adults. Some pretty awful things were going on in their world. That was when we decided to take a very critical look at it. We found that: 1. Not all grown-ups are in charge of world affairs, but only those who wear official uniforms, expensive fur-lined coats and starched white collars. All the rest, and these form the majority, are called "undesirable acquaintances". 2. The owner of the bone-meal factory, who is responsible for the deaths and injuries of fifty workers, all of whom are "undesirable acquaintances" got off scot-free. The Schwambranians would never have let him live among them. 3. Oska and I don't have to work at all (except at our lessons), while Klavdia, Annushka's niece, scrubs floors and washes dishes for the neighbours and can only have a piece of candy on Sundays. Besides, she's landless, for she has no Schwambrania to go to. We ended our list of the world's injustices by drawing a long line along the margin and printing a stern and angry word along its entire length. The word was: Injustices. "MIXING WITH THE PEOPLE" We later added our own upbringing to our list of injustices. I now realize that I cannot really blame our parents, for they lived in different times, and there were many who were much worse. The disgraceful way of life of those times had a demoralizing effect on us, as it did on our parents. It is strange to think that our parents believed they were quite progressive in bringing up their children. For instance, we had to mop up the puddle we made near the fishbowl ourselves and were forbidden to call Annushka to help us. Papa spoke of this proudly and at length when he visited his friends. He wished to bring us up in a democratic spirit and, to this end, would sometimes take us for a buggy ride without a driver. He would hire a gig and horse and we would ride off "to mix with the people". Papa, dressed in a tussore shirt, would drive. He would shout "Whoa!" "Hey, there!" and "Giddiyap!" with relish. However, there would always be some confusion if an elegant lady appeared on foot on the narrow road ahead. Then Papa would sound embarrassed as he said, "Go on and sing something, boys. But make it good and loud, so she'll turn around. After all, I can't shout, 'Get out of the way' can I? Especially since I think I know her." And so we would sing. When this did not work and the lady kept on walking slowly. Papa would send me on ahead. I would climb down from my seat, catch up with the woman and say in my most polite voice: "Uh, Miss.... Lady.... Papa wants you to move over, because we can't pass. We don't want to run you over." Though the women would always step aside, for some reason or other they were usually offended. Our rides "to mix with the people" ended when Papa once sent us all tumbling into a ditch. THE ANIMAL WORLD In order to instil a love for the birds and the beasts in us and in this way ennoble our souls, our parents would occasionally buy us a pet. We had dogs, cats and fishes. The fishes lived in a fishbowl. One day our parents noticed that the little goldfish were disappearing one by one. They discovered that Oska had been fishing them out, putting them in matchboxes and burying them in the sand. He had been very much impressed by a funeral procession and had set up a regular fish cemetery in the yard. Then there was the very unpleasant encounter between Oska and the cat, which had scratched him badly when he had tried to brush its teeth with Papa's tooth-brush. The incident involving the kid was most unfortunate. The whole idea was a mistake from the very beginning, though Papa had bought the kid especially for us. It was black and small, and curly-haired with a hard, round forehead. It looked as if it might be a live Persian lamb collar for Papa's winter coat. Papa brought the kid into the parlour. Its spindly legs slid out from under it on the slippery linoleum. "He's all yours," Papa said. "And make sure you take good care of him!" The kid said "baa-aa" and dropped some marbles on the rug. Then he nibbled on the wallpaper in the study and wet an armchair. Luckily, Papa was having his after-dinner nap and so had no idea of what was happening. We played with the frisky kid for a while, then got tired of the game and went off, forgetting all about our new curly-haired pet. The kid disappeared. An hour later there was a loud thumping on the piano keys, though there was no one in the parlour. It was the kid jumping on the keyboard. This woke Papa. He was in a hurry to leave for his evening rounds at the hospital and dressed without putting on the light. He soon came yawning into the dining room. Oska and I were so astonished we plopped down on the same chair. Mamma threw up her hands. Papa looked at his feet and gasped. One of his trouser legs barely reached his knee. It hung in sticky, chewed