Valentin Katayev. A White Sail Gleams
PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW
OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2
Translated from the Russian by Leonard Stoklitsky
Illustrated by Vitali Goryaev
Валентин Катаев
Original Russian title: Белеет парус одинокий
На английском языке
First printing 1954
Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
________________________________________________________
A Few Words About Myself
1. The Farewell
2. The Sea
3. In the Steppe
4. The Watering
5. The Runaway
6. The Turgenev
7. The Photograph
8. "Man Overboard!"
9. Odessa by Night
10. At Home
11. Gavrik
12. "Call That a Horse?"
13. Madam Storozhenko
14. "Lower Ranks"
15. The Boat at Sea
16. "Turret Gun, Shoot!"
17. The Owner of the Shooting Gallery
18. Questions and Answers
19. A Pound and a Half of Rye Bread
20. Morning
21. Word of Honour
22. Near Mills
23. Uncle Gavrik
24. Love
25. "I Was Stolen"
26. The Pursuit
27. Grandpa
28. Stubborn Auntie Tatyana
29. The Alexandrovsky Police Station
30. The Preparatory Class
31. The Box on the Gun Carriage
32. Fog
33. Lugs
34. In the Basement
35. A Debt of Honour
36. The Heavy Satchel
37. The Bomb
38. HQ of the Fighting Group
39. The Pogrom
40. The Officer's Uniform
41. The Christmas Tree
42. Kulikovo Field
43. The Sail
44. The May Day Outing
45. A Fair Wind
Looking back on my life, I recall to mind some episodes that were
instrumental in shaping my understanding of the writer's mission.
The power of the printed word was first really brought home to me when
I landed at the front during the First World War. I mentally crossed out
nearly all I had written up until then and resolved that from now on
everything I write should benefit the workers, peasants and soldiers, and
all working people.
In 1919, when I was in the ranks of the Red Army and was marching
shoulder to shoulder with revolutionary Red Army men against Denikin's
bands, I vowed to myself that I would dedicate my pen to the cause of the
revolution.
Many Soviet writers took part in the Civil War, and their words and
their actions inspired the fighting men. Alexander Serafimovich was a war
correspondent. Alexander Fadeyev shared the privations of the Far Eastern
partisans. Dmitry Furmanov was the Commissar of Chapayev's division. Nikolai
Ostrovsky fought the interventionists in the Ukraine. Mikhail Sholokhov took
part in the fighting against Whiteguard bands. Eduard Bagritsky went to the
front as a member of a travelling propaganda team. More than 400 Soviet
writers gave their lives on the battlefronts of the Great Patriotic War of
1941-45. Their names are inscribed on a marble memorial plaque in the
Writers Club in Moscow.
At the time of the Russian revolution of 1905 I was just a boy of
eight, but I clearly remember the battleship Potemkin, a red flag on her
mast, sailing along the coast past Odessa. I witnessed the fighting on the
barricades, I saw overturned horse-trams, twisted and torn street wires,
revolvers, rifles, dead bodies.
Many years later I wrote A White Sail Gleams (Written in 1936.-Ed.) a
novel in which I tried to convey the invigorating spirit that had been
infused into the life of Russia by her first revolution.
A Son of the Working People is a reminiscence of the First World War,
in which I fought.
When construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric power station began I
went there together with the poet Demyan Bedny. Afterwards we visited
collective farms in the Don and Volga areas and then set out for the Urals.
I remember that when our train stopped at Mount Magnitnaya in the Urals
I was so impressed by what I saw that I decided to leave the train at once
and remain in the town of Magnitogorsk. I said good-bye to Demyan Bedny and
jumped down from the carriage.
"Good-bye and good luck!" he called out. "If I were younger and didn't
have to get back to Moscow I'd stay here with pleasure."
I was struck by all I saw in Magnitogorsk, by the great enthusiasm of
the people building for themselves. This was a revolution too. It inspired
my book Time, Forward! During the last war, as a correspondent at the front,
I saw a great deal, but for some reason it was the youngsters that made the
biggest impression on me-the homeless, destitute boys who marched grimly
along the war-torn roads. I saw exhausted, grimy, hungry Russian soldiers
pick up the unfortunate children. This was a manifestation of the great
humanism of the Soviet man. Those soldiers were fighting against fascism,
and therefore they, too, were beacons of the revolution. This prompted me to
write Son of the Regiment.
When I look around today I see the fruits of the events of 1917, of our
technological revolution, of the construction work at Magnitogorsk. I see
that my friends did not give their lives on the battlefronts in vain.
What does being a Soviet writer mean? Here is how I got the answer.
Returning home one day, a long time ago, I found an envelope with
foreign stamps on it in my letter-box. Inside there was an invitation from
the Pen Club, an international literary association, to attend its next
conference, in Vienna. I was a young writer then, and I was greatly
flattered. I told everyone I met about the remarkable honour that had been
accorded me. When I ran into Vladimir Mayakovsky in one of the editorial
offices I showed him the letter from abroad. He calmly produced an elegant
envelope exactly like mine from the pocket of his jacket.
"Look," he said. "They invited me too, but I'm not boasting about it.
Because they did not invite me, of course, as Mayakovsky, but as a
representative of Soviet literature. The same applies to you. Understand?
Reflect, Kataich (as he called me when he was in a good mood), on what it
means to be a writer in the Land of Soviets."
Mayakovsky's words made a lasting impression on me. I realised that I
owed by success as a creative writer to the Soviet people, who had reared
me. I realised that being a Soviet writer means marching in step with the
people, that it means being always on the crest of the revolutionary wave.
In my short story The Flag, which is based on a wartime episode, the
nazis have surrounded a group of Soviet fighting men and called on them to
give up. But instead of the white flag of surrender they ran up a crimson
flag which they improvised from pieces of cloth of different shades of red.
Similarly, Soviet literature is made up of many works of different
shades which, taken together, shine like a fiery-red banner of the
revolution.
Once, walking round Shanghai I wandered into the market where the
so-called "Temple of the City Mayor" stood. Here they sold candles for
church-goers. An old Chinese woman was standing at a table giving out some
strange sticks from two vases. For ten yuans you were allowed to take one of
these sticks with hieroglyphics on it. Then the woman would ask you what
number page was marked on the stick, and turning to her book for reference,
she would find the appropriate page, tear it out and give it to you. On my
piece of paper was written: "The Phoenix sings before the sun. The Empress
takes no notice. It is difficult to alter the will of the Empress, but your
name will live for centuries."
We haven't got an Empress, and so that part of the prophecy does not
apply. It's highly unlikely that my name will live for centuries, and so
that part doesn't apply either.
All that remains is the phrase "The Phoenix sings before the sun". I
can agree with that since the sun is my homeland.
1958
Valentin Katayev
THE FAREWELL
The blast of the horn came from the farmyard at about five o'clock in
the morning.
A piercing, penetrating sound that seemed split into hundreds of
musical strands, it flew out through the apricot orchard into the deserted
steppe and towards the sea, where its rolling echo died mournfully along the
bluff.
That was the first signal for the departure of the coach.
It was all over. The bitter hour of farewell had come.
Strictly speaking, there was no one to bid farewell to. The few summer
residents, frightened by recent events, had begun to leave in mid-season.
The only guests now remaining at the farm were Vasili Petrovich
Batchei, an Odessa schoolmaster, and his two sons, one three and a half
years old and the other eight and a half. The elder was called Petya, and
the younger Pavlik. Today they too were leaving for home.
It was for them the horn had been blown and the big black horses led
out of the stable.
Petya woke up long before the horn. He had slept fitfully. The
twittering of the birds roused him, and he dressed and went outside.
The orchard, the steppe, and the farmyard all lay in a chill shadow.
The sun was rising out of the sea, but the high bluff still hid it from
view.
Petya wore his city Sunday suit, which he had quite outgrown during the
summer: a navy-blue woollen sailor blouse with a white-edged collar, short
trousers, long lisle stockings, button-shoes, and a broad-brimmed straw hat.
Shivering from the cold, he walked slowly round the farm, saying
good-bye to the places where he had spent such a wonderful summer.
All summer long Petya had run about practically naked. He was now as
brown as an Indian and could walk barefoot over burrs and thorns. He had
gone swimming three times a day. At the beach he used to smear himself from
head to foot with the red marine clay and then scratch out designs on his
chest. That made him really look like a Red Indian, especially when he stuck
into his hair the blue feathers of those marvellously beautiful birds-real
fairy-tale birds-which built their nests in the bluff. And now, after all
that wealth and freedom, to have to walk about in a tight woollen sailor
blouse, in prickly stockings, in shoes that pinched, and in a big straw hat
with an elastic that rubbed against his ears and pressed into his neck!
Petya lifted his hat and pushed it back so that it dangled on his
shoulders like a basket.
Two fat ducks waddled past, quacking busily. They threw a look of scorn
at this foppish boy, as though he were a stranger, and then dived under the
fence one after the other.
Whether they had deliberately snubbed him or simply failed to recognise
him, Petya could not be sure, yet all of a sudden he felt so sad and
heavy-hearted that he wanted to cry.
Straight to his heart cut the feeling that he was a complete stranger
in this cold and deserted world of early morning. Even the pit in the corner
of the garden-the deep, wonderful pit where it was such thrilling fun to
bake potatoes in a camp-fire-even that seemed unbelievably strange,
unfamiliar.
The sun was rising higher.
The farmyard and orchard still lay in the shade, but the bright, cold,
early rays were already gilding the pink, yellow, and blue pumpkins set out
on the reed roof of the clay hut where the watchman lived.
The sleepy-eyed cook, in a homespun chequered skirt and a blouse of
unbleached linen embroidered in black and red cross-stitch, with an iron
comb in her dishevelled hair, was knocking yesterday's dead coals out of the
samovar, against the doorstep.
Petya stood in front of the cook watching the string of beads jump up
and down on her old, wrinkled neck.
"Going away?" she asked indifferently.
"Yes," the boy replied. His voice shook.
"Good luck to you."
She went over to the water-barrel, wrapped the hem of her chequered
skirt round her hand, and pulled out the spigot.
A thick stream of water arched out and struck the ground. Sparkling
round drops scattered, enveloping themselves in powdery grey dust.
The cook set the samovar under the stream. It moaned as the fresh,
heavy water poured into it. No, not a particle of sympathy from anybody!
There was the same unfriendly silence and the same air of desolation
everywhere-on the croquet square, in the meadow, in the arbour.
Yet how gay and merry it had been here such a short while ago! How many
pretty girls and naughty boys! How many pranks, scenes, games, fights,
quarrels, peacemakings, kisses, friendships!
What a wonderful party the owner of the farm, Rudolf Karlovich, had
given for the summer residents on the birthday of his wife, Luiza
Frantsevna! Petya would never forget that celebration. In the morning a huge
table with bouquets of wild flowers on it was set under the apricot trees.
In the centre lay a cake as big as a bicycle wheel.
Thirty-five lighted candles, by which one could tell Luiza Frantsevna's
age, had been stuck into that rich, thickly frosted cake.
All the summer residents were invited to morning tea under the apricot
trees.
The day continued as merrily as it had begun. It ended in the evening
with a costume ball for the children, with music and fireworks.
All the children put on the fancy dress that had been made for them.
The girls turned into mermaids and Gipsies, the boys into Red Indians,
robbers, Chinese mandarins, sailors. They all wore splendid, bright-coloured
cotton or paper costumes.
There were rustling tissue-paper skirts and cloaks, artificial roses
swaying on wire stems, and tambourines with floating silk ribbons.
Naturally-how could it be otherwise!-the very best costume was Petya's.
Father himself had spent two days making it. His pince-nez kept falling off
his nose while he worked; he was nearsighted, and every time he upset the
bottle of glue he muttered into his beard frightful curses at the people who
had arranged "this outrage" and generally expressed his disgust with "this
nonsensical idea".
But of course, he was simply playing safe. He was afraid the costume
might turn out a failure, he was afraid of disgracing himself. How he tried!
But then the costume-say what you will!-was a remarkable one.
It was a real knight's suit of armour, made of strips of gold and
silver Christmas tree paper cleverly pasted together and stretched over a
wire frame. The helmet was decorated with a flowing plume and looked exactly
like the helmet of a knight out of Sir Walter Scott. What is more, the visor
could be raised and lowered.
In short, it was so magnificent that Petya was placed beside Zoya to
make up the second couple. Zoya was the prettiest girl at the farm, and she
wore the pink costume of a Good Fairy.
Arm in arm they walked round the garden, which was hung with Chinese
lanterns. Here and there in the mysterious darkness loomed trees and bushes
unbelievably bright in the flare of red and green Bengal lights.
In the arbour, by the light of candles under glass shades, the
grown-ups had their supper. Moths flew to the light from all sides and fell,
singed, to the table-cloth.
Four hissing rockets rose out of the thick smoke of the Bengal lights
and climbed slowly into the sky.
There was a moon, too. Petya and Zoya discovered this fact only when
they found themselves in the very farthest part of the garden. Moonlight so
bright and magic shone through the leaves that even the whites of the girl's
eyes were a luminous blue-the same blue that danced in the tub of dark water
under the old apricot tree, in which a toy boat floated.
Here, before they knew it, the boy and girl kissed. Then they were so
embarrassed that they dashed off headlong with wild shouts, and they ran and
ran until they landed in the backyard. There the farm labourers who had come
to congratulate the mistress were having their own party.
