led on his  ashen
lips.
     Moustaches frowned. "From the  Potemkin? How  do you do, my dear  chap.
You might at least have changed  your boots. And us waiting for you all this
long time.  Well,  what  have  you to say for  yourself,  Rodion Zhukov? The
game's up, eh?"
     With these words Moustaches gripped the sailor by the sleeve.
     The sailor's face contorted.
     "Hands off!" he cried in a  terrible  voice. He shifted  his weight and
slammed his fist into Moustaches' chest with all his might. "Keep your hands
off a sick man!"
     The sleeve ripped.
     "Stop!"
     But it was too late.
     The sailor had torn himself free and was running down the deck, weaving
in and out among the baskets, crates,  and passengers. Moustaches  ran after
him.
     An onlooker might have thought these two grown men were playing tag.
     They  dived, one  after  the other, into  the  passage-way next to  the
engine-room and  then bobbed up on the other  side. They  ran up the ladder,
their soles drumming and sliding on the slippery brass steps.
     "Stop! Grab him!" cried Moustaches, wheezing heavily.
     The sailor now carried  a  batten which he  had torn loose somewhere on
the way.
     "Grab him! Grab him!"
     The  passengers, frightened and curious,  gathered in a cluster  on the
deck. There was a piercing blast from a policeman's whistle.
     The sailor cleared a high hatchway in  one leap. He  dodged Moustaches,
who  had run round the hatchway,  jumped back over  it, and then hopped on a
bench. From the  bench he  sprang to the rail, grasped the ensign staff, and
struck Moustaches across the face  with the batten as hard as he could. Then
he jumped into the sea.
     Spray showered up over the stern.
     "Oh!"
     The passengers, every single one of them, reeled back  as if a gust  of
wind had caught them.
     Moustaches ran back and  forth in front of the rail. "Catch him!  He'll
get away!" he cried hoarsely, holding  his hands to his  face.  "Catch  him!
He'll get away!"
     The mate ran up the ladder three steps at a time with a life-belt.
     "Man overboard!"
     The  passengers reeled forward  towards  the rail,  as if now a gust of
wind had caught them from behind.
     Petya squeezed  through to the rail. Amid the whipped  egg-white of the
foam, the sailor's head bobbed  up and  down with the waves like a float. He
was already a good way off, and he was swimming.
     Not  towards the ship, but  away from it,  working his arms and legs as
fast as he could. After every three  or four strokes he turned back a tense,
angry face.
     The  mate saw that the  man who  was overboard  had  not the  slightest
desire to be "saved". On the contrary,  he was plainly trying to put as much
distance as possible  between himself and  his saviours. Besides, he was  an
excellent swimmer and the shore was relatively near.
     And so, everything was in order.
     There was no cause for worry.
     In  vain did Moustaches tug at the mate's sleeve, make fierce eyes, and
demand that the ship be stopped and a boat lowered.
     "He's a political criminal. You'll answer for this!"
     The  mate  shrugged his  shoulders  phlegmatically. "It's  none  of  my
business. I have no orders. Speak to the captain."
     The captain merely waved his hand.  "We're  late as it is.  It's out of
the question,  my good man. Why  should we? We'll be mooring in half an hour
and then you can go and catch your political chappie. This steamship line is
a  private  company.  It  doesn't  go  in  for  politics,  and  we  have  no
instructions on that score."
     Swearing  under his breath,  Moustaches, his face battered,  headed for
the place where the gangway would be set, forcing his  way through the crowd
of third-class passengers preparing to disembark.
     He roughly pushed aside the frightened people; he stepped on their feet
and kicked their baskets,  and  finally reached the rail  so  as to  get off
first, the moment the ship moored.
     By now the sailor's head  could barely be seen  in  the  waves amid the
markers swaying above the fishing nets.

        9
     ODESSA BY NIGHT

     The  shore darkened quickly; it turned a light blue,  then a deep blue,
then purple. On land, evening had already come. At  sea it was still  light.
The glossy swell  reflected a  clear sky. But here,  too, evening was making
itself felt.
     The signal lanterns on the  paddle-boxes had been lit without the boy's
noticing it, and their bulging glass sides, in the daytime so dark and thick
one could never guess their colour, now gleamed green and red; they did  not
throw any light as yet, but they definitely glowed.
