black bonnet with cock's plumes. From behind her shoulders peered Nusya's
pale, lustreless, round face and Izzy the Dizzy's bowler hat.
This was Madam Kogan, with her whole family.
Not daring to enter the room, she stood for a long time curtsying in
the doorway, raising the hem of her skirt with one hand and pressing the
other to her heart. A honeyed, well-bred and at the same time frenzied smile
played on her wrinkled mobile little face.
"Mr. Batchei!" she exclaimed in a shrill, bird-like voice, stretching
out both her trembling gloved hands towards Father. "Mr. Batchei! Tatyana
Ivanovna! We have always been good neighbours! Are people to blame because
they have a different God?"
All of a sudden she fell to her knees.
"Save my children!" she wailed. "Let them smash everything but only let
them spare my children!"
"Mama, stop lowering yourself!" Nusya cried angrily. He shoved his
hands in his pockets and turned aside, showing the bluish shaven nape of his
neck.
"Nusya, will you shut up at last?" hissed Izzy the Dizzy. "Or do you
want that I should slap your cheeks? Your mother knows what she is doing.
She knows that Mr. Batchei is an intellectual person and will not allow us
to be killed."
Auntie Tatyana ran to the door and lifted the Jewess to her feet. "Why,
Madam Kogan, what ever are you doing? For shame! Why, of course, of course!
Goodness me! Please come in, Mr. Kogan, Nusya, Dorochka- What a misfortune!"
While Madam Kogan wept and gushed words of gratitude that made Father
and Auntie Tatyana feel so ashamed they wished the earth would swallow them
up, and while she hid the children and her husband in the back rooms, the
singing outside grew louder and nearer with every step.
A small crowd which indeed looked like a religious procession was
coming across Kulikovo Field towards the house.
In front walked two grey-haired old men in winter coats but hatless,
carrying a portrait of the Tsar on an embroidered linen towel. Petya at once
recognised the blue ribbon across the shoulder and the acorn which was the
Tsar's face. Behind the portrait swayed church banners, raised high in the
cold, bluish, soapy air.
Then came a lot of respectable-looking men and women in winter
overcoats and galoshes, high overshoes and top boots. White steam poured
from their wide-open mouths. They sang:
Save, O Lo-o-o-ord, Thy flo-o-ock, and bless Thy do-o-o-omains. . . .
They looked so peaceable and dignified that for a minute an indecisive
smile played on Father's face.
"There, you see?" he said. "They're walking along quietly and
peacefully without hurting a soul, and you-"
Just then the procession came to a stop on the other side of the
street, opposite the house. Out of the crowd ran a burly, moustached woman
with purplish-blue cheeks and two shawls tied across her bosom. Her bulging
eyes, black as Isabella grapes, stared with ferocious determination at the
windows. She planted her fat legs in their thick white woollen stockings
wide apart, like a man, and shook her fist at the house.
"Aha, Jew-faces!" she cried in the shrill voice of a market woman.
"Hiding, eh? Never mind, we'll get you in a jiffy! Orthodox Christians, show
your icons!"
With these words she raised the hem of her skirt and ran across the
street with a determined air. On the way she picked a cobblestone from a
pile that had been put there for mending the roadway.
After her, about twenty long-armed roughs with tri-coloured ribbons on
their overcoats and jackets stepped out of the crowd. They crossed the
street without hurrying, one ofter the other, and as each passed the pile of
cobbles he bent low and nimbly.
When the last one passed, the place where the pile of stones had stood
was absolutely smooth ground.
A deathly silence set in. Each tick of the clock was now the crash of a
pistol-shot, and the panes in the windows were black. The silence dragged
out so long that Father had time to say, "I don't understand. Where, after
all, are the police? Why don't they send men from the Army Staff?"
"Oh, the police!" Auntie Tatyana cried hysterically.
She stopped short.
The silence became more terrifying than ever. Izzy the Dizzy sat on the
edge of a chair in the middle of the parlour, his bowler hat pushed down on
his forehead. His sickly eyes were fixed on a spot in the corner.
Nusya had been walking up and down the passage with his hands in his
pockets. Now he stopped to listen. His full lips were curved in a strained,
scornful smile.
The silence lasted another unbearable instant and then burst. Somewhere
down below the first rock slammed through a window. Then a squall hit the
house. Glass shattered to the pavement. The iron sign-board was ripped off
with a thunderous rattle. There was the crash of breaking doors and boxes.
Jars of lozenges, kegs, and tinned goods rolled out into the roadway.
Whistling and whooping, the brutalised mob surrounded the house. The
gold-framed portrait with the crown soared slantwise into the air, now here,
now there. It was as if an officer in epaulets and a blue ribbon across his
shoulder, with church banners on all sides of him, was rising up on tiptoe
all the time to look over the heads.
"Mr. Batchei! Do you see what they're doing?" whispered Kogan, wringing
his hands. "Two hundred rubles' worth of merchandise!"
"Papa, keep quiet! Stop lowering yourself!" shouted Nusya. "This isn't
a question of money!" The pogrom continued.
"Sir! They're going through the flats looking for Jews!" Madam Kogan
screamed. She began to flutter in the dark passage like a chicken at sight
of the knife. "Dora! Nusya! My children!" "They're coming up the stairs,
sir!"
From the stairs sounded the rumble of coarse voices and boots,
amplified tenfold by the box-like front entrance. With trembling fingers,
yet extraordinarily quickly, Father buttoned all the buttons of his jacket
and rushed to the door, tearing open with both hands the choking starched
collar under his beard. Before Auntie Tatyana could open her mouth he was on
the stairs. "For goodness' sake, Vasili Petrovich!" "Don't sir, they'll kill
you!" "Daddy!" cried Petya, rushing after him. In his black jacket, straight
and agile, his face set, his cuffs rattling, Father quickly ran downstairs.
Up the stairs towards him clumped the woman in the thick white woollen
stockings. She wore cotton mitts, and in her right hand she gripped a heavy
cobblestone. Now her eyes were not black but a bluish-white, and glazed,
like the eyes of a dead bullock. Behind her came sweating roughs in
dark-blue caps, the kind grocers' assistants wore.
"Gentlemen!" Father cried, not at all to the point, in his high
falsetto, his neck turning a deep red. "Who gave you the right to break into
other people's houses? This is robbery! I won't allow it!"
"And who might you be? The house-owner?"
The woman shifted the cobblestone to her left hand, and, without
looking at Father, hit him in the ear with her right fist as hard as she
could. Father rocked on his heels, but the men prevented him from falling: a
red, freckled hand grabbed him by the silk lapel of his jacket and jerked
him forward. The old cloth ripped.
"Stop hitting him! He's our Daddy!" Petya cried in a voice totally
unlike his own. "You have no right! Fools!"
Somebody gave a sharp, vicious pull, with all his might, at Father's
sleeve. The sleeve came off. The round cuff with its cuff-link rolled down
the stairs. Petya saw a bleeding scratch on Father's nose, saw his
nearsighted eyes full of tears-his pince-nez had been knocked off- and his
hair, long like a seminary student's, lying in two dishevelled parts.
Stinging pain filled the boy's heart. He was ready to die at that
minute if only they would stop hurting Daddy.
"Beasts! Cattle! Animals!" Father moaned through set teeth, backing
away from the pogrom-makers.
Auntie Tatyana and Dunya came running down holding icons.
"Gentlemen, what are you doing? Have you no fear of God?" Auntie
Tatyana said over and over again, tears in her eyes.
"Are you mad?" Dunya cried in rage, lifting as high as she could an
icon of the Saviour with waxen orange-blossoms under the glass. "You're
beating Orthodox Christians! Look what you're doing before you begin. Go
back where you came from. There's no Jews here, not a one! Go away!"
Police whistles sounded in the street-as usual, exactly half an hour
after the start of a pogrom. The woman in the white stockings put the
cobblestone on a step and carefully wiped her hand on the hem of her skirt.
"Well, that'll do for here," she said with a nod of the head. "A little
of a good thing goes a long way. Hear those policemen of ours blowing out
their guts? Come on, now let's get that Jew at Malofontanskaya and the
corner of Botanicheskaya!"
She gathered her heavy skirts and, grunting, climbed downstairs.
THE OFFICER'S UNIFORM
For several days afterwards the pavement in front of the house was
strewn with cobbles, broken glass, splintered boxes, crushed balls of
blueing, rice, rags, and various household articles.
Among the bushes in the field one suddenly came across a picture album,
a bamboo book stand, a lamp, a flat-iron.
Passers-by carefully avoided the wreckage, as if mere contact with it
would make a person a party to the pogrom and disgrace him for life.
The children too. When, horror-struck and curious, they went down into
the pillaged shop, they deliberately hid their hands in their pockets so as
not to be tempted by a mint cake or a crushed box of Kerch cigarettes lying
about.
Father paced the floor from morning to night, his chin tensely thrust
forward; he looked somehow younger, sterner, and was unusually brisk; he had
become noticeably grey at the temples. The jacket had been mended so
skilfully that there was scarcely any trace of the damage. Life was becoming
normal again.
There was no more firing in the streets. Peaceful silence reigned in
the city. The first tram-car since the strike rolled past the house. It was
a clumsy, absurd contraption which looked like a city coach, with huge rear
wheels and tiny front ones.
An engine whistled at the railway station. The Russkiye Vedomosti, the
Niva and the Zadushevnoye Slovo were delivered to the house.
One day Petya looked out of the window and saw a yellow postal van at
the entrance.
A warm wave flooded his heart, and it missed a beat. The postman opened
the door at the back of the van and took out a parcel.
"It's from Grandma!" Petya cried, smacking the windowsill with his
palms.
