feeling of relief the crowd on 'board and the crowd on the pier began to
wave handkerchiefs, hats, and umbrellas. However, they were a little
premature, the ship still remained at her berth.
The captain's mate, the coastguard officer and a group of soldiers with
green shoulder-straps appeared on deck again. The officer began to return
the passengers' passports. Just then Petya noticed a strangely
familiar-looking man standing behind the officer. He was la shabby
individual in a straw hat and there was something sad and dog-like about his
eyes. As he slowly scrutinized the passengers he raised a dark pince-nez to
his fleshy nose. At that moment Petya recognized Moustache-the same
moustached sleuth who had chased seaman Zhukov all over the decks of the
Turgenev five years before.
At that moment the sleuth looked at Petya, and their eyes met. There
was no way of telling whether he had recognized the boy or not, but he
immediately turned round to the officer and whispered something in his ear.
Petya felt a chill run down his spine. The officer, holding a stack of
passports in his hand as he walked over to Vasily Petrovich and jerking his
chin at Petya, barked:
"Your son?"
"Yes."
"Then kindly remove the St. George ribbon from his cap. If you do not,
I will be forced to escort you ashore and take up the matter of your son's
unauthorized wearing of military uniform. It's against the law at home and
even more so abroad."
"Petya, take the ribbon off this minute!"
"Here's your passport. I'll see to the ribbon. You can claim it in the
commandant's office when you return."
Gavrik, watching from the pier, saw the officer and soldiers surround
Petya. Petya removed his cap.
"Run! Petya, run!" he yelled land made a frantic dash for the gangway,
but he immediately realized his mistake when he saw that Petya merely
removed the ribbon and gave it to the officer, after which he put his cap on
his head again as if nothing had happened.
Gavrik looked round anxiously, but no one had paid any attention to his
yelling. They were all busy waving good-bye.
The officer handed out the passports, saluted and walked down the
gangway, followed by his soldiers and Moustache. A brisk command was shouted
in Italian, and the gangway was pulled up. Italian sailors in blue jerseys
ran along the side, nimbly taking in the mooring-lines; there was a jerky,
insistent ringing of the engine-room telegraph, the red blades of the
propeller revolved, churning up the water beneath the gold lettering which
spelled: Palermo. The deck straightened itself, the ship shuddered, and
Petya saw the pier, its structures, the stacks of goods, and the crowd of
waving people move now forward, now backward, and then, in some mysterious
way, turn up now at one rail, now at the other, only much smaller.
Everything on shore began to recede and diminish, as if carried away by the
wide stream of foamy green water seething beneath the stern.
Petya could hardly distinguish Gavrik and Auntie, who was waving her
umbrella. The panorama of the city began to rise slowly from behind the port
structures. There was Nikolayevsky Boulevard, the white columns of the
Vorontsov Palace rising on the cliff, the City Hall, and the tiny Duc de
Richelieu pointing his outstretched arm away to the horizon.
They passed the breakwater and saw its other side, the one that faced
the open sea. A multitude of fishermen with long bamboo fishing-rods were
darting through the spray and foam of the breaking waves.
They could see Langeron, Alexandrovsky Park and the remains of its
famous arched wall and next to it the Industry and Trade Fair. This was a
township of fancy pavilions, the most prominent of which were the huge
three-storey wooden samovar of the Caravan Tea Company and the gold-tipped
black champagne bottle of the Rederer Company.
A symphony orchestra was playing at the Fair, and the breeze that
billowed the hundreds of coloured flags and pennants on the white flagstaffs
brought to Petya's ears snatches of violin crescendos, gently muted by the
distance.
Petya remained on deck, fascinated by the sight of the ship entering
the open sea. His only regret was that his St. George ribbon had been left
behind in the officer's pocket. The wind was getting stronger, it whipped
the Italian flag at the stern, and Petya thought wistfully of the long ends
of his St. George ribbon which might have been streaming in the wind.
The fresh sea breeze was already ruffling his blouse. It caught at its
collar, it billowed it out on his back and puffed out the wide sleeves that
were fastened tightly at the wrists. Perhaps it was even nicer to have a
ciap without a ribbon, for now, by a slight stretch of imagination, it could
be taken for the beret of the Boy Captain, the hero of Jules Verne's famous
book, with the .added advantage that there was la letter under its lining.
It was almost as if fate had decided to make this an even more
memorable day for Petya and it presented him with another unforgettable
impression.
"Look, look! He's flying!" Pavlik shouted.
"Who's flying? Where?"
"There, it's Utochkin!"
It had completely slipped Petya's mind that this was the day of
Utochkin's long-awaited flight from Odessa to Dofinovka. The fearless
aviator had been waiting for good flying weather to take off from the Fair
grounds in his Farman, fly eleven miles straight across the bay, and land in
Dofinovka. It was not every boy that had the luck to see this spectacle, not
from the shore, but from the sea.
Petya and the passengers who poured out of their cabins saw Utochkin's
plane flying low over the water. It had just taken off and was now
approaching the ship. It flew so close to the stern that the rays of the
setting sun caught at the clearly visible bicycle wheels of the flying
machine, the copper fuel tank, and the bent figure of the pilot, his feet
dangling as he sat between the semi-transparent yellow wings.
As he came abreast of the ship the daredevil aviator doffed his leather
helmet and waved.
"Hurrah!" Petya yelled and was ready to pull his cap off too, but
suddenly remembering the letter, clapped it on tighter instead.
"Hurrah!" the passengers shouted as they waved frantically. The flying
machine was getting smaller as it headed towards Dofinovka, a stream of blue
petrol smoke trailing in its wake.
Up till then Petya's travels had consisted of two visits to Grandma at
Yekaterinoslav and their yearly trips to Budaki, on the sea-shore near
Akkerman, where they spent their summer holidays. They made the journey to
Yekaterinoslav by train, and travelled to Akkerman by sea on the Turgenev,
which they considered the latest thing in technical wonders. Now they were
sailing from Odessa to Naples on an ocean liner. To tell the truth, the
Palermo wasn't that at all. But, since she had made several transatlantic
voyages, Petya, by a slight stretch of imagination, convinced himself and
tried hard to convince the others that the Palermo was really an ocean
liner.
The journey was to take two weeks, which seemed quite a long time for
such a swift ship as the prospectuses and advertisements would have one
believe she was.
The point was that when the signer in the grey morning coat sold the
steamship tickets to Vasily Petrovich he innocently failed to mention that
the Palermo was not exactly a passenger ship, but was, rather, a freighter
that took on passengers, and that it was to make fairly long calls at a
number of ports. They discovered this in Constantinople-the first of the
long stops, but the trip to Constantinople was pleasant, brief, and
comfortable.
Petya was captivated by the wonders of life on board ship. Everything,
every detail of its ultra-modern, technical efficiency, combined with the
romantic flavour of the old sailing ships, fascinated him. The steady, even
throbbing of the powerful engines merged with the fresh, lively sound of the
waves as they surged past the iron sides in an unending stream. The strong
wind, full of the smell of the open sea, whistled through the shrouds; it
billowed out the canvas sleeves of the ventilator casings, bringing forth
hot and cold draughts from the engine-room and the hold.
There was a mingling of all the smells: the warm', soothing smell of
the polished mahogany tables in the lounges and the smell of painted
bulkheads; the aromas of the restaurant and the smell of hot steel,
lubricating oil and dry steam; the resinous-woody smell of the mats and the
fresh smell of pine-water sprayed in the distant white-tiled rooms with hot
and cold running water. There were the heavy swaying copper candle-holders
with glass-covered candles, and the elegant, frosted globes of the electric
lights; the steel gang-ways, the grates of the engine-room and the double
oaken stairway with the polished carved banisters and graceful balusters
leading to the saloon.
Petya explored every nook and cranny of the ship the very first day. He
peeped into mysterious cubby-holes and into the depths of the coal bunkers,
where dim electric lights burned day and night, trembling in their wire
casings like trapped mice.
The practically upright ladders below decks with their slippery steel
rungs led the boy to grimier and less pleasant regions. Black oily water
oozed underfoot, and he became queasy from the deafening booming and
crashing of the engines, the continuous motion of the propeller shaft as it
revolved in its oily bed, and the heavy air of the hold. Engineers,
greasers, and stokers lived and worked in the depths of the ship. Every now
and then the iron door of the stokehole flew open and Petya felt a blast of
intense heat. Then he saw the stokers moving swiftly against the background
of the flaming inferno, using their long crow-bars en the caked red-hot
coal. Petya saw their black, sweat-drenched faces bathed in the crimson
light and was terrified at the thought of remaining in such an appalling
place even for five minutes.
He hurried away, slipping on the steel floor mats, holding on to greasy
steel handrails, and running up and down ladders in his eagerness to get
away from that forbidding world. But it was not so easy. Stunned by the din
and jangle of engines throbbing somewhere close, Petya found himself in
places such as he had never dreamed existed.
He knew there were deck passengers as well as first-and second-class
ones, but he discovered that there was another category, the so-called
"steerage" passengers, who were not even allowed on the lowest deck, the
place usually reserved for cattle. They occupied wooden bunks in the depths
of one of the half-filled holds.
Petya saw heaps of dirty oriental rags on which several Turkish
families were sitting and lying, prostrated by the rolling and pitching of
the ship, the stale air, the semi-darkness, and the noise of the engines.
