and  receive  a
school-leaving certificate at Faig's school.  Faig was a philanthropist  and
patron  of  the Arts. He enjoyed making donations and did so with a  splash,
including an announcement in the papers.
     He donated suites of furniture and cows to lotteries, contributed large
sums towards  improving the cathedral and  buying a new bell, he established
the Faig Prize  to be awarded annually at  the yacht  races,  and paid fifty
rubles for a glass of champagne at charity bazaars. In short, this Faig, who
had become  a  legend, was  the horn of plenty  that poured charity upon the
poor.
     However, the main source of his popularity lay in the fact that he rode
around town in his own carriage.
     This was  no antediluvian contraption of  the type that usually  bumped
along  as  part  of  the funeral cortege. Neither was it a wedding carriage,
upholstered in white satin with crystal headlights and folding step. Nor was
it a bishop's  carriage,  that screeching  conveyance which,  in addition to
carrying  the  bishop, was also used for transporting to  private homes  the
Icon of the  Holy Virgin of Kasperovka associated with Kutuzov  and the fall
of  Ochakov. Faig's carriage was  a coupe de  luxe on  English springs, with
high box and a coachman dressed  according to the height of English fashion.
The doors sported  a fictitious coat-of-arms, and, as  a finishing  touch. a
liveried footman stood on the footboard, which reduced the street loafers to
a state approaching religious ecstasy.
     A pair of bob-tailed horses  with  patent-leather blinkers  whisked the
carriage along at la brisk trot. Faig  was inside.  He was wearing a top hat
and a  Palmerston coat, his side whiskers were dyed black, and a  Havana was
planted between his teeth. His feet were wrapped in a Scotch plaid.
     While the  Bachei family was watching Faig's carriage from  the windows
and wondering whom he might have  come to  see, the door-bell rang. Dunyasha
opened the  door and nearly swooned. The  liveried  footman stood before her
with his three-cornered purled hat pressed to his breast.
     "Mr. Faig presents  his  respects  to  the Bachei family,"  the footman
said, "and asks to be received."
     The  Bachei  family,  who  had  rushed  into  the   hall,  stood  there
dumbfounded. Auntie  was the only one who  had kept a  level head. She  gave
Vasily  Petrovich  a meaning look, turned to the footman, and with a  polite
smile and in an offhand manner said, "Please ask him up."
     The footman bowed  and went downstairs, sweeping  the stairway with the
long tails of his livery coat.
     No  sooner had Vasily Petrovich fastened his collar,  adjusted his tie,
and got his arms through  the sleeves of his good frock-coat, than  Mr. Faig
entered. He carried his top  hat, his gloves  tossed into it, stiffly in one
hand and in the other, which sparkled with the diamonds, he held a  cigar. A
democratic smile  lit up his face between the black side whiskers. He spread
the aroma of Havana cigar smoke mixed with the scent of Atkinson's  perfume.
A  battery of badges, medals,  and  fraternity-pins followed the cut of  his
frock-coat.   Tiny   pearls   glowed  gently  in  the  buttonholes   of  his
magnificently starched white shirt-front.
     This man, the  personification of success and wealth, had suddenly paid
them a call! Faig put his top hat on  the hall table and extended his  plump
hand to Father in  the  grand  manner. That was  all  Petya saw, for  Auntie
manoeuvred  him and  Pavlik  into the kitchen and kept them there  until Mr.
Faig departed.
     Judging by the  fact that  Faig's loud and merry laughter  and Father's
chuckle were heard several times,  the  visit was  a friendly one.  But what
could be the reason for it? The explanation was forthcoming when Faig, after
being helped into  the carriage by the  footman and  having the Scotch plaid
tucked round his legs, waved his white hand with the cigar and drove off. He
had come to Vasily Petrovich with the offer of a teaching appointment in his
establishment.
     It had all been  so unexpected and so much like a miracle, that  Vasily
Petrovich turned to the  icon and crossed himself. Teaching in Faig's school
was  much  more remunerative than  in the gymnasium,  because  Faig paid his
teachers almost double the salary paid by  the government. Vasily  Petrovich
was captivated by  Faig's matter-of-fact way, his  cordiality and democratic
manners which contrasted so pleasantly and unexpectedly with his  appearance
and his way of life.
     In  conversation   with  Vasily   Petrovich,  Faig  displayed  a   keen
understanding of contemporary affairs. He was biting and yet restrained when
criticizing the  Ministry of Education for  its inability to  appreciate its
best teachers; he fiercely  resented  the government's attempts to turn  the
schools into military barracks and openly declared that  the  time had  come
for society to take the  matter of public  education  into its own hands and
banish servile officials  and petty tyrants such as the head  of  the Odessa
District Education Department,  who had revived the worst traditions  of the
Arakcheyev times. He declared that their  attitude towards Vasily Petrovich,
in addition to lacking any  justification, had been  disgusting, and that he
hoped to right  the wrong and restore justice, as he  considered the  matter
his  sacred duty  to  Russian  society and  science.  He hoped  that  in his
establishment Vasily Petrovich would find full scope for" his abilities as a
brilliant teacher  and for  his love of  the great Russian  literature. As a
believer  in European methods of  education he  was sure that he and  Vasily
Petrovich would understand one  another.  As for the formalities, he did not
doubt  for a  minute  that he  would get  the consent  of  the  Minister  of
Education  to have  Vasily Petrovich officially accredited, since  a  public
gymnasium was one thing, and a  private school something else again. Nor did
Faig  conceal the  fact  that one of  the reasons which had  prompted him to
engage Vasily Petrovich was  that by so doing he would raise the standard of
the school in the eyes of the liberal circles of Odessa society; another was
that it would be a challenge to  the government,  since, according  to Faig,
Vasily Petrovich's famous speech on the  occasion of Tolstoi's death had won
him a definite political reputation.
     All this was strange and  flattering  to Vasily  Petrovich, although he
winced at the mention of his political reputation. And when Faig added, "You
shall  be  our  standard-bearer,"  Vasily   Petrovich  even  felt  a  little
frightened. However, Faig's proposition was accepted, and life in the Bachei
family underwent a miraculous change.
     Faig had paid Vasily Petrovich for six months  in advance. The  sum was
larger than the family  had ever dreamed of.  Now, whenever Vasily Petrovich
ventured forth, the neighbours watched him enviously from their windows  and
said:
     "Look, there goes Bachei, the one Faig has taken on."
     Once again Vasily Petrovich began  to think in terms  of a trip abroad.
And at long last, after weighing up his  resources and consulting Auntie for
the twentieth time, he decided: we're going!


     THE SAILOR'S OUTFIT


     Spring, which came early, was warm and glorious. Easter passed and left
pleasant memories.  Soon  it  was  examination  time, a  time  Petya  always
associated  with  the  brief  May  thunderstorms,  fiery  flashes of  purple
lightning, the lilac in bloom in the school garden, the dry air of the empty
class-rooms  with the  desks moved close  together and the  clouds of  chalk
dust, pierced by the warm rays of the afternoon sun that  remained suspended
in the air after the last exam.
     They began preparing for the trip during examination time. Switzerland,
a country that had always had a special place in Vasily  Petrovich's  heart,
was their main objective. However, it was decided that they should first  go
to Naples by sea, and then cross Italy by rail. This indirect route would be
slightly more expensive, but it would give them the  chance to visit Turkey,
Greece, the islands of the Aegean Sea and Sicily, they would  be able to see
all  the  sights   of  Naples,  Rome,  Florence,  and  Venice;  then,  funds
permitting, they might even pay a brief visit to Paris. Vasily Petrovich had
mapped  out  the itinerary many  years  before, when  Mother had still  been
alive.  The  two-of  them  had spent many  an evening leafing through travel
guides and writing down the travel expenses. They had noted the price of the
tickets,  hotel  and  boarding-house  rates, and  even admission  prices  to
museums and tips were included in their careful calculations.
     Despite all this  Vasily Petrovich feared to overtax the budget, and so
he studied the rail and steamer ticket prices once more.
     There were many arguments  about what to  take and how to pack.  Auntie
suggested that they  should  buy two very  ordinary  suitcases  and put very
ordinary clothes in them. However, it  turned  out that Vasily Petrovich was
of another mind completely. He  thought they  should have a special  satchel
and Alpine  rucksacks with  special  straps  that would  not  interfere with
climbing.
     Auntie shrugged and laughed,  but Petya and Pavlik  insisted  that only
the special  Alpine  rucksacks  be  ordered,  and  so  she gave  in.  Vasily
Petrovich went  to the shop with his own draft of the special travelling-bag
and the special rucksacks. A few  days later the Bachei household was richer
by   two   rucksacks   and  a   rather  strange-looking  creation   of   the
luggage-and-harness industry. It was of  tartan and bore a vague resemblance
to a huge accordion, covered all over with a multitude of patch-pockets.
     These new and still  empty  travelling-bags and the exciting  smell  of
leather  and  dyed  material  brought  visions  of  far distances  into  the
household. Then they discovered  that the boys could not go  abroad in their
school uniforms, they would have to wear "civvies."
     That was no problem as  far as Pavlik was concerned. He still  had last
year's "pre-school"  clothes: a pair of short trousers and  a  middy-blouse.
Petya's outfit presented a problem. It would have  been ridiculous to deck a
fourteen-year-old boy out in a grown man's suit with a coat, waistcoat and a
tie. But a little boy's outfit with short  trousers was no good either. They
had to find a happy medium. Petya was  already in a frenzy of impatience and
the outfit he wanted was undoubtedly influenced by  the illustrations in the
works  of Jules Verne and Mayne Reid. In his opinion it had to  be something
like 'a naval cadet's uniform, consisting of his  long school trousers and a
navy-blue blouse, not the  kind that  little boys wear, but the real  thing,
made of heavy flannel.
     It  was  no  easy  matter  to have  such a blouse made.  No  children's
outfitter and  no  tailor seemed to  understand what  was expected  of them.
Petya, who had already  pictured  himself  as a  naval cadet, was desperate.
Gavrik came to his  rescue. He suggested a  naval outfitter's shop where  he
knew someone. He seemed to have friends everywhere!
     The shop  was located in  the  so-called Sabansky  Barracks, an ancient
white-columned structure.
     The enclosed yard, vast and spacious, and the ominous appearance of the
disused fortress, the pyramids of old cannon-balls,  anchors, parallel bars,
and the  mast  with  its  multi-coloured  signal  flags, thrilled  Petya. An
orderly in a sailor's cap sat on a bench beneath a bell.
     "Don't worry," Gavrik said, seeing that Petya had stopped in confusion.
"The fellows  here are  good chaps." They climbed  up  the worn  steps of an
ancient stairway and found themselves in a  dark corridor. It was as cold as
a  crypt, and the change was especially noticeable later the noonday heat of
the May sunshine.
     Gavrik  confidently led his friend through the darkness to a  door, and
the  boys entered  a deep-vaulted room. The walls were twelve feet thick, so
that the two little windows barely let in any light, although they 'directly
faced the sea  opposite  Quarantine Bay  and  the white lighthouse with  its
circling  sea-gulls that stood  out so clearly against the choppy blue-green
water.
     A sailor wearing the  red shoulder-straps of the coastguard service sat
at a large sewing-machine, working the iron treadle with his bare feet as he
hemmed a woollen signal flag. A heap of signal flags lay in a corner.
     The sailor stopped sewing when  he saw Gavrik. A  smile broke over  his
pock-marked face, but then he noticed the strange boy standing behind Gavrik
and raised his bushy eyebrows inquiringly.
     "It's all right. This is the  fellow  who's teaching  me Latin," Gavrik
said, and Petya realized that the sailor knew all about his friend.
     "What's new?" the sailor asked.
     "Nothing special," Gavrik  answered.  "I've  come about something  else
this  time. I was wondering  whether  you  could make a regulation  sailor's
blouse for this fellow."
     "I haven't got the right material."
     "He's got it. Petya, show him the cloth."
     Petya  handed over  the  package. The  sailor unrolled the  soft, fine,
strong navy-blue wool.
     "That's the real stuff!" Gavrik said with a touch of pride.
     "How much did you pay for it?" the sailor asked.
     Petya  told him the price and he  felt sure the  meaning look that  the
sailor gave Gavrik was disapproving.
     "Don't go thinking things," Gavrik said. "His old man's just a teacher.
They're not well off. They're even hard up for money at times. It so happens
that he needs a regulation blouse."
     Gavrik amazed Petya  as he explained  why he needed the  blouse. He had
all the details  of the projected  journey at  his fingertips. Petya  caught
several significant glances passing between Gavrik and the sailor.
     Perhaps he would not have paid any attention to this,  were it  not for
the  fact that something similar had taken place when he was giving Gavrik a
Latin  lesson in Near Mills. Motya had been present during the  lesson,  and
since Motya regarded  Petya as  some  kind  of superior being, an object  of
devoted  and secret  worship,  he  began  to  boast  for  her  benefit.  His
imagination ran away with him as he described the forthcoming  journey. When
he  got as far as the splendours of  Switzerland Terenty  exchanged  glances
with Gavrik and then  with  his guest, Sinichkin, a thin, consumptive worker
wearing top boots and a black cotton shirt beneath a threadbare jacket.
     When Terenty looked sat him,  Sinichkin shook  his  head and  muttered,
"No, he's no longer there," or something to that effect. Suddenly, he looked
Petya straight in the eye and asked him solemnly:
     "Will you be going to France, too? Will you visit Paris?"
     And  when  Petya  answered  that  if their  money  held  out they would
certainly  go there,  Sinichkin looked at  Terenty significantly again,  but
they did not ask Petya any more questions.
     Petya felt  that his forthcoming trip abroad had  evoked in  Gavrik and
his friends in Near Mills some kind of special interest, but he  was  in the
dark as to the reason why.
     The sailor  and Gavrik had  exchanged  the  same sort of  glances  too.
Perhaps,  Petya  thought, people always behaved like that in the presence of
someone about to  go abroad. Petya had not yet set  foot outside his  native
city,  but he already felt  that  new  experiences  awaited him around every
corner. He would  suddenly find himself in a  side-street he  had never trod
before  and would stop to look at a tiled house or a garden with the curious
eyes of a tourist.
     How  many times, for example, had  he passed the Sabansky Barracks  and
never dreamed that behind its gates was an unknown world-a sleepy,  deserted
yard with  anchors and cannon-balls, a naval outfitter's shop where a sailor
sewed  woollen  signal flags,  ancient windows in deep niches from which the
sea  seemed  altogether  different and unfamiliar,  luring  one  to  explore
far-off lands.
     The sailor examined the cloth and praised it. He would make the blouse,
but  his charge would be five rubles. Gavrik shoved Petya aside, looked hard
at the  sailor, shook his head reproachfully, and said that one ruble  would
be far too  much. They bargained a long time, and finally the sailor said he
would do the job for  two rubles, and only  because  Petya was "one  of us."
What this meant Petya did not understand.
     The sailor  then wiped the lid of  a large  sea  chest with his sleeve,
said, "Sit down,  boys," and went to fetch a copper kettle of boiling water.
They drank tea  from  tin mugs, sucking lumps of sugar  and eating tasty rye
bread that the sailor  cut  off in large  slices,  pressing  the loaf to his
brawny chest.
     Gavrik and  the  sailor  kept up  a  grave conversation  over tea, and,
judging by what was said, Petya concluded that the sailor-Gavrik called  him
"Uncle Fedya"-knew Terenty's family well and was actually a distant relative
on  his mother's  side.  The  conversation was mostly about family and money
matters. However, from  certain hints and veiled  expressions, Petya divined
that there was another bond between Terenty and Uncle Fedya. Petya could not
quite get the hang of it, but  he vaguely  felt a long-forgotten echo of the
terrible and troubled air of 1905.
     At last Uncle  Fedya pulled out a decrepit  oilcloth tape-measure  with
the numbers all worn off,  measured Petya, and  promised to  have the blouse
ready  in three days.  He  was as good as his  word.  In addition, he made a
sailor's  cap for the boy with the left-over cloth, and  attached an old St.
George ribbon with long ends to it. The cap was free of charge.
     Petya had a look at himself in the crooked little  mirror  that hung on
the wall next  to a coloured  print of Taras Shevchenko  and could not  hold
back the happy, radiant smile that spread across his face all the way to his
ears.