Why, he had forgotten all about it! Now, at sight of the yellow van, he
instantly remembered: lugs, the dress coat he had turned into a total mess,
the sandals he had sold, Pavlik's moneybox-in a word, all his crimes, which
might come to light at any moment.
The bell rang. Petya ran to the anteroom.
"Don't you dare touch it! It's for me, for me!"
And so it was, to everybody's amazement. "Master Pyotr Batchei.
Personal" was written in big letters in purple ink on the canvas top.
The canvas was tightly sewn down with strong thread and Petya split his
fingernails as he tore it off. He did not have the patience to do a neat job
of removing the squeaking cover, which was held in place by long thin nails,
so he grabbed the kitchen chopper and hacked the box open; it was as fragile
as a violin. Out of it he took something carefully wrapped in a very old
copy of the Russky Invalid.
It was an officer's jacket.
"Grandfather's uniform!" Petya exclaimed triumphantly. "There!"
Nothing else was in the parcel.
"I-I don't see-" mumbled Auntie.
"What a queer idea, sending military relics to a child," Father
remarked dryly, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Highly unpedagogical."
"Oh, keep quiet! You don't understand anything! Grandma's a wonder!"
Petya shouted in delight. He ran to the nursery with the precious parcel.
Gold buttons gleamed through their neat wrapping of tissue-paper. Petya
hastily undid the wrapping.
My God! What was this? No eagles!
The buttons were absolutely smooth. They differed in no way from the
cheapest lugs on the uniforms of ordinary privates. True, Petya found
sixteen of them. But the whole batch would bring him no more than three
fives.
What could have happened?
Many years later Petya was to learn that in the time of Emperor
Alexander II officers' buttons were without eagles. But who could have
foreseen it? He felt completely crushed.
Petya sat on the windowsill with the useless uniform in his lap.
Outside, snow-flakes were flying past the thermometer. He watched them
indifferently, without a trace of the joy he usually felt at the first snow.
One after another there passed before his mind's eye pictures of the
events he had taken part in and witnessed only a short time before. But now
it all seemed as distant, as hazy, and as untrue as a dream. As if it all
had taken place in some other town; perhaps, even, in some other country.
Yet Petya knew that it had not been a dream. It had taken place over
there, not far away, beyond Kulikovo Field, beyond the milky smoke of snow
that whirled along between sky and earth.
Where was Gavrik now?
What had happened to Terenti and the sailor?
Had they got away across the roofs?
But there was no answer to these questions.
The snow came down thicker and thicker, covering the black earth of
Kulikovo Field with the clean, bright sheet of winter, come at last.
THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Christmas came.
Pavlik awoke before dawn. For him Christmas Eve was a double holiday:
it was his birthday, too.
You can easily imagine how impatiently the boy had awaited this joyous
and at the same time most curious day when he suddenly became four years
old.
One day he was still three, and the next he was four. When did that
happen? Probably at night.
Pavlik had decided long ago to watch for the mysterious moment when
children become a year older. He woke up in the middle of the night and
opened his eyes wide, but as far as he could see nothing had changed.
Everything was the same as usual: the chest of drawers, the night-lamp, the
dry palm branch behind the icon.
How old was he now: three, or four?
He examined his arms attentively and gave a kick with his legs under
the blanket. No, his arms and legs were the same as when he had gone to bed
in the evening. But perhaps his head had grown a bit? He carefully felt his
head-his cheeks, his nose, his ears. . . . They all seemed to be the same as
yesterday.
Now wasn't that strange?
It was all the more strange because in the morning he was sure to be
four. That he knew for certain. Then how old was he now? He couldn't still
be three. But on the other hand it didn't look very much like four, either.
It would be a good idea to wake Daddy. He was sure to know. But crawl
out from under the warm quilt and walk barefoot across the floor-no, thanks!
A better idea was to pretend to be asleep and wait with closed eyes for the
transformation to take place.
Pavlik shut his eyes, but before he knew it he fell asleep. When he
woke up he saw at once that the night-lamp had gone out a long time ago and
that the dark, bluish light of early-early winter morning was coming in
through the cracks in the shutters.
Now there couldn't be the slightest doubt: he was four.
The whole flat was still fast asleep; Dunya had not yet begun to bustle
about in the kitchen. Four-year-old Pavlik sprang nimbly out of bed and
"dressed himself" -that is, he pulled on his vest, with the cloth-covered
buttons, back to front and shoved his bare little feet into his shoes.
Cautiously opening the heavy, squeaky door with both hands, he set out
for the parlour. It was a little boy's big journey through a deserted flat.
In the middle of the darkness, filling the entire parlour with the strong
smell of fir needles, stood something huge and vague, with black paws
reaching all the way to the floor and hung with dangling chains of paper.
This, Pavlik already knew, was the Christmas tree. While his eyes
accustomed themselves to the gloom he cautiously walked round the thick
velvety tree whose silver threads cast the faintest possible flickers of
light.
The tree echoed the boy's every step with a papery stir, a tremble, a
rustle of cardboard and of Christmas crackers, a delicate tinkle of glass
decorations.
Now that he was accustomed to the darkness Pavlik saw, in the corner, a
table heaped with presents. He rushed to it, forgetting the tree for a
moment. They were first-rate presents, much better than what he had
expected: a bow with arrows in a velvet quiver, a beautiful book with
coloured pictures, Grandma Tatyana's Poultry Yard, a real "grown-up" lotto
game, and a horse which was bigger, handsomer, and, most important of all,
much newer than Kudlatka. Besides, there were tins of George Borman
Lozenges, bars of chocolate with picture cards, and a cake in a round box.
Pavlik had never expected such riches. The table was laden with toys
and sweets-and all his very own.
Still, he felt that something was lacking. He quietly dragged all his
old toys, including the tattered Kudlatka, into the parlour from the nursery
and added them to the new ones. Now there were as many toys as in a shop.
But even this did not seem enough.
He brought out the famous moneybox and put it on top of the drum in the
middle of the table, as the chief symbol of his wealth.
After building this triumphal toy tower and feasting his eyes upon it,
Pavlik returned to the Christmas tree. For a long time now a honey cake
covered with pink frosting, hanging not very high at all, by a yellow
worsted thread, had been disturbing him. It was shaped like a star and had a
hole in the middle, and it was so beautiful that he felt an overpowering
desire to eat it as quickly as possible.
Deciding that it would be no great harm if there were one honey cake
less on the tree, Pavlik untied it from the branch and put it in his mouth.
He took a sizable bite, but to his amazement he discovered that the cake was
not at all as tasty as one might have thought. As a matter of fact, it was a
simply disgusting cake: it was stale, it was made of rye flour, it wasn't
sweet, and it had a strong smell of treacle. And yet by the looks of it, it
was the kind of cake the snow-white Christmas angels, who sang so sweetly
high up in heaven, lived on.
With a grimace Pavlik hung the nibbled cake back on the branch. There
was clearly some misunderstanding here. No doubt a spoiled cake had been put
in with the others by accident in the shop.
At this point Pavlik noticed another and still more beautiful honey
cake, covered with blue frosting. It hung quite high, and he had to pull up
a chair. This time he did not untie the cake from the branch but simply bit
off a corner. It was so unpleasant that he spat it out at once.
But it was hard to believe that all the other cakes were worthless too.
Pavlik decided to try every single one. No sooner said than done.
Grunting, wheezing, his tongue sticking out, he dragged the heavy chair
round the tree, climbed up on it, bit off a corner of a cake, saw that it
was foul, and dragged the chair farther.
Before long he had tasted all the honey cakes except two near the very
ceiling and far out of reach. For a long time he stood with his head bent
back, thinking about them. They attracted him because they were beyond
reach, and hence all the more beautiful and desirable.
These cakes, he was certain, would not trick him. He was planning how
to put the chair on top of the table and try to get them from there when he
heard the fresh rustle of a holiday dress. Auntie Tatyana's beaming face
looked into the parlour.
"Aha, our little birthday-boy is up before everybody else, I see. What
are you doing?"
"Walking round the Christmas twee," Pavlik replied modestly. He looked
up at Auntie Tatyana with the trusting, truthful eyes of a well-behaved
child.
"Oh, my precious little tadpole! Twee! Not twee but tree. When will you
finally learn to say that word properly? Well, happy birthday!"
The next moment the boy found himself in Auntie Tatyana's warm,
fragrant, tender embrace.
Dunya, her face flushed with embarrassment, hurried in from the
kitchen, holding out a dainty sky-blue cup with "Happy Birthday" written on
it in gold letters.
So began that happy day which was destined to have such an absolutely
unexpected and frightful ending.
In the evening, Pavlik had guests-little boys and girls. They were all
such kids that Petya felt it beneath his dignity to talk to them, let alone
play with them.
Petya's heart was unutterably sad and heavy as he sat on the windowsill
in the dark nursery, looking at the decoratively frosted window on which the
golden nut of the street lamp glimmered among icy ferns.
Ominous forebodings darkened his spirits.
From the parlour streamed the hot, crackling light of the Christmas
tree-a flaming bonfire of candles and golden rain. He could hear the
enticing music of the piano. That was Father pounding out a seminary polka,
the tails of his dress coat spread apart and his starched cuffs rattling. A
great many children's sturdy little legs were stamping senselessly round the
Christmas tree.
"Never mind, Petya," said Auntie Tatyana as she passed by. " Don't be
envious. You'll have your day too."
"Oh, Auntie, you don't understand anything at all," the boy said in a
piteous voice. "Leave me alone."
At last came that long-awaited moment-the distribution of the nuts and
cakes. The children surrounded the Christmas tree on tiptoe and stretched
their hands towards the cakes, which shone like medals. The tree rocked. The
chains rustled.
"Oh, look," a ringing, frightened little voice suddenly said,
"somebody's bitten my cake!"
"Mine too!"
"I have two, and they're all bitten."