On a pine table brought from the servants' kitchen stood a keg of beer,
two jugs of vodka, a bowl of fried fish, and a wheaten loaf. The drunken
cook, in a new print blouse with frills, was angrily serving the
merry-makers portions of fish and filling their mugs. A concertina-player,
his coat unbuttoned and his knees spread apart, swayed from side to side on
a stool as his fingers rambled over the bass keys of the wheezing
instrument.
Two straight-backed fellows with impassive faces had taken each other
by the waist and were stamping out a polka, with much flourishing of the
heels. Several women labourers in brand-new kerchiefs and tight kid pumps,
their cheeks smeared with the juice of pickled tomatoes- for coquetry and to
soften the skin-stood with their arms round one another.
Rudolf Karlovich and Luiza Frantsevna were backing away from one of the
labourers.
He was as drunk as a lord. Several men were holding him back. He
strained to get free. Blood spurted from his nose on his Sunday shirt, which
was ripped down the middle. He was swearing furiously.
Sobbing and choking over his frenzied words, and grinding his teeth the
way people do in their sleep, he shouted: "Three rubles and fifty kopeks for
two months of slaving! Miser! Let me get at the bastard! Just let me get at
him! I'll choke the life out of him! Matches, somebody! Let me get at the
straw! I'll give them a birthday party! If only Grishka Kotovsky was here,
you rat!"
(Grigori Kotovsky (1887-1925) was active in the agrarian movement in
Bessarabia in 1905-1906; he was a leader of the Bessarabian peasants'
partisan actions against the landowners. In 1918-1920 this son of the people
was an army leader and Civil War hero.-Tr.)
The moonlight gleamed in his rolling eyes.
"Now, now," muttered the master, backing away. "You look out, Gavrila.
Don't go too far. You can be hanged nowadays for that sort of talk."
"Go ahead, hang me!" the labourer shouted, panting. "Why don't you? Go
ahead, bloodsucker!"
This was so terrifying, so puzzling, and, above all, so out of keeping
with the spirit of the wonderful party, that the children ran back,
screaming that Gavrila wanted to cut Rudolf Karlovich's throat and set fire
to the farm.
The panic that broke out is difficult to imagine.
The parents led the children to their rooms. They locked all the doors
and closed all the windows, as though a storm were brewing. The rural
prefect Chuvyakov, who had come to spend a few days with his family, marched
across the croquet square, kicking out the hoops and scattering the balls
and mallets.
He carried a double-barrelled gun at the ready.
In vain did Rudolf Karlovich plead with the summer residents to be
calm. In vain did he assure them that there was no danger, that Gavrila was
now bound and locked up in the cellar, and that tomorrow the constable would
come for him.
Once, in the night, a red glow lit up the sky far over the steppe. The
next morning it was rumoured that a neighbouring farm had been burned down.
Labourers had set it on fire, it was said.
People coming from Odessa reported disturbances in the city. There were
rumours that the trestle bridge in the port was on fire.
The constable arrived at dawn the next morning. He led Gavrila away. In
his sleep Petya heard the bells of the constable's troika.
The summer residents began to leave for home.
Soon the farm was deserted.
Petya lingered under the old apricot tree, beside the tub of such fond
memory, and struck the water with a twig. No, the tub wasn't the same, the
water wasn't the same, and even the old apricot tree was not the same!
Everything, absolutely everything, had become different. Everything had
lost its magic. Everything looked at Petya as out of the remote past.
Would the sea also be so cold and heartless to him this last time?
Petya ran to the bluff.
THE SEA
The low sun beat blindingly into his eyes. Below, the entire sweep of
the sea was like burning magnesium. Here the steppe ended suddenly.
Silvery bushes of wild olive quivered in the shimmering air at the edge
of the bluff.
A steep path zigzagged downwards. Petya was used to running down the
path barefoot. His shoes bothered him; the soles were slippery. His feet ran
of themselves. It was impossible to stop them.
Until the first turn he still managed to resist the pull of gravity. He
dug in his heels and clutched at the dry roots hanging over the path. But
the roots were rotten and they broke. The clay crumbled beneath his heels. A
cloud of dust as fine and brown as cocoa enveloped him.
The dust got into his nose; it tickled his throat. Petya very soon had
enough of that. Oh, he'd risk it!
He cried out at the top of his lungs, and, with a wave of his arms,
plunged headlong.
His hat filled with air and bobbed up and down behind him. His collar
fluttered in the wind. Burrs stuck to his stockings. After frightful leaps
down the huge steps of the natural stairway, the boy suddenly flew out on
the dry sand of the shore. The sand felt cold; it had not yet been warmed by
the sun. This sand was amazingly white and fine. It was deep, soft, marked
all over with the shapeless holes of yesterday's footprints, and looked like
semolina of the very best quality.
The beach slanted almost imperceptibly towards the water. The last
strip of sand, lapped by broad tongues of snow-white foam, was damp, dark,
and smooth; it was firm, easy to walk on.
This was the most wonderful beach in the world, stretching for about a
hundred miles under the bluffs from Karolino-Bugaz to the mouth of the
Danube, then the border of Rumania. At that early hour it seemed wild and
desolate.
The sensation of loneliness gripped Petya with new force. But this time
it was quite different; it was a proud and manly kind of loneliness. He was
Robinson Crusoe on his desert island.
The first thing Petya did was to study the footprints. He had the
experienced, penetrating eye of a seeker after adventures.
He was surrounded by footprints. He read them as though he were reading
Mayne Reid.
The black spot on the face of the bluff and the grey ashes meant that
natives had landed from a canoe the night before and had cooked a meal over
a camp-fire. The fan-like tracks of gulls meant a dead calm at sea and lots
of small fish near the shore.
The long cork with a French trademark and the bleached slice of lemon
thrown up on the sand by the waves left no doubt that a foreign ship had
sailed by far out at sea several days before.
Meanwhile the sun had climbed a bit higher above the horizon. Now the
sea no longer shone all over but only in two places: in a long strip at the
very horizon and in another near the shore, where a dozen blinding stars
flashed in the mirror of the waves as they stretched themselves out neatly
on the sand.
Over the rest of its vast expanse the sea shone in the August calm with
such a tender and such a melancholy blue that Petya could not help
recalling:
A white sail gleams, so far and lonely,
Through the blue haze above the foam. . .
although there was no sail in -sight and the sea wasn't the least
misty.
He gazed spellbound at the sea.
. . . No matter how long you look at the sea, you never tire of it. The
sea is always different, always new.
It changes from hour to hour, before your very eyes.
Now it is pale-blue and quiet, streaked here and there with the whitish
paths you see during a calm. Or a vivid dark-blue, flaming and glistening.
Or covered with dancing white horses. Or, if the wind is fresh, suddenly
dark indigo and looking like wool when you run your hand against the nap.
When a storm breaks, it changes threateningly. The wind whips up a great
swell. Screaming gulls dart across the slate-coloured sky. The churning
waves roll and toss the shiny carcass of a dead dolphin along the shore. The
sharp green of the horizon stands out like a jagged wall over the
mud-coloured storm clouds. The malachite panels of the breakers, veined with
sweeping zigzag lines, crash against the shore with the thunder of cannon.
Amid the roar, the echoes reverberate with a brassy ring. The spray hangs in
a fine mist, like a muslin veil, all the way to the top of the shaken
bluffs.
But the supreme spell of the sea lies in the eternal mystery hidden in
its expanses.
Is not its phosphorescence a mystery-when you dip your arm into the
warm black water on a moonless July night and see it suddenly gleam all over
with blue dots? Or the moving lights of unseen ships and the slow faint
flashes pf an unknown beacon? Or the grains of sand, too many for the human
mind to grasp?
. . . And finally, was not the sight of the revolutionary battleship
which once appeared far out at sea, full of mystery?
Its appearance was preceded by a fire in the port of Odessa. The glow
could be seen forty miles away. At once rumours spread that the trestle
bridge was burning.
Then the word Potemkin was spoken.
(A battleship of the Black Sea Fleet whose sailors mounted a heroic
revolt in 1905 and went over to the side of the revolution. Warships were
dispatched to put down the revolt, but the sailors of these vessels refused
to fire on the insurgents. However, the red flag did not wave from the mast
of the Potemkin for long. The absence of a united leadership of the revolt,
and the shortage of provisions and coal compelled the sailors to surrender.
The revolt of the battleship Potemkin played a role of immense
importance in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement.-Tr.)
Several times the revolutionary battleship, solitary and mysterious,
appeared on the horizon in sight of the Bessarabian shore.
The farm labourers would drop their work and come out to the bluff to
catch a glimpse of the distant thread of smoke. Sometimes they thought they
saw it. They would snatch off their caps and shirts and wave them furiously,
greeting the insurgents.
But Petya, to tell the truth, could not make out a thing in the desert
vastness of the sea, no matter how much he screwed up his eyes.
Except once. Through a spyglass which he had begged for a minute from
another boy, he made out the light-green silhouette of the three-funnelled
battleship flying a red flag at its mast.
The ship was speeding westward, in the direction of Rumania.
The next day a lowering cloud of smoke spread out along the horizon.
That was the whole of the Black Sea squadron in pursuit of the Potemkin.
Fishermen who sailed up in their big black boats from the mouth of the
Danube brought the rumour that the Potemkin had reached Constantsa, where
she had to surrender to the Rumanian government. Her crew went ashore and
scattered in all directions.
At dawn one morning, after several more days of alarm, a line of smoke
again covered the horizon.
That was the Black Sea squadron returning from Constantsa to Sevastopol
with the captured insurgent in tow, as if on a lariat.
Deserted, without her crew, her engines flooded, her flag of revolt
lowered, the Potemkin, surrounded by a close convoy of smoke, moved slowly
ahead, dipping ponderously in the swell. It took the ship a long time to
pass the high bluffs of Bessarabia, where her progress was followed in
silence by the farmhands, border guards, fishermen. . . . They stood there
looking until the entire squadron disappeared from view.
Again the sea became as calm and gentle as though blue oil had been
poured over it.
Meanwhile details of mounted police had appeared on the steppe roads.
They had been sent to the Rumanian border to capture the runaway sailors
from the Potemkin.
. . . Petya decided to have a last quick swim.
But no sooner had he taken a running dive into the sea and begun to
swim on his side, cleaving the cool water with his smooth brown shoulder,
than he forgot everything in the world.
First he swam across the deep spot near the shore to the sand-bank.
There he stood up and began to walk about knee-deep in the transparent
water, examining the sandy bottom with its distinct fish-scale pattern.
At first glance the bottom seemed uninhabited. But a good close look
revealed living things. Moving across the wrinkles of the sand, now
appearing, now burying themselves, were tiny hermit crabs. Petya picked one
up from the bottom and skilfully pulled the crab-it even had tiny
nippers!-out of its shell.
Girls liked to string those little shells on twine. They made fine
necklaces. But men didn't go in for that sort of thing.
Then Petya caught sight of a jellyfish and went after it. The jellyfish
hung like a transparent lamp-shade, with a fringe of tentacles just as
transparent. It seemed to hang motionless-but that was not really so. The
thin blue gelatinous margin of the thick cupola was breathing and rippling,
like the edge of a parachute. The tentacles stirred too. The jellyfish moved
slantwise towards the bottom, as though sensing danger.
But Petya caught up with it. Carefully, so as not to touch the
poisonous edge which stung like nettles, he picked the jellyfish out of the
water with both hands, by its cupola. Then he flung its weighty but flimsy
body to the shore.
The jellyfish flew through the air, dropping some of its tentacles on
the way, and then slapped against the wet sand. The sun immediately flared
up in its slime like a silver star.
With a cry of delight Petya plunged from the sandbank into the deep
water and took to his favourite sport: swimming underwater with eyes open.
What rapture!
Before the boy's enchanted gaze there spread the wonderful world of the
submarine kingdom. Clearly visible, and enlarged as if by a magnifying
glass, were pebbles of all colours. They made a cobble stoned road of the
sea bed.
The stems of the sea plants were a fairy-tale forest shot through with
the cloudy green rays of a sun now as pale as the moon.
A huge old crab was scampering along sidewise among the roots, his
terrifying claws spread out like horns. On his spider-like legs he carried
the bulging box that was his back; it was dotted with white stony warts.
Petya wasn't the least scared. He knew how to deal with crabs. You had
to pick them up boldly, by the back, with two fingers. Then they couldn't
bite.
But he was not interested in the crab. Let it crawl along in
peace-crabs were no great rarity. The whole beach was strewn with their dry
claws and red shells.
Sea horses were much more interesting.
Just then a small school of them appeared among the seaweed. With their
chiselled faces and chests they looked for all the world like chess knights,
except that they had tails, curled forward. They swam, standing upright,
straight at Petya, spreading out their webbed fins like tiny underwater
dragons.
It was clear they had never expected to run into a hunter at that early
hour.
Petya's heart leaped with joy. He had only one sea horse in his
collection, and a wrinkled old creature it was. These were big and handsome,
every single one of them.
To let such a rare opportunity slip by would be sheer madness.
Petya rose to the surface to fill his lungs and start the hunt at once.
But all of a sudden he caught sight of Father at the edge of the bluff.
He was waving his straw hat and shouting.
