betray the voyager by their songs or their charms. But the creatures which
are now singing arc very real indeed, they are called Corixae minutissimae.
It's very touching music, isn't it?"
"Very!" replied Valya.
"Yes, indeed, they know how to sing, do these savage ruffians!" mused
the Professor.
"Ruffians?"
"I think it's a fair name for these water bugs. Gluttons and brigands
they are, but as talented as the legendary sirens."
"But how do they sing? A bug surely has no voice?"
"They sing with their feet," replied the old man. "At least they
produce music. On one of the front claws of the female bug there are
bristles like the teeth in a musical box. . . . The bug uses its second
front leg like the bow of a fiddle and produces music from these bristles."
Karik and Valya very much wanted to see the bug-violinists, but however
much they looked about they could not spot a single one of them.
The bugs were sitting somewhere in the water weed forest.
Meanwhile the Carrabus surged along under full sail towards the shore
which now could be seen coming nearer and nearer every minute.
Already rocks stuck up out of the water, and every now and then yellow
shoals appeared beneath them.
The grass forest edging the shore was now becoming plainer and plainer.
"Where shall we land?" asked Karik.
"Anywhere you like," replied the Professor, gazing at the shore. "A
little nearer or a little further is not very important - we shall have to
do a good bit of foot-slogging in any case."
Valya groaned.
"Have we really got to go on foot? Oh, how tired I am!"
"Don't worry, Valya, have patience," comforted the old man. "Our
journey, I hope, will finish at any time now. I too wish to get home as soon
as possible. I have students waiting for me in the university. The
examinations will soon be on!"
The Professor suddenly started laughing.
"If only my students could see me in this ship made of an oak leaf
sailing under sails made of flies' wings, whatever would they say? When you
think of it - any of them could put me in a waistcoat pocket. Ha, ha, ha!"
It was now midday.
Grating her bottom on the stones, the Carrabus gently came up towards
the beach and stopped, rocking in the light swell.
The voyagers got out on the beach.
Beyond the near line of forest there was sticking out the dark
mast-like landmark.
It looked as if they were standing right by it; as if they had just to
go through this one little wood and then it would be over.
Karik looked around and, having gazed sadly at the famous Carrabus,
waved his hand in farewell.
"Fare - ye - well, good ship Carrabus. Don't forget your Captain !"
"But I thought we were going to sail right up to the very landmark!"
said Valya.
"You thought wrong!" the Professor shrugged his shoulders.
"But why ever did we load the Carrabus with so much food?"
"Why ever?" Karik was offended. "If a gale had started to blow! or
suppose we had been cast away on some uninhabited water leaf island! What
would have we had to eat then?"
"True enough," said the Professor. "One must be far-sighted when
setting out on a voyage. It's far better to throw away what one does not
need than to die of hunger."
* * * * * *
For two to three hours the old man and the children sat at the edge of
the forest, rested and partook of a heavy meal.
The Professor got up and wiping his beard with a petal he ran as nimbly
as a small boy up the nearest hillock.
"There you are," he shouted, looking upwards. "Very good! Excellent!
Simply marvellous!"
The children also looked up.
Above the forest some sort of heavy, hairy animals were flying on
broad, seemingly-glass wings.
Was the Professor looking at these?
"Wasps!" yelled Karik.
"Not wasps, bumble bees!" corrected the Professor.
The dark and golden bumble bees circled over the thick foliage of the
grass forest, circled and alighted on some sort of strange tree which had
huge lilac-red hats on its summit. The bumble bees sat on these hats,
bustled into them and then soaring upwards flew off in the direction of the
landmark and there disappeared - apparently alighting on the ground.
The Professor came, took the children by the hand and, gazing at them
fixedly, said:
"Now I'll tell you, my dears! A very daring plan has flashed into my
mind. We can fly the rest of our journey on a bumble bee."
The children started in alarm.
"On a bumble bee? . . . I . . . I don't want to go on a bumble bee,"
said Valya. "I am afraid of them."
The Professor flung his arm around Valya's shoulder.
"Don't be frightened, my darling! This is quite safe. The larvae of the
May bug beetles always fly on honey bees, and the honey bees don't touch
them."
"But then it may be better to fly on a honey bee?" said -Karik.
The Professor shook his head.
"No, we cannot do it on honey bees! These bees would carry us into
their hives and that would be the end of us. But the bumble bees will carry
us straight to the landmark. They have evidently got a nest there. You see
the way they are all flying. These bumble bees will be much better for us
than any honey bee."
"No, all the same, I am frightened." Valya shook her head. "I..."
"Now, you shut up!" the Professor scolded her. "I'll tell you in detail
how the larvae of the Blister beetles travel on bees, and I hope that after
this you will stop being frightened."
The old man sat down on the hillock and, seating the children beside
him, began:
"I do beg of you, my dears, not to confuse the Blister beetle with the
May bug, just because these beetles are called May beetles. They are by no
means the same. This Blister beetle is an amazing creature. Insects as a
rule have three stages of life: the larva comes out of the egg, becomes a
cocoon and finally from the cocoon emerges the complete insect. Well, now,
the Blister beetle has four transformations: the egg, the Triungulina or
six-legged larva, the ordinary larva, the cocoon and the grown-up Blister
beetle. Remember Triungulina. Fabre calls this simply 'the louse.' Now these
lice or Triungulinae feed on bees' honey. . . . But how does it find the
combs? Who shows it the way to the bees? Who carries it into the hive?"
"Its mother!" suggested Valya.
"Well, it couldn't possibly depend on its mother," laughed the
Professor. "By the time the louse comes out of its egg its mother is no
longer in the land of the living. In order to get into the bees' nest the
Triungulina must get up into a flower and, hiding itself there, await a bee.
As soon as ever a bee comes into the flower the louse seizes its hairy coat
with its claws arid sticks on until the bee has carried it back home. Do you
understand, Valya? And what do you think now: the stupid Triungulina is not
frightened of making the trip, surely you wouldn't be frightened?"
"It's because the Triungulina is so stupid!" sighed Valya.
"Yes, you must chuck being such a coward, Valya," insisted Karik. "If
we don't fly on the bumble bee we shall have to go on foot, and it may take
us another three weeks and maybe a month. Yes, and goodness knows what may
happen to us. We may meet a thousand new dangers on that long journey. Some
beetle or other will bury us, or a caterpillar will crush us or a butterfly
will whisk us over a precipice. Surely it's much better on a bumble bee! . .
. And . . . and in any case pioneers mustn't be cowards."
"Well, all right, we'll go by bumble bee!" said Valya, in a shaky
voice. "What flower have we to climb up?"
"There you are, this one! Up to the red round ball which is 1 swinging
up there. It's red clover. The favourite flower of bumble bees."
The Professor and the children scrambled up the thick stem on to the
lilac-reddish hat of the clover and hid between its tube-like flowers, which
were hiding drops of clean, clear honey.
"Will the bumble bee come soon?" asked Valya.
"How am I to know?" answered Karik, in a whisper.
"Be quiet!" hissed the Professor.
They sat like that for more than an hour.
At last wings droned above their heads. A broad shadow came between
them and the sky just as if a cloud had covered up the sun.
Valya clung to her brother. Her heart hammered, arms and legs shook.
She wanted to say something but her lips would not move.
"Be ready!" said the Professor, in a scarcely audible voice.
Valya secretly squeezed Karik's hand.
The hum of the wings became louder and louder. A hairy bumble bee, with
its hair bristling out, circling down landed on the flower. It put out its
feet and at once started to eat.
What happened then neither Valya nor Karik could follow. The huge,
furry body came down around them like a heavy fur hat.
The children heard the stifled voice of the Professor:
"Hold on as tight as you can!"
They buried their hands in the fur and in another minute were flying
upwards in a whirlwind.
Queer soil - The Professor 'collects' a moth - Karik and Valya in the
plywood box - An expensive Oecophora - The Professor is packed up - Back to
the old world
THE WIND QUITE TOOK THE TRAVELLERS' BREATH AWAY. THE ground swayed
beneath them and fell away.
"Hold tighter!" yelled the Professor.
The children could hardly hear his voice. The even, heavy drumming of
the bumble bee's wings and the piercing whistle of the wind drowned
everything.
To begin with, the bumble bee flew high above the ground. But then it
seemed as if it was finding itself too heavy and was not happy. Small wonder
- three pairs of hands were gripping its hairy coat, three pairs of legs
were striking it in the body every time it made a sharp turn.
The bumble bee started to fling itself from side to side - evidently in
order to try and dislodge its uninvited passengers.
It flew on all the time getting lower and lower, every now and then
shaking itself; but it could not get rid of the heavy load.
Valya's head was swimming and her heart seemed gripped in iron bands.
The Professor took an anxious look at her. "If only the poor girl can
manage to hold on! If only her hands don't slip!"
Then suddenly the bumble bee beat its wings more furiously.
The wind whistled in the ears of the travellers.
It was plunging like an arrow towards the ground.
"Ah, what a pity if it lands before time," flashed through Karik's
brain. "We can only have got halfway there by now."
The earth came nearer every second. The old man and the children curled
up their legs tightly in order not to hit anything hard when they landed.
The tops of the grassy jungle came closer and closer.
And then - violent jolts - one, two, three. . . .
