The Writers' Circle

CHAPTER 1




Jagged rooftops and the abandoned winding stone streets were hushed, and yet the cries of an old woman echoed down across the otherwise silent town of Novgorod. The morning birds skimmed along the dormant houses and the distant golden sun gleamed upon the striking Russian churches. Nevertheless, over in the distance stood the effect of the new communist regime that had been bestowed forcefully upon the country. The formidable and indestructible concrete blocks obscured the beautiful winter scenery. The fields that were green and overflowing with natural life now were torn down to make way for office blocks and cramped apartments for the growing population. Some people could imagine above in the inaccessible reaches of the sky there was a powerful fist over the land made of impenetrable steel. Stal or Stalin is the Russian word for steel and it was he who ruled over the Soviet Union at the time. People who had these minds and looked through the red and patriotic glory were the ones in trouble. They were the colour in an otherwise black and white existence and their actions were deeply frowned upon. Yet still, they fought a loosing battle for what they saw as a corrupting country. As for Stalin himself, he did not trust anyone. He did not even favour his own allies.

The woman who had serenaded through the cultural remains of the city placed a box of fruits on a pile of worn wooden crates. She called in a friendly way over to a house at the other side of the street. The house had been painted various colours to hide the rotting wood over the years but at the time it was a vibrant yellow colour. The roof had caved in slightly in the middle and some of the tiles have broken off from the main frame. A woman who attentively came out of her house looked around and saw the old woman hold her arms out with an apple clasped tightly in one of her palms. 
"Beila!" 
She called to the woman emerging from the yellow house. Beila raised her head and slowly walked over to the woman, her back was hunched over and she looked around as if something was going to attack her. Beila was one of those people who could see through everything that was happening. But, it was not so much that she could see it. It was that she could not see how communism was good and always felt in the wrong. It had not dramatically changed her life like people had promised. Beila tried not to think of such things but she led a solitary life and kept herself to herself, she had no family and not many friends so it was a bit of a burden.
"Beila, here is an apple for you" The woman said, smiling with a bright round face through her vibrantly coloured headscarf that covered her greying hair.
"Thank you." Beila replied with her aquamarine eyes and cherry red cheeks shining brighter than usual in the low late-winter sun.
"I spare a Kopeck for you." Beila said while taking a glowing new coin from her worn pocket and placing it in the wrinkled and warm hand of the woman.
"It means more than words Beila, many thanks now go go go, do not be late. Rebikov said he would be rid of you if you wasted any more of his time!" She responded briskly. 

Before setting off down the path to the factory at the end of the long street Beila took a glance at her house. It was a wooden house built by her father many years ago. Its tiles were falling off and onto the path, only to be stolen by passers by. Its wooden markings that her father had painstakingly carved were rubbed off and after several bad storms the roof supports were beginning to show. There was a sign plastered on the large nostalgic door. It was a warrant to demolish the house. The government was knocking down the dilapidated houses to make way for sturdier and reliable communal apartments and there was nothing Beila could do about it, in several days she would be homeless. 
Beila looked down the incessant gravel road. There were several cars parked in front of the more presentable houses on the other side of the street. The houses that the wealthy owners were fortunate enough to bribe their way out of being demolished were very lucky. Beila's big, worn, brown boots stood among the rubble of the homes next to her that had already been destroyed. She held the knot of her headscarf and lowered her head while marching onwards into the seamless urban desert. 

A train flew across the rickety ice tracks. A sudden cold burst of wind blew onto Beila's face as the train dashed along the track. It passed dangerously close to the various metal pylons situated around. Nearby, the twisted rails that trains passed were orange and disfigured. Underprivileged beggar children rummaged through the puddles dotted around the scoured rusty tracks. De-feathered shabby crows pecked at bludgeoned carrion at the overgrown edge. Beila caught a glimpse of her workplace building through the grey maze. She saw the new soviet concrete buildings looming over the once admired Russian churches and felt as if a shadow had swallowed her. The atmosphere was menacing. A proud Russian poster was painted onto the side of one of the buildings showing a loyal country but underneath this glory there was melancholy and Beila sensed it clearly, she knew there was something up. She was never a fan of this but everyone else made her feel so wrong. Everyone had always said what a change it had made and was still making to their lives. Beila began to wonder if she had missed something that everyone else had picked up on. Her eyes darted quickly up to the top of the building where the menacing towers overcast any other building around Novgorod, shunning a thousand years of history into the shadows. She slowly looked down, almost counting the windows and bricks one by one.

The small children near the tracks sensed Beila's presence and scurried across the tracks and into one of the abandoned houses near Beila's own residence.  Beila looked both ways and crossed the track with haste. She heard the crunching sound of eroding stones below her boots. Beila approached the building. A heavy steel door lead her into a hallway where old torn posters and work notes were pinned up on the plastered walls. A book filled with the names of the workers laid upon an industrial table, guarded by a woman sat on a small aged chair. She was winding ribbons up with her worn hands.