"Huh," someone said in disappointment, "they're not new at all. They've
been eaten once already."
Auntie Tatyana flushed to the roots of her hair as nibbled cakes were
stretched out to her from all sides.
Finally her eyes came to rest on Pavlik. "Did you do that, you naughty
boy?"
"Auntie dear, I only wanted a teeny-weeny taste," Pavlik looked
innocently at his angered aunt with wide-open eyes that were amber-coloured
from the Christmas tree lights. "I thought," he added with a sigh, "they
were good, but it turns out they're only for guests."
"That's enough, you bad, bad boy!" Auntie Tatyana cried. With a gesture
of despair she ran to the sideboard. Luckily, there was still plenty of
other sweets. Satisfaction was immediately given to all who had been
slighted. The scandal was hushed.
Soon the sleepy guests were carried away to their homes. The party was
over. Pavlik set about putting his treasures in order.
Just then Dunya appeared in the doorway of the nursery with a
mysterious air and beckoned to Petya.
"Young master, that crazy Gavrik is waiting for you in the back
stairway," she whispered, glancing round.
Petya dashed into the kitchen.
Gavrik was sitting on the high backstairs sill, leaning against the icy
window on which danced blue sparks from the moon. Under his hood glittered
small angry eyes. He was breathing heavily.
Petya's first thought was that Gavrik had come to collect his debt. He
was about to tell the sad story of Grandfather's buttons and promise honour
bright to settle the debt in two days, at the latest, when Gavrik quickly
reached inside his padded jacket and pulled out four familiar-looking bags.
"Here," he said in a low, firm voice, handing them to Petya. "Hide
these and we'll call it quits. They're left over from Joseph Karlovich, God
rest his soul."
As he said these last words Gavrik fervently made the sign of the
cross.
"Hide them and keep 'em until they're needed."
"Right," whispered Petya.
Gavrik said nothing for a long time. Finally he wiped his nose hard
with his fist and climbed down from the windowsill.
"Well, Petya, so long."
"Did-did they get away?"
"They did. Across the roofs. Now they're looking for 'em high and low."
Gavrik paused for a moment, considering whether he hadn't said too
much. Then he leaned forward trustfully.
"If you only knew how many were caught!" he whispered into Petya's ear.
"But they won't be caught! Take my word for it. They're hiding in the
catacombs. Like all the revolutionaries. In the spring they'll start again.
You know, the landlord's throwing Terenti's wife and the kids, Zhenechka and
Motya, out in the street. That's the way things are."
Gavrik scratched his eyebrows with a worried air.
"I don't know what to do with 'em now. Looks as we'll all have to move
from Near Mills to Grandpa's hut. Grandpa's in a bad way. Looks as if he's
going to die soon. Why don't you drop in some day, Petya? Only not so soon.
The main thing is to hide these bags in a good place. 'Weep no more,
Marusya, you will yet be mine.' Shake, pal."
Gavrik shoved a flat hand into Petya's and then ran off, beating a
tattoo on the stairs with his broken boots.
Petya went back to the nursery and hid the bags under the books in his
satchel.
Just then the door flew open with an unearthly bang and Father marched
into the room holding the mutilated dress coat.
"What's the meaning of this?" he asked in such a quiet voice that Petya
nearly fainted.
"By the true and holy Cross-" he muttered, but he could not gather up
the strength to cross himself.
"What's the meaning of this?" Father shouted, turning red and shaking
from head to foot.
That very second Pavlik let out a heart-rending howl in the parlour, as
though echoing Father's angry shout.
The little boy ran in on legs wobbling from horror and threw his arms
round Father's knees. His mouth was such a wide-open square that his yelling
throat, with its tiny, quivering lobe at the back, could clearly be seen.
The tears came in streams. In his trembling hand lay the open moneybox, full
of bits of tin and iron instead of money.
"D-da-da-dy," babbled Pavlik, hiccuping. "Pe-etya- rob-hie-robbed me!"
"On my word of hon-" began Petya, but Father already had a firm grip on
his shoulders.
"You good-for-nothing!" he roared. "You scalawag! I know everything!
You're a gambler, and a liar besides!"
He began to shake Petya-so furiously that it seemed he wanted to shake
the very life out of the boy. His jaw bounced up and down, and so did his
pince-nez, which had slipped from his perspiring nose with its cork-like
pores, and dangled on the black cord.
"Give them to me this very instant, those-what do you call 'em-mugs,
jugs-"
"Lugs," Petya said with a crooked smile, hoping somehow to turn the
matter into a joke.
But when Father heard the word "lugs" from the lips of his son he flew
into a still greater rage.
"Lugs, eh? Excellent! Where are they? Give them here this very minute.
Where is that street filth? Where are those germs? Into the fire with them!
Into the stove! I don't want to see a single trace of them!"
He took in the room with a swift glance and then made straight for the
satchel.
Father walked down the passage with long, quick, nervous strides,
carrying the bags squeamishly, as though they were dead kittens. Petya,
sobbing, ran after him all the way to the kitchen.
"Daddy! Daddy!" he shouted, tugging at his sleeves. "Daddy!"
Father roughly pushed Petya aside, moved a clattering pot and fiercely
shoved the bags into the flaming stove, getting soot on his cuffs.
The boy froze in horror.
"Hook it!" he screamed.
But at that instant shots resounded inside the stove, followed by a
small explosion.
A multicoloured flame shot through the stove ring. Noodles flew up out
of the pot and plastered themselves against the ceiling. The stove cracked.
Out of the crack poured acrid smoke, filling the entire kitchen in one
minute.
They flooded the stove. Later, when they raked out the ashes, they
found a pile of charred revolver cartridge cases.
But Petya knew none of this. He had fainted. They put him to bed. His
whole body was on fire. When they took his temperature it was one hundred
and three and five-tenths.
KULIKOVO FIELD
No sooner had the scarlet fever passed when pneumonia set in.
Petya was ill all winter. Only in the middle of Lent did he begin to
walk about inside the house.
Spring was on the way. First early spring-in fact, early-early spring.
No longer winter but by no means real spring.
The short-lived southern snow had long since vanished, without giving
Petya a taste of its delights. It was now the dry, grey Odessa March.
On shaky legs, Petya wandered idly through the rooms which had become
small and very low the minute he climbed out of bed. He stood on tiptoe in
front of the pier-glass in the dark anteroom and with a tug of self-pity
examined his peaky white face with the shadows under eyes that seemed
somehow startled and hard to recognise.
The whole first half of the day he was all alone in the flat. Father
was at school, and Auntie Tatyana took Pavlik out walking.
The noises of the deserted rooms made Petya pleasantly light-headed.
The sharp click of the pendulum came with a persistent, frightening
inevitability. Petya went to the window. It was still sealed for the winter;
there was a roll of yellowed cotton wool sprinkled with pieces of clipped
worsted between the two frames.
He saw the mean, grey, dry roadway, the hard earth of Kulikovo Field,
and a grey sky with the faintest watery traces of blue. From the kitchen
window he could see the blue twigs of the lilacs in the vacant lot. He knew
that if you stripped the bitter bark with your teeth you would uncover a
wonderfully green, pistachio-coloured stem.
At long intervals the low, funereal bass of the Lenten bells quivered
in the air, bringing to the heart a feeling of emptiness and sadness.
Yet latent in this bleak world were the powerful forces of spring. They
were merely awaiting their hour. They could be felt in everything, and most
of all in the hyacinth bulbs.
The indoor spring was still hidden in the dark storeroom, where, amid
the mousy odour of household odds and ends, Auntie Tatyana had placed
shallow little bowls along the wall. The Dutch bulbs, Petya knew, needed
darkness in order to sprout. And in the darkness of the storeroom the
mystery of growth was taking place.
Pale but firm spears were cutting their way through the silken, wasted
husks of the bulbs. He knew that just in time for Easter, taut, bushy, pale
pink, white and purple hyacinth flowers would miraculously appear on the
thick stems.
In the meantime, Petya's child's heart was lonely and numb in this
grey, desolate world of the vernal equinox.
The days were growing longer, Now he had nothing to fill the incredibly
dragging hours between dinner and evening. How long they were, those dreary
hours of the equinox! Even longer than the deserted streets stretching
endlessly in the direction of Near Mills.
Petya was now allowed to stroll about near the house. He walked slowly
up and down the dry pavement, squinting at the sun as it set beyond the
railway station.
Only a year ago he had looked upon the station as the end of town.
Beyond it lay geography. But now he knew that the town continued beyond the
station, that there were the long, dusty streets of the suburbs. He clearly
pictured them, reaching away to the west.
In the distance, filling the broad space between two dreary brick
houses, hung a monstrous red sun from the times when the Earth was young; it
gave off no rays, yet its sharp, sullen light blinded you.
Two weeks before Easter, wagon-loads of timber were brought to Kulikovo
Field. Carpenters, navvies, and foremen appeared. Tape-lines were stretched
over the ground in all directions. Contractors with yellow folding footrules
in their outside pockets paced off sections of land. The construction of
booths for the Easter fair had begun.
Petya's greatest pleasure was to wander among the boxes of big nails,
the axes, saws, logs and shavings, and to guess what would be built where in
Kulikovo Field. Each new row of posts, each new trench, each lot measured by
tape-line and marked off with pegs excited his imagination.
His soaring fantasy drew pictures of amazingly beautiful booths full of
wonders and mysteries, while levelheaded experience told him that it would
all be the same as last year. No better and no worse. But his fantasy could
not reconcile itself to that; it demanded something new, something never
seen before.
He loitered about near the workers and contractors in the hope of
getting some information out of them.
"I say there, could you tell me what this is going to be?"
"A booth, naturally."
"I know, but what kind?"
"Wooden, naturally."
Petya chuckled, to flatter the man.
