Lev Kassil. The black book and Schwambrania



     PROGRESS PUBLISHERS
     MOSCOW

     Translated from the Russian by Fainna Glagoleva

     Copyright Translation into English Progress Publishers 1978
     First Printing 1978
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     îÁ ÁÎÇÌÉÊÓËÏÍ ÑÚÙËÅ

     OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 ? http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
     __________________________________________________________


        THE BLACK BOOK AND SCHWAMBRANIA

     A story of THE UNUSUAL ADVENTURES OF TWO KNIGHTS
     In Search of Justice
     Who Discovered
     THE GREAT SCHWAMBRANIAN NATION
     On the Big Tooth Continent,
     With a description
     Of the amazing events
     That took place
     On the Wandering Islands,
     And also many other things,
     As told by
     ADELAR CASE,
     FORMER ADMIRAL
     OF SCHWAMBRANIA,
     Who now goes by the name of
     LEV KASSIL,
     And including a great number
     Of secret documents, sea charts,
     The Coat of Arms and the flag


     __________________________________________________________________


        PART ONE

        THE BLACK BOOK

        A LAND OF VOLCANIC ORIGIN

        DISCOVERY

     On  the evening  of  October  11, 1492,  the 68th  day of  his  voyage,
Christopher  Columbus  noticed  a  moving light  on  the  horizon.  Columbus
followed the light and discovered America.
     On  the evening  of February  8,  1914,  my brother and  I, having been
punished,  were  sitting in  the corner. After twelve minutes of this he was
pardoned,  as being the younger, but refused to leave  me until  my sentence
was up  and  so stayed put.  For a while  we  were engrossed in  picking our
noses. On the 4th minute, when we tired of this, we discovered Schwambrania.

        THE LOST QUEEN, OR THE MYSTERY OF THE SEASHELL GROTTO

     The disappearance of  the queen  brought everything  to  a  head.  This
happened in  broad  daylight,  and  the  light of day  dimmed. It was Papa's
queen, and that was what made everything so terrible. Papa was a great chess
fan,  and everyone knows  what  an  important  figure the queen  is  on  the
chessboard.
     The lost queen was part of a new set made to order especially for Papa,
who was very proud of it.
     We were not to touch the figures for anything, yet it was impossible to
keep our hands off them.
     The  lovely lacquered  pieces fired  our imaginations, prompting  us to
invent any number of exciting games for  them. Thus, the pawns could  either
be soldiers  or tenpins. There  were small  circles  of felt pasted on their
round  soles,  and so they slid  around like floor polishers. The rooks were
good wine glasses, while the kings could either be samovars or generals. The
round knobs that crowned the bishops were like light bulbs. We could harness
a pair of black and a pair of  white  horses to cardboard cabs and line them
up to wait  for fares, or else we could arrange them so that they  formed  a
merry-go-round. However, the queens  were the best of  all.  One queen was a
blonde and the other was a brunette. Either one could be a Christmas tree, a
cabby, a Chinese pagoda, a flower pot on a stand or a priest. Indeed, it was
impossible to keep our hands off them.
     On that memorable day  the white  cabby-queen's black horse  was taking
the black  priest-queen  to see  the  black  general-king. He  received  the
priest-queen most nobly. He set  the white samovar-king on  the  table, told
the pawns to polish the chequered  parquet floor and turned on  the electric
light-bishops. Then the king and queen each had two rookfuls of tea.
     When  at last  the  samovar-king cooled off and we became  tired of our
game, we decided to put the figures  back in their case. Horrors!  The black
queen was missing!
     We  bruised our  knees crawling about,  looking under the  chairs,  the
tables and the bookcases. All our efforts  were in vain. The  wretched queen
was gone. Vanished! We finally had to tell  Mamma, who soon had everyone  up
in  arms. No matter how hard we all looked, we could not find it. A terrible
storm was about to break over our cropped heads. Then Papa came home.
     This was no measly storm. A blizzard, a hurricane, a cyclone, a simoom,
a waterspout and a typhoon came crashing down  upon us! Papa was furious. He
called us vandals and  barbarians. He said that  one could even teach a wild
bear  to  handle things carefully,  and all  we knew  how to  do  was  wreck
everything  we touched, and he would  not stand for such destructiveness and
vandalism.
     "Into the corner, both of you! And stay there!" he shouted. "Vandals!"
     We looked at each other and burst into tears.
     "If I'd  have known  I  was going to have such  a  Papa, I'd never  get
borned!" Oska bawled.
     Mamma blinked hard.  She  was about to  shed a tear,  but  that did not
soften Papa's heart.  We  stumbled off  to  the "medicine  chest". For  some
reason or  other  that  was  the  name  given to the  dim storeroom near the
bathroom  and the kitchen. There were always  dusty jars and bottles  on the
small window-sill, which is probably how the room originally got its name.
     There was a small low bench in one comer known as "the dock". Papa, who
was a doctor, felt  it was wrong to  have children stand  in the corner when
they were punished and so had us sit in the corner instead.
     There we were, banished to that shameful bench. The medicine  chest was
as dim as a dungeon. Oska said:
     "He meant the circus,  didn't he? I mean, the part about bears being so
careful. Didn't he?"
     "Yes."
     "Are vandals part of the circus, too?"
     "Vandals are robbers," I muttered.
     "That's what I thought." He sounded pleased.  "They have chains tied on
them."
     Annushka, our cook,  stuck her head out of the kitchen and threw up her
hands.
     "Goodness! The master's lost his toy and so the babies have to sit here
in the  dark. My poor little sinners! Do you want me to bring you the cat to
play with?"
     "No!"  I  growled.  The resentment which  had  gradually died down  now
welled up in me again.
     As the  unhappy day drew to  a close the dim room became  darker still.
The Earth  was turning its back on  the Sun. The world, too, turned its back
on us. We  looked out  upon the unjust world from  our place of  shame.  The
world was very large, as I had learned  in geography, but there was no place
for  children in  it. Grown-ups were  in charge  of  everything on  all five
continents. They changed the  course of history, rode horses, hunted, sailed
ships, smoked, made real things, went
     off  to war, fell in love, saved people,  kidnapped people  and  played
chess. But  their  children were made to stand in corners. The grown-ups had
probably forgotten the games they had played as children  and the books they
had found so interesting. Indeed, they had probably forgotten all about that
part of their lives. Otherwise they would have let us play with  whomever we
wanted to,  climb fences, wade through puddles and pretend that  a  chessman
called a king was a boiling samovar.
     That was what we were thinking about as we sat in the corner.
     "Let's run away! We'll gallop off!" Oska said.
     "Go  ahead, what's keeping you? But  where'll you go? Everyplace you go
there'll be grown-ups, and you're just a little boy."
     At that moment I had a brainstorm. It cut through the gloom like a bolt
of lightning, so that I was not at all surprised to hear the roll of thunder
that followed (actually, Annushka had dropped the roasting pan).
     There was  no need to run away, to search for a  promised land. It  was
here,  somewhere  very  close  at hand.  We  had only  to invent it. I could
practically  see it in the gloom. There, by the bathroom door, were its palm
trees, ships, palaces and mountains.
     "There's land ahead, Oska!" I shouted excitedly. "Land! It's a new game
we can play all our lives!"
     Oska's one thought was a good future ahead. "I'll blow the whistle, and
I'll be the engineer!" he said. "What'll we play?"
     "It's going to  be a game about a land, our own land. We'll live  in it
every day, besides living here, and it'll belong to us. Left paddle ahead!"
     "Aye, aye, Sir! Left paddle ahead! Whoooo!"
     "Slow speed. Pay out the mooring line."
     "Shhh," Oska hissed, letting off steam.
     We disembarked from our bench onto a new shore.
     "What's it called?"
     At the time of the events described, our favourite book was Greek Myths
by  Gustav Schwab, and  so  we  decided to name our  new  land  Schwabrania.
However, the word sounded too much like the cotton swabs  Papa used  in  his
practice, so  we added an "m", making our new land Schwambrania. We were now
Schwambranians. All of the above was to be kept a deep dark secret.
     Mamma  soon let us out of our  dungeon. She  had no way of knowing that
she  was  now  dealing  with  two  citizens  of  a  great  nation  known  as
Schwambrania.
     A  week  later the black queen  surfaced. The cat had rolled  it into a
crack under the  trunk. However, Papa had by then ordered  a new queen,- and
so this  queen was  ours. We decided to make  it the keeper of the secret of
Schwambrania.
     Mamma had a beautiful little grotto made of seashells that she had  put
away behind the mirror of her dressing table and had forgotten all  about. A
pair of tiny filigree brass gates guarded the entrance to the cosy cave. The
cave was empty. We decided to hide our queen there.
     We  wrote  "C.W.S."  (Code Words  of Schwambrania) on a  slip of paper,
pulled away an edge of the felt circle on the bottom of the black  queen and
stuck the paper into the space. Then we put the queen in the cave and sealed
the   gates  with  sealing-wax.  The  queen  was  now   doomed  to   eternal
imprisonment. I will tell you of what happened to it later.

        A BELATED INTRODUCTION

     Schwambrania was a land of volcanic origin.
     Red-hot growing forces boiled and bubbled within us. They  were held in
check by the stiff, rock-bound structure of our family and of the society in
which we lived.
     There  was so much we wanted to  know and still more that we  wanted to
learn how to do. But our teachers would only let us know as much as could be
found in our schoolbooks  and in silly children's stories,  and we  did  not
really know how to do anything, because we had never been taught to.
     We wanted to be a part of the adult  world,  but we were told to go and
play with our tin soldiers if we didn't want  to  get into  trouble with our
parents, teachers or the police.
     There  were  many  people in  our  town. They hurried up  and  down the
streets and often came into our yard, but we were only allowed  to associate
with the people our elders approved of.
     My brother  and I played Schwambrania for several years.  It became our
second country and was a mighty nation.  The Revolution,  that stern teacher
and excellent  educator, helped  us to overcome our old ties, and we finally
abandoned the tinfoil ruins of Schwambrania forever.
     I have saved  our  "Schwambranian letters" and  maps, the plans  of our
military campaigns  and  sketches  of the  flag  and  coat-of-arms.  I  have
referred to them to freshen my recollections while writing  this book. It is
the  story  of  Schwambrania,  with  tales  about  the   travels   of   many
Schwambranians and our own adventures there, as well as many other events.

