ful 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.


        A STORM IN THE MOUNTAINS


     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.


        THE HOME-COMING


     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.


        PRECIOUS STONES


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


        SUNDAY


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


        THE KITE FROM A SHOP


     It  was  a  shop kite  that  looked like  a geometrical  drawing,  with
canary-yellow calico stretched over  it and tight connecting wires that made
it  look  like  the Wright  brothers'  biplane.  Two  boys  stood on  tiptoe
zealously holding the  apparatus as high as they could reach, while  Zhenya,
holding the