"I know that too. You do say funny things! But what will there be
inside? A circus?"
"That's right."
"But how? Doesn't a circus have to be round?"
"Then it won't be a circus."
"Will it be a waxworks?"
"That's right."
"Such a tiny booth?"
"Then it won't be a waxworks."
"But really. What will it be?"
"A privy."
Petya blushed but then chuckled all the louder. He was willing to
endure any humiliation as long as he found out at least something.
"Ha-ha-ha! But really, what are you building here?"
"Run along, kid, this ain't no place for you. You'll be late to
school."
"I don't go to school yet. I had scarlet fever, and pneumonia too."
"Then go to bed instead of making a pest of yourself here."
With a forced grin Petya sauntered off, racking his brains over the
insoluble problem.
For it was a known fact that before the booths were roofed with canvas
and hung with pictures nothing could be learned. It was impossible to
tell-as impossible as trying to guess the colour of the hyacinth that would
blossom out on the pale stem by Easter Sunday.
On Holy Saturday, highly mysterious green crates and trunks labelled
"Handle with Care" were brought to the fairgrounds. Not a single boy in
Odessa knew what was in them.
You could only make a rough shot: wax figures, magicians' tables, or
flat, heavy snakes with filmy eyes and forked tongues.
One of the trunks was known to contain a mermaid with a lady's bust and
a scaly tail instead of legs. But how did she get along without water? Could
there be a bath-tub inside the trunk? Or was she packed in wet mud? All you
could do was guess.
Petya was dying for the fair to open. It seemed to him that nothing was
ready, that the whole thing would fall through, that this year the fair
would never open at all.
But his fears proved groundless. By Easter Sunday all was ready: the
pictures hung, the flagpoles whitewashed, and the square generously
sprinkled from long green barrels which had been carted between the booths
all the previous day and had darkened the dry earth with their glistening
rakes of water.
In a word, Easter came and blossomed exactly according to calendar.
The bells pealed monotonously. A fresh-looking sun raced along among
fluffy clouds. Auntie Tatyana, in a white lace dress, sliced a ham, turning
back rind as thick and curved as the holster of a revolver.
Sugar lambs covered the Easter cakes. A pink Christ holding a paper
church banner flew through the air on a wire, like a ballet dancer. Round a
green hill of watercress lay coloured eggs polished so glossy with butter
that they reflected the newly washed windows.
Curly hyacinths in bowls wound with crinkly pink paper gave off their
stiflingly sweet and at the same time grave-yardish odour; a fragrance so
heavy that you could almost see it rising as smoky lilac strands in the
sunshine above the Easter table.
But Easter Sunday, for Petya, was the longest and dreariest day of all,
because no public entertainment or merry-making whatsoever was allowed. That
day the police dedicated to God. But at noon on the following day-with the
permission of the authorities-the public began to make merry.
At the stroke of twelve the police officer on duty blew his whistle,
and the tricoloured flag was run up on the tall whitewashed pole in the
middle of Kulikovo Field.
The next instant everything broke loose. The Turkish drums of the
regimental bands struck up. The hurdy-gurdies and merry-go-round organs
began to blare. From the whitewashed platforms of the booths came the
shrill, baboon-like, guttural cries of the red-headed clowns and jugglers
calling to the public. The glass beads and carriages and horses of the
merry-go-round began to whirl.
The fragile little swing-boats flew up into the dizzying blue of the
cloud-spotted sky. From all sides came the insistent and unceasing clang of
brass bells and triangles.
A vendor passed carrying on his head a gleaming pitcher of coloured icy
water in which swam a few slices of lemon, a piece of ice and a dusty silver
sun.
A pock-marked Port Arthur veteran in a shaggy black Caucasian fur cap
had taken off his boots and was climbing the greased pole for the prize
razor and shaving brush at the top.
The dizzying carnival in Kulikovo Field thundered away for seven days
from noon to sunset; it filled the Batchei home with the din and hubbub of
merry-making crowds from the outlying working-class districts.
Petya spent his days, from morn to dusk, in Kulikovo Field. For some
reason he felt certain that he would meet Gavrik there. Many a time he
sighted in the crowd a pair of lilac-coloured corduroys and a naval cap with
anchor buttons-that was what Gavrik had worn the Easter before-and ran in
that direction, threading his way through the crowd, but always in vain.
It smacked somehow of Near Mills, this carnival of the common people
where many of the men carried thin iron canes like Terenti's and a great
many of the girls wore blue earrings like Motya's.
But Petya's hopes did not come true. The last day of the fair drew to
an end. The bands played the "Longing for Home" march for the last time. The
flag was lowered. Police whistles trilled. The ground emptied. It was all
over until next Easter.
A sad and sullen sunset glowed long in the sky beyond the garish,
startlingly quiet booths, beyond the iron wheels of the motionless
tip-overs, beyond the bare flagpoles.
The unbearably mournful silence of the holiday just over was broken
only now and then by the lion's deep, blood-curdling roar and the hyena's
jerky laughter.
In the morning wagons came, and two days later not a trace of the fair
remained. Kulikovo Field was again a black, dreary square from which all day
long came the sing-song voices of sergeants drilling their men:
"Right turn! One-two!"
"Left turn! One-two!"
"About turn! One-two!"
The days kept growing longer, and more and more difficult to fill. Then
one day Petya went to the seashore to pay Gavrik a visit.
THE SAIL
Grandpa was dying.
Gavrik knew this, and so did Motya and her mother, and so did Petya,
who now spent his days on the shore.
Grandpa knew it too.
He lay from morning to night on a sagging iron bed which had been
carried out of the hut, into the warm April sunshine.
When Petya came up to say hello the first time he was embarrassed by
the white transparency of Grandpa's face and its faint bluish glow against
the red pillow.
A clear, composed face, with a longish white beard, it had a beauty and
dignity that struck Petya. But the most amazing and most disturbing thing
about the face was that it seemed ageless, already beyond the limits of
time.
"Hello, Grandpa," said Petya.
The old man turned his eyes with their bloodless violet lids and looked
long at the boy in the Gymnasium uniform, but apparently without
recognition.
"It's me, Petya, from Kanatnaya and the corner of Kulikovo."
Grandpa gazed into the distance without stirring.
"Don't you remember him, Grandpa? He's the one you made a lead sinker
for last year."
A shadow of remembrance, as distant as a cloud, flickered in the old
man's face. He smiled a clear, conscious smile, showing his gums.
"A sinker," he said softly, but without any special effort. "Yes. A
lead sinker."
Chewing his lips, he gave Petya a fond look.
"You've sprung up. That's good. Go play now, my child. Play with
pebbles on the beach. Go play. Only be careful and don't fall in the water."
He evidently took Petya for a little child, something like his
great-grandson Zhenechka who was crawling about in the yellow dandelions
nearby.
From time to time the old man lifted his head to take an admiring look
at his household.
Since the arrival of Terenti's family the place had become
unrecognisable. It was as if they had brought a corner of Near Mills with
them.
Terenti's wife had freshened the clay floor for Easter and had
whitewashed all the walls, inside and outside.
The windows of the rejuvenated hut had been washed and bordered with
blue, and they gleamed merrily in the sunshine.
Round the hut grew green irises, now about to blossom. Among them Motya
had laid out her dolls, representing society ladies at their summer villas.
Linen of different colours was drying on the lines. Motya, her hair
like a boy's, was watering the vegetable patch, pressing the big
watering-can to her stomach with both hands. The dog Rudko, smiling sourly,
ran up and down fastened to a wire between two posts. Near the vegetable
patch, smoke was curling from a clay stove with a bottomless iron pot fitted
into it for a chimney. There was the delicious smoky smell of gruel.
Motya's mother, in a gathered skirt, was bent over a trough. All about
her soap bubbles floated in the air.
Occasionally Grandpa had the feeling that time had turned back, and he
was forty again. Grandma had just whitewashed the hut. His grandson Terenti
was crawling among the dandelions. On the roof lay a mast wrapped in a
brand-new sail.
Now he would heave the mast on his shoulder, take the oars and the
red-leaded wooden rudder under his arm, and go down to the shore to rig the
boat.
But the lapses of memory were short-lived. The old man would suddenly
feel weighed down by household cares. He would laboriously raise himself on
his elbow and call Gavrik.
"What do you want, Grandpa?"
The old man would chew his lips for a long time as he gathered his
strength.
"The boat-not carried away, is it?" he would finally ask, his eyebrows
lifting sadly, like two little gable roofs.
"It's safe, Grandpa. You'd better lie down again." - "It ought to be
tarred-"
"I'll tar it, Grandpa, don't you worry. Now lie back."
Grandpa would lie back obediently, but a minute later he would call
Motya.
"What are you doing there, my child?"
"Watering the potatoes."
"Clever girl. Yes, give 'em plenty of water. The weeds- are you pulling
'em out?"
"I am, Grandpa."
"Or else they'll choke everything. Well, go, my child. Play with your
dolls for a while. Take a rest."
Again Grandpa would fall back heavily.
But then Rudko would start barking, and the old man would turn angry
bushy eyes in the dog's direction. "Down, Rudko! Quiet, damn you!" He
thought he was calling to the playful dog in a commanding shout. But
actually he spoke in a murmur.
Most of the time Grandpa lay motionless, gazing into the distance.
Between the two low hills on the shore he could see a triangle of blue with
a great many fishing sails. As he looked at them the old man carried on a
leisurely conversation with himself.
"Yes, that's true. The wind loves a sail. A sail makes all the
difference in the world. A sail will take you wherever you want to go. You
can go to Dofinovka, if you want, or you can go to Lustdorf. With a sail you
can go to Ochakov, and to Kherson, and even all the way to Eupatorium. But
if all you have is oars, and no sail-why, it's a joke! It'll take you a good
pale, lustreless, round face and Izzy the Dizzy's bowler hat.