The bluff was so high and the voice made such a hollow echo that all
Petya caught was a rolling ". . . ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh!. . ."
But he understood very well what that "ooh-ooh-ooh" meant. It meant:
"Where did you disappear to, you rascal? I've been looking for you all over
the farm. The coach is waiting. Do you want us to miss the boat because of
you? Get out of the water at once, you good-for-nothing!"
Father's voice brought back to Petya the bitter feeling of parting with
which he had awakened in the morning. He lifted his voice in such a
desperate shout that it made his ears ring: "I'm coming! I'm coming!"
". . . ming-ming-ming!" the bluffs echoed.
Petya pulled on his suit right over his wet body-very pleasant that
was, too, if the truth be told-and hurried up the bluff.
IN THE STEPPE
The coach already stood in the road, in front of the gate. The driver
had climbed up on a wheel and was tying to the roof the canvas camp beds of
the departing summer residents and also round baskets of blue egg-plants
which the farm owner, taking advantage of the occasion, was sending to
Akkerman.
Little Pavlik, dressed for the journey in a new blue pinafore and a
stiffly-starched pique hat that looked like a jelly-mould, stood at a
prudent distance from the horses. He was making a deep and detailed study of
their harness.
He was amazed beyond words to find that this harness -the real harness
of real live horses-was totally unlike the harness of his beautiful papier
mache horse, Kudlatka. (Kudlatka, who had not been taken to the country, was
now awaiting her master in Odessa.)
The shopkeeper who sold them Kudlatka had probably got something wrong!
At any rate, he had to remember to ask Daddy as soon as they came home
to cut out a pair of those lovely black things for the eyes and sew them on.
At the thought of Kudlatka, Pavlik felt a twinge of anxiety. How was
she getting along in the attic without him? Was Auntie Tatyana giving her
hay and oats? The mice hadn't chewed off her tail, had they? True, there
wasn't much of a tail left-two or three hairs and an upholstery nail, but
still. . . .
Then, in a fit of impatience, Pavlik stuck his tongue out of the corner
of his mouth and ran off to the house to hurry Daddy and Petya.
But worried though he was about the fate of Kudlatka, he did not for a
moment forget about his new travelling-bag, which hung across his shoulder
on a strap. He held it tight with both his little hands.
For in that bag, besides a bar of chocolate and a few Capitain salty
biscuits, lay his chief treasure, a moneybox made out of an Ainem Cocoa tin.
Here Pavlik kept the money he was saving to buy a bicycle.
He had put aside quite a sum already: about thirty-eight or thirty-nine
kopeks.
Now Daddy and Petya were coming towards the coach after their breakfast
of grey wheaten bread and milk still warm from the cow.
Under his arm Petya carefully carried his treasures: a jar of needle
fish preserved in alcohol and a collection of butterflies, beetles, shells,
and crabs.
All three bid a warm farewell to their hosts, who had come to the gate
to see them off. Then they climbed into the coach and set out.
The road skirted the farm.
Its water pail rattling, the coach rolled along past the orchard, past
the arbour, and past the cattle and poultry yards. Finally it reached the
garman, the level, well-stamped platform where the grain is threshed and
winnowed. In Central Russia this platform is called a tok, but in Bessarabia
it is a garman.
The straw world of the garman began just beyond the roadside
embankment, overgrown with bushes of grey, dusty scratch weed on which hung
thousands of tear-shaped yellowish-red berries.
There was a whole town of old and new straw ricks as big as houses, a
town with real streets, lanes, and blind alleys. Here and there, beside the
layered and blackened walls of very old straw, shoots of wheat broke their
way through the firm and seemingly cast-iron earth; they glowed like emerald
wicks, amazingly clear and bright.
Thick opalescent smoke poured from the chimney of the steam-engine. An
unseen thresher whined persistently. The small figures of peasant women with
pitchforks were walking knee-deep in wheat on top of a new rick.
The wheat on the pitchforks cast gliding shadows against the clouds of
chaff pierced by the slanting rays of the sun.
Sacks, scales, and weights flashed by.
Then a tall mound of newly threshed wheat covered with a tarpaulin
floated past.
After that the coach rolled out into the open steppe.
In a word, at first everything was the same as in the other years. The
flat, deserted fields of stubble stretching on all sides for dozens of
miles. The lone burial mound. The lilac-coloured immortelles gleaming like
mica. The marmot sitting beside his burrow. The piece of rope looking like a
crushed snake. . . .
But suddenly a cloud of dust appeared ahead. A police detail was
galloping down the road.
"Halt!"
The coach stopped.
One of the horsemen rode up.
Behind the green shoulder strap with a number on it bobbed the short
barrel of a carbine. A dusty forage cap, worn at a slant, also bobbed up and
down. The saddle creaked and gave off a strong hot smell of leather.
The snorting muzzle of the horse came to a stop at a level with the
open window. Big teeth chewed at the white iron bit. Grassy-green foam
dripped from the black rubbery lips. Out of the delicate pink nostrils a hot
steamy breath poured over the three passengers.
The black lips stretched towards Petya's straw hat.
"Who's that inside?" a rough military voice shouted somewhere overhead.
"Summer residents. I'm taking them to the boat." The driver spoke
quickly, in an unrecognisably thin and sugary voice. "They're bound for
Akkerman and then straight to Odessa by boat. They've been living on a farm
out here all summer. Ever since the beginning of June. Now they're on their
way home."
"Well, let's have a look at 'em."
With these words a red face with yellow moustaches and eyebrows and a
close-shaven chin, and above it a cap with an oval badge on a green band,
appeared at the window.
"Who are you?"
"Holiday-makers," said Father, smiling.
The soldier evidently did not like the smile or that breezy word
"holiday-makers", which sounded to him like a jeer.
"I can see you're holiday-makers," he said with rough displeasure.
"That don't tell me anything. Just what kind of holiday-makers are you?"
Father turned pale with indignation. His jaw began to quiver, and his
little beard quivered too. He buttoned all the buttons of his summer coat
with trembling fingers and adjusted his pince-nez.
"How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice?" he cried in a sharp
falsetto. "I am Collegiate Counsellor Batchei, a high school teacher, and
these are my two children, Peter and Paul. Our destination is Odessa."
Pink spots broke out on Father's forehead.
"Excuse me, Your Honour," the soldier said smartly, his pale eyes
popping out of his head. He saluted with his whip hand. "I didn't know."
He looked as if he had been frightened to death by the "Collegiate
Counsellor", a grim-sounding title he probably had never heard before.
"To the devil with him!" he thought. "He might land me in hot water. I
might get it in the neck."
He put the spurs to his horse and galloped off.
"What an idiot!" Petya remarked, when the soldiers had ridden off a
good distance.
Father again lost his temper. "Hold your tongue! How many times have I
told you you mustn't dare say that word! People who regularly use the word
'idiot' are usually themselves-er-none too clever. Remember that."
At any other time, of course, Petya would have argued, but now he kept
his peace.
He knew Father's state of mind perfectly.
Father, who always spoke of titles and medals with scornful irritation,
who never wore his formal uniform or his Order of St. Anna, Third Class, who
never recognised any social privileges and insisted that all the inhabitants
of Russia were no more and no less than "citizens", had suddenly, in a fit
of anger, said God knows what. And to whom! To an ordinary soldier.
"High school teacher" .. . "Collegiate Counsellor" . . . "How dare you
speak to me in that tone of voice". . . .
"Ugh, what nonsense!" Petya read in Father's embarrassed face. "For
shame!"
Meanwhile, in the general excitement, the driver had lost the thong of
his whip; this always happened on long journeys. He was now walking along
the road and poking with the whip-handle among the grey, dust-coated
wormwood.
At last he found the thong. He tied it to the handle and pulled the
knot with his teeth.
"Damn their souls!" he exclaimed as he came up to the coach. "All they
do is ride up and down the roads and scare people."
"What do they want?" Father asked.
"God only knows. Hunting after somebody, no doubt. Day before yesterday
somebody set fire to landlord Balabanov's farm, about thirty versts from
here. They say it was a runaway sailor from the Potemkin did it. And now
they're looking for that runaway sailor high and low. They say he's taken to
cover somewhere in the steppe hereabouts. What a business! Well, time to get
going."
With these words he climbed to his high box and took up the reins. The
coach moved on.
The morning was as fine as ever, but now everybody's mood was spoiled.
In this wonderful world of the deep-blue sky with its wild droves of
white-maned clouds, this world of lilac shadows running in waves from mound
to mound over the steppe grasses, in which a horse's skull or a bullock's
horns might be sighted at any moment, a world created, it would seem, for
the sole purpose of man's joy and happiness- in this world, obviously, not
all was well.
Such were the thoughts of Father, the driver, and Petya.
Pavlik, however, was occupied with thoughts of his own.
His attentive brown eyes were fixed on a point beyond the window, and
his round, cream-coloured little forehead, with the neat bang sticking out
from under his hat, was knitted.
"Daddy," he said suddenly, without taking his eyes from the window.
"Daddy, what's the Tsar?"
"What's the Tsar? I don't follow you."
"Well, what is he?"
"Hm. . . . A man."
"No, not that. I know he's a man. Don't you see? I mean not a man, but
what is he? Understand?"
"No, I can't say that I do."
"I mean, what is he?"
"Ye Gods! What is he? Well, the crowned sovereign, if you like."
"Crowned? What with?"
Father gave Pavlik a severe look. "Wha-a-t?"
"If he's crowned, then what with? Don't you see? What with?"
"Stop talking nonsense!" Father said. He turned away angrily.
THE WATERING
At about ten o'clock in the morning they stopped in a large
half-Moldavian, half-Ukrainian village to water the horses.
Father took Pavlik by the hand and went off to buy some cantaloupes.
Petya remained near the horses. He wanted to see them being watered.
The horses which had pulled the big lumbering coach were led by the
driver to the well; it was the kind known as a "crane-well".
The driver stuck his whip into his boot-top and took hold of the long
pole that hung vertically and had a heavy oak bucket attached by a chain to
the end. Moving one hand over the other up the pole, he lowered the bucket
into the well. The sweep creaked. Its top end swung down, as if trying to
peep into the well, while the other end, which had a large porous rock tied
to it as a counterweight, glided upwards.
Petya flattened himself against the edge of the well and looked down
into it as if it were a telescope.
The shaft was round, and its stone lining was covered with dark-brown
velvety mould. It was very deep. In the cold darkness at the bottom there
gleamed a tiny circle of water in which Petya saw his hat reflected with
photographic distinctness.
He shouted. The well filled with a resounding roar, the way a clay
pitcher does.
Down and down and down the bucket went. It became altogether tiny, but
still it did not reach the water. Finally a faint splash sounded. The bucket
sank into the water, gurgled, and then began to rise.
Heavy drops slapped down into the water, making noises like caps
exploding.
The pole, polished by countless hands to the smoothness of glass, took
a long time to rise. At last the wet chain appeared. The sweep creaked for
the last time. The driver seized the heavy bucket with his strong hands and
emptied it into the stone trough.
But first he drank out of the bucket himself. Then Petya drank. That
was the most thrilling moment in the whole procedure of watering the horses.
The water was as transparent as could be, and as cold as ice. Petya
dipped his nose and chin into it. The inside of the bucket was coated with a
beard of green slime. The bucket and the slime had an almost weird
fascination. There was something very, very old about them, something
reminding him of the forest, of the Russian fairy-tale about the wooden
mill, the Miller who was a sorcerer, the deep mill-pond, and the Frog
Princess.
Petya's forehead immediately began to ache from the ice water. But it
was a hot day, and he knew that the ache would soon pass.
He also knew for certain that about eight or ten buckets were needed to
water the horses. That would take at least half an hour. Plenty of time for
a stroll.
He carefully picked his way through the mud near the trough-mud as
black as boot-polish and indented with hog tracks. Then he followed a gutter
across a meadow strewn with goose down.
The gutter brought him to a bog overgrown with a tall forest of reeds,
sedge and weeds.
Here cool twilight reigned even when the sun was its highest and
brightest. A rush of heady odours struck Petya's nostrils.
The sharp odour of sedge mingled with the sweet and nutty smell of the
headache shrubs, which actually did make your head ache.
The shrubs were sharp-leafed and covered with blackish-green bolls with
fleshy prickles and long smelly flowers that were remarkably delicate and
remarkably white. Beside them grew nightshade, henbane, and the mysterious
sleeping-grass.
On the path sat a big frog, its eyes closed as though it were
bewitched. Petya tried with all his might to keep from looking at the frog:
he was afraid he might see a little golden crown on its head.
For that matter, the whole place seemed bewitched, like the forests in
fairy-tales.
Surely somewhere nearby wandered the slender, large-eyed Alyonushka,
weeping bitterly over her brother Ivanushka. . ..
And if a little white lamb had suddenly run out from the thicket and
bleated in a thin baby voice, Petya certainly would have been frightened out
of his wits.
The boy decided not to think about the little lamb. But the more he
tried not to, the more he did. And the more he did, the more he was afraid
to be alone in the black greenness of this bewitched place.
He screwed up his eyes as tight as he could, to keep from crying out,
and fled from the poisonous thicket. He did not stop running until he found
himself at the backyard of a small farm.
Behind the wattle fence, on the stakes of which hung a whole collection
of clay pitchers, Petya saw a pleasant little garman, its small arena
covered with wheat fresh from the fields. In the middle of it stood a girl
of about eleven in a long gathered skirt, a short print blouse with puffed
sleeves, and a kerchief that came down to her eyes.
