him the very next instant.
Surely God would not fail to punish him at once for such out-and-out
sacrilege. But nothing happened.
"Very strange," Father remarked coolly. "That means a member of our
household has taken to thieving. Your Aunt and I obviously have no need to
take money in secret from the sideboard. Pavlik has been in sight of
grown-ups ^all day long, so he couldn't have taken it either. You've given
your word of honour. Therefore, we can only assume that the money was taken
by Dunya, who has served us faithfully for five years."
At the moment Dunya happened to be in the anteroom, filling a lamp.
She set the lamp-chimney and her rag on the mirror-stand and appeared
in the doorway. Her neck and even her arms, which were bared to the elbow,
had turned red. Her big good-natured face had broken out in splotches and
was screwed up in misery.
"May I never see a happy day for the rest of my life," she cried, "if
the young master didn't lose that change from the market playing lugs with
Gavrik!" Father looked at Petya.
The boy realised that he had to make a lightning retort, that without
losing a second he had to say something proud and noble and just, something
which would crush Dunya and instantly free him from all suspicion.
A minute ago he still could have confessed. But now that the matter of
lugs had been brought up-not for anything in the world!
"You have no right to talk like that!" he screamed hoarsely. A bright
flush of false indignation suffused his face. "You're lying!"
But even that did not seem enough to him. "You-you're probably-the
thief yourself!" he blurted out, stamping his feet.
While Dunya bustled about in the kitchen packing her things and
demanding that she be paid off, Petya ran into the nursery and slammed the
door so furiously that the enamelled image of the guardian angel on the back
of the bed began to rock.
He flatly refused to ask Dunya's forgiveness. He got into bed and made
believe he had fainted. They left him in peace.
Father did not come in to kiss him good-night.
Petya heard Auntie Tatyana pleading with Dunya to remain. Dunya,
sobbing, finally consented.
Many times that night he sprang awake, horrified at what he had done.
He was ready to run to the kitchen and kiss Dunya's feet to beg forgiveness.
But what upset him still more was the thought of Gavrik, who would demand
settlement tomorrow.
In the morning Petya waited until Father led Pavlik to the bathroom to
wash. Then he went to the wardrobe and took out the old uniform dress coat.
Family legend had it that Daddy had had the dress coat made when he was
graduating from the university and that he had worn it only once in his
life, at the insistence of Mummy's strait-laced relatives who demanded when
Daddy married Mummy that everything should be done the proper way. Ever
since then it had hung in the wardrobe, forgotten by everybody.
The dress coat had a great many lugs but the pity of it was that most
of them were too small to be of any use in the game.
There were only four big ones. But even these fell short of
expectations: they were cheap, thick white threes which had practically gone
out of circulation.
The Odessa tailor who sewed on those buttons sometime in the last
century had done a conscientious job: they did not yield to scissors. Petya
impatiently ripped them off, cloth and all, with his teeth.
Need we say it? This time, too, Petya had miserable luck.
He fell deeper in debt to Gavrik than ever.
He was now hopelessly involved. Gavrik regarded him with a dour sort of
pity that boded no good.
"Well, Petya, what do you say?" he asked sternly.
There was no misunderstanding those words. They meant roughly this:
"Now look here, pal, if you don't pay back those lugs I'll have to take it
out of your hide.
Friendship's got nothing to do with it. That's the law, and you know it
yourself. Lugs aren't cigarette pictures- they cost money. So don't be
sore."
Petya wasn't sore. He knew that Gavrik was in the right. He merely
heaved a deep sigh and asked for a little more time. Gavrik consented.
All that evening Petya was in torment. His ears became so hot from the
mental strain that they had a distinct ruby glow in the light of the lamp.
He thought up a thousand and one ways of getting rich quick, but they
were all either too fantastic or too criminal. Finally a wonderful yet
surprisingly simple idea came to him. Hadn't his late Grandfather, Mummy's
Daddy, been a major? How could that ever have slipped his mind!
Losing no time, he tore a sheet from his arithmetic copybook and sat
down to write a letter to his Grandmother, Mummy's Mummy, who lived in
Ekaterinoslav.
He showered her with endearments, reported brilliant progress at the
Gymnasium (to tell the truth, a bit of an exaggeration) and then asked her
to send him-as quickly as possible-dear Grandfather's major's uniform as a
remembrance.
A shrewd boy, Petya. He knew just the right approach to that
kindhearted old lady who treasured the memory of Grandfather, a hero of the
Turkish war, no less ardently than she loved Petya, her eldest grandson.
Further he told her that he had made up his mind to follow in his
heroic Grandfather's footsteps and become a hero too. He had decided upon an
army career and needed the uniform as a constant spur to his martial spirit.
Petya hoped to get a pile of lugs from the major's uniform-about
twenty, if not all of thirty, excellent officers' fives with embossed
eagles.
That alone could clear his debt and perhaps even give him a chance to
win back his losses.
The parcel, he calculated, was sure to reach him in a week at the
latest.
Petya told Gavrik the whole story. Gavrik said it was a good idea.
Together, standing on tiptoe, the boys dropped the letter into the big
yellow box with the picture of a registered letter with five seals on it and
two crossed postal bugles.
Now all they had to do was sit back and wait.
In anticipation of rich pickings Gavrik let Petya draw upon unlimited
credit, and Petya light-mindedly gambled away the future legacy from his
Grandfather.
THE HEAVY SATCHEL
A week passed, then another, and still no parcel from Grandmother.
Although the Tsar had proclaimed "freedom" there were more and more
disturbances. The postal service worked badly. Father stopped receiving the
Russkiye Vedomosti from Moscow, and in the evenings he sat silent and
disturbed, not knowing what was going on in the world or what view to take
of things.
The preparatory class was dismissed for an indefinite period. Petya
idled away his days. During this time he lost so much to Gavrik on credit
that chills ran down his spine whenever he thought about it.
One day Gavrik came and said with an ominous smile, "You'd better not
expect those lugs of yours so soon. There's going to be a general in a
couple of days."
A month earlier Petya would not have understood this. But now it was
perfectly clear: a "general" meant a strike.
There was no reason to doubt Gavrik's words. Petya had noted long ago
that somehow or other everything was known much earlier in Near Mills than
in town.
The news was a knife-thrust in the heart.
"But couldn't it come before that?"
"Not likely."
Petya turned pale.
"What about that debt?" Gavrik said firmly.
Petya trembled with impatience to start playing. He hastily gave his
word of honour and swore by the true and holy Cross that tomorrow, in one
way or another, he would pay it all back without fail.
"See that you do! Or else-" Gavrik planted his legs in their broad
lilac-coloured corduroys wide apart, sailor fashion.
That evening Petya stole Pavlik's famous moneybox, locked himself in
the bathroom, and with a table-knife pried out its contents: forty-three
kopeks in coppers and silver.
He performed this complicated operation with amazing skill and speed
and then filled the box with a collection of rattling trash: nails, lead
seals, bone buttons and pieces of iron.
This was absolutely necessary, for twice a day-morning and
evening-thrifty, methodical Pavlik checked his moneybox: he raised the tin
to his ear and, sticking out his tongue, rattled the kopeks, delighting in
the sound and the weight of his treasure. One can imagine the howl he would
raise if he discovered the theft. But everything went off well.
Before going to sleep Pavlik rattled his bank full of trash and found
it in perfect order.
But crime, as we all know, never pays. In three days Petya lost
Pavlik's money to the last kopek.
There was no hope of Grandfather's uniform coming soon. Again Gavrik
began to press for payment.
Every morning Petya sat on the windowsill waiting for Gavrik.
He pictured with horror the day it all came to light: the lugs, the
sandals, the dress coat, Pavlik's moneybox. Inevitably, sooner or later,
that day would arrive. Horrors!
But he tried not to think about that. He tormented himself with the
eternal fruitless dream of the bankrupt gambler-the dream of recouping his
losses.
Walking the streets was dangerous, yet Gavrik never failed to appear.
He would come to the middle of the yard, put two fingers in his mouth, and
let out a magnificent whistle. Petya would hastily nod to his chum from the
window and run down the back stairs. "The lugs come?"
"Tomorrow, I swear it, on my word of honour. By the true and holy
Cross. This is the last time."
One fine day Gavrik announced that he couldn't wait any longer. In
other words, Petya, as a bankrupt debtor, now became Gavrik's slave until he
paid back in full.
Such was the harsh but just law of the street.
Gavrik tapped Petya on the shoulder, like a knight-errant initiating
his servitor into squiredom.
"Now you'll be my shadow," he said good-naturedly. "Fetch your
satchel," he added in a stern voice.
"My satchel? What for?"
"For the lugs, you bloke."
A shrewd gleam flickered in Gavrik's eyes.
To tell the truth, Petya was delighted at the prospect of such a merry
form of slavery. He had long wanted to roam about town with Gavrik but
because of what was going on he had been forbidden, in the strictest of
terms, to set foot outside the yard. Now his conscience could rest perfectly
at ease: he had nothing to do with it-it was Gavrik's will, and he had to
obey Gavrik without a word. He didn't want to walk about town, of course,
but he simply had to: that was the law.
Petya ran upstairs and came down with his satchel.
"Put it on."
Petya obeyed. From all sides Gavrik inspected the little Gymnasium
scholar in the long overcoat reaching to his heels and with the empty
satchel on his back. What he saw evidently satisfied him.
"Gymnasium card?"
"Yes."
"Show it here."
Petya produced his card. Gavrik opened it and spelled out the words at
the top: "Valuing his honour, the Gymnasium pupil cannot fail to value the
honour of his school. . . ."