This was Madam Kogan, with her whole family.
Not daring to enter the room, she stood for a long time curtsying in
the doorway, raising the hem of her skirt with one hand and pressing the
other to her heart. A honeyed, well-bred and at the same time frenzied smile
played on her wrinkled mobile little face.
"Mr. Batchei!" she exclaimed in a shrill, bird-like voice, stretching
out both her trembling gloved hands towards Father. "Mr. Batchei! Tatyana
Ivanovna! We have always been good neighbours! Are people to blame because
they have a different God?"
All of a sudden she fell to her knees.
"Save my children!" she wailed. "Let them smash everything but only let
them spare my children!"
"Mama, stop lowering yourself!" Nusya cried angrily. He shoved his
hands in his pockets and turned aside, showing the bluish shaven nape of his
neck.
"Nusya, will you shut up at last?" hissed Izzy the Dizzy. "Or do you
want that I should slap your cheeks? Your mother knows what she is doing.
She knows that Mr. Batchei is an intellectual person and will not allow us
to be killed."
Auntie Tatyana ran to the door and lifted the Jewess to her feet. "Why,
Madam Kogan, what ever are you doing? For shame! Why, of course, of course!
Goodness me! Please come in, Mr. Kogan, Nusya, Dorochka- What a misfortune!"
While Madam Kogan wept and gushed words of gratitude that made Father
and Auntie Tatyana feel so ashamed they wished the earth would swallow them
up, and while she hid the children and her husband in the back rooms, the
singing outside grew louder and nearer with every step.
A small crowd which indeed looked like a religious procession was
coming across Kulikovo Field towards the house.
In front walked two grey-haired old men in winter coats but hatless,
carrying a portrait of the Tsar on an embroidered linen towel. Petya at once
recognised the blue ribbon across the shoulder and the acorn which was the
Tsar's face. Behind the portrait swayed church banners, raised high in the
cold, bluish, soapy air.
Then came a lot of respectable-looking men and women in winter
overcoats and galoshes, high overshoes and top boots. White steam poured
from their wide-open mouths. They sang:
Save, O Lo-o-o-ord, Thy flo-o-ock, and bless Thy do-o-o-omains. . . .
They looked so peaceable and dignified that for a minute an indecisive
smile played on Father's face.
"There, you see?" he said. "They're walking along quietly and
peacefully without hurting a soul, and you-"
Just then the procession came to a stop on the other side of the
street, opposite the house. Out of the crowd ran a burly, moustached woman
with purplish-blue cheeks and two shawls tied across her bosom. Her bulging
eyes, black as Isabella grapes, stared with ferocious determination at the
windows. She planted her fat legs in their thick white woollen stockings
wide apart, like a man, and shook her fist at the house.
"Aha, Jew-faces!" she cried in the shrill voice of a market woman.
"Hiding, eh? Never mind, we'll get you in a jiffy! Orthodox Christians, show
your icons!"
With these words she raised the hem of her skirt and ran across the
street with a determined air. On the way she picked a cobblestone from a
pile that had been put there for mending the roadway.
After her, about twenty long-armed roughs with tri-coloured ribbons on
their overcoats and jackets stepped out of the crowd. They crossed the
street without hurrying, one ofter the other, and as each passed the pile of
cobbles he bent low and nimbly.
When the last one passed, the place where the pile of stones had stood
was absolutely smooth ground.
A deathly silence set in. Each tick of the clock was now the crash of a
pistol-shot, and the panes in the windows were black. The silence dragged
out so long that Father had time to say, "I don't understand. Where, after
all, are the police? Why don't they send men from the Army Staff?"
"Oh, the police!" Auntie Tatyana cried hysterically.
She stopped short.
The silence became more terrifying than ever. Izzy the Dizzy sat on the
edge of a chair in the middle of the parlour, his bowler hat pushed down on
his forehead. His sickly eyes were fixed on a spot in the corner.
Nusya had been walking up and down the passage with his hands in his
pockets. Now he stopped to listen. His full lips were curved in a strained,
scornful smile.
The silence lasted another unbearable instant and then burst. Somewhere
down below the first rock slammed through a window. Then a squall hit the
house. Glass shattered to the pavement. The iron sign-board was ripped off
with a thunderous rattle. There was the crash of breaking doors and boxes.
Jars of lozenges, kegs, and tinned goods rolled out into the roadway.
Whistling and whooping, the brutalised mob surrounded the house. The
gold-framed portrait with the crown soared slantwise into the air, now here,
now there. It was as if an officer in epaulets and a blue ribbon across his
shoulder, with church banners on all sides of him, was rising up on tiptoe
all the time to look over the heads.
"Mr. Batchei! Do you see what they're doing?" whispered Kogan, wringing
his hands. "Two hundred rubles' worth of merchandise!"
"Papa, keep quiet! Stop lowering yourself!" shouted Nusya. "This isn't
a question of money!" The pogrom continued.
"Sir! They're going through the flats looking for Jews!" Madam Kogan
screamed. She began to flutter in the dark passage like a chicken at sight
of the knife. "Dora! Nusya! My children!" "They're coming up the stairs,
sir!"
From the stairs sounded the rumble of coarse voices and boots,
amplified tenfold by the box-like front entrance. With trembling fingers,
yet extraordinarily quickly, Father buttoned all the buttons of his jacket
and rushed to the door, tearing open with both hands the choking starched
collar under his beard. Before Auntie Tatyana could open her mouth he was on
the stairs. "For goodness' sake, Vasili Petrovich!" "Don't sir, they'll kill
you!" "Daddy!" cried Petya, rushing after him. In his black jacket, straight
and agile, his face set, his cuffs rattling, Father quickly ran downstairs.
Up the stairs towards him clumped the woman in the thick white woollen
stockings. She wore cotton mitts, and in her right hand she gripped a heavy
cobblestone. Now her eyes were not black but a bluish-white, and glazed,
like the eyes of a dead bullock. Behind her came sweating roughs in
dark-blue caps, the kind grocers' assistants wore.
"Gentlemen!" Father cried, not at all to the point, in his high
falsetto, his neck turning a deep red. "Who gave you the right to break into
other people's houses? This is robbery! I won't allow it!"
"And who might you be? The house-owner?"
The woman shifted the cobblestone to her left hand, and, without
looking at Father, hit him in the ear with her right fist as hard as she
could. Father rocked on his heels, but the men prevented him from falling: a
red, freckled hand grabbed him by the silk lapel of his jacket and jerked
him forward. The old cloth ripped.
"Stop hitting him! He's our Daddy!" Petya cried in a voice totally
unlike his own. "You have no right! Fools!"
Somebody gave a sharp, vicious pull, with all his might, at Father's
sleeve. The sleeve came off. The round cuff with its cuff-link rolled down
the stairs. Petya saw a bleeding scratch on Father's nose, saw his
nearsighted eyes full of tears-his pince-nez had been knocked off- and his
hair, long like a seminary student's, lying in two dishevelled parts.
Stinging pain filled the boy's heart. He was ready to die at that
minute if only they would stop hurting Daddy.
"Beasts! Cattle! Animals!" Father moaned through set teeth, backing
away from the pogrom-makers.
Auntie Tatyana and Dunya came running down holding icons.
"Gentlemen, what are you doing? Have you no fear of God?" Auntie
Tatyana said over and over again, tears in her eyes.
"Are you mad?" Dunya cried in rage, lifting as high as she could an
icon of the Saviour with waxen orange-blossoms under the glass. "You're
beating Orthodox Christians! Look what you're doing before you begin. Go
back where you came from. There's no Jews here, not a one! Go away!"
Police whistles sounded in the street-as usual, exactly half an hour
after the start of a pogrom. The woman in the white stockings put the
cobblestone on a step and carefully wiped her hand on the hem of her skirt.
"Well, that'll do for here," she said with a nod of the head. "A little
of a good thing goes a long way. Hear those policemen of ours blowing out
their guts? Come on, now let's get that Jew at Malofontanskaya and the
corner of Botanicheskaya!"
She gathered her heavy skirts and, grunting, climbed downstairs.
THE OFFICER'S UNIFORM
For several days afterwards the pavement in front of the house was
strewn with cobbles, broken glass, splintered boxes, crushed balls of
blueing, rice, rags, and various household articles.
Among the bushes in the field one suddenly came across a picture album,
a bamboo book stand, a lamp, a flat-iron.
Passers-by carefully avoided the wreckage, as if mere contact with it
would make a person a party to the pogrom and disgrace him for life.
The children too. When, horror-struck and curious, they went down into
the pillaged shop, they deliberately hid their hands in their pockets so as
not to be tempted by a mint cake or a crushed box of Kerch cigarettes lying
about.
Father paced the floor from morning to night, his chin tensely thrust
forward; he looked somehow younger, sterner, and was unusually brisk; he had
become noticeably grey at the temples. The jacket had been mended so
skilfully that there was scarcely any trace of the damage. Life was becoming
normal again.
There was no more firing in the streets. Peaceful silence reigned in
the city. The first tram-car since the strike rolled past the house. It was
a clumsy, absurd contraption which looked like a city coach, with huge rear
wheels and tiny front ones.
An engine whistled at the railway station. The Russkiye Vedomosti, the
Niva and the Zadushevnoye Slovo were delivered to the house.
One day Petya looked out of the window and saw a yellow postal van at
the entrance.
A warm wave flooded his heart, and it missed a beat. The postman opened
the door at the back of the van and took out a parcel.
"It's from Grandma!" Petya cried, smacking the windowsill with his
palms.
Why, he had forgotten all about it! Now, at sight of the yellow van, he
instantly remembered: lugs, the dress coat he had turned into a total mess,
the sandals he had sold, Pavlik's moneybox-in a word, all his crimes, which
might come to light at any moment.