She stood there shielding her eyes against the sun with her elbow and
shifting her bare feet as she drove round the circle, by a long rope, two
horses harnessed one ahead of the other. Scattering the straw lightly with
their hoofs, the horses pulled a ribbed stone roller over the thick layer of
shining wheat. The roller bounced heavily but noiselessly.
A wide board, bent upward in front like a ski, dragged behind the
roller.
Petya knew that the bottom of the board was fitted with a lot of sharp
yellow flints which did an especially good job of knocking the grain out of
the ears.
The board slid along quickly. On it stood a lad of Petya's age, in a
faded shirt unbuttoned at the collar, and a cap with the peak over one ear;
he had a hard time keeping his balance, but he did it with a dashing air, as
though he were sliding downhill standing up on a toboggan.
At his feet a tiny fair-haired girl sat on her haunches, like a mouse;
with both her hands she kept a convulsive grip on one of her brother's
trouser-legs.
Round the circle ran an old man, stirring the wheat with a wooden
pitchfork and throwing it under the horses' feet. The circle kept spreading
out, and an old woman was shaping it with a long paddle.
A short distance away, near the rick, a woman with a face black from
the sun and with arms as veined as a man's was labouring away at the handle
of the winnower, as if it were a hurdy-gurdy. Red blades flashed in the
round opening of the drum.
The wind carried a shining cloud of chaff out of the winnowing machine.
Like light, airy muslin it settled on the ground and on the tall weeds; it
floated to the vegetable garden where a scarecrow in a torn cap-it was a
nobleman's cap, with a red band-spread its rags over the dry leaves of ripe
yellow-red steppe tomatoes.
It was clear that the whole peasant family, with the exception of its
head, was at work on this small garman. The head of the family, of course,
was at the war in Manchuria, and quite likely at that very moment he was
crouching in a field of kaoliang while the Japanese were firing shimose at
him.
The people here were poor, and their threshing was on a small scale,
not at all like the rich, noisy, busy threshing Petya was accustomed to at
the other farm. But he found this simple scene fascinating too. He would
have liked very much, for one thing, to take a ride on the board with the
flints, or, at least, to turn the handle of the winnower. At any other time
he surely would have asked the boy to take him along on the board, but the
pity of it was that he had to hurry.
He went back.
Petya was never to forget the simple, touching details of that picture
of peasant labour: the glint of the new straw; the neatly whitewashed back
wall of the clay hut, and beside it the rag dolls and the little dried
gourds called tarakutski, the only toys of peasant children; and on the
ridge of the reed roof, a stork standing on one leg next to his large and
carelessly built nest.
Especially clear was the picture he carried away of the stork, with its
tight-fitting little jacket and pique vest, its red walking stick of a leg
(the other leg was bent under and not to be seen at all), and the long red
beak that made a wooden click, like a night watchman's rattle.
In front of a cottage with a blue notice board reading "Volost
Administration", three saddled cavalry horses were hitched to the porch
posts.
A soldier in dusty boots, with a sword between his knees, sat on the
steps in the shade smoking a cigarette made of coarse tobacco rolled in
newspaper.
"I say there, what are you doing here?" Petya asked him.
The soldier lazily surveyed the city boy from head to foot and ejected
a long stream of yellow spittle through his teeth. "Hunting down a sailor,"
he said indifferently.
What kind of mysterious and terrible man is this sailor who is hiding
somewhere in the steppe nearby, who sets fire to farms and whom soldiers are
hunting? Petya wondered as he walked down the hot, deserted street back to
the well. What if that dreadful highwayman attacked coaches?
Naturally, Petya did not mention his fears to Father and Pavlik. Why
make them worry? But he himself, naturally, would keep a lookout. And to be
on the safe side he shoved his collections farther back under the seat.
As soon as the coach started up the hill he glued his face to the
window and anxiously scanned the roadside, expecting to see the highwayman
pop out at every turn.
He was firmly resolved to stick to his post all the way to town, come
what may.
Meanwhile Father and Pavlik, obviously unaware of the danger, occupied
themselves with the cantaloupes.
In a pillow-case of plain linen that was faded from numerous
launderings and had a little bouquet of flowers embroidered in each corner,
lay ten cantaloupes, bought at a kopeck each. Father took out a firm
greyish-green one covered with a close network of lines, and saying, "Well,
now we shall try these famous cantaloupes", neatly sliced it lengthwise and
opened it like a book. A wonderful fragrance filled the coach.
He cut round the soft insides with his penknife and flipped them out
the window. Then he divided the cantaloupe into thin, appetising slices.
"Looks quite toothsome," he remarked as he laid out the slices on a clean
handkerchief.
Pavlik, who had been fidgeting impatiently all the while, pounced on
the biggest slice with both hands and sank into it up to his ears. He ate
with gurgling sounds of delight; cloudy drops of juice hung from his chin.
Father, on the other hand, put a small slice into his mouth, tried it,
closed his eyes, and said, "Indeed an excellent cantaloupe."
"Yum-yum," Pavlik confirmed.
Here Petya, behind whose back all these unendurable things had been
taking place, could hold out no longer. Forgetting the danger, he threw
himself upon the cantaloupe.
THE RUNAWAY
About ten miles from Akkerman the vineyards began. The cantaloupe had
been eaten long ago and the rind thrown out of the window. The trip was
growing tedious. It would soon be midday.
The fresh morning breeze, which had served as a reminder that autumn
really was in the offing, had subsided completely. The sun beat down as in
the middle of July; its rays were somehow even hotter, drier, broader.
Sand lay nearly all of two feet deep in the road, and the horses
laboured to pull the heavy coach through it. The small front wheels sank in
the sand up to the hub. The large rear wheels wobbled along slowly,
crunching the blue seashells in the sand.
A choking cloud of dust as fine as flour enveloped the travellers.
Their eyebrows and eye-lashes turned grey. The dust gritted between their
teeth. Pavlik goggled his mirror-like, light-chocolate eyes and sneezed
desperately.
The driver turned into a miller.
All about them the vineyards stretched endlessly.
The earth, dry and grey from dust, was covered with the gnarled plaits
of old vines standing in strict chessboard pattern. They looked as if they
were twisted by rheumatism. Had not Nature bethought herself to decorate
them with those wonderful leaves of antique design they might have looked
ugly, repulsive even.
In the rays of the midday sun the leaves, with their jagged edges,
their raised patternwork of curving veins and their turquoise spots of
copper sulphate, looked like fresh greenery.
The young shoots of the vines wound sharply round the tall stakes,
while the old ones were bent under the weight of clusters of grapes.
It took a keen eye, though, to spot the clusters hidden among the
leaves. A person without any experience might pass through several acres
without noticing a single one, yet every vine was hung with them, and they
cried out, "Why, here we are, you strange creature, bushels and bushels of
us, all about you! Pick us and eat, simpleton that you are!" Then, all of a
sudden, the simpleton would notice a cluster under his very nose, then
another, then a third-until, as if by magic, the entire vineyard glowed with
them.
Petya was an expert in these matters. His eye caught the clusters at
once. More, he could even tell the different varieties as they drove past.
And there were a great many varieties. The large light-green Chaus had
cloudy pits visible through their thick skin and hung in long triangular
clusters weighing two or three pounds. The experienced eye would never
confuse them with, say, the Ladies' Fingers, which were also light-green but
longer and shinier. The tender medicinal Shashla might appear to be the twin
of the Pink Muscatel, yet what a world of a difference between them! The
round Shashla grapes, pressed so tightly together in their graceful little
clusters that they lost their shape and almost became cubes, brightly
reflected the sun in their honey-pink bubbles. The Pink Muscatels, however,
were covered with a dull purplish film and did not reflect the sun.
All of them-the blue-black Isabella, the Chaus, the Shashla and the
Muscatel-were so wonderfully ripe and beautiful that even the critical
butterflies alighted on them as if they were flowers, and the feelers of the
butterflies intertwined with the green tendrils of the vines.
From time to time a straw hut could be seen among the vines. Beside it,
in the lacy blue shade of an apple tree or apricot tree, always stood a tub
of copper sulphate.
Petya gazed with longing at those cosy little straw huts.
Well did he know the delight of sitting on the hot dry straw inside
such a hut, in the sultry after-dinner shade.
The oppressive, motionless air would be filled with the aroma of
savoury and fennel. Pods of chick-peas would be drying with a faint crackle.
It was wonderful! What bliss!
The grape-vines would tremble and ripple in the glassy waves of heat.
And over it all would stretch the dusty, pale-blue sky of the steppe, a
sky nearly drained of colour by the heat.
How wonderful!
Suddenly something so extraordinary happened, and with such
breath-taking swiftness, that it was difficult to say what came first and
what after.
At any rate, first a shot rang out. Not the familiar hollow shot from a
fowling-piece which you so often heard in vineyards and inspired no fears.
No. This was the ominous and terrifying crack of an army rifle.
At that same instant a mounted policeman holding a carbine appeared in
the road.
He raised his carbine again and aimed into the depths of the vineyard.
But then he changed his mind, lowered the carbine across his saddle, spurred
the horse, and, leaning forward, jumped over the roadside ditch and the high
embankment right into the vineyard. He slapped down his cap and galloped
straight ahead, trampling the vines. Soon he was lost from sight.
The coach continued on its way.
For a time not a soul was to be seen.
All of a sudden there was a stirring in the bushes on the embankment
behind them. A figure jumped into the ditch and then clambered out into the
road.
Veiled in a thick cloud of dust, the figure raced after the coach.
The driver, on his high seat, was probably the first to notice that
figure. But instead of pulling on the brakes he stood up and waved the whip
furiously over his head. The horses broke into a gallop.
But the stranger had already jumped on the footboard. He opened the
rear door and looked in.
His breath came in painful gasps.
He was a stocky man with a young face pale from fright and brown eyes
filled with what seemed either merriment or deadly fear.
A shiny new cap with a button on it, the kind of cap workmen wore on
holidays, sat awkwardly on his large, round, close-cropped head. Yet under
his tight jacket could be seen an embroidered shirt such as farmhands wore,
so that he seemed to be a farm labourer too.
However, his thick trousers of pilot-cloth, which were velvety with
dust, were neither a workman's nor a farm labourer's.
One of the trouser-legs had pulled up, showing the rust-coloured top of
a rough, double-seamed navy boot.
"The sailor!" The instant this terrifying thought flashed through
Petya's mind he clearly saw, to his horror, a blue anchor tattooed on the
back of the hand clenched round the door-knob.
The stranger was obviously just as embarrassed by his sudden intrusion
as were the passengers themselves.
At sight of the dumbfounded gentleman in pince-nez and the two
frightened children, he moved his lips soundlessly; he seemed to be trying
to say hello, or else to apologise.
But all that came of his efforts was a twisted, confused smile.
Finally he waved his hand and was about to jump from the footboard to
the road, but a mounted detail suddenly appeared ahead. He peered cautiously
round the corner of the coach, and when he caught sight of the soldiers in a
cloud of dust he quickly jumped inside, slamming the door after him.
He looked at the passengers with pleading eyes. Then, without saying a
word, he dropped to all fours. To Petya's horror, he crawled under the seat
where the collections were hidden.
Petya looked in despair at Father. But Father sat absolutely
motionless; his face was impassive and somewhat pale, and his beard jutted
forward determinedly. His hands were folded on his stomach; he was twirling
his thumbs.
His entire appearance said: Nothing has happened. You must not ask any
questions. You must sit in your places and continue travelling as before.
Petya, and little Pavlik too, understood Father at once. Mum's the
word! Under the circumstances that was the simplest and best policy.
As to the driver, he was no problem at all. He was so busy whipping on
the horses that he never even glanced back.
In a word, it was a most curious but unanimous conspiracy of silence.
The mounted detail rode up to the coach.
Soldiers' faces looked in at the window. But the sailor was already far
back under the seat. He was completely out of sight.
The soldiers obviously found nothing suspicious in that peaceful coach
with the children and the egg-plants. They rode on without stopping.
For not less than half an hour after that all were silent. The sailor
lay under the seat without stirring. Tranquillity reigned.
Finally a string of little houses amidst green acacia trees came into
view ahead. The outskirts of the town.
Father was the first to break the silence. "Well, well, we've almost
reached Akkerman," he remarked as if to himself, yet in a deliberately loud
voice, as he stood gazing nonchalantly out the window. "It's already in
sight. How frightfully hot it is! And not a soul in the road."
Petya saw through his father's manoeuvre at once. "We're almost there!"
he shouted. "We're almost there!"
He took Pavlik by the shoulders and pushed him to the window. "Look,
Pavlik," he cried with feigned excitement, "look at that beautiful bird in
the sky!"
"Where?" Pavlik asked with curiosity, sticking out his tongue.
"Goodness gracious, what a stupid thing you are! Why, there it is."
"I don't see it."
"You must be blind."
At that moment there was a rustle behind them, followed by the banging
of the door. Petya quickly turned round. But everything was the same as
before-only now there was no boot sticking out from under the seat.
Petya looked in alarm under the seat to see if his collections were
safe. They were. Everything was in order.
At the window, Pavlik was still moving his head this way and that,
looking for the bird,
"Where's the bird?" he asked querulously, twisting his little mouth.