One more jolt and the travellers were thrown out of their fur cabin and
hurled along the ground.
Turning head over heels the children and the Professor rolled over and
over on some queer soil. It was blue in colour and very soft and spungy.
At last having rolled over for the last time the Professor caught hold
of the edge of a large smooth rock and managed to get on to his feet.
Holding on to the edge of the rock he moved around it, limping slightly.
"Odd," the old man muttered, feeling the flat smooth rock which seemed
as round as a millstone. "Whatever is this? And there's another similar
round rock . . . there's a third and yet a fourth. . . ."
The Professor managed with difficulty to clamber on to one of the rocks
and here gazed around himself. In front of him was a wide plain of the
strangest soil. It looked like a chess board. Even blue-coloured roads ran
across it from edge to edge. He leant over the edge of the rock and
carefully scrutinised its smooth, black, shining surface. Then suddenly a
wild guess flashed into his head.
"A button!" he clapped his hand to his forehead. "I am standing on a
button! Then the chess board soil and blue roads are . . . the very thing .
. . . Children!" he shouted to Karik and Valya, who were sitting on a slope
rubbing their bruised sides and knees. "Children, what do you think, we're
nearly home. This is my waistcoat!"
The children leaped up overjoyed.
"But the box? Where is the box with the enlarging powder?" demanded
Valya, impatiently.
The Professor, standing on the button, was attentively surveying the
neighbourhood surrounding the waistcoat. "Odd! Very odd," he shrugged his
shoulders. He looked around once again. Then he suddenly saw a gigantic
column lying on the ground. The further end of this lay far away towards the
west. The forest jungle was parted and a straight vista stretched along the
column to disappear in the blue distance as it joined the horizon.
"It's fallen down! fallen down, the rascal! and not more than ten
minutes ago."
"What has fallen?"
"Our landmark. However, this is no misfortune. We are already there.
The box must be just here . . . on the same side as the landmark is lying.
Follow me, my dears!"
Then the Professor boldly dashed along the edging of the waistcoat,
jumping over buttonholes and stumbling over threads. Following him hastened
Karik and Valya, jumping and skipping.
At the edge of the waistcoat they all stopped. In front of them the
grassy jungle was rustling.
"There it is!" yelled the Professor, stretching out his hand towards a
thick clump.
Through gaps in the jungle they could see a tall yellow building.
"Hurrah!" shouted the children cheerfully. Then holding hands they
dashed towards the box.
Panting and puffing, the Professor also ran up to the box.
"Well, there we are! There we are!" the Professor rubbed his hands with
excitement. "Our trials are over. And wasn't it a good thing we weren't
frightened of the bumble bee. This is simply incredible! We should never
have found the box on foot. Our landmark fell down a few minutes before our
arrival. Yes, indeed! To be fearless is the same as to be lucky!"
The Professor passed his hand over his bald head and continued, quite
moved by the events:
"So, my dears, in a few minutes we shall once again become big,
ordinary people. Here at the wall of this box ends our difficult and
dangerous journey. We are standing on the threshold of the big world. But
before we throw off this little world I would like to say a few words to
you. You have seen a lot in the past days but to tell you the truth you have
only started to look into one of the tiny corners of the little world. You
have just read a few pages out of the thick book entitled Nature. And these
pages, I might say, are by no means the most interesting. In the book of
nature there are other pages from which it is almost impossible to tear
oneself away.
"You have seen just a tiny part of the world we live in. It is small,
it is unnoticed, this part; we often pay it no attention at all. Yet it is a
very important part of the big world in which you and I will soon be living
again.
"Its life is closely knit with our lives, much, much closer than many
people are aware of.
"In this little world there are our friends and there are also our
enemies.
"We need to know them both.
"We must come back again here sometime. We must come back with a big
expedition equipped from head to foot, and we must conquer this
too-little-known world.
"For this expedition we shall not have recourse to a lilliput liquid.
We shall come with microscopes, with the great knowledge and the experience
of numbers of scientists.
"Our equipment will be patience.
"But we must talk about this in detail at home when we have got back
there. But now let us proceed with something we must not any longer
postpone.
"To make ourselves big again!"
The Professor then stepped to the wall of the plywood box. Looking
through the solitary window he announced cheerfully, rubbing his hands:
"Everything is there. Climb in, my friends, one at a time. The box with
the enlarging powder is in the right-hand corner. Carry on!"
Karik and Valya after him climbed through the little window.
The Professor helped them through and was just about to climb through
himself when suddenly a moth with shining wings of a metallic hue alighted
on the wall of the box.
It was a very small moth; in all only a few times the size of the
Professor.
The old man took a look at it and froze in his tracks.
"An Olive Oecophora," he whispered, taking a deep breath with
excitement.
He pressed close to the plywood wall and was all on tenterhooks, like a
hunter who has spotted nearby some rare wild beast.
The Oecophora, paying no attention to the Professor, crawled past him
along the wall.
The old man's heart beat and hammered. "Stop!" he cried, and jumping up
high he seized the Oecophora by the wing.
The moth tried to escape and they fell heavily together to the ground.
The moth started hitting out, waved its free wing up and down, and
pressed the Professor's chest with its feet; but the old man would not let
go.
Lying on the ground under the butterfly he made every effort to hold on
to his valuable prey.
He forgot about everything else in the world.
Yes, and it was not to be wondered at.
In his hands there was struggling an Olive Oecophora - a moth rare in
our climate, the very smallest specimen of the Lepidopterae, or scale-winged
insects.
How it came to appear by the side of the plywood box - a moth native of
warm climates, the Professor never at this moment questioned. He remembered
only one thing: in his ample collection in the moth cabinets where under
glass sitting on pins with their wings spread out were carpet moths, fur
moths, hair, grain, cherry, hawthorn, burdock and field moths, in this
collection there had never been an Olive Oecophora.
And now there would be one.
"Yes, you just wait. Ah, what a beauty !" the old man scolded the
stubborn moth which dragged him along the ground, trying in every way to get
free.
"Yes, now then . . . now then . . . that's enough . . . Now then,
stop!"
* * * * *
Whilst the Professor was wrestling with the Olive Oecophora,
Karik and Valya had reached the right-hand corner of the chest where
the little box with the enlarging powder was standing. Gradually their eyes
became used to the semi-darkness. They looked round the empty room with the
bare walls. Through the round little window there fell on the floor a
narrow, slanting beam of sunlight. Golden dust swam in the sunlight and the
beam appeared full of life.
"It is jolly here. Isn't it, Karik?" said Valya, looking around. Karik
not replying walked over to the corner in which there was standing a huge
trunk-like white box covered with a thick sheet of parchment.
"There it is!" said Karik. He clambered up to the edge of the box,
drummed with his bare heels on its sides and stretched out his hand to
Valya.
"Climb up here! Come on!"
Valya scrambled up and sat beside Karik.
Karik bent down and tore the parchment lid off the box.
"Eat! And become big again!" he announced in a loud voice, bending over
the box.
"Oughtn't we to wait for the Professor?" asked Valya.
"No - and do you know what. Let's get big before the Professor. Think
how interesting that will be. We shall already be big whilst he is still
tiny."
"All right ! I agree," said Valya, and quickly plunged her hand beneath
the parchment and fetched out a whole handful of glistening powder.
She put her hand up to her mouth, opened it and then suddenly taking
her hand away turned to Karik:
"How much of it should one eat to get big again?"
"Eat plenty of it."
"But supposing we grow very big. . . . it would not be very pleasant to
be a girl of giant size."
"Don't worry, eat it up!" replied Karik calmly, "if you do grow too
much - you can drink some reducing liquid and get yourself right again.
That's all. Look how I am eating. Like this!"
Then Karik poured a whole fistful of powder into his mouth.
"Ready!"
Valya swallowed the powder and said with a frown:
"The reducing liquid was much nicer."
"No, there is nothing wrong with the powder. It is a little acid."
Karik jumped down to the floor and pulled Valya after him.
"Now we must clear out of here quickly."
"Why?"
"Why, because it will soon become tight."
"Why tight?"
"Why, why, why?" Karik got angry. "For the simple reason that we are
going to turn into big people . . . you see . . . Ow!" he shouted, having
bitten his tongue. His head had hit the ceiling.
With a loud crack the chest split open. The bright daylight blinded
Karik. He screwed his eyes up, rubbed them and once more opened them.
Before him stood Valya. She had not changed in the slightest. However,
everything around had become quite different: the green jungle had turned
back into ordinary grass. On the grass lay a thick pole with a red rag faded
in the sun and the gnats had once again become gnats.
"Isn't it grand!" said Valya. "Just think, we need no longer be
frightened of a gnat. Just one clap of the hand and it's a goner."
"Wait!" Karik interrupted her in a worried voice. "Where is the box
with the powder?"
They looked down at their feet.
In the grass were the broken pieces of the chest. Amid these pieces lay
the box turned over and alongside it a tiny parchment sheet. The wind was
blowing a white dust over the grass.
"That's our enlarging powder!" shouted Karik in alarm, and dashed to
catch the dust.
But it was already too late.
"Now what will happen?" asked Valya, anxiously. "Does it mean that our
Professor will have to stay small for ever? Good gracious, maybe we have
squashed him already."
