eyes was running to and fro, sabre in hand, now and then blowing hard on his
whistle and shouting, "Disperse or I fire!"
Another policeman, the old man Petya knew, kept moving about aimlessly
in front of the crowd, waving his hands like an orchestra conductor and
pleading in lachrymose tones, "Gentlemen, do be sensible, gentlemen, do be
sensible!"
"Come on, break down the gates," said a man in an old railway cap with
a red band on the sleeve of his wadded jacket; he was standing on the roof
of the engine shop. His voice was not loud but it carried everywhere.
Evidently this was one of the leaders.
The wrought-iron gates squealed on their rusty hinges and began to give
in under the pressure of the crowd. There was the sound of a chain snapping.
One leaf of the gates, torn away, fell with a rattle in the yard, the other
hung crookedly from its brick gate-post.
The crowd rushed in. Everything became confused.
Later on Petya learned that the management had tried to crush the
strike by bringing in strike-breakers and locking the gates.
Once inside, the crowd scattered among the shops, and then Petya saw
something like the kind of game children play, only the players were angry
men. The shop door opened and men ran wildly out, followed by other men who
overtook them and flogged them on the head and neck with oily rags twisted
into hard ropes as they ducked and dodged. It was like a game of "tag." But
nobody laughed or shouted, and one of the fleeing men had blood trickling
from his nose; he smeared it over his face with the sleeve of his torn shirt
as he ran.
A small open truck appeared at the shop door, pushed by a couple of
dozen workers with tense, determined faces. And there in the truck, his legs
drawn up awkwardly, his hands gripping the sides, sat the railway engineer
whom Petya has seen the night he had gone with Gavrik to the workshops. His
cap was back to front, which gave his handsome face with its well-tended
beard a very stupid look.
Zhenya Chernoivanenko and the boys who had shouted "Spoony, spoony,
kissy-kissy-coo" after Petya and Motya, zealously helped the adults to push
the truck.
Petya was not frightened any longer, nor did the crowd seem alarming.
He was caught up in the general mood and ran after the truck, his brows
drawn tangrily together. He pushed some of the boys aside, got his satchel
against the edge of the truck and began shoving with the others. He felt as
though it were his effort alone that moved it.
As soon as the truck and its burden emerged from the factory gates they
were greeted with shouts and whistles from all sides. Some of the men had
picked up the policeman with the fierce eyes. Holding him by the shoulders
and top-boots', they gave him a swing and tossed him on to the engineer. His
sabre was gone, and so was his revolver.
The other policeman, the old one, was not thrown into the truck; he got
a couple of blows on the back of the head with a hard twisted rag and
shambled away by the fence, without sabre, revolver or cap, smiling
foolishly.
The truck was pushed for about half a mile, then abandoned on the line,
and Petya, Zhenya and the other boys went back to the workshop. But
everybody had gone, only a few workers with shot-guns and red arm-bands
paced up and down by the smashed gates.
Petya and Zhenya made their way home through strangely deserted streets
and lanes. Motya was standing by the gate -and at once started scolding
Zhenya:
"You little ruffian, you tramp, where've you been all this time? And as
for you," she turned on Petya, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking
a child to a strike! Just look at yourself, if your father could see you!"
Ever since that walk to get snowdrops Motya had had a tendency to find
fault with Petya.
He looked down at his boots all scratched by clinker, at his crushed
satchel with the broken strap, at the buckle of his belt pushed to one side.
"You're all dirty," Motya went on. "Go and get washed quickly, I'll
fetch water for you."
"Stop ordering us about!" said Zhenya. He pulled out of his pocket the
whistle which had only recently hung round the neck of the old policeman and
blew a shrill blast.
"You scoundrel! You little ruffian!" Motya threw up her hands, but then
surrendered and burst into a fit of childlike laughter.
At that moment an open cab appeared in the distance. Swaying over the
ruts, wheels rattling, it raced down the street. Men with red arm-bands
bumped on the seats and shouted something as they passed each gate.
Petya saw Terenty among them, waving his little cap. His face was red
and excited which made the white scar on his temple stand out all the more
sharply.
"Out to the common!" he shouted, pointing ahead with his cap, hardly
aware that it was his own house he was passing.
Petya flung his satchel over the fence and raced after Motya and
Zhenya. The common was already black with people.
The sun had only just sunk behind the barrows and great clouds sailing
through the sky seemed to shed their own light over the meeting. Terenty
stood erect on the seat of the cab, surrounded by the crowd. With one hand
he steadied himself on the driver's shoulder, and gestured energetically
with the other. His voice carried to Petya in fragments borne on gusts of
wind. Sometimes he could make out whole sentences.
The wrathful voice that seemed to fly with the breeze over the silent
crowd, over the quiet steppe, filled Petya with a burning sense of struggle
for freedom. His heart beat hard. And when the people sang in discord, "You
fell a victim in the fight" and there was a flicker of movement as heads
were bared, Petya too removed his cap and clutched it to his breast with
both hands, singing with the others. He could not hear himself, but beside
him he could hear the high voice of Motya as she stood on tiptoe, her neck
stretched, singing enthusiastically:
"... Fresh ranks of the people have risen to fight...."
Petya had the feeling that in a moment mounted Cossacks would dash out
from somewhere and a massacre would begin. But everything was quiet, and the
silhouettes of the sentries stationed on the hillocks and barrows were
outlined black against the glow of the sunset.
The meeting ended and the people dispersed as quickly and
inconspicuously as they had gathered. The common emptied. But on the young
grass among crushed dandelions Petya saw a great number of sticks, iron
bolts and pieces of brick which the workers had brought with them, just in
case. Then Terenty and Gavrik appeared. They walked in step, hands in
pockets, looking well satisfied with the day's work.
"Come on, come on," said Terenty, passing one hand over Motya's cheek
and holding out the other to Petya. "Don't dawdle. It's true there are
meetings and demonstrations all over the town and the police don't know
which way to turn, and Tolmachov's sitting at home wondering what to do, but
all the same.... We'd better be getting along."
This time, however, the police evidently were at a loss, and Governor
Tolmachov did not venture to send for troop's. Throughout the twenty-four
hours of the strike, not a single soldier or policeman was seen about Near
Mills, except for the old local policeman who spent the whole day going from
house to house, begging tearfully for his sabre and revolver. He came to the
Chernoivanenkos' too, and Terenty went out into the yard to talk to him.
"Terenty, lad," he pleaded, "I knew you when you were in diddies. Have
a good heart. Tell your lads to give me my weapons back, or I'll be put out
of the police. They're the property of the Crown."
Terenty frowned.
"What d'you mean by my lads? Think what you're saying."
"As if you didn't know yourself," said the old man with a wink, and
added guilelessly, "your lads, the ones that are revolutionaries. You're
their chief, aren't you?"
Terenty took the man by the shoulder and led him out of the gate.
"Get along with you, old 'un! And don't babble of things you know
nothing about. Or if you do-better keep off the streets at night. Get that?"
"Ah, Terenty, Terenty." The old policeman sighed and shambled along to
the next house.
The following day the strike ended and everything went on as before.
Factory whistles filled the air every morning just as they had, but now it
was no longer cold and misty, but bright with sunshine and filled with the
fragrance of flowers and the song of birds. And the people going to work in
groups and crowds seemed to Petya to be different too, they walked more
boldly, they looked cheerful and confident and in some way brighter and
cleaner-probably because they had got rid of their clumsy winter clothes and
many were already in light canvas jackets and coloured cotton shirts.
Coming home from school Petya felt very hot in his heavy uniform jacket
and cap, which soon became quite wet on the inside.
Lessons finished a week before the exams. From morning to night Petya
sat at the table under the mulberry tree, his fingers in his ears, learning
events and dates, wagging his head like a Chinese mandarin. He had made up
his mind to get top marks in all the exams whatever happened, for he knew
full well that no leniency would be shown him, he would be failed on any
pretext. He got thin, and his hair, long uncut, straggled on his neck.
Come to the station with me?" said Gavrik one day, appearing suddenly
behind Petya.
Petya was so deep in his swotting that he did not even wonder why
Gavrik was not at work. He only wagged his head a little faster and mumbled,
"Let me alone."
Glancing up, however, he saw a very mysterious smile on Gavrik's face.
Still more surprising was his carefully combed hair, the new cotton shirt
held in by a new belt, the pressed trousers and the new boots which he wore
only on very special occasions. All this must mean something unusual.
"Why the station?" Petya asked.
"To get the newspaper."
"What newspaper?"
"Our own. A daily. The workers' paper, lad. Sent straight from St.
Petersburg by express. It's called the Pravda."
Petya had already heard talk of the new workers' paper the Beks would
soon be putting out in St. Petersburg. Collections had been made for it
among the workers, Petya had seen the money. Sometimes Terenty or Gavrik had
brought it home from work and after counting it carefully, put it away in a
tin box that had once held sweet drops. Once a week Terenty would send it
away by post, and put the receipt in the same box.
The money was mostly in small coins, even in single kopeks. Ruble and
three-ruble notes appeared but rarely, and it was difficult to imagine how
such a big thing as a daily paper could possibly emerge from these coppers.
But now it seemed that it could, and it was coming on the St.
Petersburg-Odessa express.
To be frank, Petya was already heartily sick of grinding away at his
books all day and every day, from morning to night. He was glad of the
excuse for a break. The idea of going to the station was enticing. It was a
place that always attracted him. The network of rails spurred his
imagination to picture the unknown regions to which their smoothly curving
lines led.