        DEPARTURE


     Unexpected  complications  set in when  they  applied to the  chief  of
police  for  travel  passports.  Vasily  Petrovich  had  to  submit  written
statements testifying to his loyalty to the state. This was  not  as easy as
it  seemed.  He  filled out  the application  forms, and four  days later an
officer from the Alexandrovsky police-station  knocked at the door  with two
witnesses in order to proceed with the inquiry. The mere mention of the word
"inquiry" irritated Vasily Petrovich. And when the inquisitor plumped into a
chair in the  dining-room  where he spread his greasy folders and put down a
spill-proof ink-well on the clean table-cloth, and in an official tone asked
all kinds of stupid  questions about sex, age, religious  affiliation, rank,
title, etc., Vasily Petrovich felt like throwing him out; but he  controlled
himself and  endured the grilling. He signed  his name to the inquiry paper,
next to  the illegible  scrawl  of janitor Akimov, one of the witnesses, and
the flourishing signature of the other witness, an insipid, pimply young man
in a technical-school cap with two crossed hammers over the peak.
     Soon  afterwards  a  policeman  came with  a  notice  requesting Vasily
Petrovich  to  appear  before  the  chief of  police. Vasily Petrovich  duly
appeared  and  had a  talk with the chief  in his office.  They  discussed a
variety of subjects, mostly political, and Vasily Petrovich explained why he
had  left  his  job with the  Ministry of Education.  They parted on amiable
terms.
     But that was  not  all. Vasily Petrovich  had  to  submit a mountain of
documents:  his   service  record,   birth  certificate,  his  wife's  death
certificate, etc., etc. This  took much time  and energy  and caused endless
frustration. All the copies  had to be  letter-perfect before they  could be
notarised. Petya tagged along with his father on this dreary roundabout.
     How unbearable  were  those typing bureaus where sour  and arrogant old
maids  in squeaking corsets  would get  up from behind their  Underwoods and
Remingtons,  haughtily  survey  Vasily  Petrovich and  rudely  announce that
nothing  could  be done  before another  week! How tired  they  were  of the
stifling, deserted summer streets, criss-crossed by  the latticed shadows of
the blossoming  white acacias and the notaries'  oval signboards with  their
black, two-headed eagles!
     When  all the copies were duly prepared and notarized,  it  turned  out
that there would have to be yet another inquiry.
     Time was passing and there were moments  when  Vasily Petrovich felt so
frustrated that he was ready to abandon the idea of going abroad. But Gavrik
saved the situation once more.
     "You're  green!" he  said  to Petya, shrugging his shoulders. "You're a
bunch of innocents. Tell your old man to grease their palms."
     "What, bribe them? Never!" Vasily Petrovich thundered when Petya passed
on his friend's advice. "I'll never sink that low!"
     But  in the  end, completely exasperated by red  tape, he did sink that
low. And behold, everything changed as  if by magic: a  certificate  of  his
loyalty  was  produced in  an instant, and  the hitherto unattainable travel
passport was delivered to the house.
     They had only to book their tickets and set out. Since they had decided
to travel on an Italian ship, there was something thrilling and foreign even
in  the  matter  of purchasing  the  tickets. In  Lloyd's  Travel Agency  on
Nikolayevsky  Boulevard, next door to the  Vorontsov Palace-that is,  in the
most fashionable part of the town-the prospective tourists were greeted with
such  reverence  and  politeness  that Petya  thought  his father  had  been
mistaken for someone else.
     A gentleman in a grey morning coat  with a large pearl tie-pin stuck in
a brilliantly coloured tie asked them to sit down in the deep leather chairs
which  stood  around  a  small  mahogany  table. The surface  of the  table,
polished to  a  high gloss, was  littered  with Lloyd's  narrow, illustrated
prospectuses in various  languages. There were photographs  of many-storeyed
hotels,  palm-trees, ancient ruins and  ocean liners.  Petya saw tiny  white
Remus and Romulus at  the  jagged tits of the  white  she-wolf,  St.  Mark's
winged lion, Vesuvius with an  umbrella-like Italian pine in the foreground,
Milan  Cathedral, as thin  and pointed as a fish-bone, and the leaning Tower
of Pisa; these symbols of Italian cities transported the boy into the realms
of foreign travel.
     Undoubtedly, the Travel Agency office belonged to that world  too, with
its flamboyant posters, price-lists, impressive rosewood filing cabinets and
counters, ship chronometers  instead  of ordinary clocks, models of ships in
glass cases, portraits  of the  King  and  Queen  of Italy, and  the gallant
gentleman in the  grey morning coat,  who chattered away in  broken  Russian
while selling Vasily Petrovich  the  pretty second-class tickets from Odessa
to Naples and patting Pavlik, whom he called "leetle signor turisto," on his
close-cropped head.
     From then on Petya felt that the journey had begun.
     When the tickets were handed  to them, together with a sheaf of  guides
and prospectuses, and when, in a high state of excitement, they emerged from
Lloyd's,  Petya regarded  Nikolayevsky Boulevard as the marine embankment of
some foreign city, and the familiar Richelieu monument with the iron bomb on
the  pedestal  as  one  of  the  "sights"  which  was  now to be  thoroughly
"inspected," not merely looked at. This feeling was  heightened by the ships
of every flag that lay at anchor in the bay far below the boulevard.
     The day of departure arrived.
     Their  ship  was  scheduled  to  sail  at  four  in  the afternoon.  At
one-thirty Dunyasha was sent  to hire two cabs. Auntie, in a mantilla and  a
little hat with daisies, was seeing them off. She  and a speechless, excited
Pavlik  climbed into one  cab;  Vasily Petrovich and Petya,  with the Alpine
rucksacks and the tartan travelling-bag packed so tight that it was ready to
burst, got into the other.
     A group  of idlers  stood around discussing  the event in  loud voices.
Dunyasha,  wearing her new calico dress,  wiped  her  tears  with her apron.
Vasily  Petrovich patted the pockets  of  his freshly-ironed silk jacket  to
make sure he had not forgotten anything, removed his black-banded straw hat,
crossed himself, and said with a show of nonchalance:
     "Well, let's be off!"
     The crowd parted, the cabs set off, and Dunyasha began to weep aloud.
     Petya's feeling that they were already abroad never left him. To get to
the port they had  to cross the city through the  rich business centre. Then
only did Petya realize how greatly Odessa had changed in the past few years.
The typical provincial  nature of this southern city had remained  unchanged
on the outskirts. There  one  could still  find the small  lime-stone houses
with  tiled  roofs,  the  walnut  and  mulberry  trees  in  the  yards,  the
bright-green booths of the soft-drinks vendors, Greek coffee-houses, tobacco
shops, and wine cellars  with a white lamp in the shape of a bunch of grapes
over the entrance.
     The  spirit  of European  capitalism reigned in  the town centre. There
were  black glass  signs  with  impressive gold lettering in  every European
language  at  the  entrance  to  the  banks  and company offices. There were
highly-priced luxury goods in the windows of  the English  and French shops.
Linotypes  clattered  and  rotary  presses  whirred  in  the  semi-basements
occupied  by newspaper  print-shops. As they  were crossing Greek Street the
drivers  pulled up  in  terror  to give  way  to  a  new and shiny  electric
tram-car,  emitting   cascades   of  sparks.  This  was  the   city's  first
tramway-line,  built by a Belgian company, connecting  the  centre  with the
Industry and Trade Fair that had just opened on wasteland near Alexandrovsky
Park.
     At  the  corner  of  Langeron  and Yekaterininskaya  streets,  directly
opposite the huge  Fankoni Cafe where  stockbrokers and grain  merchants  in
Panama  hats  sat  at  marble-topped  tables  set out right on the pavement,
Paris-style, under awnings and surrounded by potted laurel trees, the cab in
which Auntie  and  Pavlik  were  travelling  was  all but  overturned  by  a
bright-red  automobile driven by the  heir  to  the  famous Ptashnikov Bros,
firm,  a grotesquely bloated  young man in a  tiny  yachting cap, who looked
amazingly like a prize Yorkshire pig.
     The spirit  of  "European  capitalism" disappeared when they began  the
downhill  ride  to  the port and passed  the dives, doss-houses, second-hand
shops, and the dead-end lanes where tramps and down-and-outs, pale-faced and
ragged,  were  playing cards or sleeping on the  bare ground.  However,  the
spirit reappeared when they  approached the warehouses, commercial agencies,
the  stacks of crates and  sacks that  were  like a  city, with streets  and
alleys, and, finally, the ships of many nations and companies.
     The embarkation officer told the drivers where their ship, the Palermo,
was being  loaded, and they headed for the wharf. They  stopped  opposite  a
large  ship  gaily  flying  the  Italian  flag,  and  the  boys   were  most
disappointed to find that she had only one funnel.
     As might have been expected, they arrived  far too early and had nearly
an hour and a half till sailing time. Loading was in full swing. The arms of
powerful  steam  winches  swung  to  and  fro,  lowering bunches of  barrels
strapped together  and  crates that must have  weighed a ton into the  hold.
Passengers were not allowed on board as yet-not that any were in sight, with
the exception of a group of turbaned Turks or Persians, deck passengers, who
were sitting silently and sullenly on their rug-wrapped belongings.


