Александр Куприн – The Garnet Bracelet and other Stories / Гранатовый браслет и другие повести. Книга для чтения на английском языке (страница 10)

Now the group proceeded to the turnery where mostly wagon and locomotive wheels were finished. Leather transmission belts coming down from a stout steel shaft running the whole length of the ceiling set in motion two or three hundred machines of the most varied sizes and shapes. There were so many belts criss-crossing in all directions that they seemed like one tangled, vibrating network. The wheels of some of the machines were making twenty revolutions per second, while others were turning so slowly that you could hardly notice it. Steel, iron, and brass shavings thickly littered the floor in thin long spirals. Drilling machines filled the air with an unbearable screeching. The visitors were shown a nut-making machine – rather like two huge steel jaws munching steadily. Two workmen were busy feeding the end of a long red-hot rod into the machine, which bit off its tip regularly to spit out a completely finished nut.

When they left the turnery Shelkovnikov, who had been addressing his explanations exclusively to the shareholders, suggested that they should inspect the nine-hundred h.p. “Compound,” the mill’s pride. By then the gentlemen from Petersburg were sufficiently overwhelmed and exhausted by what they had already seen and heard. Every new impression, far from interesting them, wearied them still more. Their faces were red from the heat of the rail-mill, and their hands and clothes were sooty. They therefore accepted the manager’s invitation with apparent reluctance, and only because they had to maintain the prestige of those who had sent them.

The “Compound” was installed in a separate building, very neat and nice-looking, with bright windows and an inlaid floor. Despite its huge size the machine made hardly any noise. Two pistons, each about thirty feet long, moved smoothly and swiftly up and down their cylinders encased in wood. A wheel twenty feet in diameter, with twelve ropes gliding over it, was revolving just as noiselessly and swiftly. Its sweeping motion sent the hot, dry air rushing through the machine room in strong, regular gusts. The machine supplied power to the blowers and rolling mills and the machinery in the turnery.

Having inspected the “Compound,” the shareholders felt quite certain that their trials were at an end; but the tireless Shelkovnikov obligingly made a fresh suggestion.

“Now, gentlemen, I’ll show you the heart of the mill, its life-centre.”

He dragged rather than led them into the steam-boiler house. But after all that they had seen the “heart of the mill” – twelve cylindrical boilers each thirty-five feet in length and ten feet in height – failed to impress the weary shareholders much. Their thoughts had long been centring round the dinner awaiting them, and they no longer asked questions but nodded with absent-minded indifference at whatever explanations Shelkovnikov gave. When he had finished they sighed with obvious relief and heartily shook hands with him.

Bobrov was now the only one left near the boilers. Standing at the edge of the deep, half-dark stone pit where the furnaces were, he looked for a long time down on the hard work of six men, bare to the waist. It was their duty to stoke the furnaces with coal day and night, without let-up. Now and again the round” iron doors opened with a clang, and Bobrov could see the dazzling white flames roaring and raging in the furnaces. Now and again the half-naked figures of the workmen, withered by fire and black with the coal dust ingrained in their skin, bent down, all the muscles and vertebrae standing out on their backs. Now and again their lean, wiry hands scooped up a shovelful of coal and thrust it into the blazing orifice with a swift, deft movement. Another two workmen, standing above, were kept as busy shovelling down fresh coal from the huge black piles round the boiler house. There was something depressing and inhuman, Bobrov thought, in the stokers’ endless work. It seemed as if a supernatural power had chained them for life to those yawning maws and they must, under penalty of a terrible death, tirelessly feed the insatiable, gluttonous monster.

“Watching them fattening your Moloch, are you?” said a cheerful, good-humoured voice behind Bobrov’s back.

Bobrov started and all but fell into the pit. He was staggered by the unexpected coincidence of the doctor’s facetious exclamation with his own thoughts. For a long time after he regained his composure he could not stop wondering at the strange coincidence. He was always interested and mystified to hear someone beside him suddenly bring up what he had just been reading or thinking about.