"Show me the bird. Pe-e-et-ya, where's the bird?"
"Stop whining," Petya said in the tone of a grown-up. "The bird's gone.
It flew away. Don't bother me."
Pavlik gave a deep sigh: he saw that he had been tricked. He looked
under the seat, but to his amazement no one was there.
"Daddy," he said finally, in a shaking voice, "where's the man? Where's
he gone to?"
"Stop chattering," Father said sternly.
Pavlik fell into a sad silence, puzzling over the mysterious
disappearance of the bird and the no less mysterious disappearance of the
man.
The wheels began to clatter over cobblestones. The coach drove into a
shady street lined with acacias.
The grey wobbly trunks of telephone poles flashed by, and roofs of red
tile and blue-painted iron; for a minute the dull water of the estuary
appeared in the distance.
An ice-cream man in a raspberry-coloured shirt walked by in the shade,
carrying his tub on his head.
Judging by the sun, it was already past one o'clock. The Turgenev was
to sail at two.
Father told the driver to go directly to the wharf without stopping at
a hotel. At the wharf, the steamer had just let out a very long and deep
hoot.
THE TURGENEV
Even in the early years of this century the Turgenev was considered
quite out of date.
With her gather long but narrow hull, her two paddle-wheels-their red
float-boards could be seen through the slits of the round paddle-box-and her
two funnels she looked more like a big launch than a small steamer.
To Petya, however, the Turgenev was always one of the miracles of
shipbuilding, and the trip between Odessa and Akkerman seemed no less than a
voyage across the Atlantic Ocean.
A second-class ticket cost a goodly sum: one ruble and ten kopeks. Two
tickets were bought. Pavlik travelled free.
Still, travelling by steamer was much cheaper, and much pleasanter,
besides, than bouncing along in the dust for thirty miles in an Ovidiopol
carriage. This was a rattling vehicle with a Jewish driver in a tattered
gaberdine belted swaggeringly with a coachman's red girdle; a
despondent-looking fellow with red hair and with eyes always pink and
ailing, who tested the five-ruble piece with his teeth. He would drag the
very heart out of his passengers by stopping every two miles to feed oats to
his decrepit nags.
No sooner had they settled themselves in a second-class cabin than
Pavlik, worn out by the heat and the drive, became drowsy. He had to be put
to bed at once on the black oilcloth bunk; the bunk was burning hot from the
sun beating through the rectangular windows.
The windows were framed in highly polished brass, true, but they
spoiled the fun all the same.
Everyone knew that a ship was supposed to have round portholes which
were screwed down when a storm blew up.
In this respect the third-class quarters in the bow of the ship were
much better, for they had real portholes, even though instead of soft bunks
there were only plain wooden plank-benches, like in the horse-trams.
Travelling third class, however, was looked upon as "improper", in just
the same degree as travelling first class was "exorbitant".
By social standing, it was to the middle category of passengers, to the
second class, that the family of the Odessa schoolmaster Batchei belonged.
That was as pleasant and convenient in some cases as it was inconvenient and
humiliating in others. It all depended upon which class their acquaintances
were travelling in.
For that reason Mr. Batchei, so as to avoid unnecessary indignities,
made it a point never to depart from the summer resort in the company of
wealthy neighbours.
The tomato and grape season was then at its height. The loading went on
and on tediously.
Several times Petya stepped out on deck to see whether they would ever
be ready to cast off. Each time it seemed to him that no progress was being
made. The stevedores were following one another up the gangway in an endless
file, carrying crates and baskets on their shoulders, and still the cargo on
the wharf did not diminish.
The boy walked over to the mate, who was in charge of the loading, and
hovered about beside him. He went to the hatchway and looked down it to see
how wine barrels were carefully lowered into the hold on chains, three or
four at a time, tied together.
Every now and then he went so far as to brush his elbow against the
mate. "Accidentally on purpose", to attract attention to himself.
"Don't get in the way, my lad," the mate said, annoyed but indifferent.
Petya took no offence. The main thing was to strike up a conversation
by hook or by crook.
"I say there, tell me please, are we starting soon?"
"We are."
"How soon?"
"As soon as we're loaded we'll start."
"But when will we be loaded?"
"When we start."
Petya gave a loud laugh, to flatter the mate.
"But tell me really-when?"
"Get out of the way, I said!"
Petya walked off with a lively, independent air, as though no
unpleasantness had occurred between them; it was simply that they had
chatted and then parted.
He rested his chin on the rail and again looked at the wharf. Now he
was bored to death by it.
Besides the Turgenev, a great many barges were being loaded.
The whole wharf was crowded with wagons of wheat.
The wheat made a dry, silken rustle as it flowed down the wooden chutes
into the square hatchways of the holds.
A fierce white sun reigned with merciless monotony over that dusty
square which had not the slightest trace of beauty or poetry.
Everything, absolutely everything, seemed dreary and ugly.
Those wonderful tomatoes which had such a warm and delicious gleam in
the shade of wilted leaves in the vegetable gardens now lay packed in
thousands of crates all alike.
Those tender-tender grapes, each cluster of which, in the vineyard,
seemed a work of art, had been squeezed greedily into coarse willow baskets
and hastily sewn round with sacking; and on each basket there was a label
besmeared with paste.
The wheat that had been grown and harvested with such labour-the large
amber wheat fragrant with all the odours of the hot fields-lay there on a
dirty tarpaulin, and men in boots walked over it.
Among the sacks, crates and barrels strode an Akkerman policeman in a
white uniform jacket, with an orange revolver-cord round his sunburned neck
and a long sword at his side.
The motionless river heat, the dust, and the sluggish but never-ending
noise of the tedious loading made Petya sleepy.
On an off-chance, he went up to the mate again to find out if they
would start soon, and again he received the answer that when they were
loaded they would start, and they would be loaded when they started.
Yawning, and reflecting sleepily that everything in the world was
obviously merchandise-the tomatoes were merchandise, the barges were
merchandise, the houses on the earthen shore were merchandise, the
lemon-yellow ricks next to those houses were merchandise, and quite likely
the stevedores were merchandise too-Petya staggered to the cabin and lay
down beside Pavlik. He fell asleep before he knew it, and when he woke up he
found they were already moving.
The cabin had in some strange way changed its position. It had become
much lighter. Across the ceiling ran a mirror-like reflection of rippling
water.
The engine was working. The busy flutter of the paddle-wheels could be
heard.
Petya had missed the most thrilling moment of the departure-missed the
third blast of the siren, the captain's command, the raising of the gangway,
the casting-off. . . .
What made it all the more horrible was that neither Father nor Pavlik
was in the cabin. That meant they had seen it all.
"Why didn't you wake me?" Petya cried out. He felt as if he had been
robbed in his sleep.
As he rushed out of the cabin to the deck he gave his leg a frightful
bang against the sharp brass threshold. But he paid no attention to such a
trifle.
"Drat them! Drat them!"
Petya need not have been so excited, however.
The boat had indeed cast off, but it had not yet set a straight course;
it was only turning about. That meant the most interesting events were still
to come.
There would be "slow ahead", and "dead slow ahead", and "stop", and "go
astern", and "dead astern", and a host of other fascinating things which the
boy knew to perfection.
The wharf moved back, grew smaller, circled about.
The boat was suddenly full of passengers, all crowding together at the
same side. They were still waving their handkerchiefs and hats, with as much
frenzy as if they were bound for the end of the world, while as a matter of
fact they were travelling a distance of exactly thirty miles as the crow
flies.
But such were the traditions of sea travel, and such the hot
temperament of Southerners.
Most of them were third-class passengers and deck passengers from the
lower foredeck, near the hold. They were not allowed on the upper deck,
which was reserved exclusively for the "clean" public of the first and
second classes.
Petya caught sight of Father and Pavlik on the top deck. They were
waving their hats excitedly.
Also on deck were the captain and the entire crew- the mate and two
barefoot deck-hands. The only members of the whole crew who were doing
anything really nautical were the captain and one of the hands. The mate and
the other hand were selling tickets. With their coloured little paper rolls
and a green wire cash-box of the kind usually seen in bakeries, they were
making the round of the passengers who had not had time to buy tickets on
shore.
The captain gave his commands striding back and forth across the deck
between the bridges on either side. Meanwhile, right before the admiring
eyes of the passengers,
the deck-hand looked into the big brass pot of a compass and turned the
steering-wheel, helping it along now and then with his bare foot. The
steering-wheel creaked incredibly and the rudder chains clanged as they
crept backwards and forwards along the side, ready at any moment to tear
away the trains of careless ladies.
The boat was backing and slowly turning.
"Starboard helm!" cried the captain to the helmsman. He had the hoarse,
mustardy voice of a glutton and a bully. He paid not the slightest attention
to the passengers who had gathered in a deferential knot at the compass.
"Starboard helm! More! A little more! Another trifle more! Good! Steady!"
The captain went across to the starboard bridge, opened the speaking
tube, and pressed the pedal. In the depths of the boat a bell ting-a-linged.
The passengers lifted their eyebrows respectfully and exchanged silent
glances. They understood: the captain had just signalled to the engine-room.
What should he do? Run to the bridge to watch the captain call down
into the speaking tube, or remain near the helmsman and the compass? Petya
was ready to tear himself in two.
The speaking tube won.
He seized Pavlik by the hand and dragged him to the bridge. "Look,
Pavlik, look!" he shouted excitedly, not without the secret hope of
astonishing two pretty little girls by his knowledge of things nautical.
"He's going to say 'Go ahead' into the speaking tube."
"Slow astern!" said the captain into the speaking tube.
Down below, the bell immediately ting-a-linged. That meant the command
had been heard.
THE PHOTOGRAPH
Akkerman had disappeared from sight, and so had the ruins of the old
Turkish fortress, yet the steamer was still running down the enormously
broad estuary of the Dniester. There seemed no end to the ugly,
coffee-coloured river, over which the sun had poured a leaden film.
The water was so muddy that the boat's shadow seemed to be lying on
clay.
The passengers felt as though the trip had not yet really begun. They
were all sick of the estuary and were waiting for the sea.
Finally, after about an hour and a half, the steamer neared the mouth
of the estuary.
Petya glued himself to the rail; he did not want to miss even the
slightest detail of the great moment. The water became noticeably lighter,
although it still was fairly muddy.
The waves now were broader and higher. The buoys marking the channel
jutted out of the water like red sticks, and their pointed mushroom caps
rocked unsteadily to and fro.
At times a buoy floated so close to the ship's side that Petya could
clearly see the iron cage in the centre of the mushroom where a lantern was
placed at night.
The Turgenev overtook several black fishing boats and two small boats
with taut dark sails.
The boats, lifted and then dropped by the steamer's wave, began to
rock.
Off the hot sandy Cape of Karolino-Bugaz, with its border-post barracks
and mast, a broad fairway marked by two lines of buoys led out into the open
sea.
Now the captain himself looked at the compass every minute or so and
indicated the course to the helmsman.
This was clearly no trifling matter.
The water became still lighter. Now it was obviously diluted by the
pure blue of the sea.
"Half-speed!" the captain called into the speaking tube.
Ahead of them, sharply divided from the yellow estuary, lay the shaggy
blue-black sea.
"Slow!"
From the sea came a fresh wind.
"Dead slow!"
The engine almost stopped breathing. The float-boards barely slapped
the water. The flat shore stretched so near that wading across to it seemed
the easiest thing in the world.
The small, dazzling white lighthouse at the border post; the high mast
with its gay garlands of naval flags stiffened by the wind; the gunboat
sitting low among the reeds; the small figures of the border guards washing
their linen in the crystal shallow water-all these moved noiselessly past
the ship, their sunlit details as clear and distinct as transfer pictures.
The nearness of the sea made the world clean and fresh again, as if all
the dust had suddenly been blown away from the ship and her passengers.
A change came over the crates and baskets, too. What had been
insufferably dull merchandise gradually turned into cargo, and as the ship
approached the sea it began to creak, as real cargo should.
"Half-speed!"
The border post lay astern; it shifted about and drifted into the
distance. The ship was surrounded by deep water, clear and dark-green. The
moment she entered it she started to roll; the wind whipped spray on the
deck.
"Full speed!"
Murky clouds of soot poured out of the hoarsely spluttering funnels. A
slanting shadow settled across the awning at the stern.
Apparently that old lady, the engine, was not finding it so easy to
battle the strong waves of the open sea. She began to breathe hard.
The ancient plating creaked rhythmically. The anchor under the bowsprit
bowed to the waves.
The wind had already managed to carry off a straw hat; it floated away,
rocking in the broad foamy wake.
Four blind Jews in blue spectacles climbed the ladder to the upper deck
in single file, holding down their bowler hats.
They seated themselves on a bench and then went at it with their
fiddles.
"The Hills of Manchuria" march, played in a sickeningly false key,
mingled with the heavy sighs of the engine.
Up the same ladder ran one of the ship's two stewards, the tails of his
dress coat waving in the wind; he wore white cotton gloves that were
comparatively clean. As he ran he bore along, with the skill of a juggler, a
tray with a fizzing bottle of lemonade.
That was how they entered the sea.
Petya had already inspected the whole ship. He had discovered that
there were no suitable children aboard, hardly anyone with whom a pleasant
acquaintance might be struck up.
At first, true, the two girls for whom he so unsuccessfully showed off
his nautical knowledge had looked promising.