        THE LETTER


     Suddenly Petya saw Gavrik coming towards him, swinging a spray of white
acacia. Petya could hardly believe his eyes. Had he come to see them off? It
was not at all like Gavrik to do a thing like that.
     "What made you come here?"  Petya  asked. "I've come  to see  you off,"
Gavrik answered and the nonchalant gesture as he handed Petya the acacia was
magnificent.
     "Are you crazy?"  Petya felt very embarrassed. "No," Gavrik said. "What
is it then?"
     "I'm your pupil,  you're  my teacher. And Terenty says that  we  should
respect our teachers. Isn't that  right?" There was a quizzical  twinkle  in
Gavrik's smiling eyes. "Stop fooling."
     "I'm not fooling," Gavrik said. And taking Petya by the arm, he said in
a very serious voice, "I want a word with you. Let's take a walk."
     They strolled  down  the pier, through the flocks of  lazy pigeons that
kept pecking away at kernels  of maize. At the end of the pier they sat down
on a huge anchor. Gavrik looked around, and when he had made sure that there
was  no  one within earshot,  he  said,  as  if  continuing  an  interrupted
conversation:
     "Look here.  I'll  give you  a letter, which you must stow away safely.
When  you reach a foreign country, stamp it and drop it in a letter-box. But
not in Turkey, because  they  belong to  the  same gang. Post it in Italy or
Switzerland, or, best of all, France. Will you do this for us?"
     Petya stared at Gavrik in amazement, wondering whether he was joking or
serious. However,  he had such a serious look about him that  there could be
no doubt.
     "Of course I'll do it," Petya said and shrugged.
     "Where will you get the money for the stamp?" Gavrik queried.
     "Don't worry. We'll be writing to Auntie all the time. That'll  be easy
enough."
     "I can give you the twenty kopeks for the stamp, maybe you can exchange
it there for their kind of money."
     Petya smiled.
     "Listen, none of that," Gavrik said severely. "And remember, it's  very
important... er  ... well." He wanted  to say "Party business," but did not.
He tried to think of an appropriate word,  but could not, and could only wag
an ink-stained finger significantly in front of Petya's nose.
     "I understand," Petya nodded solemnly.
     "It's  a personal request  from Terenty," Gavrik said after  a moment's
silence, as if to explain the importance of the matter. "Do you get me?"
     "Yes," Petya answered.
     Gavrik looked  around  once more and took the letter out of his pocket.
It was wrapped in newspaper to keep it from getting soiled.
     "Where can I hide it?"
     "Right here."
     Gavrik  took off Petya's sailor's cap  and pushed the letter  carefully
under the lining at the place where one of the seams had not been stitched.
     Petya was just about to say that Uncle Fedya had done  a  pretty sloppy
job on the cap, but at that moment a long shrill whistle drowned out all the
sounds of the  port for fully a minute. Then, abruptly, it stopped, as if it
had flown across the city and disappeared into the steppe beyond. The second
blow was a brief one, like a  period  at the end of  la long sentence. Petya
saw  the passengers  going  up the gangway. Gavrik  clapped Petya's  cap  on
again, adjusted the ribbons and the two ran towards the ship.
     "There's just  one  more thing," Gavrik  said hurriedly as  they  raced
along, "if they discover the letter,  say  you found it, but the best thing,
if you have time, would be to tear it up and get rid of it, although there's
nothing very special in it. So don't be soared."
     "I know, I know," Petya answered in a jumpy voice.
     "Petya!" Vasily Petrovich, Pavlik and Auntie were shouting together, in
varying  stages of despair, as they fussed around the  Alpine  rucksacks and
travelling-bag.
     "You dreadful child!" Father was boiling. "You'll be the death of me!"
     "Where  have you  been? What a thing to  do! To  disappear  just as the
first whistle was blowing!" Auntie was saying  excitedly, addressing herself
to Petya and the other passengers, who were arriving in crowds.
     "We nearly left without you!" Pavlik bellowed at the top of his lungs.
     A sailor picked up  their things. They followed him up the gangway over
the mysterious gap between the side  of the ship and the  harbour wall where
far below the green water glistened dully and a small transparent  jellyfish
bobbed on the surface. The  captain's mate, an Italian,  took their tickets,
and a Russian coastguard officer took Vasily Petrovich's passport. Petya was
positive that the officer eyed his sailor's cap with obvious suspicion.
     They went down a steep ladder into the bowels of the ship, each of them
tripping  over the high copper coaming, Electric lights burned dimly  in the
day-time darkness of the corridors, and when walking on the coconut mats and
cork  flooring they were conscious that the  ship, which was still moored to
the pier, had a fairly strong list.
     A  middle-aged  Italian  stewardess  unlocked the door  and  the sailor
dumped their bags  in the small cabin. The  sea was dazzlingly reflected  on
the porthole side of the very low creamy-white ceiling.
     While they were putting their things in the luggage nets,  bumping into
one  another  in  the  process,  the  siren  blew   a  second  blast-a  long
one-followed by two short ones.
     When,  at long last, after getting lost in the  maze  of  corridors and
stumbling painfully over  the high coamings, they found  their way up to one
of the decks,  the  steam winches were no longer  rattling, the long arms of
the  cranes were  motionless,  and  the only  sound  breaking in  the  sunny
stillness was the hiss of escaping steam.
     Auntie and Gavrik were  part of the small crowd gathered on the pier to
see  the  ship  off. When Gavrik  spotted  Petya, he  shook his fist at  him
stealthily and winked.  Petya knew exactly  what he meant. He fixed his  cap
casually and shouted:
     "Don't forget your Latin revision!"
     "I know it!" Gavrik shouted back, cupping his hands to his mouth. "Hie,
haec, hoc! How's that?"
     "Correct!"
     "There you are!"
     "Don't forget: I'll question you on the whole course when I get back!"
     Then  came  that  disconcerting  pause  that always precedes the  third
whistle, when neither those on board nor those on  the pier know what to say
or  do. Auntie  was  rummaging in her  bag for her handkerchief  in order to
start waving it at any moment. Gavrik kept his eyes on Petya's cap.
     "You might as well go,  there's no  sense  standing about here," Vasily
Petrovich said to Auntie as he leaned over the rail.
     "What? What did you say?" Auntie asked, holding her hand to her ear.
     "I said you might as well go home!" Vasily Petrovich shouted.
     But Auntie shook her head so vigorously that it would seem her one duty
in life was to stay there to the very end.
     "Duckie dear," she shouted to Pavlik  through her tears, "it'll be cold
at sea. You had better go put on your coat."
     Pavlik  winced  and  walked  away independently, so  that  none  of the
passengers would think  he was  "duckie dear."  "Duckie  dear, put  on  your
woollen stockings!" There was no stopping Auntie now.
     Pavlik had to assume a very  casual expression again, to show that none
of this had anything to do  with him, although  to tell the truth his  heart
was heavy at the prospect of parting with Auntie.
     The blast  of the third whistle shattered the air over the ship. With a
feeling  of relief  the crowd on 'board  and the crowd on the  pier began to
wave  handkerchiefs,  hats,  and  umbrellas. However,  they  were  a  little
premature, the ship still remained at her berth.
     The captain's mate, the coastguard officer and a group of soldiers with
green  shoulder-straps appeared  on deck again. The  officer began to return
the   passengers'   passports.   Just  then   Petya  noticed   a   strangely
familiar-looking  man  standing  behind  the  officer.  He  was  la   shabby
individual in a straw hat and there was something sad and dog-like about his
eyes. As he slowly scrutinized the passengers he raised a dark  pince-nez to
his  fleshy  nose.  At  that  moment  Petya  recognized  Moustache-the  same
moustached  sleuth  who had  chased seaman Zhukov all over the decks  of the
Turgenev five years before.
     At that moment  the  sleuth looked at Petya, and their eyes met.  There
was no way of  telling whether he had  recognized  the  boy or not,  but  he
immediately turned round to the officer and whispered something in his ear.
     Petya felt a chill run  down his spine. The officer, holding a stack of
passports in his hand as he walked over to Vasily Petrovich  and jerking his
chin at Petya, barked:
     "Your son?"
     "Yes."
     "Then kindly remove the St.  George ribbon from his cap. If you do not,
I will be forced to escort you ashore and  take up  the matter of your son's
unauthorized wearing  of military uniform. It's against  the law at home and
even more so abroad."
     "Petya, take the ribbon off this minute!"
     "Here's your passport. I'll see to  the ribbon. You can claim it in the
commandant's office when you return."
     Gavrik, watching from the  pier, saw  the officer and soldiers surround
Petya. Petya removed his cap.
     "Run! Petya, run!" he yelled land made a frantic dash  for the gangway,
but  he  immediately realized  his  mistake  when he  saw  that Petya merely
removed the ribbon and gave it to the officer, after which he put his cap on
his head again as if nothing had happened.
     Gavrik looked round anxiously, but no one had paid any attention to his
yelling. They were all busy waving good-bye.
     The officer  handed out  the  passports,  saluted  and walked  down the
gangway, followed by his soldiers and Moustache. A brisk command was shouted
in  Italian, and the gangway was  pulled up. Italian sailors in blue jerseys
ran along the side, nimbly taking in the mooring-lines; there was  a  jerky,
insistent  ringing  of the  engine-room telegraph,  the red  blades  of  the
propeller revolved, churning up  the water beneath the  gold lettering which
spelled:  Palermo.  The deck straightened itself, the  ship  shuddered,  and
Petya saw the  pier, its  structures, the  stacks of goods, and the crowd of
waving people  move now forward, now backward, and then,  in some mysterious
way, turn  up  now  at  one  rail, now  at  the other,  only  much  smaller.
Everything on shore began to recede and diminish,  as if carried away by the
wide stream of foamy green water seething beneath the stern.
     Petya  could  hardly distinguish Gavrik and Auntie, who was waving  her
umbrella. The panorama of the city began to rise slowly from behind the port
structures.  There  was Nikolayevsky  Boulevard, the  white  columns of  the
Vorontsov  Palace rising on  the cliff,  the City Hall, and the  tiny Duc de
Richelieu pointing his outstretched arm away to the horizon.


