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        Translated by Robert Daglish

     Lyrical and  humorous, deeply national  but  concerned  with  the human
condition  at  large, often  about  children but mainly  for adults,  Fazil'
Iskander's  writing  abounds,  like  his  native  Abkhazia,  in  colour  and
contrasts.

     It is merriment and toil that make the earth beautiful, Iskander writes
in  one of his  stories. These qualities are also typical of his characters,
most of them drawn from his fellow countrymen, ever  a mixture of  gallantry
and guile, humour and hard work.

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     Let's  just  talk. Let's talk about things we don't have to talk about,
pleasant things. Let's talk about some of the amusing sides of human nature,
as  embodied  in  people  we  know.  There is  nothing  more  enjoyable than
discussing  certain  odd habits  of  our acquaintances.  Because,  you  see,
talking  about them makes us  aware of our own healthy normality. It implies
that we, too, could indulge in such idiosyncrasies if we liked, but we don't
like because we have no use for them. Or have we?
     One of  the  rather amusing features of human nature is that each of us
tries to live up to an image imposed upon him by other people.
     Now here is an example from my own experience.
     When I  was at school the whole  class was  one day  given  the task of
turning a patch of seaside  wasteland into  a  place  of  cultured  rest and
recreation. Strange though it may seem, we actually succeeded.
     We  planted out the  patch with eucalyptus seedlings, using the cluster
method, which was an advanced method for those times. Admittedly, when there
were not  many seedlings and too much wasteland  left, we began  to put only
one seedling  in each hole, thus giving the  new, progressive method and the
old method the chance to show their worth in free competition.
     In a few years a beautiful  grove of eucalyptus trees  grew  up on that
wasteland and it was quite impossible  to tell where the clusters  and where
the single seedlings had been.  Then it  was said that the single seedlings,
being in direct proximity to the clusters and envying them with a thoroughly
good sort of envy, had made an effort and caught up.
     Be  that  as it may,  when  I come  back  to  my  hometown nowadays,  I
sometimes take  it easy in the  shade  of those now  enormous trees and feel
like  a sentimental  patriarch. Eucalyptus  grows very  fast,  so anyone who
wants to feel like  a sentimental patriarch can plant  a eucalyptus tree and
live to  see its  crown towering high  above him, its leaves tinkling in the
breeze like the toys on a New Year tree.
     But that's not the point. The point is that on that far-off day when we
were reclaiming  the wasteland one of the  boys drew attention to the  way I
held the hand barrow we were using  for carrying soil.  The P. T. instructor
in charge of us also noticed the  way I held the stretcher. Everyone noticed
the way I held the stretcher. Some pretext for amusement had to be found and
found it was.  It  turned  out that I  was  holding  the  stretcher like  an
Inveterate Idler.
     This was the first  crystal to form and it started a  vigourous process
of crystallisation  which  I  did all I  could to  assist,  so as  to become
finally crystallised in the preordained direction.
     Now  everything contributed  to the  building  of  my image.  If  I sat
through a  mathematics  test not troubling anyone and calmly  waiting for my
neighbour to  solve the problem everyone attributed this not to my stupidity
but to sheer idleness. Naturally I made no attempt to disillusion them. When
for  Russian composition  I would  write  something straight  out of my head
without looking  anything  up in textbooks and cribs, this was taken as even
more convincing proof of my incorrigible idleness.
     In order to preserve  my  image I  deliberately neglected my duties  as
monitor. Everyone soon  became so used to this that when any other member of
the  form forgot  to  perform his monitorial duties,  the teacher, with  the
whole form  voicing its approval in the  background, would make  me wipe the
blackboard or carry the physics apparatus into the room.
     Further development of  my image compelled me to give up  homework. But
to  maintain the suspense  of the situation I had to show reasonable results
in my schoolwork. So every day, as  soon as  instruction in the humanitarian
subjects began, I would lean forward on my desk and pretend to be dozing. If
the teacher protested, I would say  I  was ill but did  not want to miss the
lesson, so as not to get left behind.  In this reclining  attitude  I  would
listen attentively to  what the teacher was saying without being diverted by
any of the usual pranks, and try to  remember everything he told us. After a
lesson  on  any new material, if there  was still some  time  left,  I would
volunteer to answer questions in advance for the next lesson.
     The teachers liked this because it flattered  their pedagogical vanity.
It meant that they  could explain  their subject so well and so clearly that
the  pupils  were  able  to  take it all  in without even referring  to  the
textbooks.
     The teacher would put down a good mark for me in the register, the bell
would ring and everyone would  be satisfied. And nobody  but I ever realised
that the information I had  just memorised was about to romp out of  my head
just as the bar romps out  of the  hands  of the weight lifter the moment he
hears the umpire's approving "Up!"
     To  be  perfectly  accurate,  I  had  better  add  that sometimes, when
reclining on my desk pretending to doze, I would actually fall into a  doze,
though I could  still  hear the voice  of  the  teacher.  Much  later  on  I
discovered that some people  use the same, or  almost the  same, method  for
learning languages. I believe it would not  appear too immodest if I were to
say  that  I  am the inventor  of  this  method.  I  make  no mention of the
occasions when I actually fell asleep because they were rare.
     After a while rumours concerning this Inveterate Idler reached the ears
of our headmaster and for some reason he decided that it was I who had taken
the telescope that had disappeared six months ago from the geography room. I
don't know why he drew  this  conclusion. Possibly he reasoned that the very
idea of  even a visual reduction of distance would appeal most  of all to  a
victim of sloth.  I  cannot think  of any other  explanation.  Luckily,  the
telescope was recovered soon afterwards, but from then on people kept an eye
on me, as if I might get up to some trick at any moment.
     It soon turned out, however, that I had  no such intentions,  and that,
on the contrary, I was a very  obedient and conscientious slacker. What  was
more, slacker though I was, I seemed to be getting quite decent results.
     Then they decided  to  apply to  me  a method of concentrated education
that was fashionable in those years. The essence of this method was that all
the teachers in the school  would suddenly concentrate on one backward pupil
and, taking  advantage of his confusion, turn him into a shining example  of
scholastic attainment.
     It  was  assumed  that  other  backward  pupils,  envying  him  with  a
thoroughly Good Envy, would make an effort to rise to his level.  Just  like
the singly planted eucalyptus seedlings.
     The effect of the method depended on the suddenness of the mass attack.
Otherwise  the pupil  might succeed in  slipping out  of range  or  actually
discredit the method itself.
     As  a  rule the experiment achieved its purpose. Before the hurly-burly
caused by the mass attack could disperse, the reformed pupil  would take his
place  with  the  best in  the  class, impudently  wearing  the smile  of  a
despoiled virgin.
     When this happened, the teachers, envying one another with perhaps  not
quite  such a  Good Envy,  would  zealously  follow his  progress  in  their
markbook,  and,  of  course,  each  teacher  would try  to  ensure  that the
victorious upward curve of scholastic attainment was not  broken within  the
limits of his subject.
     Well,  either  they piled  into me too enthusiastically,  or  else they
forgot what my own fairly respectable level had been before they started but
when  they  began to analyse the  results of their  experiment it turned out
that they had trained me up to the level of a potential medal-winner.
     "You  could  pull off  a silver,"  my class-mistress  announced  rather
dazedly.
     The  potential  medal-winners   were   a  small   ambitious  caste   of
untouchables. Even the teachers were  somewhat  afraid of  them. It would be
their duty to  defend the honour of the school, and to damage the reputation
of a potential medal-winner  was equivalent to threatening the honour of the
school. Every potential medal-winner  had  at some time by  his own  efforts
achieved distinction in one of the basic subjects and  had then been coached
to the necessary degree of perfection in all the rest.
     So, with my school diploma sewn into my jacket pocket  together with my
money I got  into a  train and  set off  for Moscow. At that  time the train
journey  from Abkhazia to Moscow took three days.  I  had  plenty of time to
think things over, and of all the possible variants for my future  education
I chose the philosophical faculty of the university. My choice may have been
decided by the following circumstance.
     About two years before this I had exchanged some books with a friend of
mine. I  had given  him Conan Doyle's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and
he  had given me  an odd  volume of Hegel's Lectures  on Aesthetics.  I  had
already been told that  Hegel was simultaneously both a  philosopher  and  a
genius and that, in those far-off years, was a strong  enough recommendation
for me.
     Since I had not yet heard that Hegel was a difficult  author to read, I
understood nearly everything I read. If I came across a paragraph with long,
incomprehensible words, I simply skipped  it  because the meaning was  clear
enough  without it. Later on, when studying at the institute, I learned that
besides their  rational kernel the  works of Hegel  contained quite a lot of
idealistic husk. I guessed that just those paragraphs I had skipped were the
husk. My  way  of  reading  him had been to  open  the  book  at some  verse
quotation from Schiller or Goethe, and then read round it, trying to keep as
near to  the quotation as possible, like a  camel on the edge  of an  oasis.
Some of Hegel's thoughts surprised me by  their  high  probability of truth.
For  instance,  he  called  the  fable a servile genre,  which sounded  true
enough, and I made a point of remembering this so as  to avoid that genre in
the future.
     Eventually,  for some unknown  reason  I gave up  reading  that volume.
Perhaps I had used up all the quotations or perhaps it was something else. I
decided that  I had far too much time ahead  of me and that  one day I would
read all the volumes in  their proper order. But I still haven't  started on
them.
     It may well be that this random reading of mine and also a certain lack
of clarity  in the actions  of mankind on  the road to a bright  future were
responsible for my choice of the philosophical faculty.
     In  Moscow,  after certain adventures that I shall not relate because I
need  them as plots  for  my stories,  I entered not the university  but the
Library Institute. When I had been studying there for three years, it dawned
on me  that it would be  more interesting and more profitable to write one's
own books  than  deal  with other  people's, and so I moved to  the Literary
Institute, where they teach you how to write.
     Since then I  have been  writing, although, as I now  realise, my  true
vocation is inventing. In recent years I have felt that people are beginning
to impose on me the  role of humourist and involuntarily somehow I am trying
to live up to this imposed image.
     No sooner do  I make a start on something serious than I see  before me
the disappointed face of  a reader  waiting  for  me  to  have done with the
official part, so to speak, and get on with something funny. This means that
I have to change  horses  in midstream and pretend that  I  only  started by
talking seriously to make it seem all the funnier later on.
     Every day, except for the days when I do something  else, I shut myself
up in my  room, put a sheet of paper into my voracious  little "Kolibri" and
write, or pretend to be writing.
     Usually my typewriter gives a few desultory taps and then lapses into a
long silence. My family  try to look as if they are creating  conditions for
my  work  and  I try to look as if I am working. As a matter of fact,  while
sitting over my typewriter I am actually inventing something and at the same
time listening for the telephone in the next room so that I can be the first
to run and answer it.
     The  reason for this is that  my daughter  is  also  listening  for the
telephone to ring and, if she gets there  first, she will cut off the caller
with a blow of her little fist.  She thinks this is a  kind of game, and she
is not altogether wrong.
     Of all  my  numerous  inventions  I  will  mention  here only  two.  An
instrument for stimulating spiritual activity (a kind of electromassage  for
the soul), and also the method of "Mother-in-Law  Isolation by Shock", based
entirely on Pavlov's doctrine of conditioned and unconditioned reflexes.
     The instrument  for stimulating spiritual activity outwardly  resembles
the  conventional electric  shaver.  The  difficulty of  using  it  lies  in
determining the exact location  of a  given  person's  soul. Apparently  the
whereabouts of  a man's  soul in  the organism depends on his character  and
inclinations. It may be located  in the stomach, in the gall bladder, in the
blind gut and, of  course,  in  the heel.  This last  fact was known to  the
ancient Greeks. Hence the expression "heel of Achilles". The  heel being the
part of the body furthest  removed  from the brain makes communication  very
difficult between these  two vital internal  organs of the human  body, that
is, between the soul and the brain, and this in the course of  time leads to
an intellectual disease known as Chronic Mental Flatfootedness.
     Regrettably, my  instrument  has not been  widely  adopted  because the
voltages of the systems in general use are not suitable for it.
     The method of "Mother-in Law Isolation by Shock" has, on  the contrary,
become perhaps a little too widespread thanks to its exceptional  simplicity
and practical effectiveness.
     To apply this method you must, of course, have a mother-in-law and also
a child.  If you have both, there can  be no doubt that  the  upbringing and
particularly  the feeding  of the  child  will  be  in  the  hands  of  your
mother-in-law. And since she will put all the overflowing energy of her love
into the process, your child will quickly develop a firm dislike of food.
     So, one morning when your mother-in-law seats herself formidably beside
your child and starts plying him (or her) with rice  pudding or something of
the kind, you  quietly sit down on  the other side of  the table  and watch.
From time to time, in an apparent fit of absent-mindedness  you  imitate the
actions of  your child, opening  your  mouth when he does  and swallowing in
such a way as to emphasise the futility of the whole operation.
     Your child will soon begin to notice this. Though unable to grasp their
full meaning, he will feel that your actions are directed against the common
tyrant. He  (or she) will  look now at you, now  at the tyrant.  And if your
mother-in-law keeps a stiff  upper lip and pretends not to notice  anything,
he will call her attention to your behaviour in no uncertain manner.
     Your mother-in-law then becomes nervous and starts  giving you looks in
which a  Freudian  hatred  is  as yet disguised under a  mask of pedagogical
reproach.  To this  you respond  with  a  sad  glance  and an expression  of
complete submission, and  also a shrug  of  the shoulders as if  to indicate
that you  are not asking for anything, you are just looking, that's all. The
atmosphere becomes tense.
     Eventually, after the  usual mythological  threats or  open  blackmail,
when the most hated spoonful of all is being thrust down the child's throat,
you will say in a very quiet, uncertain voice:
     "If she (or he) doesn't want it, can I finish it?"
     Petrified with indignation,  your mother-in-law glares  at you with the
expression of Tsar  Peter  looking at his traitor son in the famous painting
by N. N. Ghe. But there is still time for her  to stage a come-back, and you
must be ready to prevent this.
     "No, only if she doesn't want it," you say,  thus explaining that there
is no need for wrath. "She can eat it if she wants it."
     At this point your mother-in-law faints.  You pick her up  quickly, and
carefully--I   stress  the   carefully  because   some  people  are   rather
rough--carry her to  bed. Now you may calmly go about your own affairs until
dinner time.
     I  must admit that lately  I have begun to repent  of  discovering  and
popularising  this method. Starkly  before  me rises  the  problem of  moral
responsibility  for  letting  loose an immature  idea  among the masses. The
indiscriminate repudiation  of mothers-in-law can  be attributed  only to  a
non-historical approach to  the whole problem. For  do not mothers in-law in
the present period of history play a most progressive role in family life?
     As a matter of fact, our mother-in-law is our real wife.  It is she who
cooks  our meals, she  who looks  after the  house, she  who  brings up  our
children and simultaneously teaches us how to live our lives. And as if this
were  not enough, she gives us  her own daughter to provide us  with all the
honey-sweet pleasures of love. Who is  more noble  or  more self-sacrificing
than she? She is surely our  true wife or, at least,  the senior wife in our
small but close-knit harem.
     Of  my other minor discoveries  I feel I can  mention one.  It concerns
humour. I have a number of  valuable observations on this subject. I believe
that to possess a good sense of humour  one  must reach a  state  of extreme
pessimism, look down into those awful depths, convince oneself that there is
nothing there either, and make one's way  quietly back again. Real humour is
the trail we leave on the way back from the abyss.

