remained standing near their table, entertaining them in their own tongue.
His sister, he told them, was married to the eldest son of Themistocles
Kriadi, the owner of a Greek bakery in Odessa, and he himself had spent
three years in Odessa as a boy. His grandfather, who had been a member of
the Hetaeria, a secret society, had lived in Odessa for a while too, whence
he had returned to fight for the liberation of Greece and had been executed
by the Turks.
Apparently, he had taken Vasily Petrovich for a Russian revolutionary,
forced to flee abroad, and so he made no bones about criticizing the state
of affairs in Russia and the Russian government; he heaped abuse on the
tsar, Nicholas the Bloody, and was certain there would soon be another
revolution in Russia which would dethrone the tyrants and bring freedom for
all.
Vasily Petrovich felt uncomfortable and anxiously looked round several
times, but each time the proprietor assured him that all decent Greeks
sympathized with the Russian revolution, and that they would soon have a
revolution -in Greece, too, to get rid of the Turks once and for all. His
Russian was so impossible that the boys were bursting with restrained
laughter. Pavlik even held his nose tight to keep from giggling. Father
tapped the marble table menacingly with his wedding-ring and they calmed
down a bit.
Street vendors came in several times and offered the foreigners their
wares.
One had long strings of dried sponges hanging round his neck and was
carrying a bowl of goldfish. The orange-red fish swam among wisps of seaweed
and were of such a brilliant hue that the coffee shop was lighted up by an
eerie glow and resembled a submarine kingdom.
Another had dozens of pairs of hard slippers with curled pointed toes
and streaming pink and light-blue gauze scarves which immediately
transformed the cafe into a kind of Arabian Nights shop.
This impression was heightened by a Syrian selling oriental rugs, and
when a man with long robes and copper-wares appeared on the threshold, there
could be no doubt left that the Bachei family was now in Baghdad and that
the cafe proprietor was none other than Harun-al-Rashid in disguise.
However, the appearance of a seller of Eastern sweets, who laid out
before them his bright lacquered boxes of halvah, rahat-lakoum, and dates,
so terrified the boys, and especially Pavlik, who felt a menacing acid lump
in his throat, that the mirage vanished on the instant.
Although Vasily Petrovich had made up his mind not to buy anything, he
failed to resist the temptation, the only excuse Being that the purchase was
both inexpensive and essential. He bought Petya a wide-brimmed straw hat. It
did not exactly go with his naval cadet's outfit, but he could no longer
wear his warm sailor's cap. Petya's head was dripping wet; sweat trickled
down his temples and his neck. His cap would be so drenched with
perspiration during the day that it would barely dry by morning.
Petya was loath to part with the cap which made him look like the Boy
Captain. He tried the new hat on in front of the fly-blown mirror and saw
that he now resembled a Boer. At any rate, Boer generals wore the same kind
of wide-brimmed hats, although theirs were felt, not straw. Petya had often
seen their pictures in old copies of the Niva, dating back to the Boer War.
All he needed now was a carbine and bandolier.
"You look just like a young Boer," Father said. That settled it.
The young Boer strutted around in front of the mirror and was eager to
parade on the streets in his new attire.
Just then the sound of a long boat whistle came from the direction of
the port. They immediately recognized the deep Italian baritone of the
Palermo-they could pick it in a thousand. And so, leaving a few drachmas on
the table, they rushed towards the pier.
The Palermo was already out in the harbour. Suddenly, Petya realized
that he had forgotten his old cap in the coffee-house. He broke out in a
cold sweat; without a word, he turned round and raced back. Neither Father
nor Pavlik noticed his absence at first. It was all too apparent, however,
when they were getting into the boat. That which Vasily Petrovich had
dreaded above all was now a reality: one of the children was lost!
Meanwhile, Petya was frantically running up and down the dockland
alleys looking for the coffee-house. But all the side-streets were alike,
and there were so many coffeehouses on each street that he soon realized he
was lost. He had lost all sense of direction and cursed himself for having
got so excited about the new hat as to forget the old one. In every cafe he
saw the same marble-topped tables, portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece, dominoes, steaming cups of coffee, gurgling hookahs, papered walls,
lace curtains, little moustached women behind the counters under the icons
with the palm branches and burning candles, proprietors absorbed in their
newspapers.
Petva rushed into passionate explanations, switching from Russian to
French, telling them he had lost his cap, but no one understood him, because
the Greeks knew very little Russian, and his French was pretty bad. Petya
thought of Near Mills, of Terenty, and Sinichkin. The picture of Gavrik
stuffing the letter under the lining of the sailor's cap Uncle Fedya had
made was so clear in his memory. Now he knew that Uncle Fedya had left the
seam open on purpose, that he, Petya, had been entrusted with a very
important mission. They had relied on him, and he had behaved like a vain,
foolish child who had imagined he looked like a Boer in his silly straw hat.
He was so ashamed of himself and so upset that he was ready to cry.
He hated the new straw hat that was bobbing up and down on an elastic
band on his back as he darted among the peddlers, donkeys with creels of
fruit, ice-cream vendors, and street barbers. The coffee-house he sought had
vanished into thin air. His one thought v/as to find it, and there was no
telling how it would have ended if he had not heard the Palermo blow her
third and last whistle. He ran in the direction of the sound and finally
came out on the pier where Father was explaining something from his
Self-Taught Greek handbook to a port official in a tunic and a hard-peaked
cap with purling.
"There he is! Thank God!" Vasily Petrovich shouted and shook his
handbook so vigorously over his head that his pince-nez fell off his nose
and dangled on the black cord. "Dreadful child! How dare you! Where have you
been all this time?"
"I forgot my cap," Petya panted. "I looked everywhere for it. I don't
know where it is. I couldn't find our coffeehouse."
"What!" Father screamed. "Because of a filthy, rotten cap!"
"Daddy, it's not rotten!" Petya mumbled mournfully.
"Rotten!" Father bellowed.
"Oh, Daddy, you don't understand a thing!" Petya groaned.
"I don't understand?" Father said and his lower jaw and shaking beard
jutted out as he grabbed the boy by the shoulders.
He began to shake him, shouting, "I don't understand? Don't
understand?" when the moustached Greek proprietress suddenly appeared on the
pier, carrying a small package.
"Boy," she said, smiling sadly, "you forget your hat. Ai-ai-ai. It so
hot in Athens, but in the nights on the vapora in Archipelago you'll be
cold, your little head gets cold. Here your hat."
Petya grabbed his cap. It was wrapped up in la back copy of a
French-Language newspaper, Le Messager d'Athenes. He did not even get a
chance to thank the kind woman, as his father bundled him into the boat,
which hurried them off to the ship. They reached it just as the sailors were
about to pull in the gangway.
An hour later the "vapora," as the kind Greek woman had called the
ship, was passing Aegina Island. Athens had vanished in the blur of magic
colours of a Mediterranean sunset.
Petya saw nothing of it. He was busy in the cabin, removing the
slightly creased and sweat-soaked letter from the lining of his cap and
putting it in the inner pocket of his Alpine rucksack. The address on the
envelope was in French:
W. Oulianoff
4. Rue Marie Rose
Paris XIV.
They were a long time rounding Greece, and finally they cleared Cape
Malea. The last of the islands, resembling a hunk of dry bread, was
swallowed up by the purple swell of the Archipelago. For two days they were
out of sight of land. The sun rose and set, but the barren flatness of the
Mediterranean seemed motionless. The sea kept changing colours: it was dark
blue at dawn, bright blue at noon, and copper-purple at sunset, but there
was no hint of green in it, as in the Black Sea. They were already conscious
of the nearness of Africa, that huge burning continent, and if it had not
been for the wind-true, a hot one, but tempered somewhat by the sea-it would
have been very hard to endure the intense, almost tropical, heat.
The wind was chasing long rows of waves along the Ionian Sea. The deck
rose and fell gently enough to make the rolling of the ship even pleasant.
The engines worked steadily. From time to time stokers who had finished
their shifts would appear in the forecastle, where they would douse each
other with sea water from the fire-pump. Petya had learned to tell the time
by their appearance. But in point of fact it was immaterial what the time
was-time seemed just as motionless as the ship in the middle of the blue
expanse.
Petya roamed all over the Palermo. One of the strangest places was the
cattle-deck which housed a herd of cows. Petya felt that he was in a cowshed
as he walked down the narrow passage-way between the rows of cows' tails.
The cows shifted their weight lazily, making the manure ooze through their
cloven hoofs. He was glad to feel the springy layers of straw beneath his
feet instead of the hard deck planks. Part of the deck was taken up by bales
of pressed hay which obscured the view of the sea. The hot sun beat down on
the hay, making it exude all its stored-up field smells. Petya would pull a
dry, withered stalk of siage or burdock out of the solid mass, rub it
between his palms, and smell the powdered leaves. Then he would think he was
somewhere in Bessarabia, in Budaki, and not on board a ship sailing in the
Mediterranean. It was strange and very pleasant.
It was fun to crawl past the signal bell to the very tip of the bow,
lie down on the hot deck, cautiously stick his head over the side and look
all the way down. A huge anchor arm protruded from the hawse-hole there, and
still farther below he could see the ship's stem cut through the waves with
a sure constancy. Salt spray blew into his face, he felt the metallic smell
of the deeply ploughed waves, and below the water-line he saw the bright red
of the keel shining through the boiling sapphire of the water. This was the
one spot where the ship's motion, its full speed, could really be
appreciated, making him as dizzy as if he were on a merry-go-round. Petya
could have watched the rushing water for hours on end, listening to the
strains of a mandolin played by Pieripo, one of the stokers, a young lad
with pearly flashing teeth and blue-black curly hair. After coming off watch
he would sit astride the anchor chain and pluck the strings, evoking with
its gentle tinkling notes a foretaste of Italy.
