orner.
     Gavrik said that his brother wanted him to take Grandpa in for a while.
     "Tell your brother that I shall  do  everything necessary  and that  he
needn't  have any misgivings,"  Joseph  Karlovich said rapidly. "I have some
connections  in town. I  believe  that  sooner or later  I shall  succeed in
finding him a place as night watchman."
     Gavrik left Grandpa  with Joseph Karlovich,  promising to look in  from
time to time, and went out.
     "Tell  Terenti," the  owner of  the shooting gallery  whispered at  the
door, "that Sophia Petrovna wants him to know that she has quite a supply of
nuts, only  she  regrets they  aren't  very  big  ones. Not walnuts. He will
understand. They aren't  walnuts.  Have  him arrange the transportation.  Is
that clear?"
     "Yes,"  said  Gavrik, who  was accustomed  to receiving such  messages.
"They're not walnuts, and have him send someone for them." "That's right."
     Joseph Karlovich rummaged  about in the lining  of his frightful jacket
and produced a ten-kopek piece.
     "Please take this  and buy yourself some sweets. I regret that I cannot
offer  you anything else. I  should, upon my honour, be glad to present  you
with  a Monte Cristo, but-" Joseph Karlovich sadly spread his hands, and his
passion-ravaged   face  gave  a  twitch-"but  unfortunately,   owing  to  my
regrettable character, I haven't a single one left."
     Gavrik solemnly accepted the ten-kopek piece, thanked him, and went out
into the street, which was lit up by the fitful glow of the illuminations.

        35
     A DEBT OF HONOUR

     In  the  morning  Petya took  two pairs  of  leather sandals  from  the
storeroom and on the way to school sold them to an old-clothes man for  four
kopeks.
     When  Gavrik appeared in the afternoon the boys  immediately spread out
their lugs. Petya lost everything he had just bought even more  quickly than
the first time.
     It was easy to see why. The friends were too unevenly matched.
     In Gavrik's pouches lay almost all the lugs of the seaside district. He
could afford  big risks,  while  Petya had to treasure each deuce  and place
miserly bets, which, as everyone knows, always leads to quick losses.
     The next day Petya,  no longer able to control himself, stealthily took
sixteen kopeks from the sideboard, change put there by Dunya.
     This  time he decided to play  more wisely  and  cautiously.  The first
thing he needed in order to win was a good king-lug. "
     Petya's  king-lug was a big and remarkably handsome livery button  with
lions  and  a  count's  crown on  it, but  in  spite  of  its  beauty it was
worthless: it was too light. What he had to do  was make it heavier. He went
to the railway station, made his way over to the  sidings, and on a dead end
siding  beyond the engine-shed he stripped a lead  seal  from  a goods  van,
nearly dying from fright as he did so.
     At home he beat the lead into the bowl of  his king-lug  with a hammer.
Then he went across Kulikovo Field and put the lug on a rail. When he picked
it up after a suburban train had passed over it, the lug  was  hot and heavy
and wonderfully  flattened  out.  Now  it  was  as good as  any  of Gavrik's
king-lugs.
     Gavrik came soon  after, and  they  began to  play. It was  a  long and
bitter contest.
     A good king-lug was not enough, it appeared. Skill was the thing! Petya
ended up by losing everything he had and falling into debt besides.
     Gavrik said he would come for the debt tomorrow.
     The period that now set in for Petya was like a nightmare.
     In  the evening, after dinner, Father said calmly,  "There was  sixteen
kopeks' change on the sideboard. You didn't by any chance take it, did you?"
     The blood rushed into Petya's heart and then out of it.
     "No," he said with all the indifference he could muster.
     "Come now, look me in the eye."
     Father took Petya by the chin and turned up his face.
     "On my word of honour," said Petya, trying his  hardest  to look Father
straight in the eye. "By the true and holy Cross."
     Turning cold with horror, Petya faced the icon and crossed himself.
     He expected a bolt  of lightning to come through  the ceiling and  fell
him the very next instant.
     Surely God would  not fail to punish him  at once for  such out-and-out
sacrilege. But nothing happened.
     "Very  strange," Father remarked coolly. "That  means a member  of  our
household has taken  to thieving. Your Aunt and I obviously have no  need to
take  money in secret  from  the sideboard.  Pavlik has  been  in  sight  of
grown-ups ^all day long, so he couldn't  have  taken it either. You've given
your word of honour. Therefore, we can only assume that the money was  taken
by Dunya, who has served us faithfully for five years."
     At the moment Dunya happened to be in the anteroom, filling a lamp.
     She  set the lamp-chimney and her rag  on the mirror-stand and appeared
in the doorway. Her  neck and even her arms,  which were bared to the elbow,
had  turned  red. Her big good-natured face had broken  out in splotches and
was screwed up in misery.
     "May I never see a happy day  for the rest of my life,"  she cried, "if
the young master didn't lose that change from the  market  playing lugs with
Gavrik!" Father looked at Petya.
     The boy  realised that  he had to make a lightning retort, that without
losing a second he had to say  something proud and noble and just, something
which would crush Dunya and instantly free him from all suspicion.
     A minute ago he still could have confessed. But now that the matter  of
lugs had been brought up-not for anything in the world!
     "You have no right to talk  like that!" he screamed hoarsely. A  bright
flush of false indignation suffused his face. "You're lying!"
     But even  that did  not seem  enough  to him. "You-you're  probably-the
thief yourself!" he blurted out, stamping his feet.
     While Dunya  bustled  about  in  the  kitchen  packing her  things  and
demanding that she be paid off, Petya ran into the  nursery and slammed  the
door so furiously that the enamelled image of the guardian angel on the back
of the bed began to rock.
     He flatly refused to ask  Dunya's forgiveness. He got into bed and made
believe he had fainted. They left him in peace.
     Father did not come in to kiss him good-night.
     Petya  heard Auntie  Tatyana  pleading  with  Dunya to  remain.  Dunya,
sobbing, finally consented.
     Many  times that night  he sprang awake, horrified at what he had done.
He was ready to run to the kitchen and kiss Dunya's feet to beg forgiveness.
But what upset him still more was  the thought of  Gavrik, who would  demand
settlement tomorrow.
     In  the morning Petya waited until Father led Pavlik to the bathroom to
wash. Then he went to the wardrobe and took out the old uniform dress coat.
     Family legend had it that Daddy had had the dress coat made when he was
graduating  from the university  and that  he had worn it  only once in  his
life, at the insistence of  Mummy's strait-laced relatives who demanded when
Daddy married Mummy that  everything  should  be  done the proper  way. Ever
since then it had hung in the wardrobe, forgotten by everybody.
     The dress coat had a great many  lugs but the pity of  it was that most
of them were too small to be of any use in the game.
     There  were   only  four  big  ones.  But  even  these  fell  short  of
expectations: they were cheap, thick white threes which had practically gone
out of circulation.
     The  Odessa tailor who  sewed on those  buttons sometime  in  the  last
century had done a conscientious job:  they did not yield to scissors. Petya
impatiently ripped them off, cloth and all, with his teeth.
     Need we say it? This time, too, Petya had miserable luck.
     He fell deeper in debt to Gavrik than ever.
     He was now hopelessly involved. Gavrik regarded him with a dour sort of
pity that boded no good.
     "Well, Petya, what do you say?" he asked sternly.
     There was no  misunderstanding  those words.  They meant  roughly this:
"Now look here, pal, if  you don't pay back those lugs I'll have to take  it
out of your hide.
     Friendship's got nothing to do with it. That's the law, and you know it
yourself.  Lugs  aren't cigarette pictures- they cost  money.  So  don't  be
sore."
     Petya  wasn't sore. He  knew  that  Gavrik was in the right. He  merely
heaved a deep sigh and asked for a little more time. Gavrik consented.
     All  that evening Petya was in torment. His ears became so hot from the
mental strain that they had a distinct ruby glow in the light of the lamp.
     He thought up a thousand and one  ways of getting rich  quick, but they
were all  either too  fantastic or  too criminal. Finally  a  wonderful  yet
surprisingly  simple idea came to him.  Hadn't his late Grandfather, Mummy's
Daddy, been a major? How could that ever have slipped his mind!
     Losing  no time, he  tore a sheet from his arithmetic copybook and  sat
down  to  write a  letter  to his  Grandmother, Mummy's Mummy,  who lived in
Ekaterinoslav.
     He  showered her  with endearments, reported brilliant  progress at the
Gymnasium (to  tell the truth, a bit of an exaggeration) and then asked  her
to  send him-as quickly as possible-dear  Grandfather's major's uniform as a
remembrance.
     A  shrewd  boy,  Petya.  He  knew  just  the  right  approach  to  that
kindhearted old lady who treasured the memory  of Grandfather, a hero of the
Turkish war, no less ardently than she loved Petya, her eldest grandson.
     Further  he  told  her that  he had  made up his  mind to follow in his
heroic Grandfather's footsteps and become a hero too. He had decided upon an
army career and needed the uniform as a constant spur to his martial spirit.
     Petya  hoped  to get  a  pile of lugs  from the  major's  uniform-about
twenty,  if not  all  of  thirty,  excellent officers'  fives  with embossed
eagles.
     That alone could clear his debt  and  perhaps even give him a chance to
win back his losses.
     The  parcel,  he calculated,  was sure to  reach him  in a week at  the
latest.
     Petya told Gavrik  the  whole story. Gavrik  said it  was  a good idea.
Together,  standing  on  tiptoe, the boys  dropped the  letter into the  big
yellow box with the picture of a registered letter with five seals on it and
two crossed postal bugles.
     Now all they had to do was sit back and wait.
     In  anticipation of rich pickings Gavrik let Petya draw upon  unlimited
credit, and Petya light-mindedly gambled away  the  future legacy  from  his
Grandfather.