"Right," he remarked, returning the card. "Stow it away. Might come in
handy."
Then Gavrik turned Petya round and filled the satchel with heavy bags
of lugs.
"Now nobody'll stop us from going anywhere," Gavrik said, fastening the
straps of the satchel. He patted the calf-skin cover with satisfaction.
Petya did not quite get the meaning of those words but following the
general law of the street-to ask less and to know more-he held his tongue.
The boys cautiously left the yard.
Thus began their wanderings together through the disordered city.
With each passing day it became more dangerous to walk the streets.
Gavrik, however, did not give up his thrilling and mysterious life of a
roaming champion. On the contrary, the more restless and frightening the
city became the more stubbornly did he make his way to the remotest and most
dangerous places. So much so that at times Petya began to wonder whether
there wasn't some inexplicable connection between Gavrik and the disorders.
From morning to evening the two went in and out of backyards where
Gavrik carried on a business in lugs- buying, selling and exchanging-with
the local boys. In some of the yards he collected debts. In others he
played. In still others he had strange dealings with grown-ups who, to
Petya's extreme astonishment, were just as keen about lugs as children were.
Petya, carrying the heavy satchel on his back, obediently followed
Gavrik everywhere. And again, in Gavrik's presence the city magically turned
itself about before Petya's wonder-struck eyes, showing him its
communicating courtyards, cellars, holes in fences, sheds, firewood yards,
glassed-in arcades, and all its other secrets. Petya saw the horrifying and
at the same time picturesque poverty of the Odessa slums; until then he had
never even known they existed.
Hiding in gateways when there was shooting and passing around
overturned horse-trams blocking the roadway, the boys roamed up and down the
city, going to the most outlying sections.
Thanks to Petya's Gymnasium uniform they easily entered districts that
were cordoned by troops and the police. Gavrik taught Petya to go up to the
chief of the cordon detail and say in a tearful voice, "Mr. Officer, please
let me and my pal cross over to the other side. We live in that big grey
house over there and I'm sure Mummy's worried why we've been away so long."
The boy looked so guileless and respectable in his Gymnasium overcoat
and with the calf-skin satchel on his back that the officer, although he was
not supposed to let anyone pass into the suspected zone, usually made an
exception in the case of the two frightened kids.
"Run for it, only be careful. Keep close to the wall, and don't let me
see you again. Now be off."
In this way the boys could always reach districts that were completely
cut off to others.
They went several times to an old Greek house in Malaya Arnautskaya. In
the courtyard there was a fountain-a pyramid of spongy sea rocks with a
green iron stork on top. Once upon a time water used to come out of its
beak.
While Petya waited in the yard Gavrik ran down into the basement,
returning with a lot of bags of unusually heavy lugs. He stuffed them into
Petya's satchel and then they quickly ran out of the quiet yard with its
old, rickety galleries.
Once Petya saw Gavrik's grandfather there. He was walking slowly on
bent legs across the yard to the refuse-bin.
"Oh, Grandpa!" he cried. "I say there, what are you doing here? I
thought you were in jail."
Grandpa looked at the boy but obviously did not recognise him.
"I'm here now," he mumbled tonelessly, shifting his pail to his other
hand. "I'm-a watchman-a night watchman now-"
He continued slowly on his way.
The boys went to the port, to Chumka, to Duke's Gardens, to Peresyp, to
the Ghen factory-everywhere but Near Mills. To Near Mills Gavrik went alone,
after his day of labours.
Had Auntie Tatyana and Father had even an inkling of the places their
Petya visited during that time they surely would have lost their reason.
THE BOMB
Finally, however, this wonderful but weird life of wandering came to an
end.
On that memorable day Gavrik appeared earlier than usual, and he and
Petya immediately set out.
Gavrik's face was grey and extraordinarily grim. His tightly-pressed
lips had turned different colours from the cold. He walked along with a
quick, rolling gait, his hands deep in the pockets of his broad corduroys- a
small, hunched, determined figure. Every now and then a hard light came into
his clear, fixed eyes so like Grandpa's. Petya barely managed to keep up
with his friend. They practically ran through the streets, which were
deserted like the streets in a dream.
Tense expectation hung in the grey air. The boys' footsteps rang on the
paving stones. Occasionally the pane of ice covering an empty puddle broke
underfoot.
All of a sudden a faint rumble sounded somewhere far away, in the
centre of town. It was as if a pyramid of empty crates had crashed to the
roadway from a waggon.
Gavrik stopped and listened to the feeble echo.
"What's that?" Petya whispered. "Crates?"
"A bomb," Gavrik said dryly and with assurance. "Somebody's been done
in."
Two streets farther on a woman with a basket from which lumps of
charcoal and quinces were dropping turned the corner at a run.
"Oh, Lord! Oh, Holy Mother!" she said over and over again, trying to
straighten her kerchief with a trembling hand. "Oh, Lord, it was awful! The
man was torn to pieces."
"Where?"
"In Police Street. There I was, walking along, and here he was, in a
carriage. And then it exploded. Tore him to bits. Lord forgive us! It killed
the horses and tore the carriage to bits-"
"Who was it?"
"The chief of police. From the Alexandrovsky station. There I was, and
here he was. And that revolutionary stood just opposite. And just imagine,
he was carrying an ordinary little package, done up in newspaper-"
"Did they catch him?"
"The revolutionary? Never! Everybody ran away and he did too. They say
he was a sailor in disguise."
The woman ran off. Despite his grimness, Gavrik took Petya by the
shoulder and did a couple of jig steps.
"That's the one who punched Grandpa's face," he said in a quick, fiery
whisper. "That'll teach him to use his fists! Right?"
"Right," said Petya, turning cold.
That day the boys made two trips to the courtyard in Malaya Arnautskaya
with the fountain and stork, where they took on "goods", as Gavrik called
it.
The first time that they set out with the "goods" for the Alexandrovsky
Prospect, which was cordoned off by troops, they were let through without
any particular difficulty.
After passing several houses Gavrik led Petya through a gateway into a
big deserted yard with a Cossack tethering post; the ground there was hard
and frozen and studded with empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases that
had been pressed into it by soldiers' boots.
They crossed the yard, went down into a cellar and walked for a long
time in the damp darkness, past wood-bins, until they came out into another
yard. From there they followed a narrow opening which led between two tall
and gloomy brick walls into still another yard.
Gavrik obviously knew all the ins and outs here. The opening was so
narrow that Petya, making his way behind Gavrik, found his satchel scraping
against the walls. Finally they reached the other yard, which was as narrow
and high and dark as a cistern.
Judging by the long distance they had come and the number of turns and
zigzags, they were in the yard of a building that faced some other street.
The whole yard was strewn with broken glass and plaster.
The windows of the building were tightly shuttered. There seemed to be
no one living in it.
A hollow silence hung in the air.
But beyond that silence, in the unknown street on the other side of the
building, there was the alarming noise of some sort of movement, a noise
more sensed than heard.
Besides, every now and then loud shots barked from above, seemingly
from the sky, and they filled the yard with the echoings of a well. Petya
pressed his back to the wall and, trembling, shut his eyes. But not so
Gavrik.
Without hurrying he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Somewhere up above a shutter banged. "Coming!" a voice called.
A minute later-to Petya it seemed an hour-a sweating red-faced man
without an overcoat, in a jacket smeared with chalk, flung open the
backstairs door.
Petya gasped. It was Terenti.
"Let's have it-quick!" Terenti muttered, wiping his wet face on his
sleeve.
Paying no attention to Petya himself, Terenti went straight to the
satchel.
"Thanks! Just in time! We didn't have a damn thing left!"
Breathing heavily, he unfastened the straps with impatient fingers and
transferred the bags from the satchel to his pockets. "Tell Joseph Karlovich
to send some more right away," he called out as he ran back. "Bring
everything there is or else we won't hold out."
"Right," said Gavrik.
Just then a bullet struck the wall near the roof, and a spray of pink
brick dust came down on the boys.
They quickly retraced their route to Malaya Arnautskaya and took on
another load of "goods". This time the satchel was so heavy that Petya
staggered under its weight.
Now, of course, he knew very well what kind of lugs these were. At any
other time he would have thrown the whole thing up and run home. But today
his entire being was gripped by the thrill of danger, by a feeling more
powerful even than the gambling fever, and not for anything in the world
would he have deserted his pal. Besides, he would be able to share Gavrik's
glory. The very thought that he might lose the right to tell about his
adventures made him instantly disregard all danger.
Gavrik and Petya set out on the return trip. But how the city had
changed in the meantime! Now it was seething.
One minute the streets would be filled with people running in all
directions, and the next they would be swept clear in a flash by the iron
broom of a fusillade.
As they approached the cordon Gavrik caught Petya by the arm and
quickly pulled him into a gateway.
"Stop!"
"Why?"
Still holding Petya's arm Gavrik cautiously peeped out. The next
instant he shrank back and pressed himself against the wall of the gateway,
under the black board listing the tenants of that house.
"Listen, Petya, we're stuck. I just saw that skunk who nearly tore my
ear off. Look, there he is."
Petya tiptoed to the edge of the gateway and looked out. At the cordon
post a gentleman in a heavy overcoat and an astrakhan cap was walking up and
down the roadway past the stacked rifles and the torn-up iron fence of the
public garden. When he turned, Petya saw a coarse clean-shaven face and a
fleshy nose. There was something very familiar about that unfamiliar face.
He had seen it somewhere before. But where? Something prevented him from
remembering. Could it be that bluish upper lip? Then suddenly he remembered.