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     It was a summer evening and my uncle had  guests. When  they ran out of
wine, I was sent to the nearest shop for some more, which, as I now realise,
was not altogether the best thing for my upbringing. The errand, it is true,
had first been offered to my  brother but he had  stubbornly refused knowing
that no  one  in the  next  few  hours  would be likely  to punish  him  for
refusing, and that before tomorrow came he would surely get up to some trick
which he would have to answer for anyway.
     So off I  went, running barefoot down the warm,  unpaved street, bottle
in  one  hand,  money in the  other.  I  clearly remember  the quite unusual
feeling  of elation  that came  over me. It could not have been inspired  by
anticipation of my forthcoming purchase because  in  those days I showed  no
particular interest  in  such  matters.  Even now  my interest  is  moderate
enough.
     After all, what  is the beauty of wine? Only its power to take the edge
out of our personal worries when  we drink with friends, and fortify what we
already have in common. And even if the only thing we have in common is some
worry  or  trouble, then wine, like art, transforming  grief, soothes us and
gives  us the strength to go on living and  hoping. We experience a  renewed
joy  in  discovering  one  another, we feel  we  are  all  human  beings and
together.
     To drink with  any  other aim  in view is  simply  illiterate. Solitary
boozing  I would compare with smuggling  or some kind of perversion.  He who
drinks alone clinks glasses with the devil.
     Well, as I was saying, on my way to  the shop I was seized by a strange
feeling of excitement. All the time, as I ran, I kept my eyes on the ground,
and now  and then I seemed to see a wad  of banknotes lying there. It  would
pop up in front of me and I would actually stop to  make sure whether it was
there or not. I realised I  was  imagining things but the vision was so real
that  I could not help stopping. Having made  sure there was no money on the
ground, I only became even more  elatedly convinced that I was just about to
find some, and on I flew.
     I bounded up  the  wooden steps  of the shop, which stood on a kind  of
platform, and thrust the money  and the bottle into the shopkeeper's  hands.
While he was fetching the wine, I  took  one  last  look  down,  and there I
actually did see a  wad of  paper money  wrapped in  a pre-war  thirty-ruble
note.
     I picked it up, grabbed the  bottle and dashed off home, half-dead with
fear and joy.
     "I've found some money!"  I shouted, running  into the room. Our guests
jumped  nervously, some of them  even  resentfully, to their  feet. A hubbub
arose. There turned out to be more than a hundred rubles in the packet.
     "I'll go as well!" my brother cried, fired belatedly by my success.
     "Get going then!" Uncle  Yura, a  lorry-driver, shouted. "I was the one
who suggested a drink. I'm always lucky over picking things up."
     "Particularly your elbow," our imperturbable Auntie Sonya put in slyly.
     "Back in the old days, in  Labinsk..." Uncle Pasha began. He was always
telling us about his ulcer or about the  wonderful life they used to lead in
the Kuban country in  the old days. Either he would start off about life  on
the Kuban and finish with his ulcer, or the other  way round. But Uncle Yura
shouted him down.
     "It was  my suggestion! I ought  to get  a cut!"  he clamoured. Once he
started there was no stopping him.
     "If it was, I didn't hear it," Uncle Pasha retorted gruffly.
     "You said yourself a White Cossack slashed your ear with his sabre!"
     "That  was  my left  ear and  you're sitting  on my right," said  Uncle
Pasha,  delighted to have outwitted Uncle  Yura,  and with a  well-practised
movement of his huge, workman's hand folded his left ear forward. Just above
it  there was a cleft large enough to  hold  a walnut. Everyone respectfully
examined the scar left by the Cossack sabre.
     "Yes,  it seems  only yesterday. We was  stationed  at  Tikhoretsky..."
Uncle Pasha  resumed, trying to profit  by the general attention, but  Uncle
Yura again interrupted him.
     "If  you don't  believe  me, let the  boy say  it  himself."  Whereupon
everyone looked at me.
     In those days I  was fond of Uncle  Yura, and of everyone  else  at the
table. I wanted them all  to enjoy my  success,  to  feel they had all had a
part in it without any advantage for anyone.
     "It was everybody's suggestion," I proclaimed spiritedly.
     "I'm not saying it wasn't everybody's  suggestion, but who suggested it
first?" Uncle Yura  bawled,  but his voice was drowned in a  joyful burst of
clapping, by which everyone sought to show that Uncle Yura was much too fond
of stealing the limelight.
     "Oh, Allah," said Uncle Alikhan, who was the mildest and most peaceable
of men because  his job was selling honey-coated almonds, "the boy has found
money and they  make all  this  noise. Wouldn't it  be  better to  drink his
health?"
     This caused an even greater hubbub because  all the menfolk got  up and
wanted to drink my health at once.
     "I always knew he'd make a man...."
     "May this little glass...."
     "Our young people have an open road before them...."
     "Here's wishing him a happy childhood...."
     "And what a road it is! A first-class highway!"
     "For this life,"  Uncle Fima  was the last to proclaim, "we fought like
lions, and the lion's share of us was left lying on the battlefield."
     "He'll be a learned  man, like you,"  my  aunt interposed, to calm  him
down.
     "Even more learned," Uncle Fima cried and, having  elevated me to  this
unprecedented height, he drained his glass. Uncle Fima was the most educated
man  in  our  street and  therefore always the first  to  feel the effect of
drink.
     I was jubilant. I wanted to show how fond I was of everyone I wanted to
give them my word of  honour  as a Young Pioneer that I would find for them,
one  and all, everything they  had ever lost in life. I may not have thought
in exactly those words, but that was the gist  of it. However, I had no time
to voice my  thoughts, because mother came in and, deliberately ignoring the
general  merriment,  plucked  me out  of  the  room like a radish out  of  a
vegetable bed.
     She  didn't like my attending these festive gatherings  at  the best of
times, added  to  which she was offended that I should have run past  my own
home with the money I had found.
     "You'll be like your father, always doing your best for  other people,"
she said as we went down the steps.
     "I'll do my best for everyone," I replied.
     "It doesn't work  out like that," she  said sadly, taken  up  with some
thought of her own.
     At that moment we met  my  brother returning  from his search. His face
showed that you can't draw the winning ticket twice over.
     "Did you let them see all the money?" he asked as he went by.
     "Yes," I replied proudly.
     "More fool you," he snapped, and ran away.
     None of these  minor  setbacks, however, could damp the  new flame that
burned within me. Already I had decided that nothing would ever go  wrong or
get lost  in our house any more. If  I could find so much money without even
trying,  what should I find when I was really on the look-out? The world was
full  of treasures,  above and below ground; all you had to do was keep your
eyes open and not be too lazy to pick them up.
     The next morning, with the money I had found my family bought me a fine
sailor's jacket with an anchor on the sleeve,  which I was to wear for  many
years to come, and before the  day was out the news  of my find  had  spread
round our yard and far beyond its borders. People dropped in to congratulate
us  and learn the details of this  joyful event.  The women eyed me  with  a
housewife's curiosity,  and their  glances  showed that they would not  have
minded adopting me as their own son or, at least, borrowing me for a while.
     I  told the story of  my discovery dozens of  times, not forgetting  to
mention the sense of anticipation that had preceded it.
     "I  felt it was going  to happen," I would  say. "I kept looking at the
ground and saw money lying there."
     "Do you feel that now?"
     "No, not now," I confessed honestly.
     It really was a minor miracle. Now my theory is that the money had been
dropped by some  profiteering  driver, one  of the kind who often stopped at
that  shop for a  quick drink. When he got on the  road  again, he must have
realised his loss, and his anxious signals had been correctly decoded  by my
excited brain.
     That very same day  a woman came round from next door and congratulated
my mother, then said she had lost one of her hens.
     "Well, what do you expect me to do?" my mother asked severely.
     "Ask your son to look for it," said the woman.
     "Oh, go along, for goodness sake," mother replied. "The  boy found some
money for once and now we shall never have any peace."
     They  were talking  in  the  corridor and I could hear them through the
door. Overcome by impatience, I opened it.
     "I'll find  your  hen,"  I  said,  peeping out cheerfully  from  behind
mother's back.  A  day  or  two  before  this  my ball  had rolled  into our
neighbour's cellar.  When I went to fetch  it I had noticed a hen there and,
since no one in our yard had complained of losing a hen, I now realised that
this must  be hers. "I feel it's in the cellar next  door,"  I said  after a
moment's thought.
     "There's no  hen down there," came the unexpected retort from the owner
of  the cellar. She had been listening to our conversation while hanging out
her washing in the yard.
     "It must be," I said.
     "No  need to go rummaging in there,  knocking down the firewood. You'll
only start a fire or something," she blustered.
     I  took a box  of matches and  dashed over to the  cellar. The door was
locked  but there  was a hole in the wall on the other side, through which I
crawled.
     It was dark inside except for a faint glimmer  of light  from the hole,
and I had to bend down all the time.
     "What's he doing in there?" came a voice from outside.
     "Looking for treasure," Sonka, my  scatter-brained girlfriend  of those
days, replied. "He's found a million."
     Striking matches carefully and peering  round, I reached the spot where
I had seen the hen  before, and there she was again. She  had half risen and
was craning her neck, blinking dazedly in my direction. I realised  she must
be sitting  on some eggs.  Townbred fowls usually find a  hidden nook to lay
their eggs. It was not difficult to catch  her in the darkness. I groped  in
the nest she had made for herself with a few wisps of hay, and put  the warm
eggs into my pockets. Then I made my way back, not lighting any more matches
because I was now heading for the daylight.
     At the sight of the  hen, its mistress  started clucking with joy, just
like her bird.
     "That's not all," I said as I handed it over.
     "What else is there?" she asked.
     "Here you are,"  I  replied,  and  started  taking the  eggs out  of my
pockets. For some reason  the hen  got  annoyed at  the  sight of the  eggs,
though I had made  no  secret of  taking  them  from the cellar. Perhaps she
hadn't  noticed what I was doing in the dark. Her mistress put  the eggs  in
her apron and, tucking the hen under her arm, walked out of the yard.
     "Come and see us when the figs are ripe," she shouted from the gate.
     From  then on I was  always on the  look-out and often made some  quite
unexpected discoveries,  with the result that  I became known as  a kind  of
domestic bloodhound. I remember  a rather eccentric relative of ours who had
lost his goat and wanted to take me off to his village, so that I could make
a thorough search  for  it.  I was  sure of  finding the  goat,  but  mother
wouldn't let me  go  because  she was afraid  I  might get lost in the woods
myself.
     I found  many other things because I  was always  searching and because
everyone believed  in my powers of detection. At home I would find  chips of
wood baked  in with  the  bread, needles  left sticking in  cushions by  our
absent-minded womenfolk, old tax receipts and bonds of the new state loan.
     One of our neighbours often lost her spectacles and would call me in to
look for them.  I soon found them, if she had not had time to sweep them out
of the room  with the litter.  But even then  I would retrieve them from the
rubbish bin because they were the one thing the cats prowling round it never
touched. But soon she began to lose her spectacles too often  and in the end
I advised her to buy a spare pair so that,  having lost  one pair, she could
look  for it with the other.  She followed my advice and for a time all went
well,  but  then she started losing the spare  pair, too, so I  had twice as
much  work to  do and  was  compelled  to  keep  the  spare pair  hidden  in
readiness.
     I  enjoyed presenting the people around me with things they had lost. I
worked out my  own system of search, based on the principle of first seeking
the lost object in the place where it had been, and then in places where  it
had not  been and never could  have been. Much later in life I learned  that
this is called the dialectical unity of opposites.
     If  the  people  around  me stopped losing  things I  sometimes had  to
contrive my discoveries artificially.
     In the evenings I would patrol the yard like a warden  and hide  things
that had been left lying about. Often it was  some washing hanging forgotten
on  the line.  I would toss it up into the  branches  of a tree and the next
day, when  appealed  to  for help,  after a  certain amount of  thinking and
asking questions about what had been hanging where, as though I were solving
an equation based on the speed and direction of the  wind, I would point out
the  lost  linen to the  astonished housewives and recover it  from the tree
myself. Of  course, I  was not so silly  as to repeat this trick too  often.
Besides, there were far more real losses requiring my attention.
     In all this time only one of  my finds  failed to  please its owner. It
happened like this.
     There was a girl living in our yard  who had  recently come of age. Her
name was Lyuba. Nearly all day long she would sit at the  window  and  smile
into the street, arranging her hair this way and that  with a  little gilded
hair-comb, which I at the time mistakenly took  for a gold one. At her elbow
stood a gramophone  with its  horn turned towards the street,  almost always
playing one and the same tune:

        Lyuba, Lyuba, Lyuba, my love....