They were migrating somewhere together with their children, copper
coffee-pots and large wicker crates filled with chickens. With great
difficulty Petya made his way to the top deck, to the fresh sea air, where
it took him quite a while to recover.
The first- and second-class passengers lived according to a strictly
prescribed routine: at 8 a.m. the middle-aged stewardess in a starched cap
entered their cabin, said, "Buon giorno," and set a tray with coffee and
rolls on the little table; at noon and again at 6 p.m. a waiter with a white
napkin tucked under his arm would glide noiselessly down the corridor,
knocking at every cabin door and rattling oft" in a truly commedia dell'arte
manner, stressing his r's. "Pr-rego, signor-ri, mangiar-r-re!" which meant,
"Dinner is being served."
First-class passengers had the additional privilege of five o'clock tea
and a late supper. But the Bachei family, belonging to that golden mean of
society that usually travelled second-class, failed to qualify.
The first and second classes had separate dining-rooms. The first mate
presided at the second-class table d'hote. The captain, who was inaccessible
to ordinary mortals and therefore shrouded in mystery, presided in the
first-class dining-room. Even Pavlik, who was such a pusher, saw him not
more than two or three times during the whole trip.
The first mate, on the other hand, was la jovial fellow and, judging by
his shiny purple-pink Roman nose, a drunkard as well. He was the life and
soul of the company. He pinched Pavlik gently under the table, calling him
"little Russky," he was attentive in passing the ladies cheese and filling
the gentlemen's wineglasses, and his snow-white, stiffly starched tunic
rustled pleasantly as he turned now left, now right, bestowing his
open-hearted smiles all round.
For dinner there were real Italian macaroni with tomato sauce, a second
course of roast meat and fagioli, which turned out to be beans, and for
dessert, Messina oranges with twigs and leaves attached, wrinkled
purple-green figs, and fresh almonds that did not necessitate a nutcracker,
but were easily cut with a table knife right through the thick green outer
husk and the still soft inner shell. Being served by a waiter somewhat
embarrassed them. He would hold the platter to the left of them, balancing
it on his finger-tips, and they had to help themselves. From a sense of
modesty they always took much less than they would have liked to.
Vasily Petrovich was shocked and furious when he found out that wine
went with the dinner-one bottle for three passengers. True, it was very weak
and rather sour Italian wine, and the passengers mixed it with water half
and half, but, none the less, Vasily Petrovich was outraged. The first time
he saw a large bottle without any label placed before his setting he was so
indignant that his beard shook, and he felt like shouting, "Take this brew
away!" but he controlled himself in time and simply moved the bottle away.
Later, however, when he tasted it, he realized that the steamship
company had no intention of making drunkards out of its second-class
passengers by serving them strong, expensive wines, and so allowed the boys
to colour their drinking-water with a few drops, in order not to waste it
completely, as it had been included in the price of the tickets.
This daily water-colouring was the high light of the dinner-hour for
Petya and Pavlik.
Ice-cold water was poured into a large goblet from a heavy, misty
decanter that had become frosted in the ship's refrigerator; then a small
amount of wine was added to the water.
The wine did not mix with the water immediately. It swirled around in
threads and then spread out, making the water a bright ruby-red, and
throwing a pink swaying star-like reflection on the starched table-cloth.
The biggest impression of those first days was the sight of the open
sea. For a day and two nights, between Odessa and the Bosporus, there was no
land in sight. The ship was making good speed, yet it seemed to be
motionless in the centre of a blue circle.
At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, Petya could not figure out
which way they were heading.
There was something entrancing about this seeming immobility, about the
empty horizon and the triumph of the two blue elements-sea and sky-between
which Petya's whole existence seemed to be suspended.
At dawn of the. second day he was awakened by the sound .of running
feet overhead. The ship's bell was ringing, the engines had stopped and in
the unusual stillness he could hear the clear gurgling sound of water
lapping at the ship's side. He looked out the porthole and through the early
morning mist saw a steep green bank. There was a little lighthouse and a
barrack with a tiled roof on the bank.
Petya threw on his clothes and ran up on deck. A Turkish pilot in a red
fez was standing next to the captain, and the ship inched slowly into the
green lane of the Zoospores. The lane widened and narrowed like a meandering
river. At times the bank would be so close that Petya thought he could
stretch his arm and touch the leaning white tombstones chaotically scattered
among the cypresses in the Moslem cemetery, the poppy-red flag with the
crescent in the middle that waved over the custom-house, or the turf-covered
earthwork of the shore batteries.
This was Turkey-they were now abroad, in a foreign country, and Petya
suddenly felt a sharp pang of longing for his homeland, and, at the same
time, a burning curiosity. The homesickness remained with him until he
returned to Russia.
The sun was now quite high, and by the time they reached the Golden
Horn and dropped anchor in the roads of Constantinople Bay the warm
reflections of the water sparkled and gleamed all over the ship-from
water-line to mast-top.
From then on the Bachei family was possessed by a madness common to all
inexperienced tourists. They felt that every minute was precious and wanted
to set out immediately to see all the sights of this most wonderful city,
the panorama of which was so close that they could see the ant-like coming
and going of crowds of people, the cupolas of the broad, tall mosques and
the spires of the minarets.
They decided to forego breakfast and waited impatiently for a
shrewd-looking Turkish official, who had been given several silver piastres,
to scribble something in Father's passport; the scribble turned out to be
the Sign of Osman. The moment the Bacheis went down the gangway, they were
pounced upon by artful boatmen. Finally, they flopped on to the velvet
cushions of a wherry and, for two lire, were rowed ashore.
Everything that happened afterwards merged for Petya into a sensation
of an endless, scorching, tiring day - the deafening babble of the truly
Eastern bazaars, the equally Eastern deathly quiet of the huge deserted
courts around the mosques and the stony museum-like iciness inside. At every
step they parted with a steady stream of lire, piastres, paras, and copper
medjidies, coins which delighted the boys with their inscriptions in Turkish
and the strange Sign of Osman.
In Turkey the Bachei family first came in contact with that terrible
phenomena known as guides, and guides pursued them for the remainder of
their trip. There were Greek guides, Italian guides, and Swiss guides.
Despite specific national traits, they all had something in common: they
stuck like leeches. But the Constantinople guides left the others far
behind.
The minute the Bacheis set foot on the pavements of Constantinople they
were besieged by guides. The scene with the rival boatmen was repeated. The
guides battled for their prey; it was a real free-for-all and massacre, to
which no one paid the slightest heed.
The guides poured torrents of filth on each other in every language and
dialect of the Levant; they tore at each other's starched dickeys, swung
their sticks with contorted faces, elbowed each other, turned round and
kicked out like mules.
In the end the Bacheis were claimed by an impressive-looking guide who
had vanquished his opponents with the help of a policeman friend. He wore a
morning coat that had faded badly under the arms, striped trousers, and a
red fez. His wildly-dilated nostrils and coal-black janissary moustache
expressed a determination to conquer or to die; however, in every other
aspect his face, and especially his frightened baggy eyes, wreathed in
smiles, bespoke a desire immediately to show the tourists all there was to
see in Constantinople: Pera, Galata, Yildiz Kiosk, the Fountain of Snakes,
the Seven-Towered Palace, the ancient water-line, the catacombs, the wild
dogs, the famous St. Sophia Mosque, Sultan Ahmed's Mosque, Suleiman's
Mosque, Osman's Mosque, Selim's Mosque, Bayezid's Mosque, and all the two
hundred and twenty-seven other large and six hundred and sixty-four smaller
mosques in the city-in other words, he was at their complete disposal.
He bundled them into a gleaming phaeton drawn by two horses, jumped on
the step, looked round wildly, and told the driver not to spare the whip.
They were all in by evening, so much so that Pavlik fell asleep in the
boat on the way back to the ship and had to be carried up the gangway.
Vasily Petrovich was aghast at the day's expenditure, not counting the
fact that the breakfast and lunch due them on the ship had gone to waste. He
decided not to have a guide next day, an intention that was furthered by the
fact that that night the Palermo was taken from the outer roads to a berth
to take on cargo along with a dozen other ships.
There could tie no chance of the guide finding them in the monotonous
chaos of the crowded pier. They slept like logs in the small overheated
cabin, oblivious to the clatter of the winches and the swift flashes of the
multicoloured harbour lights that filtered in through the porthole.
They awoke to a dazzling morning sun and the magic panorama of
Istanbul. Vasily Petrovich and the boys hastened down the gangway. This was
their last day ashore and they had to get as much out of it as they possibly
could.
The first person they saw as they stepped down on the pier was their
guide of the day before. He waved his bamboo cane over his head in greeting.
The phaeton and the copper-faced, docile Macedonian on the coach-box were
nearby.
It was the day before all over again, with the added attraction of
being taken through the bazaars and the curio shops of the guide's friends.
Souvenir-buying turned out to be just as ruinous an undertaking as the
guided tour. But the Bacheis, hypnotized by their impressions, had reached
that stage of tourist fever when people shed all will-power and, with
something akin to the lunatic's loss of reason, submit to their guide's
every whim.
They bought stacks of crudely-coloured postcards of the places they had
just seen; they parted with piastres and lire for cypress rosaries, for
glass balls with coloured spirals, for tropical shells, for paper-knives,
and for exactly the same kind of aluminium pen-nibs that were on sale at the
Fair in Odessa.