And then, Italy lay before him. A dim cone loomed up through the
morning mist. This was Mount Etna. It began to grow taller and wider; la
strip of hilly country rose from the sea. They were approaching Sicily.
The nearer they got to the shore, the gloomier did the land look. It
was nothing like Petya's mental picture of Italy.
They could see Catania quite clearly on the rocky slope. The port was
surrounded by hillsides of hardened black lava which descended to the water,
giving it its dark hue.
Italy had a harsh welcome for the travellers: there was a sirocco
blowing. The Italians pronounced it "shirokko"; it was a dry, scorching wind
from Africa. The mercury reached 113°. Clouds of dust rolled along streets
that had been hacked out of the lava streams or paved with lava stones, just
as in Odessa. The sky was a dull leaden yellow. Mules and horses with red
ear-muffs harnessed to fancy carriages stood glumly on the square, and the
wind blew the spray of a fountain and their dusty tails to one side.
A few straggling pedestrians moved phlegmatically along the street.
Even the guides who were sitting around the fountain were too listless to
come over to the tourists, and merely waved their picture postcards.
They could hear the dry rustle of palm leaves, whipped by the wind. The
green-black leaves of magnolia trees gleamed dully; the paths were strewn
with broken branches and huge waxen flowers, dead and speckled with the
brown of decay; shreds of grey cobweb fluttered in the laurels and
stone-pines-all dominated by the shadow of Mount Etna.
The wisest thing would have been to return to the ship. But Vasily
Petrovich's guide-book stated that the city stood on the site of ancient
Catana which, except for the ruins of its Forum, theatre, and some other
early Roman architectural relics, had been buried in lava. He was determined
that the boys should see them.
They doggedly climbed uphill against the wind, exhausted land sweating
profusely, until at last they beheld the ruins. By then, however, the boys
were so tired that the sights meant nothing to them.
They by-passed the museum. They felt that they had been roaming for
ages through the streets of the city, that in all likelihood the ship had
finished unloading and taking on fresh cargo, and they could now resume the
voyage.
But the sirocco had slowed work down at the port; the cattle had just
been taken off, and the Bacheis had to push their way through the herd to
get on board. The animals were too weary to moo; they only looked at Petya's
straw hat through bleary eyes, while the sirocco tore at their tails and
whistled around their horns.
Next day the ship entered the Strait of Messina and dropped anchor
opposite the city of the same name. What a wonderful change it was! Here was
the picturesque Italy of world-famous water-colours and oleographs: a blue
sky, a still bluer sea, white sails, cliffs, and shores covered by orange
and olive groves.
From the harbour, Messina looked enticing and beautiful, but Petya
suddenly felt there was something wrong in the number of houses and the way
they were spaced. There seemed to be fewer than there should have been. And
there were sinister dead spaces between them, hidden amongst the scraggy
underbrush.
There was something vaguely frightening in the very name of the city.
Not until they reached the pier did Petya realize half the city was in
ruins.
Then, suddenly, he recalled the words the whole world had uttered in
terror three years before: the Messina earthquake. He himself had often
repeated those words, without really understanding them. He had seen the
ruins of Byzantium, of ancient Greece, and of early Roman settlements, but
these had been magnificent stones, historical monuments, and no more; they
had fallen into a state of decay over thousands of centuries. They were
truly astounding, but they did not wring the heart. Now, however, Petya was
looking at heaps of recent debris which, not so very long ago, had been
streets of houses. The city had been destroyed and tens of thousands of
people had perished in a matter of minutes, and neither fortress towers, nor
marble columns, nor anything else remained as a reminder of the catastrophe.
A pitiful heap of rubbish, bits of walls with shreds of cheap wallpaper
still clinging to them, stucco laths, broken glass and twisted iron beds,
overgrown with pea-trees and nightshade, was all that met the eye. It was
the first destroyed city that Petya had ever seen; and it was not a famous
ancient one from his history book-no, this was a very ordinary, rather small
modern Italian city, inhabited by very ordinary Italians.
Years later, when Petya, a grown man, beheld the ghastly ruins of
European cities, he was still haunted by the ruins of Messina.
It was the same depressing scene of abject poverty everywhere, although
partially concealed by lush southern vegetation and the bright colours of
the Sicilian summer. Most of the inhabitants were still living in temporary
shacks, tents, and huts thrown together from the debris. Multi-coloured rags
were drying on the clothes-lines. Goats grazed on the grass-grown rubbish
heaps. Half-naked children with eyes as shiny as anthracite roamed the razed
streets and poked in the ruins, still hoping to find something of value
there.
The little shacks on the sites of former shops sold postcards,
lemonade, coal, and olives.
The Bacheis walked down the scorching streets of the half-dead city,
surrounded by fishermen, boatmen, and children. They grabbed the tourists'
hands, smiled, looked into their faces, and showered them with torrents of
rapid Italian. These people were neither guides nor beggars, and it was
impossible to understand what they wanted. They patted Petya's sailor's
collar and touched his blue blouse excitedly repeating, "Marinaio russo,
marinaio russo!"
Suddenly, Vasily Petrovich understood what it was all about. He
remembered that a Russian squadron had been anchored off Messina at the time
of the earthquake and that the sailors had selflessly and courageously
helped the people of the doomed city. Petya's regulation naval blouse and
many other things about them told the people that the Bacheis were Russians,
and they were expressing their gratitude, especially to the little Russian
sailor.
They used strange words but understandable gestures to describe the
terrible earthquake and the heroism of the Russian sailors who had rushed
into the burning houses and pulled the injured and the dying from under the
ruins.
A grey-haired, ragged woman, carrying a large earthen pitcher, pushed
her way through the crowd and offered the Bacheis a tray with three glasses
of cold water-aqua frescal-as her only means of expressing her gratitude to
the Russians. Petya's heart swelled with pride, but he regretted that he was
not wearing his sailor's cap and was sorrier still that it did not have the
St. George ribbon.
"Grazie, Russo!" the Italians repeated, shaking hands with all three,
and this was quite understandable.
There were other words spoken too:
"Evviva la rivoluzione, evviva la republica russa!"
Apparently, in the eyes of the Messina fishermen and boatmen, Vasily
Petrovich's dishevelled beard, his steel-framed pince-nez, his
democratic-looking Russian shirt and tussore coat corresponded to their
image of a Russian revolutionary, a man illuminated by the far-off blaze of
1905, the undying glory of the barricades in Presnya District in Moscow and
the mutiny on board the battleship Potemkin.
That evening the Palermo weighed anchor, passed out of the Strait of
Messina, entered the Tyrrhenian Sea, and set course for Naples, her home
port.
The stifling night was so black that even the stars that thickly
spangled the velvet sky did little to lighten it. Were it not for the
shimmering, snow-white foam down below, the slight tilt of the deck
underfoot, and the swishing sound of the waves racing past, one would think
the ship was flying, not sailing.
Petya could not fall asleep that night, perhaps because it was their
last night aboard. He paced up and down his favourite walk, the spar-deck
near the wheel-house. The sailor at the helm was as still as a statue. Petya
liked to watch him, waiting for the mysterious, inexplicable moment when,
for no apparent reason, the helmsman would move his hands and turn the wheel
a little. It spun around smoothly and silently; yet immediately, somewhere
right beneath their feet, the engine began to work; they heard short bursts
of escaping steam, a chain rattled, and steel rods moved in their oiled
grooves along the sides, slightly turning the rudder. That meant that the
ship had yawed and the helmsman was bringing her back.
There was something strange about the fact that the ship sailing on its
course should suddenly yaw. What mysterious forces of nature could affect
its simple mechanical movement? The wind? Currents? The motion of the Earth?
Petya did not know the answer, but the realization that these unknown forces
existed and were constantly at work all around him, and that it was possible
to overcome them, instilled in Petya a great respect for the helmsman and a
still greater respect for the compass at which he glanced from time to time.
For the first time in his life Petya really grasped the full meaning of
this wonderful, simple instrument, invented by man's genius to battle
against the dark forces of nature. A brass bowl on a cast-iron stand stood
alongside the wheel, and a brightly illumined dial set on a thin pin seemed
to be floating freely inside it under a glass cover. The disk, or compass
card, was divided into points, degrees, and fractions of degrees. The
navigator had laid a copper ruler to point out their course, and the moment
the ship veered ever so slightly the markings on the disk moved out of
place: then the helmsman, by turning the wheel, would bring them into place
again.
The copper ruler was now pointing towards Naples. Although everything
around them was as black as the bottom of la coal-pit, the ship raced ahead
unerringly, at full speed, making up for the time lost at their
ports-of-call.
Suddenly Petya noticed a strange light away on the horizon. It did not
look like a lighthouse or like the glow of an approaching ship. It was
almost red and very uneven. It shone for a while and went out; two minutes
later it would flare up again, shine and go out again; and so it continued
at regular intervals-a rhythmic appearing and disappearing, but growing
bigger all the time. It was as if someone had put a smouldering matchstick
in his mouth, and the breathing- made the little ember glow brightly.
By now the waves and the edges of a dark night cloud were brushed with
light, and a blast of heat seemed to come from the direction of the glow.
