Valentin Katayev. The Cottage in the Steppe
a novel
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TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY FAINNA SOLASKO AND EVE MANNING
Russian original title: Хуторок в степи
FOREIGN LANGUAGES PUBLISHING HOUSE Moscow
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2/
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DESIGNED BY D. BISTI
CONTENTS
Death of Tolstoi
Skeleton
What Is a Red?
A Heavy Blow
Requiem
The Resignation
An Old Friend
Gavrik's Dream
A Jar of Jam
Mr. Faig
The Sailor's Outfit
Departure
The Letter
On Board
Istanbul
Chicken Broth
The Acropolis
The New Hat
The Mediterranean
Messina
Pliny the Younger
Naples and the Neapolitans
Alexei Maximovich
Vesuvius
A Cinder
The Eternal City
On the Shores of Lake Geneva
Emigres and Tourists
Love at First Eight
A Storm in the Mountains
The Home-Coming
Precious Stones
Sunday
The Kite From a Shop
The Bad Mark
Auntie's New Idea
The Old Woman
Workers of the World, Unite!
The New Home
Snowdrops
The Lena Massacre
The First Issue of the Pravda
The Cottage in .the Steppe
The Death of Warden
The Widow with a Child
The Secret Note
The Rendezvous
Caesar's Commentaries
Queen of the Market
Friends in Need
Don't Kick a Man When He's Down!
Terenty Semyonovich
Glow-Worms
Moustache
The Sail
At the Camp-Fire
Stars
Gusts of wind from the sea brought rain and tore the umbrellas from
people's hands. The streets were shrouded in the grey half-light, and
Petya's heart felt just as dark and dreary as the morning.
Even before he reached the familiar corner he saw a small crowd
gathered around the news-stand. Stacks of overdue papers had just been
dropped off and were being snatched up eagerly. The unfolded pages fluttered
in the wind and were instantly spotted by the rain. Some of the men in the
crowd removed their hats, and a woman sobbed loudly, dabbing a handkerchief
at her eyes and nose.
"So he is dead," Petya thought. He was near enough now to see the wide
black mourning border around the pages and a dark portrait of Lev Tolstoi
with his familiar white beard.
Petya was thirteen and, like all young boys, he was terrified by
thoughts of death. Whenever someone he knew died, Petya's heart would be
gripped by fear and he would recover slowly as after a serious illness. Now,
however, his fear of death was of an entirely different mature. Tolstoi had
not been an acquaintance of theirs. Petya could not conceive of the great
man as living the life of an ordinary mortal. Lev Tolstoi was a famous
writer, just like Pushkin, Gogol, or Turgenev. In the boy's imagination he
was a phenomenon, not a human being. And now he was on his deathbed at
Astapovo Station, and the whole world waited with bated breath for the
announcement of his death. Petya as caught up in the universal anticipation
of an event that seemed incredible and impossible where the immortal known
as "Lev Tolstoi" was concerned. And when the event had become a reality,
Petya was so crushed by the news that he stood motionless, leaning against
the slimy, wet trunk of an acacia.
It was just as mournful and depressing at the gymnasium as in the
streets. The boys were hushed, there was no running up and down the stairs,
and they spoke in whispers, as in church at a requiem mass. During recesses
they sat around in silence on the window-sills. The older boys of the
seventh and eighth forms gathered in small groups on the landings and near
the cloak-room where they furtively rustled the pages of their newspapers,
since it was against the rules to bring them to school. Lessons dragged on
stiffly and quietly with maddening monotony. The inspector or one of the
assistant teachers would look in through the panes of the classroom door,
their faces bearing an identical expression of cold vigilance. Petya felt
that this familiar world of the gymnasium, with the official uniforms and
frock-coats of the teachers, the light-blue stand-up collars of the ushers,
the silent corridors where the tiled floor resounded to the click of the
inspector's heels, the faint odour of incense near the carved oaken doors of
the school chapel on the fourth floor, the occasional jangling of a
telephone in the office downstairs, and the* tinkling of test-tubes in the
physics laboratory-this was a world utterly remote from the great and
terrible thing that, according to Petya, was taking place beyond the walls
of the gymnasium, in the city, in Russia, throughout the world.
What actually was taking place outside?
Petya would look out of the window from time to time, but could see
only the familiar uninteresting scene of the streets leading to the railway.
He saw the wet roof of the law-court, a beautiful structure with a statue of
the blind Themis in front. Beyond was the cupola of the St. Panteleimon
Church, the Alexandrovsky district fire-tower and, in the distance, the
damp, gloomy haze of the workers' quarter with its factory chimneys,
warehouses and a certain leaden darkness on the horizon which reminded him
of something that had happened long ago and which he could not quite place.
It was only after lessons had ended for the day and Petya found himself in
the street that he suddenly remembered it all.
An early twilight descended on the city. Oil lamps lit up the shop
windows, throwing sickly yellow streaks of light on the wet pavements. The
ghostly elongated shadows of passers-by flitted through the mist. Suddenly
there was a sound of singing. Row after row of people with their arms linked
were Founding the corner. A hat-less student marched in front, pressing a
black-framed portrait of Lev Tolstoi to his breast. The damp wind ruffled
his fair hair. "You fell, a victim in the fight," the student was singing in
a defiant tenor above the discordant voices of the crowd. Both the student
and the procession of singing people had suddenly and with great force
brought back to Petya a long-forgotten time and street. Then, as now, the
pavement had glittered in the mist, and along it marched a crowd of
students-mostly men and a few women wearing tiny karakul hats-and factory
workers in high boots. They had sung "You fell a victim." A scrap of red
bunting had bobbed over the heads of the crowd. That had been in 1905.
As if to complete the picture, Petya heard the clickety-clack of
horseshoes striking sparks on the wet granite cobbles. A Cossack patrol
galloped out of a side-street. Their peakless caps were cocked at a rakish
angle and short carbines dangled behind their shoulders. A whip cut the air
near Petya and the strong odour of horses' sweat filled his nostrils. In an
instant everything was a whirling, shouting, running mass.
Petya held his cap with both hands as he jumped out of the way. He
bumped into something hot. It turned over. He saw that it was a brazier
outside the greengrocer's. The hot coals scattered and mixed with the
smoking chestnuts. The street was empty.
For days Tolstoi's death was the sole topic of conversation in Russia.
Extra editions of the newspapers told the story of Tolstoi's departure from
his home in Yasnaya Polyana. Hundreds of telegrams date-lined Astapovo
Station described the last hours and minutes of the great writer. In a flash
the tiny, unknown Astapovo Station became as world-famous as Yasnaya
Polyana, and the name of the obscure station-master Ozolin who had taken the
dying man into his house was on everybody's lips.
Together with the names of Countess Sofya Andreyevna and Chertkov,
these new names-Astapovo and Ozolin- which accompanied Tolstoi to his grave,
were just as frightening to Petya as the black lettering on the white
ribbons of the funeral wreaths.
Petya noted with surprise that this death, which everyone regarded as a
"tragedy," apparently had something to do with the government, the Holy
Synod, the police, and the gendarmerie corps. Whenever he saw the bishop's
carriage with a monk sitting on the box next to the coachman, or the
clattering droshki of the chief of police, he was certain that both the
bishop and the chief of police were rushing somewhere on urgent business
connected with the death of Tolstoi.
Petya had never before seen his father in such a state of mind, not
actually excited, but, rather, exalted and inspired. His usually kind frank
face suddenly became sterner and younger. The hair above his high, classic
forehead was combed back student-fashion. But the aged, red-rimmed eyes full
of tears behind his pince-nez conveyed such grief, that Petya's heart ached
with pity for his father.
Vasily Petrovich came in and put down two stacks of tightly bound
exercise books on the table. Before changing into the old jacket he wore
about the house, he took a handkerchief from the back pocket of his
frock-coat with its frayed silk lapels and wiped his wet face and beard
thoroughly. Then he jerked his head decisively.
"Come on, boys, wash your hands and we'll eat!"
Petya sensed his father's mood. He realized that Vasily Petrovich was
taking Tolstoi's death badly, that for him Tolstoi was not only an adored
writer, he was much more than that, almost the moral centre of his life. All
this he felt keenly, but could not put his feelings into words.
Petya had always responded quickly to his father's moods, and now he
was deeply upset. He grew quiet, and his bright inquiring eyes never once
left his father's face.
Pavlik, who had just turned eight and had become a schoolboy, was
oblivious to all that was taking place; he was completely absorbed in the
affairs of his preparatory class and his first impressions of school.
"During our writing lesson today we raised an obstruction!" he said,
pronouncing the difficult word with obvious pleasure. "Old Skeleton ordered
Kolya Shaposhnikov to leave the room although he wasn't to blame. Then we
all booed with our mouths closed until Skeleton banged so hard on the desk
that the ink-pot bounced up to the ceiling!"
"Stop it! You should be ashamed of yourself," his father said with a
pained look. Suddenly, he burst out, "Heartless brats! You should be
whipped! How could you mock an unfortunate, sick teacher whose days are
almost numbered? How could you be so brutal?" Then, apparently trying to
answer the questions that had been worrying him all those days, he went on:
"Don't you realize that the world cannot live on hate? Hate is contrary to
Christianity and to plain common sense. And this at a time when they are
laying to rest a man who, perhaps, is the last true Christian on earth."
Father's eyes became redder still. Suddenly he smiled wanly and put his
hands on the boys' shoulders. Gazing at each in turn he said:
"Promise me that you will never torture your fellow-creatures."
"I never did," Petya said softly.
Pavlik screwed up his face and pressed his close-cropped head against
Father's frock-coat which smelt of a hot iron and faintly of moth-balls.
"Daddy, I'll never do it again. We didn't know what we were doing," he
said, wiping his eyes with his fists and sniffling.
It's terrible, say what you like, it's terrible," Auntie said at
dinner. She put down the ladle and pressed her fingers to her temples. "You
can think what you like about Tolstoi- personally, I look on him as the
greatest of writers-but all his non-resistance and vegetarianism are
ridiculous, and as for the Russian government, its attitude in the matter is
abominable. We are disgraced in the eyes of the whole world! As big a
disgrace as Port Arthur, Tsushima, or Bloody Sunday."
"I beg you to-" Father said anxiously. "No, please don't beg me. We
have a dull-witted tsar and a dull-witted government! I'm ashamed of being a
Russian."
"Stop, I beg you!" Father shouted. His chin jutted forward and his
beard shook slightly. "His Majesty's person is sacred. He is above
criticism. I won't permit it. Especially in front of the children."
"I'm sorry, I won't do it again," Auntie answered hurriedly.
"Let's drop the subject."
"There's just one thing I can't understand, and that is how an
intelligent, kind-hearted man like you, who loves Tolstoi, can honestly
regard as sacred a man who has covered Russia with gallows and who-"
"For God's sake," Father groaned, "let's not discuss politics. You are
an expert at turning any conversation into a political discussion! Can't we
talk without getting mixed up in politics?"
"My dear Vasily Petrovich, you still haven't realized that everything
in our lives is politics. The government is politics. The church is
politics. The schools are politics. Tolstoi is politics."
"How dare you speak like that?" "But I will!"
"Blasphemy! Tolstoi is not politics." "That's exactly what he is!"
And for long after, while Petya and Pavlik were doing their home-work
in the next room, they could hear the excited voices of Father and Auntie,
interrupting each other.
"Master and Man, Concession, Resurrection!" "War and Peace, Platon
Karatayev!" "Platon Karatayev, too, is politics!" "Anna Karenina, Kitty,
Levin!" "Levin argued communism with his brother!" "Andrei Bolkonsky,
Pierre!" "The Decembrists!" "Haji Murat!" "Nikolai Palkin!" ( The derogatory
nickname of Nicholas I, signifying "cudgel."-Tr).
"Stop, I beg you. The children can hear us."
Pavlik and Petya were sitting quietly at Father's desk, beside the
bronze oil lamp with the green glass lampshade.
Pavlik had finished his home-work and was busy putting together his new
writing outfit of which he was still very proud. He was pasting a transfer
on his pencil-box, patiently rolling up the top layer of wet paper with his
finger. A multi-coloured bouquet of flowers bound with light-blue ribbons
could be seen through it. He heard the voices in the dining-room, but did
not pay any attention to them; his mind was full of the incident that had
taken place during the writing lesson earlier" in the day. The
"obstruction," which at first sight seemed such a daring and funny prank,
now appeared in another light altogether. Pavlik could not banish the
horrible scene from his eyes.
There at the blackboard stood the teacher, old Skeleton. He was in the
last stages of consumption and was ghastly thin. His blue frock-coat hung
loosely about his shoulders. It was too long and old, and very worn, but
there were new gold buttons on it. His starched dickey bulged casually on
his sunken chest and a skinny neck protruded from the wide greasy collar.
Skeleton stood stock-still for a moment or two, challenging the class with
his dark eyes. Then he turned swiftly to the blackboard, picked up a piece
of chalk with his thin, transparent fingers, and began tracing out the
letters.
In the ominous quiet they could hear the scratching of the chalk on the
slate: a light, delicate touch when he outlined a feathery curlicue and a
loud screech as he drew an amazingly straight line at a slant. Skeleton
would crouch and then suddenly straighten again, just like a puppet. He'd
cock his head to one side, utterly oblivious to his surroundings, and either
sing out "stro-o-ke" in a high thin voice, or "line" in a deep rasping one.
"Stroke, line. Stroke, line."
Suddenly a voice from the last row, still higher and as fine as a hair,
mimicked, "Stro-o-ke." Skeleton's back twitched, as if he had been stabbed,
but he pretended he hadn't heard. He continued writing, but the chalk was
already crumbling in his emaciated fingers, and his large shoulder-blades
jerked painfully beneath the threadbare frock-coat.
"Stroke, line. Stroke, line," he sang out and his neck and large ears
became crimson.
"Stro-o-oke! Str-rr-oke! Stro-o-oke!" mimicked someone in the last row.
All of a sudden Skeleton spun round, strode rapidly down the aisle and
grabbed the first boy at hand. He yanked him up from his desk, dragged him
to the door, and threw him out of the class-room. Then he banged the door so
hard that the panes rattled and dry putty fell all over the parquet floor.
Skeleton walked back to the blackboard with heavy steps. He was
wheezing loudly as he picked up the chalk and was about to continue the
lesson. Just then he heard the hum of steady, barely audible booing.
Startled, he froze into immobility. His knees trembled visibly. His cuffs
and baggy blue trousers trembled too. His black sunken eyes glared at the
boys with undisguised hatred. But he had no way of finding out the culprits.
They were all sitting with their mouths tightly shut, looking quite
indifferent, and yet they were all booing steadily, monotonously, and
imperceptibly. The whole class was booing, but no one could be accused of
it. Then a tortured scream of pain and rage broke from his lips. He was
jerking like a puppet as he hurled the chalk at the blackboard. It broke
into bits. Skeleton stamped his foot. His eyes became bloodshot. His thin
hair was plastered to his damp forehead. His neck twitched convulsively and
he tore open his collar. He rushed over to his desk, hurled the chair aside,
flung the class register against the wall, and began pounding the desk with
his fists. He no longer heard his own voice as he shouted, "Ruffians!
Ruffians!" The inkpot bounced up and down, and the purple liquid stained his
loosened dickey, his bony hands and damp forehead. The scene ended when
Skeleton, suddenly becoming limp, sat down on the window-sill, rested his
head against the frame and was seized with a terrible coughing spell. His
deeply sunken temples, almost black eye-sockets, and bared yellow teeth made
his face look like the skull of a skeleton. Were it not for the sweat
streaming down his forehead, one could have easily taken him for a corpse.
That was the picture Pavlik could not banish from his mind. The boy
felt terribly oppressed; however, his mental state in no way interfered with
the job in hand. He bestowed special care on transferring the picture, for
he did not want to make a hole in the wet paper and spoil the bouquet and
light-blue ribbons that looked so bright in the light of the lamp.
Petya, meanwhile, was absent-mindedly leafing through a thick notebook.
There were emblems scratched out on the black oilskin cover-an anchor, a
heart pierced with an arrow and several mysterious initials. He was
listening to Father and Auntie arguing in the dining-room. Some words were
repeated more often than others; they were: "freedom of thought," "popular
government," "constitution," and, finally, that burning word-"revolution."
"Mark my words, it will all end in another revolution," Auntie said.
"You're an anarchist!" Father shouted shrilly.
"I'm a Russian patriot!"
"Russian patriots have faith in their tsar and their government!"
"Have you faith in them?"
"Yes, I have!"
Then Petya heard Tolstoi mentioned once more.
"Then why did this tsar and this government in whom you have such faith
excommunicate Tolstoi and ban his books?"
"To err is human. They look on Tolstoi as a politician, almost a
revolutionary, but Tolstoi is simply the world's greatest writer and the
pride of Russia. He is above all your parties and revolutions. I'll prove
that in my speech."
"Do you think the authorities will allow you to say that?"
"I don't need permission to say in public that Lev Tolstoi is a great
Russian writer."
"That's what you think."
"I don't think it-I am absolutely sure!"
"You're an idealist. You don't know the kind of country you're living
in. I beg you not to do that! They'll destroy you. Take my advice."
Petya woke up in the middle of the night and saw Vasily Petrovich
sitting at his desk in his shirtsleeves. Petya was used to seeing his father
correct exercise-books at night. This time, however, Father was doing
something else. The stacks of exercise-books were lying untouched, and he
was writing something rapidly in his fine hand. Little fat volumes of an old
edition of Tolstoi's works were scattered about the desk.
"Daddy, what are you writing?" "Go to sleep, sonny," Vasily Petrovich
said. He walked over to the bed, kissed Petya, and made the sign of the
cross over him.
The boy turned his pillow, laid his head on the cool side and fell
asleep again.
Before he dozed off he heard the rapid scratching of a pen, the faint
clinking of the little icon at the head of his bed, saw his father's dark
head next to the green lamp-shade, the warm grow of the candle flame in the
corner beneath the big icon, and the dry palm branch that cast a mysterious
shadow on the wallpaper, as always bringing to mind the branch of Palestine,
the poor sons of Solim, and the wonderful soothing music of Lermontov's
poem:
Peace and silence all around,
On the earth and in the sky....
Next morning, while Vasily Petrovich was busy washing, combing his
hair, and fastening a black tie to a starched collar, Petya had a chance to
see what his father had been writing during the night.
An ancient home-made exercise-book sewn together with coarse thread lay
on the desk. Petya recognized it immediately. Its usual place was in
Father's dresser, next to the other family relics: the yellowed wedding
candles, a spray of orange blossom, his dead mother's white kid gloves and
little bead bag, her tiny mother-of-pearl opera-glasses, some dried leaves
of a wild pear tree that grew on Lermontov's grave, and a collection of odds
and ends which, in Petya's view, were just junk, but to Vasily Petrovich
very precious.
Petya had leafed through the exercise-book once before. Half of it was
taken up with la speech Vasily Petrovich had written on the hundredth
anniversary of Pushkin's birth; there had not been anything in the other
half. The boy now saw that a new speech filled up this yellowed half of the
book. It was written in the same fine hand, and its subject was Tolstoi's
death. This is how it began:
"A great Russian writer is dead. Our literary sun has set."
Vasily Petrovich put on a pair of new cuffs and his best hollow-gold
cufflinks, carefully folded the exercise-book in two and put it in his
side-pocket. Petya watched his father drink a quick glass of tea and then
proceed to the hall where he put on his heavy coat with the frayed velvet
collar. The boy noticed that his fingers were trembling and his pince-nez
was shaking on his nose. For some reason, Petya suddenly felt terribly sorry
for his father. He went over to him and brushed against his coat-sleeve, as
he used to do when he was a very small boy.
"Never mind, we'll show them yet!" Father said and patted his son's
back.
"I still advise you against it," Auntie said solemnly as she looked
into the hall.
"You're wrong," Vasily Petrovich replied in a soft tremulous voice. He
put on his wide-brimmed black hat and went out quickly.
"God grant that I am wrong!" Auntie sighed. "Come on, boys, stop
wasting time or you'll be late for school," she added and went over to help
Pavlik, her favourite, buckle on his satchel, as he had not yet mastered the
fairly simple procedure.
The day slipped by, a short and, at the same time, an interminably long
and dreary November day, full of a vague feeling of expectation, furtive
rumour, and endless repetition of the same agonizing words: "Chertkov,"
"Sofya Andreyevna," "Astapovo," "Ozolin."
It was the day of Tolstoi's funeral.
Petya had spent all his life on the southern sea coast, in the
Novorossiisk steppe region, and had never seen a forest. But now he had a
very clear mental picture of Yasnaya Polyana, of woods fringing an overgrown
ravine. In his mind's eye Petya saw the black trunks of the ancient,
leafless lindens, and the plain pine coffin containing the withered,
decrepit body of Lev Tolstoi being lowered into the grave without priest or
choir boys attending. And overhead the boy could see the ominous clouds and
flocks of crows, exactly like those that circled over the church steeple and
the bleak Kulikovo Field in the rainy twilight.
As usual, Father returned from his classes when the lamp had been lit
in the dining-room. He was excited, happy and deeply moved. When Auntie, not
without anxiety, asked him whether he had delivered his speech and what the
reaction had been, Vasily Petrovich could not restrain the proud smile that
flashed radiantly beneath his pince-nez.
"You could have heard a pin drop," he said, taking his handkerchief out
of his back-pocket and wiping his damp beard. "I never expected the young
bounders to respond so eagerly and seriously. And that goes for the young
ladies too. I repeated it for the seventh form of the Maryinsky School."
"Were you actually given permission to do so?" "I didn't ask anyone's
permission. Why should I? I hold that the literature teacher is fully
entitled to discuss with his class the personality of any famous Russian
writer, especially when the writer in question happens to be Tolstoi. What
is more, I believe that it is my duty to do so." "You're so reckless."
Later in the evening some young people, strangers to the family,
dropped in: two students in very old, faded caps, and a young woman who also
seemed to be a student. One of the youths sported a crooked pince-nez on a
black ribbon, wore top-boots, smoked a cigarette and emitted the smoke
through his nostrils; the young woman had on a short jacket and kept
pressing her little chapped hands to her bosom. For some reason or other
they were reluctant to come into the rooms, and remained in the hall talking
with Vasily Petrovich for a long time. The deep, rumbling bass seemed to
belong to the student with the pince-nez, and the pleading, lisping voice of
the young woman kept repeating the same phrase over and over again at
regular intervals:
"We feel certain that as a progressive and noble-minded person and
public figure, you won't refuse the student body this humble request."
The third visitor kept wiping his wet shoes shyly on the door mat and
blowing his nose discreetly.
It turned out that news of Vasily Petrovich's talk had somehow reached
the Higher Courses for Women and the Medical School of the Imperial
University in Odessa, and the student delegation had come to express their
solidarity and also to request him to repeat his lecture to a
Social-Democratic student circle. Vasily Petrovich, while flattered, was
unpleasantly surprised. He thanked the young people but categorically
refused to address the Social-Democratic circle. He told them that he had
never belonged to any party and had no intention of ever joining one, and
added that he would regard any attempt to turn Tolstoi's death into
something political as a mark of disrespect towards the great writer, as
Tolstoi's abhorrence of all political parties and his negative attitude to
politics generally were common knowledge.
"If that's the case, then please excuse us," the young lady said dryly.
"We are greatly disappointed in you. Comrades, let's go."
The young people departed with dignity, leaving behind the odour of
cheap tobacco and wet footprints on the doorstep.
"What an astonishing thing!" Vasily Petrovich said as he strode up and
down the dining-room, wiping his pince-nez on the lining of his house
jacket. "It's really astonishing how people always find an excuse to talk
politics!"
"I warned you," Auntie said. "And I'm afraid the consequences will be
serious."
Auntie's premonition turned out to be correct, although the results
were not as immediate as she had expected. At least a month went by before
the trouble began. Actually, the approaching events cast a few shadows
before them. However, they seemed so vague that the Bachei family paid
little attention to them.
"Daddy, what's a 'red'?" Pavlik asked unexpectedly, as was his wont, at
dinner one day, his shining, naive eyes fixed on Father.
"Really, now!" Vasily Petrovich said. He was in excellent spirits.
"It's a somewhat strange question. I'd say that red means . . . well-not
blue, yellow, nor brown, h'm, and so on."
"I know that. But I'm talking about people, are there red people?"
"Oh, so that's what you mean! Of course there are. Take the North
American Indians, for example. The so-called redskins."
"They haven't got to that yet in their preparatory class," Petya said
haughtily. "They're still infants."
Pavlik ignored the insult. He kept his eyes on Father and asked:
"Daddy, does that mean you're an Indian?"
"Basically, no." Father laughed so loudly and boisterously that the
pince-nez fell off his nose and all but landed in his soup.
"Then why did Fedya Pshenichnikov say you were a red?"
"Oho! That's interesting. Who is this Fedya Pshenichnikov?"
"He's in my form. His father is senior clerk in the Governor's office
in Odessa."
"Well! If that's the case, then perhaps your Fedya knows best. However,
I think you can see for yourself that I'm not red, the only time I ever get
red is during severe frost."
"I don't like this," Auntie commented.
Not long afterwards a certain Krylevich, the bookkeeper of the mutual
aid society at the boy's school where Vasily Petrovich taught, -dropped in
one evening to see him about some savings-bank matters. When they had
disposed of the matter, Krylevich, whom Vasily Petrovich had always found to
be an unpleasant person, remained for tea. He stayed for an hour and a half,
was incredibly boring, and kept turning the conversation to Tolstoi,
praising Vasily Petrovich for his courage, and begging him for his notes,
saying he wanted to read them at home. Father refused, and his refusal upset
Krylevich. Standing in front of the mirror in the hall, putting on his flat,
greasy cap with the cockade of the Ministry of Education, he said with a
sugary smile:
"I'm sorry you don't want to give me the pleasure, really sorry. Your
modesty is worse than pride."
His visit left a nasty after-taste.
There were other minor happenings of the same order; for instance, some
of their acquaintances would greet Vasily Petrovich in the street with
exaggerated politeness, while others, on the' contrary, were unusually curt
and made no attempt to conceal their disapproval.
Then, just before Christmas, the storm broke.
`
Pavlik, who had just been "let out" for the holidays, was walking up
and down in front of the house in his overlong winter topcoat, meant to last
several seasons, and his new galoshes which made such a pleasant crunching
sound and left such first-rate dotted prints with an oval trade mark in the
middle on the fresh December snow. His report-card for the second quarter
was in his satchel. His marks were excellent, there were no unpleasant
reprimands and he even had "excellent" for attention, diligence, and
behaviour, which, to tell the truth, was overdoing it a bit. But, thanks to
his innocent chocolate-brown crystal-clear eyes, Pavlik had the happy knack
of always landing on his feet.
The boy's mood harmonized with the holiday season, and only one tiny
little worm of anxiety wriggled down in the deep recesses of his soul. The
trouble was that today, after the last lesson, the preparatory class,
throwing caution to the winds, had organized another "obstruction." This
time they took revenge on the doorman who had refused to let them out before
the bell rang. The boys got together and tossed somebody's galosh into the
cast-iron stove that stood next 'to the cloak-room, with the result that a
column of acrid smoke rose up, and the doorman had to flood the stove with
water. At that moment the bell rang, and the preparatory class scattered in
a body. Now Pavlik was worried that the inspector might get to know about
their prank, and that would lead to serious complications. This was the sole
blot in his feeling of pure joy at the thought of the holidays ahead.
Suddenly Pavlik saw what he feared most. A messenger was coming down
the street and heading straight for him; he wore a cap with a blue band land
his coat was trimmed with a lambskin collar from which Pavlik could see the
blue stand-up collar of his tunic. He was carrying a large cardboard-bound
register under his arm. The messenger walked up leisurely to the gate,
looked at the triangular lamp with the house number underneath it, and
stopped. Pavlik's heart sank.
"Where do the Bacheis live?" the messenger asked.
Pavlik realized that his end had come. There could be no doubt that
this was an official note to his father concerning the behaviour of Pavel
Bachei, preparatory-class pupil-in other words, the most dreadful fate that
could befall a schoolboy.
"What is it? Do they want Father?" Pavlik asked with a sickly smile. He
did not recognize his own voice and blushed a deep crimson as he added, "You
can give it to me, I'll deliver it and you won't have to climb the stairs!"
"I must have his signature," the messenger said sternly, curling his
big moustache.
"Second floor, number four," Pavlik whispered and felt hot, choked,
nauseous, and scared to death.
It never dawned on the boy that the messenger was a stranger. And in
any case, this being his first year at school, he could not possibly know
all the personnel.
The moment the front door closed after the messenger the light went out
for Pavlik. The world with all its beauty and freshness no longer existed
for him. It had vanished on the instant. The crimson winter sun was setting
beyond the blue-tinted snow-covered Kulikovo Field and the station; the
bells of the frozen cab horse around the corner tinkled as musically as
ever; the pots of hot cranberry jelly, set out on the balconies to cool,
were steaming as usual, the coat of delicate pale-blue snow on the balcony
railings and the steam curling over the pots seemed as cranberry-red as the
cooling jelly itself; the street, full of the holiday spirit, was as gay and
as lively as ever.
Pavlik no longer noticed any of this. At first he made up his mind that
he would never go home again-he would roam the streets until he died of
hunger or froze to death. Then, after he 'had walked around the
side-streets, he took a sacred vow to change his whole way of life and
never, never take part in any "obstructions" again; moreover, he would be a
model pupil, the best-behaved boy not only in Odessa, but in all Russia, and
thus earn Father's and Auntie's forgiveness. Then he began to feel sorry for
himself, for his ruined life, and even started to cry, smearing the tears
all over his face. In the end pangs of hunger drove him, home and, utterly
exhausted with suffering, he appeared on the threshold after the lamps had
been lit. Pavlik was ready to confess and repent when he suddenly noticed
that the whole family was in a state of great excitement. The excitement,
apparently, had nothing at all to do with the person of Pavlik, as no one
paid the slightest attention to him when he came in.
The dining-room table had not been cleared. Father was striding from
room to room, his shoes squeaking loudly and 'his coat-tails flying. There
were red spots on his face.
"I told you. I warned you," Auntie kept repeating, as she swung back
and forth on the swivel stool in front of the piano with its wax-spotted
silver candlesticks.
Petya was breathing on the window-pane and etching with his finger the
words, "Dear sir, Dear sir."
It turned out that the messenger had been from the office of the
Education Department and had nothing to do with the gymnasium at all. He had
delivered a message to Councillor Bachei, requesting him to appear the
following day "to explain the circumstances which prompted him to deliver an
unauthorized speech to his students on the occasion of Count Tolstoi's
death."
When Vasily Petrovich returned from the Education Department next day,
he sat down in the rocker in his frock-coat and folded his arms behind his
head. The moment Petya saw his pale forehead and trembling jaw, he knew
something terrible had happened.
Father was reclining on the wicker back of the chair and rocking
nervously, shoving off with the toe of his squeaking shoe.
"Vasily Petrovich, for God's sake, tell me what happened," Auntie said
finally, her kind eyes wide with fright.
"Please, leave me alone!" Father said with an effort, and his jaw
twitched more violently.
His pince-nez had slid down, and Petya saw two tiny pink dents on the
bridge of his nose which gave his face the appearance of helpless suffering.
The boy recalled that he had had this same look when Mother had died and lay
in a white coffin covered with hyacinths; then, too, Father had rocked back
and forth nervously, arms folded behind his head, his eyes filled with
tears. Petya walked over to Father, put his arms around his shoulders, which
bore faint traces of dandruff, and hugged him.
"Daddy, don't!" he said gently.
Father shook the boy's arms off, jumped up, and gesticulated so
violently that his starched cuffs popped out with a snap.
"In the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ-leave me alone!" he shouted in an
agonized voice and fled into the room that was both his study and bedroom
and the boys' room as well.
He divested himself of jacket and shoes, lay down and turned his face
to the wall.
At the sight of Father lying huddled up, of his white socks and the
blue steel buckle on the crumpled back of his waistcoat, Petya broke down
and began to cry, wiping his tears on his sleeve.
What actually had taken place at the Education Department? To begin
with, Vasily Petrovich had spent a long and uncomfortable time sitting alone
in the cold, officially sumptuous waiting-room on a gilded blue velvet chair
of the kind usually seen in museums or theatre lobbies. Then a dandified
official in the uniform of the Ministry of Education appeared, his figure
reflected in the parquet floor, and informed Vasily Petrovich that His
Excellency would see him.
His Excellency was sitting behind an enormous writing-desk. He was
hunchbacked and, like most hunchbacks, was very short, so that nothing could
be seen of him above the massive malachite desk set with two bronze
malachite candelabra, except a proud, malicious head, iron grey land
closely-cropped, propped up by a high starched collar and white tie. He was
wearing his formal civil service dress-coat with decorations.
"Why did you take the liberty of appearing here without your uniform?"
His Excellency demanded, without offering the caller a seat or getting up
himself.
Vasily Petrovich was taken aback, but when he tried to picture his old
uniform with the rows of holes where Petya had once yanked the buttons off
together with the cloth, he smiled good-naturedly, to his own surprise, and
even waved his hands somewhat humorously.
"I would request you not to act the clown. Don't wave your arms about:
you are in an office, not on the stage."
"My dear sir!" Vasily Petrovich said as the blood rushed to his face.
"Silence!" barked the official in the best departmental manner, as he
crashed his fist down on a pile of papers. "I am a member of the Privy
Council, 'Your Excellency' to you, not 'my dear sir'! Be good enough to
remember where you are and sta-a-and to attention! I summoned you here to
present you with an alternative," he continued, pronouncing the word
"alternative" with evident relish, "to present you with an alternative:
either publicly recant your baleful errors in the presence of the School
Inspector and the students at one of the next lessons, and explain the
demoralizing effects of Count Tolstoi's teachings on Russian society, or
hand in your resignation. Should you refuse to do so, you will be discharged
under Article 3 with no explanation and with all the unfortunate
consequences as far as you are concerned. I will not tolerate
anti-government propaganda in my district. I will mercilessly and
unhesitatingly suppress every instance of it."
"Allow me, Your Excellency!" Vasily Petrovich said in a trembling
voice. "Lev Tolstoi, our famous man of letters, is the pride and glory of
all Russia. I don't understand. What have politics got to do with it?"
"First of all, Count Tolstoi is an apostate, excommunicated from the
Orthodox Church by the Holy Synod. He is a man who dared to encroach upon
the most sacred principles of the Russian Empire and its fundamental laws.
If you cannot grasp this, then government service is not the place for you!"
"I regard that as an insult," Vasily Petrovich said with great
difficulty, as he felt his jaw begin to tremble.
"Get out!" roared the official, rising.
Vasily Petrovich left the office with his knees shaking, a shaking that
he could not control either on the marble staircase, where in two white
niches there were two gypsum busts of the tsar and tsarina in la pearl
tiara, or in the cloak-room, where a massive attendant threw his coat to him
over the barrier, or even later, in the cab, a luxury the Bachei family
indulged in only on very special occasions.
And so here he was, lying on the bed-clothes with his feet tucked up
under him, deeply insulted, powerless, humiliated, and overwhelmed by the
misfortune that had befallen not only him personally but, as he now
realized, his whole family as well. To be discharged under Article 3 with no
grounds stated meant more than the black list and social ostracism, it
signified in all probability an administrative exile, i.e., utter ruin,
poverty, and the end of the family. There was only one way out-a public
recantation.
By nature Vasily Petrovich was neither hero nor martyr. He was an
ordinary kind-hearted, intelligent man, a decent, honest intellectual, the
kind known as an "idealist," and a "pure soul." His university tradition
would not allow him to retreat. In his opinion a "bargain with one's
conscience" was the epitome of moral degradation. And, nevertheless, he
wavered. The pit they had dug for him so ruthlessly would not bear thinking
about. He realized that there was no way out, although he tried to think of
one.
Vasily Petrovich was so disheartened that he even decided to petition
the Emperor and sent for ten kopeks' worth of the best "ministerial"
stationery from the shop round the corner. He still adhered to his belief
that the tsar-the Lord's Anointed-was just and upright.
Perhaps he would actually have written to the tsar, had it not been for
the fact that at this juncture Auntie took a hand in the matter. She told
the cook on no account to go for any "ministerial" stationery, and
addressing herself to Vasily Petrovich said:
"My God, you're the perfect innocent! Don't you understand that they
are one and the same bunch?"
Vasily Petrovich blinked confusedly and kept repeating:
"But what's to be done, Tatyana Ivanovna? Tell me, just what can I do?"
Auntie, however, had no advice to offer. She retreated to her little
room next to the kitchen, sat down at her dressing-table, and pressed a
crumpled lace handkerchief to her red nose.
It was Christmas Eve, the twenty-fourth of December, a day that had a
special meaning for the Bachei family. It was the day of Mother's patron
saint. Every year on that day they visited the cemetery to offer up a mass
for the dead. They set out today too. There was a blizzard blowing and the
blinding whiteness hurt their eyes. The snow-drifts at the cemetery blended
with the white of the sky. Fine, powdery snow crystals rose over the black
iron railings and crosses. The wind whistled through old metal wreaths with
porcelain flowers. Petya stood knee-deep in the fresh snow. He had taken off
his cap, but still had on a hood. He was praying diligently, trying to
visualize his dead mother, but could recall only minor details: a hat with a
feather in it, a veil, the hem of a wide silk dress with a fringe on it. Two
kind eyes were smiling at him through the dotted veil tied under her chin.
That was all Petya could remember. There was a faint trace of a long past
grief that time had healed, the fear of his own death, and the gold letters
of Mother's name on the white marble slab from which the sexton had
carelessly brushed the snow just before they had arrived. Next to it was
Grandma's grave, and there was a vacant place between the two graves where,
as Vasily Petrovich was wont to say, he would one day be laid at rest
between his mother and his wife, the two women he had loved so faithfully
and steadfastly.
Petya crossed himself and bowed at the proper moments, he kept thinking
about his mother, and, at the same time, observed the priest, the
psalm-reader, Father, Pavlik, and Auntie. Pavlik was fidgeting all the time,
the turned-up hood irritated his ears and he kept tugging at it. Auntie was
weeping into her muff quietly. Father stood with eyes fixed on the
tombstone, his folded hands held humbly before him and his greying head with
the long seminarist's hair bent low. Petya knew Father was thinking about
Mother. But he had no idea of the terrible conflict raging within him.
Especially now did Vasily Petrovich miss her, her love, and her moral
support. He thought of the day when he, an eager young man, had read to her
his essay on Pushkin, of how they had both discussed it long and heatedly,
of the glorious morning, when he had put on his new uniform and was standing
in the hall, ready to set out to read his essay, and she had handed him his
freshly-pressed handkerchief, still warm from the hot iron, kissed him
fondly, and crossed him with her thin fingers; and afterwards, when he had
returned home in triumph, they had had a hearty dinner and little Petya,
whom they were training to be an independent young man, had smeared his
porridge all over his fat cheeks and kept repeating, "Daddy! Eat!" his black
eyes sparkling. How long ago, and yet, how close it all seemed! Now Vasily
Petrovich had to decide his fate alone.
For the first time in his life he understood clearly something that he
either could not or refused to understand before: that it was impossible in
Russia to be an honest and independent person if one held a government job.
One had to be a docile tsarist official, with no views of one's own, and
obey the orders of other officials-one's superiors-unquestioningly, no
matter how unjust or even criminal they might be. But worst of all, as far
as Vasily Petrovich was concerned, was the fact that the one responsible for
this state of affairs was none other than the Russian autocrat himself, the
Anointed of the Lord, in whose sanctity and infallibility Vasily Petrovich
had trusted so deeply and implicitly.
Now that this trust had been shaken, Vasily Petrovich turned
whole-heartedly to religion. He offered up prayers for his dead wife, and
implored divine help and guidance. But his prayers no longer brought him
consolation. He crossed himself, bowed low, and yet somehow or other he
seemed to see the priest and psalm-reader, who were rushing through the
service, in a new and different light. Their words and actions no longer
created the religious atmosphere of former years, but, instead, seemed
crude, unnatural, as if Vasily Petrovich himself was not praying, but only
observing two shamans performing some rite. That which formerly had moved
him deeply was now bereft of all its poetry.
The priest, in a mourning chasuble of brocade with a silver cross
embroidered on the back, his short arms wrapped in the dark sleeves of a
protruding tunic, was chanting the beautiful words of the requiem as he
deftly swung the censer to and fro, making the hot coals glow like rubies.
Purple smoke poured from it, turned grey quickly and melted in the wind,
leaving the air heavy with incense.
The psalm-reader had an enormous moustache and his winter overcoat was
exactly like Vasily Petrovich's, even to the frayed velvet collar. His
bulging eyes were reverently half closed, and his voice rose and fell as he
quickly echoed the priest's singing. Both priest and psalm-reader made a
pretence of not hurrying, although Vasily Petrovich could see they were
rushing the service, as they had to officiate at other graves where they
were eagerly awaited and whence impatient relatives were already signalling
them. Their relief was evident when they finally reached the last part and
put all their energy behind the words "the tears at the grave turn to
singing," etc., after which the Bachei family kissed the cold silver cross,
and while the psalm-reader was hurriedly wrapping it up in the stole, Vasily
Petrovich shook the priest's hand and awkwardly pressed two silver rubles
into his palm. The priest said, "I thank you!" and added, "I hear that
you're having trouble with the Education Department. Have faith in the Lord,
perhaps there is a way out. Good-bye for the present. Dreadful weather,
isn't it? A regular blizzard."
Vasily Petrovich had caught a faint trace of insult in those words.
Petya saw his face turn red. Suddenly there flashed into Vasily Petrovich's
mind the Education Department official bawling at him and his own
humiliating fear, and once again the feeling of pride, which until then he
had tried so hard to subordinate to Christian humility, welled up in him. At
that moment he decided that not for anything in the world would he
surrender, and if necessary he would suffer all the consequences for the
sake of Truth.
However, once they had returned home from the cemetery and he had
calmed down a little, his former doubts returned: had he the right to
jeopardize his family?
Meanwhile, the school holidays pursued their usual course, the only
difference being that this time they were not as jolly or as carefree as in
previous years.
Tedious and tiresome as usual was the waiting for nightfall on
Christmas Eve; appetizing smells drifted in from the kitchen while they
awaited the appearance of the first star in the window-the signal to light
the lamps and sit down to dinner and Christmas pudding. They had the usual
Christmas party next day, and carol-singers came in carrying a star hung
with tinsel and a round paper icon in the centre. Blue diamonds of moonlight
glittered festively and mysteriously on the frosted window-panes, and on New
Year's Eve there was apple pie with a new silver coin hidden in it for good
luck. The regimental bands played as usual in the clear, frosty noonday for
the Twelfth-Day parade on Cathedral Square. The holidays were coming to an
end. Some kind of decision had to be made. Vasily Petrovich became
despondent, and his depression affected the boys. Auntie alone tried to keep
up the holiday spirit. She put on a new silk dress, and all her favourite
rings were brought out to adorn her slender fingers; she smelled of "Coeur
de Jeannette" perfume, and she would sit at the piano, open a large folio,
and play Madame Vyaltseva's repertoire of waltzes, polkas, and gipsy
serenades. On Twelfth-Day Eve she decided to have the traditional
fortune-telling. They poured cold water into a basin and dropped melted
paraffin into it, as they had no wax, and then interpreted the various
shapes it froze into; in the kitchen they burned balls of crumpled paper and
then told the meaning of the shadows cast by them on the freshly whitewashed
wall. But there was something strained in all this.
Late at night-the last night of the school holidays-Petya, who was
drowsing off to sleep, again heard Father and Auntie talking heatedly in the
dining-room.
"You cannot and you must not do such a thing!" Auntie was saying in an
excited voice. "What then?" Father asked, and there was a sharp click as he
cracked his knuckles. "What shall I do? How shall we live? Have I the right
to do this? What a tragedy that Zhenya is no longer with us!"
"Believe me, if Zhenya were here now, she would never let you grovel
before these officials!"
Petya soon fell asleep and did not hear any more, but an astonishing
thing happened the next morning: for the first time in his life Vasily
Petrovich did not put on his frock-coat and did not go to his classes.
Instead, the cook was sent to the shop for "ministerial" stationery, and
Vasily Petrovich wrote out his resignation in his clear flowing hand,
unadorned by flourishes or curlicues.
His resignation was accepted coldly. However, there was no further
unpleasantness-apparently, it was not in the interests of the Education
Department to have the story spread round. And so, Vasily Petrovich found
himself out of a job, the most terrible thing that could hap-
pen to a family man with no other means of support except his salary.
Vasily Petrovich had put aside a little money a long time ago; he had
dreamed of going abroad with his wife, and then, after her death, with his
'boys. Now that dream evaporated. This money, together with what he would
get from the mutual aid society, would see the family through the next year,
if they lived frugally. But it was still a mystery how they were to exist
after that, especially as another question arose: how were Petya and Pavlik
to continue at the gymnasium? As the sons of a teacher they had been exempt
from tuition fees; now, however, he would have to pay out of their meagre
budget a sum that was beyond his means.
But worst of all, where Vasily Petrovich was concerned, was his
enforced idleness, for he had been used to work all his life. He did not
know what to do with himself and hung around the house for days on end in
his old jacket, forgetting to go to the barber's, looking older every day,
and making frequent visits to the cemetery where he spent long hours at his
wife's grave.
Pavlik, still too young to be touched by the terrible thing that had
befallen them, continued his former carefree existence. But Petya understood
everything. The thought that he would have to leave school, remove the
cockade from his cap and wear his uniform with hooks instead of shiny metal
buttons, as was the case with boys who had been expelled or had not
matriculated, made him blush with shame. Things were aggravated by an
ominous change in the attitude of the teachers and some of his class-mates.
In short, the New Year could not have begun worse. Petya was most
unhappy and was amazed to see that Auntie, far from being upset or
down-hearted, gave the impression of everything being fine. There was a look
of determination in her eye which implied that she was going to save the
family at all costs.
Her plan was as follows: she would serve tasty, nourishing, and
inexpensive home-cooked meals to working intellectuals, which, to her mind,
would yield enough to keep the family in food. In order to add to the income
Auntie decided to move into the dining-room, move the cook into the kitchen,
and let the two rooms, thus vacated, with board.
Father winced painfully at the mere thought of his home being turned
into an "eating-house," but as there was no other way out, he gave in and
said:
"Do whatever you think best."
That was Auntie's green light. "To let" notices that could be read
clearly from the street were pasted on the windows of the two rooms. On the
gate-post they nailed a little board that said: "Dinners served." It had
been done artistically in oils by Petya and depicted a steaming tureen with
the inscription mentioning single working intellectuals. Auntie believed
that this would impart a social, political, and even an opposition note to
their commercial undertaking. She began to buy new kitchen utensils and put
in a stock of the best and freshest foods; she had a new calico dress and
snow-white apron made for Dunyasha and spent most of her time studying the
Molokhovets Cookery Book, that bible of every well-to-do home. She copied
the most useful recipes into a special notebook and made up tasty and
nourishing menus.
Never before had the Bachei family eaten so well-or, rather, feasted
so. After a month's time they had all put on weight, including Vasily
Petrovich, a fact that seemed strangely at variance with his status of a man
persecuted by the government.
All would have gone well, perhaps even brilliantly, had it not been for
the lack of customers. One might have thought that all the professional
people had agreed never to dine again.
True, the first few days brought some customers. Two well-dressed
bearded gentlemen with sunken cheeks and a fanatical glitter in their eyes
called, discovered that there were no vegetarian dishes on the menu, and
stamped out without bothering to say good-bye.
Then a saucy orderly in a peakless cap, serving in the Modlinsky
Regiment, came in at the back door and asked for two portions of
cabbage-soup for his officer. Auntie explained that there was no
cabbage-soup on the menu, but that there was soupe printaniere. That, said
the soldier, was quite all right with him, provided there was plenty of
bread to go with it, as his gentleman had lost all his money at cards and
was sitting in his quarters with a bad cold and nothing hot in his stomach
for nearly two days. Auntie gave him two portions of soupe printaniere and
plenty of bread on credit, and the orderly doubled down the stairs on his
short, thick legs in worn-down boots, leaving the heavy odour of an infantry
barracks in the kitchen. Two days later he appeared again; this time he
carried off two portions of bouillon and meat patties, also on credit, and
promised to pay as soon as his gentleman won back his money; apparently, his
gentleman never did, because the soldier disappeared for good.
No one else came to dine.
As far as letting the two rooms was concerned, things were not much
better. The very day they put the little cards in the window a newly-wed
couple made inquiries: he was a young army surgeon, and everything he had on
was new and resplendent; she was a plump, dimpled blonde with a beauty-mark
over her Cupid's-bow lips, wearing a squirrel-lined cloak and pert bonnet,
and carrying a tiny muff on a cord. They seemed to be the personification of
happiness. Their new, twenty-four carat gold wedding-rings shone so
dazzlingly, they were surrounded by such a fragrant aroma of scented soap,
cold cream, brilliantine, hair tonic, and Brokar perfume, the mixture of
which seemed to Petya the very essence of newly-weddedness, that the Bachei
flat with its old wallpaper and poorly-waxed floors suddenly appeared to be
small, shabby, and dark.
While the young couple was looking over the rooms, the husband never
once let go of his wife's arm, as if he were afraid she'd run off somewhere;
the wife, in turn, pressed close to him as she looked round in horror and
exclaimed in a loud singsong voice:
"Dahling, it's a barm! It's a real bahn! It smells like a kitchen! No,
no, it's not at all what we're looking for!"
They left hurriedly. The army surgeon's silver spurs tinkled
delicately, and the young wife raised her skirts squeamishly and stepped
gingerly as if afraid to soil her tiny new shoes. It was only after the
downstairs door had banged behind them that Petya realized the strange
foreign word "bahn" was just plain "barn," and he felt so hurt he could have
cried. Auntie's ears were still burning long after they had gone.
No one else came to see the rooms. And so Auntie's plans failed. The
spectre of poverty again rose up before the Bachei family. Despair banished
all hopes. Who knows what the outcome would have been, if salvation had not
come one fine day-out of the blue, as it always does.
It was really a glorious day, one of those March days when the snow has
melted, the earth is black, a watery blueness breaks through the clouds over
the bare branches of the orchards, a fresh breeze sweeps the first dust
along the dry pavements, and the incessant tolling of the Lenten bells booms
over the city like a great bass string. The bakeries sold pastry "skylarks"
with charred raisin eyes, and swarms of rooks circled over Cathedral Square,
over the huge corner house, over Libman's Cafe, and over the double-headed
eagle above Gayevsky's, the chemist's, their spring din and clamour drowning
out the sounds of the city.
It was a day Petya would long remember. It was the day he became a
tutor and, for the first time in his life, was to be paid for a Latin lesson
he gave to another boy. This other boy was Gavrik.
A few days before, on his way home from school, Petya was walking along
slowly, lost in unhappy thoughts and visualizing the day in the near future
when he would be expelled from the gymnasium for arrears of fees.
Suddenly, someone crashed into him from behind and punched his satchel
so hard that his pencil-box shook and clattered. Petya stumbled and nearly
fell; he turned, ready to charge his unseen enemy, and saw Gavrik, his feet
planted apart and a grin on his face.
"Hi, Petya! Where've you been all this time?"
"It's you, you tramp! You're a fine chap, hitting one of your own!"
"Go on! I socked the satchel, not you."
"What if I had fallen?"
"I'd have caught you."
"How are things?"
"Not too bad. Earning a living."
Gavrik lived in Near Mills and Petya rarely saw him nowadays, but their
childhood friendship was as strong as ever. Whenever they would meet and ask
each other the usual "How are things?" Petya would shrug his shoulders and
answer, "Still at school," while Gavrik would furrow his small round
forehead and say, "Earning la living." Each time they met, Petya would hear
the latest story, which inevitably ended the same way: either the current
employer had gone bankrupt or he had cheated Gavrik out of his pay. Such was
the case with the owner of the bathing beach between Sredny Fontan and
Arcadia who had employed Gavrik for the season to unlock the bathing-boxes,
take charge of hiring the striped bathing-suits, and keep an eye on the
bathers' clothes. The beach owner disappeared at the end of the season
without paying him a kopek, all he had had in the end were his tips. It was
the same with the Greek who had hired a gang of dockers and who had brazenly
cheated the men out of more than half their wages. It was the same again
when he had worked as bill-poster, and on many of the other jobs which he
had taken in the hope of being at least a little help to Terenty's family
and at the same time earning a bit for himself.
It was much more fun, although just as unprofitable in the long run, to
work in the "Bioscope Realite" cinema on Richelieu Street, near the
Alexandrovsky police-station In those days the cinema, that famous invention
of the Lumiere brothers, was no longer a novelty, but, none the less, the
magic of "moving pictures" continued to amaze the world. Cinemas mushroomed
up all over the city, -and they became known as "illusions."
An "illusion" signified a multi-coloured electric-light bill-board,
sometimes even with moving letters, and the bravura thunder of the pianola,
a mechanical piano whose keys were pressed down and raced back and forth
automatically, instilling in the audience a greater feeling of awe towards
the inventions of the 20th century. Usually there were slot-machines in the
foyer, and if you put five kopeks in the slot a bar of chocolate would slip
out mysteriously, or brightly-coloured sugar eggs would roll out from under
a bronze hen. Sometimes there would be a wax figure on exhibition in a glass
case. As yet there were no specially built theatres for the "illusions," and
the general practice was to rent a flat and use the largest room for the
screen.
Madame Valiadis, widow of a Greek, an enterprising and highly
imaginative woman, owned the "Bioscope Realite." She decided to wipe out all
her rivals at once. To this end she first engaged Mr. Zingertal, a famous
singer of topical ditties, to appear before each showing, and second, she
decided to revolutionize the silent film by introducing sound effects.
Crowds thronged to the "Bioscope Realite."
Mr. Zingertal, the popular favourite, duly appeared before each
performance in front of a small screen in the former dining-room decorated
with old flowered paper, a room as long and narrow as a pencil-box.
Zingertal, a tall, thin Jew, wore a rather long frock-coat, yellowed pique
vest, striped trousers, white spats and a black top hat which pressed down
on his protruding ears. With a Mephistophelian smile on his long,
clean-shaven, lined and hollow-cheeked face, he sang the popular tunes of
the day, accompanying himself on a tiny violin, tunes such as "The Odessa
girl is the girl for me," "The soldier boys are marching," and, finally, his
hit song "Zingertal, my robin, play me on your violin." Then Madame Valiadis
came on, wearing an ostrich hat and opera gloves minus the fingers to show
off her rings; she sat at the battered old piano and, as the lights dimmed,
began pounding out the accompaniment.
The lamp of the projector hissed, the film buzzed and rattled on, and
tiny, cramped red or blue captions, which seemed to have been typed on a
typewriter, appeared on the screen. Then, in quick succession, carne the
shorts: a panorama of a cloudy Swiss lake that moved along jerkily and with
great effort, followed by a Pathe news-reel with a train thundering into a
station and a parade of helmeted, goose-stepping foreign soldiers who
flashed by so quickly that they seemed to be running-all this was seen as if
through a veil of rain or snow. Then Bleriot's monoplane emerged from the
clouds for an instant-his famous Channel flight from Calais to Dover. Then
came the comedy, and this was Madame Valiadis' greatest moment. Behind the
flickering veil of raindrops a little monkey-like man called Knucklehead,
learning to ride a bicycle, kept bumping into things and knocking them over;
the audience not only saw all this, they heard it as well. The crash and
tinkle of falling glass accompanied the shattering of street lamps on the
screen. Pails banged and clattered as house-painters in blouses tumbled off
ladders and landed on the pavement. Dozens of dinner-sets were smashed to
bits as they slid and dropped from the display window of a china shop. A cat
mewed hysterically when the bicycle wheels rolled over its tail. The enraged
crowd shook their fists and chased the fleeing Knucklehead. Police whistles
screamed. Dogs barked. A fire-engine tore past. Bursts of laughter shook the
darkened "illusion" room. And all the while, unseen by the audience, Gavrik
sweated, earning his fifty kopeks a day. It was he who waited for his cue to
smash the crockery, blow a whistle, bark, mew, ring a bell, shout "Catch
him! Hold him!", stamp his feet to give the effect of a running mob, and
dump on the floor a crate of broken glass, drowning out the unmerciful
pounding on the battered keys that was Ma dame Valiadis' contribution on the
other side of the screen.
Petya helped Gavrik on several occasions. The two of them would raise
such a rumpus behind the screen that crowds would gather in the street. The
popularity of the electric theatre grew tremendously.
But the avaricious widow was far from satisfied. Aware that the public
liked politics, she ordered Zingertal to freshen up his repertoire with
something political, and then raised the price of admission. Zingertal
shrugged his shoulders, smiled his Mephistophelian smile and said, "As you
wish"; next day he appeared with a new number entitled "Neckties, neckties"
instead of the old "The soldier boys are marching."
Pressing the tiny violin to his shoulder with his blue horse-like chin,
he flourished his bow, winked slyly at the audience, and, hinting at
Stolypin, began:
Our Premier, Mr. X,
Hangs ties on people's necks,
A habit which we dreadfully deplore....
Zingertal was thrown out of the city within twenty-four hours; Madame
Valiadis, forced to piay enormous bribes to the police and to close her
"illusion," was ruined, while Gavrik was paid only a quarter of what he had
earned.
GAVRIK'S DREAM
Now Gavrik was standing next to 'Petya in a greasy blue cotton smock
over a tattered coat with a worn-out Astrakhan collar and cap to match, like
those warn by middle-aged bookbinders, type-setters and waiters. ' Petya
realized immediately that his friend had changed jobs again and was earning
his daily bread at some other trade.
Gavrik was going on fifteen. His voice had changed to a youthful bass.
He had not grown very much, but his shoulders were broader and stronger, and
there were fewer freckles on his nose. His features had become more definite
and his clear eyes were firm. And yet, there was still much of the child
about him-such as his deliberate rolling sailor's gait, his habit of
wrinkling his round forehead when puzzled by something- and his amazing
accuracy in spitting through tightly-clenched teeth.
"Well, where are you working now?" Petya asked, his eyes taking in
Gavrik's strange outfit.
"In the Odessa Leaflet print-shop."
"Tell me another!"
"It's the truth!"
"What do you do there?"'
"I deliver the ad proofs to the clients."
"Proofs?" Petya said doubtfully.
"Sure, proofs. Why?"
"Oh, nothing."
"Maybe you've never seen proof-sheets? Here, I'll show you some. See?"
With these words Gavrik put his hand into the breast pocket of his
smock and pulled out a couple of packets of wet paper reeking of kerosene.
"Let me see!" Petya cried, grabbing a packet.
"Keep your paws off," Gavrik said good-naturedly, not at all in anger
or from a desire to offend Petya, but out of sheer habit.
"Come here, I'll show them to you."
The boys walked over to an iron post near the gates, and Gavrik
unrolled a damp paper covered all over with newspaper advertisements as
black and as greasy as shoe polish. Most of them were illustrated, and Petya
immediately recognized them from the pages of the Odessa Leaflet, which the
Bachei family took in. Here were the Fleetfoot Shoes and the Guide Galoshes,
waterproofs with peaked hoods sold by Lurie Bros., Faberge diamonds in open
jewel cases, with black lines radiating from them, bottles of Shustov's
rowan-berry brandy, theatre lyres, furriers' tigers, harness-makers' steeds,
the black cats of fortune-tellers and palmists, skates, carriages, toys,
suits, fur coats, pianos and balalaikas, biscuits and elaborate cream cakes,
Lloyd's ocean liners, and railway locomotives. And, finally, there were the
impressive-looking, long, uninterrupted columns of joint-stock company
reports and bank balances, showing their investments and fantastic
dividends.
Gavrik's small, strong, ink-stained hands held the damp newspaper
sheet, that magic, miniature record of the wealth of a big industrial and
trading centre, so far beyond the reach of Gavrik and the thousands of other
ordinary working people like him.
"There you are!" Gavrik said, and when he noticed that Petya seemed to
be reflecting on the nature of man's wealth, an exercise in which he himself
had often indulged when reading the ads or the signs and posters, he sighed
and added, "Proofs!" Then he gazed ruefully at his canvas shoes that were a
size too big and not the thing for the season. "How are things?"
"Not bad," Petya mumbled, lowering his eyes.
"Tell me another," Gavrik said.
"On my honour!"
"Then why did you take to serving dinners at home?"
Petya blushed crimson.
"It's true, isn't it?" Gavrik insisted.
"What if it is?" Petya said.
"It means you're hard up for money."
"We are not."
"Yes, you are. You can't even make ends meet."
"What do you mean?"
"Come off it, Petya. You can't fool me. I know your old man was booted
out of his job and you haven't a kopek."
That was the first time Petya heard the truth about the family's
finances put so simply and crudely.
"How do you know?" he asked weakly.
"Who doesn't? It's the talk of the town. But don't worry, Petya, they
won't put him in the jug for it."
"Who ... won't be put in the jug?"
"Why, your old man."
"What are you talking about? What do you mean by the jug?"
Gavrik knew that Petya was naive but this was too much for him and he
burst out laughing.
"What a fellow! He doesn't even know what the 'jug' means! It means
being locked up in jail." "Where?"
"In jail!" Gavrik bellowed. "Do you know how people are jailed?"
Petya looked into Gavrik's serious eyes and for the first time he felt
really frightened.
"Take it easy, they won't put your dad in jail," Gavrik said hurriedly.
"They hardly ever jail people for Lev Tolstoi now. Take it from me." He bent
close to Petya and added in a whisper, "They're picking up people right and
left now for illegal books. For the Workers' Paper and The Social-Democrat
too. But Lev Tolstoi doesn't interest them any more."
Petya looked at Gavrik with uncomprehending eyes. "Oh, what's the use
of talking to you," Gavrik said disgustedly.
He had been ready to tell his friend the latest news: for instance,
that his brother Terenty had just returned from exile after all those years
and was now working in the railway-yard, that some of the committee members
had returned with him, that it was "business as usual" again as far as their
activities were concerned, and that it had not been his own idea to get a
job in the print-shop-he had been "spoken for" by these same committee
members for a very definite purpose. Gavrik was about to explain just
exactly what the purpose was, but he saw from Petya's expression that his
friend had not the slightest idea of what he was talking about, land so he
decided to keep mum for the time being.
"How's the dinners-at-home business going?" he asked, changing the
subject. "Are there any cranks who want them?"