        36
     THE HEAVY SATCHEL

     A week passed, then another, and still no parcel from Grandmother.
     Although the Tsar  had  proclaimed "freedom" there  were more and  more
disturbances. The postal service worked  badly. Father stopped receiving the
Russkiye  Vedomosti  from Moscow, and  in  the  evenings he  sat  silent and
disturbed,  not knowing what was going on in the world or what view to  take
of things.
     The  preparatory class was  dismissed  for  an indefinite period. Petya
idled away his  days.  During this time he  lost so much to Gavrik on credit
that chills ran down his spine whenever he thought about it.
     One day Gavrik came and said with an ominous smile,  "You'd  better not
expect those  lugs of  yours  so soon. There's going  to be  a general  in a
couple of days."
     A month earlier Petya  would not have understood  this. But now  it was
perfectly clear: a "general" meant a strike.
     There was no reason to doubt Gavrik's words. Petya  had noted  long ago
that somehow or other everything  was known much earlier  in Near Mills than
in town.
     The news was a knife-thrust in the heart.
     "But couldn't it come before that?"
     "Not likely."
     Petya turned pale.
     "What about that debt?" Gavrik said firmly.
     Petya trembled with  impatience to start playing.  He hastily  gave his
word of honour and swore  by the  true and holy Cross that tomorrow,  in one
way or another, he would pay it all back without fail.
     "See  that you do!  Or  else-" Gavrik planted his legs in  their  broad
lilac-coloured corduroys wide apart, sailor fashion.
     That  evening Petya stole Pavlik's famous  moneybox, locked himself  in
the  bathroom,  and with a table-knife pried  out  its contents: forty-three
kopeks in coppers and silver.
     He performed this complicated  operation  with amazing skill  and speed
and then  filled  the box  with a collection of  rattling trash: nails, lead
seals, bone buttons and pieces of iron.
     This   was   absolutely   necessary,  for   twice   a  day-morning  and
evening-thrifty, methodical Pavlik  checked his  moneybox: he raised the tin
to his ear  and, sticking out his tongue,  rattled the kopeks, delighting in
the sound and the weight of his treasure. One  can imagine the howl he would
raise if he discovered the theft. But everything went off well.
     Before  going to sleep  Pavlik rattled his bank full of trash and found
it in perfect order.
     But  crime,  as we all  know,  never  pays. In  three  days Petya  lost
Pavlik's money to the last kopek.
     There was  no hope of Grandfather's uniform coming  soon. Again  Gavrik
began to press for payment.
     Every morning Petya sat on the windowsill waiting for Gavrik.
     He pictured  with  horror the day it all  came to  light: the lugs, the
sandals,  the dress  coat, Pavlik's moneybox. Inevitably,  sooner  or later,
that day would arrive. Horrors!
     But he  tried not  to think about that. He  tormented himself  with the
eternal  fruitless dream of the  bankrupt gambler-the dream of recouping his
losses.
     Walking the streets was dangerous, yet Gavrik  never failed to  appear.
He would come to the middle of the yard, put two  fingers in  his mouth, and
let out a magnificent  whistle. Petya would hastily nod to his chum from the
window and run down the back stairs. "The lugs come?"
     "Tomorrow, I  swear  it,  on my  word of honour.  By  the true and holy
Cross. This is the last time."
     One  fine  day Gavrik  announced  that he couldn't wait any  longer. In
other words, Petya, as a bankrupt debtor, now became Gavrik's slave until he
paid back in full.
     Such was the harsh but just law of the street.
     Gavrik  tapped  Petya on the shoulder, like a knight-errant  initiating
his servitor into squiredom.
     "Now  you'll  be  my  shadow,"  he  said  good-naturedly.  "Fetch  your
satchel," he added in a stern voice.
     "My satchel? What for?"
     "For the lugs, you bloke."
     A shrewd gleam flickered in Gavrik's eyes.
     To tell the truth, Petya was delighted at the prospect of  such a merry
form of  slavery.  He  had long wanted to  roam about town with  Gavrik  but
because  of what was  going on  he had been forbidden, in  the strictest  of
terms, to set foot outside the yard. Now his conscience could rest perfectly
at ease: he had nothing to do with  it-it was Gavrik's  will, and  he had to
obey Gavrik without  a word. He  didn't want to walk about  town, of course,
but he simply had to: that was the law.
     Petya ran upstairs and came down with his satchel.
     "Put it on."
     Petya  obeyed.  From all  sides  Gavrik inspected the  little Gymnasium
scholar in the  long  overcoat  reaching to  his  heels  and with  the empty
satchel on his back. What he saw evidently satisfied him.
     "Gymnasium card?"
     "Yes."
     "Show it here."
     Petya produced his card. Gavrik  opened it and spelled out the words at
the top: "Valuing his honour, the  Gymnasium pupil cannot fail to  value the
honour of his school. . . ."
     "Right," he remarked, returning the  card. "Stow it away. Might come in
handy."
     Then Gavrik turned Petya round and filled  the satchel with  heavy bags
of lugs.
     "Now nobody'll stop us from going anywhere," Gavrik said, fastening the
straps of the satchel. He patted the calf-skin cover with satisfaction.
     Petya did  not quite get the meaning of  those words but following  the
general law of the  street-to ask less and to know more-he held  his tongue.
The boys cautiously left the yard.
     Thus began their wanderings together through the disordered city.
     With  each passing day  it  became more dangerous to walk  the streets.
Gavrik,  however, did  not give up his  thrilling and mysterious life  of  a
roaming  champion. On the contrary, the  more restless  and frightening  the
city became the more stubbornly did he make his way to the remotest and most
dangerous places. So much  so  that at times Petya began to  wonder  whether
there wasn't some inexplicable connection between Gavrik and the disorders.
     From morning  to evening  the two went in and  out  of backyards  where
Gavrik carried on  a  business  in lugs- buying, selling and exchanging-with
the  local  boys.  In  some of  the yards  he collected  debts. In others he
played. In  still  others  he had  strange dealings with  grown-ups who,  to
Petya's extreme astonishment, were just as keen about lugs as children were.
     Petya,  carrying the heavy  satchel on  his back,  obediently  followed
Gavrik everywhere. And again, in Gavrik's presence the city magically turned
itself   about  before   Petya's   wonder-struck   eyes,   showing  him  its
communicating courtyards, cellars, holes in fences,  sheds, firewood  yards,
glassed-in arcades, and all  its other secrets. Petya saw the horrifying and
at the same  time picturesque poverty of the Odessa slums; until then he had
never even known they existed.
     Hiding  in   gateways  when  there  was  shooting  and  passing  around
overturned horse-trams blocking the roadway, the boys roamed up and down the
city, going to the most outlying sections.
     Thanks to Petya's Gymnasium uniform they easily  entered districts that
were cordoned by troops and the police. Gavrik taught Petya to go  up to the
chief of the cordon detail and  say in a tearful voice, "Mr. Officer, please
let  me  and  my pal cross  over to the other side. We live in that big grey
house over there and I'm sure Mummy's worried why we've been away so long."
     The  boy looked so guileless and  respectable in his Gymnasium overcoat
and with the calf-skin satchel on his back that the officer, although he was
not  supposed to  let anyone pass  into the suspected zone,  usually made an
exception in the case of the two frightened kids.
     "Run for it, only  be careful. Keep close to the wall, and don't let me
see you again. Now be off."
     In this way the boys could  always reach districts that were completely
cut off to others.
     They went several times to an old Greek house in Malaya Arnautskaya. In
the courtyard  there  was a fountain-a pyramid  of spongy sea  rocks  with a
green  iron stork  on  top. Once upon  a time  water used to come out of its
beak.
     While  Petya waited  in the  yard Gavrik  ran down  into the  basement,
returning with  a lot of bags  of unusually heavy lugs. He stuffed them into
Petya's satchel  and then  they quickly ran out of the quiet  yard  with its
old, rickety galleries.
     Once  Petya saw Gavrik's  grandfather there. He  was  walking slowly on
bent legs across the yard to the refuse-bin.
     "Oh, Grandpa!"  he  cried.  "I say there,  what  are you doing  here? I
thought you were in jail."
     Grandpa looked at the boy but obviously did not recognise him.
     "I'm here now,"  he mumbled tonelessly,  shifting his pail to his other
hand. "I'm-a watchman-a night watchman now-"
     He continued slowly on his way.
     The boys went to the port, to Chumka, to Duke's Gardens, to Peresyp, to
the Ghen factory-everywhere but Near Mills. To Near Mills Gavrik went alone,
after his day of labours.
     Had Auntie Tatyana and Father had even an inkling of  the  places their
Petya visited during that time they surely would have lost their reason.

        37
     THE BOMB

     Finally, however, this wonderful but weird life of wandering came to an
end.
     On  that memorable  day  Gavrik appeared earlier than usual, and he and
Petya immediately set out.
     Gavrik's  face was grey and extraordinarily  grim.  His tightly-pressed
lips had turned  different  colours from  the cold. He  walked along  with a
quick, rolling gait, his hands deep in the pockets of his broad corduroys- a
small, hunched, determined figure. Every now and then a hard light came into
his  clear, fixed  eyes so like Grandpa's.  Petya barely managed to keep  up
with his  friend.  They  practically  ran  through the  streets, which  were
deserted like the streets in a dream.
     Tense expectation hung in the grey air. The boys' footsteps rang on the
paving stones. Occasionally the pane of ice covering  an empty  puddle broke
underfoot.
     All  of  a sudden a  faint rumble  sounded somewhere far  away,  in the
centre of town. It was as  if a pyramid  of empty  crates had crashed to the
roadway from a waggon.
     Gavrik stopped and listened to the feeble echo.
     "What's that?" Petya whispered. "Crates?"
     "A  bomb," Gavrik said dryly  and with assurance. "Somebody's been done
in."
     Two  streets  farther  on  a  woman  with a  basket from which lumps of
charcoal and quinces were dropping turned the corner at a run.
     "Oh,  Lord!  Oh, Holy  Mother!" she said over and over again, trying to
straighten her  kerchief with a trembling hand. "Oh, Lord, it was awful! The
man was torn to pieces."
     "Where?"
     "In Police Street. There I was, walking along, and  here he was,  in  a
carriage. And then it exploded. Tore him to bits. Lord forgive us! It killed
the horses and tore the carriage to bits-"
     "Who was it?"
     "The chief of police. From the Alexandrovsky  station. There I was, and
here he was. And that revolutionary stood just  opposite. And just  imagine,
he was carrying an ordinary little package, done up in newspaper-"
     "Did they catch him?"
     "The revolutionary? Never!  Everybody ran away and he did too. They say
he was a sailor in disguise."
     The  woman  ran  off. Despite his  grimness, Gavrik  took  Petya by the
shoulder and did a couple of jig steps.
     "That's the one  who punched Grandpa's face," he said in a quick, fiery
whisper. "That'll teach him to use his fists! Right?"
     "Right," said Petya, turning cold.
     That day the boys made two trips to the courtyard in Malaya Arnautskaya
with  the fountain and stork,  where they took  on "goods", as Gavrik called
it.
     The first time that they set out with the "goods" for the Alexandrovsky
Prospect, which was cordoned  off by  troops, they were let  through without
any particular difficulty.
     After passing several houses  Gavrik led Petya through a gateway into a
big deserted yard with a  Cossack tethering post; the  ground there was hard
and  frozen and studded with empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases  that
had been pressed into it by soldiers' boots.
     They crossed the yard, went  down  into a cellar  and walked for a long
time in the damp darkness, past wood-bins, until  they came out into another
yard. From there they  followed  a narrow opening which led between two tall
and gloomy brick walls into still another yard.
     Gavrik  obviously  knew all the ins and outs  here.  The opening was so
narrow that Petya, making his way  behind Gavrik, found his satchel scraping
against the walls. Finally they reached  the other yard, which was as narrow
and high and dark as a cistern.
     Judging by the long distance they had come and the number of  turns and
zigzags, they were in the yard of a building that faced some other street.
     The whole yard was strewn with broken glass and plaster.
     The windows of the building were tightly shuttered.  There seemed to be
no one living in it.
     A hollow silence hung in the air.
     But beyond that silence, in the unknown street on the other side of the
building,  there  was the alarming noise  of some sort of  movement, a noise
more sensed than heard.
     Besides,  every  now  and then loud shots  barked from above, seemingly
from  the sky, and they  filled the yard with  the echoings of a well. Petya
pressed  his back  to the wall and, trembling, shut  his  eyes. But  not  so
Gavrik.
     Without hurrying he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
     Somewhere up above a shutter banged. "Coming!" a voice called.
     A  minute later-to  Petya  it seemed an  hour-a  sweating red-faced man
without  an  overcoat, in a  jacket  smeared  with  chalk,  flung  open  the
backstairs door.
     Petya gasped. It was Terenti.
     "Let's have it-quick!" Terenti muttered,  wiping his wet  face  on  his
sleeve.
     Paying no attention  to Petya himself, Terenti  went  straight  to  the
satchel.
     "Thanks! Just in time! We didn't have a damn thing left!"
     Breathing  heavily, he unfastened the straps with impatient fingers and
transferred the bags from the satchel to his pockets. "Tell Joseph Karlovich
to  send some  more right  away,"  he  called  out as  he  ran back.  "Bring
everything there is or else we won't hold out."
     "Right," said Gavrik.
     Just then a bullet struck the wall  near  the roof, and a spray of pink
brick dust came down on the boys.
     They quickly  retraced their  route to Malaya  Arnautskaya and took  on
another  load  of "goods". This  time the satchel  was  so  heavy that Petya
staggered under its weight.
     Now, of course, he knew very well what kind of lugs these  were. At any
other time he would have thrown  the whole thing up and run home. But  today
his entire being  was gripped by the thrill  of danger, by  a  feeling  more
powerful even than the gambling fever,  and  not for anything  in  the world
would he have deserted his pal. Besides, he would be able to  share Gavrik's
glory.  The very  thought that  he  might lose the  right to tell  about his
adventures made him instantly disregard all danger.
     Gavrik and  Petya set  out  on the return  trip.  But how the  city had
changed in the meantime! Now it was seething.
     One minute  the streets  would be  filled  with  people running in  all
directions, and the next they  would be swept clear  in a flash  by the iron
broom of a fusillade.
     As they approached  the  cordon  Gavrik  caught  Petya by the  arm  and
quickly pulled him into a gateway.
     "Stop!"
     "Why?"
     Still  holding Petya's  arm  Gavrik  cautiously  peeped  out.  The next
instant he shrank back and pressed himself against the wall of the  gateway,
under the black board listing the tenants of that house.
     "Listen, Petya,  we're stuck.  I just saw that skunk who nearly tore my
ear off. Look, there he is."
     Petya tiptoed to  the edge of the gateway and looked out. At the cordon
post a gentleman in a heavy overcoat and an astrakhan cap was walking up and
down the roadway past the  stacked rifles and the torn-up  iron fence of the
public garden.  When  he turned, Petya saw a coarse clean-shaven  face and a
fleshy nose. There was something  very familiar about  that unfamiliar face.
He had  seen it  somewhere before.  But where? Something prevented him  from
remembering. Could it be that bluish upper lip? Then suddenly he remembered.
Of course, it  was Moustaches! The  man  from the Turgenev, only now without
the moustache. That face had impressed itself on Petya's memory for the rest
of his  life. He would  have recognised  it in a thousand,  moustache or  no
moustache.
     "It's  Moustaches,"  whispered  Petya, taking his  place beside Gavrik,
with his  satchel pressed against the wall.  "The  one who was  chasing  the
sailor. Only now  he's without his moustache. Remember? I told you about him
and you laughed at me."
     "Shaved it off so nobody  would  know  him. But he knows me,  the rat,"
Gavrik said angrily. "We'll never get past."
     "But perhaps we can."
     "Not on your life."
     Gavrik peeped out. "He's walking up and down."
     He clenched  his fist  and  angrily began  to chew  his  knuckles. "And
they're sitting there waiting for us. The dirty snake!"
     There was a minute of deep and utter silence in the uprising, a silence
broken by scattered shots in the distance. They reverberated  over the roofs
of the city.
     "Listen,  Petya," Gavrik  said  all of a  sudden,  "do  you understand?
They're  sitting there waiting  all for nothing- without the goods.  They'll
all be shot as easy as anything. And I can't  go because  that skunk is sure
to follow me!"
     Gavrik's eyes filled with tears of anger.  He  gave a  loud sniff, blew
his nose on the ground, and then looked angrily into Petya's eyes.
     "Understand?"
     "Uh-huh," said Petya with his lips alone, turning pale under his chum's
angry, friendly, insistent and at the same time pleading look.
     "Can you get through by yourself? You won't let 'em down?"
     Petya's excitement was such that he could not get out a single word. He
swallowed hard and nodded his head. Gavrik, first  glancing round  furtively
and peeping out of the gateway, began to fill Petya's pockets with his bags.
     "Give them all  the goods, everything, you hear? What's in your satchel
and what's in your pockets too. If you're caught  shut up and say  you found
it in the street and don't know anything. Clear?"
     "Uh-huh."
     "When you hand it over come back here. I'll be waiting for you here  in
the gateway. Clear?"
     "Uh-huh."
     Petya, his pockets bulging, walked up to  the cordon.  He was so scared
and excited he hardly knew what he was doing.
     "Hey, where are you going? Are you  blind?" Moustaches shouted, running
up to him.
     "Please," Petya whimpered in the thin voice he had learned from Gavrik,
"please let me through.  I live  nearby, in the  Alexandrovsky Prospect,  in
that big grey house, and my Mummy's awfully worried. She probably thinks I'm
killed!"
     Real  tears  poured out  of  his eyes  and rolled down  his plump grimy
cheeks. Moustaches gave the little preparatory class pupil a  disgusted look
and took him by the satchel.
     He led the boy to the edge of the roadway and gave him a light shove in
the behind with his knee.
     "Run along!"
     Beside himself with joy, Petya raced towards the house.