"What can it be?" Petya exclaimed in a frightened voice.
"Stromboli," a familiar voice answered. This was the first mate who had
just come up on the spar-deck. "Il famoso vulcano Stromboli" he repeated
solemnly and handed Petya his large sea binoculars, the dark lenses of which
reflected the red glow of Stromboli.
They were passing the volcano now and Petya looked at it through the
binoculars. Just then a flame shot up, as if coming from the pipe of a
samovar. The fire illuminated the edge of the crater, and Petya even thought
he heard an underwater rumbling and felt a wave of volcanic heat, but it was
only his fancy.
Before long Stromboli had slipped behind; however, its fiery breath
could be seen through the pitch darkness, casting a grim light on the waves
and clouds.
Petya was in ecstasy: he had just seen with his own eyes a
fire-spouting mountain, a real, genuine volcano! It wasn't every schoolboy
who could boast of having seen one. Schoolboy-why, probably not even a
single teacher had ever been so near to a real volcano! Not even the
geography teacher. Not even the head of the school. Maybe the head of the
Education Department had seen one, but certainly not the school inspector.
What would Auntie say when she found out he had seen a volcano! And what la
fuss their friends would make! This time not even Gavrik would wrinkle up
his nose disdainfully, spit through his teeth and say, "Now tell me
another." Too bad there were no witnesses except the helmsman and the first
mate. Perhaps though it was even better that Daddy and Pavlik had slept
through it all. This time Petya would be cock of the walk of the Bachei
family.
Petya waited until the volcano had disappeared completely and then
rushed below anticipating his triumph and Pavlik's humiliation when he would
burst into the cabin and say, "I've just seen a volcano-you've slept through
the whole thing!"
But the triumph was not to be: all the other passengers had long been
lining the rails, and Pavlik, who had been awakened by his waiter friend,
was standing at the stern, his chin pressed against the rail, trying to look
interested while Vasily Petrovich lectured in popular vein on the volcano
they had just observed.
Thereupon Petya went below to the cabin to be the first to inform
Auntie of the great event. He rummaged in his rucksack and found the nicest
of all the Constantinople postcards with a picture of the Galata Tower on
it, and wrote: "Dear Auntie! You'll never guess what happened! Of course,
you won't believe me, but I've just seen a real, active volcano with my own
eyes!"
Petya paused, made a bargain with his conscience, and resolutely added:
"It was erupting!"
By this time Petya was really convinced that the volcano had been
erupting. When he had snatched up his pencil, he was bursting with
impressions and was ready to fill up every inch of space on the postcard
with a magnificent description of a volcano erupting in the open sea. But no
sooner had he written the first majestic sentences than his inspiration
petered out.
To tell the truth, Pliny the Younger had already described an erupting
volcano and Petya, having read the description in his geography textbook,
did not feel like competing with one of Rome's finest writers, especially
since Pliny had described something that he had witnessed, whereas Petya
would have to describe what he had not seen.
And so after the words "It was erupting!" he added: "Your loving nephew
Petya," and hid the postcard in the rucksack, hoping to post it at the first
opportunity.
Thus, if Petya's description of the erupting volcano lacked something
of Pliny's accuracy, its truly classical laconism left the great writer's
effort very much in the shade.
A number of rocky islands were sighted during the day. Bathed in the
silver light of the noonday sun, they seemed like some ethereal silhouettes
of varying shades of deep blue: the nearer ones a darker hue, the more
distant-lighter. The Palermo was steaming full speed ahead. It had
disembarked the last of the steerage passengers, its freight decks had been
swabbed and scrubbed white, the copper coamings and ladders were shining
brightly, the lifeboats and lifebuoys had had a fresh coat of paint, the
Italian flag was fluttering in the breeze; the Palermo again became a spick
and span ocean liner.
"There's Capri, and Ischia, and Procida," Vasily Petrovich called out
the names of the islands they were passing as they entered the Bay of
Naples.
"Vesuvius!" Pavlik shouted at the top of his lungs. True enough, it was
Vesuvius. The grey-blue silhouette of the twin peaks, with sulphurous smoke
pouring out of one of them, was outlined sharply in the bright haze. It
melted before their eyes, vanished into thin air, and revealed a panorama of
the city and hundreds of ships at anchor in the harbour.
A flock of gulls attacked the Palermo. The graceful white birds floated
on outspread wings, snatching at shreds of greens thrown out of the kitchen
porthole. To tell the truth, Petya was already bored with the ship. At
first, when everything had been new and mysterious, it had fascinated him;
now, however, at the end of the long voyage, it no longer interested him.
But when he set foot on the paved yard of the Naples custom-house, he, like
the Prisoner of Chillon, suddenly regretted his prison.
He felt, after all, that he did not want to part with the ship, with
its wonderful places, strange smells, and the long, narrow, unpainted beech
deck planks caulked with tar and scrubbed clean with sand.
During the customs inspection Petya was terrified lest the Italian
inspector find the letter in his rucksack. However, the more than meagre
baggage of the Bachei family was completely ignored by the customs officers.
The official did not even glance at the unique concoction of the Odessa
harness-and-luggage industry as he passed by. All he did was jab his thumb
in it, and the agent following him drew a circle in chalk on each of their
bags. The Bacheis were now free to pick up their things and go.
There was something humiliating in this official disdain, for they did
examine the other passengers' baggage. These were mainly the expensive
trunks and suitcases of the first-class passengers, covered with gay hotel
labels. The officials minutely examined the exquisite clothing, pulled out
Syrian shawls, crystal humidors of Turkish tobacco, and round jars of
Russian caviar, and respectfully demanded duty.
Vasily Petrovich and the boys hoisted their Alpine bags with some
effort and hauled the bursting sack out on to the scorching square. They
were immediately surrounded by a crowd of screeching hotel agents. Each had
a gold-braided cap with the name of his hotel on the peak. Petya had once
witnessed a similar scene at the Odessa railway station, whither they had
gone to meet Grandma. It had amused him to see a swarm of vociferous agents
dragging at the coat-tails of a protesting gentleman clutching his umbrella.
But the Odessa agents were no match for their Neapolitan colleagues.
The Neapolitans were three times more numerous and four times as audacious.
They shrieked as they attacked Vasily Petrovich: "Grand-Hotel! Continental!
Livorno! Vesuvio! Hotel di Roma! Hotel di Firenze! Hotel di Venezia!" They
brandished wads of brightly illustrated prospectuses and promised fabulously
low rates, unheard-of comforts, suites facing Vesuvius, family table d'hote,
breakfasts thrown in, and excursions to Pompeii.
Vasily Petrovich waved frantically to a group of porters in blue
blouses with badges on their chests who were sitting on the flagstones,
utterly indifferent to the massacre of defenceless tourists by hotel agents.
Vasily Petrovich tried to break through to the cabmen. He was successful
too, but they were as impassive as the porters: they sat on their high boxes
with meters, smoking long, foul-smelling cigars, and not one of them offered
Vasily Petrovich a helping hand.
On the contrary, when he had finally managed to gain the lower step of
one of the cabs, the cabman glared at him, snatched off his well-worn felt
hat, shook it menacingly at Vasily Petrovich and screamed, "No, signor, no!"
so that Vasily Petrovich was forced to retreat.
There was something sinister about the strange indifference of the
cabmen and porters. Vasily Petrovich did not know what to make of it. Later
on they found out that they had arrived in Naples the day the coachmen,
porters, and tramway workers had struck work in protest against the
government's preparations for war with Turkey.
But this did not help the Bacheis very much, for the hotel agents,
apparently satisfied that Italy should conquer Tripoli, were not on strike.
Despite his deep dislike of the police, Vasily Petrovich was about ready to
appeal to two carabineers for help. They were as alike as peas in a pod:
both wore three-cornered hats and black trousers with red stripes down the
sides, both had the same type of moustache and both had big noses. But at
that moment things took a different turn.
A small, fat, shrewd hotel agent had the bright idea that the way to a
father's heart lay through his love for his son. He hoisted a kicking Pavlik
on to one shoulder, the plaid rucksack on to the other, and made off down a
side-street. Vasily Petrovich and Petya dashed after him, but it took them a
good forty minutes of fast sprinting to catch up with him at the Hotel
Esplanade.
When he had finally deposited Pavlik and the rucksack in the lobby, the
agent hung his cap up on a peg over the desk and was immediately transformed
from agent into owner of the establishment. It turned out that he also
personified four others: waiter, chef, lift-boy and porter-in other words,
he was the entire personnel of the hotel, not counting the chamber-maid and
cashier- posts held by his wife.
The Hotel Esplanade was located between a second-hand clothing shop and
an eating-house in an alley so narrow that no two carriages could ever pass
each other there. This, however, was a minor detail, for the alley was
actually a large stairway of wide and worn stone slabs. Garments of every
hue were drying on the clotheslines strung between the tall, narrow houses,
and although Naples was resplendent in the radiant colours of June, the
alley was dark and damp; even a green gas-lamp shone in the window of the
eating-house.