Petya shook his head sadly.
"I see," Gavrik said.
"Then it's a flop?"
"Yes."
"What are you going to do?"
"Somebody might rent the rooms."
"You mean you're letting rooms too? Things must be bad!" Gavrik
whistled sympathetically.
"Don't worry, we'll manage. I can give lessons," Petya said stoically.
He had long since made up his mind to become a tutor and coach backward
pupils, but did not quite know how to go about it. As a rule only university
students or senior form boys gave lessons, but there was always room for the
exception. The main thing was to be lucky and find a pupil to coach.
"How can you give lessons when you probably -don't know a darn thing
yourself?" Gavrik said in his usual crude, straightforward way and sniggered
good-naturedly.
Petya was hurt. There had 'been a time when he had really fooled about
instead of swotting, but now he was putting everything he had into his
lessons.
"I'm only kidding," Gavrik said. Suddenly he had a bright idea and
quickly asked, "Look, can you teach Latin too?"
"What a question, of course I can!"
"That's the stuff!" Gavrik exclaimed. "How much would you charge to
coach someone for the third form Latin exams?"
"What do you mean: 'how much'?"
"How much money?"
"I don't know," Petya mumbled in confusion. "Some tutors charge a ruble
a lesson."
"That's far too much. Let's settle for half a ruble."
"What's it all about?" Petya asked.
"Never mind."
Gavrik stood silently for a few minutes, looking down at his moving
fingers, as if making calculations.
"Go on, tell me!" Petya insisted.
"It's nothing very special," Gavrik answered. "Let's go this way." And,
taking Petya by the arm, he led him down the street, peering into his face
sideways.
Gavrik never liked to talk about himself or disclose his plans to
people. Experience had taught him to be secretive. That was why, even though
he had made up his mind to let Petya in on the dream of his life, he could
not bring himself to talk about it, and so they both walked on in silence.
"You see," he began, "but first your word of honour that you won't tell
a soul."
"Honour bright!" Petya exclaimed and involuntarily, from force of
habit, crossed himself, looking the while at the cupolas of St. Panteleimon
Church that shone blue beyond Kulikovo Field.
Gavrik opened his eyes wide and whispered:
"Here's my idea: I want to pass the gymnasium exams for the first,
three forms without attending classes. Two chaps are helping me with the
other subjects, but I'm sort of stuck with Latin."
This was so unexpected that Petya stopped dead in his tracks.
"What?"
"You heard me."
"But why should you study?" Petya blurted out in surprise.
"Why do you study?" Gavrik said with a hard and pugnacious glitter in
his eye. "It's all right for you, but not for me-is that it? For all you
know, it may be more necessary for me than for you."
He might have told Petya that since Terenty had returned from exile he
had been talking a lot about the lack of educated people among the workers,
about the fact that new struggles lay ahead. Probably after consulting some
of the committee members, he had told Gavrik in no uncertain terms that
whether he liked it or not, he would have to pass the gymnasium exams: he
could first take the third form exams, then the sixth form exams, and then
the final school-leaving exams. But Gavrik told Petya nothing of all this.
"Well, are you willing to have a go?" he asked instead. "My offer's
half a ruble a lesson."
Petya felt embarrassed and, at the same time, flattered, and he blushed
a delicate pink with pleasure.
"Oh, I'm willing," he said, and coughed, "only not for money."
"What do you mean? Do you think I'm a beggar? I'm working. Half a ruble
a lesson, four lessons a month. That makes two silver pieces. I can afford
it."
"Nothing doing. I won't take money for the lessons."
"Why won't you take it? Don't be a fool! Money doesn't lie around in
the street. Especially now, when you're so hard up for it. At least you'll
be able to give Auntie something for food."
That had a great effect on Petya. He suddenly pictured himself handing
Auntie some money one fine day and saying nonchalantly, "Oh, it slipped my
mind completely, Auntie. Here, I've earned a bit by giving lessons, please
take it. It'll come in useful."
"All right," Petya answered. "I'll take you on. But remember: if you
start fooling around, it'll be good-bye. I'm not used to taking money for
nothing."
"I don't find it in the woodshed either," Gavrik said glumly. The
friends parted till Sunday, which was the lap-pointed day for the first
lesson.
Never had Petya prepared his own lessons so painstakingly as he was now
preparing for his lessons with Gavrik, for his first appearance in the role
of teacher. Proud and conscious of his responsibility, Petya did his very
best to ensure the success of his venture. He pestered Father with endless
questions about comparative linguistics. He consulted the Brockhaus and
Efron Encyclopaedia and made copious notes. At school he worried the Latin
master for explanations concerning the numerous rules of Latin syntax, a
fact which amazed the teacher, since -he had no great opinion of Petya's
diligence. Petya sharpened several pencils, got out pen and ink, dusted
Father's desk, and arranged on it Pavlik's globe, his own
twenty-five-powered microscope, and a few thick volumes-all with a view to
creating a strictly academic atmosphere and instilling in Gavrik a reverence
for science.
After dinner Vasily Petrovich left for the cemetery. Auntie took Pavlik
to an exhibition. Dunyasha had the afternoon off and went to visit her
relatives. Petya could not have wished for anything better. He paced up and
down the room with his hands behind his back like a veteran schoolmaster and
rehearsed his introductory speech for the first lesson. It would be wrong to
say that he was nervous, but he felt something akin to what a skater feels
as he is about to glide across the rink.
Gavrik was not long in coming. He appeared at exactly the appointed
hour. It was significant that he did not come up the back stairs and through
the kitchen, as was his wont, after whistling from the yard below; Gavrik
rang the front-door bell, said "hullo" quietly, hung up his threadbare coat
in the hall, and smoothed his hair in front of the mirror. His hands were
scrubbed clean, and before entering he carefully tucked his cotton shirt
with its mother-of-pearl buttons under his narrow belt. He had a new
five-kopek notebook with a pink blotter peeping out of it and a new pencil
stuck in the middle. Petya led his friend into the study and sat him down at
the desk, between microscope and globe, which objects drew a guarded look
from Gavrik.
"Well," Petya said sternly and suddenly became embarrassed.
He stopped, waited manfully for his bashfulness to pass, and then tried
once more:
"Well.... Latin is one of the richest and mightiest of the
Indo-European languages. Originally, as was the case with the Umbrian and
Oscan languages, it was one of the group of main dialects of the
non-Etruscan population of Central Italy, the dialect of the inhabitants of
the Latium Plain, whence the Romans came. Is that clear?"
"No," Gavrik said, shaking his head.
"What is unclear?"
"The main dialects of the non-Etruscans," Gavrik repeated carefully,
giving Petya a pitiful look.
"Never mind. You'll soon catch on. It's just because it's new to you.
Let's continue. At a time when the languages of the other peoples of
Italy-say, the Etruscans, Iiapygians, and Ligurians, not counting, of
course, the Umbrians and Sabellians who were akin to the Latins-remained, so
to speak, isolated as local dialects in secluded regions," Petya made a
circle with his arms in a highly professional manner to indicate that the
other languages of Italy had remained secluded, "thanks to the Romans, Latin
not only emerged as the main language of Italy, but developed into the
literary language as well." Petya raised his finger significantly. "Clear?"
"No," Gavrik repeated miserably and shook his head again. "You know
what, Petya? Show me their alphabet instead."
"I know what comes first better than you do," Petya said dryly.
"Maybe we can do the bit about the Etruscans and the Umbrians later,
just now I'd like to take a shot at those Latin letters. Huh?"
"Who's tutor here? You or me?"
"You."
"Very well then, pay attention."
"I'm listening," Gavrik said obediently.
"Good, let's continue," Petya said as he paced up and down with his
arms behind his back, enjoying every moment of his superiority and his
teacher's authority. "Well, er ... about three hundred years later, this
classical literary Latin lost its supremacy and was replaced by a popular
Latin, and so on, and so forth-anyway, it's not all that important." (Gavrik
nodded in agreement.) "The main thing, my friend, is that this very same
Latin finally ended up by having twenty letters in the alphabet, and then
three more were added to it."
"That makes it twenty-three!" Gavrik put in happily.
"Right. Twenty-three letters in all."
"What are they?"
"Don't rush into Hell before your father!" Petya intoned the Latin
master's favourite saying-subconsciously he had been imitating him all the
time. "The letters of the Latin alphabet, which you will now write down,
are: A, B, C, D...."
Gavrik sat up, licked the tip of his pencil, and began copying the
Latin letters gracefully.
"Wait a minute, silly, what are you doing? Write a Latin 'B,' not a
Russian one."
"What's the Latin one like?"
"The same as the Russian 'V.' Understand?"
"I'm not that dumb!"
"Erase what you've written and correct it."
Gavrik pulled a little piece of an "Elephant" India rubber carefully
wrapped up in a scrap of paper from one of the pockets of his wide corduroy
breeches, rubbed the elephant's backside vigorously over the Russian letter,
and wrote the Latin "B" in its place.
"Tell you what," Petya said-he was beginning to feel quite bored with
it all-"you just keep on copying the Latin letters from the book, land I'll
stretch my legs meanwhile."
Gavrik copied diligently, and Petya began to stretch his legs, that is,
he began to walk back and forth with his hands clasped behind him until,
finally, he came to a stop before the dining-room sideboard. It is a
well-known fact that all sideboards have a special magnetism where boys are
concerned, and it rarely happens that a boy passes a sideboard without
peeping in to see what it contains. Petya was no exception, the more so
since Auntie had been careless enough to say:
"... And keep away from the sideboard."
Petya knew perfectly well that she had in mind the large jar of
strawberry jam which his grandmother in Yekaterinoslav had sent them for
Christmas. They had not opened it yet, although it was meant for the
holidays, and as the holidays had already passed, Petya felt a bit
aggrieved. It was really hard to understand Auntie.
Usually so kind and generous, when it came to jam she became
monstrously, inexplicably stingy. One could not even hint at jam in her
presence. A terrified look would come into her eyes and she would rattle
off:
"No, no! By no means! Don't dare go near it. I'll give it to you when
the time comes."
But when that time would come, no one could say. She herself said
nothing and simply threw up her hands in alarm at the very idea. Actually,
it was all very stupid, for hadn't the jam been made and sent expressly for
the purpose of being eaten!
While stretching his legs, Petya opened the sideboard, got up on to a
chair and looked on the very top shelf where the heavy jar of Yekaterinoslav
jam stood. After admiring it for a while he closed the sideboard and
returned to his pupil. Gavrik was labouring away and had already got as far
as "N," which he did not know how to write. Petya helped him, praised his
penmanship, and noted casually:
"By the way, Grandma sent us a six-pound jar of strawberry jam for
Christmas."
"You don't say." '
"Honestly!"
"They don't make jars that big."
"Don't they?" Petya smiled sarcastically
"No, they don't."
"A fat lot you know about jars!" Petya mumbled and stalked into the
dining-room. When he returned, he gingerly placed the heavy jar on the desk
between globe and microscope. "Well, go on, say it's not a six-pounder."
"You win."
Gavrik drew his notebook closer land copied out three more Latin
letters: "O," identical with the Russian letter, "P," resembling the Russian
"R," and a rather strange-looking one called "Q," which gave him not a
little trouble.
"Fine!" Petya exclaimed. He hesitated a moment and added, "What do you
say to trying the jam? Want to?"
"I don't mind," Gavrik said. "But what'll Auntie say?"
"We'll just have a spoonful, she won't even notice the difference."
"Petya went to fetch a spoon, then he patiently untied the bow of the
tight cord. He carefully raised the top paper, which had taken the shape of
a lid and, still more carefully, removed the parchment disk beneath.
The disk had been soaked in rum to keep the jam from spoiling, and
directly underneath lay the glossy, placid surface. With the utmost caution
Petya and Gavrik helped themselves to a full spoon each.
The Yekaterinoslav grandmother was a famous jam-maker, and strawberry
jam was her pride. But this jam in particular was of unrivalled quality.
Never had Petya-to say nothing of Gavrik-tasted anything like it. It was
fragrant, thick, and, at the same time, ethereal, full of large transparent
berries, tender, choice, deliciously sprinkled all over with tiny yellow
seeds, and it just melted in their mouths.
They licked their spoons clean and made the happy discovery that,
actually, the quantity of jam in the jar hadn't gone down a bit-the surface
was still level with the top. No doubt, some physical law of large and small
quantities could well be applied to this particular case: the vast capacity
of the jar and the minute capacity of the tea-spoon, but since neither Petya
nor Gavrik as yet had any idea of this law, they thought it no less than a
miracle that the jam had remained at its former level.
"Exactly as it was," Gavrik said.
"I told you she wouldn't notice it." With these words Petya replaced
the first parchment disk, then the paper lid, rewound the cord tightly, made
exactly the same kind of bow, returned the jar to the sideboard and placed
it on the top shelf.
Meanwhile Gavrik had written out two more letters: "R" and a
shaky-looking "S."
"That's fine!" Petya praised him. "By the way, I think we can safely
try another spoonful."
"Of what?"
"The jam."
"But what about Auntie?"
"Don't be silly. We left it exactly the same as before. Another
spoonful each will still leave as much as there was. Right?"
Gavrik thought about it and agreed. After all, one could not contradict
the obvious.
Petya brought in the jar, untied the tight bow painstakingly, carefully
removed the paper lid and parchment disk, and admired the glossy surface
that shone as before at the very top of the jar; then the two friends had
another spoonful each, licked the spoons, and Petya wound the cord around
the neck of the jar and retied the bow.
This time the jam seemed doubly delicious and their enjoyment of it
twice as fleeting.
"You see, the level hasn't changed!" Petya said triumphantly, as he
lifted the jar that was just as heavy as ever.
"I wouldn't say that," Gavrik rejoined. "This time it's sure to be a
tiny bit lower. I had a good look at it."
Petya raised the jar and examined it closely.
"Nothing of the sort. It's exactly the same, no change."
"That's what you think," Gavrik said. "You can't notice it because the
empty space is hidden by the edges of the paper. Turn back the edge and
you'll see."
Petya lifted up the pleated edge of the paper lid and raised the jar to
the light. The jar was almost as full as before. Almost, but not quite.
There was a space a hair's-breadth wide, but it was a space. This was most
unfortunate, although it was doubtful that Auntie would notice it. Petya
took the jar into the dining-room and replaced it on the top shelf.
"Let's see what you've been scribbling," he said with an affected
gaiety.
Gavrik scratched his head in silence and sighed.
"What's the matter? Are you tired?"
"No. It's not that. I rather think that she'll notice it, even though
only a tiny bit is missing."
"No, she won't."
"I'll bet she will. And you'll be in a fix when she does."
Petya flushed.
"So what! Who cares! After all, Grandma sent it for all of us, and
there's no reason why I shouldn't taste it. If a friend comes to study with
me, surely I can treat him to strawberry jam? Huh! You know what? I'll bring
it in and we'll each have a saucerful. I'm sure Auntie won't say anything.
She'll even praise us for being honest and straightforward about it, for not
doing it in a sneaky way."
"Do you think we ought to?" Gavrik asked timidly.
"What's to stop us!" Petya exclaimed.
Suiting the action to the word he brought in the jar and, certain that
he was doing an honest and honourable deed, measured out two full saucers of
the jam.
"That's enough!" he said firmly, tied up the jar, and put it back in
the sideboard.
But it was far from being enough. It was only now, after they had each
had a saucerful, that the friends began really to appreciate the heavenly
jam. Overcome with an overwhelming and irrepressible desire for at least a
little more, Petya brought the jar in again, and with a look of grim
determination and without even so much as a glance at Gavrik, served out two
more helpings. Petya never dreamed that a saucer could hold so much. When he
held the jar up to the light, he saw that it was at least a third empty.
Each ate his portion and licked his spoon clean.
"Never tasted anything like it!" Gavrik said as he went back to copying
out the letters "T," "U," "V," and "X," experiencing at the same time a
burning desire to have at least one more spoonful of the delectable stuff.
"All right," Petya said resolutely, "we'll eat exactly half of it and
no more!"
When there was exactly half the jam left, Petya tied the cord for the
Last time and carried the jar back to the sideboard, his mind firmly made up
not to go near it again. He tried not to think about Auntie.
"Well, have you had enough?" he asked Gavrik with a wan smile.
"More than enough," Gavrik answered, for the sticky sweetness was
beginning to give him a sour taste.
Petya felt slightly nauseous himself. Bliss was suddenly turning into
something quite the opposite. They no longer wanted even to think about the
jam, and yet, strange as it may seem, they could not get it out of their
minds. It seemed to be taking revenge on them, creating an insane, unnatural
desire for more. It was no use trying to resist the craving. Petya, dazed,
returned once more to the dining-room, and the boys began scooping up
spoonfuls of the nauseating delicacy, having lost all sense of what they
were doing. This was hatred turned to worship, and worship turned to hatred.
Their mouths were puckered up from the acid-sweet taste of the jam. Their
foreheads were damp. The jam stuck in their protesting throats. But they
kept on devouring it as if it were porridge. They were not even eating it,
they were struggling with it, destroying it as a mortal enemy. They came to
their senses when only a thin film of jam left on the very bottom of the jar
evaded their spoons.
At that moment Petya realized the full meaning of the terrible thing
they had done. Like criminals anxious to cover up their tracks, the boys ran
into the kitchen and began feverishly to rinse the sticky jar under the tap,
remembering, however, to take turns drinking the sweetish, cloudy water.
When they had washed and wiped the jar clean, Petya put it back on the
shelf in the sideboard, as if that would somehow remedy the situation. He
comforted himself with the foolish hope that perhaps Auntie had already
forgotten about Grandma's jam, or that when she would see the clean empty
jar she would think they had eaten it long ago. Alas, Petya knew very well
that at best his hopes were foolish.
The boys tried not to look at each other as they walked back to the
writing-desk and resumed the lesson.
"Where were we?" Petya said weakly, for he could hardly keep from
vomiting. "We have twenty of the twenty-three letters. Later on,
historically, two more letters were added."
"Which makes twenty-five," Gavrik said, choking down his sugary saliva.
"Quite right. Copy them out."
Just then Vasily Petrovich came in. He was in that sad but peaceful
mood that always came over him after a visit to the cemetery. He glanced at
the studious boys, and noticing the strange expression of ill-concealed
disgust on their faces, he said:
"I see you are working on the Sabbath, my dear sirs. Having a hard
time? Never mind! The root of learning may be bitter, but its fruits are
sweet."
With these words he tiptoed over to the icons, took from his pocket the
small bottle of wood-oil he had bought in the church shop and carefully
filled the icon-lamp, a task he performed every Sunday.
Soon Auntie returned and was followed by Dunyasha. Pavlik was still
downstairs. They heard the samovar singing in the kitchen. The delicate
tinkle of the china tea-set drifted in from the dining-room.
"I'd better be going," Gavrik said, putting his things together
quickly. "I'll finish the other letters at home. So long. See you next
Sunday!" With a solemn look on his face he ambled through the dining-room,
past the sideboard and into the hall.
"Where are you going?" Auntie asked. "Won't you stay to tea?"
"Thanks, Tatyana Ivanovna, they're waiting for me at home. I've a
couple of chores to do yet."
"You're sure you won't stay? We've got nice strawberry jam. H'm?"
"Oh no, no!" Gavrik exclaimed in alarm. In the hall he whispered to
Petya, "I owe you 50 kopeks," and dashed down the stairs to escape from the
scene of the crime.
"You're not looking well," Auntie said as she turned to Petya. "You
look as if you had tainted sausage. Maybe you're going to be ill. Let's see
your tongue."
Petya hung his head dejectedly and stuck out a marvellously pink
tongue.
"Aha! I know what it is!" Auntie cried. "It's all because of that
Latin. You see, my dear, how difficult it is to be a tutor! Never mind,
we'll open Grandma's jam in honour of your first lesson and you'll be your
old self again in no time."
With these words Auntie walked over to the sideboard, while Petya lay
down on his bed with a groan and stuck his head under the pillow so as not
to hear or see anything.
However, at the very moment that Auntie was gazing in astonishment at
the clean empty jar and trying to puzzle out why it was there and how it had
got into the sideboard, Pavlik rushed into the hall, yelling at the top of
his lungs:
"Faig, Faig! Listen! Faig has driven up to our house in his carriage!"
They all rushed to the windows, including Petya, who had tossed aside
his pillow. True enough, Faig's carriage was at the front gate.
Mr. Faig was one of the best-known citizens in town.
He was as popular as Governor Tolmachov, as Maryiashek, the town idiot,
as Mayor Pelican who achieved fame by stealing a chandelier from the
theatre, as Ratur-Ruter, the editor-publisher, who was often thrashed in
public for his slanderous articles, as Kochubei, the owner of the largest
ice-cream parlour, the source of wholesale food-poisoning every summer, and,
finally, as brave old General Radetsky, the hero of Plevna.
Faig, a Jew who had turned Christian, was a man of great wealth, the
owner and head of an accredited commercial school. His school was a haven
for those young men of means who had been expelled for denseness and bad
behaviour from other schools in Odessa and elsewhere in the Russian Empire.
By paying the appropriate fee one could always graduate and receive a
school-leaving certificate at Faig's school. Faig was a philanthropist and
patron of the Arts. He enjoyed making donations and did so with a splash,
including an announcement in the papers.
He donated suites of furniture and cows to lotteries, contributed large
sums towards improving the cathedral and buying a new bell, he established
the Faig Prize to be awarded annually at the yacht races, and paid fifty
rubles for a glass of champagne at charity bazaars. In short, this Faig, who
had become a legend, was the horn of plenty that poured charity upon the
poor.
However, the main source of his popularity lay in the fact that he rode
around town in his own carriage.
This was no antediluvian contraption of the type that usually bumped
along as part of the funeral cortege. Neither was it a wedding carriage,
upholstered in white satin with crystal headlights and folding step. Nor was
it a bishop's carriage, that screeching conveyance which, in addition to
carrying the bishop, was also used for transporting to private homes the
Icon of the Holy Virgin of Kasperovka associated with Kutuzov and the fall
of Ochakov. Faig's carriage was a coupe de luxe on English springs, with
high box and a coachman dressed according to the height of English fashion.
The doors sported a fictitious coat-of-arms, and, as a finishing touch. a
liveried footman stood on the footboard, which reduced the street loafers to
a state approaching religious ecstasy.
A pair of bob-tailed horses with patent-leather blinkers whisked the
carriage along at la brisk trot. Faig was inside. He was wearing a top hat
and a Palmerston coat, his side whiskers were dyed black, and a Havana was
planted between his teeth. His feet were wrapped in a Scotch plaid.
While the Bachei family was watching Faig's carriage from the windows
and wondering whom he might have come to see, the door-bell rang. Dunyasha
opened the door and nearly swooned. The liveried footman stood before her
with his three-cornered purled hat pressed to his breast.
"Mr. Faig presents his respects to the Bachei family," the footman
said, "and asks to be received."
The Bachei family, who had rushed into the hall, stood there
dumbfounded. Auntie was the only one who had kept a level head. She gave
Vasily Petrovich a meaning look, turned to the footman, and with a polite
smile and in an offhand manner said, "Please ask him up."
The footman bowed and went downstairs, sweeping the stairway with the
long tails of his livery coat.
No sooner had Vasily Petrovich fastened his collar, adjusted his tie,
and got his arms through the sleeves of his good frock-coat, than Mr. Faig
entered. He carried his top hat, his gloves tossed into it, stiffly in one
hand and in the other, which sparkled with the diamonds, he held a cigar. A
democratic smile lit up his face between the black side whiskers. He spread
the aroma of Havana cigar smoke mixed with the scent of Atkinson's perfume.
A battery of badges, medals, and fraternity-pins followed the cut of his
frock-coat. Tiny pearls glowed gently in the buttonholes of his
magnificently starched white shirt-front.
This man, the personification of success and wealth, had suddenly paid
them a call! Faig put his top hat on the hall table and extended his plump
hand to Father in the grand manner. That was all Petya saw, for Auntie
manoeuvred him and Pavlik into the kitchen and kept them there until Mr.
Faig departed.
Judging by the fact that Faig's loud and merry laughter and Father's
chuckle were heard several times, the visit was a friendly one. But what
could be the reason for it? The explanation was forthcoming when Faig, after
being helped into the carriage by the footman and having the Scotch plaid
tucked round his legs, waved his white hand with the cigar and drove off. He
had come to Vasily Petrovich with the offer of a teaching appointment in his
establishment.
It had all been so unexpected and so much like a miracle, that Vasily
Petrovich turned to the icon and crossed himself. Teaching in Faig's school
was much more remunerative than in the gymnasium, because Faig paid his
teachers almost double the salary paid by the government. Vasily Petrovich
was captivated by Faig's matter-of-fact way, his cordiality and democratic
manners which contrasted so pleasantly and unexpectedly with his appearance
and his way of life.
In conversation with Vasily Petrovich, Faig displayed a keen
understanding of contemporary affairs. He was biting and yet restrained when
criticizing the Ministry of Education for its inability to appreciate its
best teachers; he fiercely resented the government's attempts to turn the
schools into military barracks and openly declared that the time had come
for society to take the matter of public education into its own hands and
banish servile officials and petty tyrants such as the head of the Odessa
District Education Department, who had revived the worst traditions of the
Arakcheyev times. He declared that their attitude towards Vasily Petrovich,
in addition to lacking any justification, had been disgusting, and that he
hoped to right the wrong and restore justice, as he considered the matter
his sacred duty to Russian society and science. He hoped that in his
establishment Vasily Petrovich would find full scope for" his abilities as a
brilliant teacher and for his love of the great Russian literature. As a
believer in European methods of education he was sure that he and Vasily
Petrovich would understand one another. As for the formalities, he did not
doubt for a minute that he would get the consent of the Minister of
Education to have Vasily Petrovich officially accredited, since a public
gymnasium was one thing, and a private school something else again. Nor did
Faig conceal the fact that one of the reasons which had prompted him to
engage Vasily Petrovich was that by so doing he would raise the standard of
the school in the eyes of the liberal circles of Odessa society; another was
that it would be a challenge to the government, since, according to Faig,
Vasily Petrovich's famous speech on the occasion of Tolstoi's death had won
him a definite political reputation.
All this was strange and flattering to Vasily Petrovich, although he
winced at the mention of his political reputation. And when Faig added, "You
shall be our standard-bearer," Vasily Petrovich even felt a little
frightened. However, Faig's proposition was accepted, and life in the Bachei
family underwent a miraculous change.
Faig had paid Vasily Petrovich for six months in advance. The sum was
larger than the family had ever dreamed of. Now, whenever Vasily Petrovich
ventured forth, the neighbours watched him enviously from their windows and
said:
"Look, there goes Bachei, the one Faig has taken on."
Once again Vasily Petrovich began to think in terms of a trip abroad.
And at long last, after weighing up his resources and consulting Auntie for
the twentieth time, he decided: we're going!
THE SAILOR'S OUTFIT
Spring, which came early, was warm and glorious. Easter passed and left
pleasant memories. Soon it was examination time, a time Petya always
associated with the brief May thunderstorms, fiery flashes of purple
lightning, the lilac in bloom in the school garden, the dry air of the empty
class-rooms with the desks moved close together and the clouds of chalk
dust, pierced by the warm rays of the afternoon sun that remained suspended
in the air after the last exam.
They began preparing for the trip during examination time. Switzerland,
a country that had always had a special place in Vasily Petrovich's heart,
was their main objective. However, it was decided that they should first go
to Naples by sea, and then cross Italy by rail. This indirect route would be
slightly more expensive, but it would give them the chance to visit Turkey,
Greece, the islands of the Aegean Sea and Sicily, they would be able to see
all the sights of Naples, Rome, Florence, and Venice; then, funds
permitting, they might even pay a brief visit to Paris. Vasily Petrovich had
mapped out the itinerary many years before, when Mother had still been
alive. The two-of them had spent many an evening leafing through travel
guides and writing down the travel expenses. They had noted the price of the
tickets, hotel and boarding-house rates, and even admission prices to
museums and tips were included in their careful calculations.
Despite all this Vasily Petrovich feared to overtax the budget, and so
he studied the rail and steamer ticket prices once more.
There were many arguments about what to take and how to pack. Auntie
suggested that they should buy two very ordinary suitcases and put very
ordinary clothes in them. However, it turned out that Vasily Petrovich was
of another mind completely. He thought they should have a special satchel
and Alpine rucksacks with special straps that would not interfere with
climbing.
Auntie shrugged and laughed, but Petya and Pavlik insisted that only
the special Alpine rucksacks be ordered, and so she gave in. Vasily
Petrovich went to the shop with his own draft of the special travelling-bag
and the special rucksacks. A few days later the Bachei household was richer
by two rucksacks and a rather strange-looking creation of the
luggage-and-harness industry. It was of tartan and bore a vague resemblance
to a huge accordion, covered all over with a multitude of patch-pockets.
These new and still empty travelling-bags and the exciting smell of
leather and dyed material brought visions of far distances into the
household. Then they discovered that the boys could not go abroad in their
school uniforms, they would have to wear "civvies."
That was no problem as far as Pavlik was concerned. He still had last
year's "pre-school" clothes: a pair of short trousers and a middy-blouse.
Petya's outfit presented a problem. It would have been ridiculous to deck a
fourteen-year-old boy out in a grown man's suit with a coat, waistcoat and a
tie. But a little boy's outfit with short trousers was no good either. They
had to find a happy medium. Petya was already in a frenzy of impatience and
the outfit he wanted was undoubtedly influenced by the illustrations in the
works of Jules Verne and Mayne Reid. In his opinion it had to be something
like 'a naval cadet's uniform, consisting of his long school trousers and a
navy-blue blouse, not the kind that little boys wear, but the real thing,
made of heavy flannel.
It was no easy matter to have such a blouse made. No children's
outfitter and no tailor seemed to understand what was expected of them.
Petya, who had already pictured himself as a naval cadet, was desperate.
Gavrik came to his rescue. He suggested a naval outfitter's shop where he
knew someone. He seemed to have friends everywhere!
The shop was located in the so-called Sabansky Barracks, an ancient
white-columned structure.
The enclosed yard, vast and spacious, and the ominous appearance of the
disused fortress, the pyramids of old cannon-balls, anchors, parallel bars,
and the mast with its multi-coloured signal flags, thrilled Petya. An
orderly in a sailor's cap sat on a bench beneath a bell.
"Don't worry," Gavrik said, seeing that Petya had stopped in confusion.
"The fellows here are good chaps." They climbed up the worn steps of an
ancient stairway and found themselves in a dark corridor. It was as cold as
a crypt, and the change was especially noticeable later the noonday heat of
the May sunshine.
Gavrik confidently led his friend through the darkness to a door, and
the boys entered a deep-vaulted room. The walls were twelve feet thick, so
that the two little windows barely let in any light, although they 'directly
faced the sea opposite Quarantine Bay and the white lighthouse with its
circling sea-gulls that stood out so clearly against the choppy blue-green
water.
A sailor wearing the red shoulder-straps of the coastguard service sat
at a large sewing-machine, working the iron treadle with his bare feet as he
hemmed a woollen signal flag. A heap of signal flags lay in a corner.
The sailor stopped sewing when he saw Gavrik. A smile broke over his
pock-marked face, but then he noticed the strange boy standing behind Gavrik
and raised his bushy eyebrows inquiringly.
"It's all right. This is the fellow who's teaching me Latin," Gavrik
said, and Petya realized that the sailor knew all about his friend.
"What's new?" the sailor asked.
"Nothing special," Gavrik answered. "I've come about something else
this time. I was wondering whether you could make a regulation sailor's
blouse for this fellow."
"I haven't got the right material."
"He's got it. Petya, show him the cloth."
Petya handed over the package. The sailor unrolled the soft, fine,
strong navy-blue wool.
"That's the real stuff!" Gavrik said with a touch of pride.
"How much did you pay for it?" the sailor asked.
Petya told him the price and he felt sure the meaning look that the
sailor gave Gavrik was disapproving.
"Don't go thinking things," Gavrik said. "His old man's just a teacher.
They're not well off. They're even hard up for money at times. It so happens
that he needs a regulation blouse."
Gavrik amazed Petya as he explained why he needed the blouse. He had
all the details of the projected journey at his fingertips. Petya caught
several significant glances passing between Gavrik and the sailor.
Perhaps he would not have paid any attention to this, were it not for
the fact that something similar had taken place when he was giving Gavrik a
Latin lesson in Near Mills. Motya had been present during the lesson, and
since Motya regarded Petya as some kind of superior being, an object of
devoted and secret worship, he began to boast for her benefit. His
imagination ran away with him as he described the forthcoming journey. When
he got as far as the splendours of Switzerland Terenty exchanged glances
with Gavrik and then with his guest, Sinichkin, a thin, consumptive worker
wearing top boots and a black cotton shirt beneath a threadbare jacket.
When Terenty looked sat him, Sinichkin shook his head and muttered,
"No, he's no longer there," or something to that effect. Suddenly, he looked
Petya straight in the eye and asked him solemnly:
"Will you be going to France, too? Will you visit Paris?"
And when Petya answered that if their money held out they would
certainly go there, Sinichkin looked at Terenty significantly again, but
they did not ask Petya any more questions.
Petya felt that his forthcoming trip abroad had evoked in Gavrik and
his friends in Near Mills some kind of special interest, but he was in the
dark as to the reason why.
The sailor and Gavrik had exchanged the same sort of glances too.
Perhaps, Petya thought, people always behaved like that in the presence of
someone about to go abroad. Petya had not yet set foot outside his native
city, but he already felt that new experiences awaited him around every
corner. He would suddenly find himself in a side-street he had never trod
before and would stop to look at a tiled house or a garden with the curious
eyes of a tourist.
How many times, for example, had he passed the Sabansky Barracks and
never dreamed that behind its gates was an unknown world-a sleepy, deserted
yard with anchors and cannon-balls, a naval outfitter's shop where a sailor
sewed woollen signal flags, ancient windows in deep niches from which the
sea seemed altogether different and unfamiliar, luring one to explore
far-off lands.
The sailor examined the cloth and praised it. He would make the blouse,
but his charge would be five rubles. Gavrik shoved Petya aside, looked hard
at the sailor, shook his head reproachfully, and said that one ruble would
be far too much. They bargained a long time, and finally the sailor said he
would do the job for two rubles, and only because Petya was "one of us."
What this meant Petya did not understand.
The sailor then wiped the lid of a large sea chest with his sleeve,
said, "Sit down, boys," and went to fetch a copper kettle of boiling water.
They drank tea from tin mugs, sucking lumps of sugar and eating tasty rye
bread that the sailor cut off in large slices, pressing the loaf to his
brawny chest.
Gavrik and the sailor kept up a grave conversation over tea, and,
judging by what was said, Petya concluded that the sailor-Gavrik called him
"Uncle Fedya"-knew Terenty's family well and was actually a distant relative
on his mother's side. The conversation was mostly about family and money
matters. However, from certain hints and veiled expressions, Petya divined
that there was another bond between Terenty and Uncle Fedya. Petya could not
quite get the hang of it, but he vaguely felt a long-forgotten echo of the
terrible and troubled air of 1905.
At last Uncle Fedya pulled out a decrepit oilcloth tape-measure with
the numbers all worn off, measured Petya, and promised to have the blouse
ready in three days. He was as good as his word. In addition, he made a
sailor's cap for the boy with the left-over cloth, and attached an old St.
George ribbon with long ends to it. The cap was free of charge.
Petya had a look at himself in the crooked little mirror that hung on
the wall next to a coloured print of Taras Shevchenko and could not hold
back the happy, radiant smile that spread across his face all the way to his
ears.
Unexpected complications set in when they applied to the chief of
police for travel passports. Vasily Petrovich had to submit written
statements testifying to his loyalty to the state. This was not as easy as
it seemed. He filled out the application forms, and four days later an
officer from the Alexandrovsky police-station knocked at the door with two
witnesses in order to proceed with the inquiry. The mere mention of the word
"inquiry" irritated Vasily Petrovich. And when the inquisitor plumped into a
chair in the dining-room where he spread his greasy folders and put down a
spill-proof ink-well on the clean table-cloth, and in an official tone asked
all kinds of stupid questions about sex, age, religious affiliation, rank,
title, etc., Vasily Petrovich felt like throwing him out; but he controlled
himself and endured the grilling. He signed his name to the inquiry paper,
next to the illegible scrawl of janitor Akimov, one of the witnesses, and
the flourishing signature of the other witness, an insipid, pimply young man
in a technical-school cap with two crossed hammers over the peak.
Soon afterwards a policeman came with a notice requesting Vasily
Petrovich to appear before the chief of police. Vasily Petrovich duly
appeared and had a talk with the chief in his office. They discussed a
variety of subjects, mostly political, and Vasily Petrovich explained why he
had left his job with the Ministry of Education. They parted on amiable
terms.
But that was not all. Vasily Petrovich had to submit a mountain of
documents: his service record, birth certificate, his wife's death
certificate, etc., etc. This took much time and energy and caused endless
frustration. All the copies had to be letter-perfect before they could be
notarised. Petya tagged along with his father on this dreary roundabout.
How unbearable were those typing bureaus where sour and arrogant old
maids in squeaking corsets would get up from behind their Underwoods and
Remingtons, haughtily survey Vasily Petrovich and rudely announce that
nothing could be done before another week! How tired they were of the
stifling, deserted summer streets, criss-crossed by the latticed shadows of
the blossoming white acacias and the notaries' oval signboards with their
black, two-headed eagles!
When all the copies were duly prepared and notarized, it turned out
that there would have to be yet another inquiry.
Time was passing and there were moments when Vasily Petrovich felt so
frustrated that he was ready to abandon the idea of going abroad. But Gavrik
saved the situation once more.
"You're green!" he said to Petya, shrugging his shoulders. "You're a
bunch of innocents. Tell your old man to grease their palms."
"What, bribe them? Never!" Vasily Petrovich thundered when Petya passed
on his friend's advice. "I'll never sink that low!"
But in the end, completely exasperated by red tape, he did sink that
low. And behold, everything changed as if by magic: a certificate of his
loyalty was produced in an instant, and the hitherto unattainable travel
passport was delivered to the house.
They had only to book their tickets and set out. Since they had decided
to travel on an Italian ship, there was something thrilling and foreign even
in the matter of purchasing the tickets. In Lloyd's Travel Agency on
Nikolayevsky Boulevard, next door to the Vorontsov Palace-that is, in the
most fashionable part of the town-the prospective tourists were greeted with
such reverence and politeness that Petya thought his father had been
mistaken for someone else.
A gentleman in a grey morning coat with a large pearl tie-pin stuck in
a brilliantly coloured tie asked them to sit down in the deep leather chairs
which stood around a small mahogany table. The surface of the table,
polished to a high gloss, was littered with Lloyd's narrow, illustrated
prospectuses in various languages. There were photographs of many-storeyed
hotels, palm-trees, ancient ruins and ocean liners. Petya saw tiny white
Remus and Romulus at the jagged tits of the white she-wolf, St. Mark's
winged lion, Vesuvius with an umbrella-like Italian pine in the foreground,
Milan Cathedral, as thin and pointed as a fish-bone, and the leaning Tower
of Pisa; these symbols of Italian cities transported the boy into the realms
of foreign travel.
Undoubtedly, the Travel Agency office belonged to that world too, with
its flamboyant posters, price-lists, impressive rosewood filing cabinets and
counters, ship chronometers instead of ordinary clocks, models of ships in
glass cases, portraits of the King and Queen of Italy, and the gallant
gentleman in the grey morning coat, who chattered away in broken Russian
while selling Vasily Petrovich the pretty second-class tickets from Odessa
to Naples and patting Pavlik, whom he called "leetle signor turisto," on his
close-cropped head.
From then on Petya felt that the journey had begun.
When the tickets were handed to them, together with a sheaf of guides
and prospectuses, and when, in a high state of excitement, they emerged from
Lloyd's, Petya regarded Nikolayevsky Boulevard as the marine embankment of
some foreign city, and the familiar Richelieu monument with the iron bomb on
the pedestal as one of the "sights" which was now to be thoroughly
"inspected," not merely looked at. This feeling was heightened by the ships
of every flag that lay at anchor in the bay far below the boulevard.
The day of departure arrived.
Their ship was scheduled to sail at four in the afternoon. At
one-thirty Dunyasha was sent to hire two cabs. Auntie, in a mantilla and a
little hat with daisies, was seeing them off. She and a speechless, excited
Pavlik climbed into one cab; Vasily Petrovich and Petya, with the Alpine
rucksacks and the tartan travelling-bag packed so tight that it was ready to
burst, got into the other.
A group of idlers stood around discussing the event in loud voices.
Dunyasha, wearing her new calico dress, wiped her tears with her apron.
Vasily Petrovich patted the pockets of his freshly-ironed silk jacket to
make sure he had not forgotten anything, removed his black-banded straw hat,
crossed himself, and said with a show of nonchalance:
"Well, let's be off!"
The crowd parted, the cabs set off, and Dunyasha began to weep aloud.
Petya's feeling that they were already abroad never left him. To get to
the port they had to cross the city through the rich business centre. Then
only did Petya realize how greatly Odessa had changed in the past few years.
The typical provincial nature of this southern city had remained unchanged
on the outskirts. There one could still find the small lime-stone houses
with tiled roofs, the walnut and mulberry trees in the yards, the
bright-green booths of the soft-drinks vendors, Greek coffee-houses, tobacco
shops, and wine cellars with a white lamp in the shape of a bunch of grapes
over the entrance.
The spirit of European capitalism reigned in the town centre. There
were black glass signs with impressive gold lettering in every European
language at the entrance to the banks and company offices. There were
highly-priced luxury goods in the windows of the English and French shops.
Linotypes clattered and rotary presses whirred in the semi-basements
occupied by newspaper print-shops. As they were crossing Greek Street the
drivers pulled up in terror to give way to a new and shiny electric
tram-car, emitting cascades of sparks. This was the city's first
tramway-line, built by a Belgian company, connecting the centre with the
Industry and Trade Fair that had just opened on wasteland near Alexandrovsky
Park.
At the corner of Langeron and Yekaterininskaya streets, directly
opposite the huge Fankoni Cafe where stockbrokers and grain merchants in
Panama hats sat at marble-topped tables set out right on the pavement,
Paris-style, under awnings and surrounded by potted laurel trees, the cab in
which Auntie and Pavlik were travelling was all but overturned by a
bright-red automobile driven by the heir to the famous Ptashnikov Bros,
firm, a grotesquely bloated young man in a tiny yachting cap, who looked
amazingly like a prize Yorkshire pig.
The spirit of "European capitalism" disappeared when they began the
downhill ride to the port and passed the dives, doss-houses, second-hand
shops, and the dead-end lanes where tramps and down-and-outs, pale-faced and
ragged, were playing cards or sleeping on the bare ground. However, the
spirit reappeared when they approached the warehouses, commercial agencies,
the stacks of crates and sacks that were like a city, with streets and
alleys, and, finally, the ships of many nations and companies.
The embarkation officer told the drivers where their ship, the Palermo,
was being loaded, and they headed for the wharf. They stopped opposite a
large ship gaily flying the Italian flag, and the boys were most
disappointed to find that she had only one funnel.
As might have been expected, they arrived far too early and had nearly
an hour and a half till sailing time. Loading was in full swing. The arms of
powerful steam winches swung to and fro, lowering bunches of barrels
strapped together and crates that must have weighed a ton into the hold.
Passengers were not allowed on board as yet-not that any were in sight, with
the exception of a group of turbaned Turks or Persians, deck passengers, who
were sitting silently and sullenly on their rug-wrapped belongings.
Suddenly Petya saw Gavrik coming towards him, swinging a spray of white
acacia. Petya could hardly believe his eyes. Had he come to see them off? It
was not at all like Gavrik to do a thing like that.
"What made you come here?" Petya asked. "I've come to see you off,"
Gavrik answered and the nonchalant gesture as he handed Petya the acacia was
magnificent.
"Are you crazy?" Petya felt very embarrassed. "No," Gavrik said. "What
is it then?"
"I'm your pupil, you're my teacher. And Terenty says that we should
respect our teachers. Isn't that right?" There was a quizzical twinkle in
Gavrik's smiling eyes. "Stop fooling."
"I'm not fooling," Gavrik said. And taking Petya by the arm, he said in
a very serious voice, "I want a word with you. Let's take a walk."
They strolled down the pier, through the flocks of lazy pigeons that
kept pecking away at kernels of maize. At the end of the pier they sat down
on a huge anchor. Gavrik looked around, and when he had made sure that there
was no one within earshot, he said, as if continuing an interrupted
conversation:
"Look here. I'll give you a letter, which you must stow away safely.
When you reach a foreign country, stamp it and drop it in a letter-box. But
not in Turkey, because they belong to the same gang. Post it in Italy or
Switzerland, or, best of all, France. Will you do this for us?"
Petya stared at Gavrik in amazement, wondering whether he was joking or
serious. However, he had such a serious look about him that there could be
no doubt.
"Of course I'll do it," Petya said and shrugged.
"Where will you get the money for the stamp?" Gavrik queried.
"Don't worry. We'll be writing to Auntie all the time. That'll be easy
enough."
"I can give you the twenty kopeks for the stamp, maybe you can exchange
it there for their kind of money."
Petya smiled.
"Listen, none of that," Gavrik said severely. "And remember, it's very
important... er ... well." He wanted to say "Party business," but did not.
He tried to think of an appropriate word, but could not, and could only wag
an ink-stained finger significantly in front of Petya's nose.
"I understand," Petya nodded solemnly.
"It's a personal request from Terenty," Gavrik said after a moment's
silence, as if to explain the importance of the matter. "Do you get me?"
"Yes," Petya answered.
Gavrik looked around once more and took the letter out of his pocket.
It was wrapped in newspaper to keep it from getting soiled.
"Where can I hide it?"
"Right here."
Gavrik took off Petya's sailor's cap and pushed the letter carefully
under the lining at the place where one of the seams had not been stitched.
Petya was just about to say that Uncle Fedya had done a pretty sloppy
job on the cap, but at that moment a long shrill whistle drowned out all the
sounds of the port for fully a minute. Then, abruptly, it stopped, as if it
had flown across the city and disappeared into the steppe beyond. The second
blow was a brief one, like a period at the end of la long sentence. Petya
saw the passengers going up the gangway. Gavrik clapped Petya's cap on
again, adjusted the ribbons and the two ran towards the ship.
"There's just one more thing," Gavrik said hurriedly as they raced
along, "if they discover the letter, say you found it, but the best thing,
if you have time, would be to tear it up and get rid of it, although there's
nothing very special in it. So don't be soared."
"I know, I know," Petya answered in a jumpy voice.
"Petya!" Vasily Petrovich, Pavlik and Auntie were shouting together, in
varying stages of despair, as they fussed around the Alpine rucksacks and
travelling-bag.
"You dreadful child!" Father was boiling. "You'll be the death of me!"
"Where have you been? What a thing to do! To disappear just as the
first whistle was blowing!" Auntie was saying excitedly, addressing herself
to Petya and the other passengers, who were arriving in crowds.
"We nearly left without you!" Pavlik bellowed at the top of his lungs.
A sailor picked up their things. They followed him up the gangway over
the mysterious gap between the side of the ship and the harbour wall where
far below the green water glistened dully and a small transparent jellyfish
bobbed on the surface. The captain's mate, an Italian, took their tickets,
and a Russian coastguard officer took Vasily Petrovich's passport. Petya was
positive that the officer eyed his sailor's cap with obvious suspicion.
They went down a steep ladder into the bowels of the ship, each of them
tripping over the high copper coaming, Electric lights burned dimly in the
day-time darkness of the corridors, and when walking on the coconut mats and
cork flooring they were conscious that the ship, which was still moored to
the pier, had a fairly strong list.
A middle-aged Italian stewardess unlocked the door and the sailor
dumped their bags in the small cabin. The sea was dazzlingly reflected on
the porthole side of the very low creamy-white ceiling.
While they were putting their things in the luggage nets, bumping into
one another in the process, the siren blew a second blast-a long
one-followed by two short ones.
When, at long last, after getting lost in the maze of corridors and
stumbling painfully over the high coamings, they found their way up to one
of the decks, the steam winches were no longer rattling, the long arms of
the cranes were motionless, and the only sound breaking in the sunny
stillness was the hiss of escaping steam.
Auntie and Gavrik were part of the small crowd gathered on the pier to
see the ship off. When Gavrik spotted Petya, he shook his fist at him
stealthily and winked. Petya knew exactly what he meant. He fixed his cap
casually and shouted:
"Don't forget your Latin revision!"
"I know it!" Gavrik shouted back, cupping his hands to his mouth. "Hie,
haec, hoc! How's that?"
"Correct!"
"There you are!"
"Don't forget: I'll question you on the whole course when I get back!"
Then came that disconcerting pause that always precedes the third
whistle, when neither those on board nor those on the pier know what to say
or do. Auntie was rummaging in her bag for her handkerchief in order to
start waving it at any moment. Gavrik kept his eyes on Petya's cap.
"You might as well go, there's no sense standing about here," Vasily
Petrovich said to Auntie as he leaned over the rail.
"What? What did you say?" Auntie asked, holding her hand to her ear.
"I said you might as well go home!" Vasily Petrovich shouted.
But Auntie shook her head so vigorously that it would seem her one duty
in life was to stay there to the very end.
"Duckie dear," she shouted to Pavlik through her tears, "it'll be cold
at sea. You had better go put on your coat."
Pavlik winced and walked away independently, so that none of the
passengers would think he was "duckie dear." "Duckie dear, put on your
woollen stockings!" There was no stopping Auntie now.
Pavlik had to assume a very casual expression again, to show that none
of this had anything to do with him, although to tell the truth his heart
was heavy at the prospect of parting with Auntie.
The blast of the third whistle shattered the air over the ship. With a
feeling of relief the crowd on 'board and the crowd on the pier began to
wave handkerchiefs, hats, and umbrellas. However, they were a little
premature, the ship still remained at her berth.
The captain's mate, the coastguard officer and a group of soldiers with
green shoulder-straps appeared on deck again. The officer began to return
the passengers' passports. Just then Petya noticed a strangely
familiar-looking man standing behind the officer. He was la shabby
individual in a straw hat and there was something sad and dog-like about his
eyes. As he slowly scrutinized the passengers he raised a dark pince-nez to
his fleshy nose. At that moment Petya recognized Moustache-the same
moustached sleuth who had chased seaman Zhukov all over the decks of the
Turgenev five years before.
At that moment the sleuth looked at Petya, and their eyes met. There
was no way of telling whether he had recognized the boy or not, but he
immediately turned round to the officer and whispered something in his ear.
Petya felt a chill run down his spine. The officer, holding a stack of
passports in his hand as he walked over to Vasily Petrovich and jerking his
chin at Petya, barked:
"Your son?"
"Yes."
"Then kindly remove the St. George ribbon from his cap. If you do not,
I will be forced to escort you ashore and take up the matter of your son's
unauthorized wearing of military uniform. It's against the law at home and
even more so abroad."
"Petya, take the ribbon off this minute!"
"Here's your passport. I'll see to the ribbon. You can claim it in the
commandant's office when you return."
Gavrik, watching from the pier, saw the officer and soldiers surround
Petya. Petya removed his cap.
"Run! Petya, run!" he yelled land made a frantic dash for the gangway,
but he immediately realized his mistake when he saw that Petya merely
removed the ribbon and gave it to the officer, after which he put his cap on
his head again as if nothing had happened.
Gavrik looked round anxiously, but no one had paid any attention to his
yelling. They were all busy waving good-bye.
The officer handed out the passports, saluted and walked down the
gangway, followed by his soldiers and Moustache. A brisk command was shouted
in Italian, and the gangway was pulled up. Italian sailors in blue jerseys
ran along the side, nimbly taking in the mooring-lines; there was a jerky,
insistent ringing of the engine-room telegraph, the red blades of the
propeller revolved, churning up the water beneath the gold lettering which
spelled: Palermo. The deck straightened itself, the ship shuddered, and
Petya saw the pier, its structures, the stacks of goods, and the crowd of
waving people move now forward, now backward, and then, in some mysterious
way, turn up now at one rail, now at the other, only much smaller.
Everything on shore began to recede and diminish, as if carried away by the
wide stream of foamy green water seething beneath the stern.
Petya could hardly distinguish Gavrik and Auntie, who was waving her
umbrella. The panorama of the city began to rise slowly from behind the port
structures. There was Nikolayevsky Boulevard, the white columns of the
Vorontsov Palace rising on the cliff, the City Hall, and the tiny Duc de
Richelieu pointing his outstretched arm away to the horizon.
They passed the breakwater and saw its other side, the one that faced
the open sea. A multitude of fishermen with long bamboo fishing-rods were
darting through the spray and foam of the breaking waves.
They could see Langeron, Alexandrovsky Park and the remains of its
famous arched wall and next to it the Industry and Trade Fair. This was a
township of fancy pavilions, the most prominent of which were the huge
three-storey wooden samovar of the Caravan Tea Company and the gold-tipped
black champagne bottle of the Rederer Company.
A symphony orchestra was playing at the Fair, and the breeze that
billowed the hundreds of coloured flags and pennants on the white flagstaffs
brought to Petya's ears snatches of violin crescendos, gently muted by the
distance.
Petya remained on deck, fascinated by the sight of the ship entering
the open sea. His only regret was that his St. George ribbon had been left
behind in the officer's pocket. The wind was getting stronger, it whipped
the Italian flag at the stern, and Petya thought wistfully of the long ends
of his St. George ribbon which might have been streaming in the wind.
The fresh sea breeze was already ruffling his blouse. It caught at its
collar, it billowed it out on his back and puffed out the wide sleeves that
were fastened tightly at the wrists. Perhaps it was even nicer to have a
ciap without a ribbon, for now, by a slight stretch of imagination, it could
be taken for the beret of the Boy Captain, the hero of Jules Verne's famous
book, with the .added advantage that there was la letter under its lining.
It was almost as if fate had decided to make this an even more
memorable day for Petya and it presented him with another unforgettable
impression.
"Look, look! He's flying!" Pavlik shouted.
"Who's flying? Where?"
"There, it's Utochkin!"
It had completely slipped Petya's mind that this was the day of
Utochkin's long-awaited flight from Odessa to Dofinovka. The fearless
aviator had been waiting for good flying weather to take off from the Fair
grounds in his Farman, fly eleven miles straight across the bay, and land in
Dofinovka. It was not every boy that had the luck to see this spectacle, not
from the shore, but from the sea.
Petya and the passengers who poured out of their cabins saw Utochkin's
plane flying low over the water. It had just taken off and was now
approaching the ship. It flew so close to the stern that the rays of the
setting sun caught at the clearly visible bicycle wheels of the flying
machine, the copper fuel tank, and the bent figure of the pilot, his feet
dangling as he sat between the semi-transparent yellow wings.
As he came abreast of the ship the daredevil aviator doffed his leather
helmet and waved.
"Hurrah!" Petya yelled and was ready to pull his cap off too, but
suddenly remembering the letter, clapped it on tighter instead.
"Hurrah!" the passengers shouted as they waved frantically. The flying
machine was getting smaller as it headed towards Dofinovka, a stream of blue
petrol smoke trailing in its wake.
Up till then Petya's travels had consisted of two visits to Grandma at
Yekaterinoslav and their yearly trips to Budaki, on the sea-shore near
Akkerman, where they spent their summer holidays. They made the journey to
Yekaterinoslav by train, and travelled to Akkerman by sea on the Turgenev,
which they considered the latest thing in technical wonders. Now they were
sailing from Odessa to Naples on an ocean liner. To tell the truth, the
Palermo wasn't that at all. But, since she had made several transatlantic
voyages, Petya, by a slight stretch of imagination, convinced himself and
tried hard to convince the others that the Palermo was really an ocean
liner.
The journey was to take two weeks, which seemed quite a long time for
such a swift ship as the prospectuses and advertisements would have one
believe she was.
The point was that when the signer in the grey morning coat sold the
steamship tickets to Vasily Petrovich he innocently failed to mention that
the Palermo was not exactly a passenger ship, but was, rather, a freighter
that took on passengers, and that it was to make fairly long calls at a
number of ports. They discovered this in Constantinople-the first of the
long stops, but the trip to Constantinople was pleasant, brief, and
comfortable.
Petya was captivated by the wonders of life on board ship. Everything,
every detail of its ultra-modern, technical efficiency, combined with the
romantic flavour of the old sailing ships, fascinated him. The steady, even
throbbing of the powerful engines merged with the fresh, lively sound of the
waves as they surged past the iron sides in an unending stream. The strong
wind, full of the smell of the open sea, whistled through the shrouds; it
billowed out the canvas sleeves of the ventilator casings, bringing forth
hot and cold draughts from the engine-room and the hold.
There was a mingling of all the smells: the warm', soothing smell of
the polished mahogany tables in the lounges and the smell of painted
bulkheads; the aromas of the restaurant and the smell of hot steel,
lubricating oil and dry steam; the resinous-woody smell of the mats and the
fresh smell of pine-water sprayed in the distant white-tiled rooms with hot
and cold running water. There were the heavy swaying copper candle-holders
with glass-covered candles, and the elegant, frosted globes of the electric
lights; the steel gang-ways, the grates of the engine-room and the double
oaken stairway with the polished carved banisters and graceful balusters
leading to the saloon.
Petya explored every nook and cranny of the ship the very first day. He
peeped into mysterious cubby-holes and into the depths of the coal bunkers,
where dim electric lights burned day and night, trembling in their wire
casings like trapped mice.
The practically upright ladders below decks with their slippery steel
rungs led the boy to grimier and less pleasant regions. Black oily water
oozed underfoot, and he became queasy from the deafening booming and
crashing of the engines, the continuous motion of the propeller shaft as it
revolved in its oily bed, and the heavy air of the hold. Engineers,
greasers, and stokers lived and worked in the depths of the ship. Every now
and then the iron door of the stokehole flew open and Petya felt a blast of
intense heat. Then he saw the stokers moving swiftly against the background
of the flaming inferno, using their long crow-bars en the caked red-hot
coal. Petya saw their black, sweat-drenched faces bathed in the crimson
light and was terrified at the thought of remaining in such an appalling
place even for five minutes.
He hurried away, slipping on the steel floor mats, holding on to greasy
steel handrails, and running up and down ladders in his eagerness to get
away from that forbidding world. But it was not so easy. Stunned by the din
and jangle of engines throbbing somewhere close, Petya found himself in
places such as he had never dreamed existed.
He knew there were deck passengers as well as first-and second-class
ones, but he discovered that there was another category, the so-called
"steerage" passengers, who were not even allowed on the lowest deck, the
place usually reserved for cattle. They occupied wooden bunks in the depths
of one of the half-filled holds.
Petya saw heaps of dirty oriental rags on which several Turkish
families were sitting and lying, prostrated by the rolling and pitching of
the ship, the stale air, the semi-darkness, and the noise of the engines.
They were migrating somewhere together with their children, copper
coffee-pots and large wicker crates filled with chickens. With great
difficulty Petya made his way to the top deck, to the fresh sea air, where
it took him quite a while to recover.
The first- and second-class passengers lived according to a strictly
prescribed routine: at 8 a.m. the middle-aged stewardess in a starched cap
entered their cabin, said, "Buon giorno," and set a tray with coffee and
rolls on the little table; at noon and again at 6 p.m. a waiter with a white
napkin tucked under his arm would glide noiselessly down the corridor,
knocking at every cabin door and rattling oft" in a truly commedia dell'arte
manner, stressing his r's. "Pr-rego, signor-ri, mangiar-r-re!" which meant,
"Dinner is being served."
First-class passengers had the additional privilege of five o'clock tea
and a late supper. But the Bachei family, belonging to that golden mean of
society that usually travelled second-class, failed to qualify.
The first and second classes had separate dining-rooms. The first mate
presided at the second-class table d'hote. The captain, who was inaccessible
to ordinary mortals and therefore shrouded in mystery, presided in the
first-class dining-room. Even Pavlik, who was such a pusher, saw him not
more than two or three times during the whole trip.
The first mate, on the other hand, was la jovial fellow and, judging by
his shiny purple-pink Roman nose, a drunkard as well. He was the life and
soul of the company. He pinched Pavlik gently under the table, calling him
"little Russky," he was attentive in passing the ladies cheese and filling
the gentlemen's wineglasses, and his snow-white, stiffly starched tunic
rustled pleasantly as he turned now left, now right, bestowing his
open-hearted smiles all round.
For dinner there were real Italian macaroni with tomato sauce, a second
course of roast meat and fagioli, which turned out to be beans, and for
dessert, Messina oranges with twigs and leaves attached, wrinkled
purple-green figs, and fresh almonds that did not necessitate a nutcracker,
but were easily cut with a table knife right through the thick green outer
husk and the still soft inner shell. Being served by a waiter somewhat
embarrassed them. He would hold the platter to the left of them, balancing
it on his finger-tips, and they had to help themselves. From a sense of
modesty they always took much less than they would have liked to.
Vasily Petrovich was shocked and furious when he found out that wine
went with the dinner-one bottle for three passengers. True, it was very weak
and rather sour Italian wine, and the passengers mixed it with water half
and half, but, none the less, Vasily Petrovich was outraged. The first time
he saw a large bottle without any label placed before his setting he was so
indignant that his beard shook, and he felt like shouting, "Take this brew
away!" but he controlled himself in time and simply moved the bottle away.
Later, however, when he tasted it, he realized that the steamship
company had no intention of making drunkards out of its second-class
passengers by serving them strong, expensive wines, and so allowed the boys
to colour their drinking-water with a few drops, in order not to waste it
completely, as it had been included in the price of the tickets.
This daily water-colouring was the high light of the dinner-hour for
Petya and Pavlik.
Ice-cold water was poured into a large goblet from a heavy, misty
decanter that had become frosted in the ship's refrigerator; then a small
amount of wine was added to the water.
The wine did not mix with the water immediately. It swirled around in
threads and then spread out, making the water a bright ruby-red, and
throwing a pink swaying star-like reflection on the starched table-cloth.
The biggest impression of those first days was the sight of the open
sea. For a day and two nights, between Odessa and the Bosporus, there was no
land in sight. The ship was making good speed, yet it seemed to be
motionless in the centre of a blue circle.
At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, Petya could not figure out
which way they were heading.
There was something entrancing about this seeming immobility, about the
empty horizon and the triumph of the two blue elements-sea and sky-between
which Petya's whole existence seemed to be suspended.