The west Petya had already seen. But there was still the north, all its
boundlessly vast expanses-Russia with Moscow, St. Petersburg, ancient Kiev,
Arkhangelsk, the Volga, and Siberia which was Bo hard to picture, and
finally the Lena River which was now not merely a river but an event in
history, reeking with blood-like Khodynka ( A place in Moscow where
thousands of people were trampled to death in May 1896 during the coronation
of Nicholas II due to the authorities' criminal negligence.-Tr.) or
Tsushima. And it was from there, from the north, from the smoky, foggy St.
Petersburg, that the express would today bring the newspaper Pravda.
When Petya and Gavrik arrived at the station, the train was already in
and stood by the platform. It consisted entirely of shining Pullmans, blue
or yellow, without a single third-class green coach. And there were two
coaches such as neither Petya nor Gavrik had ever seen before; involuntarily
the lads stopped before them.
They were faced with brightly polished wood, and the door handles, the
corners of windows, the foreign letters of the inscription and the badge of
the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits were of brass that glittered in
the sun. Even the outside conveyed a smart severity, like that of a ship.
When the boys, nudging one another, peeped in through a window with its
narrow band of painted glass at the top, they gasped at the luxury inside,
at the polished mahogany panels, the stamped-plush walls, the snow-white
rumpled bedding, the electric-light bulbs like milky tulips, the blue net
for light articles, the heavy bronze spittoon and the carpet on the floor.
In the other coach they saw something even more astounding-a buffet
with bottles and hors-d'oeuvres, and a waiter in a tailcoat clearing
pyramidal napkins from the tables, napkins so white and stiff that they
might have been made of marble.
Even Petya who had been abroad had never imagined anything like this,
let alone Gavrik.
"Oooh, just look!" Petya whispered, pressing his face so hard against
the thick glass that his nose left a moist imprint.
Gavrik's eyes narrowed and with a queer smile he hissed through his
teeth, "That's how our fine gentry travel."
"Keep off the coach, please!" said a stern voice with a foreign accent,
and a conductor in the uniform jacket and cap of the Compagnie
Internationale des Wagons-Lits shoved the boys away with a firm hand as he
passed.
Gavrik wrinkled his nose, doubled up his arm and thrust the elbow
towards the man-in Near Mills an indication of the utmost mockery and
contempt. But the conductor, from the height of his superiority, ignored the
gesture, and the boys went on to the luggage coach.
At the moment flat cane baskets were being brought out; through the
open nets covering them the lads could see fresh, moist flowers-Parma
violets and roses, sent through St. Petersburg from Nice to Werkmeister's
flower shop. Werkmeister himself, a gentleman in a short light bell-bottomed
coat with mourning bands on the sleeve and on a top hat, was supervising the
unloading, accompanying each basket the porter carried to the cart with a
gentle touch from a finger bearing two wedding rings.
The boys could smell the perfume of damp flowers, strange among the
coal and metal smells of the railway station, and this suddenly brought back
to Petya that station in Naples, so like this one except for the palms and
the agaves, and the forgotten girl with the black ribbon in her chestnut
braid. And again he felt the bitter-sweet pang of parting. He even fancied
that he saw her before him.
But at that moment Gavrik seized his sleeve and pulled him after a big
truck loaded with piles of St. Petersburg newspapers and magazines. Two
porters wheeled it with some difficulty, the small iron wheels striking
sparks as they rumbled over the asphalt.
The boys ran alongside, trying to guess which pile contained the
Pravda. The truck was wheeled off the platform into the station building and
came to a squealing stop beside a newspaper stall-a carved bookcase of fumed
oak, big as an organ, with hundreds of books, newspapers and magazines lying
.and hanging all over it.
Petya loved to look at all these novelties from St. Petersburg. The
covers of love and detective novels excited him, so did the coloured
caricatures of the Satirikon, and Alarm-Ctock, and the garlands of The
Leichtweiss Cave, Nat Pinkerton, Nick Carter, and Sherlock Holmes series,
that hung on lines like washing, with tiny pictures of these famous foreign
detectives, with pipes or without, among whom the famous Russian detective
Putilin looked very tnai've and provincial with his ministerial
side-whiskers and his old-fashioned silk hat. Then there were the
illustrated weekly journals-The Spark, Sun of Russia, All the World, Round
the World, and especially that new magazine which had only just come out,
the Blue Journal, which really was blue all through, smelt strongly of
kerosene and stained the fingers.
All these dozens, hundreds, thousands of printed sheets promising a
fantastic variety of ideas and subjects, but actually offering only an
appalling emptiness, fascinated Petya, and he stood before them as though
spellbound.
Meanwhile, the bundles of newspapers had been flung one after the other
beneath the counter. The stout, long-bearded old man with a gold chain
across his waistcoat, who rented the stall, kept putting a small pince-nez
on his strawberry-coloured nose, leafing through his account book and
jotting down notes with a pencil, while a very thin, bony lady in a hat,
whose pointed angry face made her look like a pike, flung bundles of
newspapers on the counter, from which they were quickly snatched up by
news-boys and the owners of street stalls who had been queuing up for a long
time.
"Fifty New Times, thirty Country Life, a hundred and fifty Stock
Exchange, a hundred Speech. There you are, next!" she cried in a croaking
voice, and in an instant the bundles were carried off on shoulders or heads
across the station square. There they were pitched on to handcarts,
wheelbarrows or cabs to be distributed over the whole city as fast as
possible.
Gavrik took his place at the end of the queue with a little group of
people who did not look like stall owners or news-boys. More than anything
else they looked like workers. Gavrik greeted some of them and they
exchanged a few quick words, impatiently eyeing the bundles of newspapers
disappearing from the counter.
Petya had the feeling they were apprehensive about something.
At last their turn came.
"And what do you want?" asked the pike-faced lady, with a stern look at
the strangers. She knew all her regular clients by sight but these she had
never seen before. "What have you come for?"
"Our paper's the Pravda." An elderly worker with a clipped moustache
wearing a Sunday jacket and tie but smelling strongly of varnish pushed
forward to the counter. "We are from the Gena Factory, the Ropit Wharf, the
repair workshops, the Weinstein Flour Mill, the Schawald Shipping Company
and the Zur and Co. Furniture Factory. To begin with we want fifty copies
apiece."
"What's that you say? Pravda? I've never heard of such a paper," said
the lady in an artificial voice and turned to the old man. "Ivan Antonovich,
does our agency handle the newspaper Pravda?"
"What's the matter?" asked the old man, and without raising his head
from his accounts shot a hostile look at the customers out of his small,
piercing eyes.
"There's an application for three hundred copies of some Pravda," said
the lady.
"Not some Pravda," Gavrik corrected her, "but the workers' daily paper
which has its office at 37, Nikolayevskaya Street, St. Petersburg. Isn't it
there?"
"It's not arrived," said the old man indifferently. "Come tomorrow."
"Excuse me," said an elderly worker, "but that's not possible. We've
had a telegram."
"It's not arrived."
"Not arrived, hasn't it?" the elderly worker snapped, frowning. "The
Black-Hundred New Times has come, the bourgeois Speech has come, but the
workers' Pravda isn't here? Where's your lousy freedom, then?"
"For that sort of talk I could- Sofya Ivanovna, go quick for the
gendarme!"
"What's that?" said the elderly worker very quietly, and his thick grey
brows drew closer together. "Perhaps you want to send for the soldiers too?
As they did on the Lena?"
"Don't waste your breath on them, Yegor Alexeyevich!" shouted a lad in
a seaman's cap with blue tattooing on Ms sinewy arm-evidently from the
Schawald Shipping Company. "Put him out!" He made a rush for the old man,
pushing aside the pike-faced lady, whose hat went askew.
Petya shut his eyes. Now, he thought, something terrible will happen.
But all he heard was the old man whining, "Don't touch me, I'll have the law
on you...."
When he opened his eyes he saw Gavrik standing behind the counter,
triumphantly pulling out a big package of the Pravda printed on cheap
yellowish paper with the name in big, black letters, as straight and stern
as the meaning of the word. (Pravda-truth.-Tr.)
"But mark this, gentlemen, we don't sell retail!" hissed the lady. "And
don't expect credit. Either you take the whole consignment-a thousand
copies, and pay on the spot, or you can get out and tomorrow your beggarly
Pravda goes back to St. Petersburg, and the sooner it goes smash the
better."
The paper was a cheap one, fitted for lean pockets. Other papers cost
five kopeks, the Pravda only two. But even so, a thousand copies meant
twenty rubles, a big sum in those days.
The six turned out their pockets but found that they could only scrape
up sixteen rubles seventy-four kopeks.
"Ragamuffins, beggars, rabble, and want to push your noses into
politics," rattled the lady all in one breath, turned her back and put her
lace-mittened hand on the pile of papers.
"Just a minute," said the young fellow from the Schawald Shipping
Company.
He raced into the first-class waiting-room, handed his silver watch
over the refreshment counter and was back in a moment with a five-ruble note
crumpled in his hand.
So ten minutes later Gavrik and Petya were marching towards Near Mills,
each with a package of papers on his shoulder.
Although the newspaper was published legally, with the necessary
permit, Petya felt like a law-breaker. Whenever the boys passed a policeman
he felt the man was looking at them with great suspicion. As a matter of
fact, he was often right.