     All at once the dark-blue city, with its cupola-shaped theatre roof and
the colonnade of the Vorontsov Palace, loomed in front of them, shutting out
half the horizon.
     The watery  stars  of  the wharf  lamps  were palely  reflected  in the
light-coloured, absolutely  motionless lake of the  harbour. It was into the
harbour  that the Turgenev now  turned, closely skirting  the thick tower of
the  lighthouse-really not  a very  big one at  all-which  had a bell  and a
ladder.
     Down in the engine-room  the captain's bell ting-a-linged for  the last
time.
     "Slow!"
     The  narrow  little  steamer  slid  quickly  and  noiselessly past  the
three-storey bows of the ocean-going  ships of the Dobrovolny  Merchant Line
standing  in a row  inside the breakwater. Petya  had to  crane his  neck in
order to study their monstrous anchors.
     Those were ships!
     "Stop!"
     Without slowing down, carried along by  her  momentum, the Turgenev cut
obliquely  across the  harbour,  in complete silence; she  bore  down on the
wharf as if she would crash into it any minute.
     Two long creases stretched back from her sharp bow, making stripes like
a mackerel's in the water.
     Along the sides the water gurgled softly.
     Heat poured from the advancing city as from an oven.
     All of a  sudden Petya saw a funnel and  two masts sticking out of  the
mirror-like surface.  They floated by  as  close to the ship's side as could
be-black, frightful, dead.
     The passengers crowding at the rail gave a gasp.
     "They scuttled her," someone said in a low voice.
     "Who?" the  boy wanted to ask, horror-struck. But just  then  he saw an
even  more gruesome  sight: the  charred  iron skeleton  of  a  ship leaning
against a charred wharf.
     "They burned her," the same voice said, more softly than before.
     Now the wharf was upon them.
     "Astern!"
     The  paddle-wheels  began to clatter again,  revolving in  the opposite
direction. Little whirlpools scurried across the water.
     The  wharf  drifted  away  and somehow shifted about,  and  then,  very
slowly, it approached again, but from the other side.
     Over  the  heads of the  passengers shot a coiled rope, unwinding as it
flew.
     Petya felt a slight jolt; it had been softened by the rope fender.
     The gangway was shoved up from the wharf. The first to run down  it was
Moustaches. He immediately disappeared in the crowd.
     Our  travellers waited  their turn,  and  before  long they were slowly
walking down the gangway to the wharf.
     Petya was surprised  to see a policeman and  several civilians standing
at the foot  of the gangway. They  were looking  closely, very  closely,  at
everyone coming down. They looked at Father, who thrust forward a  quivering
beard and mechanically  buttoned his coat. He tightened his grip on Pavlik's
hand, and his face took on exactly  the same unpleasant expression as it had
in the coach that morning when he was talking to the soldier.
     They took a  cab.  Pavlik was put on the folding seat in  front,  while
Petya sat next to Father on the main seat, quite like a grown-up.
     As  they  drove  out  they  saw   a  sentry  with  a  rifle  and   with
cartridge-pouches at his  belt standing  by the  gate.  That  was  something
altogether new.
     "Why is a sentry standing there, Daddy?" Petya asked in a whisper.
     "For God's sake!" Father said irritably, with a jerk of  his neck. "All
you do is ask questions. How should I know? If he's standing  there it means
he's standing there. And you're to sit quiet."
     Petya  saw that  no questions were to be asked, and also that there was
no call to take offence at Father's irritability.
     But when, at the railway crossing, he saw the trestle bridge burned  to
the ground, the mounds of charred sleepers, the twisted rails hanging in the
air,  and the wheels of overturned railway  carriages-when he saw that scene
of frozen chaos  he cried out  breathlessly, "Oh, what's that?  Look! I  say
there, cabby, what's that?"
     "Set  fire to it, they did," the  cab-driver said mysteriously, shaking
his head  in the  firm beaver-cloth  hat,  but  whether  in condemnation  or
approval was not clear.
     They drove past the famous Odessa Stairway.