At the Greek Monastery monks palmed off on them a yellow wooden box.
Through the huge magnifying glass on the lid they were supposed to see a
view of Athos. The box cost six piastres.
They came to their senses only in the European quarter of the city when
they found themselves amid the sumptuous stores, restaurants, banks, and
embassies set in the luxuriant dark verdure of southern gardens. The guide
inveigled them into a friend's camera shop to buy Kodaks, and then he
suggested dining at an exclusive French restaurant.
At this stage Vasily Petrovich came to, rebelled, and fleeing from
luxury and extravagance, went to the other extreme by heading for
Constantinople's slums, where they saw human misery at its lowest.
The slums shook Petya to the depths of his soul, and not even the visit
to Scutari on the Asiatic shore could immediately restore his equilibrium.
The motor boat raced across the Bosporus, cleaving the green water with
its prow, leaving two diverging glistening furrows in its wake. Hundreds of
wherries were reflected in the waters of the still, lake-like strait.
Turkish merchants, officials with brief cases, and officers travelling to
and from Scutari, sat on velvet cushions under the light canopies.
Wet oars glittered all over the bay as they caught the sun's rays. The
smell of thyme and savoury was borne to them from the Asiatic shore. But
Petya could not erase the memory of the foul-smelling slums and the swarms
of green flies buzzing around the festering sores of the beggars.
The moment they moored in Scutari the guide rushed on with renewed
energy, determined not to miss a single one of the sights. Alas, our
travellers were quite spent.
There was a bazaar nearby and they made for a stand with cool drinks.
The lemonade with a strange flavour of anise drops was heavenly. They drank
pink ice-water and ate coloured ice-cream. Then they turned to the wonderful
variety of Eastern sweets.
Vasily Petrovich was always opposed to giving children too many sweets,
since they were bad for teeth and appetite. But this time he could not
resist the temptation of trying the baklava that was swimming in honey, or
the salted pistachio nuts whose bony shells had burst at the tips, like the
fingers of a kid glove, so that the green kernels peeped through.
The sweets made them thirsty, and the cool drinks made them eat more
sweets. The incident of Grandma's jam was still fresh in Petya's memory and
he moderated his intake accordingly. But Pavlik was insatiable. He ate and
ate. And when Father flatly refused to buy any more, Pavlik dived into the
crowd and emerged a few minutes later, carrying a rather large box with
bright lacquered pictures pasted all over it. It was a box of the best
rahat-lakoum.
"Where did you get that?" Father asked severely.
"I bought it," Pavlik answered with bravado.
"What with?"
"I had a piastre and a half."
"Where did you get the money?"
"I won it!" Pavlik said proudly.
"What do you mean, you won it? Where? When? From whom?"
And so the whole story came out. While Father had been busy studying
the planning of their travels and balancing expenses, while Petya had been
spending his time on deck, Pavlik had made friends with the Italian waiter
and had been introduced to the society of the second-class restaurant
personnel. He had played lotto with them, using the three kopeks he had
found in his pocket and which the Italian waiter changed into Turkish
currency. Pavlik had been lucky, he had won a few piastres. Vasily Petrovich
seized Pavlik by the shoulders and began to shout and shake the life out of
him, heedless of the fact that they were in the middle of a large oriental
bazaar.
"How dare you gamble? Wretch! How many times have I told you that no
one with any respect for himself plays for money! And with ... with
foreigners!"
Pavlik was feeling sick from the sweets and began to howl-he did not
share his father's ideas about gambling, especially since he had been so
lucky at it. Father was livid, there was no telling how it would have ended
if the guide had not suddenly looked at his gold-plated American watch with
four lids. They had just two hours left till sailing time.
All they needed now was to miss the boat! They rushed to the pier and
jumped into the first wherry they saw without bothering to bargain down the
price. Soon they were safely on board the Palermo. She had finished loading
and had moved out into the harbour, ready to sail.
The parting with their guide was a dramatic scene. He had received his
fee of two lire, but remained standing in the rocking boat on legs as
all-enduring as those of an old wolf, watching Vasily Petrovich land the
boys climb up the ladder. Then he began to ask for baksheesh.
He had always been very eloquent, a necessary accomplishment in his
profession, but this time he outdid himself. He usually spoke three European
languages simultaneously, inserting only the essential words in Russian.
Now, however, he spoke mostly in Russian, inserting French phrases from time
to time. His speech sounded something like a monologue out of the
pseudo-classical tragedies of Racine and Corneille.
The language was obscure, the meaning clear. Extending his hand, which
was covered with copper rings glittering with paste diamonds, and speaking
as passionately as when he described the wonders of the city, he told them
of his poverty-stricken family, burdened by a paralysed grandmother and four
small children who had neither milk nor clothing. He complained of
approaching old age, of his trouble with the police who fleeced him of most
of his earnings, of a chronic ulcer, of unbearable taxes, of the cutthroat
competition. He begged them to take pity on an aged, penniless Turk who had
dedicated his whole life to tourists. His thick greying eyebrows raised, his
face took on a tragic expression, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.
All this could have passed for charlatanry, pure and simple, were it
not for the genuine human suffering in his frightened brown eyes. Unable to
withstand his pleading, Vasily Petrovich took the last Turkish coins from
his pockets and poured them into the guide's outstretched hand.
It was nearly evening, and one could sense the slowly gathering storm
in the motionless air, heavy from the heat of the day. The storm was not
approaching from any definite direction, it seemed to be materializing out
of nothing over the amphitheatre of the city, over the mosques and minarets.
By the time the heavy, grating anchor chain crawled upward, and the
overloaded ship, sunk deeper than its water-line, began slowly to turn
round, the sun had disappeared in the storm clouds. It was so dark that they
had to turn on the lights. Hot smells of cooking and engines escaped from
the hatches. The sight of the now colourless city heightened the stormy
green of the Golden Horn.
The ship's engines were snorting heavily and laboriously. The surface
of the water seemed as flat as a sheet of glass, yet the ship began to rock
slightly.
Pavlik had just finished^ the last piece of rahat-lakoum, thickly
coated with powdery sugar. He all but choked on it; it tasted doughy, and
was gummy and sticky. Suddenly he felt an acid metallic after-taste in his
mouth. His jaws contracted spasmodically. The greenness of the clear water
reminded him of the rahat-lakoum and he shut his eyes tight. But the moment
he did so, he felt he was flying up and down on a swing. With great effort
he tried to say, "Daddy, I'm sick," but he was overtaken by vomiting.
At that instant a jagged flash of lightning pierced the coal-black
clouds over the crescent of St. Sophia's and the surrounding minarets. It
was followed by a crack that seemed to split the sky in two and poured the
shattered fragments down upon the city and harbour. A whirlwind whipped up
columns of dust on the hills. The water foamed. When they cleared Serai
Burna and entered the Sea of Marmara, that is, the Marble Sea, its shoppy
surface did indeed resemble the colour pattern of marble.
Petya missed the storm in the Sea of Marmara, for he, too, fell victim
to Pavlik's malady. The two of them, white as chalk, lay prone in the stuffy
cabin. Father rushed from one to the other, not knowing what to do. But the
Italian stewardess, with long-practiced efficiency, ran up and down the
corridor, providing the afflicted with basins.
There was more to it than the rocking of the vessel and the Eastern
sweets. The boys, overtired, were feeling the effects of the rushing about
in the heat, the noise of the streets, and the mass of new impressions. The
seasickness soon passed, but they were feverish and delirious. The ship's
doctor examined them thoroughly, in the traditional manner of the old
European doctors: he pressed their tongues down with the handle of a silver
spoon borrowed from the first-class dining-room; his strong, experienced
fingers kneaded their bare stomachs; he tapped them with a little
rubber-tipped hammer; he listened to their breathing through a stethoscope
and without it, by placing his large, fleshy ear to their bodies; he felt
their pulse, keeping his eyes on his large gold watch, the lid of which
reflected the round porthole and the water rushing past it; he joked in
Latin with an alarmed Rather, trying to cheer him. He said there was nothing
seriously wrong, that they should stay in bed for three days; he gave them
laxative powders and left graciously, after prescribing chicken broth,
toast, and a light omelette.
His last words gravely upset Vasily Petrovich, because experienced
travellers in Odessa had warned him never to request anything from the
ship's dining-room that was not on the menu, because: "You don't know those
thieves: they'll rob you, that's how they make their money; they'll charge
you for the service, the bread, la ten per-cent tip, and God knows what
else, and before you know where you are, you'll have nothing left."
Although mortified by the prospect, Vasily Petrovich nevertheless
struggled with his dictionary and in broken Italian ordered two bowls of
chicken broth with toast and two omelettes, a la carte.
And to the boys missed the Dardanelles and Salonika, as well as the Sea
of Marmara. Only the noises of the port, mingled with the confusion of
Greek, Turkish, and Italian voices, reached them through the half-open
porthole.
They were sailing south through the Gulf of Salonika, with the open sea
on the left and barren shores on the right. The coast gave way to hills
which rose gradually until they became a mountain range. A single peak rose
above the range, and a bank of motionless fluffy clouds hung over the peak.
There was something enchanting about the lone mountain and the clouds that
threw blue shadows on it. The passengers trained their binoculars on it as
if they expected to see a miracle performed there before their very eyes.