At dawn of the. second day he was awakened by the sound .of running
feet overhead. The ship's bell was ringing, the engines had stopped and in
the unusual stillness he could hear the clear gurgling sound of water
lapping at the ship's side. He looked out the porthole and through the early
morning mist saw a steep green bank. There was a little lighthouse and a
barrack with a tiled roof on the bank.
Petya threw on his clothes and ran up on deck. A Turkish pilot in a red
fez was standing next to the captain, and the ship inched slowly into the
green lane of the Zoospores. The lane widened and narrowed like a meandering
river. At times the bank would be so close that Petya thought he could
stretch his arm and touch the leaning white tombstones chaotically scattered
among the cypresses in the Moslem cemetery, the poppy-red flag with the
crescent in the middle that waved over the custom-house, or the turf-covered
earthwork of the shore batteries.
This was Turkey-they were now abroad, in a foreign country, and Petya
suddenly felt a sharp pang of longing for his homeland, and, at the same
time, a burning curiosity. The homesickness remained with him until he
returned to Russia.
The sun was now quite high, and by the time they reached the Golden
Horn and dropped anchor in the roads of Constantinople Bay the warm
reflections of the water sparkled and gleamed all over the ship-from
water-line to mast-top.
From then on the Bachei family was possessed by a madness common to all
inexperienced tourists. They felt that every minute was precious and wanted
to set out immediately to see all the sights of this most wonderful city,
the panorama of which was so close that they could see the ant-like coming
and going of crowds of people, the cupolas of the broad, tall mosques and
the spires of the minarets.
They decided to forego breakfast and waited impatiently for a
shrewd-looking Turkish official, who had been given several silver piastres,
to scribble something in Father's passport; the scribble turned out to be
the Sign of Osman. The moment the Bacheis went down the gangway, they were
pounced upon by artful boatmen. Finally, they flopped on to the velvet
cushions of a wherry and, for two lire, were rowed ashore.
Everything that happened afterwards merged for Petya into a sensation
of an endless, scorching, tiring day - the deafening babble of the truly
Eastern bazaars, the equally Eastern deathly quiet of the huge deserted
courts around the mosques and the stony museum-like iciness inside. At every
step they parted with a steady stream of lire, piastres, paras, and copper
medjidies, coins which delighted the boys with their inscriptions in Turkish
and the strange Sign of Osman.
In Turkey the Bachei family first came in contact with that terrible
phenomena known as guides, and guides pursued them for the remainder of
their trip. There were Greek guides, Italian guides, and Swiss guides.
Despite specific national traits, they all had something in common: they
stuck like leeches. But the Constantinople guides left the others far
behind.
The minute the Bacheis set foot on the pavements of Constantinople they
were besieged by guides. The scene with the rival boatmen was repeated. The
guides battled for their prey; it was a real free-for-all and massacre, to
which no one paid the slightest heed.
The guides poured torrents of filth on each other in every language and
dialect of the Levant; they tore at each other's starched dickeys, swung
their sticks with contorted faces, elbowed each other, turned round and
kicked out like mules.
In the end the Bacheis were claimed by an impressive-looking guide who
had vanquished his opponents with the help of a policeman friend. He wore a
morning coat that had faded badly under the arms, striped trousers, and a
red fez. His wildly-dilated nostrils and coal-black janissary moustache
expressed a determination to conquer or to die; however, in every other
aspect his face, and especially his frightened baggy eyes, wreathed in
smiles, bespoke a desire immediately to show the tourists all there was to
see in Constantinople: Pera, Galata, Yildiz Kiosk, the Fountain of Snakes,
the Seven-Towered Palace, the ancient water-line, the catacombs, the wild
dogs, the famous St. Sophia Mosque, Sultan Ahmed's Mosque, Suleiman's
Mosque, Osman's Mosque, Selim's Mosque, Bayezid's Mosque, and all the two
hundred and twenty-seven other large and six hundred and sixty-four smaller
mosques in the city-in other words, he was at their complete disposal.
He bundled them into a gleaming phaeton drawn by two horses, jumped on
the step, looked round wildly, and told the driver not to spare the whip.
They were all in by evening, so much so that Pavlik fell asleep in the
boat on the way back to the ship and had to be carried up the gangway.
Vasily Petrovich was aghast at the day's expenditure, not counting the
fact that the breakfast and lunch due them on the ship had gone to waste. He
decided not to have a guide next day, an intention that was furthered by the
fact that that night the Palermo was taken from the outer roads to a berth
to take on cargo along with a dozen other ships.
There could tie no chance of the guide finding them in the monotonous
chaos of the crowded pier. They slept like logs in the small overheated
cabin, oblivious to the clatter of the winches and the swift flashes of the
multicoloured harbour lights that filtered in through the porthole.
They awoke to a dazzling morning sun and the magic panorama of
Istanbul. Vasily Petrovich and the boys hastened down the gangway. This was
their last day ashore and they had to get as much out of it as they possibly
could.
The first person they saw as they stepped down on the pier was their
guide of the day before. He waved his bamboo cane over his head in greeting.
The phaeton and the copper-faced, docile Macedonian on the coach-box were
nearby.
It was the day before all over again, with the added attraction of
being taken through the bazaars and the curio shops of the guide's friends.
Souvenir-buying turned out to be just as ruinous an undertaking as the
guided tour. But the Bacheis, hypnotized by their impressions, had reached
that stage of tourist fever when people shed all will-power and, with
something akin to the lunatic's loss of reason, submit to their guide's
every whim.
They bought stacks of crudely-coloured postcards of the places they had
just seen; they parted with piastres and lire for cypress rosaries, for
glass balls with coloured spirals, for tropical shells, for paper-knives,
and for exactly the same kind of aluminium pen-nibs that were on sale at the
Fair in Odessa.
At the Greek Monastery monks palmed off on them a yellow wooden box.
Through the huge magnifying glass on the lid they were supposed to see a
view of Athos. The box cost six piastres.
They came to their senses only in the European quarter of the city when
they found themselves amid the sumptuous stores, restaurants, banks, and
embassies set in the luxuriant dark verdure of southern gardens. The guide
inveigled them into a friend's camera shop to buy Kodaks, and then he
suggested dining at an exclusive French restaurant.
At this stage Vasily Petrovich came to, rebelled, and fleeing from
luxury and extravagance, went to the other extreme by heading for
Constantinople's slums, where they saw human misery at its lowest.
The slums shook Petya to the depths of his soul, and not even the visit
to Scutari on the Asiatic shore could immediately restore his equilibrium.
The motor boat raced across the Bosporus, cleaving the green water with
its prow, leaving two diverging glistening furrows in its wake. Hundreds of
wherries were reflected in the waters of the still, lake-like strait.
Turkish merchants, officials with brief cases, and officers travelling to
and from Scutari, sat on velvet cushions under the light canopies.
Wet oars glittered all over the bay as they caught the sun's rays. The
smell of thyme and savoury was borne to them from the Asiatic shore. But
Petya could not erase the memory of the foul-smelling slums and the swarms
of green flies buzzing around the festering sores of the beggars.
The moment they moored in Scutari the guide rushed on with renewed
energy, determined not to miss a single one of the sights. Alas, our
travellers were quite spent.
There was a bazaar nearby and they made for a stand with cool drinks.
The lemonade with a strange flavour of anise drops was heavenly. They drank
pink ice-water and ate coloured ice-cream. Then they turned to the wonderful
variety of Eastern sweets.
Vasily Petrovich was always opposed to giving children too many sweets,
since they were bad for teeth and appetite. But this time he could not
resist the temptation of trying the baklava that was swimming in honey, or
the salted pistachio nuts whose bony shells had burst at the tips, like the
fingers of a kid glove, so that the green kernels peeped through.
The sweets made them thirsty, and the cool drinks made them eat more
sweets. The incident of Grandma's jam was still fresh in Petya's memory and
he moderated his intake accordingly. But Pavlik was insatiable. He ate and
ate. And when Father flatly refused to buy any more, Pavlik dived into the
crowd and emerged a few minutes later, carrying a rather large box with
bright lacquered pictures pasted all over it. It was a box of the best
rahat-lakoum.
"Where did you get that?" Father asked severely.
"I bought it," Pavlik answered with bravado.
"What with?"
"I had a piastre and a half."
"Where did you get the money?"
"I won it!" Pavlik said proudly.
"What do you mean, you won it? Where? When? From whom?"
And so the whole story came out. While Father had been busy studying
the planning of their travels and balancing expenses, while Petya had been
spending his time on deck, Pavlik had made friends with the Italian waiter
and had been introduced to the society of the second-class restaurant
personnel. He had played lotto with them, using the three kopeks he had
found in his pocket and which the Italian waiter changed into Turkish
currency. Pavlik had been lucky, he had won a few piastres. Vasily Petrovich
seized Pavlik by the shoulders and began to shout and shake the life out of
him, heedless of the fact that they were in the middle of a large oriental
bazaar.
"How dare you gamble? Wretch! How many times have I told you that no
one with any respect for himself plays for money! And with ... with
foreigners!"
Pavlik was feeling sick from the sweets and began to howl-he did not
share his father's ideas about gambling, especially since he had been so
lucky at it. Father was livid, there was no telling how it would have ended
if the guide had not suddenly looked at his gold-plated American watch with
four lids. They had just two hours left till sailing time.
All they needed now was to miss the boat! They rushed to the pier and
jumped into the first wherry they saw without bothering to bargain down the
price. Soon they were safely on board the Palermo. She had finished loading
and had moved out into the harbour, ready to sail.
The parting with their guide was a dramatic scene. He had received his
fee of two lire, but remained standing in the rocking boat on legs as
all-enduring as those of an old wolf, watching Vasily Petrovich land the
boys climb up the ladder. Then he began to ask for baksheesh.
He had always been very eloquent, a necessary accomplishment in his
profession, but this time he outdid himself. He usually spoke three European
languages simultaneously, inserting only the essential words in Russian.
Now, however, he spoke mostly in Russian, inserting French phrases from time
to time. His speech sounded something like a monologue out of the
pseudo-classical tragedies of Racine and Corneille.
The language was obscure, the meaning clear. Extending his hand, which
was covered with copper rings glittering with paste diamonds, and speaking
as passionately as when he described the wonders of the city, he told them
of his poverty-stricken family, burdened by a paralysed grandmother and four
small children who had neither milk nor clothing. He complained of
approaching old age, of his trouble with the police who fleeced him of most
of his earnings, of a chronic ulcer, of unbearable taxes, of the cutthroat
competition. He begged them to take pity on an aged, penniless Turk who had
dedicated his whole life to tourists. His thick greying eyebrows raised, his
face took on a tragic expression, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.
All this could have passed for charlatanry, pure and simple, were it
not for the genuine human suffering in his frightened brown eyes. Unable to
withstand his pleading, Vasily Petrovich took the last Turkish coins from
his pockets and poured them into the guide's outstretched hand.
It was nearly evening, and one could sense the slowly gathering storm
in the motionless air, heavy from the heat of the day. The storm was not
approaching from any definite direction, it seemed to be materializing out
of nothing over the amphitheatre of the city, over the mosques and minarets.
By the time the heavy, grating anchor chain crawled upward, and the
overloaded ship, sunk deeper than its water-line, began slowly to turn
round, the sun had disappeared in the storm clouds. It was so dark that they
had to turn on the lights. Hot smells of cooking and engines escaped from
the hatches. The sight of the now colourless city heightened the stormy
green of the Golden Horn.
The ship's engines were snorting heavily and laboriously. The surface
of the water seemed as flat as a sheet of glass, yet the ship began to rock
slightly.
Pavlik had just finished^ the last piece of rahat-lakoum, thickly
coated with powdery sugar. He all but choked on it; it tasted doughy, and
was gummy and sticky. Suddenly he felt an acid metallic after-taste in his
mouth. His jaws contracted spasmodically. The greenness of the clear water
reminded him of the rahat-lakoum and he shut his eyes tight. But the moment
he did so, he felt he was flying up and down on a swing. With great effort
he tried to say, "Daddy, I'm sick," but he was overtaken by vomiting.
At that instant a jagged flash of lightning pierced the coal-black
clouds over the crescent of St. Sophia's and the surrounding minarets. It
was followed by a crack that seemed to split the sky in two and poured the
shattered fragments down upon the city and harbour. A whirlwind whipped up
columns of dust on the hills. The water foamed. When they cleared Serai
Burna and entered the Sea of Marmara, that is, the Marble Sea, its shoppy
surface did indeed resemble the colour pattern of marble.
Petya missed the storm in the Sea of Marmara, for he, too, fell victim
to Pavlik's malady. The two of them, white as chalk, lay prone in the stuffy
cabin. Father rushed from one to the other, not knowing what to do. But the
Italian stewardess, with long-practiced efficiency, ran up and down the
corridor, providing the afflicted with basins.
There was more to it than the rocking of the vessel and the Eastern
sweets. The boys, overtired, were feeling the effects of the rushing about
in the heat, the noise of the streets, and the mass of new impressions. The
seasickness soon passed, but they were feverish and delirious. The ship's
doctor examined them thoroughly, in the traditional manner of the old
European doctors: he pressed their tongues down with the handle of a silver
spoon borrowed from the first-class dining-room; his strong, experienced
fingers kneaded their bare stomachs; he tapped them with a little
rubber-tipped hammer; he listened to their breathing through a stethoscope
and without it, by placing his large, fleshy ear to their bodies; he felt
their pulse, keeping his eyes on his large gold watch, the lid of which
reflected the round porthole and the water rushing past it; he joked in
Latin with an alarmed Rather, trying to cheer him. He said there was nothing
seriously wrong, that they should stay in bed for three days; he gave them
laxative powders and left graciously, after prescribing chicken broth,
toast, and a light omelette.
His last words gravely upset Vasily Petrovich, because experienced
travellers in Odessa had warned him never to request anything from the
ship's dining-room that was not on the menu, because: "You don't know those
thieves: they'll rob you, that's how they make their money; they'll charge
you for the service, the bread, la ten per-cent tip, and God knows what
else, and before you know where you are, you'll have nothing left."
Although mortified by the prospect, Vasily Petrovich nevertheless
struggled with his dictionary and in broken Italian ordered two bowls of
chicken broth with toast and two omelettes, a la carte.
And to the boys missed the Dardanelles and Salonika, as well as the Sea
of Marmara. Only the noises of the port, mingled with the confusion of
Greek, Turkish, and Italian voices, reached them through the half-open
porthole.
They were sailing south through the Gulf of Salonika, with the open sea
on the left and barren shores on the right. The coast gave way to hills
which rose gradually until they became a mountain range. A single peak rose
above the range, and a bank of motionless fluffy clouds hung over the peak.
There was something enchanting about the lone mountain and the clouds that
threw blue shadows on it. The passengers trained their binoculars on it as
if they expected to see a miracle performed there before their very eyes.
Father, pressing his red Baedeker to his breast with one hand and
holding his binoculars in the other, was also peering at the magic mountain.
When Petya came up, he turned towards his son eagerly. His eyes shining with
excitement, he placed Mother's little mother-of-pearl opera-glasses in
Petya's hand and said:
"Look, Mount Olympus!"
Petya did not get the import of his words.
"What?"
"Olympus!" Vasily Petrovich repeated triumphantly. Petya decided that
Father was joking, and laughed.
"You're not serious?"
"I told you it's Olympus!"
"Which Olympus? Mount Olympus?"
"Do you know of any other?"
And Petya suddenly realized that the land that was now so close was
none other than ancient Pieria, and that this mountain was Homer's Olympus,
the home of the Greek gods whom Petya knew so well from his ancient history.
Maybe the gods were still there? Petya lifted Mother's opera-glasses to
his eyes, but, unfortunately, they were too weak to magnify the sacred
mountain. All he could make out was a flock of sheep moving up a slope like
the shadow of a cloud and the erect figure of the shepherd surrounded by
dogs. He was certain, however, that he could see the gods quite clearly. One
of the clouds resembled the reclining Zeus, another, flying in a flowing
garment like Athena, was in all probability rushing to help Achilles at
Troy.
The previous summer Vasily Petrovich, anxious to broaden the horizons
of his sons, had read them the Iliad from cover to cover, so that Petya now
had no trouble at all singling out the flying Athena. However, that meant
that Troy, too, must be somewhere nearby.
"Daddy, where's Troy? Shall we see it?" Petya asked breathlessly.
"Alas, my boy," Father said, "we've left Troy far behind. It's near the
Dardanelles, and you won't see it now." Then he added reproachfully, hinting
at the sad affair of the Eastern sweets, "Thus Fate punishes Greed and
Gluttony."
His words, undoubtedly, were just. Still, Petya thought Fate had been
too cruel in depriving them of the delight of seeing Troy with their own
eyes-and all because of that awful rahat-lakoum.
In order not to set Petya too strongly against Fate, Vasily Petrovich
hastened to add that they would not have been able to see Troy from the ship
anyway, and peace between the boy and Fate was restored.
Two days later, when Petya saw Athens, he was more than rewarded for
having missed seeing Troy.
The barren rocky mountains of Euboea, longest of the Greek islands,
stretched for many weary miles. At last they left the island behind. That
night they sailed through straits and saw lighthouses along the shore. The
ship changed speed several times and swung round. It was late when they
finally fell asleep, and next morning when they awoke the ship was anchored
in Piraeus harbour, in full sight of Athens.
This time Vasily Petrovich was determined to do without the services of
a guide.
The Greek guides differed from the Turkish in that they had amber
rosaries in their hands, were shorter, and wore small black fezzes without
tassels instead of red ones with black tassels. Unlike the warlike Moslems
they did not make a frontal assault on the tourists, cursing and shouting;
instead, they surrounded them silently like humble Christians and their
endurance usually won out. When Vasily Petrovich found himself in the centre
of a tight circle of guides fingering amber rosaries and looking at him with
quiet, gentle, olive-black eyes, he did not feel at all intimidated.
"Nyet!" he said vehemently in Russian, and then, to sound more
convincing, he added in French and in German, "Non! Nein!" At the same time
his arm sliced through the air so swiftly in a gesture of refusal that Petya
thought he heard the air whistle.
None of this, however, made any impression on the guides. They kept
their ground, fingering their rosaries, their large noses drooping
forlornly. Vasily Petrovich took his boys firmly in tow and forged ahead.
The guides too moved on and did not let them out of the circle.
Vasily Petrovich ignored them. He strode down the streets of Piraeus
with the confidence of a native. It was not for nothing that he had spent
the past few days in his cabin, unmindful of the sea breezes, poring over a
guide-book to Piraeus and Athens.
The startled guides made a timid attempt to hustle the Bachei family
into one of the large, dilapidated carriages that trailed their footsteps;
Pavlik yelled, "Go away!" as loud as he could, causing the guides to retreat
somewhat. But the magic circle remained intact.
They reached the railway station without having once lost their way,
bought tickets, and departed for Athens under the noses of the dumbfounded
guides who crowded the platform. Athens turned out to be a stone's throw
away. When they arrived there, they made their way to another station just
as silently and as resolutely as before, and set out immediately for the
ancient city in a suburban train with open carriages.
Excited by the battle with the guides, their victory, and the
possibility of renewed attacks, they had not been paying much attention to
their surroundings. However, when they reached the mountain-top, which was
covered with marble fragments, and suddenly beheld the Acropolis: the
Parthenon, the Propylaea, the small temple of Wingless Victory, and the
Erechteion-all of which seemed to be a confused mass and yet was an ensemble
of heavenly unity-they gasped at the sheer beauty of the scene, an art that
had been imitated time without number all over the world, becoming ever more
insignificant and trivial.
Like all great monuments of architecture, they seemed at first sight to
be rather small and exquisite, seen against the wild expanse of sky, so
clear and so blue that it made their heads swim.
This was the realm of marble columns and stairways, yellowed by time,
alongside which the figures of the numerous tourists seemed dwarfed.
Oh, how Vasily Petrovich had dreamed of seeing the Acropolis with his
own eyes, of touching the ancient stones! It had been the dream of his life.
He had visualized the day when he would take his children to the Parthenon
and tell them of the Golden Age of Pericles and of its genius, the great
Phidias. Reality, however, which was much cruder and simpler, added to the
majesty, so much so that Vasily Petrovich was unable to utter a word; he
stood in silence, stooping slightly under the impact of the scene that moved
him almost to tears.
Petya and Pavlik, on the other hand, were not losing any time; they
scrambled up the slippery pebbles towards the Parthenon, wondering why it
seemed so near and yet was so far. They helped each other up, scaring the
lizards as they climbed the weather-beaten stairways, until they found
themselves at last among the Doric columns, which seemed to have been put
together from gigantic marble millstones.
The noonday sun blinded them, but they were not aware of the heat
because there was a fresh wind blowing from the Archipelago. The tiled
roof-tops of Athens glittered far below, blending with the landscape. They
could see the port, the rows of ships, the forest of masts about the roofs
of the warehouses, and out in the harbour, sprinkled with the silvery
glitter of sunshine, was an English warship, emitting an ominous cloud of
smoke.
Still further down, on the opposite shore, away beyond the hills, was
the Gulf of Petalis, and they could see the azure strip of water that was
more ancient than Hellas itself-the Gulf of Corinth.
One could stand there silently till nightfall, feeling neither fatigue,
nor boredom, nor anything earthly, nothing but an awareness of the supreme
beauty created by man.
But they would have to hurry, for the ship sailed at five, and Vasily
Petrovich wanted to show the boys the Athens museums. Nothing, however,
could add to the impression made by the Acropolis: neither the marble
statues of the gods and heroes, nor the earthen vessels behind the glass
show-cases, nor the Tanagra statuettes, nor the amazing amphorae and flat
bowls adorned with red and white figures against a black background.
Out once more in the narrow streets of the Piraeus port, with its
picturesque oriental atmosphere, but possessing nothing that the Bacheis had
not already seen in Constantinople, they decided to risk a cup of coffee in
a Greek cafe.
It was cooler inside. The cafe smelt of boiling coffee, anise, roast
lamb, and something else that was so appetizing it made the boys' mouths
water. Vasily Petrovich tried to calculate the cost of a meal in drachmas,
land decided to order two portions of a Greek dish for the three of them. A
kindly little Greek woman, with a pronounced moustache and dressed in black,
wiped the marble table-top with a kitchen towel and set down a platter of
lamb stew with Greek sauce.
It was then, that they realized just what could be done with a small
amount of purple egg-plants, red tomatoes, green pepper, parsley, and
genuine olive oil.
While they were busy polishing off the last traces of the amber sauce
with pieces of bread, the kindly proprietress stood stroking Pavlik's head.
Her dark-brown hand was adorned with an Athos signet-ring and her sad eyes
were full of maternal tenderness, as she said in broken Russian:
"Eat, boy, eat!"
When they had finished, she cleared the table, wiped the marble top
again, and retired modestly behind the counter, where a candle was burning
beneath an icon and a palm branch. Her husband now took her place. He
brought in a tray with three small cups of steaming coffee, three glasses of
water, three saucers with Greek pastry, and three saucers of wild-orange jam
with nuts. Besides all this, he asked Vasily Petrovich in broken Russian
whether he would care for a hookah, an offer which was rejected with
considerable vehemence.
It was cosy and homely in the cafe. There were lace curtains on the
windows, the walls were papered, and a canary warbled in a bamboo cage.
There were other customers in the cafe, but they sat around their
tables so sedately and unobtrusively that they did not in any way disturb
the tranquillity of the establishment. They had cups of coffee and glasses
of water before them, but, engrossed in games of dominoes, telling their
beads, or reading newspapers, they hardly touched them; they were more like
relatives than chance customers. Even the portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece over the door leading to the kitchen did not have an official look
about them, and could have passed for enlargements of Grandma and Grandpa on
their wedding day. It was hard to believe that the marble temple of the
Parthenon which crowned the summit of the nearby mountain had been built by
the ancestors of these mild-looking Greeks who were moving the dominoes
across the marble table-tops and sucking the snake-like pipes of their
gurgling hookahs.
While the Bacheis were sipping the strong coffee, the proprietor
remained standing near their table, entertaining them in their own tongue.
His sister, he told them, was married to the eldest son of Themistocles
Kriadi, the owner of a Greek bakery in Odessa, and he himself had spent
three years in Odessa as a boy. His grandfather, who had been a member of
the Hetaeria, a secret society, had lived in Odessa for a while too, whence
he had returned to fight for the liberation of Greece and had been executed
by the Turks.
Apparently, he had taken Vasily Petrovich for a Russian revolutionary,
forced to flee abroad, and so he made no bones about criticizing the state
of affairs in Russia and the Russian government; he heaped abuse on the
tsar, Nicholas the Bloody, and was certain there would soon be another
revolution in Russia which would dethrone the tyrants and bring freedom for
all.
Vasily Petrovich felt uncomfortable and anxiously looked round several
times, but each time the proprietor assured him that all decent Greeks
sympathized with the Russian revolution, and that they would soon have a
revolution -in Greece, too, to get rid of the Turks once and for all. His
Russian was so impossible that the boys were bursting with restrained
laughter. Pavlik even held his nose tight to keep from giggling. Father
tapped the marble table menacingly with his wedding-ring and they calmed
down a bit.
Street vendors came in several times and offered the foreigners their
wares.
One had long strings of dried sponges hanging round his neck and was
carrying a bowl of goldfish. The orange-red fish swam among wisps of seaweed
and were of such a brilliant hue that the coffee shop was lighted up by an
eerie glow and resembled a submarine kingdom.
Another had dozens of pairs of hard slippers with curled pointed toes
and streaming pink and light-blue gauze scarves which immediately
transformed the cafe into a kind of Arabian Nights shop.
This impression was heightened by a Syrian selling oriental rugs, and
when a man with long robes and copper-wares appeared on the threshold, there
could be no doubt left that the Bachei family was now in Baghdad and that
the cafe proprietor was none other than Harun-al-Rashid in disguise.
However, the appearance of a seller of Eastern sweets, who laid out
before them his bright lacquered boxes of halvah, rahat-lakoum, and dates,
so terrified the boys, and especially Pavlik, who felt a menacing acid lump
in his throat, that the mirage vanished on the instant.
Although Vasily Petrovich had made up his mind not to buy anything, he
failed to resist the temptation, the only excuse Being that the purchase was
both inexpensive and essential. He bought Petya a wide-brimmed straw hat. It
did not exactly go with his naval cadet's outfit, but he could no longer
wear his warm sailor's cap. Petya's head was dripping wet; sweat trickled
down his temples and his neck. His cap would be so drenched with
perspiration during the day that it would barely dry by morning.
Petya was loath to part with the cap which made him look like the Boy
Captain. He tried the new hat on in front of the fly-blown mirror and saw
that he now resembled a Boer. At any rate, Boer generals wore the same kind
of wide-brimmed hats, although theirs were felt, not straw. Petya had often
seen their pictures in old copies of the Niva, dating back to the Boer War.
All he needed now was a carbine and bandolier.
"You look just like a young Boer," Father said. That settled it.
The young Boer strutted around in front of the mirror and was eager to
parade on the streets in his new attire.
Just then the sound of a long boat whistle came from the direction of
the port. They immediately recognized the deep Italian baritone of the
Palermo-they could pick it in a thousand. And so, leaving a few drachmas on
the table, they rushed towards the pier.
The Palermo was already out in the harbour. Suddenly, Petya realized
that he had forgotten his old cap in the coffee-house. He broke out in a
cold sweat; without a word, he turned round and raced back. Neither Father
nor Pavlik noticed his absence at first. It was all too apparent, however,
when they were getting into the boat. That which Vasily Petrovich had
dreaded above all was now a reality: one of the children was lost!
Meanwhile, Petya was frantically running up and down the dockland
alleys looking for the coffee-house. But all the side-streets were alike,
and there were so many coffeehouses on each street that he soon realized he
was lost. He had lost all sense of direction and cursed himself for having
got so excited about the new hat as to forget the old one. In every cafe he
saw the same marble-topped tables, portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece, dominoes, steaming cups of coffee, gurgling hookahs, papered walls,
lace curtains, little moustached women behind the counters under the icons
with the palm branches and burning candles, proprietors absorbed in their
newspapers.
Petva rushed into passionate explanations, switching from Russian to
French, telling them he had lost his cap, but no one understood him, because
the Greeks knew very little Russian, and his French was pretty bad. Petya
thought of Near Mills, of Terenty, and Sinichkin. The picture of Gavrik
stuffing the letter under the lining of the sailor's cap Uncle Fedya had
made was so clear in his memory. Now he knew that Uncle Fedya had left the
seam open on purpose, that he, Petya, had been entrusted with a very
important mission. They had relied on him, and he had behaved like a vain,
foolish child who had imagined he looked like a Boer in his silly straw hat.
He was so ashamed of himself and so upset that he was ready to cry.
He hated the new straw hat that was bobbing up and down on an elastic
band on his back as he darted among the peddlers, donkeys with creels of
fruit, ice-cream vendors, and street barbers. The coffee-house he sought had
vanished into thin air. His one thought v/as to find it, and there was no
telling how it would have ended if he had not heard the Palermo blow her
third and last whistle. He ran in the direction of the sound and finally
came out on the pier where Father was explaining something from his
Self-Taught Greek handbook to a port official in a tunic and a hard-peaked
cap with purling.
"There he is! Thank God!" Vasily Petrovich shouted and shook his
handbook so vigorously over his head that his pince-nez fell off his nose
and dangled on the black cord. "Dreadful child! How dare you! Where have you
been all this time?"
"I forgot my cap," Petya panted. "I looked everywhere for it. I don't
know where it is. I couldn't find our coffeehouse."
"What!" Father screamed. "Because of a filthy, rotten cap!"
"Daddy, it's not rotten!" Petya mumbled mournfully.
"Rotten!" Father bellowed.
"Oh, Daddy, you don't understand a thing!" Petya groaned.
"I don't understand?" Father said and his lower jaw and shaking beard
jutted out as he grabbed the boy by the shoulders.
He began to shake him, shouting, "I don't understand? Don't
understand?" when the moustached Greek proprietress suddenly appeared on the
pier, carrying a small package.
"Boy," she said, smiling sadly, "you forget your hat. Ai-ai-ai. It so
hot in Athens, but in the nights on the vapora in Archipelago you'll be
cold, your little head gets cold. Here your hat."
Petya grabbed his cap. It was wrapped up in la back copy of a
French-Language newspaper, Le Messager d'Athenes. He did not even get a
chance to thank the kind woman, as his father bundled him into the boat,
which hurried them off to the ship. They reached it just as the sailors were
about to pull in the gangway.
An hour later the "vapora," as the kind Greek woman had called the
ship, was passing Aegina Island. Athens had vanished in the blur of magic
colours of a Mediterranean sunset.
Petya saw nothing of it. He was busy in the cabin, removing the
slightly creased and sweat-soaked letter from the lining of his cap and
putting it in the inner pocket of his Alpine rucksack. The address on the
envelope was in French:
W. Oulianoff
4. Rue Marie Rose
Paris XIV.
They were a long time rounding Greece, and finally they cleared Cape
Malea. The last of the islands, resembling a hunk of dry bread, was
swallowed up by the purple swell of the Archipelago. For two days they were
out of sight of land. The sun rose and set, but the barren flatness of the
Mediterranean seemed motionless. The sea kept changing colours: it was dark
blue at dawn, bright blue at noon, and copper-purple at sunset, but there
was no hint of green in it, as in the Black Sea. They were already conscious
of the nearness of Africa, that huge burning continent, and if it had not
been for the wind-true, a hot one, but tempered somewhat by the sea-it would
have been very hard to endure the intense, almost tropical, heat.
The wind was chasing long rows of waves along the Ionian Sea. The deck
rose and fell gently enough to make the rolling of the ship even pleasant.
The engines worked steadily. From time to time stokers who had finished
their shifts would appear in the forecastle, where they would douse each
other with sea water from the fire-pump. Petya had learned to tell the time
by their appearance. But in point of fact it was immaterial what the time
was-time seemed just as motionless as the ship in the middle of the blue
expanse.
Petya roamed all over the Palermo. One of the strangest places was the
cattle-deck which housed a herd of cows. Petya felt that he was in a cowshed
as he walked down the narrow passage-way between the rows of cows' tails.
The cows shifted their weight lazily, making the manure ooze through their
cloven hoofs. He was glad to feel the springy layers of straw beneath his
feet instead of the hard deck planks. Part of the deck was taken up by bales
of pressed hay which obscured the view of the sea. The hot sun beat down on
the hay, making it exude all its stored-up field smells. Petya would pull a
dry, withered stalk of siage or burdock out of the solid mass, rub it
between his palms, and smell the powdered leaves. Then he would think he was
somewhere in Bessarabia, in Budaki, and not on board a ship sailing in the
Mediterranean. It was strange and very pleasant.
It was fun to crawl past the signal bell to the very tip of the bow,
lie down on the hot deck, cautiously stick his head over the side and look
all the way down. A huge anchor arm protruded from the hawse-hole there, and
still farther below he could see the ship's stem cut through the waves with
a sure constancy. Salt spray blew into his face, he felt the metallic smell
of the deeply ploughed waves, and below the water-line he saw the bright red
of the keel shining through the boiling sapphire of the water. This was the
one spot where the ship's motion, its full speed, could really be
appreciated, making him as dizzy as if he were on a merry-go-round. Petya
could have watched the rushing water for hours on end, listening to the
strains of a mandolin played by Pieripo, one of the stokers, a young lad
with pearly flashing teeth and blue-black curly hair. After coming off watch
he would sit astride the anchor chain and pluck the strings, evoking with
its gentle tinkling notes a foretaste of Italy.
And then, Italy lay before him. A dim cone loomed up through the
morning mist. This was Mount Etna. It began to grow taller and wider; la
strip of hilly country rose from the sea. They were approaching Sicily.
The nearer they got to the shore, the gloomier did the land look. It
was nothing like Petya's mental picture of Italy.
They could see Catania quite clearly on the rocky slope. The port was
surrounded by hillsides of hardened black lava which descended to the water,
giving it its dark hue.
Italy had a harsh welcome for the travellers: there was a sirocco
blowing. The Italians pronounced it "shirokko"; it was a dry, scorching wind
from Africa. The mercury reached 113А. Clouds of dust rolled along streets
that had been hacked out of the lava streams or paved with lava stones, just
as in Odessa. The sky was a dull leaden yellow. Mules and horses with red
ear-muffs harnessed to fancy carriages stood glumly on the square, and the
wind blew the spray of a fountain and their dusty tails to one side.
A few straggling pedestrians moved phlegmatically along the street.
Even the guides who were sitting around the fountain were too listless to
come over to the tourists, and merely waved their picture postcards.
They could hear the dry rustle of palm leaves, whipped by the wind. The
green-black leaves of magnolia trees gleamed dully; the paths were strewn
with broken branches and huge waxen flowers, dead and speckled with the
brown of decay; shreds of grey cobweb fluttered in the laurels and
stone-pines-all dominated by the shadow of Mount Etna.
The wisest thing would have been to return to the ship. But Vasily
Petrovich's guide-book stated that the city stood on the site of ancient
Catana which, except for the ruins of its Forum, theatre, and some other
early Roman architectural relics, had been buried in lava. He was determined
that the boys should see them.
They doggedly climbed uphill against the wind, exhausted land sweating
profusely, until at last they beheld the ruins. By then, however, the boys
were so tired that the sights meant nothing to them.
They by-passed the museum. They felt that they had been roaming for
ages through the streets of the city, that in all likelihood the ship had
finished unloading and taking on fresh cargo, and they could now resume the
voyage.
But the sirocco had slowed work down at the port; the cattle had just
been taken off, and the Bacheis had to push their way through the herd to
get on board. The animals were too weary to moo; they only looked at Petya's
straw hat through bleary eyes, while the sirocco tore at their tails and
whistled around their horns.
Next day the ship entered the Strait of Messina and dropped anchor
opposite the city of the same name. What a wonderful change it was! Here was
the picturesque Italy of world-famous water-colours and oleographs: a blue
sky, a still bluer sea, white sails, cliffs, and shores covered by orange
and olive groves.
From the harbour, Messina looked enticing and beautiful, but Petya
suddenly felt there was something wrong in the number of houses and the way
they were spaced. There seemed to be fewer than there should have been. And
there were sinister dead spaces between them, hidden amongst the scraggy
underbrush.
There was something vaguely frightening in the very name of the city.
Not until they reached the pier did Petya realize half the city was in
ruins.
Then, suddenly, he recalled the words the whole world had uttered in
terror three years before: the Messina earthquake. He himself had often
repeated those words, without really understanding them. He had seen the
ruins of Byzantium, of ancient Greece, and of early Roman settlements, but
these had been magnificent stones, historical monuments, and no more; they
had fallen into a state of decay over thousands of centuries. They were
truly astounding, but they did not wring the heart. Now, however, Petya was
looking at heaps of recent debris which, not so very long ago, had been
streets of houses. The city had been destroyed and tens of thousands of
people had perished in a matter of minutes, and neither fortress towers, nor
marble columns, nor anything else remained as a reminder of the catastrophe.
A pitiful heap of rubbish, bits of walls with shreds of cheap wallpaper
still clinging to them, stucco laths, broken glass and twisted iron beds,
overgrown with pea-trees and nightshade, was all that met the eye. It was
the first destroyed city that Petya had ever seen; and it was not a famous
ancient one from his history book-no, this was a very ordinary, rather small
modern Italian city, inhabited by very ordinary Italians.
Years later, when Petya, a grown man, beheld the ghastly ruins of
European cities, he was still haunted by the ruins of Messina.
It was the same depressing scene of abject poverty everywhere, although
partially concealed by lush southern vegetation and the bright colours of
the Sicilian summer. Most of the inhabitants were still living in temporary
shacks, tents, and huts thrown together from the debris. Multi-coloured rags
were drying on the clothes-lines. Goats grazed on the grass-grown rubbish
heaps. Half-naked children with eyes as shiny as anthracite roamed the razed
streets and poked in the ruins, still hoping to find something of value
there.
The little shacks on the sites of former shops sold postcards,
lemonade, coal, and olives.
The Bacheis walked down the scorching streets of the half-dead city,
surrounded by fishermen, boatmen, and children. They grabbed the tourists'
hands, smiled, looked into their faces, and showered them with torrents of
rapid Italian. These people were neither guides nor beggars, and it was
impossible to understand what they wanted. They patted Petya's sailor's
collar and touched his blue blouse excitedly repeating, "Marinaio russo,
marinaio russo!"
Suddenly, Vasily Petrovich understood what it was all about. He
remembered that a Russian squadron had been anchored off Messina at the time
of the earthquake and that the sailors had selflessly and courageously
helped the people of the doomed city. Petya's regulation naval blouse and
many other things about them told the people that the Bacheis were Russians,
and they were expressing their gratitude, especially to the little Russian
sailor.
They used strange words but understandable gestures to describe the
terrible earthquake and the heroism of the Russian sailors who had rushed
into the burning houses and pulled the injured and the dying from under the
ruins.
A grey-haired, ragged woman, carrying a large earthen pitcher, pushed
her way through the crowd and offered the Bacheis a tray with three glasses
of cold water-aqua frescal-as her only means of expressing her gratitude to
the Russians. Petya's heart swelled with pride, but he regretted that he was
not wearing his sailor's cap and was sorrier still that it did not have the
St. George ribbon.
"Grazie, Russo!" the Italians repeated, shaking hands with all three,
and this was quite understandable.
There were other words spoken too:
"Evviva la rivoluzione, evviva la republica russa!"
Apparently, in the eyes of the Messina fishermen and boatmen, Vasily
Petrovich's dishevelled beard, his steel-framed pince-nez, his
democratic-looking Russian shirt and tussore coat corresponded to their
image of a Russian revolutionary, a man illuminated by the far-off blaze of
1905, the undying glory of the barricades in Presnya District in Moscow and
the mutiny on board the battleship Potemkin.
That evening the Palermo weighed anchor, passed out of the Strait of
Messina, entered the Tyrrhenian Sea, and set course for Naples, her home
port.
The stifling night was so black that even the stars that thickly
spangled the velvet sky did little to lighten it. Were it not for the
shimmering, snow-white foam down below, the slight tilt of the deck
underfoot, and the swishing sound of the waves racing past, one would think
the ship was flying, not sailing.
Petya could not fall asleep that night, perhaps because it was their
last night aboard. He paced up and down his favourite walk, the spar-deck
near the wheel-house. The sailor at the helm was as still as a statue. Petya
liked to watch him, waiting for the mysterious, inexplicable moment when,
for no apparent reason, the helmsman would move his hands and turn the wheel
a little. It spun around smoothly and silently; yet immediately, somewhere
right beneath their feet, the engine began to work; they heard short bursts
of escaping steam, a chain rattled, and steel rods moved in their oiled
grooves along the sides, slightly turning the rudder. That meant that the
ship had yawed and the helmsman was bringing her back.
There was something strange about the fact that the ship sailing on its
course should suddenly yaw. What mysterious forces of nature could affect
its simple mechanical movement? The wind? Currents? The motion of the Earth?
Petya did not know the answer, but the realization that these unknown forces
existed and were constantly at work all around him, and that it was possible
to overcome them, instilled in Petya a great respect for the helmsman and a
still greater respect for the compass at which he glanced from time to time.
For the first time in his life Petya really grasped the full meaning of
this wonderful, simple instrument, invented by man's genius to battle
against the dark forces of nature. A brass bowl on a cast-iron stand stood
alongside the wheel, and a brightly illumined dial set on a thin pin seemed
to be floating freely inside it under a glass cover. The disk, or compass
card, was divided into points, degrees, and fractions of degrees. The
navigator had laid a copper ruler to point out their course, and the moment
the ship veered ever so slightly the markings on the disk moved out of
place: then the helmsman, by turning the wheel, would bring them into place
again.
The copper ruler was now pointing towards Naples. Although everything
around them was as black as the bottom of la coal-pit, the ship raced ahead
unerringly, at full speed, making up for the time lost at their
ports-of-call.
Suddenly Petya noticed a strange light away on the horizon. It did not
look like a lighthouse or like the glow of an approaching ship. It was
almost red and very uneven. It shone for a while and went out; two minutes
later it would flare up again, shine and go out again; and so it continued
at regular intervals-a rhythmic appearing and disappearing, but growing
bigger all the time. It was as if someone had put a smouldering matchstick
in his mouth, and the breathing- made the little ember glow brightly.
By now the waves and the edges of a dark night cloud were brushed with
light, and a blast of heat seemed to come from the direction of the glow.
"What can it be?" Petya exclaimed in a frightened voice.
"Stromboli," a familiar voice answered. This was the first mate who had
just come up on the spar-deck. "Il famoso vulcano Stromboli" he repeated
solemnly and handed Petya his large sea binoculars, the dark lenses of which
reflected the red glow of Stromboli.
They were passing the volcano now and Petya looked at it through the
binoculars. Just then a flame shot up, as if coming from the pipe of a
samovar. The fire illuminated the edge of the crater, and Petya even thought
he heard an underwater rumbling and felt a wave of volcanic heat, but it was
only his fancy.
Before long Stromboli had slipped behind; however, its fiery breath
could be seen through the pitch darkness, casting a grim light on the waves
and clouds.
Petya was in ecstasy: he had just seen with his own eyes a
fire-spouting mountain, a real, genuine volcano! It wasn't every schoolboy
who could boast of having seen one. Schoolboy-why, probably not even a
single teacher had ever been so near to a real volcano! Not even the
geography teacher. Not even the head of the school. Maybe the head of the
Education Department had seen one, but certainly not the school inspector.
What would Auntie say when she found out he had seen a volcano! And what la
fuss their friends would make! This time not even Gavrik would wrinkle up
his nose disdainfully, spit through his teeth and say, "Now tell me
another." Too bad there were no witnesses except the helmsman and the first
mate. Perhaps though it was even better that Daddy and Pavlik had slept
through it all. This time Petya would be cock of the walk of the Bachei
family.
Petya waited until the volcano had disappeared completely and then
rushed below anticipating his triumph and Pavlik's humiliation when he would
burst into the cabin and say, "I've just seen a volcano-you've slept through
the whole thing!"
But the triumph was not to be: all the other passengers had long been
lining the rails, and Pavlik, who had been awakened by his waiter friend,
was standing at the stern, his chin pressed against the rail, trying to look
interested while Vasily Petrovich lectured in popular vein on the volcano
they had just observed.
Thereupon Petya went below to the cabin to be the first to inform
Auntie of the great event. He rummaged in his rucksack and found the nicest
of all the Constantinople postcards with a picture of the Galata Tower on
it, and wrote: "Dear Auntie! You'll never guess what happened! Of course,
you won't believe me, but I've just seen a real, active volcano with my own
eyes!"
Petya paused, made a bargain with his conscience, and resolutely added:
"It was erupting!"
By this time Petya was really convinced that the volcano had been
erupting. When he had snatched up his pencil, he was bursting with
impressions and was ready to fill up every inch of space on the postcard
with a magnificent description of a volcano erupting in the open sea. But no
sooner had he written the first majestic sentences than his inspiration
petered out.
To tell the truth, Pliny the Younger had already described an erupting
volcano and Petya, having read the description in his geography textbook,
did not feel like competing with one of Rome's finest writers, especially
since Pliny had described something that he had witnessed, whereas Petya
would have to describe what he had not seen.
And so after the words "It was erupting!" he added: "Your loving nephew
Petya," and hid the postcard in the rucksack, hoping to post it at the first
opportunity.
Thus, if Petya's description of the erupting volcano lacked something
of Pliny's accuracy, its truly classical laconism left the great writer's
effort very much in the shade.
NAPLES AND THE NEAPOLITANS
A number of rocky islands were sighted during the day. Bathed in the
silver light of the noonday sun, they seemed like some ethereal silhouettes
of varying shades of deep blue: the nearer ones a darker hue, the more
distant-lighter. The Palermo was steaming full speed ahead. It had
disembarked the last of the steerage passengers, its freight decks had been
swabbed and scrubbed white, the copper coamings and ladders were shining
brightly, the lifeboats and lifebuoys had had a fresh coat of paint, the
Italian flag was fluttering in the breeze; the Palermo again became a spick
and span ocean liner.
"There's Capri, and Ischia, and Procida," Vasily Petrovich called out
the names of the islands they were passing as they entered the Bay of
Naples.
"Vesuvius!" Pavlik shouted at the top of his lungs. True enough, it was
Vesuvius. The grey-blue silhouette of the twin peaks, with sulphurous smoke
pouring out of one of them, was outlined sharply in the bright haze. It
melted before their eyes, vanished into thin air, and revealed a panorama of
the city and hundreds of ships at anchor in the harbour.
A flock of gulls attacked the Palermo. The graceful white birds floated
on outspread wings, snatching at shreds of greens thrown out of the kitchen
porthole. To tell the truth, Petya was already bored with the ship. At
first, when everything had been new and mysterious, it had fascinated him;
now, however, at the end of the long voyage, it no longer interested him.
But when he set foot on the paved yard of the Naples custom-house, he, like
the Prisoner of Chillon, suddenly regretted his prison.
He felt, after all, that he did not want to part with the ship, with
its wonderful places, strange smells, and the long, narrow, unpainted beech
deck planks caulked with tar and scrubbed clean with sand.
During the customs inspection Petya was terrified lest the Italian
inspector find the letter in his rucksack. However, the more than meagre
baggage of the Bachei family was completely ignored by the customs officers.
The official did not even glance at the unique concoction of the Odessa
harness-and-luggage industry as he passed by. All he did was jab his thumb
in it, and the agent following him drew a circle in chalk on each of their
bags. The Bacheis were now free to pick up their things and go.
There was something humiliating in this official disdain, for they did
examine the other passengers' baggage. These were mainly the expensive
trunks and suitcases of the first-class passengers, covered with gay hotel
labels. The officials minutely examined the exquisite clothing, pulled out
Syrian shawls, crystal humidors of Turkish tobacco, and round jars of
Russian caviar, and respectfully demanded duty.
Vasily Petrovich and the boys hoisted their Alpine bags with some
effort and hauled the bursting sack out on to the scorching square. They
were immediately surrounded by a crowd of screeching hotel agents. Each had
a gold-braided cap with the name of his hotel on the peak. Petya had once
witnessed a similar scene at the Odessa railway station, whither they had
gone to meet Grandma. It had amused him to see a swarm of vociferous agents
dragging at the coat-tails of a protesting gentleman clutching his umbrella.
But the Odessa agents were no match for their Neapolitan colleagues.
The Neapolitans were three times more numerous and four times as audacious.
They shrieked as they attacked Vasily Petrovich: "Grand-Hotel! Continental!
Livorno! Vesuvio! Hotel di Roma! Hotel di Firenze! Hotel di Venezia!" They
brandished wads of brightly illustrated prospectuses and promised fabulously
low rates, unheard-of comforts, suites facing Vesuvius, family table d'hote,
breakfasts thrown in, and excursions to Pompeii.
Vasily Petrovich waved frantically to a group of porters in blue
blouses with badges on their chests who were sitting on the flagstones,
utterly indifferent to the massacre of defenceless tourists by hotel agents.
Vasily Petrovich tried to break through to the cabmen. He was successful
too, but they were as impassive as the porters: they sat on their high boxes
with meters, smoking long, foul-smelling cigars, and not one of them offered
Vasily Petrovich a helping hand.
On the contrary, when he had finally managed to gain the lower step of
one of the cabs, the cabman glared at him, snatched off his well-worn felt
hat, shook it menacingly at Vasily Petrovich and screamed, "No, signor, no!"
so that Vasily Petrovich was forced to retreat.
There was something sinister about the strange indifference of the
cabmen and porters. Vasily Petrovich did not know what to make of it. Later
on they found out that they had arrived in Naples the day the coachmen,
porters, and tramway workers had struck work in protest against the
government's preparations for war with Turkey.
But this did not help the Bacheis very much, for the hotel agents,
apparently satisfied that Italy should conquer Tripoli, were not on strike.
Despite his deep dislike of the police, Vasily Petrovich was about ready to
appeal to two carabineers for help. They were as alike as peas in a pod:
both wore three-cornered hats and black trousers with red stripes down the
sides, both had the same type of moustache and both had big noses. But at
that moment things took a different turn.
A small, fat, shrewd hotel agent had the bright idea that the way to a
father's heart lay through his love for his son. He hoisted a kicking Pavlik
on to one shoulder, the plaid rucksack on to the other, and made off down a
side-street. Vasily Petrovich and Petya dashed after him, but it took them a
good forty minutes of fast sprinting to catch up with him at the Hotel
Esplanade.
When he had finally deposited Pavlik and the rucksack in the lobby, the
agent hung his cap up on a peg over the desk and was immediately transformed
from agent into owner of the establishment. It turned out that he also
personified four others: waiter, chef, lift-boy and porter-in other words,
he was the entire personnel of the hotel, not counting the chamber-maid and
cashier- posts held by his wife.
The Hotel Esplanade was located between a second-hand clothing shop and
an eating-house in an alley so narrow that no two carriages could ever pass
each other there. This, however, was a minor detail, for the alley was
actually a large stairway of wide and worn stone slabs. Garments of every
hue were drying on the clotheslines strung between the tall, narrow houses,
and although Naples was resplendent in the radiant colours of June, the
alley was dark and damp; even a green gas-lamp shone in the window of the
eating-house.
Hotel Esplanade boasted but four rooms, all of them facing the
glassed-in gallery of the courtyard which was very much like the courtyards
in the older parts of Odessa-the only difference being that here the
flowering oleanders and azaleas grew not out of green tubs, but straight out
of the ground, and the garbage heap was full of oyster shells, red crayfish
shells, and squeezed-out lemons, in addition to green vegetable parings and
fish entrails. When Vasily Petrovich saw the two forbidding canopied beds,
the chipped iron wash-basin adorned with views of the Bay of Naples, and the
wallpaper which told only too well of bedbugs, he grabbed up his rucksack,
ready to run from the den, but his tired legs failed him. He sank into a
wobbly chair, took out his Italian phrase-book, and began bargaining. The
proprietor insisted on ten lire a day, Vasily Petrovich offered one. They
finally settled for three, which was only one lira more than it should have
cost. They were now free to begin the sightseeing. But Vasily Petrovich
suddenly felt too tired to get up from his chair. Now only did he realize
how exhausting the long sea voyage had been, although it had seemed so
pleasant and comfortable. With an effort he reached the bed and lay there
all in, wiping the glasses of his pince-nez with his handkerchief.
"I think," he said, addressing the boys with an apologetic smile, "I'll
have a nap. You should have forty winks too. Take off your sandals and lie
down for a bit."
Pavlik, who could hardly keep his eyes open, began taking off his
sandals. Petya, however, was dying to see the city. He wanted to send off
his correspondence: the letter Gavrik had given him and the postcard he had
written to Auntie, describing the "eruption" of Stromboli. Father was
opposed to the idea, but Petya said with such assurance that he wasn't a
baby and looked so deeply pious as he faced the crucifix, crossed himself,
and promised he'd be back the minute he bought the stamp, that Vasily
Petrovich finally agreed and gave him a silver lira for the stamps. Pavlik's
eyes turned green at the sight of it. "What about me?" he said, buckling on
his sandals.
"You should go to sleep," Petya answered coldly.
"I'm not asking you, I'm asking- Daddy."
"God forbid!" Father was aghast at the mere thought.
"I like that," Pavlik said, his face all screwed up, just in case he
might have to start crying at a moment's notice.
"What do you mean-I like that?" Father asked sternly.
"Petka can go and I've got to stay in?"
"First of all, don't say, 'I like that.' It's about time you learned
how to behave, and secondly, say, 'Petya, 'riot ' Petka.' "
"All right," Pavlik agreed readily. "But if Petya can go, why can't I?"
"Because Petya's older than you are."
Pavlik hated that argument. No matter how much he grew, or how hard he
tried, he was always smaller than Petya.
"It's not my fault that Petya's older," he whined. "He goes everywhere,
but I can't go anywhere!"
"I have a special reason for going. I have my correspondence to attend
to, while you just want to come along to make mischief," Petya said in his
haughtiest voice.
"Maybe I have correspondence too? Daddy, please, let me go!"
"It's out of the question!" Father said resolutely, and Pavlik's
spirits rose.
As a rule, after saying, "It's out of the question," Father would pause
arid add, "but if you give me your word that you'll behave..." or something
to that effect. And so to speed things up, Pavlik shammed a fit of tears,
stealing looks at Father out of the corner of his eye. He knew his daddy.
"However," Vasily Petrovich said, unable to stand the tears, "if you
promise to-"
"Oh, I swear by the Holy Cross!" Pavlik said quickly -and blundered.
Father frowned.
"How many times have I told you never to swear! An oath degrades the
person who takes it. When you promise something, it is enough to give your
word. Any decent person's word can only be sacred. So', one's word is
enough."
"I give you my word," Pavlik said triumphantly, buckling a sandal, and,
in his haste, made another blunder.
"What do you give me your word about?"
"That I'll behave."
"That's the main thing. And don't move an inch from Petya."
"I won't."
"You won't what?"
"I won't move an inch from Petya," Pavlik said.
"Very well then."
"And tell him to listen to me," Petya added, "otherwise I won't take
him, because he'll surely get lost and I'll be responsible for him."
"I won't get lost," Pavlik said.
"Yes, you will! You always get lost!"
"Who got lost last time, in Odessa, when we nearly got left behind, and
when Auntie was so worried she nearly went crazy?"
"Fibber!"
"I'm not fibbing."
"Now then, children, no quarrelling!"
"It's not me, it's Petka."
"In that case, you'll both stay in."
"No, Daddy!" Pavlik pleaded. "I give you my word I'll behave."
"And do what you're told?" Petya asked.
"Yes," Pavlik answered.
"Without fail?"
"Yes." Pavlik sounded slightly annoyed.
"Don't forget, now!" Petya said pompously and severely.
"All right, run along," Father mumbled sleepily as he curled up on the
bed under the ridiculous canopy. "And for heaven's sake don't get lost," he
added in a barely audible whisper.
He was snoring before Petya and Pavlik got to the bottom of the stairs.
Of course, they got lost.
Once out in the street, Petya took Pavlik by the hand. Pavlik was
furious, but could not -say a thing, since he had memorized Father's saying,
"If you've given your word, keep it."
The first thing was to buy a stamp. This was not as simple a matter as
in Russia, where lots of shops sold postage stamps. Shops were not lacking
here, but none of them sold stamps. In fact, the shopkeepers could not even
understand what it was that Petya wanted, although he glibly rattled off the
Italian he had learned on the ship.
"Prego, signor," Petya .said bravely, but there was a frightened look
in his eyes, "prego, signor... una, una ..." However, he could not explain
what the "una" he wanted was, because he did not know the word for "stamp"
in Italian.
He would then pull out the envelope, spit on his finger, and give a
wonderful performance of sticking an imaginary stamp on an envelope. "Don't
you see, una stamp. Una stamp." At which point the shopkeeper would gesture
dramatically in the true Neapolitan manner and hold forth volubly in
language that left Petya bewildered. This scene was repeated about ten
times, until, finally, after they had gone up and down three or four
streets, the owner of a wine-vault that was bedecked inside and out with
clusters of mandolin-shaped raffia-covered bottles took them to the corner
and pointed far off into the distance. He accompanied the gesture by a long
theatrical monologue; the only two words Petya was able to make out were
posta centrals, that is, the central post-office.
The boys set out in the direction indicated. Petya would stop a
passer-by occasionally and, bestowing a severe look on Pavlik, would ask:
"Prego, signor, la posta centrale?"
Some of the passers-by understood him, some did not, but all were eager
to help the two young foreigners who wanted to buy stamps.
The Neapolitans proved to be splendid people-kind and warm-hearted,
though somewhat fussy. They were not a bit like the Neapolitans of the
pictures: handsome men in short trousers and wide crimson sashes with red
kerchiefs on their curly heads and ravishingly beautiful women in lace
mantillas.
They were very ordinary-looking people; the men wore black jackets and
faded hats, the women, black blouses and no hats. All the men had one thing
in common: no shirt collars-just a stud at the neck in front of their open
shirts; the women wore coral ornaments.
They took the greatest interest in Petya and Pavlik, they forgot about
their own affairs, and a large, noisy crowd gathered to take the boys to the
post-office. The gathering stopped at every corner and had a heated
discussion as to which street to take next.
They threw torrents of words at each other as they dragged the boys in
different directions and if the boys had not been holding on to each other
so persistently, they most certainly would have been dragged apart. More and
more people joined the crowd. Ragged, olive-skinned street urchins, lively
as little devils, ran before the crowd as if they were accompanying a band.
An old organ-grinder with a long, foul-smelling cigar stuck under his
yellow-white moustache trailed along at the end of the procession.
They were now walking down the middle of the street. People peered out
of windows, curious to know what it was all about; when they found out,
they, too, would gesticulate wildly, pointing out the shortest way. A
kind-hearted signorina wiped Pavlik's hot neck with her handkerchief and
called him bambino.
Stray dogs, every bit as nasty as those in Constantinople, attached
themselves to the throng. The whole business was developing into a street
scandal.
Petya was becoming nervous. The only thing that kept him going was the
knowledge that he, as the elder brother, was responsible to his father for
Pavlik's safety. He rattled off his Italian, mixing it with French words
from Margot's French textbook and Russian exclamations.
"Si, signorino, si, signorino," the Neapolitans said soothingly, seeing
how excited he was.
At the same time, Petya was taking in all he could of the famous city.
At first they passed through narrow, dark alleys, with iron gas-lamps on the
walls of the houses. Then they suddenly came out upon a dazzling white
square with a fountain and an ancient church, through the open doors of
which came the solemn sounds of an organ.
Once they caught a fleeting glimpse of the unbelievably blue sea, the
beach, and a row of stately, hairy date-palms in the distance. They crossed
a busy shopping centre. Then they skirted a bleak monastery wall with a huge
statue of a saint in a niche. They went up and down steep street stairways,
past tall, narrow houses where some of the windows with green shutters were
real, the others painted on for the sake of symmetry, but so expertly done
that one could hardly tell the difference.
They reached a street which was blocked completely by a long row of
empty tram-cars. Striking conductors and drivers, carrying their leather
bags and brass keys, were walking up and down, exchanging a few words with
the passers-by.
The moment the crowd accompanying the boys saw the tram-cars, they lost
all interest in the young foreigners. Attention was now focussed entirely on
the strikers, especially as the first rows of demonstrators, carrying red
and black flags, portraits and slogans, appeared at the far end of the
street.
The people rushed towards them, leaving the boys to their own devices.
Pavlik grasped Petya's hand and watched the demonstrators approach.
Grim-looking bearded men in wide-brimmed hats carried a black flag with
a white inscription, and portraits of other bearded men, among whom Pavlik,
much to his surprise, recognized Lev Tolstoi.
Behind the bearded men came others with shaven chins and in small caps.
They carried a red flag and the portraits of two more bearded men whom Petya
had never seen before. These were Marx and Engels.
The people in the demonstration were workers, porters, stokers,
sailors, and shop assistants. They wanted to keep in slow step, but it was
no good, the more they tried, the more they quickened their pace to their
natural Italian tempo.
They waved their hats and walking-sticks and shouted out slogans:
"Long live socialism! Workers of the world, unite! Down with war
expenditures! Down with the government of war! We want peace!"
Passers-by joined the demonstration. Many of them were wheeling
bicycles. Street vendors pushed their handcarts. The old organ-grinder had
joined them, too. Everything was bathed in the rosy glow of sunset, lending
a theatrical setting to the scene, but still Petya was greatly alarmed. He
squeezed Pavlik's hand, and his alarm was transmitted to Pavlik.
"Petka," he shouted, "this is a revolution!"
"No, it's a demonstration," Petya said. "Who cares-let's run!"
But they were now caught up in the crowd and had no idea how to get out
or which way to run.
Just then they heard loud voices behind them, speaking Russian. A
number of people, including a boy Petya's age in a jacket, were elbowing
their way through the crowd, closer to the marchers. The boy in the jacket
had a high forehead and a duck-like nose with drops of perspiration on it;
he was pushing and shoving with all his might. A thin man with a yellow
moustache above a shaven chin, wearing a cream-coloured summer coat and cap
all awry, apparently the boy's father, had a firm grip on his shoulder and
kept repeating in a hollow bass voice:
"Take it easy, Max, take it easy!" He stretched his long, sinewy neck
over the heads of the crowd and looked sharply ahead; although urging Max to
take it easy, he himself, apparently, was unable to follow this advice. At
times he would turn around and shout to someone behind, accenting his o's in
a Nizhny-Novgorod fashion.