"Don't you get fussed!" Karik yelled at her. "What's the use of it and
you may in fact squash him."
Valya froze in her place, but Karik squatting on his haunches started
to rake the cool grass with his fingers spaced out like the teeth of a comb.
But it was all in vain.
"Karik," said Valya, "he must be here somewhere and he would surely
hear us. Let him come out himself."
"Yes, yes," agreed Karik.
He found amongst the pieces of the chest a small smooth board, wiped
the dust off it and laying it on a flat place said gently but plainly:
"Professor. Can you hear us? Come out on to the board. On to this" -
Karik knocked the board with his knuckle. "Don't be afraid. We won't move."
Several minutes passed.
The children sat perfectly still on their haunches and bending their
heads watched the board.
Then suddenly on the yellow surface a sort of midge appeared.
"There he is!" panted Valya.
"Wait a minute!" whispered Karik. "Don't puff like a steam engine. You
will blow him off the board."
Holding his breath, Karik bent lower over the board, screwing up one
eye he started to gaze fixedly at the tiny object which ran backwards and
forwards on the board.
"It is our Professor!" said Karik, holding his hand in front of his
mouth.
"Look, look," whispered Valya. "Can you see his hands moving? What a
teeny person. Were we really like that?"
"Even smaller," answered Karik. "Don't talk, sit and hold your tongue!"
Valya even stopped breathing.
Then suddenly in the complete silence they caught the sound of a tiny,
tiny squeak - weaker than a mosquito.
"He is saying something!" whispered Karik, bending his car to the
board.
"What is he saying?"
"I can't understand!"
Meanwhile the Professor jumped off the board to the ground and vanished
in the grass.
"He has gone away!"
"Where to?"
"We must just sit and wait."
After several minutes the old man appeared again. This time he was not
alone.
"Look, look," said Valya. "Something is attacking him."
The children bent over the board, but the longer they looked the less
they could understand: whether it was the Professor himself that was
dragging a dark moth after him or whether it was the moth that held the
Professor and would not let him get up on to the board.
The moth was struggling, napping its wings, and it knocked the
Professor off his feet.
"Let's help him," suggested Valya, "or this Rotton thing will eat him
up."
The Professor floundering on the edge of the board squeaked something.
"Do you hear, Karik? He is shouting, 'Help, help'."
Valya stretched out her hand to the moth.
"Wait a bit!" Karik stopped his sister. "He is saying something else."
But Valya seized the moth and with a whisk threw it aside, then raised
the board with the old man on it to her very eyes.
"He is evidently very upset about something!" announced Valya.
"The butterfly evidently hurt him badly."
The Professor raised his hands to the heavens and ran up and down the
board squeaking. He shook his fists and stamped his tiny feet.
"Don't be frightened," comforted Valya, "it won't hurt you. I've killed
it."
But this did not calm the old man. He waved his arms more furiously and
even appeared to spit several times. By all appearance it was no trifling
matter he was raging over.
"Well, all right, all right," Valya soothed him. "I'll find it in a
minute and squash it. I'll teach it not to hurt little things."
The Professor no sooner had heard these words than he clasped his hands
behind his head, staggered about and then started to jump up and down, so
impatiently squeaking all the time that Karik at once understood the great
man wished to say something very important.
"I'll squash it in a minute," shouted Valya.
"Now, don't go shouting," said Karik in a whisper. "You'll deafen him.
After all, he is tiny. Give him to me now!"
Karik carefully shook the old man from the board into the palm of his
hand and lifted him up to his ear.
"Oecophora" he heard the weak voice of the Professor. "A solitary
Oecophora. Such a specimen! Such a specimen!"
"He is saying something about Ecofor," whispered Karik.
"I expect that's what the powder is called," replied Valya quietly,
"but there is no more powder."
Karik looked at the palm of his hand and said slowly and clearly:
"Professor, what are we to do? The wind has scattered all the powder.
It wasn't our fault."
He again put his hand to his ear.
"That doesn't matter," squeaked the scarcely audible voice. "I have got
another gramme of the powder in my laboratory. Carry me home. But first find
the Oecophora . . . it is here . .'. in the grass."
"But what is this Oecophora?" asked Karik.
"The Oecophora," squeaked the old man, "is a moth. They live only in
the south. In our climate such moths are extremely rare - and Valya took it
away from me. You must most certainly find it."
"There you are, Valya," said Karik. "Look for the moth. You threw it
away and it is very rare. You must find it again."
Valya bent down, searched in the grass and picked up a tiny half-dead
moth by its wing.
"Is this it?" asked Karik, showing the moth to the Professor. "That's
it! that's it!" rejoiced the old man. "Take it home, only please be more
careful. Don't crush the wing!"
"But which direction should we take to go home?" asked Karik.
"First of all go straight to the pond, not turning in any way, and
beyond the pond you yourselves will see the road to the town."
Karik plucked the broad leaf of a plantain, deftly rolled up a twisted
funnel of this leaf and carefully placed in the bottom of this funnel the
great scholar - Professor Ivan Hermogenovitch Enotoff.
"And now let's run home," he said to Valya. "Only don't whatever you do
lose the valuable Oecophora moth."
"Wait. We cannot go through the town naked!"
"Good gracious!" shouted Karik in contempt.
"No, no," said Valya. "I won't go. It would be unpleasant."
"What do you mean unpleasant?" Karik was surprised.
"Well, all my bones are sticking out. Look how thin I am. Everybody
would laugh at me."
"That's nothing, we'll run there."
"No, no," insisted Valya, shaking her head. "We must dress."
Valya picked up the Professor's crumpled shirt from the ground and put
it over her head. Looking at his sister, Karik started laughing.
"What a scarecrow! Whatever do you think you look like?"
The old man's shirt reached down to Valya's very heels. The sleeves
hung down to her knees. All the same it was some sort of dress.
Valya started to roll up the sleeves, and she gathered up the shirt
tails like a train.
"What about you?" she demanded of Karik, not paying any attention to
his laughter. You put on something of the Professor's."
Karik decided to get into the old man's trousers.
He drew them on up to his very neck.
"Very becoming!" Valya approved.
Swamped in the trousers, Karik made several steps, stumbled and fell.
Fortunately he was able to hold up the hand in which the Professor was in or
else he would certainly have lost or squashed the poor chap.
"Turn up the legs!" advised Valya, helping her brother to get up and
wrestle with the trousers.
Karik did this.
At last the dressing was finished.
Karik took his sister by the hand and they both, as if in a concert,
sang cheerfully:
FORWARD! The bugles blow
From battle most glorious.
Forward! and home will go,
The children victorious."
Beyond the pond, like an arrow, lay an asphalt road. It led to the
town.
An unexpected attack - Biology has its uses - Home again - Excitement
and pleasure - Elephants and fleas
IT WAS ALREADY EVENING BY THE TIME KARIK AND VALYA ENTERED the dark
streets of the town.
In the windows of the houses yellow lights were twinkling.
The streets were empty.
Somewhere far ahead children were shouting. They were evidently playing
at Cossacks and brigands.
Over the dark green public gardens called "The second five-year plan"
there rose up like a sort of blue rainbow the reflection of electric lights.
Music was to be heard there, swings creaked; people in the garden were
making noises and laughing: bells were ringing cheerfully and a trumpet
welcomed noisily.
"Amusements in the gardens!" said Karik, listening. "That means it is a
holiday today."
But when did we disappear?" asked Valya.
"Ages ago."
"A fortnight ago!" sighed Valya. "But somehow it seems years."
The gardens were not far from home.
"Let's run!" suggested Valya.
"Right you are!"
The children cheerfully dashed towards their home. But they had hardly
run more than a few steps when out of the gate of a big grey house jumped a
hairy, crooked-legged cur with a torn ear. Panting and barking, he threw
himself at Karik and Valya, trying to seize their legs.
Karik threw a stone at it. The cur whimpered and with its tail between
its legs vanished under the gate.
"Heh!" shouted someone behind the gate. "Who's hurting our Tusick?"
The gate creaked.
A crowd of rough children ran out into the street.
Karik and Valya stopped.
Holding his slipping trousers up with one hand and raising high above
his head the other hand in which was clutched the plantain leaf with the
Professor, Karik said:
"Your Tusick shouldn't attack people."
The children came closer and packed tightly round Karik and Valya. One
youngster in a waistcoat stuck his hands in his pockets up to the very
elbows, spat wickedly and looked them over from head to foot.
"Who are these people?" he demanded jeeringly. "What are they doing in
our street?"
"We - we are travellers!" said Valya, timidly.
The gang laughed.
"She is travelling with mother to market!" shouted one.
"What do you mean? This is the daughter of the actual seal which was on
Papanin's icefloe."
"Nothing of the sort! She is travelling to a circus!"
Karik frowned.
"Now look here," he said, putting one leg forward. "You let us go or
else. . . ."
"What'll happen?"
"You'll see soon enough!"
The urchins started to pull Valya by her long shirt, and Karik by the
Professor's wide trousers.
"Stop, please!" whimpered Valya. "We must get home. We have been away
for a long time."
"But where have you come from?"
"What's that got to do with you?" said Karik.
"Everything to do with us. In our orchard two scarecrows have
disappeared, one in a shirt and the other in trousers."
The gang laughed.
