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to the little bench on which those familiar letters "V" and "G" were carved. The bench stood on a
hummock and the wind whistled round me. I don't know why I slipped my hand in my pocket and took
out my Zauer. Even when I went off to work at the factory-training school, I took the pistol with me.
Nikita often pulled my leg about it.
"What do you want with a gun at work, Vasil?"
"But where can I put it?"
"Leave it in the hostel."
"That's all right for you, you've got a locker that locks. But mine's always open."
"Ask the locksmiths, they'll put a lock on it for you."
"What's the use of a lock? Locks can be broken."
"Vasil, you're incurable! You've got used to guns. You'd like to be living in the period of War
Communism all the time! Vasily Mandzhura can't adapt himself to peace-time conditions!"
I knew that Nikita was joking, but his jokes nettled me a little. Fine peace-time conditions with what
was going on all round us!
It was not a year since the Pilsudski men had attacked the Soviet frontier post near Yampol and killed
the commander. Quite recently enemies of our republic had murdered the Soviet diplomatic courier
Theodor Nette. And the murder of Kotovsky? ... I ought not to be the only one with a gun all the
young workers who lived on the border should be armed and ready for anything. And I went on bringing
my pistol to work with me...
I took aim at one of the battlemented towers of the Old Fortress, but it was already rather dark and
the sights were blurred.
But what was this mysterious report of Tiktor's? .. .
I shoved the pistol into my pocket and wandered back to the hostel, utterly fed up.
Our hostel was unusually quiet. But, of course there was a film on at the club. All the chaps would
be there. Pity I was late.
There were two lights on in the dormitory, one on the ceiling, the other by Nikita's bed.
Our secretary lived with us. There was a heap of books on his bedside locker. As usual, Nikita had
stayed at home. "I'll have my fun, when I'm old," he used to say, "now, while my eyes are all right, it's
better to read books." "To read books a to exchange hours of boredom for hours of delight." "A book is
a friend of man that will never betray him," Nikita often repeated to us the dictums of certain philosophers
known only to himself. And he read like a man bewitched on the way to the hostel, walking blindly
along the pavement with an open book before his eyes, at home in the hostel until late at night, and during
the lunch-hour, sitting on a rusty boiler in the school yard.
Obviously Nikita had no intention of going out anywhere this evening. He was lying on his bed
undressed; his clothes lay neatly folded on a chair beside him.
I walked silently over to my bed and took off my cap.
Nikita looked round and said: "There's a questionnaire for you under your pillow, Mandzhura. Fill it
up and hand it in to me in the morning."
My heart sank. Now it was starting!
It must be a special, tricky sort of questionnaire.
"What's it about?" I asked in a whisper.
"For your pistol," Nikita replied, not taking his eyes off the book. "Special Detachment papers aren't
valid any more, we've got to make personal applications for permission to carry fire-arms."
A page rustled. Nikita felt for the pencil on his locker and marked something, as if to show that the
conversation was over.
All right! I'm not going to beg you to talk...
It was very still. The sound of spring streets floated in through the open window. That special sound
of spring! Have you noticed that in spring every noise comes to you as if you were hearing it for the first
time? A cock crowed in the next yard and it seemed to me I had never heard such a fine, full-throated
crow in my life...
In the stillness of the room, I examined the printed questionnaire that I had to fill in for the right to
carry la pistol. I was expecting Nikita to say something about Tiktor's report.
"Oh, yes, Vasil, I nearly forgot," Nikita murmured, looking round. "There's a parcel for you in your
locker. I signed for it." And again he buried himself in his book.
The square heavy parcel, criss-crossed with packing thread, smelled of bast matting and apples.
Across the bottom was written in indelible pencil: "Sender: Miron Mandzhura, Cherkassy, District State
Printing-House."
Now that he had gone to work in Cherkassy, my father sometimes sent me parcels. Everything they
contained was shared round the hostel an apple for one, a lump of glistening salted pork for another.
The other chaps' parcels were shared out in exactly the same way.
There were a lot of tasty things in that parcel. And I was hungry. But I could not open it. If I started
treating Nikita now, without waiting for the other chaps to come in, he might think I had heard about the
report and was trying to get round him trying to bribe him with home-made poppy cakes.
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