Of course, it was Moustaches! The man from the Turgenev, only now without
the moustache. That face had impressed itself on Petya's memory for the rest
of his life. He would have recognised it in a thousand, moustache or no
moustache.
"It's Moustaches," whispered Petya, taking his place beside Gavrik,
with his satchel pressed against the wall. "The one who was chasing the
sailor. Only now he's without his moustache. Remember? I told you about him
and you laughed at me."
"Shaved it off so nobody would know him. But he knows me, the rat,"
Gavrik said angrily. "We'll never get past."
"But perhaps we can."
"Not on your life."
Gavrik peeped out. "He's walking up and down."
He clenched his fist and angrily began to chew his knuckles. "And
they're sitting there waiting for us. The dirty snake!"
There was a minute of deep and utter silence in the uprising, a silence
broken by scattered shots in the distance. They reverberated over the roofs
of the city.
"Listen, Petya," Gavrik said all of a sudden, "do you understand?
They're sitting there waiting all for nothing- without the goods. They'll
all be shot as easy as anything. And I can't go because that skunk is sure
to follow me!"
Gavrik's eyes filled with tears of anger. He gave a loud sniff, blew
his nose on the ground, and then looked angrily into Petya's eyes.
"Understand?"
"Uh-huh," said Petya with his lips alone, turning pale under his chum's
angry, friendly, insistent and at the same time pleading look.
"Can you get through by yourself? You won't let 'em down?"
Petya's excitement was such that he could not get out a single word. He
swallowed hard and nodded his head. Gavrik, first glancing round furtively
and peeping out of the gateway, began to fill Petya's pockets with his bags.
"Give them all the goods, everything, you hear? What's in your satchel
and what's in your pockets too. If you're caught shut up and say you found
it in the street and don't know anything. Clear?"
"Uh-huh."
"When you hand it over come back here. I'll be waiting for you here in
the gateway. Clear?"
"Uh-huh."
Petya, his pockets bulging, walked up to the cordon. He was so scared
and excited he hardly knew what he was doing.
"Hey, where are you going? Are you blind?" Moustaches shouted, running
up to him.
"Please," Petya whimpered in the thin voice he had learned from Gavrik,
"please let me through. I live nearby, in the Alexandrovsky Prospect, in
that big grey house, and my Mummy's awfully worried. She probably thinks I'm
killed!"
Real tears poured out of his eyes and rolled down his plump grimy
cheeks. Moustaches gave the little preparatory class pupil a disgusted look
and took him by the satchel.
He led the boy to the edge of the roadway and gave him a light shove in
the behind with his knee.
"Run along!"
Beside himself with joy, Petya raced towards the house.
HG OF THE FIGHTING GROUP
Petya slipped through the gateway and started across the yard.
When he came this way an hour earlier, with Gavrik, he had not been
troubled by anything in particular. He knew he was under the reliable wing
of a resourceful and experienced friend. He was freed from the necessity of
thinking for himself; he was merely an obedient companion without a will of
his own. Someone else, someone stronger than he, thought and acted for him.
Now he was completely alone. There was no one but himself to depend
upon.
Without Gavrik the world around Petya immediately became threatening,
huge, full of lurking dangers.
Danger skulked in the stone arches of the inner galleries, among the
ominous boxes and the old broken furniture. It stood waiting in the middle
of the yard, behind the mulberry tree whose trunk had been gnawed by horses.
It peered out of the black hole of the refuse-bin.
Everything the boy saw took on an exaggerated size. Huge Cossack horses
pressed their smooth, golden, dancing cruppers against him. Monstrous tails
swished across his satchel. Don Cossacks in blue breeches with red stripes
hopped on one foot while the other was in the stirrup.
"From the right, by threes!" cried the hoarse voice of a Cossack
ensign.
The mirror-like crescent of a drawn sabre hung in the air above the j
aunty forage caps.
Petya went down into the cellar.
He walked a long time, feeling his way in the stuffy but cold darkness
and breathing the dusty air of storage rooms. Every time a cobweb touched
his eyelashes he took it for a bat's wing, and horror gripped him.
Finally he reached the second yard. It was deserted.
Only now, in the midst of this strange emptiness, did Petya become
really aware of how terribly alone he was. He wanted to run back-but
thousands of miles and thousands of fears separated him from the street,
from Gavrik.
In the opening between the second and third yards it was so unbearably
quiet that he felt like shouting with all his might; shouting desperately,
passionately, frenziedly-anything so as not to hear that silence.
It was the kind of silence that comes only in the interval between two
shots.
Now he had to put two fingers in his mouth and whistle. But suddenly he
realised that he did not know how to whistle with his fingers. He had
learned long ago to spit through his teeth, but not to whistle. He hadn't
thought of it. It had slipped his mind.
Clumsily he put his fingers in his mouth and blew, but no whistle came
out. In desperation he blew again, as hard as he could. Nothing. Only
spittle and a hiss.
Then Petya mustered all his spiritual powers.
"Hey!" he yelled, closing his eyes.
His voice sounded very weak. Still, a booming echo instantly filled the
empty cistern of a yard.
No one answered, however. The silence became more terrifying than ever.
High above there was a deafening crackle. Down flew the joint of a
drain-pipe, carrying with it pieces of brick, spikes, and mortar.
"H-e-y! H-e-y! H-e-y!" Petya shouted at the top of his lungs.
A shutter in the top storey opened and an unfamiliar face looked out.
"What's all the shouting about? Bring it? Come up here! And be lively!"
The face disappeared.
Petya looked about in indecision. But he was all alone, with no one to
advise him. There was another crackle overhead. A big chunk of plaster flew
down and crashed into bits at Petya's feet.
Bending over, he dashed to the backstairs door. He started up the
clanging iron stairway, tripping on the hem of his overcoat; it had been
bought several sizes too large, so that he could grow into it.
"Faster! Faster!" an angry voice cried from above.
The heavy satchel banged painfully against his back. The bulging
pockets got in his way. He suddenly felt hot. The inside of his cap became
warm and wet. Sweat poured down on his eyebrows and eyes. His face flamed.
Upstairs, the irritable, pleading voice kept shouting, "Faster! Faster,
damn you!"
Petya breathed heavily, sticking out his tongue from the exertion. He
had barely reached the third-storey landing when a man in an expensive but
soiled overcoat with a lambskin collar grasped him by the shoulders.
The man was hatless and his forehead was plastered with strands of wet
hair. He had a foppish little moustache and beard which didn't at all fit in
with his ordinary, snub-nosed face, now red and powdered with plaster.
His eyes, under bushy brows white with plaster, had a gay, dare-devil
gleam, and at the same time a sort of alarmed expression. He looked like a
man who had been torn away from a very difficult and urgent job and was in a
terrible hurry to get back to it.
When Petya felt the strong fingers grip his shoulders he thought the
man was going to shake him, the way Daddy did when he was very angry. His
legs buckled under him from fright. But the man looked affectionately into
his eyes.
"Bring it?" he asked in a hurried whisper. Without waiting for an
answer he pulled the boy into the empty kitchen of a flat where-as Petya
sensed immediately- something tremendous and frightening was going on,
something that usually never happened in flats.
The man ran his eyes over Petya and without saying a word went straight
for his bulging pockets. He hastily pulled the heavy little bags out of
them. Petya stood in front of him with his arms spread apart.
There was something very familiar about his unfamiliar face with the
little moustache and beard.
Petya had surely seen it somewhere before. But when? Where?
He searched the recesses of his memory, but with no results. Something
kept putting him off. Could it be the moustache and beard?
In the meantime the man had deftly extracted the four bags from the
boy's pockets.
"Is that all?"
"No, there's more in the satchel."
"Good boy! Thanks! And just think-a Gymnasium pupil!"
As a sign of his admiration he gripped Petya's cap by the visor and
pulled it down hard on top of his ears.
And now Petya saw, an inch from his nose, a strong sooty hand which
gave off the sour smell of gunpowder. On it was a little blue anchor.
"The sailor!" he exclaimed.
But that same instant something crashed in the other part of the flat.
There was a blast of air. A pot tumbled from a shelf. With soft, cat-like
steps the sailor ran into the passage, shouting, "Wait here!"
A minute later six jerky shots resounded somewhere close by. Petya
threw off his satchel and began to unfasten it with trembling fingers.
Just then Terenti came into the kitchen from the passage. He was
swaying on his feet. He was coatless, in a shirt with only one sleeve. The
other sleeve was wound about his head. Blood trickled down his temple from
under the bandage. He held a revolver in his right hand.
When he saw Petya he started to say something but waved his hand and
first took a drink of water, putting his mouth to the tap.
"Bring it?" he asked, pausing for air between two gulps. The water
flowed noisily over his startingly white face. "Where's Gavrik? Alive?"
"Uh-huh."
But there was obviously no time for questions. Without stopping to wipe
his face Terenti took the bags out of the satchel.
"All the same we won't hold out," he muttered. He could scarcely stand
on his feet. "We'll get away across the roofs. They're setting up a gun.
You'd better clear out, kid, before a bullet gets you. Clear out quick.
Thanks, and good luck!"
He sat down on a stool but a moment later got up, and, wiping his
revolver on his knee, ran down the passage to the room from which came the
steady bark of shots and the crash of glass.
Petya picked up his light satchel and ran to the door. Curiosity,
however, made him pause for a minute and look down the passage. Through the
wide-open door he saw a room piled with broken furniture.
In the middle of the wall, papered in a design of brown bouquets, he
saw a yawning hole round which the lath framework was bared.
