of the audience. There was a
general commotion, during which they escaped through an emergency exit.
     Wisps  of cigarette smoke drifted about in  the Teachers' Room, snaking
around the globes  and stuffed birds. There was  a table beside the bookcase
where the class ledgers were kept, witnesses of the good, bad or indifferent
progress of every boy in the  school. The school  inspector  usually  leafed
through them during recess.


        THE INSPECTOR

     The boys  almost liked Inspector Nikolai Romashov. He was a well-built,
handsome  man  who wore  his hair in a short brush cut. His  dark eyes  were
often narrowed, and he had a sharp tongue that was often rude.
     He,  too,  followed his own  educational  methods.  If, for instance, a
given class had committed some collective crime or did not wish to hand over
an offender, Romashov  would appear after  lessons,  entering the  classroom
slowly and facing the boys, all of  whom  would stand  stiffly at attention.
Then, raising his head high, he would survey them. It seemed  that his beard
swept over the tops of our heads.
     "Where's the monitor?"  he  would say in  a chillingly calm  voice. "Go
over and shut the door. So."
     The monitor would  shut the door tightly.  The  boys, hungry  and tired
after five hours of study, would stand at attention. Romashov would continue
his inspection  of the class through his beard.  He  would then take a  book
from his pocket,  sit down at  the  lectern and become engrossed in  it. The
boys stood at attention. For ten minutes. For half an hour.
     After  about an hour's reading,  the inspector would  suddenly put  his
book aside  and begin  his harangue  in  a  soft  but  resounding  baritone,
speaking calmly throughout:
     "Well?  What  have you to say  for yourselves,  muttonheads? Addlepated
hooligans. Dimwitted pigeon fanciers! What a brainless collection  of dolts!
Morons! I'll have you publicly castigated in front of the whole  school, you
numskulls! Pigheaded  charlatans! Nitwits! Whose stupid head is that? Ah, is
that you, Gavrya? I mean you, too, by the way. Why are  you turning your mug
away? You're the top-ranking dunce here! Well? I'll  bet you feel ashamed of
yourselves, you louts. Scoundrels! Idiots! I'll see you get what's coming to
you, you blackguards. Here you are, left  after school. And  there's  dinner
waiting at  home. Hot soup. Roast beef. I can smell  the savoury  sauce." At
this  the inspector  would  sniff  loudly and smack his  lips. "Ha!  Hungry,
aren't you? I'll bet you are.  And  you're sure to get your backsides tanned
when you get  home. Your fathers will  see to that. I'll send a  note along,
telling your dads to let down your pants and give you a good whacking in the
rear   deportment  ledger.  There's  nothing  to  laugh  at,  you  lummoxes!
Rattlebrained whelps! Left after school! For shame!"
     After  carrying on  in this vein  for  about an hour, he  would finally
dismiss the class, but one at a time, with long intervals in between. We all
felt faint by then.


        LAMBS AND BILLY GOATS

     Romashov had  divided all the  boys into two groups: the lambs and  the
hilly goats. That, too, was how he introduced the pupils of a class to a new
teacher.
     "Be seated, idlers! Here, you see, are the lambs, the crammers, the 'A'
students,  the goody-goodies. And  here are the  'F'  and  'D' students, the
left-backs,   the    dinner-missers,   the   blabbermouths,   loafers    and
back-benchers. Aleferenko! Shove your  belly  into your satchel! Look  at it
hanging over your belt!"
     The  inspector was in  charge of seating the class. Thus,  he  had  the
wildest, laziest and  worst pupils  in the front rows. The farther back  and
closer  to the windows, the better the marks a boy had. However, a very warm
relationship based  on prompting and cribbing existed all along the diagonal
line between the far  left "A"  comer of  the class and the front right  "D"
corner.


        THE TALE OF THE AFON RECRUIT

     The Black Book contained eight  incomprehensible  entries.  These eight
mysteriously  similar  notations  all  bore  the  same  date. The  following
paragraph was repeated eight times:

     "(Name) of the ... grade has been severely reprimanded for the last and
final  time for outrageous hooliganism. His deportment  mark for the term is
"C" ("C-"). He is to be punished by twenty hours of compulsory schoolwork on
successive  holidays.  His  parents  have been  notified.  (Signed)... Class
supervisor. (Signed) Inspector...."

     These eight entries refer to a scandalous and tragic event which in its
time had the entire town up in arms. However, no  one  knew the end  of  the
story or the names of the real participants in the events.  There is  not  a
word in  the Black Book  about Bloodhound Kozodav, the Afon  Recruit  or the
Tavern,  that  third-rate  joint run  by Madame  Kolenkorovna. Mokeich,  the
now-departed  school janitor, divulged the sector  of the Black Book to  me.
Here it is.


        THE FIRST BELL

     There were  no electric bells  in the  city  about  eighteen years ago.
Instead,  there  were  wire  handles  on  the  porches,  somewhat  like  the
pull-chains  of old-fashioned  toilets. And  you pulled the handle  when you
rang. Then  a new  doctor arrived in Pokrovsk. They said he was  very much a
man for  modern  technology  and scientific  development. Indeed, the doctor
subscribed to Niva, a  literary magazine, and had battery-run electric bells
installed  in  his  apartment.  A little  white bell-button appeared on  the
outside door beneath the doctor's card. The patients would press the button,
at  which a  loud-voiced  bell  would  suddenly come to  life in the  foyer.
Everybody  agreed this  was  wonderful. The doctor  soon  had a  flourishing
practice,  and  it  became the height  of  fashion  in Pokrovsk  to  have an
electric bell  on one's front porch. Five years later  there  was  hardly  a
house  with  a  porch  that  did  not  have  a  bell-button. The  bells  had
variously-pitched voices. Some buzzed, others tinkled,  still others rasped,
and  there were those that  simply rang.  Some bells had instruction notices
tacked up beside the buttons, such as: "Please don't bang  on the  door. Put
your finger on the pip for to ring the bell."
     The people of Pokrovsk were proud of their cultured ringing. They spoke
of their  doorbells with love and interest. When meeting in the street, they
would inquire after the health of a doorbell.
     "Hello,  Pyotr! How are you?  And  how's the  new  arrival? Did the man
install it yet?"
     "Yes, thanks. What a beauty! Come on over and hear  it ring. It's got a
voice like a canary."
     When  matchmakers praised a girl's  dowry  they would say: "She'll have
her own wing of a house with a 'lectric bell on the porch."
     Mlynar, the richest man  in town, had seven  different bells installed,
one  for each  day  of  the week.  The bell with the liveliest sound was for
Sundays. The gloomiest-ever bells jangled on fast-days.
     The Afon Recruit would be  sent for whenever  a bell went out of order.
The Recruit doctored old bells, installed new ones and was reputed to be the
best  "bell man"  in town.  His  fame was widespread,  and his place  in the
annals  of Pokrovsk was as  honourable as that of  Lake Sapsayevo, still the
best swamp in the area, or Lazar, the best of the cabbies, who is still hale
and hearty, or the granary fire, surely the best of all fires.


        THE TAVERN

     The Afon  Recruit  lived at the  market  place, by the meat  rows  that
smelled of fresh  blood. He  lived in  the Tavern, as its inhabitants called
their  filthy,  comfortless hovel. A large pit  near the Tavern was  forever
filled  with  foul-smelling puddles,  and  stray  dogs would scrounge around
there, dragging out long ropes of  intestines  or messes of entrails, all of
which  swarmed  with  blue-bottle  flies.  The  market's  hardware  section,
resounding with hammering and clanging, was a short way off.
     The Afon Recruit lived in the Tavern. No one knew  where  he  was from,
how he had got his nickname or of what nationality he was. But everyone knew
him. He was strong, as swarthy as a roasted nut, thin, wiry, and as agile as
a pennant  in the wind. He had a huge round earring in his  left  ear, and a
long black moustache sprang from under his hooked nose. The  left tip of his
moustache pointed  skyward, while the right pointed down, which fact made it
resemble a  washbasin  faucet.  His pearly  teeth were forever flashing in a
smile.  His hands were forever busy, doing  some piece of work or other. And
his hands  were of a  kind  called "golden hands"  in Russian.  He  could do
anything. He  was a mechanic, a barber, a magician,  a watchmaker-you simply
had to name it.
     He was the most respected man in the Tavern. Everyone followed his lead
and liked him. No one could remember ever having seen him angry. Even when a
heated argument  led to ugly  knives, the Afon Recruit's  smile flashed more
brightly than the blades. He  would materialize between  the  fighters as if
from thin air to shove them apart. Then, flying onto one of the bunks like a
dervish, he would shout:
     "Attenshun,  pu-leeze! Presenting the ver-ry  latest hocus-pocus magic:
black, white, striped and polka-dotted! Ladies, gents and esquires! Entendez
a sec! Voulez vous have a look! Stupendous! A-mazing! Alley-oop!"
     Tiny boxes and balls would come pouring out of his pocket to be juggled
over his head. His  hat spun on a cane which he balanced on  the  tip of his
nose as he lit cigarettes inside his  coat sleeves.  A woman's voice issured
from  his innards,  and  it was singing. Meanwhile, his torn sole  gaped and
said "Merci". The quarrel was forgotten instantly.
     Dunka Kolenkorovna, a half-wit, was the mistress of  the Tavern. Kostya
Gonchar, the town fool, was her favorite lodger. He was absolutely harmless,
for his  great joy in life  was adorning his person with anything  bright or
shiny. He  went  about town in his rags hung with pictures cut out of  Niva,
the  tops  of tea tins,  ads for various brands of cigarettes, empty lozenge
tins,  beads, paper  flowers,  playing  cards, bits  of harness  and  broken
teaspoons. The townsfolk  were indulgent and  gave him whatever  bright  and
useless odds and ends they had. To this very day whenever anyone in Pokrovsk
is dressed too gaudily someone will say:
     "Look at him! He's dolled up like Kostya Gonchar!"
     Bloodhound Kozodav,  the  policeman  whose beat  was the  market place,
liked to drop  in at the Tavern.  Kozodav possessed everything  an exemplary
policeman  needed: a pair of fierce moustaches, a badge, a whistle, a sword,
a deep, gruff  voice, a blue-red lump of a  nose, a medal,  and  braided red
shoulder  straps, the envy of  Kostya Gonchar. Bloodhound Kozodav would drop
in  at the Tavern to have a drink  on  the house, play a game  of cards, and
have a heart-to-heart talk with Joseph Pikus, the sage travelling salesman.
     The other inhabitants of  the Tavern were Levonti Abramkin, a nightman,
Hersta, a German organ-grinder, his parrot that had been trained to pick out
"lucky" fortune cards, Chi Sun-cha, a tubercular Chinaman, and Shebarsha and
Krivopatrya, two bosom friends and petty thieves.


        THE DEVIL AND THE BABES

     In the evenings  boys from our school would sneak into the Tavern. Here
they could  enjoy oilcakes, relax in pleasant company, forget for an hour or
two the  strictly regulated  life  of the  school  and  play  cards  without
worrying about Seize'em pouncing on them.  Here no one ever  asked you  what
your term  mark  for  Russian  grammar  was  or whether you  had  done  your
homework. We were always welcome. The inhabitants of the Tavern joined us in
berating the school rules and  regulations, and many  were quite prepared to
beat up the Latin teacher for giving a boy an  undeserved "F". Chi  Sun-cha,
who was always so reserved, would get all worked up.
     "Why so bad Latin teacher?"  he would say as he cut out coloured  paper
festoons. "Boy good. Why he get 'F'?"
     We would bring the men books we thought were good, the latest news, our
school  lunches  and  junk  for Kostya  Gonchar.  In  exchange  we  received
invaluable information in such varied fields as  the art  of jimmying locks,
forging signatures, and the Odessa version of ju-jitsu.
     The Afon Recruit was a great one for discussing  a book he had read and
always drew us into these discussions. In the beginning, the other  men made
fun  of him, saying that the  devil had taken on a bunch of babes, but  soon
nearly  every other inhabitant of the Tavern was  taking part in our  heated
debates. To  top it all, Vasya  Gorbyl, one  of the "babes", gave  Shebarsha
such a beating that we were  all treated with special respect from  that day
on. At first, our reading was limited to adventure  stories. Thus, we sailed
80,000 Leagues Under the Sea, found Captain Grant's Children and nearly lost
our  own  heads  over  the  Headless Horseman.  Then  Stepan  Gavrya,  alias
Atlantis, brought  some banned  political  books to  the Tavern.  The Tavern
inhabitants listened to the story of the Paris Commune with bated breath.
     We schoolboys were pledged to secrecy about these visits to the Tavern.
     Many of  our  fellow classmates had no idea where the  so-called  Hefty
Gang hung out after school. Whenever Bloodhound Kozodav put in an unexpected
appearance  at the  Tavern the banned books were  whisked  out of sight  and
Bloodhound was  offered a drink. He would soon  be  in a benevolent mood and
would whisper confidentially:
     "Lissen, boys, don't  poke  your noses  out for 'nother half-hour. That
Seize'em's sniffing around Breshka Street. I'll give you a sign soon's all's
clear."


