For the Good of the Cause (7 page)

Khabalygin, standing on the upper landing, cleared his throat, which made the rolls of sallow fat on his neck shake again, and lit a cigarette.

“That’s that. I suppose the rest is much the same.”

The Comrade from the Department looked at his watch and said: “It all seems pretty clear-cut.”

The electronics expert stroked his mustache with two fingers and said nothing.

The Comrade from the Ministry asked: “How many other buildings are there beside this one?”

“Two, but …”

“Really?”

“Yes, but they are quite terrible. Only one story and thoroughly inconvenient. And they’re so far apart from each other. Let’s go and look at them.”

“And there are workshops in them too?”

“But listen, you’re aware of the son of conditions we’re working in, aren’t you?” Fyodor threw off the restraint imposed on him by the demands of hospitality and by the exalted position of his visitors. He really was worried now: “For one thing, we’ve got no dormitory. That’s what we were going to use this building for. The young people have to live in private rooms all over town where there’s sometimes foul language and drunkenness. All our efforts to build their characters are defeated. Where can we do it, on the staircase here?”

“Oh, come now, come now,” the members of the commission protested.

“Character-building depends on you, not on the premises,” the young man from the Department said sternly.

“You can’t blame anyone else for that,” the District Committee Supervisor added.

“Yes, you really have no excuse,” Khabalygin said, spreading his short arms.

Fyodor turned his head sharply and shrugged his shoulders, perhaps in response to this attack on him from all sides, or perhaps to put an end to this relentless interrogation. He could see that if he didn’t ask directly he was never going to find out what this was all about. He knitted his bushy, fair brows.

“I’m sorry, but I’d very much like to know on whose authority you are acting and what exactly you are after.”

The Comrade from the Ministry took off his hat and wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. He looked even more impressive without a hat. He had a fine head of hair, although it was thinning in spots.

“Haven’t you heard yet?” he asked in a tone of mild surprise. “Our Ministry and”—he nodded toward his colleague—“the Department have decided that a research institute of national importance should be set up in this town and accommodated in the buildings originally intended for your school. That’s it, isn’t it, Khabalygin?”

“Yes, that’s it,” Khabalygin agreed, nodding his head in its green fedora. “That’s the way it is.” He eyed the principal somewhat sympathetically and gave him a friendly pat on the shoulder. “I’m sure you can stick it out for another couple of years, and then they’ll build you a new school—an even better one! That’s how things go, my friend, so don’t let it get you down. It can’t be helped. It’s all for the good of the cause!”

Not very tall to begin with, Fyodor now seemed to become even shorter. He looked stunned, as if he had been hit over the head.

“But how …” Fyodor said the first, but by no means the most important, thing that came to his mind. “We haven’t even kept this place in good repair.” When Fyodor was upset, his voice, always gruff, dropped even lower and became quite hoarse.

“Don’t worry about that,” Khabalygin said. “I bet you painted it last year.”

The Comrade from the Department went down one step on the stairs.

There were so many things the principal wanted to tell them that he couldn’t make up his mind what to say first.

“What have I got to do with your Ministry?” he protested hoarsely, while blocking the visitors’ way. “We come under the local Economic Council. You need a Government order for a transfer of this sort.”

“You’re quite right.” The commission members pushed him gently aside, making their way down the stairs. “We’re just preparing the necessary papers. We expect the final okay in a couple of days.”

The five men went down the stairs while the principal just stood there staring blankly after them.

“Fyodor Mikheyevich!” Lidia called out, coming down the corridor. For some reason or other, she had her hand clasped to her throat. Her blouse was open at the neck and one could see how sunburned she had gotten while working on the building site. “What did they have to say?”

“They are taking the building away from us,” he replied in a flat, almost toneless voice, without raising his eyes.

And with that he went into his study.

“What?” she cried out after a moment. “The new one? They’re taking it away from us?” She hurried after him, her heels tapping on the floor. In the doorway she bumped into the bookkeeper. She brushed her aside and rushed in after the principal.