        ON BOARD


     They passed the breakwater  and saw its other side,  the one that faced
the open sea.  A multitude of fishermen with  long  bamboo fishing-rods were
darting through the spray and foam of the breaking waves.
     They  could see  Langeron,  Alexandrovsky Park and the remains  of  its
famous  arched  wall and next to it the  Industry and Trade Fair. This was a
township  of fancy pavilions,  the  most  prominent of  which  were the huge
three-storey  wooden  samovar of the Caravan Tea Company and the gold-tipped
black champagne bottle of the Rederer Company.
     A  symphony  orchestra was  playing  at  the Fair, and the  breeze that
billowed the hundreds of coloured flags and pennants on the white flagstaffs
brought  to Petya's ears  snatches of violin crescendos, gently muted by the
distance.
     Petya remained on deck, fascinated by  the  sight of the ship  entering
the open sea. His only  regret was that  his St. George ribbon had been left
behind  in the officer's pocket. The wind  was getting  stronger, it whipped
the Italian flag at the stern, and Petya  thought wistfully of the long ends
of his St. George ribbon which might have been streaming in the wind.
     The fresh sea breeze was already ruffling his blouse. It  caught at its
collar, it billowed it out on his  back and puffed out the wide sleeves that
were  fastened  tightly at the wrists. Perhaps it was even nicer to  have  a
ciap without a ribbon, for now, by a slight stretch of imagination, it could
be taken for the beret of the Boy Captain, the hero  of Jules Verne's famous
book, with the .added advantage that there was la letter under its lining.
     It was  almost  as  if  fate  had  decided to make  this  an even  more
memorable  day for Petya and it  presented  him  with  another unforgettable
impression.
     "Look, look! He's flying!" Pavlik shouted.
     "Who's flying? Where?"
     "There, it's Utochkin!"
     It  had  completely slipped  Petya's mind  that  this  was  the day  of
Utochkin's  long-awaited  flight  from Odessa  to  Dofinovka.  The  fearless
aviator had  been waiting for good flying weather to take off from  the Fair
grounds in his Farman, fly eleven miles straight across the bay, and land in
Dofinovka. It was not every boy that had the luck to see this spectacle, not
from the shore, but from the sea.
     Petya and the passengers who  poured out of their cabins saw Utochkin's
plane flying  low  over  the  water. It  had  just  taken  off and  was  now
approaching  the  ship. It flew so close to the stern  that the rays  of the
setting  sun caught at  the  clearly visible  bicycle wheels  of  the flying
machine, the  copper fuel tank, and the bent figure of the pilot,  his  feet
dangling as he sat between the semi-transparent yellow wings.
     As he came abreast of the ship the daredevil aviator doffed his leather
helmet and waved.
     "Hurrah!" Petya  yelled  and was ready  to pull his  cap  off  too, but
suddenly remembering the letter, clapped it on tighter instead.
     "Hurrah!" the passengers shouted as they  waved frantically. The flying
machine was getting smaller as it headed towards Dofinovka, a stream of blue
petrol smoke trailing in its wake.
     Up till then Petya's travels had consisted of  two visits to Grandma at
Yekaterinoslav  and their yearly  trips  to  Budaki, on the  sea-shore  near
Akkerman, where they  spent their summer holidays. They made the journey  to
Yekaterinoslav  by train, and travelled to Akkerman by  sea on the Turgenev,
which  they considered the latest thing in technical wonders. Now  they were
sailing  from  Odessa  to  Naples on  an ocean liner. To tell the truth, the
Palermo wasn't that at  all.  But, since she had made  several transatlantic
voyages, Petya, by a  slight stretch of  imagination, convinced  himself and
tried  hard  to convince the  others that  the  Palermo was really an  ocean
liner.
     The journey was to take two weeks, which seemed quite  a long  time for
such a swift ship  as  the prospectuses  and  advertisements would  have one
believe she was.
     The  point was that when the signer in the grey morning  coat sold  the
steamship tickets  to Vasily Petrovich he  innocently failed to mention that
the Palermo was not exactly a passenger ship,  but was, rather,  a freighter
that took on passengers,  and  that  it  was  to make fairly long calls at a
number of  ports. They  discovered this  in  Constantinople-the first of the
long  stops,  but  the  trip  to Constantinople  was  pleasant,  brief,  and
comfortable.
     Petya was captivated by the  wonders of life on board ship. Everything,
every  detail of its ultra-modern, technical efficiency,  combined with  the
romantic flavour of  the old sailing ships, fascinated him. The steady, even
throbbing of the powerful engines merged with the fresh, lively sound of the
waves as they surged past  the iron sides in an unending stream.  The strong
wind, full of  the  smell of the open sea, whistled through the  shrouds; it
billowed  out the canvas  sleeves  of the ventilator casings, bringing forth
hot and cold draughts from the engine-room and the hold.
     There  was a mingling of all the  smells:  the warm', soothing smell of
the  polished  mahogany  tables  in  the  lounges  and  the smell of painted
bulkheads;  the  aromas  of  the restaurant  and the  smell  of  hot  steel,
lubricating oil and dry steam; the resinous-woody smell of the  mats and the
fresh smell of pine-water sprayed in the distant white-tiled  rooms with hot
and  cold running water. There  were the heavy swaying copper candle-holders
with glass-covered candles, and the elegant, frosted  globes of the electric
lights;  the steel gang-ways,  the grates of the  engine-room and the double
oaken stairway with the  polished  carved banisters  and  graceful balusters
leading to the saloon.
     Petya explored every nook and cranny of the ship the very first day. He
peeped into mysterious cubby-holes  and into the depths of the coal bunkers,
where dim  electric lights  burned day  and  night, trembling in their  wire
casings like trapped mice.
     The practically upright  ladders below decks with  their slippery steel
rungs led the  boy to grimier and less  pleasant regions. Black  oily  water
oozed underfoot,  and he  became  queasy  from  the  deafening  booming  and
crashing of the engines, the continuous motion of the propeller shaft  as it
revolved  in  its  oily bed,  and the  heavy  air  of the  hold.  Engineers,
greasers, and stokers lived and worked in the depths of the ship. Every  now
and then the iron door of the stokehole flew  open and Petya felt a blast of
intense heat.  Then he saw the stokers moving swiftly against the background
of  the flaming inferno,  using their  long crow-bars  en  the caked red-hot
coal.  Petya  saw  their black,  sweat-drenched faces  bathed in the crimson
light  and  was terrified at the thought of remaining  in such  an appalling
place even for five minutes.
     He hurried away, slipping on the steel floor mats, holding on to greasy
steel  handrails,  and running up  and down  ladders in his eagerness to get
away from that forbidding world. But  it was not so easy. Stunned by the din
and  jangle of  engines throbbing  somewhere  close, Petya  found himself in
places such as he had never dreamed existed.
     He knew there  were deck passengers as well  as first-and  second-class
ones, but  he  discovered  that  there was another category,  the  so-called
"steerage" passengers, who  were  not even allowed  on  the lowest deck, the
place usually  reserved for cattle. They occupied wooden bunks in the depths
of one of the half-filled holds.
     Petya  saw  heaps  of dirty  oriental  rags  on  which several  Turkish
families were sitting and lying, prostrated by  the rolling and  pitching of
the ship,  the stale air,  the semi-darkness, and the  noise of the engines.
They  were  migrating   somewhere   together  with  their  children,  copper
coffee-pots  and  large  wicker  crates  filled with  chickens.  With  great
difficulty Petya made his way to the top  deck,  to the fresh sea air, where
it took him quite a while to recover.
     The  first- and  second-class  passengers lived according to a strictly
prescribed  routine:  at 8 a.m. the middle-aged stewardess in a starched cap
entered their cabin,  said,  "Buon giorno," and set a tray with  coffee  and
rolls on the little table; at noon and again at 6 p.m. a waiter with a white
napkin  tucked  under his  arm  would glide noiselessly  down the  corridor,
knocking at every cabin door and rattling oft" in a truly commedia dell'arte
manner, stressing his r's. "Pr-rego,  signor-ri, mangiar-r-re!" which meant,
"Dinner is being served."
     First-class passengers had the additional privilege of five o'clock tea
and a late supper. But the  Bachei family, belonging to that golden mean  of
society that usually travelled second-class, failed to qualify.
     The first and  second classes had separate dining-rooms. The first mate
presided at the second-class table d'hote. The captain, who was inaccessible
to  ordinary mortals  and therefore  shrouded  in  mystery,  presided in the
first-class dining-room.  Even  Pavlik, who  was such a  pusher, saw him not
more than two or three times during the whole trip.
     The first mate, on the other hand, was la jovial fellow and, judging by
his shiny  purple-pink Roman nose, a drunkard as well. He was  the  life and
soul of the company.  He  pinched Pavlik gently under the table, calling him
"little Russky," he  was attentive in passing  the ladies cheese and filling
the  gentlemen's  wineglasses,  and  his snow-white,  stiffly starched tunic
rustled  pleasantly  as  he  turned  now  left,  now  right,  bestowing  his
open-hearted smiles all round.
     For dinner there were real Italian macaroni with tomato sauce, a second
course  of roast meat and fagioli,  which turned  out  to be beans, and  for
dessert,   Messina  oranges  with  twigs   and  leaves  attached,   wrinkled
purple-green figs,  and fresh almonds that did not necessitate a nutcracker,
but were  easily cut with a table knife right through the  thick green outer
husk and the  still soft  inner shell. Being  served  by  a  waiter somewhat
embarrassed  them. He would hold the platter to the left of them,  balancing
it  on his  finger-tips, and they  had  to help themselves. From a sense  of
modesty they always took much less than they would have liked to.
     Vasily Petrovich was shocked  and  furious  when he found out that wine
went with the dinner-one bottle for three passengers. True, it was very weak
and  rather sour  Italian wine, and the passengers mixed it with  water half
and half, but, none the  less, Vasily Petrovich was outraged. The first time
he saw a large bottle without any label  placed before his setting he was so
indignant that  his beard shook,  and he felt like shouting, "Take this brew
away!" but he controlled himself in time and simply moved the bottle away.
     Later, however, when  he  tasted it, he  realized  that  the  steamship
company  had  no  intention  of making  drunkards out  of  its  second-class
passengers by serving them strong, expensive  wines, and so allowed the boys
to colour their  drinking-water  with a few drops, in order not to waste  it
completely, as it had been included in the price of the tickets.
     This daily water-colouring was  the high  light of the  dinner-hour for
Petya and Pavlik.
     Ice-cold  water was poured into  a  large  goblet from a  heavy,  misty
decanter that  had become frosted in the ship's refrigerator;  then a  small
amount of wine was added to the water.
     The wine did not mix with the  water  immediately. It swirled around in
threads  and  then  spread out, making  the  water  a bright  ruby-red,  and
throwing a pink swaying star-like reflection on the starched table-cloth.