        38
     HG OF THE FIGHTING GROUP

     Petya slipped through the gateway and started across the yard.
     When  he came  this way  an hour earlier, with Gavrik,  he had not been
troubled by anything in  particular. He knew he was under the  reliable wing
of a resourceful and experienced friend. He  was freed from the necessity of
thinking for himself; he was merely an obedient companion without  a will of
his own. Someone else, someone stronger than he, thought and acted for him.
     Now  he  was completely  alone. There was no  one but himself to depend
upon.
     Without Gavrik the world around Petya immediately  became  threatening,
huge, full of lurking dangers.
     Danger skulked  in the stone arches of  the inner galleries, among  the
ominous boxes  and the old broken  furniture. It stood waiting in the middle
of the yard, behind the mulberry tree whose trunk had been gnawed by horses.
It peered out of the black hole of the refuse-bin.
     Everything the boy saw took on an exaggerated size. Huge Cossack horses
pressed their smooth, golden, dancing cruppers against him.  Monstrous tails
swished across his satchel. Don Cossacks in blue breeches  with red  stripes
hopped on one foot while the other was in the stirrup.
     "From the  right,  by  threes!"  cried  the  hoarse voice  of a Cossack
ensign.
     The mirror-like crescent of a drawn  sabre  hung in the air above the j
aunty forage caps.
     Petya went down into the cellar.
     He  walked a long time, feeling his way in the stuffy but cold darkness
and  breathing the dusty air of storage rooms. Every time  a  cobweb touched
his eyelashes he took it for a bat's wing, and horror gripped him.
     Finally he reached the second yard. It was deserted.
     Only now, in the  midst  of  this strange emptiness,  did Petya  become
really  aware  of  how terribly alone  he was. He  wanted  to  run  back-but
thousands  of miles and  thousands of fears separated him from  the  street,
from Gavrik.
     In the opening between the second and third yards  it was so unbearably
quiet  that he felt  like shouting with all his might; shouting desperately,
passionately, frenziedly-anything so as not to hear that silence.
     It was  the kind of silence that comes only in the interval between two
shots.
     Now he had to put two fingers in his mouth and whistle. But suddenly he
realised that  he  did  not  know how  to whistle with his  fingers. He  had
learned long  ago to spit  through his  teeth, but not to whistle. He hadn't
thought of it. It had slipped his mind.
     Clumsily he put his fingers in his mouth and blew, but no  whistle came
out.  In  desperation he  blew again,  as  hard  as he  could. Nothing. Only
spittle and a hiss.
     Then Petya mustered all his spiritual powers.
     "Hey!" he yelled, closing his eyes.
     His voice sounded very weak. Still, a booming echo instantly filled the
empty cistern of a yard.
     No one answered, however. The silence became more terrifying than ever.
     High  above  there  was a deafening crackle.  Down flew the joint  of a
drain-pipe, carrying with it pieces of brick, spikes, and mortar.
     "H-e-y! H-e-y! H-e-y!" Petya shouted at the top of his lungs.
     A shutter in the top storey opened and an unfamiliar face looked out.
     "What's all the shouting about? Bring it? Come up here! And be lively!"
     The face disappeared.
     Petya looked about in indecision. But he was all  alone, with no one to
advise him. There was another crackle overhead. A big chunk of plaster  flew
down and crashed into bits at Petya's feet.
     Bending  over, he  dashed to  the backstairs  door.  He  started up the
clanging  iron stairway, tripping on  the hem of  his overcoat; it had  been
bought several sizes too large, so that he could grow into it.
     "Faster! Faster!" an angry voice cried from above.
     The  heavy  satchel  banged  painfully  against his  back. The  bulging
pockets got in his  way. He suddenly felt hot. The inside of his cap  became
warm and wet. Sweat poured down on his eyebrows and eyes. His face flamed.
     Upstairs, the irritable, pleading voice kept shouting, "Faster! Faster,
damn you!"
     Petya breathed heavily, sticking out  his tongue from  the exertion. He
had barely reached the third-storey  landing when a man in an expensive  but
soiled overcoat with a lambskin collar grasped him by the shoulders.
     The man was hatless and his forehead was plastered with  strands of wet
hair. He had a foppish little moustache and beard which didn't at all fit in
with his ordinary, snub-nosed face, now red and powdered with plaster.
     His eyes,  under bushy brows white with plaster,  had a gay, dare-devil
gleam,  and at the same time a sort of alarmed  expression. He looked like a
man who had been torn away from a very difficult and urgent job and was in a
terrible hurry to get back to it.
     When Petya felt the  strong fingers  grip his shoulders he thought  the
man was going to shake  him, the  way Daddy did when he  was very angry. His
legs buckled under him from  fright.  But the man looked affectionately into
his eyes.
     "Bring it?"  he  asked  in a  hurried whisper. Without waiting  for  an
answer he pulled  the boy  into  the empty kitchen of a  flat where-as Petya
sensed  immediately-  something  tremendous  and  frightening  was going on,
something that usually never happened in flats.
     The man ran his eyes over Petya and without saying a word went straight
for his  bulging pockets.  He  hastily pulled the  heavy  little bags out of
them. Petya stood in front of him with his arms spread apart.
     There was something  very familiar  about  his unfamiliar face with the
little moustache and beard.
     Petya had surely seen it somewhere before. But when? Where?
     He searched the recesses of his memory, but  with no results. Something
kept putting him off. Could it be the moustache and beard?
     In the meantime the man  had deftly extracted  the four  bags  from the
boy's pockets.
     "Is that all?"
     "No, there's more in the satchel."
     "Good boy! Thanks! And just think-a Gymnasium pupil!"
     As a sign of his admiration  he gripped  Petya's cap by  the visor  and
pulled it down hard on top of his ears.
     And now  Petya  saw,  an inch from his nose,  a strong sooty hand which
gave off the sour smell of gunpowder. On it was a little blue anchor.
     "The sailor!" he exclaimed.
     But  that same instant something crashed in the other part of the flat.
There was a  blast  of air. A pot tumbled from a shelf. With soft,  cat-like
steps the sailor ran into the passage, shouting, "Wait here!"
     A minute  later six jerky shots resounded  somewhere  close  by.  Petya
threw off his satchel and began to unfasten it with trembling fingers.
     Just  then  Terenti  came into the kitchen  from  the  passage. He  was
swaying on  his feet. He was coatless,  in a shirt with only one sleeve. The
other sleeve  was wound about his  head. Blood trickled down his temple from
under the bandage. He held a revolver in his right hand.
     When he saw Petya he started to say  something but waved  his  hand and
first took a drink of water, putting his mouth to the tap.
     "Bring  it?" he asked,  pausing for air  between two gulps.  The  water
flowed noisily over his startingly white face. "Where's Gavrik? Alive?"
     "Uh-huh."
     But there was obviously no time for questions. Without stopping to wipe
his face Terenti took the bags out of the satchel.
     "All the same we won't hold  out," he muttered. He could scarcely stand
on  his  feet. "We'll get away across  the roofs.  They're setting up a gun.
You'd better clear out, kid, before  a  bullet gets you.  Clear  out  quick.
Thanks, and good luck!"
     He  sat  down  on a  stool but a moment  later got  up, and, wiping his
revolver on his knee, ran down the  passage to the room from  which came the
steady bark of shots and the crash of glass.
     Petya  picked up  his light  satchel and  ran  to the  door. Curiosity,
however, made him  pause for a minute and look down the passage. Through the
wide-open door he saw a room piled with broken furniture.
     In the middle of the wall, papered in  a  design of  brown bouquets, he
saw a yawning hole round which the lath framework was bared.
     Several  men  were leaning against  the  sills of  the smashed windows,
firing one shot after another down into the street from their revolvers.
     Petya saw Terenti's bandaged  head and the sailor's lambskin collar. He
also caught  a  glimpse of a shaggy  black Caucasian  cloak  and  a  college
student's cap.
     The room swam and surged in bluish threads of smoke.
     The sailor knelt at a windowsill on which stood a boudoir  night table.
He kept shoving out his arm, and it jerked as he fired shot after shot.
     "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" he yelled madly.
     In the midst of all that movement, chaos, commotion, and smoke only one
man was  completely calm-a man with a yellow, indifferent, waxen face, and a
small black hole above his closed eyes.
     He lay on the floor in the middle of the room, in an awkward pose, face
up, surrounded by empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases.
     His broken pince-nez, with the black cord  looped behind his firm white
ear,  lay  beside his  head on  the  plaster-sprinkled  parquet.  A very old
technological student's  cap  with  a cracked visor  also  lay neatly on the
floor.
     Petya looked at the man and suddenly realised that he  was looking at a
corpse.
     He ran back. How  he got out of the house and reached the gateway where
Gavrik was waiting for him he did not remember.
     "Well? Deliver it?"
     "I did."
     Breathlessly  Petya  told  Gavrik   everything  he  had  seen  in  that
terrifying flat.
     "All the same they won't hold out. They'll get away across the  roofs,"
he whispered, breathing heavily. "They're putting up a cannon against them."
     Gavrik turned pale and made the sign  of the cross. Never  in his  life
had Petya seen his friend so scared.
     Nearby,  almost next  to them,  a gun roared. An iron echo rumbled over
the roofs.
     "Done for!" Gavrik cried in despair. "Hook it!"
     The boys rushed out into  the street and ran across the city, which had
changed for the third time that morning.
     Now  the Cossacks were complete masters of the  situation. The  streets
resounded with the clatter of hoofs.
     Squadrons of  Don  Cossacks that had been lying  low  in the courtyards
sped through the  gateways, lashing  out to the  right  and left with  their
whips.
     There was no hiding from them: all the house-entrances and gateways had
been locked tight and were  guarded by  army and police details. Every alley
was a trap.
     The  remnants  of  the dispersed demonstration scattered  this way  and
that, without any hope of  saving themselves. Cossacks overtook them and cut
them down one by one.
     In Malaya Arnautskaya a bow-legged  man without a hat or coat ran  down
the middle of the roadway past the boys. Under  his arm he held a stick with
a red  flag. It  was the owner of the shooting gallery.  He  ran limping and
dodging from side to side.
     At any other time this sight might have surprised  the boys, but now it
only filled them with horror.
     Every ten paces or  so  Joseph Karlovich turned back  a  terribly pale,
tormented face with wild eyes. Two  Don  Cossacks were bearing down upon him
at a fast trot.
     The horseshoes  rang loud  against the  granite cobbles, drawing sparks
that were pale in the daylight.
     A minute later Joseph Karlovich was between the two horses. He let them
pass, slipped aside, and then dashed up to a door and seized the handle.
     The door was locked. He tugged at it in desperation, kicked it with all
his might,  rammed  it with his  shoulder. It  did not  yield.  The Cossacks
turned their horses and rode up on the pavement.
     Joseph Karlovich hunched  himself over, bent his head  and pressed  the
flag  to his breast with both hands.  A sabre flashed. His  back jerked. His
jacket split open crosswise. With a convulsive movement he turned round.
     For  a second  his pain-distorted face with its short side-whiskers was
seen.
     "Scoundrels! Satraps!  Butchers!" he cried passionately, at the  top of
his voice. "Down with the autocracy!"
     But  at that  very instant two sabres  flashed through the air, sharply
and simultaneously. Joseph Karlovich  fell, still pressing the banner to his
open hairy chest with the blue tattooing.
     One of the Don Cossacks bent over him and did something.
     A  minute later the two Cossacks were galloping on,  dragging the man's
body behind them on a  rope. It left a long, red, astonishingly bright trail
on the deathly-grey cobbles.
     A crowd rushed out of a side street and separated the boys.