"Zablotny! Shut the door! Those beggar children are trying to steal the materials again!" The woman complained to Beila whilst peering out of the door and surveying outside while getting a bony old stick and whacking it defensively near Beila's feet. 
Beila said nothing but then closed the door like an obedient slave. She took off her dilapidated coat and hat and hung them on a precariously placed coat rack between the door and the guarding woman. Beila was a short, plump woman with a friendly, delightful and welcoming appearance. She was a peasant woman of beauty and had a sugary sweet smile and podgy crimson cheeks. She flicked her chestnut brown hair from her face and into a small but cluttered French plait at the back. 

Beila was about to rush through the door into the factory knowing that she was already late, much to her boss: Rebikov's anger. The old woman shouted at her abusively before handing her a worn down pencil she held tightly with her stubby fingers that were as worn as the pencil itself. 
"You write in book! Rebikov needs to see which workers are the productive ones an which are to be rid of, you don't want to lose your home and your job Zablotny. You do as I say and I might put in a good word for you!"
   Beila looked through the door and away from the prying eyes of Rebikov's assistant. A twisted framework of stairs spiralled up to a small room at the top of the factory, this was where Beila worked. Dim lights were just visible through the dirty windows. At a small corner of the large ground floor people were distributing army clothes by packing them into small compact boxes but many of the workers were making ammunitions. The loud noises of the machines made it impossible to hear anyone speaking but they all looked at Beila with an unwelcoming stare. 

Beila carefully opened the door of the small office at the top floor and shut it behind her to block out the deafening noises that continually rattled from downstairs. A large man stood up with great effort and waddled towards Beila. He had a sweaty stench about him and his shirt obviously had not been washed in some time. He wore patchy trousers and grubby work overalls that made no difference to his messy attire. He was hairy and unkempt and made an animal like growl, bearing his mouldy teeth. He wiped his hands on his overalls and stared down at Beila, even though he was barely much taller than her. 
 "Ah, Zablotny, dishonourer of Soviet Union, late again"
Beila nodded as she passed him, secretly shuddering inside.
	"Sorry Rebikov." 

The room was atmospherically hushed, with everyone working hard at their tables. Beila went to her station which was nearest the petty window at the corner shadowed by the warped black bars that tangled over it. It was the only window that faced the railway tracks next to them and was dangerously close to electrical power lines but at least it faced outside. The rest of the workers windows are tinted and gave the miserable view of the ammunitions factory below, if they could make it out through the dust on the glass. Everything merged into a grey blur and it is hard to construct where the ceiling ended and the unbalanced building support beams began. In the corners there are piles of years old dust lying undisturbed along with thick worn cobwebs where spiders once had home. Several plain and faded woven rugs were patched across the unstable flooring. The floors had not been swept in months and no-one dare look under the rugs or cracks in the decaying large wooden beams hanging from the low ceiling. Beila's station was dishevelled with strips of fragmentary clothing pouring out onto the floor. Beila looked around to see that every other member of the room had the same amount of unfeasible load of work piled upon their unsteady wooden workstations. 

Beila's best friend and co-worker who was thoughtlessly pleating a portion of fabric looked up in surprise to see Beila there next to her beginning her work. She smiled and scraped her wild brown hair from her fatigued face. She was taller and thinner than Beila, her eyes were more deeply set and were tarnished a cavernous sea blue. Beila beamed back to her before facing the finger shattering work that was placed upon her workstation. A short silence plummeted through the building as everyone worked rigorously.
	"I was speaking to Rebikov's wife yesterday while you were out feeding the chickens." Beila's friend abruptly blurted out. Beila curved around on her a small wooden chair to face her. 
	"She was discussing Moscow again; it would be my dream to go to such an amazing place, I cannot see how you can not have fascination with the red capital." She said in delight, staring in a day dream up at the dusty beams above and imagines the lights of the city shining forever. 
	"Yaroslava! Veliky Novgorod is my home, I have never known anywhere else." Beila protested to her. 
Yaroslava nodded in understanding. 
	"I know, but I am going to Moscow, I want to be a good communist. To be standing on the Kremlin balcony with Josef Stalin, isn't that what you want Beila?" Yaroslava said while strongly making her point with her serious and compelling political voice.
She could see Yaroslava's ongoing dream to become a communist leader and of what she would give to become a high party member. For an eternity Beila had apparition of once becoming an actress in the studios, giving people films that she was so deprived of as a child. 
	"Zablotny! You're not working, and Yaroslava Simonov, I expect more from you, a potential communist politician amongst us! Make me proud!" Rebikov bellowed.