Father, pressing his red Baedeker to his breast with one hand and
holding his binoculars in the other, was also peering at the magic mountain.
When Petya came up, he turned towards his son eagerly. His eyes shining with
excitement, he placed Mother's little mother-of-pearl opera-glasses in
Petya's hand and said:
"Look, Mount Olympus!"
Petya did not get the import of his words.
"What?"
"Olympus!" Vasily Petrovich repeated triumphantly. Petya decided that
Father was joking, and laughed.
"You're not serious?"
"I told you it's Olympus!"
"Which Olympus? Mount Olympus?"
"Do you know of any other?"
And Petya suddenly realized that the land that was now so close was
none other than ancient Pieria, and that this mountain was Homer's Olympus,
the home of the Greek gods whom Petya knew so well from his ancient history.
Maybe the gods were still there? Petya lifted Mother's opera-glasses to
his eyes, but, unfortunately, they were too weak to magnify the sacred
mountain. All he could make out was a flock of sheep moving up a slope like
the shadow of a cloud and the erect figure of the shepherd surrounded by
dogs. He was certain, however, that he could see the gods quite clearly. One
of the clouds resembled the reclining Zeus, another, flying in a flowing
garment like Athena, was in all probability rushing to help Achilles at
Troy.
The previous summer Vasily Petrovich, anxious to broaden the horizons
of his sons, had read them the Iliad from cover to cover, so that Petya now
had no trouble at all singling out the flying Athena. However, that meant
that Troy, too, must be somewhere nearby.
"Daddy, where's Troy? Shall we see it?" Petya asked breathlessly.
"Alas, my boy," Father said, "we've left Troy far behind. It's near the
Dardanelles, and you won't see it now." Then he added reproachfully, hinting
at the sad affair of the Eastern sweets, "Thus Fate punishes Greed and
Gluttony."
His words, undoubtedly, were just. Still, Petya thought Fate had been
too cruel in depriving them of the delight of seeing Troy with their own
eyes-and all because of that awful rahat-lakoum.
In order not to set Petya too strongly against Fate, Vasily Petrovich
hastened to add that they would not have been able to see Troy from the ship
anyway, and peace between the boy and Fate was restored.
Two days later, when Petya saw Athens, he was more than rewarded for
having missed seeing Troy.
The barren rocky mountains of Euboea, longest of the Greek islands,
stretched for many weary miles. At last they left the island behind. That
night they sailed through straits and saw lighthouses along the shore. The
ship changed speed several times and swung round. It was late when they
finally fell asleep, and next morning when they awoke the ship was anchored
in Piraeus harbour, in full sight of Athens.
This time Vasily Petrovich was determined to do without the services of
a guide.
The Greek guides differed from the Turkish in that they had amber
rosaries in their hands, were shorter, and wore small black fezzes without
tassels instead of red ones with black tassels. Unlike the warlike Moslems
they did not make a frontal assault on the tourists, cursing and shouting;
instead, they surrounded them silently like humble Christians and their
endurance usually won out. When Vasily Petrovich found himself in the centre
of a tight circle of guides fingering amber rosaries and looking at him with
quiet, gentle, olive-black eyes, he did not feel at all intimidated.
"Nyet!" he said vehemently in Russian, and then, to sound more
convincing, he added in French and in German, "Non! Nein!" At the same time
his arm sliced through the air so swiftly in a gesture of refusal that Petya
thought he heard the air whistle.
None of this, however, made any impression on the guides. They kept
their ground, fingering their rosaries, their large noses drooping
forlornly. Vasily Petrovich took his boys firmly in tow and forged ahead.
The guides too moved on and did not let them out of the circle.
Vasily Petrovich ignored them. He strode down the streets of Piraeus
with the confidence of a native. It was not for nothing that he had spent
the past few days in his cabin, unmindful of the sea breezes, poring over a
guide-book to Piraeus and Athens.
The startled guides made a timid attempt to hustle the Bachei family
into one of the large, dilapidated carriages that trailed their footsteps;
Pavlik yelled, "Go away!" as loud as he could, causing the guides to retreat
somewhat. But the magic circle remained intact.
They reached the railway station without having once lost their way,
bought tickets, and departed for Athens under the noses of the dumbfounded
guides who crowded the platform. Athens turned out to be a stone's throw
away. When they arrived there, they made their way to another station just
as silently and as resolutely as before, and set out immediately for the
ancient city in a suburban train with open carriages.
Excited by the battle with the guides, their victory, and the
possibility of renewed attacks, they had not been paying much attention to
their surroundings. However, when they reached the mountain-top, which was
covered with marble fragments, and suddenly beheld the Acropolis: the
Parthenon, the Propylaea, the small temple of Wingless Victory, and the
Erechteion-all of which seemed to be a confused mass and yet was an ensemble
of heavenly unity-they gasped at the sheer beauty of the scene, an art that
had been imitated time without number all over the world, becoming ever more
insignificant and trivial.
Like all great monuments of architecture, they seemed at first sight to
be rather small and exquisite, seen against the wild expanse of sky, so
clear and so blue that it made their heads swim.
This was the realm of marble columns and stairways, yellowed by time,
alongside which the figures of the numerous tourists seemed dwarfed.
Oh, how Vasily Petrovich had dreamed of seeing the Acropolis with his
own eyes, of touching the ancient stones! It had been the dream of his life.
He had visualized the day when he would take his children to the Parthenon
and tell them of the Golden Age of Pericles and of its genius, the great
Phidias. Reality, however, which was much cruder and simpler, added to the
majesty, so much so that Vasily Petrovich was unable to utter a word; he
stood in silence, stooping slightly under the impact of the scene that moved
him almost to tears.
Petya and Pavlik, on the other hand, were not losing any time; they
scrambled up the slippery pebbles towards the Parthenon, wondering why it
seemed so near and yet was so far. They helped each other up, scaring the
lizards as they climbed the weather-beaten stairways, until they found
themselves at last among the Doric columns, which seemed to have been put
together from gigantic marble millstones.
The noonday sun blinded them, but they were not aware of the heat
because there was a fresh wind blowing from the Archipelago. The tiled
roof-tops of Athens glittered far below, blending with the landscape. They
could see the port, the rows of ships, the forest of masts about the roofs
of the warehouses, and out in the harbour, sprinkled with the silvery
glitter of sunshine, was an English warship, emitting an ominous cloud of
smoke.
Still further down, on the opposite shore, away beyond the hills, was
the Gulf of Petalis, and they could see the azure strip of water that was
more ancient than Hellas itself-the Gulf of Corinth.
One could stand there silently till nightfall, feeling neither fatigue,
nor boredom, nor anything earthly, nothing but an awareness of the supreme
beauty created by man.
But they would have to hurry, for the ship sailed at five, and Vasily
Petrovich wanted to show the boys the Athens museums. Nothing, however,
could add to the impression made by the Acropolis: neither the marble
statues of the gods and heroes, nor the earthen vessels behind the glass
show-cases, nor the Tanagra statuettes, nor the amazing amphorae and flat
bowls adorned with red and white figures against a black background.
Out once more in the narrow streets of the Piraeus port, with its
picturesque oriental atmosphere, but possessing nothing that the Bacheis had
not already seen in Constantinople, they decided to risk a cup of coffee in
a Greek cafe.
It was cooler inside. The cafe smelt of boiling coffee, anise, roast
lamb, and something else that was so appetizing it made the boys' mouths
water. Vasily Petrovich tried to calculate the cost of a meal in drachmas,
land decided to order two portions of a Greek dish for the three of them. A
kindly little Greek woman, with a pronounced moustache and dressed in black,
wiped the marble table-top with a kitchen towel and set down a platter of
lamb stew with Greek sauce.
It was then, that they realized just what could be done with a small
amount of purple egg-plants, red tomatoes, green pepper, parsley, and
genuine olive oil.
While they were busy polishing off the last traces of the amber sauce
with pieces of bread, the kindly proprietress stood stroking Pavlik's head.
Her dark-brown hand was adorned with an Athos signet-ring and her sad eyes
were full of maternal tenderness, as she said in broken Russian:
"Eat, boy, eat!"
When they had finished, she cleared the table, wiped the marble top
again, and retired modestly behind the counter, where a candle was burning
beneath an icon and a palm branch. Her husband now took her place. He
brought in a tray with three small cups of steaming coffee, three glasses of
water, three saucers with Greek pastry, and three saucers of wild-orange jam
with nuts. Besides all this, he asked Vasily Petrovich in broken Russian
whether he would care for a hookah, an offer which was rejected with
considerable vehemence.
It was cosy and homely in the cafe. There were lace curtains on the
windows, the walls were papered, and a canary warbled in a bamboo cage.
There were other customers in the cafe, but they sat around their
tables so sedately and unobtrusively that they did not in any way disturb
the tranquillity of the establishment. They had cups of coffee and glasses
of water before them, but, engrossed in games of dominoes, telling their
beads, or reading newspapers, they hardly touched them; they were more like
relatives than chance customers. Even the portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece over the door leading to the kitchen did not have an official look
about them, and could have passed for enlargements of Grandma and Grandpa on
their wedding day. It was hard to believe that the marble temple of the
Parthenon which crowned the summit of the nearby mountain had been built by
the ancestors of these mild-looking Greeks who were moving the dominoes
across the marble table-tops and sucking the snake-like pipes of their
gurgling hookahs.