     'TWAS IN THE GARDEN....

     In September the  leaves began to fall  and the grass  turned yellow in
the Public Gardens, which somehow resembled  the worn fur  collar  of an old
winter coat.
     In September the boys of our school picked a fight with the town boys.
     Vanya Makhas, a fifth-grade boy,  was out walking with  a girl from the
Girls School. Some  boys  from Berezhnaya  Street who were sitting on one of
the park benches began baiting him.
     "Hey, sonny! Don't you pick your girls from our street."
     Makhas  escorted the  girl to the fountain and said:  "Pardon me.  I'll
only be a minute. I'll be back in  a sec." Then  he returned  to the  bench,
went up to the  fellow and struck him, knocking him against  the wire fence.
The next moment the fight had turned into a free-for-all. The boys fought in
silence, for  there were teachers sitting on the benches of  the next  walk.
The town boys knew this, too, and felt it unfair to shout and thus put their
enemies at a disadvantage.
     Some  park watchmen  who  were passing  broke  up  the  fight, and  the
appearance of Seize'em on the scene put a stop to the slaughter.
     That  was  when  the town fathers  asked the  principal  to include the
Public Gardens  in  the  list  of  off-limits  places  for  schoolboys.  The
principal was only too pleased to comply. Thus, the boys of  our school were
deprived of their  last  recreation spot.  They  tried to  protest,  but the
Parents' Committee upheld the principal's ruling.


     WE'RE CHALLENGING YOU

     That very day a secret emergency meeting was held at the  Tavern. Hefty
and Atlantis were the only two boys present.
     Atlantis was  boiling mad. "It's  against the  law! There's no place we
can  go anyway, and  now this! I don't give a damn for  this whole town  any
more."
     "You  know  what I'd suggest?"  Joseph said. "Why don't  you  send  the
district supervisor a telegram with a  paid reply?  You shouldn't be silent.
Why, it's a regular ghetto for schoolboys.  You can't  go here, you can't go
there. So where can you go?"
     "Alley-oop!  To hell with the telegram!" the Recruit interrupted.  "No.
This calls for some hard thinking. La!"
     "Bash  their  heads  in  and  be  done  with  it!" Krivopatrya  shouted
cheerfully from his  upper bunk. He was  lying  with his head  and shoulders
over the side, spitting intently, trying to send the spittle through a  ring
he had made of his fingers.
     "That's no  good. We've got to make  them  all suffer. Tar  and feather
them. They're all to blame.  The  Town Council and the Parents' Committee. A
bunch of rotten pigs. And we  have to be sure we don't get caught. Otherwise
they'll  expel  us.  It'll  take  a lot of  brains to  think  of something,"
Atlantis said.
     "The boys'll  all  stick together. Once we get started  they won't know
what hit them," Hefty added.
     A silence fell. The plotters were lost in thought. Water  dripped  from
the roof.
     Suddenly Joseph jumped to his feet, smacked himself on the forehead and
exclaimed: "Eureka! Eureka, which, in Greek, means 'I have the answer'! This
head has come up with an amazing idea. What?"
     "For God's sake! What is it?"
     "What's all  this noise and commotion? Where do you think you  are,  at
school or in a respectable tavern?"
     "Are you going to tell us or not? What're you waiting for?"
     "Shh! Quiet,  please! My  idea is a fix of an idea. It has nothing  but
good sides  for all of us, and not a single bad side. Now listen, everybody.
What is the exception of my conception? I mean, what is the conception of my
exceptional idea? Now, this is what you do...." At this Joseph began cutting
the air, using his thin fingers like a pair of scissors. He went on  cutting
the air for several minutes, then looked around  at each of  us in turn. His
eyes shone as he spoke in a momentous whisper:
     "The doorbells...."


        THE MANIFESTO

     Hefty chose eight fine boys  from different grades for the bell-cutting
campaign. First, the following manifesto was drawn up:
     "Boys!  The  Public  Gardens  are  now off-limits.  (Be  sure  nobody's
watching you read this!) Our enemies are Fish-Eye, the Town Council and  the
Parents. Which means the whole town's against us. And that  means  we've got
to get even, and make sure they never forget it. This town will never forget
what we're going to do to them. In this place  everybody's proud as peacocks
of their doorbells. Fellows! We of the Committee of  War and  Vengeance have
decided  to cut off all the  doorbells in Pokrovsk. Each  of us, on The Day,
will  cut off the doorbell outside his  house. Our parents are on Fish-Eye's
side.
     "The Committee of  War and  Vengeance will appoint local boys to do the
job  in  the  houses where  there  aren't any Boys School fellows. It'll  be
another  St.  Bartholomew's Night for doorbells! Boys! Don't  spare a single
bell!  We've  been  driven  to  this.  We've  been  deprived  of   our  last
recreational vestige.
     "The Committee of War and Vengeance has appointed the following boys to
be  in  charge  of their  class. Obey their orders! In view of the danger of
expulsion, we're using their nicknames.
     "1st grade-Marusya
     "2nd grade-Honeycomb
     "3rd grade-Atlantis
     "4th grade-Donder-Bong
     "5th grade-Meatball
     "6th grade-Satrap (The Ghost of Hamlet's Father)
     "7th grade-Fishnet (I inhabit)
     "8th grade-King of the Jews
     "The man in charge-Hefty
     "The doorbells will be handed over to the monitors. They will pass them
on to the  Committee  that will hand them over of a cripple,  who will trade
them  for gunpowder, bullets, pop-guns,  etc. The  day of  St. Bartholomew's
Night  will be  announced by the  monitors. The  signal  to begin is a white
triangle, pasted to the windowpane.
     "Don't break the big bell in the Teachers' Room or they might guess who
did it. If anybody rats, he'll get a bell stuffed down his throat! Down with
the doorbells!
     "One for all!
     "All for one!
     "Long live War and Vengeance!
     "Sign this and pass it on, but not to Lizarsky or Dimwit.
     "Cmte. for W. & V. 1915"

     Copies of  the manifesto began circulating throughout the  school, read
to the whispering of prompting during classes, amidst the jostling commotion
of recess and the stale  cigarette smoke  of the washrooms. There  were  two
hundred and sixty-eight  coats hanging on pegs in the cloakroom. Two hundred
and sixty-six signatures appeared  under  the manifestoes.  The two boys who
were kept out of it  were  Lizarsky, the police  officer's son, and his best
friend. Dimwit.
     War had been declared.


        THE STILLED VOICES

     Five days later the ringleaders met at the Tavern. Although it was late
in the afternoon, each one came carrying his heavily-packed school  satchel.
However,  instead of  the  usual  dull grammar books  and  figure-laden math
books,  they now  contained  severed bell-buttons.  The white, black,  grey,
mother-of-pearl, enamel, yellow, stiff  and worn  buttons (the latter  would
stay depressed and keep on ringing the  bell) stared out of  their wooden or
metal circles, squares, ovals and rosettes that were lacquered, or-rusty, of
fumed or stained oak, or walnut. The wires protruded like torn ligaments.
     Every family was now waiting for the Afon Recruit to call. He spent the
next  two  weeks  installing new bells, bringing  the stilled voices back to
life, as he was wont to  say.  Then, when  the  last button had been screwed
into place, he said to Hefty: "Your turn! You start a week from today."
     The following Saturday was a muddy day. More than one rubber drowned in
the puddles, more than one galosh  sank on the main  street of Pokrovsk that
day.  However, when  the townspeople finally trudged home  from church  that
evening, losing their  rubbers, their way and  their  strength, they fumbled
about outside their front doors in the darkness in vain  and struck matches,
cupping  their  hands  to shield  the  flames from  the wind.  There were no
bell-buttons in sight. That night everyone discovered that the new bells had
been cut off.
     "What's  going on?" was the worried refrain the following day at  Mass,
on  the  street corners, at the front gates and  on the benches outside  the
houses.  "Good  Lord!  In bright daylight, too! It's  highway robbery. Maybe
they've got a whole gang at it."
     "Imagine! I mixed the dough and set it out to rise. Then I went outside
for a breath of air and to have a chat  with my  neighbour. Grinya was doing
his homework. Well, we talked for  a bit, and I went back. I wanted to close
the front  door  and, gracious! There  was no doorbell. And  not  a soul  in
sight, mind you."
     The  poor  woman could  never  imagine that  her  dear  son  Grinya,  a
snub-nosed fifth-grade boy, had cut off the button.


        THE ZEMSTVO INSPECTOR AND SON

     The  town was  in  the dumps.  No  one attempted to  have a  new button
installed. The schoolboys were  jubilant. Outside every  front door a bright
circle or square with holes where the nails had been gaped forlornly.
     The Zemstvo inspector was the only one to summon the  Afon Recruit. "Go
on, put in a new one!" he said. "Go  on, you  scoundrel. And make sure  it's
screwed on tight this time! I know your kind." And he shook his finger.
     The Recruit cast a guarded look at him.
     "Don't  play the innocent. I know you. You barely stick it to the wall,
so's the brats can pry it  off quicker.  I know you bums. They get them off,
and a  black thief like you shovels in the profits. But  you  won't get away
with  it this time! I'll post policeman here. I'll have a man on duty  round
the clock."
     The Recruit installed  a  new  button and hurried  back to the  Tavern,
where the boys were waiting for him.
     "I  just  put in a new pip for the  Zemstvo Inspector. Don't touch  it.
He'll have bloodhound there day and night."
     "To hell  with  all coppers!" Venya  Razudanov, alias Satrap,  and  the
Zemstvo  inspector's  own son,  shouted  belligerently.  He  was  stocky and
stubborn, a true copy  of his father,  and that was how he had got his other
nickname, the Ghost of Hamlet's Father.
     "Wait  a minute, my  militant boy," Joseph Pukis said. "What kind of an
aplombic tone of voice  is that?  Stop and think. You may have to part  with
your school cap  instead of another doorbell. Why spit in the  wind? Caution
above all.'
     "That's right, Satrap. You got to be careful. If  you get  caught, I'll
take care  of you good." At this Hefty held his monstrous, mallet-like  fist
up to Satrap's face.
     As  always,  his  fist was  admired  and discussed at length.  Everyone
tested it an exclaimed:
     "Boy, that's some fist! Look at the size of it!"
     "In these days a good-sized fist is better  than a  so-so head," Joseph
philoscophized.
     "Big, good fist," Chi Sun-cha exclaimed. "Boswain fist like so. Ah! Lot
of h teeth."
     "I'll cut off the button anyway!" the Zemstvo Inspector's son muttered.


        A CHAPTER  USING FILM TECHNIQUE, IN WHICH THE READER, GLIMPSING FEET ON
TOP AND HEADS BELOW, MIGHT SHOUT: "WATCH THE FRAME!"