"Come closer, gentlemen! Come closer. Last year these
anarchist-syndicalists were lying on the tracks blocking the way with their
bodies, but look at them today. There's a world of difference in their
tactics!"
"Yes, you're right!" a man in a pince-nez and panama replied rolling
his r's and swallowing the endings of the words. "This proves my point that
although Russia has become the centre of revolution since 1905, still, the
consolidation of the European proletariat is progressing rapidly. I beg your
pardon," he said to Petya in passing, as the sleeve of his ample jacket
brushed against the boy's head.
He was followed by another Russian in a cheap, ill-fitting suit and a
new felt hat on his round, firmly-set head. The new-comer had a bamboo
walking-stick on his arm and forged ahead, cutting his way through the crowd
with his bulging chest; he saw only the demonstrators who seemed to draw his
whole being irrepressibly. His knitted eyebrows, twitching face muscles,
parted lips, and small angry eyes-all seemed strangely familiar to Petya.
The arm with the bamboo cane thrust Petya aside, and the boy had a good
look at the short fingers, the thick, square-cut nails, the white knuckles,
and an anchor tattooed on the bulging muscle between thumb and forefinger.
Petya had no time to wonder why the little faded blue anchor seemed so
familiar or who these Russians were and what they were doing here, because
the crowd swayed and surged first to the right, then to the left, and Petya
caught a glimpse of the three-cornered hats and narrow red stripes on the
trousers of the carabineers at the far end of the street. He saw the black
plumes of the bersaglieri's hats as they passed on the double, rifles at the
ready.
A harsh, menacing bugle blast pierced the air. For a split second a
hush descended on the crowd. It was broken by the sound of shattering glass,
and then everything spun around in a howling, screaming, wailing, running
mass.
Several shots rang out.
Petya and Pavlik were swept away by the stampede; they held hands
tightly, trying to keep together. Petya forgot that they were abroad and at
any minute he expected to see Cossacks gallop out of a side-street, lashing
out left and right with their whips. He thought he was running down Odessa's
Malaya Arnautskaya, an impression heightened by the fact that here, too,
they were treading on scattered chestnuts.
Someone knocked Pavlik over. He fell and skinned his knee, but Petya
pulled him to his feet and dragged him on. Pavlik was so scared that he
forgot to cry, he kept repeating:
"Run! Hurry, let's run!"
Finally, they were swept into a narrow courtyard paved with worn
flagstones and cluttered with dustbins. There were lovely iron grates on the
ground-floor windows. The boys ran under a dirty marble archway, where each
step rang and resounded like a pistol shot, and found themselves out in the
street, opposite a small park on a steep slope. Several people were
scrambling up the dark, weathered stones that covered the slope. This was
all that was left of the crowd that had swept them into the courtyard. The
boys began to climb the slope too, but it was much steeper and higher than
it had seemed. A marble lion's head jutted out of the wall, and a stream of
water spurted from an iron pipe in the lion's mouth into a marble basin.
Petya edged Pavlik towards the basin and tried to push him up. But Pavlik
could not get a grip.
"Come on, climb up!" Petya shouted. "You clumsy ox!" Just then more
people ran out of the marble gateway. These were the Russians-the boy in the
short jacket and the three men Petya had seen in the crowd.
The boy was tugging his father along by the sleeve, but the father kept
stopping and turning back. His fists were clenched and his cap had slid to
the back of his head; a shock of yellow hair showed from under the tilted
peak; his moustache bristled and his blue eyes burned with an angry fire.
"Do you want to be killed? Come on," the boy was saying, as he hung on
to him tightly, "take it easy!"
"Alexei Maximovich, you're much too reckless! You have no right to take
such a risk!" the man in the pince-nez said, rubbing his bruised shoulder.
"I'll be damned if I don't go back and give that long-nosed idiot in
the striped trousers one in the face!" Alexei Maximovich muttered in his
deep voice. "I'll teach him to respect women!" A fit of coughing reduced him
to silence.
The boy in the short jacket was holding on grimly to his father's
sleeve. The man with the anchor on his hand also seemed ready to dash back
into the fray and restrained himself with difficulty.
"Come on, climb, Pavlik!" Petya shouted desperately. At the sound of
his voice the Russians turned to him.
"Look, Russians!" the boy said.
"What are you doing here?" the man in the pince-nez said sternly.
The man with the anchor on his hand scaled the wall as nimbly as a cat,
extended his bamboo cane, and helped the others up, one by one, including
Petya and a tear-stained Pavlik.
It was so calm and peaceful there, it was difficult to imagine that a
few moments before, somewhere nearby, soldiers and carabineers had been
breaking up the demonstration, broken glass had jangled on the pavement,
people had fallen, and the revolvers had barked in the streets.
Alexei Maximovich looked at Petya and Pavlik quizzically.
"Well, young gentlemen of the Russian Empire, and what may you be doing
here?"
Feeling that they were now among fellow-countrymen, the boys' spirits
rose. They kept interrupting each other in their haste to relate their
adventures, but all the while Petya had the feeling that somehow the men-
Alexei Maximovich and the one with the anchor on his hand-were familiar. No
matter how he strained his memory he could not place Alexei Maximovich, but
he soon remembered and recognized the other, although he could not quite
believe it at first.
"Well, well, you travellers, things aren't so bad," Alexei Maximovich
said. "One skinned knee for the two of you. It could have been much worse."
With these words he gathered Pavlik under his arm ' and carried him
over to the fountain. He washed his knee thoroughly, bandaged it swiftly and
tightly with a handkerchief, set the boy down, and told him to walk up and
down.
"Fine! You can return to the ranks now. First rinse your face and paws
in the basin, though, or you'll really frighten your father. By the way,
what's your name?"
"Pavlik."
"And your brother's?"
"Petya."
"Excellent. Max, come over here. I have a job for you. Take these two
Apostles-Peter and Paul-to the post-office, help them buy a stamp, drop the
letter in the letter-box, tell them how to get back to their hotel, and come
back as fast as you can, otherwise we'll miss the boat. Arrivederci, signori
Apostles, bon voyage!" he said, shaking hands with Petya and Pavlik. His
large graceful hand was saffron-yellow from the sun.
"Merci," the well-brought-up Pavlik answered, awkwardly scraping his
bandaged leg.
"Come on," the boy said, shepherding the two of them. "The post-office
is only about five minutes' walk from here."
"You probably don't remember me, but I recognized you," Petya wanted to
say as he went up to the man with the anchor on his hand; however, something
held him back. He said nothing and looked -straight into the man's eyes.
"Maybe he'll recognize me too," he thought anxiously. But the man,
evidently, did not recognize him, though he noticed his blouse, fingered the
material, and said:
"Where was it made?"
"In the tailor's shop of the Naval Battalion," Petya answered.
"I can see that right away. Regulation stuff!"
It seemed to Petya that there was no mirth in his chuckle.
"Come on, fellows, let's go!" the boy said. "We've got to get back to
Capri."
The post-office really was a stone's throw away; however, the boys
managed to talk a few things over on the way.
"What's your name?" Petya asked.
"Max."
"But Max and Moritz, seeing that, climbed the roof to get the hat,"
Petya recited from a well-known illustrated children's book of the day by
Wilhelm Busch.
"Trying to be funny?" Max said menacingly. He was apparently sick of
being teased about his name, and he dug Petya lightly in the ribs.
Of course, in other circumstances, Petya would never have let such a
thing pass, but this time he decided not to make a fuss about it.
"Who's your father?" he asked, changing the subject.
"You mean you don't know my father?" Max appeared to be surprised.
"Why should I know him?" Petya asked.
"Well, because everyone seems to know him," Max mumbled in confusion.
He had a bad habit of mumbling, and he always spoke as if he were sucking on
a sweet.
"Who is he, then?"
"A dyer," Max answered.
"You're fibbing!" Petya said.
"Honestly, he's a dyer," Max insisted, sucking on the imaginary sweet.
"Don't you believe me? Ask anyone. He's a dyer and his name is Peshkov."
"Quit fibbing! Dyers aren't like that."
"There are all kinds of dyers."
"If he's a dyer, what is he doing here, in Italy?"
"He lives here."
"Why doesn't he live in Russia?"
"Curiosity killed the cat."
There was something in the way he said the familiar phrase that
reminded Petya of Gavrik, Near Mills, Terenty, and Sinichkin-of everything
associated in his mind with the word "revolution." Now it had suddenly
reared up before him here, in Naples, in the immobile tram-cars, the running
crowd, the sound of shattering glass, the shots, the sinister blue-black
plumes on the bersaglieri's hats, the flags, the portraits, and, finally, at
the sight of the man with the anchor on his hand, for he had recognized the
sailor from the Potetnkin.
Petya wanted to ask Max how Rodion Zhukov happened to be in Naples,
about the man in the pince-nez, and what they were all doing in Italy, but
at that moment they stopped outside the post-office.
"Let's have the correspondence," Max said.
"What for?" Petya asked suspiciously.
"Come on, hand it over! I haven't time to argue. Where is it going?"
"The postcard's for my aunt in Odessa, the letter's going to Paris."
"To Paris?"
"Yes."
"Then we'll send it express."
"What's express?"
"Hayseed!" Max said, making sucking noises with his tongue. "Express
means express. You know, by non-stop express train. Daddy always sends his
Paris letters by express. Give me the letter."
Petya hesitated for a moment, then pulled the creased envelope from his
pocket. Max snatched it from him, ran over to the window, and began to speak
a rapid, if lisping, Italian.
"What about the money?" Petya shouted, but instead of answering, Max
kicked out his foot several times, as much as to say: keep quiet!
Two minutes later he walked over to Petya and handed him the receipt.
"What about the money?" Petya repeated.
"Silly, I send off a dozen letters every day, and 1 have a whole heap
of stamps. See?" He took out a handful of stamps from his pocket. "When I
stay with Dad I always post his letters for him. But how do you know
Vladimir Ilyich?"
"Who's Vladimir Ilyich?" Petya asked.
"Lenin."
"Who's Lenin?"
"The man who lives in Paris on Rue Marie Rose. Ulyanov. I read the
address on the envelope. The letter's for him, isn't it?"
"Sure it is!" Petya said. "But I didn't write it."
"Did your father tell you to post it?" "No. It was given to me in
Odessa. I was asked to post it." And Petya blushed suddenly. Max nodded his
round head.
"I know what you mean. Don't look so suspicious. We often send letters
to Lenin ourselves. That is, my father writes them and I post them off. And
we always send them express. Now, tell me where you are staying." "At the
Hotel Esplanade."
Max frowned and that made him look more like his father than ever.
"I don't think it's very far from here. Go straight down this street
till you come to a fountain, turn left, cross two more streets and you'll be
right in front of your hotel. Arrivederci, I must run now."
He shook hands with the two boys hurriedly, crossed the street, turned
the corner, and disappeared behind a painted statue of a Madonna in a niche,
adorned with flowers and lemon branches with tiny green lemons on them.
Hand it over," Pavlik said as he winced and rubbed his knee.
"What?"
"Hand it over!" Pavlik repeated and even stretched out his hand. "Hand
over half the lira."
"What are you talking about?"
' "About the lira. The one Daddy gave you for the stamp."
"Oh, so that's what you mean! Well, let me tell you something." And
Petya put his thumb to his nose and waggled his fingers.
"That's thieving," Pavlik said, whining piteously and throwing out
quick glances.
"Shut up!" Petya hissed. "All the Italians are watching us."
"I don't care! Let them all see what a thief you are!" And Pavlik
wailed louder. That was too much for Petya.
"All right," he said dryly. "If that's the kind of pig you are, you can
have half of it. But we'll have to get it changed first."
"No, you give me the lira, and I'll give you fifty centesimos change."
Pavlik rummaged around under his blouse, felt something there, and pulled
out a small silver coin.
"Where did you get that?" Petya asked severely in a good imitation of
Vasily Petrovich's voice.
"I won it from the cook on the Palermo!" Pavlik answered not without
pride.
"How many times have I told you not to gamble, you wretch!"
"Well, what about you? Who yanked all the buttons off Daddy's uniform?"
"That was when I was small."
"Well, I'm small now," Pavlik reasoned.
"Yes, and what a rat you are," Petya said angrily. "Just wait. I'll
tell Daddy all about it!"
"And you'll be a telltale till you die!" Pavlik shouted triumphantly.
"Gelato! Gelato! Gelato!" a heavenly Italian tenor sang out. The boys
saw an ice-cream vendor wheeling along the same kind of green box the Odessa
ice-cream vendors had; the only difference was that this one was much
longer, it was decorated with scenes of Naples, and had four wheels instead
of two.
The boys' eyes met, and at that moment peace was restored as well as a
feeling of deep affection, all based on a passionate desire to disregard
Father's iron rule; never to buy anything in the street and never, never to
eat anything without permission.
They read the same burning question in each other's eyes at that
instant: what was to be done if there were no one to give permission? The
most natural solution was: if there is no one about, we'll have to eat
without permission.
Petya, the linguist, stepped forward and opened his mouth to say
something that started with the words, "Prego, signor..."
But the handsome young ice-cream vendor, with a hat resembling a red
stocking on his curly locks, was a bright fellow. He opened the long box,
and the boys were astounded to see a huge chunk of ice instead of the two
familiar copper containers with tin lids. The ice-cream man took out a
little steel plane and started planing the ice log. Then he packed two
glasses full of ice shavings and poured an artificially bright-green liquid
from a bottle over them.
The boys were fascinated. For some reason, though, it was not at all
sweet, and they soon felt as if they had eaten melted water-colours.
The vendor was not wasting time. He soon had another two glasses ready;
this time he poured something so dazzlingly pink over them that Pavlik
turned green at the memory of the rahat-lakoum he had had in Constantinople.
Petya refused the proffered ices. Using Vasily Petrovich's firm gesture, he
said "Basta!" in faultless Italian, paid the man ten centesimos, and hauled
Pavlik off without another word.
The bad taste of the strange ices was forgotten the moment the boys
came to a booth snuggling against an old stone wall from which a stream of
spring water flowed.
There was a basket of enormous Neapolitan lemons on the counter next to
some jars of powdered sugar and tall glasses.
In a twinkling of an eye the man at the counter had sliced two lemons
in half, put them through a squeezer, and caught the juice in two glasses.
He added powdered sugar to the juice and deftly placed the glasses under the
stream of water. They filled up with something breath-takingly pearly and
foaming at the rims, and the glasses became dimmed. The boys were entranced
the moment their parched lips touched the wonderful beverage.
The sun was setting. A round purple-pink evening cloud hung over the
white square and the fountain. It was so vast that the people, the houses,
and even the church spires seemed tiny beneath it.
There was something awe-inspiring about the beautiful scene. The boys
turned left, as Max had told them, and ran homewards, but the weird light
cast by the cloud made the city still more alien and unfamiliar. They could
not recognize a single street.
Night was falling rapidly, although the cloud still glowed in the now
purple sky. Whichever way the boys turned, it followed them, its round
crimson edges peeping out from behind the roof-tops. The narrow streets were
fast becoming crowded with people out for a walk, as is the custom in
southern cities towards evening. The air was full of the sound of scuffing
feet on the stone pavements. The heat of the day was replaced by the heat of
the evening, not so dry perhaps, but more stifling.
Streaks of light fell on the pavements from the open doorways of the
cafes and bars. The tinkling of mandolins drifted down from balconies. The
mingled smells of hot coffee, gas, anisette, oysters, fried fish, and lemons
seemed twice as strong. Women fanned their faces, and the ice-cream vendors
and news-boys sang out louder and more melodiously.
Coral-sellers mysteriously appeared in doorways. Petya felt there was
something in the highest degree dangerous and sinful about their bowlers,
shoved down over their sinister eyes, their sugary smiles beneath the dyed
moustaches, their velvet vests and morning coats, their dark bejewelled
fingers, and about the wide, flat boxes hanging round their necks on stout
belts which they supported in front of them while they silently displayed
their treasures to passing ladies: they held out blood-red corals, strings
of smaller corals, and pale-pink ones that seemed almost white and were as
big and smooth as beans; they displayed mounted Pompeii cameos and clusters
of translucent gems. Set out on black velvet and illuminated by the deathly
glare of the gas-lamps, the little stones gave Petya a strange impression of
being tiny inanimate creatures from another planet.
Pavlik was more worried by the hostile eyes of the vendors; he thrust
his hand inside his blouse, clenching his fist tightly over the small
Italian coins there.
One of the side-streets seemed vaguely familiar. The boys turned the
corner and ran along the flagstones up the hill. Suddenly, the houses ended
and they saw Vesuvius. They had apparently approached it from another side,
as it was quite different now: it had only one peak and was gigantic. They
were almost alongside it. The volcano was bathed in the last rays of the
dying sunset, a monstrous cap of sulphurous smoke hung over the peak,
seething with the scorching heat of molten iron, and it seemed as if
Vesuvius was ready to erupt at any minute. The boys ever, thought they heard
an underground tremor.
They were so panic-stricken that they rushed madly downhill and bumped
right into their dishevelled father, who had been searching the streets for
them for the past three hours.
He was so relieved at seeing them he even forgot to scold them. They
were all so exhausted after the day that they flopped on to their beds the
minute they got back and did not even bother to wash up. They slept like
logs, despite the impossible heat, the droning mosquitoes, and the noises
and music coming from the street all night long.
Next morning marked the beginning of an exciting and delightful life
which swept them up and whirled them through cities and hotels until, a
month and a half later, utterly worn out, the travellers recrossed the
Russian border and found themselves home once more.
Although they had followed a well-planned route, whenever Petya looked
back on that journey it always seemed to him to have been a mad jumble of
unrelated travelling impressions, of beautiful scenery, palaces, fountains,
squares and, of course, museums.
The Bacheis had too little money to allow themselves the luxury of
stopping somewhere along the route for an extra day to rest up, look around,
and gather their thoughts and impressions.
For instance, they spent only three days in Naples, but into those
three days they crammed: a boat trip to the Isle of Capri to see the famous
Blue Grotto and, on the way hack, a walk round Sorrento and Castellamrnare;
a visit to the site of the excavations at Pompeii and to Vesuvius, climbing
nearly as high as the crater; they went to practically every museum, art
gallery, and church in Naples, including the famous Aquarium, where the boys
beheld the magic of the submarine world behind the glass cases, illuminated
from above like the stage of a unique theatre. There, in the Mediterranean
Sea water, among the white coral trees and polyps which resembled blue and
red chrysanthemums, giant lobsters crawled over lovely sea-shells and fish
swam up and down like interplanetary dirigibles that had reached Mars from
the Earth.
As they sat in the stuffy railway carriage, about ready to leave Naples
for Rome, Vasily Petrovich looked out of the window and said with some
uncertainty:
"If I'm not mistaken, that's Alexei Maximovich Gorky." He adjusted his
pince-nez, leaned out of the window, and began to scrutinize someone.
"Gorky!" he exclaimed confidently.
Petya stuck his head out under his father's arm. A rather large group
of people were strolling down the platform. They were carrying travelling
bags and speaking loudly in Russian. Petya immediately singled out the tall,
slightly stooped figure of the man who had recently bandaged Pavlik's knee.
Now he knew why the man had seemed so familiar, for he had often seen
his photographs in magazines and on postcards. It was Gorky, the famous
writer. Petya also spotted the sailor carrying a cheap suitcase.
A woman in mourning passed, accompanied by a girl of about thirteen,
evidently her daughter. He caught a glimpse of a small face with serious
eyes and lips pressed tightly together in grief, a dark chestnut braid tied
with a black ribbon and thrown over a thin shoulder.
Then the train pulled out, and the group on the platform slipped
backward. Petya had a last glimpse of Gorky, the sailor, the woman, and the
girl. They were standing beside a train at the other side of the platform.
Apparently, some of the party were leaving, and the others were seeing them
off.
"Gorky! Gorky!" Petya yelled, waving his hat.
The girl turned and looked at Petya. Their eyes met. At that instant a
cloud of acrid smoke enveloped him. Petya shut his eyes, but he was not
quick enough, for a tiny cinder flew into1 his eye and became lodged under
the upper lid.
The subsequent torment killed all the pleasure of the journey from
Naples to Rome.
A nail in your shoe or a cinder in your eye! We have all suffered from
these evils at one time or other. It starts as a slightly unpleasant feeling
and gradually drives the victim frantic with pain.
At first Petya was just uncomfortable from the alien body lodged in his
eye. The eye was watery and he was certain the tears would wash the cinder
out and bring a feeling of blessed relief. But the tears kept streaming down
his face, while the cinder stayed put. It was lodged way up under the lid
and scratched and irritated the eyeball at the slightest movement.
Blinded by tears and feeling that his eye was on fire, Petya rushed up
and down the stuffy carriage, not knowing what to do. In his agony he bumped
into the other passengers. He bruised his knee, but the new pain could not
eliminate the old one.
Father insisted he sit quietly and not rub his eye under any
circumstances, for then the cinder would wash out by itself. But it did not.
Petya began to rub his eye again; the pain became unbearable. He moaned,
screamed, and in his despair beat out a tattoo on the floor with his heels.
With shaking hands Father tried to raise the eyelid and get at the cinder
with the tip of his handkerchief. Petya would not let him. He kept running
back and forth to the wash-room, where he would pour some tepid water from
the wash-basin into his cupped palm and bathe his eye in it. Nothing helped.
It was infinitely worse than a toothache.
In the rare moments when the pain subsided, Petya saw dry, barren
hills, white dust on the highway, level crossings and little huts of the
trackmen behind rickety fences made of old sleepers and surrounded by
sunflowers, hollyhocks, and dirty pigs; all these flashed by the carriage
windows in the glare of the Italian noon. Were it not for the groves of
lovely Italian pines, their spreading branches and almost black needles, one
would think the train was approaching a town in the Ukraine instead of Rome.
All this was bleary and flitting, there was but one impression, one
scene that remained constant: the railway platform in Naples, the group of
people, the woman in mourning, and the girl with the black ribbon in her
chestnut hair. She was embedded in his mind as the cinder in his eye.
All things eventually come to an end. Petya's torment ended too. An old
Italian woman with a coral cross on her wrinkled neck sat at the far end of
the carriage. FOT baggage she had a wicker basket with ducks' heads poking
through the top; she had been reading her prayer-book throughout the
journey, but she had missed nothing of what was going on in the carriage.
When Petya for the tenth time rushed to the wash-room to bathe his eye, she
suddenly reached out and grabbed him with her strong, knotty hands, forced
him down on the bench, got hold of his head, and drew it towards her dark,
hairy, witch-like face.
Without a word she raised his eyelid with nimble fingers, opened her
hot mouth, stuck out her long tongue, and licked the cinder that had been
rubbed into the mucous membrane. Petya instantly felt a wave of relief. The
old woman picked the cinder off her tongue, held it triumphantly between two
fingers for all to see, and said something in Italian; the sentence was
greeted with applause, making the ducks quack boisterously.
Then she kissed Petya on the head, crossed him from left to right, and
returned to her prayer-book.
The train pulled into Rome. Three wandering musicians-a mandolin,
guitar, and violin - played their last piece. Thus, to the strains of "Santa
Lucia" and the grating of brakes, they came to a stop.
Again the Bacheis were surrounded by a noisy crowd of agents and guides
as they made their way to an ancient phaeton. The driver cracked his long
whip over the nags, turned the handle of a Large meter attached to the side
of the box, and they jogged off over the sun-scorched squares of Rome, past
spouting fountains that left greenish strips on the paving stones and, like
the needles of a compass, pointed in the direction of the prevailing south
wind. After his recent torture Petya sat back and took his fill of the
sights. It seemed as if his eyesight had improved threefold. He kept turning
this way and that, so as not. to miss a single detail of the famous city.
The lean driver in a squashed black felt hat smothered them in clouds
of foul smoke from his long cigar. Instead of taking the shortest route to
the hotel, he zigzagged through every street in the city. The centesimos in
the window of the meter mounted, rapidly turning into lire; to distract
their attention from the meter, the driver, with a theatrical gesture,
called out the sights. They passed the Caracalla thermae, St. Angel's
Castle, the Tiber, the Forum, St. Peter's, and the Coliseum.
Father spread out a map of Rome on his lap. One would think he could
not believe his eyes and was seeking a theoretical confirmation of the
obvious fact of the existence of the city of Rome and all its famous
landmarks, so well known from paintings and photographs.
The real Rome was not as magnificent as the descriptions and paintings.
Monotonously lighted by the sun, wilted from the heat, it lay spread out on
its ancient hills beneath the pale-blue sky and seemed much simpler and more
beautiful than one had imagined.
The summer streets were deserted. Papal guards stood watch at the
entrance to Vatican City. They wore uniforms of the Middle Ages and were
armed with halberds. Pavlik, who had been to the Opera with Auntie during
the previous winter, now shouted at the top of his voice:
"Look! Look! Huguenots!"
Before Petya could clap his hand over his brother's mouth he shrilled
still louder, bubbling over with joy and surprise:
"Donbasilios! Look, Donbasilios!"
True enough, two Catholic priests were making their way through the
colonnade of St. Peter's. They wore black soutanes and long hats with the
brims rolled up, and carried umbrellas under their arms; no two men could
have looked more like Don Basilio from The 'Barber of Seville than they.
Several monks crossed the square. A barefoot Franciscan went by,
wearing a crude hair-shirt tied with a cord, for all the world like an
ancient prophet. Plump, jolly Benedictines strolled along, telling their
beads, and the sun shone on their tonsures.
Black-robed nuns passed with lowered heads; they had weird-looking,
huge, snow-white, firmly-starched, light-as-a-feather batiste head-dresses.
A little grey donkey pulled a cart. The cart was at least eight feel
high and had solid wooden wheels that creaked as loudly as the first
primitive carts must have creaked, bringing to Petya's mind a picture of
Hannibal's baggage train, moving through the dust at the golden gates of
Rome.
Just then a carriage on springs, harnessed tandem with four black
horses, flew out of a side-street. The spokes of the wheels spun round,
flashing like lightning in the sun. A behatted cardinal reclined on the
leather cushions. Petya caught a glimpse of his bluish cheeks, heavy
eyebrows, and haughty, cruel eyes, pencilled like an actor's.
The cardinal surveyed the Bachei family and the old driver, who had
whipped the hat off his bald head and folded his hands piously. There was no
telling just what it was the prince of the church thought, but he smiled
cordially, freed his thin rosary-entwined hand from his lace cuff and,
without drawing his fingers together, by an imperceptible movement of his
palm, blessed the travellers. His purple robe flashed past and the carriage
vanished, leaving a faint odour of incense in its wake.
Two weeks later, having crossed and recrossed Italy from one end to the
other, the tourists found themselves in Switzerland, strictly in keeping
with Vasily Petrovich's plan. They decided to stop and rest for a bit before
setting out once more.
To tell the truth, they had had enough of changing trains and being on
the go all the time, but it was almost impossible to stop now, for Father
had been tempted to buy some very reasonable special tickets from a travel
agency in Milan, that entitled them to travel without extra cost on any
railway in Switzerland they cared to within a period of sixty days.
Sixty days was too much as far as the Bacheis were concerned, since the
summer holidays would be over in a month and a half. However, the tickets
were valid for sixty days, and what they lost in time they made up on
Pavlik, as they had given his age as seven and bought only two full-fare
third-class tickets for the three of them.
It was cheating, even if petty, and before Vasily Petrovich agreed to
go through with it he stood for a long time wiping the glasses of his
pince-nez in embarrassment and twisting his neck from side to side. But in
the end the tickets were bought and stamped with the date of purchase, thus
marking the beginning of a strange, restless period when they felt that
every day not spent in a railway carriage was ruinous to their finances.
However, they just had to stop for a rest.
ON THE SHORES OF LAKE GENEVA
Here they were, sitting in wicker chairs on the open terrace of a
small, inexpensive boarding-house in Ouchy on the shore of Lake Geneva.
Tiers of hotels, parks, and church spires rose on a slant to the rear of
them and disappeared into the clear sky over Lausanne. A strip of sky-blue
water, dotted with winged sails and gulls, shone through the pleasant green
of the gardens and vineyards. Savoy lay before them across the lake, veiled
in a haze of sunshine; there were velvety meadows, gorges, and valleys
adorned by tiny picturesque villages, and above it all, the wild mountain
range that stretched right across the horizon.
Mont Blanc was supposed to be somewhere in the vicinity, but Vasily
Petrovich tried in vain to locate it through his little opera-glasses, for
the outline of the range was obscured by clouds. This was all the more
disappointing since their room was one "with a view of Mont Blanc."
A middle-aged chamber-maid wished the travellers ban matin and set a
tray-the complet-on the table. It consisted of a tea-set, a straw basked of
tiny bits of toast, butter curls, jam and honey; there was also a sugar-bowl
with midget dominoes of sugar so brittle they had to be picked up gingerly
with sugar tongs, as they crumbled at the slightest pressure.
Vasily Petrovich put on his pince-nez and examined the strange,
yellowish sugar closely. Then he picked up a cube, smelled it, tasted it,
and announced that this was real cane-sugar.
Cane-sugar! The discovery astounded the boys. Petya was especially
excited, for he visualized Auntie's amazement and his friends' jealousy when
they found out that he had seen real cane-sugar with his own eyes and had
even had some in his tea, while sitting on a terrace "with a view of Mont
Blanc." That was worth writing about. He pulled out his stationery box, but
the Swiss morning was so heavenly, the stillness so breath-taking, and the
bees hung over the honey pot so motionlessly, that Petya suddenly found he
could not move a finger, let alone begin writing.
He now realized how dead tired he was and how badly he needed a rest.
Scenes of Italy kept flashing through his mind chaotically. He saw St.
Mark's and the lion with its paw on a stone Bible sharply outlined against
the intensely blue sky, and that was Venice. Then light-blue double-decked
tram-cars rounded the beautiful square and the white marble lace-like
cathedral, adorned by two thousand Gothic statues, and that was Milan. He
saw himself in a cloud of dry white dust passing the marble quarries of
Carrara where huge marble panels, cubes, slabs, and chunks that had just
been sawn lay in piles ready for shipment; finally, the many-tiered graceful
Tower of Pisa leaning motionlessly to one side.
Once their train had stopped at a remote siding in the middle of a hot,
beautiful valley, and they could see the cloudy purple mountain range on the
horizon and feel the slight breath of chill Alpine air. Suddenly, they dived
into the Simplon tunnel, twenty-two miles through the heart of a mountain;
there was a sudden darkness, the stale smell of coal, the deafening clamour
of steel, and the black mirrored surfaces of the locked carriage windows
which reflected the sinister, ghastly dimness of the flickering electric
lights in the carriages.
And then, after an endless half-hour of depressing, motionless,
headlong movement, when it seemed as if there was no air left to breathe and
there would never be an end to the infernal darkness pressing in on every
side on the train and the two exhausted engines, then, suddenly, there came
the dazzling rush of daylight, the clatter of falling window-sashes, the
refreshing breeze that tore through the carriages from the Rhone Valley and
blew away the stale smells of the tunnel. Mountains. Glaciers. Valleys.
Wooden chalets with huge round cheeses on the roofs. Herds of red and black
Swiss cows and the melodious clack, instead of tinkle, of the flat wooden
bells in the sunny calm of the station, the white cross on the red Swiss
flag, and a St. Bernard on a huge poster advertising Suchard Chocolate.
Petya was now in a new country, a lovely, toy country.
The voices of people arguing drifted up to them from the terrace below.
They were speaking Russian. At the sound of his native tongue Petya sat
up and listened.
"You cannot ignore the main thesis adopted unanimously at the January
meeting of the Central Committee," a woman said in a shrill voice, stressing
the words "ignore" and "meeting."
"I'm not ignoring it, but..." a man's voice objected softly, with a
veiled note of irony in the clear baritone.
"You're wrong, sir. You are either ignoring it or pretending not to
ignore it."
"Where's your proof?"
"The January meeting was absolutely clear as to the true nature of
Social-Democratic work," a second male voice suddenly joined in. It was the
deep, angry voice of an old smoker who was constantly clearing his throat
and spitting.
"Now, now," the sarcastic baritone said.
The woman's voice became shriller:
"Denial of the illegal Social-Democratic party, belittling its role and
its meaning, attempts to shorten the programme, tactical aims and slogans of
revolutionary Social-Democracy testify to the influence of the bourgeoisie
on the proletariat."
Vasily Petrovich jumped at the words "revolutionary Social-Democracy"
and "proletariat" which had been spoken so loudly that they carried across
the garden. He looked at the children anxiously.
The woman's voice persisted:
"There are people who discard such basic slogans of revolutionary
Marxism as the hegemony of the working class in the fight for socialism and
a democratic revolution!"
"Does that mean me?"
"Yes, it does. You and those like you."
"God knows what's going on here!" Vasily Petrovich mumbled, and his
nose became white from excitement. "Children, go inside this minute!"
But Petya, burning with curiosity, was hanging over the balustrade,
trying to see what was going on on the terrace below.
Through the green ivy-covered lattice he saw a table with a pitcher of
milk on it and several people sitting around in wicker chairs: an
angry-faced woman in a black jacket who looked like a school-teacher, a
consumptive young man in a cotton shirt and a worn coat, and a good-looking
gentleman in a tussore jacket, with a shiny, steel-rimmed pince-nez on his
fleshy Roman nose, through which, at that very moment, the words "now, now,"
were being forced sarcastically.
"You and those like you are the backers of Stolypin's 'workers' party'
and exponents of bourgeois influence on the proletariat, with your call for
a so-called legal or open workers' party!" the woman continued, rapping the
table sharply with her knuckles.
"That's right. Exponents of genuine bourgeois influence," the
consumptive young man rattled off in a hollow voice, as he choked in a fit
of coughing and spat, then struck a match with shaking hands. "And your
'open' workers' party while Stolypin is running things simply means
desertion on the part of those who have renounced the aims of the
revolutionary struggle of the masses against autocracy, the Third Duma, and
all that Stolypin stands for!"
This was too much for Vasily Petrovich. He grabbed Petya by the
shoulders and shoved him into the room, saying:
"Never listen to such things! Stay right here! Pavlik, come in at once!
My God, why must we suffer this! Politics, politics everywhere!"
, When the boys were settled in the room, Vasily Petrovich went out on
the terrace and shouted to the people below in a voice that trembled with
rage:
"I would ask you to choose your words more carefully! At least, you can
refrain from shouting. Remember, there are children here."
The people down below stopped talking. Then a nasal voice staid:
"Comrades, we are being spied upon." His words were followed by a
scraping of chairs, and the woman's voice said:
"There's your 'open' party for you! Why, we aren't safe from the tsar's
spies even in free Switzerland!"
"I say!" Vasily Petrovich shouted threateningly, and he flushed an
angry red.
However, the glass door downstairs was slammed demonstratively; a
confused Vasily Petrovich muttered, "A fine state of affairs, this!" went
into his room, and slammed his door just as demonstratively.
"Daddy, they're Russians, aren't they?" Pavlik whispered. "Are they
anarchists?"
"Don't be silly, they're Social-Democrats!" Petya said.
"I didn't ask you. Daddy, what are they doing here?"
"Stop asking stupid questions!" Father said impatiently. "And stop
worrying about things that don't concern you," he added, looking straight at
Petya.
"But, Daddy," Pavlik persisted, "they're Russians, like us, aren't
they?"
"Yes, yes, they're Russians all right, but they're emigres. Let's have
no more of this," he concluded dryly.
"What are emigres? Are they people who are against the tsar?"
"That's enough!" Father barked resolutely.
And so, the political discussion was ended. That was the last they saw
of the emigres on the floor below.
The episode made a big impression on Petya. Again his thoughts turned
to that strange phenomenon known as "the Russian revolution." His thoughts
were of Russia and the Russians.
Until then he had taken it for granted that all Russians-no matter
whether they were rich or poor, peasants or workers, officials or merchants,
officers or soldiers-were loyal subjects of His Majesty, the Emperor. It was
a concept that was as natural to him as the fact that the Black Sea was a
large mass of salt water or that the sky was a mass of blue air.
But the familiar concept received a jolt during their travels when, to
Petya's surprise, they began to encounter not a few Russians.
He noticed that all Russians abroad were divided into two categories:
tourists and emigres. The tourists were wealthy, very wealthy, and the
Bachei family never really came in contact with them, because they travelled
first-class on the railways and -ships, stayed at fabulously expensive
hotels, dined on the terraces of fashionable restaurants and, for their
outings, they hired the best carriages, thoroughbred riding horses, and
automobiles that were far more elegant than the one owned by the Ptashnikov
brothers, which, until then, Petya had considered a miracle, the pinnacle of
wealth and luxury.
No matter where these Russian tourists appeared, they were always
surrounded, in Petya's eyes, by an aura of wealth and luxury. They travelled
in families, with well-dressed children, accompanied by governesses,
companions, travel agents and guides that were as pompous and impressive as
ministers.
The males were well-groomed, the females squeamish, there were young
girls and young gallants, women whose age told and elegant old gentlemen who
smelled of strange perfumes and expensive cigars.
Sometimes, in the cool semi-darkness of an art gallery or among the
scorching ruins of an ancient theatre, the Bacheis would find themselves
standing next to these people, but even here an invisible wall separated
them and made closer contact entirely out of the question. In their presence
Petya smarted under the humiliating feeling of shame, if not for his
family's poverty, then, at all events, for their lack of worldly things.
Secretly, he was mortified by his father's shabby suit, his
down-at-heel shoes, cheap straw hat, and celluloid collar and cuffs which
Father carefully cleaned every night and then washed in soap suds. Petya
hated himself for this feeling of shame, but he could not overcome it. He
felt all the more humiliated because he knew his father was secretly just as
ashamed as he was. In the presence of the wealthy tourists, Father's face
took on a strained expression of indifference, his beard twitched and his
hands made imperceptible movements, so that the edges of his cuffs crawled
up out of sight into his coat sleeves.
But most humiliating of all was that the wealthy Russians seemed never
to notice the presence of the Bacheis.
They would simply stop talking Russian and switch casually to another
language - French, Italian, or English - and continue their conversation as
naturally and easily as if they had been speaking Russian.
The pictures of the great masters, which Vasily Petrovich regarded with
bowed head and tears in his eyes, they examined from various angles through
lorgnettes and from under their hands, commenting knowingly and admiring
them in a dignified manner.
They beheld the ruins of an ancient theatre with such looks on their
faces as if they expected a Greek chorus to appear and ancient actors in
masks to stage a tragedy for their benefit.
It seemed as if everything there belonged to them, on the basis of some
ancient immutable law. And Petya felt that they were truly the masters of
everything. The whole world was theirs, or, at least, belonged to their
kind, and as for Russia-it certainly was theirs.
That is why the second category of Russians abroad, the emigres, seemed
all the more a strange group to him. They were the exact opposite of the
tourists.
These were poor, shabbily dressed intellectuals. They travelled
third-class, went on foot, and lived in the smallest, cheapest
boarding-houses. Thus, the Bacheis were in constant contact with them, and
Petya was soon able to form a very definite opinion of them.
These were men and women like those the Bacheis encountered at the
boarding-house in Ouchy. They were preoccupied with politics. Petya often
heard them say various "political" words rather loudly, much to Vasily
Petrovich's dismay.
They were for ever arguing, heedless of their surroundings: at the
railway station when seeing friends off, in the mountains near a waterfall
that covered the trembling ferns with fine spray, at dinner, in a museum
while examining hollow boulders sawed in half and full of gleaming purple
crystals of amethyst.
The emigres, in Petya's opinion, were all possessed by a single idea.
Petya understood that it was a matter of politics, but could only guess
vaguely at what exactly it was all about. He knew that they were "against
the autocracy." And if they were constantly on the go, it was not because
they were touring, but because they had to go, in the interests of their
"common cause."
Once, in Geneva, the Bacheis came upon a rather large group of emigres
on a little island, near the Rousseau monument. Black swans swam on the
lake, and the bronze Rousseau, an old man with a haggard, passionate face,
sat in his bronze chair watching them as they plunged their graceful necks
under the water and snatched savagely at the pieces of bread thrown to them
from the daintily painted boats. While Vasily Petrovich was standing,
bare-headed, before the statue of the writer and philosopher whom he had
worshipped since student days, Petya heard the loud voices of the emigres.
They were sitting in the shade of the willows, targuing as usual. Suddenly,
Petya heard a familiar name: Ulyanov.
"Ulyanov-Lenin is in Paris now, isn't he?"
"Yes, he lives in Longjumeau."
"There is a Party school there, I believe?"
"Yes. Lenin lectures to Party workers there on political economy, the
agrarian question, and the theory and practice of socialism."
"What's his attitude towards the Capri school?"
"Utterly irreconcilable, of course."
"After his resolution on the situation in the Party-it was adopted at
the meeting of the Paris second group for assistance to the Russian
Social-Democratic Labour Party-you can be sure he will never agree to any
compromise."
"I haven't read the resolution."
"It's at the printer's already."
"What about Plekhanov?"
"Well, Plekhanov will always be Plekhanov."
"So you think-"
"I always thought and think now that there is only one line of action
open to the Russian revolution, and that is Lenin's line. And the sooner all
of us realize this, the sooner the Russian revolution will become a
reality."
Petya suddenly felt that the emigres, whom until then he had always
regarded as a bunch of eccentrics, forced into exile after the unsuccessful
revolution of 1905, were a force to be taken seriously. Why, they had Party
schools, central committees, assistance groups, and held special meetings.
They even printed their resolutions. Apparently, far from giving in after
the defeat of the 1905 Revolution, many of them were now working hard
preparing for another revolution. They had a leader too - Lenin-Ulyanov,
probably the one Gavrik's letter was for. Petya had heard the name Ulyanov
several times already. He tried to picture this man who lived in a place
called Longjumeau, near Paris, preparing a new revolution in Russia.
Now, whenever Petya saw Russian emigres in a railway carriage or at a
station, he was certain they were going to Paris, to Ulyanov's Party school.
Of course, that was where the emigres Gorky was seeing off at the station in
Naples were going, including the woman in mourning and the girl who had
looked at Petya so severely at the very moment the train had pulled out of
the station and the cinder had flown into his eye.
Petya could not get the girl out of his mind. Strange as it might seem,
he often thought of her with a bitter feeling of loneliness, and in his
heart he reproached her for appearing so suddenly and as suddenly
disappearing, as if she were to blame. He exaggerated the meaning of the
look that had passed between them.
He had already read Turgenev, Lermontov's A Hero of Our Times,
Tolstoi's War and Peace, and, it goes without saying, Pushkin's Yevgeny
Onegin, and most of Goncharov. Although Vasily Petrovich, who chose the
books his boys read, had emphasized the social significance of these
classical works, Petya was captivated by an entirely different aspect,
namely: romance.
He literally devoured the pages devoted to love, and leafed through the
rest, which were full of "social significance," or, as Vasily Petrovich put
it, "the gist of the book." For Petya the gist of the book were the love
scenes.
He was a sensitive boy, given to day-dreaming, and the exalted love in
the Russian novels held him in thrall. However, that was theory, and it did
not seem to have its counterpart in reality. "Love at first sight" or "cold
indifference," when applied to a girl from the fourth form in a black school
pinafore and a felt hat with a green school bow, and carrying an oilcloth
satchel in her small hands, was a hopeless occupation, since the girl would
but smile coyly at his efforts, unable to appreciate what it was all about.
Nevertheless, Petya often drifted off into a day-dream, and then he
would become Pechorin or Onegin or Mark Volokhov, although, actually, he was
really much more like Grushnitsky, Lensky, or Raisky.
Needless to say, all the girls he knew would then be transformed into
Marys, Tatyanas, and Veras, all of them lovely and all unhappy, a fact which
fed his vanity. However, the girls concerned rarely had any idea of what was
going on in his head and looked on him as a queer and conceited boy.
At first, their travelling impressions had been so all-consuming- that
Petya had had no time to think of love. But then, a tiny cinder had flown in
his eyes, marking the beginning of a new romance.
It was "love at first sight." Petya had no doubt about that, although
he had yet to make up his mind who she was and who he himself was. Since the
thing had taken place in a foreign country, Turgenev would be the closest
parallel. She might be Asya, or, stretching the point a bit, Gemma from
Spring Torrents. There were several pros to these selections, as Petya, in
the role of the main hero, was the object of their ardent and devoted love.
Petya's intuition told him that actually she was neither Gemma nor
Asya. In fact, she was more the Tatyana type. But he rejected Tatyana, for
then he would have to be Onegin, and that in no way satisfied his need for
mutual love.
Nor would Princess Mary or Bela do, simply because Petya was tired of
being Pechorin, a role he had abused considerably in recent times.
Vera, the heroine of Goncharov's The Precipice, was best suited. There
was something mysterious and wilful about her, too. In this case he would be
Mark Volokhov, as he was definitely opposed to the role of the luckless
Raisky. That settled it. It was not a bad choice at all, especially since he
had never yet been Mark Volokhov.
No sooner had Petya settled on Mark Volokhov and Vera than he suddenly
decided the mysterious netherworld kiss of Klara Milieh was exactly what he
wanted. She, then, would be Klara Milieh. What could be better? However,
just then an inner voice whispered that this, too, was untrue.
Meanwhile, love could not wait, it would not stand the loss of a single
minute. Petya finally compounded all the women characters in his favourite
books, retaining Klara Milich's nether-world kiss and adding the black bow
and the chestnut braid, and found at last his own "true love," the' girl of
his dreams-tender, faithful, and loving, whom Fate had given him for one
fleeting moment and then had snatched away so cruelly.
Petya's soul was filled with longing. A strange feeling of loneliness
never left him. He loved this feeling and, far from spoiling his trip across
Switzerland, it seemed somehow to enhance it.
He was no longer Pechorin, or Onegin, or Mark Volokhov. He was himself,
but he had changed and suddenly matured.
Vasily Petrovich was rather worried at the change that had come over
Petya, transforming him before his very eyes from a boy into a youth. He
felt that his son was experiencing something novel and attributed it to the
mass of new impressions. Perhaps, that really was the cause of it. But he
had no idea of the state Petya's soul was in as a result of a too vivid
imagination. He would sometimes come over to him, look into his eyes, and
run his big veined hand through the boy's hair.
"How are things, my little Petya?" he would ask fondly.
At which Petya, who was pretty close to tears of self-pity, would hold
him off and say glumly:
"I'm not little."
Whenever the opportunity offered, Petya would look at himself in the
mirror, trying to assume a grim, manly expression. He began brushing his
hair a new way to keep the cow-licks down, using his father's brush and
dousing it generously with water.
At Petya's insistence they bought woollen capes and alpenstocks in
Interlaken. Then Petya began to drop hints about a green Tyrol hat with a
pheasant feather and spiked shoes. But Father was so careful of every
centime that he flatly refused and became angry as well.
Petya would not part with his cape even on the hottest days; he did not
wear it in the usual way, but threw one end over his shoulder in the
classical Spanish manner. If Pavlik's cape looked like a modest pelerine,
Petya's most certainly was transformed into a cloak.
Pavlik trailed his long purple-barked staff artlessly; Petya leaned on
his as if it were a shepherd's crook.
At times he would smile sadly, walk away and stand on a cliff all
alone, peering down at a tiny village and lovely little church at the bottom
of a valley.
Once he talked Father into climbing a mountain in. had weather, when
the automatic barometer on Fluelen Square was etching a sinister, uneven
line on the paper ribbon of a barely moving spool.
"It's misty on top and there's a blizzard, we won't be able to see a
thing, and we'll only waste our money on the funicular," Father said. To his
horror, he had just found out that their special tickets did not include
trips on the funicular.
Petya used every means of persuasion to make his father see that
mountain-climbing on sunny days was a dull business, for there was nothing
of interest except tiresome snow-capped peaks and the glaciers, and that it
was much more interesting in bad weather, when all the other tourists sought
the comfort of their hotel rooms, and when one could actually see a real
snow-storm in July.
"No one but us will be seeing it!" Petya insisted.
And he had his way. They set out in the slanting, stepped carriage of
the electric funicular, which pulled them upwards at a practically vertical
angle.
Of course, they were alone in the carriage. For some time they crept up
a steep slope covered by pine woods which were later replaced by firs. The
trees floated downwards diagonally and so Petya first saw the roots and then
the pointed crowns hung with cones; they kept getting smaller until they
vanished out of sight in the haze of the hot July day.
There were foaming waterfalls lost among the ferns.
It was getting cooler. The tree belt ended. The last station was
crawling down towards them. It was a spotless little house with a moist
roof. The Bacheis descended from the carriage, Vasily Petrovich leafed
through his Baedeker, and they set out on foot up the mountain, winding
their way among black boulders covered with silvery fungi.
There were signs of mist everywhere. It was hard going over the
slippery quartz pebbles, especially in leather-soled sandals. The stony
ground was overgrown with creeping Alpine roses and cyclamens. Suddenly,
Petya found his first edelweiss among the clumps of damp moss. It was a
strange, star-shaped, dead-looking flower that seemed to be cut out of white
cloth. Petya pinned the flower to his chest by sticking the stem in the
collar of his blouse.
The horizon was very high and near now, and a grey mist rolled towards
them. Everything was suddenly wrapped in gloom: they had entered a cloud. It
became very chilly. In a second their woollen capes turned white from the
mist. Darkness enveloped them. A biting wind blew stinging, icy rain into
their faces.
Vasily Petrovich insisted that they turn back immediately, but Petya
continued climbing higher, gathering his cape round him and tapping the
steel point of his alpenstock on the wet stones.
The cold became more intense.
First wet and then dry snow-flakes appeared among the raindrops. In an
instant the rain had turned into a snow-storm.
"Come back! Come back this minute!" Father shouted.
Petya did not hear him. He was enraptured by the grim beauty of a
summer blizzard. He ran to the edge of the cliff that usually offered a
magnificent view of the entire range, including the Monte Rosa, Jungfrau,
and the Matterhorn.
Nothing could be seen of them now. The snow swirled overhead,
underfoot, and on every side of him, covering the flowers and boulders with
a white blanket.
"All that money thrown away," Father muttered, trying to catch a
glimpse of the famous mountains.
"Oh, Dad, you don't understand a thing!" Petya protested. "Don't you
see, it's summer down there, and it's hot, while we - we're in the middle of
a snow-storm! Wasn't it worth coming up here for that alone?"
"So it's summer down there and winter up here. A perfectly natural
thing. What's so extraordinary about that' You're in the mountains, you
know. You're just a dreamer."
Petya was covered with snow, there were snow-flakes on his eyebrows and
eyelashes as he stood with his arms folded on his chest and his cape flying
in the wind. He was lost in melancholy rapture at the thought of the girl
who had been so cruelly snatched away from him and taken off to Paris. He
was filled with his unrequited love and loneliness, although in his heart of
hearts he was exultant as he pictured himself standing there, suffering,
forsaken by all, with an edelweiss pinned to his chest and a crude Alpine
cape that could never protect him from the cold flung over his shoulders.
"Enough! We've had enough of the beautiful view!" Father grumbled.
"Before you know it you'll both be down with pneumonia."
"So what! Who cares?" Petya answered, but he was glad to turn his back
on the piercing wind and run downhill after Pavlik.
On the way back to the funicular they came upon a shepherd's hut-a real
Swiss chalet with stones on the flat roof. They warmed up and dried their
clothes at the fireside and an old Swiss woman gave them three tall narrow
glasses of cold goat's milk for a small coin.
As Vasily Petrovich was sipping the milk he was thinking: how wonderful
it is here, how quiet! How restful! Perhaps, this is what happiness really
means: living on a small plot, in a small hut, breeding cows, making cheese,
breathing the clear mountain air, and not feeling yourself a slave ,of any
government, religion, or society. Rousseau, that great hermit and sage, was
absolutely right. These thoughts had flitted through his tired brain before,
but now they became amazingly clear. They were as tangible and visible as
the drops of milk that glistened in his damp beard.
To tell the truth, Petya was really pleased when the funicular lowered
them slowly into the warm, sunlit valley and the strange excursion came to
an end, On the whole, they were satisfied with it.
"Ah-hh, it was well worth while," Vasily Petrovich said as he rubbed
his hands. "We saw real edelweiss in its natural surroundings!"
Pavlik, although wont to conceal his feelings, was as pleased as Punch.
He fussed around secretively in a corner of their hotel room, hiding
something carefully as he rummaged around in the rucksack, banging and
knocking whatever it was. As it later turned out, he had not wasted his time
while in' Switzerland. Hawing seen quite a few precious stones and crystals
in the shop windows, found, so it was said, in the surrounding mountains,
the boy decided he could make his fortune if only he kept his eyes peeled on
the ground during their excursions-treasure was just lying around, waiting
to be picked up. So he had secretly filled his rucksack with stones he
considered to be of especial value. Today, while Petya stood lost in his
romantic reverie and Father was busy exploring the Alpine flora, Pavlik had
found two rather large round stones. He was certain they were packed full of
amethysts. All he had to do was saw them in half, and out would come a pile
of precious stones. Pavlik was a cautious boy and decided to postpone this
operation till he got home. Once there, he would sell his gems on the quiet
and make his life's dream come true, that is, buy a second-hand bicycle.
From that day on Petya began to dream of Paris with renewed passion. He
had a strange premonition that he would see "her" there, and the meeting
would be the beginning of a new, incredibly happy existence.
Paris was included in their itinerary, but before starting out they had
to make the best use of their special railway tickets and see as much of
Switzerland as they could.
Actually, they were rather fed up with Switzerland, with its cheeses,
milk, chocolate, boarding-houses, funiculars. collections of minerals,
wooden toys, and beautiful views-all so very much alike wherever they went.
They could not back out now: after all, they did not want to waste the
money they had spent on the tickets! And so they continued riding and
changing trains in every conceivable direction for the sole purpose of
realizing their investment.
They stood around a deep pit in Bern, watching the famous bears walk
back and forth on their hind legs, begging for titbits.
On a green meadow on the outskirts of Lucerne they saw a huge yellow
dirigible, on which the words "Villa Lucerne" were inscribed.
They were caught in a storm on Lake Vierwaldstatter and saw the
terrifying lightning flashes reflected on the surface of water that suddenly
had turned black.
They were amazed at the truly Italian city of Lugano, a city of noisy,
babbling crowds, macaroni, mandolins, bottles of Chianti, and iced
orangeade.
The peaked towers of Chillon Castle seemed to rise straight up out of
the lake and were outlined against the jagged peak of Dent du Midi. There
they .saw the famous dungeon and iron ring, the stone columns and an
inscription, attributed to Byron, scratched out on one of them.
They bought Auntie a light silk blanket in one of the towns of German
Switzerland. At one of the stations a group of lively, stocky Tyrol marksmen
came into their carriage; they wore short trousers and wide green braces;
tiny caps, adorned with pheasant feathers, were stuck on the muzzles of
their guns, and they yodelled as they sang Tyrol melodies.
There were many other impressions, but they were all confused, leaving
them with a feeling of a constant need to keep on travelling.
When the time arrived for them to go on to Paris, Vasily Petrovich
hesitated. He was sitting in their small room in one of Geneva's cheap
hotels and going over their resources, covering a scrap of notepaper with
long columns of tiny figures.
"Well, when do we leave for Paris?" Petya asked impatiently.
"Never!" Father snapped.
"But you promised us."
"I know, but I'm calling it off."
"Why?"
"We haven't enough money left. How can we go to Paris when it's nearly
August; Auntie says that the entrance exams at Faig's begin on the first; in
any case, it's about time you and Pavlik stopped having a good time and got
down to reviewing a few subjects before the new term begins. In other words,
we've had enough!"
"Daddy, you're fooling!" Petya pleaded.
"You heard what I said!" Father muttered.
When Petya noticed that Father's voice had reverted to the usual tone,
he changed his approach.
"But you promised, and it's not honourable to go back on your word," he
said casually and rather impudently.
"How dare you speak to your father like that! Be quiet! You insolent
child!" Vasily Petrovich shouted and grabbed Petya by the shoulders, with a
mind to give him a good shaking, but then he remembered that they were
abroad, and let it go at one short yank, after which they all felt relieved:
thank God, the matter had been settled at last, there would not be any more
travelling. They would go back to dear old Odessa via Vienna.
They realized how incredibly tired they were, how bored by endless
jolting in railway carriages, sleeping in hotels, buying postcards, running
to art galleries, speaking French, and eating Swiss soup and tiny pieces of
meat with vegetables instead of borshch and vareniki.
They wanted to swim in the sea, eat a good slice of sweet water-melon,
drink steaming tea from the samovar, and have strawberry jam and hot buns
with deliciously melting iced butter.
Terribly homesick, they left the very next day.
They were in such a rush that although they broke their journey in
Vienna for two days, it made no impression on them whatever. They had had
too much. The only recollection that remained was a scene they saw from the
carriage window as they were pulling out of the station: a crimson strip of
sunset and the endlessly drawn-out skyline of steeples and spires,
weather-vanes and the enormous Ferris wheel in Prater Amusement Park which
towered over the city and seemed somehow to be a strange symbol of Vienna
itself.
The train crawled slowly, and it took them nearly two days and two
nights to reach the Russian border. All because Vasily Petrovich, true to
his principle of economizing on tickets, had decided not to waste money on
the express train -SchneUzug - and had booked tickets on the Personenzug,
that is, the slow passenger train which, despite its very appropriate and
pretty-sounding name, turned out to be a freight-and-passenger train.
Journeying across Switzerland, Petya and Pavlik had both become expert
rail travellers and had learned to determine the exact speed of a train by
the telegraph poles flashing past. For instance, if one could count slowly
to five or six between poles, that meant the train was doing about thirty
miles an hour. The Swiss trains were mostly fast trains-they counted to five
between the poles. Sometimes there were trains that had only four or even
three counts between poles. But on the Austrian Personenzug they counted up
to ten between the poles-a tortoise speed. No longer did the poles flash by
the windows in quick succession; each one sailed by slowly, lazily trailing
thin wires with lonely swallows perched on them, and the wait for the next
pole was so long that at times it seemed as if there would not be a next
pole. The train stopped at every station and siding on the way. There were
no sleeping-berths. They travelled day and night on the hard wooden benches
of the closely packed third-class carriage.
Their fellow-passengers were not the well-dressed, polite, and
good-natured tourists and farmers of the Swiss trains. These were Austria's
poor: artisans with their tools, soldiers, market-women, Jews in
old-fashioned coats and white stockings and with side whiskers so long and
curled that they seemed to be faked.
There were a lot of Slavs in the carriage-Czechs, Poles, and Serbians;
some were in national costume. They smoked foul-smelling cigars and
porcelain pipes with long, hanging chubouks and green tassels. They ate dry
Austrian sausage, filling the carriage with the odour of garlic; as Vasily
Petrovich said, sniffing the air, it had a purely local flavour.
The passengers spoke a mixture of Slavic languages, and dialects, and
German was hardly heard.
Most passengers had but short distances to travel. People kept coming
in and going out at every station. An old organ-grinder boarded the train at
one of the many stops. He had on a green hunting-jacket with buttons made of
a deer's antlers and was not unlike the Emperor Franz Josef. Finding a seat
in the corner of the carriage, he began grinding out his tunes. After he had
played ten Viennese waltzes and marches, he took his battered Tyrol hat and
passed it round, bowing with truly royal grace. However, the only one who
gave him anything was a woman with tear-reddened eyes who took some coins
from her purse, wrapped them in paper, and dropped them into his hat. At the
nearest station he shouldered his little organ with shreds of glass bead
ornaments hanging from it and got off the train.
For a long time after, the pitiful sounds of the old organ vibrated in
Petya's ears. His mood blended strangely with the shabby and forlorn
appearance of the strangers who surrounded him, with the twilight, and the
faint creaking of the carriage lantern; the Austrian conductor in a soft cap
had just placed a lighted candle-end in it which cast a red glow on the
sides of the carriage and the sealed red Westinghouse brake handle.
They approached the Russian border the next day, in a state of utter
exhaustion. It was drizzling. As before people got off at every stop, but no
new passengers boarded the train. When some people sitting next to them got
out, Vasily Petrovich spread his raincoat on the empty seats and placed his
travelling-bag at the head for a pillow, to make a place for Pavlik. But an
Austrian soldier suddenly loomed up, shoved Pavlik aside, flopped down on
the bench, put his head on the travelling-bag, and was sound asleep in an
instant, filling the carriage with his snoring.
"How dare you!" Vasily Petrovich shouted in a high-pitched voice, livid
with rage. "You boor!"
But the soldier lay there as if he were made of lead; he heard nothing
and understood less. It suddenly dawned on Vasily Petrovich that the soldier
was dead drunk. This was the last straw.
"You insolent curl Do you hear? Get up this minute! Get off our seats!"
The soldier opened his watery-blue eyes, winked, belched loudly, and
fell asleep again.
Pavlik began pounding at the tops of the double-stitched, heavy
military boots, shouting:
"Get out! Get out!"
The soldier raised himself up slowly and stared at Pavlik in amazement
for a few moments, uncertain whether to laugh or get angry. He decided on
the latter. Laying his heavy hand with dirty nails on Pavlik's face, his red
moustache bristling, he spluttered and shouted in German:
"Get out, you Russian swine! You're not the boss here! This isn't
Russia! I'll box your ears off for insulting the Austrian army!"
The conductor strolled in at the sound of the rumpus.
"Remove this drunken wretch!" Father demanded.
But the conductor sided with the soldier. He threw out his chest and
informed Father sternly that there were no reserved seats in the carriage
and each passenger was entitled to occupy any empty seat he wished;
moreover, if the Russian gentleman persisted in insulting the Austrian army
he would throw him and his children and their things off the train. Those
were his exact words, "Mit Kind and Kegel hinaus!"
When Vasily Petrovich heard that he was being accused of insulting the
Austrian army, he really got scared. "Calm down," he mumbled to Pavlik as he
pulled his raincoat and travelling-bag from under the soldier.
The soldier's sword rattled as life turned over and began snoring and
whistling once more.
He jumped up at the very next station and left the carriage, muttering
Austrian oaths concerning the Russian swine.
The Bacheis remained sitting there, stung to the quick. Vasily
Petrovich was pale and his beard shook. But there was nothing he could do.
When they eventually reached the border, there was only one other
passenger left. He occupied the far corner, hugging a wicker basket and a
holdall with a pillow and an old quilt in it.
He was apparently a Russian too, and his appearance classified him as
an emigre.
