you Russian swine!  You're not the boss  here!  This  isn't
Russia! I'll box your ears off for insulting the Austrian army!"
     The conductor strolled in at the sound of the rumpus.
     "Remove this drunken wretch!" Father demanded.
     But the  conductor sided with the soldier. He threw out his  chest  and
informed Father sternly that there  were  no reserved seats in the  carriage
and  each  passenger  was  entitled  to  occupy any  empty  seat he  wished;
moreover, if the Russian gentleman persisted in insulting  the Austrian army
he  would throw him and his children and their things off  the  train. Those
were his exact words, "Mit Kind and Kegel hinaus!"
     When Vasily Petrovich  heard that he was being accused of insulting the
Austrian army, he really got scared. "Calm down," he mumbled to Pavlik as he
pulled his raincoat and travelling-bag from under the soldier.
     The  soldier's sword rattled as life turned over  and began snoring and
whistling once more.
     He jumped up at the very  next station and left the carriage, muttering
Austrian oaths concerning the Russian swine.
     The  Bacheis  remained  sitting  there,  stung  to  the  quick.  Vasily
Petrovich was pale and his beard shook. But there was nothing he could do.
     When  they  eventually reached the border,  there  was only  one  other
passenger  left. He occupied the far  corner,  hugging a wicker basket and a
holdall with a pillow and an old quilt in it.
     He was  apparently a Russian too, and  his appearance classified him as
an emigre.
     He  seemed very agitated, although he  was trying  to  appear calm.  In
fact, he  even  pretended to be  dozing. An Austrian official passed through
the carriage  soon afterwards and took their  passports. Petya noticed  that
the passenger's hands trembled as he handed the officer his passport. With a
screeching of  brakes  the train  came to a stop. The Bacheis  hauled  their
things on to the filthy, deserted platform and set out for the custom-house.
There  was a  long  screened counter  made up  o>f rails worn white; several
Russian customs  officials and a Russian gendarme  captain in  a  light-blue
tunic with silver braid were standing behind it.
     They  spread  their  baggage  on  the  counter for inspection. For some
reason, Vasily Petrovich  always got  excited and irritated whenever he  had
anything to do with officialdom, even when there  was no apparent reason for
it. He had the feeling that his dignity was being trampled upon.
     "Do you have any  coffee,  tobacco, perfumes,  or silks?"  the  customs
official asked as he ran his  hand indifferently over the things laid out on
the counter.
     "You can find out for yourself," Father said and flushed as he tried to
control the trembling of his jaw. "I am not obliged to declare anything."
     The   customs   official   rummaged   about   in   the   travelling-bag
disinterestedly, pulled  a few stones out of Pavlik's bag,  shrugged, looked
them over, replaced them, and went off.
     "Where have you come from?"  the gendarme captain asked coldly, and his
spurs jingled slightly.
     "From Austro-Hungary, as you see."
     "You've been to Switzerland, too, I gather?" the captain said politely,
pointing his grey, suede-clad hand at their capes and alpenstocks.
     "Obviously," Vasily Petrovich said with a hint of irony in his voice.
     "Did you bring any literature with you?"
     "What do you mean?"
     "I mean Geneva or Zurich Social-Democratic publications.  It's my  duty
to  warn  you  that  any  attempt  to  carry  such  anti-government  illegal
publications across the frontier can lead to the most dire consequences."
     Vasily Petrovich had no time  to open  his  mouth and tell  the captain
what he thought of him, for the latter suddenly turned his back  on him  and
walked  off quickly; in fact, he  practically ran  towards the passenger who
had been in the carriage with them.
     The  man was standing  at the  railed  counter,  surrounded by  customs
officials who were  emptying the contents  of  his wicker  basket on to  the
counter.  There were  a pair of student's serge  trousers, cotton  shirts, a
pair of boots, a quilt, and linen. They fingered his quilt methodically.
     "Nikiforov!"  the  captain said loudly, and  a little man  in  civilian
dress with a large pair of shears suddenly appeared next to him. "Let's have
the quilt!"
     The  little  man went over  to the counter and began ripping the  seams
expertly.
     "You have  no  right  to destroy  my property," the passenger  said and
turned as white as a sheet.
     "Don't worry, we  won't spoil it,"  the officer replied..  He stuck his
hand  into an  open  seam and began  pulling out  packs of  cigarette  paper
squeamishly  with two fingers. The thin paper  was closely covered with fine
print. Two men  in bowler hats ran up and  seized the man.  He turned a deep
red  and suddenly  tried to break free. As he looked about  he shouted  in a
weak voice:
     "Tell the comrades I was taken at the border. My name  is Osipov!  Tell
them I was caught. I'm Osipov!"
     He was hustled through a side door with the railroad's iron monogram on
it.
     "The  other passengers are  requested  to return  to  the  platform and
continue their  journey,"  the gendarme  captain  said  and handed  out  the
passports.
     The Bacheis walked across the station to the opposite platform, where a
Russian train with "Volochisk-Odessa" written on the carriage plates awaited
them. A Russian station-master in a red cap went up to a brass bell and rang
twice. Thus did Russia greet them.


        PRECIOUS STONES


     The next day they  drove  from the  station  with  Auntie  in two  real
Russian cabs, past  Kulikovo Field  and Athos Church,  which  to  Petya  now
seemed very small and somehow provincial. Auntie seemed provincial too in  a
huge  new  cart-wheel hat and a hobble  skirt so narrow that  she could only
toddle along with tiny steps.
     Petya noticed that although Auntie was glad to see them,  she made much
less  fuss  than she  usually did  when they came back in  the  autumn  from
Budaki.  It was almost as though she was displeased about  something. With a
sudden shock of surprise, Petya realized  what the trouble was. In her heart
of  hearts  Auntie was  deeply hurt that they had not taken her  abroad with
them.
     All her talk with Vasily Petrovich and the boys was tinged with a faint
irony. She  kept  calling  them "our famous travellers," and when Petya told
her  about the blizzard  in the mountains, Auntie said loftily, "I can  well
imagine it."
     The  house  where they lived seemed to have got smaller  and their flat
looked cramped  and dark. The silken quilt they had brought from Switzerland
as a  present left Auntie completely unimpressed.  And in general,  at first
there was a certain awkwardness, unease.
     It soon vanished, however, and everything slipped back into old groove,
that is  except  for  Pavlik's  disappearance  on  the second  day  and  his
reappearance late in the evening, hungry, worn out and tear-stained.
     "Great  heavens! What  on earth's  happened?" cried Auntie, throwing up
her hands as she saw  her darling in such a state. "Where have  you been all
this time?"
     "Oh, let me alone," he said gloomily.
     "Very well, but-"
     "I was in town."
     "What for?"
     "Let me alone, can't you!"
     "You're frightening me, Pavlik!"
     "I went to sell those precious stones."
     "What stones?" Auntie looked into Pavlik's face in alarm.
     "Precious stones," he repeated, "the ones I brought from Switzerland. I
wanted to sell them and buy a second-hand bicycle."
     Auntie's chin trembled.
     "Well? And what happened?"
     "I  went to Purits Brothers on Richelieu Street,  and  to Faberge's  on
Deribasovskaya Street, and then to two  jeweller's shops on Preobrazhenskaya
Street-and  a lot  more  after that. And  then I went to  the archaeological
museum and the University and to the pawnbroker's. ..."
     "Great  heavens!" Auntie  groaned, pressing  the  ends of  her  fingers
against her temples.
     "I thought perhaps  they bought things like  that  too." Pavlik slumped
wearily  on to  a chair and  let his head rest on the table. "But  they  all
said-"
     "What did they all say?"
     "They said my stones were just ordinary rocks."
     "Oh, chickie dear, ray own little one!"  Auntie  gasped,  between tears
and laughter. "My  poor little traveller, my little gold-digger! Oh, I can't
stop. I'll die of laughing! You'll be the death of me yet!"
     That was the end of the brief story of the Bachei family's travels.
     Petya, however, was still bursting with impressions. Time after time he
gave  Auntie  and  Dunyasha  the  cook eloquent,  detailed  descriptions  of
Constantinople, the Mediterranean, a volcanic eruption, the disturbances  in
Naples, the Simplon  tunnel, the blizzard in the  mountains, the dungeons of
the Chillon  Castle  and the dirigible "Villa Lucerne." He displayed all the
picture postcards,  souvenirs  and  free travel agency prospectuses  he  had
stuffed  into  his suitcase. Every day  he sauntered over Kulikovo Field and
along all the streets round his  house  in the hope of meeting  some  boy he
knew and telling him all about the trip abroad. But it was still a fortnight
before  the  end  of  the holidays and the  boys  had not come back from the
country or the seaside. The town was empty.
     Petya was lonely and dull.  He looked with distaste at the deep blue of
the  August  sky  arching  over  the gardens  and  roof-tops. He  heard  the
monotonous, sleepy cries of hawkers coming from all sides, and felt ready to
die of boredom.
     "Your friend  Gavrik's been  several  times," said  Auntie one day, "he
wanted to know when you'd be back from your travels."
     "What!" cried Petya. "Gavrik!" He stopped,  confused by the realization
that   he  had  never   once  even  thought   of  Gavrik   recently.  Gavrik
Chernoivanenko!  How  could  he have  forgotten him?  Why, that was just the
person Petya was wanting!
     Although the day was hot, even sultry, Petya  seized his Swiss cape and
alpenstock and without losing a moment set off for Near Mills.