Fyodor Mikheyevich was walking slowly toward his desk.

“Listen!” Lidia called out in a strained voice … “What is this? How can they do such a terrible thing? It’s not right!” Her voice was becoming shriller with every word. She was saying out loud what he should have shouted at them. But he was the principal, not a woman. Tears were now streaming down her cheeks. “What are we going to tell the kids? That we’ve cheated them?”

He couldn’t remember ever having seen her cry before. He slumped into his chair and stared vacantly ahead at his desk. His forehead was one mass of wrinkles.

The bookkeeper, an elderly, shriveled-up woman, her straggly hair gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck, was standing there holding a checkbook.

She had heard everything. She would have gone away at once and not bothered him, but she had just spoken to the bank and been told that she could cash a check. The check had already been made out, with the amount and date filled in. She therefore had to see the principal, in spite of everything. She put the long, blue-striped book down in front of him and held it flat with her hand.

Fyodor dipped his pen in the ink, grasped his right wrist with his left hand, and raised it to write his signature. But even clutched like this, his hands still shook. He tried to put his signature on the check. The pen started to make some marks, then dug into the paper and sputtered.

Fyodor looked up at the bookkeeper and smiled.

She bit her lip, took the checkbook away from him, and hurried out.

Everything had happened so suddenly, and the commission had breezed through with such supreme confidence and so rapidly, that Fyodor had not been able to find the words he wanted while they were there, and even after they had gone he was still unable to decide exactly what to do.

He phoned the Education Department of the Economic Council. All they did was listen to his story, voice their indignation, and promise to look into the matter. Another time that might have cheered him up. But now it didn’t. He knew the commission hadn’t come for a social visit.

He felt so ashamed. He didn’t know how he could face the students or the teachers, or anybody else he had gotten to help with the new building on the understanding that it would be theirs. All the plans which for months, even years, he and his colleagues had been making for the new building were now completely ruined. He would gladly exchange his own living quarters for worse ones if only the new building were given to the school.

His mind went blank. He just didn’t seem able to think clearly.

Without a word to anyone and without putting on his hat, he went out to try to collect his thoughts.

Leaving the building, he set off in the direction of the railroad. But he wasn’t really thinking about where he was going, because in his mind he was turning over the dozens of vitally important things the school was losing along with the new building. The railroad barrier came down just as he got to the crossing. Fyodor stopped, although he could have slipped through under it. A long freight train appeared in the distance, eventually reached the crossing, and quickly clattered past down the incline. But Fyodor didn’t really take any of this in. The barrier was raised and he continued on his way.

He was inside the gates of the new building before he realized where he actually was. His legs had taken him there of their own accord. The main entrance, on which all the glazing and painting were already finished, was locked. So Fyodor went through the grounds, which had been marked off and cleared by the students. There was plenty of land, and they had planned to turn it into athletic fields.

One of the builders’ trucks stood in the yard, and the plumbers were noisily throwing brackets, piping, and other scuff into it. But Fyodor paid no attention to them.

He went into the building. It made him feel good to hear his footsteps echoing on the stone slabs of the wide lobby. Its two cloakrooms, one on each side, were big enough for a thousand people. The hat- and coat-racks of aluminum tubing shone brightly, and maybe it was this that made Fyodor ask himself a simple question which-because all this time he had been thinking about the school, not its new occupants—had not occurred to him until now: What on earth would the new institute do with such a building? For one thing, they’d probably dismantle these cloakrooms, because the institute wouldn’t have even a hundred people. And what about the gymnasium with its wall ladders, rings, horizontal bars, nets, and wire-meshed windows? Was all that going to be pulled down and thrown out? What about the workshops with their specially built concrete foundations under each machine? And the electric wiring? And the whole layout of the building around the lecture halls? And the blackboards? And the main lecture hall, designed like an amphitheater? And the auditorium? And …

At that moment a couple of painters and carpenters walked by him with their tools on the way out of the building.