        39
     THE POGROM

     Petya lost all sense of time that day.
     When  he finally  reached home  he had  the feeling that it was already
dusk, but actually it was not yet two o'clock.
     Near Kulikovo Field  and  the Army Staff  building all was  quiet.  The
events in  town reached  this district  as rumours  and  distant firing. But
everyone was long since used to rumours and firing.
     The sky was low  and almost black and gave off the sharp cold breath of
approaching  snow. On days like  that, evening began in  the morning. A  few
tiny snow-flakes had already flown by in the misty bluish air, but the  hard
earth was still a solid black, without a single fleck of grey.
     Petya  came  in  by the  back  door, dropped his empty  satchel  in the
kitchen  and tiptoed to the nursery. But it was too early for anyone to have
begun worrying about his absence.
     When he saw the quiet, peaceful rooms, when he heard the faint whirr of
the  sewing machine,  when  he smelled  the simmering  borshch,  he suddenly
wanted to throw his  arms round  Daddy's  neck, press his cheek against  his
jacket, burst into tears, and tell all.
     But only for an instant. That feeling immediately yielded, in the boy's
feverish  mind, to another, a new,  feeling: one of reserve, responsibility,
secrecy.  For  the  first time  in his life  the boy understood, simply  and
seriously, with all his heart, that there were things not to be told even to
one's  nearest and dearest, but kept to oneself,  no  matter how  painful it
might be.
     Father was rocking in the rocking-chair, with his hands behind his head
and his pince-nez dangling free. Petya walked in, sat down on a chair beside
him, and folded his hands sedately on his knees.
     "Bored  with being  idle, son? Don't  take it  to  heart.  Things  will
quieten  down  soon,  the  schools will  open again. You'll  go back  to the
Gymnasium, get your fill of Poors, and then you'll feel better."
     He smiled his lovable, nearsighted smile.
     Suddenly  the kitchen  door  banged  and swift footsteps sounded in the
passage.  Dunya  appeared  in  the  dining-room doorway.  She leaned  limply
against the door, clasping her hands to her breast.
     Oh, sir-
     She could not get out another word.
     She was  breathing  heavily, quickly, her half-open mouth swallowing in
air. Her kerchief was awry; a strand of hair with a pin hanging from it fell
on her ghostly-white face.
     Lately the  family had become used  to seeing her  burst in  like this.
Almost every day she came to  announce some piece of town news or other. But
this time  her  crazed  eyes,  her  convulsive  breathing  and  her  general
overwrought   appearance   predicted   something  extraordinary,   something
frightful.
     She brought in  with  her  such a dark, such an ominous silence that it
seemed  as if the clock had begun  to tick ten times louder, and as  if grey
panes had been put into the windows. The whirr of the sewing machine stopped
instantly. Auntie  Tatyana  ran  in, pressing her  fingers to the  tiny blue
veins in her temples.
     "What is it? What's happened?"
     Dunya moved her lips but no sound came out.
     When she  did speak it was in a  voice that could barely be heard.  "In
Kanatnaya they're beating up the Jews. A pogrom-"
     "Impossible!"  Auntie Tatyana  clutched at  her heart and sank  into  a
chair.
     "May I drop dead  on the  spot!  They're smashing all the Jewish shops.
They threw a chest of drawers into the street from the first storey. They'll
be in our street in about ten minutes."
     Father jumped up. He was pale, his jaw quivered. He tried to put on his
pince-nez but his hand refused to obey him.
     "Good Lord! What does this mean?"
     He raised his eyes to the icon and crossed himself twice.
     Dunya, taking that for a sign, came to herself. She climbed on  a chair
and impetuously took down the icon.
     "Dunya, what are you doing?"
     But  Dunya made no reply. She was already in the other rooms collecting
the  icons.  She  quickly  set  them  on the windowsills facing  the street,
propping them up with piles of books, boxes,  tea-caddies, and anything else
she could lay hands on.
     Father followed her with a perplexed look.
     "I don't see- What's the point of all that?"
     "That's what to do,  sir," she mumbled in a frightened voice.  "They're
beating up the Jews but they don't touch Russians. Whoever has icons  in the
windows they leave them alone."
     "Don't you dare!" he screamed, his voice breaking. He pounded the table
with his fist as hard and as fast as he could. "Don't you dare! I forbid it!
Do  you  hear? Stop it this  very minute! That's  not what  icons  are  for!
It's-it's blasphemy! At once!"
     Father's round  starched  cuffs jumped out  of  his  sleeves.  His face
turned deathly pale. Pink spots broke out on his high chiselled forehead.
     Never  had  Petya seen Father like this:  his whole body shook, he  was
terrifying.
     Father  ran to the  window and seized an icon. But Dunya  pounced on it
and would not let go.
     "Oh, don't, sir!" she  cried  in despair.  "They're killing everybody!"
She turned to Auntie. "Tatyana Ivanovna! Dear Tatyana Ivanovna! They'll kill
us all! They won't think twice!"
     "Shut  up!"   yelled  Father.   The   veins  on  his  forehead  swelled
frighteningly. "Shut up! I'm the master here. It's my house and  I'll  never
permit that here! Let them come! Let them murder us all! The swine! You have
no right- you have no-"
     Auntie Tatyana wrung her hands.
     "Vasili Petrovich, I implore you, be calm!"
     But Father had already buried his  face in his hands and  stood leaning
against the wall.
     "They're coming!" Dunya cried.
     Silence fell.
     Faint, harmonious singing drifted in from the street. It sounded like a
religious procession or a funeral somewhere in the distance.
     Cautiously, Petya looked out of the window. There was not a soul in the
street. Over the  deserted  Kulikovo Field hung a sky the  colour of  slate,
darker and lower than before.
     In the wrinkles of  the naked earth lay a few long strands  of  snow as
light as swan's down, collected by the wind.
     The singing grew louder and louder. Now Petya clearly saw that  the low
dark cloud lying  on  the horizon in Kulikovo Field,  to  the  right of  the
railway station, was not a cloud at all but a slowly approaching mob.
     The windows in the house were slammed shut.
     From  the  kitchen  came  the  murmur  of  low,  restrained  voices,  a
shuffling,  and  the  rustle of  skirts. Then, altogether  unexpectedly,  an
elderly woman appeared in the passage holding by the hand a little girl with
bright ginger hair and a tear-stained face.
     The woman was dressed for paying a social call,  in a black silk skirt,
a mantilla, and lisle mitts. Somewhat askew on her head sat a small but high
black bonnet with  cock's  plumes. From behind her shoulders peered  Nusya's
pale, lustreless, round face and Izzy the Dizzy's bowler hat.
     This was Madam Kogan, with her whole family.
     Not daring  to enter the room, she stood  for a long time curtsying  in
the  doorway, raising the hem  of  her skirt with one  hand and pressing the
other to her heart. A honeyed, well-bred and at the same time frenzied smile
played on her wrinkled mobile little face.
     "Mr. Batchei!" she exclaimed  in a shrill, bird-like  voice, stretching
out  both her trembling gloved hands  towards Father. "Mr.  Batchei! Tatyana
Ivanovna! We have  always been good neighbours! Are people to blame  because
they have a different God?"
     All of a sudden she fell to her knees.
     "Save my children!" she wailed. "Let them smash everything but only let
them spare my children!"
     "Mama,  stop  lowering  yourself!" Nusya cried angrily.  He shoved  his
hands in his pockets and turned aside, showing the bluish shaven nape of his
neck.
     "Nusya, will you  shut up  at last?" hissed Izzy  the Dizzy. "Or do you
want  that  I should slap your cheeks? Your mother knows what she  is doing.
She knows  that  Mr. Batchei is an intellectual person and will not allow us
to be killed."
     Auntie Tatyana ran to the door and lifted the Jewess to her feet. "Why,
Madam Kogan, what ever are you doing? For shame!  Why, of course, of course!
Goodness me! Please come in, Mr. Kogan, Nusya, Dorochka- What a misfortune!"
     While Madam  Kogan wept  and gushed words of gratitude that made Father
and Auntie Tatyana  feel so ashamed they wished the earth would swallow them
up, and while  she hid  the children and her husband in the  back rooms, the
singing outside grew louder and nearer with every step.
     A  small  crowd  which indeed  looked like a  religious  procession was
coming across Kulikovo Field towards the house.
     In  front walked two grey-haired old men  in winter  coats but hatless,
carrying a portrait of the Tsar on an embroidered linen towel. Petya at once
recognised the  blue ribbon across the shoulder  and the acorn which was the
Tsar's face. Behind the portrait swayed  church banners, raised high  in the
cold, bluish, soapy air.
     Then  came  a  lot  of respectable-looking  men  and  women  in  winter
overcoats and galoshes, high  overshoes  and top boots. White  steam  poured
from their wide-open mouths. They sang:

     Save, O Lo-o-o-ord, Thy flo-o-ock, and bless Thy do-o-o-omains. . . .