        SUNDAY


     Now that Petya had an aim, the town no longer seemed so empty and dull.
It  was  Sunday,  and the bells rang melodiously.  The  little  engine on  a
suburban train gave  a merry  toot as it  puffed  past Kulikovo Field toward
Bolshoi Fontan, pulling its string of open coaches filled with passengers in
Sunday clothes, the officers  looking particularly festive in their starched
white tunics sparkling with gold buttons  and  crossed  by  narrow straps on
which their swords hung. Cooks were coming home with market baskets on their
arms,  their  usual load  of provisions  topped off with bunches of dark-red
dahlias and  orange  amaranthuses  that  looked  like  vegetables. Handcarts
filled with water-melons, plums and early grapes rattled along the road. All
this  gave Petya a holiday  feeling, a special lift  of  the spirits, and he
gaily struck the metal  end of his alpenstock against the stone slabs of the
pavement and the metal horse-blocks.
     He walked so fast that he got over  the quite considerable  distance to
Near Mills in half an hour. He  was  bathed in perspiration  and slowed down
only when he  came to the familiar  fence made of  old sleepers.  Here Petya
stopped to get his breath,  then began to put on the cape which up to now he
had carried on his arm. But he hardly had draped it around him and assumed a
solemn look, when somebody cried quite close, "Oh, who's that?"
     Petya turned and saw a pretty girl in her teens wearing a cotton dress;
she was looking at him over the fence in something like awe. .
     Motya  had grown so  much  taller and so  much  prettier  in the summer
months that at first he did not know her again. And before  he  realized who
she was  she  recognized  him, flushed crimson and  backed towards the house
with small steps, never taking her frightened, admiring eyes off the boy.
     Finally she bumped into the  mulberry  tree  beneath  which  hens  were
pecking  at  the  reddish-black  berries, staining the smooth  clay  of  the
courtyard with the juice. Then she called in a faint voice, "Gavrik, Petya's
come."
     "Aha,  back again,"  Gavrik said, appearing  at the door of the hut. He
was barefoot and his unbelted Russian shirt was open at the throat. With one
hand he held up his trousers, in the other was a Latin textbook.
     "You've been a long  time on your travels! I'm going through  the Latin
grammar a second time by myself- darn the thing! Well, give me your  paw and
let's take a look at you."
     Petya grasped Gavrik's strong hand, already the hand of a man, and then
Motya's small one-soft, but rough on the palm.
     "Thanks very much about the letter," said Gavrik when they were sitting
on the bench by the table fixed in the ground under the mulberry tree.
     "I sent it from Naples," Petya said and added carelessly, "express."
     "I know," said Gavrik seriously.
     "How d'you know?"
     "We've had an answer. Thanks again, very much. You're a pal. You helped
us a lot."
     Petya felt much flattered, although he was secretly  a  bit  put out to
find that Gavrik was paying no attention to his  cape and alpenstock. Motya,
however,  never took her  eyes off these strange  things, and at last  asked
timidly, "Petya, does everyone go about like that over there?"
     "Not everyone, of course,  only  some people," Petya explained  with  a
condescending smile. "Mostly those who  go mountain-climbing. Because  up on
top you  may get caught in  a blizzard. And without  an alpenstock you can't
climb up at all, it's dreadfully slippery."
     "And did you climb up?"
     "No end of times," Petya sighed.
     "Oh,  how lucky you are!" said Motya, gazing reverently at the cape and
the iron-shod stick.
     Gavrik, however, could not hold back a comment of a different kind.
     "Better take that thing off, Petya, look at the way you're sweating."
     Petya treated this with silent contempt.
     Then he began eagerly telling  them  everything about the trip, sparing
no colours  and careful  to remember  the  smallest detail. Gavrik  listened
rather  indifferently, but Motya, sitting by  Petya  on  the  corner of  the
bench, whispered from time to time, "How lucky you are!"
     It  would  be  wrong,  however,  to  say  that  Gavrik  was not  at all
interested in  what Petya  had  to tell. But the  things that interested him
were  not  those that  interested  Motya.  For  instance, he  listened  with
indifference  to  Petya's  description  of  the  volcanic  eruption and  the
blizzard in  the mountains. But  when it came to the tram workers' strike in
Naples, and  the meeting  with Maxim Gorky, and the emigres,  then  Gavrik's
eyes  sparkled,  knots  of  muscle appeared at the sides  of  his  jaw,  and
bringing his fist down on Petya's knee he cried, "Aha! That was  grand! That
was well done!"
     But when Petya, in a half-whisper, afraid that Gavrik might not believe
him,  said that he  thought he had seen Rodion Zhukov in  Naples, Gavrik not
only believed it,  he  even nodded  and  said, "That's right. It was him. We
know  about  it.  You  probably saw him when he left  the  Capri school  for
Longjumeau, to go to Ulyanov-Lenin."
     Petya stared at his friend in surprise.  How he had changed! It was not
only  that  he  was  taller  and  more  mature,  there  was  a  concentrated
determination about him,  an  assurance and  even-this struck Petya  most of
all-a certain confidence and ease. Look  how freely and easily he pronounced
the  French  word  Longjumeau,  and  how  ordinary   and  natural  the  name
Ulyanov-Lenin sounded when he spoke it.
     "Oh, so you know Longjumeau too?" said Petya ingenuously.
     "Of course," Gavrik answered, smiling with eyes alone.
     "They've got a ... Party school  there,"  Petya went on, not quite sure
of himself and hesitating before the words "Party school."
     Gavrik regarded  Petya thoughtfully  as though weighing  him  up,  then
laughed gaily.
     "Seems like you didn't waste your time abroad,  brother! You've started
to understand a few things. Good!"
     Petya dropped his eyes modestly, then suddenly jumped as though  stung.
He had just remembered the incident at the  frontier  and felt instinctively
that  it had something to do  with Gavrik's last words or, to be more exact,
with the thought behind them.
     "Gavrik, listen," he began excitedly, then glanced at Motya and stopped
uncertainly.
     "Motya,  you go  off and  take a walk  somewhere," said Gavrik  firmly,
patting her on the shoulder over which her fair braid with its bow of cotton
was prettily, flung.
     The girl pouted, but rose obediently and went  away at once, from which
Petya concluded that this was nothing uncommon in the Chernoivanenko family.
     "Well, what is it?" Gavrik asked.
     "Osipov  wanted  his  comrades  told  that  he'd .been  caught  at  the
frontier," said Petya, lowering his  voice; he then told Gavrik all that had
happened in the customhouse at Volochisk the day they had crossed.
     Gavrik listened  in  silence, with a  serious face,  then said, "Just a
minute."
     He  went into the cottage  and came out again  in a moment, followed by
Terenty.
     "Ah, here's our foreign traveller," said Terenty, holding out his hand.
"Welcome home! And thank  you  very much about the letter.  You  helped us a
lot, got us out of a hole."
     Petya  noticed that Terenty too  seemed somehow to  have changed during
the summer. Although his broad, pock-marked workman's face was as rough-hewn
and frank as before, Petya  read a greater  firmness and independence in its
features. Like Gavrik he was comfortably barefoot, but his trousers were new
and of  good quality, a  jacket was thrown over his shoulders and his  clean
shirt had  a metal stud in a buttonhole at the  top, from which  it could be
concluded that Terenty wore stiff collars.
     He sat down where  Motya had sat, beside Petya, flung his strong, heavy
arm round the boy's shoulders, and gave him a hug.
     "Well? Let's have it."
     Petya repeated the story in great detail.
     "A bad business,"  said  Terenty, scratching one  bare  foot  with  the
other. "That's the second mail-bag gone wrong. Those students are no good at
all.  I said we ought  to arrange it  through-" Terenty and Gavrik exchanged
meaning  looks. "Well, and  of course,"  Terenty turned  back to Petya, "you
know all this doesn't concern anyone else."
     "He understands a bit already," said Gavrik.
     "So much  the better,"  Terenty said  casually  and  then  changed  the
subject quite definitely. "You won't be going abroad again? Well, all right.
It's not so bad at home, either. And about the letter, thanks again. You did
a big thing for us. Stay here a while, take a walk, maybe,  and I'll go back
inside, I've got visitors. I'll be seeing  you. Look, the best thing you can
do is to go on the common, Zhenya's there, he's got a  new kite. I bought it
at Kolpakchi's. It's the latest construction, and will fly in any wind."
     He was clearly anxious to get back to his guests.
     "Motya, why've you gone off and left Petya?" he called. "Come  and take
him to the common. I've got to go, excuse me."
     Terenty walked quickly back into the cottage; through the small windows
Petya could see  it was  full of people.  He had a feeling Terenty wanted to
get  rid  of him, but before  he had  time to formulate a feeling of offence
Motya appeared, Gavrik  took  him by the arm  and all three went off to  the
common. Eight-year-old Zhenya, Motya's brother, was very much like Gavrik at
the same age, only plumper and better dressed. Surrounded by all the boys of
Near Mills, he was trying to fly a strange kind of kite, not a  bit like the
ones which Petya's generation had made out of reeds, newspaper, glue, thread
and coarse grass for a tail.


        THE KITE FROM A SHOP


     It  was  a  shop kite  that  looked like  a geometrical  drawing,  with
canary-yellow calico stretched over  it and tight connecting wires that made
it  look  like  the Wright  brothers'  biplane.  Two  boys  stood on  tiptoe
zealously holding the  apparatus as high as they could reach, while  Zhenya,
holding the thin cord, waited for the best moment to race across the common,
pulling his flying machine after him. At last he screwed up his eyes and ran
into  the  wind,  butting  it  with  his head.  The  kite  shot  up,  swayed
uncertainly, circled and fell back on the grass.
     "The brute just won't fly," Zhenya hissed through his teeth, wiping his
wet,  angry, freckled  face with the tail of his shirt.  Evidently, this was
not the first time the kite had flopped.
     All the boys of Near Mills rushed to the kite, whooping and chattering,
but  Zhenya pushed them angrily  aside. "Keep  your hands off," he said  and
started untangling the cord.
     "Zhora, Kolya, go  back and hold it  up again. As high as you  can, but
don't let it go till I shout. See?"
     He  seemed  used to  giving orders, and  the  others  to  obeying them,
although he was  the youngest there. The  real Chernoivanenko breed, thought
Gavrik  with a sense of  pride, as  he watched  Zhora and  Kolya  take their
places again and hold up the kite while  Zhenya spat on his index finger and
raised it to gauge the wind.
     "This time you're going to fly, see if you don't," he  muttered like an
invocation,  and took a  firm  grip of the cord.  "Are you ready  there?" he
called. "One, two, three- let go!"
     The kite shot up-and fell. Mocking laughter came from the boys.
     "It won't fly, no good trying," someone shouted.
     "Bone-head!" Zhenya replied. "D'you know what kind of kite this is? Dad
bought  it  at  Kolpakchi's  on  Yekaterininskaya  Street; it cost one ruble
forty-five kopeks."
     "A lot your Dad knows about kites!"
     "You leave my Dad alone, or I'll give you a sock in the jaw!"
     "It won't fly anyway, it's got no tail."
     "You  fool, it's not an  ordinary kite, it's from a shop, I'll show you
whether it'll fly or not."
     But try as he would, the shop kite flopped  back  on  the ground  every
time.
     "Your Dad just threw away his money."
     It  was a painful situation. The disappointed spectators began drifting
away.
     "Wait a  bit, where  are  you going, stupids?" cried Zhenya, trying  to
smile as he  squatted on his heels  by the kite. "Come back  here, it'll fly
all right this time."
     But his authority was now completely gone and  like a defeated general,
he  could get none to heed him. At first Petya and  Gavrik exchanged glances
and  contemptuous  observations  about  the  shop  toy  which  couldn't come
anywhere  near the good old  home-made kites. But after a while Gavrik began
to feel the family honour was in danger.
     He frowned  and  paced weightily  over to the kite. "Keep off, it's not
yours,"  whined Zhenya, almost in tears, trying to  push his uncle away with
his elbow.
     "Is that so?" remarked Gavrik; raising Zhenya by the shoulders, he gave
him a shove  with his knee on the seat. Then he walked unhurriedly all round
the  kite without  touching it,  carefully  examining  all  its  struts  and
fastenings.
     "So that's  it. Now  I see," he  said at last and bent  a stern look on
Zhenya. "Can't you see where the centre of gravity is, dunderhead?"
     "Where?" asked Zhenya.
     "Utochkin the flyer," Gavrik scoffed, without condescending to explain.
     Once  more  he bent a  keen-eyed gaze on  the kite,  stooped  over  it,
refastened a string and moved an aluminium ring a little.
     "Now it's  a different matter. Come on, let's show 'em." And  he winked
at Petya.
     Petya and Motya took the ends of the kite and held it over their heads.
Gavrik picked up the ball  of string lying on the ground among  the withered
immortelles, shouted, "Let go!" and ran against the wind.
     The kite slipped out of Petya's and Motya's hands and  shot  upward-but
this  time  it  did  not  falter and fall,  it hung  lightly in the air  and
followed the running Gavrik in a graceful curve. Petya and Motya stood there
with hands still raised, as though reaching out  to the  kite, begging it to
return. But it flew on, drawn by the cord, mounting smoothly higher.
     Gavrik stopped and the kite stopped too, almost directly over his head.
     "Aha! That's taught you!" he  called up,  wagging a finger at the kite.
He began carefully twitching the taut line and the kite twitched too, like a
fish on a hook. Then he moved the ball forward and back, carefully unwinding
the line which slid off-  arid up in little jerks. The kite  obediently rose
higher and higher, catching the wind and repeating the movements of the ball
in Gavrik's hands, but with a smoother, wider sweep. It was so high now that
they had to throw their heads far back to see it.
     The kite  became smaller, it floated  against the deep-blue August sky,
slender and golden,  bathed in the warm sunshine, every surface catching the
fresh sea breeze.
     Zhenya ran  along beside his Uncle Gavrik, begging  and  pleading to be
allowed to hold the line, but it was no good.
     "Keep off, kid," said Gavrik, watching  the kite through narrowed eyes.
It  was only when the whole line had been paid  out  and Gavrik had given  a
final twitch to the kite as though making sure it  was firmly fastened, that
he handed it over to Zhenya.
     "Hold it tight, if you let that go you'll not catch it again."
     Motya ran home for paper and they began "sending up letters." There was
something magical in the way a fragment  of paper  with a hole in the middle
threaded  on to  the stick began hesitantly  rising  up the  line, sometimes
stopping as  though it had caught on something. The nearer the "letter" came
to the kite, the faster it climbed  until  at last it slipped quickly up and
clung to the  kite  like  steel  to a magnet,  while a  second and  a  third
followed it up, and  Petya imagined that  letters from him full of love  and
complaint were sliding up  one after  the other into the blue emptiness,  to
... Longjumeau.
     Suddenly the line slipped out  of Zhenya's hands. The  kite, liberated,
flew up with the wind, carrying a long garland of "letters." They all had to
run for a long time, jumping ditches and  climbing fences, before they found
it at last outside the town, in the steppe, lying in thick silver wormwood.
     When they at last came home to Near Mills, it was evening, the big moon
still  shed  little light  but  faint  ashy shadows were cast  by fences and
trees, the air was perfumed with four-o'clocks,  and grey moths circled  and
fluttered mysteriously in the darkness of the hedges.
     As they  neared the house,  Petya saw a number of  people coming out of
the gate. One of  them he recognized  as Uncle Fedya,  the  sailor  from the
tailor  shop at Sabarisky Barracks who had made him the navy blouse. But the
sailor seemed not to recognize him in the dim light.
     Petya also  noticed a young woman in a hat and a blouse, and an elderly
man  in a jacket  and top-boots carrying a railwayman's lantern, evidently a
guard or engine-driver. Fragments of talk came to him.
     "Levitsky writes in Our Dawn that the  failure of the  1905  Revolution
was  partly due to the fact that  no bourgeois government  was formed,"  the
young woman's voice said.
     "Your Levitsky's  just a Liberal and nothing more, he only makes a show
of  being a Marxist," a man's voice replied. "You read the Star,  there's an
article by Lenin, that'll help you to get things straight."
     "I  propose  we  keep  off  discussion  out of  doors.  You  can  start
quarrelling again next Sunday," said a third voice.
     There  was  smothered  laughter  and  the figures  disappeared  in  the
shadows.
     "Who are those visitors?" Petya asked and felt  at once that  he should
not have asked.
     "Oh,  just people,"  said  Gavrik reluctantly. "It's a sort  of  Sunday
school." To change the subject  he went on, "On  the fourteenth of  August I
want  to take  the  exams for three  forms. I've been through everything. If
you'll  just help me with the Latin a  bit." "Of course I will," said Petya.
The Chernoivanenko family would not hear  of letting Petya go before supper.
Terenty placed a  candle with a glass shade on the table under  the mulberry
tree,  at once attracting  a whole swarm of  moths.  His  wife, washing  the
teacups after  the visitors,  wiped her hands on her  apron  and went up  to
Petya. Of  all the Chernoivanenko  family  she had  changed  the least.  She
greeted the boy country-fashion, holding out her hand with stiff fingers.
     Motya  brought a  big  dish covered with a homespun  cloth  out  of the
larder.
     "Maybe you'd like to try our plum dumplings, Petya?" she asked shyly.
     After supper Petya set  off home. Gavrik walked with him almost to  the
station. It was a warm summer night,  a harvest moon in a  misty  ring shone
through  the  dark  branches, crickets were  shrilling  everywhere,  on  the
outskirts dogs barked as they do in villages, and somewhere a gramophone was
playing.  Petya felt  a  pleasant weariness  after this long  delightful day
which had imperceptibly opened before him  something  new, something  he had
previously sensed only vaguely.
     On that  day Petya matured  inwardly,  as though he had grown older  by
several years. Perhaps it was on that day the boy finally became a youth.
     Now he no longer had any  doubts  that it was to  a certain extent from
Near   Mills,  from   Terenty's  cottage,  that  this   thing   called   the
"revolutionary movement" came.