     Up at the top of its  triangle, in the space between the silhouettes of
the two  semi-circular  symmetrical palaces, the small figure of  the Due de
Richelieu stood  outlined against the light  evening sky, his  arm stretched
out in antique mode towards the sea.
     The  three-armed  street  lamps along  the  boulevard gleamed. From the
terrace of an open-air restaurant came the strains  of music. The first pale
star  trembled  in  the sky over the  chestnut trees  and the  gravel of the
boulevard.
     Somewhere up above, Petya knew, beyond the Nikolayev Boulevard, lay the
bright,  noisy, luring, unapproachable, intangible place which was  referred
to in the Batchei family circle with contemptuous respect as "the Centre".
     In  the Centre  lived "the  rich", those  special beings who  travelled
first  class, who could go  to the theatre every day, who for  some  strange
reason  had  their dinner  at seven o'clock in the  evening, who kept a chef
instead of  a cook  and a bonne instead of a nursemaid, and often even "kept
their own horses"-something indeed beyond human imagination.
     The Batcheis, of course, did not live in "the Centre".
     The droshky  rumbled over the cobblestones of  Karantinnaya Street  and
then, turning right, drove up the hill to the city proper.
     Petya was unaccustomed to the city after his summer's absence.
     He was deafened by the clang of horseshoes, which  drew sparks from the
cobbles, by the clatter of  wheels, by the jangle of the horse-trams, by the
squeaking of  shoes and the  firm tapping of walking sticks on the dark-blue
slabs of the pavement.
     The crisp sadness of autumn's tints had long ago  gilded the farm,  the
harvested fields, the  wide-open steppe. But here, in the city, summer still
reigned, rich and luxuriant.
     The  languid  heat  of evening  hung  in  the  breathless  air  of  the
acacia-lined streets.
     Through  the  open  doors of  grocers' shops Petya could see the little
yellow  tongues  of oil  lamps  throwing  their  light  on jars of  coloured
sugar-plums.
     Right  on   the  pavement,   under  the  acacias,   lay   mountains  of
water-melons-glossy greenish-black  Tumans with  waxy  bald  spots, and long
bright Monasteries with striped sides.
     Every now and then there appeared the gleaming vision of a corner fruit
shop. In the dazzling glare of the new incandescent  lamps,  a Persian could
be  seen   fanning  magnificent  Crimean   fruit  with  rustling  plumes  of
tissue-paper. There were large  purple plums covered with a turquoise bloom,
and those very expensive luscious brown Beurre Alexander pears.
     They drove  past mansions, and,  through  the  ironwork fences entwined
with wild vines,  Petya  could see, in the light pouring  from the  windows,
beds  of luxurious  dahlias,  begonias and  nasturtiums,  with  plump  moths
fluttering above them.
     From the railway station came the whistle of steam-engines.
     Then they passed the familiar chemist's shop.
     Behind  the large  plate-glass  window  with  its  gilded glass letters
gleamed two crystal pears, one full of a bright violet liquid and  the other
a green  liquid.  Petya was  convinced they were  poison.  It was  from this
chemist's the horrible oxygen pillows had been brought to Mummy when she was
dying.   What  a  frightful  snoring   sound  they  had  made  near  Mummy's
medicine-blackened lips!
     Pavlik  was fast asleep. Father  took him  in  his arms.  Pavlik's head
swayed and bobbed up and down.  His heavy little bare legs kept slipping off
Father's  lap. But his fingers  tightly gripped  the  bag with the treasured
moneybox.
     In that  state he was handed over into the arms of Dunya, the cook, who
was waiting in the street for her  masters when the cab finally pulled up at
the gate with the triangular little lantern in which the house number glowed
dimly.
     "Welcome home! Welcome home!"
     Petya, still feeling the roll of  the deck under his feet, ran into the
entrance-way.
     What a huge, deserted staircase!
     Bright and echoing. How many lamps! At every landing a paraffin lamp in
a cast-iron fixture, and  over each lamp a little hood  swaying  lazily in a
circle of light.
     Brightly polished brass plates on the doors. Coconut fibre  doormats. A
pram.
     Petya had  completely  forgotten  these  things, and they now  appeared
before his wondering eyes in all their original novelty.
     He would have to get used to them again.