     The gramophone was  like the  looking-glass in Pushkin's fairy-tale; it
talked all  the  time of  its mistress. I was  sure of this anyway, and  so,
judging by Lyuba's smiling face, was she.
     One day that summer, in the rather overgrown little garden by our house
I found Lyuba's comb  lying in the grass. I was sure it was her comb because
I had  never seen  another like it. The same evening I paced about the yard,
waiting  for  sounds of  panic and for someone to come out  and  ask  me  to
conduct a search. But Lyuba  was  not to be  seen and  there  was no sign of
alarm. The next morning I was even more surprised to find no messenger at my
bedside. I  could only  conclude that someone else must have lost the golden
comb, but I had  to make sure that Lyuba's  was  still in its place. As luck
would have it, she stayed away from the window all day and  appeared only in
the evening. And now the gramophone was playing quite a different tune.
     I didn't know what song it was but I understood that the gramophone was
no longer talking about her. It was a sad song  and,  when  Lyuba turned her
back to the window, I  saw that there was no comb  in  her hair and realised
that she and the gramophone together were mourning its loss.
     Her  mother   and  father  were  standing  at  another  window  leaning
comfortably on the sill.
     "Lyuba," I asked, when the song was over, "you haven't  lost something,
have you?"
     "No," she said with a start of fright, and touched her hair in the very
place  where the  comb  had been before. And for some reason, she blushed so
violently that I could see she knew what I was talking about. The only thing
I didn't know was why she was concealing her loss.
     "Didn't you lose this?"  I said, and with the air of a conjurer who had
grown rather tired of being gaped at by everyone  I produced the golden comb
from my pocket.
     "Nasty little spy," she shouted quite unexpectedly  and, snatching  the
comb away from me, ran into  the room.  This  was  a  quite  meaningless and
foolish insult.
     "Silly fool!" I shouted through the window, trying  to  pursue her with
my voice. "You have to read books to know what a spy is."
     I turned to go  away but her father called me  over. Now he was  at the
window alone, Lyuba's mother having run after her daughter into the room.
     "What's this all about?" he asked, leaning out of the window.
     "She lost  her comb herself in  the garden,  and  now she's cross about
it," I said, and took myself off, still not realising what it was all about.
That evening Lyuba got into hot water.
     Later on  an air force  man  appeared in their house, and a new  record
called "Dear Hometown" began to play.
     A week later the air force man left and took Lyuba with him and now her
mother would sit sadly at the window with  the gramophone whimpering  like a
big faithful dog for its mistress, "Lyuba, Lyuba, my love...."
     I continued my  quest, venturing  further and  further into  unexplored
territory.
     It was  particularly rewarding to search the beach  after a  storm.  At
various times I found there a sailor's belt  with a buckle, a buckle without
a belt, live cartridges dating from the time of the civil war, sea shells of
all shapes and sizes, and even a dead dolphin. One day I discovered a bottle
tossed up by a storm, but for some reason  there was no message in it and  I
took it back to the shop.
     Quite  near town, on  the bank of the River  Kelasuri I found  a  whole
creek of gold-bearing  sand and spent all day standing knee-deep in the cold
paleblue  water, panning for gold. I would scoop up a double handful of sand
and water, then  tilt my cupped hands  and watch the  water run away. Little
golden sparks  flashed in my palms, the water tickled my toes, big blobs  of
sunlight quivered on the crystal clear bottom of  the creek, and I had never
been happier in my whole life.
     Later I  was told that this was not gold but mica, but the feel of that
cold mountain  water, the  hot sun, the clear bottom  of  the creek  and the
quiet  happiness of  the  prospector is  with me still.  One day  I made yet
another discovery that I want to describe in more detail.
     We used to play a game of seeing who could dive deepest. We would start
at a depth of about two meters and go deeper and deeper until our breath was
spent.
     On the day  I am speaking of another  boy  and I were competing in this
way on the Dogs' Beach. The beach still has this  name, either because it is
strictly forbidden to let a dog bathe there, or because that is exactly what
people do there with their dogs. Well, anyway, I made my last  dive, reached
the bottom, tried  to scoop a handful of sand and nearly bumped my nose on a
big square slab,  on which I  glimpsed  what looked like  a  picture of  two
people.
     "Ancient stone with a picture on it!" I shouted wildly as I reached the
surface.
     "You're  kidding," the other boy said, swimming over to me and  looking
into my eyes.
     "Word  of  honour!"  I insisted. "It's  a  huge slab  with  prehistoric
figures on it."
     We began  diving in  turns  and  nearly  every time we  saw  in the dim
submarine light that  white slab with its two blurred figures. Then we dived
together and tried to move it, but it wouldn't budge an inch.
     Eventually the  cold drove us  out of the water, but  not before  I had
taken careful  note of the  place where  we  had been diving. It was exactly
halfway between a buoy and an old pile sticking up out of the sea.
     School began  a  few days  later  and I told our form-master  about  my
discovery. He used to take us for geography and history. He was a powerfully
built man with withered  legs. A  Hercules  on crutches.  His whole presence
breathed mental vigour and spiritual integrity. In anger he was terrible. We
loved him not  only  because he had such  an interesting  way  of telling us
about everything, but also  because  he  treated us  seriously, without that
casual air of condescension in which youth always detects indifference.
     "It  must  be  an  ancient  Greek  stella,"  he said,  after  listening
attentively to my story. "That's a splendid discovery."
     It was decided that we should go down to the beach after school and, if
possible, lift the stone out of the  water.  "A stella," I kept repeating to
myself with  delight, and the  rest of the day's  lessons passed  in  joyful
anticipation of the expedition.
     So off we went down to the sea. Our P.T. instructor was sent with us as
labour power. He hadn't wanted to go at first but the headmaster had managed
to talk him into it. There was no one in the school that the P.T. instructor
was afraid of because, as he often told us himself, he could take a job as a
boxing  coach  any  day.  We  believed that he  could knock  out  the  whole
pedagogical council at one blow. Perhaps this was why his face always wore a
somewhat contemptuous  expression,  which  seemed  to be aimed at everything
that was done at school, as though he lived in expectation  of the day  when
his one fatal blow would have to be delivered.
     If  anyone disobeyed him during a  P.T.  lesson, he could administer  a
mighty finger flick on the  forehead, equal  in impact to  a  jump  from the
sports ground wall on to the well-trodden school yard. This we all knew from
experience.
     We  undressed  and charged pell-mell into the sea. Only our form-master
was  left  on  the  beach. He stood there  leaning  on his crutches  in  his
immaculate white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and waited.
     There had been a storm the day  before and I was afraid the water would
be hazy but it was just as clear and still as before.
     Reaching the spot  first, I dived to the bottom  and saw  nothing. This
didn't worry me much because I might not have got my bearings quite right. I
plunged again,  and  again saw nothing. All round  me  the  whole  form  was
snorting, squealing and  splashing. Most of them were  simply playing about,
but some  must  have  been  diving  to the bottom because  they  brought  up
handfuls of sand  and threw them at each other. No one reported sighting any
stone. I swam over to the buoy to see whether it had come adrift, but it was
still firmly anchored in its place.
     Soon the P.T. instructor appeared on the scene.  He  had  been slightly
delayed by the need to put on bathing trunks.
     "Well, where's the  statue?" he asked, puffing as if the water  was too
hot for him.
     "It should be here," I said, pointing.
     He took a deep  breath  and, executing a powerful somersault, shot into
the depths like a torpedo. He could certainly swim and dive, you had to give
him  that.  He  stayed  under for a long  time and at  last  came up,  as if
propelled by an underwater explosion.
     "You've  made the  bottom  all  muddy,"  he  said, snorting  loudly and
shaking  his head. "Now then, you young skeletons, off you go from here!" he
bawled and,  striking the water with the flat of his  hand, sent a great jet
of water at the other boys.
     "You're  not  making this up,  are you?" he  asked me  severely,  still
puffing and blowing as if the water was too hot for him.
     "Do you think I'm crazy?" I said.
     "How should I know?" he  replied, surveying the surface of the water as
though seeking a suitable hole to dive  through. At last  he found one  and,
having taken a deep breath, plunged again.
     This time he reappeared with a chunk of rusty iron from the pile.
     "Is this it?" he asked, eyes bulging from the strain.
     "Do you think I'm  crazy?" I said. "I saw a stone slab  with  people on
it."
     "How should I  know?"  he repeated and, tossing away the chunk of iron,
made yet another plunge.
     Left to myself, I began to think it was time to make for the beach, but
anticipation  of the  shame I should endure in front  of my  form-master was
stronger than fear. After  all, I had seen it here. It couldn't have floated
away!
     This  time the P.T.  instructor came to  the  surface, spluttering with
fright.
     "What's happened?" I  asked, frightened myself,  thinking he  had  been
stung by a sea-horse or something.
     "What  happened!  I forgot  to  take a  deep  breath--that's  what," he
snorted, mimicking me wrathfully.
     "So you forgot and I'm to blame," I said, offended by his tone.
     The  P.T. instructor was  about to retort but before he could  do  so a
girl's voice said, "What are you looking for?"
     I glanced round. A strange girl was swimming cautiously towards us.
     "Yesterday," the P.T. instructor began crossly, but he soon melted when
he turned his head. "Well, an ancient Greek statue actually... Perhaps you'd
like to dive with us?"
     "I don't know how  to dive,"  she  said  with a silly smile, as  though
inviting him to teach her. Her hair  was  tied up in a red scarf.  The  P.T.
instructor gazed at this scarf in silent  admiration, as if trying to puzzle
out where she had got it.
     "And  where  are  you  from yourself?"  he asked  irrelevantly,  having
apparently established where the headscarf had come from.
     "From Moscow.  Why?" the girl replied,  and  glanced towards the shore,
striving to make up her mind whether it was dangerous to talk to strange men
at such a depth.
     "You're in luck,"  the P.T.  instructor  said.  "I'll  teach you how to
dive."
     This time she smiled more boldly. "No, I'd rather watch you."
     "Well, if I don't come up again you can consider yourself responsible,"
he said,  intercepting her smile with a smile of his own that he enlarged to
positively brazen dimensions.
     He  did a particularly  impressive somersault  and  plummeted into  the
depths. I realised that now he had started gallivanting he wouldn't have any
more time for my stone.
     "Did you really see a statue?" the girl asked and, lifting her hand out
of the water, tucked a straying lock of hair under the scarf with her little
finger, which in her foolishness she took to be less wet than the others.
     "Not a statue but a stella," I  corrected her, watching  her  shameless
attempts to pretty herself up for the P.T. instructor.
     "What is that?" she asked, calmly continuing her efforts.
     I decided to take action before the P.T. instructor came up again.
     "Don't  interfere,"  I said. "Isn't the sea  big enough for you? Go and
swim somewhere else."
     "Don't be rude, boy," she said haughtily, as though speaking to me from
an upstairs window of her own house.  How quick they were to sense which way
the wind  was blowing! She  knew the P.T. instructor would appear  sooner or
later and take her side.
     He surfaced noisily, like a  dancer bursting  into a ring of onlookers.
He  had been a very  long  time under water but  it had been a  wasted dive,
because he had done it not for us but for her.
     "Well, did you see it?" she asked him,  as though she had been with him
all along, and even swam a little closer to him.
     "They're  just a lot of day-dreamers!"  he said, when  he had  got  his
breath back. This was his pet name for anyone  he considered  a weakling  or
good-for-nothing. "Let's have a swim instead."
     "All right, but not too far," she consented, perhaps just to spite me.
     "What about the stone?" I said, mournfully reminding him of duty.
     "You'll get such a clump  in a minute you'll be lying under that  stone
of yours," he explained calmly,  and they swam away, his  dark head with its
broad sunburnt neck bobbing beside her red kerchief.
     I looked at the beach. Many of the other boys were already lying on the
sand, warming  themselves.  Our form-master was still there,  leaning on his
crutches, waiting  for me to find  the stone. Had I not seen my  friend only
the day before, I would have decided the whole thing had been just a dream.
     I dived another ten times  or  so, combing the bottom  all the way from
the pile to  the buoy.  But  the wretched stone had vanished. Meanwhile  our
form-master had called me several times  but  as I  could not hear  him very
well  I pretended not to have heard  him at  all. I felt too ashamed to come
out of the water. I didn't know what I should say to him.
     I was very tired,  cold  and  had swallowed  a lot of sea-water. It was
becoming harder and harder to dive and I no  longer went right to the bottom
but merely ducked  below the surface to  avoid being seen. Many of the other
boys had dressed by  now  and some had gone  home,  but my form-master still
stood there waiting.
     The P.T. instructor  and  the girl had gone ashore. He  had carried his
clothes  over  to  her place  and  they  were sitting together,  talking and
throwing pebbles into the sea.
     I  was  hoping they would all  go away soon and  let me get out  of the
water. But my form-master was still there, so I went on diving.
     The P.T. instructor had  now  tied the girl's scarf round his own head.
While I was wondering why he had done this, he suddenly did a hand-stand and
she started timing him with his watch. He stood on his hands for a long time
and actually talked  to her in this position,  which she,  of course,  found
very amusing.
     I admired him mournfully for  a moment,  and just  then my  form-master
shouted to  me very loudly and startled me into looking at him. Our eyes met
and now there was nothing I could do but swim ashore.
     "You must be frozen," he shouted, when I swam nearer.
     "You don't believe me, do  you?" I  said through chattering teeth,  and
crawled out of the water.
     "Why  shouldn't  I believe you?" he  said severely, leaning forward and
gripping his crutches tightly  with his  gladiator's hands. "But you've been
bathing far too long. Lie down at once!"
     "There was a boy with me," I said  in the whining voice of the failure.
"I'll point him out to you tomorrow."
     "Lie down!"  he commanded  and took a step  towards me. But I stood  my
ground because I felt it  would be  hard enough for  me to argue  with  them
standing, let alone lying down.
     "Perhaps that boy  has pulled  it out already?" one  of our lads asked.
That was a tempting suggestion. I looked at my form-master and realised from
his glance  that he was expecting only the truth, and that what I was  going
to  say  would be the truth, and so I just couldn't lie. I was too  proud of
the trust he had placed in me.
     "No," I  said,  regretting,  as  always in such cases,  that  I was not
lying, "I saw him yesterday and he would have told me."
     "Perhaps  a fish  found  it and carried it  away,"  the same lad added,
hopping about with his head on one side to get the water out of his ear.
     That  was  the first jibe and  I knew there  were more to come, but our
form-master put a stop to  all that with a glance,  and  said,  "If I didn't
believe you I should never have come  here in  the first  place."  He looked
thoughtfully at the sea and added, "It  must have been dragged down into the
sand or carried away by the storm."
     But fifteen years later  the  stella was found, not very  far from  the
spot where I had seen it. And the person who found it, incidentally, was  my
friend's brother. So I was in on that too.
     The experts say it is a rare and valuable work of art--a stella with  a
gentle and sorrowful bas-relief that had once marked a grave.
     I remember our form-master with  affection and pride,  his thick  curly
hair and fine  aquiline  features,  the face  of  a  Greek  god, a god  with
crippled legs.
     Our seas have no tides, but the  land of childhood is like a beach, wet
and  mysterious  after the tide  has  gone out, where one may find  the most
unexpected things.
     I  was always  out  there searching and  perhaps it  made me  a  little
absent-minded. Later on,  when  I grew up,  that is, when I had something to
lose, I realised that all  the lucky finds of childhood are the secret loans
granted to  us by fate, which  afterwards,  as  adults,  we must redeem. And
justly so.
     And another thing I came to understand was that everything that is lost
may  be found--even love, even youth. The one thing  that can never be found
again is a lost conscience.
     But even that is not so sad a thought as it may appear if one remembers
that it cannot be lost simply through absent-mindedness.