	Unexpectedly and without warning a great heaving train swept rapidly past the work building. Simultaneously every woman in the room lifted their worn fingers from the sowing machines. Everything in the room began to shudder and quake, their part of the factory which was only held up by a few old supports rocked aggressively. Then the last carriage rattled past leaving everything in a sinister silence. 
	"We have to get those wooden beams replaced." Rebikov said.
	"One of these days, that train will be through Zablotny's window." A large woman commented from a dark and shadowy corner of the room.
	Rebikov slammed his hairy fists on her workstation and growled fiercely but was disrupted when a man covered in oil and wearing a boiler suit came to the door and beckoned him outside. Rebikov turned around and looked at everyone in the room with a piercing glare.
	"Do not stop working, you stop and I sack you and you will be on the streets before you can say sorry Rebikov!" He barked aggressively.
Yaroslava immediately turned towards the doorway with so much intrigue but could not hear what was being said outside.
Subsequently to that, the sound of heavy rain absolutely pulverized the roof of the building. The dusty barred windows were pouring with raindrops. However, the dirt remained untouched on the inner surface of the glass. Beila looked at the other side of the confined stuffy room and peered through the window and towards the shadowed church buildings in the distance. There were the remains of a falling city, it made her so angry and upset. She heard the noise of a vehicle arrived up to the factory doors and that what drew her to the window in the first place. The heavy rain bounced off the toothed heavy tiled roofs and onto the irregular potholed footpath below. Yaroslava tugged Beila's green jumper sleeve.
"Beila sit down, Rebikov will sack you. You will never be able to work in Novgorod again and believe me he will make sure of it." Yaroslava ordered. 
Beila sat down but still looked out of the window. She felt so separate from the rest of the world and could not accept what she had been forced to cope with. The other women did not know it, not even Yaroslava knew fully that Beila was sad. She longed for real friends and a lifestyle that she now dearly missed. Beila felt naïve towards everything. She had given up trying to understand years ago.
"Beila, you go to Moscow with me." Yaroslava said with a lot of confidence. 
Beila looked at her puzzled.
"Wait, you will see, I will change your mind."
The women waited at their eternal workstations and anticipated orders from Rebikov who had just stepped into the room after he had spoken with the ammunitions worker. They all raised their heads in synchronization to face him as he took pride of place at the front of the room. He clasped his hairy hands and tightly pressed his grubby palms firmly together, the sweat acting like strong glue.
"Listen, there is man here from Moscow, he say he reporter from Politburo and is interested in looking here, he is doing article on important businesses in Soviet Union. Because we have ammunitions factory he has come here." He projected with his loud voice and strong Russian accent in a way that was impossible to miss.

Rebikov returned outside and back to the balcony overlooking the ammunitions factory, he was talking in a dull low tone so no-one in the office could hear him. A man was stood outside. They could see his shadow just through the tinted windows. A hubbub of excited chatters swept the room about who exactly the man was. Beila looked at Yaroslava's smug smile. She could tell that she was thinking about getting this man to persuade her to go to Moscow with her and it all suddenly made sense.

Rebikov arrived proudly back into the room with the man. He was tall and scrawny looking, even more so than the poor peasant women. He had a shadow black wisped head of hair and hazel tinted eyes, his dark moustache comically curled upwards at both sides. A flawless black buttoned suit fitted his frame perfectly. Shining golden star cufflinks were on his gleaming white shirt and a well positioned red cravat covered his neck. He peered at everyone. His face was serious, almost infamous with his frown and his burning dark pebble like eyes glaring through his globular glasses.
"This is Mr Skorobogatov, he is here to report, you do your job and he will do his." The boss shouted.
Beila though ignored everything around her and fixated on Mr Skorobogatov. She could see behind his serious face and could tell he had a sense of intrigue about the place. She knew it was rude to stare but every time she tried to look away from him her eyes always reverted back to him once again, it was the first time in a while that Beila had felt a slight glimmer of happiness. Rebikov approached Mr Skorobogatov. He came up so close to him that Mr Skorobogatov began to back away into a corner, nervously brushing off the dirt from his fitted suit.
"Mr Skorobogatov, the dictatorship wants to take the business to make room for more ammunition workers and storage. What is going on!? Anyone would think there is going to be war!" Rebikov ranted.
"Mr Rebikov, if the government decide to change the industry for the good of the Soviet economy then so be it, you do not have control." Mr Skorobogatov replied calmly backing Rebikov away to the nearest worker that happened to be Beila.
Rebikov turned towards Beila with a brutal and untamed stare as he bangs his hairy hands on the unstable desk.
"Zablotny! You dishonour this opportunity! Take Mr Skorobogatov's coat!"
"Yes Rebikov." Beila replied softly, her chair scraping back across the wooden floor when she stood up.
	