     From somewhere above there came the  sharp resounding  click of  a key,
followed  by  the  slamming  of  a  door  and  then  by  quick voices.  Each
exclamation rang out like a pistol shot.
     The gay bravura notes of  a grand piano came, muffled, through  a wall.
With compelling chords, music was reminding the boy of its existence.
     And then-goodness me! Who was that?
     A forgotten  but  frightfully familiar  lady in  a dark-blue silk dress
with a lace collar and  lace cuffs came running out  through the  door.  Her
eyes  were  red from tears,  excited,  happy;  her  lips  were stretched  in
laughter.  Her chin  trembled, but  whether  from laughing or  crying  Petya
couldn't quite be sure.
     "Pavlik!"
     She tore him from the cook's arms.
     "Good gracious! How heavy you've become!"
     Pavlik opened eyes turned absolutely black  from sleep and remarked, in
surprise, but with profound indifference, "Ah, Auntie?"
     Then he fell asleep again.
     Why, of course, this was Auntie Tatyana! Dear, precious Auntie Tatyana,
whom he knew so well but who had simply slipped out of his memory. How could
he have failed to recognise her?
     "Petya? How huge you are!"
     "Do you  know  what  happened to  us,  Auntie?" Petya  began  at  once.
"Auntie, you don't know anything  about it! But Auntie, only listen  to what
happened  to us.  Why,  Auntie, you're  not  listening!  Auntie,  you're not
listening!"
     "Very well, very well. Wait  a  minute. Go inside first. Where's Vasili
Petrovich?" "Here I am." Father was coming up the stairs.
     "Well, here we are. How do you do, Tatyana Ivanovna."
     "Welcome home, welcome home! Come in. Were you seasick?"
     "Not  a  bit. We had an excellent  trip. Have you any small change? The
driver can't change a three-ruble note."
     "I'll take care of that. Don't worry about it. Petya, don't trip me up.
You'll  tell  me later.  Dunya, be  a dear  and run down  and pay the cabby.
You'll find some money on my dressing-table."
     The hall into which Petya walked seemed spacious and dim and so strange
that at first he failed to recognise even the tall swarthy  boy in the straw
hat who had suddenly appeared, as if from  nowhere, inside  the walnut frame
of the  forgotten  but  familiar  pier-glass lit  up  by  the forgotten  but
familiar lamp.
     But Petya, of all  people, should  have recognised him  instantly,  for
that boy was himself.
     10
     AT HOME
     On  the farm there had been a  little room with  whitewashed  walls and
three camp-beds covered with light cotton counterpanes.
     An iron washstand. A pine  table. A  chair.  A candle in a glass shade.
Green latticed shutters. Floorboards bare of paint from constant scrubbing.
     How  nice and  cool it had been, after  eating his fill of clotted milk
and  grey whole-meal bread, to fall  asleep in  that sad, empty room  to the
soothing noise of the sea! Here everything was different.
     Here  there was a big flat  with papered walls and rooms  crowded  with
furniture in loose-covers.
     The wallpaper was  old, and in each room it had a different design; the
furniture was different in each room too.
     The bouquets and lozenges on the wallpaper made the rooms seem smaller.
The furniture  here  was  called  "suites",  and  it  muffled  the sound  of
footsteps  and voices. Here, lamps  were  carried from room to  room. In the
parlour stood rubber plants with stiff, waxy leaves. Their  new shoots stuck
out like sharp little daggers sheathed in saffian covers.
     When  the  lamps  were  moved  their  light  passed from  one mirror to
another. The vase on top of the piano shook every time  a droshky drove down
the street. The clatter of the wheels connected the house with the city.
     Petya wanted to finish his tea as quickly as possible.  He was dying to
run out into the courtyard, for at least a minute, to see the boys and learn
the news.
     But  it was already very late-after nine.  All the  boys were  probably
asleep long ago.
     He was anxious  to tell Auntie  Tatyana,  or at least Dunya, about  the
runaway  sailor.  But they were  busy; they  were making the beds,  fluffing
pillows, taking heavy, slippery sheets out of the chest of drawers, carrying
lamps from room to room.
     Petya  followed  Auntie Tatyana  about.  "Why  won't you  listen to me,
Auntie?" he pleaded, stepping on her train. "Please listen."
     "You can see I'm busy."