--------


     As  a boy  I  was much disliked by all farmyard cocks. I don't remember
what  started it, but if a warlike cock appeared in the  neighbourhood there
was bound to be bloodshed.
     One summer  I  was  staying with  my  relatives in one  of the mountain
villages  of Abkhazia. The whole family--the mother, two grown-up daughters,
two  grown-up sons--  went off to work early in the morning to weed maize or
pick tobacco. I was left behind in the  house alone. My duties were pleasant
and easy  to perform. I  had to feed the goats (one good bundle of  rustling
hazelnut branches),  draw  fresh water from the stream for  the midday break
and in general keep an eye on the  house. There was nothing special  to keep
an  eye on, but  now and then I had to give a  shout to make the hawks  feel
there was a  man in the vicinity and refrain from attacking our chickens. In
return  for this  I, as a representative of  the feeble urban branch  of the
family, was allowed  to suck a pair of  fresh eggs  straight from the  nest,
which I did both gladly and conscientiously.
     Fixed along the outside wall of the kitchen there were  some baskets in
which the hens laid their eggs. How they knew they were supposed to lay them
there was always  a mystery to me. I would stand on tip-toe  and grope about
until I  found an egg.  Feeling simultaneously like a successful pearl diver
and  the thief of Baghdad, I would  break the top by tapping  it on the wall
and suck the egg  dry  at once.  Somewhere nearby the hens would be clucking
mournfully. Life seemed significant and full of wonder. The air was healthy,
the  food  was  healthy,  and I  swelled  with juice  like  a  pumpkin on  a
well-manured allotment.
     In  the house I found two books: Mayne Reid's The Headless Horseman and
The Tragedies and Comedies of  William Shakespeare. The  first book swept me
off my feet. The very names of the characters were music to my ears: Maurice
the Mustanger, Louise Pointdexter, Captain Cassius  Calhoun, El Coyote,  and
the magnificent Doña Isidora Covarubio de los Llanos.
     "'My  pistol is at your head! I have one shot left--an apology,  or you
die!'...
     "'It's the mirage!' the Captain exclaimed with the addition of  an oath
to give vent to his chagrin."
     I  read that  book  from beginning  to end, then from  the end  to  the
beginning, and skipped through it twice.
     Shakespeare's  tragedies  seemed  to me  muddled and pointless. On  the
other  hand,  the  comedies   fully   justified  the  author's  efforts   at
composition. I realised  that it  was not  the  jesters  who depended on the
royal courts but the royal courts that depended on the jesters.
     The house  we lived in  stood on a hill and the winds blew round it and
through it twenty-four hours a  day.  It was as dry and sturdy as a  veteran
mountaineer.
     The eaves of the small veranda were tufted  with  swallows'  nests. The
swallows  dived swiftly  and accurately into  the  veranda  and hovered with
fluttering  wings  at  a nest, where their greedy,  vociferous  young waited
open-beaked,  almost  falling  out in  their  eagerness. Their  gluttony was
matched only by  the tireless energy of their  parents. Sometimes having fed
its young, the  father would hang for a  few  moments leaning back  from the
edge of the nest, its arrow-shaped body motionless and only the head turning
warily this  way and that. One more instant  and it would drop like a stone,
then deftly level out and soar away from the veranda.
     The  chickens foraged peacefully in the yard,  the sparrows and  chicks
twittered.  But  the  demons  of  rebellion  were not slumbering. Despite my
preventive shouts,  a hawk  came  over  nearly every  day.  In  a diving  or
low-level attack, it would snatch up a chicken and with mighty sweeps of its
burdened  wings  make  off  in  the  direction  of  the  forest.  It  was  a
breath-taking sight and  I would sometimes  let it get  away  on purpose and
shout later just to soothe my conscience.  The  captured  chicken hung in an
attitude of terror and foolish  submission. If I made enough noise in  time,
the hawk would  either  miss its prey or drop it in flight. In such cases we
would find  the chicken somewhere in the  bushes, glassy-eyed and  paralysed
with fright.
     "She's a goner," one of  my cousins would say,  cheerfully chopping off
its head and marching away to the kitchen with the carcass.
     The chief of this  barnyard kingdom was a huge red-feathered cock, rich
in plumage  and cunning as an  Oriental  despot. Within  a few  days  of  my
arrival it  became  obvious  that he hated  me  and was  only  looking for a
pretext to come openly to blows. Perhaps he  had noticed that I was eating a
lot of eggs  and this offended his male vanity?  Or was  he infuriated by my
half-heartedness  during  the  hawk attacks? I think  both  these things had
their  effect  on him but his chief grudge  was that someone was challenging
his power over the hens. Like any other despot, this he would not tolerate.
     I realised that dual power could not last  long and, in preparation for
the forthcoming battle, kept him under close observation.
     No one  could deny the  cock his share of personal  bravery. During the
hawk  attacks,  when  the  hens and  chickens  would  flutter  clucking  and
squawking in all directions, he alone would remain in the yard and, gobbling
fiercely, try to restore order in his timid harem. He  would even take a few
resolute steps in the  direction of the swooping foe, but since nothing that
runs can overtake that which flies, this made an impression of mere bravado.
     Usually he would forage in the  yard or the  kitchen garden accompanied
by  two  or  three of his favourite  hens  but without  losing  sight of the
others. Now and  then  he  would crane  his neck and look up at the  sky  in
search of danger.
     As soon as the shadow of a gliding hawk  passed over  the  yard  or the
cawing of a  crow was  heard, he would  throw up his head  belligerently and
signal his charges to  be on the alert.  The hens would  listen  in a scared
fashion and sometimes scuttle away  for cover. More often than  not it was a
false  alarm,  but by keeping his numerous mistresses in  a state of nervous
tension he crushed their will and achieved complete submission.
     As he scratched  the ground with  his  horny claws he  would  sometimes
discover  a delicate morsel and summon the  hens with  loud cries to join in
the feast.
     While  the  hen  that got  there  first was pecking his  find, he would
circle round her  a few times,  dragging his wing exuberantly and apparently
choking with delight. This operation usually  ended  in  rape. The hen would
shake herself bemusedly,  trying to  recover  her senses and grasp what  had
happened, while he looked round in victorious satisfaction.
     If the wrong hen ran up in  response to his call,  he  would  guard his
find or drive her away while continuing to summon his new beloved with  loud
grunting  noises.  His favourite was a neat white hen, as slim as  a pullet.
She would approach him cautiously,  stretch out  her neck, cleverly scoop up
the morsel  and run away as hard as she could, showing no signs of gratitude
whatever.
     He would pound  after  her humiliatedly, trying to  keep up appearances
though  well aware  of  the indignity of  his position. Usually he failed to
catch her and would eventually come to a halt,  breathing heavily and trying
to look  at me as though nothing  had happened and his little trot  had been
entirely for his own pleasure.
     Actually  the  invitations to a feast were quite often sheer deception.
He had nothing worth eating and the hens knew it, but they were betrayed  by
their eternal feminine curiosity.
     As the days went by he grew more and more insolent. If I happened to be
crossing the yard he would run after me for a short distance just to test my
courage. Despite  the shivers going  down my spine I would nevertheless stop
and wait to see what  would follow. He  would stop, too, and wait.  But  the
storm was bound to break and break it did.
     One day, when  I was eating in the kitchen,  he marched in  and planted
himself in the doorway. I threw him a few pieces of hominy but to  no avail.
He  pecked up  my offering  but I could see  he had no  intention  of making
peace.
     There was nothing  for it. I  brandished a half-burnt log at him but he
merely gave a little jump, stuck out his neck like a gander and stared at me
with hate-filled eyes. Then  I threw the log. It fell beside him. He  jumped
even higher and flung himself at me, belching  a stream of barnyard abuse. A
flaming red ball of hate came flying towards me. I managed to  shield myself
with a  stool.  He flew straight into it  and collapsed on the  floor like a
slain dragon. While he was getting up, his wings beat on  the earthen floor,
raising spurts of dust and chilling my legs with the wind of battle.
     I  managed  to  change  my  position  and  retreat  towards  the  door,
protecting myself with the stool like a Roman legionary with his shield.
     As I was crossing  the yard he  charged several times. Whenever he came
at me I felt as if he was going to peck my eyes out.  I made good use of the
stool  and  he  bounced off it regularly  on  to  the ground.  My hands were
scratched and bleeding and the heavy stool was becoming ever harder to hold.
But it was my only means of protection.
     One more attack. With a mighty sweep of his wings the cock flew up and,
instead of colliding with my shield unexpectedly perched on top of it.
     I  threw the stool down and in  a few bounds reached  the veranda,  and
from there darted into the room slamming the door behind me.
     My chest was humming like a telegraph  pole and my hands were streaming
with blood. I stood and  listened.  I was sure  that  the  wretched cock was
lurking at the door. And so he was. After a while he moved away a little and
began to march  up  and down the veranda, his iron  claws clacking loudly on
the floor. He was calling me out to  do battle but I preferred to lie low in
my stronghold.  At  length  he  grew tired of waiting and,  perched  on  the
railing, gave vent to a victorious cock-a-doodle-doo.
     When my cousins learnt of my affray with the cock, they started holding
daily tournaments. Neither of  us  gained any decisive advantage  and we all
went about with scratches and bruises.
     The  fleshy, tomato-like comb of my opponent bore several  marks of the
stick and his glorious fountain of a tail showed signs of drying up, but far
from losing any of his self-assurance he had become all the more insolent.
     He had acquired an annoying habit of crowing  from  a perch on the rail
of the veranda, just  under  the window of the room where I slept. Evidently
he regarded the veranda as occupied territory.
     Our  battles were held in  all kinds of places,  in  the yard,  in  the
kitchen  garden, in the orchard. If I climbed a tree for figs or for apples,
he would stand and wait for me patiently beneath.
     To cure him of some of his arrogance I resorted  to various stratagems.
I started treating the hens to extra food.  He  would fly into a rage when I
called them but they treacherously deserted him all the same. Persuasion was
useless.  Here,  as  in any  other  field,  abstract  propaganda  was easily
deflated by the reality of profit. The handfuls of maize that  I  tossed out
of  the  window conquered the tribal loyalty  and  family  traditions of the
valourous egg-layers. In  the end the  pasha himself  would appear. He would
reproach them indignantly but they, merely pretending to be ashamed of their
weakness, went on pecking up the maize.
     One day, when my aunt and her  sons were working in the kitchen garden,
we had another encounter. By this time I was an experienced and cold-blooded
warrior. I found a  forked stick  and, using it like  a trident, after a few
unsuccessful attempts  pinned the  cock  to  the ground.  His powerful  body
writhed  frantically and its vibrations came  up the  stick like an electric
current.
     I was inspired by the madness of the brave. Without  letting go of  the
stick or releasing its pressure, I bent down and, seizing my chance, pounced
on the cock  like a goal-keeper on a ball and  managed  to seize him  by the
throat. He writhed vigourously and dealt me such a blow on the head with his
wing that I went deaf in one ear. Fear reinforced my courage. I squeezed his
throat even tighter. Hard and sinewy, it jerked and twisted in my hand and I
felt  as if I  were holding a snake. With the other hand I grasped his legs.
His  long claws worked  desperately  to reach my body  and fasten on to some
part of it.
     But the trick was done. I straightened up and the  cock  hung suspended
by his feet, emitting stifled squawks.
     All  this time  my cousins  and aunt had been  roaring with laughter as
they watched us from behind the  fence.  So much the better!  Great waves of
joy flowed through  me. In  a  very  short  time,  however,  I  felt  rather
confused.  My  vanquished  opponent showed no  signs  of  giving in.  He was
throbbing with a furious  desire for revenge. If I let him go, he would come
at me again, and yet I couldn't go on holding him like this forever.
     "Throw him over the fence," my aunt advised.
     I went up to the fence and tossed him over with leaden arms.
     Curse it  all! He, of course, did not fly over the fence but perched on
it, spreading  his  massive  wings. The next moment he flung  himself at me.
This was too much. I made a wild dash for safety and from my breast rose the
ancient cry for help of all fleeing children:
     "Mummy! "
     One must be very foolish or very brave to turn one's  back on an enemy.
In my case it was certainly not bravery, and I paid the price for it.
     He  caught  me several times while I was running till at last I tripped
and fell.  He sprang  on top  of  me,  he rolled  on  me,  he  gurgled  with
bloodthirsty glee. He might quite  easily have pecked through my spine if my
cousin had  not run up and knocked  him off into the bushes with his hoe. We
decided that this  had killed him, but  in the evening the cock came out  of
the bushes, subdued and saddened.
     As she bathed my wounds, my aunt said, "It doesn't  look as if you  two
will ever get on together. We'll roast him tomorrow."
     The  next day my cousin and I  set  about catching the cock.  The  poor
fellow sensed  that  fate had turned against him. He fled  from us  with the
speed of an ostrich. He flew into the kitchen  garden, he hid in the bushes.
Finally  he flapped  into the cellar,  and there  we  caught him. He  looked
persecuted  and  his eyes were full of mournful reproach.  He seemed  to  be
saying to me, "Yes, we were foes, you and I.  But it was an  honourable war,
between men. I never expected such  treachery  from  you." I felt  strangely
upset and  turned away. A few minutes later my cousin lopped off  his  head.
The cock's  body jerked and writhed,  the wings flapped and folded as  if to
cover the gushing throat. Life  would be safer now but  all the fun had gone
out of it
     Still, he made us a fine dinner, and the spicy nut sauce that went with
it diluted the pangs of my unexpected sorrow.
     Now I realise that he was really a splendid fighting cock, but born too
late.  The days of  cock fighting have long since passed, and  fighting  the
human race is a lost cause from the start.