"Eh, chaps!" shouted one of them, "drag them into the orchard and let
them frighten the birds."
"Now push off!" said Karik, bravely.
He raised the hand with the Professor in it high above his head, rolled
his eyes and roared out in the queerest of voices:
Microga-a-aster nemo-o-o ru-umi"
The urchins looked at each other.
"Triungu-uli-i-na," wailed Valya.
"Car-r-rabus!" Karik ground his teeth.
Valya raised her arms above her head spreading out her fingers and
stamping her feet.
"Cor-r-rixa! Bewa-a-are of Corr-r-rixa!"
The urchins broke away suddenly.
"Oy, they're lunatics!" shouted one of the children in alarm.
In the darkness white patches of shirts flashed and right and left door
latches clicked.
The street was suddenly deserted.
"There you are," said Karik, breathing heavily, "biology has its uses.
But now let's run as quickly as possible so as to meet no more people. We
are evidently very like scarecrows."
With the wind whistling in their ears, Karik and Valya dashed along at
full speed. Houses, side streets, streets, blocks, gardens - all flashed by
exactly as in a cinema.
Here at last were the familiar green gates. The children flew into the
courtyard.
"You haven't lost the Professor?" demanded Valya, panting for breath.
Karik carefully unwrapped a corner of the leaf.
"He's there. He's sitting down."
The courtyard was empty.
The children raised their heads. The windows on the second floor were
alight. Through the curtains someone could be seen moving - granny or mother
- going from the table to the sideboard.
"They are laying supper!" whispered Valya.
"Oh! we mustn't be late for supper!" said Karik, "Come on !"
"Oy, Karik, this is terrible! Mother is sure to scold us, isn't she?"
"What next? Surely mother cannot be worse than a Pottery wasp?"
The children dashed on: jostling each other and racing each other, they
ran up the staircase and stopped at Flat 39.
Karik hastily pressed the white knob. Behind the door a bell rang.
After half a minute's silence, which seemed an age to the children,
hasty footsteps were heard. The door chain rattled. The door flung wide
open.
On the threshold was mother.
"You!" she shouted, and started to cry. "My little sparrows! Let me
kiss you!"
She started to squeeze the children to herself.
"Mother, stop! Wait!" shouted Valya, breaking away. "You will crush the
Professor."
"Little Valya, whatever is wrong with you?" lamented mother, and
started to cry even more.
"Stop, mother, don't cry!" said Karik seriously. "Better give us a
small, clean wine glass."
"A wine glass?"
"Well, yes!" Karik nodded his head. "We can put the Professor in a wine
glass, I am so afraid of losing him."
Mother threw up her hands.
"Both of them! Both mad! Whatever has happened?"
Bumping against chairs and knocking them over, mother dashed to the
telephone, tore off the receiver and shouted with a tearful voice:
"Ambulance! Immediately! Hurry up! What? What address? Ach, our
address?"
"Do stop, mother," said Karik, taking the telephone receiver away from
his mother. "He only needs a wine glass, and you are trying to get a whole
ambulance. He would get lost in the saloon of the ambulance and will wander
around it for years. Much better give us the glass."
Mother hesitated, frightened. She remembered that it is always better
to agree with lunatics than to argue with them. For this reason, not saying
another word, she got a clean wine glass out of the sideboard and wiping
away her tears gave it to Karik.
Holding her breath she waited to see what Karik would do. He unwrapped
the bruised plantain leaf and laying the wine glass on its side, said:
"Gross over into your crystal palace, Professor." Then suddenly mother
saw a tiny insect move with very small step along the green leaf and then
briskly run into the wine glass. Karik carefully turned the wine glass
upright and stood it on the table.
"Are you comfortable there?" he asked, and bent his ear to the very
edge of the glass.
In the glass something squeaked.
"All right," replied Karik, "I'll cover the palace with a clean
handkerchief and for a mattress I'll throw you a piece of cotton wool. Have
a good rest meanwhile!"
"Now I understand." Mother smiled through her tears. "This is some new
game. But whatever is the beetle you put in the glass?"
"Beetle?" Karik was most offended. "That's a nice business! . . . It is
very rude to call a Professor that."
"I understand!" Mother started to smile. "You call it a scholar."
"Not us, the whole world and not it but him."
"Very well then, show me! Let me see what you have got there."
Mother bent over the wine glass. She expected to see some sort of
trained insect.
"A ma-a-an!" she suddenly screamed with all her force.
"Well, no, mother, it isn't just a man," said Karik. "It's our
Professor Ivan Hermogenovitch. He invented a liquid which has made him tiny.
We were also like that, even smaller. Then we ate some enlarging powder and
became big again. There wasn't sufficient powder for the Professor. But he
has some more in his study. We'll get some immediately and make him big
again."
Mother listened to the children with amazement and at last realised
that they were not mad.
"But, children," she said, "the Professor's flat has been sealed up by
the militia. We shall have to wait till morning. Tell the Professor this!"
Karik distinctly and quietly repeated it all to the Professor.
"It doesn't matter, Karik," squeaked the old man cheerfully. "I've made
myself very comfortable here . . . wait till morning!"
Karik raised his head and said to mother, "Let's wait till morning."
In the wine glass something was again squeaking.
Karik listened and said:
"Sit down, mother. Ivan Hermogenovitch would like me to tell you
something."
Mother sat listening.
Karik coughed and then without hurrying started to tell about the
strange adventures of the three important travellers, on the ground and
under the ground, on the water and under the water, between sky and earth,
in the air, in the forests, on the mountains, in the caves and in the
crevices. And once again all three lived through their exploits in this
story: they once again battled bravely, floated in ships, flew through the
air and fell down deep, dark holes.
Listening to Karik, mother nodded her head, sometimes sobbing,
sometimes laughing, but most often listening with wide, open-frightened
eyes, not daring to breathe or to stir.
"My poor darlings!" mother exclaimed, wiping the tears away with a
handkerchief. "What a lot you have had to endure! How granny will take on
when she comes home and hears about your adventures."
"Do you know what, mother?" said Karik. "We had better not tell
granny."
Mother thought a little and smiled.
"You are right," she said. "Granny is delicate. It might be quite
harmful for her to listen to such a story. I'll tell her you were at your
Uncle Peter's. . . . But now, how can we entertain you? What would you like
to eat?"
"Oh, Mother!" said Valya. "We shall cat everything you've got."
Mother hustled around. Dishes started to clatter in the dining-room.
The gas burners started to hiss in the kitchen.
By the time the children had washed and dressed themselves, mother had
laid the table and there had appeared hot from the frying-pan bacon and eggs
followed by cold chicken, salad, cheese, mountains of soft delicious rolls
and all sorts of sardiny things.
Standing in front of the sideboard, as if in thought, mother opened a
glass door and took out a black bottle with a gold title on a white label -
"Port wine."
"It would be a good idea," said mother, "in such an event as this if we
drank a little wine with hot water."
When it was all ready everybody sat down.
"May I invite you to our table, Professor?" said Karik, and
triumphantly placed the wine glass between his plate and that of Valya.
Karik threw a crumb of cheese into the glass.
"Help yourself, Professor!" he said.
There was a squeaking in the glass.
"He wants some bread," said Valya, and dropped a crumb, of bread into
the wine glass.
"What about wine?" asked Mother. "How can we entertain the Professor to
wine?"
"I know!" Karik jumped up out of his chair. "We'll pour a drop into the
shell of a sunflower seed."
He ran out, got a sunflower seed and shelled it. Mother poured one drop
of port wine into the shell, and Karik cautiously slipped it down the side
of the tilted glass.
Soon the party became very jolly.
"Your health, Ivan Hermogenovitch!" shouted Karik, raising a tumbler of
hot water coloured with port wine.
"To our travels!" shouted Valya.
Everyone touched glasses, drank and ate.
The Professor did not waste his time either. He ate bread and cheese
and drank port wine.
Karik bent over to see how he was getting on and exclaimed:
"He's singing! What a good thing he is still small!"
* * * * * *
Soon the household was fast asleep.
Karik and Valya were quietly and evenly breathing in their clean beds,
whilst the Professor snored, comfortably curled up on his piece of cotton
wool in the wine glass.
For the first time for many days their sleep was calm and untroubled.
No dangers lurked around them any more.
* * * * * *
Next day the Professor was sitting in his study as if nothing had
happened to him.
Ten newspaper correspondents took his photograph and wrote about his
adventures in notebooks.
Shortly after there appeared in one of the papers a marvellous article
about everything, with a big portrait of Professor Ivan Hermogenovitch
Enotoff.
Someone spread the rumour that Professor Enotoff had discovered how to
change elephants into fleas, and then this was muddled up and it was said
"He makes elephants out of fleas."
Mind you, there may be a Professor who can make elephants out of fleas,
but I don't know him and I am not going to say anything about him, because I
never like to write about anything I have not seen with my own eyes.
_____________________________________
About the author:
The wonderful children's writer Yan Leopoldovich Larri (February 15,
1900 - March 18, 1977)- was born according to some encyclopedias in Riga,
but he himself mentions the Moscow region. He started his career as a
children's author in 1926.
After his book " The Country of the Happy" was published in 1931 his
name became blacklisted and later he was arrested. He spend 15 years in the
Gulag and was released only in 1956.
are now singing arc very real indeed, they are called Corixae minutissimae.