        ISTANBUL


     The biggest impression of those first days  was  the  sight of the open
sea. For a day and two nights, between Odessa and the Bosporus, there was no
land  in  sight.  The  ship  was making  good speed,  yet it  seemed  to  be
motionless in the centre of a blue circle.
     At noon, when the sun was directly overhead, Petya could not figure out
which way they were heading.
     There was something entrancing about this seeming immobility, about the
empty horizon and the triumph  of the  two blue elements-sea and sky-between
which Petya's whole existence seemed to be suspended.
     At dawn  of the. second day  he  was awakened by the sound  .of running
feet overhead. The  ship's bell was ringing,  the engines had stopped and in
the  unusual  stillness he  could  hear  the clear  gurgling  sound of water
lapping at the ship's side. He looked out the porthole and through the early
morning  mist saw a  steep green bank. There  was a little lighthouse  and a
barrack with a tiled roof on the bank.
     Petya threw on his clothes and ran up on deck. A Turkish pilot in a red
fez was  standing next  to the captain, and the  ship inched slowly into the
green lane of the Zoospores. The lane widened and narrowed like a meandering
river. At  times the bank would  be  so  close that Petya  thought he  could
stretch his arm and touch the leaning white tombstones chaotically scattered
among  the cypresses  in the Moslem  cemetery,  the  poppy-red flag with the
crescent in the middle that waved over the custom-house, or the turf-covered
earthwork of the shore batteries.
     This  was Turkey-they were now abroad, in a foreign country,  and Petya
suddenly  felt a sharp pang of longing for  his  homeland, and,  at the same
time, a  burning  curiosity.  The homesickness remained with  him  until  he
returned to Russia.
     The sun was now  quite high, and by  the time  they reached the  Golden
Horn  and dropped  anchor  in  the  roads  of  Constantinople Bay  the  warm
reflections  of  the water  sparkled  and gleamed  all  over  the  ship-from
water-line to mast-top.
     From then on the Bachei family was possessed by a madness common to all
inexperienced tourists. They felt that  every minute was precious and wanted
to set out immediately to see all the  sights  of this  most wonderful city,
the panorama of which was so close  that they could see the  ant-like coming
and  going of crowds of people, the cupolas of the  broad, tall  mosques and
the spires of the minarets.
     They  decided  to  forego  breakfast  and  waited  impatiently  for   a
shrewd-looking Turkish official, who had been given several silver piastres,
to scribble something in  Father's passport;  the  scribble turned out to be
the Sign of Osman. The moment  the Bacheis went down the gangway,  they were
pounced  upon  by  artful boatmen. Finally,  they  flopped  on to the velvet
cushions of a wherry and, for two lire, were rowed ashore.
     Everything that happened afterwards  merged for Petya  into a sensation
of  an endless, scorching,  tiring day -  the deafening babble of the  truly
Eastern bazaars,  the equally Eastern  deathly quiet  of  the huge  deserted
courts around the mosques and the stony museum-like iciness inside. At every
step they parted with a steady stream  of lire, piastres,  paras, and copper
medjidies, coins which delighted the boys with their inscriptions in Turkish
and the strange Sign of Osman.
     In  Turkey the Bachei family  first  came in contact with that terrible
phenomena known as  guides,  and guides pursued them for  the  remainder  of
their trip.  There were  Greek  guides,  Italian guides, and  Swiss  guides.
Despite  specific  national  traits,  they all had something in common: they
stuck like  leeches.  But  the  Constantinople guides  left the  others  far
behind.
     The minute the Bacheis set foot on the pavements of Constantinople they
were besieged  by guides. The scene with the rival boatmen was repeated. The
guides  battled for their prey; it was a real  free-for-all and massacre, to
which no one paid the slightest heed.
     The guides poured torrents of filth on each other in every language and
dialect of  the Levant; they  tore  at each other's starched  dickeys, swung
their sticks with contorted faces,  elbowed  each  other, turned  round  and
kicked out like mules.
     In the end the Bacheis were claimed by an impressive-looking  guide who
had vanquished his opponents  with the help of a policeman friend. He wore a
morning coat that had faded badly  under the arms, striped  trousers, and  a
red fez.  His wildly-dilated  nostrils  and  coal-black  janissary moustache
expressed  a determination  to conquer  or to die;  however,  in every other
aspect  his face, and  especially  his frightened  baggy eyes,  wreathed  in
smiles,  bespoke a desire immediately to  show the tourists all there was to
see in Constantinople:  Pera, Galata, Yildiz Kiosk, the  Fountain of Snakes,
the Seven-Towered  Palace, the  ancient water-line, the catacombs,  the wild
dogs,  the  famous  St.  Sophia  Mosque, Sultan  Ahmed's  Mosque, Suleiman's
Mosque,  Osman's  Mosque, Selim's Mosque, Bayezid's Mosque, and  all the two
hundred and twenty-seven other large  and six hundred and sixty-four smaller
mosques in the city-in other words, he was at their complete disposal.
     He bundled them into a gleaming phaeton drawn by two horses,  jumped on
the step, looked round wildly, and told the driver not to spare the whip.
     They were all in by evening, so much so  that Pavlik fell asleep in the
boat on the way back to the ship and had to be carried up the gangway.
     Vasily Petrovich was aghast at the day's expenditure, not counting  the
fact that the breakfast and lunch due them on the ship had gone to waste. He
decided not to have a guide next day, an intention that was furthered by the
fact that that night the Palermo was taken  from the outer  roads to a berth
to take on cargo along with a dozen other ships.
     There could tie no chance  of the  guide finding them in the monotonous
chaos  of the crowded pier. They  slept like  logs  in the  small overheated
cabin, oblivious to the clatter of the winches and the  swift flashes of the
multicoloured harbour lights that filtered in through the porthole.
     They  awoke  to a  dazzling  morning sun  and  the  magic  panorama  of
Istanbul. Vasily Petrovich and the boys hastened  down the gangway. This was
their last day ashore and they had to get as much out of it as they possibly
could.
     The first person they saw as  they stepped down on  the  pier was their
guide of the day before. He waved his bamboo cane over his head in greeting.
The phaeton  and the copper-faced, docile Macedonian on the  coach-box  were
nearby.
     It  was  the day before all  over again, with  the  added attraction of
being taken through the bazaars and the curio shops of the guide's friends.
     Souvenir-buying turned out  to be just as ruinous an undertaking as the
guided  tour. But the Bacheis, hypnotized by their impressions,  had reached
that  stage of  tourist fever  when people  shed  all will-power  and,  with
something akin  to the  lunatic's  loss of  reason, submit  to their guide's
every whim.
     They bought stacks of crudely-coloured postcards of the places they had
just seen; they parted  with  piastres  and lire  for cypress rosaries,  for
glass balls  with coloured spirals, for  tropical shells,  for paper-knives,
and for exactly the same kind of aluminium pen-nibs that were on sale at the
Fair in Odessa.
     At  the  Greek Monastery monks palmed off on them a  yellow wooden box.
Through the huge  magnifying glass on  the lid they were supposed  to  see a
view of Athos. The box cost six piastres.
     They came to their senses only in the European quarter of the city when
they  found themselves amid  the  sumptuous  stores, restaurants, banks, and
embassies set in the luxuriant  dark verdure of southern  gardens. The guide
inveigled  them  into  a  friend's  camera shop to  buy  Kodaks, and then he
suggested dining at an exclusive French restaurant.
     At this  stage  Vasily Petrovich came  to,  rebelled, and  fleeing from
luxury  and  extravagance,  went  to  the  other  extreme  by   heading  for
Constantinople's slums, where they saw human misery at its lowest.
     The slums shook Petya to the depths of his soul, and not even the visit
to Scutari on the Asiatic shore could immediately restore his equilibrium.
     The motor boat raced across the Bosporus, cleaving the green water with
its prow, leaving two  diverging glistening furrows in its wake. Hundreds of
wherries  were reflected  in the  waters  of the  still,  lake-like  strait.
Turkish merchants,  officials with brief cases,  and  officers travelling to
and from Scutari, sat on velvet cushions under the light canopies.
     Wet oars glittered all over the bay  as they caught the sun's rays. The
smell of thyme  and savoury was borne  to them  from  the Asiatic shore. But
Petya could  not erase the memory  of the foul-smelling slums and the swarms
of green flies buzzing around the festering sores of the beggars.
     The moment  they  moored  in Scutari the guide rushed  on  with renewed
energy,  determined  not to  miss  a  single  one of the  sights.  Alas, our
travellers were quite spent.
     There was a bazaar  nearby and they  made for a stand with cool drinks.
The lemonade with a  strange flavour of anise drops was heavenly. They drank
pink ice-water and ate coloured ice-cream. Then they turned to the wonderful
variety of Eastern sweets.
     Vasily Petrovich was always opposed to giving children too many sweets,
since  they  were bad for teeth and  appetite.  But this  time  he could not
resist the temptation of trying the  baklava that was swimming  in honey, or
the salted pistachio  nuts whose bony shells had burst at the tips, like the
fingers of a kid glove, so that the green kernels peeped through.
     The  sweets made them thirsty, and the cool drinks  made them  eat more
sweets. The incident of  Grandma's jam was still fresh in Petya's memory and
he moderated his intake  accordingly. But Pavlik  was insatiable. He ate and
ate. And when Father flatly refused to  buy any more, Pavlik dived  into the
crowd  and emerged a  few  minutes later, carrying a  rather  large box with
bright  lacquered  pictures  pasted  all over  it. It  was a box of the best
rahat-lakoum.
     "Where did you get that?" Father asked severely.
     "I bought it," Pavlik answered with bravado.
     "What with?"
     "I had a piastre and a half."
     "Where did you get the money?"
     "I won it!" Pavlik said proudly.
     "What do you mean, you won it? Where? When? From whom?"
     And so the whole story  came out. While  Father had  been busy studying
the planning  of their travels and balancing expenses, while  Petya had been
spending his time  on deck, Pavlik  had made friends with the Italian waiter
and  had been  introduced to  the society  of  the  second-class  restaurant
personnel.  He had  played lotto  with them,  using the three  kopeks he had
found  in  his  pocket and  which the Italian waiter  changed  into  Turkish
currency. Pavlik had been lucky, he had won a few piastres. Vasily Petrovich
seized Pavlik by  the shoulders and began to shout and shake the life out of
him, heedless of the fact that  they  were in the middle of a large oriental
bazaar.
     "How dare  you gamble?  Wretch! How many times have I told  you that no
one  with  any  respect for himself plays  for  money!  And  with  ...  with
foreigners!"
     Pavlik was  feeling sick from the  sweets and began to howl-he did  not
share  his father's ideas about  gambling, especially since he  had been  so
lucky at it. Father was livid, there was no telling  how it would have ended
if the  guide had not suddenly looked at his gold-plated American watch with
four lids. They had just two hours left till sailing time.
     All they needed now was to  miss the boat! They  rushed to the pier and
jumped into the first wherry they saw without bothering to bargain  down the
price. Soon they were safely on board  the Palermo. She had finished loading
and had moved out into the harbour, ready to sail.
     The parting with their guide was a dramatic scene.  He had received his
fee  of  two lire,  but remained standing  in the  rocking  boat  on legs as
all-enduring  as  those  of an old wolf, watching Vasily  Petrovich land the
boys climb up the ladder. Then he began to ask for baksheesh.
     He  had always been very  eloquent, a necessary accomplishment  in  his
profession, but this time he outdid himself. He usually spoke three European
languages simultaneously, inserting  only the  essential  words  in Russian.
Now, however, he spoke mostly in Russian, inserting French phrases from time
to  time.  His  speech  sounded  something  like  a  monologue  out  of  the
pseudo-classical tragedies of Racine and Corneille.
     The language was obscure, the meaning clear.  Extending his hand, which
was covered with copper rings glittering with paste  diamonds,  and speaking
as  passionately as when he  described the wonders of the city, he told them
of his poverty-stricken family, burdened by a paralysed grandmother and four
small  children  who  had  neither  milk  nor  clothing.  He  complained  of
approaching old age, of his trouble with the police  who fleeced him of most
of his earnings, of a  chronic ulcer, of unbearable taxes,  of the cutthroat
competition. He begged them to take pity on an aged, penniless  Turk who had
dedicated his whole life to tourists. His thick greying eyebrows raised, his
face took on a tragic expression, and the tears streamed down his cheeks.
     All this  could have  passed  for charlatanry, pure and simple, were it
not for the genuine human suffering in his frightened brown  eyes. Unable to
withstand his pleading, Vasily  Petrovich took the last  Turkish coins  from
his pockets and poured them into the guide's outstretched hand.