He seemed very agitated, although he was trying to appear calm. In
fact, he even pretended to be dozing. An Austrian official passed through
the carriage soon afterwards and took their passports. Petya noticed that
the passenger's hands trembled as he handed the officer his passport. With a
screeching of brakes the train came to a stop. The Bacheis hauled their
things on to the filthy, deserted platform and set out for the custom-house.
There was a long screened counter made up o>f rails worn white; several
Russian customs officials and a Russian gendarme captain in a light-blue
tunic with silver braid were standing behind it.
They spread their baggage on the counter for inspection. For some
reason, Vasily Petrovich always got excited and irritated whenever he had
anything to do with officialdom, even when there was no apparent reason for
it. He had the feeling that his dignity was being trampled upon.
"Do you have any coffee, tobacco, perfumes, or silks?" the customs
official asked as he ran his hand indifferently over the things laid out on
the counter.
"You can find out for yourself," Father said and flushed as he tried to
control the trembling of his jaw. "I am not obliged to declare anything."
The customs official rummaged about in the travelling-bag
disinterestedly, pulled a few stones out of Pavlik's bag, shrugged, looked
them over, replaced them, and went off.
"Where have you come from?" the gendarme captain asked coldly, and his
spurs jingled slightly.
"From Austro-Hungary, as you see."
"You've been to Switzerland, too, I gather?" the captain said politely,
pointing his grey, suede-clad hand at their capes and alpenstocks.
"Obviously," Vasily Petrovich said with a hint of irony in his voice.
"Did you bring any literature with you?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean Geneva or Zurich Social-Democratic publications. It's my duty
to warn you that any attempt to carry such anti-government illegal
publications across the frontier can lead to the most dire consequences."
Vasily Petrovich had no time to open his mouth and tell the captain
what he thought of him, for the latter suddenly turned his back on him and
walked off quickly; in fact, he practically ran towards the passenger who
had been in the carriage with them.
The man was standing at the railed counter, surrounded by customs
officials who were emptying the contents of his wicker basket on to the
counter. There were a pair of student's serge trousers, cotton shirts, a
pair of boots, a quilt, and linen. They fingered his quilt methodically.
"Nikiforov!" the captain said loudly, and a little man in civilian
dress with a large pair of shears suddenly appeared next to him. "Let's have
the quilt!"
The little man went over to the counter and began ripping the seams
expertly.
"You have no right to destroy my property," the passenger said and
turned as white as a sheet.
"Don't worry, we won't spoil it," the officer replied.. He stuck his
hand into an open seam and began pulling out packs of cigarette paper
squeamishly with two fingers. The thin paper was closely covered with fine
print. Two men in bowler hats ran up and seized the man. He turned a deep
red and suddenly tried to break free. As he looked about he shouted in a
weak voice:
"Tell the comrades I was taken at the border. My name is Osipov! Tell
them I was caught. I'm Osipov!"
He was hustled through a side door with the railroad's iron monogram on
it.
"The other passengers are requested to return to the platform and
continue their journey," the gendarme captain said and handed out the
passports.
The Bacheis walked across the station to the opposite platform, where a
Russian train with "Volochisk-Odessa" written on the carriage plates awaited
them. A Russian station-master in a red cap went up to a brass bell and rang
twice. Thus did Russia greet them.
The next day they drove from the station with Auntie in two real
Russian cabs, past Kulikovo Field and Athos Church, which to Petya now
seemed very small and somehow provincial. Auntie seemed provincial too in a
huge new cart-wheel hat and a hobble skirt so narrow that she could only
toddle along with tiny steps.
Petya noticed that although Auntie was glad to see them, she made much
less fuss than she usually did when they came back in the autumn from
Budaki. It was almost as though she was displeased about something. With a
sudden shock of surprise, Petya realized what the trouble was. In her heart
of hearts Auntie was deeply hurt that they had not taken her abroad with
them.
All her talk with Vasily Petrovich and the boys was tinged with a faint
irony. She kept calling them "our famous travellers," and when Petya told
her about the blizzard in the mountains, Auntie said loftily, "I can well
imagine it."
The house where they lived seemed to have got smaller and their flat
looked cramped and dark. The silken quilt they had brought from Switzerland
as a present left Auntie completely unimpressed. And in general, at first
there was a certain awkwardness, unease.
It soon vanished, however, and everything slipped back into old groove,
that is except for Pavlik's disappearance on the second day and his
reappearance late in the evening, hungry, worn out and tear-stained.
"Great heavens! What on earth's happened?" cried Auntie, throwing up
her hands as she saw her darling in such a state. "Where have you been all
this time?"
"Oh, let me alone," he said gloomily.
"Very well, but-"
"I was in town."
"What for?"
"Let me alone, can't you!"
"You're frightening me, Pavlik!"
"I went to sell those precious stones."
"What stones?" Auntie looked into Pavlik's face in alarm.
"Precious stones," he repeated, "the ones I brought from Switzerland. I
wanted to sell them and buy a second-hand bicycle."
Auntie's chin trembled.
"Well? And what happened?"
"I went to Purits Brothers on Richelieu Street, and to Faberge's on
Deribasovskaya Street, and then to two jeweller's shops on Preobrazhenskaya
Street-and a lot more after that. And then I went to the archaeological
museum and the University and to the pawnbroker's. ..."
"Great heavens!" Auntie groaned, pressing the ends of her fingers
against her temples.
"I thought perhaps they bought things like that too." Pavlik slumped
wearily on to a chair and let his head rest on the table. "But they all
said-"
"What did they all say?"
"They said my stones were just ordinary rocks."
"Oh, chickie dear, ray own little one!" Auntie gasped, between tears
and laughter. "My poor little traveller, my little gold-digger! Oh, I can't
stop. I'll die of laughing! You'll be the death of me yet!"
That was the end of the brief story of the Bachei family's travels.
Petya, however, was still bursting with impressions. Time after time he
gave Auntie and Dunyasha the cook eloquent, detailed descriptions of
Constantinople, the Mediterranean, a volcanic eruption, the disturbances in
Naples, the Simplon tunnel, the blizzard in the mountains, the dungeons of
the Chillon Castle and the dirigible "Villa Lucerne." He displayed all the
picture postcards, souvenirs and free travel agency prospectuses he had
stuffed into his suitcase. Every day he sauntered over Kulikovo Field and
along all the streets round his house in the hope of meeting some boy he
knew and telling him all about the trip abroad. But it was still a fortnight
before the end of the holidays and the boys had not come back from the
country or the seaside. The town was empty.
Petya was lonely and dull. He looked with distaste at the deep blue of
the August sky arching over the gardens and roof-tops. He heard the
monotonous, sleepy cries of hawkers coming from all sides, and felt ready to
die of boredom.
"Your friend Gavrik's been several times," said Auntie one day, "he
wanted to know when you'd be back from your travels."
"What!" cried Petya. "Gavrik!" He stopped, confused by the realization
that he had never once even thought of Gavrik recently. Gavrik
Chernoivanenko! How could he have forgotten him? Why, that was just the
person Petya was wanting!
Although the day was hot, even sultry, Petya seized his Swiss cape and
alpenstock and without losing a moment set off for Near Mills.
Now that Petya had an aim, the town no longer seemed so empty and dull.
It was Sunday, and the bells rang melodiously. The little engine on a
suburban train gave a merry toot as it puffed past Kulikovo Field toward
Bolshoi Fontan, pulling its string of open coaches filled with passengers in
Sunday clothes, the officers looking particularly festive in their starched
white tunics sparkling with gold buttons and crossed by narrow straps on
which their swords hung. Cooks were coming home with market baskets on their
arms, their usual load of provisions topped off with bunches of dark-red
dahlias and orange amaranthuses that looked like vegetables. Handcarts
filled with water-melons, plums and early grapes rattled along the road. All
this gave Petya a holiday feeling, a special lift of the spirits, and he
gaily struck the metal end of his alpenstock against the stone slabs of the
pavement and the metal horse-blocks.
He walked so fast that he got over the quite considerable distance to
Near Mills in half an hour. He was bathed in perspiration and slowed down
only when he came to the familiar fence made of old sleepers. Here Petya
stopped to get his breath, then began to put on the cape which up to now he
had carried on his arm. But he hardly had draped it around him and assumed a
solemn look, when somebody cried quite close, "Oh, who's that?"
Petya turned and saw a pretty girl in her teens wearing a cotton dress;
she was looking at him over the fence in something like awe. .
Motya had grown so much taller and so much prettier in the summer
months that at first he did not know her again. And before he realized who
she was she recognized him, flushed crimson and backed towards the house
with small steps, never taking her frightened, admiring eyes off the boy.
Finally she bumped into the mulberry tree beneath which hens were
pecking at the reddish-black berries, staining the smooth clay of the
courtyard with the juice. Then she called in a faint voice, "Gavrik, Petya's
come."
"Aha, back again," Gavrik said, appearing at the door of the hut. He
was barefoot and his unbelted Russian shirt was open at the throat. With one
hand he held up his trousers, in the other was a Latin textbook.
"You've been a long time on your travels! I'm going through the Latin
grammar a second time by myself- darn the thing! Well, give me your paw and
let's take a look at you."
Petya grasped Gavrik's strong hand, already the hand of a man, and then
Motya's small one-soft, but rough on the palm.
"Thanks very much about the letter," said Gavrik when they were sitting
on the bench by the table fixed in the ground under the mulberry tree.
"I sent it from Naples," Petya said and added carelessly, "express."
"I know," said Gavrik seriously.
"How d'you know?"
"We've had an answer. Thanks again, very much. You're a pal. You helped
us a lot."
Petya felt much flattered, although he was secretly a bit put out to
find that Gavrik was paying no attention to his cape and alpenstock. Motya,
however, never took her eyes off these strange things, and at last asked
timidly, "Petya, does everyone go about like that over there?"
"Not everyone, of course, only some people," Petya explained with a
condescending smile. "Mostly those who go mountain-climbing. Because up on
top you may get caught in a blizzard. And without an alpenstock you can't
climb up at all, it's dreadfully slippery."
"And did you climb up?"
"No end of times," Petya sighed.
"Oh, how lucky you are!" said Motya, gazing reverently at the cape and
the iron-shod stick.
Gavrik, however, could not hold back a comment of a different kind.
"Better take that thing off, Petya, look at the way you're sweating."
Petya treated this with silent contempt.
Then he began eagerly telling them everything about the trip, sparing
no colours and careful to remember the smallest detail. Gavrik listened
rather indifferently, but Motya, sitting by Petya on the corner of the
bench, whispered from time to time, "How lucky you are!"
It would be wrong, however, to say that Gavrik was not at all
interested in what Petya had to tell. But the things that interested him
were not those that interested Motya. For instance, he listened with
indifference to Petya's description of the volcanic eruption and the
blizzard in the mountains. But when it came to the tram workers' strike in
Naples, and the meeting with Maxim Gorky, and the emigres, then Gavrik's
eyes sparkled, knots of muscle appeared at the sides of his jaw, and
bringing his fist down on Petya's knee he cried, "Aha! That was grand! That
was well done!"
But when Petya, in a half-whisper, afraid that Gavrik might not believe
him, said that he thought he had seen Rodion Zhukov in Naples, Gavrik not
only believed it, he even nodded and said, "That's right. It was him. We
know about it. You probably saw him when he left the Capri school for
Longjumeau, to go to Ulyanov-Lenin."
Petya stared at his friend in surprise. How he had changed! It was not
only that he was taller and more mature, there was a concentrated
determination about him, an assurance and even-this struck Petya most of
all-a certain confidence and ease. Look how freely and easily he pronounced
the French word Longjumeau, and how ordinary and natural the name
Ulyanov-Lenin sounded when he spoke it.
"Oh, so you know Longjumeau too?" said Petya ingenuously.
"Of course," Gavrik answered, smiling with eyes alone.
"They've got a ... Party school there," Petya went on, not quite sure
of himself and hesitating before the words "Party school."
Gavrik regarded Petya thoughtfully as though weighing him up, then
laughed gaily.
"Seems like you didn't waste your time abroad, brother! You've started
to understand a few things. Good!"
Petya dropped his eyes modestly, then suddenly jumped as though stung.
He had just remembered the incident at the frontier and felt instinctively
that it had something to do with Gavrik's last words or, to be more exact,
with the thought behind them.
"Gavrik, listen," he began excitedly, then glanced at Motya and stopped
uncertainly.
"Motya, you go off and take a walk somewhere," said Gavrik firmly,
patting her on the shoulder over which her fair braid with its bow of cotton
was prettily, flung.
The girl pouted, but rose obediently and went away at once, from which
Petya concluded that this was nothing uncommon in the Chernoivanenko family.
"Well, what is it?" Gavrik asked.
"Osipov wanted his comrades told that he'd .been caught at the
frontier," said Petya, lowering his voice; he then told Gavrik all that had
happened in the customhouse at Volochisk the day they had crossed.
Gavrik listened in silence, with a serious face, then said, "Just a
minute."
He went into the cottage and came out again in a moment, followed by
Terenty.
"Ah, here's our foreign traveller," said Terenty, holding out his hand.
"Welcome home! And thank you very much about the letter. You helped us a
lot, got us out of a hole."
Petya noticed that Terenty too seemed somehow to have changed during
the summer. Although his broad, pock-marked workman's face was as rough-hewn
and frank as before, Petya read a greater firmness and independence in its
features. Like Gavrik he was comfortably barefoot, but his trousers were new
and of good quality, a jacket was thrown over his shoulders and his clean
shirt had a metal stud in a buttonhole at the top, from which it could be
concluded that Terenty wore stiff collars.
He sat down where Motya had sat, beside Petya, flung his strong, heavy
arm round the boy's shoulders, and gave him a hug.
"Well? Let's have it."
Petya repeated the story in great detail.
"A bad business," said Terenty, scratching one bare foot with the
other. "That's the second mail-bag gone wrong. Those students are no good at
all. I said we ought to arrange it through-" Terenty and Gavrik exchanged
meaning looks. "Well, and of course," Terenty turned back to Petya, "you
know all this doesn't concern anyone else."
"He understands a bit already," said Gavrik.
"So much the better," Terenty said casually and then changed the
subject quite definitely. "You won't be going abroad again? Well, all right.
It's not so bad at home, either. And about the letter, thanks again. You did
a big thing for us. Stay here a while, take a walk, maybe, and I'll go back
inside, I've got visitors. I'll be seeing you. Look, the best thing you can
do is to go on the common, Zhenya's there, he's got a new kite. I bought it
at Kolpakchi's. It's the latest construction, and will fly in any wind."
He was clearly anxious to get back to his guests.
"Motya, why've you gone off and left Petya?" he called. "Come and take
him to the common. I've got to go, excuse me."
Terenty walked quickly back into the cottage; through the small windows
Petya could see it was full of people. He had a feeling Terenty wanted to
get rid of him, but before he had time to formulate a feeling of offence
Motya appeared, Gavrik took him by the arm and all three went off to the
common. Eight-year-old Zhenya, Motya's brother, was very much like Gavrik at
the same age, only plumper and better dressed. Surrounded by all the boys of
Near Mills, he was trying to fly a strange kind of kite, not a bit like the
ones which Petya's generation had made out of reeds, newspaper, glue, thread
and coarse grass for a tail.
It was a shop kite that looked like a geometrical drawing, with
canary-yellow calico stretched over it and tight connecting wires that made
it look like the Wright brothers' biplane. Two boys stood on tiptoe
zealously holding the apparatus as high as they could reach, while Zhenya,
holding the thin cord, waited for the best moment to race across the common,
pulling his flying machine after him. At last he screwed up his eyes and ran
into the wind, butting it with his head. The kite shot up, swayed
uncertainly, circled and fell back on the grass.
"The brute just won't fly," Zhenya hissed through his teeth, wiping his
wet, angry, freckled face with the tail of his shirt. Evidently, this was
not the first time the kite had flopped.
All the boys of Near Mills rushed to the kite, whooping and chattering,
but Zhenya pushed them angrily aside. "Keep your hands off," he said and
started untangling the cord.
"Zhora, Kolya, go back and hold it up again. As high as you can, but
don't let it go till I shout. See?"
He seemed used to giving orders, and the others to obeying them,
although he was the youngest there. The real Chernoivanenko breed, thought
Gavrik with a sense of pride, as he watched Zhora and Kolya take their
places again and hold up the kite while Zhenya spat on his index finger and
raised it to gauge the wind.
"This time you're going to fly, see if you don't," he muttered like an
invocation, and took a firm grip of the cord. "Are you ready there?" he
called. "One, two, three- let go!"
The kite shot up-and fell. Mocking laughter came from the boys.
"It won't fly, no good trying," someone shouted.
"Bone-head!" Zhenya replied. "D'you know what kind of kite this is? Dad
bought it at Kolpakchi's on Yekaterininskaya Street; it cost one ruble
forty-five kopeks."
"A lot your Dad knows about kites!"
"You leave my Dad alone, or I'll give you a sock in the jaw!"
"It won't fly anyway, it's got no tail."
"You fool, it's not an ordinary kite, it's from a shop, I'll show you
whether it'll fly or not."
But try as he would, the shop kite flopped back on the ground every
time.
"Your Dad just threw away his money."
It was a painful situation. The disappointed spectators began drifting
away.
"Wait a bit, where are you going, stupids?" cried Zhenya, trying to
smile as he squatted on his heels by the kite. "Come back here, it'll fly
all right this time."
But his authority was now completely gone and like a defeated general,
he could get none to heed him. At first Petya and Gavrik exchanged glances
and contemptuous observations about the shop toy which couldn't come
anywhere near the good old home-made kites. But after a while Gavrik began
to feel the family honour was in danger.
He frowned and paced weightily over to the kite. "Keep off, it's not
yours," whined Zhenya, almost in tears, trying to push his uncle away with
his elbow.
"Is that so?" remarked Gavrik; raising Zhenya by the shoulders, he gave
him a shove with his knee on the seat. Then he walked unhurriedly all round
the kite without touching it, carefully examining all its struts and
fastenings.
"So that's it. Now I see," he said at last and bent a stern look on
Zhenya. "Can't you see where the centre of gravity is, dunderhead?"
"Where?" asked Zhenya.
"Utochkin the flyer," Gavrik scoffed, without condescending to explain.
Once more he bent a keen-eyed gaze on the kite, stooped over it,
refastened a string and moved an aluminium ring a little.
"Now it's a different matter. Come on, let's show 'em." And he winked
at Petya.
Petya and Motya took the ends of the kite and held it over their heads.
Gavrik picked up the ball of string lying on the ground among the withered
immortelles, shouted, "Let go!" and ran against the wind.
The kite slipped out of Petya's and Motya's hands and shot upward-but
this time it did not falter and fall, it hung lightly in the air and
followed the running Gavrik in a graceful curve. Petya and Motya stood there
with hands still raised, as though reaching out to the kite, begging it to
return. But it flew on, drawn by the cord, mounting smoothly higher.
Gavrik stopped and the kite stopped too, almost directly over his head.
"Aha! That's taught you!" he called up, wagging a finger at the kite.
He began carefully twitching the taut line and the kite twitched too, like a
fish on a hook. Then he moved the ball forward and back, carefully unwinding
the line which slid off- arid up in little jerks. The kite obediently rose
higher and higher, catching the wind and repeating the movements of the ball
in Gavrik's hands, but with a smoother, wider sweep. It was so high now that
they had to throw their heads far back to see it.
The kite became smaller, it floated against the deep-blue August sky,
slender and golden, bathed in the warm sunshine, every surface catching the
fresh sea breeze.
Zhenya ran along beside his Uncle Gavrik, begging and pleading to be
allowed to hold the line, but it was no good.
"Keep off, kid," said Gavrik, watching the kite through narrowed eyes.
It was only when the whole line had been paid out and Gavrik had given a
final twitch to the kite as though making sure it was firmly fastened, that
he handed it over to Zhenya.
"Hold it tight, if you let that go you'll not catch it again."
Motya ran home for paper and they began "sending up letters." There was
something magical in the way a fragment of paper with a hole in the middle
threaded on to the stick began hesitantly rising up the line, sometimes
stopping as though it had caught on something. The nearer the "letter" came
to the kite, the faster it climbed until at last it slipped quickly up and
clung to the kite like steel to a magnet, while a second and a third
followed it up, and Petya imagined that letters from him full of love and
complaint were sliding up one after the other into the blue emptiness, to
... Longjumeau.
Suddenly the line slipped out of Zhenya's hands. The kite, liberated,
flew up with the wind, carrying a long garland of "letters." They all had to
run for a long time, jumping ditches and climbing fences, before they found
it at last outside the town, in the steppe, lying in thick silver wormwood.
When they at last came home to Near Mills, it was evening, the big moon
still shed little light but faint ashy shadows were cast by fences and
trees, the air was perfumed with four-o'clocks, and grey moths circled and
fluttered mysteriously in the darkness of the hedges.
As they neared the house, Petya saw a number of people coming out of
the gate. One of them he recognized as Uncle Fedya, the sailor from the
tailor shop at Sabarisky Barracks who had made him the navy blouse. But the
sailor seemed not to recognize him in the dim light.
Petya also noticed a young woman in a hat and a blouse, and an elderly
man in a jacket and top-boots carrying a railwayman's lantern, evidently a
guard or engine-driver. Fragments of talk came to him.
"Levitsky writes in Our Dawn that the failure of the 1905 Revolution
was partly due to the fact that no bourgeois government was formed," the
young woman's voice said.
"Your Levitsky's just a Liberal and nothing more, he only makes a show
of being a Marxist," a man's voice replied. "You read the Star, there's an
article by Lenin, that'll help you to get things straight."
"I propose we keep off discussion out of doors. You can start
quarrelling again next Sunday," said a third voice.
There was smothered laughter and the figures disappeared in the
shadows.
"Who are those visitors?" Petya asked and felt at once that he should
not have asked.
"Oh, just people," said Gavrik reluctantly. "It's a sort of Sunday
school." To change the subject he went on, "On the fourteenth of August I
want to take the exams for three forms. I've been through everything. If
you'll just help me with the Latin a bit." "Of course I will," said Petya.
The Chernoivanenko family would not hear of letting Petya go before supper.
Terenty placed a candle with a glass shade on the table under the mulberry
tree, at once attracting a whole swarm of moths. His wife, washing the
teacups after the visitors, wiped her hands on her apron and went up to
Petya. Of all the Chernoivanenko family she had changed the least. She
greeted the boy country-fashion, holding out her hand with stiff fingers.
Motya brought a big dish covered with a homespun cloth out of the
larder.
"Maybe you'd like to try our plum dumplings, Petya?" she asked shyly.
After supper Petya set off home. Gavrik walked with him almost to the
station. It was a warm summer night, a harvest moon in a misty ring shone
through the dark branches, crickets were shrilling everywhere, on the
outskirts dogs barked as they do in villages, and somewhere a gramophone was
playing. Petya felt a pleasant weariness after this long delightful day
which had imperceptibly opened before him something new, something he had
previously sensed only vaguely.
On that day Petya matured inwardly, as though he had grown older by
several years. Perhaps it was on that day the boy finally became a youth.
Now he no longer had any doubts that it was to a certain extent from
Near Mills, from Terenty's cottage, that this thing called the
"revolutionary movement" came.
The new term opened on the fifteenth of August and some days before
that, Vasily Petrovich went to Faig's school to conduct re-examinations of
pupils who had failed in the end-of-term exams. He came home to dinner in a
radiant mood, for Mr. Faig had been more than affable to him, and had
personally taken him all over the school, showing him the gym and the
physics laboratory fitted up with all the best, modern equipment imported
from abroad. Finally Mr. Faig had taken him home in his own carriage, so
that the whole street had seen Vasily Petrovich in his frock-coat, with
exercise books under his arm, jump rather awkwardly out of the carriage and
bow to Mr. Faig who vouchsafed a glimpse of his dyed side-whiskers and a
wave of a hand in Swiss glove in the window.
At dinner Vasily Petrovich was in high spirits and re-dated a number of
humorous incidents illustrating the ' ways and customs of the Faig school
where certain pupils, the spoiled sons of rich parents, stayed two or even
three years in each form, grew whiskers, married and started families while
still within the walls of that god-forsaken establishment; why, there had
even been a case when a Faig pupil came to school with his own son, the only
difference being that father was in the sixth form, and son in the first.
"Se non e vero e ben trovafo!" cried Vasily Petrovich laughing
infectiously-it's not true, but it's well invented.
Auntie, however, did not appear to share his mood. She kept shaking her
head doubtfully and saying, "Well, well, I somehow can't see you stopping
there long."
In the evening Vasily Petrovich sat down to correct the exercise books.
The boys heard him snort a number of times, and once he muttered, "What the
devil is all this? Disgraceful! It's got to be put a stop to, and at once,"
and threw down his pencil.
Out of the ten boys taking their Russian exam a second time, Vasily
Petrovich failed seven, and although at the teachers' meeting Mr. Faig made
no objections, his expression was one of grieved indignation. This time
Vasily Petrovich came home by horse-tram, and not in high spirits.
At the end of the first term the teaching staff learned that a certain
Blizhensky was to enter the school. This Blizhensky was the son of a
broadcloth millionaire, a young man who had been to a number of high schools
in St. Petersburg, then to others in Moscow and Kharkov, and finally to the
Pavel Galagan College in Kiev, known as a school that accepted the worst
pupils in the Russian Empire, even those who had been expelled in disgrace.
However, strange as it might be, the Pavel Galagan College too had got
rid of this prodigy. So now he was to enter the fifth form at Faig's.
Although entrance examinations in the middle of the year were strictly
prohibited, an exception was made in some roundabout way for the millionaire
Blizhensky's son.
A few days before this examination Mr. Faig, meeting Vasily Petrovich
in the assembly hall before morning prayers, took his arm and walked up and
down the corridor with him, confiding some of his ideas with regard to the
latest West-European pedagogical trends.
"I have a great respect for your strictness," he concluded. "In fact, I
really admire it. I am strict myself- but I am also fair. And I stand by my
principles. You failed seven boys not long ago, and did I ever say a word
against it? But, my dear Vasily Petrovich, let us be frank-" He took a very
thin gold watch from his waistcoat pocket and glanced at it. "There are
times when pedagogical strictness can bring results which are just the
opposite of those desired. Rejected by an establishment of learning,
standing outside its walls, a young man, instead of becoming an educated,
useful member of our young constitutional society, may enter the service of
the police, may perhaps-entre nous soit dit- become an agent of the secret
police, a spy, and in the end fall under the influence of the Black Hundred.
I believe that to you, a Tolstoian and ... h'm ... perhaps a revolutionary,
this would be very undesirable."
"I am not a Tolstoian, still less a revolutionary," said Vasily
Petrovich with a touch of irritation.
"I say it only between ourselves. You may depend on my discretion. But
everybody in this town knows that you have had differences with the
authorities and have perhaps to a certain extent suffered for it. You are a
Red, Vasily Petrovich. I will say no more. Not a word! But I would be
extremely disappointed, nay! grieved, if this young man were to fail in his
entrance examination. He is the only heir to a million, and ... he has
already suffered much. In a word, I beg of you," Mr. Faig concluded in his
softest, gentlest voice, "do not cause me any more unpleasantness. Be strict
but merciful. This, in the interests of our educational establishment which
I hope are as dear to you as to me. I think you understand me."
On this day Vasily Petrovich again rolled home in Mr. Faig's carriage.
For some days he felt as though he had eaten tainted fish.
"To hell with it!" he decided at last. "I'll give the young swine a
bare pass. You can't knock down a wall with a pea-shooter."
When the exam was actually held, however, a few days later, and Vasily
Petrovich saw the "young swine" sitting alone in his glory at a table in the
middle of the assembly hall, before the entire Areopagus of teachers- for he
was to be examined in all subjects simultaneously and briefly-the blood
rushed to his head.
The young man, about twenty years of age, was in the full-dress uniform
of the Pavel Galagan College, and the high, stiff collar constricted his
throat and pushed against his powdered cheeks, making him look as though he
were choking. The back of his clipped neck displayed a liberal amount of
pimples, and his reddish-chestnut hair parted in the middle was so plastered
with brilliantine that his flat, snaky head shone like a mirror. Now, Vasily
Petrovich could not stand men who used lotions, and the smell of
brilliantine made him feel sick. But most of all his sense of what was
proper was outraged by the gold pince-nez which perched most incongruously
on the young man's coarse nose, giving his little pig's eyes a frankly
impudent expression.
What a blockhead, thought Vasily Petrovich, irritated, tossing his head
and fastening all the buttons of his frock-coat.
As he stood to attention to answer the examiners' questions, the young
man thrust out his broad rear, which seemed to be poured into his uniform.
When Vasily Petrovich's turn came, he put a number of simple questions
in an indifferent voice, received answers that brought a melancholy smile
from Mr. Faig, drew the report form towards him with trembling fingers and
put down a fail. The exam ended in funereal silence. Vasily Petrovich went
home on the horse-tram, took off his collar that seemed to have become too
tight, removed his frock-coat and boots, refused any dinner and lay down on
his bed, face to the wall. Neither Auntie nor the boys ventured to ask him
anything, but all understood something very serious must have happened.
In the evening the bell rang, and when Petya opened the door he saw an
old man in a long beaver coat and a young man with gold pince-nez wearing
the smart uniform cap of the Ravel Galagan College.
"Is Vasily Petrovich at home?" the old man asked, and without waiting
for an answer marched straight towards the dining-room in his coat and hat,
pointing towards the half-open door with his ivory-headed stick and asking,
"In there, eh?"
Vasily Petrovich barely had time to get into his frock-coat and boots.
"I'm Blizhensky. Good evening," the old man wheezed. "You failed this
idiot of mine today, and you were quite right. In your place I'd have bashed
his face in as well. Come here, you worthless lout." And he turned round.
The young man emerged from behind his father, took off his cap and held
it in both hands, his glistening head hanging.
"Down on your knees!" his father rasped, striking his stick on the
floor. "Kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand!"
The young man did not kneel, nor did he kiss Vasily Petrovich's hand,
he gulped and then began to cry noisily, rubbing a red nose with his
handkerchief.
"He's sorry, he'll not do it again," the old man said. "Now you will
give him private lessons at home twice a week, and pull him up. As for the
entrance examination, we can settle it like this." The old man felt in the
pocket of his frock-coat, on the lapel of which Vasily Petrovich saw the
silver medal of the Society of Michael the Archangel ( A reactionary
Black-Hundred organization.-Tr.) on its tricolour ribbon, took out a blank
exam report form and handed it to Vasily Petrovich. "Here you will put down
a pass for the young fool, and the old report with God's help we will
destroy. Faig and the other teachers have agreed."
He then took out a note-case and laid two "Peters" on the table-two
five-hundred-ruble notes with a Peter I watermark.
"What is it?" mumbled Vasily Petrovich confusedly, with a weak gesture,
glancing at the money through his pince-nez. Then he realized the outrageous
insult of the proposal. He paled until even his ears were white, he shook
from head to foot so that Petya feared he would die of heart failure now,
this very instant. Then the colour flooded back to his face until it was
purple and he gasped dumbly.
"Sir, you are a scoundrel!" he screamed. He sobbed with rage. "Get out
of here! How dare you?... In my own house!... Get out! Get out this minute!"
The old man, startled and frightened, crossed himself rapidly several
times and then ran at top speed from the room, through the hall and out of
the door, overturning the rickety what-not with its piles of music. And
Vasily Petrovich ran after him, awkwardly pushing at his back, trying to
strike him on the back of the head, while Petya pulled his father's coat,
crying, "Daddy, please! Daddy, don't!"
Altogether, it was a disgraceful scene which ended with the old man and
the young one pelting down the stairs, while Vasily Petrovich on the landing
flung after them the five-hundred-ruble notes which fluttered slowly from
wall to wall of the stair-well.
The two Blizhenskys, father and son, picked up the money, then looked
up, and the old man yelled senselessly, "Mangy Jews!" and threatened with
his ivory-topped stick.
The next day a messenger brought Vasily Petrovich a letter from Mr.
Faig in a long, elegant envelope of thick paper with a fantastic
coat-of-arms embossed on it. In most courteous terms Vasily Petrovich was
informed that in consideration of differences of views on questions of
education, his further services at the school had become superfluous. The
letter was written for some reason in French and ended with the signature:
Baron Faig.
Although this was a terrible blow for the Bachei family, Vasily
Petrovich accepted it with perfect calm. He could have expected nothing
else.
"Well, Tatyana Ivanovna," he said to Auntie, cracking his fingers, "it
appears that my pedagogical activities ..." he smiled ironically, "it
appears that my pedagogical activities are ended and I shall have to seek
some other profession."
"But why?" Auntie asked. "You could give private lessons."
"To swine like that?" cried Vasily Petrovich, his voice rising almost
to a scream. "Never! I'll carry sacks at the port first!"
Despite the seriousness of the situation, Auntie could not restrain a
faint, melancholy smile. Vasily Petrovich jumped up as though stung and
began pacing the room.
"Yes, sacks!" he said excitedly. "And I see nothing shameful or amusing
in it. The overwhelming majority of the population in the Russian Empire are
engaged in manual labour. Why should I be any exception?"
"But you are a man of learning."
"Of learning?" said Vasily Petrovich bitterly. "Yes, I don't dispute
it. But I'm not a man, I'm a slave!"
"What did you say?" cried Auntie, raising her hands.
"You heard me. A slave. That's the only word for it. First, I was a
slave of the Ministry of Education as represented by the head of the
Education Department, and he drove me out like a dog because I presumed to
have my own opinion about Tolstoi. Then, I became the slave of Faig, a slimy
scoundrel, and he drove me out like a dog, too, because I was honest and
refused to give a pass to that dolt, that blockhead Blizhensky, for the sole
reason that he was the son of a millionaire, if you please. To hell with
both of them and the whole Russian government into the bargain!" he shouted;
it burst out of him, and for a second he himself was frightened at what he
had said. But he could no longer stop. "And if in this Russia of ours I have
to be somebody's slave," he went on, "then I'd sooner be an ordinary slave
and not an intellectual one. At least I'll keep my inner integrity.... Oh
God," he groaned with sudden tears in his eyes and looked at the icon. "What
a blessing that He in His mercy took my poor Zhenya, that she does not have
to share these indignities with me! How would she have borne it, seeing
nothing left to her husband but to carry sacks down at the port."
"How you keep harping on those sacks," said Auntie, wiping her eyes.
"Yes, sacks, sacks!" Vasily Petrovich repeated defiantly.
Night had fallen. Pavlik was asleep, breathing heavily, but Petya lay
awake, listening to the voices in the dining-room. He had a vivid mental
picture of his father, for some reason without overcoat and hat, in his
frock-coat and old boots, going down the famous Odessa steps to the port and
then dragging about the heavy jute sacks of copra. But there was something
false, artificial about the picture. Petya himself could not take it
seriously, yet nevertheless he was so sorry for his father that he wanted to
weep, to run to him, embrace him and cry, "Never mind, Daddy, it'll be all
right, I'll carry sacks with you too, we'll manage somehow!"
AUNTIE'S NEW IDEA
Of course, Vasily Petrovich did not carry sacks, and although the
situation continued to be dreadful, even tragic, time went on and there was
no outward change to be seen in the life of the Bachei family, except that
Vasily Petrovich spent most of his time at home, trying not to go out
anywhere.
The approach of poverty was so unnoticeable that a kind of tranquillity
settled on them all. As for the outside world-friends and neighbours-the
Faig episode passed unremarked, or rather, it was tacitly agreed that if
Vasily Petrovich had quarrelled with two school principals in the course of
one year, he must be impossible to get on with and he had nobody to blame
but himself.
A factor which helped to distract attention from Vasily Petrovich's
affairs was the murder of Stolypin in Kiev, an event which shook up the
whole Russian Empire. Some were horrified, others felt the rise of vague,
undefined hopes. For a month people talked of nothing but the "Bagrov shot,"
and were quite sure it smelt of revolution, although all knew that Stolypin
had been shot by one of his own body-guards and the incident probably had
nothing to do with revolution at all.
"Say what you like, Vasily Petrovich, but something's got to be done,"
said Auntie very decidedly one day. "We can't go on like this."
"What do you suggest?" Vasily Petrovich asked wearily.
"I've thought of a plan, but I don't know how you will regard it. Not
far from Kovalevsky's country-house there's a really beautiful little
place," said Auntie insinuatingly.
"Never in this world!" cried Vasily Petrovich resolutely.
"Wait a minute," Auntie said gently. "You don't even let me finish."
"Never in this world!" he cut in with still greater resolution.
"But look-"
"Oh, heavens," snapped Vasily Petrovich, frowning. "I know everything
you're going to say."
"Now that's just where you're wrong."
"I'm not. But it's all nonsense. And you're only building castles in
the air. I don't want to hear another word about it. To start off with,
where's the money to come from?"
"We'd hardly need any. Perhaps just a very little."
"Never!" Vasily Petrovich cut her short.
"Now, why not?"
"Because I am against the whole principle of private property in land.
You'll never make me become a real estate owner. The land belongs to God.
Yes, to God and the people who till it. I will not do it, and that's all I
have to say. Besides, it's only empty dreams."
Auntie waited patiently for Vasily Petrovich to finish.
"I've listened to you," she said gently, "and now you listen to me.
After all, it isn't even polite to interrupt in the middle of a sentence."
"Be so kind as to say all you want to say; but I do not wish to own any
real estate whatsoever and I won't. And that's the end of it."
"In the first place, you don't have to own property. Madame
Vasyutinskaya is prepared to rent the place. And secondly, we need pay her
at first only about as much as we're paying for this flat; the rest of the
money will come from the sale of the crop."
Hearing Auntie talk of sales of crops, Vasily Petrovich boiled up
again.
"So that's it! And may I be permitted to inquire where this sale will
take place and what this crop is to be?"
"Black and white cherries, pears, apples and grapes," said Auntie.
"So you suggest that I start trading in fruit?"
"But why not?"
"Well, of all things...." Unable to find words, Vasily Petrovich
shrugged his shoulders.
Auntie ignored his impatient gesture. "We could do very well, and get
out of all our difficulties at once."
"If that's the case, then why doesn't your Madame Vasyutinskaya want to
reap all these benefits for herself?"
"Because she's an old lady and all alone, and she intends to go
abroad."
Vasily Petrovich snorted.
"So your lonely old do-nothing wants to go abroad and shift all her
worries on to our shoulders, is that it?"
"All right, have it your own way," said Auntie shortly, leaving the
final question unanswered. "I thought you'd be attracted by my- idea of
renting a delightful cottage close to town, close to the sea, tilling the
soil, eating the produce of your own labour and at least being independent.
It's completely according to your principles. But if you don't like the
idea...."
"I don't!" said Vasily Petrovich stubbornly, and Auntie dropped the
subject.
She understood her brother-in-law well enough to know that she had said
enough for the present. Let him calm down and think it over, get used to the
idea.
A few days later he opened the subject himself.
"You do get fantastic ideas," he- said. "I've noticed you've always got
something foolish in your head-letting rooms, or cooking dinners-things of
that sort. And nothing ever comes of it all."
"Something will come of this," said Auntie calmly.
"Just another of your castles in the air."
Auntie made no reply.
A few more days passed.
"It's absurd to think that we'd even have the physical strength to run
a place like that."
"The house is quite a small one," Auntie said, "and there are only
thirteen acres of land attached to it." With a faint smile she added, "In
any case, I don't think it would be any harder than carrying sacks down at
the docks."
"That is not funny at all," said Vasily Petrovich flushing.
Again the subject was dropped, but now Auntie knew that Vasily
Petrovich would soon give way. And she was right.
Gradually, imperceptibly, Auntie's idea was capturing his imagination.
It was not such a foolish one after all; in fact, it contained a good deal
of common sense, and Vasily Petrovich was secretly much taken with it, it
fell into line with the views of life which had recently been taking form in
his mind, especially since his visit to Switzerland. These views were still
vague and undefined, a mixture of Jean Jacques Rousseau and the Narodniks,
of "going to the people" and of natural education. He pictured a clean,
uncomplicated, patriarchal country life, independent of the state. A
flourishing little patch of soil cultivated by his own hands and those of
his family, without the use of hired labour. Something in the spirit of
Switzerland, of the cantons.
Now it appeared that his dream was close to realization. Everything was
there-the small patch of land, the orchard, even the vineyard which made it
particularly like southern Switzerland. True, there were no mountains, but
there was the sea with bathing and fishing. And most important of
all-freedom, independence from the state. What a wonderful upbringing for
the children!
The end of it was that Vasily Petrovich finally took fire and asked
Auntie to tell him all the details. From her room she brought a plan of the
place. It appeared she had already gone quite a long way in her negotiations
with Madame Vasyutinskaya. The house itself was a five-room affair with an
outside kitchen, then there was a stable, a labourer's hut, a rain-water
cistern and a shed which, Auntie said, held the wine press.
"Why, it's not just a summer cottage, it's a whole manor house!" Vasily
Petrovich cried gaily.
Then they set to work counting the fruit trees and the vines, which
were indicated by circles. Their calculations showed that within a year they
would pay the whole rent and have a solid sum left over. But perhaps all
this was only on paper? Auntie suggested going to see for themselves.
They boarded the little suburban train that passed their house and went
to the sixteenth station, from which a horse-tram took them to the
Kovalevsky country-house. After that, guided by Auntie, they walked a mile
or so across the steppe to "their cottage."
Auntie was evidently familiar with the place. She stroked the dog as it
rattled its chain, and tapped at the watchman's window. A sleepy-looking boy
came out, whom Auntie called Gavrila. He was the last of Madame
Vasyutinskaya's labourers and acted as watchman, stableman and vineyard
tender. Now he showed the Bacheis over the house and grounds.
They saw the vineyard, the orchard, and even more trees than they had
expected, for about three acres of recently planted cherry trees had not
been included in the plan.
Everything was in excellent condition: the vines were bent over and
covered with soil for the winter, and the trunks of the apple trees were
swathed in straw to protect them from rabbits and field mice.
It had been a mild winter with little snow. Some still lay on the
mounds of earth over the vines but it had already thawed on the sunny side.
Near the house, however, where some very thick dark-green fir trees stood,
great snow-drifts still lay on the flower-beds, gilded by the setting sun,
with the clearly etched dark-blue shadows of garden seats and of shrubs
lying in long, wavy lines across them. The windows shone like gold tinsel.
It was exactly like those winter landscapes which Petya saw every year at
the spring exhibitions held by South Russian artists, where Auntie took the
boys to teach them the love of beauty.
With a great rattling Gavrila opened the glass door of the house, and
they went through the empty, cold rooms lighted by slanting rays of frosty
sunshine.
All round about lay the dead, snow-covered steppe, criss-crossed by
rabbit tracks and with nothing but Kovalevsky's house roof and a distant
stretch of sea to catch the eye.
They went through the house and other buildings, then back to the
orchard. Vasily Petrovich noticed that one carelessly wrapped apple tree had
been gnawed. He stopped and turned a stern look on Gavrila.
"Look at that, that won't do," he said. "We'll have the rabbits eating
our whole crop!"
The next day final negotiations began with Ma-dame Vasyutinskayia-and
so did the search for money to pay the initial instalment of rent, the
inevitable expenses attached to removal and starting in a new place.
For the first time Petya discovered that money was not only earned, it
could also be "found." But to find money appeared to be something extremely
complicated, worrying and, worst of all, humiliating. His father was often
out, but now nobody said Vasily Petrovich was at school, or had gone to a
teachers' meeting, they simply said he had "gone to town."
Father and Auntie used new words, words which Petya had never heard
before, such as mutual credit association, short-term loan, pawnbroker, note
of hand, six per cent per annum, and second mortgage.
Very often, after going to town a number of times, Vasily Petrovich
would come home disturbed and upset, refuse any dinner, take off his
frock-coat and lie down on the bed with his face to the wall. That
mysterious lottery-loan bond, part of Mother's dowry, emerged from the
drawer. Up to now Petya had only heard of it once a year, when Vasily
Petrovich crossed himself and opened the Odessa Leaflet to see whether it
had won two hundred thousand.
One day when they came home from school Petya and Pavlik found that the
piano-also part of Mother's dowry-had disappeared from the dining-room,
leaving a patch of floor that looked clean and freshly painted. The room
seemed so bare without it that Petya nearly burst into tears.
Then the rings disappeared from Auntie's fingers.
Finally the day came, a Sunday, when Auntie with trembling fingers
pushed a thick package of bank-notes, notes of hand and a receipt signed by
a notary into her reticule, put on her hat, gloves and best squirrel cape
left by her late sister, and said decisively, "Vasily Petrovich, I'm going!"
"Very well," Vasily Petrovich replied dully through the door.
"Come, Petya," Auntie said resolutely. The boy was to accompany her, in
case anyone tried to rob her on the way.
Auntie clutched the reticule containing their whole possessions to her
chest while Petya walked grimly behind with sharp glances right and left.
But there was nothing to arouse suspicion. It was Lent, the bells rang
funerally over the town, and most of the people they met were old women in
dark clothes returning from morning service with strings of convent-made
bread-rings, soft but very sour-looking.
Madame Vasyutinskaya lived quite nearby, in a time-darkened house of
limestone standing in a quiet side-street near the sea.
Petya saw an old woman in mourning, sunk deep into an old arm-chair. He
had heard it said that Madame Vasyutinskaya was paralyzed and "had lost her
legs," but the last bit seemed to be wrong, for he could quite plainly see
feet in fur slippers on a soft footstool. The room was small and very hot;
it had a tiled stove with brass fittings and a great deal of old-fashioned
mahogany furniture. In the corner numerous lamps burned with blue and
crimson flames before icons hung with a multitude of Easter decorations,
large and small, of crystal, porcelain and gold, dangling on silk ribbons.
Outside the window he could see lilac bushes and a flock of sparrows that
fluttered and squabbled among the grey, bare twigs with their swelling buds.
In front of the old lady stood a Japanese table with a coffee-set, a
round bast box of chocolate halvah and a silver bread-basket with
convent-made bread-rings. The room smelt of coffee and the cigarettes which
Madame Vasyutinskaya smoked. She glanced at Petya, nodded her massive head
in its old-fashioned black bonnet and talked to Auntie a little while about
the weather and politics. Then she rang a silver bell and at once an old
footman in a tailcoat and soft slippers came in on his shaky legs from a
neighbouring room, letting in the monotonous trilling of canaries, and
placed an inlaid rosewood box on the table before his mistress.
Nervous and for some reason flushing, Auntie took the money and notes
of hand from her reticule and handed them to the old woman, who put them in
her box without counting them and gave Auntie a paper folded in four,
bearing a number of coloured stamps-the agreement. Petya noticed that the
box was lined with pink quilted satin like a wedding coach.
The old woman locked the box with a small key that hung round her neck.
The sharp click gave Petya a momentary feeling of fright.
Auntie carefully tucked the agreement into her reticule. Then the old
footman shuffled out noiselessly with the box, and Madame Vasyutinskaya,
puffing, poured three cups of coffee out of the brass pot.
"What a lovely thing!" said Auntie, taking the dark-blue cup with its
gleam of worn gold inside. "It's Gardner, isn't it?"
"Old Popov," the old woman answered in her deep baritone, and emitted
two streams of tobacco smoke from her nose.
"Really? I quite took it for Gardner," said Auntie, and raising her
veil, began drinking coffee in tiny, elegant sips. The old woman put a piece
of chocolate halvah on a saucer and held it out to Petya.
"No, it's old Popov," she said, turning her bloated face to Auntie. "It
was a wedding present from my late husband. He was a man of great taste. We
had an estate near Chernigov, forty hundred acres, but after the peasants
burned the house and killed my husband in 1905, I sold the land and came to
live here. But I think you know all that. Until Stolypin was killed," she
continued in the same wheezing monotonous baritone, "I still preserved some
illusions. Now I have none. Russia needs a firm hand and the late Pyotr
Arkadyevich Stolypin, peace to his soul, was the last real nobleman and
administrator who could have saved the Empire from revolution. That is why
they shot him. But our Emperor, God forgive me, he's worth nothing. A
dish-rag.... Don't you listen," she added sternly, turning to Petya, "it's
too early for you to hear such things. Eat your halvah. I tell you," and she
turned her bovine eyes on Auntie and lowered her voice, "he is not God's
Anointed, but a plain coward. Instead of shooting and hanging these rabble,
he flew into a panic. How could any man with sense and understanding give
Russia a constitution and allow that disgraceful All-Russian talking-shop in
the Tavrichesky Palace, with Yids spitting dirt at the government and openly
calling for revolution!"
With the last words her voice rose to a sudden scream, so strident that
even the canaries in the neighbouring room were silenced for a little while.
"And they'll get it, mark my words-revolution will come, and very soon,
and then those scum will hang all decent people on the first lamppost. But
I'm not such a fool as to sit here and wait for it. I had enough with my
Chernigov estate. You can all do as you like, but I shall go abroad. I shall
go, and leave a curse on this country with its Social-Democrats and
factions, and resolutions, and strikes, and May Day meetings, and
workers-of-the-world-unite! Take my land and run it as you please-if the
rabble are kind enough to give their permission, that is!"
She was no longer talking, she was screaming at the top of her voice,
and Petya looked with mingled terror and disgust at her eyes, rolling in
frenzy.
"Excuse me," she said suddenly in her ordinary voice. "Will you be so
kind as to pay the second instalment on your note of hand to my lawyer, and
he will forward it to me."
Auntie quickly began preparing to go, pulling on her gloves and
straightening her hat. Madame Vasyutinskaya did not stop her. When they came
out of the house, they noticed open trunks in the little yard ;and coats
hung on ropes to air. Evidently Madame Vasyutinskaya really did intend to
leave.
WORKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!
Soon afterwards, the Bachei family moved to their new home. Not all at
once, however. Vastly Petrovich went first to take possession and have
everything in order before spring came.
Auntie and the boys were to remain in town for a little while longer,
to sub-let the flat and store the furniture.
The boys were still going to school, for the fees had been paid at the
beginning of the year. What they would do the next year depended on the
success of the new venture.
Gavrik often visited them now. He had taken and passed the exams for
three forms as an out-student; Petya was coaching him for the sixth-form
exam, but now he did not refuse the fifty kopeks a lesson.
Gavrik was still working in the Odessa Leaflet print-shop, not as a
printer's devil, however; he was already an apprentice type-setter and
earning quite good wages. Sometimes he came straight from work in the
evening, bringing with him the acrid, alluring smell of the print-shop. He
was very apt at his job and in some ways had already outstripped his master.
When he came to the Bachei home, he was no longer shy and awkward, he bore
himself confidently and one day even brought a half-pound of sweets for tea.
He handed the little package to Auntie, saying, "Allow me to make this
little present. It's my pay-day. They're Abrikosov's caramels, I know you
like them."
The misfortunes of the Bachei family -seemed to have brought Gavrik and
Petya closer together. Gavrik not only sympathized with Petya-he understood
his situation, which was much more important. Incidentally, from beginning
to end of the whole affair he expressed his own very definite views about it
all quite freely.
Vasily Petrovich's dismissal from the Faig establishment, although
unpleasant, was something inevitable, for after all better to starve than to
work for such a parasite, such a blood-sucker. Here, Gavrik fully approved
of Vasily Petrovich's action. But to sell the piano for a song and rent a
farm-this was another matter; he could not believe that a family of
intellectuals would be able to till the soil with their own hands.
"You don't know a thing about it, you'll get calluses and that's all.
Stolypin farmers!" he added with a smile.
Petya had noticed lately that Gavrik linked up everything with
politics.
"Yes, but what was Father to do?" he asked with irritation.
"What he'd done before. Give people learning. That's what a teacher's
job is."
"But if he's not allowed?"
"Eh, brother, they can't forbid anyone to teach folks."
"But what folks? Where are they?"
"He'd find them if he looked for them," said Gavrik evasively. "Well,
let's get on with the lesson."
After their lessons Petya would often walk part of the way home with
Gavrik, sometimes he even went as far as Near Mills. There were many things
they talked of on the way, and Gavrik was not so secretive as formerly.
Petya learned that there was a committee of the Russian Social-Democratic
Labour Party in the town. It consisted of Beks and Meks. The Beks were the
Bolsheviks and the Meks-the Mensheviks. There was a clear line between them.
Terenty and all his friends belonged to the Beks.
There had been a Party conference in Prague not long before, and at
this conference Ulyanov, who was also called Lenin or Frey, the one who had
been sent the letter by Petya, had defeated the Meks, and now there was a
real revolutionary party of the working class.
"And will there be a revolution?" asked Petya, remembering Madame
Vasyutinskaya and her dreadful eyes that rolled like those of a madwoman.
"All in good time," said Gavrik. "We've got to get our forces together.
Then we'll see."
Once he pulled out of his pocket a dirty canvas bag filled with
something hard, and held it up before Petya's nose.
"See that?" he winked.
"What is it? Buttons for tiddly-winks?" asked Petya, surprised. He had
never thought Gavrik could still go in for silly things like that.
"Aha!" said Gavrik. "Like a game?" And his eyes sparkled slyly. Petya
held out his hand.
"Let's see."
"Hands off," said Gavrik sternly and hid the bag behind his back.
Petya realized that this must be something very different from buttons.
"I suppose it's the kind of buttons that nearly blew up our kitchen
that time," he said, remembering how the pans had leaped on the stove and
the macaroni dangled from the ceiling.
"Not quite, but something like it," said Gavrik, who evidently wanted
to show off but could not make up his mind. "Guess again, you're getting
nearer."
"Show me!" Petya pleaded, burning with curiosity.
"Not now."
"When?"
"Don't be so inquisitive," said Gavrik and pushed the bag deep into his
trouser pocket.
Petya, offended, asked no more but sulked in silence.
When the friends drew level with the depot, however, Gavrik led Petya
behind a corner. He looked round carefully, then pulled out the bag and
unfastened the knotted string with his teeth. He tipped something out on to
his palm and held it under Petya's eyes. His palm was filled with little
metal pieces that smelt strongly of printer's ink.
"Type," he said mysteriously.
Petya did not understand.
"Type for printing. Letters."'
Petya had never seen real type. As a child, it is true, he had been
given a toy printing-set in a flat tin box. There had been several dozen
rubber letters, a frame, a pad soaked with thick ink, and a pair of pincers
for handling the letters. You could set a number of words in the frame and
then stamp them on paper, making printed lines with black strips between
them. But of course, real printing was something quite different.
"And can you set type and print yourself?"
"Of course!"
"And will it be just as clear as in the newspaper?"
"Just as clear."
"Set something, show me."
"Set something, eh?" Gavrik thought a moment. "All right. But let's go
on a bit first."
They went round the depot, crawled under trucks, ran down from the
embankment and found themselves in a deep gully thick with dry weeds from
last year. There they sat down on the ground. From his pocket Gavrik took a
steel thing with a clip which he called a composing-stick and started
quickly setting letter after letter of type in a long line.
He then took a stump of pencil from his pocket and rubbed the lead over
the letters. Again he delved into that bottomless pocket, took out a scrap
of clean newsprint, laid the composing-stick on it and pressed down with his
hand.
"Ready!" He held out the paper to Petya, but without letting go of it.
"Workers of the world, unite!" Petya read these strange words faintly
but clearly printed in real newspaper lettering.
"What's that?" he asked, admiring the deft speed with which Gavrik had
done it all.
"What we've been talking about," said Gavrik; he tore the paper into
minute fragments and let the wind carry them away. "But remember!" He wagged
a finger smelling of kerosene under Petya's nose.
"You needn't worry."
Gavrik went up close to Petya and breathed into his ear, "I've got out
fifteen bags of type like this."
At the end of March Auntie finally managed to sublet the flat on good
terms. Now the furniture had to be taken care of, and then they could
finally move. Gavrik talked it over with Terenty and then suggested that the
furniture be put in their shed at Near Mills to save storage costs; and
Petya could live there too, until the end of the school exams.
This seemed ideal, and Auntie agreed gladly. She herself decided to go
and stay with an old school friend, taking Pavlik with her.
So one fine day two great flat carts called platforms, each drawn by a
pair of horses, drove into the yard. And the Bachei furniture was carried
out.
They had all thought there was a great deal of furniture in the
apartment, they had feared two platforms would not hold it all. It turned
out, however, that the second platform was only half filled. And when tables
and chairs were stood upside down on the platforms and fastened on with
thick ropes, the suites which to Petya had always looked so fine and
expensive, especially the drawing-room suite with its golden silk
upholstery, lost all their grandeur.
The bright sunshine seemed to bring all defects into glaring
prominence, every scratch, crack and tear. The wash-stand looked
particularly forlorn with its broken pedal and the crack right across the
marble. The bronze dining-room lamp became insignificant with the shade and
bronze ball removed and thrown down amid the supporting chains on the floor;
it looked a silly, old-fashioned thing that nobody in their senses would
want. Petya's most unpleasant surprise, however, was the bookcase which had
always been known in the Bachei family as "Vasily Petrovich's library."
Empty of books, lying on its side, it looked miserably small, almost like a
toy, and all the books-the famous Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopaedia,
Karamzin's History of the State of Russia, Pushkin, Lermontov, Tolstoi,
Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoyevsky, Nekrasov, Sheller-Mikhailov and
Pomyalovsky-taken all together, made up about a dozen piles strongly tied
with string. In fact, all these things as they were carried out did not look
like solid, dignified furniture at all, but just old junk.
Petya climbed up beside the driver of the first platform to show him
the way. Dunyasha, her nose swollen with crying, sat on the second, holding
the mirror that reflected the street at a fantastic, dizzy angle.
Auntie, standing by the open gate with Pavlik beside her, crossed
herself and for some reason waved her handkerchief.
All the way Petya was afraid he might meet some of the boys from
school. Although he would never have admitted it even to himself, he was
ashamed of their furniture and ashamed to be taking it to such a poor
quarter of the town as Near Mills. It was not so easy to get accustomed to
the idea that now they too were "poor."
Terenty and Gavrik were not at home, only the Chernoivanenko mother and
daughter were there to meet him. Motya was more excited than anyone else,
she followed each article as it was carried across the front garden into the
shed, which had long been cleared for them.
"Oh, Petya, what beautiful chairs you've got!" she cried in sincere
admiration, and touched the silk upholstery of an armchair, rubbed down in
places so that the white threads showed.
Zhenka appeared with a crowd of boys. They swarmed round the platforms
at once, climbing with bare feet on to the wheels, feeling the bronze ball
from the lamp and turning the taps of the wash-stand; Zhenka himself
actually climbed on to the box, seized the reins, assumed a daredevil
expression and shouted, "Whoa there, damn you!" A few cuffs, however, soon
scattered the whole gang and they tore down the unpaved street, raising
clouds of dust.
When the furniture was stowed in the shed and the platforms drove away,
Dunyasha shouldered a bundle containing her clothes and icons and set off on
foot straight across the steppe to the cottage, which was not far from there
as the crow flies.
"Well, so now you're going to live here with us at Near Mills," said
Motya gaily, then noticed Petya's downcast look and added, "But whit's the
matter? Don't you like it here? You mustn't think it isn't nice, it is, it's
awfully nice. The snowdrops are out on the steppe, just the other side of
the common, and there'll soon be violets in the gullies. We can go and pick
them sometimes. Wouldn't you like it?"
Gavrik soon came home from the print shop and stealthily showed Petya
another bag of type.
"That's the sixteenth," he said with a wink.
"Look out, one of these days you may get caught," said Petya.
"Well, if I'm caught, I'm caught," sighed Gavrik. "Can't be helped."
The next moment, however, he was gaily singing a comic song very
popular on the outskirts of Odessa: "When they caught him, well, they socked
him-hey! hey! hey!"
At first glance there might not seem to be much sense in the words, but
Petya always felt some hidden meaning, some daring, fighting challenge in
that song.
They arranged a nook for Petya among the neatly stacked furniture in
the shed, with bed, table, lamp and bookshelf. There was plenty of room, so
Gavrik brought his own bed in too, to live with Petya.
Terenty came home from work, nodded to Petya and cast a business-like
look round the shed. With \a dissatisfied grunt he rearranged the furniture
to occupy less room and put a brick under the bookcase to stop it wobbling.
When he had finished there was even more space.
"But mind you behave yourselves, no fooling. I know you-you'll start
smoking, or stop each other studying." He turned to Petya. "You'll have to
work hard or they'll fail you, sure as I stand here. They won't forgive your
dad for Blizhensky. They're all the same gang. You'll see that I am right.
Well...."
He slipped the bag of tools off his shoulder, threw off his oily jacket
and went to the bowl standing on a bench by the fence. Motya gave him a
piece of blue-veined washing soap, stepped up on a low stool and poured
water from a jug over his large, black hands. Then he bent his head for her,
and washed face, head and neck, spluttering, ridding himself of metal dust
and smoke. His washing took a long time, he continued until he was as fresh
and pink as a baby pig. Then he took the embroidered towel hanging over
Motya's shoulder and dried himself with the same gusto.
Petya, meanwhile, was digesting with alarm Terenty's final words which
he believed without the faintest hesitation, particularly as he himself had
long felt something cold and threatening in the faces of the director and
school inspector whenever he passed them.
Petya was no longer surprised to find Terenty so well informed about
all their circumstances, even the incident with Blizhensky. He had stopped
regarding Terenty as a plain master mechanic at the railway workshops,
earning good wages, maybe, but still only a workman. Petya understood well
that in Terenty's other, secret life, which was called "Party work," he was
not only bigger and more important than Vasily Petrovich, he was much more
important than the school director, than Mr. Faig, than the head of the
Education Department, perhaps even more important than the Governor of
Odessa, Tolmachov.
They all had supper together. Terenty's wife picked up the prongs and
pulled an iron pot out of the stove, country-style. The pot contained
cabbage soup without meat. It was followed by a pan of potatoes fried in
sunflower oil. Everything was eaten with wooden spoons. The rye bread was
fresh and very fragrant. A head of garlic and some pods of red pepper were
on the table, but only Terenty and Gavrik took any; they put the red pepper
in the cabbage soup and rubbed the garlic on the crust of bread.
Petya, not to be outdone by his friend, also took a polished, fiery-red
pod of pepper, put it in his soup and mashed it.
"Oh, don't!" said Motya in a frightened whisper.
But Petya had already managed to swallow a mouthful of the soup and was
now sitting, tears in his eyes, his tongue thrust out, feeling as though he
breathed fire.
"Maybe you'd like some garlic too?" asked Gavrik innocently.
"Go to hell!" said Petya with difficulty, wiping the tears from his
eyes.
