p “Yes, and they mentioned it on the radio,” says Sashka. “A Polish delegation.”

p “They’re going to lay a wreath,” Yurchik says, “and take the eternal flame back to Poland with them.”

p “Take away the eternal tlame? For keeps?" Vitka wants to know.

p “They won’t take it away. They’ll just light a flame from ours and take that.”

p The ZILs have halted, some in the road, some on the broad avenue across the Field. Doors click. People get out. Two in trilbies, the others hatless. One is wearing a green jacket, the others are in fawn or grey raincoats.

p Two men carry a large wreath up to the wall round the graves.

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p Passers-by stop to watch what is going on. The grannies and nurses hold hands with their children and hurry over to the graves from all sides.

p The three boys head in the same direction, but they just saunter along with their hands in their pockets, preserving their dignity.

p The people who arrived in the ZILs have gathered by the wall. The two who were wearing hats have now bared their heads like the others and the wind is playing through their hair. The one in the green jacket must be an interpreter. He keeps waving his arms and talking—must be translating the inscriptions—while the delegation stands round and listens. Then one of them moves out of the group and strides firmly through the entrance, to the centre of the square, where the eternal flame is burning. The others file after him. When he reaches the flame he goes down on one knee, and after that the boys can’t see him any more because the others are in the way.

p But what they have seen they like and expressions of pleasure and pride appear on their faces. Yes, they like the way that man went down on one knee and bowed his grey head. It looked so gallant and fine. They had never seen anyone kneel in reverence like that, they had only read of such things in historical novels.

p But what really impresses them is that this man knelt at their common graves. He knelt in reverence on their own Leningrad earth and the wind from the Neva ruffled his grey hair.

p And everyone looked on in silence. The passersby, the children, the Leningrad power workers from the first floor of their club and the post-office workers from the ground floor.... But now the group of Poles has parted and the grey-haired man has reappeared and is walking back down the path to the cars. He is holding something in front of his 350 chest in his right hand and shielding it with his left. That must be the flame they have lighted from ours and are taking back to their own country. The grey-haired man is followed by the others. The cardoors click. The delegation gets in, so does the interpreter in the green jacket.

p And that’s all. The black ZILs hum gently as they turn round, then the whole splendid procession of gleaming black limousines rolls away. The trams again go clanking past. The grannies and nurses return to their benches.

p Still sauntering along casually, hands in pockets, the three boys, without saying a word, head for the graves. They grew up near these graves; every day, summer and winter, they have seen this granite wall with its inscriptions composed by Lunacharsky. But none of them, not even Yurchik, has ever got around to reading those inscriptions properly. At the age of eleven or twelve you somehow aren’t terribly interested in what is written on gravestones.

p But now they walk slowly round the wall and stop at every inscription to read with care and appreciation those stern and solemn lines. The boys want to know what it was the Poles read on these graves and what they took away with them to Poland from our Field of Mars.

p NOT KNOWING THE NAMES
OF ALL THE HEROES IN THE STRUGGLE
FOR FREEDOM
OF ALL THOSE WHO SHED THEIR BLOOD
THE HUMAN RACE
HONOURS THE NAMELESS
IN MEMORY
AND HONOUR OF THEM ALL
HAS THIS STONE BEEN PLACED
TO STAND HERE
THROUGH THE AGES

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p They read in silence, to themselves. Sashka frowns, Vitka gapes, his pink lips lolling open, Yurchik’s small face wears an expression of intense concentration.

p Fast or slow, they eventually grasp the meaning of these words. And just look at that—no punctuation marks! After all the bother they cause, it turns out you can get on quite well without them. This is written for the years to come, for Russians, for Poles, for all the nations, so one can’t be bothered with a lot of punctuation marks.

p IMMORTAL IS HE
WHO DIES FOR
A GREAT CAUSE
HE WHO GIVES
HIS LIFE
FOR THE PEOPLE
WHO WORKS AND FIGHTS
AND DIES
FOR THE COMMON GOOD
LIVES FOR EVER
AMONG THE PEOPLE

p The little boy in the white shirt and the little girl in the red frock stand at a distance watching the big boys reading the inscriptions. They are probably waiting for something else to happen. Perhaps someone else will go down on one knee? But the big boys merely take the cigarette stubs out of -their mouths and put them away in their pockets.

p YOU PROLETARIAN
AROSE
FROM THE DEPTHS OF OPPRESSION
POVERTY AND IGNORANCE
TO WIN
FREEDOM AND HAPPINESS
YOU WILL BENEFIT 352
ALL MANKIND
AND FREE IT
FROM SLAVERY

p They go inside the wall. The wreath brought by the Poles stands in the corner. In a hollow on a small square platform in the middle burns the eternal flame. Fluttering in the wind under the bright sunlight, it looks like a gold and scarlet banner. This is the flame those Poles came here to get. The flame that the gasmen keep an eye on to make sure it burns for ever.

p NOT VICTIMS BUT HEROES
LIE BENEATH THESE STONES
YOUR FATE ROUSES
NOT GRIEF BUT ENVY
IN THE HEARTS
OF ALL YOUR GRATEFUL
DESCENDANTS
IN THOSE RED AND TERRIBLE DAYS
YOU LIVED GLORIOUSLY
AND DIED A FINE DEATH

p Well, and what if the gasmen do have to keep an eye on it, the boys think to themselves. Of course, they have to, and they have to keep it clean when it gets clogged. It wouldn’t work otherwise.

p And what if it did happen to go out one day, when that hurricane blew it out. The wind blew it out, but people lit it again, and they’ll do the same again if necessary. Yes, of course it’s eternal, an eternal flame.

p And the gravestones at their scratched, sunburnt feet, in their dusty sandals, speak to them in soft voices, telling them about the dead.

p “Died in action against the Whiteguards.”

p “Murdered by Right Socialist-Revolutionaries.”

p “Killed at the front.”

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p “Killed by Whiteguard Finns.”

p “Murdered by Whiteguards during the suppression of the Yaroslavl uprising in July 1918.

p “Here lie buried those who fell in battle during the February Revolution and the Great Revolution of October 1917.”

p YOU WENT TO WAR
AGAINST WEALTH
POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
FOR THE FEW
AND YOU DIED HONOURABLY
SO THAT WEALTH
POWER AND KNOWLEDGE
SHOULD BECOME
THE LOT OF ALL

p The three boys, hands in pockets, stroll away from the graves.

p Yes, it’s quite right, they are thinking, that foreigners should make note of such things and take them away abroad. Yes, that’s as it should be. What was written there? You lived gloriously and died a fine death. In those faraway, red and terrible days.

p “But why ‘terrible’?" Vitka asks.

p But his friends don’t want to discuss that at the moment. They have too much to think about. Yurchik has clamped his pale lips tight shut to show he doesn’t want to talk. You do some thinking yourself, Vitka, with your own head, if you can.

p The boys walk in silence down the smooth avenue between the neatly clipped lime-trees and those lofty words beat in their hearts.

p They left just in time. A woman with a whistle was just hurrying up to the graves. She had noticed the boys and she ran as fast as her legs would carry her. She thought, so she told the grannies and nurses afterwards, that they were going to steal the flowers from the wreath. But they went away and 354 nothing had happened to the wreath. And in her annoyance at having made herself run for nothing the woman blew a parting blast at them on her whistle.

p The little girl in the red frock and the little boy in the white shirt went back to their clocks. They hadn’t understood a thing. The time had not yet come for them to understand* The little girl sat down, spreading out her red frock so that she looked like a big red flower. And both of them, the boy and the girl, looked like flowers on that brightgreen patch of grass.

Translated by Robert Daglish