     It was as black as pitch.
     Then, as our eyes  became  accustomed to the  dark, we made out a  door
with plaque  on it. It read: "G. V. Razudanov, Zemstvo Inspector." Beside it
was new bell-button.  We were  on the second floor landing  and  could see a
stretch of staircase. Down below under the stairs  was a  head  with a lumpy
nose and long  moustaches, topped by a cap with a cockade. It was Bloodhound
Kozodav. I-was cold. He shivered.  He  raised his collar. He kept  blinking.
His eyelids dropped. Kozodav was dying to sleep.
     The clock in the dining-room of  the  Zemstvo  Inspector's house struck
two. On the table were a sandwich on  a plate and a glass  of milk, left out
for someone.
     There were steps on the stairs. It was  the sound of muddy rubbers. One
foot stumbled on a tread. "Dammit! It's as dark as hell."
     A  match  flared.  A  hand  in  a  kid  glove held  the  match  to  the
bell-button. Another match was struck and went out, and then another.
     "The Recruit really did his damnedest!"
     Kozodav's head was somewheres down below.  Above it were a pair of feet
shod in shoes and rubbers.
     Kozodav, who had dozed off for a minute, came to his senses and clumped
up the stairs  hurriedly. "Got  you this time!"  he bellowed. He was heaving
mightily, and his moustache bristled as  he raised a whistle to his lips. He
grabbed the intruder by the collar with his free hand  and whistled.  "Help!
Murder! I got'im!"
     The intruder turned  calmly and brushed the policeman's  hand  from his
collar with a regal gesture. It was Venya Razudanov, the Zemstvo Inspector's
son. He  was  more than indignant.  "What's  the matter with you, you  fool?
Can't you see who I am?"
     "I'm  s-s-sorry! I  d-didn't recognize you  in  the  dark. I'm  awfully
sorry. I thought it was someone creeping up here after the bell."
     The door  opened.  The Zemstvo  Inspector,  wearing his wife's dressing
gown and carrying a double-barrelled  shotgun, emerged onto the landing. The
sleepy-eyed, frightened faces of his wife, sister-in-law and maid peeped out
from behind him.
     "What's going on here?"
     Kozodav snapped to attention, his hand  frozen in a  salute. Venya  was
the one to explain.
     "This idiot was  sound asleep on his  feet and decided I was a burglar,
Papa. And he missed whoever it was that got the bell."
     All eyes  were  now  on the door jamb.  There  were torn wires and nail
holes where the  bell button had  so  recently been. Then everyone turned to
Kozodav. He went up to the door, unable to believe his eyes. He ran his hand
over the spot and  shrugged.  The  Zemstvo inspector shook him by the collar
and yelled: "Get out, you idiot! You let him get away!"
     Venya, meanwhile, was playing the part of a hurt, insulted boy. "I'm so
tired, Mamma. I spent half the  night studying. And this is what I came home
to...."
     The next  scene  concerned the family alone. There was a kiss  for  the
poor boy. Fade-out. In other words, the end of the chapter.
     The brightly-polished bell button made a bulge in the pocket of Venya's
overcoat.


        BLOODHOUND SUMMONS JOSEPH

     "I want those bell-snatchers  caught! Hear me?" the police officer said
to Kozodav. "You've  become the  laughing-stock of this  whole town! If  you
catch them, you'll get a fifty-rouble bonus. If you  don't, I'll make things
so hot for you, you'll cook to a frizzle!"
     Bloodhound threw himself into the job.
     He was  walking through  the  market.  No,  he was not  walking, he was
sailing. The red braiding of the shoulder straps which adorned his  powerful
shoulders rose and fell like oars  in the human stream of the market.  There
Kozodav  came  upon Kostya Gonchar,  the  Tavern simpleton. He was wandering
about  the  market,  looking  as  festive  as  a  Christmas  tree.  Two  new
acquisitions gleamed on his belly: a shiny ad for  Triangle Galoshes and ...
a large red  rosette with a bell-button in  the centre.  At the sight of the
bell-button Kozodav made a  beeline for Kostya. He promised  to give him his
fine red shoulder straps, gold tassels and anything else he wanted if Kostya
would  tell him where he  had gotten the bell. And Kostya beaming  brightly,
told him  all  he  knew.... He  said he had  stolen the  bell from under the
Recruit's bunk.
     "The Recruit hid it, but I felt around and  found it. There's lots more
there! One an' twenty times more, an'...."
     At which Kozodav  promised  him a thousand  other glittering treasures.
Kostya  brought him  a  torn copy of the  Manifesto  issued  by  the War and
Vengeance Committee. The ringleaders were as good as caught. In order to get
all the other Bloodhound decided to tempt  Joseph, too. He dropped in at the
Tavern, sat down on Joseph's bunk, and cleared his throat politely.
     "Ah, sir  honourable policeman," Pukis  said. "So you  want to see  me?
What a I do for you?"
     Bloodhound moved closer, looked around and nudged Joseph. "You sure are
tricky one, Joseph! Why don't you just tell me how you  and  the Recruit cut
off t] bell? I won't tell a soul. I just want to hear  how you did it.  Come
on, quit pretending."
     "I don't understand you one bit." Joseph's face, which had been placid,
took' a  surprised look. "Though I'm Joseph and you're a  policeman, I don't
know h< you dreamed this up."
     Kozodav  pulled  out  his wallet and rustled  the  crisp  notes inside.
Joseph cor nued unperturbed:
     "And  besides,  and  I  hope  you  won't  take offence,  I  think,  sir
honourable policeman, that you're a great honourable scoundrel!"
     Kozodav shook  his fist at him, slammed the door and  was off. He  soon
came to a halt and  took the  Manifesto from his  pocket. The  top  and  the
bottom had  been torn off, but the list of monitors was intact. He  pondered
over it a while, then tore Satrap's name out of it and said to himself: "The
Zemstvo  Inspector'11  give me a  fiver  for  this scrap  of  paper,  or his
sonny-boy'll be  expelled, too."  He  set  his  cap on  straight and  headed
towards  the  precinct  and from  there  to  the  Boys  School,  to  see the
principal.


        STEPS IN THE CORRIDOR

     The monotonous  wind cooled  the puddles like tea poured into a saucer.
The telephone  wires  hummed. At ten a.m. the switchboard operator connected
the precinct station with the green-papered office beyond the Teachers' Room
by way  of these windblown, humming wires. The principal, as sallow-faced as
the  green  wallpaper  of his  office,  and  as slow-moving  and joyless  as
dictation,  cranked his telephone, sat back  in  his  armchair,  removed the
receiver and raised it to his ear.
     "Hello," he said.
     Lessons were in progress. Half an hour later every classroom  heard two
men walking down the  corridor.  Their  steps were loud  and  alien. The one
whose gait was  slow  and heavy wore boots  that squeaked. The other tinkled
and jungled  at every step. The boys  listened  intently.  They raised their
heads  from their notebooks, ponies, cracks in their desks, banned books and
trump cards. Anxious eyes were fixed on the doors.


        EXPOSE

     The third grade was having a math test. Once  again all became still in
the corridor outside. Pens scratched. Hefty had made  a mistake in a problem
and couldn't  get the answer right. The steps in the corridor had  made  him
nervous. Stepan  Atlantis, whose heart had also skipped a beat, saw that his
chum  was having trouble and sent him  the following note: "Relax.  Fish-Eye
isn't a man-eater."
     But  he  was, as far as they were concerned. The classroom door opened.
There was a rattle of desk tops as the boys rose.  Seize'em entered, beaming
foully and twirling his key chain. The key on it was the key to the bookcase
where the Black Book was kept.
     "Stepan Gavrya! Go to the principal's office!" he commanded.
     Atlantis towered over his desk. He looked dazed.
     "Hurry up!" Seize'em said. "And take your books."
     An  anxious hum filled the classroom. He  was to  take his books!  That
meant was leaving for good. He wouldn't be coming back.
     Hefty  waited. He had lowered his head,  as  if to ward off a blow, but
Seized said nothing to him. Bloodhound Kozodav, being vary of Hefty's fists,
had torn his name off the list, too.
     Atlantis'  hands shook  as he got his  books together, put  them in his
satchel a then  headed towards  the door. On the  way out he slipped Hefty a
rolled-up  scrap of paper. Atlantis stopped in the doorway.  He was about to
say  something,  but  Seize'em  shoved  him out.  The boys  waited in  tense
silence.  The  math  teacher  wiped  the  foggy  lenses  of  his  spectacles
nervously.
     Hefty unrolled  the scrap of  paper.  It contained the solution  to the
problem, done step-by-step. Even in this last  moment Stepan had come to his
friend's aid. Hi  sat  there motionlessly for a minute with his head lowered
and his  eyes on his desk. Then he rose  quickly,  swayed, filled  his broad
barrel chest  with air, glowered said in a voice that was a statement, not a
question:
     "May I leave the room."
     "There's only ten minutes left till the end of the lesson," the teacher
said.
     "May  I  leave  the  room?"  Hefty  exhaled stubbornly and stepped into
aisle.
     "Well, if you really can't wait."
     The stunned boys  watched Hefty stuff  his  books into his  satchel and
lumber towards the door, satchel in  hand. A terrible silence  settled  over
the third grade.
     Hefty did not look back. He went straight out, into the empty corridor,
and once there he  suddenly felt very small and doomed. And he heard, coming
from  be! the closed door, a shriek  of laughter rise up over the desks, the
inkwells  and lectern amidst  the  shocked silence of the boys  he had left.
Then it changed into gurgling scream.  It was little Petya Yachmenny  in the
first row who had become  hysterical from the tension. Hefty threw back  his
shoulders and stalked towards the principal's office.


        EIGHT BOYS

     Kozodav was breathing heavily. He was breathing heavily  and poking his
:finger at  the  boys lined up  in  front of  him.  "Yes,  sir!  This  one's
Honeycomb, and this one's Atlantis. That's their nicknames."
     The other man was rocking  back  and forth in a tilted chair. His spurs
jungled and  he  twirled his small  black  moustache.  "Well, well....  Such
conspirators! Well, well, boys."
     The seven of them stood stiffly before the desk. There were only seven,
since  the  Zemstvo  Inspector's son  was missing. The soot  of  misery  and
despair was settling on their faces.
     "So. Indeed," the principal said curtly, and  his voice sounded as if a
twig had snapped. "I thank you. Well, you wretches, what have you to say for
yourselves? For shame! For shame! It's  disgraceful! Who else was in on this
with you? Oh,  so you won't tell? Miserable creatures. You're no more than a
bunch of thugs. You'll all  be expelled. You're  a  disgrace  to  the school
emblem. Nothing you can say will change matters. I want to see your parents.
I'm very sorry for them. Having sons like you is enough to break a  parent's
heart. You scoundrels."
     The seven raised their eyes and heaved a collective sigh. Indeed, there
were their parents.  They could expect their  mothers' tears. And  scolding.
And their fathers'  chairs being pushed back in  anger. Perhaps even a cuff.
Their  dinners would be  getting cold on the table.  "You'll  end up being a
stevedore!" And the empty days stretching on ahead.
     Then the  King  of the  Jews said rudely,  "Let's not bring our parents
into this. It's bad enough as it is."
     "Silence! Do you want to be blacklisted for good?"
     Just then Hefty entered. He leaned  a hand on the edge of the desk, and
the desk creaked. Moving  his jaw slowly,  he seemed to be chewing his words
as he said, "I'm in on it, too. I'm the ringleader."
     "Well. You can consider yourself dismissed. You're also expelled."
     Eight overcoats were missing from the cloakroom now.
     Eight boys trudged across the muddy square, their  feet dragging in the
ooze.  They  were  bent  under  the  weight of  their  school  satchels  and
misfortune. They looked back  at  the school a last time and one of them, it
was Hefty, the boys in the  classroom saw it  was he, shook his fist angrily
at the building.  Everyone in the school who had seen them wanted  to shout,
pound their fists on  their  desks, turn over the lecterns and catch up with
the eight  boys outside. But  the boys in classrooms were pupils, and pupils
were not allowed to make any  noise or express comradely feelings until they
were permitted  to do so by the bell,  which measured out  their portions of
freedom.
     Penpoints scratched across paper and left many a blot.