When they rose from table, Petya, like a well-brought-up boy, crossed
himself before the dark icon of St. Nicholas-the one he had seen as a boy in
Grandad Chernoivanenko's hut, bowed first to the mistress of the house, then
to the master and said, "Thank you most humbly." To which the mistress
answered kindly, "Good health go with it. Excuse the supper."
That was how Petya's life in Near Mills began.
They rose at six in the morning and washed in the yard, pouring cold
water from the well over each other from a jug, ate a piece of black bread
spread with plum jelly and washed it down with tea.
Then the three men-Terenty, Gavrik and Petya-set off for work. They
went out of the gate together just as the factory whistles sounded from all
sides in a long-drawn-out, imperative yet indifferent wail. The mist of a
March morning trembled from their monotonous chorus.
Gates creaked and banged all over Near Mills and the streets filled
with men hurrying to work. There were more and more of them, they overtook
one another, greeted one another in passing, gathered into small groups.
Terenty walked quickly, in silence, his tools clanking softly in his
bag. Petya and Gavrik could hardly keep up with him. Most of the workers
greeted Terenty and he replied, mechanically raising the little cap like
cyclist's wear from his big, round head. Soon he joined a large group
turning into a side-street while Petya and Gavrik went straight on together.
They parted company at the station, Petya turning right to the school
while Gavrik, casually raising one large finger to the peak of a cap exactly
like Terenty's, went on through the town to the print-shop.
All the time he was at school Petya had a strange feeling of
awkwardness, timidity, alienation. He kept away from the other boys. When
the long recess came, he looked for Pavlik, and the two brothers walked
silently up and down the corridors, holding each other's bells. Pavlik's
face was very serious, even grim.
On returning to Near Mills, Petya went into the shed and settled down
to his lessons, working with desperate intensity as though preparing for
battle.
In the evening Terenty and Gavrik came home and they all had supper.
After that Petya drilled Gavrik in Latin, and Gavrik in his turn drilled
Motya in all subjects-for she wanted to enter the fourth form at school.
It was eleven when they finally went to bed. Petya and Gavrik put out
the lamp and then lay talking in the dark. Although, to be exact, it was
Petya who did most of the talking. Gavrik had little to say, only pushed his
head deeper into the pillow. After the day's work he liked to have a good
sleep.
More than once Petya tried to tell Gavrik about the girl he fell in
love with abroad; he would introduce it with a rapid description of Vesuvius
and the Blue Grotto in Capri with its magical underwater lighting that makes
hands and faces look as though made of blue glass; but when he began to
speak in hints and half-sentences of that wonderful first meeting at the
station in Naples, he found Gavrik was already asleep, even starting to
snore.
Once, however, Petya did manage to tell Gavrik about his romance before
his friend finally dropped off to sleep. "And what happened after that?"
asked Gavrik, more from politeness than interest.
"Nothing," sighed Petya. "We parted for ever." "Well, that's very sad,
of course," said Gavrik, frankly yawning. "What was her name?"
"Her name?" said Petya slowly and mysteriously; it was a very awkward
moment. With a shade of secret grief he said, "Ah, what does a name matter!"
"Well, what was she like, at least-dark or fair?" asked Gavrik.
"Neither dark nor fair, more ... how can I explain? Her hair was sort
of chestnut, or better, dark chestnut," Petya answered with painful
exactitude.
"Uhuh, I understand," mumbled Gavrik. "Well, let's go to sleep."
"No, wait a minute," said Petya, whose imagination was only beginning
to get to work. "Don't go to sleep yet. I want you to advise me, as pal-what
ought I to do now?"
"Write to her," said Gavrik. "You know her address, don't you?"
"Ah, what would that help!" said Petya in grief-stricken accents.
"But if you love her," said Gavrik judicially.
"What's love?" said the disillusioned Petya and quoted Lermontov,
slightly out of place:
But love is no solace-too fleeting it is,
Unequal to life-long devotion.
"In that case, shut up and let me get to sleep," grunted Gavrik,
turning round on the other side and pulling the pillow over his ear.
Not another word could be got from him.
But Petya lay awake for a long time.
He could see the moon like a greenish sickle peeping in through the
tiny window. Time after time he heard the gate creak. There was a murmur of
talk and more than once people came into the little yard and went out again.
"Don't go straight there, go round by the marshalling yard." The voice
was Terenty's, evidently he had had visitors again.
Petya began thinking of that girl, but somehow he could no longer see
her clearly. The picture was hazy- a braid with a black ribbon, a cinder in
his eye, the blizzard in the mountains-and that was all. It seemed that he
had simply forgotten her.
It was rather chilly in the shed. Petya took down his Swiss cape from
the wall and spread it over his bed. Now he saw himself as the lonely
traveller in a poor shepherd's hut. There he lay, rolled in his cape,
forgotten by all, with a broken heart and a tormented soul. And she whom he
so loved, at this very moment perhaps she was.... Petya made a last
desperate effort to picture what she could be doing, but instead found his
mind drifting to quite different thoughts-thoughts of the corning exams, the
new life waiting for him on the farm, and strangest thing of all-thoughts of
Motya. Really, it wouldn't be such a bad idea to go out to the steppe with
her sometime to pick snowdrops.
It had never before entered his head that Motya could possibly be the
heroine of a romance. But now it seemed the most natural thing in the world,
he was surprised he had not thought of it. After all, she was pretty, she
loved him-of that Petya had no doubt whatsoever, and most important of all,
she was always there, at hand.
These thoughts induced a pleasant excitement, and instead of going to
sleep in tears, Petya drifted into slumber with a Languid, self-satisfied
smile and wakened with a feeling of something new and extremely pleasant.
Instead of sitting down to his lessons when he came home from school,
he sought out Motya, who was helping her mother make potato cakes, and went
straight to the point.
"Well, how about it?" he said with a condescending smile.
"How about what?" asked Motya, diffident as always when talking to
Petya.
"Have you forgotten?"
"What?" Motya repeated even more diffidently, and glanced up at the boy
from under her brows with sweet, innocent eyes.
"I thought you intended to go and pick snowdrops."
She blushed and her fingers began crumbling the edge of a potato cake.
"Do you mean it?"
"Of course. But if you don't want to go, well, it doesn't matter."
"Mummy, can you manage without me?" asked Motya. "I promised to show
Petya where the snowdrops and violets grow."
"Go along, children, go and gather your flowers," said her mother
affectionately.
Motya ran behind the curtain, unfastening her apron as she went. She
put on her best goatskin shoes and the coat she had rather grown out of
during the winter, and flung her braid over her shoulder. She was terribly
excited, and a faint dew of perspiration appeared on her neat nose.
Meanwhile, Petya, deliberately unhurried, strode nonchalantly to the
shed, put on his cloak, picked up his alpenstock and presented himself to
Motya in his sombre glory-somewhat spoiled by the school cap.
"Well, let's go," said Petya with all the grand indifference he could
muster.
"Yes, let's go," Motya answered in a very small voice, her head down,
and led the way to the gate, her new shoes squeaking loudly.
While they crossed the common where the cows were already grazing on
last year's grass, Petya turned over the very important question of which
Motya was to be- Olga or Tatyana? In any case he, of course, remained
Yevgeny Onegin. He selected the old version of Yevgeny Onegin as the
easiest, to avoid too much trouble. Motya was not worth anything more
complicated. Now he must decide quickly whether she would be Olga or
Tatyana, and then make a beginning.
In appearance she was not a bit like Tatyana, she would make a much
better Olga-if it weren't for that coat with its too short sleeves, of
course, and those dreadful squeaking shoes that could surely be heard all
over Near Mills.
Here was the end of the common, time to start. Petya quickly merged
Tatyana and Olga, getting quite a suitable hybrid whom he could preach to in
the best Onegin style:
And, in some quiet place apart
Instruct the lady of his heart. . .
and yet whose hand he could tenderly press; and best of all there would
be no need for kissing, the very thought of which made Petya thoroughly
uncomfortable.
He would continue to be Onegin but with a faint touch of Lensky which,
however, should not hamper him in following the great rule:
A woman's love for us increases .
The less we love her, sooth to say. . .
It could become a splendid romance. It was rather a drawback, of
course, that he really did like Motya. That was quite out of place if he
were to be Onegin. But Petya resolved to treat his feelings with contempt,
and as soon as they were out on the steppe he said sternly, "Motya, I've
something very serious to say to you."
The girl's heart turned over and she halted, alarmed by his grim look.
"Have you ever loved anyone?" asked Petya with still greater sternness.
"Yes," answered Motya in a small voice.
Petya's face showed an involuntary smile of self-satisfaction, but on
the instant he banished it and asked, looking straight into her eyes,
"Who?"
"A lot of people," answered Motya simply.
Petya bit back the word "fool," that nearly slipped out, and set to
work patiently explaining what love was, what it meant in general and what
it meant in particular. Motya understood and flushed crimson.
"Well then?" Petya asked insistently.
"You know for yourself," Motya whispered almost inaudibly, raising
happy, tear-filled eyes to his face.
She was so sweet in that moment that Petya was ready to fall in love
with her, very much like Lensky with Olga, in spite of the squeaking shoes
and the coat bought on the market. But such a very easy victory could not
satisfy him, it was too commonplace.
"So I can count on your friendship?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," said Motya. "Always."
"Then I must tell you my secret. Only promise that it shall remain
between ourselves."
"I give my word, I swear it by the true Cross," said Motya and quickly
crossed herself several times. "May I die here on this spot if I ever say a
word."
"I have fallen in love," said Petya mournfully.
He stood in silence for a moment, then told Motya about his romance,
word for word as he had told it to Gavrik in the shed.
Motya listened in silence, her arms hanging despondently, and when he
finished she asked in a voice unlike her own, "What is her name?"
"What does a name matter!" Petya answered.
"And you love her very, very much?" said Motya in lifeless tones.
"That's just it," Petya answered.
"I wish you all happiness," said Motya in a barely audible voice.
"Yes, but I want your advice as a friend-what ought I to do now? How
should I act?"
"Write her a letter if you love her so much."
"But what is love? 'Love is no solace-too fleeting it is, unequal to
life-long devotion,'" said Petya, in a. somewhat dramatic sing-song.
"I wish you all happiness," said Motya. Her eyes suddenly narrowed like
a cat's, almost frightening Petya. Then she turned and walked rapidly back
the way they had come.
"Stop, where are you going? What about the snowdrops?" Petya called
out.
"I wish you all happiness," she said again, without turning.
Petya ran after her, the cape hampered him but he overtook her. She
flung off the hand he put on her shoulder and quickened her steps.
"Silly girl, I was only joking, can't you understand I was joking?
Can't you take a joke?" Petya mumbled. "Why do you have to lose your temper
like that?"
Now that she was angry he liked her twice as much as before.
Motya ran all the way across the common and only slowed her pace to a
walk when she reached the street.
Petya walked beside her, protesting:
"I was only joking. Can't you understand that? Silly girl, to lose your
temper this way!"
"I've not lost my temper," she said quietly.
The storm of jealousy had passed, she was the old Motya again.
"Let's make up, then," Petya proposed.
"But I haven't quarrelled with you," she answered. She even forced a
faint smile because she did not want people to see them quarrelling in the
street.
Petya was embarrassed but inwardly triumphant. Taken all round it had
been an excellent love scene.
It was Zhenya who spoiled it all. He had long been watching them,
together with his faithful followers. And now the whole gang of boys
followed them at a cautious distance chanting in chorus, "Spoony, spoony,
krssy-kissy-coo!"
One day at the beginning of April Gavrik came home from the print-shop
much later than usual. Petya was in the shed going over his geometry.
"Soldiers have fired on the workers at the Lena gold-fields," Gavrik
said before he was properly inside, and without removing his cap crossed
over and sat down on the edge of his bed.
Petya already knew from the talk he had heard in Near Mills that far
away in Siberia, in the dense taiga by the Lena River, there were
gold-fields where workers lived in horrible conditions. He also knew that at
one of the worst of these, the workers had been on strike ever since
February and had even sent deputations to the other fields. The strike was
led by the Beks, while the Meks were trying to persuade the workers to call
off the strike and make peace with the management. But the workers would not
listen to the Meks and the strike spread. Over six thousand were out. That
was the last news which had come by devious routes from the banks of the
Lena.
Now Gavrik sat, his hands between his knees, staring at the green shade
of the lamp that was reflected in his fixed eyes. His breathing was slow but
deep, like a succession of sighs-evidently he had hurried home from the
print-shop.
At first Petya did not take in the full significance of Gavrik's words.
It had been said so simply, almost without expression: "Soldiers have fired
on the workers." He looked again at Gavrik, at his frozen, haggard face, and
realization flooded his mind.
"How-how did they fire?" he asked, feeling his face stiffen like
Gavrik's.
"Just like that. Quite simple," said Gavrik roughly. "From rifles.
Company, aim! Fire!"
"How do you know?"
"I set the dispatch myself. Nonpareil, six point. It came in three
hours ago. It's to be in today's issue- if they don't take it out. You can
expect any dirt from them. Well, I'm off," he said, rising with a jerk.
"Where are you going?"
"To Terenty at the workshops. Seems he's doing overtime on the
night-shift."
With that Gavrik turned and went.
Petya felt he could not bear it alone in the shed, he ran after Gavrik
and overtook him by the gate. Silently they walked together through the
transparent darkness of the April night. The first apple blossom was out in
the gardens, but in Siberia it was still winter with hard frost, and the
Lena River lay ice-bound under its covering of snow.
Petya had come out without a coat and soon felt chilly. He thrust his
hands into the sleeves of his school jacket and huddled his elbows to him as
he walked beside Gavrik. A church clock somewhere struck eleven. In the
houses everyone was asleep and the windows were dark; the only lamp was the
electric light at the gates of the railway workshops, that cast its
reflection on the lines. The watchman was dozing, the bottom of his
sheepskin peeped through the open door of his shelter.
Petya and Gavrik went round the locomotive shop, and peered through the
dusty glass, broken here and there. Petya could see the flickering light of
a furnace, and the great bulk of an engine slung in chains from the roof.
Workers walked about beneath it. Petya at once recognized Terenty, carrying
an oily steel connecting-rod on his shoulder, one hand steadying an end
wrapped in a black rag.
A railway engineer in a uniform cap and a tunic with shoulder-straps
stood, feet astride, at one side, holding a large blueprint as though it
were a newspaper he was reading.
All this Petya had seen many times before, it contained nothing
unusual, still less menacing. But now a chill of fear ran through him. He
felt that any moment those chains might snap and the pendant engine crash
down with all its giant weight upon the men standing underneath. For an
instant the picture was so real before him that he shut his eyes.
But at that moment Gavrik put two fingers into his mouth and whistled.
Terenty turned and looked at the dark glass of the window that dimly
reflected the electric lights in the shop. Then with a smooth heavy movement
of his great body he slid the rod from his shoulder and carried it on
outstretched arms away to the side. Soon after that he appeared round the
corner and came up to the boys.
"What's the matter?" he asked Gavrik, but looked at Petya.
"Soldiers have fired on the workers at the Lena gold-fields," said
Gavrik in a low voice. "A dispatch came from Irkutsk today. I ran off eight
copies just in case." He handed Terenty a sheet of fresh proofs.
Terenty turned his back to the lighted window and read the dispatch.
Petya could not see the expression of his face but felt it must be dreadful.
Suddenly Terenty bent, snatched up a piece of clinker from the ground and
flung it against the wall with such force that it shattered to fragments.
For some time he stood breathing heavily, mastering himself, then he
led Gavrik aside and they talked quickly for a moment.
On the way back Gavrik several times left Petya and disappeared for a
little while. Once Petya saw him go to somebody's gate and thrust a white
paper into the crack. He guessed that this was a copy of the dispatch.
They returned to their shed, put out the light and went to bed, but it
was a long time before the boys could sleep. Petya found himself listening
fearfully to the sounds of the night. He had the feeling that something
terrible was going to begin. Shouting crowds would run down the street, a
fire would break out somewhere, there would be revolver shots. But
everything was quiet.
The pointsman's horn sounded from the railway crossing; then a goods
train passed. A cart rattled along the uneven road a long way off, he could
hear an empty bucket banging under it. Then came the third cock-crow,
prolonged and sleepy, caught up by bird after bird throughout Near Mills.
That was followed by the factory whistles and then the creaking of gates.
The day passed as usual. At recess, however, Petya noticed some of the
big boys reading a newspaper under the stairs, and heard the whispered
words, "There's trouble at the Lena gold-fields."
Gavrik came home even later than the previous day- he had waited for
the latest news-and brought a big bundle of proofs with him. They were of
dispatches giving the details of the Lena massacre. Five hundred killed and
wounded. Petya went cold with horror.
Night came. Terenty said a few words to Gavrik, then they both went
out. Petya wanted to go too, but they refused to take him. Left alone, he
went to bed, pulled his cape right over his head and fell asleep. Soon,
however, he was awake again.
Everything was very quiet. Petya lay on his back, eyes open, trying to
picture five hundred killed and wounded. But it was impossible, no matter
how he strained his imagination. All he could see was an indistinct picture
of a snow-covered field strewn with the dark forms of dead workers. The
meaning of the picture was immeasurably worse than the picture itself and
this inconsistency tormented Petya, and would let him think of nothing else.
Suddenly it occurred to him that five hundred was just the number of
pupils and teachers at his school. He pictured the corridors, staircases,
class-rooms, gym and the assembly hall full of dead and wounded pupils and
teachers, the pools of blood on the tile floors, the screams, the groans,
the confusion....
A shudder ran through him.
But still it was not the same, because this was only fancy while that
had been real. Those bodies were real, not imaginary, and Petya started to
remember all the dead bodies he had seen.
He remembered Mother in her coffin, looking like a bride, her lips
blackened from medicine and a strip of paper on her forehead. He remembered
Uncle Misha in his frock-coat, his arms with their bony white hands crossed
on his breast. He remembered Vitya Seroshevsky, one of the boys in the
fourth form who had died of diphtheria, looking like a large doll in his
blue uniform. Grandad- Mother's father-with his bald head reflecting the
light of the candles. An infantry general who had been taken past the house
in an open coffin on a gun-carriage, with all his decorations carried on a
velvet cushion in front.
But none of these had been killed, they had died a natural death, they
were taken to the cemetery with wreaths and incense and music and singing
and lanterns on crape-swathed staffs. However dreadful they might look,
these motionless forms still bore human semblance amid all the funereal
trappings, and they could not give Petya any idea of those hundreds who lay
prone in the snow, and his torment continued.
Suddenly he saw again what had long been thrust away into the very back
of his memory and hardly ever came to the surface, because it was so much
more terrible than anything else.
Petya remembered 1905, Terenty's bandaged head with blood trickling
down his temple, he remembered the room with its smashed furniture full of
the smoke of gunfire, and the man with the indifferent waxen face and a
black hole above the open eye who lay so uncomfortably on the floor among
empty cartridge clips and cartridge eases. He remembered the two Cossacks
galloping past, dragging after them on a rope the corpse of a man Petya
knew, Joseph Karlovich, who owned the shooting-gallery, and leaving a long,
strangely bright trail of red on the grey, dusty road.
Again Petya saw the snow-covered field and the dead bodies. But it no
longer tormented him with unreality, for now he understood the meaning it
held. What it meant was that some people killed others because those others
did not want to be slaves.
Rage flooded Petya. He bit the pillow to hold back tears. But they came
nevertheless. In the morning he rose, weary from a sleepless night, with
dark circles under his eyes, haggard and sombre.
Gavrik and Terenty had not yet come home. Motya, a grey knitted shawl
round her head and shoulders, silently gave him a mug of tea and a hunk of
bread and jam. She 'had not yet combed her hair, she stole fearful looks at
the boy and shivered in the chill of early morning-probably she had not
slept all night either. Her mother was washing clothes out in the yard, with
iridescent soap-bubbles rising from her tub. She mournfully wished Petya
good morning.
On this day Petya set off for school alone. The streets looked just as
they always did. Workers walked in groups on their way to the morning-shift.
They seemed to go faster than usual. Groups knotted together and in some
places formed crowds. Passing them, Petya could feel hostile looks cast at
his cap with its badge, his bright buttons and belt with the uniform buckle.
Although the early sunshine filled the street with warm, rosy light and
the air was clear and fresh with the scents of April, although the little
shunters whistled gaily to one another as usual, an invisible funereal
shadow seemed to lie over everything.
Petya saw the elderly local policeman pacing his beat down the street.
But at the cross-roads he saw another policeman, one he did not know. Petya
greeted the old policeman as usual with a courteous lift of his cap and
passed the stranger with head down; but he could feel the man examining him
from head to foot with fierce eyes in a young, soldierly face.
News-boys were running about the town shouting, "Lena events, full
report, five hundred killed and wounded!"
It was strangely quiet at the school, both at lessons and during
recess. On his way home, before he got to Near Mills, Petya heard a factory
whistle, then another, and a third, until their chorus made the air vibrate.
At the cross-roads where the strange policeman had stood in the
morning, Petya found a thick crowd that swelled with every minute as people
joined it singly or in groups, running out from all the nearby streets,
gardens and waste lots.
He realized that this was a strike, and the men in this crowd were the
workers from various mills and factories who had just downed tools.
He wanted to turn back and go another way, but a fresh crowd swelled up
behind him, carrying him along with it. The two masses of people joined and
Petya found himself in the middle, hemmed in on all sides. He tried to get
out but his satchel hindered him. One strap broke and the satchel slipped
down. With an effort Petya twisted round, slid it off his shoulder and held
it in front of him, pushing away the backs and elbows that pressed against
him.
Petya was too small to see what was going on in front, all he knew was
that he was being carried along somewhere, that the crowd had some definite
objective and that somebody was guiding its movement. He began to feel a
little calmer and with the corner of his satchel straightened the cap that
had been pushed to one side.
The people moved very slowly. There was nothing menacing in their
movement, as Petya had thought at first, rather it was resolute, tense and
business-like.
The factory whistles which had drowned out every other sound gradually
died away, and he could hear the hum of voices.
At last everyone stopped. Petya saw the long roofs of the repair
workshops and felt railway lines under his feet-he stumbled and would have
fallen but for somebody's big, strong hand. Then there was a general move
forward again, and frantic police whistles.
The crowd separated into groups and Petya saw the familiar gates of the
workshops. They were closed and before them the policeman with the fierce
eyes was running to and fro, sabre in hand, now and then blowing hard on his
whistle and shouting, "Disperse or I fire!"
Another policeman, the old man Petya knew, kept moving about aimlessly
in front of the crowd, waving his hands like an orchestra conductor and
pleading in lachrymose tones, "Gentlemen, do be sensible, gentlemen, do be
sensible!"
"Come on, break down the gates," said a man in an old railway cap with
a red band on the sleeve of his wadded jacket; he was standing on the roof
of the engine shop. His voice was not loud but it carried everywhere.
Evidently this was one of the leaders.
The wrought-iron gates squealed on their rusty hinges and began to give
in under the pressure of the crowd. There was the sound of a chain snapping.
One leaf of the gates, torn away, fell with a rattle in the yard, the other
hung crookedly from its brick gate-post.
The crowd rushed in. Everything became confused.
Later on Petya learned that the management had tried to crush the
strike by bringing in strike-breakers and locking the gates.
Once inside, the crowd scattered among the shops, and then Petya saw
something like the kind of game children play, only the players were angry
men. The shop door opened and men ran wildly out, followed by other men who
overtook them and flogged them on the head and neck with oily rags twisted
into hard ropes as they ducked and dodged. It was like a game of "tag." But
nobody laughed or shouted, and one of the fleeing men had blood trickling
from his nose; he smeared it over his face with the sleeve of his torn shirt
as he ran.
A small open truck appeared at the shop door, pushed by a couple of
dozen workers with tense, determined faces. And there in the truck, his legs
drawn up awkwardly, his hands gripping the sides, sat the railway engineer
whom Petya has seen the night he had gone with Gavrik to the workshops. His
cap was back to front, which gave his handsome face with its well-tended
beard a very stupid look.
Zhenya Chernoivanenko and the boys who had shouted "Spoony, spoony,
kissy-kissy-coo" after Petya and Motya, zealously helped the adults to push
the truck.
Petya was not frightened any longer, nor did the crowd seem alarming.
He was caught up in the general mood and ran after the truck, his brows
drawn tangrily together. He pushed some of the boys aside, got his satchel
against the edge of the truck and began shoving with the others. He felt as
though it were his effort alone that moved it.
As soon as the truck and its burden emerged from the factory gates they
were greeted with shouts and whistles from all sides. Some of the men had
picked up the policeman with the fierce eyes. Holding him by the shoulders
and top-boots', they gave him a swing and tossed him on to the engineer. His
sabre was gone, and so was his revolver.
The other policeman, the old one, was not thrown into the truck; he got
a couple of blows on the back of the head with a hard twisted rag and
shambled away by the fence, without sabre, revolver or cap, smiling
foolishly.
The truck was pushed for about half a mile, then abandoned on the line,
and Petya, Zhenya and the other boys went back to the workshop. But
everybody had gone, only a few workers with shot-guns and red arm-bands
paced up and down by the smashed gates.
Petya and Zhenya made their way home through strangely deserted streets
and lanes. Motya was standing by the gate -and at once started scolding
Zhenya:
"You little ruffian, you tramp, where've you been all this time? And as
for you," she turned on Petya, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking
a child to a strike! Just look at yourself, if your father could see you!"
Ever since that walk to get snowdrops Motya had had a tendency to find
fault with Petya.
He looked down at his boots all scratched by clinker, at his crushed
satchel with the broken strap, at the buckle of his belt pushed to one side.
"You're all dirty," Motya went on. "Go and get washed quickly, I'll
fetch water for you."
"Stop ordering us about!" said Zhenya. He pulled out of his pocket the
whistle which had only recently hung round the neck of the old policeman and
blew a shrill blast.
"You scoundrel! You little ruffian!" Motya threw up her hands, but then
surrendered and burst into a fit of childlike laughter.
At that moment an open cab appeared in the distance. Swaying over the
ruts, wheels rattling, it raced down the street. Men with red arm-bands
bumped on the seats and shouted something as they passed each gate.
Petya saw Terenty among them, waving his little cap. His face was red
and excited which made the white scar on his temple stand out all the more
sharply.
"Out to the common!" he shouted, pointing ahead with his cap, hardly
aware that it was his own house he was passing.
Petya flung his satchel over the fence and raced after Motya and
Zhenya. The common was already black with people.
The sun had only just sunk behind the barrows and great clouds sailing
through the sky seemed to shed their own light over the meeting. Terenty
stood erect on the seat of the cab, surrounded by the crowd. With one hand
he steadied himself on the driver's shoulder, and gestured energetically
with the other. His voice carried to Petya in fragments borne on gusts of
wind. Sometimes he could make out whole sentences.
The wrathful voice that seemed to fly with the breeze over the silent
crowd, over the quiet steppe, filled Petya with a burning sense of struggle
for freedom. His heart beat hard. And when the people sang in discord, "You
fell a victim in the fight" and there was a flicker of movement as heads
were bared, Petya too removed his cap and clutched it to his breast with
both hands, singing with the others. He could not hear himself, but beside
him he could hear the high voice of Motya as she stood on tiptoe, her neck
stretched, singing enthusiastically:
"... Fresh ranks of the people have risen to fight...."
Petya had the feeling that in a moment mounted Cossacks would dash out
from somewhere and a massacre would begin. But everything was quiet, and the
silhouettes of the sentries stationed on the hillocks and barrows were
outlined black against the glow of the sunset.
The meeting ended and the people dispersed as quickly and
inconspicuously as they had gathered. The common emptied. But on the young
grass among crushed dandelions Petya saw a great number of sticks, iron
bolts and pieces of brick which the workers had brought with them, just in
case. Then Terenty and Gavrik appeared. They walked in step, hands in
pockets, looking well satisfied with the day's work.
"Come on, come on," said Terenty, passing one hand over Motya's cheek
and holding out the other to Petya. "Don't dawdle. It's true there are
meetings and demonstrations all over the town and the police don't know
which way to turn, and Tolmachov's sitting at home wondering what to do, but
all the same.... We'd better be getting along."
This time, however, the police evidently were at a loss, and Governor
Tolmachov did not venture to send for troop's. Throughout the twenty-four
hours of the strike, not a single soldier or policeman was seen about Near
Mills, except for the old local policeman who spent the whole day going from
house to house, begging tearfully for his sabre and revolver. He came to the
Chernoivanenkos' too, and Terenty went out into the yard to talk to him.
"Terenty, lad," he pleaded, "I knew you when you were in diddies. Have
a good heart. Tell your lads to give me my weapons back, or I'll be put out
of the police. They're the property of the Crown."
Terenty frowned.
"What d'you mean by my lads? Think what you're saying."
"As if you didn't know yourself," said the old man with a wink, and
added guilelessly, "your lads, the ones that are revolutionaries. You're
their chief, aren't you?"
Terenty took the man by the shoulder and led him out of the gate.
"Get along with you, old 'un! And don't babble of things you know
nothing about. Or if you do-better keep off the streets at night. Get that?"
"Ah, Terenty, Terenty." The old policeman sighed and shambled along to
the next house.
The following day the strike ended and everything went on as before.
Factory whistles filled the air every morning just as they had, but now it
was no longer cold and misty, but bright with sunshine and filled with the
fragrance of flowers and the song of birds. And the people going to work in
groups and crowds seemed to Petya to be different too, they walked more
boldly, they looked cheerful and confident and in some way brighter and
cleaner-probably because they had got rid of their clumsy winter clothes and
many were already in light canvas jackets and coloured cotton shirts.
Coming home from school Petya felt very hot in his heavy uniform jacket
and cap, which soon became quite wet on the inside.
Lessons finished a week before the exams. From morning to night Petya
sat at the table under the mulberry tree, his fingers in his ears, learning
events and dates, wagging his head like a Chinese mandarin. He had made up
his mind to get top marks in all the exams whatever happened, for he knew
full well that no leniency would be shown him, he would be failed on any
pretext. He got thin, and his hair, long uncut, straggled on his neck.
THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE "PRAVDA"
Come to the station with me?" said Gavrik one day, appearing suddenly
behind Petya.
Petya was so deep in his swotting that he did not even wonder why
Gavrik was not at work. He only wagged his head a little faster and mumbled,
"Let me alone."
Glancing up, however, he saw a very mysterious smile on Gavrik's face.
Still more surprising was his carefully combed hair, the new cotton shirt
held in by a new belt, the pressed trousers and the new boots which he wore
only on very special occasions. All this must mean something unusual.
"Why the station?" Petya asked.
"To get the newspaper."
"What newspaper?"
"Our own. A daily. The workers' paper, lad. Sent straight from St.
Petersburg by express. It's called the Pravda."
Petya had already heard talk of the new workers' paper the Beks would
soon be putting out in St. Petersburg. Collections had been made for it
among the workers, Petya had seen the money. Sometimes Terenty or Gavrik had
brought it home from work and after counting it carefully, put it away in a
tin box that had once held sweet drops. Once a week Terenty would send it
away by post, and put the receipt in the same box.
The money was mostly in small coins, even in single kopeks. Ruble and
three-ruble notes appeared but rarely, and it was difficult to imagine how
such a big thing as a daily paper could possibly emerge from these coppers.
But now it seemed that it could, and it was coming on the St.
Petersburg-Odessa express.
To be frank, Petya was already heartily sick of grinding away at his
books all day and every day, from morning to night. He was glad of the
excuse for a break. The idea of going to the station was enticing. It was a
place that always attracted him. The network of rails spurred his
imagination to picture the unknown regions to which their smoothly curving
lines led.
The west Petya had already seen. But there was still the north, all its
boundlessly vast expanses-Russia with Moscow, St. Petersburg, ancient Kiev,
Arkhangelsk, the Volga, and Siberia which was Bo hard to picture, and
finally the Lena River which was now not merely a river but an event in
history, reeking with blood-like Khodynka ( A place in Moscow where
thousands of people were trampled to death in May 1896 during the coronation
of Nicholas II due to the authorities' criminal negligence.-Tr.) or
Tsushima. And it was from there, from the north, from the smoky, foggy St.
Petersburg, that the express would today bring the newspaper Pravda.
When Petya and Gavrik arrived at the station, the train was already in
and stood by the platform. It consisted entirely of shining Pullmans, blue
or yellow, without a single third-class green coach. And there were two
coaches such as neither Petya nor Gavrik had ever seen before; involuntarily
the lads stopped before them.
They were faced with brightly polished wood, and the door handles, the
corners of windows, the foreign letters of the inscription and the badge of
the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits were of brass that glittered in
the sun. Even the outside conveyed a smart severity, like that of a ship.
When the boys, nudging one another, peeped in through a window with its
narrow band of painted glass at the top, they gasped at the luxury inside,
at the polished mahogany panels, the stamped-plush walls, the snow-white
rumpled bedding, the electric-light bulbs like milky tulips, the blue net
for light articles, the heavy bronze spittoon and the carpet on the floor.
In the other coach they saw something even more astounding-a buffet
with bottles and hors-d'oeuvres, and a waiter in a tailcoat clearing
pyramidal napkins from the tables, napkins so white and stiff that they
might have been made of marble.
Even Petya who had been abroad had never imagined anything like this,
let alone Gavrik.
"Oooh, just look!" Petya whispered, pressing his face so hard against
the thick glass that his nose left a moist imprint.
Gavrik's eyes narrowed and with a queer smile he hissed through his
teeth, "That's how our fine gentry travel."
"Keep off the coach, please!" said a stern voice with a foreign accent,
and a conductor in the uniform jacket and cap of the Compagnie
Internationale des Wagons-Lits shoved the boys away with a firm hand as he
passed.
Gavrik wrinkled his nose, doubled up his arm and thrust the elbow
towards the man-in Near Mills an indication of the utmost mockery and
contempt. But the conductor, from the height of his superiority, ignored the
gesture, and the boys went on to the luggage coach.
At the moment flat cane baskets were being brought out; through the
open nets covering them the lads could see fresh, moist flowers-Parma
violets and roses, sent through St. Petersburg from Nice to Werkmeister's
flower shop. Werkmeister himself, a gentleman in a short light bell-bottomed
coat with mourning bands on the sleeve and on a top hat, was supervising the
unloading, accompanying each basket the porter carried to the cart with a
gentle touch from a finger bearing two wedding rings.
The boys could smell the perfume of damp flowers, strange among the
coal and metal smells of the railway station, and this suddenly brought back
to Petya that station in Naples, so like this one except for the palms and
the agaves, and the forgotten girl with the black ribbon in her chestnut
braid. And again he felt the bitter-sweet pang of parting. He even fancied
that he saw her before him.
But at that moment Gavrik seized his sleeve and pulled him after a big
truck loaded with piles of St. Petersburg newspapers and magazines. Two
porters wheeled it with some difficulty, the small iron wheels striking
sparks as they rumbled over the asphalt.
The boys ran alongside, trying to guess which pile contained the
Pravda. The truck was wheeled off the platform into the station building and
came to a squealing stop beside a newspaper stall-a carved bookcase of fumed
oak, big as an organ, with hundreds of books, newspapers and magazines lying
.and hanging all over it.
Petya loved to look at all these novelties from St. Petersburg. The
covers of love and detective novels excited him, so did the coloured
caricatures of the Satirikon, and Alarm-Ctock, and the garlands of The
Leichtweiss Cave, Nat Pinkerton, Nick Carter, and Sherlock Holmes series,
that hung on lines like washing, with tiny pictures of these famous foreign
detectives, with pipes or without, among whom the famous Russian detective
Putilin looked very tnai've and provincial with his ministerial
side-whiskers and his old-fashioned silk hat. Then there were the
illustrated weekly journals-The Spark, Sun of Russia, All the World, Round
the World, and especially that new magazine which had only just come out,
the Blue Journal, which really was blue all through, smelt strongly of
kerosene and stained the fingers.
All these dozens, hundreds, thousands of printed sheets promising a
fantastic variety of ideas and subjects, but actually offering only an
appalling emptiness, fascinated Petya, and he stood before them as though
spellbound.
Meanwhile, the bundles of newspapers had been flung one after the other
beneath the counter. The stout, long-bearded old man with a gold chain
across his waistcoat, who rented the stall, kept putting a small pince-nez
on his strawberry-coloured nose, leafing through his account book and
jotting down notes with a pencil, while a very thin, bony lady in a hat,
whose pointed angry face made her look like a pike, flung bundles of
newspapers on the counter, from which they were quickly snatched up by
news-boys and the owners of street stalls who had been queuing up for a long
time.
"Fifty New Times, thirty Country Life, a hundred and fifty Stock
Exchange, a hundred Speech. There you are, next!" she cried in a croaking
voice, and in an instant the bundles were carried off on shoulders or heads
across the station square. There they were pitched on to handcarts,
wheelbarrows or cabs to be distributed over the whole city as fast as
possible.
Gavrik took his place at the end of the queue with a little group of
people who did not look like stall owners or news-boys. More than anything
else they looked like workers. Gavrik greeted some of them and they
exchanged a few quick words, impatiently eyeing the bundles of newspapers
disappearing from the counter.
Petya had the feeling they were apprehensive about something.
At last their turn came.
"And what do you want?" asked the pike-faced lady, with a stern look at
the strangers. She knew all her regular clients by sight but these she had
never seen before. "What have you come for?"
"Our paper's the Pravda." An elderly worker with a clipped moustache
wearing a Sunday jacket and tie but smelling strongly of varnish pushed
forward to the counter. "We are from the Gena Factory, the Ropit Wharf, the
repair workshops, the Weinstein Flour Mill, the Schawald Shipping Company
and the Zur and Co. Furniture Factory. To begin with we want fifty copies
apiece."
"What's that you say? Pravda? I've never heard of such a paper," said
the lady in an artificial voice and turned to the old man. "Ivan Antonovich,
does our agency handle the newspaper Pravda?"
"What's the matter?" asked the old man, and without raising his head
from his accounts shot a hostile look at the customers out of his small,
piercing eyes.
"There's an application for three hundred copies of some Pravda," said
the lady.
"Not some Pravda," Gavrik corrected her, "but the workers' daily paper
which has its office at 37, Nikolayevskaya Street, St. Petersburg. Isn't it
there?"
"It's not arrived," said the old man indifferently. "Come tomorrow."
"Excuse me," said an elderly worker, "but that's not possible. We've
had a telegram."
"It's not arrived."
"Not arrived, hasn't it?" the elderly worker snapped, frowning. "The
Black-Hundred New Times has come, the bourgeois Speech has come, but the
workers' Pravda isn't here? Where's your lousy freedom, then?"
"For that sort of talk I could- Sofya Ivanovna, go quick for the
gendarme!"
"What's that?" said the elderly worker very quietly, and his thick grey
brows drew closer together. "Perhaps you want to send for the soldiers too?
As they did on the Lena?"
"Don't waste your breath on them, Yegor Alexeyevich!" shouted a lad in
a seaman's cap with blue tattooing on Ms sinewy arm-evidently from the
Schawald Shipping Company. "Put him out!" He made a rush for the old man,
pushing aside the pike-faced lady, whose hat went askew.
Petya shut his eyes. Now, he thought, something terrible will happen.
But all he heard was the old man whining, "Don't touch me, I'll have the law
on you...."
When he opened his eyes he saw Gavrik standing behind the counter,
triumphantly pulling out a big package of the Pravda printed on cheap
yellowish paper with the name in big, black letters, as straight and stern
as the meaning of the word. (Pravda-truth.-Tr.)
"But mark this, gentlemen, we don't sell retail!" hissed the lady. "And
don't expect credit. Either you take the whole consignment-a thousand
copies, and pay on the spot, or you can get out and tomorrow your beggarly
Pravda goes back to St. Petersburg, and the sooner it goes smash the
better."
The paper was a cheap one, fitted for lean pockets. Other papers cost
five kopeks, the Pravda only two. But even so, a thousand copies meant
twenty rubles, a big sum in those days.
The six turned out their pockets but found that they could only scrape
up sixteen rubles seventy-four kopeks.
"Ragamuffins, beggars, rabble, and want to push your noses into
politics," rattled the lady all in one breath, turned her back and put her
lace-mittened hand on the pile of papers.
"Just a minute," said the young fellow from the Schawald Shipping
Company.
He raced into the first-class waiting-room, handed his silver watch
over the refreshment counter and was back in a moment with a five-ruble note
crumpled in his hand.
So ten minutes later Gavrik and Petya were marching towards Near Mills,
each with a package of papers on his shoulder.
Although the newspaper was published legally, with the necessary
permit, Petya felt like a law-breaker. Whenever the boys passed a policeman
he felt the man was looking at them with great suspicion. As a matter of
fact, he was often right.
It would have been hard not to notice two youths, one in school uniform
and the other dressed as a workman, striding along very quickly, with
sizeable bundles on their shoulders and obviously excited, the boy in school
uniform looking round apprehensively at every step and the young workman
whistling the "Varshavyanka" as loudly as he could, beating out the rhythm
with his stride.
The nearer they came to their house, the faster the boys went until
they were almost running. Sometimes Gavrik tossed his bundle in the air and,
imitating newsboys, shouted, "New daily workers' paper, the Pravda! Latest
news! All about the Lena massacre!" His eyes burned.
When they came to Sakhalinchik, quite close to Near Mills, Gavrik
pulled out a number of copies and raced ahead at full speed, waving them
over his head and shouting, "The Tsar's Minister Makarov tells the State
Duma, 'What has been will be!' Down with the butcher Makarov! Long live the
workers' Pravda! Buy the workers' Pravda\ Two kopeks a copy! What has been
won't be!"
They came to the factory district and here Gavrik was quite at home.
This was his own world, where he felt free and independent. Big gates with
brass lettering on wire netting. Square brick buildings and tall chimneys.
The squat concrete tower of the "Cocovar" margarine factory with its huge
placard of a bulldog-faced chef offering a dish with a steaming pudding. The
waterworks, the depot, the elevators.. ..
Here and there workers in blue shirts and greasy overalls came running
out, drawn by Gavrik's cries. Some of them bought papers and handed coppers
to Gavrik which he slipped into his mouth like a real news-boy.
Once a policeman noticed the disturbance and whistled, but Gavrik
showed his elbow from the distance and the boys dived quickly down an
alleyway.
Petya's fears had almost left him, it was as though they were playing
some exciting, risky game.
Suddenly they heard the beat of running feet behind them. They turned.
A man with his jacket open and flying was racing after them. He had bow legs
and weaved from side to side, shouting, "Hi! You lads there! Stop!"
At first Petya thought he wanted to buy a paper and waited, but a
second glance showed him his mistake. The man running after them held a
short rubber truncheon and on his lapel was the badge of the Black-Hundred
Union with its tricolour ribbon.
"Run!" shouted Gavrik.
But the man with the truncheon was there already; Petya felt a heavy
blow which luckily missed his head and descended on the bundle of papers,
just clipping his ear in passing.
Fragments of newsprint flew on all sides.
"Hands off!" Gavrik snarled, hoarse with rage; with his free hand he
gave the man such a blow that he staggered back and almost fell. "Hands off,
you blackguard! Murderer, bastard! I'll kill you!"
Without removing his eyes from the man, Gavrik slipped the bundle of
papers from his shoulder and reached them back to Petya.
"Take those and run to the repair shops, call the workers' squad," he
said rapidly, licking his lips and forgetting Petya might not know what
workers' squads were.
But Petya knew. Hugging the papers, he raced along the narrow street at
top speed.
Gavrik and the man faced each other on the road. Still licking his lips
and breathing heavily through his nose, Gavrik slowly slid his right hand
into his pocket. When he just as slowly took it out, it held a steel
knuckleduster.
"I'll kill you!" he repeated, his hard eyes fixed on the man as though
he wanted to fix in his mind that puffy dark face that looked as though it
had been stung by bees, the little pig's eyes, the bullet-head with hair
parted at the side and combed across the low forehead, and the crooked grin
of a bully.
"Now then, you scum!" said the man and aimed a blow with his rubber
truncheon; but Gavrik dodged it and raced after Petya.
He heard the beat of boots behind him, and when the sound came close
Gavrik suddenly threw himself down on the ground; the man caught his foot,
tripped and measured his length. Gavrik promptly sat down on him and started
hammering the man's black head with his knuckle-duster, repeating fiercely,
"Hands off! Hands off! Hands off!"
The man got his hand into his pocket with a groan and pulled out a
small black Browning. A number of shots rang out, but Gavrik managed to get
his foot on the man's arm and the bullets only struck harmless sparks from
the cobbles.
"Help! Police!" sobbed the man and, twisting his head round, suddenly
hit Gavrik on the leg.
Gavrik gasped and the next minute they were rolling over and over on
the ground. It is hard to say how it would have ended, for Gavrik was much
smaller and weaker than his opponent, but at that moment assistance came
from the repair workshops.
Five men of the workers' squad armed with pieces of piping and spanners
tore the Browning and the rubber truncheon out of the bully's hand, gave him
a couple of buffets and all but carried Gavrik into the yard. It all
happened so quickly that when a policeman came running up, drawn by the
firing, he found nobody in the street except Gavrik's assailant sitting on
the ground, slumped against the fence of the "Cocovar" margarine factory,
spitting out blood-covered teeth.
From then on the new paper was sold regularly, first in the
working-class districts and round the factories, and then here and there in
the centre of the city.
THE COTTAGE IN THE STEPPE
A few days later exams began. It cost Motya and her mother a good deal
of work to clean and mend Petya's uniform, for it had been in more than one
adventure since its owner had come to live in Near Mills.
Petya's ear, which caught a glancing blow by the rubber truncheon, was
no longer painful but was still blue and swollen, and in general presented a
disreputable appearance. Petya hoped a dusting of tooth-powder would make it
look a little more presentable and allowed Motya to do the powdering, which
she did, passing a rag very gently and carefully over the injured ear, her
tongue thrust out in concentrated effort.
Petya did not do at all badly in his exams, although the examiners
tried hard to fail him.
The tense, tiring examination period, which as always coincided with
the first May thunderstorms, thickly flowering lilacs, summer heat and short
sleepless nights filled with moonlight and the whispers of lovers,
thoroughly exhausted Petya. When he finally returned to Near Mills from the
last exam-eyes sparkling, hair rumpled, hands covered with ink and chalk,
perspiring and happy-it would have been hard to recognize him for the same
boy he had been a couple of months before, so much older and thinner he
looked.
The next day he shouldered his pillow and blanket and set off for home.
The first person he saw there was his father. Vasily Petrovich was
weeding round the cherry trees, tearing out grass and chamomiles and tossing
them into a basket. Petya looked at the kindly, unshaven face and the
noticeably greyer hair, the dark-blue shirt, faded at the back and bleached
almost white under the arms, the old trousers, baggy at the knees, the dusty
sandals and the pince-nez that fell off and dangled on its cord every time
his father bent down-and a flood of warmth filled him.
"Dad!" he called, "I'm through!"
His father turned and a happy smile lighted up the wet bearded face
with a swollen vein running across the forehead.
"Ah, Petya! Well, congratulations, that's fine."
The boy dropped his pillow and blanket on the dusty grass and flung
both arms round his father's hot, sunburned neck, noticing with surprise and
a secret thrill of pride that they were almost the same height.
Auntie appeared from the flowering lilacs with the hoe in her hands.
Petya did not recognize her at once, for she had a kerchief fastened tightly
round her head, making her look like a peasant woman.
"Auntie, I've passed them all!" Petya cried.
"I know, I heard you, congratulations," said Auntie, wiping her wet
forehead with her arm. She beamed, but she could not refrain from improving
the occasion. "Now you're in the seventh form, I hope you'll behave better."
Dunyasha, her head in a kerchief and a hoe in her hands like Auntie,
also congratulated the young master on his success.
Then came a creaking of wheels followed by a big, bony, very old horse
in funereal black blinkers pulling a long water-cart. The horse was led by
the lanky youth, Gavrila, whom Petya had seen before, and Pavlik sat astride
the barrel, barefoot and in a big straw hat, holding the reins and whip.
"Hey, Petya! Hullo!" he called, spitting to one side like a real
carter. "Look, I can drive him a bit already! Here you, stop! Whoa!" he
shouted at the horse, which at once stood motionless on its trembling legs,
evidently glad to do so.
Gavrila set to work watering the trees, pouring a bucketful into the
hollow dug round each. The dry earth absorbed the water instantaneously. In
a few minutes Petya realized the work entailed in looking after an orchard.
Summer was beginning and there had not been a single really good
rainfall. In the cistern the water was right down to the bottom. Now it had
to be brought from the horse-tram terminus.
The orchard was in blossom and the trees were covered ,with ovaries
that needed moisture all the time. It was a good thing that with the
Vasyutinskaya orchard they had got that old horse, called Warden, and the
water-cart. But a tremendous amount of water was needed, and Warden could
barely crawl.
From morning to night there was the creaking of un-greased wheels from
the water-cart, the crack of the whip .and the heavy breathing of the bony
black nag that looked ready to fall down and give up the ghost at any
moment. It was hard to make him rise from his wet straw in the morning. He
trembled all over, weakly shifting his great cracked hoofs, and the flies
crawled round his blind, watering eyes.
This somewhat dashed their spirits, and at times seemed like a bad
omen. But the weather was wonderful and the crop promised to be so rich that
the Bachei family, busy from morning to night with their unaccustomed but
enjoyable physical work, felt splendid.
At first Petya thought he never would learn to dig round the trees. The
heavy spade twisted awkwardly in his hands and seemed too blunt to cut
deeply into the ground with its thick growth of grass and chamomiles. His
hands smarted and he rubbed blisters on the palms. But by the time they had
burst and turned into calluses, he began to understand the way of it.
It seemed that the spade should be put down at an angle, and he should
press not only with his hands but also, and mainly, with his foot-slowly and
evenly; there was a crack of tearing roots and the spade went down into the
black soil right to the very top. Then came the blissful moment when he bore
down with all his weight on the handle, felt it bend a little, and with a
pleasant effort turned over the heavy layer of soil with its imprint of the
spade and half a wriggling red worm.
At first Petya worked in sandals, but then began digging barefoot to
save them, and the contact of his skin with the warm iron was another thing
he enjoyed. He ^realized that this was not play, it was work, the future of
the family depended on it.
All of them worked in the sweat of their brows, it was a real struggle
for existence. They had dinner at midday on the big glassed-in veranda, hot
from the sunshine. They ate borshch, boiled beef, and grey wheaten bread
which they bought from the German settlers at> Lustdorf. They were so tired
they ate almost in silence, and what talk there was concerned only the
weather, rain and the crop.
Although they were living in a summer cottage they were quite unlike
the usual holiday crowd. They slept on folding beds in the big, comfortless
rooms, with spades, hoes, buckets, watering-cans and other implements lying
about in the corners. They washed at dawn by the water-cart, and although
the sea was not far away, only about a mile and a half, they seldom went
bathing- there was no time.
Vasily Petrovich became thin and haggard; he was evidently overtaxing
his strength but he refused to slacken off, and worked so hard that Petya
often worried about him.
Everything appeared to be going well. It was the kind of life Vasily
Petrovich had often dreamed of in secret, especially after his European
tour-with something of Switzerland, something of the Rousseau spirit, a life
independent of the government or society. A little plot of land, an orchard,
a vineyard, healthy physical toil and leisure devoted to reading, walking,
philosophical conversation and all the rest of it.
So far, it is true, there had been only the healthy physical toil, no
time was left for the leisure devoted to spiritual joys. But after all, that
was natural, the new life was only just beginning.
Nevertheless, Vasily Petrovich was never free from a nagging sense of
worry. He was uneasy about the crop.
The ovaries stood thick on the cherry trees, fine, green balls that
swelled day by day, but who could say how they would go on? Suppose there
was no rain, the water carried proved insufficient and the crop was lost?
And even if it was not lost, how were they to sell it?
Up to now the question of selling the crop had never been properly
discussed, it had been somehow taken for granted. People would come,
wholesale dealers from the market, and buy up the whole of it. All right.
But what if they didn't come and didn't buy it?
Meanwhile, the date for the second payment on the note of hand was
drawing near, and two postcards had come from abroad, with a reminder from
the old woman and a warning that if the payment was not made punctually she
would at once protest the bill, close the agreement and let the farm to
other tenants.
This took all peace of mind from Vasily Petrovich and he began to lose
his temper about trifles.
Auntie remained cheerful, she made various plans and fastened a sheet
of paper to a telegraph post by the horse-tram terminus announcing a
comfortable cottage of two completely isolated rooms to let in a delightful
spot on the steppe not far from the sea, with an orchard and vineyard; it
could be rented either for the season or by the month. Full service if
required.
These two separate rooms were nothing more nor less than the tiny
neglected hut roofed with shingles where Madame Vasyutinskaya's servants had
once lived. It stood by itself, its windows facing the steppe, amid a thick
growth of silvery wormwood; to Petya, who had explored the whole place, it
was a wonderful, mysterious, and very romantic spot.
However, people who read the notice and came to take a look were not
impressed. One and all said the same thing, "You call it 'not far from the
sea'?"
Gavrik came a number of times to study Latin. He liked the farm, but he
still had no use for all this business of physical toil and the
sweat-of-your-brow, he looked upon it as an eccentric whim. He did not say
so straight out, however. On the contrary, he asked very seriously about
watering, hoeing, crop prospects and the wholesale price of cherries. He
gave no advice, only shook his head in concern and sighed so sympathetically
that Petya even began to have qualms about the success of their venture.
Gavrik said little about his work in the print-shop and life in Near
Mills, he seemed reluctant to discuss it, but from the little he did say
Petya concluded that things were not going very smoothly. After the big May
Day demonstration which he had hardly noticed in his absorption in exams,
the police had got busy again, there had been house searches and some people
had been arrested; the police had been to the Chernoivanenkos', too, but had
found nothing and Terenty was not arrested.
"In general, it's hard to work," said Gavrik, and Petya was in no doubt
about the sense in which he used the word "work."
On one of his visits, as though continuing that topic, Gavrik said
suddenly, "About renting out that cottage of yours-it's not such a bad
idea."
"Yes, but nobody wants it," said Petya.
"If you look properly you may find someone," Gavrik answered, as though
he had thought it all over. "There are people for whom a place like that
would be just the very thing. Not everyone likes to take a room in town,
where you have to hand in your papers for registration the moment you move
in. Get me?" he ended sternly, looking very straight at Petya.
"I get you all right," Petya answered with a shrug.
"Well then, remember," said Gavrik still more sternly. "The point is,"
he went on more gently, almost casually, "I know a widow with a child, an
assistant doctor, she's from another town and she wants a room where it's
quiet. Of course, we could fix her up in our shed, but in Near Mills
conditions aren't all we want-you understand? Such a watch kept, it's no use
trying. The widow's got all her. papers in order, you've no need to worry
about that."
"I understand," said Petya.
"Well, I needn't explain any more, then. Terenty told me to sound you
out about it. I've never seen her myself. But I'm sure she'll be all right
with you. A quiet place, like a farm really, neither town nor village, and
plenty of summer cottages all round. Who'll ever notice her? Couldn't find
anything better. Now the next question- what's the rent?"
"I believe it's seventy rubles for the season."
"Eh, lad, that's opening your mouth a bit too wide! You'll get nothing
that way. Fifteen rubles a month's a good fair price. She can pay two months
in advance. But what's the sense of talking to you about it? I'll go to your
aunt."
Gavrik did talk to Auntie and soon convinced her that it would be
better to have a real, concrete thirty rubles-which weren't to be picked up
on the ground- rather than an imaginary seventy. As for the widow and her
child, Gavrik said nothing about her but made it clear that he had specially
sought out a suitable tenant for them and was thus doing the Bachei family a
very good turn-although he made no actual promises.
The rain did not come. The drought continued and the heat was
suffocating.
Warden was fed freshly cut hay instead of oats to save money, and fell
sick with a stomach disorder; for the fourth day he lay with distended belly
on his straw, too weak even to raise himself on his forefeet, let alone pull
the water-cart. The German vet came from Lustdorf, examined the horse and
looked into his gaping mouth. To Auntie's question whether he would be able
to pull the cart again, the vet answered, "That horse has done all his
pulling. Time to send him to the knacker's."
The ovaries on the trees ceased to swell; they looked as if they would
never grow any bigger, but remain as they were, the size of peas. And most
dreadful of all, some of them turned yellow and dropped off.
The Bacheis continued earthing up trees from morning to night, although
they felt it was useless labour.
"Auntie, Daddy, Petya, come quick, the Persians are here!" cried
Pavlik, racing up to them under the low boughs of the trees, waving his
straw hat.
In reality these were not Persians at all, they were two
powerfully-built Jews in dark-blue belted shirts hung to their knees and
tall sheepskin hats pulled low over their brows-dealers who bought fruit
wholesale, and were called Persians because in the old days Persians had
done all this type of fruit-trading in Odessa.
Petya saw two men standing by the dry water barrel with faces
expressionless as those of carved idols. He gazed at them as at the arbiters
of fate, with fear and hope. Even at the exams he had been less agitated.
The whole Bachei family surrounded the Persians.
One of them addressed Auntie.
"Are you the mistress here?" he asked in a low rumbling voice that
seemed to issue from his stomach. "We'll take a look at your crop, maybe
we'll buy it on the tree-if there's anything left of it."
Without waiting for an answer, both Persians walked along the overgrown
paths, glancing carelessly at the trees and now and then stopping to touch
an ovary or feel the soil round the roots.
The Bacheis followed them in silence, trying to guess their thoughts.
Although the men's faces remained expressionless, it was plain that the
situation was really bad. When they had finished their examination, the
Persians brought their sheepskin hats close together and whispered for a
moment.
"They need water," said one, addressing Auntie; they whispered again
and walked silently away.
"Well?" asked Auntie, following them with tiny steps and overtaking
them at the gate.
"They need water," the man repeated, halting, and after a moment's
thought he added, "fruit like that we wouldn't take even as a gift."
"Come now, you're exaggerating," said Auntie with a kind of forced
coquettishness, trying to turn it into a joke, "Let's be serious."
"Well, we'll give you twelve rubles for the whole crop as it stands,
take it or leave it," the man answered and pushed his hat lower over his
brows.
Auntie flushed with indignation. Such an absurd sum as twelve rubles
was an insult. She could hardly believe her ears.
"What's that? How much did you say?"
"Twelve rubles," the man repeated roughly.
"Vasily Petrovich, you hear what they're offering?" cried Auntie,
clasping her hands and forcing a laugh.
"What's wrong with that? It's a good price," said the Persian. "Better
take it while you can get it, in another week you won't get five, you'll
just have blistered your hands for nothing."
"Boor!" said Auntie.
"Sirs, will you kindly get out of here!" cried Vasily Petrovich, and
his jaw shook. "Outside! Out, I say! Gavrila, put them out, throw them out!
Robbers!" And Vasily Petrovich stamped his foot.
"No need for abuse," said the Persian quite pacifically. "First learn
to look after your fruit, then it'll be time enough to shout."
So the men left, not forgetting to shut the gate behind them.
"Just think, the impudence of it!" Auntie kept repeating. She dropped
her spade and fanned herself with her handkerchief.
"Now, don't you go getting upset about it, ma'am," said Gavrila. "Just
take no notice. They only came to push down the price. I know their sort.
But what they said about water, that's right. Our orchard has to have it.
The trees want water. No water, no crop. And there you are, the horse is
down. No way to bring it. If only it would rain now. Water-you can't do
without it."
Scant comfort in that.
They tried to hire a horse from the German settlers in Lustdorf, but
nothing came of it: first the Germans named an impossibly high price, and
then refused point-blank, saying they needed their horses themselves. The
real fact was that they all had their own orchards and the ruin of a
competitor just suited them.
"Amazing, how unneighbourly they are!" cried Auntie at dinner-time,
cracking her fingers, a thing she had never done before.
"What's to be done, what's to be done," mumbled Vasily Petrovich,
bending a little too low over his plate. "Homo homini lupus est, which means
'Man's a wolf to man'.... If you remember, I told you at the time this
stupid idea of trading in fruit would end badly." His ears turned red as a
cock's comb.
He had said it would end badly-he could well have said it would end in
complete ruin. It was clear without words. Auntie turned pale with the pain
of hearing these cruel, unjust words. Her eyes filled with tears and her
lips trembled.
"Vasily Petrovich, aren't you ashamed," she said imploringly, her
fingers at her temples.
"Why should I be ashamed? It's all your fantastic idea ... your crazy
idea...."
Vasily Petrovich could no longer stop, he had lost all control of
himself. He jumped up and suddenly saw Pavlik apparently holding his nose so
as not to giggle; actually the boy was biting his fingers desperately to
keep himself from crying.
"What!" yelled Vasily Petrovich in a voice not his own. "You have the
impudence to laugh! I'll teach you to respect your father! Stand up, you
rascal, when your father speaks to you!"
"Dad-Daddy!" sobbed Pavlik, and clapped his hands over his face in
terror.
But Vasily Petrovich was beyond understanding. He picked up his plate
of soup and smashed it down on the floor. Then he twisted his arm round
awkwardly, gave Pavlik a buffet on the back of the neck and rushed out into
the orchard, slamming the door behind him with such violence that the
coloured glass at the top fell in shattered fragments.
"I can't live in this madhouse any longer!" Petya suddenly screamed.
"Damn you! I'm going to Near Mills and I'm not coming back!" He ran into his
room to put his things together.
Altogether, it was a shameful, degrading scene. One might have thought
they had all lost their senses, gone mad as dogs do in the heat.
The heat certainly was dreadful-close, exhausting, dry, burning-enough
to drive anybody mad. The pale sky seemed to have a dull, scorching veil
drawn over it. Waves of heat came from the steppe as they come from the open
door of an oven. Hot winds carried clouds of dust. The acacias rustled with
a dry, papery sound and the grass was grey. The strip of sea on the horizon
looked brown, speckled with greyish-white foam; and whenever the roar of the
wind died down one could hear the sound of waves-dry and monotonous like the
distant rattle of pebbles thrown on to some huge sieve.
The dusty shadows of trees flickered on the walls and ceilings of
rooms. A terrible day.... Not only Petya but Vasily Petrovich, Auntie and
even Pavlik were ready to collect their belongings and run away-anywhere, to
get away from the sight of one another and the mutual sense of injury. But
of course nobody did run away, they only wandered aimlessly about in the hot
rooms and along the rustling paths. They felt fettered to this wretched
place which had at first looked like heaven on earth.