        GEOGRAPHY

     "But the earth still turns-if you
     don't believe me, sit on your
     very own buttocks-and
     slide!"
     Mayakovsky


     Just  like any other country, Schwambrania had  a  terrain,  a climate,
flora, fauna and population all its own.
     Oska made the first map  of Schwambrania. He copied a large molar tooth
from a dentist's ad  he had seen, and  since it had three roots it  at  once
resembled a tulip, the crown  of the Nibelungs  and an  upside-down "M", the
letter  we had  added to the middle of  the  name of our new country. It was
very tempting to see some special meaning in this  and we did: we decided it
was a wisdom tooth,  signifying the wisdom of the Schwambranians.  Thus, the
new  country's  contours resembled a wisdom tooth. The surrounding ocean was
dotted  with islands and blots,  but  I must  say  that the  ink-spots  were
truthfully  marked  as such:  "Not an iland, an erer". The ocean was  marked
"Oshen". Oska drew wavy lines and inscribed them "waves". Then he marked the
"see"  and added two  arrows,  one pointing out  the "curant" and the  other
"this way is aposit". There  was also  a "beech", a straight-coursing  river
named the Halma,  the capital city of Schwambraena, the towns of Argonsk and
Drandzonsk, Foren  Shore Bay, "that side", a "peer", mountains and, finally,
"the place where the Earth curves".
     At the time  Oska was very much concerned about the spherical nature of
the ground underfoot and did his best to prove the roundness of the Earth to
himself. Luckily, we  knew nothing of  Mayakovsky's poetry, for Oska's pants
certainly would have been worn thin in his  efforts to see if he could slide
on it. However, he discovered another way of proving it. Before putting  the
finishing touches to his map of Schwambrania, he led me out of our yard with
a  very meaningful look on  his face. Beyond the granaries and near the main
square the remains of a mound could be seen.  Perhaps this  had once been  a
part of some earthen  foundation for a chapel, or perhaps it had once been a
large flower bed. Time had all  but levelled the little hump. Oska beamed as
he led me to it. He pointed grandly and said:
     "Here's the place where the Earth curves."
     I dared not contradict him.  Perhaps the Earth did curve  there. At any
rate, in order not to lose  face, for  he was my baby brother  after all,  I
said:  "Ha! That's  nothing!  You  should have  seen that  place in Saratov.
That's where the Earth re curves."
     Schwambrania was a truly symmetrical land, one  that could easily serve
an example for any ornament. To the West were mountains, a city and the sea.
To  East were mountains, a city and the sea. There was a bay on the left and
a bay  the right. This symmetry reflected  the true  justice  which governed
Schwambrania  and  the rules of our game. Unlike ordinary books, where  good
prevails and evil is vanquished on the very last page, ours was a land where
the heroes were rewarded  and the villains defeated at the  very start. Ours
was a country of complete well-being and exquisite perfection. There was not
even a jagged line in its contour.
     Symmetry  is  a   balance  of  lines,  a  linear  system  of   justice.
Schwambrania was a land of true justice, where all the good  things  in life
and even the terrain were  fairly distributed. There was a bay  on  the left
and a bay on the right, the city  of Drandzonsk in the West and the  city of
Argonsk in the East. Justice reigned.

        HISTORY

     Now, as was only proper for a real nation, Schwambrania  had to have  a
history all its  own.  Six months of our  playing the game  covered  several
centuries of its existence.
     As I learned from my reading, the  past history of any  self-respecting
country was crammed full of wars. That was why Schwambrania had to work hard
to catch  up. However, there was no one it could fight. That was  why we had
to draw two curved lines  across the bottom of the  Big Tooth  Continent and
write "Fence" along one  of them. We  now  had two enemy nations in  the two
marked-off  comers.   One  was  "Caldonia",  a  combination  of   "cad"  and
"Caledonia",  and  the other was  "Balvonia",  a  combination  of "bad"  and
"Bolivia". The level ground situated between Caldonia and Balvonia was there
to serve as a battle-field. It was marked "War" on the map.
     We were  soon  to see the  same  word in  large  block letters  in  the
newspapers.
     We imagined that all real battles took place in  a special hard-packed,
cleanly-swept square area like a parade ground. The Earth never curved here,
for the ground was level and smooth.
     "The  war place is  paved like a  sidewalk,"  I  said  knowingly to  my
brother.
     "Is there a  Volga in  a war?" he  wanted to know. He  thought that the
Volga meant any river.
     To both  sides of the "War"  part on the map  were  the places  for the
prisoners of war. The three areas were clearly marked "prizon".
     All  wars in  Schwambrania  began  with the  postman ringing  the front
doorbell of the Emperor's palace. He would say:
     "There's a special delivery for you, Your Majesty. Sign here."
     "I wonder who it's from?" the Emperor would say, licking the tip of his
pencil.
     Oska was the postman. I was the Emperor.
     "I  think I know that  handwriting," the postman would reply. "It looks
like it's from Balvonia. From their king."
     "Any letters from Caldonia?" the Emperor would ask.
     "They're  still  writing,"  the  postman  would  answer,  mimicking  to
perfection the reply of our postman, Neboga, for that was  what he would say
whenever we asked if there were any letters for us.
     "Lend me a hairpin, Queen!" the Emperor would shout and would then slit
open the envelope with a hairpin. A letter might read:

     "Dear Mr. King of Schwambrania,
     "How are you? We are fine, thank God. Yesterday we had a bad earthquake
and three volcanoes  erupted. Then  there was a terrible fire in  the palace
and a terrible flood. Last week we had a war against Caldonia. But we licked
them and captured all of  them. Because  the  Balvonians  are all very brave
heroes. And  all  the  Schwambranians  are  fools, idiots,  dunderheads  and
vandals.  And  we  want to fight you. God  willing, we  present you  with  a
manifesto in the newspapers. Come on out and fight a War. We'll lick you all
and capture you, too. If you don't fight a War, you're  all scaredy-cats and
sissies. And we despise you. You're all a bunch of idiots.
     "Regards to your missus the Queen and to the young man who's  the heir.
"Wherewith is the print of mine own boot.
     "The King of Balvonia"

     Upon  reading such a  letter, the  Emperor  would become very angry. He
would take his sword down from the wall and  summon his  knife-grinders.  He
would then send the Balvoniancad a telegram with a "paid reply". The message
would read:

        "I MARCH ON YOU."

     According to my History of  Russia textbook, either  Prince Yaroslav or
Prince Svyatoslav of yore had sent his enemies a similar warning. The Prince
would  telegraph this message to some warrior tribe of Pechenegs or Polovtsi
and would then ride off to settle their hash. However, it  would never do to
address such  an  impertinent fellow as the King  of Balvonia politely,  and
that was why  the Emperor of Schwambrania would angrily add  "rat": "I March
on you, rat!" Then the Emperor would summon the supplier of medicine to  His
Majesty's court,  whose  official title was Physician Extraordinary, and get
himself called up.
     "And how are  we  today?"  the  Physician Extraordinary would  inquire.
"How's our stomach? Uh  ... how's our stool, I  mean  throne, today? Breathe
deeply, please."
     Then the Emperor  would get into his coach and say:  "Come  on, fellow!
Don't spare the horses!"
     And he would go off to war. Everyone would cheer and salute, while  his
queen waved a clean hankie from her window.
     Naturally, Schwambrania won  all its  wars.  Balvonia  was defeated and
annexed. But  no sooner were  the "war parade grounds"  swept clean and  the
"prizon"  places  aired than Caldonia would declare  war on Schwambrania. It
would also be defeated.  A hole was made in the fortress wall, and from then
on the Schwambranians  could go to Caldonia without  paying  the fare, every
day except Sundays.
     There  was  a special place on  "that  side" for "Foren Land". That was
where  the  nasty  Piliguins lived.  They  roamed the icy  wastes  and  were
something of a cross between pilgrims and penguins.  The  Schwambranians had
met the Piliguins head-on on  the war  grounds on  several occasions and had
always  defeated  them.  However, we did not annex  their land,  for then we
would  have had no one to fight. Thus,  Piliguinia was  set aside for future
historic developments.

        FROM POKROVSK TO DRANDZONSK

     When in Schwambrania, we lived on the main street of Drandzonsk, on the
1,001st  floor  of  a diamond house. When in Russia we lived in the  town of
Pokrovsk  on  the Volga River, opposite the city of Saratov. We lived on the
first floor of a house on Market Square.
     The screeching voices  of the women  vendors burst in  through the open
windows. The pungent dregs of the market were piled high on the square.  The
unharnessed horses  chomped loudly, and their feed-bags jerked  and  bobbed.
Wagons  raised their shafts heavenwards, imploringly.  There  were eatables,
junk,  groceries,  greens,  dry  goods,  embroideries  and  hot  food  rows.
Thin-rind watermelons  were  stacked  in pyramids  like  cannon-balls in the
movie The Defence of Sevastopol.
     This  was the film  then  being shown  at the  Eldorado,  the  electric
cinematographic theatre around the corner. There were always goats  outside.
Regular herds of goats crowded  around to munch  on the playbills which were
pasted to the billboards with flour-paste.
     Breshka Street  led  from the Eldorado to  our  house.  People used  to
promenade here in the evenings. The street  was only two blocks long, and so
the strollers would  jostle each other  as they  walked back  and forth  for
hours on end,  from one  corner  to  another, like  tiny waves  in a bathtub
splashing  first  against one side  and  then another.  The girls  from  the
outlying  farms  walked down  the middle  of the street.  They seemed to  be
sailing  along  unhurriedly,  swaying  slightly  as  they walked,  like  the
floating  watermelon rinds hitting the Volga piers. The dry,  staccato sound
of roasted  sunflower  seeds  being  cracked  floated  above  the crowd. The
sidewalks were black from discarded sunflower shells. The roasted seeds were
known locally as "Pokrovsk conversation".
     Standing  on the  sidelines  were young fellows wearing rubber galoshes
over their boots. They would flick away a garland of empty seed shells stuck
to  their lip with  a  magnificent  movement of  a pinky. A young  man would
address a girl with true politesse: "Mind if I latch on? How's about telling
us your name? What is it? Marusya? Katya?"
     "Go  on! Doesn't he  think he's  something!" the girl would scoff. "Oh,
well, what the heck, you might as well walk along."
     All evening long the babbling, sunflower seed-cracking crowd of country
boys and girls would stomp up and down in front of our windows.
     We would sit on the  windowsill in the dark parlour, looking out at the
darkening street. As busy  Breshka  Street floated by  us, invisible palaces
and  castles  rose on the windowsill and palm fonds waved, and  cannonade we
two alone could hear resounded all  around us.  The  destructive shrapnel of
our  imagination tore through the night. We were firing  upon Breshka Street
from our windowsill, which was Schwambrania.
     We could hear the whistles  of the  river boats on the Volga. They came
to us from the darkness of the night like  streamers bridging the  distance.
Some were very high and vibrated like the coiled  wire in bulb, while others
were low and rumbling like a piano's bass string. A boat was attached to the
other end of each streamer, lost in the dampness of the great river. We knew
the entire ledger of  these boat calls by heart, and could read the whistles
and  blasts  like  the  lines of  a  book.  Here  was  a velvety,  majestic,
high-rising   and  slowly  descending  "arrival"  whistle  of  the   Rus.  A
hoarse-voiced tug pulling a heavy barge scolded a rowboat. Two short, polite
blasts followed.  That was the Samolyot  and the  Kavkaz-Mercury approaching
each other. We even knew  that the Samolyot was  heading upstream  to Nizhny
Novgorod, while  the  Kavkaz-Mercury was  heading  downstream  to Astrakhan,
since the  Mercury,  obeying the rules of river etiquette,  was the first to
say hello.

     JACK, THE SAILOR'S COMPANION

     Our world was a bay jam-packed with boats. Life was an endless journey,
and each given day was  a  new voyage. It was quite natural, therefore, that
every  Schwambranian was a sailor. Each and every one had  a boat tied up in
his back  yard. Jack, the Sailor's Companion,  was  far  and  away the  most
highly respected of all Schwambranians.
     This  great  statesman  came  into being  because  of a small  handbook
entitled: The Sailor's Pocket Companion and Dictionary of Most-Used Phrases.
We bought this  dog-eared treasure at the market second-hand for five kopeks
and endowed our new hero, Jack, the Sailor's Companion, with all the  wisdom
between its covers.
     Since the handbook contained a vocabulary as well as a short section of
sailing  directions, Jack soon became  a  regular linguist, as he learned to
speak German, English, French and Italian.
     Speaking for Jack, I would read the vocabulary  aloud, line after line.
The result was most satisfying.
     "Thunder, lightning, waterspout, typhoon!" Jack, the Sailor's Companion
would  say.  "Donner, blitz, wasserhose! How do  you do, sir or madame, good
morning, bonjour. Do you speak any other language? Yes, I  speak  German and
French. Good morning, evening.  Goodbye, guten Morgen,  Abend, adieu. I have
come by boat, ship, on foot, on horseback; par mer, a pied, a cheval.... Man
overboard. Un uomo in mare.  What is the charge for saving him? Wie viel ist
der bergelon?"
     Sometimes Jack's imagination ran away with him, and I  would  blush for
shame at his whopping lies.
     "The pilot grounded us," Jack, the Sailor's Companion would say angrily
on page  103, but would  then  confess in  several languages (page 104):  "I
purposely ran aground to save the cargo."
     We began our day in Pokrovsk with an arrival whistle while still in our
beds.  This meant  we  had  returned  from a  night  spent in  Schwambrania.
Annushka would watch the morning ritual patiently.
     "Slow speed! Cast down  the mooring rope!" Oska commanded after  he had
sounded his fog horn.
     We cast off our blankets.
     "Stop! Let down the gangplank!"
     We swung our legs over the side of our beds.
     "All off! We've arrived!"
     "Good morning!"