        THE BAD MARK


     The new term  opened  on the  fifteenth of  August and some days before
that, Vasily Petrovich went to Faig's  school to  conduct re-examinations of
pupils who had failed in the end-of-term exams. He came home to dinner  in a
radiant mood,  for  Mr.  Faig  had been more than affable  to him,  and  had
personally taken him  all  over  the school, showing him  the  gym  and  the
physics laboratory fitted up with all the  best,  modern  equipment imported
from  abroad. Finally  Mr. Faig had taken him home in  his own carriage,  so
that the  whole street  had  seen Vasily  Petrovich  in his frock-coat, with
exercise books under his  arm, jump rather awkwardly out of the carriage and
bow to Mr. Faig who  vouchsafed a glimpse of his  dyed  side-whiskers and  a
wave of a hand in Swiss glove in the window.
     At dinner Vasily Petrovich was in high spirits and re-dated a number of
humorous  incidents illustrating the ' ways  and customs  of the Faig school
where  certain pupils, the spoiled  sons of rich parents, stayed two or even
three years in each form, grew whiskers, married and  started families while
still within the walls  of that  god-forsaken  establishment; why, there had
even been a case when a Faig pupil came to school with his own son, the only
difference being that father was in the sixth form, and son in the first.
     "Se  non  e  vero  e ben  trovafo!"  cried  Vasily  Petrovich  laughing
infectiously-it's not true, but it's well invented.
     Auntie, however, did not appear to share his mood. She kept shaking her
head doubtfully and  saying,  "Well, well, I somehow can't see  you stopping
there long."
     In the evening Vasily Petrovich sat down to correct the exercise books.
The boys heard him snort a number of times, and  once he muttered, "What the
devil is all this? Disgraceful! It's got to be  put a stop to, and at once,"
and threw down his pencil.
     Out  of the ten boys  taking their Russian exam  a second  time, Vasily
Petrovich failed seven, and although at the  teachers' meeting Mr. Faig made
no  objections,  his expression  was one of  grieved indignation. This  time
Vasily Petrovich came home by horse-tram, and not in high spirits.
     At the end of  the first term the teaching staff learned that a certain
Blizhensky was  to  enter  the  school.  This Blizhensky was  the  son of  a
broadcloth millionaire, a young man who had been to a number of high schools
in St. Petersburg, then to others in Moscow and Kharkov, and finally  to the
Pavel Galagan College  in Kiev, known as  a  school  that accepted the worst
pupils in the Russian Empire, even those who had been expelled in disgrace.
     However, strange as it might  be, the Pavel Galagan College too had got
rid  of this prodigy. So  now he  was to  enter the  fifth form  at  Faig's.
Although  entrance examinations  in the  middle of  the  year  were strictly
prohibited, an exception was made in some roundabout way for the millionaire
Blizhensky's son.
     A few days before this examination  Mr. Faig,  meeting Vasily Petrovich
in the assembly hall  before morning prayers, took his arm and walked up and
down the corridor  with him, confiding some of his ideas with regard  to the
latest West-European pedagogical trends.
     "I have a great respect for your strictness," he concluded. "In fact, I
really admire it. I am strict myself- but I am  also fair. And I stand by my
principles. You failed  seven boys  not  long ago, and did I ever say a word
against it? But, my dear Vasily Petrovich,  let us be frank-" He took a very
thin  gold watch from  his  waistcoat pocket and glanced  at it. "There  are
times  when  pedagogical  strictness  can bring  results which  are just the
opposite  of  those  desired.  Rejected  by  an establishment  of  learning,
standing outside its walls,  a young man,  instead of becoming an  educated,
useful member of our young constitutional society, may  enter the service of
the police, may perhaps-entre nous  soit dit- become  an agent of the secret
police, a spy, and in the end fall under the influence of the Black Hundred.
I believe that to you, a Tolstoian and ...  h'm ... perhaps a revolutionary,
this would be very undesirable."
     "I  am  not  a Tolstoian,  still  less  a  revolutionary,"  said Vasily
Petrovich with a touch of irritation.
     "I say it only between ourselves. You may depend on my discretion.  But
everybody  in  this town  knows  that you  have  had  differences  with  the
authorities and have perhaps to a certain extent suffered for it. You  are a
Red,  Vasily  Petrovich. I will  say  no more.  Not a word!  But I would  be
extremely disappointed, nay! grieved, if this young  man were to fail in his
entrance examination.  He  is the  only heir  to a million, and  ...  he has
already suffered  much.  In a word, I beg of you," Mr. Faig concluded in his
softest, gentlest voice, "do not cause me any more unpleasantness. Be strict
but merciful. This, in the interests of our educational establishment  which
I hope are as dear to you as to me. I think you understand me."
     On this day Vasily  Petrovich again rolled home in Mr. Faig's carriage.
For some days he felt as though he had eaten tainted fish.
     "To hell with it!"  he decided at last. "I'll  give the  young swine  a
bare pass. You can't knock down a wall with a pea-shooter."
     When the exam was actually held,  however, a few days later, and Vasily
Petrovich saw the "young swine" sitting alone in his glory at a table in the
middle of the assembly hall, before the entire Areopagus of teachers- for he
was  to be examined  in all subjects  simultaneously and  briefly-the  blood
rushed to his head.
     The young man, about twenty years of age, was in the full-dress uniform
of the Pavel Galagan  College,  and the high, stiff  collar constricted  his
throat and pushed against his powdered  cheeks, making him look as though he
were choking. The back of his  clipped neck  displayed  a liberal amount  of
pimples, and his reddish-chestnut hair parted in the middle was so plastered
with brilliantine that his flat, snaky head shone like a mirror. Now, Vasily
Petrovich  could  not  stand   men  who  used  lotions,  and  the  smell  of
brilliantine made him  feel sick.  But  most  of all  his sense  of what was
proper was outraged by the gold pince-nez  which perched most  incongruously
on  the  young man's  coarse  nose, giving  his  little pig's eyes a frankly
impudent expression.
     What a blockhead, thought Vasily Petrovich, irritated, tossing his head
and fastening all the buttons of his frock-coat.
     As he stood  to attention to answer the examiners' questions, the young
man thrust out his broad rear, which seemed to be poured into his uniform.
     When Vasily Petrovich's turn came, he put a  number of simple questions
in an indifferent voice,  received answers that  brought  a melancholy smile
from Mr. Faig, drew the report form towards  him with trembling fingers  and
put  down a fail. The exam ended in funereal silence. Vasily  Petrovich went
home  on  the horse-tram, took off his collar that seemed to have become too
tight, removed his frock-coat and boots, refused  any dinner and lay down on
his bed,  face to the wall. Neither Auntie nor the  boys ventured to ask him
anything, but all understood something very serious must have happened.
     In the evening  the bell rang, and when Petya opened the door he saw an
old  man in a long  beaver coat and a young man with  gold pince-nez wearing
the smart uniform cap of the Ravel Galagan College.
     "Is  Vasily Petrovich at home?"  the old man asked, and without waiting
for an answer marched  straight towards the dining-room in his coat and hat,
pointing towards the half-open door with his  ivory-headed stick and asking,
"In there, eh?"
     Vasily Petrovich barely had time to get into his frock-coat and boots.
     "I'm Blizhensky.  Good evening," the old  man wheezed. "You failed this
idiot of mine today, and you were quite right. In your place I'd have bashed
his face in as well. Come here, you worthless lout." And he turned round.
     The young man emerged from behind his father, took off his cap and held
it in both hands, his glistening head hanging.
     "Down on  your  knees!" his father  rasped,  striking his  stick on the
floor. "Kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand!"
     The young man did  not kneel, nor did he kiss Vasily  Petrovich's hand,
he  gulped  and  then  began to cry noisily, rubbing a  red  nose  with  his
handkerchief.
     "He's sorry, he'll  not do it again," the old  man said. "Now you  will
give him private lessons at  home twice  a week, and pull him up. As for the
entrance examination, we can settle it like this." The  old man  felt in the
pocket of  his frock-coat,  on the lapel of which  Vasily Petrovich saw  the
silver  medal  of the  Society  of Michael  the  Archangel  (  A reactionary
Black-Hundred  organization.-Tr.) on  its tricolour ribbon, took out a blank
exam report form and handed it to Vasily Petrovich. "Here  you will put down
a pass for  the young  fool,  and the old  report  with  God's help  we will
destroy. Faig and the other teachers have agreed."
     He  then took out a note-case and laid two  "Peters"  on  the table-two
five-hundred-ruble notes with a Peter I watermark.
     "What is it?" mumbled Vasily Petrovich confusedly, with a weak gesture,
glancing at the money through his pince-nez. Then he realized the outrageous
insult of  the proposal. He paled until  even his  ears were white, he shook
from head to  foot  so that Petya feared he would die of heart failure  now,
this  very  instant. Then the colour flooded back to  his face until it  was
purple and he gasped dumbly.
     "Sir, you are  a scoundrel!" he screamed. He sobbed with rage. "Get out
of here! How dare you?... In my own house!... Get out! Get out this minute!"
     The  old man, startled and frightened, crossed himself rapidly  several
times and then ran at top  speed from the room, through  the hall and out of
the  door, overturning the rickety  what-not with its piles  of  music.  And
Vasily  Petrovich  ran after him,  awkwardly pushing at his  back, trying to
strike him  on the back  of the  head, while Petya pulled his father's coat,
crying, "Daddy, please! Daddy, don't!"
     Altogether, it was a disgraceful scene which ended with the old man and
the young one pelting down the stairs, while Vasily Petrovich on the landing
flung  after them  the five-hundred-ruble notes which fluttered slowly  from
wall to wall of the stair-well.
     The  two Blizhenskys, father and son,  picked up the money, then looked
up, and the  old man yelled senselessly, "Mangy  Jews!"  and threatened with
his ivory-topped stick.
     The  next  day  a messenger brought Vasily  Petrovich a letter from Mr.
Faig  in  a  long,  elegant  envelope  of  thick  paper  with  a   fantastic
coat-of-arms embossed on  it. In  most  courteous terms Vasily Petrovich was
informed that  in consideration  of  differences of views  on  questions  of
education, his further services  at  the school had become superfluous.  The
letter  was written for some reason in French  and ended with the signature:
Baron Faig.
     Although  this  was  a terrible  blow  for  the Bachei  family,  Vasily
Petrovich  accepted it with perfect  calm. He could  have  expected  nothing
else.
     "Well, Tatyana Ivanovna,"  he said to Auntie, cracking his fingers, "it
appears  that  my  pedagogical  activities ..."  he smiled  ironically,  "it
appears that my  pedagogical activities are ended and  I shall have to  seek
some other profession."
     "But why?" Auntie asked. "You could give private lessons."
     "To swine like that?" cried Vasily  Petrovich,  his voice rising almost
to a scream. "Never! I'll carry sacks at the port first!"
     Despite the seriousness of  the situation, Auntie  could not restrain a
faint,  melancholy smile. Vasily Petrovich  jumped  up  as  though stung and
began pacing the room.
     "Yes, sacks!" he said excitedly. "And I see nothing shameful or amusing
in it. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Russian Empire are
engaged in manual labour. Why should I be any exception?"
     "But you are a man of learning."
     "Of  learning?" said Vasily Petrovich bitterly. "Yes, I  don't  dispute
it. But I'm not a man, I'm a slave!"
     "What did you say?" cried Auntie, raising her hands.
     "You heard  me. A  slave. That's  the  only word for it. First, I was a
slave  of  the  Ministry of Education  as  represented  by  the head  of the
Education Department, and he drove  me out like  a dog because I presumed to
have my own opinion about Tolstoi. Then, I became the slave of Faig, a slimy
scoundrel, and he drove me  out  like a  dog, too, because I  was honest and
refused to give a pass to that dolt, that blockhead Blizhensky, for the sole
reason that he was the  son of a millionaire,  if you  please.  To hell with
both of them and the whole Russian government into the bargain!" he shouted;
it burst out of him, and for  a second he himself was  frightened at what he
had said. But he could no longer stop. "And if in this Russia of ours I have
to be  somebody's slave," he went on, "then I'd sooner  be an ordinary slave
and not an  intellectual one. At least I'll  keep my inner integrity....  Oh
God," he groaned with sudden tears in his eyes and looked at the icon. "What
a blessing that He in His  mercy took my poor Zhenya, that she does not have
to share  these  indignities with  me! How would she have borne  it,  seeing
nothing left to her husband but to carry sacks down at the port."
     "How you keep harping on those sacks," said Auntie, wiping her eyes.
     "Yes, sacks, sacks!" Vasily Petrovich repeated defiantly.
     Night had fallen. Pavlik was  asleep, breathing  heavily, but Petya lay
awake,  listening to the voices  in the dining-room.  He had  a vivid mental
picture  of  his  father,  for  some reason without overcoat and hat, in his
frock-coat and old boots, going down the famous Odessa steps to the port and
then  dragging about the heavy jute sacks of copra. But  there was something
false,  artificial  about the  picture. Petya  himself  could  not  take  it
seriously, yet nevertheless he was so sorry for his father that he wanted to
weep, to run to  him, embrace him and  cry, "Never mind, Daddy, it'll be all
right, I'll carry sacks with you too, we'll manage somehow!"