     They looked so peaceable and dignified that for a  minute an indecisive
smile played on Father's face.
     "There,  you   see?"  he  said.  "They're  walking  along  quietly  and
peacefully without hurting a soul, and you-"
     Just then the  procession  came  to  a  stop  on the other side of  the
street, opposite the house. Out of the crowd  ran  a burly, moustached woman
with purplish-blue cheeks and  two shawls tied across her bosom. Her bulging
eyes, black as  Isabella  grapes, stared with ferocious determination at the
windows. She planted her  fat  legs in  their thick white  woollen stockings
wide apart, like a man, and shook her fist at the house.
     "Aha,  Jew-faces!" she cried  in  the shrill  voice of a  market woman.
"Hiding, eh? Never mind, we'll get you in a jiffy! Orthodox Christians, show
your icons!"
     With these words she raised  the hem of her skirt and  ran  across  the
street with a determined  air. On  the way  she  picked a cobblestone from a
pile that had been put there for mending the roadway.
     After her,  about twenty long-armed roughs with tri-coloured ribbons on
their overcoats  and  jackets  stepped  out  of the crowd. They  crossed the
street without hurrying, one ofter the other, and as each passed the pile of
cobbles he bent low and nimbly.
     When the last one passed, the place where  the pile of stones had stood
was absolutely smooth ground.
     A deathly silence set in. Each tick of the clock was now the crash of a
pistol-shot, and the panes  in the  windows were black. The  silence dragged
out so long that Father  had  time to say, "I don't understand. Where, after
all, are the police? Why don't they send men from the Army Staff?"
     "Oh, the police!" Auntie Tatyana cried hysterically.
     She stopped short.
     The silence became more terrifying than ever. Izzy the Dizzy sat on the
edge of a chair in the middle of the parlour,  his bowler hat pushed down on
his forehead. His sickly eyes were fixed on a spot in the corner.
     Nusya had been walking up  and down the  passage with his hands in  his
pockets. Now he stopped  to listen. His full lips were curved in a strained,
scornful smile.
     The silence lasted another unbearable instant and then burst. Somewhere
down below the first  rock slammed through a window.  Then a squall hit  the
house. Glass shattered to the  pavement. The iron sign-board was ripped  off
with a thunderous rattle. There  was the crash of breaking  doors and boxes.
Jars of lozenges, kegs, and tinned goods rolled out into the roadway.
     Whistling and  whooping, the brutalised mob  surrounded the  house. The
gold-framed portrait with the crown soared slantwise into the air, now here,
now there. It was as if an officer  in epaulets and a blue ribbon across his
shoulder,  with church banners on all sides of him, was rising up on  tiptoe
all the time to look over the heads.
     "Mr. Batchei! Do you see what they're doing?" whispered Kogan, wringing
his hands. "Two hundred rubles' worth of merchandise!"
     "Papa, keep  quiet! Stop lowering yourself!" shouted Nusya. "This isn't
a question of money!" The pogrom continued.
     "Sir! They're going through the flats  looking  for Jews!"  Madam Kogan
screamed. She began to flutter in  the dark passage like a chicken at  sight
of the  knife. "Dora! Nusya! My children!"  "They're  coming up the  stairs,
sir!"
     From  the  stairs  sounded  the  rumble  of  coarse  voices  and boots,
amplified  tenfold by the box-like front  entrance.  With trembling fingers,
yet extraordinarily quickly, Father  buttoned all the buttons of his  jacket
and rushed  to the door,  tearing open with both hands the choking  starched
collar under his beard. Before Auntie Tatyana could open her mouth he was on
the stairs. "For goodness' sake, Vasili Petrovich!" "Don't sir, they'll kill
you!" "Daddy!" cried Petya, rushing after him. In his black jacket, straight
and agile, his face set, his cuffs rattling, Father quickly ran downstairs.
     Up the stairs towards  him clumped the woman in the thick white woollen
stockings. She wore cotton mitts, and in her right hand she gripped a  heavy
cobblestone. Now  her eyes were not black  but  a  bluish-white, and glazed,
like  the  eyes  of a  dead  bullock. Behind  her came  sweating  roughs  in
dark-blue caps, the kind grocers' assistants wore.
     "Gentlemen!"  Father  cried,  not  at  all  to  the  point, in his high
falsetto, his neck turning a deep red. "Who gave you the right to break into
other people's houses? This is robbery! I won't allow it!"
     "And who might you be? The house-owner?"
     The woman shifted  the  cobblestone  to  her  left  hand,  and, without
looking  at Father,  hit him  in the ear with her right fist as hard  as she
could. Father rocked on his heels, but the men prevented him from falling: a
red, freckled  hand grabbed him  by the silk lapel  of his jacket and jerked
him forward. The old cloth ripped.
     "Stop hitting him! He's  our  Daddy!"  Petya cried  in a voice  totally
unlike his own. "You have no right! Fools!"
     Somebody gave  a sharp, vicious pull,  with all his  might, at Father's
sleeve. The sleeve came off. The round  cuff with its cuff-link  rolled down
the stairs.  Petya  saw  a  bleeding  scratch  on  Father's  nose,  saw  his
nearsighted  eyes full  of tears-his pince-nez had been knocked off- and his
hair, long like a seminary student's, lying in two dishevelled parts.
     Stinging pain  filled  the  boy's heart.  He  was ready  to die at that
minute if only they would stop hurting Daddy.
     "Beasts!  Cattle!  Animals!"  Father moaned through set  teeth, backing
away from the pogrom-makers.
     Auntie Tatyana and Dunya came running down holding icons.
     "Gentlemen,  what  are you doing?  Have you no  fear  of  God?"  Auntie
Tatyana said over and over again, tears in her eyes.
     "Are you  mad?"  Dunya  cried in rage, lifting as high  as she could an
icon  of  the Saviour with  waxen orange-blossoms  under the glass.  "You're
beating  Orthodox Christians! Look what  you're  doing  before you begin. Go
back where you came from. There's no Jews here, not a one! Go away!"
     Police whistles sounded in the  street-as usual, exactly half  an  hour
after  the  start  of  a pogrom.  The  woman in  the white stockings put the
cobblestone on a step and carefully wiped her hand on the hem of her skirt.
     "Well, that'll do for here," she said with a nod of the head. "A little
of  a good thing goes a long  way.  Hear those policemen of ours blowing out
their  guts? Come  on, now let's get  that  Jew at  Malofontanskaya and  the
corner of Botanicheskaya!"
     She gathered her heavy skirts and, grunting, climbed downstairs.

        40
     THE OFFICER'S UNIFORM

     For  several days afterwards the pavement  in  front  of the house  was
strewn  with cobbles,  broken  glass, splintered  boxes,  crushed  balls  of
blueing, rice, rags, and various household articles.
     Among the bushes in the field one suddenly came across a picture album,
a bamboo book stand, a lamp, a flat-iron.
     Passers-by carefully avoided the  wreckage, as if mere  contact with it
would make a person a party to the pogrom and disgrace him for life.
     The children too. When, horror-struck  and curious, they went down into
the pillaged shop, they deliberately hid  their hands in their pockets so as
not to be tempted by a mint cake or a crushed  box of Kerch cigarettes lying
about.
     Father paced  the floor from morning to  night, his chin tensely thrust
forward; he looked somehow younger, sterner, and was unusually brisk; he had
become  noticeably  grey  at  the  temples.  The jacket  had  been mended so
skilfully that there was scarcely any trace of the damage. Life was becoming
normal again.
     There was  no more firing in the streets.  Peaceful silence  reigned in
the city. The first tram-car since  the strike rolled past the house. It was
a clumsy, absurd contraption which looked like  a city coach, with huge rear
wheels and tiny front ones.
     An engine whistled at the railway station. The Russkiye Vedomosti,  the
Niva and the Zadushevnoye Slovo were delivered to the house.
     One day Petya looked  out of the window and saw a  yellow postal van at
the entrance.
     A warm wave flooded his heart, and it missed a beat. The postman opened
the door at the back of the van and took out a parcel.
     "It's from  Grandma!" Petya  cried, smacking  the  windowsill with  his
palms.
     Why, he had forgotten all about it! Now, at sight of the yellow van, he
instantly remembered: lugs, the dress coat he had turned into a  total mess,
the sandals he had  sold, Pavlik's moneybox-in a word, all his crimes, which
might come to light at any moment.
     The bell rang. Petya ran to the anteroom.
     "Don't you dare touch it! It's for me, for me!"
     And  so  it  was,  to  everybody's  amazement.  "Master Pyotr  Batchei.
Personal" was written in big letters in purple ink on the canvas top.
     The canvas was tightly sewn down with strong thread and Petya split his
fingernails as he tore it off. He did not have the patience to do a neat job
of removing the squeaking cover, which was held in place by long thin nails,
so he grabbed the kitchen chopper and hacked the box open; it was as fragile
as  a violin. Out of it he  took something carefully  wrapped in  a very old
copy of the Russky Invalid.
     It was an officer's jacket.
     "Grandfather's uniform!" Petya exclaimed triumphantly. "There!"
     Nothing else was in the parcel.
     "I-I don't see-" mumbled Auntie.
     "What  a  queer  idea,  sending  military relics  to a  child,"  Father
remarked dryly, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Highly unpedagogical."
     "Oh,  keep quiet! You  don't understand anything!  Grandma's a wonder!"
Petya shouted in delight. He ran to the nursery with the precious parcel.
     Gold buttons gleamed through their neat wrapping of tissue-paper. Petya
hastily undid the wrapping.
     My God! What was this? No eagles!
     The buttons were absolutely  smooth. They differed in  no way  from the
cheapest  lugs  on  the uniforms of  ordinary  privates.  True, Petya  found
sixteen of them.  But  the whole  batch  would bring him no more  than three
fives.
     What could have happened?
     Many  years later Petya  was  to learn  that in  the  time  of  Emperor
Alexander  II  officers'  buttons  were  without eagles. But who  could have
foreseen it? He felt completely crushed.
     Petya  sat on the  windowsill  with  the  useless uniform  in  his lap.
Outside,  snow-flakes  were  flying  past  the thermometer.  He watched them
indifferently, without a trace of the joy he usually felt at the first snow.
     One after  another there passed before his  mind's eye pictures of  the
events he had taken part in and witnessed only a  short time before. But now
it all  seemed as distant, as  hazy, and  as untrue as a dream. As if it all
had taken place in some other town; perhaps, even, in some other country.
     Yet Petya knew that it had not been  a dream. It had  taken  place over
there, not far away,  beyond Kulikovo Field, beyond the milky  smoke of snow
that whirled along between sky and earth.
     Where was Gavrik now?
     What had happened to Terenti and the sailor?
     Had they got away across the roofs?
     But there was no answer to these questions.
     The snow came down  thicker and thicker, covering  the black  earth  of
Kulikovo Field with the clean, bright sheet of winter, come at last.