While the Bacheis were sipping the strong coffee, the proprietor
wave handkerchiefs, hats, and umbrellas. However, they were a little
premature, the ship still remained at her berth.
The captain's mate, the coastguard officer and a group of soldiers with
green shoulder-straps appeared on deck again. The officer began to return
the passengers' passports. Just then Petya noticed a strangely
familiar-looking man standing behind the officer. He was la shabby
individual in a straw hat and there was something sad and dog-like about his
eyes. As he slowly scrutinized the passengers he raised a dark pince-nez to
his fleshy nose. At that moment Petya recognized Moustache-the same
moustached sleuth who had chased seaman Zhukov all over the decks of the
Turgenev five years before.
At that moment the sleuth looked at Petya, and their eyes met. There
was no way of telling whether he had recognized the boy or not, but he
immediately turned round to the officer and whispered something in his ear.
Petya felt a chill run down his spine. The officer, holding a stack of
passports in his hand as he walked over to Vasily Petrovich and jerking his
chin at Petya, barked:
"Your son?"
"Yes."
"Then kindly remove the St. George ribbon from his cap. If you do not,
I will be forced to escort you ashore and take up the matter of your son's
unauthorized wearing of military uniform. It's against the law at home and
even more so abroad."
"Petya, take the ribbon off this minute!"
"Here's your passport. I'll see to the ribbon. You can claim it in the
commandant's office when you return."
Gavrik, watching from the pier, saw the officer and soldiers surround
Petya. Petya removed his cap.
"Run! Petya, run!" he yelled land made a frantic dash for the gangway,
but he immediately realized his mistake when he saw that Petya merely
removed the ribbon and gave it to the officer, after which he put his cap on
his head again as if nothing had happened.
Gavrik looked round anxiously, but no one had paid any attention to his
yelling. They were all busy waving good-bye.
The officer handed out the passports, saluted and walked down the
gangway, followed by his soldiers and Moustache. A brisk command was shouted
in Italian, and the gangway was pulled up. Italian sailors in blue jerseys
ran along the side, nimbly taking in the mooring-lines; there was a jerky,
insistent ringing of the engine-room telegraph, the red blades of the
propeller revolved, churning up the water beneath the gold lettering which
spelled: Palermo. The deck straightened itself, the ship shuddered, and
Petya saw the pier, its structures, the stacks of goods, and the crowd of
waving people move now forward, now backward, and then, in some mysterious
way, turn up now at one rail, now at the other, only much smaller.
Everything on shore began to recede and diminish, as if carried away by the
wide stream of foamy green water seething beneath the stern.
Petya could hardly distinguish Gavrik and Auntie, who was waving her
umbrella. The panorama of the city began to rise slowly from behind the port
structures. There was Nikolayevsky Boulevard, the white columns of the
Vorontsov Palace rising on the cliff, the City Hall, and the tiny Duc de
Richelieu pointing his outstretched arm away to the horizon.
They passed the breakwater and saw its other side, the one that faced
the open sea. A multitude of fishermen with long bamboo fishing-rods were
darting through the spray and foam of the breaking waves.
They could see Langeron, Alexandrovsky Park and the remains of its
famous arched wall and next to it the Industry and Trade Fair. This was a
township of fancy pavilions, the most prominent of which were the huge
three-storey wooden samovar of the Caravan Tea Company and the gold-tipped
black champagne bottle of the Rederer Company.
A symphony orchestra was playing at the Fair, and the breeze that
billowed the hundreds of coloured flags and pennants on the white flagstaffs
brought to Petya's ears snatches of violin crescendos, gently muted by the
distance.
Petya remained on deck, fascinated by the sight of the ship entering
the open sea. His only regret was that his St. George ribbon had been left
behind in the officer's pocket. The wind was getting stronger, it whipped
the Italian flag at the stern, and Petya thought wistfully of the long ends
of his St. George ribbon which might have been streaming in the wind.
The fresh sea breeze was already ruffling his blouse. It caught at its
collar, it billowed it out on his back and puffed out the wide sleeves that
were fastened tightly at the wrists. Perhaps it was even nicer to have a
ciap without a ribbon, for now, by a slight stretch of imagination, it could
be taken for the beret of the Boy Captain, the hero of Jules Verne's famous
book, with the .added advantage that there was la letter under its lining.
It was almost as if fate had decided to make this an even more
memorable day for Petya and it presented him with another unforgettable
impression.
"Look, look! He's flying!" Pavlik shouted.
"Who's flying? Where?"
"There, it's Utochkin!"
It had completely slipped Petya's mind that this was the day of
Utochkin's long-awaited flight from Odessa to Dofinovka. The fearless
aviator had been waiting for good flying weather to take off from the Fair
grounds in his Farman, fly eleven miles straight across the bay, and land in
Dofinovka. It was not every boy that had the luck to see this spectacle, not
from the shore, but from the sea.
Petya and the passengers who poured out of their cabins saw Utochkin's
plane flying low over the water. It had just taken off and was now
approaching the ship. It flew so close to the stern that the rays of the
setting sun caught at the clearly visible bicycle wheels of the flying
machine, the copper fuel tank, and the bent figure of the pilot, his feet
dangling as he sat between the semi-transparent yellow wings.
As he came abreast of the ship the daredevil aviator doffed his leather
helmet and waved.
"Hurrah!" Petya yelled and was ready to pull his cap off too, but
suddenly remembering the letter, clapped it on tighter instead.
"Hurrah!" the passengers shouted as they waved frantically. The flying
machine was getting smaller as it headed towards Dofinovka, a stream of blue
petrol smoke trailing in its wake.
Up till then Petya's travels had consisted of two visits to Grandma at
Yekaterinoslav and their yearly trips to Budaki, on the sea-shore near
Akkerman, where they spent their summer holidays. They made the journey to
Yekaterinoslav by train, and travelled to Akkerman by sea on the Turgenev,
which they considered the latest thing in technical wonders. Now they were
sailing from Odessa to Naples on an ocean liner. To tell the truth, the
Palermo wasn't that at all. But, since she had made several transatlantic
voyages, Petya, by a slight stretch of imagination, convinced himself and
tried hard to convince the others that the Palermo was really an ocean
liner.
The journey was to take two weeks, which seemed quite a long time for
such a swift ship as the prospectuses and advertisements would have one
believe she was.
The point was that when the signer in the grey morning coat sold the
steamship tickets to Vasily Petrovich he innocently failed to mention that
the Palermo was not exactly a passenger ship, but was, rather, a freighter
that took on passengers, and that it was to make fairly long calls at a
number of ports. They discovered this in Constantinople-the first of the
long stops, but the trip to Constantinople was pleasant, brief, and
comfortable.
Petya was captivated by the wonders of life on board ship. Everything,
every detail of its ultra-modern, technical efficiency, combined with the
romantic flavour of the old sailing ships, fascinated him. The steady, even
throbbing of the powerful engines merged with the fresh, lively sound of the
waves as they surged past the iron sides in an unending stream. The strong
wind, full of the smell of the open sea, whistled through the shrouds; it
billowed out the canvas sleeves of the ventilator casings, bringing forth
hot and cold draughts from the engine-room and the hold.
There was a mingling of all the smells: the warm', soothing smell of
the polished mahogany tables in the lounges and the smell of painted
bulkheads; the aromas of the restaurant and the smell of hot steel,
lubricating oil and dry steam; the resinous-woody smell of the mats and the
fresh smell of pine-water sprayed in the distant white-tiled rooms with hot
and cold running water. There were the heavy swaying copper candle-holders
with glass-covered candles, and the elegant, frosted globes of the electric
lights; the steel gang-ways, the grates of the engine-room and the double
oaken stairway with the polished carved banisters and graceful balusters
leading to the saloon.
Petya explored every nook and cranny of the ship the very first day. He
peeped into mysterious cubby-holes and into the depths of the coal bunkers,
where dim electric lights burned day and night, trembling in their wire
casings like trapped mice.
The practically upright ladders below decks with their slippery steel
rungs led the boy to grimier and less pleasant regions. Black oily water
oozed underfoot, and he became queasy from the deafening booming and
crashing of the engines, the continuous motion of the propeller shaft as it
revolved in its oily bed, and the heavy air of the hold. Engineers,
greasers, and stokers lived and worked in the depths of the ship. Every now
and then the iron door of the stokehole flew open and Petya felt a blast of
intense heat. Then he saw the stokers moving swiftly against the background
of the flaming inferno, using their long crow-bars en the caked red-hot
coal. Petya saw their black, sweat-drenched faces bathed in the crimson
light and was terrified at the thought of remaining in such an appalling
place even for five minutes.
He hurried away, slipping on the steel floor mats, holding on to greasy
steel handrails, and running up and down ladders in his eagerness to get
away from that forbidding world. But it was not so easy. Stunned by the din
and jangle of engines throbbing somewhere close, Petya found himself in
places such as he had never dreamed existed.
He knew there were deck passengers as well as first-and second-class
ones, but he discovered that there was another category, the so-called
"steerage" passengers, who were not even allowed on the lowest deck, the
place usually reserved for cattle. They occupied wooden bunks in the depths
of one of the half-filled holds.
Petya saw heaps of dirty oriental rags on which several Turkish
families were sitting and lying, prostrated by the rolling and pitching of
the ship, the stale air, the semi-darkness, and the noise of the engines.