Several men were leaning against the sills of the smashed windows,
firing one shot after another down into the street from their revolvers.
Petya saw Terenti's bandaged head and the sailor's lambskin collar. He
also caught a glimpse of a shaggy black Caucasian cloak and a college
student's cap.
The room swam and surged in bluish threads of smoke.
The sailor knelt at a windowsill on which stood a boudoir night table.
He kept shoving out his arm, and it jerked as he fired shot after shot.
"Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" he yelled madly.
In the midst of all that movement, chaos, commotion, and smoke only one
man was completely calm-a man with a yellow, indifferent, waxen face, and a
small black hole above his closed eyes.
He lay on the floor in the middle of the room, in an awkward pose, face
up, surrounded by empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases.
His broken pince-nez, with the black cord looped behind his firm white
ear, lay beside his head on the plaster-sprinkled parquet. A very old
technological student's cap with a cracked visor also lay neatly on the
floor.
Petya looked at the man and suddenly realised that he was looking at a
corpse.
He ran back. How he got out of the house and reached the gateway where
Gavrik was waiting for him he did not remember.
"Well? Deliver it?"
"I did."
Breathlessly Petya told Gavrik everything he had seen in that
terrifying flat.
"All the same they won't hold out. They'll get away across the roofs,"
he whispered, breathing heavily. "They're putting up a cannon against them."
Gavrik turned pale and made the sign of the cross. Never in his life
had Petya seen his friend so scared.
Nearby, almost next to them, a gun roared. An iron echo rumbled over
the roofs.
"Done for!" Gavrik cried in despair. "Hook it!"
The boys rushed out into the street and ran across the city, which had
changed for the third time that morning.
Now the Cossacks were complete masters of the situation. The streets
resounded with the clatter of hoofs.
Squadrons of Don Cossacks that had been lying low in the courtyards
sped through the gateways, lashing out to the right and left with their
whips.
There was no hiding from them: all the house-entrances and gateways had
been locked tight and were guarded by army and police details. Every alley
was a trap.
The remnants of the dispersed demonstration scattered this way and
that, without any hope of saving themselves. Cossacks overtook them and cut
them down one by one.
In Malaya Arnautskaya a bow-legged man without a hat or coat ran down
the middle of the roadway past the boys. Under his arm he held a stick with
a red flag. It was the owner of the shooting gallery. He ran limping and
dodging from side to side.
At any other time this sight might have surprised the boys, but now it
only filled them with horror.
Every ten paces or so Joseph Karlovich turned back a terribly pale,
tormented face with wild eyes. Two Don Cossacks were bearing down upon him
at a fast trot.
The horseshoes rang loud against the granite cobbles, drawing sparks
that were pale in the daylight.
A minute later Joseph Karlovich was between the two horses. He let them
pass, slipped aside, and then dashed up to a door and seized the handle.
The door was locked. He tugged at it in desperation, kicked it with all
his might, rammed it with his shoulder. It did not yield. The Cossacks
turned their horses and rode up on the pavement.
Joseph Karlovich hunched himself over, bent his head and pressed the
flag to his breast with both hands. A sabre flashed. His back jerked. His
jacket split open crosswise. With a convulsive movement he turned round.
For a second his pain-distorted face with its short side-whiskers was
seen.
"Scoundrels! Satraps! Butchers!" he cried passionately, at the top of
his voice. "Down with the autocracy!"
But at that very instant two sabres flashed through the air, sharply
and simultaneously. Joseph Karlovich fell, still pressing the banner to his
open hairy chest with the blue tattooing.
One of the Don Cossacks bent over him and did something.
A minute later the two Cossacks were galloping on, dragging the man's
body behind them on a rope. It left a long, red, astonishingly bright trail
on the deathly-grey cobbles.
A crowd rushed out of a side street and separated the boys.
THE POGROM
Petya lost all sense of time that day.
When he finally reached home he had the feeling that it was already
dusk, but actually it was not yet two o'clock.
Near Kulikovo Field and the Army Staff building all was quiet. The
events in town reached this district as rumours and distant firing. But
everyone was long since used to rumours and firing.
The sky was low and almost black and gave off the sharp cold breath of
approaching snow. On days like that, evening began in the morning. A few
tiny snow-flakes had already flown by in the misty bluish air, but the hard
earth was still a solid black, without a single fleck of grey.
Petya came in by the back door, dropped his empty satchel in the
kitchen and tiptoed to the nursery. But it was too early for anyone to have
begun worrying about his absence.
When he saw the quiet, peaceful rooms, when he heard the faint whirr of
the sewing machine, when he smelled the simmering borshch, he suddenly
wanted to throw his arms round Daddy's neck, press his cheek against his
jacket, burst into tears, and tell all.
But only for an instant. That feeling immediately yielded, in the boy's
feverish mind, to another, a new, feeling: one of reserve, responsibility,
secrecy. For the first time in his life the boy understood, simply and
seriously, with all his heart, that there were things not to be told even to
one's nearest and dearest, but kept to oneself, no matter how painful it
might be.
Father was rocking in the rocking-chair, with his hands behind his head
and his pince-nez dangling free. Petya walked in, sat down on a chair beside
him, and folded his hands sedately on his knees.
"Bored with being idle, son? Don't take it to heart. Things will
quieten down soon, the schools will open again. You'll go back to the
Gymnasium, get your fill of Poors, and then you'll feel better."
He smiled his lovable, nearsighted smile.
Suddenly the kitchen door banged and swift footsteps sounded in the
passage. Dunya appeared in the dining-room doorway. She leaned limply
against the door, clasping her hands to her breast.
Oh, sir-
She could not get out another word.
She was breathing heavily, quickly, her half-open mouth swallowing in
air. Her kerchief was awry; a strand of hair with a pin hanging from it fell
on her ghostly-white face.
Lately the family had become used to seeing her burst in like this.
Almost every day she came to announce some piece of town news or other. But
this time her crazed eyes, her convulsive breathing and her general
overwrought appearance predicted something extraordinary, something
frightful.
She brought in with her such a dark, such an ominous silence that it
seemed as if the clock had begun to tick ten times louder, and as if grey
panes had been put into the windows. The whirr of the sewing machine stopped
instantly. Auntie Tatyana ran in, pressing her fingers to the tiny blue
veins in her temples.
"What is it? What's happened?"
Dunya moved her lips but no sound came out.
When she did speak it was in a voice that could barely be heard. "In
Kanatnaya they're beating up the Jews. A pogrom-"
"Impossible!" Auntie Tatyana clutched at her heart and sank into a
chair.
"May I drop dead on the spot! They're smashing all the Jewish shops.
They threw a chest of drawers into the street from the first storey. They'll
be in our street in about ten minutes."
Father jumped up. He was pale, his jaw quivered. He tried to put on his
pince-nez but his hand refused to obey him.
"Good Lord! What does this mean?"
He raised his eyes to the icon and crossed himself twice.
Dunya, taking that for a sign, came to herself. She climbed on a chair
and impetuously took down the icon.
"Dunya, what are you doing?"
But Dunya made no reply. She was already in the other rooms collecting
the icons. She quickly set them on the windowsills facing the street,
propping them up with piles of books, boxes, tea-caddies, and anything else
she could lay hands on.
Father followed her with a perplexed look.
"I don't see- What's the point of all that?"
"That's what to do, sir," she mumbled in a frightened voice. "They're
beating up the Jews but they don't touch Russians. Whoever has icons in the
windows they leave them alone."
"Don't you dare!" he screamed, his voice breaking. He pounded the table
with his fist as hard and as fast as he could. "Don't you dare! I forbid it!
Do you hear? Stop it this very minute! That's not what icons are for!
It's-it's blasphemy! At once!"
Father's round starched cuffs jumped out of his sleeves. His face
turned deathly pale. Pink spots broke out on his high chiselled forehead.
Never had Petya seen Father like this: his whole body shook, he was
terrifying.
Father ran to the window and seized an icon. But Dunya pounced on it
and would not let go.
"Oh, don't, sir!" she cried in despair. "They're killing everybody!"
She turned to Auntie. "Tatyana Ivanovna! Dear Tatyana Ivanovna! They'll kill
us all! They won't think twice!"
"Shut up!" yelled Father. The veins on his forehead swelled
frighteningly. "Shut up! I'm the master here. It's my house and I'll never
permit that here! Let them come! Let them murder us all! The swine! You have
no right- you have no-"
Auntie Tatyana wrung her hands.
"Vasili Petrovich, I implore you, be calm!"
But Father had already buried his face in his hands and stood leaning
against the wall.
"They're coming!" Dunya cried.
Silence fell.
Faint, harmonious singing drifted in from the street. It sounded like a
religious procession or a funeral somewhere in the distance.
Cautiously, Petya looked out of the window. There was not a soul in the
street. Over the deserted Kulikovo Field hung a sky the colour of slate,
darker and lower than before.
In the wrinkles of the naked earth lay a few long strands of snow as
light as swan's down, collected by the wind.
The singing grew louder and louder. Now Petya clearly saw that the low
dark cloud lying on the horizon in Kulikovo Field, to the right of the
railway station, was not a cloud at all but a slowly approaching mob.
The windows in the house were slammed shut.
From the kitchen came the murmur of low, restrained voices, a
shuffling, and the rustle of skirts. Then, altogether unexpectedly, an
elderly woman appeared in the passage holding by the hand a little girl with
bright ginger hair and a tear-stained face.
The woman was dressed for paying a social call, in a black silk skirt,
a mantilla, and lisle mitts. Somewhat askew on her head sat a small but high
Surely God would not fail to punish him at once for such out-and-out
sacrilege. But nothing happened.