        41
     THE CHRISTMAS TREE

     Christmas came.
     Pavlik  awoke before  dawn. For him Christmas Eve was a double holiday:
it was his birthday, too.
     You can easily imagine how impatiently the boy had  awaited this joyous
and at  the same time most  curious  day when  he suddenly became four years
old.
     One day  he was  still three,  and the next he was four. When  did that
happen? Probably at night.
     Pavlik had decided long  ago  to  watch for the  mysterious moment when
children become a  year older. He woke  up in the  middle  of the night  and
opened his  eyes  wide,  but as  far  as he  could see nothing had  changed.
Everything was the same as usual: the chest of drawers,  the night-lamp, the
dry palm branch behind the icon.
     How old was he now: three, or four?
     He examined his  arms attentively and gave  a kick with his legs  under
the blanket. No, his arms and legs were the  same as when he had gone to bed
in the evening. But perhaps his head  had grown a bit? He carefully felt his
head-his cheeks, his nose, his ears. . . . They all seemed to be the same as
yesterday.
     Now wasn't that strange?
     It was  all the more  strange because in the morning he was sure  to be
four. That he knew for certain. Then how old was  he now? He  couldn't still
be three. But on the other hand it didn't look very much like four, either.
     It  would be a  good idea to wake Daddy. He was sure to know. But crawl
out from under the warm quilt and walk barefoot across the floor-no, thanks!
A better idea was to pretend to  be asleep and wait with closed eyes for the
transformation to take place.
     Pavlik shut his eyes,  but before  he  knew it he fell  asleep. When he
woke up he  saw at once that the night-lamp had gone out a long time ago and
that  the  dark,  bluish light of early-early  winter morning  was coming in
through the cracks in the shutters.
     Now there couldn't be the slightest doubt: he was four.
     The whole flat was still fast asleep; Dunya had not yet begun to bustle
about  in the  kitchen. Four-year-old Pavlik  sprang nimbly out  of  bed and
"dressed himself"  -that is,  he pulled  on his vest, with the cloth-covered
buttons, back to front and shoved his bare little feet into his shoes.
     Cautiously opening the heavy, squeaky door with both hands,  he set out
for the parlour. It was a little boy's big journey through a deserted  flat.
In the  middle of the darkness, filling the  entire  parlour with the strong
smell  of  fir  needles, stood something  huge  and  vague, with black  paws
reaching all the way to the floor and hung with dangling chains of paper.
     This,  Pavlik  already knew,  was  the Christmas  tree.  While his eyes
accustomed themselves  to the  gloom  he  cautiously walked round the  thick
velvety  tree  whose silver threads cast  the faintest possible flickers  of
light.
     The tree  echoed the boy's every step with a papery stir, a tremble,  a
rustle of cardboard and of  Christmas  crackers, a delicate tinkle  of glass
decorations.
     Now that he was accustomed to the darkness Pavlik saw, in the corner, a
table heaped with presents.  He  rushed  to  it, forgetting the  tree  for a
moment.  They  were  first-rate  presents, much  better  than  what  he  had
expected: a  bow  with  arrows in  a  velvet quiver,  a beautiful book  with
coloured pictures, Grandma Tatyana's Poultry Yard, a  real "grown-up"  lotto
game, and a horse which  was bigger,  handsomer, and, most important of all,
much  newer  than  Kudlatka.  Besides,  there  were  tins  of George  Borman
Lozenges, bars of chocolate with picture cards, and a cake in a round box.
     Pavlik had never  expected such riches. The table was laden  with  toys
and sweets-and all his very own.
     Still,  he felt that something was lacking.  He quietly dragged all his
old toys, including the tattered Kudlatka, into the parlour from the nursery
and added them to  the new ones.  Now there were as many toys as in  a shop.
But even this did not seem enough.
     He brought out the famous moneybox and put it on top of the drum in the
middle of the table, as the chief symbol of his wealth.
     After building this triumphal toy tower and feasting his eyes upon  it,
Pavlik returned to the Christmas  tree.  For a long  time now  a honey  cake
covered  with  pink  frosting, hanging not very high  at all,  by  a  yellow
worsted thread, had been disturbing him. It was shaped like a star and had a
hole in the middle, and  it was  so beautiful  that he felt an  overpowering
desire to eat it as quickly as possible.
     Deciding that it would be  no great harm  if there  were one honey cake
less on the tree, Pavlik untied it from the branch and put it in  his mouth.
He took a sizable bite, but to his amazement he discovered that the cake was
not at all as tasty as one might have thought. As a matter of fact, it was a
simply disgusting cake: it was stale,  it was  made of  rye flour, it wasn't
sweet, and it had a strong smell of treacle. And yet by the looks  of it, it
was the kind of cake the snow-white  Christmas  angels,  who sang so sweetly
high up in heaven, lived on.
     With a grimace Pavlik hung  the nibbled cake back on the  branch. There
was clearly some misunderstanding here. No doubt a spoiled cake had been put
in with the others by accident in the shop.
     At  this  point Pavlik noticed  another and  still more beautiful honey
cake, covered with blue  frosting. It hung quite high, and he had to pull up
a chair. This time  he did not untie the cake from the branch but simply bit
off a corner. It was so unpleasant that he spat it out at once.
     But it was hard to believe that all the other cakes were worthless too.
     Pavlik  decided  to  try every  single one. No  sooner said than  done.
Grunting, wheezing, his tongue  sticking  out,  he dragged the  heavy  chair
round the tree, climbed up on it, bit  off a  corner of a  cake, saw that it
was foul, and dragged the chair farther.
     Before long he had tasted all the honey cakes except  two near the very
ceiling and  far out of reach. For a long  time  he stood with his head bent
back,  thinking  about  them. They attracted  him  because  they were beyond
reach, and hence all the more beautiful and desirable.
     These cakes, he was certain, would  not trick him. He was planning  how
to put the  chair on top of the table and try to get them from there when he
heard the  fresh rustle  of a  holiday dress. Auntie Tatyana's beaming  face
looked into the parlour.
     "Aha, our little birthday-boy is up  before everybody else, I see. What
are you doing?"
     "Walking round the Christmas  twee," Pavlik replied modestly. He looked
up at Auntie  Tatyana  with the trusting,  truthful  eyes  of a well-behaved
child.
     "Oh, my precious little tadpole! Twee! Not twee but tree. When will you
finally learn to say that word properly? Well, happy birthday!"
     The next  moment  the  boy  found himself  in  Auntie  Tatyana's  warm,
fragrant, tender embrace.
     Dunya,  her  face  flushed  with  embarrassment, hurried  in  from  the
kitchen, holding out a dainty sky-blue cup with "Happy  Birthday" written on
it in gold letters.
     So  began that happy  day which was destined to have such an absolutely
unexpected and frightful ending.
     In the evening, Pavlik had guests-little boys and  girls. They were all
such kids that Petya felt it beneath his dignity to talk  to them, let alone
play with them.
     Petya's heart was unutterably sad and heavy as he sat on the windowsill
in the dark nursery, looking at the decoratively frosted window on which the
golden nut of the street lamp glimmered among icy ferns.
     Ominous forebodings darkened his spirits.
     From  the parlour  streamed  the  hot, crackling light of the Christmas
tree-a  flaming  bonfire of  candles  and  golden rain.  He  could  hear the
enticing music of the piano. That was Father pounding  out a seminary polka,
the tails of  his dress coat spread apart and his starched cuffs rattling. A
great many children's sturdy little legs were stamping senselessly round the
Christmas tree.
     "Never mind, Petya,"  said  Auntie Tatyana as she passed by. " Don't be
envious. You'll have your day too."
     "Oh, Auntie, you don't understand  anything  at all," the boy said in a
piteous voice. "Leave me alone."
     At last came that long-awaited moment-the distribution of the nuts  and
cakes. The children surrounded the Christmas  tree  on tiptoe  and stretched
their hands towards the cakes, which shone like medals. The tree rocked. The
chains rustled.
     "Oh,   look,"   a  ringing,  frightened  little  voice  suddenly  said,
"somebody's bitten my cake!"
     "Mine too!"
     "I have two, and they're all bitten."
     "Huh," someone said in disappointment, "they're not new at all. They've
been eaten once already."
     Auntie Tatyana flushed to the roots of her hair  as nibbled cakes  were
stretched out to her from all sides.
     Finally her eyes came to rest  on Pavlik. "Did you do that, you naughty
boy?"
     "Auntie  dear,  I only  wanted  a  teeny-weeny  taste,"  Pavlik  looked
innocently at his angered aunt with  wide-open eyes that were amber-coloured
from  the Christmas  tree lights. "I thought," he added with a  sigh,  "they
were good, but it turns out they're only for guests."
     "That's enough, you bad, bad boy!" Auntie Tatyana cried. With a gesture
of  despair she ran  to the sideboard. Luckily,  there  was still plenty  of
other  sweets.  Satisfaction  was immediately  given  to  all who  had  been
slighted. The scandal was hushed.
     Soon the sleepy guests were carried away to their homes.  The party was
over. Pavlik set about putting his treasures in order.
     Just then  Dunya  appeared  in  the  doorway  of  the  nursery  with  a
mysterious air and beckoned to Petya.
     "Young  master,  that  crazy  Gavrik  is waiting for  you in  the  back
stairway," she whispered, glancing round.
     Petya dashed into the kitchen.
     Gavrik was sitting on the high backstairs sill, leaning against the icy
window on which danced blue sparks from  the  moon. Under his hood glittered
small angry eyes. He was breathing heavily.
     Petya's first thought was that Gavrik had come to  collect his debt. He
was about to tell the sad story  of Grandfather's buttons and promise honour
bright to settle the debt  in two days,  at the  latest, when Gavrik quickly
reached inside his padded jacket and pulled out four familiar-looking bags.
     "Here,"  he said  in  a  low, firm voice, handing them to  Petya. "Hide
these and we'll call it quits. They're left over from Joseph Karlovich,  God
rest his soul."
     As  he said these  last  words Gavrik  fervently made  the  sign of the
cross.
     "Hide them and keep 'em until they're needed."
     "Right," whispered Petya.
     Gavrik said nothing  for a  long time. Finally  he wiped his  nose hard
with his fist and climbed down from the windowsill.
     "Well, Petya, so long."
     "Did-did they get away?"
     "They did. Across the roofs. Now they're looking for 'em high and low."
     Gavrik paused for  a moment,  considering whether  he  hadn't  said too
much. Then he leaned forward trustfully.
     "If you only knew how many were caught!" he whispered into Petya's ear.
"But they  won't  be caught!  Take my  word  for it. They're hiding  in  the
catacombs. Like all the revolutionaries. In the  spring they'll start again.
You know, the landlord's throwing Terenti's wife and the kids, Zhenechka and
Motya, out in the street. That's the way things are."
     Gavrik scratched his eyebrows with a worried air.
     "I don't know what to  do with 'em now. Looks as we'll all have to move
from Near  Mills to Grandpa's hut. Grandpa's in a  bad way. Looks as if he's
going to die soon. Why don't you drop in  some day, Petya? Only not so soon.
The  main  thing  is  to hide these bags  in a  good place.  'Weep  no more,
Marusya, you will yet be mine.' Shake, pal."
     Gavrik  shoved a flat hand into  Petya's and  then ran  off, beating  a
tattoo on the stairs with his broken boots.
     Petya went back  to the nursery and hid the bags under the books in his
satchel.
     Just then the door flew open with an unearthly  bang and Father marched
into the room holding the mutilated dress coat.
     "What's the meaning of this?" he asked in such a quiet voice that Petya
nearly fainted.
     "By the true and holy Cross-" he muttered, but  he  could not gather up
the strength to cross himself.
     "What's the meaning of  this?" Father shouted, turning red and  shaking
from head to foot.
     That very second Pavlik let out a heart-rending howl in the parlour, as
though echoing Father's angry shout.
     The  little  boy ran in on legs wobbling from horror and threw his arms
round Father's knees. His mouth was such a wide-open square that his yelling
throat, with  its tiny, quivering  lobe at the back, could clearly  be seen.
The tears came in streams. In his trembling hand lay the open moneybox, full
of bits of tin and iron instead of money.
     "D-da-da-dy," babbled Pavlik, hiccuping. "Pe-etya- rob-hie-robbed me!"
     "On my word of hon-" began Petya, but Father already had a firm grip on
his shoulders.
     "You good-for-nothing!" he  roared. "You  scalawag! I  know everything!
You're a gambler, and a liar besides!"
     He began to  shake Petya-so furiously that it seemed he wanted to shake
the very life out  of  the boy. His jaw  bounced up and down, and so did his
pince-nez, which had slipped  from  his  perspiring  nose with its cork-like
pores, and dangled on the black cord.
     "Give  them to me  this very instant, those-what do  you call 'em-mugs,
jugs-"
     "Lugs,"  Petya said  with a crooked  smile,  hoping somehow to turn the
matter into a joke.
     But when Father heard the word "lugs"  from the lips of his son he flew
into a still greater rage.
     "Lugs, eh? Excellent! Where are they? Give  them here this very minute.
Where is that street filth? Where are  those germs? Into the fire with them!
Into the stove! I don't want to see a single trace of them!"
     He took in the room with a  swift glance and then made straight for the
satchel.
     Father  walked  down  the passage  with long, quick,  nervous  strides,
carrying the bags squeamishly,  as  though they  were  dead kittens.  Petya,
sobbing, ran after him all the way to the kitchen.
     "Daddy! Daddy!" he shouted, tugging at his sleeves. "Daddy!"
     Father roughly pushed Petya aside, moved a clattering  pot and fiercely
shoved the bags into the flaming stove, getting soot on his cuffs.
     The boy froze in horror.
     "Hook it!" he screamed.
     But  at that  instant  shots resounded inside the stove, followed by  a
small explosion.
     A multicoloured flame shot through the stove ring. Noodles  flew up out
of the pot and plastered themselves  against the ceiling. The stove cracked.
Out  of  the  crack  poured acrid smoke,  filling the entire kitchen in  one
minute.
     They flooded  the stove. Later, when  they  raked out  the ashes,  they
found a pile of charred revolver cartridge cases.
     But Petya knew none of this. He had  fainted. They put  him to bed. His
whole body was on  fire. When they took his  temperature  it was one hundred
and three and five-tenths.