It would have been hard not to notice two youths, one in school uniform
and the other dressed as a workman, striding along very quickly, with
sizeable bundles on their shoulders and obviously excited, the boy in school
uniform looking round apprehensively at every step and the young workman
whistling the "Varshavyanka" as loudly as he could, beating out the rhythm
with his stride.
The nearer they came to their house, the faster the boys went until
they were almost running. Sometimes Gavrik tossed his bundle in the air and,
imitating newsboys, shouted, "New daily workers' paper, the Pravda! Latest
news! All about the Lena massacre!" His eyes burned.
When they came to Sakhalinchik, quite close to Near Mills, Gavrik
pulled out a number of copies and raced ahead at full speed, waving them
over his head and shouting, "The Tsar's Minister Makarov tells the State
Duma, 'What has been will be!' Down with the butcher Makarov! Long live the
workers' Pravda! Buy the workers' Pravda\ Two kopeks a copy! What has been
won't be!"
They came to the factory district and here Gavrik was quite at home.
This was his own world, where he felt free and independent. Big gates with
brass lettering on wire netting. Square brick buildings and tall chimneys.
The squat concrete tower of the "Cocovar" margarine factory with its huge
placard of a bulldog-faced chef offering a dish with a steaming pudding. The
waterworks, the depot, the elevators.. ..
Here and there workers in blue shirts and greasy overalls came running
out, drawn by Gavrik's cries. Some of them bought papers and handed coppers
to Gavrik which he slipped into his mouth like a real news-boy.
Once a policeman noticed the disturbance and whistled, but Gavrik
showed his elbow from the distance and the boys dived quickly down an
alleyway.
Petya's fears had almost left him, it was as though they were playing
some exciting, risky game.
Suddenly they heard the beat of running feet behind them. They turned.
A man with his jacket open and flying was racing after them. He had bow legs
and weaved from side to side, shouting, "Hi! You lads there! Stop!"
At first Petya thought he wanted to buy a paper and waited, but a
second glance showed him his mistake. The man running after them held a
short rubber truncheon and on his lapel was the badge of the Black-Hundred
Union with its tricolour ribbon.
"Run!" shouted Gavrik.
But the man with the truncheon was there already; Petya felt a heavy
blow which luckily missed his head and descended on the bundle of papers,
just clipping his ear in passing.
Fragments of newsprint flew on all sides.
"Hands off!" Gavrik snarled, hoarse with rage; with his free hand he
gave the man such a blow that he staggered back and almost fell. "Hands off,
you blackguard! Murderer, bastard! I'll kill you!"
Without removing his eyes from the man, Gavrik slipped the bundle of
papers from his shoulder and reached them back to Petya.
"Take those and run to the repair shops, call the workers' squad," he
said rapidly, licking his lips and forgetting Petya might not know what
workers' squads were.
But Petya knew. Hugging the papers, he raced along the narrow street at
top speed.
Gavrik and the man faced each other on the road. Still licking his lips
and breathing heavily through his nose, Gavrik slowly slid his right hand
into his pocket. When he just as slowly took it out, it held a steel
knuckleduster.
"I'll kill you!" he repeated, his hard eyes fixed on the man as though
he wanted to fix in his mind that puffy dark face that looked as though it
had been stung by bees, the little pig's eyes, the bullet-head with hair
parted at the side and combed across the low forehead, and the crooked grin
of a bully.
"Now then, you scum!" said the man and aimed a blow with his rubber
truncheon; but Gavrik dodged it and raced after Petya.
He heard the beat of boots behind him, and when the sound came close
Gavrik suddenly threw himself down on the ground; the man caught his foot,
tripped and measured his length. Gavrik promptly sat down on him and started
hammering the man's black head with his knuckle-duster, repeating fiercely,
"Hands off! Hands off! Hands off!"
The man got his hand into his pocket with a groan and pulled out a
small black Browning. A number of shots rang out, but Gavrik managed to get
his foot on the man's arm and the bullets only struck harmless sparks from
the cobbles.
"Help! Police!" sobbed the man and, twisting his head round, suddenly
hit Gavrik on the leg.
Gavrik gasped and the next minute they were rolling over and over on
the ground. It is hard to say how it would have ended, for Gavrik was much
smaller and weaker than his opponent, but at that moment assistance came
from the repair workshops.
Five men of the workers' squad armed with pieces of piping and spanners
tore the Browning and the rubber truncheon out of the bully's hand, gave him
a couple of buffets and all but carried Gavrik into the yard. It all
happened so quickly that when a policeman came running up, drawn by the
firing, he found nobody in the street except Gavrik's assailant sitting on
the ground, slumped against the fence of the "Cocovar" margarine factory,
spitting out blood-covered teeth.
From then on the new paper was sold regularly, first in the
working-class districts and round the factories, and then here and there in
the centre of the city.
A few days later exams began. It cost Motya and her mother a good deal
of work to clean and mend Petya's uniform, for it had been in more than one
adventure since its owner had come to live in Near Mills.
Petya's ear, which caught a glancing blow by the rubber truncheon, was
no longer painful but was still blue and swollen, and in general presented a
disreputable appearance. Petya hoped a dusting of tooth-powder would make it
look a little more presentable and allowed Motya to do the powdering, which
she did, passing a rag very gently and carefully over the injured ear, her
tongue thrust out in concentrated effort.
Petya did not do at all badly in his exams, although the examiners
tried hard to fail him.
The tense, tiring examination period, which as always coincided with
the first May thunderstorms, thickly flowering lilacs, summer heat and short
sleepless nights filled with moonlight and the whispers of lovers,
thoroughly exhausted Petya. When he finally returned to Near Mills from the
last exam-eyes sparkling, hair rumpled, hands covered with ink and chalk,
perspiring and happy-it would have been hard to recognize him for the same
boy he had been a couple of months before, so much older and thinner he
looked.
The next day he shouldered his pillow and blanket and set off for home.
The first person he saw there was his father. Vasily Petrovich was
weeding round the cherry trees, tearing out grass and chamomiles and tossing
them into a basket. Petya looked at the kindly, unshaven face and the
noticeably greyer hair, the dark-blue shirt, faded at the back and bleached
almost white under the arms, the old trousers, baggy at the knees, the dusty
sandals and the pince-nez that fell off and dangled on its cord every time
his father bent down-and a flood of warmth filled him.
"Dad!" he called, "I'm through!"
His father turned and a happy smile lighted up the wet bearded face
with a swollen vein running across the forehead.
"Ah, Petya! Well, congratulations, that's fine."
The boy dropped his pillow and blanket on the dusty grass and flung
both arms round his father's hot, sunburned neck, noticing with surprise and
a secret thrill of pride that they were almost the same height.
Auntie appeared from the flowering lilacs with the hoe in her hands.
Petya did not recognize her at once, for she had a kerchief fastened tightly
round her head, making her look like a peasant woman.
"Auntie, I've passed them all!" Petya cried.
"I know, I heard you, congratulations," said Auntie, wiping her wet
forehead with her arm. She beamed, but she could not refrain from improving
the occasion. "Now you're in the seventh form, I hope you'll behave better."
Dunyasha, her head in a kerchief and a hoe in her hands like Auntie,
also congratulated the young master on his success.
Then came a creaking of wheels followed by a big, bony, very old horse
in funereal black blinkers pulling a long water-cart. The horse was led by
the lanky youth, Gavrila, whom Petya had seen before, and Pavlik sat astride
the barrel, barefoot and in a big straw hat, holding the reins and whip.
"Hey, Petya! Hullo!" he called, spitting to one side like a real
carter. "Look, I can drive him a bit already! Here you, stop! Whoa!" he
shouted at the horse, which at once stood motionless on its trembling legs,
evidently glad to do so.
Gavrila set to work watering the trees, pouring a bucketful into the
hollow dug round each. The dry earth absorbed the water instantaneously. In
a few minutes Petya realized the work entailed in looking after an orchard.
Summer was beginning and there had not been a single really good
rainfall. In the cistern the water was right down to the bottom. Now it had
to be brought from the horse-tram terminus.
The orchard was in blossom and the trees were covered ,with ovaries
that needed moisture all the time. It was a good thing that with the
Vasyutinskaya orchard they had got that old horse, called Warden, and the
water-cart. But a tremendous amount of water was needed, and Warden could
barely crawl.
From morning to night there was the creaking of un-greased wheels from
the water-cart, the crack of the whip .and the heavy breathing of the bony
black nag that looked ready to fall down and give up the ghost at any
moment. It was hard to make him rise from his wet straw in the morning. He
trembled all over, weakly shifting his great cracked hoofs, and the flies
crawled round his blind, watering eyes.
This somewhat dashed their spirits, and at times seemed like a bad
omen. But the weather was wonderful and the crop promised to be so rich that
the Bachei family, busy from morning to night with their unaccustomed but
enjoyable physical work, felt splendid.
At first Petya thought he never would learn to dig round the trees. The
heavy spade twisted awkwardly in his hands and seemed too blunt to cut
deeply into the ground with its thick growth of grass and chamomiles. His
hands smarted and he rubbed blisters on the palms. But by the time they had
burst and turned into calluses, he began to understand the way of it.
It seemed that the spade should be put down at an angle, and he should
press not only with his hands but also, and mainly, with his foot-slowly and
evenly; there was a crack of tearing roots and the spade went down into the
black soil right to the very top. Then came the blissful moment when he bore
down with all his weight on the handle, felt it bend a little, and with a
pleasant effort turned over the heavy layer of soil with its imprint of the
spade and half a wriggling red worm.