     AUNTIE'S NEW IDEA


     Of  course,  Vasily  Petrovich  did  not carry  sacks, and although the
situation continued to be dreadful, even tragic, time went on and  there was
no outward change to be  seen in the life of the Bachei  family, except that
Vasily  Petrovich  spent most  of his time  at  home, trying not  to go  out
anywhere.
     The approach of poverty was so unnoticeable that a kind of tranquillity
settled  on  them  all. As  for the outside world-friends and neighbours-the
Faig  episode passed unremarked,  or rather, it  was tacitly agreed  that if
Vasily Petrovich had  quarrelled with two school principals in the course of
one year, he must be impossible to  get on  with and he  had nobody to blame
but himself.
     A factor which helped  to distract  attention from  Vasily  Petrovich's
affairs  was  the murder of Stolypin in  Kiev, an  event which shook up  the
whole Russian  Empire. Some were horrified, others  felt the  rise of vague,
undefined hopes. For a month people talked of nothing but the "Bagrov shot,"
and were quite sure it smelt of revolution,  although all knew that Stolypin
had  been shot  by one of his own body-guards  and the incident probably had
nothing to do with revolution at all.
     "Say what you like, Vasily Petrovich, but something's  got to be done,"
said Auntie very decidedly one day. "We can't go on like this."
     "What do you suggest?" Vasily Petrovich asked wearily.
     "I've thought of a plan, but I  don't know how you will  regard it. Not
far  from  Kovalevsky's  country-house  there's a  really  beautiful  little
place," said Auntie insinuatingly.
     "Never in this world!" cried Vasily Petrovich resolutely.
     "Wait a minute," Auntie said gently. "You don't even let me finish."
     "Never in this world!" he cut in with still greater resolution.
     "But look-"
     "Oh,  heavens,"  snapped Vasily Petrovich, frowning. "I know everything
you're going to say."
     "Now that's just where you're wrong."
     "I'm not.  But  it's all nonsense.  And you're only building castles in
the air. I don't want  to  hear  another  word about  it. To start off with,
where's the money to come from?"
     "We'd hardly need any. Perhaps just a very little."
     "Never!" Vasily Petrovich cut her short.
     "Now, why not?"
     "Because  I am against the whole principle of private property in land.
You'll never make me become  a  real estate owner.  The land belongs to God.
Yes, to God and the people who till it. I will  not do it, and  that's all I
have to say. Besides, it's only empty dreams."
     Auntie waited patiently for Vasily Petrovich to finish.
     "I've listened to you," she said  gently,  "and now you listen  to  me.
After all, it isn't even polite to interrupt in the middle of a sentence."
     "Be so kind as to say all you want to say; but I do not wish to own any
real estate whatsoever and I won't. And that's the end of it."
     "In  the  first  place,  you  don't   have  to   own  property.  Madame
Vasyutinskaya is prepared to rent the place. And secondly,  we need  pay her
at first only about as much as we're  paying for  this flat; the rest of the
money will come from the sale of the crop."
     Hearing  Auntie  talk of sales of crops,  Vasily  Petrovich  boiled  up
again.
     "So that's it! And  may I be permitted to inquire  where this sale will
take place and what this crop is to be?"
     "Black and white cherries, pears, apples and grapes," said Auntie.
     "So you suggest that I start trading in fruit?"
     "But why not?"
     "Well, of  all  things...."  Unable  to  find  words, Vasily  Petrovich
shrugged his shoulders.
     Auntie ignored his impatient  gesture.  "We could do very well, and get
out of all our difficulties at once."
     "If that's the case, then why doesn't your Madame Vasyutinskaya want to
reap all these benefits for herself?"
     "Because  she's an  old lady  and  all  alone,  and she  intends  to go
abroad."
     Vasily Petrovich snorted.
     "So  your  lonely old do-nothing wants to go abroad  and shift all  her
worries on to our shoulders, is that it?"
     "All right, have it your  own  way,"  said  Auntie shortly, leaving the
final question  unanswered. "I thought  you'd be  attracted by my-  idea  of
renting a  delightful  cottage  close to town, close to the sea, tilling the
soil, eating the produce of your own labour and at least being  independent.
It's completely according  to  your  principles. But if you  don't  like the
idea...."
     "I don't!"  said  Vasily Petrovich  stubbornly, and Auntie dropped  the
subject.
     She understood her brother-in-law well enough to know that she had said
enough for the present. Let him calm down and think it over, get used to the
idea.
     A few days later he opened the subject himself.
     "You do get fantastic ideas," he- said. "I've noticed you've always got
something foolish  in  your head-letting rooms, or cooking dinners-things of
that sort. And nothing ever comes of it all."
     "Something will come of this," said Auntie calmly.
     "Just another of your castles in the air."
     Auntie made no reply.
     A few more days passed.
     "It's absurd to think that we'd even have the physical  strength to run
a place like that."
     "The  house  is quite a  small  one," Auntie  said, "and there are only
thirteen  acres of  land attached to  it." With a faint smile she added, "In
any case, I don't think it would be any  harder than carrying sacks down  at
the docks."
     "That is not funny at all," said Vasily Petrovich flushing.
     Again  the  subject  was dropped,  but  now  Auntie  knew  that  Vasily
Petrovich would soon give way. And she was right.
     Gradually, imperceptibly, Auntie's idea was capturing his  imagination.
It  was not  such a foolish one after all; in fact, it contained a good deal
of common sense, and Vasily  Petrovich  was  secretly much taken with it, it
fell into line with the views of life which had recently been taking form in
his mind, especially since his visit to Switzerland. These  views were still
vague and undefined, a mixture of Jean Jacques Rousseau  and  the Narodniks,
of  "going to the  people" and of  natural education.  He pictured  a clean,
uncomplicated,  patriarchal  country  life,  independent  of  the  state.  A
flourishing  little patch of  soil cultivated  by his own hands and those of
his family, without  the use of  hired labour. Something in  the  spirit  of
Switzerland, of the cantons.
     Now it appeared that his dream was close to realization. Everything was
there-the small patch of land, the orchard, even the vineyard  which made it
particularly like  southern Switzerland. True, there were  no mountains, but
there  was  the  sea  with  bathing  and  fishing.  And  most  important  of
all-freedom,  independence  from  the state. What a wonderful upbringing for
the children!
     The end  of it  was that Vasily Petrovich finally took fire  and  asked
Auntie to tell him all the  details. From her room she brought a plan of the
place. It appeared she had already gone quite a long way in her negotiations
with Madame Vasyutinskaya. The  house itself was a five-room affair  with an
outside kitchen, then there  was a  stable,  a labourer's  hut, a rain-water
cistern and a shed which, Auntie said, held the wine press.
     "Why, it's not just a summer cottage, it's a whole manor house!" Vasily
Petrovich cried gaily.
     Then they set to  work counting  the fruit  trees  and the vines, which
were indicated by circles. Their calculations showed that within a year they
would  pay the whole rent  and have a solid  sum left over.  But perhaps all
this was only on paper? Auntie suggested going to see for themselves.
     They boarded the little suburban train that passed their house and went
to  the  sixteenth  station,  from  which  a  horse-tram  took  them  to the
Kovalevsky country-house. After that, guided by Auntie, they walked  a  mile
or so across the steppe to "their cottage."
     Auntie was evidently familiar with the place. She stroked the dog as it
rattled its chain, and tapped at the watchman's window. A sleepy-looking boy
came  out,   whom  Auntie  called  Gavrila.  He  was   the  last  of  Madame
Vasyutinskaya's  labourers and  acted  as watchman, stableman  and  vineyard
tender. Now he showed the Bacheis over the house and grounds.
     They saw  the vineyard, the orchard, and even more trees  than they had
expected, for about three  acres of  recently planted cherry trees  had  not
been included in the plan.
     Everything was  in excellent  condition: the  vines were bent  over and
covered  with  soil for the winter, and  the trunks of the apple  trees were
swathed in straw to protect them from rabbits and field mice.
     It  had been  a mild winter with little  snow. Some  still  lay on  the
mounds  of earth over the vines but it had already thawed on the sunny side.
Near the  house, however, where some very thick dark-green fir  trees stood,
great snow-drifts still lay on the flower-beds, gilded  by the setting  sun,
with  the clearly  etched  dark-blue shadows of garden seats  and of  shrubs
lying in long, wavy lines across  them. The windows shone like  gold tinsel.
It was  exactly like those  winter landscapes which Petya  saw every year at
the  spring exhibitions held by South Russian artists, where Auntie took the
boys to teach them the love of beauty.
     With a great  rattling Gavrila  opened the glass door of the house, and
they went through the empty,  cold rooms  lighted by slanting rays of frosty
sunshine.
     All  round  about lay the dead,  snow-covered steppe, criss-crossed  by
rabbit tracks and with  nothing but Kovalevsky's house  roof  and a  distant
stretch of sea to catch the eye.
     They  went through the house and  other buildings,  then  back  to  the
orchard. Vasily Petrovich noticed that one carelessly wrapped apple tree had
been gnawed. He stopped and turned a stern look on Gavrila.
     "Look  at that, that won't do," he said. "We'll have the rabbits eating
our whole crop!"