"Very strange," Father remarked coolly. "That means a member of our
household has taken to thieving. Your Aunt and I obviously have no need to
take money in secret from the sideboard. Pavlik has been in sight of
grown-ups ^all day long, so he couldn't have taken it either. You've given
your word of honour. Therefore, we can only assume that the money was taken
by Dunya, who has served us faithfully for five years."
At the moment Dunya happened to be in the anteroom, filling a lamp.
She set the lamp-chimney and her rag on the mirror-stand and appeared
in the doorway. Her neck and even her arms, which were bared to the elbow,
had turned red. Her big good-natured face had broken out in splotches and
was screwed up in misery.
"May I never see a happy day for the rest of my life," she cried, "if
the young master didn't lose that change from the market playing lugs with
Gavrik!" Father looked at Petya.
The boy realised that he had to make a lightning retort, that without
losing a second he had to say something proud and noble and just, something
which would crush Dunya and instantly free him from all suspicion.
A minute ago he still could have confessed. But now that the matter of
lugs had been brought up-not for anything in the world!
"You have no right to talk like that!" he screamed hoarsely. A bright
flush of false indignation suffused his face. "You're lying!"
But even that did not seem enough to him. "You-you're probably-the
thief yourself!" he blurted out, stamping his feet.
While Dunya bustled about in the kitchen packing her things and
demanding that she be paid off, Petya ran into the nursery and slammed the
door so furiously that the enamelled image of the guardian angel on the back
of the bed began to rock.
He flatly refused to ask Dunya's forgiveness. He got into bed and made
believe he had fainted. They left him in peace.
Father did not come in to kiss him good-night.
Petya heard Auntie Tatyana pleading with Dunya to remain. Dunya,
sobbing, finally consented.
Many times that night he sprang awake, horrified at what he had done.
He was ready to run to the kitchen and kiss Dunya's feet to beg forgiveness.
But what upset him still more was the thought of Gavrik, who would demand
settlement tomorrow.
In the morning Petya waited until Father led Pavlik to the bathroom to
wash. Then he went to the wardrobe and took out the old uniform dress coat.
Family legend had it that Daddy had had the dress coat made when he was
graduating from the university and that he had worn it only once in his
life, at the insistence of Mummy's strait-laced relatives who demanded when
Daddy married Mummy that everything should be done the proper way. Ever
since then it had hung in the wardrobe, forgotten by everybody.
The dress coat had a great many lugs but the pity of it was that most
of them were too small to be of any use in the game.
There were only four big ones. But even these fell short of
expectations: they were cheap, thick white threes which had practically gone
out of circulation.
The Odessa tailor who sewed on those buttons sometime in the last
century had done a conscientious job: they did not yield to scissors. Petya
impatiently ripped them off, cloth and all, with his teeth.
Need we say it? This time, too, Petya had miserable luck.
He fell deeper in debt to Gavrik than ever.
He was now hopelessly involved. Gavrik regarded him with a dour sort of
pity that boded no good.
"Well, Petya, what do you say?" he asked sternly.
There was no misunderstanding those words. They meant roughly this:
"Now look here, pal, if you don't pay back those lugs I'll have to take it
out of your hide.
Friendship's got nothing to do with it. That's the law, and you know it
yourself. Lugs aren't cigarette pictures- they cost money. So don't be
sore."
Petya wasn't sore. He knew that Gavrik was in the right. He merely
heaved a deep sigh and asked for a little more time. Gavrik consented.
All that evening Petya was in torment. His ears became so hot from the
mental strain that they had a distinct ruby glow in the light of the lamp.
He thought up a thousand and one ways of getting rich quick, but they
were all either too fantastic or too criminal. Finally a wonderful yet
surprisingly simple idea came to him. Hadn't his late Grandfather, Mummy's
Daddy, been a major? How could that ever have slipped his mind!
Losing no time, he tore a sheet from his arithmetic copybook and sat
down to write a letter to his Grandmother, Mummy's Mummy, who lived in
Ekaterinoslav.
He showered her with endearments, reported brilliant progress at the
Gymnasium (to tell the truth, a bit of an exaggeration) and then asked her
to send him-as quickly as possible-dear Grandfather's major's uniform as a
remembrance.
A shrewd boy, Petya. He knew just the right approach to that
kindhearted old lady who treasured the memory of Grandfather, a hero of the
Turkish war, no less ardently than she loved Petya, her eldest grandson.
Further he told her that he had made up his mind to follow in his
heroic Grandfather's footsteps and become a hero too. He had decided upon an
army career and needed the uniform as a constant spur to his martial spirit.
Petya hoped to get a pile of lugs from the major's uniform-about
twenty, if not all of thirty, excellent officers' fives with embossed
eagles.
That alone could clear his debt and perhaps even give him a chance to
win back his losses.
The parcel, he calculated, was sure to reach him in a week at the
latest.
Petya told Gavrik the whole story. Gavrik said it was a good idea.
Together, standing on tiptoe, the boys dropped the letter into the big
yellow box with the picture of a registered letter with five seals on it and
two crossed postal bugles.
Now all they had to do was sit back and wait.
In anticipation of rich pickings Gavrik let Petya draw upon unlimited
credit, and Petya light-mindedly gambled away the future legacy from his
Grandfather.
THE HEAVY SATCHEL
A week passed, then another, and still no parcel from Grandmother.
Although the Tsar had proclaimed "freedom" there were more and more
disturbances. The postal service worked badly. Father stopped receiving the
Russkiye Vedomosti from Moscow, and in the evenings he sat silent and
disturbed, not knowing what was going on in the world or what view to take
of things.
The preparatory class was dismissed for an indefinite period. Petya
idled away his days. During this time he lost so much to Gavrik on credit
that chills ran down his spine whenever he thought about it.
One day Gavrik came and said with an ominous smile, "You'd better not
expect those lugs of yours so soon. There's going to be a general in a
couple of days."
A month earlier Petya would not have understood this. But now it was
perfectly clear: a "general" meant a strike.
There was no reason to doubt Gavrik's words. Petya had noted long ago
that somehow or other everything was known much earlier in Near Mills than
in town.
The news was a knife-thrust in the heart.
"But couldn't it come before that?"
"Not likely."
Petya turned pale.
"What about that debt?" Gavrik said firmly.
Petya trembled with impatience to start playing. He hastily gave his
word of honour and swore by the true and holy Cross that tomorrow, in one
way or another, he would pay it all back without fail.
"See that you do! Or else-" Gavrik planted his legs in their broad
lilac-coloured corduroys wide apart, sailor fashion.
That evening Petya stole Pavlik's famous moneybox, locked himself in
the bathroom, and with a table-knife pried out its contents: forty-three
kopeks in coppers and silver.
He performed this complicated operation with amazing skill and speed
and then filled the box with a collection of rattling trash: nails, lead
seals, bone buttons and pieces of iron.
This was absolutely necessary, for twice a day-morning and
evening-thrifty, methodical Pavlik checked his moneybox: he raised the tin
to his ear and, sticking out his tongue, rattled the kopeks, delighting in
the sound and the weight of his treasure. One can imagine the howl he would
raise if he discovered the theft. But everything went off well.
Before going to sleep Pavlik rattled his bank full of trash and found
it in perfect order.
But crime, as we all know, never pays. In three days Petya lost
Pavlik's money to the last kopek.
There was no hope of Grandfather's uniform coming soon. Again Gavrik
began to press for payment.
Every morning Petya sat on the windowsill waiting for Gavrik.
He pictured with horror the day it all came to light: the lugs, the
sandals, the dress coat, Pavlik's moneybox. Inevitably, sooner or later,
that day would arrive. Horrors!
But he tried not to think about that. He tormented himself with the
eternal fruitless dream of the bankrupt gambler-the dream of recouping his
losses.
Walking the streets was dangerous, yet Gavrik never failed to appear.
He would come to the middle of the yard, put two fingers in his mouth, and
let out a magnificent whistle. Petya would hastily nod to his chum from the
window and run down the back stairs. "The lugs come?"
"Tomorrow, I swear it, on my word of honour. By the true and holy
Cross. This is the last time."
One fine day Gavrik announced that he couldn't wait any longer. In
other words, Petya, as a bankrupt debtor, now became Gavrik's slave until he
paid back in full.
Such was the harsh but just law of the street.
Gavrik tapped Petya on the shoulder, like a knight-errant initiating
his servitor into squiredom.
"Now you'll be my shadow," he said good-naturedly. "Fetch your
satchel," he added in a stern voice.
"My satchel? What for?"
"For the lugs, you bloke."
A shrewd gleam flickered in Gavrik's eyes.
To tell the truth, Petya was delighted at the prospect of such a merry
form of slavery. He had long wanted to roam about town with Gavrik but
because of what was going on he had been forbidden, in the strictest of
terms, to set foot outside the yard. Now his conscience could rest perfectly
at ease: he had nothing to do with it-it was Gavrik's will, and he had to
obey Gavrik without a word. He didn't want to walk about town, of course,
but he simply had to: that was the law.
Petya ran upstairs and came down with his satchel.
"Put it on."
Petya obeyed. From all sides Gavrik inspected the little Gymnasium
scholar in the long overcoat reaching to his heels and with the empty
satchel on his back. What he saw evidently satisfied him.
"Gymnasium card?"
"Yes."
"Show it here."
Petya produced his card. Gavrik opened it and spelled out the words at
the top: "Valuing his honour, the Gymnasium pupil cannot fail to value the
honour of his school. . . ."
