Midnight. The last tramcar has long since dragged its battered carcass back to the depot. The moon lays its cold light on the windowsill and spreads a luminous coverlet on the bed, leaving the rest of the room in semi-darkness. At the table in the corner under a circle of light shed by the desk lamp sits Rita bent over a thick notebook, her diary. The sharp point of her pencil traces the words:

May 24

"I am making another attempt to jot down my impressions. Again there is a big gap. Six weeks have passed since I made the last entry. But it cannot be helped.
"How can I find time for my diary? It is past midnight now, and here I am still writing. Sleep eludes me. Comrade Segal is leaving us: he is going to work in the Central Committee. We were all very much upset by the news. He is a wonderful person, our Lazar Alexandrovich. I did not realise until now how much his friendship has meant to us all. The dialectical materialism class is bound to go to pieces when he leaves. Yesterday we stayed at his place until the wee hours verifying the progress made by our 'pupils'. Akim, the Secretary of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee, came and that horrid Tufta as well. I can't stand that Mr. Know-All! Segal was delighted when his pupil Korchagin brilliantly defeated Tufta in an argument on Party history.
Yes, these two months have not been wasted. You don't begrudge your efforts when you see such splendid results. It is rumoured that Zhukhrai is being transferred to the Special Department of the Military Region. I wonder why.
"Lazar Alexandrovich turned his pupil over to me. 'You will have to complete what I have begun,'
he said. 'Don't stop halfway. You and he, Rita, can learn a great deal from each other. The lad is still rather disorganised. His is a turbulent nature and he is apt to be carried away by his emotions. I feel that you will be a most suitable guide for him, Rita. I wish you success. Don't forget to write me in Moscow.'
"Today a new secretary for the Solomensky District Committee was sent down from the Central Committee. His name is Zharky. I knew him in the army.
"Tomorrow Dmitri Dubava will bring Korchagin. Let me try to describe Dubava. Medium height, strong, muscular. Joined the Komsomol in 1918, and has been a Party member since 1920. He was one of the three who were expelled from the Komsomol Gubernia Committee for having belonged to the 'Workers' Opposition'. Instructing him has not been easy. Every day he upset the programme by asking innumerable questions and making us digress from the subject. He and Olga Yureneva, my other pupil, did not get along at all. At their very first meeting he looked her up and down and remarked: 'Your get-up is all wrong, old girl. You ought to have trousers with leather seats, spurs, a Budyonny hat and a sabre. This way you're neither fish nor fowl.'
"Olga wouldn't stand for that, of course, and I had to interfere. I believe Dubava is a friend of Korchagin's. Well enough for tonight. It's time for bed."

The earth wilted under the scorching sun. The iron railing of the footbridge over the railway platforms was burning to the touch. People, limp and exhausted from the heat, climbed the bridge wearily; most of them were not travellers, but residents of the railway district who used the bridge to get to the town proper.
As he came down the steps Pavel caught sight of Rita. She had reached the station before him and was watching the people coming off the bridge. Pavel paused some three paces away from her. She did not notice him, and he studied her with new-found interest. She was wearing a striped blouse and a short dark-blue skirt of some cheap material. A soft leather jacket was slung over her shoulder. Her sun-tanned face was framed in a shock of unruly hair and as she stood there with her head thrown slightly back and her eyes narrowed against the sun's glare, it struck Korchagin for the first time that Rita, his friend and teacher, was not only a member of the bureau of the Komsomol Gubernia Committee, but....
Annoyed with himself for entertaining such "sinful" thoughts, he called to her.
"I've been staring at you for a whole hour, but you didn't notice me," he laughed. "Come along, our train is already in."
They went over to the service door leading to the platform.
The previous day the Gubernia Committee had appointed Rita as its representative at a district conference of the Komsomol, and Korchagin was to go as her assistant.

