Chapter 20
At the beginning of the summer of 1946, Kim informed his mother that he had graduated from the railroad school, qualified as a fourth-class steam locomotive mechanic, and was being sent to work in the Astrakhan region as part of a group of graduates. Under the laws in effect, under threat of prosecution he was now required to work in his profession for no fewer than two years.
Kim’s letter stirred up the already abandoned Braina’s bitter regrets that she under a hot hand had let her son go away from her. After all, if Kim had stayed with her, he could have continued his studies for a few more years and in that time could have consciously chosen a profession to his liking. Instead, the boy at fifteen and a half was forced to start working in difficult, unfavorable conditions. But how could Braina help her son now, except by sincerely wishing him health and a successful settlement in his new place?
She did not worry in vain about the conditions in which Kim was to begin his working life. The Akhtuba railway station where Kim and Volodya Velikanov were assigned to work as part of the group of graduates of five girls and four boys, was located near Stalingrad, on the opposite bank of the Volga River. When in the winter of 1942-43 the famous Battle of Stalingrad with the Nazis took place there, many Soviet echelons with troops, equipment, and supplies arrived in Akhtuba, and German airplanes methodically, day after day, bombed the territory of the station.
The locomotive repair depot, where Kim was to work, was badly damaged, but somehow miraculously survived. Locomotives on the railroad were in short supply. The damaged steam locomotives needed to be urgently brought back into service, so after the defeat and surrender of the Germans at Stalingrad, the depot was speedily overhauled, the quality of which corresponded to the wartime conditions. In place of glass, in the wooden boards were affixed into the window openings, numerous holes in the walls and roof were somehow patched up, and the gate, torn apart and warped, with wide gaping spaces between the bars, was patched up and put back in place. As a result of this “repair,” the spacious building was blown through by drafts, it was impossible to get by without the electric lights even on sunny days, and during rainfalls water flowed through the roof in several places.
However, all of these troubles manifested themselves later, but on the first day, in the warm and dry summer weather, the young, inexperienced guys even liked the spacious, high room of the depot with two long inspection ditches and neatly arranged workbenches, machines, and shelving. The newcomers were lodged in a newly built wooden barrack: they were given bed linens, work clothes and shoes, a cash advance payment, ration cards for the working class, according to which each of them was entitled to eight hundred grams of bread daily, as well as the workers’ monthly rate of sugar, butter, cereals, and even meat. In the service canteen, it was possible to dine at a discounted price.
For the first two or three months, Kim was quite satisfied with all of this, and deep in his soul was even proud of his position as an independent person. The local workers without hesitation assigned the newcomers the dirtiest, hardest, and lowest-paid jobs, but the boys completed them conscientiously and with high quality. A monthly salary of 500-600 rubles seemed to them to be the limit of their dreams.
After work, dressed up in their railroad uniforms, Volodya and Kim would go out into the settlement for a walk, to watch a new movie, or dance to the sounds of the accordion. But with the onset of autumn, the food supply at the depot and in the city deteriorated sharply. Alarming rumors of drought and crop failure crept in. On the ration cards only bread was regularly given out, and occasionally sugar.
The service canteen now served only train crews on special coupons. And at the bazaar, one could buy only a small bucket of potatoes or a loaf of bread for a month’s salary.
Famine began, and as winter approached, the brutal cold more and more often reminded everyone of its existence. The dormitory was heated by stoves, but the wooden plank walls of the barrack could not keep warm under the pressure of the cold wind; they had to sleep without undressing, covered up with anything that was suitable. Inside the depot the temperature did not differ from the outside, on frosty days even cotton pants and a jacket did not save from drafts, especially badly the feet froze in kirzov boots. It was possible to get warm only by homemade bourgeois stoves, surreptitiously located away from the bosses, leaving work for a short time.
Hunger pushed Kim and Volodya to decide to transfer to becoming steam locomotive stokers. The reason for this was explained by the fact that the stokers, as well as the locomotive driver and his assistant, were members of the train crew and were entitled to a daily lunch in the service canteen. Before each trip, the whole brigade also received an additional fortified hot meal, as well as a dry ration for the road, consisting of a portion of bread, sausage, and sugar.
During the trip, the stoker provided a constant intense fire in the locomotive’s furnace, and after the trip, together with the assistant driver, worked to clean the locomotive. On the trip, they had to work with a heavy iron shovel for hours, almost without rest. Having, at the sign from the driver, thrown another portion of ten to fifteen shovels of coal into the furnace, it was necessary to immediately rake in the next portion from the tender before the driver gave the sign again…
For both weakened adolescents, such labor proved to be unbearable, and in midwinter, they again ended up back at the depot. Hunger and cold were supplemented with a new affliction — an infestation of lice. They swarmed inside their clothes, in their beds, and on their heads, and special high-temperature sanitation did not get rid of the disgusting insects. The bites itched uncontrollably and the boys kept scratching themselves, which irritated the local men and women workers, who had already lost their sympathy for the newcomers.
The situation of the local workers was different from that of the newcomers. Potatoes and cabbage grown in their own gardens, as well as pickles and jams stored in the cellars of their own houses, saved them from hunger; comfortable winter clothes and felted boots with homemade galoshes reliably shielded them from the cold at work. They aspired to high wages, and the weakened, emaciated, and furthermore sickly youngsters were only a hindrance. For this reason, the local workers one day amicably refused to work with the newcomers, but at the same time supported their request for early release from work. The management of the depot were also happy to let the almost useless, restless workers go home, but feared being held responsible for violating the Decree on the mandatory period of work.