        A QUIET HAVEN

     Our house was just another big boat. It had dropped anchor in the quiet
harbour  of Pokrovsk. Papa's consulting room was the bridge. No second class
passengers, meaning us,  were allowed there. The parlour was the first class
deck  house.  The dining room was the mess. The  terrace was  the  promenade
deck. Annushka's room  and the kitchen were the third  class deck, the  hold
and the  engine  room. Second class passengers were  not  allowed in  there,
either. That was really a shame,  because if there was ever any smoke in the
house it came from there.
     There smokestack was not  a make-believe one, but  a real one, and real
flames roared  in the furnace. Annushka, the  stoker and the  engineer, used
real tools:  a poker  and scoop.  The deck  house bell rang insistently. The
samovar whistled,  signalling our departure. As the water in it bubbled over
Annushka snatched it up  and carried it off to  the  mess, holding it as far
away  from her body as possible. That  was how babies were carried off  when
they had wet their diapers.
     We were summoned up on deck and had to leave the engine room.
     We always  left  the  kitchen  unwillingly,  because this was the  main
porthole of our house, a window to the outside world, so to speak. The  kind
of people  we  had been  told once and for all were  not the kind we were to
associate with were forever  coming and going here. The people  we were not.
to  associate with were:  ragmen, knife-grinders,  delivery  boys, plumbers,
glaziers,   postmen,   firemen,  organ-grinders,  beggars,   chimney-sweeps,
janitors, the neighbours' cooks, coal men, gypsy  fortune-tellers,  carters,
coopers, coachmen  and wood-cutters. They were  all third  class passengers.
And they were probably the best, the  most interesting people in  the world.
But  we were told that they were carriers of  the most dreadful diseases and
that their bodies swarmed with germs.
     One day Oska said to Levonty Abramkin, the master garbage man, "Are you
really  swamping, I  mean swaping, uh  ... you  know,  full of  measle  bugs
crawling all over you?"
     "What's  that?"  Levonty sounded  hurt.  "These here are natural  lice.
There's  no such  animal as measle bugs. There's worms, but that's something
you get in the stomach."
     "Oh!  Do you  have  worms  swarping  inside  your  stomach?" Oska cried
excitedly.
     This was the last  straw. Levonty pulled  on  his cap and  stalked out,
slamming the door behind him.
     The kitchen  was  a seat  of  learning. In  Schwambrania  the King  sat
enthroned  in  the  kitchen  and let  anyone  in  who  wanted  to  come. The
neighbourhood children would come carolling there on Christmas Eve.
     On  New  Year's  Day  our  precinct  policeman  would  call to pay  his
respects. He would click his heels and say:
     "My respects."
     He would be  offered  a glass of vodka  brought out on a saucer,  and a
silver rouble The policeman would take the rouble, offer his thanks and then
drink  to  our health Oska and I  stared into his  mouth. He would grunt and
then  stop  breathing  for moment. He  seemed to  be listening to some inner
process  in  his body, listening to the progress of the vodka,  as  it were,
down  into his policeman's stomach. Then he would click his  heels again and
salute.
     "What's he doing?" Oska whispered.
     "He's offering us his respects."
     "For a rouble?"
     The policeman seemed embarrassed.
     "What are you doing here, you rascals?" our father boomed.
     "Papa!  The  policeman's  giving us his respects  for a  rouble!"  Oska
shouted.

        OUR CAPTAIN AT HOME

     Papa was a very tall man with  a great mass of curly blond hair. He had
tremendous drive and never seemed to tire. After a hard day he could drink a
samovar-full of tea. His movements were quick and his voice loud. Sometimes,
when Papa got angry at a local  peasant who had come to him with an ailment,
he would begin to shout,  and we  feared the patient might die of fright, if
nothing else, for we certainly would have.
     However, Papa was also a very  cheerful person. Sometimes a man who had
come to complain  of a pain in the chest would soon forget about it and roar
with laughter as he gripped his sides. When Papa's  booming laugh sounded in
the house  the cat would dash under the sideboard and waves would  appear in
the fishbowl. He would  often scandalize Annushka by carrying Mamma into the
dining-room and say, "The lady of the house has arrived  for dinner,"  as he
sat her down.
     Papa liked to have  fun. As we sat at the table he would say, "Hey you,
Caldonians,  Balvonians and highwaymen, don't look so  glum." He would chuck
us under our chins and add, "Get your beards out of your soup."
     The King of Schwambrania  was aping Papa  when he  said, "Get some life
into those nags," to his driver.
     When Papa demanded another cot for the free community hospital he would
speak at the town meetings, and all the rich farmers would grumble, "No need
for that." Our local  paper, The Saratov  News, would carry a  report of the
meeting, describing  the chairman  calling our  father to order, while  "the
honourable doctor  demanded  that  Mr.  Gutnik's words be  included  in  the
minutes of the meeting and, in reply, Mr. Gutnik said that...".
     Papa knew everyone in town. Flower-decked wedding parties nearly always
felt it their duty to stop their sleighs outside our house, enveloping it in
a cloud of dazzling colour and song. Breshka Street was strewn  with wrapped
candies  that were  tossed into  the crowd by the handful from the  sleighs.
Hundreds of bells jangled on the beribboned yokes. Musicians  played  in the
rug-draped  lead sleighs.  The  red-faced, shrieking matchmakers would dance
right in  the broad sleighs, waving bouquets of paper flowers  tied  up with
ribbons.
     Papa was also remembered in connection with the following incident.
     At one  time  a gang of thugs  terrorized the town. The thugs  were all
middle-aged family men, and the police were not providing any protection for
the population.
     Then the people decided to take the law into their own hands. They drew
up  a  list of the most dangerous men  and the  crowd set out, going to each
house on the list in turn and murdering the men on the list.
     All this took place in the dead of night.
     One  of the ringleaders  found refuge in Papa's hospital. He really was
very sick. He  begged Papa to save him from the mob, going down on his knees
to plead for his life.
     "They're justified in  settling the score," Papa  said. "You  can thank
your lucky stars  you  got  sick when you did. Since  you'll  be my patient,
that's all  I'm  concerned  about  at present. I don't want to know anything
else. Get up and go lie down."
     The angry crowd surrounded the hospital. Men shouted and cursed outside
the locked gates. Papa went outside the fence to  face the crowd.  "What  do
you want?  I won't let you in, so you  might as well turn back! You'll bring
all sorts of germs into the surgical wards.  And we'll have to disinfect the
whole hospital."
     "You  just  hand  over Balbashenko,  Doctor.  We'll sign-a paper saying
we're responsible for him. We'll... take good care of him."
     "Balbashenko has a very high fever," Papa replied in a steely voice. "I
cannot discharge him now, and that's  final!  And stop all the noise. You're
frightening the other patients."
     The crowd advanced silently. Suddenly, an old stevedore stepped forward
and said,  "The doctor's right, boys.  That's according to their  laws. Come
on,  let's go. We'll take care of Balbashenko later.  Sorry to have bothered
you. Doc."
     Balbashenko was "taken care of three months later.

        THE LAND OF HANON

     Papa had a terrible temper. When  he was really angry he was deafening.
We would be chastised and  chastened,  reproved and reprimanded, admonished,
upbraided and raked over the coals. That was when Mamma entered the scene.
     She was  our soft pedal during  all of Papa's really excessive tirades.
He would always tone down in her presence.
     Mamma was a pianist and music teacher. All day long the house resounded
with  scales rippling up and down the  keyboard and  the drumming  of finger
exercises. The dull voice of a pupil with a cold could be heard counting out
loud: "One  an' two, an' three, one an' two, an' three...." Then Mamma would
sing, to  the  tune of Hanon's  immortal piano exercises: "One and five, and
three, and one, and four, and don't raise your elbows, and five and one...."
     It seemed this song was an accompaniment to all our childhood years. In
fact, all my memories can be sung to the tune of those finger exercises. All
save those associated with the sticky, fever-ridden days of diphtheria,  the
measles,  scarlet fever and  the croup come  back to me  minus this  musical
background, for then Mamma devoted herself entirely to restoring our health.
     Mamma was nearsighted. She  would bend low over the music,  so  that by
the  day's end she would be seeing  spots from  all the black squiggles that
were called notes.
     There was a bronze paper-holder on the  desk in Papa's consulting room.
It was made  in the  shape of a woman's delicate, tapering  hand  and held a
sheaf of prescription blanks, postal receipts and bills. Mamma's  hands were
just like that. As a pampered young damsel she had left her parents' home in
a large city to accompany  her husband to his rural practice in the wilds of
Vyatka region. She was to spend  many a sleepless night sitting by the dark,
frosted window, waiting up for  Papa.  There was a draught  from the window.
The flame of the small  night light flickered.  Bitter frost, a blizzard and
darkness enveloped  the house. Papa was  somewhere out in the  howling gale,
riding in a horse-drawn sleigh, on his way  to  patient in a village fifteen
miles away. Tiny  lights would  appear in the darkness,  but these  were not
lighted windows,  they  were  the  glittering  eyes of  wolves.  The distant
churchbell,  that  beacon of  all nights when blizzards raged,  faded in the
distance. Papa would follow the  sound. In time the dark houses of a village
would  appear  among  the  snowdrifts. There Papa would perform an emergency
operation by the glow of  a rushlight in a stuffy  log  cabin, rank with the
smell of sheepskin coats. Then he would wash his hands and head back home.