At first Petya worked in sandals, but then began digging barefoot to
save them, and the contact of his skin with the warm iron was another thing
he enjoyed. He ^realized that this was not play, it was work, the future of
the family depended on it.
All of them worked in the sweat of their brows, it was a real struggle
for existence. They had dinner at midday on the big glassed-in veranda, hot
from the sunshine. They ate borshch, boiled beef, and grey wheaten bread
which they bought from the German settlers at> Lustdorf. They were so tired
they ate almost in silence, and what talk there was concerned only the
weather, rain and the crop.
Although they were living in a summer cottage they were quite unlike
the usual holiday crowd. They slept on folding beds in the big, comfortless
rooms, with spades, hoes, buckets, watering-cans and other implements lying
about in the corners. They washed at dawn by the water-cart, and although
the sea was not far away, only about a mile and a half, they seldom went
bathing- there was no time.
Vasily Petrovich became thin and haggard; he was evidently overtaxing
his strength but he refused to slacken off, and worked so hard that Petya
often worried about him.
Everything appeared to be going well. It was the kind of life Vasily
Petrovich had often dreamed of in secret, especially after his European
tour-with something of Switzerland, something of the Rousseau spirit, a life
independent of the government or society. A little plot of land, an orchard,
a vineyard, healthy physical toil and leisure devoted to reading, walking,
philosophical conversation and all the rest of it.
So far, it is true, there had been only the healthy physical toil, no
time was left for the leisure devoted to spiritual joys. But after all, that
was natural, the new life was only just beginning.
Nevertheless, Vasily Petrovich was never free from a nagging sense of
worry. He was uneasy about the crop.
The ovaries stood thick on the cherry trees, fine, green balls that
swelled day by day, but who could say how they would go on? Suppose there
was no rain, the water carried proved insufficient and the crop was lost?
And even if it was not lost, how were they to sell it?
Up to now the question of selling the crop had never been properly
discussed, it had been somehow taken for granted. People would come,
wholesale dealers from the market, and buy up the whole of it. All right.
But what if they didn't come and didn't buy it?
Meanwhile, the date for the second payment on the note of hand was
drawing near, and two postcards had come from abroad, with a reminder from
the old woman and a warning that if the payment was not made punctually she
would at once protest the bill, close the agreement and let the farm to
other tenants.
This took all peace of mind from Vasily Petrovich and he began to lose
his temper about trifles.
Auntie remained cheerful, she made various plans and fastened a sheet
of paper to a telegraph post by the horse-tram terminus announcing a
comfortable cottage of two completely isolated rooms to let in a delightful
spot on the steppe not far from the sea, with an orchard and vineyard; it
could be rented either for the season or by the month. Full service if
required.
These two separate rooms were nothing more nor less than the tiny
neglected hut roofed with shingles where Madame Vasyutinskaya's servants had
once lived. It stood by itself, its windows facing the steppe, amid a thick
growth of silvery wormwood; to Petya, who had explored the whole place, it
was a wonderful, mysterious, and very romantic spot.
However, people who read the notice and came to take a look were not
impressed. One and all said the same thing, "You call it 'not far from the
sea'?"
Gavrik came a number of times to study Latin. He liked the farm, but he
still had no use for all this business of physical toil and the
sweat-of-your-brow, he looked upon it as an eccentric whim. He did not say
so straight out, however. On the contrary, he asked very seriously about
watering, hoeing, crop prospects and the wholesale price of cherries. He
gave no advice, only shook his head in concern and sighed so sympathetically
that Petya even began to have qualms about the success of their venture.
Gavrik said little about his work in the print-shop and life in Near
Mills, he seemed reluctant to discuss it, but from the little he did say
Petya concluded that things were not going very smoothly. After the big May
Day demonstration which he had hardly noticed in his absorption in exams,
the police had got busy again, there had been house searches and some people
had been arrested; the police had been to the Chernoivanenkos', too, but had
found nothing and Terenty was not arrested.
"In general, it's hard to work," said Gavrik, and Petya was in no doubt
about the sense in which he used the word "work."
On one of his visits, as though continuing that topic, Gavrik said
suddenly, "About renting out that cottage of yours-it's not such a bad
idea."
"Yes, but nobody wants it," said Petya.
"If you look properly you may find someone," Gavrik answered, as though
he had thought it all over. "There are people for whom a place like that
would be just the very thing. Not everyone likes to take a room in town,
where you have to hand in your papers for registration the moment you move
in. Get me?" he ended sternly, looking very straight at Petya.
"I get you all right," Petya answered with a shrug.
"Well then, remember," said Gavrik still more sternly. "The point is,"
he went on more gently, almost casually, "I know a widow with a child, an
assistant doctor, she's from another town and she wants a room where it's
quiet. Of course, we could fix her up in our shed, but in Near Mills
conditions aren't all we want-you understand? Such a watch kept, it's no use
trying. The widow's got all her. papers in order, you've no need to worry
about that."
"I understand," said Petya.
"Well, I needn't explain any more, then. Terenty told me to sound you
out about it. I've never seen her myself. But I'm sure she'll be all right
with you. A quiet place, like a farm really, neither town nor village, and
plenty of summer cottages all round. Who'll ever notice her? Couldn't find
anything better. Now the next question- what's the rent?"
"I believe it's seventy rubles for the season."
"Eh, lad, that's opening your mouth a bit too wide! You'll get nothing
that way. Fifteen rubles a month's a good fair price. She can pay two months
in advance. But what's the sense of talking to you about it? I'll go to your
aunt."
Gavrik did talk to Auntie and soon convinced her that it would be
better to have a real, concrete thirty rubles-which weren't to be picked up
on the ground- rather than an imaginary seventy. As for the widow and her
child, Gavrik said nothing about her but made it clear that he had specially
sought out a suitable tenant for them and was thus doing the Bachei family a
very good turn-although he made no actual promises.
The rain did not come. The drought continued and the heat was
suffocating.
Warden was fed freshly cut hay instead of oats to save money, and fell
sick with a stomach disorder; for the fourth day he lay with distended belly
on his straw, too weak even to raise himself on his forefeet, let alone pull
the water-cart. The German vet came from Lustdorf, examined the horse and
looked into his gaping mouth. To Auntie's question whether he would be able
to pull the cart again, the vet answered, "That horse has done all his
pulling. Time to send him to the knacker's."
The ovaries on the trees ceased to swell; they looked as if they would
never grow any bigger, but remain as they were, the size of peas. And most
dreadful of all, some of them turned yellow and dropped off.
The Bacheis continued earthing up trees from morning to night, although
they felt it was useless labour.
"Auntie, Daddy, Petya, come quick, the Persians are here!" cried
Pavlik, racing up to them under the low boughs of the trees, waving his
straw hat.
In reality these were not Persians at all, they were two
powerfully-built Jews in dark-blue belted shirts hung to their knees and
tall sheepskin hats pulled low over their brows-dealers who bought fruit
wholesale, and were called Persians because in the old days Persians had
done all this type of fruit-trading in Odessa.
Petya saw two men standing by the dry water barrel with faces
expressionless as those of carved idols. He gazed at them as at the arbiters
of fate, with fear and hope. Even at the exams he had been less agitated.
The whole Bachei family surrounded the Persians.
One of them addressed Auntie.
"Are you the mistress here?" he asked in a low rumbling voice that
seemed to issue from his stomach. "We'll take a look at your crop, maybe
we'll buy it on the tree-if there's anything left of it."
Without waiting for an answer, both Persians walked along the overgrown
paths, glancing carelessly at the trees and now and then stopping to touch
an ovary or feel the soil round the roots.
The Bacheis followed them in silence, trying to guess their thoughts.
Although the men's faces remained expressionless, it was plain that the
situation was really bad. When they had finished their examination, the
Persians brought their sheepskin hats close together and whispered for a
moment.
"They need water," said one, addressing Auntie; they whispered again
and walked silently away.
"Well?" asked Auntie, following them with tiny steps and overtaking
them at the gate.
"They need water," the man repeated, halting, and after a moment's
thought he added, "fruit like that we wouldn't take even as a gift."
"Come now, you're exaggerating," said Auntie with a kind of forced
coquettishness, trying to turn it into a joke, "Let's be serious."
"Well, we'll give you twelve rubles for the whole crop as it stands,
take it or leave it," the man answered and pushed his hat lower over his
brows.
Auntie flushed with indignation. Such an absurd sum as twelve rubles
was an insult. She could hardly believe her ears.
"What's that? How much did you say?"
"Twelve rubles," the man repeated roughly.
"Vasily Petrovich, you hear what they're offering?" cried Auntie,
clasping her hands and forcing a laugh.
"What's wrong with that? It's a good price," said the Persian. "Better
take it while you can get it, in another week you won't get five, you'll
just have blistered your hands for nothing."
"Boor!" said Auntie.
"Sirs, will you kindly get out of here!" cried Vasily Petrovich, and
his jaw shook. "Outside! Out, I say! Gavrila, put them out, throw them out!
Robbers!" And Vasily Petrovich stamped his foot.
"No need for abuse," said the Persian quite pacifically. "First learn
to look after your fruit, then it'll be time enough to shout."
So the men left, not forgetting to shut the gate behind them.
"Just think, the impudence of it!" Auntie kept repeating. She dropped
her spade and fanned herself with her handkerchief.
"Now, don't you go getting upset about it, ma'am," said Gavrila. "Just
take no notice. They only came to push down the price. I know their sort.
whistle and shouting, "Disperse or I fire!"