Hotel Esplanade boasted but four rooms, all of them facing the
glassed-in gallery of the courtyard which was very much like the courtyards
in the older parts of Odessa-the only difference being that here the
flowering oleanders and azaleas grew not out of green tubs, but straight out
of the ground, and the garbage heap was full of oyster shells, red crayfish
shells, and squeezed-out lemons, in addition to green vegetable parings and
fish entrails. When Vasily Petrovich saw the two forbidding canopied beds,
the chipped iron wash-basin adorned with views of the Bay of Naples, and the
wallpaper which told only too well of bedbugs, he grabbed up his rucksack,
ready to run from the den, but his tired legs failed him. He sank into a
wobbly chair, took out his Italian phrase-book, and began bargaining. The
proprietor insisted on ten lire a day, Vasily Petrovich offered one. They
finally settled for three, which was only one lira more than it should have
cost. They were now free to begin the sightseeing. But Vasily Petrovich
suddenly felt too tired to get up from his chair. Now only did he realize
how exhausting the long sea voyage had been, although it had seemed so
pleasant and comfortable. With an effort he reached the bed and lay there
all in, wiping the glasses of his pince-nez with his handkerchief.
"I think," he said, addressing the boys with an apologetic smile, "I'll
have a nap. You should have forty winks too. Take off your sandals and lie
down for a bit."
Pavlik, who could hardly keep his eyes open, began taking off his
sandals. Petya, however, was dying to see the city. He wanted to send off
his correspondence: the letter Gavrik had given him and the postcard he had
written to Auntie, describing the "eruption" of Stromboli. Father was
opposed to the idea, but Petya said with such assurance that he wasn't a
baby and looked so deeply pious as he faced the crucifix, crossed himself,
and promised he'd be back the minute he bought the stamp, that Vasily
Petrovich finally agreed and gave him a silver lira for the stamps. Pavlik's
eyes turned green at the sight of it. "What about me?" he said, buckling on
his sandals.
"You should go to sleep," Petya answered coldly.
"I'm not asking you, I'm asking- Daddy."
"God forbid!" Father was aghast at the mere thought.
"I like that," Pavlik said, his face all screwed up, just in case he
might have to start crying at a moment's notice.
"What do you mean-I like that?" Father asked sternly.
"Petka can go and I've got to stay in?"
"First of all, don't say, 'I like that.' It's about time you learned
how to behave, and secondly, say, 'Petya, 'riot ' Petka.' "
"All right," Pavlik agreed readily. "But if Petya can go, why can't I?"
"Because Petya's older than you are."
Pavlik hated that argument. No matter how much he grew, or how hard he
tried, he was always smaller than Petya.
"It's not my fault that Petya's older," he whined. "He goes everywhere,
but I can't go anywhere!"
"I have a special reason for going. I have my correspondence to attend
to, while you just want to come along to make mischief," Petya said in his
haughtiest voice.
"Maybe I have correspondence too? Daddy, please, let me go!"
"It's out of the question!" Father said resolutely, and Pavlik's
spirits rose.
As a rule, after saying, "It's out of the question," Father would pause
arid add, "but if you give me your word that you'll behave..." or something
to that effect. And so to speed things up, Pavlik shammed a fit of tears,
stealing looks at Father out of the corner of his eye. He knew his daddy.
"However," Vasily Petrovich said, unable to stand the tears, "if you
promise to-"
"Oh, I swear by the Holy Cross!" Pavlik said quickly -and blundered.
Father frowned.
"How many times have I told you never to swear! An oath degrades the
person who takes it. When you promise something, it is enough to give your
word. Any decent person's word can only be sacred. So', one's word is
enough."
"I give you my word," Pavlik said triumphantly, buckling a sandal, and,
in his haste, made another blunder.
"What do you give me your word about?"
"That I'll behave."
"That's the main thing. And don't move an inch from Petya."
"I won't."
"You won't what?"
"I won't move an inch from Petya," Pavlik said.
"Very well then."
"And tell him to listen to me," Petya added, "otherwise I won't take
him, because he'll surely get lost and I'll be responsible for him."
"I won't get lost," Pavlik said.
"Yes, you will! You always get lost!"
"Who got lost last time, in Odessa, when we nearly got left behind, and
when Auntie was so worried she nearly went crazy?"
"Fibber!"
"I'm not fibbing."
"Now then, children, no quarrelling!"
"It's not me, it's Petka."
"In that case, you'll both stay in."
"No, Daddy!" Pavlik pleaded. "I give you my word I'll behave."
"And do what you're told?" Petya asked.
"Yes," Pavlik answered.
"Without fail?"
"Yes." Pavlik sounded slightly annoyed.
"Don't forget, now!" Petya said pompously and severely.
"All right, run along," Father mumbled sleepily as he curled up on the
bed under the ridiculous canopy. "And for heaven's sake don't get lost," he
added in a barely audible whisper.
He was snoring before Petya and Pavlik got to the bottom of the stairs.
Of course, they got lost.
Once out in the street, Petya took Pavlik by the hand. Pavlik was
furious, but could not -say a thing, since he had memorized Father's saying,
"If you've given your word, keep it."
The first thing was to buy a stamp. This was not as simple a matter as
in Russia, where lots of shops sold postage stamps. Shops were not lacking
here, but none of them sold stamps. In fact, the shopkeepers could not even
understand what it was that Petya wanted, although he glibly rattled off the
Italian he had learned on the ship.
"Prego, signor," Petya .said bravely, but there was a frightened look
in his eyes, "prego, signor... una, una ..." However, he could not explain
what the "una" he wanted was, because he did not know the word for "stamp"
in Italian.
He would then pull out the envelope, spit on his finger, and give a
wonderful performance of sticking an imaginary stamp on an envelope. "Don't
you see, una stamp. Una stamp." At which point the shopkeeper would gesture
dramatically in the true Neapolitan manner and hold forth volubly in
language that left Petya bewildered. This scene was repeated about ten
times, until, finally, after they had gone up and down three or four
streets, the owner of a wine-vault that was bedecked inside and out with
clusters of mandolin-shaped raffia-covered bottles took them to the corner
and pointed far off into the distance. He accompanied the gesture by a long
theatrical monologue; the only two words Petya was able to make out were
posta centrals, that is, the central post-office.
The boys set out in the direction indicated. Petya would stop a
passer-by occasionally and, bestowing a severe look on Pavlik, would ask:
"Prego, signor, la posta centrale?"
Some of the passers-by understood him, some did not, but all were eager
to help the two young foreigners who wanted to buy stamps.
The Neapolitans proved to be splendid people-kind and warm-hearted,
though somewhat fussy. They were not a bit like the Neapolitans of the
pictures: handsome men in short trousers and wide crimson sashes with red
kerchiefs on their curly heads and ravishingly beautiful women in lace
mantillas.
They were very ordinary-looking people; the men wore black jackets and
faded hats, the women, black blouses and no hats. All the men had one thing
in common: no shirt collars-just a stud at the neck in front of their open
shirts; the women wore coral ornaments.
They took the greatest interest in Petya and Pavlik, they forgot about
their own affairs, and a large, noisy crowd gathered to take the boys to the
post-office. The gathering stopped at every corner and had a heated
discussion as to which street to take next.
They threw torrents of words at each other as they dragged the boys in
different directions and if the boys had not been holding on to each other
so persistently, they most certainly would have been dragged apart. More and
more people joined the crowd. Ragged, olive-skinned street urchins, lively
as little devils, ran before the crowd as if they were accompanying a band.
An old organ-grinder with a long, foul-smelling cigar stuck under his
yellow-white moustache trailed along at the end of the procession.
They were now walking down the middle of the street. People peered out
of windows, curious to know what it was all about; when they found out,
they, too, would gesticulate wildly, pointing out the shortest way. A
kind-hearted signorina wiped Pavlik's hot neck with her handkerchief and
called him bambino.
Stray dogs, every bit as nasty as those in Constantinople, attached
themselves to the throng. The whole business was developing into a street
scandal.
Petya was becoming nervous. The only thing that kept him going was the
knowledge that he, as the elder brother, was responsible to his father for
Pavlik's safety. He rattled off his Italian, mixing it with French words
from Margot's French textbook and Russian exclamations.
"Si, signorino, si, signorino," the Neapolitans said soothingly, seeing
how excited he was.
At the same time, Petya was taking in all he could of the famous city.
At first they passed through narrow, dark alleys, with iron gas-lamps on the
walls of the houses. Then they suddenly came out upon a dazzling white
square with a fountain and an ancient church, through the open doors of
which came the solemn sounds of an organ.
Once they caught a fleeting glimpse of the unbelievably blue sea, the
beach, and a row of stately, hairy date-palms in the distance. They crossed
a busy shopping centre. Then they skirted a bleak monastery wall with a huge
statue of a saint in a niche. They went up and down steep street stairways,
past tall, narrow houses where some of the windows with green shutters were
real, the others painted on for the sake of symmetry, but so expertly done
that one could hardly tell the difference.
They reached a street which was blocked completely by a long row of
empty tram-cars. Striking conductors and drivers, carrying their leather
bags and brass keys, were walking up and down, exchanging a few words with
the passers-by.
The moment the crowd accompanying the boys saw the tram-cars, they lost
all interest in the young foreigners. Attention was now focussed entirely on
the strikers, especially as the first rows of demonstrators, carrying red
and black flags, portraits and slogans, appeared at the far end of the
street.
The people rushed towards them, leaving the boys to their own devices.
Pavlik grasped Petya's hand and watched the demonstrators approach.
Grim-looking bearded men in wide-brimmed hats carried a black flag with
a white inscription, and portraits of other bearded men, among whom Pavlik,
much to his surprise, recognized Lev Tolstoi.
Behind the bearded men came others with shaven chins and in small caps.
They carried a red flag and the portraits of two more bearded men whom Petya
had never seen before. These were Marx and Engels.