“Hey! Listen!” Fyodor called to them, pulling himself together. “Comrades!”

But they went on their way.

“Listen, fellows!”

They turned around toward him.

“Where are you off to? It’s not quitting rime yet.”

“We’re through,” the younger of the carpenters said blithely. The older one continued glumly on his way. “You can stay here and have a smoke. We’re off!”

“But where to?”

“We’ve been taken off this job. Orders from above.”

“But how can they take you off it?”

“
How?
Don’t you know? They just send us to another job. We’ve been told to get there right away.”

And, knowing the little gray-haired principal to be easy-going, the carpenter came back, tapped him on the hand, and said: “Give us a cigarette, chief.”

Fyodor offered him a crumpled pack.

“Where’s the foreman of this job?”

“Oh, he’s already left. He was the first one to get out.”

“What did he say?”

“He said that this has nothing to do with us any more. Another outfit is taking over.”

“But who’s going to finish here?” Fyodor asked impatiently. “What’s so funny? Can’t you see how much there’s still to be done?” He frowned and looked angry.

“Who cares!” the carpenter shouted, puffing away at his cigarette and hurrying after his comrades. “Don’t you know how they handle these things? The Trust will make up a list of what we didn’t finish and get it signed when they hand this over, and everything’ll be all right.”

Fyodor watched as the carpenter walked away lightheartedly in his dirty overalls. And with him went the Economic Council, which had taken on this ill-fated project after three years of paralysis, and which had finished it, right down to the last coat of paint and the last pane of glass.

Although the Council was deserting him, the thought of the innumerable, utterly pointless alterations that would have to be made in the building fired Fyodor’s will to resist. He knew that justice was on his side. He hurried across the hallway, his steps echoing on the hard floor.

The room with the only working telephone turned out to be locked, so Fyodor rushed outside. A wind had started to blow, stirring up the sand and scattering it around. The truck with the workers was just going through the gateway. The caretaker was standing next to the gates. Fyodor decided not to go back with him. He felt in his pocket for a coin and walked over to a phone booth.

He called Ivan Grachikov, the Secretary of the Town’s Party Committee. A secretary told him that Grachikov was in conference. Fyodor gave his name and asked her to find out whether Grachikov would see him and when. In one hour, he was told.

Fyodor continued on his way. While walking, and later, outside Grachikov’s office, his mind went over every room on every floor in the new building. He couldn’t visualize a single place where the institute wouldn’t have either to knock down a wall or put up a new one. So he jotted down what all that would cost in a notebook.

For Fyodor, Grachikov wasn’t just the Secretary of the Party Committee. He was also a friend from the War. They had been in the same regiment, though they hadn’t served together very long. Fyodor had been in charge of communications. Grachikov had come from a hospital, as a replacement for a battalion commander who had been killed. They discovered that they came from the same part of the country, and on quiet evenings they used to get together or talk on the phone occasionally and reminisce about places they both knew. Then a company commander in Grachikov’s battalion was killed and, as is the practice, all openings were filled with officers from the staff, so Fyodor was assigned to command the company-temporarily. “Temporarily” turned out to be very brief indeed. Two days later he was wounded, and when he got out of the hospital he was sent to a different division.

As he sat there waiting, it occurred to him that unpleasant things always seemed to happen to him in the last days of August. It was on the twenty-ninth of August—that was yesterday’s date—that he was wounded for the first time. And when he was wounded again, in 1944, it was on the thirtieth of August. That was today’s date.

Some people left Grachikov’s office and Fyodor was called in.

“A terrible thing has happened, Ivan,” Fyodor said in a flat, hoarse voice as soon as he walked into the room. “Just terrible.”

He sat straight up on a chair ( Grachikov had gotten rid of those armchairs into which people sank so deep that their chins barely reached the top of the desk) and began his story. Grachikov rested his head in the palm of his hand and listened.