--------


     Nearly all the mathematicians I have ever known have been untidy, slack
and rather  brilliant  individuals. So  the  saying about  the perfection of
Pythagoras's pants is probably not absolutely correct.
     Pythagoras's pants may have been perfect but his disciples seem to have
forgotten the fact and pay little attention to their own appearance.
     Yet,  there was  one teacher of mathematics at our school  who differed
from all others. He  was neither slack nor  untidy.  I don't know whether he
was brilliant or not, and that is now rather difficult to establish. I think
he probably was.
     His  name was  Kharlampy Diogenovich.  So,  like Pythagoras, he  was of
Greek origin. He appeared in our  form at the beginning of a school year. We
had  never  heard  of  him  before  and  had  never   suspected   that  such
mathematicians could exist.
     He immediately established the rule of  exemplary silence in our  form.
The silence was so terrifying that our headmaster would sometimes throw open
the form-room door in alarm because he was not  sure whether we were at  our
desks or had all run away to the sports ground.
     The  sports  ground  bordered  on the  school yard  and  at all  times,
particularly during important competitions,  interfered with the pedagogical
process.  Our headmaster  had actually  written a letter requesting  that it
should be  moved elsewhere. He  maintained that the  sports ground upset his
pupils.  In  fact,  we were  upset  not  by the  sports ground  but  by  the
groundsman, Uncle Vasya, who never failed to recognise us, even without  our
books, and chased  us out of his domain with a wrathful zeal  that showed no
sign of waning with the years.
     Luckily, no one listened to our headmaster and the sports ground stayed
where it  was, except that the wooden fence was replaced by a brick wall. So
even those who  used to watch events through the chinks in the fence now had
to climb the wall.
     Nevertheless,  our  headmaster had  no  reason  to  be  afraid  of  our
absenting  ourselves from a  mathematics  lesson. This was  unthinkable.  It
would  have been just as bad  as going up to the headmaster between  lessons
and silently snatching  off his hat,  although  everyone was utterly  fed up
with that hat.  He went about  in  it all  the year round, winter and summer
always the same soft felt  hat, evergreen like a magnolia. And he was always
afraid of something.
     To the uninitiated it might have appeared that what he  feared most was
the  commission  of the Urban Department  of Public  Education, but  in fact
there was  no one  he feared more than our director of studies, a demon of a
woman about whom I  shall  one day  write a  poem  in  Byronic  vein. At the
moment, however, I have a different story to tell.
     Of course, we could never have escaped from a mathematics lesson. If we
ever managed to miss a lesson, it was usually singing.
     As soon  as our Kharlampy Diogenovich entered the  room, the whole form
would  fall silent  and  remain so  till  the end  of  the lesson. True,  he
sometimes  made  us laugh,  but this  was  not  spontaneous laughter; it was
amusement  master-minded  from  above  by  the  teacher  himself.  Far  from
destroying discipline,  it  actually  ministered  to it, just as a  converse
proposition assists proof in geometry.
     This is how  it worked. Let  us  suppose  that  a pupil  was late for a
lesson and arrived, say, about half a second after  the bell had  rung, when
Kharlampy  Diogenovich would  be on the point of entering the  room himself.
The  wretched pupil  would  be wishing he could fall through  the floor, and
would have done so if the teachers' common room had not been underneath.
     Some teachers paid  no attention to such a minor  offence, others would
flare  up  and  give  you  a  reprimand  on  the  spot;  but  not  Kharlampy
Diogenovich. In such  cases he would halt in the doorway, shift his register
from one hand to the other and with a gesture full of respect  for his pupil
motion him towards the door.
     The pupil  would  hesitate  and  his embarrassed  face would express  a
fervent   desire  to  somehow  creep  in   behind  his   teacher.  Kharlampy
Diogenovich's  face, on the  other  hand, would effuse  a joyous hospitality
moderated only by politeness and an understanding of the peculiar demands of
the situation. He would make it  felt that the mere arrival of  such a pupil
was a  delightful occasion for the whole form and himself  personally,  that
none of us had been expecting him but now that he was here no one would dare
to reproach him for being a mere fraction of a second late, least of all he,
a humble schoolmaster, who would naturally enter the form-room behind such a
splendid pupil and himself close the door after him to show that we were not
going to let our dear guest out again in a hurry.
     The whole thing would last only a few seconds, at the end  of which the
pupil having edged awkwardly through  the door, would stumble on towards his
desk.
     Kharlampy Diogenovich would watch  his progress and  make some splendid
comment. For example, "The Prince of Wales."
     The form would roar with laughter. Though we had no idea who the Prince
of Wales was, we realised that he could not possibly appear in our form. For
one thing there  would be no point in it because princes were mainly engaged
in  chasing the deer. And if this particular prince had got tired of chasing
his deer and felt like visiting a  school, they would be sure to take him to
School No. 1, near the power station, because it was  a model school. At any
rate, if he had insisted on  coming to ours, we should have been warned long
beforehand and thoroughly briefed for his arrival.
     This was why we laughed, realising that our pupil could not possibly be
a prince, and certainly not any Prince of Wales.
     But  the moment Kharlampy Diogenovich  sat down at  his desk  the  form
would fall silent and the lesson would begin.
     A  shortish man with a large head, neatly dressed and carefully shaved,
he controlled his  form  with  calm authority. Besides the form  register he
kept a notebook in which  he  made  notes after testing a boy's knowledge. I
cannot remember his ever raising  his voice at anyone  or urging him to work
harder  or threatening  to send for  his parents.  He  had  no use  for such
methods.
     During a test he never stalked about between  the desks peering  inside
or looking round vigilantly at the slightest  rustle as other teachers  did.
Nothing  of the kind.  He  would  sit at  his own  desk, reading  calmly  or
fingering a string of yellow beads, which looked like cat's eyes.
     Cribbing during his lessons  was almost useless because he never failed
to  recognise  something that  had  been  copied  and would  hold  it up  to
ridicule.  So we cribbed only in cases of extreme emergency,  when there was
no other way out
     Sometimes  during a test he  would relinquish  his beads or book  for a
moment and say:
     "Sakharov, would you mind going and sitting next to Avdeyenko, please."
     Sakharov  would  stand   up  and  stare   questioningly  at   Kharlampy
Diogenovich, unable to understand  why he, one of the best boys in the form,
should be relegated to a place next to Avdeyenko, who was an absolute dud.
     "Take pity on Avdeyenko. I'm afraid he will break his neck."
     Avdeyenko  would gaze stolidly at  Kharlampy  Diogenovich as though--or
perhaps because--he  could  not understand why he was in danger of  breaking
his neck.
     "Avdeyenko thinks he is  a swan," Kharlampy  Diogenovich would explain.
"A black swan," he would add a moment later, alluding perhaps to Avdeyenko's
sullen sunburnt face. "Carry on, Sakharov."
     Sakharov would sit down again.
     "You may carry on too," Kharlampy Diogenovich would tell Avdeyenko, but
with a perceptible  change of  voice which  now carried a carefully measured
dose  of  sarcasm. "If you don't break  your neck of course, Black Swan!" he
would  conclude firmly, his final phrase somehow expressing the valiant hope
that Avdeyenko would acquire the ability to work on his own.
     Shurik   Avdeyenko  would   pore  furiously  over  his  exercise  book,
demonstrating a great effort of mind and will directed to this end.
     Kharlampy Diogenovich's chief  weapon was  his knack of  ridicule.  The
pupil  who  defied the school rules was not a  slacker,  not  a  dud,  not a
hooligan, he was simply funny. Or rather, not simply funny--many of us would
not have minded that at  all--but  ridiculous.  Ridiculous without realising
that he was ridiculous, or being the last to guess it.
     When a  teacher makes you appear ridiculous, you  immediately lose  the
traditional support of the rest of the form and they all laugh at you. It is
all against one. If one person laughs at you, you can usually deal  with the
situation  somehow. But you cannot turn  the laugh against the  whole  form.
Once in  this ridiculous  position,  you  will go  to any  length  to  prove
yourself a little less ridiculous than you inevitably appear.
     Kharlampy Diogenovich had no favourites. We  were all potential victims
of his wit and I, of course, was no exception.
     That day I had not solved the  problem we had been set for homework. It
had been about an artillery shell flying somewhere at a certain  speed for a
certain time. We had to  work out how many kilometres it would have flown if
it  had  been  travelling  at  a  different speed  and, perhaps,  even  in a
different direction.
     As if one and the same shell could possibly fly at different speeds. It
was a muddled, stupid kind  of problem and my answer just wouldn't come  out
right. Incidentally, the answers given at the back  of some of the textbooks
in  those years--it must have  been  sabotage--were  incorrect. This did not
happen very  often, of course, because by that time nearly all the saboteurs
had been caught. But apparently there were one or two still at large.
     However, I was still troubled with doubts. Saboteurs  may be saboteurs,
but it's no good  relying on them. So,  the next  day I arrived  at school a
whole hour before lessons started. We  were in the second shift. The keenest
footballers were in the yard already. I asked one of  them about the problem
and it turned out that he had not been able to get it right either. That set
my conscience completely at rest. We split up into two teams and played till
the bell rang for school.
     In we went. Almost before I had got my breath back, I asked our top boy
Sakharov,
     "Well, how about that problem?"
     "Not so bad," he said. "I solved it."  He gave a brief, meaningful nod,
indicating that  there had  been certain difficulties  but he had surmounted
them.
     "How could you? The answer in the back is wrong."
     "No, it isn't," he said, nodding again, this time with such an annoying
expression of  assurance  on his clever, conscientious face  that I at  once
began to hate him for his good  fortune. I was  about  to express a few more
doubts  but he  turned  away, thus depriving me  of  the  falling man's last
consolation--grabbing at air.
     Apparently, at that moment Kharlampy Diogenovich  had  appeared  in the
doorway but  I  had  failed to notice him and continued  my  gesticulations,
although he was only a few feet away from  me. At length I realised what had
happened closed my textbook in frightened haste and froze to my desk.
     Kharlampy Diogenovich took his place by the blackboard.
     I cursed myself  for at first agreeing  with  the footballer  that  the
solution in the book  was wrong,  and afterwards agreeing with the  top  boy
that  it was right. Now  Kharlampy  Diogenovich  would be sure to notice  my
anxiety and call me to the board first.
     Next to me sat a quiet and meek member of the form whose name was Adolf
Komarov. Nowadays he called himself Alik Komarov and even wrote Alik on  his
copybooks because the war had  started  and he did not  want to be nicknamed
Hitler.  It made  no  difference.  Everyone remembered his proper  name  and
reminded him of it whenever they had the chance.
     I liked talking  in class  and  he liked keeping quiet. We had been put
together  to  exert  a good  influence  on each other but  it hadn't worked.
Neither of us had changed.
     Now I noticed  that even he had solved the problem. He was sitting over
his open notebook, neat, thin and quiet, and his hands lying on the blotting
paper before him made him  seem even  quieter.  He  had this stupid habit of
keeping his hands on his blotter, of which I just could not break him.
     "Hitler kaput,"  I whispered in his direction.  He made  no  reply,  of
course, but  at  least he took  his  hands off his blotter,  which  was some
relief.
     Meanwhile Kharlampy Diogenovich greeted  the form  and sat  down in his
chair. He flicked  back the sleeves of his jacket, slowly wiped his nose and
mouth with a handkerchief, which he examined for some  reason, then put away
in his pocket. After that he  removed his  watch  and began to thumb through
the pages of the register.  It  looked as if the executioner was speeding up
his preparations.
     At last, however, he finished marking those absent and looked round the
room, selecting his victim. I held my breath.
     "Who's the monitor?"  he  asked  unexpectedly. I  sighed  with  relief,
thanking him for the respite.
     There  turned  out  to  be  no  monitor  for  that  day  and  Kharlampy
Diogenovich told our form captain to wipe the board. While he  was doing so,
Kharlampy Diogenovich lectured him on  the  duties of  a form  captain  when
there was no monitor. I began to hope he would tell us some  story connected
with  the subject, or  one  of  Aesop's  fables, or  something  out of Greek
mythology. But he refrained from  any further illustration  of  his  lecture
because the scrape of the dry rag on the blackboard  was distracting  and he
was anxious for the form captain to finish his irritating task. At  last the
form captain returned to his place.
     We waited in  suspense. But at that moment the door  opened and a woman
doctor and a nurse appeared.
     "Excuse me, is this 5A?" the doctor asked.
     "No, it  is  not," Kharlampy Diogenovich replied with polite hostility,
seeing  that some  medical project was about to interfere  with  his lesson.
Although  our  form was  nearly 5A,  because it  was 5B, he had  answered as
firmly as  if we had absolutely nothing in  common. "Excuse me,"  the doctor
said again and, after lingering for a moment, withdrew and closed the door.
     I knew  they were going  to  inoculate us against typhus. Some  of  the
forms had been done already. Inoculations were never announced beforehand so
that no one could slip away or stay at home on the pretext of being ill.
     I was not  afraid of inoculations because  I  had  had plenty,  against
malaria, the nastiest of all.
     And now the white-coated hope  that  had suddenly illuminated our  form
had disappeared. I just could not let that happen.
     "May I show them where 5A is?" I said, growing quite brazen in my fear.
     There were two factors to justify the audacity of my proposal. My place
was near the door and I was often sent to the teachers' room  for  chalk and
other things of that kind. Besides, form 5A was situated in an annexe in the
school yard and the doctor might indeed get lost because she was permanently
attached to School No. 1 and rarely visited us.
     "Yes,  do,"  Kharlampy  Diogenovich  said,  and  raised   his  eyebrows
slightly.
     Trying to conceal my joy, I shot out of the room.
     I caught up the  doctor and nurse while they were still in the corridor
on our floor.
     "I'll show you where 5A is," I said, falling into step beside them.
     The  doctor  smiled  as  if  she  was  handing out  sweets  instead  of
inoculations.
     "Aren't you going to do us?" I asked.
     "During the next lesson," the doctor said, still smiling.