"Right," he remarked, returning the card. "Stow it away. Might come in
handy."
Then Gavrik turned Petya round and filled the satchel with heavy bags
of lugs.
"Now nobody'll stop us from going anywhere," Gavrik said, fastening the
straps of the satchel. He patted the calf-skin cover with satisfaction.
Petya did not quite get the meaning of those words but following the
general law of the street-to ask less and to know more-he held his tongue.
The boys cautiously left the yard.
Thus began their wanderings together through the disordered city.
With each passing day it became more dangerous to walk the streets.
Gavrik, however, did not give up his thrilling and mysterious life of a
roaming champion. On the contrary, the more restless and frightening the
city became the more stubbornly did he make his way to the remotest and most
dangerous places. So much so that at times Petya began to wonder whether
there wasn't some inexplicable connection between Gavrik and the disorders.
From morning to evening the two went in and out of backyards where
Gavrik carried on a business in lugs- buying, selling and exchanging-with
the local boys. In some of the yards he collected debts. In others he
played. In still others he had strange dealings with grown-ups who, to
Petya's extreme astonishment, were just as keen about lugs as children were.
Petya, carrying the heavy satchel on his back, obediently followed
Gavrik everywhere. And again, in Gavrik's presence the city magically turned
itself about before Petya's wonder-struck eyes, showing him its
communicating courtyards, cellars, holes in fences, sheds, firewood yards,
glassed-in arcades, and all its other secrets. Petya saw the horrifying and
at the same time picturesque poverty of the Odessa slums; until then he had
never even known they existed.
Hiding in gateways when there was shooting and passing around
overturned horse-trams blocking the roadway, the boys roamed up and down the
city, going to the most outlying sections.
Thanks to Petya's Gymnasium uniform they easily entered districts that
were cordoned by troops and the police. Gavrik taught Petya to go up to the
chief of the cordon detail and say in a tearful voice, "Mr. Officer, please
let me and my pal cross over to the other side. We live in that big grey
house over there and I'm sure Mummy's worried why we've been away so long."
The boy looked so guileless and respectable in his Gymnasium overcoat
and with the calf-skin satchel on his back that the officer, although he was
not supposed to let anyone pass into the suspected zone, usually made an
exception in the case of the two frightened kids.
"Run for it, only be careful. Keep close to the wall, and don't let me
see you again. Now be off."
In this way the boys could always reach districts that were completely
cut off to others.
They went several times to an old Greek house in Malaya Arnautskaya. In
the courtyard there was a fountain-a pyramid of spongy sea rocks with a
green iron stork on top. Once upon a time water used to come out of its
beak.
While Petya waited in the yard Gavrik ran down into the basement,
returning with a lot of bags of unusually heavy lugs. He stuffed them into
Petya's satchel and then they quickly ran out of the quiet yard with its
old, rickety galleries.
Once Petya saw Gavrik's grandfather there. He was walking slowly on
bent legs across the yard to the refuse-bin.
"Oh, Grandpa!" he cried. "I say there, what are you doing here? I
thought you were in jail."
Grandpa looked at the boy but obviously did not recognise him.
"I'm here now," he mumbled tonelessly, shifting his pail to his other
hand. "I'm-a watchman-a night watchman now-"
He continued slowly on his way.
The boys went to the port, to Chumka, to Duke's Gardens, to Peresyp, to
the Ghen factory-everywhere but Near Mills. To Near Mills Gavrik went alone,
after his day of labours.
Had Auntie Tatyana and Father had even an inkling of the places their
Petya visited during that time they surely would have lost their reason.
THE BOMB
Finally, however, this wonderful but weird life of wandering came to an
end.
On that memorable day Gavrik appeared earlier than usual, and he and
Petya immediately set out.
Gavrik's face was grey and extraordinarily grim. His tightly-pressed
lips had turned different colours from the cold. He walked along with a
quick, rolling gait, his hands deep in the pockets of his broad corduroys- a
small, hunched, determined figure. Every now and then a hard light came into
his clear, fixed eyes so like Grandpa's. Petya barely managed to keep up
with his friend. They practically ran through the streets, which were
deserted like the streets in a dream.
Tense expectation hung in the grey air. The boys' footsteps rang on the
paving stones. Occasionally the pane of ice covering an empty puddle broke
underfoot.
All of a sudden a faint rumble sounded somewhere far away, in the
centre of town. It was as if a pyramid of empty crates had crashed to the
roadway from a waggon.
Gavrik stopped and listened to the feeble echo.
"What's that?" Petya whispered. "Crates?"
"A bomb," Gavrik said dryly and with assurance. "Somebody's been done
in."
Two streets farther on a woman with a basket from which lumps of
charcoal and quinces were dropping turned the corner at a run.
"Oh, Lord! Oh, Holy Mother!" she said over and over again, trying to
straighten her kerchief with a trembling hand. "Oh, Lord, it was awful! The
man was torn to pieces."
"Where?"
"In Police Street. There I was, walking along, and here he was, in a
carriage. And then it exploded. Tore him to bits. Lord forgive us! It killed
the horses and tore the carriage to bits-"
"Who was it?"
"The chief of police. From the Alexandrovsky station. There I was, and
here he was. And that revolutionary stood just opposite. And just imagine,
he was carrying an ordinary little package, done up in newspaper-"
"Did they catch him?"
"The revolutionary? Never! Everybody ran away and he did too. They say
he was a sailor in disguise."
The woman ran off. Despite his grimness, Gavrik took Petya by the
shoulder and did a couple of jig steps.
"That's the one who punched Grandpa's face," he said in a quick, fiery
whisper. "That'll teach him to use his fists! Right?"
"Right," said Petya, turning cold.
That day the boys made two trips to the courtyard in Malaya Arnautskaya
with the fountain and stork, where they took on "goods", as Gavrik called
it.
The first time that they set out with the "goods" for the Alexandrovsky
Prospect, which was cordoned off by troops, they were let through without
any particular difficulty.
After passing several houses Gavrik led Petya through a gateway into a
big deserted yard with a Cossack tethering post; the ground there was hard
and frozen and studded with empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases that
had been pressed into it by soldiers' boots.
They crossed the yard, went down into a cellar and walked for a long
time in the damp darkness, past wood-bins, until they came out into another
yard. From there they followed a narrow opening which led between two tall
and gloomy brick walls into still another yard.
Gavrik obviously knew all the ins and outs here. The opening was so
narrow that Petya, making his way behind Gavrik, found his satchel scraping
against the walls. Finally they reached the other yard, which was as narrow
and high and dark as a cistern.
Judging by the long distance they had come and the number of turns and
zigzags, they were in the yard of a building that faced some other street.
The whole yard was strewn with broken glass and plaster.
The windows of the building were tightly shuttered. There seemed to be
no one living in it.
A hollow silence hung in the air.
But beyond that silence, in the unknown street on the other side of the
building, there was the alarming noise of some sort of movement, a noise
more sensed than heard.
Besides, every now and then loud shots barked from above, seemingly
from the sky, and they filled the yard with the echoings of a well. Petya
pressed his back to the wall and, trembling, shut his eyes. But not so
Gavrik.
Without hurrying he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
Somewhere up above a shutter banged. "Coming!" a voice called.
A minute later-to Petya it seemed an hour-a sweating red-faced man
without an overcoat, in a jacket smeared with chalk, flung open the
backstairs door.
Petya gasped. It was Terenti.
"Let's have it-quick!" Terenti muttered, wiping his wet face on his
sleeve.
Paying no attention to Petya himself, Terenti went straight to the
satchel.
"Thanks! Just in time! We didn't have a damn thing left!"
Breathing heavily, he unfastened the straps with impatient fingers and
transferred the bags from the satchel to his pockets. "Tell Joseph Karlovich
to send some more right away," he called out as he ran back. "Bring
everything there is or else we won't hold out."
"Right," said Gavrik.
Just then a bullet struck the wall near the roof, and a spray of pink
brick dust came down on the boys.
They quickly retraced their route to Malaya Arnautskaya and took on
another load of "goods". This time the satchel was so heavy that Petya
staggered under its weight.
Now, of course, he knew very well what kind of lugs these were. At any
other time he would have thrown the whole thing up and run home. But today
his entire being was gripped by the thrill of danger, by a feeling more
powerful even than the gambling fever, and not for anything in the world
would he have deserted his pal. Besides, he would be able to share Gavrik's
glory. The very thought that he might lose the right to tell about his
adventures made him instantly disregard all danger.
Gavrik and Petya set out on the return trip. But how the city had
changed in the meantime! Now it was seething.
One minute the streets would be filled with people running in all
directions, and the next they would be swept clear in a flash by the iron
broom of a fusillade.
As they approached the cordon Gavrik caught Petya by the arm and
quickly pulled him into a gateway.
"Stop!"
"Why?"
Still holding Petya's arm Gavrik cautiously peeped out. The next
instant he shrank back and pressed himself against the wall of the gateway,
under the black board listing the tenants of that house.
"Listen, Petya, we're stuck. I just saw that skunk who nearly tore my
ear off. Look, there he is."
Petya tiptoed to the edge of the gateway and looked out. At the cordon
post a gentleman in a heavy overcoat and an astrakhan cap was walking up and
down the roadway past the stacked rifles and the torn-up iron fence of the
public garden. When he turned, Petya saw a coarse clean-shaven face and a
fleshy nose. There was something very familiar about that unfamiliar face.
He had seen it somewhere before. But where? Something prevented him from
remembering. Could it be that bluish upper lip? Then suddenly he remembered.