They were migrating somewhere together with their children, copper
coffee-pots and large wicker crates filled with chickens. With great
difficulty Petya made his way to the top deck, to the fresh sea air, where
it took him quite a while to recover.
The first- and second-class passengers lived according to a strictly
prescribed routine: at 8 a.m. the middle-aged stewardess in a starched cap
entered their cabin, said, "Buon giorno," and set a tray with coffee and
rolls on the little table; at noon and again at 6 p.m. a waiter with a white
napkin tucked under his arm would glide noiselessly down the corridor,
knocking at every cabin door and rattling oft" in a truly commedia dell'arte
manner, stressing his r's. "Pr-rego, signor-ri, mangiar-r-re!" which meant,
"Dinner is being served."
First-class passengers had the additional privilege of five o'clock tea
and a late supper. But the Bachei family, belonging to that golden mean of
society that usually travelled second-class, failed to qualify.
The first and second classes had separate dining-rooms. The first mate
presided at the second-class table d'hote. The captain, who was inaccessible
to ordinary mortals and therefore shrouded in mystery, presided in the
first-class dining-room. Even Pavlik, who was such a pusher, saw him not
more than two or three times during the whole trip.
The first mate, on the other hand, was la jovial fellow and, judging by
his shiny purple-pink Roman nose, a drunkard as well. He was the life and
soul of the company. He pinched Pavlik gently under the table, calling him
"little Russky," he was attentive in passing the ladies cheese and filling
the gentlemen's wineglasses, and his snow-white, stiffly starched tunic
rustled pleasantly as he turned now left, now right, bestowing his
open-hearted smiles all round.
For dinner there were real Italian macaroni with tomato sauce, a second
course of roast meat and fagioli, which turned out to be beans, and for
dessert, Messina oranges with twigs and leaves attached, wrinkled
purple-green figs, and fresh almonds that did not necessitate a nutcracker,
but were easily cut with a table knife right through the thick green outer
husk and the still soft inner shell. Being served by a waiter somewhat
embarrassed them. He would hold the platter to the left of them, balancing
it on his finger-tips, and they had to help themselves. From a sense of
modesty they always took much less than they would have liked to.
Vasily Petrovich was shocked and furious when he found out that wine
went with the dinner-one bottle for three passengers. True, it was very weak
and rather sour Italian wine, and the passengers mixed it with water half
and half, but, none the less, Vasily Petrovich was outraged. The first time
he saw a large bottle without any label placed before his setting he was so
indignant that his beard shook, and he felt like shouting, "Take this brew
away!" but he controlled himself in time and simply moved the bottle away.
Later, however, when he tasted it, he realized that the steamship
company had no intention of making drunkards out of its second-class
passengers by serving them strong, expensive wines, and so allowed the boys
to colour their drinking-water with a few drops, in order not to waste it
completely, as it had been included in the price of the tickets.
This daily water-colouring was the high light of the dinner-hour for
Petya and Pavlik.
Ice-cold water was poured into a large goblet from a heavy, misty
decanter that had become frosted in the ship's refrigerator; then a small
amount of wine was added to the water.
The wine did not mix with the water immediately. It swirled around in
threads and then spread out, making the water a bright ruby-red, and
throwing a pink swaying star-like reflection on the starched table-cloth.
The biggest impression of those first days was the sight of the open
sea. For a day and two nights, between Odessa and the Bosporus, there was no
land in sight. The ship was making good speed, yet it seemed to be
motionless in the centre of a blue circle.
At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, Petya could not figure out
which way they were heading.
There was something entrancing about this seeming immobility, about the
empty horizon and the triumph of the two blue elements-sea and sky-between
which Petya's whole existence seemed to be suspended.
At dawn of the. second day he was awakened by the sound .of running
feet overhead. The ship's bell was ringing, the engines had stopped and in
the unusual stillness he could hear the clear gurgling sound of water
lapping at the ship's side. He looked out the porthole and through the early
morning mist saw a steep green bank. There was a little lighthouse and a
barrack with a tiled roof on the bank.
Petya threw on his clothes and ran up on deck. A Turkish pilot in a red
fez was standing next to the captain, and the ship inched slowly into the
green lane of the Zoospores. The lane widened and narrowed like a meandering
river. At times the bank would be so close that Petya thought he could
stretch his arm and touch the leaning white tombstones chaotically scattered
among the cypresses in the Moslem cemetery, the poppy-red flag with the
crescent in the middle that waved over the custom-house, or the turf-covered
earthwork of the shore batteries.
This was Turkey-they were now abroad, in a foreign country, and Petya
suddenly felt a sharp pang of longing for his homeland, and, at the same
time, a burning curiosity. The homesickness remained with him until he
returned to Russia.
The sun was now quite high, and by the time they reached the Golden
Horn and dropped anchor in the roads of Constantinople Bay the warm
reflections of the water sparkled and gleamed all over the ship-from
water-line to mast-top.
From then on the Bachei family was possessed by a madness common to all
inexperienced tourists. They felt that every minute was precious and wanted
to set out immediately to see all the sights of this most wonderful city,
the panorama of which was so close that they could see the ant-like coming
and going of crowds of people, the cupolas of the broad, tall mosques and
the spires of the minarets.
They decided to forego breakfast and waited impatiently for a
shrewd-looking Turkish official, who had been given several silver piastres,
to scribble something in Father's passport; the scribble turned out to be
the Sign of Osman. The moment the Bacheis went down the gangway, they were
pounced upon by artful boatmen. Finally, they flopped on to the velvet
cushions of a wherry and, for two lire, were rowed ashore.
Everything that happened afterwards merged for Petya into a sensation
of an endless, scorching, tiring day - the deafening babble of the truly
Eastern bazaars, the equally Eastern deathly quiet of the huge deserted
courts around the mosques and the stony museum-like iciness inside. At every
step they parted with a steady stream of lire, piastres, paras, and copper
medjidies, coins which delighted the boys with their inscriptions in Turkish
and the strange Sign of Osman.
In Turkey the Bachei family first came in contact with that terrible
phenomena known as guides, and guides pursued them for the remainder of
their trip. There were Greek guides, Italian guides, and Swiss guides.
Despite specific national traits, they all had something in common: they
stuck like leeches. But the Constantinople guides left the others far
behind.
The minute the Bacheis set foot on the pavements of Constantinople they
were besieged by guides. The scene with the rival boatmen was repeated. The
guides battled for their prey; it was a real free-for-all and massacre, to
which no one paid the slightest heed.
The guides poured torrents of filth on each other in every language and
dialect of the Levant; they tore at each other's starched dickeys, swung
their sticks with contorted faces, elbowed each other, turned round and
kicked out like mules.
In the end the Bacheis were claimed by an impressive-looking guide who
had vanquished his opponents with the help of a policeman friend. He wore a
morning coat that had faded badly under the arms, striped trousers, and a
red fez. His wildly-dilated nostrils and coal-black janissary moustache
expressed a determination to conquer or to die; however, in every other
aspect his face, and especially his frightened baggy eyes, wreathed in
smiles, bespoke a desire immediately to show the tourists all there was to
see in Constantinople: Pera, Galata, Yildiz Kiosk, the Fountain of Snakes,
the Seven-Towered Palace, the ancient water-line, the catacombs, the wild
dogs, the famous St. Sophia Mosque, Sultan Ahmed's Mosque, Suleiman's
Mosque, Osman's Mosque, Selim's Mosque, Bayezid's Mosque, and all the two
hundred and twenty-seven other large and six hundred and sixty-four smaller
mosques in the city-in other words, he was at their complete disposal.
He bundled them into a gleaming phaeton drawn by two horses, jumped on
the step, looked round wildly, and told the driver not to spare the whip.
They were all in by evening, so much so that Pavlik fell asleep in the
boat on the way back to the ship and had to be carried up the gangway.
Vasily Petrovich was aghast at the day's expenditure, not counting the
fact that the breakfast and lunch due them on the ship had gone to waste. He
decided not to have a guide next day, an intention that was furthered by the
fact that that night the Palermo was taken from the outer roads to a berth
to take on cargo along with a dozen other ships.
There could tie no chance of the guide finding them in the monotonous
chaos of the crowded pier. They slept like logs in the small overheated
cabin, oblivious to the clatter of the winches and the swift flashes of the
multicoloured harbour lights that filtered in through the porthole.
They awoke to a dazzling morning sun and the magic panorama of
Istanbul. Vasily Petrovich and the boys hastened down the gangway. This was
their last day ashore and they had to get as much out of it as they possibly
could.
The first person they saw as they stepped down on the pier was their
guide of the day before. He waved his bamboo cane over his head in greeting.
The phaeton and the copper-faced, docile Macedonian on the coach-box were
nearby.
It was the day before all over again, with the added attraction of
being taken through the bazaars and the curio shops of the guide's friends.
Souvenir-buying turned out to be just as ruinous an undertaking as the
guided tour. But the Bacheis, hypnotized by their impressions, had reached
that stage of tourist fever when people shed all will-power and, with
something akin to the lunatic's loss of reason, submit to their guide's
every whim.
They bought stacks of crudely-coloured postcards of the places they had
just seen; they parted with piastres and lire for cypress rosaries, for
glass balls with coloured spirals, for tropical shells, for paper-knives,
and for exactly the same kind of aluminium pen-nibs that were on sale at the
Fair in Odessa.