Therefore it was decided to utilize all four newcomers only in utility and auxiliary operations, which on the one hand facilitated their working conditions, but on the other — noticeably reduced their wages. There seemed to be no end in sight to this hopeless, hungry, dreary existence, but in another letter, Braina, who was very worried about Kim, unexpectedly suggested a way out of the impasse.
Remembering that in the camp the doctor’s orders were obeyed by any superiors, Braina advised Kim and his comrades to declare their inability to work in their specialty and to demand a medical examination. The conclusion of the medical commission could become a legal basis to justify dismissal.
The idea inspired the boys and immediately began to be put into effect in real life. The bosses did not hinder them, and soon each of the four applicants received a confirmation of their unsuitability for the profession of steam locomotive mechanic, which together with their declarations for dismissal were sent to Astrakhan, where the district personnel department was located. In March of 1947, a commission of two women and a man arrived from there to ascertain all the circumstances of the case on-site.
On the very first day, these people were convinced about the desperate situation of the guys, but despite that, they tried to dissuade them from being fired. The next day the members of the commission came to the depot and began to talk to the foreman at his office. Kim and his comrades expected to be called to participate in the conversation, but to them no one gave their attention. Suddenly Velikanov, muttering something excitedly, moved resolutely toward the talkers, evidently intending to speak out, but before he had reached the last few steps, suddenly staggered and collapsed on the ground.
People crowded around, not knowing what to do. Volodya, pale, thin, with closed eyes and deeply sunken cheeks, lay motionless, as though inanimate, on the concrete floor at the feet of the commission. Having been urgently called from the medical unit, the doctor suggested that he had fainted from hunger, and immediately the boys did not fail to inform the commission that this happens to them too.
This incident made such a deep impression on the commission, that at the end of April, from Astrakhan an order was received for all four applicants to be dismissed for health reasons. None of them received a penny in the calculations, because they all had debts of some kind. The only remaining thing left to rejoice about was a free ticket for a ride in the common car of a passenger train and an official certificate of dismissal.
Kim would have to spend more than four days on the road, and in his traveling bag, except for half a loaf of bread and four pieces of sugar there was nothing, and more so not a single thing that would be suitable to be sold. He would have to put up with the idea of the inevitability of the impending hunger period, because there was no place from which to wait for help. But at the last moment, it came from a fellow comrade in misfortune, Volodya Velikanov.
Volodya and Kim traveled together in the same train car for almost a day, as they were on the same route. But Volodya did not allow Kim to touch his provisions, sharing his own supplies with him, under the pretext that he was already almost home. But even with that the comrade did not cease. When they reached the station, where Kim was to change to another train, and he in a brotherly way said goodbye to his friend and headed for the exit of the car, Volodya slipped some kind of a bundle under his armpit, saying, “Sell it and buy more food for the journey!”
Stepping out onto the platform, Kim unwrapped the bundle and uttered a groan at the unexpectedness: it was the long uniform shirt that several minutes ago he had seen on Volodya under his unbuttoned coat! Kim would forever remember this action, as an example of selfless human help.
After successfully selling the uniform shirt at the station bazaar, Kim hurried to the ticket office to punch in a ticket for the next train to Tashkent. But there was nothing! At the window a notice was prominently posted indicating that there were no vacant seats on the Tashkent-bound trains. In spite of this, quite a few people crowded around the ticket office, hoping for a “maybe”.
Kim decided otherwise: it was necessary to move towards Tashkent on any passing trains, in accordance with the diagrams he had compiled in Akhtuba from the map of the railroad networks of the country. Soon the train to Aktyubinsk arrived, where Kim not without difficulty managed to persuade the compassionate conductor of one of the cars to let him ride in the vestibule to this city, located almost halfway to Tashkent.
Kim spent more than a day in the cold vestibule, from time to time warming up in the corridor near the toilet and even managing to doze off a little on the wall folding seat. In Aktyubinsk, the tired, trembling, and hungry Kim hoped to finally punch in his ticket, but waiting for him again was disappointment: there were no vacant seats on the next train. Somewhat refreshed at the train station buffet, Kim settled down on a vacant bench in the waiting room, and, defrosted by the blessed warmth, imperceptibly fell asleep. He woke up as he felt someone carefully trying to loosen the straps of the shoulder bag that was secured on his arm. As soon as he opened his eyes, the unknown guy pulled his hands away and started nearly running towards the exit.
The food supply and documents in the bag remained safe, but the dexterous thief had managed to snatch a purse from his pants pocket that had money and a railroad ticket. He instantly turned Kim into a common stowaway, for whom it was useless to hope for sympathy from the conductors and controllers. Because of this, the rest of the journey to Tashkent, which lasted nearly two days, became another round of torture of cold and insomnia for Kim. Fleeing from the controllers, at the train stops he ran to the vestibules of the cars where inspections had already been conducted. And if the vestibules were closed, then, so as not to be left behind from the train, until the next stop the fellow had to “cuckoo” on the footboard, barely withstanding the pressure of the oncoming cold wind. The cold afflicted him the most in his feet, in cramped old felt boots with cut-off shins, and no matter how hard Kim tried to move and wiggle his feet, by the time he arrived in Tashkent he could no longer feel his toes at all.
In Uzbekistan, the daytime sun was already warming up as per summertime, and sitting in its rays on the footboard of the train bound for Namangan, Kim felt a growing pain in his feet; the boots seemed very tight and mercilessly squeezed his swollen toes.