The bell rang. Petya ran to the anteroom.
"Don't you dare touch it! It's for me, for me!"
And so it was, to everybody's amazement. "Master Pyotr Batchei.
Personal" was written in big letters in purple ink on the canvas top.
The canvas was tightly sewn down with strong thread and Petya split his
fingernails as he tore it off. He did not have the patience to do a neat job
of removing the squeaking cover, which was held in place by long thin nails,
so he grabbed the kitchen chopper and hacked the box open; it was as fragile
as a violin. Out of it he took something carefully wrapped in a very old
copy of the Russky Invalid.
It was an officer's jacket.
"Grandfather's uniform!" Petya exclaimed triumphantly. "There!"
Nothing else was in the parcel.
"I-I don't see-" mumbled Auntie.
"What a queer idea, sending military relics to a child," Father
remarked dryly, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Highly unpedagogical."
"Oh, keep quiet! You don't understand anything! Grandma's a wonder!"
Petya shouted in delight. He ran to the nursery with the precious parcel.
Gold buttons gleamed through their neat wrapping of tissue-paper. Petya
hastily undid the wrapping.
My God! What was this? No eagles!
The buttons were absolutely smooth. They differed in no way from the
cheapest lugs on the uniforms of ordinary privates. True, Petya found
sixteen of them. But the whole batch would bring him no more than three
fives.
What could have happened?
Many years later Petya was to learn that in the time of Emperor
Alexander II officers' buttons were without eagles. But who could have
foreseen it? He felt completely crushed.
Petya sat on the windowsill with the useless uniform in his lap.
Outside, snow-flakes were flying past the thermometer. He watched them
indifferently, without a trace of the joy he usually felt at the first snow.
One after another there passed before his mind's eye pictures of the
events he had taken part in and witnessed only a short time before. But now
it all seemed as distant, as hazy, and as untrue as a dream. As if it all
had taken place in some other town; perhaps, even, in some other country.
Yet Petya knew that it had not been a dream. It had taken place over
there, not far away, beyond Kulikovo Field, beyond the milky smoke of snow
that whirled along between sky and earth.
Where was Gavrik now?
What had happened to Terenti and the sailor?
Had they got away across the roofs?
But there was no answer to these questions.
The snow came down thicker and thicker, covering the black earth of
Kulikovo Field with the clean, bright sheet of winter, come at last.
THE CHRISTMAS TREE
Christmas came.
Pavlik awoke before dawn. For him Christmas Eve was a double holiday:
it was his birthday, too.
You can easily imagine how impatiently the boy had awaited this joyous
and at the same time most curious day when he suddenly became four years
old.
One day he was still three, and the next he was four. When did that
happen? Probably at night.
Pavlik had decided long ago to watch for the mysterious moment when
children become a year older. He woke up in the middle of the night and
opened his eyes wide, but as far as he could see nothing had changed.
Everything was the same as usual: the chest of drawers, the night-lamp, the
dry palm branch behind the icon.
How old was he now: three, or four?
He examined his arms attentively and gave a kick with his legs under
the blanket. No, his arms and legs were the same as when he had gone to bed
in the evening. But perhaps his head had grown a bit? He carefully felt his
head-his cheeks, his nose, his ears. . . . They all seemed to be the same as
yesterday.
Now wasn't that strange?
It was all the more strange because in the morning he was sure to be
four. That he knew for certain. Then how old was he now? He couldn't still
be three. But on the other hand it didn't look very much like four, either.
It would be a good idea to wake Daddy. He was sure to know. But crawl
out from under the warm quilt and walk barefoot across the floor-no, thanks!
A better idea was to pretend to be asleep and wait with closed eyes for the
transformation to take place.
Pavlik shut his eyes, but before he knew it he fell asleep. When he
woke up he saw at once that the night-lamp had gone out a long time ago and
that the dark, bluish light of early-early winter morning was coming in
through the cracks in the shutters.
Now there couldn't be the slightest doubt: he was four.
The whole flat was still fast asleep; Dunya had not yet begun to bustle
about in the kitchen. Four-year-old Pavlik sprang nimbly out of bed and
"dressed himself" -that is, he pulled on his vest, with the cloth-covered
buttons, back to front and shoved his bare little feet into his shoes.
Cautiously opening the heavy, squeaky door with both hands, he set out
for the parlour. It was a little boy's big journey through a deserted flat.
In the middle of the darkness, filling the entire parlour with the strong
smell of fir needles, stood something huge and vague, with black paws
reaching all the way to the floor and hung with dangling chains of paper.
This, Pavlik already knew, was the Christmas tree. While his eyes
accustomed themselves to the gloom he cautiously walked round the thick
velvety tree whose silver threads cast the faintest possible flickers of
light.
The tree echoed the boy's every step with a papery stir, a tremble, a
rustle of cardboard and of Christmas crackers, a delicate tinkle of glass
decorations.
Now that he was accustomed to the darkness Pavlik saw, in the corner, a
table heaped with presents. He rushed to it, forgetting the tree for a
moment. They were first-rate presents, much better than what he had
expected: a bow with arrows in a velvet quiver, a beautiful book with
coloured pictures, Grandma Tatyana's Poultry Yard, a real "grown-up" lotto
game, and a horse which was bigger, handsomer, and, most important of all,
much newer than Kudlatka. Besides, there were tins of George Borman
Lozenges, bars of chocolate with picture cards, and a cake in a round box.
Pavlik had never expected such riches. The table was laden with toys
and sweets-and all his very own.
Still, he felt that something was lacking. He quietly dragged all his
old toys, including the tattered Kudlatka, into the parlour from the nursery
and added them to the new ones. Now there were as many toys as in a shop.
But even this did not seem enough.
He brought out the famous moneybox and put it on top of the drum in the
middle of the table, as the chief symbol of his wealth.
After building this triumphal toy tower and feasting his eyes upon it,
Pavlik returned to the Christmas tree. For a long time now a honey cake
covered with pink frosting, hanging not very high at all, by a yellow
worsted thread, had been disturbing him. It was shaped like a star and had a
hole in the middle, and it was so beautiful that he felt an overpowering
desire to eat it as quickly as possible.
Deciding that it would be no great harm if there were one honey cake
less on the tree, Pavlik untied it from the branch and put it in his mouth.
He took a sizable bite, but to his amazement he discovered that the cake was
not at all as tasty as one might have thought. As a matter of fact, it was a
simply disgusting cake: it was stale, it was made of rye flour, it wasn't
sweet, and it had a strong smell of treacle. And yet by the looks of it, it
was the kind of cake the snow-white Christmas angels, who sang so sweetly
high up in heaven, lived on.
With a grimace Pavlik hung the nibbled cake back on the branch. There
was clearly some misunderstanding here. No doubt a spoiled cake had been put
in with the others by accident in the shop.
At this point Pavlik noticed another and still more beautiful honey
cake, covered with blue frosting. It hung quite high, and he had to pull up
a chair. This time he did not untie the cake from the branch but simply bit
off a corner. It was so unpleasant that he spat it out at once.
But it was hard to believe that all the other cakes were worthless too.
Pavlik decided to try every single one. No sooner said than done.
Grunting, wheezing, his tongue sticking out, he dragged the heavy chair
round the tree, climbed up on it, bit off a corner of a cake, saw that it
was foul, and dragged the chair farther.
Before long he had tasted all the honey cakes except two near the very
ceiling and far out of reach. For a long time he stood with his head bent
back, thinking about them. They attracted him because they were beyond
reach, and hence all the more beautiful and desirable.
These cakes, he was certain, would not trick him. He was planning how
to put the chair on top of the table and try to get them from there when he
heard the fresh rustle of a holiday dress. Auntie Tatyana's beaming face
looked into the parlour.
"Aha, our little birthday-boy is up before everybody else, I see. What
are you doing?"
"Walking round the Christmas twee," Pavlik replied modestly. He looked
up at Auntie Tatyana with the trusting, truthful eyes of a well-behaved
child.
"Oh, my precious little tadpole! Twee! Not twee but tree. When will you
finally learn to say that word properly? Well, happy birthday!"
The next moment the boy found himself in Auntie Tatyana's warm,
fragrant, tender embrace.
Dunya, her face flushed with embarrassment, hurried in from the
kitchen, holding out a dainty sky-blue cup with "Happy Birthday" written on
it in gold letters.
So began that happy day which was destined to have such an absolutely
unexpected and frightful ending.
In the evening, Pavlik had guests-little boys and girls. They were all
such kids that Petya felt it beneath his dignity to talk to them, let alone
play with them.
Petya's heart was unutterably sad and heavy as he sat on the windowsill
in the dark nursery, looking at the decoratively frosted window on which the
golden nut of the street lamp glimmered among icy ferns.
Ominous forebodings darkened his spirits.
From the parlour streamed the hot, crackling light of the Christmas
tree-a flaming bonfire of candles and golden rain. He could hear the
enticing music of the piano. That was Father pounding out a seminary polka,
the tails of his dress coat spread apart and his starched cuffs rattling. A
great many children's sturdy little legs were stamping senselessly round the
Christmas tree.
"Never mind, Petya," said Auntie Tatyana as she passed by. " Don't be
envious. You'll have your day too."
"Oh, Auntie, you don't understand anything at all," the boy said in a
piteous voice. "Leave me alone."
At last came that long-awaited moment-the distribution of the nuts and
cakes. The children surrounded the Christmas tree on tiptoe and stretched
their hands towards the cakes, which shone like medals. The tree rocked. The
chains rustled.
"Oh, look," a ringing, frightened little voice suddenly said,
"somebody's bitten my cake!"
"Mine too!"
"I have two, and they're all bitten."