        THE OLD WOMAN



     The  next day final negotiations  began with Ma-dame Vasyutinskayia-and
so did  the search for money to  pay  the  initial  instalment of rent,  the
inevitable expenses attached to removal and starting in a new place.
     For the first time Petya discovered  that money was not only earned, it
could also be "found." But  to find money appeared to be something extremely
complicated, worrying and, worst of  all,  humiliating. His father was often
out, but now nobody said Vasily Petrovich  was at  school,  or had gone to a
teachers' meeting, they simply said he had "gone to town."
     Father  and Auntie used  new words, words which  Petya had  never heard
before, such as mutual credit association, short-term loan, pawnbroker, note
of hand, six per cent per annum, and second mortgage.
     Very often,  after  going to town  a  number of times, Vasily Petrovich
would  come  home  disturbed  and  upset,  refuse any  dinner, take off  his
frock-coat  and  lie  down  on the  bed  with  his  face  to the  wall. That
mysterious  lottery-loan  bond,  part  of Mother's  dowry, emerged from  the
drawer.  Up  to now  Petya had only heard  of it  once  a  year, when Vasily
Petrovich  crossed himself and opened the Odessa Leaflet to  see whether  it
had won two hundred thousand.
     One day when they came home from school Petya and Pavlik found that the
piano-also  part  of Mother's dowry-had  disappeared from  the  dining-room,
leaving a patch of floor that  looked clean and  freshly painted.  The  room
seemed so bare without it that Petya nearly burst into tears.
     Then the rings disappeared from Auntie's fingers.
     Finally the  day  came,  a Sunday, when  Auntie with  trembling fingers
pushed a thick  package of bank-notes, notes of hand and a receipt signed by
a  notary into her reticule, put on  her hat, gloves  and best squirrel cape
left by her late sister, and said decisively, "Vasily Petrovich, I'm going!"
     "Very well," Vasily Petrovich replied dully through the door.
     "Come, Petya," Auntie said resolutely. The boy was to accompany her, in
case anyone tried to rob her on the way.
     Auntie clutched the reticule containing their  whole possessions to her
chest while Petya walked grimly behind with  sharp  glances right and  left.
But  there  was  nothing to arouse suspicion.  It  was Lent, the bells  rang
funerally over the town, and most of the people  they met  were old women in
dark  clothes returning from morning service  with  strings of  convent-made
bread-rings, soft but very sour-looking.
     Madame Vasyutinskaya lived  quite nearby,  in a time-darkened  house of
limestone standing in a quiet side-street near the sea.
     Petya saw an old woman in mourning, sunk deep into an old arm-chair. He
had heard it said that Madame Vasyutinskaya was paralyzed and "had lost  her
legs," but the last bit seemed to be  wrong, for he could  quite plainly see
feet in  fur slippers  on a soft footstool. The room was small and very hot;
it had a tiled  stove with brass fittings and a great deal  of old-fashioned
mahogany furniture.  In  the  corner numerous  lamps burned  with  blue  and
crimson  flames before  icons  hung  with a multitude of Easter decorations,
large  and small, of crystal, porcelain  and gold, dangling on silk ribbons.
Outside the window he could  see  lilac bushes and a flock of  sparrows that
fluttered and squabbled among the grey, bare twigs with their swelling buds.
     In front of the  old lady stood a  Japanese table with a  coffee-set, a
round  bast  box  of  chocolate  halvah  and  a  silver  bread-basket   with
convent-made  bread-rings. The room smelt of coffee and the cigarettes which
Madame Vasyutinskaya  smoked. She glanced at Petya, nodded her massive  head
in its old-fashioned black bonnet and talked to  Auntie a little while about
the weather and  politics.  Then she rang a silver bell and  at  once an old
footman  in a tailcoat  and soft slippers came  in on his shaky  legs from a
neighbouring  room,  letting  in the monotonous  trilling  of canaries,  and
placed an inlaid rosewood box on the table before his mistress.
     Nervous and for some reason flushing, Auntie  took the money and  notes
of hand from her reticule and handed them to  the old woman, who put them in
her  box  without  counting them and gave Auntie  a  paper  folded in  four,
bearing a number of  coloured stamps-the agreement.  Petya noticed  that the
box was lined with pink quilted satin like a wedding coach.
     The old woman locked the box with a small key that hung round her neck.
The sharp click gave Petya a momentary feeling of fright.
     Auntie carefully tucked  the  agreement into her reticule. Then the old
footman  shuffled  out  noiselessly with  the box, and Madame Vasyutinskaya,
puffing, poured three cups of coffee out of the brass pot.
     "What a lovely thing!" said Auntie, taking the  dark-blue cup with  its
gleam of worn gold inside. "It's Gardner, isn't it?"
     "Old Popov,"  the old woman answered in her  deep baritone, and emitted
two streams of tobacco smoke from her nose.
     "Really? I quite took  it for  Gardner," said  Auntie, and  raising her
veil, began drinking coffee in tiny, elegant sips. The old woman put a piece
of chocolate halvah on a saucer and held it out to Petya.
     "No, it's old Popov," she said, turning her bloated face to Auntie. "It
was a wedding present from my late husband. He was a man of  great taste. We
had an estate near Chernigov, forty hundred acres, but  after  the  peasants
burned the house and killed my husband in 1905, I sold the land and  came to
live here. But I think you  know  all that. Until Stolypin was  killed," she
continued in the same wheezing monotonous baritone,  "I still preserved some
illusions. Now  I  have  none.  Russia needs a firm hand and the  late Pyotr
Arkadyevich  Stolypin, peace  to his soul,  was  the  last real nobleman and
administrator who could have saved the  Empire from revolution.  That is why
they  shot him.  But  our Emperor, God  forgive  me,  he's worth nothing.  A
dish-rag....  Don't you listen," she added sternly, turning  to Petya, "it's
too early for you to hear such things. Eat your halvah. I tell you," and she
turned her bovine eyes on  Auntie  and lowered her voice,  "he is  not God's
Anointed, but a plain  coward. Instead of shooting and hanging these rabble,
he flew  into  a panic.  How could any man with sense and understanding give
Russia a constitution and allow that disgraceful All-Russian talking-shop in
the Tavrichesky Palace, with Yids spitting dirt at the government and openly
calling for revolution!"
     With the last words her voice rose to a sudden scream, so strident that
even the canaries in the neighbouring room were silenced for a little while.
     "And they'll get it, mark my words-revolution will come, and very soon,
and then those scum will hang all decent people on  the  first lamppost. But
I'm not such a fool as to sit here and  wait  for  it. I had enough with  my
Chernigov estate. You can all do as you like, but I shall go abroad. I shall
go,  and leave  a curse  on  this  country  with  its  Social-Democrats  and
factions,   and  resolutions,  and  strikes,  and  May  Day   meetings,  and
workers-of-the-world-unite! Take  my land and  run it  as  you please-if the
rabble are kind enough to give their permission, that is!"
     She was  no longer talking, she was screaming at the top of  her voice,
and Petya looked with mingled  terror and disgust  at her eyes,  rolling  in
frenzy.
     "Excuse me,"  she  said suddenly in her ordinary voice. "Will you be so
kind as to pay the second instalment on  your note of hand to my lawyer, and
he will forward it to me."
     Auntie  quickly  began  preparing  to  go, pulling  on  her  gloves and
straightening her hat. Madame Vasyutinskaya did not stop her. When they came
out of the  house, they noticed  open trunks in the little yard  ;and  coats
hung on  ropes  to air. Evidently Madame Vasyutinskaya really  did intend to
leave.



        WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!