     "But we are going  out  to  the  museum for the  next lesson,"  I said,
rather to my own surprise.
     There had, in fact, been some talk of our making  an organised visit to
the local  museum  to  see the  prehistoric  remains on show  there. But our
history  mistress kept putting it off because  the headmaster was  afraid we
might not get there in an organised fashion.
     Last  year a boy in our form had stolen a dagger that had once belonged
to an Abkhazian feudal prince, because  he wanted  to run away to  the front
with it. This had caused a  great rumpus and the headmaster had decided that
it had all come about because the form had wandered down to  the museum in a
crowd instead of marching there in double file.
     In fact,  that  lad  had  worked  everything  out  very carefully  long
beforehand. Instead of  taking  the dagger at once,  he had hidden it in the
thatch of  an exhibit labelled  Pre-revolutionary Poor Man's Hovel, and only
months later, when the fuss had died down, did he go there in a  coat with a
slit in the lining and complete his theft.
     "We won't let you," the doctor said cheerfully.
     "But we're all going to assemble in the yard," I said, getting worried,
"and go on an organised visit to the museum."
     "So it's an organised visit, is it?"
     "Yes,  it  is,"  I  said seriously, afraid  that  she,  too,  like  our
headmaster,  would doubt our  ability  to visit the museum in  an  organised
fashion.
     "Well, Galochka, let's go  back to 5B, just in  case," the doctor said,
and stopped.  I  had always  liked these nice  clean women  doctors in their
little white caps and white coats.
     "But they told us to go  to 5A first," that  stubborn creature Galochka
protested, and looked  at me  severely. Anyone could see  she  was trying to
make herself out a grown-up.
     I  never gave  her so much  as a glance, just to show that nobody would
ever take her for one.
     "What  difference does it  make,"  the  doctor  said, and  clinched the
argument by turning round.
     "So you can't wait to show us how brave you are?" she added.
     "I'm a  malaria  sufferer,"  I  said,  dismissing  the  implication  of
self-interest. "I've had thousands of injections."
     "Well, lead on then, malaria sufferer," said the doctor, and we started
back.
     Having made sure  they  were not going to change  their minds, I ran on
ahead so as to cut out any connection between myself and their arrival.
     When I entered the form-room,  Shurik  Avdeyenko was at the  blackboard
and, although the solution to the problem was written out in three stages on
the blackboard in his beautiful  handwriting,  he could not  explain it.  He
stood there with an  expression of sullen fury on his face, as though he had
known just how it went before but was now unable to recall the course of his
reasoning.
     Don't worry, Shurik, I thought. You may not know it but  I've saved you
already. Now I wanted to be kind and benevolent to everyone.
     "Good work, Alik," I said  as  I  took my place  beside Komarov. "Fancy
solving such a difficult problem."
     Alik was considered a good plodder. He was rarely  reprimanded and even
more rarely  praised. Now  the tips of his ears blushed  gratefully. He bent
over his exercise book once more and placed his hands neatly on the blotter.
Oh well, I suppose he just couldn't help it.
     A few moments later the  door  opened and the doctor and  that Galochka
kid entered the room. The doctor said the whole form had to be inoculated.
     "If  it must be  done  now," said Kharlampy Diogenovich, with  a  quick
glance  in  my  direction, "how  can  I  object?  Go  back  to  your  place,
Avdeyenko," he added with a nod at Shurik.
     Shurik put down the chalk and walked back to his desk, still pretending
to be engaged in a concentrated effort of recall.
     A stir of  excitement passed through the form but Kharlampy Diogenovich
raised his eyebrows and all was calm. He put his notepad away in his pocket,
closed the register, relinquished his place  to the  doctor and  himself sat
down at one of the desks, looking sad and rather hurt.
     The doctor and the  girl  opened their bags  and started setting out on
the table bottles, jars and wickedly gleaming instruments.
     "Well, who's the bravest  boy  in the form?" the  doctor  said, sucking
serum  greedily into the syringe and holding it point upwards to prevent any
dripping out.
     She spoke cheerfully but no one smiled. All eyes were on the needle.
     "We'll have to  call them out  in alphabetical order,"  said  Kharlampy
Diogenovich. "Everyone is a hero in this form."
     He opened the register.
     "Avdeyenko," he said, looking up.
     The form laughed  nervously, and  even the doctor smiled,  although she
had no idea what we were laughing at.
     Avdeyenko went to the table, a tall, ungainly figure whose face clearly
revealed that he had not yet made up his mind whether it was better to get a
bad mark or be the first for inoculation.
     He pulled up his shirt and  stood with  his back to the doctor, looking
even more  ungainly and still  uncertain  which was better. When  it was all
over and he had been inoculated,  he looked just as unhappy, although he was
now envied by the whole form.
     Alik Komarov  grew  more  and  more pale  as  his turn  approached and,
although  he kept  his hands on the  blotting paper in front of him, I could
see it was not helping at all.
     I tried to cheer him up but it was  no good. He  grew paler and sterner
every minute, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on the doctor's needle.
     "Turn your head away," I told him.
     "I can't," he replied in an agonised whisper.
     "It won't hurt  much at first," I  encouraged him. "The  time  it hurts
most is when the serum starts going in."
     "I'm so  thin," he  whispered back,  scarcely moving  his  white  lips.
"It'll hurt me terribly."
     "Don't worry," I said. "You'll be all right as long as it doesn't touch
the bone.",
     "I'm nothing  but bones," he whispered desperately. "It's sure to touch
one."
     "Relax your muscles," I  said,  patting him on  the shoulder.  "Nothing
will touch the bone then."
     "I haven't got any muscles," he replied dully, "and I'm anaemic."
     "Thin   people  are  never  anaemic,"  I  retorted  strictly.  "Malaria
sufferers are anaemic because malaria sucks their blood."
     I suffered from chronic malaria and  the doctors could do nothing about
it however much they treated me. I was rather proud of my incurable malaria.
     By the time they called Alik's name, he was in a  real state. He hardly
knew where he was going or what for.
     He stood with his back to the doctor,  white-faced and glassy-eyed  and
when she made the injection he suddenly  went pale as death, although it had
seemed impossible  for him to get any paler. He turned so pale that his face
came  out in freckles. None of us had thought he was freckled  before and  I
decided to keep the fact of his concealed freckles in mind. It might come in
useful one day, although I had no idea what for.
     After  the injection he nearly collapsed but the doctor held him up and
helped him to a chair. His eyes rolled back alarmingly and we thought he was
going to die.
     "Ambulance!" I shouted. "I'll go and call the ambulance!"
     Kharlampy Diogenovich looked at me wrathfully and the doctor deftly put
a bottle of smelling salts under his  nose--not  Kharlampy Diogenovich's, of
course, but Alik's.
     At first he wouldn't open his eyes, then he suddenly jumped to his feet
and marched smartly back to his place, as though it certainly was  not  Alik
Komarov who had been just about to die.
     "Didn't feel  a thing,"  I  said, when I had my injection, though I had
felt it quite distinctly.
     "Well done, malaria sufferer," said the doctor.
     Her assistant  dabbed my back carelessly after  the injection. I  could
see she was still annoyed with me for not letting them go to 5A.
     "Rub harder," I said. "The serum must be made to circulate."
     She finished  rubbing my back  with an energy  born  of hatred. It  was
pleasant to  feel the  cool cotton wool soaked in surgical  spirit, and even
more pleasant to know that, even though she was angry with me, she still had
to rub my back.
     At last the whole thing was  over. The  doctor and  her Galochka packed
their bags and  went  on  their  way, leaving  a pleasant smell  of surgical
spirit and an unpleasant smell of serum in the room. The pupils sat at their
desks, fidgeting and cautiously feeling for  the  effects of  the  injection
with their shoulder blades and talking freely to each other as  a reward for
the suffering they had just endured.
     "Open the window,"  said Kharlampy Diogenovich, resuming his  seat.  He
wanted this spirit  of hospital freedom to  depart  along with the  smell of
medicine.
     He  took out his yellow beads and flicked them thoughtfully to and fro.
There was not  much  of the  lesson left.  He usually filled in such gaps by
telling us something instructive connected with the ancient Greeks.
     "As  we  know  from Greek  mythology,  Hercules had  to perform  twelve
labours," he said, and stopped. Click-click--as two beads slid from right to
left. "But  a certain young man thought he would revise Greek mythology," he
added, and stopped again. Click-click.
     That fellow had too big an idea of himself,  I  thought, realising that
no  one  was allowed  to  revise Greek  mythology.  Some other  God-forsaken
mythology, perhaps,  might be knocked  into shape, but  not  Greek mythology
because  it  had all been revised from beginning  to  end already and  there
couldn't possibly be any mistakes in it.
     "He decided  to  perform the thirteenth  labour of Hercules," Kharlampy
Diogenovich went on. "And to some extent he succeeded."
     We  realised at once by  his voice what a false  and futile labour this
had  been,  because  if there had been any  need  for  Hercules  to  perform
thirteen labours he would  have  performed them  himself,  but since he  had
stopped at twelve it meant that twelve were enough and there was no need for
anyone to mess about making corrections.
     "Hercules  performed  his labours  like a  hero.  But  this  young  man
performed  his  labour  out  of  cowardice."  Kharlampy  Diogenovich  paused
thoughtfully, then added, "In  a moment we shall learn just what it was that
induced him to perform this labour."
     Click. This time only  one bead slid from right to  left, driven  by  a
very sharp flip  of  the  finger. It slid rather nastily  somehow. Two beads
sliding together, as they had done before, would have been better  than just
one, all by itself.
     I caught the scent of danger in the air. It was the sound not of a bead
sliding but of a small trap closing in Kharlampy Diogenovich's hands.
     "I have a feeling that I know already what it was," he said, and looked
at me.
     Something in his glance made my heart thud heavily against my spine.
     "Be so kind," he said, and beckoned me to the blackboard.
     "Who? Me?" I asked, feeling as if my voice was coming  from the  pit of
my stomach.
     "Yes, you, my fearless malaria sufferer," he said.
     I shambled towards the board.
     "Tell us  how  you  solved the  problem,"  he  said  calmly and--click,
click--two more beads went sliding from right to left. I was in his hands.
     The form looked on and  waited. They were all  expecting me to come  to
grief, and they wanted me to do so as slowly and interestingly as possible.
     I squinted at the board from the corner of my eye, trying to trace  the
thread  of cause  and  effect between the stages  of  the problem that  were
written there, but  it  was no use. Then with a great  show  of impatience I
began rubbing it all out,  as though what Shurik had written was muddling me
and  preventing me  from  concentrating. I was still  hoping for the bell to
ring and  save  me from  execution. But the  bell did  not  ring and  it was
impossible to go on cleaning  the board forever. I put down the rag to avoid
looking ridiculous before I had to.
     "We are listening," Kharlampy Diogenovich said, without looking at me.
     "An  artillery shell..."  I  said  brightly  amid the  form's  jubilant
silence, and broke off.
     "Continue," Kharlampy Diogenovich said, after waiting politely for some
moments.
     "An artillery  shell..." I repeated stubbornly, hoping that the impetus
of these correct words would  carry  me on to more, similarly correct words.
But something held me  on a firm  tether that pulled  tight as soon  as  the
words were out of my mouth.
     I concentrated fiercely,  trying to imagine the course of the  problem,
and then plunged forward again to break the invisible tether.
     "An  artillery  shell..."   I  repeated,  quivering  with   horror  and
revulsion.
     A few restrained titters  came from the form. I sensed that the crucial
moment had arrived  and decided not to allow myself  to become ridiculous on
any account; I would rather just get a bad mark.
     "Have you swallowed this artillery shell?" Kharlampy Diogenovich  asked
with good-natured curiosity.
     He asked the question as naturally  as if he had been inquiring whether
I had swallowed a plum stone.
     "Yes," I said quickly, sensing a trap and  deciding to  foil his  plans
with an unexpected answer.
     "Then you'd better ask the military instructor  to come  and dispose of
it for you," said Kharlampy Diogenovich, but the form was already laughing.
     Sakharov was laughing, and  trying to go on looking like the top boy at
the same time. Even Shurik Avdeyenko, the gloomiest boy in our form,  whom I
had saved from certain disaster at the blackboard, was laughing. And Komarov
was laughing, Komarov who now called himself Alik but was really Adolf, just
as he had always been.
     As I  looked at  him it  occurred to me that if  we had not had  a real
gingerhead in our form he would have passed as one because his hair was fair
and the  freckles  that  he kept hidden,  like  his  first  name,  had given
themselves away during the injection. But we  did  have a real gingerhead in
the form and Komarov's gingerness had passed unnoticed. And it also occurred
to me  that  if we had  not pulled the number  of our form off the form-room
door a  few days ago, the doctor might never have called on us  in the first
place and nothing would have  happened.  I began to have vague presentiments
of the connection that exists between things and events.
     The  bell  droned funereally  through  the  form's laughter.  Kharlampy
Diogenovich put a mark against my  name in the register and also made a note
about me in his notebook.
     From  then on  I  took my homework  more seriously and never  asked the
footballers about problems I couldn't solve. Each man to his trade.
     Later in life I  noticed  that  nearly everyone is afraid of  appearing
ridiculous.  Particularly women  and  poets.  Perhaps  they sometimes appear
ridiculous because they  are too afraid of appearing so. On the other  hand,
no one can make someone else look ridiculous as skillfully as a good poet or
a good woman.
     Of  course,  it  is  not  very wise  to  be  too  afraid  of  appearing
ridiculous, but it is much less wise not to be afraid of ridicule at all.
     It seems  to me  that ancient Rome perished because its emperors in all
their marble magnificence  failed  to realise how ridiculous  they  were. If
they had got  themselves some jesters in time (you must hear the  truth,  if
only from  a fool),  they might have lasted  a little  longer. But they just
went on hoping that the geese would save Rome,  and then the Barbarians came
and destroyed Rome, its emperors and its geese.
     Not  that I  have any regrets  about that,  of course. But I do want to
express my admiration and gratitude for Kharlampy Diogenovich's method. With
the aid of laughter he tempered our sly young hearts and taught us to regard
ourselves with a strong enough sense of humour.