Their immediate problem was to board the train, which was by no means a simple task. The railway station on those rare occasions when the trains ran was taken over by an all-powerful Committee of Five in charge of boarding and without a permit from this body no one was allowed on the platform. All exits and approaches to the platform were guarded by the Committee's men. The overcrowded train could take on only a fraction of the crowd anxious to leave, but no one wanted to be left behind to spend days waiting for a chance train to come through. And so thousands stormed the platform doors in an effort to break through to the unattainable carriages. In those days the station was literally besieged and sometimes pitched battles were fought.
After vainly attempting to push through the crowd collected at the platform entrance, Pavel, who knew all the ins and outs at the station, led Rita through the luggage room. With difficulty they made their way to coach No. 4. At the carriage door a Cheka man, sweating profusely in the heat, was trying to hold back the crowd, and repeated over and over again:
"The carriage's full, and it's against the rules to ride on the buffers or the roof."
Irate people bore down on him, waving tickets issued by the Committee under his nose. There were angry curses, shouts and violent jostling at every carriage. Pavel saw that it would be impossible to board the train in the conventional manner. Yet board it they must, otherwise the conference would have to be called off.
Taking Rita aside, he outlined his plan of action: he would push his way inside, open a window and help her to climb in. There was no other way.
"Let me have that jacket of yours. It's better than any credential."
He slipped on the jacket and stuck his revolver into the pocket so that the grip and cord showed.
Leaving the bag with Rita, he went over to the carriage, elbowed through the knot of excited passengers at the entrance and gripped the handrail.
"Hey, Comrade, where you going?"
Pavel glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder at the stocky Cheka man.
"I'm from the Special Department. I want to see whether all the passengers in this carriage have tickets issued by the Committee," he said in a tone that left no doubt as to his authority.
The Cheka man glanced at Pavel's pocket, wiped his perspiring brow with his sleeve and said wearily:
"Go ahead if you can shove yourself in."
Working with his hands, shoulders, and here and there with his fists, holding on to the ledges of the upper berths to climb over the passengers who had planted themselves on their belongings in the middle of the passage, Pavel made his way through to the centre of the carriage, ignoring the torrent of abuse that rained down on him from all sides.
"Can't you look where you're going, curse you!" screamed a stout woman when Pavel accidentally brushed her knee with his foot, as he lowered himself to the floor. She had contrived to wedge her 18-stone bulk onto the edge of a seat and had a large vegetable oil can between her knees. All the shelves were stuffed with similar cans, hampers, sacks and baskets. The air in the carriage was suffocating.
Paying no heed to the abuse, Pavel demanded: "Your ticket, please!"
"My what!" the woman snapped back at the unwelcome ticket-collector.
A head appeared from the uppermost berth and an ugly voice boomed out: "Vaska, what's this 'ere mug want. Give 'im a ticket to kingdom come, will ya?"
The huge frame and hairy chest of what was obviously Vaska swung into view right above Pavel's head and a pair of bloodshot eyes fixed him with a bovine stare.
"Leave the lady alone, can't ya? What d'ye want tickets for?"
Four pairs of legs dangled from an upper side berth; their owners sat with their arms around one another's shoulders noisily cracking sunflower seeds. One glance at their faces told Pavel who they were: a gang of food sharks, hardened crooks who travelled up and down the country buying up food and selling it at speculative prices.