     Soon afterwards, the Bachei family moved to their new home. Not  all at
once, however. Vastly Petrovich  went  first  to  take  possession and  have
everything in order before spring came.
     Auntie and the  boys were to  remain in town for a little while longer,
to sub-let the flat and store the furniture.
     The boys were still going to school, for the fees had been  paid at the
beginning  of the year. What they would  do the  next year  depended on  the
success of the new venture.
     Gavrik  often visited them  now.  He had taken and passed the exams for
three forms as  an  out-student;  Petya was coaching him for the  sixth-form
exam, but now he did not refuse the fifty kopeks a lesson.
     Gavrik was  still working in the  Odessa Leaflet  print-shop, not  as a
printer's  devil,  however;  he was  already an  apprentice type-setter  and
earning quite  good wages.  Sometimes  he  came  straight  from work  in the
evening, bringing with him the acrid,  alluring smell of the  print-shop. He
was very apt at his job and in some ways had already outstripped his master.
When he  came to the Bachei home,  he was no longer shy and awkward, he bore
himself confidently and one day even brought a half-pound of sweets for tea.
He  handed  the  little package  to Auntie, saying,  "Allow  me to make this
little  present. It's my  pay-day.  They're Abrikosov's caramels, I know you
like them."
     The misfortunes of the Bachei family -seemed to have brought Gavrik and
Petya closer  together. Gavrik not only sympathized with Petya-he understood
his situation,  which was much more important. Incidentally, from  beginning
to end of the whole affair he expressed his own very definite views about it
all quite freely.
     Vasily  Petrovich's dismissal  from  the  Faig  establishment, although
unpleasant, was something inevitable, for after all better to starve than to
work for  such a parasite, such a blood-sucker. Here,  Gavrik fully approved
of Vasily  Petrovich's action. But  to sell the piano for a  song and rent a
farm-this  was  another  matter;  he  could  not  believe that  a family  of
intellectuals would be able to till the soil with their own hands.
     "You don't know a thing  about it,  you'll get calluses and that's all.
Stolypin farmers!" he added with a smile.
     Petya  had  noticed  lately  that  Gavrik  linked  up  everything  with
politics.
     "Yes, but what was Father to do?" he asked with irritation.
     "What he'd  done  before. Give people learning. That's what a teacher's
job is."
     "But if he's not allowed?"
     "Eh, brother, they can't forbid anyone to teach folks."
     "But what folks? Where are they?"
     "He'd  find them if he looked for  them," said Gavrik evasively. "Well,
let's get on with the lesson."
     After their  lessons Petya would often walk part of  the way  home with
Gavrik, sometimes he even went as  far as Near Mills. There were many things
they  talked of on the way,  and  Gavrik was not so  secretive as  formerly.
Petya learned that there  was  a committee of  the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party  in the town. It consisted of Beks and Meks. The Beks  were the
Bolsheviks and the Meks-the Mensheviks. There was a clear line between them.
Terenty and all his friends belonged to the Beks.
     There  had been a  Party conference in Prague not  long  before, and at
this conference  Ulyanov, who was also called Lenin or Frey, the one who had
been  sent the letter by Petya, had defeated  the Meks, and now there was  a
real revolutionary party of the working class.
     "And  will  there be  a  revolution?" asked  Petya,  remembering Madame
Vasyutinskaya and her dreadful eyes that rolled like those of a madwoman.
     "All in good time," said Gavrik. "We've got to get our forces together.
Then we'll see."
     Once he  pulled  out  of his  pocket a  dirty canvas  bag  filled  with
something hard, and held it up before Petya's nose.
     "See that?" he winked.
     "What is it? Buttons for tiddly-winks?"  asked Petya, surprised. He had
never thought Gavrik could still go in for silly things like that.
     "Aha!"  said Gavrik.  "Like a game?" And his eyes sparkled slyly. Petya
held out his hand.
     "Let's see."
     "Hands off," said Gavrik sternly and hid the bag behind his back.
     Petya realized that this must be something very different from buttons.
     "I  suppose it's  the kind of buttons that nearly blew  up  our kitchen
that  time," he said, remembering how the pans had leaped  on the stove  and
the macaroni dangled from the ceiling.
     "Not quite, but  something  like it," said Gavrik, who evidently wanted
to show off  but could not  make up  his mind. "Guess again, you're  getting
nearer."
     "Show me!" Petya pleaded, burning with curiosity.
     "Not now."
     "When?"
     "Don't be so inquisitive," said Gavrik and pushed the bag deep into his
trouser pocket.
     Petya, offended, asked no more but sulked in silence.
     When the friends  drew level with  the depot, however, Gavrik led Petya
behind  a corner. He looked  round  carefully,  then pulled out the  bag and
unfastened the knotted  string with his teeth. He tipped something out on to
his palm  and held it under  Petya's eyes.  His palm was filled with  little
metal pieces that smelt strongly of printer's ink.
     "Type," he said mysteriously.
     Petya did not understand.
     "Type for printing. Letters."'
     Petya had never seen real  type. As a  child, it  is true, he had  been
given  a toy printing-set in a flat tin box. There  had  been  several dozen
rubber letters, a frame, a pad soaked with thick ink, and a pair of  pincers
for  handling the letters. You could set a number  of words in the frame and
then stamp them  on  paper, making printed lines  with black strips  between
them. But of course, real printing was something quite different.
     "And can you set type and print yourself?"
     "Of course!"
     "And will it be just as clear as in the newspaper?"
     "Just as clear."
     "Set something, show me."
     "Set something, eh?" Gavrik thought a  moment. "All right. But let's go
on a bit first."
     They  went  round the depot,  crawled under  trucks, ran down  from the
embankment and found  themselves in a  deep gully thick  with dry weeds from
last year.  There they sat down on the ground. From his pocket Gavrik took a
steel  thing  with  a  clip  which he called a  composing-stick and  started
quickly setting letter after letter of type in a long line.
     He then took a stump of pencil from his pocket and rubbed the lead over
the letters. Again he delved  into that bottomless  pocket, took out a scrap
of clean newsprint, laid the composing-stick on it and pressed down with his
hand.
     "Ready!" He held out the paper to Petya, but without letting go of it.
     "Workers  of the world, unite!"  Petya read these strange words faintly
but clearly printed in real newspaper lettering.
     "What's that?" he asked, admiring the  deft speed with which Gavrik had
done it all.
     "What we've been  talking about," said Gavrik; he  tore the  paper into
minute fragments and let the wind carry them away. "But remember!" He wagged
a finger smelling of kerosene under Petya's nose.
     "You needn't worry."
     Gavrik went up close to Petya  and breathed into his ear, "I've got out
fifteen bags of type like this."


        THE NEW HOME


     At the end of March  Auntie finally  managed to sublet the flat on good
terms.  Now  the furniture had  to be taken care  of,  and then  they  could
finally move. Gavrik talked it over with Terenty and then suggested that the
furniture be put  in  their shed  at Near  Mills to save storage  costs; and
Petya could live there too, until the end of the school exams.
     This  seemed ideal, and Auntie agreed gladly. She herself decided to go
and stay with an old school friend, taking Pavlik with her.
     So one fine  day two great flat carts called platforms, each drawn by a
pair of horses, drove  into the yard. And the Bachei furniture  was  carried
out.
     They  had  all  thought there  was  a great deal  of  furniture in  the
apartment, they had feared  two platforms  would not  hold it all. It turned
out, however, that the second platform was only half filled. And when tables
and chairs were stood  upside  down on  the platforms  and  fastened on with
thick ropes,  the  suites  which  to  Petya had  always looked  so  fine and
expensive,   especially  the   drawing-room   suite  with  its  golden  silk
upholstery, lost all their grandeur.
     The  bright   sunshine  seemed  to   bring  all  defects  into  glaring
prominence,   every  scratch,   crack  and  tear.  The   wash-stand   looked
particularly forlorn with its broken  pedal and  the  crack right across the
marble. The bronze dining-room lamp became insignificant with the  shade and
bronze ball removed and thrown down amid the supporting chains on the floor;
it  looked  a silly, old-fashioned thing that nobody in  their  senses would
want. Petya's most unpleasant surprise,  however, was the bookcase which had
always been  known  in  the Bachei  family as "Vasily  Petrovich's library."
Empty of books, lying  on its side, it looked miserably small, almost like a
toy,  and  all  the  books-the  famous Brockhaus  and  Efron  Encyclopaedia,
Karamzin's History of  the  State of  Russia,  Pushkin, Lermontov,  Tolstoi,
Gogol,    Turgenev,    Dostoyevsky,    Nekrasov,    Sheller-Mikhailov    and
Pomyalovsky-taken all together,  made up about  a dozen  piles strongly tied
with string. In fact, all these things as they were carried out did not look
like solid, dignified furniture at all, but just old junk.
     Petya climbed up  beside the driver of the first  platform to show  him
the way. Dunyasha, her nose swollen with crying, sat on  the second, holding
the mirror that reflected the street at a fantastic, dizzy angle.
     Auntie,  standing by  the  open gate with  Pavlik  beside her,  crossed
herself and for some reason waved her handkerchief.
     All  the way  Petya was  afraid he  might meet  some  of the  boys from
school. Although he  would never have admitted it  even to himself,  he  was
ashamed  of  their  furniture and  ashamed to  be taking it to  such  a poor
quarter  of the town as Near Mills. It was not so easy  to get accustomed to
the idea that now they too were "poor."
     Terenty and Gavrik were not at home, only the Chernoivanenko mother and
daughter  were there to meet him. Motya was more excited than  anyone  else,
she followed each article as it was carried across the front garden into the
shed, which had long been cleared for them.
     "Oh, Petya,  what  beautiful  chairs  you've got!" she cried in sincere
admiration, and touched the silk upholstery of an armchair,  rubbed down  in
places so that the white threads showed.
     Zhenka appeared with a crowd of  boys. They swarmed round the platforms
at  once, climbing with bare feet on to the wheels, feeling  the bronze ball
from the  lamp  and  turning  the  taps  of the wash-stand;  Zhenka  himself
actually  climbed  on  to the  box,  seized the  reins, assumed a  daredevil
expression and shouted, "Whoa there, damn you!"  A few  cuffs, however, soon
scattered  the whole gang and  they tore  down  the unpaved street,  raising
clouds of dust.
     When the furniture was stowed in the shed and the platforms drove away,
Dunyasha shouldered a bundle containing her clothes and icons and set off on
foot straight across the steppe to the cottage, which was not far from there
as the crow flies.
     "Well, so now you're  going to live  here with us at  Near Mills," said
Motya gaily,  then noticed Petya's downcast look and  added, "But whit's the
matter? Don't you like it here? You mustn't think it isn't nice, it is, it's
awfully nice. The snowdrops are  out  on the  steppe, just the other side of
the common, and there'll soon be violets in the gullies. We can go  and pick
them sometimes. Wouldn't you like it?"
     Gavrik soon came home from the print shop and stealthily  showed  Petya
another bag of type.
     "That's the sixteenth," he said with a wink.
     "Look out, one of these days you may get caught," said Petya.
     "Well, if I'm caught, I'm caught," sighed Gavrik. "Can't be helped."
     The  next  moment,  however, he was  gaily singing  a comic  song  very
popular on the outskirts of Odessa: "When they caught him, well, they socked
him-hey! hey! hey!"
     At first glance there might not seem to be much sense in the words, but
Petya always  felt  some hidden meaning, some daring,  fighting challenge in
that song.
     They arranged a nook for Petya  among the neatly  stacked  furniture in
the shed, with  bed, table, lamp and bookshelf. There was plenty of room, so
Gavrik brought his own bed in too, to live with Petya.
     Terenty came home from  work, nodded to  Petya and cast a business-like
look  round the shed. With \a dissatisfied grunt he rearranged the furniture
to occupy less room and put a brick under the  bookcase to stop it wobbling.
When he had finished there was even more space.
     "But mind you behave yourselves, no  fooling. I  know  you-you'll start
smoking,  or stop each  other studying." He turned to Petya. "You'll have to
work hard or they'll fail you, sure as I stand here. They won't forgive your
dad for Blizhensky. They're  all the same gang. You'll  see that I am right.
Well...."
     He slipped the bag of tools off his shoulder, threw off his oily jacket
and  went to the  bowl standing  on a bench by  the fence.  Motya gave him a
piece of  blue-veined washing soap, stepped up on  a low  stool  and  poured
water from a jug over his large, black hands. Then he bent his head for her,
and washed face, head and neck, spluttering, ridding  himself  of metal dust
and smoke. His washing took a long time,  he continued until he was as fresh
and pink as  a baby pig. Then  he  took the embroidered  towel hanging  over
Motya's shoulder and dried himself with the same gusto.
     Petya, meanwhile,  was digesting with alarm Terenty's final words which
he believed  without the faintest hesitation, particularly as he himself had
long felt something cold  and  threatening in the  faces of the director and
school inspector whenever he passed them.
     Petya was no longer  surprised to find Terenty so  well informed  about
all their circumstances, even  the incident with Blizhensky. He  had stopped
regarding  Terenty as  a  plain master  mechanic at  the railway  workshops,
earning  good wages, maybe, but still only a  workman. Petya understood well
that in Terenty's other, secret life,  which was called "Party work," he was
not only bigger and more important  than Vasily Petrovich, he  was much more
important than  the  school  director, than  Mr. Faig, than  the head of the
Education Department,  perhaps  even  more  important than  the Governor  of
Odessa, Tolmachov.
     They all had supper  together. Terenty's wife picked up the prongs  and
pulled an  iron  pot  out  of  the  stove,  country-style. The pot contained
cabbage soup without  meat.  It was followed by a  pan  of potatoes fried in
sunflower oil. Everything was eaten with  wooden  spoons. The rye bread  was
fresh and very fragrant. A head of  garlic and some pods of  red pepper were
on the table, but only  Terenty and Gavrik took any; they put the red pepper
in the cabbage soup and rubbed the garlic on the crust of bread.
     Petya, not to be outdone by his friend, also took a polished, fiery-red
pod of pepper, put it in his soup and mashed it.
     "Oh, don't!" said Motya in a frightened whisper.
     But Petya had already managed to swallow a mouthful of the soup and was
now sitting, tears in his  eyes, his tongue thrust out, feeling as though he
breathed fire.
     "Maybe you'd like some garlic too?" asked Gavrik innocently.
     "Go to hell!" said Petya  with  difficulty, wiping the tears  from  his
eyes.
     When  they rose from table,  Petya, like a well-brought-up boy, crossed
himself before the dark icon of St. Nicholas-the one he had seen as a boy in
Grandad Chernoivanenko's hut, bowed first to the mistress of the house, then
to the  master  and  said, "Thank you  most humbly."  To  which the mistress
answered kindly, "Good health go with it. Excuse the supper."
     That was how Petya's life in Near Mills began.
     They  rose at six in the morning  and washed in the yard, pouring  cold
water from the  well over  each other from a jug, ate a piece of black bread
spread with plum jelly and washed it down with tea.
     Then the  three men-Terenty,  Gavrik and Petya-set off  for  work. They
went out of  the gate together just as the factory whistles sounded from all
sides in a  long-drawn-out, imperative  yet indifferent wail.  The mist of a
March morning trembled from their monotonous chorus.
     Gates  creaked  and banged all over Near Mills  and  the streets filled
with men hurrying  to work. There were more and  more of them, they overtook
one another, greeted one another in passing, gathered into small groups.
     Terenty  walked quickly, in  silence,  his tools clanking softly in his
bag. Petya and Gavrik  could  hardly  keep up with him. Most  of the workers
greeted  Terenty  and he replied, mechanically  raising the  little cap like
cyclist's wear from  his  big,  round  head. Soon he  joined  a large  group
turning into a side-street while Petya and Gavrik went straight on together.
     They parted  company at the station, Petya turning right  to the school
while Gavrik, casually raising one large finger to the peak of a cap exactly
like Terenty's, went on through the town to the print-shop.
     All  the  time  he  was  at  school  Petya  had  a  strange feeling  of
awkwardness, timidity, alienation. He kept away  from  the other  boys. When
the  long recess  came, he  looked for  Pavlik, and the two brothers  walked
silently up  and down  the corridors, holding  each  other's bells. Pavlik's
face was very serious, even grim.
     On returning  to  Near Mills, Petya went into the shed and settled down
to  his  lessons,  working with desperate intensity as though preparing  for
battle.
     In the  evening Terenty and Gavrik came home  and they all  had supper.
After that  Petya  drilled  Gavrik  in Latin, and Gavrik in his turn drilled
Motya in all subjects-for she wanted to enter the fourth form at school.
     It was  eleven when they  finally went to bed. Petya and Gavrik put out
the  lamp and then lay talking in  the  dark. Although,  to be exact, it was
Petya who did most of the talking. Gavrik had little to say, only pushed his
head deeper into  the pillow. After the day's work  he  liked to have a good
sleep.