        CHICKEN BROTH


     It was nearly evening, and one could  sense  the slowly gathering storm
in the motionless  air, heavy from the  heat of the day.  The storm was  not
approaching from any definite direction, it seemed to  be materializing  out
of nothing over the amphitheatre of the city, over the mosques and minarets.
By  the  time  the  heavy,  grating  anchor chain  crawled  upward, and  the
overloaded  ship,  sunk deeper  than  its  water-line,  began slowly to turn
round, the sun had disappeared in the storm clouds. It was so dark that they
had to  turn on  the  lights. Hot smells of cooking and engines escaped from
the  hatches.  The sight  of the now  colourless city heightened  the stormy
green of the Golden Horn.
     The ship's  engines  were snorting heavily and laboriously. The surface
of the  water seemed as flat as a sheet of glass, yet the ship began to rock
slightly.
     Pavlik  had just  finished^  the last  piece of  rahat-lakoum,  thickly
coated with powdery  sugar. He all but  choked on it; it  tasted doughy, and
was gummy and sticky. Suddenly he felt an  acid metallic after-taste in  his
mouth. His jaws contracted spasmodically. The  greenness of  the clear water
reminded  him of the rahat-lakoum and he shut his eyes tight. But the moment
he  did so, he  felt he was flying up and down on a swing. With great effort
he tried to say, "Daddy, I'm sick," but he was overtaken by vomiting.
     At that  instant  a  jagged  flash of lightning  pierced the coal-black
clouds over  the  crescent of St. Sophia's and the  surrounding minarets. It
was followed by a crack that  seemed to split the sky in two and poured  the
shattered fragments down upon the city  and harbour. A whirlwind whipped  up
columns  of dust on  the  hills. The water foamed.  When  they cleared Serai
Burna and entered  the Sea of  Marmara, that is,  the Marble Sea, its shoppy
surface did indeed resemble the colour pattern of marble.
     Petya missed the storm in the Sea of Marmara, for he,  too, fell victim
to Pavlik's malady. The two of them, white as chalk, lay prone in the stuffy
cabin. Father rushed from one to  the other, not knowing what to do. But the
Italian stewardess, with long-practiced  efficiency,  ran  up  and  down the
corridor, providing the afflicted with basins.
     There was more to it than  the  rocking of  the vessel and  the Eastern
sweets. The boys, overtired, were feeling  the effects  of the rushing about
in the heat, the noise  of the streets, and the mass of new impressions. The
seasickness soon passed, but  they  were feverish and delirious.  The ship's
doctor  examined them  thoroughly,  in  the  traditional  manner of the  old
European doctors: he pressed their tongues down  with the handle of a silver
spoon  borrowed from  the first-class dining-room; his  strong,  experienced
fingers   kneaded  their  bare  stomachs;  he  tapped  them  with  a  little
rubber-tipped  hammer; he listened  to their breathing through a stethoscope
and  without it, by placing his large, fleshy  ear to their bodies; he  felt
their pulse, keeping his eyes on his  large gold  watch,  the lid  of  which
reflected  the  round porthole and the  water rushing past it; he  joked  in
Latin with an alarmed Rather, trying to cheer him. He said there was nothing
seriously  wrong, that they should stay in bed for  three days; he gave them
laxative  powders  and  left  graciously,  after prescribing  chicken broth,
toast, and a light omelette.
     His last  words gravely upset  Vasily  Petrovich,  because  experienced
travellers in Odessa had  warned  him never  to  request anything  from  the
ship's dining-room that was not on the menu, because:  "You don't know those
thieves: they'll rob you,  that's how they  make their money; they'll charge
you for the  service,  the  bread,  la  ten per-cent tip, and God knows what
else, and before you know where you are, you'll have nothing left."
     Although  mortified  by  the prospect,  Vasily  Petrovich  nevertheless
struggled  with  his  dictionary and  in broken Italian ordered two bowls of
chicken broth with toast and two omelettes, a la carte.
     And to the boys missed the Dardanelles and Salonika, as well as the Sea
of  Marmara. Only the  noises  of the  port,  mingled with the confusion  of
Greek,  Turkish, and  Italian  voices, reached  them  through  the half-open
porthole.


        THE ACROPOLIS


     They were sailing south through the Gulf of Salonika, with the open sea
on  the left and  barren shores on the  right.  The coast gave way  to hills
which rose gradually until they became a  mountain range. A single peak rose
above the range, and  a bank of motionless fluffy clouds hung over the peak.
There  was something enchanting about the lone mountain  and the clouds that
threw  blue shadows on it. The passengers trained  their binoculars on it as
if they expected to see a miracle performed there before their very eyes.
     Father, pressing his  red  Baedeker  to  his  breast with  one hand and
holding his binoculars in the other, was also peering at the magic mountain.
When Petya came up, he turned towards his son eagerly. His eyes shining with
excitement, he  placed  Mother's  little  mother-of-pearl  opera-glasses  in
Petya's hand and said:
     "Look, Mount Olympus!"
     Petya did not get the import of his words.
     "What?"
     "Olympus!" Vasily Petrovich  repeated triumphantly. Petya  decided that
Father was joking, and laughed.
     "You're not serious?"
     "I told you it's Olympus!"
     "Which Olympus? Mount Olympus?"
     "Do you know of any other?"
     And  Petya  suddenly realized that the land that was  now so close  was
none other than ancient Pieria,  and that this mountain was Homer's Olympus,
the home of the Greek gods whom Petya knew so well from his ancient history.
     Maybe the gods were still there? Petya lifted Mother's opera-glasses to
his eyes,  but,  unfortunately,  they  were too weak  to  magnify the sacred
mountain. All he could make  out was a flock of sheep moving up a slope like
the shadow of a cloud and  the erect  figure of  the shepherd  surrounded by
dogs. He was certain, however, that he could see the gods quite clearly. One
of the clouds  resembled  the reclining Zeus, another, flying  in  a flowing
garment  like  Athena, was in  all probability  rushing to help  Achilles at
Troy.
     The previous summer Vasily Petrovich,  anxious to broaden  the horizons
of his sons, had  read them the Iliad from cover to cover, so that Petya now
had  no  trouble at all singling out the flying Athena.  However, that meant
that Troy, too, must be somewhere nearby.
     "Daddy, where's Troy? Shall we see it?" Petya asked breathlessly.
     "Alas, my boy," Father said, "we've left Troy far behind. It's near the
Dardanelles, and you won't see it now." Then he added reproachfully, hinting
at the sad  affair  of  the Eastern  sweets, "Thus Fate punishes  Greed  and
Gluttony."
     His words, undoubtedly, were just. Still, Petya  thought Fate  had been
too cruel  in depriving  them of the  delight of seeing Troy  with their own
eyes-and all because of that awful rahat-lakoum.
     In  order not to set Petya too strongly against Fate, Vasily  Petrovich
hastened to add that they would not have been able to see Troy from the ship
anyway, and peace between the boy and Fate was restored.
     Two  days later, when Petya saw Athens, he was more  than  rewarded for
having missed seeing Troy.
     The barren rocky  mountains  of  Euboea, longest of the  Greek islands,
stretched for  many  weary miles. At last they left  the island behind. That
night they sailed  through straits and saw lighthouses along the shore.  The
ship  changed speed  several times and swung  round. It  was late when  they
finally  fell asleep, and next morning when they awoke the ship was anchored
in Piraeus harbour, in full sight of Athens.
     This time Vasily Petrovich was determined to do without the services of
a guide.
     The  Greek guides  differed  from  the Turkish  in that they  had amber
rosaries in their hands, were  shorter, and  wore small black fezzes without
tassels  instead of red ones with  black tassels. Unlike the warlike Moslems
they  did not make a frontal assault  on the tourists, cursing and shouting;
instead,  they surrounded  them  silently  like humble  Christians and their
endurance usually won out. When Vasily Petrovich found himself in the centre
of a tight circle of guides fingering amber rosaries and looking at him with
quiet, gentle, olive-black eyes, he did not feel at all intimidated.
     "Nyet!"  he  said  vehemently in  Russian,  and  then,  to  sound  more
convincing, he added in French and in German, "Non!  Nein!" At the same time
his arm sliced through the air so swiftly in a gesture of refusal that Petya
thought he heard the air whistle.
     None of this, however,  made any impression  on  the guides. They  kept
their  ground,  fingering  their  rosaries,   their  large  noses   drooping
forlornly. Vasily Petrovich took his  boys  firmly  in tow and forged ahead.
The guides too moved on and did not let them out of the circle.
     Vasily Petrovich ignored them. He  strode  down the  streets of Piraeus
with the confidence of a native. It was not for nothing  that he  had  spent
the past  few days in his cabin, unmindful of the sea breezes, poring over a
guide-book to Piraeus and Athens.
     The startled  guides made a timid attempt to  hustle the Bachei  family
into one of  the large, dilapidated carriages that trailed their  footsteps;
Pavlik yelled, "Go away!" as loud as he could, causing the guides to retreat
somewhat. But the magic circle remained intact.
     They reached the railway  station without  having  once lost their way,
bought tickets, and departed for Athens under  the  noses of the dumbfounded
guides who crowded  the  platform. Athens turned out  to be a stone's  throw
away.  When they arrived there, they made their way to another station  just
as silently  and as resolutely as  before, and set out immediately  for  the
ancient city in a suburban train with open carriages.
     Excited  by  the  battle  with  the  guides,  their  victory,  and  the
possibility of renewed attacks, they  had not been paying much attention  to
their surroundings. However, when they  reached the  mountain-top, which was
covered with  marble fragments,  and  suddenly  beheld  the  Acropolis:  the
Parthenon,  the  Propylaea,  the small temple of Wingless  Victory,  and the
Erechteion-all of which seemed to be a confused mass and yet was an ensemble
of heavenly unity-they gasped at the sheer beauty of the scene,  an art that
had been imitated time without number all over the world, becoming ever more
insignificant and trivial.
     Like all great monuments of architecture, they seemed at first sight to
be rather small and  exquisite, seen against the wild  expanse  of  sky,  so
clear and so blue that it made their heads swim.
     This was the realm of marble columns and  stairways,  yellowed by time,
alongside which the figures of the numerous tourists seemed dwarfed.
     Oh,  how Vasily Petrovich had dreamed  of seeing the Acropolis with his
own eyes, of touching the ancient stones! It had been the dream of his life.
He had visualized the day when  he would take his  children to the Parthenon
and  tell them of the  Golden Age of  Pericles  and of its genius, the great
Phidias.  Reality, however,  which was much cruder and simpler, added to the
majesty, so  much  so that  Vasily Petrovich was  unable to utter a word; he
stood in silence, stooping slightly under the impact of the scene that moved
him almost to tears.
     Petya  and Pavlik,  on the other hand,  were  not losing any time; they
scrambled up the slippery  pebbles towards the  Parthenon, wondering  why it
seemed so near and yet was  so  far. They helped each other  up, scaring the
lizards  as  they  climbed the weather-beaten  stairways, until  they  found
themselves  at last among the Doric columns, which seemed to  have  been put
together from gigantic marble millstones.
     The  noonday  sun  blinded  them, but they were  not aware  of the heat
because  there  was  a fresh  wind blowing from  the  Archipelago. The tiled
roof-tops of  Athens  glittered far below, blending with the landscape. They
could  see the port, the rows of ships, the forest  of masts about the roofs
of  the warehouses,  and out  in  the harbour,  sprinkled with  the  silvery
glitter  of sunshine,  was an English warship, emitting an  ominous cloud of
smoke.
     Still  further  down, on the opposite shore, away beyond the hills, was
the Gulf of Petalis,  and  they could see the azure strip  of water that was
more ancient than Hellas itself-the Gulf of Corinth.
     One could stand there silently till nightfall, feeling neither fatigue,
nor boredom,  nor anything earthly, nothing  but an awareness of the supreme
beauty created by man.