--------


     In accordance with Moslem custom our family never ate pork. Our parents
ate  none and strictly forbade us to eat any. Although another of  Mahomet's
precepts--on the subject of  alcoholic  beverages--was  violated,  as  I now
realise,  quite unrestrainedly,  no liberalism  was  allowed where  pork was
concerned.
     The ban engendered both  an ardent desire and a frigid pride. I dreamed
of tasting  pork. The smell of roast  pork  made me dizzy  to the  point  of
collapse.  I  would stand for  hours outside shop  windows, staring  at  the
glistening  sausages  with their wrinkled  sides  and  spotted ends  fancied
myself tearing off the skin and plunging my teeth into the succulent, tender
meat. I imagined the taste of sausage so clearly that, when I did eventually
try it, I was quite  surprised to discover how accurately fancy had informed
me.
     Of course,  there  had been opportunities of  tasting  pork at  nursery
school or when visiting friends but I had never broken the accepted rule.
     I can still remember  picking the lumps of pork out of a nursery school
plov and giving them away to my friends. The pangs of appetite were overcome
by the sweetness  of self-denial.  I felt a kind of  ideological superiority
over my  comrades. It was  satisfying  to  be something of  a mystery to the
world at large, as though I had knowledge that no one else possessed. And it
made my yearning for the sinful object of desire all the more intense.
     There was a nurse who lived in one of the houses in our yard. We called
her  Auntie  Sonya. In those  days for some reason  we thought  of  her as a
doctor. In general, as one grows up,  one  notices  a steady decline in  the
status of one's elders.
     Auntie Sonya was an elderly lady with her hair  cut short and a look of
permanent sorrow on her face. She always spoke in a very quiet voice. It was
as though she had long since realised that there was nothing in  life  worth
raising one's voice about.
     During  the communal  battles between  neighbours  that  were  frequent
enough  in our yard she  scarcely raised her  voice  at  all, which  created
additional  difficulties for  her opponents who, having  failed to hear what
she had said, would  lose the thread  of the  quarrel and  be put off  their
stroke.
     Our families were on  good terms.  Mother told me that Auntie Sonya had
saved  me  from  certain death.  When  I had been struck down by some  grave
illness, she and mother had taken turns at my bedside for a whole month. For
some reason I experienced no feelings of gratitude towards  Auntie Sonya for
saving  me from  certain  death, but my sense of  decorum, when  they talked
about it, made me glad I was still alive.
     She would often come round to sit with us of an evening and tell us her
life story,  particularly  the  part about her  first husband, who had  been
killed in the civil war. I had heard this story many times before and  yet I
always froze with horror  at her  description  of  how she had  roamed about
among the dead, looking for the body of the man she loved. At this point she
would usually  begin  to cry, and my mother and elder sister would cry  with
her,  then begin comforting her, bring her a glass of water or  persuade her
to have some tea.
     It always astonished  me  how quickly  the  women would  recover  their
spirits and soon be able to  chatter merrily and even with renewed  interest
about all kinds of trivial matters. After this she would go home because her
husband would be back from work. He was called Uncle Shura.
     I was very fond of Uncle  Shura. I liked  the wild tangle of black hair
that hung down over his forehead, his muscular arms with their neatly rolled
up sleeves, and even his stoop. It was not the stoop of an office clerk, but
the sound, sturdy kind of stance that one finds in some old workmen although
he was neither old nor a workman.
     When he  came  home  in the evening  he would  always set about mending
something--table lamps,  electric  irons radios and even clocks.  All  these
things  were brought  to him by neighbours and he repaired them, as a matter
of course free of charge.
     Auntie Sonya  would sit on the other side of the table,  smoke and make
gentle fun of him for doing something that was not his business, wasting his
time, and so on.
     'We'll see  whether I'm wasting  my  time or not,"  Uncle  Shura  would
mutter indistinctly because he,  too, had  a cigarette between his teeth. He
would  turn  his  next mending job this way and that  in his deft, confident
hands blowing  off the dust as  he did so, and all of a sudden he would look
at it from quite a new, unexpected angle.
     "Wasting your time and making a fool  of  yourself," Auntie Sonya would
reply and, releasing a haughty stream of smoke  from her lips, gloomily wrap
her dressing-gown round her.
     In the end he  would  manage to get the clock going, or the radio would
start giving out crackles and snatches of music and  he would wink at me and
say:
     "Well? Was I wasting my time or not?"
     I would  always rejoice in his success and smile to show that, although
it had nothing to do with me, I appreciated being included in his company.
     "All right, enough  of your  boasting," Auntie  Sonya would say. "Clear
the table and we'll have some tea."
     Even  in her gruff tone, however, I could detect a secret deeply hidden
note of  pride,  and I  felt glad for  Uncle Shura  and decided that  he was
probably just as good as that hero of the civil war whom  Auntie Sonya would
never forget.
     One  evening, when I was sitting with them  as usual, my sister dropped
in and was invited  to stay for tea.  Auntie Sonya laid the  table, cut some
pieces of tender  pink bacon fat, put some mustard  on the table, and poured
out the tea. They had  often eaten bacon fat before  this, and offered it to
me  as well, but I had  always  firmly refused, which for some reason rather
amused Uncle Shura.  They offered  me some now, not very  insistently. Uncle
Shura  placed a few cubes  of fat on a piece of  bread and held it out to my
sister. Aver a mincing  refusal,  she  accepted  this  shameful offering and
began  to eat it. In my indignation I felt the tea that I had begun to drink
freeze in my throat, and experienced some difficulty in swallowing it.
     "That's  the  way!" said Uncle Shura. "She's not  like you, you  little
monk!"
     I felt  how much my  sister was enjoying what  she ate. I could see  it
from the way  she delicately  licked her lips  clean of the crumbs of  bread
defiled  by this  infidel  savoury, and  the  way  she swallowed each piece,
sitting foolishly still and pausing as if to listen to what was  going on in
her mouth and  throat.  She  had started the  slice  on  the  side where the
thinner  pieces of fat lay, and this was  a sure sign that she was relishing
every morsel, because all normal children, when eating  something they like,
leave the  best piece till  last.  Clearly  she  was  experiencing  enormous
pleasure.
     Now she was approaching the edge of the  slice with the thickest  piece
of  fat on it, systematically intensifying  her  delight. At the  same time,
with purely feminine guile she was relating how my brother had jumped out of
the window when his form mistress had come round to complain of his conduct.
Her story  served the  dual  purpose of  distracting attention from what she
herself was doing, while subtly flattering me, because everyone knew that my
teacher had never been round to  complain  about  me and I certainly  had no
reason to flee from her through the window.
     In the course of  her  story my sister glanced at me from time to time,
trying  to discover  whether I  was still watching her or whether  I was  so
carried away by her tale that  I had forgotten  what she was  doing.  But my
glance stated  quite clearly  that I  was  still keeping her  under the most
vigilant  observation.  In  reply  she opened  her  eyes  very  wide  as  if
expressing surprise that I could pay so  much attention to a  mere trifle. I
leered back, alluding vaguely to the retribution that awaited her.
     At one moment I thought the time of retribution had already arrived. My
sister  choked, then  cautiously  began to clear  her throat. I watched with
interest to  see what would happen next. Uncle Shura patted her on the back.
She  blushed and then stopped coughing, indicating that the cure had worked;
her embarrassment appeared to  be equally short-lived.  But I felt that  the
piece that  had  stuck  in her throat  was still there.  Pretending to  have
recovered, she took another bite of bread and bacon fat.
     Chew away, I thought to  myself.  We'll  see  how you manage to  get it
down.
     But  apparently  the gods had decided to  postpone their vengeance.  My
sister swallowed this piece  safely. In fact,  it must also have pushed down
the previous  piece,  because  she  breathed  with relief  and  became quite
cheerful again. Now she ate with redoubled concentration and after each bite
licked her lips for so long that it looked almost as if she were showing her
tongue at me.
     At last  she reached the edge of the  slice with the thickest piece  of
fat on it and,  before putting it  in her mouth, she  nibbled away the bread
round it, thus building up the pleasure to be gained from the last piece.
     Eventually  she  swallowed this,  too, and licked  her  lips as  though
reliving the  pleasure she had received, and also to show that all  evidence
of her fall from grace had been destroyed.
     The whole thing  occupied  less time  than it takes to  tell and  could
scarcely have been noticed  by a casual  onlooker. Anyway I  am sure neither
Uncle Shura nor Auntie Sonya noticed anything.
     Having  finished  her  slice,  my  sister started  on  her  tea,  still
pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened. As soon as she put
the  cup to her lips I drank my own down very quickly,  so that there should
be nothing in common between us. Before this I had refused a biscuit because
I  was  determined to  make my  martyrdom complete  and  deny  myself  every
possible joy  while in her  presence.  Besides I was slightly  offended with
Uncle Shura for pressing his food on me less persistently than on my sister.
I should not have accepted it, of course, but for her  it would  have been a
good lesson in principle.
     In short, my  mood was  utterly  spoiled and, as soon as  I ad drunk my
tea, I got up to go. They asked me to stay but I was inexorable.
     "I  must do my homework," I  said  with the  air  of  the  lonely saint
granting everyone else complete freedom to indulge in sin.
     My sister begged me to stay. She was sure I would denounce her  as soon
as I  got home and  she was also  afraid  of  crossing the yard at  night by
herself.
     At home I quickly undressed and got into bed. I was absorbed in envious
and gloating contemplation  of my sister's apostasy. Strange  visions passed
through my brain.  Now I was a Red partisan captured by the Whites and  they
were trying to make me eat  pork. They tortured me but  still I refused. The
officers  shook their heads in amazement. What a boy! I was amazed at myself
but not a morsel passed my lips. They could kill me  if they liked, but they
wouldn't make me eat.
     The door creaked and my sister came in. She at once asked about me.
     "He's gone to bed," my mother said. "He seemed rather glum when he came
home. Did something happen to him?"
     "Oh no,  nothing," my  sister replied, and came over  to my bed. I  was
afraid she would  start arguing  and pleading  with me and all  that kind of
thing.  Forgiveness  was out of the question but  I didn't even  want her to
whittle down the condition I was in. So I pretended to be asleep. She  stood
over me for a while, then stroked my head gently. But I turned over on to my
other  side,  showing that  even  while  asleep I could  tell  the hand of a
traitor. She stood there  a  little longer, then  withdrew.  It seemed to me
that she felt some repentance but knew no way of expiating her guilt.
     I  pitied  her a little, but  apparently this was a mistake, for only a
minute later she began telling mother something in a low voice and they both
burst into little  fits of laughter, carefully restrained to make it  appear
that they were afraid of disturbing me. Gradually they calmed down and began
to prepare for bed.
     Clearly  she had  enjoyed her evening. She  had guzzled bacon fat and I
hadn't said anything and,  to crown it all, she had made mother laugh. Never
mind, I thought, my hour will strike.
     Next  day the  whole family was seated at table, waiting  for father to
come home for  dinner.  He arrived late and got angry with mother for making
us wait for him.  He had been having trouble  at  work lately and was  often
gloomy and preoccupied.
     It had been my  intention to describe  my sister's  misdeed  during the
meal, but  now I realised this was the  wrong time to speak.  Nevertheless I
glanced at my sister now and then, giving the impression that I was about to
launch into  an account of her crime.  I would actually open my mouth,  then
say  something quite different. As soon as my lips parted she would drop her
eyes and  lower her head  in  anticipation of  the blow.  It was  even  more
enjoyable to keep her on the brink of exposure than actually expose her.
     One moment her face was pale, the next she would be blushing furiously.
Sometimes she would toss her head haughtily,  then immediately her imploring
eyes would beg forgiveness  for this rebellious gesture. She had no appetite
and  pushed away the  plate of  soup almost untouched. Mother  urged  her to
finish it.
     "Of course, she doesn't want it," I said. "She ate so much yesterday at
Uncle Shura's."
     "So much what?" my brother asked, missing everything as usual.
     Mother looked at me anxiously and shook her head without letting father
see. My sister took the plate back and began eating her soup in silence. Now
I was really enjoying myself. I transferred a  boiled onion from my plate to
hers. Boiled onion was the bugbear of our childhood. We all hated it. Mother
gave me a severe glance of inquiry.
     "She likes onions," I said. "You do,  don't you?" I added  fondly to my
sister.
     Her only response was to bow her head even lower over the plate.
     "If  you  like them, you  can  have  mine as  well,"  said my  brother,
scooping one up in his spoon. He was just about to put it on  her plate, but
my father  gave him such a look that the spoon  stopped in midair and beat a
cowardly retreat.
     Between the first and second  courses I  devised  a fresh  amusement. I
dressed a  slice of bread  with little rings  of cucumber from the salad and
began nibbling delicately at my vegetarian sandwich, pretending now and then
to dissolve  with  pleasure.  This,  I  thought,  was a very  clever way  of
reconstructing the scene  of my sister's shameful fall. She stared at me  in
astonishment,  as though the pantomime meant  nothing to her  or,  at least,
nothing shameful. Further than this, however, her protest did not go.
     In  other words, dinner was  a  tremendous  success. Virtue blackmailed
ruthlessly and wickedness hung its  head. After dinner we  drank tea. Father
became noticeably more cheerful, and so, accordingly, did we. My sister  was
particularly gay. The colour flooded  into her cheeks and her eyes sparkled.
She  started relating some incident that had occurred  at school, constantly
appealing to  me as a witness, as though nothing had happened  between us. I
felt slightly disgusted by this familiarity. It struck me that a person with
her past could have behaved  with  a little more modesty  instead of jumping
into the  limelight.  She could have waited  until other, more worthy people
thought fit to relate that story.  I was about to administer a moderate dose
of punishment, but father unwrapped a newspaper and took out a packet of new
exercise books.
     In  those  pre-war years exercise books  were as  hard  to come  by  as
textiles and certain  foods. These were the best, glossy kind, with margins,
clearly marked in red, and heavy, cool pages of a bluish white colour,  like
milk.
     There were nine of these  exercise  books altogether and father gave us
three   each.  I  at  once  felt  my  high  spirits  begin   to  wane.  Such
egalitarianism seemed to me the limit of injustice.
     I was doing well at school, and sometimes came  top in  one subject  or
another. In fact, our  relatives and  friends  were told  that I was getting
excellent  marks in all subjects, perhaps in order to balance the impression
created by my brother's unfortunate notoriety.
     He was considered a very energetic  slacker. As his teacher put it, his
ability  to  judge his own  actions  lagged far behind  his  temperament.  I
imagined that temperament of  his in the  shape of a mischievous  little imp
that was always running on ahead of my brother and that he could never catch
up with. Perhaps, it was to help him in this chase  that ever  since the age
of eleven he had dreamed  of becoming a driver. On  every available scrap of
paper he would scribble an application he had read somewhere:

        To the Director of Transport
     I request you to employ  me in  the organisation  of which  you are  in
charge because I am a qualified driver, 3rd grade.

     Later he succeeded in realising this fervent ambition. The organisation
of which  a certain director was in charge entrusted him with a vehicle, but
it turned  out that catching up with his  temperament entailed exceeding the
speed limit, and in the end he had to change his profession.
     And here was I, almost an outstanding pupil, being reduced to the  same
level as  my brother, who, starting from the back page as usual, would  fill
up these beautiful exercise books with his idiotic applications.
     And  to the  same level as my sister, who only the  day before had been
guzzling bacon  fat and was today receiving  a  present  which  she had done
nothing whatever to deserve.
     I  pushed aside  the exercise books  and  sat scowling  at  the  table,
painfully aware of  the  humiliating  tears of resentment welling  up  in my
throat.  My father tried to talk me round and promised to take me fishing in
the mountains, but it was no use. The more they tried to console me the more
strongly I felt that I had been unjustly passed over.
     "Look! I've got two blotters!"  my sister sang out  all of a sudden, as
she opened one of the exercise books. This  was the  last straw. Perhaps, if
fate had not granted her that extra sheet of blotting paper, what did happen
might never have happened.
     I stood up and in a trembling voice said to my father:
     "Yesterday she was eating bacon fat...."
     An indecent silence  descended on  the  room.  With  a sense of fear  I
realised  that I had done something wrong. Either I had not expressed myself
quite clearly  or else there was  too  close a  connection between Mahomet's
great laws and  the sneaking desire  to lay hands on someone else's exercise
books.
     Father  stared  at  me  gravely from  under his slightly  swollen lids.
Slowly his eyes filled with  fury. I realised that his gaze held nothing for
me  to look forward  to. I  made  one  more pitiful  attempt to correct  the
situation and channel his fury in the right direction.
     "She ate  bacon fat yesterday at  Uncle Shura's,"  I said  desperately,
feeling that my whole case was collapsing.
     The next  moment father seized me by the  ears, shook my  head  and, as
though realising it would  not  come off,  lifted me up and  threw me to the
floor. In the brief seconds before  I landed I felt a stab of pain and heard
the creak of my ears stretching.
     "Son of a bitch!" he  cried. "On top of everything else am  I  to  have
traitors in my own house!"
     He  grabbed  his leather jacket  and swung out  of the room, giving the
door such a slam that plaster fell off  the  walls. I remember being  shaken
not so much by the pain or  by what he said, but  by the expression of utter
repugnance with  which  he  had  seized  my ears. It was the  expression  of
someone about to kill a snake.
     Stunned by what  had happened, I remained lying on the floor for a long
time. My mother tried to lift  me  up while my brother, in a  state  of wild
excitement,  ran  round  me  in  circles,  pointing at  my ears and  roaring
delightedly,
     "Our top boy!"
     I was  very fond  of  my  father  and this was the  first time  he  had
punished me.
     Many years have passed since  then.  For a long  time  now I  have been
eating the pork that is available to all, though I don't think I am  any the
happier for it. But  the lesson was not wasted. It taught me for the rest of
my life that no lofty principle can justify meanness and treachery, and that
all treachery  is the hairy caterpillar  that  grows from a small  envy,  no
matter under what high principles it may be concealed.

--------


     It was  1942. I was  living  at  my uncle's  house  in  the  village of
Napskal, in  the mountains. Fear of the bombing  and, above all, the wartime
food shortage had  driven us away from town to  this peaceful and relatively
well-provided corner of Abkhazia.
     Our little town had, in fact, been bombed only twice, and the bombs the
Germans  had  dropped  there  had  probably been intended  for  other,  more
important targets, which they had been prevented from reaching. My theory is
that those pilots raided us out  of fear of the punishment that awaited them
if  they returned to base with a full load  of bombs. I have two reasons for
thinking so. First, their aircraft approached the town not from behind their
lines but  from behind  ours  and, secondly, there  had  never been anything
military in our town except the militia.
     After  the first air-raid the town became deserted. The  table  orators
and amateur strategists of the  seaside coffee shops wisely  adjourned their
unending  discussions  on  current  affairs  and  quietly  withdrew  to  the
surrounding villages  to eat  Abkhazian hominy,  whose prestige  accordingly
mounted by leaps and bounds.
     Only the most essential  people  and those  who had nowhere else to  go
remained  in town. We were not essential and we had somewhere to  go.  So we
went. Our  country relatives consulted  each other  and shared  us out among
themselves,  taking  into account  our respective potentialities.  My  elder
brother,  as one  already polluted  by  urban  civilisation, remained in the
village nearest town  and was afterwards recruited into the army. My  sister
was sent off to live with a distant  relative, who, being  rich, seemed much
closer related than he really was. I, as the  youngest and most useless, was
given to my  uncle  in  the  mountains.  Mother remained  somewhere near the
middle, in the house of her elder sister, whence she tried to stretch out to
us her warm and ageing wings.
     My  uncle turned out to be quite  a big  cattle-breeder; he had  twenty
goats and three sheep. While I  was  trying to make up  my mind where family
assistance ended and exploitation began, he quietly and painlessly put me in
charge of them. I  soon took a liking to the job and learned how to exert my
will over this small but rebellious herd.
     We were bound together by two ancient magical calls: Kheit! and Iiyo!
     They had many meanings and shades of meaning depending on how they were
spoken. The goats understood these meanings perfectly but sometimes, when it
suited them, pretended to miss certain subtleties.
     The various  meanings were  numerous enough. For  instance, if I let my
voice ring out freely: "Kheit!  Kheit!" it meant, "Graze on  calmly,  you've
nothing to worry about."  If I called out in a tone of pedagogical reproach,
the meaning would be, "I  can see you! I know where you're off to." And if I
let  out  a  very  sharp  and  rapid, "Iiyo!  Iiyo!" they  were  supposed to
understand it as "Danger! Come back!"
     Skillful mingling of both calls yielded a great number of variations of
an educative nature-orders, advice, warnings, reproach and so on.
     At the sound of my voice  the goats would usually raise their heads, as
if trying to make  out what  exactly was  required of them this  time.  They
always grazed with a certain air of  fastidiousness,  tearing leaves off the
bushes  and reaching  up  for  the  freshest and  furthest  away. There  was
something  indecent  about  them  standing  on their hind legs, and later on
when, as a young man, I saw the goat-legged human figures in  a reproduction
of El Greco I was reminded of that impression.
     The  goats liked to  graze  on  steep,  craggy slopes  near  a mountain
stream. I  think the  sound of the  water awakened  their appetite, like the
sizzling of  spitted meat before  dinner.  Their beards shook and they bared
their small, even teeth as they nibbled. It irritated me to see them abandon
one branch and with careless greed start on another before they had finished
the first.
     At  dinner we had to  save every crumb,  and  they  could  afford to be
fussy. It was unjust.
     The sheep usually followed  in the wake of the  goats recognising their
precedence but maintaining a modest dignity.
     They kept their  heads  low to the ground,  as though smelling out  the
grass. For  choice  they  preferred open  level patches. But  if  they  were
frightened by something and bolted, there was no stopping them. Their  tails
would whack  their hindquarters as they ran  and each whack increased  their
terror, making them rocket ahead in a kind of multi-stage panic.
     As a resting place the goats would choose the highest and rockiest crag
they could find.  They liked a clean spot to  lie on. The oldest goat  would
usually occupy the summit. He had terrifying horns  and tufts of matted hair
that was yellow with age hung from his sides.  You could  feel he understood
his  role  in  life.  He  moved slowly,  with a  dignified  swaying  of  his
snow-white, wise old astrologer's beard. If a young goat was so unmindful as
to occupy his  place he  would  walk up  calmly  and  knock  him down with a
sideways thrust of his horns, not even looking in his direction.
     One day a goat  disappeared from the herd.  I wore myself out,  running
from bush to  bush, tearing my  clothes to shreds and  shouting  till I  was
hoarse. But still I couldn't find her. On my  way back I happened to look up
and  there she was, perched on  a thick branch of a wild persimmon tree. She
had climbed up the  twisted trunk.  Our  eyes  met.  She surveyed  me with a
jaundiced  glance of  haughty non-recognition and obviously had no intention
of climbing down. Only when I let fly with a stone did she spring lightly to
the ground and run to rejoin the herd.
     I think goats are the craftiest of all quadrupeds. I had only to let my
mind wander for a minute and they would melt away into the white rocks,  the
hazel thickets and the ferns.
     It was a hot, worrying  job to look for them, running up  and  down the
narrow, heat-cracked paths  with lizards darting to and  fro like flashes of
green lightning. Sometimes a snake  would  wriggle away  from just  under my
feet and I would jump sky-high, the sole of the foot that had nearly trodden
on it tingling from its resilient chill, and go  on running and running with
a sense of the insuperable, almost joyful lightness of fear.
     And how strange it was to stop and listen to the rustle of  the bushes,
wondering whether your quarry was there and  listening to the swish  of  the
grasshoppers,  to the distant song of the larks in the majestic blue  above,
or perhaps to a human voice from the road, on to the steady thudding of your
own heart, and  to breathe  in the fleshy smell of the sun-drenched foliage,
all the sweet languor of the summer stillness.
     But the worst thing of all was when the goats were trying to get into a
field of maize. No hedge could stop them.
     I  would race towards the field, shouting  from a distance and throwing
anything that came to hand but, far from taking flight  at the sight  of me,
they  would continue  to gobble down the long maize leaves as fast  as their
jaws would go.
     In good weather I would usually lie on the grass in the shadow of a big
alder  bush, listening to  the spluttering roar of our U-2 planes patrolling
on the  other  side of the  pass. Fighting was going on over there and every
day the thunder  of war reached us as regularly as  the  sounds of labour in
the busy season.
     One day a "hedgehopper",  as we used to call  those  old biplanes, came
shooting over the mountains with a kind of panic-stricken rattle and dropped
like a stone into the lap of the Kodor Valley, then flew on almost at ground
level all the way to the sea.  With every  fibre in my body I felt the sheer
human terror of the pilot  who had skimmed over  the ridge, evidently to get
away from a German fighter. The plane's  shadow swept across the field quite
near to  me at unearthly speed, darkened  the  tobacco plantation, and a few
moments later was streaking low over the Kodor delta.
     Once in a  while  a German plane would fly over at a great  height.  We
could tell it by the irregular throb of its engines, rather like the hum  of
a malarial mosquito. Usually  the anti-aircraft guns would  open up  when i