     "But Auntie, it won't take long."
     "You'll tell me tomorrow."
     "Oh, Auntie, don't be so mean! Please let me tell you. Please, Auntie."
     "Don't get in my way, Petya. Go and tell it to Dunya."
     Petya  shambled off glumly to the kitchen, where green onions grew in a
wooden box on the windowsill.
     Dunya was hastily  pressing a  pillow-case on  an ironing-board covered
with a  strip  of coarse woollen cloth  from an army greatcoat. Thick  steam
rose from the iron.
     "Dunya,  listen to what  happened to us," Petya  began  in a  plaintive
voice, gazing at the taut glossy skin on Dunya's bare forearm.
     "Don't stand so  near, Master Petya. God knows I don't want to burn you
with this hot iron."
     "But all you have to do is listen."
     "Go and tell it to your aunt."
     "Auntie  doesn't  want  to  listen.  I'll  tell  you instead.  Du-unya,
please."
     "Tell it to the Master."
     "Oh, how stupid you are! Father knows all about it."
     "Tomorrow, Master Petya, tomorrow."
     "But I want to tell you today."
     "Please get away from my  elbow. Aren't there enough rooms in the house
for you? Why do you have to poke your nose into the kitchen?"
     "I'll only  tell you about it, Dunya dear, and then I'll go right away.
Word of honour. By the true and holy Cross."
     "What a trial you are! Everything was so quiet until you came back!"
     Dunya  planked  the  iron  down  on  the  stove,  caught up  the ironed
pillow-case and ran into  the next room so impetuously that a  breeze passed
through the kitchen.
     Petya sadly rubbed  his eyes with his fists. Suddenly he was taken with
such  a fit of yawning that he barely  managed to drag  himself to  his bed,
where, powerless to unglue his eyes,  he pulled off his sailor blouse like a
blind man.
     The  instant his  hot  cheek  touched the pillow he dropped  off into a
sleep so sound that he did not feel Father's beard when  he came, as was his
custom, to kiss him goodnight.
     Pavlik, however, caused a good deal of bother.  He had fallen into such
a  deep  sleep in the  cab that  Father and  Auntie Tatyana had quite  a job
undressing him.
     But  the moment they  put the  child to  bed he opened eyes  that  were
absolutely fresh and looked round in astonishment.
     "Have we got there yet?"
     Auntie Tatyana kissed him tenderly on his hot crimson cheek.
     "Yes, my pet. Sleep."
     But Pavlik, it appeared, had had a good sleep, and now he was in a mood
for talking.
     "Is that you, Auntie?"
     "Yes, my chick. Go to sleep."
     Pavlik lay for a  long time with wide-open, attentive  eyes-eyes now as
dark as olives-listening to the unfamiliar noises of the city flat.
     "Auntie,  what's making that  noise?" he finally said in  a  frightened
whisper.
     "Which noise?"
     "That snoring noise."
     "That's the water in the tap, my pet."
     "Is it blowing its nose?"
     "Yes. Now go to sleep."
     "What's making that whistle?"
     "That's a steam-engine."
     "Where?"
     "Have you really forgotten? At the station just opposite. Go to sleep."
     "Why is there music?"
     "Someone is playing the piano upstairs.  Don't you remember how  people
play the piano?"
     Pavlik was silent for a long time.
     One  might have thought him to be  asleep, except that  his  eyes shone
distinctly in the greenish glow of the  night lamp on the  chest of drawers.
They  were following with horror the long rays moving back and forth  across
the ceiling.
     "What's that, Auntie?"
     "Those  are the lanterns  of  droshkies passing  by outside. Close your
eyes."
     "And what's that?"
     A huge death's-head moth  fluttered with ominous  thumpings in a corner
near the ceiling.
     "That's a moth. Go to sleep."
     "Will it bite?"
     "No, it won't bite. Go to sleep."
     "I don't want to sleep. I'm afraid."
     "What  are  you  afraid of?  Stop imagining things. A big boy like you.
Tsk-tsk-tsk!"
     Pavlik took  a deep,  luxurious, quivering  breath and caught  Auntie's
hand in his two hot little hands. "Did you see the Gipsy?" he whispered.
     "No, I didn't."