Mr Skorobogatov placed the coat in Beila's open arms and she walked off carefully to hang it on a coat rack near the doorway and next to Rebikov's desk. Mr Skorobogatov who was still clutching his gloves and scarf in his hands smiled and passed them to Beila. She was beginning to see his stern face light up and soften. He did not realise it but now he was doing the staring. He kept looking at Beila. He was absolutely stunned by her beauty as he played the same thoughts over and over like a stuck record trying to calculate what was real and what was imagination.
"He is visitor we want him to think that the Novgorodian's are hospitable people." Rebikov shouted with even more aggressiveness. He clenched his fists together at the women but then smiled sinisterly at Mr Skorobogatov, showing his tobacco stained teeth like some kind of ravenous dog.
"That will not be necessary sir. I am here only to do a report. And everyone, please act like it is a normal day. I want to see the Soviet workers in action. I want to see what makes our country great." Mr Skorobogatov explained out to everyone in the room but his voice was quiet and his formal tone made several interested faces peer above the sowing machines at him.

	Rebikov shuffled over towards his office desk and got several tobacco leaves wrapped up in some old paper. He rolled the paper up with the leaves inside and smiled at Mr Skorobogatov with the roll in-between his stained teeth. He lit it with a match and inhaled deeply.
	"Makhorka?" Rebikov said while offering Mr Skorobogatov a roll and another match.
	"No thank you."
	"Oh! Not Makhorka I cannot stand the smell!" One of the peasant women whined in the work room. 
Rebikov turned around slowly his face even more sweaty than normal. His eyes slit the soul of whoever had spoken out against him and his precious Makhorka.
	"Shut up, I don't care." Rebikov yelled looking at everyone one by one and giving Beila an extra stare even though it was not her that had said it.

Mr Skorobogatov was stood against the wall and felt very uncomfortable and is unsure where to look but he decided to distract himself and the other people in the workplace. To break the ice he ordered a lanky gentleman with thick glasses to park up two chairs in a position that surveyed the factory workers. Beila smiled at him slightly but made her way loyally back to her workstation as both Rebikov and Yaroslava had been keeping an eye on her.

It was early evening again until Rebikov ordered the women to stop working. Most of them had completely forgotten about Mr Skorobogatov and his reporter friend but not Beila. She had been staring at him all day. Suddenly she panicked when she realised that she had hardly done any work at all and that Rebikov would be very angry with her. 
"My business is failing terrible, if the government want to move my workers to make room for ammunitions space I will not have a job!" Rebikov explained, his voice was beginning to get irritated.
Mr Skorobogatov nodded. He flexed his fingers and turned to a lanky gentleman next to him. He scribbled everything down on a worn notepad. Everyone jumped as they were blinded by a bulb resting on top of a camera which was something that they were not expecting. 
With several more camera flashes behind him. Mr Skorobogatov made his way towards the door and the coat rack that had his belongings. 
"Many thanks Mr Skorobogatov and have a safe journey back to Moscow, I hope you enjoyed Veliky Novgorod, is a very nice place." The boss said as he closed the door.
 Mr Skorobogatov turned around and took one last diminishing glance at Beila before exiting the factory but he was thinking of only her as he stepped down the unstable stairs of the factory. Mr Skorobogatov and the reporter speed off in a classy, shiny car that they journeyed to the fabricators in. 
Rebikov scoffed and grunted.
"It was very short visit, stupid man. I do not think he is even from Politburo! It's you're fault Zablotny!" He shouted as he chucked his fur hat across Beila's desk, it flew across her workstation and bounced off onto Yaroslava's lap
"You work Zablotny and you better hurry or you will be welcoming the new decade by stitching insignia on an army vest!"  He bellowed as he stormed strait towards Yaroslava and snatched the hat from her innocent hands. 
Rebikov told her she had to continue working after hours because she had not done enough but Beila already knew this. 
Beila thought about Mr Skorobogatov and completely ignored Rebikov and the other workers who equally hated her and felt sad that things in her life had not gone the right way. 

All of the other women left work and were ready to go back to their stable homes or apartments. They picked up their bags and left the sunlit room with the orange sunset glow beaming down on Beila's face as she continued to work overtime to catch up with the work. 

Mr Skorobogatov was sat in the back seat of a stylish black car while his chauffeur drove him onward and back to the train station. His reporter friend handed the notes to Mr Skorobogatov and looked up at him expectantly, waiting to see if his work was exemplary. Mr Skorobogatov re-arranged the glasses on his face and looked at the work with an eyebrow raised. 
	"Yes." He said slowly
 "But I will return there again, I still think there is more to that place, but for now its back to Moscow." Mr Skorobogatov answered as he gazed out of the window at the forests and buildings in the distance as he approached the Novgorod train station ready to leave for Moscow thinking about the peasant woman who had touched his very heart.