Of course, it was Moustaches! The man from the Turgenev, only now without
the moustache. That face had impressed itself on Petya's memory for the rest
of his life. He would have recognised it in a thousand, moustache or no
moustache.
"It's Moustaches," whispered Petya, taking his place beside Gavrik,
with his satchel pressed against the wall. "The one who was chasing the
sailor. Only now he's without his moustache. Remember? I told you about him
and you laughed at me."
"Shaved it off so nobody would know him. But he knows me, the rat,"
Gavrik said angrily. "We'll never get past."
"But perhaps we can."
"Not on your life."
Gavrik peeped out. "He's walking up and down."
He clenched his fist and angrily began to chew his knuckles. "And
they're sitting there waiting for us. The dirty snake!"
There was a minute of deep and utter silence in the uprising, a silence
broken by scattered shots in the distance. They reverberated over the roofs
of the city.
"Listen, Petya," Gavrik said all of a sudden, "do you understand?
They're sitting there waiting all for nothing- without the goods. They'll
all be shot as easy as anything. And I can't go because that skunk is sure
to follow me!"
Gavrik's eyes filled with tears of anger. He gave a loud sniff, blew
his nose on the ground, and then looked angrily into Petya's eyes.
"Understand?"
"Uh-huh," said Petya with his lips alone, turning pale under his chum's
angry, friendly, insistent and at the same time pleading look.
"Can you get through by yourself? You won't let 'em down?"
Petya's excitement was such that he could not get out a single word. He
swallowed hard and nodded his head. Gavrik, first glancing round furtively
and peeping out of the gateway, began to fill Petya's pockets with his bags.
"Give them all the goods, everything, you hear? What's in your satchel
and what's in your pockets too. If you're caught shut up and say you found
it in the street and don't know anything. Clear?"
"Uh-huh."
"When you hand it over come back here. I'll be waiting for you here in
the gateway. Clear?"
"Uh-huh."
Petya, his pockets bulging, walked up to the cordon. He was so scared
and excited he hardly knew what he was doing.
"Hey, where are you going? Are you blind?" Moustaches shouted, running
up to him.
"Please," Petya whimpered in the thin voice he had learned from Gavrik,
"please let me through. I live nearby, in the Alexandrovsky Prospect, in
that big grey house, and my Mummy's awfully worried. She probably thinks I'm
killed!"
Real tears poured out of his eyes and rolled down his plump grimy
cheeks. Moustaches gave the little preparatory class pupil a disgusted look
and took him by the satchel.
He led the boy to the edge of the roadway and gave him a light shove in
the behind with his knee.
"Run along!"
Beside himself with joy, Petya raced towards the house.
HG OF THE FIGHTING GROUP
Petya slipped through the gateway and started across the yard.
When he came this way an hour earlier, with Gavrik, he had not been
troubled by anything in particular. He knew he was under the reliable wing
of a resourceful and experienced friend. He was freed from the necessity of
thinking for himself; he was merely an obedient companion without a will of
his own. Someone else, someone stronger than he, thought and acted for him.
Now he was completely alone. There was no one but himself to depend
upon.
Without Gavrik the world around Petya immediately became threatening,
huge, full of lurking dangers.
Danger skulked in the stone arches of the inner galleries, among the
ominous boxes and the old broken furniture. It stood waiting in the middle
of the yard, behind the mulberry tree whose trunk had been gnawed by horses.
It peered out of the black hole of the refuse-bin.
Everything the boy saw took on an exaggerated size. Huge Cossack horses
pressed their smooth, golden, dancing cruppers against him. Monstrous tails
swished across his satchel. Don Cossacks in blue breeches with red stripes
hopped on one foot while the other was in the stirrup.
"From the right, by threes!" cried the hoarse voice of a Cossack
ensign.
The mirror-like crescent of a drawn sabre hung in the air above the j
aunty forage caps.
Petya went down into the cellar.
He walked a long time, feeling his way in the stuffy but cold darkness
and breathing the dusty air of storage rooms. Every time a cobweb touched
his eyelashes he took it for a bat's wing, and horror gripped him.
Finally he reached the second yard. It was deserted.
Only now, in the midst of this strange emptiness, did Petya become
really aware of how terribly alone he was. He wanted to run back-but
thousands of miles and thousands of fears separated him from the street,
from Gavrik.
In the opening between the second and third yards it was so unbearably
quiet that he felt like shouting with all his might; shouting desperately,
passionately, frenziedly-anything so as not to hear that silence.
It was the kind of silence that comes only in the interval between two
shots.
Now he had to put two fingers in his mouth and whistle. But suddenly he
realised that he did not know how to whistle with his fingers. He had
learned long ago to spit through his teeth, but not to whistle. He hadn't
thought of it. It had slipped his mind.
Clumsily he put his fingers in his mouth and blew, but no whistle came
out. In desperation he blew again, as hard as he could. Nothing. Only
spittle and a hiss.
Then Petya mustered all his spiritual powers.
"Hey!" he yelled, closing his eyes.
His voice sounded very weak. Still, a booming echo instantly filled the
empty cistern of a yard.
No one answered, however. The silence became more terrifying than ever.
High above there was a deafening crackle. Down flew the joint of a
drain-pipe, carrying with it pieces of brick, spikes, and mortar.
"H-e-y! H-e-y! H-e-y!" Petya shouted at the top of his lungs.
A shutter in the top storey opened and an unfamiliar face looked out.
"What's all the shouting about? Bring it? Come up here! And be lively!"
The face disappeared.
Petya looked about in indecision. But he was all alone, with no one to
advise him. There was another crackle overhead. A big chunk of plaster flew
down and crashed into bits at Petya's feet.
Bending over, he dashed to the backstairs door. He started up the
clanging iron stairway, tripping on the hem of his overcoat; it had been
bought several sizes too large, so that he could grow into it.
"Faster! Faster!" an angry voice cried from above.
The heavy satchel banged painfully against his back. The bulging
pockets got in his way. He suddenly felt hot. The inside of his cap became
warm and wet. Sweat poured down on his eyebrows and eyes. His face flamed.
Upstairs, the irritable, pleading voice kept shouting, "Faster! Faster,
damn you!"
Petya breathed heavily, sticking out his tongue from the exertion. He
had barely reached the third-storey landing when a man in an expensive but
soiled overcoat with a lambskin collar grasped him by the shoulders.
The man was hatless and his forehead was plastered with strands of wet
hair. He had a foppish little moustache and beard which didn't at all fit in
with his ordinary, snub-nosed face, now red and powdered with plaster.
His eyes, under bushy brows white with plaster, had a gay, dare-devil
gleam, and at the same time a sort of alarmed expression. He looked like a
man who had been torn away from a very difficult and urgent job and was in a
terrible hurry to get back to it.
When Petya felt the strong fingers grip his shoulders he thought the
man was going to shake him, the way Daddy did when he was very angry. His
legs buckled under him from fright. But the man looked affectionately into
his eyes.
"Bring it?" he asked in a hurried whisper. Without waiting for an
answer he pulled the boy into the empty kitchen of a flat where-as Petya
sensed immediately- something tremendous and frightening was going on,
something that usually never happened in flats.
The man ran his eyes over Petya and without saying a word went straight
for his bulging pockets. He hastily pulled the heavy little bags out of
them. Petya stood in front of him with his arms spread apart.
There was something very familiar about his unfamiliar face with the
little moustache and beard.
Petya had surely seen it somewhere before. But when? Where?
He searched the recesses of his memory, but with no results. Something
kept putting him off. Could it be the moustache and beard?
In the meantime the man had deftly extracted the four bags from the
boy's pockets.
"Is that all?"
"No, there's more in the satchel."
"Good boy! Thanks! And just think-a Gymnasium pupil!"
As a sign of his admiration he gripped Petya's cap by the visor and
pulled it down hard on top of his ears.
And now Petya saw, an inch from his nose, a strong sooty hand which
gave off the sour smell of gunpowder. On it was a little blue anchor.
"The sailor!" he exclaimed.
But that same instant something crashed in the other part of the flat.
There was a blast of air. A pot tumbled from a shelf. With soft, cat-like
steps the sailor ran into the passage, shouting, "Wait here!"
A minute later six jerky shots resounded somewhere close by. Petya
threw off his satchel and began to unfasten it with trembling fingers.
Just then Terenti came into the kitchen from the passage. He was
swaying on his feet. He was coatless, in a shirt with only one sleeve. The
other sleeve was wound about his head. Blood trickled down his temple from
under the bandage. He held a revolver in his right hand.
When he saw Petya he started to say something but waved his hand and
first took a drink of water, putting his mouth to the tap.
"Bring it?" he asked, pausing for air between two gulps. The water
flowed noisily over his startingly white face. "Where's Gavrik? Alive?"
"Uh-huh."
But there was obviously no time for questions. Without stopping to wipe
his face Terenti took the bags out of the satchel.
"All the same we won't hold out," he muttered. He could scarcely stand
on his feet. "We'll get away across the roofs. They're setting up a gun.
You'd better clear out, kid, before a bullet gets you. Clear out quick.
Thanks, and good luck!"
He sat down on a stool but a moment later got up, and, wiping his
revolver on his knee, ran down the passage to the room from which came the
steady bark of shots and the crash of glass.
Petya picked up his light satchel and ran to the door. Curiosity,
however, made him pause for a minute and look down the passage. Through the
wide-open door he saw a room piled with broken furniture.
In the middle of the wall, papered in a design of brown bouquets, he
saw a yawning hole round which the lath framework was bared.
