The Beginning of Spring. Penelope Fitzgerald

Tvyordov?’

      ‘Only hand-printing.’

      ‘How old is he?’

      ‘I don’t know. We’ve got his particulars, I suppose. Some people are ageless, Frank.’

      ‘What about the overseer?’

      Selwyn never liked to speak ill of another human being. He hesitated.

      ‘Korobyev. Well, it’s his business, of course, to collect the fines for mistakes, spoiled work, laziness, drunkenness, absence and so on. An unenviable task, Frank! But there it is, the Printer’s Union agreed to the scale of fines, and we keep to the agreed scales. But since your father died, I fear Korobyev may have instituted a collection of his own whenever he feels the need for ready money.’

      ‘Who does he collect from?’

      ‘Well, perhaps from anyone who is not quite strong enough to object. Perhaps from Agafya, our tea-woman, perhaps from Anyuta, our cleaning-woman. Perhaps a few kopeks from the errand boys.’

      ‘Have you spoken to him about it?’

      ‘Your father may have told you that I don’t believe in direct resistance to evil. The only way is to put it to shame, to put it to flight, by good example.’

      Frank thanked him, went to the press, shook hands with the entire staff, and called a general meeting to discuss the conduct of the overseer. This meant the three hand-compositors and their two apprentices, the pressmen, the readers, the three machine-men, the putting-on and taking-off boys, the gatherers, the folders, the deliverers, the storekeeper, the warehouseman who also entered the work in the account books and checked deliveries, the paper-wetting boys, the errand-boys, the doorman and Agafya and her assistant Anyuta. There was only one place where there was room to address them all at the same time and that was the shed which served both as the paper warehouse and the tea-kitchen. Once they were assembled the men complained that the boys, some of whom were only just fourteen, were incompetent to judge the question, and they were sent home. This cleared a good deal of space. Meantime Korobyev had not arrived, he had not been in at all that day, and was feeling faint.

      ‘Well, we’ll proceed without him,’ said Frank, taking up his stand on the tea-counter. ‘I’m speaking to you, not as a stranger, because as you know, I’m a child of Moscow, but as a stranger to this press which was my father’s last enterprise.’ Some crossed themselves. ‘Because he died, I have come back to you. I think I may say that during my time in England and Germany I’ve learnt the business pretty thoroughly. Tonight we have to decide between ourselves what is meant at Reid’s Press by fair dealing.’

      It was the shortest meeting that Frank had ever attended. It appeared that there was no one in the room who did not want to get rid of their overseer. Korobyev did not insist on working out his time, or accept Frank’s invitation to explain himself. All he asked for was his internal passport, which allowed him to travel more than fifteen miles from his place of birth, and which an employer, if he thought fit, could refuse to give back. Frank gave it back. As Korobyev left the building, the compositors hammered him out by knocking their sticks against their cases. The battering sound seemed to excite itself and to work itself into a metallic frenzy, splintering the ears. The din stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and outside, at the tram-stop, Korobyev could be heard shouting: ‘Listen to me! Let everyone hear what has been done to the father of a family!’

      Suddenly Agafya, her head covered with a white handkerchief, went down on her knees before Frank and implored him to have mercy on Korobyev.

      ‘That’s all rubbish, Agafya. He was taking forty-seven kopeks a week off your wages.’

      ‘I’m on my knees to you, Frank Albertovich, sir.’

      ‘Yes, I see you.’

      ‘You heard him say he’s the father of a family.’

      ‘It’s a disgrace if he is,’ said Frank. ‘He’s not married.’

      Agafya, satisfied with the dramatic effect she had made, returned, like an old sentry to his post, to her samovars and to her campaign, in which no settlement seemed possible, with the storekeeper, over the issue of tea. The tea came, not in leaf form, but in tablets. These were charged as Consumables, but Frank thought they might just as well go down under Maintenance Materials. Forbidden to smoke, everyone at the Press was impelled to drink black tea not only at the stated hours, but if they could, all day.

      From that morning Frank took on the job of overseer himself, or you might say there was no overseer at Reidka’s, only a manager who worked rather harder than most. Even so, the change would not have been possible without Tvyordov.

      This man was the only compositor to be employed year in year out, on a weekly wage. The other three were on piece work. He had a broad, placid face, and the back of his head, covered with short greying stubble, gave the same reassuring impression as the front. Work started at Reidka’s at seven, and at one minute to seven he was in the composing room. It took him a minute exactly to get his setting rule, bodkin, composing-stick and galley out of the locked cupboard where they were kept. These were his own, and he lent them to no one. Tvyordov did not take any tea at this time. He put on a clean white apron which hung from a hook by the side of his frame, and a pair of slippers which he brought with him in a leather bag. Then he stepped into his frame and put his German silver watch on the lower bar of the upper case into a clip of his own construction, which fitted it exactly. The watch had a second hand, or sweep. Tvyordov spent no time in distributing the type from the reserves of the thirty-five letters and fifteen punctuation marks, that had always been done the night before, but started straight away on his copy, memorized the first few phrases, filled his composing stick, adjusted the spaces and took a sounding from his watch to see how long this had taken and to set his standard for the day. This was not an absolute measure. It depended on the weather, the copy, the proportion of foreign words, but never on Tvyordov himself. If at any point later on in the day he found that he had pushed down his last space a few seconds too early he would wait, motionless and untroubled, then shift his setting rule down at the watch’s precise tick. When the stick was lifted into the galley he grasped the letters lightly as though they were a solid piece of metal. This was difficult, the apprentices trying it were often reduced to tears, but during the past four hundred years no easier way had apparently been discovered of doing it. In this way he could set one thousand five hundred letters and spaces in an hour.