Another policeman, the old man Petya knew, kept moving about aimlessly
in front of the crowd, waving his hands like an orchestra conductor and
pleading in lachrymose tones, "Gentlemen, do be sensible, gentlemen, do be
sensible!"
"Come on, break down the gates," said a man in an old railway cap with
a red band on the sleeve of his wadded jacket; he was standing on the roof
of the engine shop. His voice was not loud but it carried everywhere.
Evidently this was one of the leaders.
The wrought-iron gates squealed on their rusty hinges and began to give
in under the pressure of the crowd. There was the sound of a chain snapping.
One leaf of the gates, torn away, fell with a rattle in the yard, the other
hung crookedly from its brick gate-post.
The crowd rushed in. Everything became confused.
Later on Petya learned that the management had tried to crush the
strike by bringing in strike-breakers and locking the gates.
Once inside, the crowd scattered among the shops, and then Petya saw
something like the kind of game children play, only the players were angry
men. The shop door opened and men ran wildly out, followed by other men who
overtook them and flogged them on the head and neck with oily rags twisted
into hard ropes as they ducked and dodged. It was like a game of "tag." But
nobody laughed or shouted, and one of the fleeing men had blood trickling
from his nose; he smeared it over his face with the sleeve of his torn shirt
as he ran.
A small open truck appeared at the shop door, pushed by a couple of
dozen workers with tense, determined faces. And there in the truck, his legs
drawn up awkwardly, his hands gripping the sides, sat the railway engineer
whom Petya has seen the night he had gone with Gavrik to the workshops. His
cap was back to front, which gave his handsome face with its well-tended
beard a very stupid look.
Zhenya Chernoivanenko and the boys who had shouted "Spoony, spoony,
kissy-kissy-coo" after Petya and Motya, zealously helped the adults to push
the truck.
Petya was not frightened any longer, nor did the crowd seem alarming.
He was caught up in the general mood and ran after the truck, his brows
drawn tangrily together. He pushed some of the boys aside, got his satchel
against the edge of the truck and began shoving with the others. He felt as
though it were his effort alone that moved it.
As soon as the truck and its burden emerged from the factory gates they
were greeted with shouts and whistles from all sides. Some of the men had
picked up the policeman with the fierce eyes. Holding him by the shoulders
and top-boots', they gave him a swing and tossed him on to the engineer. His
sabre was gone, and so was his revolver.
The other policeman, the old one, was not thrown into the truck; he got
a couple of blows on the back of the head with a hard twisted rag and
shambled away by the fence, without sabre, revolver or cap, smiling
foolishly.
The truck was pushed for about half a mile, then abandoned on the line,
and Petya, Zhenya and the other boys went back to the workshop. But
everybody had gone, only a few workers with shot-guns and red arm-bands
paced up and down by the smashed gates.
Petya and Zhenya made their way home through strangely deserted streets
and lanes. Motya was standing by the gate -and at once started scolding
Zhenya:
"You little ruffian, you tramp, where've you been all this time? And as
for you," she turned on Petya, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking
a child to a strike! Just look at yourself, if your father could see you!"
Ever since that walk to get snowdrops Motya had had a tendency to find
fault with Petya.
He looked down at his boots all scratched by clinker, at his crushed
satchel with the broken strap, at the buckle of his belt pushed to one side.
"You're all dirty," Motya went on. "Go and get washed quickly, I'll
fetch water for you."
"Stop ordering us about!" said Zhenya. He pulled out of his pocket the
whistle which had only recently hung round the neck of the old policeman and
blew a shrill blast.
"You scoundrel! You little ruffian!" Motya threw up her hands, but then
surrendered and burst into a fit of childlike laughter.
At that moment an open cab appeared in the distance. Swaying over the
ruts, wheels rattling, it raced down the street. Men with red arm-bands
bumped on the seats and shouted something as they passed each gate.
Petya saw Terenty among them, waving his little cap. His face was red
and excited which made the white scar on his temple stand out all the more
sharply.
"Out to the common!" he shouted, pointing ahead with his cap, hardly
aware that it was his own house he was passing.
Petya flung his satchel over the fence and raced after Motya and
Zhenya. The common was already black with people.
The sun had only just sunk behind the barrows and great clouds sailing
through the sky seemed to shed their own light over the meeting. Terenty
stood erect on the seat of the cab, surrounded by the crowd. With one hand
he steadied himself on the driver's shoulder, and gestured energetically
with the other. His voice carried to Petya in fragments borne on gusts of
wind. Sometimes he could make out whole sentences.
The wrathful voice that seemed to fly with the breeze over the silent
crowd, over the quiet steppe, filled Petya with a burning sense of struggle
for freedom. His heart beat hard. And when the people sang in discord, "You
fell a victim in the fight" and there was a flicker of movement as heads
were bared, Petya too removed his cap and clutched it to his breast with
both hands, singing with the others. He could not hear himself, but beside
him he could hear the high voice of Motya as she stood on tiptoe, her neck
stretched, singing enthusiastically:
"... Fresh ranks of the people have risen to fight...."
Petya had the feeling that in a moment mounted Cossacks would dash out
from somewhere and a massacre would begin. But everything was quiet, and the
silhouettes of the sentries stationed on the hillocks and barrows were
outlined black against the glow of the sunset.
The meeting ended and the people dispersed as quickly and
inconspicuously as they had gathered. The common emptied. But on the young
grass among crushed dandelions Petya saw a great number of sticks, iron
bolts and pieces of brick which the workers had brought with them, just in
case. Then Terenty and Gavrik appeared. They walked in step, hands in
pockets, looking well satisfied with the day's work.
"Come on, come on," said Terenty, passing one hand over Motya's cheek
and holding out the other to Petya. "Don't dawdle. It's true there are
meetings and demonstrations all over the town and the police don't know
which way to turn, and Tolmachov's sitting at home wondering what to do, but
all the same.... We'd better be getting along."
This time, however, the police evidently were at a loss, and Governor
Tolmachov did not venture to send for troop's. Throughout the twenty-four
hours of the strike, not a single soldier or policeman was seen about Near
Mills, except for the old local policeman who spent the whole day going from
house to house, begging tearfully for his sabre and revolver. He came to the
Chernoivanenkos' too, and Terenty went out into the yard to talk to him.
"Terenty, lad," he pleaded, "I knew you when you were in diddies. Have
a good heart. Tell your lads to give me my weapons back, or I'll be put out
of the police. They're the property of the Crown."
Terenty frowned.
"What d'you mean by my lads? Think what you're saying."
"As if you didn't know yourself," said the old man with a wink, and
added guilelessly, "your lads, the ones that are revolutionaries. You're
their chief, aren't you?"
Terenty took the man by the shoulder and led him out of the gate.
"Get along with you, old 'un! And don't babble of things you know
nothing about. Or if you do-better keep off the streets at night. Get that?"
"Ah, Terenty, Terenty." The old policeman sighed and shambled along to
the next house.
The following day the strike ended and everything went on as before.
Factory whistles filled the air every morning just as they had, but now it
was no longer cold and misty, but bright with sunshine and filled with the
fragrance of flowers and the song of birds. And the people going to work in
groups and crowds seemed to Petya to be different too, they walked more
boldly, they looked cheerful and confident and in some way brighter and
cleaner-probably because they had got rid of their clumsy winter clothes and
many were already in light canvas jackets and coloured cotton shirts.
Coming home from school Petya felt very hot in his heavy uniform jacket
and cap, which soon became quite wet on the inside.
Lessons finished a week before the exams. From morning to night Petya
sat at the table under the mulberry tree, his fingers in his ears, learning
events and dates, wagging his head like a Chinese mandarin. He had made up
his mind to get top marks in all the exams whatever happened, for he knew
full well that no leniency would be shown him, he would be failed on any
pretext. He got thin, and his hair, long uncut, straggled on his neck.
Come to the station with me?" said Gavrik one day, appearing suddenly
behind Petya.
Petya was so deep in his swotting that he did not even wonder why
Gavrik was not at work. He only wagged his head a little faster and mumbled,
"Let me alone."
Glancing up, however, he saw a very mysterious smile on Gavrik's face.
Still more surprising was his carefully combed hair, the new cotton shirt
held in by a new belt, the pressed trousers and the new boots which he wore
only on very special occasions. All this must mean something unusual.
"Why the station?" Petya asked.
"To get the newspaper."
"What newspaper?"
"Our own. A daily. The workers' paper, lad. Sent straight from St.
Petersburg by express. It's called the Pravda."
Petya had already heard talk of the new workers' paper the Beks would
soon be putting out in St. Petersburg. Collections had been made for it
among the workers, Petya had seen the money. Sometimes Terenty or Gavrik had
brought it home from work and after counting it carefully, put it away in a
tin box that had once held sweet drops. Once a week Terenty would send it
away by post, and put the receipt in the same box.
The money was mostly in small coins, even in single kopeks. Ruble and
three-ruble notes appeared but rarely, and it was difficult to imagine how
such a big thing as a daily paper could possibly emerge from these coppers.
But now it seemed that it could, and it was coming on the St.
Petersburg-Odessa express.
To be frank, Petya was already heartily sick of grinding away at his
books all day and every day, from morning to night. He was glad of the
excuse for a break. The idea of going to the station was enticing. It was a
place that always attracted him. The network of rails spurred his
imagination to picture the unknown regions to which their smoothly curving
lines led.