It's very touching music, isn't it?"
"Very!" replied Valya.
"Yes, indeed, they know how to sing, do these savage ruffians!" mused
the Professor.
"Ruffians?"
"I think it's a fair name for these water bugs. Gluttons and brigands
they are, but as talented as the legendary sirens."
"But how do they sing? A bug surely has no voice?"
"They sing with their feet," replied the old man. "At least they
produce music. On one of the front claws of the female bug there are
bristles like the teeth in a musical box. . . . The bug uses its second
front leg like the bow of a fiddle and produces music from these bristles."
Karik and Valya very much wanted to see the bug-violinists, but however
much they looked about they could not spot a single one of them.
The bugs were sitting somewhere in the water weed forest.
Meanwhile the Carrabus surged along under full sail towards the shore
which now could be seen coming nearer and nearer every minute.
Already rocks stuck up out of the water, and every now and then yellow
shoals appeared beneath them.
The grass forest edging the shore was now becoming plainer and plainer.
"Where shall we land?" asked Karik.
"Anywhere you like," replied the Professor, gazing at the shore. "A
little nearer or a little further is not very important - we shall have to
do a good bit of foot-slogging in any case."
Valya groaned.
"Have we really got to go on foot? Oh, how tired I am!"
"Don't worry, Valya, have patience," comforted the old man. "Our
journey, I hope, will finish at any time now. I too wish to get home as soon
as possible. I have students waiting for me in the university. The
examinations will soon be on!"
The Professor suddenly started laughing.
"If only my students could see me in this ship made of an oak leaf
sailing under sails made of flies' wings, whatever would they say? When you
think of it - any of them could put me in a waistcoat pocket. Ha, ha, ha!"
It was now midday.
Grating her bottom on the stones, the Carrabus gently came up towards
the beach and stopped, rocking in the light swell.
The voyagers got out on the beach.
Beyond the near line of forest there was sticking out the dark
mast-like landmark.
It looked as if they were standing right by it; as if they had just to
go through this one little wood and then it would be over.
Karik looked around and, having gazed sadly at the famous Carrabus,
waved his hand in farewell.
"Fare - ye - well, good ship Carrabus. Don't forget your Captain !"
"But I thought we were going to sail right up to the very landmark!"
said Valya.
"You thought wrong!" the Professor shrugged his shoulders.
"But why ever did we load the Carrabus with so much food?"
"Why ever?" Karik was offended. "If a gale had started to blow! or
suppose we had been cast away on some uninhabited water leaf island! What
would have we had to eat then?"
"True enough," said the Professor. "One must be far-sighted when
setting out on a voyage. It's far better to throw away what one does not
need than to die of hunger."
* * * * * *
For two to three hours the old man and the children sat at the edge of
the forest, rested and partook of a heavy meal.
The Professor got up and wiping his beard with a petal he ran as nimbly
as a small boy up the nearest hillock.
"There you are," he shouted, looking upwards. "Very good! Excellent!
Simply marvellous!"
The children also looked up.
Above the forest some sort of heavy, hairy animals were flying on
broad, seemingly-glass wings.
Was the Professor looking at these?
"Wasps!" yelled Karik.
"Not wasps, bumble bees!" corrected the Professor.
The dark and golden bumble bees circled over the thick foliage of the
grass forest, circled and alighted on some sort of strange tree which had
huge lilac-red hats on its summit. The bumble bees sat on these hats,
bustled into them and then soaring upwards flew off in the direction of the
landmark and there disappeared - apparently alighting on the ground.
The Professor came, took the children by the hand and, gazing at them
fixedly, said:
"Now I'll tell you, my dears! A very daring plan has flashed into my
mind. We can fly the rest of our journey on a bumble bee."
The children started in alarm.
"On a bumble bee? . . . I . . . I don't want to go on a bumble bee,"
said Valya. "I am afraid of them."
The Professor flung his arm around Valya's shoulder.
"Don't be frightened, my darling! This is quite safe. The larvae of the
May bug beetles always fly on honey bees, and the honey bees don't touch
them."
"But then it may be better to fly on a honey bee?" said -Karik.
The Professor shook his head.
"No, we cannot do it on honey bees! These bees would carry us into
their hives and that would be the end of us. But the bumble bees will carry
us straight to the landmark. They have evidently got a nest there. You see
the way they are all flying. These bumble bees will be much better for us
than any honey bee."
"No, all the same, I am frightened." Valya shook her head. "I..."
"Now, you shut up!" the Professor scolded her. "I'll tell you in detail
how the larvae of the Blister beetles travel on bees, and I hope that after
this you will stop being frightened."
The old man sat down on the hillock and, seating the children beside
him, began:
"I do beg of you, my dears, not to confuse the Blister beetle with the
May bug, just because these beetles are called May beetles. They are by no
means the same. This Blister beetle is an amazing creature. Insects as a
rule have three stages of life: the larva comes out of the egg, becomes a
cocoon and finally from the cocoon emerges the complete insect. Well, now,
the Blister beetle has four transformations: the egg, the Triungulina or
six-legged larva, the ordinary larva, the cocoon and the grown-up Blister
beetle. Remember Triungulina. Fabre calls this simply 'the louse.' Now these
lice or Triungulinae feed on bees' honey. . . . But how does it find the
combs? Who shows it the way to the bees? Who carries it into the hive?"
"Its mother!" suggested Valya.
"Well, it couldn't possibly depend on its mother," laughed the
Professor. "By the time the louse comes out of its egg its mother is no
longer in the land of the living. In order to get into the bees' nest the
Triungulina must get up into a flower and, hiding itself there, await a bee.
As soon as ever a bee comes into the flower the louse seizes its hairy coat
with its claws arid sticks on until the bee has carried it back home. Do you
understand, Valya? And what do you think now: the stupid Triungulina is not
frightened of making the trip, surely you wouldn't be frightened?"
"It's because the Triungulina is so stupid!" sighed Valya.
"Yes, you must chuck being such a coward, Valya," insisted Karik. "If
we don't fly on the bumble bee we shall have to go on foot, and it may take
us another three weeks and maybe a month. Yes, and goodness knows what may
happen to us. We may meet a thousand new dangers on that long journey. Some
beetle or other will bury us, or a caterpillar will crush us or a butterfly
will whisk us over a precipice. Surely it's much better on a bumble bee! . .
. And . . . and in any case pioneers mustn't be cowards."
"Well, all right, we'll go by bumble bee!" said Valya, in a shaky
voice. "What flower have we to climb up?"
"There you are, this one! Up to the red round ball which is 1 swinging
up there. It's red clover. The favourite flower of bumble bees."
The Professor and the children scrambled up the thick stem on to the
lilac-reddish hat of the clover and hid between its tube-like flowers, which
were hiding drops of clean, clear honey.
"Will the bumble bee come soon?" asked Valya.
"How am I to know?" answered Karik, in a whisper.
"Be quiet!" hissed the Professor.
They sat like that for more than an hour.
At last wings droned above their heads. A broad shadow came between
them and the sky just as if a cloud had covered up the sun.
Valya clung to her brother. Her heart hammered, arms and legs shook.
She wanted to say something but her lips would not move.
"Be ready!" said the Professor, in a scarcely audible voice.
Valya secretly squeezed Karik's hand.
The hum of the wings became louder and louder. A hairy bumble bee, with
its hair bristling out, circling down landed on the flower. It put out its
feet and at once started to eat.
What happened then neither Valya nor Karik could follow. The huge,
furry body came down around them like a heavy fur hat.
The children heard the stifled voice of the Professor:
"Hold on as tight as you can!"
They buried their hands in the fur and in another minute were flying
upwards in a whirlwind.
Queer soil - The Professor 'collects' a moth - Karik and Valya in the
plywood box - An expensive Oecophora - The Professor is packed up - Back to
the old world
THE WIND QUITE TOOK THE TRAVELLERS' BREATH AWAY. THE ground swayed
beneath them and fell away.
"Hold tighter!" yelled the Professor.
The children could hardly hear his voice. The even, heavy drumming of
the bumble bee's wings and the piercing whistle of the wind drowned
everything.
To begin with, the bumble bee flew high above the ground. But then it
seemed as if it was finding itself too heavy and was not happy. Small wonder
- three pairs of hands were gripping its hairy coat, three pairs of legs
were striking it in the body every time it made a sharp turn.
The bumble bee started to fling itself from side to side - evidently in
order to try and dislodge its uninvited passengers.
It flew on all the time getting lower and lower, every now and then
shaking itself; but it could not get rid of the heavy load.
Valya's head was swimming and her heart seemed gripped in iron bands.
The Professor took an anxious look at her. "If only the poor girl can
manage to hold on! If only her hands don't slip!"
Then suddenly the bumble bee beat its wings more furiously.
The wind whistled in the ears of the travellers.
It was plunging like an arrow towards the ground.
"Ah, what a pity if it lands before time," flashed through Karik's
brain. "We can only have got halfway there by now."
The earth came nearer every second. The old man and the children curled
up their legs tightly in order not to hit anything hard when they landed.
The tops of the grassy jungle came closer and closer.
And then - violent jolts - one, two, three. . . .