At the Greek Monastery monks palmed off on them a yellow wooden box.
Through the huge magnifying glass on the lid they were supposed to see a
view of Athos. The box cost six piastres.
They came to their senses only in the European quarter of the city when
they found themselves amid the sumptuous stores, restaurants, banks, and
embassies set in the luxuriant dark verdure of southern gardens. The guide
inveigled them into a friend's camera shop to buy Kodaks, and then he
suggested dining at an exclusive French restaurant.
At this stage Vasily Petrovich came to, rebelled, and fleeing from
luxury and extravagance, went to the other extreme by heading for
Constantinople's slums, where they saw human misery at its lowest.
The slums shook Petya to the depths of his soul, and not even the visit
to Scutari on the Asiatic shore could immediately restore his equilibrium.
The motor boat raced across the Bosporus, cleaving the green water with
its prow, leaving two diverging glistening furrows in its wake. Hundreds of
wherries were reflected in the waters of the still, lake-like strait.
Turkish merchants, officials with brief cases, and officers travelling to
and from Scutari, sat on velvet cushions under the light canopies.
Wet oars glittered all over the bay as they caught the sun's rays. The
smell of thyme and savoury was borne to them from the Asiatic shore. But
Petya could not erase the memory of the foul-smelling slums and the swarms
of green flies buzzing around the festering sores of the beggars.
The moment they moored in Scutari the guide rushed on with renewed
energy, determined not to miss a single one of the sights. Alas, our
travellers were quite spent.
There was a bazaar nearby and they made for a stand with cool drinks.
The lemonade with a strange flavour of anise drops was heavenly. They drank
pink ice-water and ate coloured ice-cream. Then they turned to the wonderful
variety of Eastern sweets.
Vasily Petrovich was always opposed to giving children too many sweets,
since they were bad for teeth and appetite. But this time he could not
resist the temptation of trying the baklava that was swimming in honey, or
the salted pistachio nuts whose bony shells had burst at the tips, like the
fingers of a kid glove, so that the green kernels peeped through.
The sweets made them thirsty, and the cool drinks made them eat more
sweets. The incident of Grandma's jam was still fresh in Petya's memory and
he moderated his intake accordingly. But Pavlik was insatiable. He ate and
ate. And when Father flatly refused to buy any more, Pavlik dived into the
crowd and emerged a few minutes later, carrying a rather large box with
bright lacquered pictures pasted all over it. It was a box of the best
rahat-lakoum.
"Where did you get that?" Father asked severely.
"I bought it," Pavlik answered with bravado.
"What with?"
"I had a piastre and a half."
"Where did you get the money?"
"I won it!" Pavlik said proudly.
"What do you mean, you won it? Where? When? From whom?"
And so the whole story came out. While Father had been busy studying
the planning of their travels and balancing expenses, while Petya had been
spending his time on deck, Pavlik had made friends with the Italian waiter
and had been introduced to the society of the second-class restaurant
personnel. He had played lotto with them, using the three kopeks he had
found in his pocket and which the Italian waiter changed into Turkish
currency. Pavlik had been lucky, he had won a few piastres. Vasily Petrovich
seized Pavlik by the shoulders and began to shout and shake the life out of
him, heedless of the fact that they were in the middle of a large oriental
bazaar.
"How dare you gamble? Wretch! How many times have I told you that no
one with any respect for himself plays for money! And with ... with
foreigners!"
Pavlik was feeling sick from the sweets and began to howl-he did not
share his father's ideas about gambling, especially since he had been so
lucky at it. Father was livid, there was no telling how it would have ended
if the guide had not suddenly looked at his gold-plated American watch with
four lids. They had just two hours left till sailing time.
All they needed now was to miss the boat! They rushed to the pier and
jumped into the first wherry they saw without bothering to bargain down the
price. Soon they were safely on board the Palermo. She had finished loading
and had moved out into the harbour, ready to sail.
The parting with their guide was a dramatic scene. He had received his
fee of two lire, but remained standing in the rocking boat on legs as
all-enduring as those of an old wolf, watching Vasily Petrovich land the
boys climb up the ladder. Then he began to ask for baksheesh.
He had always been very eloquent, a necessary accomplishment in his
profession, but this time he outdid himself. He usually spoke three European
languages simultaneously, inserting only the essential words in Russian.
Now, however, he spoke mostly in Russian, inserting French phrases from time
to time. His speech sounded something like a monologue out of the
pseudo-classical tragedies of Racine and Corneille.
The language was obscure, the meaning clear. Extending his hand, which
was covered with copper rings glittering with paste diamonds, and speaking
as passionately as when he described the wonders of the city, he told them
of his poverty-stricken family, burdened by a paralysed grandmother and four
small children who had neither milk nor clothing. He complained of
approaching old age, of his trouble with the police who fleeced him of most
of his earnings, of a chronic ulcer, of unbearable taxes, of the cutthroat
competition. He begged them to take pity on an aged, penniless Turk who had
dedicated his whole life to tourists. His thick greying eyebrows raised, his
face took on a tragic expression, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.
All this could have passed for charlatanry, pure and simple, were it
not for the genuine human suffering in his frightened brown eyes. Unable to
withstand his pleading, Vasily Petrovich took the last Turkish coins from
his pockets and poured them into the guide's outstretched hand.
It was nearly evening, and one could sense the slowly gathering storm
in the motionless air, heavy from the heat of the day. The storm was not
approaching from any definite direction, it seemed to be materializing out
of nothing over the amphitheatre of the city, over the mosques and minarets.
By the time the heavy, grating anchor chain crawled upward, and the
overloaded ship, sunk deeper than its water-line, began slowly to turn
round, the sun had disappeared in the storm clouds. It was so dark that they
had to turn on the lights. Hot smells of cooking and engines escaped from
the hatches. The sight of the now colourless city heightened the stormy
green of the Golden Horn.
The ship's engines were snorting heavily and laboriously. The surface
of the water seemed as flat as a sheet of glass, yet the ship began to rock
slightly.
Pavlik had just finished^ the last piece of rahat-lakoum, thickly
coated with powdery sugar. He all but choked on it; it tasted doughy, and
was gummy and sticky. Suddenly he felt an acid metallic after-taste in his
mouth. His jaws contracted spasmodically. The greenness of the clear water
reminded him of the rahat-lakoum and he shut his eyes tight. But the moment
he did so, he felt he was flying up and down on a swing. With great effort
he tried to say, "Daddy, I'm sick," but he was overtaken by vomiting.
At that instant a jagged flash of lightning pierced the coal-black
clouds over the crescent of St. Sophia's and the surrounding minarets. It
was followed by a crack that seemed to split the sky in two and poured the
shattered fragments down upon the city and harbour. A whirlwind whipped up
columns of dust on the hills. The water foamed. When they cleared Serai
Burna and entered the Sea of Marmara, that is, the Marble Sea, its shoppy
surface did indeed resemble the colour pattern of marble.
Petya missed the storm in the Sea of Marmara, for he, too, fell victim
to Pavlik's malady. The two of them, white as chalk, lay prone in the stuffy
cabin. Father rushed from one to the other, not knowing what to do. But the
Italian stewardess, with long-practiced efficiency, ran up and down the
corridor, providing the afflicted with basins.
There was more to it than the rocking of the vessel and the Eastern
sweets. The boys, overtired, were feeling the effects of the rushing about
in the heat, the noise of the streets, and the mass of new impressions. The
seasickness soon passed, but they were feverish and delirious. The ship's
doctor examined them thoroughly, in the traditional manner of the old
European doctors: he pressed their tongues down with the handle of a silver
spoon borrowed from the first-class dining-room; his strong, experienced
fingers kneaded their bare stomachs; he tapped them with a little
rubber-tipped hammer; he listened to their breathing through a stethoscope
and without it, by placing his large, fleshy ear to their bodies; he felt
their pulse, keeping his eyes on his large gold watch, the lid of which
reflected the round porthole and the water rushing past it; he joked in
Latin with an alarmed Rather, trying to cheer him. He said there was nothing
seriously wrong, that they should stay in bed for three days; he gave them
laxative powders and left graciously, after prescribing chicken broth,
toast, and a light omelette.
His last words gravely upset Vasily Petrovich, because experienced
travellers in Odessa had warned him never to request anything from the
ship's dining-room that was not on the menu, because: "You don't know those
thieves: they'll rob you, that's how they make their money; they'll charge
you for the service, the bread, la ten per-cent tip, and God knows what
else, and before you know where you are, you'll have nothing left."
Although mortified by the prospect, Vasily Petrovich nevertheless
struggled with his dictionary and in broken Italian ordered two bowls of
chicken broth with toast and two omelettes, a la carte.
And to the boys missed the Dardanelles and Salonika, as well as the Sea
of Marmara. Only the noises of the port, mingled with the confusion of
Greek, Turkish, and Italian voices, reached them through the half-open
porthole.
They were sailing south through the Gulf of Salonika, with the open sea
on the left and barren shores on the right. The coast gave way to hills
which rose gradually until they became a mountain range. A single peak rose
above the range, and a bank of motionless fluffy clouds hung over the peak.
There was something enchanting about the lone mountain and the clouds that
threw blue shadows on it. The passengers trained their binoculars on it as
if they expected to see a miracle performed there before their very eyes.
Father, pressing his red Baedeker to his breast with one hand and
holding his binoculars in the other, was also peering at the magic mountain.