The people in the demonstration were workers, porters, stokers,
sailors, and shop assistants. They wanted to keep in slow step, but it was
His sister, he told them, was married to the eldest son of Themistocles
Kriadi, the owner of a Greek bakery in Odessa, and he himself had spent
three years in Odessa as a boy. His grandfather, who had been a member of
the Hetaeria, a secret society, had lived in Odessa for a while too, whence
he had returned to fight for the liberation of Greece and had been executed
by the Turks.
Apparently, he had taken Vasily Petrovich for a Russian revolutionary,
forced to flee abroad, and so he made no bones about criticizing the state
of affairs in Russia and the Russian government; he heaped abuse on the
tsar, Nicholas the Bloody, and was certain there would soon be another
revolution in Russia which would dethrone the tyrants and bring freedom for
all.
Vasily Petrovich felt uncomfortable and anxiously looked round several
times, but each time the proprietor assured him that all decent Greeks
sympathized with the Russian revolution, and that they would soon have a
revolution -in Greece, too, to get rid of the Turks once and for all. His
Russian was so impossible that the boys were bursting with restrained
laughter. Pavlik even held his nose tight to keep from giggling. Father
tapped the marble table menacingly with his wedding-ring and they calmed
down a bit.
Street vendors came in several times and offered the foreigners their
wares.
One had long strings of dried sponges hanging round his neck and was
carrying a bowl of goldfish. The orange-red fish swam among wisps of seaweed
and were of such a brilliant hue that the coffee shop was lighted up by an
eerie glow and resembled a submarine kingdom.
Another had dozens of pairs of hard slippers with curled pointed toes
and streaming pink and light-blue gauze scarves which immediately
transformed the cafe into a kind of Arabian Nights shop.
This impression was heightened by a Syrian selling oriental rugs, and
when a man with long robes and copper-wares appeared on the threshold, there
could be no doubt left that the Bachei family was now in Baghdad and that
the cafe proprietor was none other than Harun-al-Rashid in disguise.
However, the appearance of a seller of Eastern sweets, who laid out
before them his bright lacquered boxes of halvah, rahat-lakoum, and dates,
so terrified the boys, and especially Pavlik, who felt a menacing acid lump
in his throat, that the mirage vanished on the instant.
Although Vasily Petrovich had made up his mind not to buy anything, he
failed to resist the temptation, the only excuse Being that the purchase was
both inexpensive and essential. He bought Petya a wide-brimmed straw hat. It
did not exactly go with his naval cadet's outfit, but he could no longer
wear his warm sailor's cap. Petya's head was dripping wet; sweat trickled
down his temples and his neck. His cap would be so drenched with
perspiration during the day that it would barely dry by morning.
Petya was loath to part with the cap which made him look like the Boy
Captain. He tried the new hat on in front of the fly-blown mirror and saw
that he now resembled a Boer. At any rate, Boer generals wore the same kind
of wide-brimmed hats, although theirs were felt, not straw. Petya had often
seen their pictures in old copies of the Niva, dating back to the Boer War.
All he needed now was a carbine and bandolier.
"You look just like a young Boer," Father said. That settled it.
The young Boer strutted around in front of the mirror and was eager to
parade on the streets in his new attire.
Just then the sound of a long boat whistle came from the direction of
the port. They immediately recognized the deep Italian baritone of the
Palermo-they could pick it in a thousand. And so, leaving a few drachmas on
the table, they rushed towards the pier.
The Palermo was already out in the harbour. Suddenly, Petya realized
that he had forgotten his old cap in the coffee-house. He broke out in a
cold sweat; without a word, he turned round and raced back. Neither Father
nor Pavlik noticed his absence at first. It was all too apparent, however,
when they were getting into the boat. That which Vasily Petrovich had
dreaded above all was now a reality: one of the children was lost!
Meanwhile, Petya was frantically running up and down the dockland
alleys looking for the coffee-house. But all the side-streets were alike,
and there were so many coffeehouses on each street that he soon realized he
was lost. He had lost all sense of direction and cursed himself for having
got so excited about the new hat as to forget the old one. In every cafe he
saw the same marble-topped tables, portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece, dominoes, steaming cups of coffee, gurgling hookahs, papered walls,
lace curtains, little moustached women behind the counters under the icons
with the palm branches and burning candles, proprietors absorbed in their
newspapers.
Petva rushed into passionate explanations, switching from Russian to
French, telling them he had lost his cap, but no one understood him, because
the Greeks knew very little Russian, and his French was pretty bad. Petya
thought of Near Mills, of Terenty, and Sinichkin. The picture of Gavrik
stuffing the letter under the lining of the sailor's cap Uncle Fedya had
made was so clear in his memory. Now he knew that Uncle Fedya had left the
seam open on purpose, that he, Petya, had been entrusted with a very
important mission. They had relied on him, and he had behaved like a vain,
foolish child who had imagined he looked like a Boer in his silly straw hat.
He was so ashamed of himself and so upset that he was ready to cry.
He hated the new straw hat that was bobbing up and down on an elastic
band on his back as he darted among the peddlers, donkeys with creels of
fruit, ice-cream vendors, and street barbers. The coffee-house he sought had
vanished into thin air. His one thought v/as to find it, and there was no
telling how it would have ended if he had not heard the Palermo blow her
third and last whistle. He ran in the direction of the sound and finally
came out on the pier where Father was explaining something from his
Self-Taught Greek handbook to a port official in a tunic and a hard-peaked
cap with purling.
"There he is! Thank God!" Vasily Petrovich shouted and shook his
handbook so vigorously over his head that his pince-nez fell off his nose
and dangled on the black cord. "Dreadful child! How dare you! Where have you
been all this time?"
"I forgot my cap," Petya panted. "I looked everywhere for it. I don't
know where it is. I couldn't find our coffeehouse."
"What!" Father screamed. "Because of a filthy, rotten cap!"
"Daddy, it's not rotten!" Petya mumbled mournfully.
"Rotten!" Father bellowed.
"Oh, Daddy, you don't understand a thing!" Petya groaned.
"I don't understand?" Father said and his lower jaw and shaking beard
jutted out as he grabbed the boy by the shoulders.
He began to shake him, shouting, "I don't understand? Don't
understand?" when the moustached Greek proprietress suddenly appeared on the
pier, carrying a small package.
"Boy," she said, smiling sadly, "you forget your hat. Ai-ai-ai. It so
hot in Athens, but in the nights on the vapora in Archipelago you'll be
cold, your little head gets cold. Here your hat."
Petya grabbed his cap. It was wrapped up in la back copy of a
French-Language newspaper, Le Messager d'Athenes. He did not even get a
chance to thank the kind woman, as his father bundled him into the boat,
which hurried them off to the ship. They reached it just as the sailors were
about to pull in the gangway.
An hour later the "vapora," as the kind Greek woman had called the
ship, was passing Aegina Island. Athens had vanished in the blur of magic
colours of a Mediterranean sunset.
Petya saw nothing of it. He was busy in the cabin, removing the
slightly creased and sweat-soaked letter from the lining of his cap and
putting it in the inner pocket of his Alpine rucksack. The address on the
envelope was in French:
W. Oulianoff
4. Rue Marie Rose
Paris XIV.
They were a long time rounding Greece, and finally they cleared Cape
Malea. The last of the islands, resembling a hunk of dry bread, was
swallowed up by the purple swell of the Archipelago. For two days they were
out of sight of land. The sun rose and set, but the barren flatness of the
Mediterranean seemed motionless. The sea kept changing colours: it was dark
blue at dawn, bright blue at noon, and copper-purple at sunset, but there
was no hint of green in it, as in the Black Sea. They were already conscious
of the nearness of Africa, that huge burning continent, and if it had not
been for the wind-true, a hot one, but tempered somewhat by the sea-it would
have been very hard to endure the intense, almost tropical, heat.
The wind was chasing long rows of waves along the Ionian Sea. The deck
rose and fell gently enough to make the rolling of the ship even pleasant.
The engines worked steadily. From time to time stokers who had finished
their shifts would appear in the forecastle, where they would douse each
other with sea water from the fire-pump. Petya had learned to tell the time
by their appearance. But in point of fact it was immaterial what the time
was-time seemed just as motionless as the ship in the middle of the blue
expanse.
Petya roamed all over the Palermo. One of the strangest places was the
cattle-deck which housed a herd of cows. Petya felt that he was in a cowshed
as he walked down the narrow passage-way between the rows of cows' tails.
The cows shifted their weight lazily, making the manure ooze through their
cloven hoofs. He was glad to feel the springy layers of straw beneath his
feet instead of the hard deck planks. Part of the deck was taken up by bales
of pressed hay which obscured the view of the sea. The hot sun beat down on
the hay, making it exude all its stored-up field smells. Petya would pull a
dry, withered stalk of siage or burdock out of the solid mass, rub it
between his palms, and smell the powdered leaves. Then he would think he was
somewhere in Bessarabia, in Budaki, and not on board a ship sailing in the
Mediterranean. It was strange and very pleasant.
It was fun to crawl past the signal bell to the very tip of the bow,
lie down on the hot deck, cautiously stick his head over the side and look
all the way down. A huge anchor arm protruded from the hawse-hole there, and
still farther below he could see the ship's stem cut through the waves with
a sure constancy. Salt spray blew into his face, he felt the metallic smell
of the deeply ploughed waves, and below the water-line he saw the bright red
of the keel shining through the boiling sapphire of the water. This was the
one spot where the ship's motion, its full speed, could really be
appreciated, making him as dizzy as if he were on a merry-go-round. Petya
could have watched the rushing water for hours on end, listening to the
strains of a mandolin played by Pieripo, one of the stokers, a young lad
with pearly flashing teeth and blue-black curly hair. After coming off watch
he would sit astride the anchor chain and pluck the strings, evoking with
its gentle tinkling notes a foretaste of Italy.