One more jolt and the travellers were thrown out of their fur cabin and
hurled along the ground.
Turning head over heels the children and the Professor rolled over and
over on some queer soil. It was blue in colour and very soft and spungy.
At last having rolled over for the last time the Professor caught hold
of the edge of a large smooth rock and managed to get on to his feet.
Holding on to the edge of the rock he moved around it, limping slightly.
"Odd," the old man muttered, feeling the flat smooth rock which seemed
as round as a millstone. "Whatever is this? And there's another similar
round rock . . . there's a third and yet a fourth. . . ."
The Professor managed with difficulty to clamber on to one of the rocks
and here gazed around himself. In front of him was a wide plain of the
strangest soil. It looked like a chess board. Even blue-coloured roads ran
across it from edge to edge. He leant over the edge of the rock and
carefully scrutinised its smooth, black, shining surface. Then suddenly a
wild guess flashed into his head.
"A button!" he clapped his hand to his forehead. "I am standing on a
button! Then the chess board soil and blue roads are . . . the very thing .
. . . Children!" he shouted to Karik and Valya, who were sitting on a slope
rubbing their bruised sides and knees. "Children, what do you think, we're
nearly home. This is my waistcoat!"
The children leaped up overjoyed.
"But the box? Where is the box with the enlarging powder?" demanded
Valya, impatiently.
The Professor, standing on the button, was attentively surveying the
neighbourhood surrounding the waistcoat. "Odd! Very odd," he shrugged his
shoulders. He looked around once again. Then he suddenly saw a gigantic
column lying on the ground. The further end of this lay far away towards the
west. The forest jungle was parted and a straight vista stretched along the
column to disappear in the blue distance as it joined the horizon.
"It's fallen down! fallen down, the rascal! and not more than ten
minutes ago."
"What has fallen?"
"Our landmark. However, this is no misfortune. We are already there.
The box must be just here . . . on the same side as the landmark is lying.
Follow me, my dears!"
Then the Professor boldly dashed along the edging of the waistcoat,
jumping over buttonholes and stumbling over threads. Following him hastened
Karik and Valya, jumping and skipping.
At the edge of the waistcoat they all stopped. In front of them the
grassy jungle was rustling.
"There it is!" yelled the Professor, stretching out his hand towards a
thick clump.
Through gaps in the jungle they could see a tall yellow building.
"Hurrah!" shouted the children cheerfully. Then holding hands they
dashed towards the box.
Panting and puffing, the Professor also ran up to the box.
"Well, there we are! There we are!" the Professor rubbed his hands with
excitement. "Our trials are over. And wasn't it a good thing we weren't
frightened of the bumble bee. This is simply incredible! We should never
have found the box on foot. Our landmark fell down a few minutes before our
arrival. Yes, indeed! To be fearless is the same as to be lucky!"
The Professor passed his hand over his bald head and continued, quite
moved by the events:
"So, my dears, in a few minutes we shall once again become big,
ordinary people. Here at the wall of this box ends our difficult and
dangerous journey. We are standing on the threshold of the big world. But
before we throw off this little world I would like to say a few words to
you. You have seen a lot in the past days but to tell you the truth you have
only started to look into one of the tiny corners of the little world. You
have just read a few pages out of the thick book entitled Nature. And these
pages, I might say, are by no means the most interesting. In the book of
nature there are other pages from which it is almost impossible to tear
oneself away.
"You have seen just a tiny part of the world we live in. It is small,
it is unnoticed, this part; we often pay it no attention at all. Yet it is a
very important part of the big world in which you and I will soon be living
again.
"Its life is closely knit with our lives, much, much closer than many
people are aware of.
"In this little world there are our friends and there are also our
enemies.
"We need to know them both.
"We must come back again here sometime. We must come back with a big
expedition equipped from head to foot, and we must conquer this
too-little-known world.
"For this expedition we shall not have recourse to a lilliput liquid.
We shall come with microscopes, with the great knowledge and the experience
of numbers of scientists.
"Our equipment will be patience.
"But we must talk about this in detail at home when we have got back
there. But now let us proceed with something we must not any longer
postpone.
"To make ourselves big again!"
The Professor then stepped to the wall of the plywood box. Looking
through the solitary window he announced cheerfully, rubbing his hands:
"Everything is there. Climb in, my friends, one at a time. The box with
the enlarging powder is in the right-hand corner. Carry on!"
Karik and Valya after him climbed through the little window.
The Professor helped them through and was just about to climb through
himself when suddenly a moth with shining wings of a metallic hue alighted
on the wall of the box.
It was a very small moth; in all only a few times the size of the
Professor.
The old man took a look at it and froze in his tracks.
"An Olive Oecophora," he whispered, taking a deep breath with
excitement.
He pressed close to the plywood wall and was all on tenterhooks, like a
hunter who has spotted nearby some rare wild beast.
The Oecophora, paying no attention to the Professor, crawled past him
along the wall.
The old man's heart beat and hammered. "Stop!" he cried, and jumping up
high he seized the Oecophora by the wing.
The moth tried to escape and they fell heavily together to the ground.
The moth started hitting out, waved its free wing up and down, and
pressed the Professor's chest with its feet; but the old man would not let
go.
Lying on the ground under the butterfly he made every effort to hold on
to his valuable prey.
He forgot about everything else in the world.
Yes, and it was not to be wondered at.
In his hands there was struggling an Olive Oecophora - a moth rare in
our climate, the very smallest specimen of the Lepidopterae, or scale-winged
insects.
How it came to appear by the side of the plywood box - a moth native of
warm climates, the Professor never at this moment questioned. He remembered
only one thing: in his ample collection in the moth cabinets where under
glass sitting on pins with their wings spread out were carpet moths, fur
moths, hair, grain, cherry, hawthorn, burdock and field moths, in this
collection there had never been an Olive Oecophora.
And now there would be one.
"Yes, you just wait. Ah, what a beauty !" the old man scolded the
stubborn moth which dragged him along the ground, trying in every way to get
free.
"Yes, now then . . . now then . . . that's enough . . . Now then,
stop!"
* * * * *
Whilst the Professor was wrestling with the Olive Oecophora,
Karik and Valya had reached the right-hand corner of the chest where
the little box with the enlarging powder was standing. Gradually their eyes
became used to the semi-darkness. They looked round the empty room with the
bare walls. Through the round little window there fell on the floor a
narrow, slanting beam of sunlight. Golden dust swam in the sunlight and the
beam appeared full of life.
"It is jolly here. Isn't it, Karik?" said Valya, looking around. Karik
not replying walked over to the corner in which there was standing a huge
trunk-like white box covered with a thick sheet of parchment.
"There it is!" said Karik. He clambered up to the edge of the box,
drummed with his bare heels on its sides and stretched out his hand to
Valya.
"Climb up here! Come on!"
Valya scrambled up and sat beside Karik.
Karik bent down and tore the parchment lid off the box.
"Eat! And become big again!" he announced in a loud voice, bending over
the box.
"Oughtn't we to wait for the Professor?" asked Valya.
"No - and do you know what. Let's get big before the Professor. Think
how interesting that will be. We shall already be big whilst he is still
tiny."
"All right ! I agree," said Valya, and quickly plunged her hand beneath
the parchment and fetched out a whole handful of glistening powder.
She put her hand up to her mouth, opened it and then suddenly taking
her hand away turned to Karik:
"How much of it should one eat to get big again?"
"Eat plenty of it."
"But supposing we grow very big. . . . it would not be very pleasant to
be a girl of giant size."
"Don't worry, eat it up!" replied Karik calmly, "if you do grow too
much - you can drink some reducing liquid and get yourself right again.
That's all. Look how I am eating. Like this!"
Then Karik poured a whole fistful of powder into his mouth.
"Ready!"
Valya swallowed the powder and said with a frown:
"The reducing liquid was much nicer."
"No, there is nothing wrong with the powder. It is a little acid."
Karik jumped down to the floor and pulled Valya after him.
"Now we must clear out of here quickly."
"Why?"
"Why, because it will soon become tight."
"Why tight?"
"Why, why, why?" Karik got angry. "For the simple reason that we are
going to turn into big people . . . you see . . . Ow!" he shouted, having
bitten his tongue. His head had hit the ceiling.
With a loud crack the chest split open. The bright daylight blinded
Karik. He screwed his eyes up, rubbed them and once more opened them.
Before him stood Valya. She had not changed in the slightest. However,
everything around had become quite different: the green jungle had turned
back into ordinary grass. On the grass lay a thick pole with a red rag faded
in the sun and the gnats had once again become gnats.
"Isn't it grand!" said Valya. "Just think, we need no longer be
frightened of a gnat. Just one clap of the hand and it's a goner."
"Wait!" Karik interrupted her in a worried voice. "Where is the box
with the powder?"
They looked down at their feet.
In the grass were the broken pieces of the chest. Amid these pieces lay
the box turned over and alongside it a tiny parchment sheet. The wind was
blowing a white dust over the grass.
"That's our enlarging powder!" shouted Karik in alarm, and dashed to
catch the dust.
But it was already too late.
"Now what will happen?" asked Valya, anxiously. "Does it mean that our
Professor will have to stay small for ever? Good gracious, maybe we have
squashed him already."