        PUKIS THE BENEFACTOR

     While the fifth lesson  of  the day was in progress, Joseph  Pukis, his
face very grave, entered the deserted corridor. The janitor was busy washing
the floor Joseph greeted him politely. He spoke beseechingly.
     "Mr. Janitor! I really have to see the principal. It's a matter of life
and the contrary."
     The  principal saw Joseph  in  the  Teachers' Room. He was in a  hurry.
"Yes? What can I do for you? Um.... I don't have very much time."
     "Mister Principal,  Sir, I'm  an old wandering Jew,  and  I can see the
happiness of a family man in your face. I'll bet anything that your children
will never go ban foot or wanton."
     "Get to  the point!  I have no  children. And I have no time to  waste,
either."
     "Just one little minute,  Sir. You expelled eight boys today. And I ask
you, what did  you  expel them? But do I  have  a right  to  ask you?  No! A
thousand  times no. But I have a kind heart. And when you have a kind heart,
you have to speak up. I'm very sorry for  those boys. And I'm still  sorrier
for their parents, who nursed and upbrang them.  Sir  Principal,  you  don't
have any  children.  May God give  y children.  You don't  know how oi-oi-oi
terrible it is when your boy comes home and...."
     "That's enough!" The principal  rose. "This conversation is  senseless.
The exit is over there."
     "Just one little  minute more!" Joseph cried, grabbing the  principal's
sleeve. "But do you know that all those bells, the devil take them, were cut
off by all your pupils? How many boys are there in the school?"
     "There were  two hundred  and  seventy-two until  today," the principal
replied despite himself.
     "Well, at least  two hundred and sixty of them did  the cutting. How do
you that?  And  what  if I  tell you that your best  pupil, the son  of  the
honourable Zemstvo Inspector, may  he live to  be  a hundred,  also  did the
cutting,  and even a  lot better  than  many of the others? The  police only
showed you a piece of it." Joseph took out the complete Manifesto and handed
it to  the principal. The principal paled. There on the sheet of paper  were
the  signatures of  the boys  of all eight  grades.  He pointed  to  a chair
contemptuously and said, "Sit down ... please."
     Then Joseph  told  him  of  his  terms.  The  eight  boys  were  to  be
reinstated. The police would search the Tavern and would find the bells. The
Afon  Recruit  would  lie  low  for  a  while.  He had  agreed  to this. The
townspeople would think that s bums from the  Tavern had cut off the  bells,
and in this way the  boys would be exonerated. That would put an end  to the
scandal.  If, on  the other hand,  the principal did not reinstate the boys,
the very next day the entire town, the entire region  and the entire  school
district would discover  what was going  on under  the roof of the  Pokrovsk
Boys School and what the sons of some Zemstvo inspectors were up to.
     "All right. They'll  be reinstated, but  their names will be entered in
the  Ledger." He pulled out his wallet. "How much  do I owe you for this ...
for this, and to ensure your silence?"
     Joseph jumped to his  feet. Joseph leaned across the desk. Joseph said,
"Sir! You don't have to pay me, Sir. But I swear by the memory of my mother,
may she  rest in  peace  and quiet,  that the time will come when  you'll be
repaid  by me  and by us, and by those eight boys who  went off like whipped
dogs, and you'll be repaid with good interest!"
     Thus ends the saga of the Afon Recruit.


     "FS" AND "D'S"

     After the doorbell  scandal life at  school seemed to have resumed  its
natural  course.  There  were  fewer  bloody  brawls,  fewer rows  and  less
thieving. However, the rules became still stricter.
     Seize'em was forever  shaking the plaster foundations of Antiquity when
he unlocked the bookcase to get the Deportment Ledger and disturbed the aged
Venus.
     Pupils were  absolutely forbidden  to be  seen on or  near the railroad
platform  and  the Public Gardens.  Paralysing, grey boredom oozed over from
one day to the next, from one page of our books to the next.  The Deportment
Ledger was a sword that  hung over our  heads.  Rows of  boys being punished
would be  lined  up along  the walls during classes. The  pages of the class
journals filled up with broken fences of "F's" and big fat "D's".


        ROACHIUS, THE QUESTION MARK

     Veniamin Pustynin, the Latin teacher,  who was nicknamed Roach Whiskers
for his  long, bristling moustache (or, Roachius, to give it a Latin ending)
sowed "F's" and "D's" with a vengeance. He had another nickname as well, one
our class usually used, and that was Crookneck.
     Roachius was thin and  had a  long  nose, and  really  did  look like a
crook.  Above  his  stiffly starched winged collar he had an  extremely long
neck that swayed from side to side just like a  big question  mark. And  so,
wherever he  went,  Roachius would  find a  big question  mark.  It would be
staring at him from the blackboard, the lectern, the  seat of his chair, the
back of his coat, the door to his house. The question marks would  be erased
but would reappear the following day. Roachius would turn pale, lose  weight
and fill our notebooks and report cards with "F's".
     He had a  passion for  little notebooks in  which we  were supposed  to
write down  Latin words. Whenever he called  on a pupil he demanded that the
boy come up to the blackboard with his little Latin notebook.
     "So," he would say. "I see  you've learned the lesson. Now let's have a
look at your  notebook. I want to see  what new words you've put down. What?
You left  it at home? And you dared to come up to the blackboard without it?
Go back to your seat." And he would give the boy an "F".
     No amount of pleading helped. It was an "F", and that was all there was
to it.
     There  were two  boys  in  my  class  whose  last  names  were similar:
Alekseyenko and Aleferenko. One day Alekseyenko left his hateful notebook at
home. Roachius entered the  classroom, sat down at the lectern,  put on  his
pince-nez and said softly:
     "Ale ... ferenko!"
     Aleferenko, whose  seat was  behind Alekseyenko, rose and  went to  the
front of the class, while Alekseyenko, who  in  his terror  had decided that
his name had been called, jumped to his  feet and mumbled in a rolling bass,
"I  forgot my notebook...." He stopped short,  for he  had suddenly  noticed
Aleferenko approaching  the lectern,  and  cursed  himself  for being such a
fool. Roachius calmly dipped his pen into the  inkwell. "Actually,  I called
on  Aleferenko,  but since you've confessed your guilt, you'll get what  you
deserve." And he gave him an "F".


        THE HISTORY TEAM

     The bell  rang, bringing recess to an  end.  The noise in the classroom
died down.
     He was coming!
     The boys rose in a body.
     The history teacher was coming. He had fine blond hair parted  down the
middle,  a very  young,  pale, thin face and  huge blue eyes.  His head  was
tilted slightly in a kindly manner. His collar was snow-white. Kirill  Ukhov
burst into the classroom and tossed the class journal onto the lectern.
     The boys stood at attention.
     Ukhov looked them over,  rushed over to the lectern, then  into  one of
the  aisles  and  crouched  down.   Suddenly  his  blue  eyes  flashed.  His
high-pitched voice  rose  to a shout: "Who!  Dared! To sit!  Down! I haven't
said ... 'Be seated'.  Get up and stay up!  And you! And you, too!  And you!
Wretches!  All the others,  be seated. Hands  on your  desks.  Both of them.
Where's your other hand?  Stand  up and stay up! And  you, over to the wall!
Right there! Well? Silence! Whose desk creaked? Shalferov, was it yours? Get
up! Silence!"
     Fourteen  boys  stood all  through  the  lesson.  The  history  teacher
expounded on ancient kings and famous steeds. He kept fixing  his  tie,  his
hair, his cuffs. A gold bracelet glinted under his  left cuff.  It  was  the
gift of some legendary noblewoman.
     Fourteen boys were standing.  The lesson dragged  on and on. Their legs
became numb. Finally, Ukhov glanced at his watch. The gold lid clicked shut.
Some of the boys by the wall cleared their throats tentatively.
     "Caught cold?" Ukhov inquired with concern. "Monitor, close the window,
there's a draught."
     The monitor closed the window. The  lesson continued. The punished boys
continued to  stand by the wall,  shifting  their weight  from one  foot  to
another. Then, after  having glanced at his watch several times, Ukhov would
suddenly say: "All right, team, be seated."
     The bell always rang exactly a minute later.


        AMONG THE WANDERING DESKS

     Our French  teacher's  name was Matryona Martynovna Badeikina,  but she
insisted we refer to her as Mathilde Martynovna. We never argued the point.
     She   called   the   first-to-third   grade   boys   "polliwogs",   the
third-to-sixth grade boys "dearies" and the senior boys "gentlemen". She was
definitely  afraid of the polliwogs.  Some of them had moustaches as wild as
the  weeds on an empty  lot,  and their voices were so deep and fearful they
frightened the camels on the street. Besides, whenever a polliwog came up to
the  lectern to recite  a  lesson, the smell of  home-grown  tobacco  was so
strong on his breath it nearly made poor Mathilde sick.
     "Don't  come  any closer!"  she  would  wail.  "The  smell, pardon,  is
overwhelming."
     "It was the  tomato pie I had," the  polliwog would  explain  politely.
"The smell's because I'm burping."
     "Ah,  mon dieu!  What  has  the pie  to do with it?  You're  absolutely
drenched in nicotine."
     "Oh, no, Matryona ... I mean, Mathilde Martynovna! I don't smoke.  And,
uh ... please, pooeejekiteh la class?" (This should have been "Pui-je quitte
la class?")
     This would melt Matryona's heart. One had only to ask for permission to
leave the room in  French for her to beam  happily. Actually, we thought she
was  too  sensitive.  If  anyone  wrote  some  obscenity  in  French on  the
blackboard,  or tacked a  dead rat  to the lectern, or  did anything else in
jest,  she  would always get  offended.  She  would enter it  in  the  class
journal, get  all  huffy, cover  her face with  her ham and  just  sit there
saying nothing. And we would be silent, too. Then, at a sign from Hefty, the
desks  would begin  to  close  in on the lectern slowly.  We  were  great at
coasting  around  in  our desks,  with our knees raising them  and our  feet
moving  along  the  floor.  When all  the  boys  grouped  around  her  in  a
semicircle, we would chant softly:
     "Je vous aime, je vous aime, je vous aime."
     Matryona Martynovna would take her hands from her face and see the des]
all  around  her. Then  Hefty  would  rise  and say  in  a  deep,  touching,
chivalrous voice:
     "Pardon, Mathilde Martynovna!  Don't be  too hard on your polliwogs....
Haw Scratch out what you wrote in the journal or we won't let you out."
     Matryona would beam and scratch it out.
     The boys would then beat a solemn tattoo on their desk tops. The back n
would play taps. The desks would retreat.
     However, we soon tired of declaring our love  to the mam'-selle and so,
instead of "je vous aime" we  began saying "Novouzensk", which  sounded just
like  it. In fact, when we chanted it, you couldn't tell the difference. And
so poor Mathilde went  on imagining  that the  boys all loved  her, while we
were chanting the name a nearby town.
     However, it all ended sadly. Other objects besides  our desks soon fell
prey to < wanderlust. Thus, a large bookcase once set out down the corridor,
and  Seize'em's galoshes glided out of  the Teachers'  Room. However, when a
lectern, with He  and  a friend under it  to provide  motor power, reared up
just  before a lesson a galloped around,  the principal's spirit took a hand
in  the  table-tilting  and the t culprits had their names  put  down in the
Black  Book,  while the rest of the class  was made to stay after school for
two hours and miss their dinners.