strips. So that was what the kid had been up to! That very evening it was taken back to its previous owner. THE WORLD AROUND US Father and Mother worked hard from morning till evening, while we, to tell the honest truth, were the world's greatest loafers. We had been provided with a classical "perfect childhood". We had a gym of our own, toy trains, automobiles and steamboats. We had tutors to teach us languages, drawing and music. We knew Grimm's Fairy Tales by heart, as well as Greek mythology and the Russian epic poems. However, all this paled as far as I was concerned after I had read an indifferent-looking book called, I believe, The World Around Us. It described in simple language how bread was baked, how vinegar was obtained, how bricks were made, how steel was smelted and how leather was tanned. The book introduced me to the fascinating world of things and to the people who made them. The salt on our table had gone through a grainer, and the cast iron pot through a blast furnace. I discovered that shoes, saucers, scissors, windowsills, steam engines and tea had all been invented, extracted, produced and made by the toil of many, many people and were the result of their knowledge and skill. The story about a sheepskin coat was no less interesting than the tale of the golden fleece. I suddenly had a terrible urge to start making useful things myself. However, my old books and my teachers never provided any information about the people who made things, though they dwelled ecstatically on the many royal heroes. We were being brought up as helpless, useless gentlemen, or as an arrogant caste of people whose lives were devoted to "pure brainwork". True, we had building blocks with which we were expected to produce something imaginative. Our pent-up energy sought an outlet. We extracted the couch springs in order to discover the true construction of things and were severely punished for our efforts. We even envied a fellow named Fektistka, the pock-marked tinsmith's apprentice, who looked down on us for still being in short pants. Though he was illiterate, he knew how to make real pails, dustpans, tin mugs, basins and tubs. However, when we saw him at the river one day, Fektistka showed us the very real black-and-blue marks and bruises on his bony body, the result of the hard lessons his master's heavy hand taught him, for the tinsmith beat Fektistka unmercifully. He made the boy work from dawn to dusk, fed him scraps and pummelled his bony back to teach him the principles of the tinsmith's trade. INTELLECT AND HANDIWORK We stopped envying Fektistka after that. Disturbing thoughts filled our heads. It seemed that people who were engaged in mental work were wholly at the mercy of ordinary things, while the skilled workers who made them had none of their own. Whenever the toilet would not flush properly or a lock got stuck, or the piano had to be moved, Annushka was sent downstairs to the basement apartment where a railroadman and his family lived, to ask "someone" to come up and help. As soon as "someone" came upstairs the things would obey him: the piano would roll off to whenever it was supposed to go, the toilet would cough and begin to work properly, and the lock would let go of the key. Mamma would say, "He can fix everything," and would then be sure to count the silver spoons in the sideboard. If, on the other hand, the people in the basement apartment wanted to write to a brother who lived in a distant village, they would come to "the gentleman" upstairs. As the railroadman watched Papa's pen fly across the sheet of paper, taking down his letter as he dictated it, he would say in wonder: "Ah, that's book learning for you! How can you compare it to our trade! That's pure ignorance." In their heart of hearts the inhabitants of each floor despised the inhabitants of the other. "What's so special about that?" Papa said, for his pride was hurt. "So he fixed the toilet. I'd like to see him perform an operation." Meanwhile, the people downstairs were saying to themselves: "I'd like to see you crawling around on all fours under a locomotive's belly. Whisking a pen around isn't anything to brag about." The relationship between our two floors could only be compared to the relationship of the blind man and his leader, a legless man, in the well-known story. The blind man carried the legless man, who looked ahead from his perch on the other's shoulders. It was a doubtful alliance bound by a grudging dependence upon each other. Still and all, the "undesirable acquaintances" knew how to make things. Perhaps they would have taught us something, if not for the fact that we were being brought up as "gentlemen who worked only with their brains", so that the closest we got to work was making paper boats and model factories. We consoled ourselves