        THE WHISTLE AWAKENED SCHWAMBRANIA

     In winter  there were  blizzards in  Pokrovsk,  too.  The steppe  would
attack  the settlement with snowstorms and sharp winds. Then the churchbells
of Pokrovsk would toll on through the night, guiding stragglers back to  the
snow-covered road.
     Our family was all at home in our warm house. The blizzard spun on like
a spindle, spinning its fine, frosty thread, howling in the chimney.  It was
our houseboat whistling from its safe berth in a sheltered harbour.
     The  guests  that evening  were our usual  visitors: Terpanian, the tax
inspector,  and  the  dentist,  a  tiny  man  named  Pufler.  Oska had  just
embarrassed everyone  by  confusing  his words and calling Pufler  a denture
instead of a dentist.
     Papa  and  the  tax inspector  were playing chess. Mamma was  playing a
minuet by Paderewski, and  Annushka was carrying in the  samovar, which  was
saying "puff", whistling and saying "wheeee...."
     Terpanian,  who was a jolly man, teased Annushka, as always, pretending
he was going to poke her in the ribs as he made a scarey noise.
     Annushka got frightened,  as she always did,  and shrieked,  making the
tax inspector laugh and say, "Yippee!"
     Papa looked at the clock and said, "All right, you rascals, off to bed!
We won't detain you any longer."
     We  politely  bid everyone  goodnight  and went  off to  sail  away  to
Schwambrania for the night.
     The mooring ropes were  cast  off,  which meant  we  had  taken off our
shoes.  Sailing  whistles  could  be heard  in  the  nursery. Then  the last
commands were sounded: "Left paddle ahead! Shhhhh! Whooo!"
     "Half speed ahead! Full steam ahead!"
     We were  Schwambranians again. We were sick and tired of  safe harbors,
of being barred  from the kitchen, of piano  exercises and patients  ringing
the front doorbell. We  were  sailing for our second homeland. The shores of
Big Tooth  Continent could be seen beyond the place where  the Earth curved.
The Black Queen, the keeper of the secret of Schwambrania, was imprisoned in
the seashell grotto. The palaces of Drandzonsk awaited us.
     We finally arrived. I stood on the bridge and pulled the whistle lever.
There was a loud blast.
     It was a loud approaching whistle. I opened my eyes. I was in Pokrovsk.
Back in our room. The whistle sounded again. An urgent blast hit the window.
The  room  was filled with  the  loud, oppressing sound of  the  whistle. It
passed through the house, dragging its feet.
     It did not stop. Then bells began ringing all over the house. The front
doorbell pealed. The bell for Papa's consulting room  rang in  the  kitchen.
The telephone was jangling. I could hear Papa shouting: "They  should all be
hanged!  Couldn't they have foreseen such a  thing? Well, it's  too late  to
talk about it now. Do you  have enough stretchers? I'm  on my way.  Have you
sent a horse for me? I'll be right over. The hospital's been alerted."
     The  whistle was  warning us about  some  great  calamity.  Mamma  came
rushing into our  room. She said there had been a terrible  accident at  the
bone-meal factory, where the high wall of the drying shed had collapsed. The
manager had told the workers to load too many  bones on it, and the wall was
very old.  He had  been  warned  that the wall might give  way.  Now  it had
collapsed  under great  weight,  falling on top  of  fifty men. Papa and the
other doctors had all rushed to the factory to try to save the victims.
     So. That's what.... That's what. That's what could happen. But never in
Schwambrania! Never!

        CRITICISING THE WORLD AND OUR OWN LIVES

     The collapse of the wall  in the bone-meal factory  brought  about  the
collapse of our faith in the well-being of the all-powerful tribe of adults.
Some  pretty  awful things were  going on  in their  world. That was when we
decided to take a very critical look at it. We found that:
     1. Not all grown-ups are in charge of world affairs, but only those who
wear  official  uniforms,  expensive  fur-lined  coats  and  starched  white
collars. All  the rest, and these form the majority, are called "undesirable
acquaintances".
     2. The  owner of the  bone-meal factory,  who  is responsible  for  the
deaths  and  injuries  of  fifty  workers,  all  of  whom  are  "undesirable
acquaintances" got off  scot-free. The Schwambranians would  never have  let
him live among them.
     3. Oska and I don't have to work at all (except at our  lessons), while
Klavdia,   Annushka's  niece,  scrubs  floors  and  washes  dishes  for  the
neighbours  and can  only have a  piece of candy on Sundays.  Besides, she's
landless, for she has no Schwambrania to go to.
     We ended our list  of the  world's  injustices by drawing  a  long line
along the margin and  printing  a  stern  and angry  word  along  its entire
length. The word was: Injustices.

        "MIXING WITH THE PEOPLE"

     We later added  our  own upbringing to  our list  of  injustices. I now
realize that I cannot really blame our parents, for  they lived in different
times, and there were many who  were much worse. The disgraceful way of life
of those times had a demoralizing effect on us, as it did on our parents. It
is strange to think that our parents believed they were quite progressive in
bringing  up their  children. For instance,  we had to mop up  the puddle we
made near the fishbowl ourselves and were forbidden to call Annushka to help
us. Papa spoke of this proudly and at length when he visited his friends. He
wished to  bring  us  up  in  a democratic spirit and,  to this  end,  would
sometimes take us for a buggy ride without a driver. He would hire a gig and
horse  and  we would ride off "to mix with  the  people". Papa, dressed in a
tussore  shirt,  would  drive.  He  would  shout  "Whoa!" "Hey,  there!" and
"Giddiyap!" with relish. However, there would always be some confusion if an
elegant  lady appeared on foot  on  the narrow  road  ahead. Then Papa would
sound embarrassed as he said, "Go on and sing something,  boys. But  make it
good and loud, so she'll turn  around. After all, I can't shout, 'Get out of
the way' can I? Especially since I think I know her."
     And  so  we would sing. When  this did not  work and the  lady kept  on
walking  slowly. Papa  would send  me on  ahead. I would climb down from  my
seat, catch up with the woman and say in my most polite voice:
     "Uh, Miss....  Lady....  Papa  wants you to move over, because we can't
pass.  We don't  want to  run you over." Though the women would always  step
aside, for some reason or other they were usually offended.
     Our  rides "to mix with the  people" ended  when Papa once sent  us all
tumbling into a ditch.

        THE ANIMAL WORLD

     In order  to  instil a love for the  birds and the beasts  in us and in
this way ennoble our souls, our parents would occasionally buy us a  pet. We
had dogs,  cats and fishes.  The fishes lived  in  a fishbowl.  One day  our
parents noticed  that the little goldfish were disappearing one by one. They
discovered that Oska had been fishing them out,  putting them in  matchboxes
and burying them in the sand.  He had been very much impressed by a  funeral
procession and had set up a regular fish cemetery in the yard.
     Then there was the very unpleasant encounter between Oska and the  cat,
which had scratched  him badly when  he  had  tried  to brush its teeth with
Papa's tooth-brush.
     The incident involving the kid was most unfortunate. The whole idea was
a mistake from the very beginning, though Papa had bought the kid especially
for  us.  It  was  black  and  small, and  curly-haired with a  hard,  round
forehead. It looked as if it might be a live Persian lamb  collar for Papa's
winter  coat.  Papa  brought the kid into the parlour. Its spindly legs slid
out from under it on the slippery linoleum.
     "He's all yours," Papa said. "And make sure you take good care of him!"
The kid  said "baa-aa" and dropped some marbles on the rug.  Then he nibbled
on the wallpaper in  the study and wet an armchair. Luckily, Papa was having
his after-dinner nap and so  had  no idea  of what was happening. We  played
with the frisky kid for a while,  then got tired of the  game and  went off,
forgetting all about our new curly-haired  pet. The kid disappeared. An hour
later there was a loud thumping on the piano keys,  though  there was no one
in the parlour. It was the kid jumping  on the keyboard. This woke Papa.  He
was in a hurry to leave for  his evening rounds at the hospital and  dressed
without putting on the  light.  He soon  came yawning  into the dining room.
Oska and I were so astonished we plopped down on the same chair. Mamma threw
up her hands. Papa looked at  his feet and  gasped. One of  his trouser legs
barely reached his knee. It hung in sticky,  chewed strips. So that was what
the kid had been up to! That very evening it was taken back  to its previous
owner.

        THE WORLD AROUND US

     Father and  Mother worked hard from morning  till evening, while we, to
tell the  honest  truth,  were  the world's  greatest loafers.  We had  been
provided with a classical "perfect childhood". We had a gym of our  own, toy
trains,  automobiles and steamboats. We had  tutors to teach  us  languages,
drawing  and music. We  knew Grimm's Fairy  Tales by heart, as well as Greek
mythology and  the Russian epic poems. However,  all  this paled as far as I
was concerned  after  I  had  read  an  indifferent-looking  book called,  I
believe, The World Around Us.  It described in simple language how bread was
baked, how vinegar was obtained, how bricks were made, how steel was smelted
and how leather was  tanned. The book introduced me to the fascinating world
of things  and to the people who made  them. The  salt on our table had gone
through  a  grainer,  and  the cast  iron  pot  through a  blast furnace.  I
discovered that shoes, saucers, scissors, windowsills, steam engines and tea
had  all been invented, extracted,  produced  and made by the toil of  many,
many  people  and  were the result  of their knowledge and  skill. The story
about a sheepskin coat was no less interesting  than the tale  of the golden
fleece. I suddenly had a terrible urge to start making useful things myself.
However,  my old books and my teachers never  provided any information about
the people  who made  things, though they dwelled  ecstatically on the  many
royal heroes. We were being brought up as helpless, useless gentlemen, or as
an arrogant caste  of people whose lives were devoted to  "pure  brainwork".
True,  we  had building  blocks  with which  we  were  expected  to  produce
something imaginative. Our pent-up energy sought an outlet. We extracted the
couch springs in  order to discover the true construction of things and were
severely punished for our efforts.
     We even envied  a fellow named  Fektistka,  the  pock-marked tinsmith's
apprentice, who looked down on us for still being in short pants. Though  he
was illiterate, he  knew how to  make real pails, dustpans, tin mugs, basins
and tubs. However, when we saw him at the river one day, Fektistka showed us
the very real black-and-blue marks  and bruises on his bony body, the result
of the  hard lessons  his master's heavy hand taught him, for  the  tinsmith
beat Fektistka unmercifully. He made the boy work from dawn to dusk, fed him
scraps and  pummelled his  bony  back to  teach  him  the principles  of the
tinsmith's trade.

        INTELLECT AND HANDIWORK

     We stopped envying Fektistka after that. Disturbing thoughts filled our
heads.
     It seemed that  people  who were engaged in mental work were  wholly at
the mercy  of ordinary things, while the skilled  workers who made them  had
none of their own.
     Whenever  the  toilet would  not flush properly or a lock got stuck, or
the piano  had  to be  moved,  Annushka was sent  downstairs to the basement
apartment where a railroadman and his family lived, to ask "someone" to come
up  and help. As soon as "someone" came upstairs the  things would obey him:
the piano would roll off to whenever it was supposed to go, the toilet would
cough  and begin to  work properly, and the lock would let  go  of the  key.
Mamma  would say, "He can fix everything," and would  then  be sure to count
the silver spoons in the sideboard.
     If,  on the other hand, the people  in the basement apartment wanted to
write to  a brother who lived in a distant village, they would come to  "the
gentleman" upstairs.  As  the railroadman watched  Papa's pen fly across the
sheet of paper, taking down  his  letter as  he dictated it, he would say in
wonder: "Ah,  that's  book learning  for you! How can  you compare it to our
trade! That's pure ignorance."
     In their heart  of hearts the  inhabitants of each  floor despised  the
inhabitants of the other.
     "What's so special about that?" Papa said, for his pride was hurt.  "So
he fixed the toilet. I'd like to see him perform an operation."
     Meanwhile, the  people downstairs were saying  to themselves: "I'd like
to see you crawling around on all fours under a locomotive's belly. Whisking
a pen around isn't anything to brag about."
     The relationship  between our two  floors could only be compared to the
relationship  of  the  blind  man and his leader,  a  legless  man,  in  the
well-known story. The blind  man carried the legless  man, who  looked ahead
from his perch on the other's shoulders. It was a doubtful alliance bound by
a grudging dependence upon each other.
     Still and all, the "undesirable acquaintances" knew how to make things.
Perhaps they would have taught us something, if  not for  the  fact that  we
were being brought up as "gentlemen who worked only  with  their brains", so
that  the closest we got to work was making paper boats and model factories.
We consoled ourselves with the thought that on the Big Tooth Continent every
last inhabitant not only knew a lot of fairy tales  by heart, but could also
bind them into a book if necessary.