When Petya came up, he turned towards his son eagerly. His eyes shining with
excitement, he placed Mother's little mother-of-pearl opera-glasses in
Petya's hand and said:
"Look, Mount Olympus!"
Petya did not get the import of his words.
"What?"
"Olympus!" Vasily Petrovich repeated triumphantly. Petya decided that
Father was joking, and laughed.
"You're not serious?"
"I told you it's Olympus!"
"Which Olympus? Mount Olympus?"
"Do you know of any other?"
And Petya suddenly realized that the land that was now so close was
none other than ancient Pieria, and that this mountain was Homer's Olympus,
the home of the Greek gods whom Petya knew so well from his ancient history.
Maybe the gods were still there? Petya lifted Mother's opera-glasses to
his eyes, but, unfortunately, they were too weak to magnify the sacred
mountain. All he could make out was a flock of sheep moving up a slope like
the shadow of a cloud and the erect figure of the shepherd surrounded by
dogs. He was certain, however, that he could see the gods quite clearly. One
of the clouds resembled the reclining Zeus, another, flying in a flowing
garment like Athena, was in all probability rushing to help Achilles at
Troy.
The previous summer Vasily Petrovich, anxious to broaden the horizons
of his sons, had read them the Iliad from cover to cover, so that Petya now
had no trouble at all singling out the flying Athena. However, that meant
that Troy, too, must be somewhere nearby.
"Daddy, where's Troy? Shall we see it?" Petya asked breathlessly.
"Alas, my boy," Father said, "we've left Troy far behind. It's near the
Dardanelles, and you won't see it now." Then he added reproachfully, hinting
at the sad affair of the Eastern sweets, "Thus Fate punishes Greed and
Gluttony."
His words, undoubtedly, were just. Still, Petya thought Fate had been
too cruel in depriving them of the delight of seeing Troy with their own
eyes-and all because of that awful rahat-lakoum.
In order not to set Petya too strongly against Fate, Vasily Petrovich
hastened to add that they would not have been able to see Troy from the ship
anyway, and peace between the boy and Fate was restored.
Two days later, when Petya saw Athens, he was more than rewarded for
having missed seeing Troy.
The barren rocky mountains of Euboea, longest of the Greek islands,
stretched for many weary miles. At last they left the island behind. That
night they sailed through straits and saw lighthouses along the shore. The
ship changed speed several times and swung round. It was late when they
finally fell asleep, and next morning when they awoke the ship was anchored
in Piraeus harbour, in full sight of Athens.
This time Vasily Petrovich was determined to do without the services of
a guide.
The Greek guides differed from the Turkish in that they had amber
rosaries in their hands, were shorter, and wore small black fezzes without
tassels instead of red ones with black tassels. Unlike the warlike Moslems
they did not make a frontal assault on the tourists, cursing and shouting;
instead, they surrounded them silently like humble Christians and their
endurance usually won out. When Vasily Petrovich found himself in the centre
of a tight circle of guides fingering amber rosaries and looking at him with
quiet, gentle, olive-black eyes, he did not feel at all intimidated.
"Nyet!" he said vehemently in Russian, and then, to sound more
convincing, he added in French and in German, "Non! Nein!" At the same time
his arm sliced through the air so swiftly in a gesture of refusal that Petya
thought he heard the air whistle.
None of this, however, made any impression on the guides. They kept
their ground, fingering their rosaries, their large noses drooping
forlornly. Vasily Petrovich took his boys firmly in tow and forged ahead.
The guides too moved on and did not let them out of the circle.
Vasily Petrovich ignored them. He strode down the streets of Piraeus
with the confidence of a native. It was not for nothing that he had spent
the past few days in his cabin, unmindful of the sea breezes, poring over a
guide-book to Piraeus and Athens.
The startled guides made a timid attempt to hustle the Bachei family
into one of the large, dilapidated carriages that trailed their footsteps;
Pavlik yelled, "Go away!" as loud as he could, causing the guides to retreat
somewhat. But the magic circle remained intact.
They reached the railway station without having once lost their way,
bought tickets, and departed for Athens under the noses of the dumbfounded
guides who crowded the platform. Athens turned out to be a stone's throw
away. When they arrived there, they made their way to another station just
as silently and as resolutely as before, and set out immediately for the
ancient city in a suburban train with open carriages.
Excited by the battle with the guides, their victory, and the
possibility of renewed attacks, they had not been paying much attention to
their surroundings. However, when they reached the mountain-top, which was
covered with marble fragments, and suddenly beheld the Acropolis: the
Parthenon, the Propylaea, the small temple of Wingless Victory, and the
Erechteion-all of which seemed to be a confused mass and yet was an ensemble
of heavenly unity-they gasped at the sheer beauty of the scene, an art that
had been imitated time without number all over the world, becoming ever more
insignificant and trivial.
Like all great monuments of architecture, they seemed at first sight to
be rather small and exquisite, seen against the wild expanse of sky, so
clear and so blue that it made their heads swim.
This was the realm of marble columns and stairways, yellowed by time,
alongside which the figures of the numerous tourists seemed dwarfed.
Oh, how Vasily Petrovich had dreamed of seeing the Acropolis with his
own eyes, of touching the ancient stones! It had been the dream of his life.
He had visualized the day when he would take his children to the Parthenon
and tell them of the Golden Age of Pericles and of its genius, the great
Phidias. Reality, however, which was much cruder and simpler, added to the
majesty, so much so that Vasily Petrovich was unable to utter a word; he
stood in silence, stooping slightly under the impact of the scene that moved
him almost to tears.
Petya and Pavlik, on the other hand, were not losing any time; they
scrambled up the slippery pebbles towards the Parthenon, wondering why it
seemed so near and yet was so far. They helped each other up, scaring the
lizards as they climbed the weather-beaten stairways, until they found
themselves at last among the Doric columns, which seemed to have been put
together from gigantic marble millstones.
The noonday sun blinded them, but they were not aware of the heat
because there was a fresh wind blowing from the Archipelago. The tiled
roof-tops of Athens glittered far below, blending with the landscape. They
could see the port, the rows of ships, the forest of masts about the roofs
of the warehouses, and out in the harbour, sprinkled with the silvery
glitter of sunshine, was an English warship, emitting an ominous cloud of
smoke.
Still further down, on the opposite shore, away beyond the hills, was
the Gulf of Petalis, and they could see the azure strip of water that was
more ancient than Hellas itself-the Gulf of Corinth.
One could stand there silently till nightfall, feeling neither fatigue,
nor boredom, nor anything earthly, nothing but an awareness of the supreme
beauty created by man.
But they would have to hurry, for the ship sailed at five, and Vasily
Petrovich wanted to show the boys the Athens museums. Nothing, however,
could add to the impression made by the Acropolis: neither the marble
statues of the gods and heroes, nor the earthen vessels behind the glass
show-cases, nor the Tanagra statuettes, nor the amazing amphorae and flat
bowls adorned with red and white figures against a black background.
Out once more in the narrow streets of the Piraeus port, with its
picturesque oriental atmosphere, but possessing nothing that the Bacheis had
not already seen in Constantinople, they decided to risk a cup of coffee in
a Greek cafe.
It was cooler inside. The cafe smelt of boiling coffee, anise, roast
lamb, and something else that was so appetizing it made the boys' mouths
water. Vasily Petrovich tried to calculate the cost of a meal in drachmas,
land decided to order two portions of a Greek dish for the three of them. A
kindly little Greek woman, with a pronounced moustache and dressed in black,
wiped the marble table-top with a kitchen towel and set down a platter of
lamb stew with Greek sauce.
It was then, that they realized just what could be done with a small
amount of purple egg-plants, red tomatoes, green pepper, parsley, and
genuine olive oil.
While they were busy polishing off the last traces of the amber sauce
with pieces of bread, the kindly proprietress stood stroking Pavlik's head.
Her dark-brown hand was adorned with an Athos signet-ring and her sad eyes
were full of maternal tenderness, as she said in broken Russian:
"Eat, boy, eat!"
When they had finished, she cleared the table, wiped the marble top
again, and retired modestly behind the counter, where a candle was burning
beneath an icon and a palm branch. Her husband now took her place. He
brought in a tray with three small cups of steaming coffee, three glasses of
water, three saucers with Greek pastry, and three saucers of wild-orange jam
with nuts. Besides all this, he asked Vasily Petrovich in broken Russian
whether he would care for a hookah, an offer which was rejected with
considerable vehemence.
It was cosy and homely in the cafe. There were lace curtains on the
windows, the walls were papered, and a canary warbled in a bamboo cage.
There were other customers in the cafe, but they sat around their
tables so sedately and unobtrusively that they did not in any way disturb
the tranquillity of the establishment. They had cups of coffee and glasses
of water before them, but, engrossed in games of dominoes, telling their
beads, or reading newspapers, they hardly touched them; they were more like
relatives than chance customers. Even the portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece over the door leading to the kitchen did not have an official look
about them, and could have passed for enlargements of Grandma and Grandpa on
their wedding day. It was hard to believe that the marble temple of the
Parthenon which crowned the summit of the nearby mountain had been built by
the ancestors of these mild-looking Greeks who were moving the dominoes
across the marble table-tops and sucking the snake-like pipes of their
gurgling hookahs.
While the Bacheis were sipping the strong coffee, the proprietor