with the thought that on the Big Tooth Continent every last inhabitant not only knew a lot of fairy tales by heart, but could also bind them into a book if necessary. GOD AND OSKA Oska was a great one for confusing things. He had learned to read when he was much too young and from the time he was four he could remember anything at all, from the names on shop signs to articles in the medical encyclopaedia. He remembered everything he read, but this produced chaos in his head, for he would always mix up the strange new words he had discovered. He was forever making everyone laugh. He would confuse "pomade" and "pyramid" and said "monoclers" instead of "chroniclers". Once he wanted to ask Mamma for a sandwich and instead said, "Mamma, may I have a Greenwich?" "Good gracious!" Mamma exclaimed. "I'm sure he must be a child wonder!" A day later Oska said, "There's a new wonder in the office, too, Mamma! They bang on it and it types." What he meant, of course, was the Underwood typewriter. However, there were things he was very sure about. Mamma once read him a famous story with a moral about a boy who was too lazy to pick up a horseshoe and then had to pick up all the plums his father had purposely dropped on the road. "Did you understand the meaning of the story?" she asked. "Yes. It's about you shouldn't eat dirty plums off the ground." Oska felt that everyone without exception was an old friend of his. He would strike up a conversation with anyone at all on the street, overwhelming the person with the strangest questions. I once left him alone for a while in the public gardens. He was bouncing his ball and it landed in a flower bed. He reached over to get it, crushed some flowers, then saw the sign that said": "Keep off the grass" and became frightened. He then decided to seek outside help. A tall woman dressed in black and wearing a straw hat was sitting on a bench some distance away. She had her bad to Oska, but he could see her shoulder-length curls. "My ball bounced into the 'keep off the flowers'," he said to the lady' back. The lady turned, and Oska was terrified to see that she had a heavy beard. H forgot all about his ball. "Why do you have a beard on, lady?" "Do I look like a lady?" the lady said in a deep, kindly voice. "I'm a priest, m son." "A priest-mason?" Oska said doubtfully. "Then why do you have on a skirt?' He knew a mason was a bricklayer and imagined it was awfully inconvenient to slap cement on bricks while wearing a skirt that reached to the ground. "This is not a skirt, it's a cassock, as is only proper for a man of the cloth." "Wait," Oska said, trying to recall something. "I know. You're the man which makes cloth. And there's a lady, too. It's music that comes out of the gramophone She spins cloth of gold." "Aren't you a joker!" the priest laughed. "But aren't you a Christian? Who' your father? Your papa? Ah, a doctor. I see. Do you know about God?" "Yes. God's in the kitchen. Annushka hung him in the corner. His name's Christ Has Risen." "God is everywhere," the priest said sternly. "At home, in the fields, in the gardens. He is everywhere. God can hear us talking here this very minute. He is with us every minute of the day and night." Oska looked around, but did not see God and so he decided that the priest was playing some new kind of game with him. "Is God for real or make-believe?" "I'll put it to you this way. How did all this come about?" The priest pointed to the flowers. "It wasn't me, honest! That's how they were," Oska said quickly, thinking the man had noticed the crushed flowers. "God created all this." Oska was happy the man thought it was all God's doing. "And God created you, too." "No, he didn't! Mamma made me." "And who made your mamma?" "Her mamma. Grandma!" "And what about the very first mamma?" "She just happened. From out of a monkey," Oska said, for he and I had already read My First Natural History Book. "Ugh!" the perspiring priest exclaimed. "That's a godless, lawless upbringing, a corruption of infants' minds!" And he stomped off, with the skirt of his habit raising a cloud of dust. Os ka recounted the conversation to me, word for word. "And he was so funny looking! He had on a dress and a beard, too!" Our family was not very religious. Papa said that God could hardly exist, while Mamma said that God was nature, but, on the other hand, that He could punish us. As far as we were concerned, God had originally appeared from our nurse's bedtime stories. He later entered the house through the kitchen door which was left slightly ajar. God, as we imagined Him, consisted of votive light, church bells and the delicious smell of the freshly-baked Easter cakes. At times He appeared as an angry, distant force, thundering in the sky and keeping an eye on such things as whether it was a sin to