     HIS ROYAL MAJESTY'S BIRTHDAY

     Looking  through  the classroom windows  that morning  we could see the
fluttering red, blue and white slices of the flag.
     It was a  red-letter day on the  calendar, marked by the notation: "His
Royal Majesty's Birthday."
     The cracked bell of Pokrovsk's Peter and Paul Church rang out:
     "An-ton! An-ton! An-ton!
     And a lit-the ring and bong-bong,
     And a lit-the ring and bong-bong."
     There was a special service at the school at eleven o'clock.
     The boys  were lined up  in pairs. The stiff, silver-stitched edges  of
our high collars cut into our necks.
     All was still. There  was a smell of  incense  in the air.  It was very
close. The priest, the very same one who hit the boys over the head with the
Bible during Bible classes as he admonished them, saying "Stand up straight,
you dolt!" was now solemnly reading the  service  in  a nasal voice. He  was
dressed in  glittering robes  for the  occasion.  The choir sang. The small,
hairy precentor scurried up and down.
     We were to stand stiffly at attention for two long hours. We could  not
so  much as move a muscle. My nose itched, but I dared  not  scratch it. Our
arms had to be in line with the seams of our trousers. All was still. It was
hot and stuffy.
     "Long life to the Tsar! Glo-ory to him!"
     "Bozhenov's going to be sick, Nikolai Ilyich."
     "Shhh! Not a word! He would't dare!"
     "Glo-oo-ry to him!"
     "Honest,  Nikolai  Ilyich. He  can't hold it in  any  more. He's  going
to...."
     "Shhh!"
     All was still.  And  suffocating.  My nose itched. This was discipline.
Hands  and arms in  line  with  your seams. The second hour was drawing to a
close.
     "Go-oo-d save the Tsar!"
     The principal took a  step forward, and it seemed that  he  had fired a
child's popgun when he cried: "Hooray!"
     "Hoo-ra-aa-aa-ay!"
     The walls shook. The principal again cried:
     "Hooray!"
     "Hoora-aa-aa-ay!"
     And once more. Heave-ho, all together now!
     "Hooray!"
     "AA.-.aghh...."
     "Nukolai Ilyich! Bozhenov's throwing up all over the floor!"
     "God save the Tsar...."
     Bozhenov was carried out.  He had fainted.  The service was over. Now I
could at  last scratch  my nose  and unbutton the  top  button  of my  stiff
collar.


        SCIENCE KNOWS MANY MITACS

     We had always known, from Annushka having told  us, that "science knows
many  mitacs". This was the secret formula for guessing a card trick, and it
always  helped  you to pick  the right  pair. Which meant  that science  was
indeed all-powerful and did know many ... uh... mitacs. But no one knew what
a "mitac" was. We looked for the word in the  encyclopaedia, but although we
found "Mitau" (with a notation:  "see Jelgova"), we couldn't find a trace of
"mitac".
     I next learned of the  significance of  science in school. However, the
overwhelming of science was not proved as conclusively to us there as it was
in  Annushka's card trick. Science,  as  dry  and undigestible  as  sawdust,
rained  upon  us from the  lectern, powdering our  heads  generously  in the
process.  None of the teachers could  tell  us anything  definite  about the
mitacs. The second-year pupils suggested I ask the Latin teacher.
     "Where  did  you hear  that word?" he  asked,  playing  for  time,  for
Roachius was a very conceited man.
     The big boys fell silent, waiting to see what would come next.
     "Our cook said..." I began amidst the general uproar.
     "Go  stand  in the  corner till the bell  rings," he  snapped,  turning
beet-red. "Thank God the curriculum does not call  for the study of pots and
pans. Stop up your spout, you moron!"
     And  I stopped up my spout. I  realized that the  school curriculum was
not intended to satisfy, as they then said, our spiritual requirements.
     In search of the truth I once  again  fled to the wide  open  spaces of
Schwambrania. The  main character of our arithmetic  book, modestly known as
"A man". the very same one who had bought 25 3/4 yards of cloth at 3 roubles
a yard and  had  then  resold  it at 5 roubles a yard, was  losing a  lot of
money,  because  of Schwambrania.  And two travellers, one setting out  from
point  A and  the other  from point B,  could never  meet, because they were
wandering about in Schwambrania. However,  the  population of  Schwambrania,
represented by Oska, greeted my return with joy.


        A PLACE ON THE MAP

     Having returned to the  Big Tooth  Continent, I immediately set  out to
carry  out some reforms. Firstly,  Schwambrania had  to be  given a definite
place on the map We found a good  spot for it in the Southern Hemisphere, in
the middle of  the ocean. Thus,  whenever it was winter in Pokrovsk, it  was
summer in Schwambrania, or the only kind of game that is any fun is one that
takes you far away to another clime.
     Now Schwambrania was firmly set on the map. The Big Tooth Continent was
situated in the Pacific Ocean to the east of Australia, having absorbed some
of  the  islands of  Oceania. Its northern borders,  reaching  as far as the
equator,  had a flourishing tropical flora, while its southern borders  were
frozen wastelands, lying in close proximity to the Antarctic.
     I then shook  the contents of all the books  I had ever  read onto  the
soil  of Schwambrania. Oska,  who  was  determined to keep abreast, was busy
learning new words and confusing  them terribly. No sooner would I come home
from school than he would draw me aside and whisper:
     "I've got news for you! Jack went to  Camera, to hunt chocolates, and a
hundred wild Balkans attacked  him, and  started killing him!  And just then
Miss  Terracota started smoking.  It's  a good  thing his faithful dog Sarah
Bemhardt saved him just in time."
     And it was  up to me to figure  out  that Oska meant the Cameroons, not
camera,  cannibals, not the Balkans, and cachalots, not chocolates.  It  was
easy to guess that he had confused Sarah Bemhardt and a St. Bernard dog. And
the reason he called the volcano  a Miss  was because I had  told  him about
emissions of rocks.


        THE ORIGIN OF SCOUNDRELS

     We were growing older. The letters of my script had firmly taken hands,
and my  lines were now as even as rows  of soldiers. Now that we  were a bit
older we became convinced that there was very  little symmetry in the world,
and that there were no absolutely  straight  lines, completely round circles
or flat  surfaces. Nature,  we discovered, was  contradictory, imperfect and
zig-zagged. This state of affairs had come about as a result of the constant
battles  being waged  by the forces of  nature.  The jagged  contours of the
continents were a  reflection of this struggle.  The  sea battered into  the
mainland, while the continents thrust their fingers into the  blue locks  of
the sea.
     The time had come for us to review the borders of Schwambrania. Thus, a
new map was drawn up.
     That  was  when we  noticed that all struggle was not confined  to  the
realm of geography. All of life  was  ruled by some sort of struggle,  which
hummed  in  the hold of history and propelled it. Even our own  Schwambrania
became  dull and  lifeless without it.  Our game  became as uneventful  as a
stagnant pond  of  water.  At that time we  did not yet know  what sort of a
struggle powered history. Living in our  cosy apartment, we had no chance to
discover anything about the great, all-consuming struggle for  survival, and
so decided that  every war,  every overthrown government, etc.,  was no more
than a  struggle between good  and evil. It was as simple  as that. That was
why  we had  to put several scoundrels  in  Schwambrania to liven things up.
Bloodthirsty  Count  Chatelains  Urodenal  became  the  chief  scoundrel  of
Schwambrania.
     At the  time all the magazines carried ads for Chatelain's  Urodenal, a
popular patent remedy for kidney and liver stones. The ads carried a picture
of  a man  racked by pain, with the  pain  depicted as  pincers gripping the
unfortunate's body; or else, there was a picture of a  man  using  a clothes
brush  to brush  a  huge  human  kidney.  We  decided  that  these would  be
considered the crimes committed by the bloodthirsty count.


        THE TOP OF THE WORLD

     Although the rooftops belonged to the real world,  they were high above
the  dull earth and were not subject to its laws. The roofs were occupied by
Schwambranians.  Up and  down  the steep sides, over the attics and eaves, I
set off  on my  dizzying journeys.  I could  travel the length of a block by
going from roof to roof and never once touch the ground. It was wonderful to
watch the sky at twilight as I lay  on  the cooling iron  roof,  between the
chimney and the  birdhouse  pole.  The  sky  was  so close as it  drifted by
overhead, and the roof drifted off into the clouds. The starling on duty was
whistling on the mast. The day, like a great ship, was sailing into evening,
raising the red oars of sunset and casting shadows as pointed as the tips of
an anchor into the yard.
     However, no one was allowed to be out on the roofs. The janitor and his
broom guarded the heavenly approaches. He was vigilant and unbending.
     People who lived in  other houses and saw me  thundering  across  their
roofs  would shout:  "Shame  on you!  A doctor's  son gallivanting over  the
rooftops!" Actually, I could not understand why a doctor's son was doomed to
crawl  on  the ground. But  the  confounded label of  "doctor's son"  was  a
killjoy, a ball-and-chain that forced us to be goody-goodies.
     One  day  the janitor tracked me down.  He came crashing over  the iron
roof  after  me.  I wanted  to  jump into the  next  yard,  but  someone had
unleashed a  vicious-looking mutt there.  In  another  yard  the  owner  was
standing outside  in his long Johns and a  vest. He  said he would guarantee
"an  earboxing and  scolderation".  Just  then I  noticed  a ladder  leaning
against an adjoining roof. I stuck my  tongue out at the janitor and escaped
across the third yard.


        PLAYING STICKBALL IN THE LILACS

     The little yard  I found  myself  in was  full of lilac bushes  in full
bloom, which made it seem  as though everything  in sight  was covered  with
lavender froth.
     I heard someone approaching lightly from behind. A smiling  girl with a
long  golden  braid  came running out  of  the  garden.  She  was carrying a
jump-rope. She stopped and stared at me. I backed away towards the gate.
     "What made you run like that?"
     "The janitor."
     The girl had dancing dark eyes that looked like the  black India rubber
balls we used  for playing stickball. I felt that I  had to  bat a long one,
but I couldn't run. The  rules of the game said that you'd surely be blocked
if another player stood opposite.
     "Are you afraid of janitors?"
     "I don't want  to waste my time on them!" I said in a deep  bass voice.
"Actually, I spit  on them, through  my teeth and  over my shoulder." And  I
stuck my hands into my pockets.
     The  girl  looked  at  me  with awe.  "What do you  mean  by over  your
shoulder?"
     I showed her how it was done. We were silent for a while. Then the girl
said, "What grade are you in?"
     "The first."
     "So am I." She beamed.
     We were silent again.
     "One of the girls in my class can wiggle her  ears.  We all  envy her,"
she said.
     "That's nothing! There's a  fellow in my class who can spit and hit the
ceiling. He's this big! He can lay  you flat with his right hand tied behind
his back. And if he hits a desk top with his fist he can crack it. Only they
won't let him do it. Otherwise, he sure as anything would."
     We were silent again. An organ-grinder began playing a mournful song. I
looked around the yard in search of a  topic for conversation. The house was
sailing through  the sky.  A large kite with a rag tail  shot over the roof,
dipped, straightened and tugged away as it soared higher still.
     "My buckle will  never get yellow," I said to my own surprise, "because
it's nickel-plated. If you want to, you can touch it."  I  unbuckled my belt
and  held it  out  to  her. The girl  touched the  buckle politely. I became
bolder, took  off my school cap and showed her where my first and last names
had been written in  indelible ink  inside the hatband to make sure it would
not get lost. The girl read my name.
     "My name's Taya. My  full name is Taisia Opilova. What do they call you
short? Lenny?"
     "No, Lelya. Glad to know you."
     "Lelya? That's a girl's name!"
     "It is not. Lola is."
     We thus became acquainted.