The west Petya had already seen. But there was still the north, all its
boundlessly vast expanses-Russia with Moscow, St. Petersburg, ancient Kiev,
Arkhangelsk, the Volga, and Siberia which was Bo hard to picture, and
finally the Lena River which was now not merely a river but an event in
history, reeking with blood-like Khodynka ( A place in Moscow where
thousands of people were trampled to death in May 1896 during the coronation
of Nicholas II due to the authorities' criminal negligence.-Tr.) or
Tsushima. And it was from there, from the north, from the smoky, foggy St.
Petersburg, that the express would today bring the newspaper Pravda.
When Petya and Gavrik arrived at the station, the train was already in
and stood by the platform. It consisted entirely of shining Pullmans, blue
or yellow, without a single third-class green coach. And there were two
coaches such as neither Petya nor Gavrik had ever seen before; involuntarily
the lads stopped before them.
They were faced with brightly polished wood, and the door handles, the
corners of windows, the foreign letters of the inscription and the badge of
the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits were of brass that glittered in
the sun. Even the outside conveyed a smart severity, like that of a ship.
When the boys, nudging one another, peeped in through a window with its
narrow band of painted glass at the top, they gasped at the luxury inside,
at the polished mahogany panels, the stamped-plush walls, the snow-white
rumpled bedding, the electric-light bulbs like milky tulips, the blue net
for light articles, the heavy bronze spittoon and the carpet on the floor.
In the other coach they saw something even more astounding-a buffet
with bottles and hors-d'oeuvres, and a waiter in a tailcoat clearing
pyramidal napkins from the tables, napkins so white and stiff that they
might have been made of marble.
Even Petya who had been abroad had never imagined anything like this,
let alone Gavrik.
"Oooh, just look!" Petya whispered, pressing his face so hard against
the thick glass that his nose left a moist imprint.
Gavrik's eyes narrowed and with a queer smile he hissed through his
teeth, "That's how our fine gentry travel."
"Keep off the coach, please!" said a stern voice with a foreign accent,
and a conductor in the uniform jacket and cap of the Compagnie
Internationale des Wagons-Lits shoved the boys away with a firm hand as he
passed.
Gavrik wrinkled his nose, doubled up his arm and thrust the elbow
towards the man-in Near Mills an indication of the utmost mockery and
contempt. But the conductor, from the height of his superiority, ignored the
gesture, and the boys went on to the luggage coach.
At the moment flat cane baskets were being brought out; through the
open nets covering them the lads could see fresh, moist flowers-Parma
violets and roses, sent through St. Petersburg from Nice to Werkmeister's
flower shop. Werkmeister himself, a gentleman in a short light bell-bottomed
coat with mourning bands on the sleeve and on a top hat, was supervising the
unloading, accompanying each basket the porter carried to the cart with a
gentle touch from a finger bearing two wedding rings.
The boys could smell the perfume of damp flowers, strange among the
coal and metal smells of the railway station, and this suddenly brought back
to Petya that station in Naples, so like this one except for the palms and
the agaves, and the forgotten girl with the black ribbon in her chestnut
braid. And again he felt the bitter-sweet pang of parting. He even fancied
that he saw her before him.
But at that moment Gavrik seized his sleeve and pulled him after a big
truck loaded with piles of St. Petersburg newspapers and magazines. Two
porters wheeled it with some difficulty, the small iron wheels striking
sparks as they rumbled over the asphalt.
The boys ran alongside, trying to guess which pile contained the
Pravda. The truck was wheeled off the platform into the station building and
came to a squealing stop beside a newspaper stall-a carved bookcase of fumed
oak, big as an organ, with hundreds of books, newspapers and magazines lying
.and hanging all over it.
Petya loved to look at all these novelties from St. Petersburg. The
covers of love and detective novels excited him, so did the coloured
caricatures of the Satirikon, and Alarm-Ctock, and the garlands of The
Leichtweiss Cave, Nat Pinkerton, Nick Carter, and Sherlock Holmes series,
that hung on lines like washing, with tiny pictures of these famous foreign
detectives, with pipes or without, among whom the famous Russian detective
Putilin looked very tnai've and provincial with his ministerial
side-whiskers and his old-fashioned silk hat. Then there were the
illustrated weekly journals-The Spark, Sun of Russia, All the World, Round
the World, and especially that new magazine which had only just come out,
the Blue Journal, which really was blue all through, smelt strongly of
kerosene and stained the fingers.
All these dozens, hundreds, thousands of printed sheets promising a
fantastic variety of ideas and subjects, but actually offering only an
appalling emptiness, fascinated Petya, and he stood before them as though
spellbound.
Meanwhile, the bundles of newspapers had been flung one after the other
beneath the counter. The stout, long-bearded old man with a gold chain
across his waistcoat, who rented the stall, kept putting a small pince-nez
on his strawberry-coloured nose, leafing through his account book and
jotting down notes with a pencil, while a very thin, bony lady in a hat,
whose pointed angry face made her look like a pike, flung bundles of
newspapers on the counter, from which they were quickly snatched up by
news-boys and the owners of street stalls who had been queuing up for a long
time.
"Fifty New Times, thirty Country Life, a hundred and fifty Stock
Exchange, a hundred Speech. There you are, next!" she cried in a croaking
voice, and in an instant the bundles were carried off on shoulders or heads
across the station square. There they were pitched on to handcarts,
wheelbarrows or cabs to be distributed over the whole city as fast as
possible.
Gavrik took his place at the end of the queue with a little group of
people who did not look like stall owners or news-boys. More than anything
else they looked like workers. Gavrik greeted some of them and they
exchanged a few quick words, impatiently eyeing the bundles of newspapers
disappearing from the counter.
Petya had the feeling they were apprehensive about something.
At last their turn came.
"And what do you want?" asked the pike-faced lady, with a stern look at
the strangers. She knew all her regular clients by sight but these she had
never seen before. "What have you come for?"
"Our paper's the Pravda." An elderly worker with a clipped moustache
wearing a Sunday jacket and tie but smelling strongly of varnish pushed
forward to the counter. "We are from the Gena Factory, the Ropit Wharf, the
repair workshops, the Weinstein Flour Mill, the Schawald Shipping Company
and the Zur and Co. Furniture Factory. To begin with we want fifty copies
apiece."
"What's that you say? Pravda? I've never heard of such a paper," said
the lady in an artificial voice and turned to the old man. "Ivan Antonovich,
does our agency handle the newspaper Pravda?"
"What's the matter?" asked the old man, and without raising his head
from his accounts shot a hostile look at the customers out of his small,
piercing eyes.
"There's an application for three hundred copies of some Pravda," said
the lady.
"Not some Pravda," Gavrik corrected her, "but the workers' daily paper
which has its office at 37, Nikolayevskaya Street, St. Petersburg. Isn't it
there?"
"It's not arrived," said the old man indifferently. "Come tomorrow."
"Excuse me," said an elderly worker, "but that's not possible. We've
had a telegram."
"It's not arrived."
"Not arrived, hasn't it?" the elderly worker snapped, frowning. "The
Black-Hundred New Times has come, the bourgeois Speech has come, but the
workers' Pravda isn't here? Where's your lousy freedom, then?"
"For that sort of talk I could- Sofya Ivanovna, go quick for the
gendarme!"
"What's that?" said the elderly worker very quietly, and his thick grey
brows drew closer together. "Perhaps you want to send for the soldiers too?
As they did on the Lena?"
"Don't waste your breath on them, Yegor Alexeyevich!" shouted a lad in
a seaman's cap with blue tattooing on Ms sinewy arm-evidently from the
Schawald Shipping Company. "Put him out!" He made a rush for the old man,
pushing aside the pike-faced lady, whose hat went askew.
Petya shut his eyes. Now, he thought, something terrible will happen.
But all he heard was the old man whining, "Don't touch me, I'll have the law
on you...."
When he opened his eyes he saw Gavrik standing behind the counter,
triumphantly pulling out a big package of the Pravda printed on cheap
yellowish paper with the name in big, black letters, as straight and stern
as the meaning of the word. (Pravda-truth.-Tr.)
"But mark this, gentlemen, we don't sell retail!" hissed the lady. "And
don't expect credit. Either you take the whole consignment-a thousand
copies, and pay on the spot, or you can get out and tomorrow your beggarly
Pravda goes back to St. Petersburg, and the sooner it goes smash the
better."
The paper was a cheap one, fitted for lean pockets. Other papers cost
five kopeks, the Pravda only two. But even so, a thousand copies meant
twenty rubles, a big sum in those days.
The six turned out their pockets but found that they could only scrape
up sixteen rubles seventy-four kopeks.
"Ragamuffins, beggars, rabble, and want to push your noses into
politics," rattled the lady all in one breath, turned her back and put her
lace-mittened hand on the pile of papers.
"Just a minute," said the young fellow from the Schawald Shipping
Company.
He raced into the first-class waiting-room, handed his silver watch
over the refreshment counter and was back in a moment with a five-ruble note
crumpled in his hand.
So ten minutes later Gavrik and Petya were marching towards Near Mills,
each with a package of papers on his shoulder.
Although the newspaper was published legally, with the necessary
permit, Petya felt like a law-breaker. Whenever the boys passed a policeman
he felt the man was looking at them with great suspicion. As a matter of
fact, he was often right.