stick your tongue out at your mother or not. There was a picture in My First Bible Stories of God sitting on a cloud of smoke, creating the whole world on page 1. However, the very first book we read on natural history dispersed the smoke. That did not leave God anything to sit on. HEAVENLY SCHWAMBRANIA But it did leave something called the Kingdom of Heaven. Whenever beggars stopped at our house and Annushka turned them away she would console them and herself with the knowledge that all beggars, all poor people and, apparently, all people who came under the heading of undesirable acquaintances, would go straight to paradise after their proper funerals, and there they would promenade in the heavenly glades. One day Oska and I decided that we had already been transported there. Marisha, the neighbours' maid, was getting married at Trinity Church, and Annushka took us along. It was as beautiful inside the church as in Schwambrania, and the church smelled good. There were paintings all over the walls of angels and quite a few of old men, all of whom were surrounded by puffy clouds. There were many lighted candles, although it was bright daylight outside. As for beggars, why, there were as many beggars there as in paradise, and all of them were busy praying. Then the main priest came out and pretended that he was God. As Oska was to tell everyone later, he had on a big golden baby's vest, and then he put on a long bib over his head, and it was all made of gold, too. Then he stood before a stand, and a sheet was spread on the floor in front of it. Marisha looked just like a princess, and she and her groom stood side by side. Then they went into a huddle, like we did when we were choosing sides for a game. They went over and stood right on the sheet. We couldn't hear what they and the priest were talking about, but Oska swore that they had thought of a charade and wanted the priest to guess whether it was "a trunkful of money or a golden shore". And then the priest said, "Better or worse?" And Marisha said, "You do?" Then the priest said to the groom: "Your wetted wife?" and the groom said: "I, too." And Marisha looked as if she was crying. "Wasn't that silly?" Oska said. "What was she bawling for? It's all make-believe anyway." After that he said they played "Who's got the ring?", and when they were through with the game the priest told them to hold hands. Then they played ring-around-a-rosie, and the priest led them around the stand. The choir sang and sang, and they ended by singing: "Hal, yell Loolia! Hal, yell Loolia!" Then Marisha chose her groom and they kissed. After our visit to the church we decided that paradise was a sort of Schwambrania that the grown-ups had invented for poor people. In our own Schwambrania I decided to establish a clergy of our own (at first Oska confused clergy with purging), to make things more pompous. Patriarch Liverpill was the chief prelate of Schwambrania. Instead of addressing him as "Your Grace", we used "Your Disgrace". CINDERELLA OF POKROVSK All fairy tales always had happy endings. Scullery maids became princesses, sleeping beauties awoke, witches perished, and lost orphans found their parents. There was always a wedding on the last page, with the groom and bride living happily ever after. In Schwambrania, a land that was half-real, a happy ending was the glorious finishing touch of every adventure. Thus it was that we came to the conclusion that people could certainly live much happier lives if they followed our example and played make-believe. Actually, we were to discover that fairy tales were the only place where everyone lived happily ever after, for a real fairy tale which the people around us tried to play at ended most unhappily. Everyone knows the story about the poor maid whose name was Cinderella and her mean old stepmother who made her work so hard. Everyone knows of the doves that plucked all the grain from the ashes, and of the Good Fairy who sent her to the ball, and of the glass slipper Cinderella lost in the palace. But I'm sure no one knows that the story of Cinderella is recorded in the old Deportment Ledger, the dread Black Book of the Pokrovsk Boys High School. The school supervisor, nicknamed Seize'em, recorded a new version of the story on the pages of the ledger. But his entry was very brief and acid. That is why I will have to tell you the story of Cinderella from Pokrovsk myself. Her name was Marfusha. She was temporarily our parlour maid, and she collected stamps. THE CANCELLED EAGLES The stamps came from distant cities and lands. The envelopes they were pasted on contained letters of greetings, news, requests, thanks, as well as the latest remedies for alcoholism, anaemia and other illnesses. Foreign drug firms sent Papa information about their patent medicines. Marfusha