And then, Italy lay before him. A dim cone loomed up through the
morning mist. This was Mount Etna. It began to grow taller and wider; la
strip of hilly country rose from the sea. They were approaching Sicily.
The nearer they got to the shore, the gloomier did the land look. It
was nothing like Petya's mental picture of Italy.
They could see Catania quite clearly on the rocky slope. The port was
surrounded by hillsides of hardened black lava which descended to the water,
giving it its dark hue.
Italy had a harsh welcome for the travellers: there was a sirocco
blowing. The Italians pronounced it "shirokko"; it was a dry, scorching wind
from Africa. The mercury reached 113°. Clouds of dust rolled along streets
that had been hacked out of the lava streams or paved with lava stones, just
as in Odessa. The sky was a dull leaden yellow. Mules and horses with red
ear-muffs harnessed to fancy carriages stood glumly on the square, and the
wind blew the spray of a fountain and their dusty tails to one side.
A few straggling pedestrians moved phlegmatically along the street.
Even the guides who were sitting around the fountain were too listless to
come over to the tourists, and merely waved their picture postcards.
They could hear the dry rustle of palm leaves, whipped by the wind. The
green-black leaves of magnolia trees gleamed dully; the paths were strewn
with broken branches and huge waxen flowers, dead and speckled with the
brown of decay; shreds of grey cobweb fluttered in the laurels and
stone-pines-all dominated by the shadow of Mount Etna.
The wisest thing would have been to return to the ship. But Vasily
Petrovich's guide-book stated that the city stood on the site of ancient
Catana which, except for the ruins of its Forum, theatre, and some other
early Roman architectural relics, had been buried in lava. He was determined
that the boys should see them.
They doggedly climbed uphill against the wind, exhausted land sweating
profusely, until at last they beheld the ruins. By then, however, the boys
were so tired that the sights meant nothing to them.
They by-passed the museum. They felt that they had been roaming for
ages through the streets of the city, that in all likelihood the ship had
finished unloading and taking on fresh cargo, and they could now resume the
voyage.
But the sirocco had slowed work down at the port; the cattle had just
been taken off, and the Bacheis had to push their way through the herd to
get on board. The animals were too weary to moo; they only looked at Petya's
straw hat through bleary eyes, while the sirocco tore at their tails and
whistled around their horns.
Next day the ship entered the Strait of Messina and dropped anchor
opposite the city of the same name. What a wonderful change it was! Here was
the picturesque Italy of world-famous water-colours and oleographs: a blue
sky, a still bluer sea, white sails, cliffs, and shores covered by orange
and olive groves.
From the harbour, Messina looked enticing and beautiful, but Petya
suddenly felt there was something wrong in the number of houses and the way
they were spaced. There seemed to be fewer than there should have been. And
there were sinister dead spaces between them, hidden amongst the scraggy
underbrush.
There was something vaguely frightening in the very name of the city.
Not until they reached the pier did Petya realize half the city was in
ruins.
Then, suddenly, he recalled the words the whole world had uttered in
terror three years before: the Messina earthquake. He himself had often
repeated those words, without really understanding them. He had seen the
ruins of Byzantium, of ancient Greece, and of early Roman settlements, but
these had been magnificent stones, historical monuments, and no more; they
had fallen into a state of decay over thousands of centuries. They were
truly astounding, but they did not wring the heart. Now, however, Petya was
looking at heaps of recent debris which, not so very long ago, had been
streets of houses. The city had been destroyed and tens of thousands of
people had perished in a matter of minutes, and neither fortress towers, nor
marble columns, nor anything else remained as a reminder of the catastrophe.
A pitiful heap of rubbish, bits of walls with shreds of cheap wallpaper
still clinging to them, stucco laths, broken glass and twisted iron beds,
overgrown with pea-trees and nightshade, was all that met the eye. It was
the first destroyed city that Petya had ever seen; and it was not a famous
ancient one from his history book-no, this was a very ordinary, rather small
modern Italian city, inhabited by very ordinary Italians.
Years later, when Petya, a grown man, beheld the ghastly ruins of
European cities, he was still haunted by the ruins of Messina.
It was the same depressing scene of abject poverty everywhere, although
partially concealed by lush southern vegetation and the bright colours of
the Sicilian summer. Most of the inhabitants were still living in temporary
shacks, tents, and huts thrown together from the debris. Multi-coloured rags
were drying on the clothes-lines. Goats grazed on the grass-grown rubbish
heaps. Half-naked children with eyes as shiny as anthracite roamed the razed
streets and poked in the ruins, still hoping to find something of value
there.
The little shacks on the sites of former shops sold postcards,
lemonade, coal, and olives.
The Bacheis walked down the scorching streets of the half-dead city,
surrounded by fishermen, boatmen, and children. They grabbed the tourists'
hands, smiled, looked into their faces, and showered them with torrents of
rapid Italian. These people were neither guides nor beggars, and it was
impossible to understand what they wanted. They patted Petya's sailor's
collar and touched his blue blouse excitedly repeating, "Marinaio russo,
marinaio russo!"
Suddenly, Vasily Petrovich understood what it was all about. He
remembered that a Russian squadron had been anchored off Messina at the time
of the earthquake and that the sailors had selflessly and courageously
helped the people of the doomed city. Petya's regulation naval blouse and
many other things about them told the people that the Bacheis were Russians,
and they were expressing their gratitude, especially to the little Russian
sailor.
They used strange words but understandable gestures to describe the
terrible earthquake and the heroism of the Russian sailors who had rushed
into the burning houses and pulled the injured and the dying from under the
ruins.
A grey-haired, ragged woman, carrying a large earthen pitcher, pushed
her way through the crowd and offered the Bacheis a tray with three glasses
of cold water-aqua frescal-as her only means of expressing her gratitude to
the Russians. Petya's heart swelled with pride, but he regretted that he was
not wearing his sailor's cap and was sorrier still that it did not have the
St. George ribbon.
"Grazie, Russo!" the Italians repeated, shaking hands with all three,
and this was quite understandable.
There were other words spoken too:
"Evviva la rivoluzione, evviva la republica russa!"
Apparently, in the eyes of the Messina fishermen and boatmen, Vasily
Petrovich's dishevelled beard, his steel-framed pince-nez, his
democratic-looking Russian shirt and tussore coat corresponded to their
image of a Russian revolutionary, a man illuminated by the far-off blaze of
1905, the undying glory of the barricades in Presnya District in Moscow and
the mutiny on board the battleship Potemkin.
That evening the Palermo weighed anchor, passed out of the Strait of
Messina, entered the Tyrrhenian Sea, and set course for Naples, her home
port.
The stifling night was so black that even the stars that thickly
spangled the velvet sky did little to lighten it. Were it not for the
shimmering, snow-white foam down below, the slight tilt of the deck
underfoot, and the swishing sound of the waves racing past, one would think
the ship was flying, not sailing.
Petya could not fall asleep that night, perhaps because it was their
last night aboard. He paced up and down his favourite walk, the spar-deck
near the wheel-house. The sailor at the helm was as still as a statue. Petya
liked to watch him, waiting for the mysterious, inexplicable moment when,
for no apparent reason, the helmsman would move his hands and turn the wheel
a little. It spun around smoothly and silently; yet immediately, somewhere
right beneath their feet, the engine began to work; they heard short bursts
of escaping steam, a chain rattled, and steel rods moved in their oiled
grooves along the sides, slightly turning the rudder. That meant that the
ship had yawed and the helmsman was bringing her back.
There was something strange about the fact that the ship sailing on its
course should suddenly yaw. What mysterious forces of nature could affect
its simple mechanical movement? The wind? Currents? The motion of the Earth?
Petya did not know the answer, but the realization that these unknown forces
existed and were constantly at work all around him, and that it was possible
to overcome them, instilled in Petya a great respect for the helmsman and a
still greater respect for the compass at which he glanced from time to time.
For the first time in his life Petya really grasped the full meaning of
this wonderful, simple instrument, invented by man's genius to battle
against the dark forces of nature. A brass bowl on a cast-iron stand stood
alongside the wheel, and a brightly illumined dial set on a thin pin seemed
to be floating freely inside it under a glass cover. The disk, or compass
card, was divided into points, degrees, and fractions of degrees. The
navigator had laid a copper ruler to point out their course, and the moment
the ship veered ever so slightly the markings on the disk moved out of
place: then the helmsman, by turning the wheel, would bring them into place
again.
The copper ruler was now pointing towards Naples. Although everything
around them was as black as the bottom of la coal-pit, the ship raced ahead
unerringly, at full speed, making up for the time lost at their
ports-of-call.
Suddenly Petya noticed a strange light away on the horizon. It did not
look like a lighthouse or like the glow of an approaching ship. It was
almost red and very uneven. It shone for a while and went out; two minutes
later it would flare up again, shine and go out again; and so it continued
at regular intervals-a rhythmic appearing and disappearing, but growing
bigger all the time. It was as if someone had put a smouldering matchstick
in his mouth, and the breathing- made the little ember glow brightly.
By now the waves and the edges of a dark night cloud were brushed with
light, and a blast of heat seemed to come from the direction of the glow.
"What can it be?" Petya exclaimed in a frightened voice.