        THE FIRST SCHWAMBRANIAN GIRL

     From then on T, a free  son of Schwambrania, climbed down the roof into
lilac  valley  each  day.  Taya  Opilova  was" fated  to become  the  Eve of
Schwabrania. Oska was dead set  against it. He said he wouldn't  take a girl
into the game for all the  pastries in the world. True enough, there had not
been a single girl Schwambrania until  then. I tried to make  him understand
that  in  any  s  respecting book  fair maidens  were always  kidnapped  and
rescued,  and that r they could  be  kidnapped and rescued  in Schwambrania,
too. Besides, I ha wonderful name for the first Schwambranian girl: Countess
Cascara Sagrada, daughter of Count  Cascara Barbe.  I had  borrowed the name
from a back cove  Niva and recalled that it had been described as  "mild and
gentle".  Oska  fin  had  to  agree,  and so,  little  by  little,  I  began
introducing Cascara, meaning  Taya the customs and ways of  Schwambrania. At
first she couldn't understand what was all about, but then gradually came to
know  the  history and geography of Big Tooth  Continent. She was  sworn  to
secrecy.
     I finally conquered her heart when I put on my cardboard epaulettes and
said  I was  going off to war with Piliguinia and  would  bring  her  back a
trophy.
     I returned from my Piliguinian  campaign the following day and galloped
along the roof, carrying my trophies: two cream-filled pastries. One for her
and one me. Oska had had a bite of mine.
     I jumped off the wall and froze in my  tracks. A strange boy dressed in
uniform of the Cadet School was walking up and down in the garden with Taya.
He was much  older and taller than I.  He  had real shoulder straps, a  real
bayonet in a holster, and was terribly stuck-up.
     "Ah!" he said at the sight of me. "Is this your Schwambroman?"
     Taya had told him all about it.
     "Look here, you civilian boy,"  the  cadet said in a very superior tone
of voice.
     "How could you have given a young lady such a disgusting name? You know
what Cascara Sagrada is?  It's,  pardon the expression, constipation  pills.
You filthy civvy! Anybody can tell you're a doctor's sonny-boy."
     This was the last straw.
     "Once a cadet  always a cad!"  I shouted and scrambled up  the roof.  I
threw half of the pastry at the  cadet and  then ate the other pastry  and a
half.
     I stretched out on the roof. I was very upset by what had happened. The
starling on  duty was whistling overhead.  I sailed  away  to  Schwambrania,
proud and lonely, and the day,  like  a great ship, sailed into evening. The
sunset raised its red oars, and shadows as  pointed as the tips of an anchor
fell upon the yard.
     "To hell with everything!" I said.
     But this did not apply to Schwambrania.

        THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES


        THE THEATRE OF MILITARY OPERATIONS

     A battle  was raging in the house. Brother was set against brother. The
disposition  of warring forces  was  as follows: Schwambrania was in  Papa's
consulting office and Piliguinia was in the dining-room. The parlour was the
battle-field. The stockade for prisoners of war was in the dark foyer.
     Naturally,  as  the  elder  brother,  I  was  a  Schwambranian.  I  was
advancing, protected by the armchair and a clump of potted rubber plants and
rhododendrons. My brother Oska  had  dug in behind the Piliguinian threshold
of the dining-room. He was shouting:
     "Bang! Zing! Zing! I shot you dead twice,  but you  keep on crawling. I
say fins!"
     "No,  not fins! It's  called a truce!  And anyway, you didn't shoot  me
dead, you just grazed me through."
     Klavdia,  a girl from next door, was pining away in the foyer, that  is
the stockade. She had been  invited  over especially to be a prisoner-of-war
and was, in turn, a Schwambranian or a Piliguinian Army nurse.
     "Will you let me  out of  prisoner-of-war soon?" she  said timidly, for
she had become very bored sitting around in the dark doing nothing.
     "Not yet!" I  shouted.  "Our glorious forces have completed  an orderly
retreat to  pre-established  positions  under the  overwhelming pressure  of
enemy forces." I had borrowed  the sentence  from  the newspapers. The daily
frontline  dispatches were  full of fine-sounding,  vague  expressions which
were  used to  conceal various military setbacks, losses, defeats and routs,
and all together they went under the grand heading of news from the "theatre
of military operations".
     The  glossy  pictures  in  Niva  portrayed  fine, well  groomed  troops
ceremoniously  carrying  on a  picturesque  war.  The  generals'  impressive
shoulders  bore  gilded clusters  of  epaulettes.  Their tunics  heaved with
galaxies  of glittering  medals. The brave Cossack hero Kuzma  Kriuchkov was
shown  accomplishing his  great  feat over  and  over again  on pictures  in
calendars,  on  cigarette boxes, post cards and  candy boxes.  He was  shown
defeating a troop, a squadron, a whole regiment  of Germans, and always with
a lock of hair curling out from under  his rakishly tilted cap.  Each school
service ended  with a  special  prayer for  the  truly Christian  troops. We
schoolboys wore patriotic tricoloured scarfs as we  sold little Allied flags
in the streets, putting the coppers in collection boxes and proudly saluting
the trim officers.
     The  war  eclipsed  everything.  "Louder  the  victory  march!  We  are
victorious, and the enemy is on the run!" There were notices and manifestoes
everywhere. "The original has been signed by His Imperial Majesty." The war,
that  great,  beautiful,  magnificent  war,  had  captured  our  minds,  our
conversation, our dreams, our games.
     The only game we played was war.
     The truce had ended.  My troops were battling at the approaches  to the
foyer. Annushka, who was a neutral, suddenly  appeared on the  battle-field,
demanding  that Klavdia be  released  immediately,  because  her  mother was
waiting for her in the kitchen.
     We all said  "fins", which meant  a  truce,  and ran  to  the  kitchen.
Klavdia mother,  who was our neighbour's  cook, always  had a puffy, swollen
face.  She  was seated  at  the kitchen table. A grey envelope  was lying in
front  of her. She  greeted  us and picked it  up  gingerly, saying, "It's a
letter from your brother, Klavdia." He voice sounded strangely anxious. "Ask
the young man to read it to us. Dear Lon I hope he's all right."
     I saw the sacred postmark: "From the Army in the Field". I accepted the
envelope solemnly.  My fingertips  filled with  awe and excitement. It was a
letter  from over  there! A letter  from the front lines! "March  along,  my
friends, to war, hussar bold and daring!"
     I began reading in a bright, excited voice: "Dear Mother, I'm not going
to send this  letter myself, because I was badly  wounded, and  my right arm
was amputate above the elbow...."
     I was thunderstruck, I could not continue. Klavdia's mother screamed. H
dishevelled head fell upon the  table top  and she  sobbed loudly. I  wanted
very much to  console  her somehow, and  myself,  too,  for I felt  that the
reputation of t war had been badly damaged by this close  scrape with  gore,
and so I said hesitantly:
     "He'll probably be decorated for this. Maybe he'll get  a silver medal.
May he'll even get a St. George Cross."
     Somehow, I felt I had not said the right thing.


        A VIEW OF THE WAR FROM THE WINDOW

     A  dull algebra  lesson was in progress. Our math teacher was sick, and
his classes had been taken over temporarily by the  dullest of  all possible
excise tax clerks  w was dodging the draft. His name was Gennady Alexeyevich
Samlykov, and soon nicknamed him Old Nag.
     Soldiers of the  214th Regiment were drilling on the square outside the
school. Their marching  songs  and the shouted commands  of  their  officers
drifted through  the open windows, confusing the  algebraic  formulas. "Hey,
Kitty, Kitty, Kitty, Madrid and Oporto!" they sang. "Line up! Count off!"
     "Curly,  curly,   curly  ringlets,  little  Curlylocks,  you're  mine!"
"Hup-two-three-four!  Left!  Keep your line straight!" "Come when the  bugle
calls, brave men to battle!" "Watch your  feet! Where the hell  d'you  think
you are? Stand up straight!"
     "Yes, Sir!"
     "Charge!"
     "Ra-aa-aaay!"
     This  loud, rending  "hooray"  burst forth from their gaping mouths and
straining throats in a hoarse, salivery roar. Their bayonets sunk  into  the
dummy. Twisted strands of straw burst from the torn sack of a belly.
     "Who's  that  looking  out  the   window?  Repeat  what  I  just  said,
Martynenko."
     Huge  Martynenko, alias  Hefty,  tore  his  eyes  from the  window  and
lumbered to his feet.
     "Well,  what  did I  just say?" Old Nag  persisted. "So you don't know?
Well, what is the squared sum of two cathetuses?"
     "It's ... uh...." Hefty mumbled  and  suddenly winked  at  us and said:
"It's right face ... count off ... plus doubled ranks."
     We all burst out laughing.
     "You get an T for that! Go stand by the wall!"
     "Yes, Sir!" Hefty  snapped and  did a military turn at the wall. We all
grinned. Our penpoints screeched.
     "Leave the room immediately, Martynenko!"
     "Parade step ... eyes on the lectern ... down the hall... march!" Hefty
rasped.
     "This  is  abominable!" Old Nag shouted as he jumped to his feet. "I'll
put your name down in the Ledger! You'll be left after school!"
     "Curly locks, curly locks...." a snatch of song drifted  in through the
window. "What the  hell do  you  think  you're  doing?  You're to  stand  at
attention with a full pack for three hours.... Curly locks, curly locks...."


        FIRST GUN, ACHOO!

     Cr-rack!  went  something  inside  the  wood-burning  stove behind  the
blackboard. Cr-rack!  Bang-bang!  One of the boys, knowing Old Nag's fear of
guns and shooting,  had  put some  cartridges  inside the  tiled stove.  The
teacher blanched  as  acrid fumes seeped into  the room. He  ran behind  the
blackboard,  stepping on what seemed to be  a  crumpled  piece of paper. The
boys held their breath. Bang! The paper exploded, making Old Nag jump a yard
off the floor. No sooner had the sole of his other shoe come down again than
it caused another explosion. The boys, convulsed with silent laughter, began
sliding off their seats to disappear under their  desks. The enraged teacher
turned  to face  the class  and  saw no one.  Not a soul. We shook  from the
laughter under our desks.
     "Scoundrels!" Old  Nag screamed.  "I'll put you  all down!" He  tiptoed
cautiously  towards  the  lectern.  The soles of his  shoes were smoking. He
picked up  his  snuff box,  a true friend  in hard times,  but since he  had
unwisely left it  on the windowsill in the corridor for  a moment before the
lesson had begun,  we had long since added  a pinch of gun-powder and pepper
to it.
     Old Nag's quivering nostrils drew in the fiendish mixture. For a moment
he  just stood  there.  His mouth was  wide  open and  his eyes seemed to be
popping out of his head. Then a terrible, earth-shattering sneeze shook  his
body.
     Once again the classroom  became inhabited. Our laughter made our desks
shake. Then Hefty raised his hand and said, "Second gun! Fire!"
     "Ah-ah-choo!" the unfortunate Old Nag compiled.
     "Third gun...."
     "Pshoo! Ah!"
     The door opened unexpectedly. We rose, as the principal entered. He had
been attracted  by  the sound  of the shooting, our ribald laughter  and the
teacher's hysterical sneezing.
     "What's  going on here?" His voice was steely as he took  in  Old Nag's
crimson face and the angelic countenances of the rows of boys.
     "They.... Oh! Ah!" Old Nag attempted to speak. "Pshoo! Ah!"
     At this  point the monitor  decided to  intercede. "He  just  keeps  on
sneezing, Sir!"
     "I haven't asked you for an explanation!" The truth of the matter began
to  dawn  on  him.  "Insufferable  wretches!  Come  to  my  office,  Gennady
Alexeyevich."
     Old Nag stumbled along after the principal, sneezing all the way.
     He did not return to the classroom.
     We had got rid of Old Nag for good.


        THE CLASS COMMANDER AND THE COMPANY SUPERVISOR

     "There's a smell of  gunpowder  in the air!" the grown-ups  were saying
and shaking their heads.
     The smell  of  gunpowder snaked  through the  classrooms,  making  them
inflammable. Every  desk became a powder magazine, an arsenal and storeroom.
Each and every day there were new entries in the Deportment Ledger.

     "The  school inspector has taken  from Vitaly Talianov,  a fourth-grade
pupil  who  attempted  to run off to war and was apprehended at the  pier, a
Smith and Wesson revolver  and  bullets, and a tea kettle  he stole from the
ragman, who has identified it. His parents have been notified.
     Nikolai Shcherbinin, a second-grade  pupil, was found to have concealed
in his  desk:  one officer's  shoulder strap, a  sword knot,  a  package  of
gunpowder and a hollow metal tube of unknown purpose. His satchel contained:
a piece of a bayonet, a toy revolver, one spur, a soldier's tobacco pouch, a
cockade,  a  beanshooter  and a hand grenade (discharged). He  has been left
after school twice for three hours each time.
     "Terenti  Marshutin, a  fifth-grade pupil,  fired  off  a home-made gun
during the lesson, breaking a window  and fouling the air. He insists it was
an accident. He has been expelled for a week."