would steam the stamps off the empty envelopes by holding them over the samovar. There were hundreds of stamps in the brass-bound chest under her bed, sorted into small cigarette boxes. My brother and I delivered the envelopes to the kitchen. Philately strengthened the bonds of friendship between Marfusha and us. She shared all her secrets with us. We knew that she was sweet on the driver who worked at Papa's hospital, and that the clerk at the drugstore was a stuck-up good-for-nothing, because he teased Marfusha and called her Marfusion. We also discovered that if a person sneezed you had to say: "Achoo, match in your nose, a pair of wheels and the axle end to make your nose itch; wind take your sneeze, guts on gunny sacks, tendons on a wire, belly on a yoke." Whew! In the evenings Marfusha would unlock her chest and let us admire her treasures. There were complete issues of Peter the Great and other monarchs. The Alexanders were kept according to their numbers: Alexander I, II, and III. The cancellation dates covered the emperors' noses. Cancelled eagles fluffed their feathers on the red, green and blue squares of paper with saw-toothed edges. Weird lions hid behind the inked bars. We admired the collection, as Marfusha ran her hands through the tsars and eagles fondly and day-dreamed aloud: "I'll sell 'em soon's I get two thousand of 'em. An' I'll buy myself a fine lady's dress. There'll be ruffles down the front, and a bow behind, and a dotted veil to go all around. We'll see who'll dare call me Marfusion then. We'll see...." THE GASEOUS AUTHORITIES Mitya Lamberg had been expelled from the 2nd Saratov High School for having spoken unfavourably of the Bible class. He was then enrolled in the Pokrovsk Boys High and came to live with us. Mitya said he was a victim of reaction and considered it his sacred duty to annoy the authorities. He said: "I'm avenging, I mean, taking vengeance on the authorities in every one of its states: liquid, hard and gaseous." Mitya regarded his parents as the authorities of the liquid, drippy state. He had to accept the school principal and teachers as hard-state authorities. He regarded the government, the police and the local Zemstvo inspector as the gaseous authorities that seeped into everything. The boys had a special score to settle with the Zemstvo inspector. The senior boys spoke of two schoolgirls named Zoya Shvydchenko and Emma Uger. When school was out in the afternoons the inspector' sleigh was often seen on the corner waiting for Zoya and Emma, and the gaseous figure of the fat inspector always accompanied one or the other girl at the skating rink. The boys seethed. They threw snowballs at him from behind a fence. The had drawn a large black cat on the fence and written "Tomcat" under it. CHRISTMAS EVE Our cousin Victor, a young artist, came to spend Christmas with us. He was long-nosed and full of fun and ideas. "He's nice, but his nose is way out to here," Marfusha said of him. There was always a Christmas Eve masked ball at the Merchants' Assembly, I invitation only. Ladies we knew were busy having their costumes made. My parents had also received an invitation. That was when Mitya Lambert got the bright idea of getting even with the Zemstvo inspector during the ball. Pa] was all for it. Victor offered his services as an artist. We began to think of the costumes. Everyone was deep in thought that day. From time to time Mitya would bread the silence by rushing excitedly into the dining-room, shouting. "I've got it! It's hilarious!" "What?" we'd all ask. "How about dressing as a suicide? And the message on the corpse, I me on the costume can be: 'The Zemstvo inspector has driven me to my grave' Ha'ha." "With the orchestra playing a Chopin march," Mamma quipped. "Indeed, it's too funny for words." "I've never laughed so hard in my life," Papa said sadly. Mitya was embarrassed. He did a handstand and said as his legs swayed in the air: "I'll stand here like this till some good ideas flow into my head." At last Papa had a brainstorm. It really was a wonderful idea for a costume. Besides, his plan was magnificent in every other respect. Marfusha was to go to the ball and flirt with the flirtatious inspector. We trooped off to the kitchen. "Fair Marfusha, we have come to inquire whether you'd like to go to the ball at the Merchants' Assembly," Papa said solemnly. "Goodness gracious! But it's by invitation only. How'111 get in?" "You'll be the queen of the ball, Marfusha. There's only one drawback. We'll need all of your stamps. Can you bear to part with them?" "Just think, Marfusha!" Mitya pleaded. "You'll have the Zemstvo inspector at your mercy. It's up to you. You'll be the queen of the ball." "Ah, well," Marfusha said after a long pause. She sighed and bent down to pull her chest out from under