        GOD AND OSKA

     Oska was  a great one for confusing things. He had learned to read when
he  was  much too young  and  from the time he  was  four he could  remember
anything  at all, from the names on shop signs  to  articles in  the medical
encyclopaedia. He remembered everything he read, but this produced  chaos in
his  head,  for he  would  always  mix  up  the  strange  new  words he  had
discovered.  He was forever making everyone laugh. He would confuse "pomade"
and "pyramid" and said "monoclers" instead of "chroniclers".
     Once he  wanted  to  ask Mamma for a sandwich and instead said, "Mamma,
may I have a Greenwich?"
     "Good gracious!" Mamma exclaimed. "I'm sure he must be a child wonder!"
A day later Oska said, "There's a new wonder in the office, too, Mamma! They
bang on it and it types."
     What he meant, of course, was the Underwood typewriter.  However, there
were things he was very sure about. Mamma once read him a famous  story with
a moral about a boy who was  too lazy to pick up a horseshoe and then had to
pick up all the plums his father had purposely dropped on the road. "Did you
understand  the  meaning of the story?"  she  asked.  "Yes.  It's  about you
shouldn't eat dirty  plums off the ground." Oska felt that everyone  without
exception  was an old friend of his. He would strike up a  conversation with
anyone at all on  the  street,  overwhelming  the person with the  strangest
questions.
     I  once  left  him alone for a  while in  the  public  gardens. He  was
bouncing his ball and it landed in a flower bed. He reached  over to get it,
crushed some flowers, then saw the sign that said": "Keep off the grass" and
became frightened.
     He then decided to seek outside help. A tall woman dressed in black and
wearing  a straw hat was sitting  on a bench some distance away. She had her
bad to Oska, but he could see her shoulder-length curls.
     "My ball bounced into the 'keep off the flowers'," he said to the lady'
back.
     The lady turned,  and Oska was terrified to  see  that she had  a heavy
beard. H forgot all about his ball. "Why do you have a beard on, lady?"
     "Do I look like a lady?"  the lady said in a deep, kindly voice. "I'm a
priest, m son."
     "A  priest-mason?"  Oska said doubtfully.  "Then  why  do you have on a
skirt?' He  knew a mason  was  a  bricklayer  and  imagined  it was  awfully
inconvenient to slap cement on bricks while wearing a skirt that reached  to
the ground.
     "This is not  a  skirt, it's a cassock, as is  only proper for a man of
the cloth."
     "Wait," Oska said, trying to recall  something. "I know. You're the man
which makes cloth. And there's a lady, too. It's music that comes out of the
gramophone She spins cloth of gold."
     "Aren't you a joker!" the priest laughed.  "But aren't you a Christian?
Who' your father? Your papa? Ah, a doctor. I see. Do you know about God?"
     "Yes. God's in the kitchen. Annushka hung him in the corner. His name's
Christ Has Risen."
     "God is everywhere,"  the priest said sternly. "At home, in the fields,
in the gardens.  He is everywhere. God can  hear us talking  here this  very
minute. He is with us every minute of the day and night."
     Oska looked around, but did not see  God  and so  he decided  that  the
priest  was  playing some new kind of game with  him.  "Is  God for real  or
make-believe?"
     "I'll put it to you this way. How did all this come  about?" The priest
pointed to the flowers.
     "It  wasn't  me,  honest!  That's  how they were," Oska  said  quickly,
thinking the man had noticed the crushed flowers.
     "God created all this."
     Oska was happy the man thought it was all God's doing.
     "And God created you, too."
     "No, he didn't! Mamma made me."
     "And who made your mamma?"
     "Her mamma. Grandma!"
     "And what about the very first mamma?"
     "She just happened.  From out of a monkey," Oska said, for he and I had
already read My First Natural History Book.
     "Ugh!"  the perspiring  priest exclaimed.  "That's  a  godless, lawless
upbringing,  a corruption of infants' minds!" And he  stomped off,  with the
skirt of his habit raising a cloud of dust.
     Os ka recounted the conversation to me, word for  word. "And he was  so
funny looking! He had on a dress and a beard, too!"
     Our  family was not very  religious. Papa said that  God  could  hardly
exist, while Mamma said that God was nature, but, on the other hand, that He
could punish us.  As far as we were concerned,  God had originally  appeared
from our  nurse's bedtime  stories. He later entered  the house through  the
kitchen  door  which  was  left  slightly ajar.  God,  as  we imagined  Him,
consisted  of votive light,  church bells  and  the delicious  smell  of the
freshly-baked Easter cakes. At times He appeared as an angry, distant force,
thundering in the sky and keeping an eye on  such things as whether it was a
sin to stick your tongue  out at your  mother or not. There was a picture in
My First Bible  Stories of God sitting on a  cloud of  smoke,  creating  the
whole world on page 1. However, the  very  first book  we  read  on  natural
history dispersed the smoke. That did not leave God anything to sit on.

        HEAVENLY SCHWAMBRANIA

     But  it  did  leave something  called the Kingdom of  Heaven.  Whenever
beggars stopped at our house and Annushka turned them away she would console
them and herself with the  knowledge that all beggars, all poor people  and,
apparently,   all   people  who  came  under   the  heading  of  undesirable
acquaintances, would go straight  to  paradise after their proper  funerals,
and there they would promenade in the heavenly glades.
     One  day Oska and I decided that we had already been transported there.
Marisha, the neighbours' maid,  was getting married  at  Trinity Church, and
Annushka took us along.
     It  was as  beautiful  inside  the  church as in  Schwambrania, and the
church smelled good. There were  paintings all over  the walls of angels and
quite  a few of old men, all of whom were surrounded by puffy  clouds. There
were many lighted candles, although it was bright  daylight outside. As  for
beggars,  why, there were  as many beggars there as in paradise, and all  of
them were busy praying.
     Then the  main priest came out  and pretended that he was God. As  Oska
was to tell everyone later, he had on a big golden baby's vest, and then  he
put on a long bib over  his head, and it was all made of  gold, too. Then he
stood before a  stand, and a  sheet was spread  on the floor in front of it.
Marisha looked just like  a  princess, and she  and her groom  stood side by
side. Then they went into a huddle, like we did when we  were choosing sides
for a  game. They went over and stood  right on  the sheet. We couldn't hear
what they and  the priest were talking  about,  but Oska swore that they had
thought  of  a  charade and wanted  the priest  to guess whether  it was  "a
trunkful of money or a golden shore".  And then the priest  said, "Better or
worse?" And Marisha said, "You do?" Then the priest said to the groom:
     "Your wetted wife?" and the groom said: "I, too." And Marisha looked as
if  she was crying.  "Wasn't that silly?" Oska said.  "What was  she bawling
for? It's all make-believe anyway."
     After  that he  said they played "Who's got the ring?",  and  when they
were  through  with the game  the priest told them to  hold hands. Then they
played ring-around-a-rosie,  and  the priest  led them around the stand. The
choir sang and sang, and they ended by singing: "Hal, yell Loolia! Hal, yell
Loolia!" Then Marisha chose her groom and they kissed.
     After  our visit to the church we  decided that paradise  was a sort of
Schwambrania that the grown-ups had invented for poor people.
     In our own  Schwambrania I decided to establish a clergy of our own (at
first  Oska confused  clergy with  purging),  to make  things more  pompous.
Patriarch  Liverpill  was  the  chief  prelate  of Schwambrania. Instead  of
addressing him as "Your Grace", we used "Your Disgrace".


        CINDERELLA OF POKROVSK

     All  fairy  tales  always had  happy  endings.  Scullery  maids  became
princesses,  sleeping  beauties  awoke, witches perished,  and lost  orphans
found their  parents. There was always a wedding on the last  page, with the
groom and bride living happily ever after.
     In  Schwambrania,  a land  that was half-real,  a happy ending was  the
glorious finishing touch of every adventure. Thus it was that we came to the
conclusion  that  people  could certainly  live  much happier lives  if they
followed our example and played make-believe.
     Actually, we were  to  discover that fairy tales  were the  only  place
where everyone lived happily ever after,  for a  real  fairy tale which  the
people around us tried to play at ended most unhappily.
     Everyone knows the story about the poor maid whose name  was Cinderella
and her mean old stepmother who made her work so hard. Everyone knows of the
doves that plucked all  the grain  from the ashes, and of the Good Fairy who
sent  her to  the  ball,  and of  the glass  slipper Cinderella  lost in the
palace.
     But I'm sure no one knows that the story of  Cinderella is  recorded in
the old Deportment Ledger, the  dread Black Book  of the  Pokrovsk Boys High
School.
     The school supervisor,  nicknamed Seize'em,  recorded a new version  of
the story on the pages of the ledger. But his entry was very brief and acid.
That  is why I will have to tell  you the  story of Cinderella from Pokrovsk
myself. Her name was Marfusha. She was temporarily our parlour maid, and she
collected stamps.


        THE CANCELLED EAGLES

     The stamps came from distant  cities and lands. The envelopes they were
pasted on contained letters of greetings, news, requests, thanks, as well as
the  latest  remedies  for alcoholism, anaemia and other  illnesses. Foreign
drug firms sent Papa information about their patent medicines.
     Marfusha would steam the stamps off the empty envelopes by holding them
over  the  samovar.  There were hundreds  of stamps in the brass-bound chest
under her bed, sorted into small cigarette boxes.
     My  brother  and I  delivered  the envelopes to  the kitchen. Philately
strengthened the bonds of friendship between Marfusha and us.
     She shared all her secrets with us.
     We knew that she was sweet on the driver who worked at Papa's hospital,
and that the clerk at the drugstore was a stuck-up good-for-nothing, because
he teased Marfusha and called her Marfusion.
     We also discovered  that if  a person sneezed you had  to  say: "Achoo,
match in your nose, a pair of  wheels and  the  axle end to  make  your nose
itch; wind take your sneeze, guts on  gunny sacks, tendons on a  wire, belly
on a yoke." Whew!
     In  the evenings Marfusha would unlock  her chest and let us admire her
treasures.
     There were complete issues  of Peter the Great and other  monarchs. The
Alexanders were kept according  to  their numbers: Alexander I, II, and III.
The cancellation dates covered the emperors' noses. Cancelled eagles fluffed
their feathers on the  red, green and blue squares of paper with saw-toothed
edges. Weird lions hid behind the inked bars.
     We admired the collection, as Marfusha ran her hands  through the tsars
and eagles fondly and day-dreamed aloud:
     "I'll sell 'em soon's I get  two thousand of 'em. An' I'll buy myself a
fine lady's dress. There'll be ruffles down the front, and a bow behind, and
a dotted  veil to go  all around.  We'll  see who'll dare  call me Marfusion
then. We'll see...."


        THE GASEOUS AUTHORITIES

     Mitya  Lamberg had been expelled from the  2nd  Saratov High School for
having spoken  unfavourably  of the Bible class. He was then enrolled in the
Pokrovsk Boys High and came  to  live with us. Mitya said he was a victim of
reaction and considered it his sacred duty to annoy the authorities.
     He said: "I'm avenging, I  mean, taking vengeance on the authorities in
every one of its states: liquid, hard and gaseous."
     Mitya  regarded  his parents as the  authorities  of the liquid, drippy
state. He had  to accept  the  school principal  and teachers  as hard-state
authorities. He  regarded  the government,  the police and the local Zemstvo
inspector as the gaseous authorities  that seeped  into everything. The boys
had a special score to  settle with the Zemstvo  inspector.  The senior boys
spoke of  two schoolgirls named Zoya Shvydchenko and Emma  Uger. When school
was out in the afternoons the inspector' sleigh was often seen on the corner
waiting for  Zoya and Emma, and  the  gaseous  figure  of  the fat inspector
always accompanied one  or  the  other  girl  at the skating  rink. The boys
seethed. They threw snowballs at him from behind  a  fence.  The had drawn a
large black cat on the fence and written "Tomcat" under it.