"Don't you get fussed!" Karik yelled at her. "What's the use of it and
you may in fact squash him."
Valya froze in her place, but Karik squatting on his haunches started
to rake the cool grass with his fingers spaced out like the teeth of a comb.
But it was all in vain.
"Karik," said Valya, "he must be here somewhere and he would surely
hear us. Let him come out himself."
"Yes, yes," agreed Karik.
He found amongst the pieces of the chest a small smooth board, wiped
the dust off it and laying it on a flat place said gently but plainly:
"Professor. Can you hear us? Come out on to the board. On to this" -
Karik knocked the board with his knuckle. "Don't be afraid. We won't move."
Several minutes passed.
The children sat perfectly still on their haunches and bending their
heads watched the board.
Then suddenly on the yellow surface a sort of midge appeared.
"There he is!" panted Valya.
"Wait a minute!" whispered Karik. "Don't puff like a steam engine. You
will blow him off the board."
Holding his breath, Karik bent lower over the board, screwing up one
eye he started to gaze fixedly at the tiny object which ran backwards and
forwards on the board.
"It is our Professor!" said Karik, holding his hand in front of his
mouth.
"Look, look," whispered Valya. "Can you see his hands moving? What a
teeny person. Were we really like that?"
"Even smaller," answered Karik. "Don't talk, sit and hold your tongue!"
Valya even stopped breathing.
Then suddenly in the complete silence they caught the sound of a tiny,
tiny squeak - weaker than a mosquito.
"He is saying something!" whispered Karik, bending his car to the
board.
"What is he saying?"
"I can't understand!"
Meanwhile the Professor jumped off the board to the ground and vanished
in the grass.
"He has gone away!"
"Where to?"
"We must just sit and wait."
After several minutes the old man appeared again. This time he was not
alone.
"Look, look," said Valya. "Something is attacking him."
The children bent over the board, but the longer they looked the less
they could understand: whether it was the Professor himself that was
dragging a dark moth after him or whether it was the moth that held the
Professor and would not let him get up on to the board.
The moth was struggling, napping its wings, and it knocked the
Professor off his feet.
"Let's help him," suggested Valya, "or this Rotton thing will eat him
up."
The Professor floundering on the edge of the board squeaked something.
"Do you hear, Karik? He is shouting, 'Help, help'."
Valya stretched out her hand to the moth.
"Wait a bit!" Karik stopped his sister. "He is saying something else."
But Valya seized the moth and with a whisk threw it aside, then raised
the board with the old man on it to her very eyes.
"He is evidently very upset about something!" announced Valya.
"The butterfly evidently hurt him badly."
The Professor raised his hands to the heavens and ran up and down the
board squeaking. He shook his fists and stamped his tiny feet.
"Don't be frightened," comforted Valya, "it won't hurt you. I've killed
it."
But this did not calm the old man. He waved his arms more furiously and
even appeared to spit several times. By all appearance it was no trifling
matter he was raging over.
"Well, all right, all right," Valya soothed him. "I'll find it in a
minute and squash it. I'll teach it not to hurt little things."
The Professor no sooner had heard these words than he clasped his hands
behind his head, staggered about and then started to jump up and down, so
impatiently squeaking all the time that Karik at once understood the great
man wished to say something very important.
"I'll squash it in a minute," shouted Valya.
"Now, don't go shouting," said Karik in a whisper. "You'll deafen him.
After all, he is tiny. Give him to me now!"
Karik carefully shook the old man from the board into the palm of his
hand and lifted him up to his ear.
"Oecophora" he heard the weak voice of the Professor. "A solitary
Oecophora. Such a specimen! Such a specimen!"
"He is saying something about Ecofor," whispered Karik.
"I expect that's what the powder is called," replied Valya quietly,
"but there is no more powder."
Karik looked at the palm of his hand and said slowly and clearly:
"Professor, what are we to do? The wind has scattered all the powder.
It wasn't our fault."
He again put his hand to his ear.
"That doesn't matter," squeaked the scarcely audible voice. "I have got
another gramme of the powder in my laboratory. Carry me home. But first find
the Oecophora . . . it is here . .'. in the grass."
"But what is this Oecophora?" asked Karik.
"The Oecophora," squeaked the old man, "is a moth. They live only in
the south. In our climate such moths are extremely rare - and Valya took it
away from me. You must most certainly find it."
"There you are, Valya," said Karik. "Look for the moth. You threw it
away and it is very rare. You must find it again."
Valya bent down, searched in the grass and picked up a tiny half-dead
moth by its wing.
"Is this it?" asked Karik, showing the moth to the Professor. "That's
it! that's it!" rejoiced the old man. "Take it home, only please be more
careful. Don't crush the wing!"
"But which direction should we take to go home?" asked Karik.
"First of all go straight to the pond, not turning in any way, and
beyond the pond you yourselves will see the road to the town."
Karik plucked the broad leaf of a plantain, deftly rolled up a twisted
funnel of this leaf and carefully placed in the bottom of this funnel the
great scholar - Professor Ivan Hermogenovitch Enotoff.
"And now let's run home," he said to Valya. "Only don't whatever you do
lose the valuable Oecophora moth."
"Wait. We cannot go through the town naked!"
"Good gracious!" shouted Karik in contempt.
"No, no," said Valya. "I won't go. It would be unpleasant."
"What do you mean unpleasant?" Karik was surprised.
"Well, all my bones are sticking out. Look how thin I am. Everybody
would laugh at me."
"That's nothing, we'll run there."
"No, no," insisted Valya, shaking her head. "We must dress."
Valya picked up the Professor's crumpled shirt from the ground and put
it over her head. Looking at his sister, Karik started laughing.
"What a scarecrow! Whatever do you think you look like?"
The old man's shirt reached down to Valya's very heels. The sleeves
hung down to her knees. All the same it was some sort of dress.
Valya started to roll up the sleeves, and she gathered up the shirt
tails like a train.
"What about you?" she demanded of Karik, not paying any attention to
his laughter. You put on something of the Professor's."
Karik decided to get into the old man's trousers.
He drew them on up to his very neck.
"Very becoming!" Valya approved.
Swamped in the trousers, Karik made several steps, stumbled and fell.
Fortunately he was able to hold up the hand in which the Professor was in or
else he would certainly have lost or squashed the poor chap.
"Turn up the legs!" advised Valya, helping her brother to get up and
wrestle with the trousers.
Karik did this.
At last the dressing was finished.
Karik took his sister by the hand and they both, as if in a concert,
sang cheerfully:
FORWARD! The bugles blow
From battle most glorious.
Forward! and home will go,
The children victorious."
Beyond the pond, like an arrow, lay an asphalt road. It led to the
town.
An unexpected attack - Biology has its uses - Home again - Excitement
and pleasure - Elephants and fleas
IT WAS ALREADY EVENING BY THE TIME KARIK AND VALYA ENTERED the dark
streets of the town.
In the windows of the houses yellow lights were twinkling.
The streets were empty.
Somewhere far ahead children were shouting. They were evidently playing
at Cossacks and brigands.
Over the dark green public gardens called "The second five-year plan"
there rose up like a sort of blue rainbow the reflection of electric lights.
Music was to be heard there, swings creaked; people in the garden were
making noises and laughing: bells were ringing cheerfully and a trumpet
welcomed noisily.
"Amusements in the gardens!" said Karik, listening. "That means it is a
holiday today."
But when did we disappear?" asked Valya.
"Ages ago."
"A fortnight ago!" sighed Valya. "But somehow it seems years."
The gardens were not far from home.
"Let's run!" suggested Valya.
"Right you are!"
The children cheerfully dashed towards their home. But they had hardly
run more than a few steps when out of the gate of a big grey house jumped a
hairy, crooked-legged cur with a torn ear. Panting and barking, he threw
himself at Karik and Valya, trying to seize their legs.
Karik threw a stone at it. The cur whimpered and with its tail between
its legs vanished under the gate.
"Heh!" shouted someone behind the gate. "Who's hurting our Tusick?"
The gate creaked.
A crowd of rough children ran out into the street.
Karik and Valya stopped.
Holding his slipping trousers up with one hand and raising high above
his head the other hand in which was clutched the plantain leaf with the
Professor, Karik said:
"Your Tusick shouldn't attack people."
The children came closer and packed tightly round Karik and Valya. One
youngster in a waistcoat stuck his hands in his pockets up to the very
elbows, spat wickedly and looked them over from head to foot.
"Who are these people?" he demanded jeeringly. "What are they doing in
our street?"
"We - we are travellers!" said Valya, timidly.
The gang laughed.
"She is travelling with mother to market!" shouted one.
"What do you mean? This is the daughter of the actual seal which was on
Papanin's icefloe."
"Nothing of the sort! She is travelling to a circus!"
Karik frowned.
"Now look here," he said, putting one leg forward. "You let us go or
else. . . ."
"What'll happen?"
"You'll see soon enough!"
The urchins started to pull Valya by her long shirt, and Karik by the
Professor's wide trousers.
"Stop, please!" whimpered Valya. "We must get home. We have been away
for a long time."
"But where have you come from?"
"What's that got to do with you?" said Karik.
"Everything to do with us. In our orchard two scarecrows have
disappeared, one in a shirt and the other in trousers."
The gang laughed.