her bed. DAYS GLUED TOGETHER WITH RUBBER CEMENT For the next two days everyone worked on Marfusha's costume. Piles of cut-up cardboard and paper were scattered all over "the master's kitchen", as Marfusha called Papa's study. There were streaks and smudges of paint and gum-arabic on us all. Tubes of rubber cement spun out sticky thin threads. Victor strutted about with his nose in the air, and there were drops of perspiration and india-ink on his face. Papa tried to pull an Argentinian stamp off his jacket. Mamma was giving Marfusha lessons in deportment and teaching her a few French phrases. Oska and I had suddenly become Siamese twins after accidentally sitting down on a long strip of ribbon that had been covered with rubber cement. The ribbon stuck fast to our pants, glueing us together. The evening of the ball Marfusha was powdered and her hair was curled. Then she was helped into her costume. It was a huge envelope, addressed and ready to be posted. There were stamps a foot long on the corners of the envelope. A good hundred of Marfusha's stamps had been used to make up each of the costume stamps. Victor had worked hard to match the colours and shapes. There were crazy postmarks going every which way. The address on the envelope had been done in a fine round hand and read: SPECIAL DELIVERY THE NORTH POLE For: His Excellency and Northern Grace SIR ENSTVO, INSPECTOR-ZEMSTVO THE POLAR ZEMSTVO OFFICE Captain Hatteras Square You'll know it when you are there. From: London, the City You'll find it if you're witty. After Marfusha was sealed into the large envelope a small envelope was set or her head for a hat. It, too, had stamps on each of its four corners. There was a poem on the paper envelope-hat which read: Never -will you guess my name, All your guesses are in vain. No one here can hint or tell, None will be of any help. Every Zoya, Emma, Mae Will be deaf and dumb today. Marfusha's slippers had also been covered with postage stamps. She looked very attractive in her envelope-gown. "You're so beautiful, Marfusha!" Oska said. "You're just as beautiful as the lady on the shampoo picture, only beautifuller." A white silk mask with silver edging hid most of Marfusha's face. Victor was elected to be the honourary postman. No one in town knew him. Besides, he had stuck on a large black moustache And donned Mamma's black hat with the ostrich feather. This and his own Ion nose made him look both sinister and romantic at one and the same time. H might have been a Spanish grandee, or a Rumanian organ-grinder. THE ANONYMOUS LETTER Victor and his precious letter drove up to the Assembly building in style. Um-pa-pa, um-pa-pa went the bass drum in the brightly-lit ballroom. Victor handed Marfusha down from the cab and then helped her off with her coat. He bowed low with reverence. "Guten tag, comment allez-vous? Bene, bene!" he said and twirled his frozen moustache. The porters regarded them respectfully. Bright lights, music and the shrieks and laughter of a party in full swing enveloped them. Once upstairs, Marfusha was immediately surrounded and everyone began reading the message on the envelope. For a moment a burst of laughter drowned out the music. Then, just as suddenly, it stopped. Through the slits in her mask Marfusha glimpsed the baffled Zemstvo inspector's face. He read the message and turned red. However, Marfusha's dainty feet in their stamp-covered slippers caught his roving eye. "Harrumph," he said. "My dear Anonymous, may I have this waltz?" "Mais oui," Anonymous replied. "Parlez-vous francaise?" The Zemstvo inspector was taken aback, for he did not parlez a word of French. One of the merchants, Adolph Stark, came to his aid and between them they tried to make her understand that the inspector wished to dance with her. The music boomed. The musicians puffed out their cheeks. It seemed that the very walls were expanding from the booming of the drum. The music wrung everyone's heart out like a wet hankie. The inspector treated Marfusha to ice cream. Adolph Stark melted away as quickly as it did. The Zemstvo inspector kissed her hand. All the other ladies were dying of envy. Guesses as to her identity and paper streamers filled the air. Confetti showered down. Marfusha's little plate was soon piled high with ballots, for everyone was voting hers the best costume. "Stop the music!