It would have been hard not to notice two youths, one in school uniform
and the other dressed as a workman, striding along very quickly, with
sizeable bundles on their shoulders and obviously excited, the boy in school
uniform looking round apprehensively at every step and the young workman
whistling the "Varshavyanka" as loudly as he could, beating out the rhythm
with his stride.
The nearer they came to their house, the faster the boys went until
they were almost running. Sometimes Gavrik tossed his bundle in the air and,
imitating newsboys, shouted, "New daily workers' paper, the Pravda! Latest
news! All about the Lena massacre!" His eyes burned.
When they came to Sakhalinchik, quite close to Near Mills, Gavrik
pulled out a number of copies and raced ahead at full speed, waving them
over his head and shouting, "The Tsar's Minister Makarov tells the State
Duma, 'What has been will be!' Down with the butcher Makarov! Long live the
workers' Pravda! Buy the workers' Pravda\ Two kopeks a copy! What has been
won't be!"
They came to the factory district and here Gavrik was quite at home.
This was his own world, where he felt free and independent. Big gates with
brass lettering on wire netting. Square brick buildings and tall chimneys.
The squat concrete tower of the "Cocovar" margarine factory with its huge
placard of a bulldog-faced chef offering a dish with a steaming pudding. The
waterworks, the depot, the elevators.. ..
Here and there workers in blue shirts and greasy overalls came running
out, drawn by Gavrik's cries. Some of them bought papers and handed coppers
to Gavrik which he slipped into his mouth like a real news-boy.
Once a policeman noticed the disturbance and whistled, but Gavrik
showed his elbow from the distance and the boys dived quickly down an
alleyway.
Petya's fears had almost left him, it was as though they were playing
some exciting, risky game.
Suddenly they heard the beat of running feet behind them. They turned.
A man with his jacket open and flying was racing after them. He had bow legs
and weaved from side to side, shouting, "Hi! You lads there! Stop!"
At first Petya thought he wanted to buy a paper and waited, but a
second glance showed him his mistake. The man running after them held a
short rubber truncheon and on his lapel was the badge of the Black-Hundred
Union with its tricolour ribbon.
"Run!" shouted Gavrik.
But the man with the truncheon was there already; Petya felt a heavy
blow which luckily missed his head and descended on the bundle of papers,
just clipping his ear in passing.
Fragments of newsprint flew on all sides.
"Hands off!" Gavrik snarled, hoarse with rage; with his free hand he
gave the man such a blow that he staggered back and almost fell. "Hands off,
you blackguard! Murderer, bastard! I'll kill you!"
Without removing his eyes from the man, Gavrik slipped the bundle of
papers from his shoulder and reached them back to Petya.
"Take those and run to the repair shops, call the workers' squad," he
said rapidly, licking his lips and forgetting Petya might not know what
workers' squads were.
But Petya knew. Hugging the papers, he raced along the narrow street at
top speed.
Gavrik and the man faced each other on the road. Still licking his lips
and breathing heavily through his nose, Gavrik slowly slid his right hand
into his pocket. When he just as slowly took it out, it held a steel
knuckleduster.
"I'll kill you!" he repeated, his hard eyes fixed on the man as though
he wanted to fix in his mind that puffy dark face that looked as though it
had been stung by bees, the little pig's eyes, the bullet-head with hair
parted at the side and combed across the low forehead, and the crooked grin
of a bully.
"Now then, you scum!" said the man and aimed a blow with his rubber
truncheon; but Gavrik dodged it and raced after Petya.
He heard the beat of boots behind him, and when the sound came close
Gavrik suddenly threw himself down on the ground; the man caught his foot,
tripped and measured his length. Gavrik promptly sat down on him and started
hammering the man's black head with his knuckle-duster, repeating fiercely,
"Hands off! Hands off! Hands off!"
The man got his hand into his pocket with a groan and pulled out a
small black Browning. A number of shots rang out, but Gavrik managed to get
his foot on the man's arm and the bullets only struck harmless sparks from
the cobbles.
"Help! Police!" sobbed the man and, twisting his head round, suddenly
hit Gavrik on the leg.
Gavrik gasped and the next minute they were rolling over and over on
the ground. It is hard to say how it would have ended, for Gavrik was much
smaller and weaker than his opponent, but at that moment assistance came
from the repair workshops.
Five men of the workers' squad armed with pieces of piping and spanners
tore the Browning and the rubber truncheon out of the bully's hand, gave him
a couple of buffets and all but carried Gavrik into the yard. It all
happened so quickly that when a policeman came running up, drawn by the
firing, he found nobody in the street except Gavrik's assailant sitting on
the ground, slumped against the fence of the "Cocovar" margarine factory,
spitting out blood-covered teeth.
From then on the new paper was sold regularly, first in the
working-class districts and round the factories, and then here and there in
the centre of the city.
A few days later exams began. It cost Motya and her mother a good deal
of work to clean and mend Petya's uniform, for it had been in more than one
adventure since its owner had come to live in Near Mills.
Petya's ear, which caught a glancing blow by the rubber truncheon, was
no longer painful but was still blue and swollen, and in general presented a
disreputable appearance. Petya hoped a dusting of tooth-powder would make it
look a little more presentable and allowed Motya to do the powdering, which
she did, passing a rag very gently and carefully over the injured ear, her
tongue thrust out in concentrated effort.
Petya did not do at all badly in his exams, although the examiners
tried hard to fail him.
The tense, tiring examination period, which as always coincided with
the first May thunderstorms, thickly flowering lilacs, summer heat and short
sleepless nights filled with moonlight and the whispers of lovers,
thoroughly exhausted Petya. When he finally returned to Near Mills from the
last exam-eyes sparkling, hair rumpled, hands covered with ink and chalk,
perspiring and happy-it would have been hard to recognize him for the same
boy he had been a couple of months before, so much older and thinner he
looked.
The next day he shouldered his pillow and blanket and set off for home.
The first person he saw there was his father. Vasily Petrovich was
weeding round the cherry trees, tearing out grass and chamomiles and tossing
them into a basket. Petya looked at the kindly, unshaven face and the
noticeably greyer hair, the dark-blue shirt, faded at the back and bleached
almost white under the arms, the old trousers, baggy at the knees, the dusty
sandals and the pince-nez that fell off and dangled on its cord every time
his father bent down-and a flood of warmth filled him.
"Dad!" he called, "I'm through!"
His father turned and a happy smile lighted up the wet bearded face
with a swollen vein running across the forehead.
"Ah, Petya! Well, congratulations, that's fine."
The boy dropped his pillow and blanket on the dusty grass and flung
both arms round his father's hot, sunburned neck, noticing with surprise and
a secret thrill of pride that they were almost the same height.
Auntie appeared from the flowering lilacs with the hoe in her hands.
Petya did not recognize her at once, for she had a kerchief fastened tightly
round her head, making her look like a peasant woman.
"Auntie, I've passed them all!" Petya cried.
"I know, I heard you, congratulations," said Auntie, wiping her wet
forehead with her arm. She beamed, but she could not refrain from improving
the occasion. "Now you're in the seventh form, I hope you'll behave better."
Dunyasha, her head in a kerchief and a hoe in her hands like Auntie,
also congratulated the young master on his success.
Then came a creaking of wheels followed by a big, bony, very old horse
in funereal black blinkers pulling a long water-cart. The horse was led by
the lanky youth, Gavrila, whom Petya had seen before, and Pavlik sat astride
the barrel, barefoot and in a big straw hat, holding the reins and whip.
"Hey, Petya! Hullo!" he called, spitting to one side like a real
carter. "Look, I can drive him a bit already! Here you, stop! Whoa!" he
shouted at the horse, which at once stood motionless on its trembling legs,
evidently glad to do so.
Gavrila set to work watering the trees, pouring a bucketful into the
hollow dug round each. The dry earth absorbed the water instantaneously. In
a few minutes Petya realized the work entailed in looking after an orchard.
Summer was beginning and there had not been a single really good
rainfall. In the cistern the water was right down to the bottom. Now it had
to be brought from the horse-tram terminus.
The orchard was in blossom and the trees were covered ,with ovaries
that needed moisture all the time. It was a good thing that with the
Vasyutinskaya orchard they had got that old horse, called Warden, and the
water-cart. But a tremendous amount of water was needed, and Warden could
barely crawl.
From morning to night there was the creaking of un-greased wheels from
the water-cart, the crack of the whip .and the heavy breathing of the bony
black nag that looked ready to fall down and give up the ghost at any
moment. It was hard to make him rise from his wet straw in the morning. He
trembled all over, weakly shifting his great cracked hoofs, and the flies
crawled round his blind, watering eyes.
This somewhat dashed their spirits, and at times seemed like a bad
omen. But the weather was wonderful and the crop promised to be so rich that
the Bachei family, busy from morning to night with their unaccustomed but
enjoyable physical work, felt splendid.
At first Petya thought he never would learn to dig round the trees. The
heavy spade twisted awkwardly in his hands and seemed too blunt to cut
deeply into the ground with its thick growth of grass and chamomiles. His
hands smarted and he rubbed blisters on the palms. But by the time they had
burst and turned into calluses, he began to understand the way of it.
It seemed that the spade should be put down at an angle, and he should
press not only with his hands but also, and mainly, with his foot-slowly and
evenly; there was a crack of tearing roots and the spade went down into the
black soil right to the very top. Then came the blissful moment when he bore
down with all his weight on the handle, felt it bend a little, and with a
pleasant effort turned over the heavy layer of soil with its imprint of the
spade and half a wriggling red worm.