        CHRISTMAS EVE

     Our cousin Victor, a young artist, came to spend Christmas  with us. He
was long-nosed and full of fun and ideas.
     "He's nice, but his nose is way out to here," Marfusha said of him.
     There  was always  a  Christmas  Eve  masked  ball  at  the  Merchants'
Assembly, I  invitation only. Ladies we knew were busy having their costumes
made. My  parents had  also received  an  invitation. That  was  when  Mitya
Lambert  got  the  bright idea  of getting even with the  Zemstvo  inspector
during  the ball.  Pa]  was all for it.  Victor offered  his  services as an
artist. We began to think of the costumes.
     Everyone  was deep in thought that day.  From time to time Mitya  would
bread the silence by rushing excitedly into the dining-room, shouting.
     "I've got it! It's hilarious!"
     "What?" we'd all ask.
     "How about dressing  as a suicide? And the  message on the corpse, I me
on the costume can  be: 'The Zemstvo inspector has  driven  me  to my grave'
Ha'ha."
     "With the  orchestra playing a  Chopin march," Mamma quipped.  "Indeed,
it's too funny for words."
     "I've never laughed so hard in my life," Papa said sadly.
     Mitya was embarrassed. He did a handstand  and said as  his legs swayed
in  the  air:  "I'll stand here  like this till some good ideas flow into my
head."
     At  last Papa had a brainstorm. It  really  was a  wonderful idea for a
costume.  Besides, his plan was magnificent in every other respect. Marfusha
was to go to the ball and flirt with the flirtatious inspector.
     We trooped off to the kitchen.
     "Fair Marfusha, we have come to inquire whether you'd like to go to the
ball at the Merchants' Assembly," Papa said solemnly.
     "Goodness gracious! But it's by invitation only. How'111 get in?"
     "You'll be the  queen of the ball, Marfusha. There's only one drawback.
We'll need all of your stamps. Can you bear to part with them?"
     "Just  think,  Marfusha!"  Mitya  pleaded.  "You'll  have  the  Zemstvo
inspector at your mercy. It's up to you. You'll be the queen of the ball."
     "Ah, well," Marfusha said after a  long pause. She sighed and bent down
to pull her chest out from under her bed.


        DAYS GLUED TOGETHER WITH RUBBER CEMENT

     For the next two days everyone  worked on  Marfusha's costume. Piles of
cut-up  cardboard and paper were scattered all  over "the master's kitchen",
as Marfusha called Papa's study. There were streaks and smudges of paint and
gum-arabic on us all.  Tubes of  rubber cement spun out sticky thin threads.
Victor  strutted about with his nose in  the  air,  and there were  drops of
perspiration and india-ink on  his  face.  Papa tried to pull an Argentinian
stamp off  his jacket. Mamma was  giving Marfusha lessons in  deportment and
teaching  her a few  French phrases. Oska and I had  suddenly become Siamese
twins after accidentally sitting  down  on  a long strip of  ribbon that had
been covered with rubber cement. The ribbon stuck fast to our pants, glueing
us together.
     The evening of the ball Marfusha was powdered and  her hair was curled.
Then she was helped into her costume. It was a huge envelope,  addressed and
ready to  be posted.  There were  stamps a  foot long  on the corners of the
envelope. A good hundred  of Marfusha's stamps had been used to make up each
of the  costume  stamps.  Victor  had worked hard  to match the  colours and
shapes. There were crazy postmarks going every which way. The address on the
envelope had been done in a fine round hand and read:


        SPECIAL DELIVERY
     THE NORTH POLE
     For: His Excellency
     and Northern Grace
     SIR ENSTVO, INSPECTOR-ZEMSTVO
     THE POLAR ZEMSTVO OFFICE
     Captain Hatteras Square
     You'll know it when you are there.
     From: London, the City
     You'll find it if you're witty.


     After Marfusha was sealed into the large envelope  a small envelope was
set or her head for a hat. It, too, had stamps on each  of its four corners.
There was a poem on the paper envelope-hat which read:

     Never -will you guess my name,
     All your guesses are in vain.
     No one here can hint or tell,
     None will be of any help.
     Every Zoya, Emma, Mae
     Will be deaf and dumb today.

     Marfusha's  slippers had also  been covered  with postage  stamps.  She
looked very attractive in her envelope-gown.
     "You're  so beautiful, Marfusha!" Oska said. "You're just as  beautiful
as the lady on the shampoo picture, only beautifuller."
     A white silk mask with silver edging hid most of Marfusha's face.
     Victor was elected to be the honourary postman.
     No  one in town  knew  him.  Besides, he  had stuck  on  a large  black
moustache  And donned  Mamma's black hat with  the ostrich feather. This and
his own Ion nose made him look  both sinister and  romantic at  one  and the
same time. H might have been a Spanish grandee, or a Rumanian organ-grinder.


        THE ANONYMOUS LETTER

     Victor and his  precious letter drove  up to  the Assembly  building in
style. Um-pa-pa, um-pa-pa  went the bass drum in  the brightly-lit ballroom.
Victor handed  Marfusha down from  the cab and then helped her  off with her
coat. He bowed low with reverence.
     "Guten tag, comment allez-vous? Bene,  bene!" he  said and  twirled his
frozen moustache.
     The  porters  regarded them respectfully. Bright lights, music  and the
shrieks and laughter of a party in full swing enveloped them. Once upstairs,
Marfusha was immediately  surrounded and everyone began reading the  message
on  the envelope. For a moment a burst  of  laughter drowned  out the music.
Then,  just as suddenly, it stopped. Through  the slits in her mask Marfusha
glimpsed the baffled Zemstvo inspector's face.
     He read the message  and turned red. However, Marfusha's dainty feet in
their stamp-covered slippers caught his roving eye. "Harrumph," he said. "My
dear Anonymous, may I have this waltz?"
     "Mais oui," Anonymous replied. "Parlez-vous francaise?"
     The Zemstvo inspector was taken aback, for he did not parlez a  word of
French. One of the merchants, Adolph Stark, came to his aid and between them
they tried to make her understand  that  the  inspector wished to dance with
her. The music boomed. The musicians puffed out their cheeks. It seemed that
the very walls  were expanding from the booming of the drum. The music wrung
everyone's  heart out like a  wet hankie.  The inspector treated Marfusha to
ice  cream.  Adolph  Stark melted away  as  quickly as it did.  The  Zemstvo
inspector kissed her hand. All the other ladies were  dying of envy. Guesses
as  to her identity  and paper streamers filled  the  air. Confetti showered
down. Marfusha's little plate was soon piled high with ballots, for everyone
was voting hers the best costume.
     "Stop the music!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted.
     The orchestra, which was blaring away, stopped playing as suddenly as a
gramophone that had run down.
     "Ladies  and  Gentlemen!"  the  inspector announced. "The  'Letter' has
received the most votes and First Prize. A gold watch! Three cheers  for the
lovely Anonymous! And now let us open the envelope!"
     There  was a babble of voices.  Confetti bombs burst  overhead. Someone
whispered in  Marfusha's ear: "Good for you,  fair  Marfusha.  Good for you!
Keep it up!"
     Mitya was standing  around with a group of his  classmates.  They  were
laughing. Then he went over to the Zemstvo inspector and said:
     "You know, I think I recognize Anonymous. It's the well-known.... Oh, I
shouldn't have said that! I promised not to tell!"
     "I beg you to," the Zemstvo  inspector whispered.  "To  hell  with your
promise. Tell me who she is! Would you care for some ice cream?"
     "No, don't  even ask,"  Mitya  said  as he polished  off a  dish of ice
cream.
     "Let's open the letter, everybody!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted.
     At  that very  moment  a long-nosed  stranger  with  a  huge  moustache
appeared in the ballroom.
     Spouting  angry gibberish  "Carramba peppermint oleonapht, sept  accord
dominant!"  he  took  Marfusha's arm  and steered  her  quickly towards  the
stairs.
     The Zemstvo  inspector  rushed  after  them,  with  all  the  colourful
harlequins, dominoes, hussars, flower  baskets,  Chinese dolls, butterflies,
Gypsies  and  princesses  in  tow.  However, Victor's  impressive  nose  and
moustache kept them all at bay.
     Mitya  and his classmates cut the  crowd off as  if by  accident  while
Marfusha buttoned up her coat and the sleigh pulled away.
     Victor jumped into the  moving sleigh, which  then carried them swiftly
along  the sleeping streets. Marfusha's  eyelids drooped.  The street lamps,
like  some  great jellyfish,  slowly moved their  golden  beams.  Cinderella
returned to the kitchen.
     That night a new gold watch ticked away softly near the empty chest.
     Marfusha was  sound asleep. She had had  a wonderful time and  was very
tired. The torn envelope, that shell  of the magic evening, lay empty by the
bed. Four pairs of shoes stood guard outside her door.
     They would have to be shined the next morning.


        CINDERELLA IS EXPOSED

     The Pokrovsk society column of the  Saratov News  carried the following
item:
     "There  was a  masquerade  at the  Merchants' Assembly  last Wednesday.
Among the many striking costumes the most popular by far was one called 'The
Anonymous Letter'.
     "The costume was ingeniously made in the shape of an envelope with real
cancelled  postage  stamps on it and a witty address. It  was  quite  justly
awarded the First  Prize,  a gold watch which was bestowed by Mr. Razudanov,
the Zemstvo inspector.
     "Despite the insistence  of  the other  guests,  the mysterious  damsel
refused to reveal her  identity and was carried  off by a person  unknown to
the gathering. Rumour has it that she is a well-known actress."
     Two  days later, when the town was  still alive with  gossip as to  her
identity, Papa was called in to see  the Zemstvo inspector's wife, who had a
migraine headache. After he had attended to his patient. Papa had a glass of
tea with the inspector.
     "My dear doctor, you should have come to the masquerade. You don't know
what you missed. There was a young lady there who, ah, I can't even begin to
describe  her. It was a barb in my direction, I  must admit,  but you should
have seen  those dainty feet! And  those lovely hands! You can always tell a
lady by her  hands and feet, I'm sure she is a foreigner. You know, I  can't
get her out of my mind."
     "Indeed? I really don't think she's that extraordinary. It was only our
parlourmaid Marfusha."
     "Wha-a-at?"  The inspector sat bolt upright. His face turned livid, his
jaw sagged and his eyes bulged.
     Papa  could  contain  his  laughter  no   longer  and  roared  so,  the
inspector's wife had another migrain attack.



     CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER

     Here ends  the story  of  the  last Cinderella.  A  young page from the
palace did not open the kitchen door and hand Marfusha a glass slipper.
     However, a trace of Cinderella's famous slipper appeared on  a page  of
the school's Deportment Ledger, for the doves that had plucked the gold dust
from the pot of ashes for Marfusha were made to pay for what they had done.
     Several days later a rubber galosh of tremendous proportions was  found
nailed  to  the Zemstvo inspector's front porch. That very same morning  the
following notices were pasted on various fences:

        "AN ORDER
     "I hereby  order the  entire female  population  of Pokrovsk  to appear
before the Zemstvo inspector  in order  to  try on  a  slipper,  lost  by  a
mysterious lady who attended  the masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly. The
lady whose foot it fits  will be immediately appointed Zemstvo inspectoress.
The Zemstvo inspector pledges to be forever under this slipper's heel.

     (Signed) Razudanov Zemstvo Inspector"

     They said that  the next morning,  while the  galosh was  still  on the
porch, a peasant woman who  had heard of the order  tried  her luck, but her
foot was too big.
     "It's just a bit tight," she said sadly and spat into the galosh.
     Mitya  and three  of his  classmates were reprimanded  "for  unbecoming
conduct in a public place and unbridled mischief, detrimental to  the school
and the school system". Their marks for behaviour for the term were lowered.
Such is the epilogue. It is quite unlike the end of the old fairy tale.