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted. The orchestra, which was blaring away, stopped playing as suddenly as a gramophone that had run down. "Ladies and Gentlemen!" the inspector announced. "The 'Letter' has received the most votes and First Prize. A gold watch! Three cheers for the lovely Anonymous! And now let us open the envelope!" There was a babble of voices. Confetti bombs burst overhead. Someone whispered in Marfusha's ear: "Good for you, fair Marfusha. Good for you! Keep it up!" Mitya was standing around with a group of his classmates. They were laughing. Then he went over to the Zemstvo inspector and said: "You know, I think I recognize Anonymous. It's the well-known.... Oh, I shouldn't have said that! I promised not to tell!" "I beg you to," the Zemstvo inspector whispered. "To hell with your promise. Tell me who she is! Would you care for some ice cream?" "No, don't even ask," Mitya said as he polished off a dish of ice cream. "Let's open the letter, everybody!" the Zemstvo inspector shouted. At that very moment a long-nosed stranger with a huge moustache appeared in the ballroom. Spouting angry gibberish "Carramba peppermint oleonapht, sept accord dominant!" he took Marfusha's arm and steered her quickly towards the stairs. The Zemstvo inspector rushed after them, with all the colourful harlequins, dominoes, hussars, flower baskets, Chinese dolls, butterflies, Gypsies and princesses in tow. However, Victor's impressive nose and moustache kept them all at bay. Mitya and his classmates cut the crowd off as if by accident while Marfusha buttoned up her coat and the sleigh pulled away. Victor jumped into the moving sleigh, which then carried them swiftly along the sleeping streets. Marfusha's eyelids drooped. The street lamps, like some great jellyfish, slowly moved their golden beams. Cinderella returned to the kitchen. That night a new gold watch ticked away softly near the empty chest. Marfusha was sound asleep. She had had a wonderful time and was very tired. The torn envelope, that shell of the magic evening, lay empty by the bed. Four pairs of shoes stood guard outside her door. They would have to be shined the next morning. CINDERELLA IS EXPOSED The Pokrovsk society column of the Saratov News carried the following item: "There was a masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly last Wednesday. Among the many striking costumes the most popular by far was one called 'The Anonymous Letter'. "The costume was ingeniously made in the shape of an envelope with real cancelled postage stamps on it and a witty address. It was quite justly awarded the First Prize, a gold watch which was bestowed by Mr. Razudanov, the Zemstvo inspector. "Despite the insistence of the other guests, the mysterious damsel refused to reveal her identity and was carried off by a person unknown to the gathering. Rumour has it that she is a well-known actress." Two days later, when the town was still alive with gossip as to her identity, Papa was called in to see the Zemstvo inspector's wife, who had a migraine headache. After he had attended to his patient. Papa had a glass of tea with the inspector. "My dear doctor, you should have come to the masquerade. You don't know what you missed. There was a young lady there who, ah, I can't even begin to describe her. It was a barb in my direction, I must admit, but you should have seen those dainty feet! And those lovely hands! You can always tell a lady by her hands and feet, I'm sure she is a foreigner. You know, I can't get her out of my mind." "Indeed? I really don't think she's that extraordinary. It was only our parlourmaid Marfusha." "Wha-a-at?" The inspector sat bolt upright. His face turned livid, his jaw sagged and his eyes bulged. Papa could contain his laughter no longer and roared so, the inspector's wife had another migrain attack. CINDERELLA'S SLIPPER Here ends the story of the last Cinderella. A young page from the palace did not open the kitchen door and hand Marfusha a glass slipper. However, a trace of Cinderella's famous slipper appeared on a page of the school's Deportment Ledger, for the doves that had plucked the gold dust from the pot of ashes for Marfusha were made to pay for what they had done. Several days later a rubber galosh of tremendous proportions was found nailed to the Zemstvo inspector's front porch. That very same morning the following notices were pasted on various fences: "AN ORDER "I hereby order the entire female population of Pokrovsk to appear before the Zemstvo inspector in order to try on a slipper, lost by a mysterious lady who attended the masquerade at the Merchants' Assembly. The lady whose foot it fits will be immediately appointed Zemstvo inspectoress. The Zemstvo inspector pledges to be forever under this slipper's heel. (Signed) Razudanov Zemstvo Inspector" They said that the next morning, while the galosh was still on the porch, a peasant woman who had heard of the order tried her luck, but her foot was too big. "It's just a bit tight," she said sadly and spat into the galosh. Mitya and three of his classmates were reprimanded "for unbecoming conduct in a public place and unbridled mischief, detrimental to the school and the school system". Their marks for behaviour for the term