"Eh, chaps!" shouted one of them, "drag them into the orchard and let
them frighten the birds."
"Now push off!" said Karik, bravely.
He raised the hand with the Professor in it high above his head, rolled
his eyes and roared out in the queerest of voices:
Microga-a-aster nemo-o-o ru-umi"
The urchins looked at each other.
"Triungu-uli-i-na," wailed Valya.
"Car-r-rabus!" Karik ground his teeth.
Valya raised her arms above her head spreading out her fingers and
stamping her feet.
"Cor-r-rixa! Bewa-a-are of Corr-r-rixa!"
The urchins broke away suddenly.
"Oy, they're lunatics!" shouted one of the children in alarm.
In the darkness white patches of shirts flashed and right and left door
latches clicked.
The street was suddenly deserted.
"There you are," said Karik, breathing heavily, "biology has its uses.
But now let's run as quickly as possible so as to meet no more people. We
are evidently very like scarecrows."
With the wind whistling in their ears, Karik and Valya dashed along at
full speed. Houses, side streets, streets, blocks, gardens - all flashed by
exactly as in a cinema.
Here at last were the familiar green gates. The children flew into the
courtyard.
"You haven't lost the Professor?" demanded Valya, panting for breath.
Karik carefully unwrapped a corner of the leaf.
"He's there. He's sitting down."
The courtyard was empty.
The children raised their heads. The windows on the second floor were
alight. Through the curtains someone could be seen moving - granny or mother
- going from the table to the sideboard.
"They are laying supper!" whispered Valya.
"Oh! we mustn't be late for supper!" said Karik, "Come on !"
"Oy, Karik, this is terrible! Mother is sure to scold us, isn't she?"
"What next? Surely mother cannot be worse than a Pottery wasp?"
The children dashed on: jostling each other and racing each other, they
ran up the staircase and stopped at Flat 39.
Karik hastily pressed the white knob. Behind the door a bell rang.
After half a minute's silence, which seemed an age to the children,
hasty footsteps were heard. The door chain rattled. The door flung wide
open.
On the threshold was mother.
"You!" she shouted, and started to cry. "My little sparrows! Let me
kiss you!"
She started to squeeze the children to herself.
"Mother, stop! Wait!" shouted Valya, breaking away. "You will crush the
Professor."
"Little Valya, whatever is wrong with you?" lamented mother, and
started to cry even more.
"Stop, mother, don't cry!" said Karik seriously. "Better give us a
small, clean wine glass."
"A wine glass?"
"Well, yes!" Karik nodded his head. "We can put the Professor in a wine
glass, I am so afraid of losing him."
Mother threw up her hands.
"Both of them! Both mad! Whatever has happened?"
Bumping against chairs and knocking them over, mother dashed to the
telephone, tore off the receiver and shouted with a tearful voice:
"Ambulance! Immediately! Hurry up! What? What address? Ach, our
address?"
"Do stop, mother," said Karik, taking the telephone receiver away from
his mother. "He only needs a wine glass, and you are trying to get a whole
ambulance. He would get lost in the saloon of the ambulance and will wander
around it for years. Much better give us the glass."
Mother hesitated, frightened. She remembered that it is always better
to agree with lunatics than to argue with them. For this reason, not saying
another word, she got a clean wine glass out of the sideboard and wiping
away her tears gave it to Karik.
Holding her breath she waited to see what Karik would do. He unwrapped
the bruised plantain leaf and laying the wine glass on its side, said:
"Gross over into your crystal palace, Professor." Then suddenly mother
saw a tiny insect move with very small step along the green leaf and then
briskly run into the wine glass. Karik carefully turned the wine glass
upright and stood it on the table.
"Are you comfortable there?" he asked, and bent his ear to the very
edge of the glass.
In the glass something squeaked.
"All right," replied Karik, "I'll cover the palace with a clean
handkerchief and for a mattress I'll throw you a piece of cotton wool. Have
a good rest meanwhile!"
"Now I understand." Mother smiled through her tears. "This is some new
game. But whatever is the beetle you put in the glass?"
"Beetle?" Karik was most offended. "That's a nice business! . . . It is
very rude to call a Professor that."
"I understand!" Mother started to smile. "You call it a scholar."
"Not us, the whole world and not it but him."
"Very well then, show me! Let me see what you have got there."
Mother bent over the wine glass. She expected to see some sort of
trained insect.
"A ma-a-an!" she suddenly screamed with all her force.
"Well, no, mother, it isn't just a man," said Karik. "It's our
Professor Ivan Hermogenovitch. He invented a liquid which has made him tiny.
We were also like that, even smaller. Then we ate some enlarging powder and
became big again. There wasn't sufficient powder for the Professor. But he
has some more in his study. We'll get some immediately and make him big
again."
Mother listened to the children with amazement and at last realised
that they were not mad.
"But, children," she said, "the Professor's flat has been sealed up by
the militia. We shall have to wait till morning. Tell the Professor this!"
Karik distinctly and quietly repeated it all to the Professor.
"It doesn't matter, Karik," squeaked the old man cheerfully. "I've made
myself very comfortable here . . . wait till morning!"
Karik raised his head and said to mother, "Let's wait till morning."
In the wine glass something was again squeaking.
Karik listened and said:
"Sit down, mother. Ivan Hermogenovitch would like me to tell you
something."
Mother sat listening.
Karik coughed and then without hurrying started to tell about the
strange adventures of the three important travellers, on the ground and
under the ground, on the water and under the water, between sky and earth,
in the air, in the forests, on the mountains, in the caves and in the
crevices. And once again all three lived through their exploits in this
story: they once again battled bravely, floated in ships, flew through the
air and fell down deep, dark holes.
Listening to Karik, mother nodded her head, sometimes sobbing,
sometimes laughing, but most often listening with wide, open-frightened
eyes, not daring to breathe or to stir.
"My poor darlings!" mother exclaimed, wiping the tears away with a
handkerchief. "What a lot you have had to endure! How granny will take on
when she comes home and hears about your adventures."
"Do you know what, mother?" said Karik. "We had better not tell
granny."
Mother thought a little and smiled.
"You are right," she said. "Granny is delicate. It might be quite
harmful for her to listen to such a story. I'll tell her you were at your
Uncle Peter's. . . . But now, how can we entertain you? What would you like
to eat?"
"Oh, Mother!" said Valya. "We shall cat everything you've got."
Mother hustled around. Dishes started to clatter in the dining-room.
The gas burners started to hiss in the kitchen.
By the time the children had washed and dressed themselves, mother had
laid the table and there had appeared hot from the frying-pan bacon and eggs
followed by cold chicken, salad, cheese, mountains of soft delicious rolls
and all sorts of sardiny things.
Standing in front of the sideboard, as if in thought, mother opened a
glass door and took out a black bottle with a gold title on a white label -
"Port wine."
"It would be a good idea," said mother, "in such an event as this if we
drank a little wine with hot water."
When it was all ready everybody sat down.
"May I invite you to our table, Professor?" said Karik, and
triumphantly placed the wine glass between his plate and that of Valya.
Karik threw a crumb of cheese into the glass.
"Help yourself, Professor!" he said.
There was a squeaking in the glass.
"He wants some bread," said Valya, and dropped a crumb, of bread into
the wine glass.
"What about wine?" asked Mother. "How can we entertain the Professor to
wine?"
"I know!" Karik jumped up out of his chair. "We'll pour a drop into the
shell of a sunflower seed."
He ran out, got a sunflower seed and shelled it. Mother poured one drop
of port wine into the shell, and Karik cautiously slipped it down the side
of the tilted glass.
Soon the party became very jolly.
"Your health, Ivan Hermogenovitch!" shouted Karik, raising a tumbler of
hot water coloured with port wine.
"To our travels!" shouted Valya.
Everyone touched glasses, drank and ate.
The Professor did not waste his time either. He ate bread and cheese
and drank port wine.
Karik bent over to see how he was getting on and exclaimed:
"He's singing! What a good thing he is still small!"
* * * * * *
Soon the household was fast asleep.
Karik and Valya were quietly and evenly breathing in their clean beds,
whilst the Professor snored, comfortably curled up on his piece of cotton
wool in the wine glass.
For the first time for many days their sleep was calm and untroubled.
No dangers lurked around them any more.
* * * * * *
Next day the Professor was sitting in his study as if nothing had
happened to him.
Ten newspaper correspondents took his photograph and wrote about his
adventures in notebooks.
Shortly after there appeared in one of the papers a marvellous article
about everything, with a big portrait of Professor Ivan Hermogenovitch
Enotoff.
Someone spread the rumour that Professor Enotoff had discovered how to
change elephants into fleas, and then this was muddled up and it was said
"He makes elephants out of fleas."
Mind you, there may be a Professor who can make elephants out of fleas,
but I don't know him and I am not going to say anything about him, because I
never like to write about anything I have not seen with my own eyes.
_____________________________________
About the author:
The wonderful children's writer Yan Leopoldovich Larri (February 15,
1900 - March 18, 1977)- was born according to some encyclopedias in Riga,
but he himself mentions the Moscow region. He started his career as a
children's author in 1926.
After his book " The Country of the Happy" was published in 1931 his
name became blacklisted and later he was arrested. He spend 15 years in the
Gulag and was released only in 1956.