Several men were leaning against the sills of the smashed windows,
firing one shot after another down into the street from their revolvers.
Petya saw Terenti's bandaged head and the sailor's lambskin collar. He
also caught a glimpse of a shaggy black Caucasian cloak and a college
student's cap.
The room swam and surged in bluish threads of smoke.
The sailor knelt at a windowsill on which stood a boudoir night table.
He kept shoving out his arm, and it jerked as he fired shot after shot.
"Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" he yelled madly.
In the midst of all that movement, chaos, commotion, and smoke only one
man was completely calm-a man with a yellow, indifferent, waxen face, and a
small black hole above his closed eyes.
He lay on the floor in the middle of the room, in an awkward pose, face
up, surrounded by empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases.
His broken pince-nez, with the black cord looped behind his firm white
ear, lay beside his head on the plaster-sprinkled parquet. A very old
technological student's cap with a cracked visor also lay neatly on the
floor.
Petya looked at the man and suddenly realised that he was looking at a
corpse.
He ran back. How he got out of the house and reached the gateway where
Gavrik was waiting for him he did not remember.
"Well? Deliver it?"
"I did."
Breathlessly Petya told Gavrik everything he had seen in that
terrifying flat.
"All the same they won't hold out. They'll get away across the roofs,"
he whispered, breathing heavily. "They're putting up a cannon against them."
Gavrik turned pale and made the sign of the cross. Never in his life
had Petya seen his friend so scared.
Nearby, almost next to them, a gun roared. An iron echo rumbled over
the roofs.
"Done for!" Gavrik cried in despair. "Hook it!"
The boys rushed out into the street and ran across the city, which had
changed for the third time that morning.
Now the Cossacks were complete masters of the situation. The streets
resounded with the clatter of hoofs.
Squadrons of Don Cossacks that had been lying low in the courtyards
sped through the gateways, lashing out to the right and left with their
whips.
There was no hiding from them: all the house-entrances and gateways had
been locked tight and were guarded by army and police details. Every alley
was a trap.
The remnants of the dispersed demonstration scattered this way and
that, without any hope of saving themselves. Cossacks overtook them and cut
them down one by one.
In Malaya Arnautskaya a bow-legged man without a hat or coat ran down
the middle of the roadway past the boys. Under his arm he held a stick with
a red flag. It was the owner of the shooting gallery. He ran limping and
dodging from side to side.
At any other time this sight might have surprised the boys, but now it
only filled them with horror.
Every ten paces or so Joseph Karlovich turned back a terribly pale,
tormented face with wild eyes. Two Don Cossacks were bearing down upon him
at a fast trot.
The horseshoes rang loud against the granite cobbles, drawing sparks
that were pale in the daylight.
A minute later Joseph Karlovich was between the two horses. He let them
pass, slipped aside, and then dashed up to a door and seized the handle.
The door was locked. He tugged at it in desperation, kicked it with all
his might, rammed it with his shoulder. It did not yield. The Cossacks
turned their horses and rode up on the pavement.
Joseph Karlovich hunched himself over, bent his head and pressed the
flag to his breast with both hands. A sabre flashed. His back jerked. His
jacket split open crosswise. With a convulsive movement he turned round.
For a second his pain-distorted face with its short side-whiskers was
seen.
"Scoundrels! Satraps! Butchers!" he cried passionately, at the top of
his voice. "Down with the autocracy!"
But at that very instant two sabres flashed through the air, sharply
and simultaneously. Joseph Karlovich fell, still pressing the banner to his
open hairy chest with the blue tattooing.
One of the Don Cossacks bent over him and did something.
A minute later the two Cossacks were galloping on, dragging the man's
body behind them on a rope. It left a long, red, astonishingly bright trail
on the deathly-grey cobbles.
A crowd rushed out of a side street and separated the boys.
THE POGROM
Petya lost all sense of time that day.
When he finally reached home he had the feeling that it was already
dusk, but actually it was not yet two o'clock.
Near Kulikovo Field and the Army Staff building all was quiet. The
events in town reached this district as rumours and distant firing. But
everyone was long since used to rumours and firing.
The sky was low and almost black and gave off the sharp cold breath of
approaching snow. On days like that, evening began in the morning. A few
tiny snow-flakes had already flown by in the misty bluish air, but the hard
earth was still a solid black, without a single fleck of grey.
Petya came in by the back door, dropped his empty satchel in the
kitchen and tiptoed to the nursery. But it was too early for anyone to have
begun worrying about his absence.
When he saw the quiet, peaceful rooms, when he heard the faint whirr of
the sewing machine, when he smelled the simmering borshch, he suddenly
wanted to throw his arms round Daddy's neck, press his cheek against his
jacket, burst into tears, and tell all.
But only for an instant. That feeling immediately yielded, in the boy's
feverish mind, to another, a new, feeling: one of reserve, responsibility,
secrecy. For the first time in his life the boy understood, simply and
seriously, with all his heart, that there were things not to be told even to
one's nearest and dearest, but kept to oneself, no matter how painful it
might be.
Father was rocking in the rocking-chair, with his hands behind his head
and his pince-nez dangling free. Petya walked in, sat down on a chair beside
him, and folded his hands sedately on his knees.
"Bored with being idle, son? Don't take it to heart. Things will
quieten down soon, the schools will open again. You'll go back to the
Gymnasium, get your fill of Poors, and then you'll feel better."
He smiled his lovable, nearsighted smile.
Suddenly the kitchen door banged and swift footsteps sounded in the
passage. Dunya appeared in the dining-room doorway. She leaned limply
against the door, clasping her hands to her breast.
Oh, sir-
She could not get out another word.
She was breathing heavily, quickly, her half-open mouth swallowing in
air. Her kerchief was awry; a strand of hair with a pin hanging from it fell
on her ghostly-white face.
Lately the family had become used to seeing her burst in like this.
Almost every day she came to announce some piece of town news or other. But
this time her crazed eyes, her convulsive breathing and her general
overwrought appearance predicted something extraordinary, something
frightful.
She brought in with her such a dark, such an ominous silence that it
seemed as if the clock had begun to tick ten times louder, and as if grey
panes had been put into the windows. The whirr of the sewing machine stopped
instantly. Auntie Tatyana ran in, pressing her fingers to the tiny blue
veins in her temples.
"What is it? What's happened?"
Dunya moved her lips but no sound came out.
When she did speak it was in a voice that could barely be heard. "In
Kanatnaya they're beating up the Jews. A pogrom-"
"Impossible!" Auntie Tatyana clutched at her heart and sank into a
chair.
"May I drop dead on the spot! They're smashing all the Jewish shops.
They threw a chest of drawers into the street from the first storey. They'll
be in our street in about ten minutes."
Father jumped up. He was pale, his jaw quivered. He tried to put on his
pince-nez but his hand refused to obey him.
"Good Lord! What does this mean?"
He raised his eyes to the icon and crossed himself twice.
Dunya, taking that for a sign, came to herself. She climbed on a chair
and impetuously took down the icon.
"Dunya, what are you doing?"
But Dunya made no reply. She was already in the other rooms collecting
the icons. She quickly set them on the windowsills facing the street,
propping them up with piles of books, boxes, tea-caddies, and anything else
she could lay hands on.
Father followed her with a perplexed look.
"I don't see- What's the point of all that?"
"That's what to do, sir," she mumbled in a frightened voice. "They're
beating up the Jews but they don't touch Russians. Whoever has icons in the
windows they leave them alone."
"Don't you dare!" he screamed, his voice breaking. He pounded the table
with his fist as hard and as fast as he could. "Don't you dare! I forbid it!
Do you hear? Stop it this very minute! That's not what icons are for!
It's-it's blasphemy! At once!"
Father's round starched cuffs jumped out of his sleeves. His face
turned deathly pale. Pink spots broke out on his high chiselled forehead.
Never had Petya seen Father like this: his whole body shook, he was
terrifying.
Father ran to the window and seized an icon. But Dunya pounced on it
and would not let go.
"Oh, don't, sir!" she cried in despair. "They're killing everybody!"
She turned to Auntie. "Tatyana Ivanovna! Dear Tatyana Ivanovna! They'll kill
us all! They won't think twice!"
"Shut up!" yelled Father. The veins on his forehead swelled
frighteningly. "Shut up! I'm the master here. It's my house and I'll never
permit that here! Let them come! Let them murder us all! The swine! You have
no right- you have no-"
Auntie Tatyana wrung her hands.
"Vasili Petrovich, I implore you, be calm!"
But Father had already buried his face in his hands and stood leaning
against the wall.
"They're coming!" Dunya cried.
Silence fell.
Faint, harmonious singing drifted in from the street. It sounded like a
religious procession or a funeral somewhere in the distance.
Cautiously, Petya looked out of the window. There was not a soul in the
street. Over the deserted Kulikovo Field hung a sky the colour of slate,
darker and lower than before.
In the wrinkles of the naked earth lay a few long strands of snow as
light as swan's down, collected by the wind.
The singing grew louder and louder. Now Petya clearly saw that the low
dark cloud lying on the horizon in Kulikovo Field, to the right of the
railway station, was not a cloud at all but a slowly approaching mob.
The windows in the house were slammed shut.
From the kitchen came the murmur of low, restrained voices, a
shuffling, and the rustle of skirts. Then, altogether unexpectedly, an
elderly woman appeared in the passage holding by the hand a little girl with
bright ginger hair and a tear-stained face.
The woman was dressed for paying a social call, in a black silk skirt,
a mantilla, and lisle mitts. Somewhat askew on her head sat a small but high