     The boys rattled when they walked, for the pockets of each were full of
cartridge shells. We collected them on the firing range beyond the cemetery.
The  wind played tick-tack-toe  among the graves.  The  rabbit-ears  of  the
windmills  protruded from  behind the hill. An Army camp  languished on  the
small plain.  The 214th Infantry  Regiment was displaced in  wooden barracks
there. The wind carried the smell of cabbage soup, cheap tobacco, boots, and
other glorious aromas of the army's rear guard.
     The pupils of the  Pokrovsk Boys  School and the privates of the  214th
Infantry Regiment had established firm  business ties and were carrying on a
brisk trade. We  passed our sandwiches, cucumbers, apples  and various other
civilian dainties through the barbed-wire fence  of the  camp, and in return
received such  coveted items  of  army  life as  empty  magazines,  buckles,
cockades and torn shoulder straps. Officer's shoulder straps were especially
prized.  Sidor  Dolbanov,  an N.C.O.,  traded me a tar-specked  lieutenant's
shoulder  strap for two ham sandwiches, a piece of chocolate and five  of my
father's Triumph cigarettes.
     "I'm giving you  this real cheap," he said during the transaction. "I'm
only doing  it because you're  a  friend  of mine.  The way  I see  it,  you
schoolboys  are  doing your hitch just like us. They make  you wear uniforms
and drill, too. Right?"
     Sidor Dolbanov was a great one  for discoursing  on  education. "Except
that military science  takes  a lot of brains, so's you can't compare it  to
your schooling," he  philosophised  as he wolfed down  our sandwiches. "Yes,
sir, this isn't 'rithmetic or algebra, or any such like. You tell me this if
you're so smart: how many men are there in a regiment?"
     "We  didn't study that yet," I said, feeling very  embarrassed and  not
knowing the answer.
     "That's  what  I mean. What  about your  class commander, boys? Is he a
mean old bitch?"
     "He's very strict. He'll make you stand by the wall, put your name down
in the Black Book or keep you hours after school for nothing at all."
     "What a louse! Which makes him just like our company commander."
     "Do you have a company supervisor, too?"
     "No, he's  no supervisor,  he's  a  bitch of a commander. He's  hell on
wheels, that's him,  Lieutenant Gennady Alexeyevich Samlykov."" "Old Nag!" I
gasped.


        SOLDIER BOYS

     The older  boys of. our school  were strolling down Breshka Street with
some junior lieutenants. Although it  was against school rules, an exception
had been made for  our  glorious  Army officers. Soldiers saluted  them. The
older schoolgirls who  helped roll bandages made eyes at them. We were green
with envy.
     One day the school inspector entered our classroom during a lesson. His
beard looked kindly and reverential,
     "The first contingent of wounded from the front lines has just arrived.
We are  going  to welcome them. You there, in  the back rows! I'm talking to
you! Tutin! I'll leave you after  school for an hour, you dummox!  Now, as I
was saying, the entire school will go out  to welcome our glorious  soldiers
who ... ah ... have suffered so, defending the tsar and the Christian faith.
In a word, line up in pairs! And I want  you to behave properly outside, you
cutthroats, savages, jailbirds! Anyone who doesn't will be sorry he was ever
born."
     The streets were crowded and ablaze with tricoloured flags. The wounded
were being transported,  one man  to  a vehicle, in the decked-out carriages
belonging to the town's wealthy citizens, with an aristocratic lady from the
local philanthropic society  dressed  as  an Army nurse supporting  him. The
procession resembled a wedding train. Policemen saluted it.
     The wounded were put up in  a new dispensary housed in a former primary
school. The flustered ladies were in charge there. A gala concert was to  be
held in one of the  large wards. The  wounded  men,  freshly-shaven, washed,
perfumed,  surrounded by  pillows  and boxes  of  candy, sat in  embarrassed
silence, listening to the  bombastic speeches  of the town fathers. Some  of
the men were holding crutches that had been adorned with bows.
     Shvetsov,  a   fourth-grade  boy,  recited  a  poem  entitled  "Belgian
children". Six  second-grade boys were lined up behind him to  accompany his
recital with various tableaux. The Zemstvo inspector's daughter played  "The
Skylark"  by  Glinka   on  the  piano.  The  wounded  fidgeted   and  seemed
uncomfortable.  The last to  perform was the  town druggist, an amateur poet
and  tenor. Then  a tall young blond soldier  rose from  one of the cots and
cleared his throat shyly.
     "Speech! Speech!" everyone shouted, applauding loudly.
     When the noise  finally  died  down, the  soldier  said, "I'd  like  to
say.... Doctor, Sir,  and  ladies and gentlemen, and nurses,  and  everybody
else. Uh, we're very grateful to you for all this,  for everything, but we'd
rather,  I mean, we've been travelling for three days and three nights,  and
we haven't had any sleep, and that's what we really need."


        THE SPIRIT OF THE TIMES

     Soldiers were being flogged in the barracks. One officer called another
an  Armenian  mug  at  the  Officer's Club, and  the insulted  man shot  the
offender point-blank, killing him on the spot. By now the wounded were being
brought in any which way and dumped wherever there was available space.
     Then  our   forces  took  Peremyshl.  A  crowd  of  shopkeepers,  shady
characters from  the suburbs  and a few officials walked through the streets
with  a portrait of the  tsar like an icon at  the head of the  column. They
infected the air with howling tricoloured flutterings and the sour stench of
raw liquor. It was quite as if some celebration  were being warmed up over a
spirit burner.
     Once  again the  school  inspector  went  from classroom  to  classroom
carrying his solemn, parted, victorious beard as majestically as  if it were
a gonfalon.
     We  poured  out  onto  the porch  of  the school building to greet  the
demonstrators and,  at  a  signal  from the principal, we cheered. There was
something  disgusting about  the bellowing crowd of demonstrators. It seemed
that they needed but  a little push to start rioting and killing. We felt as
if a  mindless, suffocating,  insurmountable force was  engulfing us. It was
like  being on the bottom of a pile during  a free-for-all, squashed under a
great, crushing, suffocating weight, unable to expand your lungs to cry out.
     However, it all ended without incident,  not counting a call that night
to my father, to save the  life  of  a  "patriot" who had got  drunk on wood
alcohol.
     The  demonstration  made an  indelible impression  on  Oska, that great
confuser of things, imitator  and day-dreamer, who always managed  to find a
new meaning  for  each object, seeing in  each  its second  soul. His  great
passion at  the time was an old toilet seat. First,  he stuck a samovar pipe
through the hole and  made believe it was a Maxim machine-gun. Then  he  put
the toilet seat on his hobby horse, and it served as a yoke. Though this was
not exactly in the  best of taste,  still,  it was permissible. However, the
day after the  demonstration Oska organized a Schwambranian demonstration in
the yard, and this one was truly blasphemous. Klavdia had attached someone's
long drawers  with  ties  at  the  ankles  to a  floor  brush to serve as  a
gonfalon.  Oska  carried the ill-fated  toilet seat,  which now served  as a
frame for the portrait of the tsar, Nicholas  II, Ruler of all Russia, which
he had cut out of a magazine.
     The  indignant  janitor  handed  the  demonstrators  over  to  Papa and
threatened to inform the police, but was quickly pacified by a tip.
     "Children are very sensitive to the spirit of the times," the grown-ups
said meaningfully.
     The spirit of the times, an offensive spirit, seeped into everything.


        WE RECEIVE MILITARY TRAINING

     That winter the boys of  our school  and the girls of the  Girls School
were  all taken to the Army camp to be shown a  mock battle.  It was a cold,
snowy day.
     A  colonel  explained the battle  to the ladies  of  the  philanthropic
society. The ladies warmed their hands in their muffs and oh-ed  and  ah-ed,
and  whenever  a  shot  was  fired they clapped their  hands to  their ears.
However, the battle was very unimpressive and certainly did not resemble the
battle scenes pictured in Niva. Black shapes were crawling across the field.
Fires dotted  the scene, blending to produce a smokescreen. Then other fires
were lit. We were told these were signal fires.
     From a  distance  the  cross-firing,  as it  advanced  along the lines,
sounded like a pennant flapping  in the wind. The stench of the trenches was
overpowering.
     "They're attacking," the colonel said.
     The   dark  shapes   were   running   and   shouting   "Hooray!"   very
matter-of-factly.
     "The battle is over," the colonel said.
     "Which side won?" the spectators inquired, having understood nothing.
     The colonel was silent for a moment and then said: "That side." Then he
looked  up  and warned everyone:  "The  bomb-thrower  is about  to  go  into
action."
     Indeed, it did and very loudly at that. The  ladies  became frightened,
the cabbies'  horses bolted, and the cabbies cursed in  the direction of the
sky.
     The battle was over.
     The company that had taken part in  the action passed in formation, led
by  a  sly-looking  junior lieutenant.  When  they  came  abreast of us  the
soldiers burst  into  a  dirty  song  with  a  practiced air,  some  of them
whistling shrilly and straining their cold throats.
     The  girls  exchanged glances.  The  boys roared. One  of the  teachers
cleared  his  throat.  The  fat headmistress  of  the  Girls  School  became
indignant.
     "Lieutenant!" the colonel shouted. "What's going on? Stop the singing."
     Bringing up the rear, stumbling in  boots that were much too  large and
becoming entangled  in  the long  flaps of his great-coat was a small,  puny
soldier. He tried  to keep  in step,  hopping  and skipping  to keep up, but
still fell behind. The boys recognized him. He was the father of  one of the
poor boys.
     "Hey, look  at that dopey soldier! His  son's in the third grade. There
he is!"
     Everyone laughed.  The little man picked up the flaps of  his greatcoat
and set off at a trot as  he  tried to  catch up with his  company. His head
bobbed at the end of his long neck. His son stood on the  sidelines, staring
at the ground. His face was covered with red blotches.
     Oska was waiting for me impatiently when I  got  home, for he wanted to
hear all about the battle.
     "Was there a lot of shooting?"
     "I never knew war wasn't one bit nice at all," I replied.


        A DAPPLED GREY

     The year was drawing to a close. It was vacation time. On December  31,
1916,  our  parents  went  to  a New  Year's  party. Before  leaving.  Mamma
explained to us at length that "New Year's is not a children's party at all,
and you must go to bed at the usual time".
     Oska  tooted a sailing signal and sailed off  to Schwambrania  for  the
night. Meanwhile, my  friend and classmate Grisha Fedorov came to visit  me.
We cracked nuts and played lotto  for a while. Then, having nothing  else to
do, we went fishing in Papa's fishbowl. Finally,  we got bored of this, too,
turned off the light,  sat down by the window and,  after  warming  the pane
with our breath, made little  holes on the  frozen glass and looked out into
the street.
     The  moon was shining, and dull  blue shadows lay across the  snow. The
air was full of powdery, brilliant glitter. The street seemed magnificent.
     "Let's go for a walk," Grisha said.
     However, it was against school rules to be seen out on the street after
seven  o'clock  in December.  Our supervisor Seize'em would go  out  hunting
schoolboys each night, stomping up and down the streets to find them.
     I immediately imagined Seize'em pouncing on us from behind some corner,
his gold eagle-crested buttons glittering as he shouted:
     "Silence! What's your name? Stand up straight!"
     Such an encounter was  nothing to look forward to. It meant a poor mark
for deportment and  being left behind  in an empty  classroom for four hours
after  school. Perhaps there would even be something else  in store as a New
Year's surprise. Seize'em was a great one for such things.
     "Don't worry,  he's probably  at some New Year's party himself," Grisha
said.
     "He's probably stuffing himself someplace."
     It didn't take much coaxing for me to give in. We put on our  overcoats
and dashed out.
     The town's small hotel  and  the  Vesuvius Restaurant were both located
not  far  from our house. That evening  the Vesuvius seemed to be  erupting.
Streams of  light poured  forth from  the  windows, while the earth trembled
from the dancing within.
     At the  hitching  post  outside the hotel we saw an elegant high sleigh
with a  velvet seat  and  a fox-lined lap rug.  The runners  were of figured
iron. A  large dappled  grey horse  was  harnessed to  the  curved lacquered
shafts. It was Gambit, the famous pacer and the best trotter in town. We had
no trouble recognizing both the horse and the carriage, for they belonged to
Karl Zwanzig, a very wealthy man.