“Did I frighten you, old chap?” said the doctor, looking closely at Bobrov. “I’m sorry.”

“Yes – a little. You came up so quietly – it was quite a surprise.”

“Andrei Ilyich, you’d better look after your nerves. They’re no good at all. Take my advice: ask for leave of absence and go somewhere abroad. Why worry yourself here? Enjoy six months or so of easy life; drink good wine, ride a lot, try l’amour.”

The doctor walked to the edge of the furnace pit and glanced down.

“A regular inferno!” he cried. “How much would those little samovars weigh? Close to fifteen tons each, I should think?”

“A bit more than that. Upwards of twenty-five tons.”

“Oh! And suppose it occurred to one of them to – er – pop? It would make a fine sight, wouldn’t it?”

“It certainly would, doctor. All these buildings would probably be razed to the ground.”

Goldberg shook his head and whistled significantly.

“But what might cause such a thing?”

“Oh, there may be many causes; but more often than not this is what happens: when there’s very little water left in the boiler, its walls grow hotter and hotter, till they’re almost red-hot. If you let water in at a moment like that an enormous quantity of steam would form at once, the walls wouldn’t be able to stand the pressure, and the boiler would blow up.”

“So you could do it on purpose?”

“Any time you wish. Would you like to try? When the water runs quite low in the gauge, you only have to turn that small round lever. That’s all there is to it.”

Bobrov was jesting, but his tone was strangely earnest, and there was a stern, unhappy look in his eyes.

“Damn it,” the doctor said to himself, “he’s a fine chap all right, but cranky just the same.”

“Why didn’t you go to the dinner, Andrei Ilyich?” he asked, stepping back from the pit. “You should at least see what a winter garden they’ve made of the lab. And the spread – you’d be amazed.”

“To hell with it all! I can’t bear those engineers’ dinners.” Bobrov made a grimace. “Bragging, yelling, fawning on each other, and then those invariable drunken toasts when the speakers spill their wine on themselves or their neighbours. Disgusting!”

“Yes, you’re quite right.” The doctor laughed. “I saw the beginning. Kvashnin was splendid. ‘Gentlemen! he said, ‘the engineer’s calling is a lofty and important one. Along with railways, blast-furnaces, and mines he carries into the remote corners of the country the seeds of education, the flowers of civilization, and – ’ He mentioned some sort of fruits, but I don’t remember which. A super-swindler if there ever was one! ‘So let us rally, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘and bear high the sacred banner of our beneficent art!’ He got furious applause, of course.”

They walked on a few paces in silence. Suddenly a shadow came over the doctor’s face.

“Beneficent art, is it!” he said angrily. “And the workmen’s barracks are built of chips. No end of sick people, children dying like flies. That’s what they call seeds of education! They are in for a nice surprise when typhoid fever breaks loose in Ivankovo.”

“But, doctor! Do you mean to say there’ve been cases already? It would be dreadful with their barracks crammed the way they are.”

The doctor stopped to catch his breath.

“What did you think?” he said with bitterness. “Two men were brought in yesterday. One of them died this morning, and the other’s sure to die tonight, if he hasn’t died yet. And we have neither medicines, beds, nor skilled nurses. Just wait, they’ll pay for it yet!” he added angrily, shaking his fist at someone invisible.

VIII

Busy-bodies had begun to wag their tongues. Even before Kvashnin arrived there were so many piquant stories bandied about the mill that now no one doubted the real motive of his sudden intimacy with the Zinenko family. The ladies spoke about it with ambiguous smiles and the men, talking among themselves, called a spade a spade with frank cynicism. But nobody knew anything for certain. Everyone was agog for a spicy scandal.

The gossip was not wholly groundless. After paying a visit to the Zinenko family Kvashnin began to spend all his evenings with them. About eleven o’clock every morning, his fine troika of greys would pull up at the Shepetovka estate, and the driver would invariably announce, “My master begs the lady and the young ladies to have breakfast with him.” No other people were invited to those breakfasts. The food was prepared by a French cook whom Kvashnin always took with him on his frequent trips, even when he went abroad.