        THE DOVE BOOK


        INTRODUCTION

     I took my school entrance examination that spring.  Dmitry Alexeyevich,
my tutor, came to the house early on the fateful morning and made me go over
some  rules of grammar. Before  leaving for  the hospital Papa put his large
hand on my head, tilted my head back and said:
     "Well, how's the old bean?"
     Mamma accompanied me to school. She was very nervous,  and as we walked
along  she glanced at me again and  again with the greatest concern and kept
saying, "The one thing  I want you to remember is  not to  be nervous! Speak
loudly  and  clearly,  and don't  rush. Think carefully before you answer  a
question."
     Dmitry Alexeyevich  walked along on the other  side. He was drilling me
in  the  multiplication table. We  reached "9 times  9" and the  school yard
simultaneously.
     The  day  was  full   of  grammar.  At  the  noisy  market  adjectives,
interjections and  numerals  filled the air. An inanimate locomotive  on the
spur line near the granary tried to confuse me by tooting and moving like an
animate object. When we  reached the  school door  Dmitry Alexeyevich became
very solemn, although by looking through his pince-nez I could see  his kind
and gentle eyes.
     "All right. This is it," he said and then quickly added: "What part  of
speech is a school?"
     "An inanimate common noun!" "And a schoolboy?" "An animate...."
     At that very moment a  big,  tall boy wearing the school uniform opened
the door.  He glanced  at my  sailor suit with  contempt  and  said  glumly:
"You're wrong, sonny. A schoolboy's an inanimate object."
     I was stunned and baffled both by the size and by the muttered words of
this great scholar.
     A chill of nervous tension scooted along the school corridor. There was
a roll-call. The examiners' table  was covered with a heavy green cloth. The
first part of the entrance examination was a dictation.
     I thought that everyone in the classroom could hear my heart pounding.
     Anxious mothers peeped through the door, searching out the  bowed heads
of their sons, hoping they would get the tricky words right.
     I did. But I was so nervous I left off the last letter of my own name.
     Next came a written test in arithmetic and our oral examinations.
     I named all the parts of speech in a test sentence in Russian  grammar.
Then the priest  came over to me  and handed me a  book  written  in  church
Slavonic. At  this the Russian teacher, a  blond, curly-haired, fair-bearded
man spoke up rather hesitantly:
     "I  don't believe  he  needs  to know that,  Father.  I mean, being  of
another  faith and all...." He  seemed very embarrassed,  as if he had  said
something impolite. I, too, blushed.
     "All the more reason why he should," the priest replied sternly. "Here,
read from here."
     I  read and translated  the page he had  opened. Several  days later my
parents were informed that I had been accepted.


        JUST LIKE A SOLDIER-BOY

     We spent  the summer in the  country. I felt that I had taken along  my
new and  very impressive title of a schoolboy to the pine and linden forests
of Khvalyn, where I proudly  carried it to the top of the famed chalk hills,
the  ravines  of  Teremshan  and  the  maze  of  wild raspberry  patches  we
frequented on the sly.
     At that time Russia, Europe and the world were just launching a war.
     We returned home by boat. New  recruits were being transported  by  the
same boat. Newsboys at the various landings shouted the headlines: "Read the
latest  dispatches! Three  thousand  prisoners of  war! Read all  about  our
trophies!"
     Weeping, dishevelled women  of all ages crowded near  the  boat at  the
landings They were seeing off  their conscripted husbands, fathers, sons and
brothers.  The  parting  whistle  drowned  out  their  wailing,  the  ragged
cheerings of the men, the floundering band. The stem traced a large, foaming
arc  in the  water, and the  whistle sounded again.  The  sound  of it  hung
suspended in the air. All was still for a moment, and then there was another
long, anxious blast.
     The crystal  pendants  of  the chandelier  in  the  first-class  saloon
tinkled in time to the  engine's strokes. A piano crashed. The air was heavy
with the smells of the Volga, chowder and perfume. Ladies laughed.
     Looking through the saloon window, I could see the steep  bank drifting
away. A string of farm wagons lumbered forlornly up the road from the pier.
     They had seen their men off.
     My new  leather school  satchel introduced a manly,  army smell to  our
stateroom. The new term  was  to begin  in two days, and  my  school uniform
awaited  me   at   home.   My  school  days  were  beginning.  Farewell,  my
neighbourhood friends! I practically felt as if I had been conscripted. When
we  got home m head  was shaved, as was the custom for new boys. Papa said I
looked like scarecrow.
     "Just like a soldier-boy," Wirkel, the tailor,  said as he  adjusted my
uniform.


        BUTTONS

     That was a magnificent time. My grandeur  and  my first long pants were
universally recognized.
     Boys in the street shouted "squab!" at me, for the colour of the school
uniform  was dove-grey, and pupils of the Boys  School were called squabs. I
was proud to have joined the chosen.
     The sun shone  on my belly and was reflected in the brass buckle  of my
leather  belt, stamped with the black  letters of the  school.  The  raised,
shiny  metal buttons  of my  dove-grey shirt were like silver lady  bugs. On
that very  solemn and  frightening August day  I climbed  the  steps  of the
school in my new shoes (the left was a bit tight).
     I  was immediately engulfed by the subdued murmur of the corridor.  Out
there  in the August day, beyond the school doors,  were the  cottage in the
country, the chalk hills, the summer and freedom.
     A little old man wearing a tunic  with  a medal pinned on his chest was
coming towards me. He appeared grave and angry,  as everyone did to  me that
day. Recalling my mother's  instructions,  I clicked my heels and bowed low,
having first removed my cap.
     "Well, hello, hello," the old man said. "Hang your cap over there. I'll
bet you're in the first grade, aren't you? Over there, third to the left."
     Once again I bowed low and respectfully.
     "Go on, that's enough  bowing!"  he said and chuckled. Then  he  got  a
floor brush from a corner and went off to sweep the corridor.
     The boys in my class  were all huge and as hairless as I, who must have
been the smallest. Some giants in worn or faded school uniforms were walking
up and down. These were boys who had been left back. One of them crooked his
finger at me.
     "C'mon over and  sit by me.  The seat's  empty.  Whacher  name?  Mine's
Fuitin-gaich-Tpruntikovsky-Chimparchifarechesalov-Famin-Trepakovsky-Po-ko-leno-Sinemore-Perekhodyashchensky.
Say it!" I couldn't.
     "Never  mind. You'll  learn. D'you  chew oilcake?  No? Got anything  to
smoke? No? D'you know how the farmer sold his eggs at the market?"
     I had  never heard that story. The big fellow said I was  a ninny. Just
then a  lively, big-eared, dishevelled boy who had  also been left back came
over to our double desk. First  he sized me up. Then he sat down on the desk
and said:
     "Are you  the doctor's  son? You  are, aren't you? Doctor's riding on a
swine, with his sonny on behind! Whose  button is this?"  He had got hold of
one of the shiny buttons on my cuff.
     "Mine. Can't you see?"
     "Well, if it's yours,  you can  have it!"  he cried,  tore  it  off and
handed it t  "And whose  button is this?" he said, getting hold of  the next
one.
     I had learned my lesson and said I did not know.
     "You don't  know?" he  shouted. "That means it's not yours, is it?"  At
which  he tore off the second button and threw it down. The class burst into
laughter. I would have certainly lost all my buttons if the school inspector
had not entered a moment. Everyone  rose as one  man. I liked this  form  of
greeting.  The  inspector's sly and lively eyes scrutinized  us.  His  bushy
beard, combed and parted down the middle  like a swallow's tail, brushed the
various decorations on his tunic. He spoke in a kind and friendly voice.
     "Well now, you  shiny, brand-new boys!  Had your fill of  running wild?
Watch your step  now,  you rascals. 'Tention! Stepan Gavrya!  Pull  in  your
belly! Get it back  into your  satchel!  You're repeating the year,  but you
haven't even  learn  stand  straight, you oaf!  Want  to  be put down in the
Deportment Ledger? Look at the mane you've grown! Get a haircut!"
     Then  the  inspector  took  out a list and called  the roll. At this he
intentionally confused the names of the big boys who had been left back.
     "Shoefeld!"  he called  instead of Kufeld. "Varekukhonko!"  instead  of
Kukhovarenko.
     It was finally my turn.
     "Here!" I shouted at the top of my voice.
     The  inspector  raised an  eyebrow. "Look how small  he is, but what  a
voice! I can see now why they named you Leo. How old are you?"
     I  wanted  to  get  in.  right  with  the  big  boys  and  so  quipped,
"Nine-thirty!"
     He replied evenly: "You  know, Leo, king of  the beasts, you scoundrel,
that I'll make you stay after school, and that  will teach you  to be witty.
Wait  a minute cried, as if I  were about to  leave. "Wait!  Why  are  there
buttons on your cuff?  That's against regulations. There's no  need  to have
buttons where they're not  supposed to  be." He came up  to me  and took  my
sleeve,  pulled a pair of funny-looking  pincers from his pocket  and nipped
off the offending buttons.
     Now I was dressed strictly according to regulations.


        NAPOLEONS AND THE DEPORTMENT LEDGER

     My name was soon entered in the Black Book.
     I was lacking several textbooks, and so Mamma, my brother and I set out
for them to the neighboring city of Saratov.
     School had started. The first page of my school  ledger had been filled
in, the first pages of the textbook  read,  and  a mass of new and important
information gleaned.  I felt very  learned.  The Cleopatra, a  small steamer
that  was taking us across to Saratov, was passing the familiar shoreline of
Osokorye Island, but I no longer regarded it merely as an island. It was now
"a tract of land completely surrounded by water".
     We  bought the books  I  needed  in  Saratov  and  then  stopped  by  a
photographer's  studio   to   have  our  pictures  taken.  The  photographer
immortalized the stiff  school cap and cockade  and my new  shoes.  Then  we
walked down  German Street. My cap crowned my  head like  a saint's halo. My
shoes creaked like an organ.
     We dropped in  at  Jean's Cafe and Confectionary. Mamma ordered  coffee
and pastries  called napoleons. It was cool and  dim inside, but I could see
myself  in my  new  shoes  and uniform  in  the  large mirror.  At the table
opposite was a thin, stiff-backed man. He was talking to a woman at his side
and looking over at our table. His eyes were as dead and dull as a fish's on
the  kitchen  table. I  stared hard at him.  The napoleon  got  stuck in  my
throat, just as Napoleon had in the snows  of Russia.  It was our principal,
Juvenal Stomolitsky.
     I jumped up. My  lips were  sticky from the pastry  and  from  fear.  I
bowed. I sat down. I got up again. The principal nodded and turned away.
     Soon we  rose to leave. At the door I  bowed again. The day was ruined.
The napoleon rumbled uneasily in my stomach.
     Our class  supervisor entered the classroom during the long recess  the
following day. He asked  for my ledger.  This is what he wrote  on the  page
devoted to "Conduct and Deportment":
     Pupils of secondary schools are forbidden to patronize cafes, even when
accompanied by their parents.
     Kuzmenko, another boy  who had been left back, read the entry and said:
"Good for you! You've started  out right. Congratulations!  Keep up the good
work."
     To tell the truth, I had been terrified, but his words cheered me up. I
shrugged and said: "I stuck my neck out that time. What the hell!"
     From then on we called confectionaries conductionaries.