        THE NEW HAT


     But they  would have to hurry, for the ship sailed  at five, and Vasily
Petrovich  wanted  to  show  the boys  the Athens museums. Nothing, however,
could  add  to the  impression  made by the  Acropolis:  neither the  marble
statues of the  gods  and heroes, nor the earthen vessels  behind  the glass
show-cases, nor the Tanagra  statuettes, nor the amazing  amphorae and  flat
bowls adorned with red and white figures against a black background.
     Out once  more in the  narrow  streets of  the  Piraeus port,  with its
picturesque oriental atmosphere, but possessing nothing that the Bacheis had
not already seen in Constantinople, they decided to risk a cup  of coffee in
a Greek cafe.
     It  was cooler  inside. The cafe smelt of  boiling coffee, anise, roast
lamb,  and something else  that was so appetizing it made  the boys'  mouths
water. Vasily Petrovich  tried to calculate the cost of  a meal in drachmas,
land decided to order two portions  of a Greek dish for the three of them. A
kindly little Greek woman, with a pronounced moustache and dressed in black,
wiped  the marble  table-top  with a kitchen towel and set down a platter of
lamb stew with Greek sauce.
     It was  then, that they realized just  what could be done  with a small
amount  of  purple  egg-plants, red  tomatoes,  green  pepper, parsley,  and
genuine olive oil.
     While  they were busy polishing off the last traces of the  amber sauce
with pieces of  bread, the kindly proprietress stood stroking Pavlik's head.
Her dark-brown hand was adorned with an Athos signet-ring and  her  sad eyes
were full of maternal tenderness, as she said in broken Russian:
     "Eat, boy, eat!"
     When they  had finished, she cleared  the  table, wiped the marble  top
again, and retired modestly behind  the  counter, where a candle was burning
beneath an  icon and a palm  branch.  Her husband  now took  her  place.  He
brought in a tray with three small cups of steaming coffee, three glasses of
water, three saucers with Greek pastry, and three saucers of wild-orange jam
with  nuts. Besides all this,  he  asked Vasily Petrovich in  broken Russian
whether he  would care  for  a hookah,  an  offer which  was  rejected  with
considerable vehemence.
     It was cosy and homely in  the cafe. There  were lace  curtains on  the
windows, the walls were papered, and a canary warbled in a bamboo cage.
     There were other customers  in the  cafe,  but  they sat  around  their
tables so sedately  and unobtrusively  that they did not  in any way disturb
the tranquillity  of the  establishment. They had cups of coffee and glasses
of water before  them, but,  engrossed  in games of dominoes, telling  their
beads, or reading  newspapers, they hardly touched them; they were more like
relatives than chance customers. Even the portraits of the King and Queen of
Greece over the door leading  to the kitchen did  not  have an official look
about them, and could have passed for enlargements of Grandma and Grandpa on
their  wedding day. It  was  hard to believe that the marble temple  of  the
Parthenon which crowned the  summit of the nearby mountain had been built by
the  ancestors of  these  mild-looking Greeks  who were moving  the dominoes
across  the  marble table-tops and  sucking  the  snake-like  pipes of their
gurgling hookahs.
     While the  Bacheis  were  sipping  the strong  coffee,  the  proprietor
remained standing near their  table, entertaining  them in their own tongue.
His  sister, he told them, was married  to the  eldest  son of  Themistocles
Kriadi, the  owner of  a Greek bakery  in  Odessa, and he himself had  spent
three years  in Odessa as a boy.  His grandfather, who had  been a member of
the Hetaeria, a secret society,  had lived in Odessa for a while too, whence
he had returned to fight for the liberation  of Greece and had been executed
by the Turks.
     Apparently, he had taken Vasily  Petrovich for a Russian revolutionary,
forced to  flee abroad, and  so he made no bones about criticizing the state
of  affairs in Russia and the  Russian government; he  heaped abuse  on  the
tsar,  Nicholas  the  Bloody, and was certain  there  would soon be  another
revolution in Russia which would dethrone the  tyrants and bring freedom for
all.
     Vasily Petrovich felt uncomfortable and anxiously  looked round several
times,  but each  time  the proprietor  assured him that  all decent  Greeks
sympathized with  the Russian revolution, and that they would  soon  have  a
revolution -in Greece,  too, to get rid of the Turks  once and for all.  His
Russian  was  so  impossible  that  the boys  were  bursting with restrained
laughter.  Pavlik even  held  his  nose tight to  keep from giggling. Father
tapped the  marble table menacingly  with his wedding-ring  and  they calmed
down a bit.
     Street  vendors came in several times and offered the foreigners  their
wares.
     One  had long strings  of dried sponges hanging round  his neck and was
carrying a bowl of goldfish. The orange-red fish swam among wisps of seaweed
and were of such a brilliant  hue that the coffee shop was lighted up by  an
eerie glow and resembled a submarine kingdom.
     Another had dozens of pairs of hard  slippers with curled  pointed toes
and   streaming  pink  and  light-blue   gauze  scarves   which  immediately
transformed the cafe into a kind of Arabian Nights shop.
     This  impression was heightened by a  Syrian selling oriental rugs, and
when a man with long robes and copper-wares appeared on the threshold, there
could  be no doubt left that the Bachei  family  was now in Baghdad and that
the cafe proprietor was none other than Harun-al-Rashid in disguise.
     However,  the appearance of a seller  of Eastern  sweets, who laid  out
before  them  his bright lacquered boxes of halvah, rahat-lakoum, and dates,
so terrified the boys, and  especially Pavlik, who felt a menacing acid lump
in his throat, that the mirage vanished on the instant.
     Although Vasily  Petrovich had made up his mind not to buy anything, he
failed to resist the temptation, the only excuse Being that the purchase was
both inexpensive and essential. He bought Petya a wide-brimmed straw hat. It
did  not exactly go with  his naval cadet's outfit, but  he  could no longer
wear his warm sailor's cap.  Petya's  head  was dripping wet; sweat trickled
down  his  temples  and  his  neck.  His  cap  would  be  so  drenched  with
perspiration during the day that it would barely dry by morning.
     Petya was loath to  part with the cap which made him  look like the Boy
Captain.  He tried the new hat on in front of  the  fly-blown mirror and saw
that he now resembled a Boer. At any  rate, Boer generals wore the same kind
of wide-brimmed hats, although theirs were  felt, not straw. Petya had often
seen their pictures in old copies of the Niva, dating back to the  Boer War.
All he needed now was a carbine and bandolier.
     "You look just like a young Boer," Father said. That settled it.
     The young Boer strutted around in front of the mirror and  was eager to
parade on the streets in his new attire.
     Just then the  sound of a long boat whistle came  from the direction of
the  port. They  immediately  recognized  the deep Italian baritone  of  the
Palermo-they could pick it  in a thousand. And so, leaving a few drachmas on
the table, they rushed towards the pier.
     The Palermo  was already out in the  harbour.  Suddenly, Petya realized
that he  had forgotten his  old  cap in the coffee-house. He broke out  in a
cold sweat; without a word, he turned  round  and raced back. Neither Father
nor Pavlik noticed his absence at first.  It was all too apparent,  however,
when they were  getting  into  the boat.  That  which  Vasily  Petrovich had
dreaded above all was now a reality: one of the children was lost!
     Meanwhile,  Petya was  frantically  running  up  and  down the dockland
alleys looking  for the coffee-house.  But all  the side-streets were alike,
and there were so many coffeehouses on  each street that he soon realized he
was lost. He had lost all sense of direction and cursed  himself for  having
got so excited about the new hat as to forget the old one. In  every cafe he
saw  the  same  marble-topped  tables, portraits of the  King  and Queen  of
Greece, dominoes, steaming cups of coffee, gurgling hookahs,  papered walls,
lace curtains, little  moustached women  behind the counters under the icons
with  the palm branches and burning  candles, proprietors  absorbed in their
newspapers.
     Petva rushed  into passionate  explanations, switching from  Russian to
French, telling them he had lost his cap, but no one understood him, because
the Greeks knew  very little Russian,  and his French was pretty  bad. Petya
thought  of Near Mills,  of Terenty, and Sinichkin. The  picture  of  Gavrik
stuffing the  letter under the lining of the sailor's  cap  Uncle Fedya  had
made was so clear  in his memory. Now he knew that Uncle Fedya had  left the
seam open  on  purpose,  that  he,  Petya, had  been entrusted  with  a very
important mission. They  had relied on him,  and he had behaved like a vain,
foolish child who had imagined he looked like a Boer in his silly straw hat.
     He was so ashamed of himself and so upset that he was ready to cry.
     He hated the  new straw hat that was  bobbing up and down on an elastic
band on his back as  he darted  among the peddlers,  donkeys  with creels of
fruit, ice-cream vendors, and street barbers. The coffee-house he sought had
vanished into thin  air. His one thought  v/as  to find it, and there was no
telling how it would  have ended if  he had  not heard the Palermo blow  her
third and last whistle. He ran in the  direction  of the  sound and  finally
came  out  on  the  pier  where Father  was  explaining something  from  his
Self-Taught Greek handbook  to a port official in  a tunic and a hard-peaked
cap with purling.
     "There  he  is!  Thank  God!"  Vasily Petrovich shouted and  shook  his
handbook so  vigorously over his head that his pince-nez  fell off his  nose
and dangled on the black cord. "Dreadful child! How dare you! Where have you
been all this time?"
     "I forgot my cap,"  Petya  panted. "I looked everywhere for it. I don't
know where it is. I couldn't find our coffeehouse."
     "What!" Father screamed. "Because of a filthy, rotten cap!"
     "Daddy, it's not rotten!" Petya mumbled mournfully.
     "Rotten!" Father bellowed.
     "Oh, Daddy, you don't understand a thing!" Petya groaned.
     "I don't understand?" Father  said and his lower jaw and shaking  beard
jutted out as he grabbed the boy by the shoulders.
     He  began  to   shake   him,  shouting,  "I  don't  understand?   Don't
understand?" when the moustached Greek proprietress suddenly appeared on the
pier, carrying a small package.
     "Boy," she said, smiling sadly, "you  forget your  hat. Ai-ai-ai. It so
hot in Athens,  but in the  nights on the  vapora  in Archipelago you'll  be
cold, your little head gets cold. Here your hat."
     Petya  grabbed  his  cap.  It  was wrapped up  in  la back  copy  of  a
French-Language newspaper,  Le Messager  d'Athenes.  He  did not even get  a
chance to thank  the kind woman, as his  father  bundled him  into the boat,
which hurried them off to the ship. They reached it just as the sailors were
about to pull in the gangway.
     An  hour later the "vapora," as the kind  Greek  woman had  called  the
ship, was passing Aegina Island.  Athens had vanished in the  blur  of magic
colours of a Mediterranean sunset.
     Petya  saw  nothing  of it.  He was  busy  in  the cabin,  removing the
slightly creased  and sweat-soaked  letter from the  lining  of his cap  and
putting it in the inner  pocket of his Alpine rucksack. The  address  on the
envelope was in French:

     W. Oulianoff
     4. Rue Marie Rose
     Paris XIV.



        THE MEDITERRANEAN


     They were  a  long time rounding Greece, and finally they  cleared Cape
Malea.  The  last  of  the  islands, resembling a hunk  of  dry  bread,  was
swallowed  up by the purple swell of the Archipelago. For two days they were
out  of sight of land. The sun  rose and set, but the barren flatness of the
Mediterranean seemed motionless. The sea kept  changing colours: it was dark
blue at dawn, bright  blue at  noon, and copper-purple at  sunset, but there
was no hint of green in it, as in the Black Sea. They were already conscious
of  the nearness of Africa, that huge burning  continent,  and if it had not
been for the wind-true, a hot one, but tempered somewhat by the sea-it would
have been very hard to endure the intense, almost tropical, heat.
     The wind was chasing long rows  of waves along the Ionian Sea. The deck
rose and fell gently  enough to make the rolling of the ship  even pleasant.
The  engines  worked  steadily. From time to time stokers who  had  finished
their shifts would appear in the forecastle,  where  they would  douse  each
other with sea water from the  fire-pump. Petya had learned to tell the time
by  their appearance. But in point  of fact it was immaterial what  the time
was-time seemed just as motionless as  the ship in the  middle of  the  blue
expanse.
     Petya  roamed all over the Palermo. One of the strangest places was the
cattle-deck which housed a herd of cows. Petya felt that he was in a cowshed
as he walked down the narrow  passage-way  between  the rows of cows' tails.
The cows shifted their weight  lazily, making the manure ooze  through their
cloven hoofs. He was  glad to feel  the springy  layers of straw beneath his
feet instead of the hard deck planks. Part of the deck was taken up by bales
of pressed hay which  obscured the view of the sea. The hot sun beat down on
the hay, making it exude all its stored-up field smells.  Petya would pull a
dry, withered stalk  of  siage  or  burdock out of  the  solid mass,  rub it
between his palms, and smell the powdered leaves. Then he would think he was
somewhere in Bessarabia, in Budaki,  and not on board  a ship sailing in the
Mediterranean. It was strange and very pleasant.
     It was  fun to crawl past  the signal bell  to the very tip of the bow,
lie down on  the hot deck, cautiously stick his  head over the side and look
all the way down. A huge anchor arm protruded from the hawse-hole there, and
still farther below he could see the  ship's stem cut through the waves with
a sure constancy. Salt spray blew into  his face, he felt the metallic smell
of the deeply ploughed waves, and below the water-line he saw the bright red
of the keel shining through the boiling sapphire of the  water. This was the
one  spot  where  the  ship's  motion,  its  full  speed,  could  really  be
appreciated, making him as dizzy as if  he were  on a merry-go-round.  Petya
could have  watched  the rushing water for  hours  on end, listening  to the
strains  of a  mandolin played by Pieripo, one of the stokers,  a young  lad
with pearly flashing teeth and blue-black curly hair. After coming off watch
he  would sit astride the  anchor chain and pluck the  strings, evoking with
its gentle tinkling notes a foretaste of Italy.
     And then,  Italy lay  before  him. A  dim cone  loomed up  through  the
morning  mist. This was  Mount  Etna. It began to  grow taller and wider; la
strip of hilly country rose from the sea. They were approaching Sicily.
     The  nearer  they got to the shore, the gloomier did the land look.  It
was nothing like Petya's mental picture of Italy.
     They could see Catania quite  clearly on the  rocky slope. The port was
surrounded by hillsides of hardened black lava which descended to the water,
giving it its dark hue.
     Italy  had a  harsh  welcome for  the travellers:  there  was a sirocco
blowing. The Italians pronounced it "shirokko"; it was a dry, scorching wind
from  Africa. The mercury  reached 113œ. Clouds of dust rolled along streets
that had been hacked out of the lava streams or paved with lava stones, just
as in Odessa. The sky was a dull  leaden yellow.  Mules  and horses with red
ear-muffs harnessed to  fancy carriages stood glumly on the square, and  the
wind blew the spray of a fountain and their dusty tails to one side.
     A  few  straggling pedestrians moved phlegmatically  along the  street.
Even the guides who  were sitting around  the fountain were too  listless to
come over to the tourists, and merely waved their picture postcards.
     They could hear the dry rustle of palm leaves, whipped by the wind. The
green-black leaves  of magnolia trees gleamed dully; the  paths were  strewn
with broken  branches and  huge  waxen flowers, dead  and speckled  with the
brown  of  decay;  shreds  of  grey  cobweb  fluttered  in  the laurels  and
stone-pines-all dominated by the shadow of Mount Etna.
     The  wisest thing would  have  been  to return to the  ship. But Vasily
Petrovich's  guide-book stated that the  city stood on  the site of  ancient
Catana  which,  except for the ruins of  its Forum, theatre, and some  other
early Roman architectural relics, had been buried in lava. He was determined
that the boys should see them.
     They doggedly climbed uphill  against the wind, exhausted land sweating
profusely, until at  last they beheld the ruins. By then,  however, the boys
were so tired that the sights meant nothing to them.
     They  by-passed  the museum.  They felt  that they had been roaming for
ages through the  streets  of the city, that in all likelihood the ship  had
finished unloading and taking on fresh cargo, and they could now resume  the
voyage.
     But the sirocco had slowed  work  down at the port; the cattle had just
been taken off,  and the Bacheis had to push  their way through the  herd to
get on board. The animals were too weary to moo; they only looked at Petya's
straw  hat through bleary eyes, while the sirocco tore  at  their tails  and
whistled around their horns.


        MESSINA


     Next  day the ship entered  the  Strait of Messina  and  dropped anchor
opposite the city of the same name. What a wonderful change it was! Here was
the picturesque Italy of  world-famous  water-colours and oleographs: a blue
sky, a still  bluer sea, white sails,  cliffs, and shores covered by  orange
and olive groves.
     From  the harbour,  Messina  looked  enticing and  beautiful, but Petya
suddenly felt there was something wrong in  the number of houses and the way
they were spaced. There seemed  to be fewer than there should have been. And
there were sinister  dead spaces between  them, hidden  amongst  the scraggy
underbrush.
     There was something  vaguely frightening  in the very name of the city.
Not until  they reached  the pier did  Petya  realize  half the city  was in
ruins.
     Then,  suddenly, he recalled the  words the whole world had  uttered in
terror  three  years  before: the Messina  earthquake. He himself had  often
repeated  those words,  without really  understanding them. He  had seen the
ruins  of  Byzantium, of ancient Greece, and of early Roman settlements, but
these had  been magnificent  stones, historical monuments, and no more; they
had fallen into a  state of  decay over  thousands of centuries.  They  were
truly astounding, but they did not wring the heart. Now, however, Petya  was
looking  at heaps of recent  debris  which, not so very  long ago,  had been
streets  of  houses.  The city had been destroyed and  tens of thousands  of
people had perished in a matter of minutes, and neither fortress towers, nor
marble columns, nor anything else remained as a reminder of the catastrophe.
A pitiful heap of rubbish,  bits of  walls  with shreds  of cheap  wallpaper
still  clinging to them, stucco laths, broken  glass and twisted  iron beds,
overgrown with  pea-trees  and nightshade, was all  that met the eye. It was
the first destroyed city  that Petya had ever  seen; and it was not a famous
ancient one from his history book-no, this was a very ordinary, rather small
modern Italian city, inhabited by very ordinary Italians.
     Years later,  when Petya,  a  grown man,  beheld  the  ghastly ruins of
European cities, he was still haunted by the ruins of Messina.
     It was the same depressing scene of abject poverty everywhere, although
partially concealed  by lush southern  vegetation and the  bright colours of
the Sicilian summer. Most of the inhabitants were still living  in temporary
shacks, tents, and huts thrown together from the debris. Multi-coloured rags
were drying on the clothes-lines. Goats  grazed on  the grass-grown  rubbish
heaps. Half-naked children with eyes as shiny as anthracite roamed the razed
streets  and poked  in the ruins, still  hoping to  find something of  value
there.
     The  little  shacks  on the  sites  of  former  shops  sold  postcards,
lemonade, coal, and olives.
     The Bacheis  walked  down the scorching streets of the half-dead  city,
surrounded  by fishermen, boatmen, and children.  They grabbed the tourists'
hands, smiled, looked into their faces, and  showered them with torrents  of
rapid  Italian. These people  were neither guides  nor  beggars, and it  was
impossible  to  understand what  they  wanted.  They patted Petya's sailor's
collar  and touched his  blue  blouse  excitedly repeating, "Marinaio russo,
marinaio russo!"
     Suddenly,  Vasily  Petrovich understood  what  it  was  all  about.  He
remembered that a Russian squadron had been anchored off Messina at the time
of  the earthquake  and that the sailors  had  selflessly  and  courageously
helped the people of  the doomed city.  Petya's regulation  naval blouse and
many other things about them told the people that the Bacheis were Russians,
and  they  were expressing their gratitude, especially to the little Russian
sailor.
     They  used strange words  but  understandable gestures to  describe the
terrible earthquake  and  the heroism of the  Russian sailors who had rushed
into the burning houses and  pulled the injured and the dying from under the
ruins.
     A grey-haired, ragged woman, carrying  a large earthen  pitcher, pushed
her way through the crowd and offered the Bacheis  a tray with three glasses
of cold water-aqua frescal-as her  only means of expressing her gratitude to
the Russians. Petya's heart swelled with pride, but he regretted that he was
not wearing  his sailor's cap and was sorrier still that it did not have the
St. George ribbon.
     "Grazie, Russo!" the Italians  repeated, shaking hands with  all three,
and this was quite understandable.
     There were other words spoken too:
     "Evviva la rivoluzione, evviva la republica russa!"
     Apparently, in the  eyes of the  Messina fishermen and  boatmen, Vasily
Petrovich's   dishevelled   beard,   his    steel-framed   pince-nez,    his
democratic-looking  Russian  shirt  and  tussore coat corresponded  to their
image of a Russian revolutionary,  a man illuminated by the far-off blaze of
1905, the undying glory of the barricades in Presnya  District in Moscow and
the mutiny on board the battleship Potemkin.
     That evening the Palermo weighed anchor,  passed  out  of the Strait of
Messina, entered the Tyrrhenian  Sea,  and  set  course for Naples, her home
port.



        PLINY THE YOUNGER



     The  stifling  night was  so black  that even  the stars  that  thickly
spangled the velvet  sky  did little  to  lighten  it. Were  it not  for the
shimmering,  snow-white  foam  down  below, the  slight  tilt  of  the  deck
underfoot, and the swishing sound of the waves racing  past, one would think
the ship was flying, not sailing.
     Petya  could not fall asleep that night, perhaps because it  was  their
last night aboard. He paced up and  down his  favourite walk, the  spar-deck
near the wheel-house. The sailor at the helm was as still as a statue. Petya
liked to  watch  him,  waiting for the mysterious, inexplicable moment when,
for no apparent reason, the helmsman would move his hands and turn the wheel
a little. It spun  around smoothly and silently; yet  immediately, somewhere
right beneath their feet, the engine  began to work; they heard sh