     "Did you see the Wolf?"
     "No. Go to sleep."
     "Did you see the Chimney-Sweep?"
     "No, I didn't. You  can  go  to sleep  without  worrying about a single
thing."
     Again the boy  took a deep, luxurious  breath, turned over on his other
cheek, and cupped his palm under it.
     "Auntie," he mumbled, closing his eyes, "give me the dummy."
     "What? I thought you stopped using a dummy long ago."
     The "dummy" was the  special little clean handkerchief which Pavlik was
accustomed to sucking in bed and without which he could not fall asleep.
     "Dum-m-m-my. . ." the boy whimpered capriciously.
     But Auntie Tatyana did not give him the handkerchief. He was a  big boy
now. High time he stopped that.
     Thereupon Pavlik, continuing to whine, stuffed a corner  of  the pillow
into  his mouth and  got  it all  wet;  he  smiled lazily as his  eyes glued
together. Suddenly, with a flash of horror, he thought of his moneybox: what
if robbers had stolen it? But he had no energy left for worrying.
     He fell into a peaceful sleep.

        11
     GAVRIK

     That same day another boy, Gavrik-the one we mentioned while describing
the coast near Odessa- woke at dawn from the cold.
     He was  sleeping on the shore, near the boat, his head on a smooth  sea
stone and his face covered with his grandfather's old jacket. The jacket did
not reach to his feet.
     At night it was warm, but towards morning it turned cool. Gavrik's bare
feet  became chilled. In his sleep  he  pulled the jacket from his  head and
wound it round his feet. Then his head began to feel cold.
     He  started shivering but he  did  not  give in. He tried to fight  the
cold. He was unable to fall asleep again, however.
     Nothing for it but to get up!
     Reluctantly  Gavrik opened his eyes. He saw a glossy lemon sea and  the
glow of a murky cherry-coloured dawn in a cloudless grey sky. It  was  going
to be a  hot day. But  until the sun came up there was no  use even thinking
about warmth.  Of course, Gavrik could very well have slept in the hut, with
Grandpa.  There  it was warm and soft. But show me  the boy who will pass by
the delightful chance of sleeping on the seashore under the open sky!
     Every now  and then a wave laps the beach, so softly that it can barely
be heard. It breaks and then draws back, lazily dragging pebbles along  with
it.
     The next wave waits a while and  then it laps  the shore too, and again
pebbles are dragged back.
     The silvery-black sky  is strewn with August stars. The split sleeve of
the Milky Way hangs overhead like a vision of a river in the sky.
     The sky is reflected in the sea so fully, so richly, that, when you lie
on the warm pebbles with your head thrown back, you simply cannot tell which
is up and which is down; it's as though you are suspended in the middle of a
starry abyss.
     Shooting stars streak across the sky in all directions.
     In the weeds, crickets chirp. On the bluffs, far, far away, dogs bark.
     At first the stars seem to be standing still. But they aren't. When you
look at them  a long  time you  can  see the whole vault of the sky turning.
Some  of the  stars drop behind the villas. Others, new ones, come up out of
the sea.
     The breeze changes from warm to cool.
     The  sky grows whiter, more transparent. The sea  darkens. The  morning
star is reflected in its dark surface like a little moon.
     At  the villas,  the  cocks  crow  sleepily for the third time. Day  is
breaking.
     How can anybody sleep under a roof on a night like that!
     Gavrik rose, stretched himself with relish, rolled up his trousers and,
yawning, walked into the water up to his ankles.
     Had he  lost his mind? His  feet  were blue from the  cold, and here he
stepped into the  sea,  the  very  sight of which was enough to give one the
shivers.
     But  the  boy  knew what  he was  doing. The  water  only  looked cold.
Actually  it was very warm, much warmer than the air.  He was simply warming
his feet.
     Then he washed  himself and blew  his  nose into the sea so loudly that
several big-headed fry sleeping peacefully near the shore scattered to right
and left and slithered away into deep water.
     Yawning and squinting against the rising sun. Gavrik took up the hem of
his shirt and  dried his face-a  mottled little face with  a lilac-pink nose
which was peeling like a new potato.
     "Urrmph,   urrmph,  urrmph,"  he  grunted,  exactly  like  a  grown-up.