"Huh," someone said in disappointment, "they're not new at all. They've
been eaten once already."
Auntie Tatyana flushed to the roots of her hair as nibbled cakes were
stretched out to her from all sides.
Finally her eyes came to rest on Pavlik. "Did you do that, you naughty
boy?"
"Auntie dear, I only wanted a teeny-weeny taste," Pavlik looked
innocently at his angered aunt with wide-open eyes that were amber-coloured
from the Christmas tree lights. "I thought," he added with a sigh, "they
were good, but it turns out they're only for guests."
"That's enough, you bad, bad boy!" Auntie Tatyana cried. With a gesture
of despair she ran to the sideboard. Luckily, there was still plenty of
other sweets. Satisfaction was immediately given to all who had been
slighted. The scandal was hushed.
Soon the sleepy guests were carried away to their homes. The party was
over. Pavlik set about putting his treasures in order.
Just then Dunya appeared in the doorway of the nursery with a
mysterious air and beckoned to Petya.
"Young master, that crazy Gavrik is waiting for you in the back
stairway," she whispered, glancing round.
Petya dashed into the kitchen.
Gavrik was sitting on the high backstairs sill, leaning against the icy
window on which danced blue sparks from the moon. Under his hood glittered
small angry eyes. He was breathing heavily.
Petya's first thought was that Gavrik had come to collect his debt. He
was about to tell the sad story of Grandfather's buttons and promise honour
bright to settle the debt in two days, at the latest, when Gavrik quickly
reached inside his padded jacket and pulled out four familiar-looking bags.
"Here," he said in a low, firm voice, handing them to Petya. "Hide
these and we'll call it quits. They're left over from Joseph Karlovich, God
rest his soul."
As he said these last words Gavrik fervently made the sign of the
cross.
"Hide them and keep 'em until they're needed."
"Right," whispered Petya.
Gavrik said nothing for a long time. Finally he wiped his nose hard
with his fist and climbed down from the windowsill.
"Well, Petya, so long."
"Did-did they get away?"
"They did. Across the roofs. Now they're looking for 'em high and low."
Gavrik paused for a moment, considering whether he hadn't said too
much. Then he leaned forward trustfully.
"If you only knew how many were caught!" he whispered into Petya's ear.
"But they won't be caught! Take my word for it. They're hiding in the
catacombs. Like all the revolutionaries. In the spring they'll start again.
You know, the landlord's throwing Terenti's wife and the kids, Zhenechka and
Motya, out in the street. That's the way things are."
Gavrik scratched his eyebrows with a worried air.
"I don't know what to do with 'em now. Looks as we'll all have to move
from Near Mills to Grandpa's hut. Grandpa's in a bad way. Looks as if he's
going to die soon. Why don't you drop in some day, Petya? Only not so soon.
The main thing is to hide these bags in a good place. 'Weep no more,
Marusya, you will yet be mine.' Shake, pal."
Gavrik shoved a flat hand into Petya's and then ran off, beating a
tattoo on the stairs with his broken boots.
Petya went back to the nursery and hid the bags under the books in his
satchel.
Just then the door flew open with an unearthly bang and Father marched
into the room holding the mutilated dress coat.
"What's the meaning of this?" he asked in such a quiet voice that Petya
nearly fainted.
"By the true and holy Cross-" he muttered, but he could not gather up
the strength to cross himself.
"What's the meaning of this?" Father shouted, turning red and shaking
from head to foot.
That very second Pavlik let out a heart-rending howl in the parlour, as
though echoing Father's angry shout.
The little boy ran in on legs wobbling from horror and threw his arms
round Father's knees. His mouth was such a wide-open square that his yelling
throat, with its tiny, quivering lobe at the back, could clearly be seen.
The tears came in streams. In his trembling hand lay the open moneybox, full
of bits of tin and iron instead of money.
"D-da-da-dy," babbled Pavlik, hiccuping. "Pe-etya- rob-hie-robbed me!"
"On my word of hon-" began Petya, but Father already had a firm grip on
his shoulders.
"You good-for-nothing!" he roared. "You scalawag! I know everything!
You're a gambler, and a liar besides!"
He began to shake Petya-so furiously that it seemed he wanted to shake
the very life out of the boy. His jaw bounced up and down, and so did his
pince-nez, which had slipped from his perspiring nose with its cork-like
pores, and dangled on the black cord.
"Give them to me this very instant, those-what do you call 'em-mugs,
jugs-"
"Lugs," Petya said with a crooked smile, hoping somehow to turn the
matter into a joke.
But when Father heard the word "lugs" from the lips of his son he flew
into a still greater rage.
"Lugs, eh? Excellent! Where are they? Give them here this very minute.
Where is that street filth? Where are those germs? Into the fire with them!
Into the stove! I don't want to see a single trace of them!"
He took in the room with a swift glance and then made straight for the
satchel.
Father walked down the passage with long, quick, nervous strides,
carrying the bags squeamishly, as though they were dead kittens. Petya,
sobbing, ran after him all the way to the kitchen.
"Daddy! Daddy!" he shouted, tugging at his sleeves. "Daddy!"
Father roughly pushed Petya aside, moved a clattering pot and fiercely
shoved the bags into the flaming stove, getting soot on his cuffs.
The boy froze in horror.
"Hook it!" he screamed.
But at that instant shots resounded inside the stove, followed by a
small explosion.
A multicoloured flame shot through the stove ring. Noodles flew up out
of the pot and plastered themselves against the ceiling. The stove cracked.
Out of the crack poured acrid smoke, filling the entire kitchen in one
minute.
They flooded the stove. Later, when they raked out the ashes, they
found a pile of charred revolver cartridge cases.
But Petya knew none of this. He had fainted. They put him to bed. His
whole body was on fire. When they took his temperature it was one hundred
and three and five-tenths.
KULIKOVO FIELD
No sooner had the scarlet fever passed when pneumonia set in.
Petya was ill all winter. Only in the middle of Lent did he begin to
walk about inside the house.
Spring was on the way. First early spring-in fact, early-early spring.
No longer winter but by no means real spring.
The short-lived southern snow had long since vanished, without giving
Petya a taste of its delights. It was now the dry, grey Odessa March.
On shaky legs, Petya wandered idly through the rooms which had become
small and very low the minute he climbed out of bed. He stood on tiptoe in
front of the pier-glass in the dark anteroom and with a tug of self-pity
examined his peaky white face with the shadows under eyes that seemed
somehow startled and hard to recognise.
The whole first half of the day he was all alone in the flat. Father
was at school, and Auntie Tatyana took Pavlik out walking.
The noises of the deserted rooms made Petya pleasantly light-headed.
The sharp click of the pendulum came with a persistent, frightening
inevitability. Petya went to the window. It was still sealed for the winter;
there was a roll of yellowed cotton wool sprinkled with pieces of clipped
worsted between the two frames.
He saw the mean, grey, dry roadway, the hard earth of Kulikovo Field,
and a grey sky with the faintest watery traces of blue. From the kitchen
window he could see the blue twigs of the lilacs in the vacant lot. He knew
that if you stripped the bitter bark with your teeth you would uncover a
wonderfully green, pistachio-coloured stem.
At long intervals the low, funereal bass of the Lenten bells quivered
in the air, bringing to the heart a feeling of emptiness and sadness.
Yet latent in this bleak world were the powerful forces of spring. They
were merely awaiting their hour. They could be felt in everything, and most
of all in the hyacinth bulbs.
The indoor spring was still hidden in the dark storeroom, where, amid
the mousy odour of household odds and ends, Auntie Tatyana had placed
shallow little bowls along the wall. The Dutch bulbs, Petya knew, needed
darkness in order to sprout. And in the darkness of the storeroom the
mystery of growth was taking place.
Pale but firm spears were cutting their way through the silken, wasted
husks of the bulbs. He knew that just in time for Easter, taut, bushy, pale
pink, white and purple hyacinth flowers would miraculously appear on the
thick stems.
In the meantime, Petya's child's heart was lonely and numb in this
grey, desolate world of the vernal equinox.
The days were growing longer, Now he had nothing to fill the incredibly
dragging hours between dinner and evening. How long they were, those dreary
hours of the equinox! Even longer than the deserted streets stretching
endlessly in the direction of Near Mills.
Petya was now allowed to stroll about near the house. He walked slowly
up and down the dry pavement, squinting at the sun as it set beyond the
railway station.
Only a year ago he had looked upon the station as the end of town.
Beyond it lay geography. But now he knew that the town continued beyond the
station, that there were the long, dusty streets of the suburbs. He clearly
pictured them, reaching away to the west.
In the distance, filling the broad space between two dreary brick
houses, hung a monstrous red sun from the times when the Earth was young; it
gave off no rays, yet its sharp, sullen light blinded you.
Two weeks before Easter, wagon-loads of timber were brought to Kulikovo
Field. Carpenters, navvies, and foremen appeared. Tape-lines were stretched
over the ground in all directions. Contractors with yellow folding footrules
in their outside pockets paced off sections of land. The construction of
booths for the Easter fair had begun.
Petya's greatest pleasure was to wander among the boxes of big nails,
the axes, saws, logs and shavings, and to guess what would be built where in
Kulikovo Field. Each new row of posts, each new trench, each lot measured by
tape-line and marked off with pegs excited his imagination.
His soaring fantasy drew pictures of amazingly beautiful booths full of
wonders and mysteries, while levelheaded experience told him that it would
all be the same as last year. No better and no worse. But his fantasy could
not reconcile itself to that; it demanded something new, something never
seen before.
He loitered about near the workers and contractors in the hope of
getting some information out of them.
"I say there, could you tell me what this is going to be?"
"A booth, naturally."
"I know, but what kind?"
"Wooden, naturally."
Petya chuckled, to flatter the man.