were lowered. Such is the epilogue. It is quite unlike the end of the old fairy tale. THE DOVE BOOK INTRODUCTION I took my school entrance examination that spring. Dmitry Alexeyevich, my tutor, came to the house early on the fateful morning and made me go over some rules of grammar. Before leaving for the hospital Papa put his large hand on my head, tilted my head back and said: "Well, how's the old bean?" Mamma accompanied me to school. She was very nervous, and as we walked along she glanced at me again and again with the greatest concern and kept saying, "The one thing I want you to remember is not to be nervous! Speak loudly and clearly, and don't rush. Think carefully before you answer a question." Dmitry Alexeyevich walked along on the other side. He was drilling me in the multiplication table. We reached "9 times 9" and the school yard simultaneously. The day was full of grammar. At the noisy market adjectives, interjections and numerals filled the air. An inanimate locomotive on the spur line near the granary tried to confuse me by tooting and moving like an animate object. When we reached the school door Dmitry Alexeyevich became very solemn, although by looking through his pince-nez I could see his kind and gentle eyes. "All right. This is it," he said and then quickly added: "What part of speech is a school?" "An inanimate common noun!" "And a schoolboy?" "An animate...." At that very moment a big, tall boy wearing the school uniform opened the door. He glanced at my sailor suit with contempt and said glumly: "You're wrong, sonny. A schoolboy's an inanimate object." I was stunned and baffled both by the size and by the muttered words of this great scholar. A chill of nervous tension scooted along the school corridor. There was a roll-call. The examiners' table was covered with a heavy green cloth. The first part of the entrance examination was a dictation. I thought that everyone in the classroom could hear my heart pounding. Anxious mothers peeped through the door, searching out the bowed heads of their sons, hoping they would get the tricky words right. I did. But I was so nervous I left off the last letter of my own name. Next came a written test in arithmetic and our oral examinations. I named all the parts of speech in a test sentence in Russian grammar. Then the priest came over to me and handed me a book written in church Slavonic. At this the Russian teacher, a blond, curly-haired, fair-bearded man spoke up rather hesitantly: "I don't believe he needs to know that, Father. I mean, being of another faith and all...." He seemed very embarrassed, as if he had said something impolite. I, too, blushed. "All the more reason why he should," the priest replied sternly. "Here, read from here." I read and translated the page he had opened. Several days later my parents were informed that I had been accepted. JUST LIKE A SOLDIER-BOY We spent the summer in the country. I felt that I had taken along my new and very impressive title of a schoolboy to the pine and linden forests of Khvalyn, where I proudly carried it to the top of the famed chalk hills, the ravines of Teremshan and the maze of wild raspberry patches we frequented on the sly. At that time Russia, Europe and the world were just launching a war. We returned home by boat. New recruits were being transported by the same boat. Newsboys at the various landings shouted the headlines: "Read the latest dispatches! Three thousand prisoners of war! Read all about our trophies!" Weeping, dishevelled women of all ages crowded near the boat at the landings They were seeing off their conscripted husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. The parting whistle drowned out their wailing, the ragged cheerings of the men, the floundering band. The stem traced a large, foaming arc in the water, and the whistle sounded again. The sound of it hung suspended in the air. All was still for a moment, and then there was another long, anxious blast. The crystal pendants of the chandelier in the first-class saloon tinkled in time to the engine's strokes. A piano crashed. The air was heavy with the smells of the Volga, chowder and perfume. Ladies laughed. Looking through the saloon window, I could see the steep bank drifting away. A string of farm wagons lumbered forlornly up the road from the pier. They had seen their men off. My new leather school satchel introduced a manly, army smell to our stateroom. The new term was to begin in two days, and my school uniform awaited me at home. My school days were beginning. Farewell, my neighbourhood friends! I practically felt as if I had been conscripted. When we got home m head was shaved, as was the custom for new boys. Papa said I looked like scarecrow. "Just like a soldier-boy," Wirkel, the tailor, said as he adjusted my uniform. BUTTONS