Towards evening a figure appeared in the orchard-a short, stout man in
a tall sheepskin hat, but brown this time instead of black. This was another
Persian, a real one this time, with long eastern moustaches and languorous
eyes. He went quickly round the orchard leaning ion a short stick, and then
stood beside the kitchen waiting for somebody to come out. As no one
appeared, however, he went to the house and rapped on the window with his
stick.
When Auntie peeped out, he said, "Hi, Mistress!" and pointed at the
orchard with a yellow hand adorned with dirty nails. "I'll buy your crop for
five rubles. Better take it or you'll be sorry later."
"Ruffian!" cried Auntie in a dreadful voice. "Gavrila, what are you
about? Throw him out!"
But the real Persian did not wait for Gavrila, he ran off with small
limping steps and disappeared in an instant.
Then came the third postcard from Madame Vasyutinskaya, reminding them
of the date for the next payment.
Nobody wanted any supper that day, and for a long time the four
soup-plates of yoghurt sprinkled with sugar stood untouched on the table on
the veranda.
In the middle of the night a dreadful, inhuman, bloodcurdling cry
awakened everybody. What could it be? Outside the windows the black outlines
of the fruit trees swayed as in fever. Then the cry was repeated, still more
dreadful, with a kind of screaming, sobbing laugh in it. Somebody came
running along the path, waving a lantern. Then there was a battering on the
glazed door that shook the house. Gavrila stood on the step, waving his
lantern.
"Come quick, ma'am, Warden's dying," he cried in a frightened voice.
Petya flung something on and raced to the stable, trembling from head
to foot. Auntie, Vasily Petrovich, Dunyasha and Pavlik, barefoot and wrapped
in a blanket, stood huddled round the door.
Gavrila's lantern shed an ominous light inside the stable. He could
hear the deep, vibrating groans of the dying horse. They stood petrified,
helpless, unable to think of any way to stave off this catastrophe.
Just before dawn the horse gave one last dreadful scream vibrant with
pain and terror, and then fell silent for ever. In the morning a cart
arrived and he was taken out somewhere far away on the steppe-huge, bony,
black, with bared teeth and long outstretched legs ending in cracked hoofs
and shining, worn iron shoes.
They were all so crushed by this disaster that nobody did any work all
day. The death of Warden was not only a bad omen, it was the final blow to
all their hopes, it meant inevitable ruin for the family. Utter despair
reigned.
After dinner the wind died down somewhat but the sultry heat was worse
than ever. Not a cloud could be seen in the pale, dusty-looking sky. A band
of lilac lay along the horizon, a deceptive reflection of distant
thunderstorms that constantly gathered but never broke. This was not the
first time there had been a promise of storm, but it had always been
followed by disappointment, either the cloud had melted away imperceptibly
in the scorching air or it had passed by and broken somewhere out to sea,
with a useless rolling of thunder echoing over the steppe.
Today it was the same. The storm broke far away. Nobody was surprised,
they had already lost all hope of rain, although that was the only chance
left for the crop. Petya was weary after a sleepless night; he did not know
what to do with himself and wandered out on the steppe, roaming aimlessly
until a big circuit brought him to the sea. He climbed down the cliff,
clutching at roots and boulders, and finally sat down on the hot pebbles.
The water was still heaving after the storm of the previous day, but
the waves, heavy with seaweed, no longer beat angrily against the beach but
rolled smoothly up it, leaving stranded jelly-fish and dead sea-horses.
It was a wild, deserted strip of coast, and Petya, who had all day
longed to be alone, felt easier there, lapped in a quiet melancholy. It was
a long time since he had bathed and now he undressed quickly and slipped
with pleasure into the warm, foamy water.
There was a special, inexplicable delight in this bathe which he took
quite alone. First he swam along the shore for a little way among slippery
rocks washed by the sea and covered with brown weeds, then he turned out to
sea. As usual, he swam on his side, kicking his legs like a frog and
flinging one hand forward in a broad overarm swing. He pushed his shoulder
through the waves, trying to raise that splash which made him feel he was
cutting swiftly through the water although in reality his speed was nothing
wonderful. He was very pleased with himself. He particularly liked that
shoulder which pushed through the water-brown, smooth as silk under a
gleaming wet film that reflected the sunshine.
The time had long passed when he had been afraid to go far from the
shore. He would strike out boldly for the open sea and then turn over on his
back, let the waves rock him, and stare up at the sky until he had the
feeling that he was looking down at it, hanging, void of weight, in space.
The whole world vanished, he forgot everything but himself, alone and
all-powerful.
Now too, he swam out about a mile, turned over... and gasped at the
change that had taken place around him. The sky overhead was still clear and
the sea shone with a hot, blinding glare, but it had a hard glitter, like
the glitter of anthracite.
Petya looked back to the shore. Over the narrow strip of cliff, over
the steppe hung something huge, black, surging and-most terrible of
all-quite silent. Before Petya had time to realize that this was a
thundercloud it rolled up to the sun, which was blindingly white like a
magnesium flare, and swallowed it up in an instant, extinguishing all
colours from the world so that everything became a leaden grey.
Petya swam back as fast as he could, and anyway he could, trying to get
ashore before the storm burst. Far away on the steppe, under the slaty sky,
he could see whirling dust-devils chasing one another. And when he climbed
up the beach and turned to look at the sea, the place where he had only just
been was already a seething mass of foam whipped by a squall, with sea-gulls
flying wildly over.
Petya barely managed to catch his trousers and shirt as they fled with
the wind along the beach. While he was climbing the cliff everything turned
as dark as late evening. He raced at top speed to the horse-tram terminus
where rails were being laid for electric trams and concrete poured for a new
building. Just as he got there lightning flashed, there was a great bang of
thunder and in the hush that followed he could hear the roar of the
approaching downpour.
Petya ran on to the road, and as though some gate had opened, a sharp
scent of wet hemp struck him, followed by a solid wall of rain.
In an instant the road became a river. The lightning flashes showed him
the foaming torrent that swirled round his legs. His feet 'slipped. There
was no sense trying to get home through that. Up to the knees in water he
made his way back to the tram-shelter, crossing himself every time the
lightning flashed close by with an almost simultaneous clap of thunder. It
was only as he slipped down into a deep gutter that Petya suddenly realized
this was the thunderstorm, the downpour, for which the whole Bachei family
had waited so desperately. It was not ordinary water, it was the water which
would soak the orchard, fill the empty cistern and save them from ruin.
"Hurrah!" shouted Petya and ran through the storm to the farm, no
longer afraid of anything.
He slipped and fell several times on the way, flopping full length in
the mud, but now this warm mud felt wonderful. When he reached home the
sunset showed dimly through a break in the main-clouds and the storm rolled
away out to sea where lightning flashed convulsively and thunder snarled on
a dark-blue horizon. But Petya had hardly time to race along the paths and
admire the muddy water filling the hollows round the trees, to plant a happy
kiss on his father's wet beard, to give Pavlik a friendly buffet and shout,
"Grand, Auntie, isn't it?" before the storm came back, more violent than
ever.
Several times after that it circled over the sea and returned again.
The rain continued all through the night, sometimes pouring in torrents,
sometimes stealthily quiet, barely audible, while under the trees thousands
of tiny streams glittered in the lightning flashes which illumined the
orchard with all its distant, mysterious corners.
The whole night Gavrila, a sack over his head, ran round the house and
over the roof fixing up the pipes that collected the water and poured it in
rapid torrents into the cistern. And to the noise of the filling cistern
Petya fell into a deep, happy sleep.
It was late when he awakened. A rosy sun shone like a jewel through the
warm mist, and the wet garden was full of bird-song. Auntie looked in
through the open window.
"Get up, lazy-bones!" she called gaily. "While you've been asleep, our
tenants have come!"
"The widow with a child?" asked Petya yawning.
"The very same," Auntie answered with the mischievous smile that showed
her spirits were excellent. "There's tea ready, come along."
Of course, Petya wanted to see the widow and child, so he hurried to
the veranda.
He halted, thunderstruck.
Sitting at the table between Vasily Petrovich and Pavlik, calmly
drinking tea, were that same lady and that same girl he had seen the
previous year at the station in Naples.
He gave his head a shake as though a cinder had flown into his eye
again.
"Ah, here's our Petya, let me introduce him," said Auntie with her
society smile.
Petya almost burst out with "We know each other already," but something
held him back. Blushing, he went round the table, clicked his heels politely
and waited for the lady to extend her hand first, as a well-bred boy should.
After clasping the cool, slender fingers of the mother, Petya looked with
secret hope at the daughter, asking with his eyes whether she did not
remember him.
But the girl only looked surprised at Petya's queer expression and held
out her little hand indifferently, saying, "Marina." That was quite
unexpected, for in accordance with character portrayal by Pushkin and
Goncharov, Petya had always thought of her as Tanya or Vera. And now she
turned out to be Marina. Petya eyed her with frank reproach, as though she
had deceived him.
She looked just the same as she had in Naples, with the same short
summer coat, the same black hair-ribbon and the same little jutting chin
that gave her pretty face with its rather high cheek-bones a lofty,
unapproachable expression. Her hazel eyes were cold and disapproving as
though asking, "What do you want of me?"
"Frailty, thy name is woman," thought Petya bitterly, and then with
still greater bitterness realized that she had not forgotten him, she had
never even noticed him.
Petya felt insulted, his pride had suffered a blow.
"In that case, all is over between us," he said with his eyes, and with
a cold, indifferent shrug he turned and went to his place.
"Stop making faces," said Auntie.
"I'm not making faces," Petya answered, and straightaway stuffed soft
bread in his tea to make a "pudding." The way of making it was this: you put
pieces of soft bread in a half-filled glass of tea, then when the bread
swelled you turned the glass upside down on the saucer, producing something
which by a great stretch of imagination resembled a pudding. This was
considered bad manners in the Bachei family, so Vasily Petrovich gave Petya
a very stern look through his glasses and tapped the table with his index
finger.
"I shall send you away!"
"Please, don't think he doesn't know how to behave, he's just shy,"
said Auntie, addressing the mother but with a sly glance at the
daughter-which made Petya snort and start messing the "pudding" up with his
teaspoon.
Marina's mother, however, was disinclined to keep the polite
conversation going. She evidently found no pleasure in this ceremonial
tea-drinking with strangers, people who happened to be letting her rooms but
who otherwise did not interest her in the least.
She was a brunette with a small, jutting chin like her daughter's, a
dark shadow on her upper lip, a shabby widow's bonnet and wary eyes.
"About the rent," she said, continuing the talk which Petya's entrance
had interrupted. "I was told that it's fifteen rubles a month. That suits me
very well and I'd like to pay two months in advance, thirty rubles." She
opened a black bag like the ones midwives carry and took out some notes. "We
shan't want board, we've a kerosene stove and we'll manage for ourselves.
Here is the money, exactly thirty rubles."
"Oh, that's quite all right," mumbled Auntie, flushing and embarrassed
as she always was when money was discussed. "You don't need to give it me
now ... later would do.... Well, merci, then." She pushed the money which
had a slight hospital smell carelessly under the sugar-bowl.
Marina's mother put her hand in her bag again as though seeking
something else (her papers, thought Petya), but evidently changed her mind,
took her hand out and snapped the bag to with a decisive click.
"And now if you don't mind, I'd like to go to our rooms," she said.
Refusing assistance, mother and daughter picked up their belongings-an
oilcloth satchel, a kerosene stove wrapped in newspaper, a bag and an
umbrella-and crossed the garden to the cottage, leaving deep imprints on the
wet paths.
"A rather strange woman," observed Vasily Petrovich. "But after all,
what's that got to do with us?"
"In any case, she seems quite cultured," said Auntie with a sigh, took
the money out from under the sugar-bowl and slipped it into the pocket of
her smart apron.
For a little while the weather cleared, and the garden sparkled in the
hot sunshine. But hardly had the Bacheis picked up their spades and gone out
to start work when the clouds gathered again and the rain recommenced, but
this time a warm, gentle rain, just the kind needed to ensure a good crop.
It went on with short breaks for a whole week, and in that week the garden
was literally transformed.
The ovaries swelled before their eyes, promising excellent fruit. The
trees seemed to be thick with cherries-still green, it is true, but getting
ready to change colour. With all this a spirit of gaiety, hope and affection
reigned among the Bacheis, and nobody noticed the change in Petya.
For some time the boy had been in a constant state of subdued
excitement. A tense half-smile kept flitting over his face. He did not know
what to do with himself, especially as all the trees were already earthed up
and well watered by the rain, so that there was no work to keep him
occupied. Petya's heart and mind were concentrated on one aim -to see
Marina. Simple enough, one might think. She was living right beside him.
They had been introduced. They could see each other a dozen times a day. But
it was not like that at all.
The Pavlovskayas (that was their name) never left their rooms, never
appeared in the garden. Evidently they avoided society-or to put it plainly,
they were in hiding. Petya understood that well enough, but it made matters
no easier for him.
For a whole week he saw Marina only once, and that was at a distance.
She was returning from the terminus, waist-deep in wheat, holding up a big
black umbrella and carrying a tin can-evidently for kerosene.
Petya raced home, put on his cape and started walking up and down by
the gate with a most casual, indifferent air. But Marina took the path
through the fields and Petya only caught a glimpse of her closing the
umbrella and disappearing into the cottage.
Petya roamed about the orchard a long time in the rain, choosing the
parts that gave him a view of the cottage, but the girl did not appear
again.
Late that evening, when darkness fell, Petya-holding his breath and
inwardly despising himself-crept up to the cottage and crouched down in the
thick wormwood that showered him from head to foot with the aromatic
rain-water from its leaves.
One of the windows was dark but the other was pale with candlelight.
Looking in, Petya saw Marina's bent head and her moving hand as she wrote
earnestly; the light gave her fingers the faintly transparent look of
porcelain. Behind her the large shadow of Madame Pavlovskaya moved up and
down the whitewashed wall raising and lowing an open book-from which he
could conclude that Marina was writing dictation.
This sobered Petya a little, it even brought a scornful smile.
At that moment the girl's hand halted in indecision. Marina sought
counsel on the ceiling. Petya could see her jutting chin, frowning brow and
narrowed eyes; on one of them she had a sty coming. As she gazed in
puzzlement at the ceiling she licked her lips once or twice, and such a
sudden wave of emotion shook Petya that he shut his eyes. No, never in all
his life had he loved anyone as he loved this dark-haired girl with the
independent, jutting chin and the sty coming on her eye.
He had loved her for a long time, a year already. But before this she
had been a dream, a phantasy. He had almost ceased to believe in her
existence.-He had forgotten her to such an extent that sometimes he could
not even picture her. It had not really been love, only a premonition of
love, mingled with the blizzard in the mountains, the black swans round
Rousseau's island, the sulphurous smoke of Vesuvius, the vague imaginary
picture of Paris, the magic words "Longjumeau" and "Marie Rose"-in short,
everything which a year before had captured his imagination and wrung his
heart.
Now it was an ordinary, everyday love, alluring in its very
accessibility. Marina was no longer loftily unapproachable, there was no
more mystery about her. Just an ordinary girl, not even especially pretty,
with a sty on her eye, writing dictation. Tomorrow she would go out for a
walk in the garden and he would go up and talk to her. They would talk for a
long time and then they would never part again.
Petya went home to bed and fell asleep in the blissful certainty that
on the morrow a new, delightful life was going to begin. He could even see
himself as Yevgeny Onegin and her as Tatyana, anticipating the secret
rendezvous at which he would at first "instruct the lady of his heart" and
then say he'd been joking and take her arm.
But nothing of the kind happened.
Marina still did not appear, and Petya reproached her inwardly, even
called her a fair deceiver, as though she had made him some promise. Then he
resolved to chastise her by indifference, to take no more notice of her. For
a whole day he kept his eyes away from their windows. Of course it was very
cruel, but it had to be done. Let her realize what he was capable of if he
were deceived. She had only herself to blame.
The next day Petya decided to let wrath give way to kindness, for,
after all, he loved her. Again he began eyeing the cottage from afar. But it
was all no good, she did not appear.
After that he so far lost the mastery over himself as to risk going up
quite close a number of times. He noticed that a new path had been beaten
from the door, leading out into the steppe. Aha, so that was why she never
appeared in the garden! She preferred wandering over the steppe. And what if
that narrow path were nothing other than a hint, an invitation to a secret
rendezvous? Heavens above, how had he failed to understand! Why, it was
clear as daylight! So he began roaming about the steppe, glancing
impatiently at the cottage. At any moment she would see him and come out. He
would be tender, but firm.
The only fly in the ointment was that the weather had turned hot again,
too hot for his cape.
But alas!-she still stayed inside. It seemed as if she were
deliberately mocking him.
"You wait," thought Petya. "Your kerosene will come to an end, then
we'll see!"
As though to taunt him, the weather was wonderful. The lilacs were
over, but white acacia and jasmine were in full bloom, filling the air with
their sweet, languorous fragrance. At night the added scent of night violets
and flowering tobacco made the air still more intoxicating, their pale stars
vaguely visible in the twilight on the luxuriant flower-beds in front of the
house.
In the evening a great golden moon rose over the sea, and by midnight
it hung over the steppe, bathing everything in a warm, jasmine light.
Could anything be more romantic? And all of it wasted!
Weary of idleness and love, Petya could neither sleep nor eat. He
became thin and haggard and his eyes had a restless glitter.
"What's the matter, fallen in love?" asked Auntie, looking at him with
curiosity.
Petya wanted to wither her with a glance, but all he managed was such a
pitiful travesty of a smile that she shrugged her shoulders.
The end of it all was that Petya decided to write a diary. He found an
old exercise book, tore out some pages with algebra problems and wrote,
"Love has come to me...." He had expected it would be perfectly easy to fill
the whole book with a detailed description of his emotions, which he felt to
be so extraordinary and so vast. But try as he would, he could find -nothing
more to add, such was the surging confusion of his mind.
Then he turned desperately to the last resort-to write her a letter and
appoint a rendezvous.
Of course, there was nothing so very extraordinary about that. But
Petya's condition had reached the stage where the object of one's love seems
a being of a loftier sphere, an ideal far above ordinary human relations,
even though she does go to buy kerosene with an umbrella over her head, or
even writes dictation.
However, there was nothing else left to do.
For love-letters it was common to use what were called "secret notes,"
very popular in the "flying post," game played at parties. These were small
pieces of coloured paper with perforated glued edges, which could be doubled
and sealed, serving as notepaper and envelope. To open them one tore off the
perforated part. They came under the same category as confetti, serpentines,
silken masks and other ball-room trifles. These were the proper medium for
tender messages. But Petya had none, and there was nowhere to buy them. The
best he could do was to fold a sheet of paper torn from an exercise book and
himself make pin-holes along its loose edges.
This took some effort, but to write the note itself was still worse.
Petya wrote five rough copies before he achieved the following:
"Marina!! I must speak to you about something very important. Come out
to the steppe tomorrow at exactly eight in the evening. I do not sign this,
for I hope you can guess the sender." Petya heavily underlined the words
"something very important," secretly relying on feminine curiosity.
He went into the orchard and scratched some resin from a cherry tree.
With considerable satisfaction he chewed it soft, stuck the note together
with it and wrote on the outside, "To Marina. Personal and private."
Petya slipped the note into his pocket and went straight off to look
for Pavlik. He found him in the stable. And found him playing cards with
Gavrila. At the moment of Petya's appearance he was kneeling with raised
hand, preparing to slam down the ace of hearts with all the force of which
he was capable on a rubbed, worn knave that lay on the ground beside the
pack, surrounded by crawling insects and piles of small coins.
Pavlik's face was filled with reckless excitement, but Gavrila,
kneeling opposite, looked downcast, and drops of sweat ran down his long
freckled nose.
"Aha," thought Petya, "so this is how my fine brother spends the day,
this is what idleness can lead to!"
"Pavlik, come here!" he said sternly.
Pavlik jumped as though stung, and with a quick, agile movement twisted
round and sat on the pack, looking at his brother with innocent brown eyes.
"Come here!" Petya repeated with increased sternness.
"Now don't take it wrong, young master," said Gavrila, forcing a laugh.
"We're not gambling, we're just fooling about to pass the time, like. May I
die here on the spot if we're not!"
"Tell-tale-tit!" chanted Pavlik, just in case, inconspicuously scraping
out the money from under him.
Petya, however, only frowned and shrugged his shoulders.
"That's not what I'm after," he said. "Come here."
He led Pavlik away into the bushes, halted with legs astride and bent a
stern look on him.
"It's this-" He stopped, at a loss for a moment. "I want you to do
something for me ... or rather, not to do something, to go on an errand."
"I know, I know," said Pavlik quickly.
"What do you know?" asked Petya, frowning.
"I know what you want. You want me to take a note to that new girl.
Isn't that it?"
"How did you guess?" cried the startled Petya.
"Huh!" Pavlik answered scornfully. "D'you think I can't see the silly
way you're going on? But you needn't try to get me to take your notes 'cause
I won't!"
"Oh yes, you will," said Petya menacingly.
"Think you're somebody, don't you!" said Pavlik boldly, but retreating
a step to be on the safe side.
"You will go!" Petya hissed obstinately.
"No I won't."
"Yes you will!"
"No I won't, and you can stop ordering me about, too. I'm not a kid to
run after girls with your notes. Go there and have Madame Pavlovskaya pull
my ears, eh? I'm not such a fool!"
"So you won't go, won't you?" asked Petya with an ominous smile.
"No I won't!"
"All right, so much the worse for you!"
"And what'll happen?"
"Simply that I'll go right away and tell Father you're gambling."
"And I'll go right away and tell everyone you're in love with the new
girl and you're writing her sloppy notes and you sit in the weeds under her
window and stop her learning her lessons and everybody'll laugh at you. Aha,
got you!"
"You little worm," said Petya.
"You're another."
"All the same, you'd better hold your tongue," said Petya dully.
"I'll hold mine if you hold yours."
With those words Pavlik strutted back to the stable where Gavrila,
bored with nothing to do, was lying en the ground shuffling the cards.
No hope there.
That night Petya again crept to the cottage and sat among the wormwood
for a long time, plucking up courage to toss the note in through the open
window. This time the whole house was dark, evidently both were asleep.
Petya even thought he could hear deep breathing. The moon shone so brightly
on the whitewashed walls that they looked blue, patterned by the swaying
shadows of acacias, while the wormwood in which Petya sat gleamed silver.
Several times Petya had to change his position, seeking shadows that
would hide him from the moonlight, and finally made so much noise that a
deep sigh sounded from inside and an irritated voice said, "I'm sure I hear
someone walking round the house all the time."
Then another voice, soft and sleepy, replied, "Go to sleep, Mum, it's
just cats."
Petya waited trembling until all was quiet, then he took from his
pocket the note, tied round a stone, and tossed it in through the open
window.
Covered with cold sweat he slunk back. When he at last came to his
canvas bed and started silently undressing, he heard Pavlik's ominous
whisper from under the blanket.
"Aha! Think I don't know what you've been doing? Throwing in a
note-huh! Thank your stars you didn't get your ears pulled!"
"You little swine," hissed Petya.
"You're another," mumbled Pavlik sleepily.
It is hard to think how Petya would have got through the following day
if the watering of the orchard had not started again.
Petya stood zealously turning the cistern handle to pull up the bucket,
then letting the water out into the tank from which it was carried all over
the garden. He had himself volunteered for this tiring, monotonous job which
would leave his mind free to think of the rendezvous.
The unoiled axle of the latticed iron drum squealed mournfully. The
chain rattled crisply as it wound and unwound. The heavy bucket crawled
slowly up, the falling drops sounding metallically hard in the echoing
darkness of the cistern, then it raced down again, dragging the wet chain
after it, so that the drum whirled wildly round and one had to skip aside
pretty quickly to avoid a sharp blow from the handle.
His arms and back ached, his shirt was soaking, sweat ran down his face
and dripped from his chin, but Petya went on working, refusing to rest. He
was in a state of bliss which at one moment nearly turned to despair when
the day darkened, clouds came rolling up and a few drops fell, promising a
downpour in the evening that would put any meeting on the steppe out of the
question.
However, the rain passed over, the clouds dispersed and towards evening
a cool breeze sprang up-a most fortunate circumstance, since it allowed him
to put on his cape.
When Petya, after making a wide detour for caution's sake, came to the
little path by the cottage, the setting sun was blazing over the steppe and
his shadow was so long that it looked as though he were on stilts.
The monastery bells were ringing for vespers. From the distance came
the melancholy song of reapers. The white wall of the cottage was tinted
pink by the sun and the windows were a blinding gold. Petya's hands were
like ice, and his mouth felt cold, as though he had been sucking
peppermints.
Without any real reason for it, Petya had told himself that she would
most certainly come. But although he would not for the world have admitted
it, a secret doubt lurked at the bottom of his heart.
He Lay prone on the grass, his chin resting on his fists, staring at
the cottage as though by sheer force of will he could compel her now, this
very moment, to come out on the steppe. Actually, this already was not love
but insistent pride, not passion but obstinacy; it was an aimless turbulence
of spirit, the wish to bring his ideal down from heaven to earth and assure
himself that Marina was not a scrap better than other girls-for instance,
Motya- probably worse.
And yet his imagination still enthroned her as the only one, the
unattainable one, despite the sty and that chin like the toe of a shoe-and
perhaps even because of that.
Suddenly, between waves of despair and hope, he saw the familiar figure
pass the cottage, up to the waist in wormwood; he could hardly believe his
eyes, so great was his happiness. Marina came to him quickly, almost too
quickly, shading her eyes with her hand from the sun that beat straight into
her face. She was in a short summer coat with the collar raised, and her
hair was done a new way; the same black bow was there, but a sprig of
jasmine had been added.
"Good evening," she said, holding out her hand to Petya. "I had an
awful job getting away. You've no idea what Mum's like. You'll see, she'll
call me back at once. Come along quick."
She smiled and walked along the path leading into the steppe, followed
by Petya, who was knocked right off his balance and even disappointed by her
confident ease, and especially by her frankly mischievous smile.
Whatever he had expected, it had been something very different-shyness,
embarrassment, silent reproach, even severity-but most certainly not this.
One might think she had only been waiting for the chance to run out to meet
a boy! She did not even ask why he wanted her to come. And that jasmine in
her hair! Petya could see now that she was small only in size, in age she
must be fifteen; and she had probably had plenty of experience in love
affairs-perhaps she had even been kissed.
In general, it was as though she had suddenly turned into her own elder
sister.
"Aren't you hot in that cape?" she asked, glancing round.
"Aren't you hot in your coat?" Petya retorted dully.
Evidently she did not understand irony, for she answered, "It's a
summer coat, your cape's a heavy woollen one."
"A Swiss cape, specially for the mountains!" remarked Petya, not
without a boastful note.
"Yes, I see that," answered Marina.
When they were a good distance from the house, they left the path and
strolled slowly side by side among the suslik holes and wild flowers, which
threw down long shadows. For a time they said nothing, listening to the
rustle of the grass and flowers under their feet.
The sun sank behind a distant barrow. A cool breeze rose.
"Are you fond of the steppe?" asked Marina.
"I love the mountains," Petya answered sombrely.
He had not the faintest idea how he ought to proceed now. He had got
what he wanted, this was a real 'rendezvous, it was even more-a long walk
out on the steppe at sunset. But all the same he was awkward and
embarrassed. In some way she had got the upper hand over him in the first
moment. And well he knew it.
"I love the steppe," said Marina, "though I like mountains too."
"No, the mountains are finer," said Petya stubbornly.
He had never in his life found it so difficult to talk to a girl. How
much easier it had been with Motya, for instance. Of course, Motya loved
him, while this one-you couldn't guess. ... But the worst of all was that
she did not display the faintest desire to know why he had asked her to meet
him. What was that-pretence or indifference?
With every moment that passed he loved her more, he was most
desperately in love. And not at all as he had been before, he was no longer
in love with a far-away dream, but with an enchantingly close reality.
As they strolled along she would now and then give a little laugh
without any visible reason, and that teasing laughter seemed very familiar
to Petya, although he could not for the life of him remember where and when
he had heard it.
"Just wait, my dear," thought Petya, admiring Marina's pretty head with
the black ribbon and the sprig of jasmine. "Just wait, we'll see what song
you'll sing in a little while."
"Just imagine," he said with a crooked, sarcastic smile, "once upon a
time I was most tremendously in love with you."
"You-with me?" asked Marina in surprise and shrugged her shoulders.
"When could that have been?"
"A long time ago. Last year," sighed Petya. "And you, I suppose, you
never even guessed?"
She halted and looked up at him with grave probing eyes.
"That is quite impossible."
"But it was so."
"Where, and when?"
Petya looked at her with tender reproach and said very slowly and
distinctly, "June. Italy. Naples. The railway station. Can you deny it?"
In an instant Marina's face changed completely; she looked serious,
alarmed. Her colour mounted.
"You're making a mistake," she said curtly, with a look that seemed to
shut him out at once. "We've never been in Italy ... or any other foreign
country."
Petya knew this was not true.
"Yes, you have, you were wearing the same coat and the same black bow
in your hair!" he cried eagerly. "You walked along the platform with your
mother. And Maxim Gorky was there. Our train started and I leaned out of the
window and looked at you, and you looked back at me. Wasn't that so? Didn't
you look at me? Can you deny it?"
She frowned and shook her head in silence, but the deep colour did not
leave her face, even her chin was red. She was beginning to be angry.
"Can you deny it? Can you?" Petya insisted.
"Nothing of the kind ever happened, you've just dreamed it!"
"I even know where you were going. Shall I tell you? Well? To Paris!"
cried Petya with a kind of bitter triumph.
She shook her head land the colour began to leave her face.
"Marie Rose, Longjumeau," said Petya softly, impressively, looking bard
into her eyes and enjoying her discomfiture.
She turned so pale that Petya was frightened. Then her face stiffened
in a look of contempt.
"You're making it all up," she said carelessly and even forced herself
to laugh, a strange laugh that sounded so familiar.
Suddenly he realized it was Vera's mermaid laugh from The Precipice,
and he himself was the miserable Raisky.
"Remember once and for all that nothing of the sort ever happened,"
Marina said. She turned and walked rapidly back towards the house.
Petya ran after her.
"Don't follow me," she said without turning.
"Marina, wait a bit ... but why?" Petya groaned piteously.
She turned, let her eyes travel over him from head to foot with a
contemptuous look, said, "Babbler!" and ran home.
Petya had never expected the long-awaited rendezvous to end in fiasco.
He was completely puzzled by her anger. All he knew was that he had lost
her, if not for ever, at least for a very long time. And when? At the very
moment everything was perfect, when dusk was creeping over the steppe and a
great moon hung over the distant hills, with a pale light like the glow of a
paper lantern.
CAESAR'S COMMENTARIES
For some days after that Marina did not appear at all. Petya tossed a
number of notes in through the window, trying on various pretexts to lure
her to meet him, even promising to reveal some tremendously important
secret, but nothing helped. And he realized he had lost her for ever.
He was in despair. And his despair was deepened by the fact that there
was absolutely nobody to whom he could confide his unsuccessful romance,
pour out in eloquent words his "tormented soul," as Petya mentally described
the painful sting of hurt pride. So Gavrik's appearance was a godsend.
He turned up quite suddenly, as was his wont of late. Petya saw him
standing in the orchard, but it was a puzzle how he had got there. Not
through the gate, that was certain, for Petya himself had been standing
there all the time, watching to see whether anyone would go to fetch
kerosene.
Gavrik had a worn textbook tricked under his belt and carried an
exercise book rolled into a tube with which he kept angrily striking his
knee. In general, his look was sombre.
"Hullo, come to study a bit?"
"No, to catch sparrows," Gavrik answered curtly.
Petya chose a shady spot with a view of the cottage, and they sat down
among the chamomiles beneath a cherry tree.
"Well, what have you got there?" asked Petya languidly.
"I have to learn De hello Gallico."
"Aha. Now listen, and I'll explain it all. The point is that De hello
Gallico was written by Caesar. He was called Gaius Julius and he was the
Roman emperor who-"
"I know all that. I have to read it and translate it, and learn the
first chapter by heart."
"All right, we can do that," said Petya obligingly. "Open your book and
start translating."
"I've done the translation," said Gavrik.
"What do you want, then?"
"I've got to learn the first chapter. And that's far worse than
learning poetry so far as I'm concerned."
"But it is necessary," Petya said didactically, gradually slipping into
the role of teacher. "Give me your book, I'll read aloud and you repeat
everything after me."
"But don't you know it by heart?" asked Gavrik suspiciously.
Petya, however, ignored this indiscreet question; he took the book out
of Gavrik's hand and began reading with great expression:
"Gallia est omnis divisa in paries tres. Repeat that."
"Gallia est omnis divisa in paries ires" Gavrik repeated, his forehead
deeply creased.
"Good!" said Petya. "Now-"
But at that moment he thought he saw a movement by the cottage. He
craned his neck to see better.
"No good looking over there," Gavrik said quietly.
Petya started.
"How did you guess?" he asked, blushing. They knew one another too well
for pretence.
"Oh, don't play the bread-and-butter miss!" snapped Gavrik. "Anyone
might think the Pavlovskayas had dropped down from the skies. You know very
well it was we who sent them-to keep them out of the way of the police. You
need a head on your shoulders, not a turnip. They're not just ordinary
people getting out of the summer heat, they're in hiding," he said
incisively. "And they're working. And then you had to start off with all
that romantic nonsense! All right, amuse yourself with it if you like, but
don't bother them with your talk. And that's just what you've been doing.
'Why, I know you. Why, I saw you abroad! Marie Rose, Longjumeau!' Have you
any idea what. Marie Rose and Longjumeau mean?" Gavrik suddenly realized
that his voice had risen; he stopped short and looked about him. There was
nobody near, but he continued in a lower tone, "It is from there that all
the instructions come. And since I've gone so far, I don't mind telling you
that if they catch Pavlovskaya, it'll be a serious blow. I'm talking to you
like this because we consider you one of us. Am I right?"
Gavrik looked hard at Petya through narrowed eyes, awaiting a straight
answer to a straight question.
Petya thought a moment, then nodded silently. It was the first time
Gavrik had spoken so openly, definitely, keeping nothing back, calling
everything by its name.
"I swear-" Petya began and felt his throat close up with excitement. He
wanted badly to say something deeply significant, perhaps impressive. "I
swear-" he repeated, and tears welled in his eyes.
"There you are, I knew you'd start right off with something of that
sort," said Gavrik. "You needn't bother. Fine words butter no parsnips, and
we've heard plenty of talkers."
"I'm not just a talker," Petya said in a huff.
"I don't mean you, though you're not the silent type- Marie Rose,
Longjumeau. You drop that sort of thing. This isn't a game, it's serious.
And if it comes to the point, we shan't stand on ceremony with you. You know
what underground work is?"
"Of course I do," said Petya, not without dignity.
"Oh no, you don't," Gavrik answered. "In the first place it means
holding your tongue. Tell one person today, and he'll spill everything
tomorrow. You can never get back what you've said. Do you know what she
thought?"
"Who?"
"Marina. She thought you'd been sent after her. A busy."
"What's a busy?"
"You're really slow to catch on. A busy's a detective. A police agent.
It's time you knew things like that. You alarmed the Pavlovskayas so badly
they were planning to leave that very night, to get somewhere a safe
distance from your place. A good thing I happened along just then, or they'd
have been gone. They'd got their things packed, but I told them you were
more or less one of us, and not to worry."
Petya sat silent, crushed. He had never imagined his romance could have
such serious consequences. In general there was much that had never occurred
to him.
"She's certainly a nice girl. I wouldn't mind taking a stroll arm in
arm with her at twilight myself. But I've no time," Gavrik sighed.
Petya stared at him with something like horror, unable to believe his
ears. To talk like that about "her"! It was sacrilege. But Gavrik, stretched
out among the chamomiles, his arms under his head, continued in the same
tone, as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world:
"On the other hand, think of her. She has no father. He died abroad
last year of galloping consumption. He belonged to our organization, too.
Her mother's a Party worker. She's got a false passport. They always have to
be moving from place to place, hiding, changing their rooms. The girl's got
to study somehow, and not fall behind. They stay at home all the time
because they can only go out when it's absolutely necessary. And after all
she's young, it's dull for her. So it was natural enough that when you threw
that note in, she was pleased. Why shouldn't she go for a walk with a boy
once in a while? And by the way, believe it or not, she liked you, too. But
then you went and spoiled everything with your big mouth."
Petya flinched as from a toothache.
"Wait a moment," he said, "how do you know all this?"
Gavrik stared at Petya with unconcealed surprise.
"Well! Do you think they feed on air? Incidentally, that's not their
name at all, but it doesn't matter. I dash over twice a week with
provisions. Well, and sometimes there are instructions from the committee
too."
Another unpleasant surprise for Petya. So Gavrik often visited Marina,
he was a friend of the family.
"So that's it! But why do you never come to us?" asked Petya, with
something like jealousy.
"Because I generally come at night."
"Cloak and dagger stuff?" Petya asked with a note of irony.
"What do you think? Why attract attention? You never can tell who may
notice, especially in times like these. Don't you know what's going on?
There are strikes all over. The secret police are going crazy, sniffing
everywhere-no joke about it. It's worse than 1905."
Again Petya felt the atmosphere of Near Mills, which had faded away of
late.
"What about a smoke, comrade?" Gavrik said, pulling a package of cheap
cigarettes from his pocket.
Petya had never smoked and he felt no desire to. But the word
"comrade," which Gavrik pronounced with a kind of special intonation of
stern independence, the very look of the package of Peal Cigarettes made by
the Laferrne Co., five kopeks for twenty, advertised in the Pravda, made him
pull a stiff cigarette from the package and place it awkwardly in his mouth.
"Good idea," said Petya, imitating Gavrik's sternness and independence,
and squinting at the end of the cigarette as Gavrik held a match to it.
They smoked for a few moments, Gavrik with obvious enjoyment, inhaling
and spitting like a real workman, Petya removing his cigarette every moment
from his mouth and for some reason eyeing the cardboard end that emitted a
white trickle of heavy smoke.
Nothing more was said about the Pavlovskayas. They worked a little on
Caesar, then Gavrik left, saying in farewell, "Well, that's that. The main
thing is not to lose your nerve."
What that applied to, Petya did not know.
Now he was filled with a turmoil of contradictory emotions-jealousy,
anger at himself, hope, despair and, strangest of all, an ardent, surging
thirst for life.
He thought of all kinds of ways to remedy his error and draw Marina out
for a meeting. Day in, day out, this filled his mind.
Just at this time the early cherries began to ripen. They ripened
quickly, almost visibly, and every kind at once -black, red, pink and white.
Although the Bacheis had been eagerly watching the progress of this great
harvest, nevertheless, the actual realization of its size came upon them
suddenly one fine morning when a black cloud of starlings swooped down over
the orchard, followed by a grey cloud of sparrows.
The birds descended on the trees; and while Vasily Petrovich, Petya,
Pavlik, Dunyasha and Gavrila ran about below frightening off the marauders
with umbrellas, sticks, hats, handkerchiefs and shouts, Auntie put on her
lace gloves and hat, and, sparkling with happy excitement, took the
horse-tram to town where she intended first to find out the retail price of
early cherries, and then to sell them wholesale at the market.
It was evening when she returned, and as she approached the orchard she
heard shots. It was Pavlik, instructed by Gavrila, firing an old shot-gun
which they had found in the attic.
"Heavens! What are you doing?" she gasped in horror as she saw her
gentle little darling pushing a charge into the gun.
"Frightening off the sparrows. Look out!" Pavlik shouted and with a
most ferocious expression fired somewhere into the air, after which a little
cloud of feathers drifted down.
Evidently, the war against the birds was going well.
"Well, what's the commercial news?" asked Vasily Petrovich, rubbing his
hands. "I hope it's something good."
"Yes and no," answered Auntie.
"Now, just how do I take that?" he asked with a cheerful smile.
At least a dozen times that day he had gone round the orchard and seen
that the harvest was not merely good, it was amazingly, fantastically rich.
Whole poods of very large cherries hung from the branches, gleaming in the
sun like jewels with all shades of red, from the palest creamy pink, through
coral, to that dark crimson which looks almost black.
"How do you mean?" he asked again, not quite so cheerfully this time-he
had seen that Auntie looked rather upset.
"I'll tell you everything in a minute, let me wash up first, and for
goodness' sake, a cup of tea. I'm dying for tea!"
All this boded nothing good.
In half an hour Auntie was sitting on the veranda eagerly drinking tea.
"It was like this. First of all I went to a number of fruit shops.
There aren't many cherries yet, and the shops are selling them at fifteen to
twenty kopeks a pound."
"Well, well, well-that's splendid!" cried Vasily Petrovich, mentally
calculating how much they would get from each tree, even at a conservative
estimate of two poods per tree. "If that's the case, we're rich!"
"Yes, but wait a minute," said Auntie wearily. "That's the retail
price. We want to sell wholesale. So I went to the wholesale market and
found the fruit section. It turned out that the wholesale price was much
lower."
"Of course, quite natural!" cried Vasily Petrovich stoutly. "It always
is. What is it?"
"They offer two rubles forty a pood. Our delivery."
Vasily Petrovich touched the steel frame of his pince-nez and his lips
moved as he calculated once more.
"H'm ... yes... well, of course that's rather a different sum. But all
the same it's quite good, quite good. We'll be able to make our payment and
have quite a nice little profit too." And Vasily Petrovich looked gaily at
Auntie through his pince-nez.
"You're very unpractical," said Auntie. "Don't forget the two-forty's
with our delivery." With emphasis she repeated the words, "Our delivery!"
"Ah yes ... delivery," mumbled Vasily Petrovich. "Now, just what does
that imply?"
"It means we've got to bring the cherries to them there, at the
wholesale market."
"Well? What's wrong with that? We'll bring them. And then-kindly hand
over the money!"
"Oh, it's impossible to discuss anything with you!" cried Auntie,
exasperated. "Just stop a moment and think -how are we going to deliver
them? With what? We have no horse, no cart, no baskets, no bast, no-we've
absolutely nothing, and no means of getting them there. Not to mention
picking the fruit-that is, if the birds leave any of it. We haven't even
ladders."
"M'yes," mumbled Vasily Petrovich vaguely, blew his nose and said, "But
it's all very queer. Why does it have to be our delivery? You ought to have
told them-if you want our cherries, please come and get them."
"I did."
"Well?"
"They refused."
"H'm. There must be some misunderstanding there. After all, there's
such a thing as competition. If one refused, perhaps another would agree."
"I went round 'all of them, and the impresson I got was that there
isn't any competition at all, it's all one band. They're amazingly alike
even to-look at. Dark-blue shirts, red faces, sheepskin hats. The same kind
of robbers as those Persians who came to try and force down the price. And
they all talk about some Madame Storozhenko. It looks as if all the
wholesale fruit trade is in this lady's hands."
"Well, why didn't you go and talk to her, then?"
"I tried. But you can't catch her. From morning to night she drives
round orchards buying up the crops."
"What are we going to do, then?" asked Vasily Petrovich.
"I don't know," answered Auntie.
They sat staring at each other in perplexity. Vasily Petrovich wiped
his brown neck with a dirty handkerchief while Auntie drummed with her
fingers on a saucer. And Petya felt disaster again looming over the family,
but disaster much more terrible than that other time when the orchard was
drying up.
The cherries ripened every hour. The red ones blackened, the pink ones
reddened, the cream-coloured ones turned a warm pink, while the white ones
deepened to a honey colour that made the mouth water in anticipation of
their sweetness. From early morning the war against the birds went on. They
fastened bright-coloured rags to the branches, they set up scarecrows, they
ran about under the trees clapping their hands and shouting hoarsely, and
every now and then there was a report from the shotgun.
It was even harder work than hoeing and bringing water. Oh, how Petya
learned to hate starlings! How different they seemed now from those poetic
birds whistling gaily in a dozen different keys, making a spring day seem
brighter, paths more shady, and the little white clouds look as though they
were sweetly sleeping.
Now the birds were marauders descending in flocks upon the orchard from
all sides. They pecked the cherries with their sharp beaks, always finding
the ripest and tearing out a triangular piece of pulp.
They did not so much eat cherries as spoil them. When they were driven
off the trees, the whole flock continued flying about above them, describing
circles and swooping curves.
The Bacheis tried picking the cherries themselves, standing on chairs,
and discovered how difficult it was for inexperienced hands. They decided to
start off by selling cherries retail and sent Gavrila with a big basket to
Bolshoi Fontan.
Gavrila spent all day going round the villas and brought back seventy
kopeks and a strong smell of vodka, told them thickly that this was all he
had been given and went off to sleep in the weeds behind the stable.
Some summer visitors from nearby villas came to the orchard to buy
cherries-two pretty girls with lace parasols and a student in a white tunic.
They asked for two pounds, but as Auntie had no scales she poured about five
into the dainty basket the student carried over his shoulder on a stick.
-The girls at once hung cherries over their little ears and dimpled and
laughed, looking prettier than ever, while Auntie gazed at them as though
wondering, "Dear God, how can anyone be so happy!"
Then the postman brought a typed letter from the notary containing the
ominous warning that the final date for payment was in three days.
Auntie hurried to town again but returned empty-handed; Madame
Storozhenko had been away again and the Persians, as though mocking all
common sense, had offered not two-forty, but a ruble-thirty a pood,
delivered. It seemed likely that they had been rude to Auntie as well,
because she was nearly crying as she tore off her hat and paced up and down
the veranda saying again and again, "What rascals! Heavens above, what
scoundrels!"
Only one thing remained-to hire carts, horses and baskets from the
German settlers, and flying in the face of Vasily Petrovich's principles, to
exploit labour by hiring girls from the villages round about and get the
fruit off the trees as quickly as possible-for the birds had already pecked
a quarter of it.
The Germans refused to let them have any carts or horses and the girls
were already working in other orchards.
"Curse the hour when I let myself get drawn into this idiotic
business!" cried Vasily Petrovich.
"Vasily Petrovich, for your dead wife's sake have mercy on me!" said
Auntie through her tears, in a voice that showed her nose was swollen.
Then, to wind up the whole business, the gate opened creakingly and a
britzka rolled in. One Persian sat on the box, another stood on the step,
and a very large, stout lady in a white linen coat and a dusty hat
ornamented with faded forget-me-nots swayed and jolted on the seat. The
britzka went straight across the beds of petunias and flowering tobacco and
halted by the house. The Persians at once seized the lady's elbows arid she
climbed awkwardly down.
She had a fat but muscular face with a moustache, purple cheeks and
expressionless eyes.
"Here, you, boy-what's your name-don't stand there staring, run and
call the master, and look sharp," she said in the raucous voice of the
market-place, and was just going to sit down, puffing, on an iron garden
chair brought by one of the Persians when Auntie appeared, followed by
Vasily Petrovich. "Are you the owners here?" she asked and without waiting
for an answer held out a hand with short thick fingers projecting from a
black lace mitten first to Vasily Petrovich, then to Auntie.
"Good morning," she said. "I'm Madame Storozhenko."
Auntie bubbled over with excitement.
"Ah, how extremely kind of you," she twittered, assuming her society
smile. "I have twice tried to find you at the wholesale market but you were
always away. You are such an elusive lady!" And Auntie shook her finger
charmingly at Madame Storozhenko. "But I see that if the mountain does not
go to Mohammed, then Mohammed comes to the mountain."
"It makes no difference," said Madame Storozhenko, ignoring the
aphorism about the mountain and Mohammed. "They told me you wanted to sell
your crop. I'll buy it."
"In that case, perhaps, you would care to look at the orchard?" said
Auntie, exchanging a most significant look with Vasily Petrovich.
"I know that orchard like the palm of my hand," answered Madame
Storozhenko. "It's not my first time here. I always bought the crop when
Madame Vasyutinskaya was running it. And I must say she ran it much better.
Half your cherries are pecked. Of course, it's no business of mine, but I
can tell you, you've neglected the orchard badly. You'll hardly make ends
meet this way. I've been trading in fruit only five years myself, before
that I dealt in fish, but you can ask anyone and they'll tell you Madame
Storozhenko knows a thing or two about fruit. You call those cherries?
They're more like lice. You can take my word for it."
Vasily Petrovich and Auntie stood before Madame Storozhenko in
alternating hope and fear. Their fate depended on her alone, but there was
nothing to be read on her coarse face. At last Madame Storozhenko spoke:
"Take it or leave it, I've no time to waste on you. Here!" She opened a
big leather bag hanging on a strap over her shoulder, and took out a crisp
hundred-ruble note, evidently prepared beforehand. "There you are!"
"What-only a hundred rubles! Why, we've three hundred to pay on the
note of hand alone!"
"Take it and less chat," repeated Madame Storozhenko. "And say thank
you for it, too. At least you'll have nothing more to worry about, I'll look
after the picking, packing and transport.
"Madame Storozhenko, have you no conscience?" Vasily Petrovich
expostulated. "It's sheer robbery!"
"My dear man," Madame Storozhenko wheezed condescendingly, "I've got to
make something out of it, haven't I?"
"Yes, but these cherries will sell for at least five hundred rubles,
we've reckoned it up," said Auntie.
"Well, if you've reckoned it up, go and sell your crop yourselves and
don't waste other people's time. A hundred rubles, that's my last word."
"But we've got to pay on a note of hand."
"I know. In a day or two you've got to pay Madame Vasyutinskaya three
hundred and if you don't, you lose the place. And lose it you will, because
you've no money and you'll be bankrupt anyway. So my advice is to take what
you can, at least it'll feed you a little while. As for Madame
Vasyutinskaya's property, she'll rent it to me through the notary. It'll do
much better with me than with you."
"We'll see about all that!" said Auntie, turning pale.
"Better drop those airs!" snapped Madame Storozhenko with unconcealed
contempt, looking Vasily Petrovich and Auntie up and down with a black,
incomprehensible malice. "You think I don't know your sort? You haven't a
single kopek between you. You're beggars! Paupers! And call yourselves
intellectuals!"
"My dear madame," said Vasily Petrovich, "what right have you to speak
this way?"
Madame Storozhenko turned majestically to Auntie.
"Listen-what's your name-tell this man of yours to climb off his high
horse, because in three days I'll kick you out of here with all your
rubbish. Ragamuffins!"
Vasily Petrovich made a convulsive movement, he wanted to speak but
could only stamp his foot and make strangled sounds like a dumb man; then he
slumped down on the veranda step clutching his head in his hands.
"Take the hundred and write a receipt," said Madame Storozhenko,
holding it out to Auntie unconcernedly.
"You're a wicked, vile woman!" cried Auntie, trembling from head to
foot. She burst into tears and stumbled into the house.
It was such a dreadful, disgraceful scene that not only Petya, Pavlik
and Dunyasha-even Gavrila was shocked into immobility, and nobody noticed
Gavrik, who had emerged some time before from among the trees.
Now he marched slowly, with a slight roll, to Madame Storozhenko, his
right hand thrust deep in his trouser pocket.
"Get out of here, you mangy old market shark!" he hissed through his
teeth. "Get out!"
She stared at him, amazed, then suddenly recognized in this
sixteen-year-old workman the little beggar boy, the grandson of old
Chernoivanenko, who used to bring bullheads to her at the wholesale market
when she still had a fish stall. Madame Storozhenko had a good memory and
she realized in a flash that she was faced with her old enemy. In those
days, however, he had been small and defenceless and she could do as she
liked with him; now he was very different. Instinctively the old fox sensed
danger.
"Now, now, none of your bullying!" she cried, moving restlessly about
by the britzka, and turned to her Persians. "What are you thinking of? Smash
his mug in!"
The Persians advanced, lowering their heads in the sheepskin hats; but
Gavrik withdrew his hand from his pocket holding a knuckle-duster, and his
white lips tightened into a straight line.
"Get out of here!" he repeated ominously. He seized the reins close to
the bit and led the horse out of the gate, while Madame Storozhenko and the
Persians clambered into the moving britzka as best they could.
For a long time the hat with the forget-me-nots could be seen moving
along the road between fields of green grain, and Madame Storozhenko's voice
could be heard screeching curses and obscene threats in the direction of the
orchard.
Gavrik returned, breathing hard as though he had been doing heavy
physical work. He held out his hand in silence to Petya, patted Pavlik's
shoulder and stood for a while beside Vasily Petrovich, who was still
sitting on the steps, his face in his hands.
Then Gavrik spat angrily, said, "Well, we'll see," and ran through the
orchard out into the steppe, disappearing as suddenly as he had come.
For a long time all were silent-they felt that there was nothing more
to be said. At last Vasily Petrovich passed his hand down his face with a
visible effort and wiped his glasses with the hem of his long shirt; an
unexpected smile appeared on his face-a helpless childlike smile.
"Thus, their feasting turned to disaster," he said with a sigh.
But strange as it might seem, it was a sigh of relief.
For a little while calm and quietness reigned in the house and in the
orchard. The Bacheis went about as though they had just awakened and were
not yet quite sure whether it was all real or a dream. They were very
considerate to each other, even affectionate. In the evening they ate
yoghurt and drank tea. They chatted and joked. But there was not one word
about their situation; it was as though they were saving all their physical
,and mental strength for that very near future, the thought of which was so
terrible.
They went to bed early and slept well, luxuriating in rest after all
their labour and perturbation, knowing that the coming day would bring them
nothing new.
At dawn Petya felt someone tugging his foot. He opened his eyes and saw
the wide-open window and Gavrik standing by his bed. The sun had not yet
risen, but it was already quite light in the room; the cool air of early
morning was pouring in; outside, the trees stood dark green against a
crimson strip of sky, and the cocks were crowing sleepily in the distance.
"Get up!" whispered Gavrik.
"Why?" Petya whispered back. He was so accustomed to his friend's way
of popping up without warning that his appearance at this early hour was in
no way startling.
"Get your clothes on and out to work!" said Gavrik mysteriously, gaily,
and jerked his head towards the open window. He turned, jumped on to the
sill, and disappeared in the orchard.
Petya knew Gavrik, he knew this was no fooling, it was serious. He
dressed rapidly and shivering in the early chill followed Gavrik out through
the window.
Voices came from the orchard. Petya went round the house and saw people
under the cherry trees. There was the beat of axes, the squeal of saws. A
little way off a lad he did not know passed by with a new roughly made
ladder on his shoulder. A similar ladder leaned against a tree, and on the
top rung stood a barefoot girl, one hand holding a branch heavy with fruit,
the other shading her eyes from the sun which was just rising over the sea
bathing her in blinding but still cool rays.
"Petya!" the girl called. He recognized Motya. "What are you doing
here?" he asked, approaching.
"Picking your fruit," she answered gaily, and Petya saw the basket
hanging from her arm. "But you've quite forgotten us," she added with a
sigh. "You never come to Near Mills now."
She too had hung cherries over her ears and Petya thought they made her
look even prettier than before.
"Well, here we are, you see," she went on merrily, pulling cherries off
the branches and dropping them into her basket, leaves and all. "We've been
working over an hour, and you've only just managed to get your eyes open.
Lazy-bones! God'll punish you for it!" She laughed so heartily that her foot
slipped.
"Oh, catch me, I'm falling!" she cried, but managed to hold on, while
cherries rained down on Petya from the basket.
"Look here, seriously, what's going on?" Petya asked.
"Can't you see for yourself?" said Motya. "Your friends have come to
gather your crop so it won't be lost."
Petya looked round. And everywhere, on the trees and under them, he saw
more or less familiar faces from Near Mills. With surprise he recognized
Uncle Fedya Sinichkin, the old railwayman, the young schoolmistress and
others of Terenty's occasional or regular visitors. Motya's brother Zhenya
was there too with all his friends, sitting in the trees like monkeys,
filling caps, baskets land boxes with amazing dexterity and speed. Wherever
Petya looked he saw bare legs, bare, sunburned arms and cotton shirts, from
all sides he heard voices, laughter, jests and chaff. Before he had fully
taken it all in, Gavrik came running up carrying a pile of old sacks and
bast matting on his shoulder.
"Here, take hold, put these under the trees," he panted, and tossed a
number of sacks over to Petya.
With a feeling that something very good was happening, caught up in the
atmosphere of gay activity, Petya promptly set to work spreading out the
sacks, crawling round them on his knees to smooth out the folds.
Soon great, ripe cherries began falling on them with soft thuds from
baskets, caps and aprons.
When Auntie, wakened by the noise, came out on the veranda to
investigate, her first thought was that Madame Storozhenko had already taken
possession of the orchard and her roughs were unceremoniously plundering the
crop.
Although she had resigned herself to the knowledge that this was
inevitable, nevertheless, the sight of strangers stripping the trees was too
much for her. She turned pale and cried weakly, "How dare you! You've no
right! Robbers!"
"Na-a-ay, you're all wrong," Gavrik half sang on a warm, affectionate
note as he passed her dragging a ladder, "We're your own folks, from Near
Mills. Now, don't you worry about anything, not a single cherry'll go
astray, I'll see to that personally. Except maybe one or two that drop into
somebody's mouth by accident, that sort of thing might very well happen. But
what's it matter? You see yourself what a grand crop it is. I hope you never
have any worse! Selling it retail, you'll get at least three rubles a pood.
And as for that old market bitch!" And Gavrik put his thumb to his nose.
"Stop a minute, I don't understand, won't you explain?" said Auntie,
looking into Gavrik's angry, determined face and trying to make out what it
was all about.
"Don't be angry with us for not asking you first," he said. "No time
for it-this is when a day feeds a year, as the saying goes. Let the moment
slip and it's gone! We had to get hold of the wood for ladders, and the
sacks and bast mats and all that sort of thing. Wasn't it the thing to do?
Or should we have let that old shark make beggars of you all? No sir! Time
to stop that! They've sucked enough of our blood. The day's gone when we
used to stand in front of them like asses."
Auntie stared at Gavrik, his militant stance, a boy with a peeling nose
and yet a man with serious, angry eyes that said much more than his words.
Perhaps she did not yet understand everything, but the main thing was
clear. Kind folks from Near Mills had come to their aid, and again there was
hope that they might be saved. Auntie's housewifely instincts reawakened.
She quickly tied a kerchief round her head and hurried about under the
trees, putting this and that right. She told them to place the sacks and
matting so that they would not have to carry the fruit so far, asked the
pickers to keep the various kinds of cherries separate, gaily told the boys
not to put more in their mouths than in the baskets, sent Gavrila to fetch
some buckets of drinking water, then herself climbed a ladder into one of
the trees, hung cherries over her ears and, singing "The Sun is Low" at the
top of her voice, began picking cherries and dropping them into an old
hat-box.
What a wonderful day that was! It was a long time since Petya had felt
so full of bubbling happiness. True, he had no ladder and did not pick
cherries from the trees, which would have been more interesting, but running
about underneath was not so bad either. Now here, now there, a full heavy
basket descended from the leafy branches; he caught it in his arms, poured
its contents out on to the nearest pile, returned to the tree, sent the
basket up again with a bounce from his head and went on to the next tree
where another awaited him.
His arms ached pleasantly from the unaccustomed exercise, and it was
wonderful to see the pile of dark, shining berries growing before his eyes,
prettily mingled with dark leaves, to which striped wasps added flecks of
bright gold.
Petya was in charge of ten trees. Practically every minute somebody
called him to take a filled basket. But Motya's voice was the most
insistent.
"Petya, come here, mine's full! Where are you? Don't be so lazy! Here!"
A soft arm in a pink cotton sleeve would lower a heavy basket, and
through the leaves Petya could see Motya's rosy face and a cherry stone
between her lips.
By midday all were tired, and Gavrik marched up and down between the
trees, calling out, "Break off, dinner-time, break off!"
That was when Petya suddenly saw Marina and her mother. They were quite
close, coming towards him with arms round one another's waists like two
girls, and the cherries hung on their ears and the baskets in their hands
showed they must have been helping too.
At the sight of Madame Pavlovskaya Petya's courage oozed out of his
toes. What if she had guessed who it was that rustled in the weeds at night
and tossed love-notes in through the window? Why, she really might pull his
ears! That first time he saw her she had looked rather stern and
disapproving. But now, in her old house frock, with cherries hung on her
ears, she seemed very kind and good-humoured. And Marina smiled with evident
pleasure, not a trace was left of that cold, contemptuous look with which
she had thrown the dreadful word "babbler" at him.
"Good morning," Petya said in confusion, and in an effort to produce
the best possible impression on Marina's mother essayed la polite click of
his heels, which came off rather badly owing to his being barefoot. But
nobody seemed to notice.
"You're quite right, it really is a marvellously good morning," said
Marina's mother with a kind of deep, serious smile. "Isn't it, Petya? Your
name is Petya, isn't it?"
She examined him with interest, for she knew well enough about the
notes. Marina, for her part, glanced up innocently and said, "It's a long
time since I've seen you," just as if nothing had ever happened.
She provoked him. Petya would have liked to make some brilliantly witty
reply, but all he could manage was to mumble morosely, "Well, that's not my
fault."
"Why, whose is it, then?" said Marina captiously, turned a little away
from Petya and began picking at a rubbery drop of resin on the bark of the
cherry tree under which she stood.
"You know whose," Petya replied with tender reproach, and then took
fright-wasn't that almost a declaration?
Auntie came up just at the right moment to greet the visitors and
rescue her nephew from the awkward situation.
"Ah, it's you? At last! I never seem to see you. How can you shut
yourself up like that? After all, people come out here to enjoy the country,
the sea air, the garden. It's all here waiting for you and still you stay
indoors all day," she twittered, at once assuming the mincing, society
manner which, according to her ideas, was the correct one for a refined
owner of a villa talking to her refined guests. "Good gracious, what do I
see?" And Auntie clasped her hands. "You have baskets! Is it possible that
you have come to help us? But that is too charming, too kind of you! I won't
conceal it, we were in a difficult situation, a dreadful situation. Such a
wonderful harvest, and we, impractical people that we are.... You are a
cultured person yourself, you will understand."
"Yes, oh yes," said Madame Pavlovskaya coldly. "It is a small but very
typical incident, clearly illustrating the concentration of commercial
capital. It would seem that this Storozhenko-or whatever her name is-has a
monopoly of the local fruit market and is now destroying her weaker
competitors by fair means or foul. You must have been very blind not to have
seen it at once. The strong swallow up the weak-such is the law of the
historical development of capitalism."
Auntie listened in alarm. Madame Pavlovskaya, it seemed, was fully
informed about all their affairs, despite the fact that she never showed
herself outside the cottage.
Of all she said Auntie understood one thing only-that it was very
"political," and Madame Pavlovskaya must be a dangerous person.