But not for long.
To begin with, the girls were travelling first class, and by speaking
French with their governess they gave him to understand right off that they
had nothing in common with a boy from the second class.
Then, the minute they reached the sea one of the girls became sea-sick;
and-as Petya had seen through the open door-she now lay on a velvet divan in
the unattainable splendour of a first-class cabin; moreover, she lay there
sucking a lemon, which was downright disgusting.
And lastly, though she was undoubtedly beautiful and elegantly
turned-out (she wore a short coat with golden buttons decorated with
anchors, and a sailor hat with a red pompon, French style), the girl who
remained on deck turned out to be singularly capricious, and a cry-baby. She
quarrelled endlessly with her father, a tall, extremely phlegmatic gentleman
with side-whiskers, who wore a flowing cape. He was the very image of Lord
Glenarvan from Captain Grant's Children.
Father and daughter were carrying on the following conversation:
"I'm thirsty, Daddy."
"Never mind, you'll get over it," Lord Glenarvan replied
phlegmatically, without taking his eyes from his binoculars.
The girl stamped her foot. "I'm thirsty," she repeated, raising her
voice.
"Never mind, you'll get over it," her father replied, calmer than ever.
The girl chanted with stubborn fury, "Daddy, I'm thirsty. Daddy, I'm
thirsty. Daddy, I'm thirsty."
Bubbles frothed on her angry lips. In a nagging drawl that would have
tried the patience of an angel, she continued, "Da-aad-dy, I'm
thir-ir-ir-sty. I'm thir-ir-ir-sty."
To which Lord Glenarvan leisurely replied, with even greater
indifference and without raising his voice, "Never mind, you'll get over
it."
This strange duel between the two obstinate creatures had been going on
practically all the way since Akkerman.
Naturally, striking up an acquaintance with her was quite out of the
question.
Then Petya found a fascinating occupation: he followed in the footsteps
of one of the passengers. Everywhere the passenger went, Petya went too.
That was really interesting, especially since Petya had long noticed
something strange about the passenger's behaviour.
Other passengers, perhaps, had not noticed one astonishing
circumstance, but Petya had, and he was greatly struck by it.
This man did not have a ticket, and the mate was very well aware of it.
But for some reason he had said nothing to the strange passenger. More,
he had given him permission-not in so many words, of course-to go wherever
he wished, even into the first-class cabins.
Petya clearly saw what had passed when the mate approached the strange
passenger with his wire cash-box.
"Your ticket?"
The passenger whispered something in the mate's ear. The mate nodded.
"Right you are."
After that, no one disturbed the strange passenger. He walked about the
whole ship, looking into every corner: into the cabins, the engine-room, the
refreshment bar, the lavatory, the hold.
Now who could he be?
A landowner? No. Landowners did not dress that way and did not act that
way.
A Bessarabian landowner always wore a heavy linen dust coat and a white
travelling cap, and the visor of the cap was covered with finger marks.
Next, he would have a drooping corn-coloured moustache, and a small wicker
basket with a padlock on it. In the basket there were always a box of smoked
mackerel, some tomatoes and some Brinza cheese, and two or three quarts of
new white wine in a green bottle.
Landowners travelled second class, for economy's sake; they kept
together, never came out of their cabins, and were always either eating or
playing cards.
Petya had not seen the strange passenger in their company.
He wore a summer cap, true enough, but he had neither a dust coat nor a
wicker basket.
No, decidedly, he was not a landowner.
Then perhaps he was a postal official, or a schoolmaster?
Hardly.
Although under his jacket he did wear a pongee shirt with a turned-down
collar, and instead of a tie a cord with little pompons, his curled-up
moustache which was as black as boot-polish and his smooth-shaven chin
obviously did not fit in with that.
And as for the smoked pince-nez-uncommonly large ones they were-on the
coarse fleshy nose with hairy nostrils, they did not fit any category of
passenger whatsoever.
Besides, there were those pinstripe trousers and those sandals over
thick white socks.
Yes, something was definitely fishy here.
Petya shoved his hands in his pockets (which, by the way, was strictly
forbidden) and strolled along with a most independent air, following the
strange passenger all over the ship.
At first the passenger stood for a while in the narrow passage-way
between the engine-room and the galley.
The galley gave off the sour, smoky reek of an eating-house, and from
the open ventilators of the engine-room there came a hot wind smelling of
superheated steam, iron, boiling water and oil.
The engine-room skylight was raised, and Petya could look down into
it-which he did with delight.
He knew the engine from A to Z, yet he went into raptures each time he
saw it. He could stand there watching it for hours.
As everybody knew, the engine was outdated and good for nothing and so
on, but it was incredibly powerful and astonishing all the same.
The steel connecting rods covered with thick green grease slid back and
forth with amazing ease, considering they weighed a ton.
The pistons pumped furiously. The cast-iron cranks twirled. The brass
discs of the cams rubbed quickly and nervously against one another, exerting
a mysterious influence on the painstaking work of the modest but important
slide valves.
And over all this swirling chaos reigned an immensely huge flywheel. At
first glance it seemed to be turning slowly, but when one took a closer look
one saw that it was going at a tremendous speed and was raising a steady hot
wind.
It was nerve-racking to watch the mechanic as he walked about among
those inexorably moving joints and bent over to apply the long nozzle of his
oil can to them.
But the most amazing thing in the whole engine-room was the ship's one
and only electric lamp.
It hung in a wire muzzle, under a tin plate. (And what a far cry it was
from the blindingly bright electric lamps of today!)
Inside its blackened glass there was a dimly glowing red-hot little
loop of wire which quivered at every vibration of the ship.
But it seemed a miracle. It was associated with the magic word
"Edison", which in the boy's mind had long since lost meaning as a surname
and had taken on mysterious meaning as a phenomenon of Nature, like
"magnetism", or "electricity".
After that the strange man walked unhurriedly round the lower decks.
Petya had the impression he was making a secret but very attentive
study of the passengers who were sitting on their bundles and baskets at the
mast, near the rails, and beside the cargo.
He was ready to bet (betting, by the way, was also strictly forbidden)
that the man was secretly searching for someone.
The stranger stepped unceremoniously over sleeping Moldavians. He
squeezed his way through groups of Jews who were eating olives. He
cautiously raised the edges of a tarpaulin stretched over some crates of
tomatoes.
Asleep on the bare boards of the deck lay a man with his cap over his
cheek and his head nestling in one of the rope fenders which are lowered
over the side to soften the ship's impact against the wharf. His arms were
spread out and his legs were drawn up, just as a child sleeps.
Petya gave a casual glance at the man's legs and then stood petrified:
the trousers had pulled up, and he saw the well-remembered navy boots with
the rust-coloured tops.
There could be no doubt about it. They were the very same boots he had
seen under the seat in the coach that morning.
And even if that was a mere coincidence, there was something else that
most certainly was not. On the sleeping man's hand, in the very same
place-the fleshy triangle beneath the thumb and forefinger-Petya clearly saw
a small blue anchor.
He almost cried out in surprise.
He controlled himself because he noticed that the sleeping man had
attracted the attention of the moustached passenger too.
Moustaches walked past the sleeper several times, trying to peer under
the cap covering his face. But he did not succeed. Then he walked by once
again and stepped on the sleeping man's hand, as if by accident.
"Sorry!"
The other gave a start. He sat up and looked round in fright with
sleepy, uncomprehending eyes.
"Eh? What's up? Where to?" he muttered disjointedly as he rubbed the
coral imprint of the rope on his cheek.
It was he, the very same sailor!
Petya hid behind the hatchway and watched with bated breath to see what
would happen next.
But nothing special happened. After excusing himself again, Moustaches
went on his way, and the sailor turned over on his other side. He did not go
back to sleep, however, but kept looking round in alarm and-so it seemed to
Petya-impatient annoyance.
What should he do? Run to Father? Or tell the whole story to the mate?
No, no!
Petya clearly remembered Father's behaviour in the coach. Evidently the
whole business was something about which he should neither speak to anybody
nor ask any questions, but simply hold his tongue and make believe he knew
nothing.
At this point he decided to hunt up Moustaches and see what he was
doing.
He found him on the first-class deck, which was practically deserted.
He was leaning against a life-boat with a canvas tightly roped over it.
Under the deck-house the invisible wheel was pounding away at water
almost black and covered with a coarse lace of foam. It was making the kind
of noise you heard at a watermill. The ship's shadow, now a rather long one,
slid quickly over the bright waves, which turned a darker and darker blue
the farther away they were.
At the stern waved the white, blue and red merchant navy flag, shot
through by the sun.
Behind her the ship left a broad wake; it widened and melted and
stretched far into the distance, like a well-swept sleigh road at
Shrovetide.
On the left ran the high clay shore of Novorossia.
As for Moustaches, he was furtively examining something he held in his
hand.
Petya stole up to him from behind, stood on tiptoe, and saw it. It was
a small, passport-size photograph of a sailor in full uniform; his cap was
tilted at a swaggerish angle, and on its band was the inscription:
KNYAZ POTEMKIN TAVRICHESKY
That was the very same sailor, the one with the anchor on his hand.
And here Petya suddenly realised, in a flash of insight, what was
strange about Moustaches' appearance: like the man with the anchor,
Moustaches was in disguise.
"MAN OVERBOARD!"
A fair wind was blowing. To help the engine along and to make up for
the time lost during loading, the captain ordered a sail to be set.
Not a single holiday celebration, not a single present, could have
thrown Petya into such raptures as did that trifle.
On second thought, a fine trifle!
An engine and a sail at one and the same time on one and the same ship!
A packet-boat and frigate combined!
I dare say that you, comrades, would also be delighted if you suddenly
had the good fortune to make a sea voyage on a real steamer that was under
sail into the bargain.
Even in those days sails were set only on the oldest steamers, and on
the rarest occasions at that. Nowadays it is never done at all.
So you can easily imagine how Petya felt about it.
Naturally, Moustaches and the runaway flew out of his mind at once. He
stood in the bow, gazing in a trance at the barefoot deck-hand who was
pulling, rather lazily, a neatly folded sail out of the hatchway.
Petya knew perfectly well that this was a jib. All the same he went up
to the mate, who, because there were no other seamen, was helping to set the
sail.
"I say there, tell me please, is that a jib?"
"It is."
The mate's tone was decidedly gruff, but Petya was not the least
offended. He knew very well that a real sea dog was bound to be somewhat
gruff. Otherwise what kind of sea-faring man was he?
Petya looked at the passengers with a restrained superior smile and
again addressed the mate, casually, as man to man: "Now tell me, please,
what other kinds of sails are there? How about the mainsail and foresail?"
"Get out of the way," the mate said, with the expression of a man whose
tooth has suddenly begun to ache. "Run along to your Mama in the cabin."
"My Mama's dead," Petya told the rude fellow with sad pride. "We're
travelling with Father."
To that the mate made no reply, and the conversation ended.
Finally the jib was set.
The little ship ploughed on faster than ever. Odessa was now tangibly
near. The white spit of the Sukhoi Liman came into sight ahead.
The shallow water of this estuary was such a dense and dark blue that
it gave off a reddish glow.
Then the slate roofs of Lustdorf, the German quarter, and the tall
rough-hewn church with the weather-vane on its spire appeared.
And after that came the villas, orchards, vegetable gardens, bathing
beaches, towers, lighthouses.
First there was the famous Kovalevsky tower, a tower with a legend.
A rich man by the name of Kovalevsky decided to build, at his own risk,
a water-supply system for the city. It would have brought him vast profit.
For every drink of water they took, people would have to pay Mr. Kovalevsky
as much as he wanted. You see, the only source of good drinking water near
Odessa was on Mr.Kovalevsky's land. But the water lay very deep, and to get
it a tremendous water tower had to be built. That was a big job for ∙ a
single man to handle. But since Mr. Kovalevsky did not want to share his
future profits with anyone, he began to build the tower on his own. The work
turned out to cost much more than he had thought it would. His relatives
pleaded with him to give up his mad idea, but he had already put so much
money into it that he would not back out. He went on with the work. When the
tower was three-quarters built he ran out of money. But by mortgaging all
his houses and his lands, he managed to finish the tower. It was a huge
thing, and it looked like a chessboard castle enlarged thousands of times.
On Sundays whole families used to come from Odessa to look at the wonder.
But the tower alone was not enough, of course. Machines had to be ordered
from abroad; holes had to be drilled, mains had to be laid. Mr. Kovalevsky
grew desperate. He ran to the merchants and bankers of Odessa for a loan. He
offered a fabulous rate of interest. He promised them dividends such as they
had never dreamed of. He begged, he went down on his knees, he wept. But the
rich merchants and bankers would not forgive him for having refused to take
them in as partners from the beginning. They were deaf to his pleas. Not a
kopek did he get from anybody. He was completely ruined, broken, crushed.
The water-main became an obsession with him. All day long he used to pace,
like a madman, round and round the tower which had swallowed his whole
fortune, racking his brains for a way to raise money. Little by little he
went out of his mind. One fine day he climbed to the very top of the
accursed tower and jumped down. That had happened about fifty years earlier,
but the tower, blackened with age, still stood overlooking the sea not far
from the rich commercial city, as a grim warning and a ghastly monument to
insatiable human greed.
Then the new white lighthouse appeared, and after it the old one, now
no longer in service.