        42
     KULIKOVO FIELD

     No sooner had the scarlet fever passed when pneumonia set in.
     Petya was ill  all winter. Only in the middle  of  Lent did he begin to
walk about inside the house.
     Spring was on the way. First early spring-in  fact, early-early spring.
No longer winter but by no means real spring.
     The short-lived southern snow had long since  vanished, without  giving
Petya a taste of its delights. It was now the dry, grey Odessa March.
     On shaky legs, Petya  wandered idly through the rooms which had  become
small and very low the minute he climbed out  of bed. He stood  on tiptoe in
front of the  pier-glass in  the dark anteroom and  with a tug  of self-pity
examined  his  peaky  white  face with the shadows under  eyes  that  seemed
somehow startled and hard to recognise.
     The whole  first half of  the day he was all alone in the  flat. Father
was at school, and Auntie Tatyana took Pavlik out walking.
     The  noises of  the deserted rooms made Petya pleasantly  light-headed.
The  sharp  click  of  the  pendulum  came  with a  persistent,  frightening
inevitability. Petya went to the window. It was still sealed for the winter;
there was  a roll of yellowed cotton  wool  sprinkled with pieces of clipped
worsted between the two frames.
     He saw  the  mean, grey, dry roadway, the hard earth of Kulikovo Field,
and a  grey sky with  the faintest watery traces of blue.  From  the kitchen
window he could see the blue twigs of the lilacs in the  vacant lot. He knew
that if  you stripped  the bitter  bark with your teeth you would uncover  a
wonderfully green, pistachio-coloured stem.
     At long intervals the low, funereal  bass of the  Lenten bells quivered
in the air, bringing to the heart a feeling of emptiness and sadness.
     Yet latent in this bleak world were the powerful forces of spring. They
were merely awaiting their hour.  They could be felt in everything, and most
of all in the hyacinth bulbs.
     The indoor spring was still  hidden in the dark storeroom,  where, amid
the mousy odour  of household  odds  and  ends,  Auntie  Tatyana  had placed
shallow little  bowls along the  wall. The Dutch  bulbs,  Petya knew, needed
darkness  in  order  to  sprout.  And in the darkness of  the  storeroom the
mystery of growth was taking place.
     Pale but firm spears were cutting  their way through the silken, wasted
husks of the bulbs. He knew that just in time  for Easter, taut, bushy, pale
pink,  white and  purple hyacinth  flowers would  miraculously appear on the
thick stems.
     In the meantime,  Petya's  child's heart  was lonely and  numb  in this
grey, desolate world of the vernal equinox.
     The days were growing longer, Now he had nothing to fill the incredibly
dragging hours between  dinner and evening. How long they were, those dreary
hours  of  the  equinox! Even  longer  than the  deserted streets stretching
endlessly in the direction of Near Mills.
     Petya was now allowed to  stroll about near the house. He walked slowly
up and down the  dry pavement, squinting  at the sun  as it  set  beyond the
railway station.
     Only a  year  ago  he had looked upon the  station as  the end of town.
Beyond it  lay geography. But now he knew that the town continued beyond the
station,  that there were the long, dusty streets of the suburbs. He clearly
pictured them, reaching away to the west.
     In  the distance,  filling  the  broad  space between two dreary  brick
houses, hung a monstrous red sun from the times when the Earth was young; it
gave off no rays, yet its sharp, sullen light blinded you.
     Two weeks before Easter, wagon-loads of timber were brought to Kulikovo
Field. Carpenters, navvies, and  foremen appeared. Tape-lines were stretched
over the ground in all directions. Contractors with yellow folding footrules
in  their  outside pockets  paced off sections of land.  The construction of
booths for the Easter fair had begun.
     Petya's greatest pleasure  was to wander among  the boxes of big nails,
the axes, saws, logs and shavings, and to guess what would be built where in
Kulikovo Field. Each new row of posts, each new trench, each lot measured by
tape-line and marked off with pegs excited his imagination.
     His soaring fantasy drew pictures of amazingly beautiful booths full of
wonders  and mysteries, while levelheaded experience told him  that it would
all  be the same as last year. No better and no worse. But his fantasy could
not reconcile itself  to that; it  demanded  something new, something  never
seen before.
     He  loitered about near  the workers and  contractors  in  the  hope of
getting some information out of them.
     "I say there, could you tell me what this is going to be?"
     "A booth, naturally."
     "I know, but what kind?"
     "Wooden, naturally."
     Petya chuckled, to flatter the man.
     "I  know that  too.  You  do say  funny things! But what will there  be
inside? A circus?"
     "That's right."
     "But how? Doesn't a circus have to be round?"
     "Then it won't be a circus."
     "Will it be a waxworks?"
     "That's right."
     "Such a tiny booth?"
     "Then it won't be a waxworks."
     "But really. What will it be?"
     "A privy."
     Petya  blushed  but  then  chuckled all the  louder. He was willing  to
endure any humiliation as long as he found out at least something.
     "Ha-ha-ha! But really, what are you building here?"
     "Run  along,  kid,  this  ain't  no place for you.  You'll  be  late to
school."
     "I don't go to school yet. I had scarlet fever, and pneumonia too."
     "Then go to bed instead of making a pest of yourself here."
     With  a forced grin Petya  sauntered off, racking his brains  over  the
insoluble problem.
     For it  was a known fact that before the booths were roofed with canvas
and hung with  pictures  nothing  could  be learned.  It  was impossible  to
tell-as impossible as trying to guess the  colour of the hyacinth that would
blossom out on the pale stem by Easter Sunday.
     On Holy Saturday, highly  mysterious  green crates  and trunks labelled
"Handle with Care" were brought  to  the fairgrounds.  Not  a single  boy in
Odessa knew what was in them.
     You  could  only make a rough shot: wax figures, magicians'  tables, or
flat, heavy snakes with filmy eyes and forked tongues.
     One of the trunks was known to contain a mermaid with a lady's bust and
a scaly tail instead of legs. But how did she get along without water? Could
there  be a bath-tub inside the trunk? Or was she packed in wet mud? All you
could do was guess.
     Petya was dying for the fair to open. It seemed to him that nothing was
ready,  that  the whole thing would fall through,  that this year  the  fair
would never open at all.
     But his fears proved groundless.  By  Easter Sunday  all was ready: the
pictures  hung,  the  flagpoles  whitewashed,  and  the  square   generously
sprinkled from long green barrels which had been carted between  the  booths
all  the previous day and  had darkened  the dry earth with their glistening
rakes of water.
     In a word, Easter came and blossomed exactly according to calendar.
     The bells pealed monotonously.  A fresh-looking  sun  raced along among
fluffy  clouds. Auntie Tatyana, in a white lace dress, sliced a ham, turning
back rind as thick and curved as the holster of a revolver.
     Sugar  lambs  covered the Easter cakes.  A pink Christ holding a  paper
church banner flew through the air on a wire, like a ballet  dancer. Round a
green hill of watercress lay coloured  eggs polished so  glossy  with butter
that they reflected the newly washed windows.
     Curly  hyacinths in bowls wound with  crinkly pink paper gave off their
stiflingly sweet and at the same time grave-yardish  odour;  a fragrance  so
heavy  that you could almost see  it  rising as smoky  lilac strands  in the
sunshine above the Easter table.
     But Easter Sunday, for Petya, was the longest and dreariest day of all,
because no public entertainment or merry-making whatsoever was allowed. That
day the police dedicated to  God. But at noon on the following  day-with the
permission of the authorities-the public began to make merry.
     At the stroke of twelve the police officer  on  duty blew  his whistle,
and  the  tricoloured flag  was run up on the tall whitewashed  pole  in the
middle of Kulikovo Field.
     The  next  instant everything broke loose.  The Turkish  drums  of  the
regimental bands  struck  up. The hurdy-gurdies  and  merry-go-round  organs
began  to  blare.  From  the whitewashed platforms  of the  booths came  the
shrill, baboon-like, guttural cries of the  red-headed clowns  and  jugglers
calling  to  the public.  The glass  beads  and carriages and  horses of the
merry-go-round began to whirl.
     The fragile little  swing-boats flew up into the dizzying  blue  of the
cloud-spotted  sky. From all sides came the insistent and unceasing clang of
brass bells and triangles.
     A vendor passed carrying on his head a gleaming pitcher of coloured icy
water in which swam a few slices of lemon, a piece of ice and a dusty silver
sun.
     A pock-marked  Port Arthur veteran in a shaggy black Caucasian  fur cap
had taken off his boots and was  climbing the  greased  pole for  the  prize
razor and shaving brush at the top.
     The dizzying carnival in Kulikovo Field thundered  away for  seven days
from noon  to sunset; it filled the Batchei home with the  din and hubbub of
merry-making crowds from the outlying working-class districts.
     Petya spent his  days, from morn to  dusk, in Kulikovo Field. For  some
reason  he felt  certain that  he would meet  Gavrik there. Many  a  time he
sighted in the crowd a pair of lilac-coloured corduroys and a naval cap with
anchor buttons-that was what  Gavrik had worn  the Easter before-and  ran in
that direction, threading his way through the crowd, but always in vain.
     It smacked somehow  of Near Mills, this carnival of  the  common people
where many  of  the men  carried thin iron  canes like Terenti's and a great
many of the girls wore blue earrings like Motya's.
     But  Petya's  hopes did not come true. The last day of the fair drew to
an end. The bands played the "Longing for Home" march for the last time. The
flag was  lowered. Police whistles trilled. The  ground emptied. It was  all
over until next Easter.
     A  sad and  sullen sunset glowed  long in  the  sky  beyond the garish,
startlingly  quiet  booths,  beyond  the  iron  wheels   of  the  motionless
tip-overs, beyond the bare flagpoles.
     The  unbearably mournful silence of  the  holiday just  over was broken
only now and then  by the lion's deep, blood-curdling  roar  and the hyena's
jerky laughter.
     In the morning wagons came, and two days later not  a trace of the fair
remained. Kulikovo Field was again a black, dreary square from which all day
long came the sing-song voices of sergeants drilling their men:
     "Right turn! One-two!"
     "Left turn! One-two!"
     "About turn! One-two!"
     The days kept growing longer, and more and more difficult to fill. Then
one day Petya went to the seashore to pay Gavrik a visit.