Nevertheless, she tried to bring the talk back to the society tone.
"You are absolutely right," she said, "and Madame Storozhenko is a real
monster. A rude, uneducated animal, absolutely out of place in decent
society."
Pavlovskaya frowned.
"Madame Storozhenko is first and foremost a foul creature that must be
fought."
"Yes, but how?" said Auntie, with a shrug of distaste. "I can't
complain to a magistrate-it would be paying her too big a compliment!"
Pavlovskaya looked earnestly at Auntie for a moment, then suddenly
smiled, the way one smiles at children who ask foolish questions.
"The magistrate? That's fine," she said and gave a dry, angry laugh.
Auntie looked at this small woman with the amused, intelligent,
resolute face, the stubborn little chin, the dark shadow on her upper
lip-and felt she belonged to some special, strange world, a world hard to
understand, but a world which drew one.
She wanted to ask, "Are you a Social-Democrat?" but instead she
embraced Pavlovskaya and cried impulsively, like a girl, "Oh, I do like
you!"
"I don't know why," answered Pavlovskaya seriously, but it was clear
that she liked Auntie too.
Evidently, Pavlovskaya had started off with a wrong impression of the
Bachei family. She had thought them ordinary tenant farmers making money out
of letting rooms and running the orchard, and they turned out to be naive,
impractical people unable to cope with life and in bad trouble as a result.
The sense of strain disappeared and talk became easy. And although
Pavlovskaya maintained her reserve, within five minutes Auntie's quick
understanding had given her a fairly accurate picture of all that was
happening round her.
She realized that these pickers Gavrik had brought from Near Mills were
not just casual workers, but people united by common interests and, most
surprising of all, well acquainted with the Pavlovskayas. And in all of this
there seemed to be some mysterious significance.
DON'T KICK A MAN WHEN HE'S DOWN!
Petya and Marina strolled along a path in the garden, each pretending
to be deep in thought, but actually not knowing what to say, or rather how
to begin.
"Are you angry with me?" asked Marina, and as Petya remained morosely
silent she cautiously scratched his sleeve. "Don't be angry," she said.
"Better let's be friends. Shall we?"
Petya squinted down at her and scented a trick. She was trying to lure
him into a declaration. She wanted him to say, "I don't believe in
friendship between a man and a woman." And then she would catch him at once.
Oh, no, my dear, that's an old game. I'm not so silly! And Petya remained
silent.
"Why are you so quiet?" she asked, trying to see his face.
"There's nothing I can say to you," he answered in a significant tone.
Let her understand it any way she liked. She sighed, then lowering her voice
almost to a whisper she asked, "Have you been wanting to see me?"
"Have you?" asked Petya in his turn, not recognizing his own voice.
"Yes, I have," she answered and dropped her head so low that the
cherries fell off her ears. She stopped and picked them up in some
confusion.
"I even dreamed of you once," she said, blushing.
Petya could not believe his ears. "What's this," he thought in
agitation. "Can this be a confession of love?" Petya had never even dared
dream of such happiness. But now, when she shyly, truthfully told him she
had wanted to see him, she had dreamed of him, Petya suddenly felt an
enormous relief, even disappointment. Well, that was all right! Only a
minute ago she had seemed inaccessible, and now she had become a nice but at
the same time quite ordinary girl, not in the least like that Marina whom he
had loved in such hopeless torment.
"Have you ever dreamed of me?" she asked.
Petya felt the decisive moment had come, the whole further course of
the romance depended on his answer. If he said, "Yes," it was the same as a
declaration of love. Where would he be then? He dreamed of her, she dreamed
of him; he loved her, she loved him. Mutual love. The very thing he had
wanted. Of course, it was very nice and all that, but wasn't it a little too
soon? Just as things were getting interesting-there you were, all of a
sudden-mutual love!
Of course, that would relieve Petya of all sorts of worry and trouble
like sleepless nights, jealousy, or sitting in wet wormwood tossing notes in
through a window. That was certainly a big advantage. But afterwards? Only
one thing left-to kiss her. The very thought of that made Petya hot and
uncomfortable. No, no, anything you like, only not that!
But there stood Marina leaning against the ladder under a cherry tree,
looking at him with darkened eyes and licking cracked lips that even looked
hot, lips from which Petya could not tear his eyes.
"Why don't you answer?" she insisted, in the voice of a snake-charmer.
"Did you dream of me?"
Again she was clearly gaining the upper hand. Another second and Petya
would have submissively whispered, "Yes." But a spirit of doubt, of
contradiction, triumphed.
"Strange as it may be, I haven't," said Petya with a strained, crooked
smile which he imagined to be icy.
She dropped her Lashes and turned slightly pale.
"Aha, caught the wrong bird this time, my dear," thought Petya
triumphantly.
He had no pity for her. Now, when he felt himself the conqueror, he
already liked her less.
"Is that true?" She raised her eyes and with feigned interest examined
the crown of the tree under which they were standing. Petya even thought he
caught a faint smile as though she had seen something amusing there. But he
was not to be caught by tricks like that.
"You see," said Petya, who was far from wanting to bring matters to a
break, "it's not so much that I haven't seen you in dreams, but I've never
dreamed of you."
"What do you mean?" she asked with interest and again smiled up into
the tree, and even seemed to wink at it slyly.
"It's simple enough," Petya answered. "To see a person in a dream is
one thing, to dream of a person is another. Can't you understand that? I
could have seen you, you see all sorts of things in dreams. Plenty of them.
But to dream specially of one person-that's something quite different."
"I don't understand," she said, biting her lip.
"I'll explain. To dream of a person, that's when ... well, how shall I
put it... when, well, when you're in love, or whatever it is. You, for
instance, have you ever loved anyone?" asked Petya sternly, up on his
hobbyhorse.
"Yes. You," Marina answered quickly.
Petya frowned to hide his satisfaction.
"I don't believe in women's love," he answered with weary disillusion.
"You're wrong. And have you ever loved anyone?" she asked. She could
not have found a question that would please him more. Like a silly mouse she
came running into the trap so cleverly, insidiously set out by Petya.
"Questions of that kind are never answered," said Petya, "but I'll tell
you, because I regard you as my friend. After all, we are friends, aren't
we?"
"I don't believe in friendship between a man and a woman," said Marina.
"Well, I do!" said Petya in chagrin. She was beginning really to
irritate him; she kept on saying just the things he ought to have said.
Anyone would have thought she had never read a single love-story.
"You're wrong," she observed. "But I thought you had something to say
to me?"
"I wanted to say-or rather, not say, to tell.... Well, say or tell,
what does it matter. But of course, only to you as a friend, because nobody
else knows or ever will know." Petya half turned from her and hung his
head.-"I have loved," he said with a sad smile. "Or rather, I love now. But
it is of no importance."
"And she?"
"Ah, even more than I love her! I love, but she is in love. And one
day, just imagine it, we went out on the steppe to gather snowdrops. It was
a lovely evening in spring-"
"I know," said Marina quickly. "It's Motya, isn't it?"
"How did you guess?"
"That doesn't matter. I did. Though I can't understand what you see in
her," she added with a slight grimace. "Do you really love her?"
"It's queer, but I do," said Petya with a shrug. "I don't understand
myself how it happened. There's nothing special about her, just a pretty
face, but-there you are."
There was a rustle in the leaves above and a cherry stone fell,
probably dropped by a starling.
"Shoo!" cried Petya, waving his arms.
"So that's it," said Marina jealously. "So you like going to the steppe
for snowdrops? Well, and what happened there? I suppose you kissed her?"
"Questions like that are never answered," said Petya evasively.
"But I'm your friend so you've got to tell me everything. You've got
to!" Marina cried with an angry stamp.
"Aha, jealous, are you, my dear?" thought Petya. "You wait, I've more
for you yet!"
"Tell me this minute, did you kiss her or not? Or I'll go right away
and you'll never see me again! You hear me? Never!" Her eyes flashed.
She was wonderfully pretty at the moment, and Petya with a careless
shrug answered, "All right. Of course I kissed her."
"Oh, for shame, you little fibber!" That was Motya's voice from over
their heads, and the next moment Motya herself, her face flushed, came
sliding down and started hopping round Petya on one foot chanting, "I never
thought you'd tell such fibs! I never thought you'd tell such fibs!"
"Oh, Motya, you're a wonder, how you ever kept from laughing too soon!"
cried Marina, clapping her hands.
"I had to keep my hand over my mouth all the time!" Motya bubbled,
still hopping round Petya. "Fib-ber! Fib-ber!"
Petya wished the earth would open and swallow him.
"So that was it?" said Marina menacingly. "So you kissed her, did you?"
She went close up to Petya, with a quick, dexterous movement twisted a
strand of his hair round her finger and gave it a good, hard tug.
"Ow! That hurts!" cried Petya.
"Didn't you hurt me?" said Marina.
Despite all the horror of his situation, Petya could not but appreciate
that splendid answer, taken straight from Turgenev's First Love.
Suddenly Marina gave her mysterious, mermaid laugh and with feminine
inconsequence said, "Listen, Motya, let's just give him a good beating!"
"Let's!" said Motya, and the two girls advanced on Petya with ominous
laughter.
With a quick movement he twisted away from under their very hands and
raced off at top speed, bare heels twinkling.
Off went the girls after him. He could hear their merry, mocking cries.
They were overtaking him. Then Petya decided on a well-known trick-to throw
himself down right under the feet of his pursuers. He was in too great a
hurry, however, he flopped down before the girls were close enough. And
there he was, looking foolish on all fours, while the girls leisurely ran
up, sat astride on him and started pummelling him.
It did not hurt particularly, but it was humiliating.
"Don't kick a man when he's down!" Petya groaned piteously.
Then with triumphant giggles they turned to tickling him. He squealed
with helpless laughter. But just at the right moment Gavrik dropped from the
skies to help his friend.
"Two to one's not fair! Rescue all!" he cried and flung himself down on
the girls. "Come on all! Come on all!"
The summons immediately brought Pavlik, Zhenka and the boys and girls
of Zhenka's gang, and in a few moments all that could be seen under the
trees was a pile of heaving, panting, giggling, squealing bodies, arms and
legs.
That night Vasily Petrovich had slept like the dead- the heavy
dreamless sleep of a tormented exhausted man, devoid of all thought or
feeling.
It was late when he wakened, and for a long time he continued lying,
eyes closed, face to the wall, unable to imagine what would happen to them
all now.
At last he forced himself to rise, dress and go out into the orchard.
There he saw piles of cherries on the sacks and matting spread out under the
trees, and a great many people-some familiar, some strangers-standing on
ladders or sitting on the branches, gathering the crop. He saw horses
cropping the grass near two platforms. And finally he saw Auntie coming
towards him with small energetic steps, smiling cheerfully.
"Well, Vasily Petrovich, everything's settled and it couldn't be
better!"
"What do you mean?" he answered in a monotonous, expressionless voice.
A faint smile appeared on his face, a strange fixed smile like that of a
sleepwalker.
"Oh, good gracious, what else could I mean but our crop, our cherries!"
Auntie answered gaily.
At the word "cherries" Vasily Petrovich started.
"No, no! For pity's sake," he groaned, "for pity's sake spare me all
that-that torture."
"But listen a moment," said Auntie gently.
"I won't listen! I don't want to listen! Leave me alone! I'd sooner
carry sacks at the port!" cried Vasily Petrovich desperately, and, turning,
ran back into the house without looking hack, stumbling, waving his arms.
"Listen to me at least!" Auntie called after him.
He made no reply, he did not want to understand anything except that
this must be another of Auntie's foolish ideas and they were now
irretrievably ruined.
He lay down again on his bed, face to the wall, wanting one thing
only-to be let alone.
Auntie did let him alone, she knew it was no good talking to him. So in
two days everything was done, without Vasily Petrovich's participation.
Platforms drove away and drove back again. Horses snorted. Baskets
creaked. In the evening camp-fires sparkled on the steppe and, together with
the smoke, the wind brought an appetizing smell of stew and baked potatoes,
and the sound of singing. All this made for a cheerful, almost festive
atmosphere. And it was indeed a festival of gay, free work.
Vasily Petrovich, however, saw nothing of it, or rather, he refused to
see anything. He was in the hopeless, desperate, tormented state of a
trusting man who suddenly discovers that he has been grossly deceived. He
realized that the whole world had deceived him.
His world had been one of illusions. And the most dangerous of them had
been his belief that he was a free man of independent mind. For in reality
he, with all his splendid, lofty thoughts, his purity of spirit, his noble
heart, with all his love for his country and his people, had been a mere
slave, as much a slave as the millions of other Russians, a slave of the
church, the state, and what was called "society." As soon as he made a
feeble attempt to be honest and independent, the state poured its wrath upon
him in the person of the official from the Education Department, "society,"
in the person of Faig; and when he tried to live by the labour of his hands
so as to preserve his independence, to earn his bread in the sweat of his
brow, he found that this too was impossible, because it did not happen to
suit. Madame Storozhenko.
Most of the time Vasily Petrovich spent on his bed, but now he no
longer turned his face to the wall, he lay on his back, his arms folded on
his chest, staring at the ceiling with its play of green reflections from
the orchard outside. His jaws were tightly clenched and angry furrows
crossed his handsome forehead.
On the third day Auntie knocked at the door-softly but very decidedly.
"Vasily Petrovich, would you mind coming out for a minute?"
He jumped up and sat on the edge of the bed.
"What is it? What do you want?"
"Come on to the veranda."
"Why?"
"There's something important."
"Will you kindly spare me any important affairs whatsoever."
"All the same, I beg you to come."
Vasily Petrovich caught a new, serious note in Auntie's voice.
"Very well," he said dully. "Just a minute."
He tidied himself, put on his sandals, rinsed his face, smoothed his
hair with a wet brush and went out, prepared for any trials or humiliations.
But instead of a bailiff, a policeman, a notary or something along
those lines, he saw a stout man of middle age in a canvas jacket-apparently
a workman, who held a piece of sugar in his teeth and was drinking tea
"through" it from a saucer balanced on three fingers. Perspiration trickled
down his red, pock-marked face, and judging by the warm smile with which
Auntie regarded him, he was evidently a most admirable person.
"Ah, here you are, let me introduce you," Auntie said. "This is Terenty
Semyonovich Chernoivanenko from Near Mills. You remember, Petya stayed with
him, and our furniture's there."
"I'm Gavrik's brother, your Petya's friend," said Terenty. He carefully
put down the saucer and held out his great hand to Vasily Petrovich. "Very
glad to make your acquaintance. I've heard a lot about you."
"Really?" Vasily Petrovich said, seating himself at the table and
unconsciously assuming his "teacher" pose with one leg flung over the other,
his pince-nez on the black cord dangling from his hand. "Well, well, it
would be interesting to hear exactly what it was you heard about me."
"Oh, just that first you couldn't get on with the authorities because
of Count Tolstoi, and then you couldn't get on with Faig because of that
blockhead Blizhensky," Terenty said with a sigh, "well, and all the rest of
it. And of course, you acted quite rightly and we respect you for it."
Vasily Petrovich pricked up his ears.
"And who are 'we'?" he asked.
Terenty laughed good-naturedly.
" 'We,' Vasily Petrovich, are ordinary working folk. The people, that
is."
Vasily Petrovich's alertness increased. It all .smacked of "politics."
With some uneasiness he looked at Auntie, because this, of course, must be
her latest undertaking, and perhaps a dangerous one. But suddenly he saw a
pile of paper money on the table-green three-ruble notes, blue fives and
pink tens, neatly stacked and tied round with .thread.
"What's that money?" he asked.
"Just imagine," Auntie said with a modest smile of hidden triumph, "our
early cherry crop's sold and this is what we've made."
"Six hundred and fifty-eight rubles clear profit!" Terenty added,
rubbing his hands. "Now you'll be all right!"
"But just a moment," cried Vasily Petrovich, mistrusting his own eyes.
"How did it all happen? The horses? The platforms? Our delivery? What? How?"
"That's simple," Terenty said. "Our firm is on a sound footing. For the
right kind of people we can get hold of anything-horses, platforms, or
packing. Because we're, well ... the proletariat. Everything is in our
hands, Vasily Petrovich. Isn't that so?"
Although the word "proletariat" was one of the most dangerous, smelling
not only of politics but even of revolution, Terenty spoke it so simply and
naturally that Vasily Petrovich accepted it just as naturally, without the
slightest inner protest.
"So it's you who arranged everything?" he said, putting on his
pince-nez and looking at Terenty with renewed cheerfulness.
"Yes, we did it," Terenty answered with a shade of pride, and returned
Vasily Petrovich's cheerful look.
"Our saviour!" said Auntie,
Then she told him in detail and with a good deal of humour about the
sale of the cherries. They had been taken on platforms through the whole
town and sold right from the platforms retail, and their success had been
phenomenal. People grabbed them up, sometimes buying whole
basketfuls-especially the white and pink ones; the black ones were less in
demand.
"And just imagine," said Auntie, wrinkling her nose, her eyes
sparkling, "our Pavlik was the best salesman of all."
"What?" Vasily Petrovich frowned. "Pavlik sold cherries?"
"Of course," Auntie said, "we all did. Do you think I didn't sell them
too? I most certainly did. I put on an old hat a la Madame Storozhenko, sat
on the box by the driver, and drove in triumph along all the streets. Well,
and how could I stop the children after that? They all sold cherries-Petya
and Motya and Marina and little Zhenya."
"Wait a moment," Vasily Petrovich said sternly. "Did my children sell
cherries in the streets? I think I can't have understood you properly."
"Oh, good gracious, there's nothing to understand. They sat on the
platforms and drove along the streets shouting, 'Cherries! Cherries!'
Somebody had to do the shouting. Just think how they enjoyed it! But Pavlik,
Pavlik! He really amazed me. He shouted better than any of the others. I'd
never thought. You know, he's got a voice just like- Sobinov's. And such an
artistic manner, and the most important thing-a real understanding of the
customer! He always knew how to treat them, when to insist on a high price
and when to lower it a bit."
"Oh, this is outrageous!" muttered Vasily Petrovich and was just
preparing to be really angry when he suddenly seemed to hear his Pavlik
calling out in a voice like Sobinov's, "Cherries! Cherries!" and an
involuntary smile slipped under his moustache. He snatched his pince-nez off
and sat back with his benevolent teacher's "He-he-he!" It did not last long,
however, in a moment he was frowning again.
"It's not really very funny, though," he said with a sigh. "If
anything, it's sad. But it's a true saying: When in Rome, do as the Romans
do."
"That's true," Terenty said, "but it's not all the truth. You mustn't
just do as the Romans do, you must fight them. Or they'll gobble you up so
there's nothing left. Take that old bitch Madame Storozhenko-excuse the
language, but it's the only name for her-she almost swallowed you whole. A
good thing we managed to get here in time."
"Yes," said Vasily Petrovich, "I don't know how to thank you. You've
literally saved us from ruin. Thank you! Thank you from the bottom of my
heart!"
"Fine words butter no parsnips," said Terenty with a grin.
Vasily Petrovich looked at Auntie in some perplexity. He did not know
what to do next. Ought he to offer Terenty money? But Terenty evidently
guessed his thought.
"Nay, it's not money I mean," he said. "We helped you out, well, just
to be neighbourly. From a feeling of solidarity. And, of course, not to let
a good man down. Now we want you to help us a bit."
Terenty kept using the word "we," but for some reason it no longer
alarmed Vasily Petrovich.
"How can I help you?" he asked with interest.
"This way." Terenty took out a folded handkerchief and wiped his big,
kindly face and round cropped head with the satiny-white soar on the temple.
"We've got a small study circle, a sort of Sunday school. We read various
pamphlets, books, and newspapers, and so far as we can, we study political
economy. Well, that's all right as far as it goes," and Terenty sighed, "but
it doesn't go far enough. Vasily Petrovich, we're short of general
knowledge. You know-history, geography ... how life began in the world ...
that sort of thing. Now, how do you look at that?"
"You mean, you want me to read some popular lectures?" Vasily Petrovich
asked.
"That's exactly it. Yes, and a bit of Russian literature wouldn't do
any harm either. Pushkin, Gogol, Count Tolstoi. ... In general, whatever you
think is needed, you know more about that. And in return we'll help you with
the orchard. The early cherries are all sold, but there are still the late
cherries, and apples, and pears. And you've a vineyard too. Not very big,
but it'll take a good bit of work. You'll never manage it all by yourselves.
So that's the idea, you help us and we'll help you."
Vasily Petrovich had already resigned himself to the thought that his
educational activities were over, and now such a blaze of joy flared up in
him that for a moment he could hardly master himself. He even rubbed his
hands and flashed his pince-nez in his old class-room manner, .saying,
"Well, well...." But with the memory of the trouble and humiliation
connected with his former work, his enthusiasm quickly died out.
"Ah, no," he said, "no, no! Anything but that! I've had enough." His
face bore an imploring look and he cracked his fingers. "For pity's sake not
that! I vowed to myself. And what sort of teacher am I if they've driven me
out from everywhere?" he concluded bitterly.
"Why, Vasily Petrovich, how can you talk like that!" cried Auntie,
horrified.
"They didn't drive you out, they tried to gobble you up," Terenty said.
"You stuck in the throat of those gentry, so they just tried to get you out
of the way. It's as Simple as that. We stick in their throats too, but they
can't get rid of us. We're too tough. They couldn't settle us properly in
1905, and now, in 1912, they don't have a chance. And you want to deny it!"
he added reproachfully, although Vasily Petrovich had said nothing, only
stared at Terenty, trying to find the connection between 1905, 1912 and his
own fate which had worked out so dreadfully.
"No," he said at last, but with less resolution. "All you say may be
right to a certain extent, but it doesn't make it any easier for me." He was
just going to add that he would rather go to the port and carry sacks, but
for some reason stopped himself, thrust his beard forward and said, "And
that's that."
"All right," Terenty said, "have it your own way. But I think you're
making a mistake. Where's the sense of it if a teacher stops teaching? Why
should you stop? What's it matter that you couldn't agree with that
blockhead of an official and that shark Faig? They're not the people. The
people are still very ignorant, you know it yourself. They need light,
knowledge. The working class lacks educated people. And where can we find
them, when we haven't the means? Who can help us as you can? We've helped
you, you help us. We've got to be neighbourly, Vasily Petrovich. It's not
far from us to you. The same proletariat. It's only two miles from here to
Near Mills, across the steppe as the crow flies. Well, what about it?"
Terenty bent a warm look on Vasily Petrovich. "You won't have to come to us.
We'll come ourselves, if you agree; on Saturday evenings after work, or on
Sundays. We'll earth up your trees and water the orchard and work in the
vineyard, and then you'll teach us a bit after. Out in the open air, under
the trees, on the grass or somewhere on the steppe, in -some quiet spot-that
would really be fine. Especially as the police have been giving us no peace
at all in Near Mills lately. As soon as folks get together anywhere to talk
or read books-there's a raid, a search, a fuss-and come to the
police-station. But this is ideal. Even if they should come it is all plain
and clear-folks working in an orchard, the most ordinary thing in the
world."
Terenty talked gently, almost tenderly, respectfully, now and then just
touching Vasily Petrovich's sleeve with two fingers as softly as though he
were removing a wisp of down. And the more he talked, the more that idea of
lessons under the sky, in the open air, appealed to Vasily Petrovich. It was
just the thing that had been lacking-free enlightenment inspired by free
physical labour.
While Terenty was still talking, Vasily Petrovich made a mental plan of
his first lectures. He would begin, of course, with a popular outline of
general history and physical geography-perhaps to be followed by astronomy.
"Well, Vasily Petrovich, what about it? Do you agree?" Terenty asked.
"Yes, I do," Vasily Petrovich answered decidedly.
That day Auntie went to town, made the payment, and a new life started
at the farm.
For five days of the week everything went on as before. The Bacheis
continued to work in the sweat of their brow, earthing up and watering late
cherry and apple trees. The only change was that now the Pavlovskayas
sometimes joined them.
Petya and Marina had slipped into friendly, somewhat dull, neighbourly
terms. Nevertheless-more from habit than anything else-he would sometimes
look volumes at her to which she usually replied by unobtrusively putting
out her tongue.
Every Saturday afternoon, however, a whole procession would arrive from
Near Mills. Motya, Gavrik and Zhenka came, then tall, thin Sinichkin
carrying his spade carefully wrapped in newspaper under his arms. The old
railwayman with his lamp whom Petya knew from Near Mills and Uncle Fedya
would come striding .along in step like soldiers, Uncle Fedya with a big
copper kettle in his hand and a large, flat loaf of bread under his arm.
The young schoolmistress would come running from the horse-tram
terminus, clasping a few dog-eared pamphlets to her breast.
There were others of Terenty's Sunday guests, workers whom Petya had
often seen in the streets, the workshops or the gardens when he lived in
Near Mills.
Terenty himself usually came last. He would throw off his boots and
jacket, place them neatly under a tree and at once take charge.
"Well, folks, time to stop smoking and get to work."
He distributed the jobs quickly; some people he sent to help with the
earthing, others to weed, or bring water from the cistern, or water the
trees, or work in the vineyard. Then he would take a spade or hoe and start
himself.
They worked for only a couple of hours or so, but got through more than
the Bacheis had done in a week. Then all went to the sea for a bathe,
returned refreshed, sat down soberly in a circle under the trees, and
Terenty went to fetch Vasily Petrovich.
"Certainly, I'm quite ready," he invariably replied, coming out on the
veranda in a freshly-ironed tussore jacket, starched shirt with a black tie,
and pointed kid boots.
He approached the group with his springy teacher's step, erect and
severe, carrying under his arm an exercise book containing the outline of
his lecture which he had been preparing for several days; Terenty
respectfully brought a chair from the veranda and placed it for him.
When Vasily Petrovich appeared, the "pupils" wanted to rise, but with a
quick movement he gestured to them to remain seated, refused the chair and
himself sat down on the grass as though stressing the special, free,
unofficial nature of the studies.
It should be added that this was the only freedom Vasily Petrovich
permitted himself. In nothing else did he deviate a hair's breadth from the
strictest academic tradition.
"Well," he would say, glancing down at his notes, "last time we
discussed the life of primitive man who already knew how to make fire, who
hunted with the aid of crude weapons of stone, but who had not yet learned
to cultivate the land or to sow grain...."
Petya, who sometimes joined the circle, discovered a new father-not the
ordinary, domestic Dad-dear, kind and sometimes unhappy, but a capable
teacher presenting his subject in a clear, logical sequence.
Petya had never realized his father had such a fine, ringing voice, or
that mature working men could listen to him with such childlike attention.
Petya noticed that they even stood a little in awe of him. Once Uncle Fedya
forgot where he was and lighted a cigarette. Then Vasily Petrovich stopped
in the middle of a sentence and fixed such an icy look upon the culprit that
he crushed out the cigarette in his palm, flushed crimson, jumped to his
feet, and standing to attention with bulging eyes jerked out navy-fashion,
"Excuse me, Comrade Lecturer! Won't happen again!"
"Sit down," said Vasily Petrovich coldly and took up his lecture
exactly where he had broken off.
Behind his back Terenty shook his fist at Uncle Fedya, and Petya
realized that his father not only himself took a pride in his profession,
but made others respect it too.
Usually they all spent the night with the Bacheis, rising early to
work, so they cooked their supper immediately after the lecture to get to
sleep in good time.
A fire was lighted beside the twig-and-weed shanties, and a great
cauldron of potato-and-pork stew was hung over it. Night fell; the darkness
under the trees became so intense that from the distance it looked as though
the fire was burning in the mouth of a cave. Black shadowy forms moved round
it; they were gigantic and it seemed that their heads could touch the stars.
It all reminded Petya of a gipsy camp.
When the stew was ready, Terenty would go to the house to invite Vasily
Petrovich to join them.
In a few moments he would appear, this time in domestic garb-an old
Russian shirt and sandals on his bare feet. Someone would hand him a wooden
spoon and, squatting down, he would eat the rather smoky stew with evident
relish and praise it highly.
Then they would drink tea, also smoky, and eat rye bread. Sometimes
fishermen from Bolshoi Fontan whom Terenty knew would join them, bringing
fresh fish. On those occasions supper would continue until long past
midnight. Gradually the talk would turn to political subjects-at first-
cautiously, in veiled- words, then with increasing frankness, with such a
vigour of expression that Vasily Petrovich would produce a yawn, stretch
himself, rise and say, "Well, I won't trouble you any further. Thank you for
the supper, but now I'm for bed. And I advise you to get some sleep too. The
stew was really incomparable."
Nobody urged him to stay. They would put out the fire and gather in
Terenty's shanty, light the railway lantern and continue their talk-but it
was talk of a different nature. Pavlovskaya would join them, bringing along
a thick, worn, cloth-bound book. Petya knew that now they would read Karl
Marx's Capital and the latest issue of the Pravda, and after that they would
discuss Party affairs.
This, however, was not for Petya's ears, not even for Gavrik's. Their
job was to walk all round the orchard and the house, keeping an eye on the
steppe and especially on the roads. If they saw anything suspicious, they
were to give the alarm by firing the shot-gun. But who could appear in the
middle of the night on the steppe, so far from town? Who could ever think
that an innocent orchard concealed a small shanty lighted by a railway
lantern where eight or ten workmen and fishermen were discussing the destiny
of Russia, the destiny of the world, drawing up leaflets, discussing Party
matters and preparing for revolution.
Petya and Gavrik, however, did their duty conscientiously. Petya
carried the old shot-gun they used for scaring birds slung over his
shoulder, while Gavrik now and then slipped his right hand into a pocket to
touch a loaded Browning of which Petya knew nothing.
At first the girls would go round with them, for company. Marina, of
course, knew what it was all about, but Motya innocently thought they were
guarding the orchard against thieves, and followed Petya on tiptoe, never
taking her eyes off the shot-gun.
She was no longer angry with him for being such a little liar, she even
loved him more, especially now when it was so quiet, dark and mysterious all
round, when sleep had laid its hand on everything but the quails and the
crickets, when the whole steppe lay silvery in the starlight.
"Petya, aren't you even a bit afraid of thieves?" she whispered, but
Petya pretended not to have heard.
He was not in the mood for love. And altogether, he had vowed to
himself to have no more dealings with girls. He'd had enough! Better to be a
lone, brave, taciturn man for whom women do not exist.
He gazed intently out on the empty steppe, ears pricked for the
slightest sound. But Motya tiptoed after him and asked, "Petya, if you see a
thief will you shoot him?"
"Of course," Petya answered.
"Then I'll stop up my ears," Motya whispered, faint with fear and love.
"Let me alone!"
She said no more, but in a little while Petya heard a queer sound
behind him, like a cat sneezing. It was Motya's stifled giggle.
"What are you sniggering about?"
"Remember that time Marina and I fooled you?"
"Idiot! It was I that fooled you both," Petya growled.
"You let your imagination run away with you," said Marina in her
mother's voice. During these nocturnal strolls she was very quiet, reserved,
adult, said little and walked beside Gavrik, even taking his arm sometimes.
And although that did give Petya a pang of jealousy, he continued resolutely
in his role of a man for whom love does not exist.
But alas, love did exist, the whole warm night on the steppe seemed
filled with it. It was in everything-the dark sky, thick with summer
star-dust, the crystal choir of crickets, the gentle, warm, scented breeze,
the distant barking of a dog, and especially the glow-worms that seemed like
fires in the far distance, yet you need but stretch out your hand and the
soft, weightless little lamp lay on your palm shedding its dead green light
on a tiny patch of skin.
The girls collected glow-worms and put them in each other's hair. Then
they began to yawn and soon afterwards went to their shanty, floating away
through the darkness like twin constellations.
Gavrik and Petya continued to guard the camp alone until the light
disappeared in Terenty's shanty. Sometimes this was only when dawn was
breaking.
In those early morning hours Gavrik talked with unusual frankness, and
Petya learned much that was new to him. He understood now that a new,
-powerful revolutionary movement had already begun, and that it was led by
Ulyanov-Lenin who, Gavrik said, had moved from Paris to Cracow to be closer
to Russia.
"And do you think it'll really come-revolution?" asked Petya,
pronouncing the dreadful word with an effort.
"I don't just think it, I'm sure of it," Gavrik answered and added in a
whisper, "If you want to know, it's already-"
Petya waited breathlessly for what Gavrik would say next. But Gavrik
said nothing, he. could not find the words for all he had sensed or heard
from Terenty. But Petya understood. The Lena shooting. The strikes. The
meeting on the steppe. The Pravda. The fight with that bully. Prague.
Cracow. Lenin. And finally this night, that lantern in the shanty. What else
was it all but a herald of the mounting tide of revolution?
Soon the late cherries ripened. There were fewer trees this time but no
less bother.
At the height of the picking Madame Storozhenko suddenly appeared. This
time she did not enter but had the britzka stop at the far side of the
scrub-grown earth bank that marked the boundary. For a long time she stood
on the step, steadying herself with a hand on the head of one of the
Persians, watching the work.
"Ragamuffins, scamps, proletarians!" she kept screaming, shaking her
big canvas sunshade threateningly. "I'll teach you to go forcing prices
down! I'll have the police on you!"
Nobody took any notice and she finally drove away, with a parting yell,
"I'll put a stop to your tricks, so help me God!"
The next day platforms came for the cherries. While they were still out
on the steppe, a little distance from the orchard, Petya saw some heavy
boxes thrown off them which afterwards disappeared.
"What boxes were those?" he asked.
"I thought you were asleep," Gavrik replied, evidently none too
pleased. He ignored Petya's question.
"No, but seriously, what were those boxes?"
"What boxes?" Gavrik drawled, with a look of innocence. "Where'd you
see any boxes? There aren't any!"
But Petya had seen them plainly enough.
"Don't play the fool!" he snapped angrily.
Gavrik came and stood in front of him, legs apart.
"Forget them," he said sternly. But there was such mysterious triumph
in his face, such a sly gleam in his eye that Petya's curiosity only flamed
higher.
"Tell me-what were they?" he said again. He knew full well that their
contents was some important secret, and that Gavrik was aching to boast
about it. "Well?" he said insistently.
Then Gavrik brought his face up close, hesitated a moment, and after
looking all round said in a whisper, "A flat press."
Petya could not believe his ears.
"What?" he said.
"A flat press for printing," Gavrik said very distinctly. "Don't you
understand? Dunderhead!"
Dozens of times Petya had passed that little gully on the steppe, thick
with tall weeds, without noticing anything special about it. But when he
looked at it this time he saw the weeds at the bottom stir and two figures
climb out-first Uncle Fedya and then the old railwayman. Now Petya
understood it all. There must be a cave in the rocks at the bottom of the
gully, there were many of these caves all round the city, opening on to the
steppe or among the cliffs, and Petya knew they were the entrances to the
famous Odessa catacombs. So that was where the boxes had gone!
"Get it?" said Gavrik and gave Petya such a keen, almost menacing look
that the boy was just about to pronounce some solemn vow when he caught
himself up, and returning Gavrik's look, said merely, "Yes. I got it."
"I hope you do," said Gavrik. "And remember, you've seen nothing.
Forget it all."
"I know," Petya said, and they both went unhurriedly to the orchard
where the cherries were being poured out in piles on the platform.
Next morning Terenty reappeared on the veranda and put some money on
the table.
"You see how well it works out," he said. "You help us, we help you.
There's a hundred and seventeen here, and we kept back fifteen rubles for
small expenses. I hope you don't object?"
"Oh, of course not, of course not," Vasily Petrovich said.
He never suspected that these "fifteen rubles for small expenses" had
been sent that very day to St. Petersburg, and that in a week's time the
list of acknowledgements of cash received in the Pravda would include a line
that read, "From a group of Odessa workers, 15 rubles."
That was how the cherry crop was marketed.
The next thing would be the early apples. The summer was passing
quietly, everything was going well-except for a small incident which passed
unnoticed by all but Petya, on whom it left an unpleasant impression. . As
he neared the orchard one day after a bathe he saw a man coming out of the
gate. There was something familiar about him. Moved by an inexplicable sense
of danger, Petya slipped quietly into the maize field and squatted down
among the thick stems and rustling leaves. The man passed so close that
Petya could have reached out and touched his dusty serge trousers and grey
canvas shoes. He looked up and saw against the bright blue sky and marble
clouds a head in a summer cap of loofah with two peaks-in front and at the
back-the kind of cap dubbed "Hullo-Good-bye!"; he saw the grey moustache and
pince-nez of dark glass like those worn by the blind. It was Moustache, the
secret police spy whose face had been imprinted on Petya's mind as a child,
on the Turgenev, and whom he had seen again just before his trip abroad,
standing with a coastguard officer on board the Palermo.
The man passed without noticing Petya, his bluely shaved cheeks puffed
out, trumpeting softly a popular march.
Petya waited a little while and then hurried home to find out what this
man had come for. But he got little satisfaction. According to Auntie, it
was a summer resident from Bolshoi Fontan who had simply come for cherries;
Auntie had told him she was sorry but he was too late. He had walked round
the orchard, praised it and said he would most certainly come back in
September when the grapes were ripe. That was all. As it was the middle of
the week only the family had been there, and. Petya felt easier in his mind.
Perhaps the man really was staying at Bolshoi Fontan for the summer and
really had come only for cherries. After all, he was a human being, why
shouldn't he have a summer cottage at Bolshoi Fontan?
Gavrik, however, took it much more seriously, although he agreed that
it might be mere chance". To be on the safe side, Terenty increased the
sentries, and Gavrik and Petya paced the steppe not only on Saturday nights
but during the day as well. It was evidently a false alarm, however, for the
man did not appear again.
One Saturday at the beginning of August Petya and Gavrik, after
circling round the orchard a few times and seeing nothing suspicious, went
to the cliffs, lay down and gazed out to sea. The sun had only just set,
there was a brisk wind and the glow was fading from the pink clouds.
Dolphins played not far from the shore, and on the horizon the white sails
of scows stood out against the sky, for it was the mackerel fishing season.
The scows moved in various directions and frequently changed their
course, now approaching, now withdrawing. Sometimes one of them would come
quite close and pass, tossing, along the coast; then the two could see the
fountains of spray as its flat bottom slapped the water, and the man
standing on the battered bow moving a long rod, bent like a bow, backward
and forward. The boys knew that at the end of the long line was a
bait-brightly painted fish of lead with a multitude of sharp hooks. The
great art of this kind of fishing was to adapt the speed of the bait to the
movement of the shoal. The rapacious mackerel would start to pursue the
shining bait and it must not be pulled too far ahead or made too easy to
seize. The fisherman must tantalize the fish before letting it snap, then it
would be firmly caught.
It was interesting to watch, but Petya and Gavrik were thinking of
something else. They watched the sails, trying to guess which was the one
they awaited.
In addition to the fishing boats they could see far out the smart white
sails of the racing yachts of the fashionable clubs on the last lap of the
annual handicap for the prize offered by the Odessa millionaire Anatre. They
were just racing for the finish, leaning over sharply with the wind-lovely
vessels built at the best wharves of Holland and Britain. At any other time,
of course, Petya and Gavrik would have had eyes for nothing else, but now
Gavrik only remarked contentedly, "It's like Saturday evening on
Deribasovskaya Street. Crowded. Easy to slip through."
"I believe it's that one, look, with the old 'Bolshoi Fontan lighthouse
on her beam," said Petya, pronouncing the words "on her beam" with special
satisfaction.
"No," said Gavrik, ''Akim Perepelitsky's scow is bright blue, only just
painted, and this is all scaled off!"
"I believe you're right."
"I certainly am." "Look! There she is!" -
"Where?"
"Opposite Golden Shore, a bit closer, look, bright blue!"
"It's got a new jib, Perepelitsky's is patched."
"When did they say they'd come?"
"When the sun sets."
"It's set now."
"It's still too light. Needs to get a bit darker first."
"Maybe they won't come at all?"
"Rubbish. This is Party work."
The boys went on staring intently out to sea.
Only a little while before a representative of the Central Committee
had come to Odessa secretly from abroad, from Ulyanov-Lenin, bringing the
Party directives regarding the elections to the Fourth State Duma. For a
week now he had been going everywhere addressing Party meetings about the
political situation. Now he was expected at the farm. As A precautionary
measure a young-fisherman, Akim Perepelitsky, was to bring him on his
fishing boat from Langeron.
The light faded from the clouds, the sea darkened. The yachts passed
and disappeared. The sails of fishing boats became noticeably fewer. A band
was playing far away, in Arcadia, and the wind brought the distant music of
trumpets and the dull thud of a drum. And still Akim Perepelitsky's scow did
not appear.
Suddenly Gavrik cried, "Look, there it is!"
It was not at all where they had expected it to appear -instead of
coming from the Langeron side, it appeared from near to Lustdorf. Evidently
Akim Perepelitsky thought it safer to keep far out to sea until he was
opposite Lustdorf and then turned back to Kovalevsky's dacha. Now the scow
was quite close in, leaping from wave to wave before a brisk wind, making
straight for the shore.
There were two men in it. The one lying back in the stern with the
tiller under his arm was Akim Perepelitsky, Petya knew him at once. The
other-short and thickset, in an old, striped singlet under a fisherman's
canvas coat, barefoot, trousers rolled to his knees-was sitting astride the
side of the boat, skilfully unlashing the jib-sheet. This man Petya did not
immediately recognize.
While the boys raced down the cliff path the sails were furled, the
rudder taken in and dropped in the stern, the keel raised and the scow
grounded gently, the bottom scraping the pebbles as it buried its nose in
the shingle.
Following the unwritten law of the coast, Petya and Gavrik first helped
to pull the heavy boat ashore, and then greeted the arrivals.
"Gosh! It's Uncle Zhukov!" cried Gavrik like a child, shaking hands
vigorously with the Central Committee" representative. "I knew it! I was
sure it was you coming!"
Zhukov looked at Gavrik for a moment. "Aha!" he said at last. "Now I
know you too. Wasn't it you who pulled me out of the water opposite Otrada
Villa seven years ago? Look how you've shot up! I'm sorry about your
grandad.... Aye, he was a good old man, I liked him! Well, may his soul rest
in peace. I remember how he kept praying to St. Nicholas, not that he ever
got anywhere by it...." A shadow from past memories passed over Rodion
Zhukov's face.
"What's your name, by the way? I'm afraid I've forgotten."
"Gavrik. Gavrik Chernoivanenko."
"Chernoivanenko? Any relation to Terenty?"
"Yes, I'm his brother."
"You don't say! And following in his footsteps, I see." "Uncle Zhukov,
I know you too," Petya put in plaintively, tired of seeing the attention of
the Central Committee representative concentrated on Gavrik alone. "I knew
you even before he did. When you hid in the coach, remember? And then on the
Turgenev."
"Well, of all things!" cried Zhukov merrily. "So it looks as if we're
old friends, too, if you're telling the truth."
"I am, I swear it," cried Petya and crossed himself. "Gavrik can tell
you. Gavrik, tell him how I carried cartridges to Alexandrovsky Street!"
"It's right, he did," said Gavrik.
"And I saw you in Naples a year ago. You were with Maxim Gorky. Isn't
that right?"
Zhukov looked at Petya.
"Yes, it's right," he said. "I remember you now. You were in a sailor's
blouse, weren't you?"
"Yes," Petya said and looked at Gavrik in triumph.
"See?"
"Only there's one thing, lads," said Zhukov sternly.
"Forget that I was ever called Uncle Zhukov. That's gone. I'm Vasilyev
now. Don't forget. What's my name?"
"Vasilyev," the boys said in one voice.
"Remember, then.... Well, and what's your name?" he asked, turning to
Petya.
"Petya."
"He's that teacher's son," Gavrik amplified.
"I guessed it," said Zhukov, thought for a moment and added decisively,
"well, don't let's waste time. Let's go. Have they all come?"
"Long ago," Gavrik answered.
"All clear along the way? I gave them my word in Cracow that I'd be as
prudent as a young lady."
"Yes, it's all clear," Gavrik said.
Rodion Zhukov took a round basket of mackerel from the scow and put it
on his head, like any fisherman taking his catch to sell at the villa doors.
"A good catch," said Gavrik with respect.
"A whole basket in one go and with one silver bait," laughed Zhukov,
with a wink at Akim Perepelitsky. Handsome young Akim with a forelock
falling over his forehead swung the oars with lazy grace on to his shoulder
and they began to climb the cliff path.
Gavrik went about fifty paces in front of the two men, Petya the same
distance behind them; if either of them noticed anything suspicious he was
to whistle through his fingers. Petya held his fingers ready, worried by a
foolish fear that if he needed to whistle, he might suddenly be unable to
make a sound. Everything was quiet, however, and avoiding the road, they
made their way to the orchard where Terenty met them by the vineyard. Petya
saw them hug each other with many enthusiastic slaps on the back, and then
go to the shanties where a fire was already crackling under the trees,
sending out showers of golden sparks.
When Petya went up to the shanties a little later, Rodion Zhukov,
smoking a short pipe with a metal lid, was sitting before the fire,
surrounded by a group of people.
"Let's review the events that have taken place in the six months since
the Prague Conference, comrades," he was saying. "In the first place, the
Party exists again. That is the main thing. I don't need to tell you how
this was done, what tremendous difficulties -we had to overcome. There was
the rabid persecution by the tsarist police, the failures, the provocation,
the incessant interruptions in the work of the local centres and the Central
Committee. But now that's all past, thank heaven. Our Party's going ahead
boldly, confidently, broadening its activities and increasing its influence
among the masses. Not in the old way, but in the new way. What was left to
us after the defeat of the 1905 Revolution? Illegal activities, nothing
else. But now in addition to our illegal cells, our secret little groups
even more carefully concealed than before, we have broader, legal Marxist
teaching. It is this combination of legal and illegal that characterizes our
preparations for revolution under the new conditions. We are advancing to a
new .revolution, comrades, under slogans of a democratic republic, an
eight-hour working day and complete confiscation of all the big estates. You
know that these slogans have been caught up over the whole of Russia. They
have been accepted by all the thinking proletariat. To put it briefly, we've
stopped the retreat. Stolypin's liberal counter-revolution is on its last
legs. There are more strikes, mere uprisings. This is a revolutionary
movement of the masses, it is the beginning of the offensive of the working
masses against the tsarist monarchy."
Petya never took his eyes off Rodion Zhukov, off that face lighted by
the leaping, crackling flames of the fire. He was no longer the Zhukov Petya
had seen as a child and had never forgotten. Nor was it the Zhukov he had
seen in Naples, nor even the Zhukov who had just walked barefoot over the
steppe with the round basket of fish on his head. It was a new
Zhukov-Comrade Vasiilyev, exacting, almost stern, with narrowed, imperative
eyes, a firm mouth and short moustache clipped a foreign way. It was the
sailor who had become a captain.
"Now let's talk about the elections to the Fourth State Duma," Zhukov
went on. "Despite persecution and mass arrests, the Russian
Social-Democratic Party now has a clearer, more definite programme and
tactics than any other party. This is how Vladimir Lenin-Ulyanov, writing in
the Workers' Paper, formulated the situation on the eve of the
elections...."
Gavrik tugged at Petya's sleeve.
"What are you sitting here for, as if you've nothing to do?" he
whispered. "We've got to keep watch."
Petya slipped quietly out of the circle, and suddenly saw his father.
Vasily Petrovich stood leaning against a tree, arms folded, listening so
intently to Rodion Zhukov that he did not even turn his head when Petya
jolted his shoulder in passing. His hair fell in disorder over his lined
forehead and a tiny reflected fire sparkled in each glass of his pince-nez.
Petya and Gavrik circled the orchard and turned on to the road leading
to the terminus. The old horse-tram had recently been replaced by an
electric tram; its deep cello note came to them from the distance, a blue
electric spark travelled along the wire past the gardens, and the bright
light from the windows made the steppe seem still darker. Suddenly Gavrik
stopped and gripped Petya's arm. A number of white figures were walking
along the side of the road in single file, making straight for the Bacheis'
orchard. Before Gavrik had time to whisper, "Police!" Petya distinguished
the white summer tunics. The boys raced breathlessly back to the fire.
"The Liquidators shout about a decent, licensed platform for the
elections. But we Bolsheviks consider that what's needed isn't a platform
for the elections, but elections for carrying out a revolutionary
Social-Democratic platform. We have already used the elections for this and
we shall continue using them, we shall use even the most reactionary tsarist
Duma for revolutionary teaching, agitation, propaganda. That's how it is!"
Rodion Zhukov coughed angrily and reached out to the fire for an ember
to relight his pipe; at that moment Gavrik whispered to Terenty who raised
his hand without getting up.
"Just a minute, comrades. A point of order," he said in a quiet, almost
business-like tone. "First of all please preserve absolute calm and
revolutionary self-control. We're surrounded by police."
Petya expected everyone to jump up and seize weapons. He pulled his
shot-gun off his shoulder-he had not had time to fire it as they ran back to
the farm. Now it's going to start, he thought, fearful yet thrilled.
To his great surprise, however, all remained sitting quietly round the
fire. Only Rodion Zhukov with a sharp movement knocked out his pipe on the
ground and slipped it into his pocket.
"All stop where you are; you, Rodion, and you, Tamara," Terenty turned
to Pavlovskaya, "will have to hide for a little while. We've got a good
place not far from here. Gavrik, off you go! Take our illegal workers to the
gully. They can sit it out there."
"Damn them, they interrupted us at the most important point," said
Rodion Zhukov gaily. "Well, comrades, here you've got a splendid instance of
our tactics-the combination of legal and illegal." His eyes flashed
mischievously yet somehow menacingly in the light of the fire.
"Go on, go on underground," said Terenty impatiently.
Pavlovskaya and Zhukov followed Gavrik, passing beneath the trees and
disappearing into the darkness. A slight shadow that was Marina slipped
after them. Petya made to follow her, gripping his shot-gun, but Terenty
shook his finger in warning and he halted. Everything happened quickly and
quietly, without any stir. When the police officer with three of his men
followed Moustache into the orchard, trying to step quietly and keep their
sabres from rattling, they found a picture of perfect peace-a group of
people sitting by a camp-fire quietly eating supper.
"Who are you? What's the reason for this assembly?" the officer asked
sternly, advancing out of the darkness. Without a doubt he expected his
appearance to be as startling as a clap of thunder. But they went quietly on
with their supper, only the old railwayman carefully licked his wooden spoon
clean, wiped it on his trousers and held it out to the officer saying,
"You're welcome to join us, to have a bite of supper. Akim, move over a bit,
so there's room for His Honour to sit down."
"Nay, what's the good of that," drawled Akim Perepelitsky lazily.
"They've got a whole squad, our stew'll not go round them all. They'd best
go back to the station and eat their prison skilly."
"Get up!" snapped the officer. "Who d'you think you're talking to?"
"No need to be so free, Your Honour, we haven't tended pigs together,"
drawled Akim more lazily still, raised himself on his elbow and spat in the
fire.
"Ugh-rabble!" said the officer viciously, blowing his reddish moustache
and wrinkling his fleshy nose. "You- I'll make you...."
Meanwhile, the policemen stood in the darkness under the trees, ready
at any moment to seize anyone they could lay hands on, although what was
happening was very different from what they had expected.
They had thought they would catch dangerous bomb-throwers red-handed,
that they would have to use their sabres and perhaps fire-arms too. But
instead of that, this man with the moustache had brought them to an orchard
where people sat round a camp-fire peacefully eating their supper and not
only showed no fear of the police but even talked impertinently to the
officer. It looked as though they'd come on a fool's errand.
"My good sir, I haven't the honour of knowing who you are," said Vasily
Petrovich in a voice trembling with indignation, drawing himself up to his
full height and coming up close to the officer. "What do you want here? By
what right do you break into this orchard? And- and-and interrupt people
having their supper," he added, his beard shaking.
"And who might you be?" asked the officer sternly.
"I not only might be, I am the tenant and full master here, on a fully
legal agreement," said Vasily Petrovich, assuming a lofty schoolroom manner.
"These are my labourers ... seasonal labourers, if the term pleases you
better, whom I hired to work in the garden and vineyard." (Terenty nodded
approvingly.) "I am Councillor Bachei, and I won't stand any trespassing on
my grounds at night!" he cried, his voice rising to a shout, and he stamped
his sandaled foot angrily.
"Excuse me, we are not trespassing, we are the police," said the
officer, falling back a step.
"To me you are trespassing!" Vasily Petrovich shouted. "I wish to have
nothing to do with you. Why do you persecute me? Great heavens," and his
voice became plaintive. "When will it all end? First it was that official,
then Faig, then Madame Storozhenko. And now the police. Leave me alone!" he
yelled, beside himself. "Let me live in peace! Lea-ve m-ee a-lo-ne! Or I'll
lodge a complaint-with the Governor, with Major-General Tolmachov!"
Strange as it might seem, his confused speech produced a decided
impression on the officer, especially the mention of Tolmachov. After all,
who could say what he was, this Bachei? Suppose he really did complain to
General Tolmachov?
"You don't need to raise your voice," said the officer, more in
expostulation than threat, and went over to Moustache who had been
sauntering about in the darkness under the trees, carefully looking over all
the men round the fire, one after the other. The officer whispered to him,
coughed, and turned back to Vasily Petrovich.
"We have information that various illegal assemblages are constantly
held here, that banned pamphlets are read and-well, that people assemble.
And all assemblages are at present strictly forbidden."
"But, Your Honour," said Akim Perepelitsky insinuatingly, "people
assemble for work here, to earn a bit- well, to dig round the trees and tie
up the vines, and do the watering.... It's a bit of extra money for a poor
man."
"I'm not talking to you," the officer snapped. "I'm talking to the
tenant."
"I don't see that we have anything to discuss," said Vasily Petrovich.
"As for your assertion that some kind of banned pamphlets are read here and
all the rest of it, that is simply a figment of your diseased imagination,
nothing more."
"Then why do you assemble these people here at night?" asked the
officer wearily-he had realized long ago that the raid was a failure,
because nothing could be proved.
"They 'assemble,'" said Vasily Petrovich with a delicately ironical
emphasis on the word, "because with your kind permission I read lectures to
them."
"Aha, lectures?" The officer pricked up his ears.
"Yes," Vasily Petrovich said, straightening his pince-nez. "Popular
educational lectures on the history of civilization, literature and
astronomy-following the programme authorized by the Ministry of Education.
Have you any objections?"
"Astronomy." The officer shook his head disapprovingly and wrinkled his
fleshy nose. "Of course, if you follow the authorized programme, then it's
all right, you can go on."
"Ah, so you permit it?" cried Vasily Petrovich in mock delight. "You
permit it! How very condescending! Well then-in that case I will not venture
to detain you any longer. Or perhaps you would like to make a search-
confiscation-or whatever you call it? In that case, be so kind. The orchard
is at your disposal!" exclaimed Vasily Petrovich ceremoniously with a broad,
hospitable gesture of both arms as though wishing to embrace all this
wonderful night with its dark trees, camp-fire, glow-worms and starry sky.
"Dad's grand!" thought Petya, his eyes fixed admiringly on his father.
At that moment there was the rustle of skirts and Auntie came running out.
"What's this? What's this? What's going on here?" she panted, turning
alarmed eyes on the officer and the policemen.
"Don't get excited, it's nothing dreadful," said Vasily Petrovich
calmly. "This gentleman had been given false information-that some kind of
illegal assemblages took place here, but fortunately it all turned out to be
a mistake."
"Aha, I understand," said Auntie. "That's probably Madame Storozhenko's
doing."
"I can tell you nothing about that, madame," said the officer, and
after whispering to Moustache, he gestured angrily to the policemen. These
shuffled about a little, then moved away through the orchard in single file
like geese, their white tunics adding to the resemblance in the darkness.
Soon they disappeared through the gate.
"As for those lectures of yours, I shall have to report them to my
superiors,'' the officer said.
"To the Governor himself if you like," replied Vasily Petrovich and
without waiting for them to leave, he lay down by the fire and said in his
ringing teacher's voice,
"Well, gentlemen, let us continue. Last time I acquainted you with the
elementary foundations of astronomy, the wonderful science of the stars. Let
me repeat briefly what I told you. Astronomy is one of the most ancient
sciences of mankind. The Egyptians...."
Petya slipped cautiously out of the circle of fire-light, slung the
shot-gun over his shoulder and followed the police, hugging the shadows of
the trees. As he came up level with the officer and Moustache he heard the
officer saying angrily, "With agents like you, I might as well sit down on
the stove and wait for my belly to boil." "But I swear I had the most
reliable information!"
"Oh, go to hell. Madame Storozhenko greased your palm handsomely and
you went and made fools of us. Coming out here for nothing on a Saturday
night. Thank heaven there's the electric tram now, or we'd have had to
rattle back on that horse-tram!"
So they were leaving. But Petya felt he must see them on the tram with
his own eyes. Then he went back. On the road he saw a small, motionless
figure. It was Motya.
"What are you doing here?" he asked sternly.
"Waiting," she whispered. "I was so worried about you...."
"Nobody asked you to," he said. "Go home."
"Have they left?"
"Yes."
"On the electric tram?"
"Yes."
Motya laughed softly.
"What's so funny?"
"It's queer-you and I alone in the empty field, and the night all
round.... Petya," she said after a pause, "weren't you frightened when you
followed them?"
"Silly! What about the gun?"
"Yes, that's right." Motya sighed. "But I nearly died of fear."
The night was dark and warm, with a slight breeze. Now and then a faint
report like a shot came from Arcadia, where fireworks were being let off. A
number of rockets soared into the air, glowing orange, and burst in great
fiery stars that floated slowly down, and then their dry cracks came to
Petya and Motya.
"How lovely!" said Motya and sighed again.
"Go home," was all Petya answered.
She turned and went obediently down the road, and soon disappeared in
the dim silvery light.
Petya turned into the steppe and ran to the familiar gully. Nobody had
told him to see the police safely away, and nobody had told him to go to
Rodion Zhukov afterwards. He was impelled by an unconscious but sure inner
urge. It was as though some force moved him.
It was quite warm in the gully. Rustling through the weeds, Petya felt
his way along the steep rocky side, seeking the opening.
"Is that you, Petya?" Gavrik's voice asked out of the darkness.
"Yes, it's me."
"What's happening?"
"Everything's all right. They've gone."
"And not taken anyone?"
"No, no one."
"That's good. Here, reach out your hand."
Petya did so, and Gavrik pulled him into the cave. For some time they
moved ahead in complete darkness, their shoulders now and then touching the
wall, bringing down trickles of dry soil. Then the passage-way became lower
and narrower so that they had to crawl on all fours. At last a faint light
appeared, the passage widened, and Petya found himself in a large cave hewn
out in the rock, with a sloping, smoke-blackened roof.
A lantern hanging on the wall cast a light, crisscrossed by the shadows
of its bars, so that the cave looked like a cage. It was damp and cool, yet
stuffy. The lack of fresh air was very noticeable. In the corner beneath the
lamp Petya saw a small flat printing-press and guessed this was the one
brought in the boxes he had seen. In a case alongside lay the type which
Gavrik had been bringing from the Odessa Leaflet print-shop for two years.
On the wall hung his familiar blue overalls stained with printer's ink.
Rodion Zhukov w-as sitting on the floor his back against the wall,
smoking his pipe and reading a book, making pencil notes in the margin. The
Pavlovskayas were settled on the boxes in which the press had come. The
mother sat with her old waterproof drawn round her, and Marina was asleep,
her head with its black hair-ribbon resting on her mother's knees, her feet
in their dusty little buttoned shoes, one worn through at the toe, tucked
under her.
All of their belongings lay on the floor beside them- the kerosene
stove wrapped in newspaper, the bundle and the small travelling-bag, which
led to the conclusion that they always had their things packed. They looked
like people sitting in some small, out-of-the-way railway station waiting
for a train.
"It's all right. We can go back," said Gavrik.
Rodion Zhukov did not move, but made Petya tell him everything. Then he
thought a little and asked Petya to tell him again, without hurrying. Only
after Petya had given his story for the second time did Zhukov slip his book
into his pocket, rise, stretch luxuriously and say, "Well, we can go up
again, then. Evidently it was just chance the bastards happened upon me.
Come along, Tamara."
"Get up, dear," said Pavlovskaya, lightly nipping Marina's nose as one
does with a little child. The girl opened her eyes, looked round about, saw
Petya-earth-stained, tousle-headed, with the shot-gun over his
shoulder-smiled sleepily and smoothed her creased hair-ribbon.
"I want to sleep," she said pettishly, but rose obediently and picked
up the kerosene stove.
"No, leave your things here, just in case," said Rodion Zhukov.
"What a darling she is," thought Petya.
When they came out into the fresh air, the stars seemed wonderfully
bright, almost blinding. The steppe was very quiet. Silently, stopping now
and then to listen, they went back to the orchard, climbed over the earthen
weed-grown bank and seated themselves quietly at the fire where Vasily
Petrovich was still lecturing on astronomy.
"Just try to imagine," he said enthusiastically, raising his head to
look at the sky, "that we have the magic power to travel through space with
the speed of light. If that were so, we could easily convince ourselves that
the universe is infinite. Look at that starry sky which arches so
magnificently over us. What do we see? We see myriads of stars, planets, and
nebulae, and finally we see the Milky Way which in turn is nothing other
than another great collection of stars. But all this countless number is
only an infinitesimal part of the universe. So, gentlemen, imagine that we
are flying through space with a speed inconceivable to the human mind and
finally reach the most distant star. What do we find? We find that we see
before us another star-filled firmament. We fly to the farthest star of this
new sky but here too there is no end to the universe. Again a sky full of
stars opens before us. And thus, however far we fly through space, more and
more worlds open before us, and there is no end lo it because the universe
itself is endless."
Vasily Petrovich fell silent, still looking upwards. And all the others
looked silently up too-at the familiar stars, the silvery track of the Milky
Way, thrilled, fascinated by the thought of infinity.
Marina was sitting beside Petya, looking up too; and suddenly he was
swept with a wave of such tenderness, such aching love that tears rose in
his eyes.
"Listen-" he whispered, gently touching her sleeve.
"What?" she said almost soundlessly, without turning her head.
The words "I love you" nearly slipped out, but instead he managed to
say, "It is marvellous, isn't it?"
"Yes," said Marina, with a movement of her head that seemed wonderfully
free and graceful. "The darker the night, the brighter the stars."
Somewhere far away a cock crowed, barely audible; and the slender blue
finger of light from the new Bolshoi Fontan lighthouse rose far up, into the
star-filled sky.
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
Last-modified: Tue, 16 Apr 2002 18:58:22 GMT