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


        THE BAD MARK


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


     AUNTIE'S NEW IDEA


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



        THE OLD WOMAN



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