Pavel had no time to waste with them. He had to get Rita inside somehow.
"Whose box is this?" he inquired of an elderly man in railway uniform, indicating a wooden chest standing under the window.
"Hers," replied the other, pointing to a pair of thick legs in brown stockings.
The window had to be opened and the box was in the way. Since there was nowhere to move it Pavel picked it up and handed it to its owner who was seated on an upper berth.
"Hold it a moment, please, I'm going to open the window."
"Keep your hands off my things!" screamed the flat-nosed wench when he placed the box on her knees.
"Motka, what's this feller think he's doin'?" she said to the man seated beside her. The latter gave Pavel a kick in the back with his sandalled foot.
"Lissen 'ere, you! Clear out of here before I punch your nose!"
Pavel endured the kick in silence. He was too busy unfastening the window.
"Move aside, please," he said to the railwayman.
Shifting another can out of the way Pavel cleared a space in front of the window. Rita was on the platform below. Quickly she handed him the bag. Throwing it onto the knees of the stout woman with the vegetable oil can, Pavel bent down, seized Rita's hands and drew her in. Before the guard had time to notice this infringement of the rules, Rita was inside the carriage, leaving the guard swearing belatedly outside. The gang of toughs met Rita's appearance with such an uproar that she was taken aback. Since there was not even standing room on the floor, she found a place for her feet on the very edge of the lower berth and stood there holding on to the upper berth for support.
Foul curses sounded on all sides. From above the ugly bass voice croaked:
"Look at the swine, gets in himself and drags his broad in after 'im!"
A voice from above squeaked: "Motka, poke him one between the eyes!"
The woman was doing her best to stand her wooden box on Pavel's head. The two newcomers were surrounded by a ring of evil, brutish faces. Pavel was sorry that Rita had to be exposed to this but there was nothing to be done but to make the best of it.
"Move your sacks and make room for the comrade," he said to the one they called Motka, but the answer was a curse so foul that he boiled with rage. The pulse over his right eyebrow began to throb painfully. "Just wait, you scoundrel, you'll answer for this," he said to the ruffian, but received a kick on the head from above.
"Good for you, Vaska, fetch 'im another!" came approving cries from all sides.
Pavel's self-control gave way at last, and as always in such moments his actions became swift and sure.
"You speculating bastards, you think you can get away with it?" he shouted, and hoisting himself agilely on to the upper berth, he sent his fist smashing against Motka's leering face. The speculator went tumbling onto the heads of the other passengers.
"Clear out of here, you swine, or I'll shoot down the whole lot of you!" Pavel yelled, waving his revolver under the noses of the four.
The tables were turned. Rita watched closely, ready to shoot if anyone attacked Korchagin. The upper berth-quickly cleared. The gang hastily withdrew to the neighbouring compartment.
As he helped Rita up to the empty berth, Pavel whispered:
"You stay here, I'm going to see about those fellows."
Rita tried to stop him. "You're not going to fight them, are you?"
"No," he reassured her. "I'll be back soon."
He opened the window again and climbed out onto the platform. A few minutes later he was talking to Burmeister of the Transport Cheka, his former chief. The Lett heard him out and then gave orders to have the entire carriage cleared and the passengers' papers checked.
"It's just as I said," growled Burmeister. "The trains are full of speculators before they get here."
A detail of ten Cheka men cleared the carriage. Pavel, assuming his old duties, helped to examine the documents of the passengers. He had not broken all ties with his former Cheka comrades and in his capacity as secretary of the Komsomol he had sent some of the best Komsomol members to work there. When the screening was over, Pavel returned to Rita. The carriage was now occupied by a vastly different type of passenger: Red Army men and factory and office workers travelling on business.
Rita and Pavel had the top berth in one corner of the carriage, but so much of it was taken up with bundles of newspapers that there was only room for Rita to lie down.
"Never mind," she said, "we'll manage somehow."
The train began to move at last. As it slid slowly out of the station they caught a brief glimpse of the fat woman seated on a bundle of sacks on the platform and heard her yelling:
"Hey Manka, where's my oil can gone?"
Sitting in their cramped quarters with the bundles of newspapers shielding them from their neighbours, Pavel and Rita munched bread and apples and laughingly recalled the far from laughable episode with which their journey had begun.
The train crawled along. The old, battered and overloaded carriage creaked and groaned and trembled violently at every joint in the track. The deep blue twilight looked in at the windows.
Then night came, folding the carriage in darkness.
Rita was tired and she dozed with her head resting on the bag. Pavel sat on the edge of the berth and smoked. He too was tired but there was no room to lie down. The fresh night breeze blew through the open window.
Rita, awakened by a sudden jolt, saw the glow of Pavel's cigarette in the darkness. It was just like him to sit up all night rather than cause her discomfort.

"Comrade Korchagin! Drop those bourgeois conventions and lie down," she said lightly.
Pavel obediently lay down beside her and stretched his stiff legs luxuriously.
"We have heaps of work tomorrow. So try and get some sleep, you rowdy." She put her arm trustingly around his neck and he felt her hair touching his cheek.
To Pavel, Rita was sacred. She was his friend and comrade, his political guide. Yet she was a  woman as well. He had first become aware of this over there at the footbridge, and that was why her embrace stirred him so much now. He felt her deep even breathing; somewhere quite close to him were her lips. Proximity awoke in him a powerful desire to find those lips, and it was only with a great effort of will that he suppressed the impulse.
Rita, as if divining his feelings, smiled in the darkness. She had already known the joy of passion and the pain of loss. She had given her love to two Bolsheviks.

Whiteguard bullets had robbed her of both. One had been a splendid giant of a man, a Brigade Commander; the other, a lad with clear blue eyes.
Soon the regular rhythm of the wheels rocked Pavel to sleep and he did not wake until the engine whistled shrilly the next morning.

Work kept Rita occupied every day until late at night and she had little time for her diary. After an interval a few more brief entries appeared:

August 11

"The gubernia conference is over. Akim, Mikhailo and several others have gone to Kharkov for the all-Ukraine conference, leaving all the paper work to me. Dubava and Pavel have been sent to work at the Gubernia Committee. Ever since Dmitri was made secretary of the Pechorsk District Committee he has stopped coming to lessons. He is up to his neck in work. Pavel tries to do some studying, but we don't get much done because either I am too busy or else he is sent off on some assignment. With the present tense situation on the railways the Komsomols are constantly being mobilised for work. Zharky came to see me yesterday. He complained about the boys being takenaway from him, says he needs them badly himself."

August 23

"I was going down the corridor today when I saw Korchagin standing outside the manager's office with Pankratov and another man. As I came closer I heard Pavel say:
" 'Those fellows sitting there ought to be shot. "You've no right to countermand our orders," he says. "The Railway Firewood Committee is the boss here and you Komsomols had better keep out of it." You ought to have seen his mug.... And the place is infested with parasites like him!' He followed this up with some shocking

language. Pankratov caught sight of me and nudged him. Pavel swung round and when he saw me he turned pale and walked off without meeting my eyes.
He won't be coming around for a long while now. He knows I will not tolerate bad language."