"Stromboli," a familiar voice answered. This was the first mate who had
just come up on the spar-deck. "Il famoso vulcano Stromboli" he repeated
solemnly and handed Petya his large sea binoculars, the dark lenses of which
reflected the red glow of Stromboli.
They were passing the volcano now and Petya looked at it through the
binoculars. Just then a flame shot up, as if coming from the pipe of a
samovar. The fire illuminated the edge of the crater, and Petya even thought
he heard an underwater rumbling and felt a wave of volcanic heat, but it was
only his fancy.
Before long Stromboli had slipped behind; however, its fiery breath
could be seen through the pitch darkness, casting a grim light on the waves
and clouds.
Petya was in ecstasy: he had just seen with his own eyes a
fire-spouting mountain, a real, genuine volcano! It wasn't every schoolboy
who could boast of having seen one. Schoolboy-why, probably not even a
single teacher had ever been so near to a real volcano! Not even the
geography teacher. Not even the head of the school. Maybe the head of the
Education Department had seen one, but certainly not the school inspector.
What would Auntie say when she found out he had seen a volcano! And what la
fuss their friends would make! This time not even Gavrik would wrinkle up
his nose disdainfully, spit through his teeth and say, "Now tell me
another." Too bad there were no witnesses except the helmsman and the first
mate. Perhaps though it was even better that Daddy and Pavlik had slept
through it all. This time Petya would be cock of the walk of the Bachei
family.
Petya waited until the volcano had disappeared completely and then
rushed below anticipating his triumph and Pavlik's humiliation when he would
burst into the cabin and say, "I've just seen a volcano-you've slept through
the whole thing!"
But the triumph was not to be: all the other passengers had long been
lining the rails, and Pavlik, who had been awakened by his waiter friend,
was standing at the stern, his chin pressed against the rail, trying to look
interested while Vasily Petrovich lectured in popular vein on the volcano
they had just observed.
Thereupon Petya went below to the cabin to be the first to inform
Auntie of the great event. He rummaged in his rucksack and found the nicest
of all the Constantinople postcards with a picture of the Galata Tower on
it, and wrote: "Dear Auntie! You'll never guess what happened! Of course,
you won't believe me, but I've just seen a real, active volcano with my own
eyes!"
Petya paused, made a bargain with his conscience, and resolutely added:
"It was erupting!"
By this time Petya was really convinced that the volcano had been
erupting. When he had snatched up his pencil, he was bursting with
impressions and was ready to fill up every inch of space on the postcard
with a magnificent description of a volcano erupting in the open sea. But no
sooner had he written the first majestic sentences than his inspiration
petered out.
To tell the truth, Pliny the Younger had already described an erupting
volcano and Petya, having read the description in his geography textbook,
did not feel like competing with one of Rome's finest writers, especially
since Pliny had described something that he had witnessed, whereas Petya
would have to describe what he had not seen.
And so after the words "It was erupting!" he added: "Your loving nephew
Petya," and hid the postcard in the rucksack, hoping to post it at the first
opportunity.
Thus, if Petya's description of the erupting volcano lacked something
of Pliny's accuracy, its truly classical laconism left the great writer's
effort very much in the shade.
A number of rocky islands were sighted during the day. Bathed in the
silver light of the noonday sun, they seemed like some ethereal silhouettes
of varying shades of deep blue: the nearer ones a darker hue, the more
distant-lighter. The Palermo was steaming full speed ahead. It had
disembarked the last of the steerage passengers, its freight decks had been
swabbed and scrubbed white, the copper coamings and ladders were shining
brightly, the lifeboats and lifebuoys had had a fresh coat of paint, the
Italian flag was fluttering in the breeze; the Palermo again became a spick
and span ocean liner.
"There's Capri, and Ischia, and Procida," Vasily Petrovich called out
the names of the islands they were passing as they entered the Bay of
Naples.
"Vesuvius!" Pavlik shouted at the top of his lungs. True enough, it was
Vesuvius. The grey-blue silhouette of the twin peaks, with sulphurous smoke
pouring out of one of them, was outlined sharply in the bright haze. It
melted before their eyes, vanished into thin air, and revealed a panorama of
the city and hundreds of ships at anchor in the harbour.
A flock of gulls attacked the Palermo. The graceful white birds floated
on outspread wings, snatching at shreds of greens thrown out of the kitchen
porthole. To tell the truth, Petya was already bored with the ship. At
first, when everything had been new and mysterious, it had fascinated him;
now, however, at the end of the long voyage, it no longer interested him.
But when he set foot on the paved yard of the Naples custom-house, he, like
the Prisoner of Chillon, suddenly regretted his prison.
He felt, after all, that he did not want to part with the ship, with
its wonderful places, strange smells, and the long, narrow, unpainted beech
deck planks caulked with tar and scrubbed clean with sand.
During the customs inspection Petya was terrified lest the Italian
inspector find the letter in his rucksack. However, the more than meagre
baggage of the Bachei family was completely ignored by the customs officers.
The official did not even glance at the unique concoction of the Odessa
harness-and-luggage industry as he passed by. All he did was jab his thumb
in it, and the agent following him drew a circle in chalk on each of their
bags. The Bacheis were now free to pick up their things and go.
There was something humiliating in this official disdain, for they did
examine the other passengers' baggage. These were mainly the expensive
trunks and suitcases of the first-class passengers, covered with gay hotel
labels. The officials minutely examined the exquisite clothing, pulled out
Syrian shawls, crystal humidors of Turkish tobacco, and round jars of
Russian caviar, and respectfully demanded duty.
Vasily Petrovich and the boys hoisted their Alpine bags with some
effort and hauled the bursting sack out on to the scorching square. They
were immediately surrounded by a crowd of screeching hotel agents. Each had
a gold-braided cap with the name of his hotel on the peak. Petya had once
witnessed a similar scene at the Odessa railway station, whither they had
gone to meet Grandma. It had amused him to see a swarm of vociferous agents
dragging at the coat-tails of a protesting gentleman clutching his umbrella.
But the Odessa agents were no match for their Neapolitan colleagues.
The Neapolitans were three times more numerous and four times as audacious.
They shrieked as they attacked Vasily Petrovich: "Grand-Hotel! Continental!
Livorno! Vesuvio! Hotel di Roma! Hotel di Firenze! Hotel di Venezia!" They
brandished wads of brightly illustrated prospectuses and promised fabulously
low rates, unheard-of comforts, suites facing Vesuvius, family table d'hote,
breakfasts thrown in, and excursions to Pompeii.
Vasily Petrovich waved frantically to a group of porters in blue
blouses with badges on their chests who were sitting on the flagstones,
utterly indifferent to the massacre of defenceless tourists by hotel agents.
Vasily Petrovich tried to break through to the cabmen. He was successful
too, but they were as impassive as the porters: they sat on their high boxes
with meters, smoking long, foul-smelling cigars, and not one of them offered
Vasily Petrovich a helping hand.
On the contrary, when he had finally managed to gain the lower step of
one of the cabs, the cabman glared at him, snatched off his well-worn felt
hat, shook it menacingly at Vasily Petrovich and screamed, "No, signor, no!"
so that Vasily Petrovich was forced to retreat.
There was something sinister about the strange indifference of the
cabmen and porters. Vasily Petrovich did not know what to make of it. Later
on they found out that they had arrived in Naples the day the coachmen,
porters, and tramway workers had struck work in protest against the
government's preparations for war with Turkey.
But this did not help the Bacheis very much, for the hotel agents,
apparently satisfied that Italy should conquer Tripoli, were not on strike.
Despite his deep dislike of the police, Vasily Petrovich was about ready to
appeal to two carabineers for help. They were as alike as peas in a pod:
both wore three-cornered hats and black trousers with red stripes down the
sides, both had the same type of moustache and both had big noses. But at
that moment things took a different turn.
A small, fat, shrewd hotel agent had the bright idea that the way to a
father's heart lay through his love for his son. He hoisted a kicking Pavlik
on to one shoulder, the plaid rucksack on to the other, and made off down a
side-street. Vasily Petrovich and Petya dashed after him, but it took them a
good forty minutes of fast sprinting to catch up with him at the Hotel
Esplanade.
When he had finally deposited Pavlik and the rucksack in the lobby, the
agent hung his cap up on a peg over the desk and was immediately transformed
from agent into owner of the establishment. It turned out that he also
personified four others: waiter, chef, lift-boy and porter-in other words,
he was the entire personnel of the hotel, not counting the chamber-maid and
cashier- posts held by his wife.
The Hotel Esplanade was located between a second-hand clothing shop and
an eating-house in an alley so narrow that no two carriages could ever pass
each other there. This, however, was a minor detail, for the alley was
actually a large stairway of wide and worn stone slabs. Garments of every
hue were drying on the clotheslines strung between the tall, narrow houses,
and although Naples was resplendent in the radiant colours of June, the
alley was dark and damp; even a green gas-lamp shone in the window of the
eating-house.
