Vladimir Belayev The Old Fortress 3 The Town By The Sea

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Golovatsky began his introductory speech.
"People who don't realize that youth can get fun and pleasure out of doing something useful are
downright stupid!" were Golovatsky's opening words. What the audience was to see he called "only our
first attempt to show in its true light the depravity of the old life that still surrounds us, and to brand for
ever the aping of things foreign."
"The decadent music of the dancing-saloon and night club," said Golovatsky, "gives rise to feelings of
impotence and apathy, it lowers a man's working ability. And it is no accident that our enemies use it as a
weapon against us. But while branding what is rotten and alien to us," he went on, "we must learn from
what is good, seek it out and cherish it, show everything that is genuinely of the people."
Golovatsky's words, which seemed to promise a very unusual spectacle, were listened to attentively
by the large audience in the club hall. Besides the young people of the works, there were old workers
and their wives among the audience. In the front row I saw Rudenko, the director, Flegontov, and
Kazurkin, the secretary of the Town Party Committee.
I had heard Kazurkin speak once at a production meeting in the foundry, when he had called on us to
combat spoilage and not to hold up the other shops. Turunda had told me that during the Civil War
Kazurkin had been with Budyonny's cavalry in its campaign from the Azov steppes right across the
Ukraine to Lvov. It was not for nothing that he wore on his white tunic the gleaming Order of the Red
Banner, a very rare award in those days.
Kazurkin had helped us to prepare the show. After Golovatsky went to see him, everything was
available materials for the costumes, make-up men, balalaikas from the local watermen's club,
Caucasian daggers that the militia had taken from captured Makhno bandits...
As soon as Golovatsky had finished speaking, I slipped over to the signal bell. From there I could
watch not only what was happening on the stage, but also what took place in the hall. True, it was rather
difficult for me to read the large notice bearing the title of the show which was revealed as the curtain
went up:
CHARLESTONIADA or DOPE FOR DANDIES
The club decorators had reproduced the Rogale-Piontkovskaya dancing-saloon in detail. The tall
papier mache columns placed along the sides of the stage were as greasy and finger-marked as they
were in reality.
The title notice was raised out of sight and a pianist in a long dress-coat appeared on the stage an
exact replica of the pianist at Madame Rogale-Piontkovskaya's. In a squeaky affected voice he started
praising the dances that the "mademoiselles" and "messieurs" could learn at the saloon for fifty kopeks an
evening. Then he skipped over to the piano and the rattle of the Charleston filled the hall.
To the sound of the music, dancing couples began to appear from the wings.
First a titter of amusement skimmed across the hall like a puff of wind heralding a storm, then the
titters swelled into loud laughter, and soon the audience was laughing fit to break every window in the
club. The club artists had done a fine job! Working with the make-up men they had made the dancing
couples into almost photographic images of the regulars at Madame's saloon.
Madeleine the plater jerked wildly on to the stage. She was wearing a sailor's suit with a broad collar
and her fringe was so low that she seemed to have no forehead at all. Her friends were kicking their feet
in such high heels that the audience could scarcely understand how they managed to move on them at all.
The girls' lips were vividly painted, not in "bows," however, as fashion demanded, but in huge
ribbons! Nearly every dancer had a lurid blob under her nose, about the size of a hen's egg. And the
coiffures the make-up men had given them! Fringes reaching to their plucked eyebrows, turbans of hair
rising in spirals on top of their heads, birds' nests protruding from the back of their necks, spaniel curls in
huge abundance.
One of the dancers, with bare legs, had pinned a green doll in her hair and cross-belted herself with
two red fox furs tied at the back by their tails.
All the male dancers were Charlestoning in narrow, pipe-like trousers that seemed in danger of
splitting at any moment.
The audience quickly guessed who was represented by a man with greying hair parted in the middle
and plastered flat with hair-cream. He was dressed in cream flannels and a grey jacket, and his face had
been darkened with a thick layer of powder mixed with black grease. The grey-haired dancer's face
positively glistened. On his arm dangled a carved walking-stick.
Without a doubt this was Mavrodiadi the lawyer. Half-Greek, half-Turk no one knew how he had
come to be in Tavria Mavrodiadi patrolled the noisy Avenue at a certain hour every day. Many were [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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