At first Petya worked in sandals, but then began digging barefoot to
save them, and the contact of his skin with the warm iron was another thing
he enjoyed. He ^realized that this was not play, it was work, the future of
the family depended on it.
All of them worked in the sweat of their brows, it was a real struggle
for existence. They had dinner at midday on the big glassed-in veranda, hot
from the sunshine. They ate borshch, boiled beef, and grey wheaten bread
which they bought from the German settlers at> Lustdorf. They were so tired
they ate almost in silence, and what talk there was concerned only the
weather, rain and the crop.
Although they were living in a summer cottage they were quite unlike
the usual holiday crowd. They slept on folding beds in the big, comfortless
rooms, with spades, hoes, buckets, watering-cans and other implements lying
about in the corners. They washed at dawn by the water-cart, and although
the sea was not far away, only about a mile and a half, they seldom went
bathing- there was no time.
Vasily Petrovich became thin and haggard; he was evidently overtaxing
his strength but he refused to slacken off, and worked so hard that Petya
often worried about him.
Everything appeared to be going well. It was the kind of life Vasily
Petrovich had often dreamed of in secret, especially after his European
tour-with something of Switzerland, something of the Rousseau spirit, a life
independent of the government or society. A little plot of land, an orchard,
a vineyard, healthy physical toil and leisure devoted to reading, walking,
philosophical conversation and all the rest of it.
So far, it is true, there had been only the healthy physical toil, no
time was left for the leisure devoted to spiritual joys. But after all, that
was natural, the new life was only just beginning.
Nevertheless, Vasily Petrovich was never free from a nagging sense of
worry. He was uneasy about the crop.
The ovaries stood thick on the cherry trees, fine, green balls that
swelled day by day, but who could say how they would go on? Suppose there
was no rain, the water carried proved insufficient and the crop was lost?
And even if it was not lost, how were they to sell it?
Up to now the question of selling the crop had never been properly
discussed, it had been somehow taken for granted. People would come,
wholesale dealers from the market, and buy up the whole of it. All right.
But what if they didn't come and didn't buy it?
Meanwhile, the date for the second payment on the note of hand was
drawing near, and two postcards had come from abroad, with a reminder from
the old woman and a warning that if the payment was not made punctually she
would at once protest the bill, close the agreement and let the farm to
other tenants.
This took all peace of mind from Vasily Petrovich and he began to lose
his temper about trifles.
Auntie remained cheerful, she made various plans and fastened a sheet
of paper to a telegraph post by the horse-tram terminus announcing a
comfortable cottage of two completely isolated rooms to let in a delightful
spot on the steppe not far from the sea, with an orchard and vineyard; it
could be rented either for the season or by the month. Full service if
required.
These two separate rooms were nothing more nor less than the tiny
neglected hut roofed with shingles where Madame Vasyutinskaya's servants had
once lived. It stood by itself, its windows facing the steppe, amid a thick
growth of silvery wormwood; to Petya, who had explored the whole place, it
was a wonderful, mysterious, and very romantic spot.
However, people who read the notice and came to take a look were not
impressed. One and all said the same thing, "You call it 'not far from the
sea'?"
Gavrik came a number of times to study Latin. He liked the farm, but he
still had no use for all this business of physical toil and the
sweat-of-your-brow, he looked upon it as an eccentric whim. He did not say
so straight out, however. On the contrary, he asked very seriously about
watering, hoeing, crop prospects and the wholesale price of cherries. He
gave no advice, only shook his head in concern and sighed so sympathetically
that Petya even began to have qualms about the success of their venture.
Gavrik said little about his work in the print-shop and life in Near
Mills, he seemed reluctant to discuss it, but from the little he did say
Petya concluded that things were not going very smoothly. After the big May
Day demonstration which he had hardly noticed in his absorption in exams,
the police had got busy again, there had been house searches and some people
had been arrested; the police had been to the Chernoivanenkos', too, but had
found nothing and Terenty was not arrested.
"In general, it's hard to work," said Gavrik, and Petya was in no doubt
about the sense in which he used the word "work."
On one of his visits, as though continuing that topic, Gavrik said
suddenly, "About renting out that cottage of yours-it's not such a bad
idea."
"Yes, but nobody wants it," said Petya.
"If you look properly you may find someone," Gavrik answered, as though
he had thought it all over. "There are people for whom a place like that
would be just the very thing. Not everyone likes to take a room in town,
where you have to hand in your papers for registration the moment you move
in. Get me?" he ended sternly, looking very straight at Petya.
"I get you all right," Petya answered with a shrug.
"Well then, remember," said Gavrik still more sternly. "The point is,"
he went on more gently, almost casually, "I know a widow with a child, an
assistant doctor, she's from another town and she wants a room where it's
quiet. Of course, we could fix her up in our shed, but in Near Mills
conditions aren't all we want-you understand? Such a watch kept, it's no use
trying. The widow's got all her. papers in order, you've no need to worry
about that."
"I understand," said Petya.
"Well, I needn't explain any more, then. Terenty told me to sound you
out about it. I've never seen her myself. But I'm sure she'll be all right
with you. A quiet place, like a farm really, neither town nor village, and
plenty of summer cottages all round. Who'll ever notice her? Couldn't find
anything better. Now the next question- what's the rent?"
"I believe it's seventy rubles for the season."
"Eh, lad, that's opening your mouth a bit too wide! You'll get nothing
that way. Fifteen rubles a month's a good fair price. She can pay two months
in advance. But what's the sense of talking to you about it? I'll go to your
aunt."
Gavrik did talk to Auntie and soon convinced her that it would be
better to have a real, concrete thirty rubles-which weren't to be picked up
on the ground- rather than an imaginary seventy. As for the widow and her
child, Gavrik said nothing about her but made it clear that he had specially
sought out a suitable tenant for them and was thus doing the Bachei family a
very good turn-although he made no actual promises.
The rain did not come. The drought continued and the heat was
suffocating.
Warden was fed freshly cut hay instead of oats to save money, and fell
sick with a stomach disorder; for the fourth day he lay with distended belly
on his straw, too weak even to raise himself on his forefeet, let alone pull
the water-cart. The German vet came from Lustdorf, examined the horse and
looked into his gaping mouth. To Auntie's question whether he would be able
to pull the cart again, the vet answered, "That horse has done all his
pulling. Time to send him to the knacker's."
The ovaries on the trees ceased to swell; they looked as if they would
never grow any bigger, but remain as they were, the size of peas. And most
dreadful of all, some of them turned yellow and dropped off.
The Bacheis continued earthing up trees from morning to night, although
they felt it was useless labour.
"Auntie, Daddy, Petya, come quick, the Persians are here!" cried
Pavlik, racing up to them under the low boughs of the trees, waving his
straw hat.
In reality these were not Persians at all, they were two
powerfully-built Jews in dark-blue belted shirts hung to their knees and
tall sheepskin hats pulled low over their brows-dealers who bought fruit
wholesale, and were called Persians because in the old days Persians had
done all this type of fruit-trading in Odessa.
Petya saw two men standing by the dry water barrel with faces
expressionless as those of carved idols. He gazed at them as at the arbiters
of fate, with fear and hope. Even at the exams he had been less agitated.
The whole Bachei family surrounded the Persians.
One of them addressed Auntie.
"Are you the mistress here?" he asked in a low rumbling voice that
seemed to issue from his stomach. "We'll take a look at your crop, maybe
we'll buy it on the tree-if there's anything left of it."
Without waiting for an answer, both Persians walked along the overgrown
paths, glancing carelessly at the trees and now and then stopping to touch
an ovary or feel the soil round the roots.
The Bacheis followed them in silence, trying to guess their thoughts.
Although the men's faces remained expressionless, it was plain that the
situation was really bad. When they had finished their examination, the
Persians brought their sheepskin hats close together and whispered for a
moment.
"They need water," said one, addressing Auntie; they whispered again
and walked silently away.
"Well?" asked Auntie, following them with tiny steps and overtaking
them at the gate.
"They need water," the man repeated, halting, and after a moment's
thought he added, "fruit like that we wouldn't take even as a gift."
"Come now, you're exaggerating," said Auntie with a kind of forced
coquettishness, trying to turn it into a joke, "Let's be serious."
"Well, we'll give you twelve rubles for the whole crop as it stands,
take it or leave it," the man answered and pushed his hat lower over his
brows.
Auntie flushed with indignation. Such an absurd sum as twelve rubles
was an insult. She could hardly believe her ears.
"What's that? How much did you say?"
"Twelve rubles," the man repeated roughly.
"Vasily Petrovich, you hear what they're offering?" cried Auntie,
clasping her hands and forcing a laugh.
"What's wrong with that? It's a good price," said the Persian. "Better
take it while you can get it, in another week you won't get five, you'll
just have blistered your hands for nothing."
"Boor!" said Auntie.
"Sirs, will you kindly get out of here!" cried Vasily Petrovich, and
his jaw shook. "Outside! Out, I say! Gavrila, put them out, throw them out!
Robbers!" And Vasily Petrovich stamped his foot.
"No need for abuse," said the Persian quite pacifically. "First learn
to look after your fruit, then it'll be time enough to shout."
So the men left, not forgetting to shut the gate behind them.
"Just think, the impudence of it!" Auntie kept repeating. She dropped
her spade and fanned herself with her handkerchief.
"Now, don't you go getting upset about it, ma'am," said Gavrila. "Just
take no notice. They only came to push down the price. I know their sort.