Hotel Esplanade boasted but four rooms, all of them facing the
glassed-in gallery of the courtyard which was very much like the courtyards
in the older parts of Odessa-the only difference being that here the
flowering oleanders and azaleas grew not out of green tubs, but straight out
of the ground, and the garbage heap was full of oyster shells, red crayfish
shells, and squeezed-out lemons, in addition to green vegetable parings and
fish entrails. When Vasily Petrovich saw the two forbidding canopied beds,
the chipped iron wash-basin adorned with views of the Bay of Naples, and the
wallpaper which told only too well of bedbugs, he grabbed up his rucksack,
ready to run from the den, but his tired legs failed him. He sank into a
wobbly chair, took out his Italian phrase-book, and began bargaining. The
proprietor insisted on ten lire a day, Vasily Petrovich offered one. They
finally settled for three, which was only one lira more than it should have
cost. They were now free to begin the sightseeing. But Vasily Petrovich
suddenly felt too tired to get up from his chair. Now only did he realize
how exhausting the long sea voyage had been, although it had seemed so
pleasant and comfortable. With an effort he reached the bed and lay there
all in, wiping the glasses of his pince-nez with his handkerchief.
"I think," he said, addressing the boys with an apologetic smile, "I'll
have a nap. You should have forty winks too. Take off your sandals and lie
down for a bit."
Pavlik, who could hardly keep his eyes open, began taking off his
sandals. Petya, however, was dying to see the city. He wanted to send off
his correspondence: the letter Gavrik had given him and the postcard he had
written to Auntie, describing the "eruption" of Stromboli. Father was
opposed to the idea, but Petya said with such assurance that he wasn't a
baby and looked so deeply pious as he faced the crucifix, crossed himself,
and promised he'd be back the minute he bought the stamp, that Vasily
Petrovich finally agreed and gave him a silver lira for the stamps. Pavlik's
eyes turned green at the sight of it. "What about me?" he said, buckling on
his sandals.
"You should go to sleep," Petya answered coldly.
"I'm not asking you, I'm asking- Daddy."
"God forbid!" Father was aghast at the mere thought.
"I like that," Pavlik said, his face all screwed up, just in case he
might have to start crying at a moment's notice.
"What do you mean-I like that?" Father asked sternly.
"Petka can go and I've got to stay in?"
"First of all, don't say, 'I like that.' It's about time you learned
how to behave, and secondly, say, 'Petya, 'riot ' Petka.' "
"All right," Pavlik agreed readily. "But if Petya can go, why can't I?"
"Because Petya's older than you are."
Pavlik hated that argument. No matter how much he grew, or how hard he
tried, he was always smaller than Petya.
"It's not my fault that Petya's older," he whined. "He goes everywhere,
but I can't go anywhere!"
"I have a special reason for going. I have my correspondence to attend
to, while you just want to come along to make mischief," Petya said in his
haughtiest voice.
"Maybe I have correspondence too? Daddy, please, let me go!"
"It's out of the question!" Father said resolutely, and Pavlik's
spirits rose.
As a rule, after saying, "It's out of the question," Father would pause
arid add, "but if you give me your word that you'll behave..." or something
to that effect. And so to speed things up, Pavlik shammed a fit of tears,
stealing looks at Father out of the corner of his eye. He knew his daddy.
"However," Vasily Petrovich said, unable to stand the tears, "if you
promise to-"
"Oh, I swear by the Holy Cross!" Pavlik said quickly -and blundered.
Father frowned.
"How many times have I told you never to swear! An oath degrades the
person who takes it. When you promise something, it is enough to give your
word. Any decent person's word can only be sacred. So', one's word is
enough."
"I give you my word," Pavlik said triumphantly, buckling a sandal, and,
in his haste, made another blunder.
"What do you give me your word about?"
"That I'll behave."
"That's the main thing. And don't move an inch from Petya."
"I won't."
"You won't what?"
"I won't move an inch from Petya," Pavlik said.
"Very well then."
"And tell him to listen to me," Petya added, "otherwise I won't take
him, because he'll surely get lost and I'll be responsible for him."
"I won't get lost," Pavlik said.
"Yes, you will! You always get lost!"
"Who got lost last time, in Odessa, when we nearly got left behind, and
when Auntie was so worried she nearly went crazy?"
"Fibber!"
"I'm not fibbing."
"Now then, children, no quarrelling!"
"It's not me, it's Petka."
"In that case, you'll both stay in."
"No, Daddy!" Pavlik pleaded. "I give you my word I'll behave."
"And do what you're told?" Petya asked.
"Yes," Pavlik answered.
"Without fail?"
"Yes." Pavlik sounded slightly annoyed.
"Don't forget, now!" Petya said pompously and severely.
"All right, run along," Father mumbled sleepily as he curled up on the
bed under the ridiculous canopy. "And for heaven's sake don't get lost," he
added in a barely audible whisper.
He was snoring before Petya and Pavlik got to the bottom of the stairs.
Of course, they got lost.
Once out in the street, Petya took Pavlik by the hand. Pavlik was
furious, but could not -say a thing, since he had memorized Father's saying,
"If you've given your word, keep it."
The first thing was to buy a stamp. This was not as simple a matter as
in Russia, where lots of shops sold postage stamps. Shops were not lacking
here, but none of them sold stamps. In fact, the shopkeepers could not even
understand what it was that Petya wanted, although he glibly rattled off the
Italian he had learned on the ship.
"Prego, signor," Petya .said bravely, but there was a frightened look
in his eyes, "prego, signor... una, una ..." However, he could not explain
what the "una" he wanted was, because he did not know the word for "stamp"
in Italian.
He would then pull out the envelope, spit on his finger, and give a
wonderful performance of sticking an imaginary stamp on an envelope. "Don't
you see, una stamp. Una stamp." At which point the shopkeeper would gesture
dramatically in the true Neapolitan manner and hold forth volubly in
language that left Petya bewildered. This scene was repeated about ten
times, until, finally, after they had gone up and down three or four
streets, the owner of a wine-vault that was bedecked inside and out with
clusters of mandolin-shaped raffia-covered bottles took them to the corner
and pointed far off into the distance. He accompanied the gesture by a long
theatrical monologue; the only two words Petya was able to make out were
posta centrals, that is, the central post-office.
The boys set out in the direction indicated. Petya would stop a
passer-by occasionally and, bestowing a severe look on Pavlik, would ask:
"Prego, signor, la posta centrale?"
Some of the passers-by understood him, some did not, but all were eager
to help the two young foreigners who wanted to buy stamps.
The Neapolitans proved to be splendid people-kind and warm-hearted,
though somewhat fussy. They were not a bit like the Neapolitans of the
pictures: handsome men in short trousers and wide crimson sashes with red
kerchiefs on their curly heads and ravishingly beautiful women in lace
mantillas.
They were very ordinary-looking people; the men wore black jackets and
faded hats, the women, black blouses and no hats. All the men had one thing
in common: no shirt collars-just a stud at the neck in front of their open
shirts; the women wore coral ornaments.
They took the greatest interest in Petya and Pavlik, they forgot about
their own affairs, and a large, noisy crowd gathered to take the boys to the
post-office. The gathering stopped at every corner and had a heated
discussion as to which street to take next.
They threw torrents of words at each other as they dragged the boys in
different directions and if the boys had not been holding on to each other
so persistently, they most certainly would have been dragged apart. More and
more people joined the crowd. Ragged, olive-skinned street urchins, lively
as little devils, ran before the crowd as if they were accompanying a band.
An old organ-grinder with a long, foul-smelling cigar stuck under his
yellow-white moustache trailed along at the end of the procession.
They were now walking down the middle of the street. People peered out
of windows, curious to know what it was all about; when they found out,
they, too, would gesticulate wildly, pointing out the shortest way. A
kind-hearted signorina wiped Pavlik's hot neck with her handkerchief and
called him bambino.
Stray dogs, every bit as nasty as those in Constantinople, attached
themselves to the throng. The whole business was developing into a street
scandal.
Petya was becoming nervous. The only thing that kept him going was the
knowledge that he, as the elder brother, was responsible to his father for
Pavlik's safety. He rattled off his Italian, mixing it with French words
from Margot's French textbook and Russian exclamations.
"Si, signorino, si, signorino," the Neapolitans said soothingly, seeing
how excited he was.
At the same time, Petya was taking in all he could of the famous city.
At first they passed through narrow, dark alleys, with iron gas-lamps on the
walls of the houses. Then they suddenly came out upon a dazzling white
square with a fountain and an ancient church, through the open doors of
which came the solemn sounds of an organ.
Once they caught a fleeting glimpse of the unbelievably blue sea, the
beach, and a row of stately, hairy date-palms in the distance. They crossed
a busy shopping centre. Then they skirted a bleak monastery wall with a huge
statue of a saint in a niche. They went up and down steep street stairways,
past tall, narrow houses where some of the windows with green shutters were
real, the others painted on for the sake of symmetry, but so expertly done
that one could hardly tell the difference.
They reached a street which was blocked completely by a long row of
empty tram-cars. Striking conductors and drivers, carrying their leather
bags and brass keys, were walking up and down, exchanging a few words with
the passers-by.
The moment the crowd accompanying the boys saw the tram-cars, they lost
all interest in the young foreigners. Attention was now focussed entirely on
the strikers, especially as the first rows of demonstrators, carrying red
and black flags, portraits and slogans, appeared at the far end of the
street.
The people rushed towards them, leaving the boys to their own devices.
Pavlik grasped Petya's hand and watched the demonstrators approach.
Grim-looking bearded men in wide-brimmed hats carried a black flag with
a white inscription, and portraits of other bearded men, among whom Pavlik,
much to his surprise, recognized Lev Tolstoi.
Behind the bearded men came others with shaven chins and in small caps.
They carried a red flag and the portraits of two more bearded men whom Petya
had never seen before. These were Marx and Engels.
The people in the demonstration were workers, porters, stokers,
sailors, and shop assistants. They wanted to keep in slow step, but it was