        SNOWDROPS


     More than  once  Petya tried to tell Gavrik about the  girl  he fell in
love with abroad; he would introduce it with a rapid description of Vesuvius
and the Blue Grotto in Capri with its magical underwater lighting that makes
hands  and  faces look as though made of blue glass;  but when  he  began to
speak in hints and half-sentences of that  wonderful  first meeting  at  the
station  in  Naples, he  found Gavrik  was already asleep,  even starting to
snore.
     Once, however, Petya did manage to tell Gavrik about his romance before
his friend finally dropped  off to sleep. "And  what  happened after  that?"
asked Gavrik, more from politeness than interest.
     "Nothing," sighed Petya. "We parted for ever."  "Well, that's very sad,
of course," said Gavrik, frankly yawning. "What was her name?"
     "Her name?"  said Petya  slowly and mysteriously; it was a very awkward
moment. With a shade of secret grief he said, "Ah, what does a name matter!"
     "Well, what was she like, at least-dark or fair?" asked Gavrik.
     "Neither dark nor fair,  more ... how can I explain? Her  hair was sort
of  chestnut,  or  better,  dark  chestnut,"  Petya  answered  with  painful
exactitude.
     "Uhuh, I understand," mumbled Gavrik. "Well, let's go to sleep."
     "No, wait a minute,"  said Petya, whose  imagination was only beginning
to get to work. "Don't go to sleep yet. I want you to advise me, as pal-what
ought I to do now?"
     "Write to her," said Gavrik. "You know her address, don't you?"
     "Ah, what would that help!" said Petya in grief-stricken accents.
     "But if you love her," said Gavrik judicially.
     "What's  love?" said  the  disillusioned Petya  and  quoted  Lermontov,
slightly out of place:

     But love is no solace-too fleeting it is,
     Unequal to life-long devotion.

     "In that  case, shut  up  and  let  me get to sleep,"  grunted  Gavrik,
turning round on the other side and pulling the pillow over his ear.
     Not another word could be got from him.
     But Petya lay awake for a long time.
     He could  see  the moon like a  greenish sickle peeping in through  the
tiny window. Time after time he heard  the gate creak. There was a murmur of
talk and more than once people came into the little yard and went out again.
     "Don't go  straight there, go round by the marshalling yard." The voice
was Terenty's, evidently he had had visitors again.
     Petya began thinking of  that girl, but somehow he  could no longer see
her clearly. The picture was hazy- a braid with a black ribbon,  a cinder in
his eye, the blizzard in  the  mountains-and that was all. It seemed that he
had simply forgotten her.
     It was rather chilly in the shed. Petya  took down his Swiss cape  from
the  wall  and spread  it over  his bed. Now he  saw himself  as the  lonely
traveller  in  a  poor shepherd's  hut.  There he lay, rolled  in his  cape,
forgotten by all, with a broken heart and a  tormented soul. And she whom he
so  loved, at  this very  moment  perhaps  she was....  Petya  made  a  last
desperate  effort to picture what she could be doing, but instead found  his
mind drifting to quite different thoughts-thoughts of the corning exams, the
new life waiting for him on the farm, and strangest thing of all-thoughts of
Motya. Really, it  wouldn't be such a  bad idea to go out to the steppe with
her sometime to pick snowdrops.
     It had never before  entered his head that Motya  could possibly be the
heroine of a romance. But now it seemed the most natural thing in the world,
he was surprised he had not  thought of it. After  all, she was pretty,  she
loved him-of that Petya had no doubt whatsoever, and most important  of all,
she was always there, at hand.
     These  thoughts induced a pleasant  excitement, and instead of going to
sleep in  tears, Petya drifted into slumber with  a Languid,  self-satisfied
smile and wakened with a feeling of something new and extremely pleasant.
     Instead of sitting down to his  lessons when he  came home from school,
he sought out Motya, who was helping her mother make potato cakes,  and went
straight to the point.
     "Well, how about it?" he said with a condescending smile.
     "How  about what?" asked  Motya, diffident  as  always  when talking to
Petya.
     "Have you forgotten?"
     "What?" Motya repeated even more diffidently, and glanced up at the boy
from under her brows with sweet, innocent eyes.
     "I thought you intended to go and pick snowdrops."
     She blushed and her fingers began crumbling the edge of a potato cake.
     "Do you mean it?"
     "Of course. But if you don't want to go, well, it doesn't matter."
     "Mummy, can  you manage without me?" asked  Motya. "I  promised to show
Petya where the snowdrops and violets grow."
     "Go  along,  children, go and gather  your  flowers,"  said  her mother
affectionately.
     Motya  ran  behind the curtain,  unfastening her apron as she went. She
put  on  her best goatskin  shoes and the  coat  she had rather grown out of
during the winter, and  flung her braid over her  shoulder. She was terribly
excited, and a faint dew of perspiration appeared on her neat nose.
     Meanwhile,  Petya,  deliberately unhurried, strode nonchalantly  to the
shed, put on his cloak, picked  up  his alpenstock  and presented himself to
Motya in his sombre glory-somewhat spoiled by the school cap.
     "Well, let's go,"  said Petya with all the  grand indifference he could
muster.
     "Yes, let's go," Motya answered in a very small  voice, her head  down,
and led the way to the gate, her new shoes squeaking loudly.
     While they  crossed the common where the cows  were  already grazing on
last  year's grass, Petya turned over the very  important  question of which
Motya  was  to  be- Olga or Tatyana? In  any  case he,  of course,  remained
Yevgeny  Onegin.  He selected the  old  version  of  Yevgeny Onegin  as  the
easiest,  to avoid  too  much  trouble.  Motya  was not worth anything  more
complicated.  Now  he  must  decide  quickly  whether she would  be  Olga or
Tatyana, and then make a beginning.
     In appearance  she was not  a bit like Tatyana,  she would make a  much
better Olga-if  it weren't for that  coat  with  its too  short sleeves,  of
course, and  those dreadful  squeaking shoes that could surely be  heard all
over Near Mills.
     Here  was  the end  of  the common, time to start. Petya quickly merged
Tatyana and Olga, getting quite a suitable hybrid whom he could preach to in
the best Onegin style:

     And, in some quiet place apart
     Instruct the lady of his heart. . .

     and yet whose hand he could tenderly press; and best of all there would
be  no need for  kissing, the very thought  of  which made  Petya thoroughly
uncomfortable.
     He would continue to be Onegin but with a faint touch  of Lensky which,
however, should not hamper him in following the great rule:

     A woman's love for us increases .
     The less we love her, sooth to say. . .