        43
     THE SAIL

     Grandpa was dying.
     Gavrik knew this, and so  did Motya and  her mother, and so did  Petya,
who now spent his days on the shore.
     Grandpa knew it too.
     He lay  from  morning to  night on a sagging  iron  bed which had  been
carried out of the hut, into the warm April sunshine.
     When Petya  came up to say hello the first  time he was  embarrassed by
the white  transparency of Grandpa's face and its faint  bluish glow against
the red pillow.
     A clear, composed face, with a longish white beard, it had a beauty and
dignity that struck  Petya. But the most amazing and  most disturbing  thing
about  the  face was that  it seemed ageless, already  beyond the  limits of
time.
     "Hello, Grandpa," said Petya.
     The old man turned his eyes with their bloodless violet lids and looked
long  at  the  boy   in  the  Gymnasium  uniform,  but   apparently  without
recognition.
     "It's me, Petya, from Kanatnaya and the corner of Kulikovo."
     Grandpa gazed into the distance without stirring.
     "Don't you remember him, Grandpa? He's the one  you made  a lead sinker
for last year."
     A shadow of  remembrance, as distant as a  cloud, flickered  in the old
man's face. He smiled a clear, conscious smile, showing his gums.
     "A  sinker,"  he said softly, but without  any special effort.  "Yes. A
lead sinker."
     Chewing his lips, he gave Petya a fond look.
     "You've  sprung  up. That's  good. Go  play now,  my  child. Play  with
pebbles on the beach. Go play. Only be careful and don't fall in the water."
     He  evidently  took  Petya  for  a  little  child, something  like  his
great-grandson  Zhenechka who was  crawling about in  the  yellow dandelions
nearby.
     From  time to time the old man lifted his head to take an admiring look
at his household.
     Since   the  arrival  of  Terenti's  family   the  place   had   become
unrecognisable. It was as  if they had brought  a corner of  Near Mills with
them.
     Terenti's  wife  had  freshened  the  clay  floor  for  Easter  and had
whitewashed all the walls, inside and outside.
     The windows of the rejuvenated hut had been washed  and  bordered  with
blue, and they gleamed merrily in the sunshine.
     Round the hut grew green irises, now about to blossom. Among them Motya
had laid out her dolls, representing society ladies at their summer villas.
     Linen of different colours was  drying on  the lines. Motya,  her  hair
like  a  boy's,  was  watering  the  vegetable   patch,  pressing  the   big
watering-can to her stomach with both  hands. The dog Rudko, smiling sourly,
ran up  and down fastened to a wire between  two  posts.  Near the vegetable
patch, smoke was curling from a clay stove with a bottomless iron pot fitted
into it for a chimney. There was the delicious smoky smell of gruel.
     Motya's mother, in a gathered skirt, was  bent over a trough. All about
her soap bubbles floated in the air.
     Occasionally Grandpa had the feeling that time had turned  back, and he
was forty again. Grandma had just whitewashed the  hut. His grandson Terenti
was  crawling among the dandelions.  On  the  roof  lay a mast wrapped  in a
brand-new sail.
     Now  he would  heave the mast on his  shoulder,  take  the oars and the
red-leaded wooden rudder under his arm, and  go down to the shore to rig the
boat.
     But  the lapses of memory were short-lived. The old  man would suddenly
feel weighed down by household cares. He  would laboriously raise himself on
his elbow and call Gavrik.
     "What do you want, Grandpa?"
     The old  man  would chew his  lips  for a long time as he gathered  his
strength.
     "The boat-not carried  away, is it?" he would finally ask, his eyebrows
lifting sadly, like two little gable roofs.
     "It's safe,  Grandpa. You'd better lie down  again." - "It ought  to be
tarred-"
     "I'll tar it, Grandpa, don't you worry. Now lie back."
     Grandpa  would lie back obediently,  but a minute  later  he would call
Motya.
     "What are you doing there, my child?"
     "Watering the potatoes."
     "Clever girl. Yes, give 'em plenty of water. The weeds- are you pulling
'em out?"
     "I am, Grandpa."
     "Or else they'll choke everything. Well, go, my  child.  Play with your
dolls for a while. Take a rest."
     Again Grandpa would fall back heavily.
     But then Rudko would start barking,  and the old  man would turn  angry
bushy  eyes  in the  dog's  direction.  "Down,  Rudko! Quiet, damn you!"  He
thought  he  was  calling  to the  playful dog in  a  commanding shout.  But
actually he spoke in a murmur.
     Most of the time  Grandpa  lay  motionless,  gazing into the  distance.
Between the two low hills on the shore he could see  a triangle of blue with
a  great many fishing sails. As he looked  at them the old man carried on  a
leisurely conversation with himself.
     "Yes,  that's  true. The wind  loves  a  sail. A  sail  makes  all  the
difference in  the world. A sail will take you wherever  you want to go. You
can go to Dofinovka, if you want, or you can go to Lustdorf. With a sail you
can go to Ochakov, and to  Kherson, and even  all the way to Eupatorium. But
if all you have is oars, and no sail-why, it's a joke! It'll take you a good
four hours  to row  to Bolshoi  Fontan. And another four hours back. Yes,  a
fisherman needs a sail. Without a sail it's no  use putting out to sea. It's
a disgrace. A boat without a sail is the same as a man without a soul."
     Grandpa thought about a sail all the time.
     That was since the night Terenti had dropped in for a minute to see the
family. He had brought the  children presents,  given his wife  three rubles
for  provisions, and said that he would try to  see about a  new  sail  in a
couple of days.
     From then on Grandpa became more cheerful.
     His  days were filled with dreams of the  new sail. He could  see it as
clearly as  if it  stood  before him: taut, strong, billowing  in the  fresh
breeze.
     Worn out by his constant thoughts  of the sail, Grandpa would fall into
a state of semi-consciousness. He would no  longer know where he was or what
he was doing. Only his senses were alive.
     Little by little his awareness of what was himself and what not himself
would  begin to fade.  He merged, as it  were,  with the  world  about  him,
turning into odours, sounds, colours. . ..
     A cabbage  butterfly  with  lemon-coloured  veins  on its  ivory  wings
fluttered  by. He was the butterfly, and at the same time he was the  flight
of the butterfly.
     A wave broke over the pebbles.  He was its refreshing  noise.  His lips
became salty from spray carried over  by the  wind. He was  the wind and the
salt.
     A  child sat among  the dandelions.  He was that child, and he was also
those bright chicken-yellow flowers towards which the child's hands reached.
     He was the sail, the sun, the sea. .. . He was all.
     But he did not live to see the sail.
     When  Petya came to the shore one morning he did  not find Grandpa near
the hut. A bench had been set up where his bed usually stood, and a tall old
man with a Kiev cross hanging from his dark neck was planning a board.
     A long taut shaving twisted itself out of the plane.
     Nearby stood Motya  in tight  shoes and  a  brand-new  but unattractive
print dress.
     "Grandpa  died  today," she said,  coming up close  to the boy. "Do you
want to look?"
     She took Petya's hand in  her  own cold hand  and,  trying to keep  her
shoes from squeaking, led him into the hut.
     Grandpa lay on the  same sagging bed, his eyes closed  and bulging, his
chin tied with a handkerchief. His big hands were folded high on  his chest,
over the icon of St. Nicholas, and held  a  small yellow candle. A column of
such bright and hot  sunlight came  through the clean-washed window that the
candle flame was not seen at all. There was only a little hollow  of  melted
wax and the black hook of the  wick surrounded  by wavy air to show that the
candle was burning.
     Two days later Grandpa was buried.
     The night before the funeral Terenti came. He knew nothing of Grandpa's
death. On his shoulder he carried a huge, heavy package-the promised sail.
     He  dumped  it  in  the  corner and  stood for a while  looking down at
Grandpa in the  unpainted pine coffin.  Then,  without crossing  himself, he
firmly kissed the old man on his hard, icy lips and went out in silence.
     Gavrik  accompanied Terenti  along  the shore as  far  as Maly  Fontan.
Terenti gave  him some instructions about the funeral, which, of  course, he
would not be  able to attend,  then  shook  hands  and  disappeared into the
darkness.
     ...Four blond-moustached fishermen carried Grandpa  on  their shoulders
in the light open coffin.
     In  front, next to the undertaker in a tattered dress-suit, who carried
a crude cross on his shoulder,  walked Gavrik, clean, washed, neatly combed.
On a towel he carried a huge clay bowl of kolevo.
     Behind  the coffin walked  Motya's mother with Zhenechka  in her  arms,
Motya, Petya, and a few neighbours,  fishermen,  in their Sunday best. There
were eight of them  in all. But as the procession approached the cemetery it
grew larger and larger.
     In some mysterious way news of the funeral of the old fisherman who had
been  beaten  up in  jail had spread all along  the  shore  from Langeron to
Lustdorf.
     Whole families and groups of fishermen-from Maly Fontan, Sredny Fontan,
Valtukh, Arcadia, and  Zolotoi Bereg-came  out  of seaside lanes to join the
procession.
     Now a crowd  of about three hundred marched  in deep silence behind the
pauper's coffin of Grandpa.
     It  was  the last  day of  April.  Rain  was  gathering. Sparrows  with
outspread  wings were bathing in the  soft dust of the lanes. A grey asphalt
sky hung  over the gardens.  Against it the  monotonous  young green  of the
trees, hanging limp in expectation of the rain, stood out sharply.
     Cocks  crowed sleepily in the  backyards. Not a single  ray of sunshine
came through the thick, muggy clouds.
     Near  the  cemetery  the procession  was  joined by  factory-hands  and
railwaymen from  Chumka, Sakhalinchik, the Odessa Goods Station, Moldavanka,
and  Near and Distant Mills. The policeman on duty at the cemetery looked in
alarmed surprise at the huge crowd streaming through the gates.
     Like the  city, the cemetery had  its  main street,  cathedral  square,
central  district,  boulevard,  and  poverty-stricken outskirts. Death, too,
seemed  helpless  before  the  power of wealth.  Even  after  he died  a man
remained either rich or poor.
     The crowd silently walked down the main street of the shady town of the
dead,  past  marble,  granite,  and  labradorite family  vaults-those small,
luxurious villas behind whose  wrought-iron fences haughty stone angels with
lowered wings stood amid the black greenery of cypress and myrtle.
     Each plot  of land  here  had  been bought at a  fabulous price and was
owned by dynasties of the rich.
     The crowd passed the  central section  and  turned down a  less wealthy
street which had no villas, no mausoleums. Behind the iron fences lay marble
slabs bordered by bushes of  lilac and yellow  acacia. The  rains had washed
the gilt from the carved  names; small cemetery  snails  covered  the marble
plaques, greyed by time.
     Then came wooden fences and mounds c