Lit up by the pink sun setting into the golden chain of suburban
acacias, they looked so distinct, so near- and, above all, so familiar-as
they towered over the bluffs, that Petya was ready to blow into the jib as
hard as he could, if only that would make the ship arrive sooner.
From here on he knew every inch of the coast. Bolshoi Fontan, Sredny
Fontan, Maly Fontan, the high, steep shore overgrown with scratch weed, wild
rose, lilac, and hawthorn.
The big rocks standing in the water in the shadow of the bluffs, rocks
green with slime halfway up their sides, and on them the swimmers and the
anglers with their bamboo poles.
And here was Arcadia, the restaurant on piles, with its band-stand-from
a distance so small, no bigger than a prompter's box-its brightly-coloured
sunshades, and the table-cloths across which the cool wind was scurrying.
Each new detail which met the boy's eyes was fresher and more interesting
than the one before. They had not been forgotten. No! They could be
forgotten no more than he could forget his own name! They had somehow merely
slipped from his memory for a time. Now they were suddenly rushing back, the
way a boy rushes home after having gone out without permission.
They came racing back, more and more of them all the time, one
overtaking the other.
They seemed to be shouting to him, in eager rivalry:
"Greetings, Petya! So you're back at last! How we've missed you! Come
now, don't you recognise us? Take a good look: this is me, your favourite
summer resort, Marazli. How you loved to walk over my splendidly clipped
emerald lawns, strictly forbidden though that was! How you loved to examine
my marble statues, over which big snails with four little
horns-'lavriks-pavliks', you called them-used to crawl, leaving behind a
slimy trail! Look how I've grown during the summer! Look how thick my
chestnut trees have become! What gorgeous dahlias and peonies are in bloom
in my flower-beds! What magnificent August butterflies you'll see alighting
in the dark shadows of my garden walks!"
"And here am I, Otrada! Surely you haven't forgotten my bathing beach,
my shooting gallery, my skittle-alley! Look at me: while you were gone we
put up a wonderful merry-go-round, with boats and horses. And a stone's
throw away lives your old friend Gavrik. He's counting the hours until your
return. So hurry, hurry!"'
"I'm here too, Petya! How do you do? Don't you recognise Langeron? Look
at all the flat-bottomed fishing boats pulled up on my beach, and at all the
fishing nets drying on crossed oars! Wasn't it here, in my sand, that last
year you found two kopeks and then drank four whole glasses-it was so much
you actually had to force it down -of sour kvass, and it tickled your nose
and nipped your tongue? Don't you recognise the kvass stand? Why, here it is
at the edge of the bluff, as large as life, amidst the weeds that have grown
so high during the summer! You don't even need binoculars to see it!"
"And here am I! I'm here too! Hello, Petya! Ah, if you only knew what's
been going on here in Odessa while you were away! Hello! Hello!"
As they approached the city the wind grew quieter and warmer.
Now the sun had disappeared altogether. Only the top of the mast and
the tiny red peak of the weather-vane still glowed in the absolutely clear
pink sky.
The jib was taken in.
The pounding of the ship's engine raised a loud echo among the bluffs
and crags of the shore. Up the mast crept the pale-yellow top lantern.
In thought Petya was already ashore, in Odessa.
Had anybody told him that only a short while before, that very morning,
in fact, he had almost cried when bidding farewell to the farm, he never
would have believed it.
The farm? Which farm? He had already forgotten it. It had ceased to
exist for him-until the next summer.
Quick, quick! To the cabin, to hurry Daddy and to put their things
together!
Petya spun about, ready to run. But then he froze in horror. The sailor
with the anchor on his hand was sitting on the steps of the bow-ladder, and
Moustaches was walking directly towards him, hands in pockets, without his
pince-nez, his sandals squeaking.
He came up to the sailor, leaned over him, and said, in a voice neither
loud nor soft, "Zhukov?"
"What about Zhukov?" the sailor said in a low, strained voice. He
turned visibly pale and stood up.
"Sit down. Be quiet. Sit down, I tell you."
The sailor continued to stand. A faint smile trembled on his ashen
lips.
Moustaches frowned. "From the Potemkin? How do you do, my dear chap.
You might at least have changed your boots. And us waiting for you all this
long time. Well, what have you to say for yourself, Rodion Zhukov? The
game's up, eh?"
With these words Moustaches gripped the sailor by the sleeve.
The sailor's face contorted.
"Hands off!" he cried in a terrible voice. He shifted his weight and
slammed his fist into Moustaches' chest with all his might. "Keep your hands
off a sick man!"
The sleeve ripped.
"Stop!"
But it was too late.
The sailor had torn himself free and was running down the deck, weaving
in and out among the baskets, crates, and passengers. Moustaches ran after
him.
An onlooker might have thought these two grown men were playing tag.
They dived, one after the other, into the passage-way next to the
engine-room and then bobbed up on the other side. They ran up the ladder,
their soles drumming and sliding on the slippery brass steps.
"Stop! Grab him!" cried Moustaches, wheezing heavily.
The sailor now carried a batten which he had torn loose somewhere on
the way.
"Grab him! Grab him!"
The passengers, frightened and curious, gathered in a cluster on the
deck. There was a piercing blast from a policeman's whistle.
The sailor cleared a high hatchway in one leap. He dodged Moustaches,
who had run round the hatchway, jumped back over it, and then hopped on a
bench. From the bench he sprang to the rail, grasped the ensign staff, and
struck Moustaches across the face with the batten as hard as he could. Then
he jumped into the sea.
Spray showered up over the stern.
"Oh!"
The passengers, every single one of them, reeled back as if a gust of
wind had caught them.
Moustaches ran back and forth in front of the rail. "Catch him! He'll
get away!" he cried hoarsely, holding his hands to his face. "Catch him!
He'll get away!"
The mate ran up the ladder three steps at a time with a life-belt.
"Man overboard!"
The passengers reeled forward towards the rail, as if now a gust of
wind had caught them from behind.
Petya squeezed through to the rail. Amid the whipped egg-white of the
foam, the sailor's head bobbed up and down with the waves like a float. He
was already a good way off, and he was swimming.
Not towards the ship, but away from it, working his arms and legs as
fast as he could. After every three or four strokes he turned back a tense,
angry face.
The mate saw that the man who was overboard had not the slightest
desire to be "saved". On the contrary, he was plainly trying to put as much
distance as possible between himself and his saviours. Besides, he was an
excellent swimmer and the shore was relatively near.
And so, everything was in order.
There was no cause for worry.
In vain did Moustaches tug at the mate's sleeve, make fierce eyes, and
demand that the ship be stopped and a boat lowered.
"He's a political criminal. You'll answer for this!"
The mate shrugged his shoulders phlegmatically. "It's none of my
business. I have no orders. Speak to the captain."
The captain merely waved his hand. "We're late as it is. It's out of
the question, my good man. Why should we? We'll be mooring in half an hour
and then you can go and catch your political chappie. This steamship line is
a private company. It doesn't go in for politics, and we have no
instructions on that score."
Swearing under his breath, Moustaches, his face battered, headed for
the place where the gangway would be set, forcing his way through the crowd
of third-class passengers preparing to disembark.
He roughly pushed aside the frightened people; he stepped on their feet
and kicked their baskets, and finally reached the rail so as to get off
first, the moment the ship moored.
By now the sailor's head could barely be seen in the waves amid the
markers swaying above the fishing nets.
ODESSA BY NIGHT
The shore darkened quickly; it turned a light blue, then a deep blue,
then purple. On land, evening had already come. At sea it was still light.
The glossy swell reflected a clear sky. But here, too, evening was making
itself felt.
The signal lanterns on the paddle-boxes had been lit without the boy's
noticing it, and their bulging glass sides, in the daytime so dark and thick
one could never guess their colour, now gleamed green and red; they did not
throw any light as yet, but they definitely glowed.
All at once the dark-blue city, with its cupola-shaped theatre roof and
the colonnade of the Vorontsov Palace, loomed in front of them, shutting out
half the horizon.
The watery stars of the wharf lamps were palely reflected in the
light-coloured, absolutely motionless lake of the harbour. It was into the
harbour that the Turgenev now turned, closely skirting the thick tower of
the lighthouse-really not a very big one at all-which had a bell and a
ladder.
Down in the engine-room the captain's bell ting-a-linged for the last
time.
"Slow!"
The narrow little steamer slid quickly and noiselessly past the
three-storey bows of the ocean-going ships of the Dobrovolny Merchant Line
standing in a row inside the breakwater. Petya had to crane his neck in
order to study their monstrous anchors.
Those were ships!
"Stop!"
Without slowing down, carried along by her momentum, the Turgenev cut
obliquely across the harbour, in complete silence; she bore down on the
wharf as if she would crash into it any minute.
Two long creases stretched back from her sharp bow, making stripes like
a mackerel's in the water.
Along the sides the water gurgled softly.
Heat poured from the advancing city as from an oven.
All of a sudden Petya saw a funnel and two masts sticking out of the
mirror-like surface. They floated by as close to the ship's side as could
be-black, frightful, dead.
The passengers crowding at the rail gave a gasp.
"They scuttled her," someone said in a low voice.
"Who?" the boy wanted to ask, horror-struck. But just then he saw an
even more gruesome sight: the charred iron skeleton of a ship leaning
against a charred wharf.
"They burned her," the same voice said, more softly than before.
Now the wharf was upon them.
"Astern!"
The paddle-wheels began to clatter again, revolving in the opposite
direction. Little whirlpools scurried across the water.
The wharf drifted away and somehow shifted about, and then, very
slowly, it approached again, but from the other side.
Over the heads of the passengers shot a coiled rope, unwinding as it
flew.
Petya felt a slight jolt; it had been softened by the rope fender.
The gangway was shoved up from the wharf. The first to run down it was
Moustaches. He immediately disappeared in the crowd.
Our travellers waited their turn, and before long they were slowly
walking down the gangway to the wharf.
Petya was surprised to see a policeman and several civilians standing
at the foot of the gangway. They were looking closely, very closely, at
everyone coming down. They looked at Father, who thrust forward a quivering
beard and mechanically buttoned his coat. He tightened his grip on Pavlik's
hand, and his face took on exactly the same unpleasant expression as it had
in the coach that morning when he was talking to the soldier.
They took a cab. Pavlik was put on the folding seat in front, while
Petya sat next to Father on the main seat, quite like a grown-up.
As they drove out they saw a sentry with a rifle and with
cartridge-pouches at his belt standing by the gate. That was something
altogether new.
"Why is a sentry standing there, Daddy?" Petya asked in a whisper.
"For God's sake!" Father said irritably, with a jerk of his neck. "All
you do is ask questions. How should I know? If he's standing there it means
he's standing there. And you're to sit quiet."
Petya saw that no questions were to be asked, and also that there was
no call to take offence at Father's irritability.
But when, at the railway crossing, he saw the trestle bridge burned to
the ground, the mounds of charred sleepers, the twisted rails hanging in the
air, and the wheels of overturned railway carriages-when he saw that scene
of frozen chaos he cried out breathlessly, "Oh, what's that? Look! I say
there, cabby, what's that?"
"Set fire to it, they did," the cab-driver said mysteriously, shaking
his head in the firm beaver-cloth hat, but whether in condemnation or
approval was not clear.
They drove past the famous Odessa Stairway.
Up at the top of its triangle, in the space between the silhouettes of
the two semi-circular symmetrical palaces, the small figure of the Due de
Richelieu stood outlined against the light evening sky, his arm stretched
out in antique mode towards the sea.
The three-armed street lamps along the boulevard gleamed. From the
terrace of an open-air restaurant came the strains of music. The first pale
star trembled in the sky over the chestnut trees and the gravel of the
boulevard.
Somewhere up above, Petya knew, beyond the Nikolayev Boulevard, lay the
bright, noisy, luring, unapproachable, intangible place which was referred
to in the Batchei family circle with contemptuous respect as "the Centre".
In the Centre lived "the rich", those special beings who travelled
first class, who could go to the theatre every day, who for some strange
reason had their dinner at seven o'clock in the evening, who kept a chef
instead of a cook and a bonne instead of a nursemaid, and often even "kept
their own horses"-something indeed beyond human imagination.
The Batcheis, of course, did not live in "the Centre".
The droshky rumbled over the cobblestones of Karantinnaya Street and
then, turning right, drove up the hill to the city proper.
Petya was unaccustomed to the city after his summer's absence.
He was deafened by the clang of horseshoes, which drew sparks from the
cobbles, by the clatter of wheels, by the jangle of the horse-trams, by the
squeaking of shoes and the firm tapping of walking sticks on the dark-blue
slabs of the pavement.
The crisp sadness of autumn's tints had long ago gilded the farm, the
harvested fields, the wide-open steppe. But here, in the city, summer still
reigned, rich and luxuriant.
The languid heat of evening hung in the breathless air of the
acacia-lined streets.
Through the open doors of grocers' shops Petya could see the little
yellow tongues of oil lamps throwing their light on jars of coloured
sugar-plums.
Right on the pavement, under the acacias, lay mountains of
water-melons-glossy greenish-black Tumans with waxy bald spots, and long
bright Monasteries with striped sides.
Every now and then there appeared the gleaming vision of a corner fruit
shop. In the dazzling glare of the new incandescent lamps, a Persian could
be seen fanning magnificent Crimean fruit with rustling plumes of
tissue-paper. There were large purple plums covered with a turquoise bloom,
and those very expensive luscious brown Beurre Alexander pears.