        P. B. S.

     The Pokrovsk Boys High School was just like every other boys school. It
had cold tile floors that were kept clean  by being swept with damp sawdust.
There was a  long corridor and class-rooms leading off  it. The corridor was
filled by  the short incoming tides  of  recess  and drained  again  by  the
outgoing tides of the lessons.
     There was a school  bell. Its pealing had a double meaning. One, at the
end  of  a  lesson,  was  exciting  and  carefree. It pealed: "Ring! Fun and
da-ring!"
     The other sounded when recess was  over.  It announced the beginning of
another  lesson. It  was  a mean old  grouch:  "Br-rats!  I'll wr-ring  your
necks!"
     Lessons,  lessons  and  lessons.  There  was  the  class  ledger.   The
Deportment Ledger. "Leave the classroom!" "Go stand in the corner!"
     There were  prayers and  chapel.  Royal days. Tunics. The gold-stitched
silence  of  the  services.  Standing  at attention.  Boys fainting from the
closeness and from the strain of standing still for two hours in a row.
     The dove-grey overcoats. The  dove-grey boredom. I counted the  days by
the pages of  my  ledger. It  had  a column for the  schedule. A column  for
assignments. A column for marks.  Each week  ended with the signature of our
class supervisor. Sunday alone, the shortest day in the week, did not have a
space of  its own in my ledger. Every other day was strictly regimented. 18.
Pupils of secondary schools are forbidden to go outdoors  after  7 p.m. from
November 1st to March 1st. 20. Pupils are not allowed to attend the theatre,
cinematograph or other places of  amusement without  special permission from
the school inspector  in  each given instance. Pupils are strictly forbidden
to frequent confectionaries, cafes, restaurants, public gardens, etc.
     Note: The  above  places of amusement  in  Pokrovsk include  the Public
Gardens Market Square and the railroad stations.
     These  rules  were printed  on our school  cards, and  every breach  of
conduct that flaunted the  sacred rules meant a demerit.  They say all roads
lead  to Rome. At  the Boys School all roads  led  to the Deportment Ledger.
Every boy's name was entered in it at one time or another. There were simple
demerits:  boys  were   left  without   lunch;  there  were  reprimands  and
expulsions. It was a terrible book! A secret book. A Dove Book.
     There is a legend  about  a Dove Book which fell  from the  skies  many
centuries ago and which supposedly contained all the secrets of Creation. It
was a wonderful book,  something like a ledger  for the planets. None of the
wise men could read it all  and  understand it, for its secret meanings were
too deep for them. We boy regarded the Deportment Ledger as just such a Dove
Book,  for the authorities kept careful watch over its secrets.  None  of us
ever dreamed of reading the entries in it.


        SQUABS

     Unfledged doves are  called squabs. We were called  squabs,  because of
our dove grey school uniforms. Our school's Deportment Ledger, its Dove Book
had the  lives  of three  hundred  squabs  recorded  in  it.  Three  hundred
unfledged doves trapped in a cage.
     The town of Pokrovsk was once a settlement. It was a rich settlement, a
grain-selling   centre  of   Russia.   Huge,   five-storey   granaries  with
turret-roofs lined the bank of the Volga here. Tens  of millions of  bushels
of wheat were stored in this granary row. Clouds of pigeons blotted  out the
sun. The grain was loaded on barges. Small tugboats guided the barges out of
the bay, just as a boy-guide leads a blind man.
     Ukrainian  tillers lived  in Pokrovsk, as well as rich farmers,  German
colonists, boatmen,  stevedores, workers of the lumber mills, the  bone-meal
factory and  a small  number  of Russian  peasants.  In  summer they  became
bronzed by the steppe  sun, they drove camels, gathered on the water  meadow
on holidays which usually ended in endless fights along the river bank. They
raced  their boats against Saratov boats. In winter they  drank heavily, had
weddings and danced on Breshka Street. They  ate  sunflower seeds. The  rich
farmers met in council. Then, if ever  the question of a new school, a paved
road or some similar undertaking was  raised,  they would shout it down with
their usual "resolution" of: "No need for it!"
     Slush and mud were ankle-deep  on  the streets. Such  was  the state of
affairs in Pokrovsk, just seven kilometres from the city of Saratov.
     And  then the overgrown  sons of the wild  and  carefree steppes, these
huge, bold  savages from the farms, were forcibly driven into the classrooms
of Pokrovsk Boys School, had their  hair cropped  close, their names entered
in the Ledger and their bodies stuffed into the school uniform.
     It is difficult, it is all but impossible to  describe the things  that
went on in that school. There  were constant fights. Boys fought singly, and
one  class fought  another. Bottoms of  long  school coats were ripped  off.
Knuckles were cracked against enemy  jaws. Among the weapons  used were  ice
skates, school satchels, lead weights. Skulls were cracked. The seniors (Oh,
those ruling classes!) would take two small boys by the legs and batter each
other with our swinging heads. True,  there were some first-year boys so big
they drove the fear of God into the meanest seniors.
     I was rarely  hit, since I was  so  little they were afraid they  might
kill  me. Still and all, I was accidentally knocked unconscious two or three
times.
     They had their own special game of soccer that was played on empty lots
with old telegraph poles or stone  posts that were  lying on the ground. The
object of the game was to roll  a pole across the lot into the other  team's
field,  using their feet alone. As often as not, a pole would roll over some
fallen players, mangling and crushing them.
     During classes they  cribbed  and prompted  each other outrageously and
with  great imagination, inventing the most  complex and outlandish devices.
Desks, floorboards, blackboards and  lecterns  were all rigged.  There was a
special  delivery  service and a  telegraph. During written tests  they even
managed to get the answers from the senior classes.
     Some boys, to spite the teachers, would  hunch over and thus be sent to
stand  in a corner  "to  straighten  up",  where  they  persisted  to  cause
themselves great discomfort by standing  hunchbacked, although at home these
were strong boys with excellent postures.
     The boys chewed  oilcakes  in class, played  cards, fenced with knives,
traded  lea weights,  and read the  adventures of  Nat Pinkerton. There were
some  lessons during which half  of the pupils were  being punished and were
lined  up along  the walls, while  another  quarter  was out smoking in  the
washroom or else banished from the classroom. But a  few heads bobbed  above
the desks.
     The boys ignited phosphorus in order to produce  a mighty stench.  That
meant the room had to be aired, which left no time for the lesson.
     A squeegee would be  tacked under the teacher's lectern,  and when  the
string was jerked the toy would squeak. The teacher would rush  up and down,
but still squeaked. He would search the desks, and still it squeaked.
     "Stand up, all of you! And stay there!"
     Every boy would be on his feet, but still, the toy Went on squeaking.
     The  inspector would  be  summoned.  Still,  it went  on squeaking. The
pupils  would be  made to sit at their desks  for  two hours and would  miss
their lunch.
     Still, it went on squeaking-
     The boys stole things at the market, they fought the town boys on every
corner  they  beat up  policemen. They  poured  every sort of mess into  the
inkwells  of those  teachers whom  they disliked. During  lessons they would
slowly  vibrate a split  penpoint that had been stuck into  a desk,  and the
screeching sound it produce would set your teeth on edge.


        THE PRINCIPAL

     Juvenal  Stomolitsky,  the  principal, was  tall, thin,  unbending  and
careful! pressed. His eyes were round, heavy-lidded and leaden. That was why
he had bee nicknamed Fish-Eye.
     Fish-Eye  was a protege of Kasso, the  Minister of  Education  who  was
loathed  by  all. Fish-Eye  valued drilling,  absolute  quiet and discipline
above all  else. As classes  ended each  day he would  take  up  his station
outside the  cloakroom. We were to pass by him in review after we had put on
our  caps and coats. We had to stop as w approached, remove our  caps by the
visor (and only by the visor!) and bow low.
     Once, when I was in a hurry to get  home, I grasped the hatband instead
of the visor when I doffed my cap.
     "Stop!" the  principal  commanded. "Go back and return again. You  must
learn to greet me properly."
     He  never shouted. His voice was as dull and colourless as an empty tin
can. When angry  he would say:  "Abominable boy!" This was his most terrible
reprimand   and  always  meant  a  poor   mark  for  deportment  and   other
unpleasantneses in the future.
     No matter whether he appeared in a classroom  or in the Teacher's Room,
conversation would  immediately  die  down.  Everyone  would rise.  A  tense
silence followed. The  atmosphere  would  become  so stifling  you felt  you
wanted to open a window and shout.
     Fish-Eye liked to enter a classroom unexpectedly. The pupils would jump
to  their feet with a great rattling of desk tops. The teacher would  become
red  in the  face,  stumble in  the  middle of  a word and look just like  a
schoolboy who was caught smoking.
     The principal would sit down by  the lectern, making sure that each boy
called on would bow to him first  and then to the teacher. Once the district
inspector, a little  grey-haired  old man with  a large  star on  his chest,
visited the school.  The principal escorted him to one of the classrooms and
motioned with his eyes to a boy who  was being  called upon to recite to bow
first to the district inspector, then to him and, finally, to the teacher.
     The  following notations,  thanks to old  Fish-Eye, were to be found in
the Black Book:

     Andrei Glukhin was seen by  the principal wearing  his coat thrown over
his  shoulders. He is to be left  after school for four hours. Stepan Gavrya
... was seen  in town by  the principal wearing a shirt  with an embroidered
collar.  Six  hours after school. Nikolai  Avdotenko  was absent from school
without permission on October 13th and 14th. To be left in  class for twelve
hours (on two successive holidays).

     (Nikolai Avdotenko's aunt died on October 13th. He had been living with
her family.)
     The district inspector was pleased  with the way the principal  ran the
school.  "I'm very  pleathed, thir," he  lisped. "Thith  ith  an exthemplary
thchool."


     THE TEACHERS' ROOM

     The Teachers' Room was at the end  of the corridor, to the right of the
principal's office.  Continents and oceans  were rolled  up  and stuck  away
behind  a bookcase in a  corner.  The  huge  round eyeglasses of the earth's
hemisphere gazed down from a wall.  The glass door of the bookcase reflected
His Majesty, by the Grace of God, a blue  ribbon, a carefully-groomed beard,
an arrow-straight part and rows of decorations, the Tsar of all Russia. (The
actual portrait of the tsar hung  opposite).' The Black Book was kept in the
bookcase.  On top of the bookcase a lop-sided  squirrel offered its shedding
tail as a moustache for a  goddess. The  goddess was old and made of plaster
of  Paris. Her name was Venus. Whenever  the  bookcase door was  opened  the
goddess  swayed  gently  and  seemed about to  sneeze.  And the bookcase was
opened whenever someone reached for the Deportment Ledger. Caesar Karpovich,
the  school supervisor, was the  keeper of the key to  the bookcase. We  had
nicknamed him Seize'em and he was the butt of all our pranks. He had a glass
eye, something he tried very hard to conceal. However, the moment  he turned
it on us, we made faces at him and thumbed our noses.
     New  boys who had  not yet discovered  he had a  glass  eye admired the
courage of the pranksters. Seize'em was  the author of  at least half of all
the entries in the Deportment Ledger,  for he  was responsible for the boys'
behaviour, both in school and out.
     He would  ambush  us on Breshka  Street, which was strictly off-limits.
Seize'em  stalked  the  streets after seven p.m.  in  search  of boys  still
outdoors. He would come calling to see if an absent boy was  really sick. He
would lie in wait  for boys outside the  Dawn Cinema. He spent his days  and
nights busily tracking  down culprits  to provide fuel for the Ledger. Still
and all, the boys managed  to trick  him  brazenly. Once,  for instance,  he
waylaid  a  group  of sixth-grade boys inside  the Dawn Cinema.  They locked
themselves  in one of the boxes. Seize'em went for a policeman, and together
they tried to force the door of the box. As the film flickered on the screen
the boys tore down the drapes of their box, knotted them and slide  down the
drape-rope into the orchestra. First to appear on the screen were a  pair of
dangling legs. Then the boys fell into the laps