        "WHOA" IN GERMAN

     At that moment I had a wild idea.
     "You  know  what, Grisha?" I said, turning  cold  at my  own  boldness.
"Let's go for a ride. Zwanzig won't be ready to leave for a long time. We'll
just ride as far as there and around the church, and back again. I  know how
to drive."
     I didn't have to say it twice, A minute later  we had unhitched Gambit,
climbed  up onto the high velvet  seat and wrapped the furry rug around  our
legs,
     I  picked up the firm, heavy reins,  clicked my tongue as cabbies  did,
cleared my throat and said in a deep voice: "Giddiyap! Go on, boy!"
     Gambit  turned, rolled  a  large eye  at me  and  looked  away. I  even
imagined he had shrugged contemptuously, if horses did such things.
     "I bet he only understands German," Grisha said. Then he shouted: "Hey!
Fortnaus!"
     This made no impression on  Gambit, either. Finally, I smacked him hard
with the twisted reins. The very same second I was  thrown  back. If not for
Grisha, who caught me by  the  belt,  I would have sailed right  out of  the
sleigh. Gambit surged forward and was off. He hadn't bolted. He was trotting
swiftly as he always did, with  me  grasping the  reins  tightly  as we sped
along  the deserted street. What a shame that none of our friends were there
to see us!
     "Let's call  for Atlantis. He  lives right around that corner. We still
have plenty of time," I said and tugged at the left rein. Gambit  turned the
corner obediently. There was Atlantis' house.
     "Hey, there! Whoa!"
     But Gambit did not  stop. No matter how hard I pulled at the reins, the
pacer paid no attention to me. He kept on trotting swiftly.  Atlantis' house
was soon left far behind.
     "Let's not call  for him, Grisha.  He's  not  much fun. Let's  call for
Labanda  instead. He lives over there." I had wound the reins around my hand
in advance and now braced my feet against the front board.
     But Gambit did not stop outside Labanda's house either. I was beginning
to worry.
     "Listen, Grisha, do you know what to do to make him stop?"
     "Whoa! Stop!" he shouted as loudly as he could. We pulled on  the reins
together.
     However, the powerful pacer paid no  attention to our shouts or  to the
pull  of the reins. He kept trotting faster and faster, racing us along  the
dark streets.
     "He doesn't understand Russian!" Grisha said in a scared voice. "And we
don't know what  'whoa' is in German. Nobody ever taught us  that. You know,
he'll just keep on going. We can't stop him."
     "We don't want to ride any more! Stop!" we both shouted.
     But Gambit kept on stubbornly.


        HORSE WORDS

     I  tried  to  recall  everything  I knew about talking  to  horses  and
everything I had ever read about it.
     "Whoa! Stop, boy! Come on, dove!"
     But,  as  ill luck would have it, I kept  thinking  of  expressions the
likes of which could  only  be found  in some saga, things such as: "0,  you
wolf's repast, 0, you sack of grass" or, worse  still, expressions to make a
horse go faster: "Git up!... Let's see some life in you!... Here we go!"
     Having used up my vocabulary of horse  words, I tried some camel words.
"Tratrr, tratrr... chok, chok!" I shouted, imitating the camel drivers.
     But Gambit did not understand camel talk.
     "Tsob-tsobeh, tsob-tsobeh!"  I croaked, recalling the Ukrainian ox-cart
drivers.
     That didn't help either.
     The bell on Trinity Church began to strike One, two, three times.... It
struck twelve times.
     That meant we had ridden into the New Year. Were we just going to go on
driving down the streets like that for  the rest of our natural lives?  When
would the confounded horse stop?
     The  moon shone down  on us mysteriously.  The  stillness  of the empty
streets, where  one year had just ended  and another had  just begun, seeked
menacing. Were we doomed to riding in this sleigh forever?
     I had become panic-stricken.
     Suddenly, two rows of highly-polished  brass  buttons  glinted  in  the
moonlight,  appearing  from around  a  corner.  It was Seize'em. Gambit  was
racing straight at him.
     I dropped the reins in terror.
     "Silence!  What's  all the noise  about? What's your name? Stand still,
stupid!" Seize'em shrilled.
     Then a miracle happened.
     Gambit froze in his tracks.


        HAPPY NEW YEAR!

     We tumbled out  of  the  sleigh,  raced around  the  horse and, drawing
abreast  of the  supervisor,  tipped  our caps politely, grasping the patent
leather visors with our fingertips to bare our unruly heads  as we bowed low
to Seize'em, saying:  "Good evening, Seize ... Caesar Karpovich!" in unison.
"Happy New Year, Caesar Karpovich!"
     Seize'em drew his pince-nez slowly from a case which he took out of his
pocket and settled the lenses on the bridge of his nose.
     "Aha!" he beamed. "Two friends.  I recognize you! Lovely,  just lovely!
Excellent! Magnificent!  Now we'll just write both your names down." At this
he  took his famous notebook from the  inner pocket of  his overcoat. "We'll
write down both names. First one, then the other, and  they'll both  be left
after school as soon as  vacation ends. Four hours each, and no dinner. Four
hours for one, and four hours for the other. Happy New Year, children!"
     Then Seize'em stared  at the sleigh.  "One moment, boys. Have  you Herr
Zwanzig's permission to take his sleigh? Hm?"
     We interrupted each  other in our haste to assure him that Herr Zwanzig
had actually asked us to take Gambit for a run to warm him up a bit.
     "Excellent," he  murmured. "We'll  all  go back  together now  and  see
whether you are telling the truth or not. Come."
     The very notion of finding ourselves  in the fiendish sleigh  again was
so terrible that we suggested he ride  alone, promising to walk along beside
him.
     The unsuspecting supervisor clambered up onto the high  seat. He tucked
the luxurious fur rug around his legs, picked up the  reins, yanked them and
clicked his  tongue.  When this had no effect, he let the reins fall lightly
on Gambit's bad that  very moment we were tossed  aside. Clumps of snow flew
into our faces. When  we had brushed the  snow from our eyes  and shaken the
snow  off our clothes the  careening sleigh  was just disappearing  around a
bend, with our unfortunate supervisor hanging on for dear life and bellowing
something unintelligible.
     Meanwhile, Herr Karl Zwanzig, Gambit's owner, came pounding arc another
corner.  His  coat was unbuttoned and his  tie was askew. He was roaring the
top of his voice: "Help! Morder! Poleez! Shtop dem!"
     We could hear a police whistle in the distance.
     We never tried to find out how it all ended. Seize'em never said a word
of the night's adventure when we returned to school after our vacation.
     Thus did the New Year begin. It was now 1917.


        THE LEDGER FOR FEBRUARY


        ALL ABOUT THE ROUND GLOBE, IMPORTANT NEWS AND A SMALL SEA

     Mamma and Papa  had  just  gone  visiting. The  front door slammed. The
draught made the doors  fly open  all  through the house.  We heard Annushka
turn the  light off in the parlour. Then she went back to the kitchen. There
was an eeriness in the  quiet that settled on the house.  The  clock  in the
dining room ticked loudly. The  wind  rattled the windows. I sat down at the
table and pretended to be doing homework. Oska was drawing steamships. There
were very many of them, each had  smoke pouring from its stacks.  I took his
red-and-blue  pencil  and be colouring the pronouns in my Latin book, making
all the vowels red and all consonants blue. Suddenly Oska said,
     "How do people know that the Earth is round?"
     I knew the answer to that question, because it was on the first page of
geography book, and I went into a long explanation about a ship sailing far.
away  until it disappeared completely beyond the horizon. Since you couldn't
sit any longer, it meant the Earth was round.
     My explanation did not satisfy him.
     "Maybe the ship sank? Huh? Maybe it just sank."
     "Don't bother  me. Can't you see I'm  doing  my  homework?" I continued
colouring the pronouns.
     All was silence again.
     "I know how people know the Earth's round."
     "I'm glad you do."
     "Well, I do! It's because the globe is round. There!"
     "You're a round-headed ninny, that's what."
     Oska pouted. Trouble was brewing. Just then  the  telephone rang in our
fat consulting room. We raced to be  the first  to get there. The office was
dark, deserted  and  scary. I  turned  on  the light. The  room  immediately
changed its appear;
     like a  developed  negative. The  windows had been light,  but now they
became dark. The  panes had  been  black,  and  now  they  were  white. Most
important, however, office no longer frightened us. I picked up the receiver
and spoke in Papa's sc voice:
     "Hello?"
     It  was our  favourite Uncle  Lyosha, phoning  from Saratov. He had not
been us in ages.  Mamma had told us that he had gone very far away, but Oska
had eavesdropped and  learned that, strangely, he had been put in prison for
against the tsar and the war. Now he had  apparently been released. That was
news!
     "When are you coming to see us?" we shouted into the phone.
     "I will soon," he replied, and I could hear  him chuckle.  "I  want you
Mamma and Papa that I phoned and said there's been a revolution in R There's
a Provisional Government now. The tsar's abdicated. Repeat what I he said to
me, and he sounded excited.
     "How did it happen?" I shouted.
     "You're too little to understand."
     "No, I'm not! Not if you tell me. I'm in the third grade."
     And so our uncle, speaking from Saratov on the other side of the Volga,
went on  hurriedly  to  explain the  meaning  of the  war,  the  revolution,
equality and fraternity to me.
     "Are you all through speaking?" a voice interrupted. "Your time is up."
     Click!  We  were disconnected. I  stood  there,  feeling  as if  I  had
suddenly become about three years older, feeling that  I  was about to burst
from excitement.
     I glanced at  Oska.  He seemed terribly  embarrassed.  "Shame  on  you!
What's the use of you knowing the Earth's round?"
     "I held in all the time you were talking. It was an accident."
     I ran to the kitchen. Annushka had a visitor. He  was a wounded soldier
she  knew,  a man who always looked  sullen.  There was a  small silver  St.
George Cross on his chest. I shouted excitedly:
     "Annushka! First of all, there's been a revolution, and freedom, and no
more  tsar! And, secondly,  Oska wet  his pants.  Find him another  pair." I
related everything my uncle had just told me. Then Annushka's soldier-friend
stood up. His  left arm was in a sling. He embraced me with his right arm. I
was stunned. He squeezed me hard as he said:
     "That's the best piece of news you could have brought us! I  can't even
believe it."  Then he  shook his  big fist at someone outside the window and
added, "You'll get what's coming to you now! Our time's come!"
     I  looked at the  window,  but  saw no  one. Meanwhile, the soldier was
saying,
     "Pardon  me,  young man,  but  this is  the best  news I've ever heard.
Why.... Good Lord.... Thanks a  million!" He sounded as if there was a  lump
in his throat.


        A DIRECT LINE

     I went  to the dining-room, got  up on a chair and knocked on the brass
cover of the  stove's air duct.  It served as a direct line to Anna and Vera
Zhivilsky who lived  upstairs and whose  stove was directly above ours. If I
knocked on the cover of our duct  they could hear  me. I  could  hear Anna's
voice in the duct.
     "Hello!"
     "Hello, Anna!  I have some great news!  There's been a  revolution, and
there's a soldier here right now."
     "You don't know what I have! Guess."
     "Has there been another revolution someplace?"
     "No! My  godmother gave  me a set  of doll  dishes, and it  even  has a
creamer."
     I slammed down the receiver... that is, I slammed  the  brass lid shut.
No, they would never understand.  I put on my  fur hat and  coat quickly and
ran to my  friend  next door.  My  Latin homework would have to be done some
other time.


     SEIZE'EM CHASES THE MOON, OR WHAT THE LEDGER SAID OF THIS

     There was a smell of spring in the air. The sky was studded with  stars
that  glittered like the buttons  on the school inspector's tunic.  I dashed
d