They drove past mansions, and, through the ironwork fences entwined
with wild vines, Petya could see, in the light pouring from the windows,
beds of luxurious dahlias, begonias and nasturtiums, with plump moths
fluttering above them.
From the railway station came the whistle of steam-engines.
Then they passed the familiar chemist's shop.
Behind the large plate-glass window with its gilded glass letters
gleamed two crystal pears, one full of a bright violet liquid and the other
a green liquid. Petya was convinced they were poison. It was from this
chemist's the horrible oxygen pillows had been brought to Mummy when she was
dying. What a frightful snoring sound they had made near Mummy's
medicine-blackened lips!
Pavlik was fast asleep. Father took him in his arms. Pavlik's head
swayed and bobbed up and down. His heavy little bare legs kept slipping off
Father's lap. But his fingers tightly gripped the bag with the treasured
moneybox.
In that state he was handed over into the arms of Dunya, the cook, who
was waiting in the street for her masters when the cab finally pulled up at
the gate with the triangular little lantern in which the house number glowed
dimly.
"Welcome home! Welcome home!"
Petya, still feeling the roll of the deck under his feet, ran into the
entrance-way.
What a huge, deserted staircase!
Bright and echoing. How many lamps! At every landing a paraffin lamp in
a cast-iron fixture, and over each lamp a little hood swaying lazily in a
circle of light.
Brightly polished brass plates on the doors. Coconut fibre doormats. A
pram.
Petya had completely forgotten these things, and they now appeared
before his wondering eyes in all their original novelty.
He would have to get used to them again.
From somewhere above there came the sharp resounding click of a key,
followed by the slamming of a door and then by quick voices. Each
exclamation rang out like a pistol shot.
The gay bravura notes of a grand piano came, muffled, through a wall.
With compelling chords, music was reminding the boy of its existence.
And then-goodness me! Who was that?
A forgotten but frightfully familiar lady in a dark-blue silk dress
with a lace collar and lace cuffs came running out through the door. Her
eyes were red from tears, excited, happy; her lips were stretched in
laughter. Her chin trembled, but whether from laughing or crying Petya
couldn't quite be sure.
"Pavlik!"
She tore him from the cook's arms.
"Good gracious! How heavy you've become!"
Pavlik opened eyes turned absolutely black from sleep and remarked, in
surprise, but with profound indifference, "Ah, Auntie?"
Then he fell asleep again.
Why, of course, this was Auntie Tatyana! Dear, precious Auntie Tatyana,
whom he knew so well but who had simply slipped out of his memory. How could
he have failed to recognise her?
"Petya? How huge you are!"
"Do you know what happened to us, Auntie?" Petya began at once.
"Auntie, you don't know anything about it! But Auntie, only listen to what
happened to us. Why, Auntie, you're not listening! Auntie, you're not
listening!"
"Very well, very well. Wait a minute. Go inside first. Where's Vasili
Petrovich?" "Here I am." Father was coming up the stairs.
"Well, here we are. How do you do, Tatyana Ivanovna."
"Welcome home, welcome home! Come in. Were you seasick?"
"Not a bit. We had an excellent trip. Have you any small change? The
driver can't change a three-ruble note."
"I'll take care of that. Don't worry about it. Petya, don't trip me up.
You'll tell me later. Dunya, be a dear and run down and pay the cabby.
You'll find some money on my dressing-table."
The hall into which Petya walked seemed spacious and dim and so strange
that at first he failed to recognise even the tall swarthy boy in the straw
hat who had suddenly appeared, as if from nowhere, inside the walnut frame
of the forgotten but familiar pier-glass lit up by the forgotten but
familiar lamp.
But Petya, of all people, should have recognised him instantly, for
that boy was himself.
10
AT HOME
On the farm there had been a little room with whitewashed walls and
three camp-beds covered with light cotton counterpanes.
An iron washstand. A pine table. A chair. A candle in a glass shade.
Green latticed shutters. Floorboards bare of paint from constant scrubbing.
How nice and cool it had been, after eating his fill of clotted milk
and grey whole-meal bread, to fall asleep in that sad, empty room to the
soothing noise of the sea! Here everything was different.
Here there was a big flat with papered walls and rooms crowded with
furniture in loose-covers.
The wallpaper was old, and in each room it had a different design; the
furniture was different in each room too.
The bouquets and lozenges on the wallpaper made the rooms seem smaller.
The furniture here was called "suites", and it muffled the sound of
footsteps and voices. Here, lamps were carried from room to room. In the
parlour stood rubber plants with stiff, waxy leaves. Their new shoots stuck
out like sharp little daggers sheathed in saffian covers.
When the lamps were moved their light passed from one mirror to
another. The vase on top of the piano shook every time a droshky drove down
the street. The clatter of the wheels connected the house with the city.
Petya wanted to finish his tea as quickly as possible. He was dying to
run out into the courtyard, for at least a minute, to see the boys and learn
the news.
But it was already very late-after nine. All the boys were probably
asleep long ago.
He was anxious to tell Auntie Tatyana, or at least Dunya, about the
runaway sailor. But they were busy; they were making the beds, fluffing
pillows, taking heavy, slippery sheets out of the chest of drawers, carrying
lamps from room to room.
Petya followed Auntie Tatyana about. "Why won't you listen to me,
Auntie?" he pleaded, stepping on her train. "Please listen."
"You can see I'm busy."
"But Auntie, it won't take long."
"You'll tell me tomorrow."
"Oh, Auntie, don't be so mean! Please let me tell you. Please, Auntie."
"Don't get in my way, Petya. Go and tell it to Dunya."
Petya shambled off glumly to the kitchen, where green onions grew in a
wooden box on the windowsill.
Dunya was hastily pressing a pillow-case on an ironing-board covered
with a strip of coarse woollen cloth from an army greatcoat. Thick steam
rose from the iron.
"Dunya, listen to what happened to us," Petya began in a plaintive
voice, gazing at the taut glossy skin on Dunya's bare forearm.
"Don't stand so near, Master Petya. God knows I don't want to burn you
with this hot iron."
"But all you have to do is listen."
"Go and tell it to your aunt."
"Auntie doesn't want to listen. I'll tell you instead. Du-unya,
please."
"Tell it to the Master."
"Oh, how stupid you are! Father knows all about it."
"Tomorrow, Master Petya, tomorrow."
"But I want to tell you today."
"Please get away from my elbow. Aren't there enough rooms in the house
for you? Why do you have to poke your nose into the kitchen?"
"I'll only tell you about it, Dunya dear, and then I'll go right away.
Word of honour. By the true and holy Cross."
"What a trial you are! Everything was so quiet until you came back!"
Dunya planked the iron down on the stove, caught up the ironed
pillow-case and ran into the next room so impetuously that a breeze passed
through the kitchen.
Petya sadly rubbed his eyes with his fists. Suddenly he was taken with
such a fit of yawning that he barely managed to drag himself to his bed,
where, powerless to unglue his eyes, he pulled off his sailor blouse like a
blind man.
The instant his hot cheek touched the pillow he dropped off into a
sleep so sound that he did not feel Father's beard when he came, as was his
custom, to kiss him goodnight.
Pavlik, however, caused a good deal of bother. He had fallen into such
a deep sleep in the cab that Father and Auntie Tatyana had quite a job
undressing him.
But the moment they put the child to bed he opened eyes that were
absolutely fresh and looked round in astonishment.
"Have we got there yet?"
Auntie Tatyana kissed him tenderly on his hot crimson cheek.
"Yes, my pet. Sleep."
But Pavlik, it appeared, had had a good sleep, and now he was in a mood
for talking.
"Is that you, Auntie?"
"Yes, my chick. Go to sleep."
Pavlik lay for a long time with wide-open, attentive eyes-eyes now as
dark as olives-listening to the unfamiliar noises of the city flat.
"Auntie, what's making that noise?" he finally said in a frightened
whisper.
"Which noise?"
"That snoring noise."
"That's the water in the tap, my pet."
"Is it blowing its nose?"
"Yes. Now go to sleep."
"What's making that whistle?"
"That's a steam-engine."
"Where?"
"Have you really forgotten? At the station just opposite. Go to sleep."
"Why is there music?"
"Someone is playing the piano upstairs. Don't you remember how people
play the piano?"
Pavlik was silent for a long time.
One might have thought him to be asleep, except that his eyes shone
distinctly in the greenish glow of the night lamp on the chest of drawers.
They were following with horror the long rays moving back and forth across
the ceiling.
"What's that, Auntie?"
"Those are the lanterns of droshkies passing by outside. Close your
eyes."
"And what's that?"
A huge death's-head moth fluttered with ominous thumpings in a corner
near the ceiling.
"That's a moth. Go to sleep."
"Will it bite?"
"No, it won't bite. Go to sleep."
"I don't want to sleep. I'm afraid."
"What are you afraid of? Stop imagining things. A big boy like you.
Tsk-tsk-tsk!"
Pavlik took a deep, luxurious, quivering breath and caught Auntie's
hand in his two hot little hands. "Did you see the Gipsy?" he whispered.
"No, I didn't."
"Did you see the Wolf?"
"No. Go to sleep."
"Did you see the Chimney-Sweep?"
"No, I didn't. You can go to sleep without worrying about a single
thing."
Again the boy took a deep, luxurious breath, turned over on his other
cheek, and cupped his palm under it.
"Auntie," he mumbled, closing his eyes, "give me the dummy."
"What? I thought you stopped using a dummy long ago."
The "dummy" was the special little clean handkerchief which Pavlik was
accustomed to sucking in bed and without which he could not fall asleep.
"Dum-m-m-my. . ." the boy whimpered capriciously.
But Auntie Tatyana did not give him the handkerchief. He was a big boy
now. High time he stopped that.
Thereupon Pavlik, continuing to whine, stuffed a corner of the pillow
into his mouth and got it all wet; he smiled lazily as his eyes glued
together. Suddenly, with a flash of horror, he thought of his moneybox: what
if robbers had stolen it? But he had no energy left for worrying.
He fell into a peaceful sleep.
GAVRIK
That same day another boy, Gavrik-the one we mentioned while describing
the coast near Odessa- woke at dawn from the cold.
He was sleeping on the shore, near the boat, his head on a smooth sea
stone and his face covered with his grandfather's old jacket. The jacket did
not reach to his feet.
At night it was warm, but towards morning it turned cool. Gavrik's bare
feet became chilled. In his sleep he pulled the jacket from his head and
wound it round his feet. Then his head began to feel cold.
He started shivering but he did not give in. He tried to fight the
cold. He was unable to fall asleep again, however.
Nothing for it but to get up!
Reluctantly Gavrik opened his eyes. He saw a glossy lemon sea and the
glow of a murky cherry-coloured dawn in a cloudless grey sky. It was going
to be a hot day. But until the sun came up there was no use even thinking
about warmth. Of course, Gavrik could very well have slept in the hut, with
Grandpa. There it was warm and soft. But show me the boy who will pass by
the delightful chance of sleeping on the seashore under the open sky!
Every now and then a wave laps the beach, so softly that it can barely
be heard. It breaks and then draws back, lazily dragging pebbles along with
it.
The next wave waits a while and then it laps the shore too, and again
pebbles are dragged back.
The silvery-black sky is strewn with August stars. The split sleeve of
the Milky Way hangs overhead like a vision of a river in the sky.
The sky is reflected in the sea so fully, so richly, that, when you lie
on the warm pebbles with your head thrown back, you simply cannot tell which
is up and which is down; it's as though you are suspended in the middle of a
starry abyss.
Shooting stars streak across the sky in all directions.
In the weeds, crickets chirp. On the bluffs, far, far away, dogs bark.
At first the stars seem to be standing still. But they aren't. When you
look at them a long time you can see the whole vault of the sky turning.
Some of the stars drop behind the villas. Others, new ones, come up out of
the sea.
The breeze changes from warm to cool.
The sky grows whiter, more transparent. The sea darkens. The morning
star is reflected in its dark surface like a little moon.
At the villas, the cocks crow sleepily for the third time. Day is
breaking.
How can anybody sleep under a roof on a night like that!
Gavrik rose, stretched himself with relish, rolled up his trousers and,
yawning, walked into the water up to his ankles.
Had he lost his mind? His feet were blue from the cold, and here he
stepped into the sea, the very sight of which was enough to give one the
shivers.
But the boy knew what he was doing. The water only looked cold.
Actually it was very warm, much warmer than the air. He was simply warming
his feet.
Then he washed himself and blew his nose into the sea so loudly that
several big-headed fry sleeping peacefully near the shore scattered to right
and left and slithered away into deep water.
Yawning and squinting against the rising sun. Gavrik took up the hem of
his shirt and dried his face-a mottled little face with a lilac-pink nose
which was peeling like a new potato.
"Urrmph, urrmph, urrmph," he grunted, exactly like a grown-up.
Unhurriedly he made the sign of the cross over his mouth, in which two front
teeth were still missing, picked up the jacket, and started up the hill with
the rolling gait of an Odessa fisherman.
He pushed his way through a thick growth of weeds. They sprinkled his
wet feet and his trousers with the yellow dust of their pollen.
The hut stood about thirty paces from the beach on a hill of red clay
spotted with glistening crystals of shale.
It w