August 27

"We had a closed meeting of the bureau. The situation is becoming serious. I cannot write about it  in detail just yet. Akim came back from the regional conference looking very worried. Yesterday another supply train was derailed. I don't think I shall try to keep this diary any more. It is much too haphazard anyway. I am expecting Korchagin. I saw him the other day and he told me he and Zharky are organising a commune of five."

One day while at work in the railway shops Pavel was called to the telephone. It was Rita. She happened to be free that evening and suggested that they finish the chapter they had been studying — the reasons for the fall of the Paris Commune.
As he approached Rita's house on University Street that evening, Pavel glanced up and saw a light in her window. He ran upstairs, gave his usual brief knock on the door and went in. There on the bed, where none of the young comrades were allowed even to sit for a moment, lay a man in uniform. A revolver, knapsack and cap with the red star lay on the table. Rita was sitting beside the stranger with her arms clasped tightly around him. The two were engaged in earnest conversation and as Pavel entered Rita looked up with a radiant face.
The man freed himself from her embrace and rose.
"Pavel," said Rita shaking hands with him, "this is ...."
"David Ustinovich," the man said, clasping Korchagin's hand warmly.
"He turned up quite unexpectedly," Rita explained with a happy laugh.
Pavel shook hands coldly with the newcomer and a gleam of resentment flashed in his eyes. He noticed the four squares of a Company Commander on the sleeve of the man's uniform.
Rita was about to say something but Pavel interrupted her. "I just dropped in to tell you that I shall be busy loading wood down at the wharves this evening," he said.

"And anyhow you have a visitor. Well, I'll be off, the boys are waiting for me downstairs."
And he disappeared through the door as suddenly _ as he had come. They heard him hurrying down the stairs. Then the outside door slammed and all was quiet.
"There's something the matter with him," Rita faltered in answer to David's questioning look.
Down below under the bridge an engine heaved a deep sigh, exhaling a shower of golden sparks from its mighty lungs. They soared upward executing a fantastic dance and were lost in the smoke.
Pavel leaned against the railing and stared at the coloured signal lights winking on the switches.
He screwed up his eyes.
"What I don't understand, Comrade Korchagin, is why it should hurt so much to discover that Rita has a husband? Has she ever told you she hadn't? And even if she has, what of it? Why should you take it like that? You thought, Comrade, it was all platonic friendship and nothing else. ... How could you have let this happen?" he asked himself with bitter irony. "But what if he isn't her husband? David Ustinovich might be her brother or her uncle.... In which case you've done the chap an injustice, you fool. You're no better than any other swine. It's easy enough to find out whether he's her brother or not. Suppose he turns out to be a brother or an uncle, how are you going to face her after the way you've behaved? No, you've got to stop seeing her!"
The scream of an engine whistle interrupted his reflections.
"It's getting late. Time to be going home. Enough of this nonsense."

At Solomenka, as the district where the railway workers lived was called, five young men set up a miniature commune. They were Zharky, Pavel, Klavicek, a jolly fair-haired Czech, Nikolai Okunev, secretary of the railway-yards Komsomol, and Stepan Artyukhin, a boiler repairman who was now working for the railway Cheka.
They found a room and for three days spent all their free time cleaning, painting and whitewashing. They dashed back and forth with pails so many times that the neighbours thought the house was on fire. They made themselves bunks, and mattresses filled with maple leaves gathered in the park, and on the fourth day the room, with a portrait of Petrovsky and a huge map on the wall, literally shone with cleanliness.
Between the windows was a shelf piled high with books. Two crates covered with cardboard served for chairs, another larger crate did duty as a cupboard. In the middle of the room stood a huge billiard table, minus the cloth, which the room's inmates had carried on their shoulders from the warehouse. By day it was used as a table and at night Klavicek slept on it. The five lads fetched all their belongings, and the practical-minded Klavicek made an inventory of the commune's possessions. He wanted to hang it up on the wall but the others objected. Everything in the room was declared common property. Earnings, rations and occasional parcels from home were all divided equally; the sole items of personal property were their weapons. It was unanimously decided that any member of the commune who violated the law of communal ownership or who betrayed his comrades' trust would be expelled from the commune. Okunev and Klavicek insisted that expulsion should be followed by eviction from the room, and the motion was carried.
All the active members of the District Komsomol came to the commune's house-warming party. A gigantic samovar was borrowed from the next-door neighbour. The tea party consumed the commune's entire stock of saccharine. After tea, they sang in chorus and their lusty young voices rocked the rafters:

The whole wide world is drenched with tears,
In............