     It could become  a  splendid  romance.  It was  rather a  drawback,  of
course,  that he really did like Motya. That  was quite  out of  place if he
were  to be Onegin. But  Petya resolved to treat his feelings with contempt,
and as  soon as they  were out on the steppe  he said sternly,  "Motya, I've
something very serious to say to you."
     The girl's heart turned over and she halted, alarmed by his grim look.
     "Have you ever loved anyone?" asked Petya with still greater sternness.
     "Yes," answered Motya in a small voice.
     Petya's face showed an  involuntary smile of  self-satisfaction, but on
the instant he banished it and asked, looking straight into her eyes,
     "Who?"
     "A lot of people," answered Motya simply.
     Petya bit back  the word "fool,"  that  nearly slipped  out, and set to
work patiently explaining what love was, what it meant  in general and  what
it meant in particular. Motya understood and flushed crimson.
     "Well then?" Petya asked insistently.
     "You know  for yourself,"  Motya  whispered almost  inaudibly,  raising
happy, tear-filled eyes to his face.
     She  was so  sweet in that moment that Petya was ready to  fall in love
with her, very much  like Lensky with Olga, in spite  of the squeaking shoes
and  the coat bought on the market. But such a  very easy victory could  not
satisfy him, it was too commonplace.
     "So I can count on your friendship?" he asked.
     "Yes, of course," said Motya. "Always."
     "Then I  must tell you  my secret. Only  promise that  it shall  remain
between ourselves."
     "I give my word, I swear it by  the true Cross," said Motya and quickly
crossed herself several times. "May I die here on this  spot if I ever say a
word."
     "I have fallen in love," said Petya mournfully.
     He stood in silence for a moment,  then told Motya about  his  romance,
word for word as he had told it to Gavrik in the shed.
     Motya listened in silence, her  arms hanging despondently, and when  he
finished she asked in a voice unlike her own, "What is her name?"
     "What does a name matter!" Petya answered.
     "And you love her very, very much?" said Motya in lifeless tones.
     "That's just it," Petya answered.
     "I wish you all happiness," said Motya in a barely audible voice.
     "Yes, but I want your advice as a friend-what  ought I  to do now?  How
should I act?"
     "Write her a letter if you love her so much."
     "But what is love?  'Love is  no  solace-too fleeting it is, unequal to
life-long devotion,'" said Petya, in a. somewhat dramatic sing-song.
     "I wish you all happiness," said Motya. Her eyes suddenly narrowed like
a cat's, almost frightening Petya.  Then she turned and walked rapidly  back
the way they had come.
     "Stop,  where  are  you  going? What about the snowdrops?" Petya called
out.
     "I wish you all happiness," she said again, without turning.
     Petya ran  after  her, the  cape hampered him  but he overtook her. She
flung off the hand he put on her shoulder and quickened her steps.
     "Silly  girl, I was  only joking,  can't you understand  I  was joking?
Can't you take a joke?" Petya mumbled. "Why do you have to lose your  temper
like that?"
     Now that she was angry he liked her twice as much as before.
     Motya ran all the way across the  common and only slowed her pace  to a
walk when she reached the street.
     Petya walked beside her, protesting:
     "I was only joking. Can't you understand that? Silly girl, to lose your
temper this way!"
     "I've not lost my temper," she said quietly.
     The storm of jealousy had passed, she was the old Motya again.
     "Let's make up, then," Petya proposed.
     "But I  haven't quarrelled with you," she  answered.  She even forced a
faint  smile  because she did not want people to see them quarrelling in the
street.
     Petya was embarrassed but inwardly triumphant.  Taken  all round it had
been an excellent love scene.
     It  was  Zhenya who  spoiled it  all.  He had long  been watching them,
together with his  faithful  followers.  And  now  the  whole  gang  of boys
followed  them  at a cautious distance chanting in chorus,  "Spoony, spoony,
krssy-kissy-coo!"


        THE LENA MASSACRE


     One day at the beginning of April  Gavrik came home from the print-shop
much later than usual. Petya was in the shed going over his geometry.
     "Soldiers  have fired  on the workers at the Lena gold-fields,"  Gavrik
said before  he  was  properly inside,  and without removing his cap crossed
over and sat down on the edge of his bed.
     Petya already knew from the talk he had heard in  Near  Mills that  far
away  in  Siberia,  in  the  dense  taiga  by  the Lena  River,  there  were
gold-fields where workers lived in horrible conditions. He also knew that at
one  of  the  worst of these,  the  workers  had been on strike  ever  since
February and  had even  sent deputations to the other fields. The strike was
led by the Beks, while the Meks were trying to persuade the  workers to call
off the strike and make peace with the management. But the workers would not
listen to the Meks and  the strike spread. Over six thousand were out.  That
was the last  news which had  come by devious routes from the banks  of  the
Lena.
     Now Gavrik sat, his hands between his knees, staring at the green shade
of the lamp that was reflected in his fixed eyes. His breathing was slow but
deep,  like  a  succession of  sighs-evidently he had  hurried home from the
print-shop.
     At first Petya did not take in the full significance of Gavrik's words.
It had been said so simply, almost without expression: "Soldiers have  fired
on the workers." He looked again at Gavrik, at his frozen, haggard face, and
realization flooded his mind.
     "How-how did  they  fire?"  he  asked,  feeling  his face stiffen  like
Gavrik's.
     "Just like  that.  Quite  simple,"  said Gavrik roughly. "From  rifles.
Company, aim! Fire!"
     "How do you know?"
     "I  set the  dispatch  myself. Nonpareil, six point. It came  in  three
hours ago. It's  to be in today's issue- if they don't  take it out. You can
expect any dirt from them. Well, I'm off," he said, rising with a jerk.
     "Where are you going?"
     "To  Terenty  at  the workshops.  Seems  he's  doing  overtime  on  the
night-shift."
     With that Gavrik turned and went.
     Petya felt he could not  bear it alone in the shed, he ran after Gavrik
and  overtook him by the  gate.  Silently they  walked together  through the
transparent darkness of the April night. The first apple blossom was  out in
the gardens, but in Siberia  it  was still winter with hard  frost,  and the
Lena River lay ice-bound under its covering of snow.
     Petya had  come out without a coat and soon felt  chilly. He thrust his
hands into the sleeves of his school jacket and huddled his elbows to him as
he walked  beside  Gavrik.  A church clock  somewhere struck  eleven. In the
houses everyone was asleep and the  windows were dark; the only lamp was the
electric  light  at  the gates  of  the  railway  workshops,  that cast  its
reflection  on the  lines.  The  watchman  was  dozing,  the  bottom  of his
sheepskin peeped through the open door of his shelter.
     Petya and Gavrik went round the locomotive shop, and peered through the
dusty glass, broken here and there. Petya could  see the flickering light of
a furnace,  and the great bulk of an engine  slung in chains  from the roof.
Workers walked about beneath it. Petya  at once recognized Terenty, carrying
an  oily steel  connecting-rod on his  shoulder, one hand steadying  an  end
wrapped in a black rag.
     A railway engineer in a  uniform cap  and  a tunic with shoulder-straps
stood, feet astride,  at  one side, holding  a large blueprint as  though it
were a newspaper he was reading.
     All  this  Petya  had  seen many  times  before, it  contained  nothing
unusual, still  less menacing. But now a  chill  of fear ran through him. He
felt that any moment those chains  might  snap and the pendant  engine crash
down with all its  giant weight  upon  the men  standing  underneath. For an
instant the picture was so real before him that he shut his eyes.
     But at that moment Gavrik  put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
Terenty  turned and  looked at  the dark  glass of  the  window  that  dimly
reflected the electric lights in the shop. Then with a smooth heavy movement
of  his  great  body  he slid  the  rod  from his shoulder and carried it on
outstretched arms away  to the side.  Soon after that he appeared round  the
corner and came up to the boys.
     "What's the matter?" he asked Gavrik, but looked at Petya.
     "Soldiers have  fired  on the workers  at  the Lena gold-fields,"  said
Gavrik in a low  voice. "A dispatch came from Irkutsk today. I ran off eight
copies just in case." He handed Terenty a sheet of fresh proofs.
     Terenty  turned his  back to the lighted window and read the  dispatch.
Petya could not see the expression of his face but felt it must be dreadful.
Suddenly Terenty  bent, snatched up a piece of clinker from  the  ground and
flung it against the wall with such force that it shattered to fragments.
     For some  time he  stood breathing heavily, mastering himself, then  he
led Gavrik aside and they talked quickly for a moment.
     On the  way  back Gavrik several times left Petya and disappeared for a
little  while.  Once Petya saw him go to somebody's gate  and thrust a white
paper into the crack. He guessed that this was a copy of the dispatch.
     They returned to their shed, put out the  light and went to bed, but it
was a  long time before the boys could  sleep. Petya found himself listening
fearfully to  the  sounds of the  night.  He had the feeling that  something
terrible was going to begin.  Shouting crowds would run  down  the street, a
fire  would  break  out  somewhere,  there  would  be  revolver  shots.  But
everything was quiet.
     The  pointsman's horn sounded  from the  railway crossing; then a goods
train passed.  A cart rattled along the uneven road a long way off, he could
hear  an  empty  bucket banging  under  it.  Then came the third  cock-crow,
prolonged and sleepy, caught up  by bird  after bird throughout  Near Mills.
That was followed by the factory whistles and then the creaking of gates.
     The day passed as usual. At recess, however, Petya  noticed some of the
big boys  reading a  newspaper under the  stairs, and  heard  the  whispered
words, "There's trouble at the Lena gold-fields."
     Gavrik came home even later than  the previous  day-  he had waited for
the latest news-and brought a big bundle  of proofs with  him. They were  of
dispatches giving the details of the Lena massacre. Five  hundred killed and
wounded. Petya went cold with horror.
     Night came.  Terenty said a few  words  to  Gavrik, then they both went
out.  Petya  wanted to go too,  but they refused to take him. Left alone, he
went to  bed,  pulled his cape right  over  his  head and fell asleep. Soon,
however, he was awake again.
     Everything was very  quiet. Petya lay on his back, eyes open, trying to
picture five hundred killed and wounded. But  it  was impossible,  no matter
how he strained his imagination.  All he could see was an indistinct picture
of a snow-covered field  strewn  with the dark forms of  dead  workers.  The
meaning of the picture  was  immeasurably worse  than the picture itself and
this inconsistency tormented Petya, and would let him think of nothing else.
     Suddenly  it occurred  to him that five hundred was  just the number of
pupils and teachers at his school. He  pictured  the corridors,  staircases,
class-rooms, gym  and the assembly hall full of dead and  wounded pupils and
teachers, the  pools of blood  on the tile floors,  the screams, the groans,
the confusion....
     A shudder ran through him.
     But still it was not  the same, because this was only fancy  while that
had been real. Those  bodies were real, not  imaginary, and Petya started to
remember all the dead bodies he had seen.
     He  remembered  Mother  in  her coffin, looking like a bride, her  lips
blackened from medicine and a strip of  paper on her forehead. He remembered
Uncle Misha in his frock-coat, his arms with  their bony white hands crossed
on his  breast.  He remembered Vitya Seroshevsky,  one  of  the boys in  the
fourth  form who had  died of diphtheria, looking like a large  doll in  his
blue  uniform. Grandad- Mother's father-with  his  bald head  reflecting the
light of the candles. An infantry general who  had been taken past the house
in an open coffin on a gun-carriage, with all  his decorations carried  on a
velvet cushion in front.
     But none of these had been killed, they had died  a natural death, they
were taken to  the cemetery  with wreaths  and incense and music and singing
and lanterns  on  crape-swathed  staffs. However dreadful  they might  look,
these  motionless  forms  still bore  human semblance  amid all the funereal
trappings, and they could not give Petya any idea of those  hundreds who lay
prone in the snow, and his torment continued.
     Suddenly he saw again what had long been thrust away into the very back
of  his memory  and hardly ever came to the surface,  because it was so much
more terrible than anything else.
     Petya remembered  1905, Terenty's  bandaged head with  blood  trickling
down his  temple, he remembered the room with its smashed  furniture full of
the smoke  of  gunfire,  and the  man with the indifferent waxen  face and a
black hole above the open  eye who lay so  uncomfortably on the floor  among
empty  cartridge clips and cartridge  eases. He remembered the  two Cossacks
galloping past,  dragging after  them  on a  rope the  corpse of a man Petya
knew, Joseph Karlovich, wh