"I know that too. You do say funny things! But what will there be
inside? A circus?"
"That's right."
"But how? Doesn't a circus have to be round?"
"Then it won't be a circus."
"Will it be a waxworks?"
"That's right."
"Such a tiny booth?"
"Then it won't be a waxworks."
"But really. What will it be?"
"A privy."
Petya blushed but then chuckled all the louder. He was willing to
endure any humiliation as long as he found out at least something.
"Ha-ha-ha! But really, what are you building here?"
"Run along, kid, this ain't no place for you. You'll be late to
school."
"I don't go to school yet. I had scarlet fever, and pneumonia too."
"Then go to bed instead of making a pest of yourself here."
With a forced grin Petya sauntered off, racking his brains over the
insoluble problem.
For it was a known fact that before the booths were roofed with canvas
and hung with pictures nothing could be learned. It was impossible to
tell-as impossible as trying to guess the colour of the hyacinth that would
blossom out on the pale stem by Easter Sunday.
On Holy Saturday, highly mysterious green crates and trunks labelled
"Handle with Care" were brought to the fairgrounds. Not a single boy in
Odessa knew what was in them.
You could only make a rough shot: wax figures, magicians' tables, or
flat, heavy snakes with filmy eyes and forked tongues.
One of the trunks was known to contain a mermaid with a lady's bust and
a scaly tail instead of legs. But how did she get along without water? Could
there be a bath-tub inside the trunk? Or was she packed in wet mud? All you
could do was guess.
Petya was dying for the fair to open. It seemed to him that nothing was
ready, that the whole thing would fall through, that this year the fair
would never open at all.
But his fears proved groundless. By Easter Sunday all was ready: the
pictures hung, the flagpoles whitewashed, and the square generously
sprinkled from long green barrels which had been carted between the booths
all the previous day and had darkened the dry earth with their glistening
rakes of water.
In a word, Easter came and blossomed exactly according to calendar.
The bells pealed monotonously. A fresh-looking sun raced along among
fluffy clouds. Auntie Tatyana, in a white lace dress, sliced a ham, turning
back rind as thick and curved as the holster of a revolver.
Sugar lambs covered the Easter cakes. A pink Christ holding a paper
church banner flew through the air on a wire, like a ballet dancer. Round a
green hill of watercress lay coloured eggs polished so glossy with butter
that they reflected the newly washed windows.
Curly hyacinths in bowls wound with crinkly pink paper gave off their
stiflingly sweet and at the same time grave-yardish odour; a fragrance so
heavy that you could almost see it rising as smoky lilac strands in the
sunshine above the Easter table.
But Easter Sunday, for Petya, was the longest and dreariest day of all,
because no public entertainment or merry-making whatsoever was allowed. That
day the police dedicated to God. But at noon on the following day-with the
permission of the authorities-the public began to make merry.
At the stroke of twelve the police officer on duty blew his whistle,
and the tricoloured flag was run up on the tall whitewashed pole in the
middle of Kulikovo Field.
The next instant everything broke loose. The Turkish drums of the
regimental bands struck up. The hurdy-gurdies and merry-go-round organs
began to blare. From the whitewashed platforms of the booths came the
shrill, baboon-like, guttural cries of the red-headed clowns and jugglers
calling to the public. The glass beads and carriages and horses of the
merry-go-round began to whirl.
The fragile little swing-boats flew up into the dizzying blue of the
cloud-spotted sky. From all sides came the insistent and unceasing clang of
brass bells and triangles.
A vendor passed carrying on his head a gleaming pitcher of coloured icy
water in which swam a few slices of lemon, a piece of ice and a dusty silver
sun.
A pock-marked Port Arthur veteran in a shaggy black Caucasian fur cap
had taken off his boots and was climbing the greased pole for the prize
razor and shaving brush at the top.
The dizzying carnival in Kulikovo Field thundered away for seven days
from noon to sunset; it filled the Batchei home with the din and hubbub of
merry-making crowds from the outlying working-class districts.
Petya spent his days, from morn to dusk, in Kulikovo Field. For some
reason he felt certain that he would meet Gavrik there. Many a time he
sighted in the crowd a pair of lilac-coloured corduroys and a naval cap with
anchor buttons-that was what Gavrik had worn the Easter before-and ran in
that direction, threading his way through the crowd, but always in vain.
It smacked somehow of Near Mills, this carnival of the common people
where many of the men carried thin iron canes like Terenti's and a great
many of the girls wore blue earrings like Motya's.
But Petya's hopes did not come true. The last day of the fair drew to
an end. The bands played the "Longing for Home" march for the last time. The
flag was lowered. Police whistles trilled. The ground emptied. It was all
over until next Easter.
A sad and sullen sunset glowed long in the sky beyond the garish,
startlingly quiet booths, beyond the iron wheels of the motionless
tip-overs, beyond the bare flagpoles.
The unbearably mournful silence of the holiday just over was broken
only now and then by the lion's deep, blood-curdling roar and the hyena's
jerky laughter.
In the morning wagons came, and two days later not a trace of the fair
remained. Kulikovo Field was again a black, dreary square from which all day
long came the sing-song voices of sergeants drilling their men:
"Right turn! One-two!"
"Left turn! One-two!"
"About turn! One-two!"
The days kept growing longer, and more and more difficult to fill. Then
one day Petya went to the seashore to pay Gavrik a visit.
THE SAIL
Grandpa was dying.
Gavrik knew this, and so did Motya and her mother, and so did Petya,
who now spent his days on the shore.
Grandpa knew it too.
He lay from morning to night on a sagging iron bed which had been
carried out of the hut, into the warm April sunshine.
When Petya came up to say hello the first time he was embarrassed by
the white transparency of Grandpa's face and its faint bluish glow against
the red pillow.
A clear, composed face, with a longish white beard, it had a beauty and
dignity that struck Petya. But the most amazing and most disturbing thing
about the face was that it seemed ageless, already beyond the limits of
time.
"Hello, Grandpa," said Petya.
The old man turned his eyes with their bloodless violet lids and looked
long at the boy in the Gymnasium uniform, but apparently without
recognition.
"It's me, Petya, from Kanatnaya and the corner of Kulikovo."
Grandpa gazed into the distance without stirring.
"Don't you remember him, Grandpa? He's the one you made a lead sinker
for last year."
A shadow of remembrance, as distant as a cloud, flickered in the old
man's face. He smiled a clear, conscious smile, showing his gums.
"A sinker," he said softly, but without any special effort. "Yes. A
lead sinker."
Chewing his lips, he gave Petya a fond look.
"You've sprung up. That's good. Go play now, my child. Play with
pebbles on the beach. Go play. Only be careful and don't fall in the water."
He evidently took Petya for a little child, something like his
great-grandson Zhenechka who was crawling about in the yellow dandelions
nearby.
From time to time the old man lifted his head to take an admiring look
at his household.
Since the arrival of Terenti's family the place had become
unrecognisable. It was as if they had brought a corner of Near Mills with
them.
Terenti's wife had freshened the clay floor for Easter and had
whitewashed all the walls, inside and outside.
The windows of the rejuvenated hut had been washed and bordered with
blue, and they gleamed merrily in the sunshine.
Round the hut grew green irises, now about to blossom. Among them Motya
had laid out her dolls, representing society ladies at their summer villas.
Linen of different colours was drying on the lines. Motya, her hair
like a boy's, was watering the vegetable patch, pressing the big
watering-can to her stomach with both hands. The dog Rudko, smiling sourly,
ran up and down fastened to a wire between two posts. Near the vegetable
patch, smoke was curling from a clay stove with a bottomless iron pot fitted
into it for a chimney. There was the delicious smoky smell of gruel.
Motya's mother, in a gathered skirt, was bent over a trough. All about
her soap bubbles floated in the air.
Occasionally Grandpa had the feeling that time had turned back, and he
was forty again. Grandma had just whitewashed the hut. His grandson Terenti
was crawling among the dandelions. On the roof lay a mast wrapped in a
brand-new sail.
Now he would heave the mast on his shoulder, take the oars and the
red-leaded wooden rudder under his arm, and go down to the shore to rig the
boat.
But the lapses of memory were short-lived. The old man would suddenly
feel weighed down by household cares. He would laboriously raise himself on
his elbow and call Gavrik.
"What do you want, Grandpa?"
The old man would chew his lips for a long time as he gathered his
strength.
"The boat-not carried away, is it?" he would finally ask, his eyebrows
lifting sadly, like two little gable roofs.
"It's safe, Grandpa. You'd better lie down again." - "It ought to be
tarred-"
"I'll tar it, Grandpa, don't you worry. Now lie back."
Grandpa would lie back obediently, but a minute later he would call
Motya.
"What are you doing there, my child?"
"Watering the potatoes."
"Clever girl. Yes, give 'em plenty of water. The weeds- are you pulling
'em out?"
"I am, Grandpa."
"Or else they'll choke everything. Well, go, my child. Play with your
dolls for a while. Take a rest."
Again Grandpa would fall back heavily.
But then Rudko would start barking, and the old man would turn angry
bushy eyes in the dog's direction. "Down, Rudko! Quiet, damn you!" He
thought he was calling to the playful dog in a commanding shout. But
actually he spoke in a murmur.
Most of the time Grandpa lay motionless, gazing into the distance.
Between the two low hills on the shore he could see a triangle of blue with
a great many fishing sails. As he looked at them the old man carried on a
leisurely conversation with himself.
"Yes, that's true. The wind loves a sail. A sail makes all the
difference in the world. A sail will take you wherever you want to go. You
can go to Dofinovka, if you want, or you can go to Lustdorf. With a sail you
can go to Ochakov, and to Kherson, and even all the way to Eupatorium. But
if all you have is oars, and no sail-why, it's a joke! It'll take you a good