Unhurriedly he made the sign of the cross over his mouth, in which two front
teeth were still missing, picked up the jacket, and started up the hill with
the rolling gait of an Odessa fisherman.
     He pushed his way through a thick growth  of  weeds. They sprinkled his
wet feet and his trousers with the yellow dust of their pollen.
     The hut stood about  thirty paces from the beach  on a hill of red clay
spotted with glistening crystals of shale.
     It was actually  nothing but a  shanty crudely knocked together out  of
various  old pieces  of wood-parts  of  painted  planks  from boats,  boxes,
plywood, and masts.
     The roof was flat and made of clay, and weeds and tomatoes grew on it.
     Grandma, when  she was still  alive, always used to whitewash  the  hut
twice a year, at Easter and Our Saviour's Day, in order somehow to hide  its
poverty from people. But then  Grandma died, and for three years now  no one
had whitewashed  the  hut. Its walls  had  peeled and  turned dark. Here and
there,  though,  there were still faint traces of whitewash in the old wood.
They constantly reminded  Gavrik of Grandma and  of  her  life, a life  less
lasting even than whitewash.
     Gavrik was an orphan. His  father  he did not  remember at all.  Of his
mother  he had  a hazy memory:  a steaming trough, red hands,  a Kiev signet
ring on a smooth swollen finger, and a mass of soap bubbles with rainbows in
them flying round the metal combs in her hair.
     Grandpa  was already  up. He was walking through the  tiny  weed-grown,
refuse-strewn  vegetable   patch,   where   a  few  late   pumpkin   flowers
gleamed-large orange-coloured fleshy and hairy  flowers with a sweet  liquid
at the bottom of their transparent cups.
     Grandpa was gathering tomatoes in his shirt; the shirt had been  washed
so often that it  had lost  all colour, but now,  in the glow of the  rising
sun, it was a delicate pink.
     Between the turned-up shirt and the baggy trousers there showed a strip
of lean brown stomach with the black dimple of the navel.
     Very few tomatoes  were left in the patch. They had eaten nearly all of
them. Grandpa managed  to find  eight  little  yellowish  ones. That was all
there were.
     The old  man  walked  along  with  his  grey head  bent and  his  chin,
smooth-shaven like a soldier's, against his chest. He turned aside the weeds
with his bare feet, hoping to find something there. But he found nothing.
     A pullet with a piece of rag round  her leg ran  after Grandpa, pecking
occasionally  at the ground  and  making  the little umbrellas of  fennel up
above tremble.  Grandfather and grandson did  not  greet each other or  wish
each  other good  morning. But that did not mean they had quarrelled. On the
contrary, they were great friends.
     It was simply that the  new  morning promised nothing but hard work and
cares. There was no use deceiving each other with empty wishes.
     "We've eaten  them all;  there's  none left," Grandpa muttered,  as  if
continuing a conversation left off the day before. "Just  think of it. Eight
tomatoes-call that food? It's a joke!"
     Gavrik put his hand to his eyes and looked at the sun. "Are we going?"
     "We'll have to," said Grandpa. He came out of the vegetable patch.
     They went into the hut and slowly drank some water from a bucket neatly
covered with a clean board.
     The  old  man gave a  grunt,  and Gavrik grunted too.  The  grandfather
tightened his belt another notch, and the grandson did likewise.
     Grandpa  took  a chunk of yesterday's bread from the shelf and tied it,
together with the tomatoes, in a cotton kerchief with black polka dots.
     Then, with a small flat keg of  water under his  arm,  he walked out of
the hut and hung a padlock on the door.
     This was  an unnecessary precaution. In  the  first  place,  there  was
nothing to steal, and in the second place, who would stoop so low  as to rob
paupers?
     Gavrik took the oars from the roof and heaved them  up on his small but
sturdy shoulder.
     A busy day  lay  ahead  of grandfather and grandson. Two days before, a
storm had raged.  The waves had  torn the line.  The fish were keeping away.
They had had no catch. And there was not a kopek left.
     Yesterday the sea  had calmed  down  and they had set the line for  the
night.
     Today they had to pull it out, get the fish to market in time, bait the
line, and in the evening  set it again without fail, so  as not to  miss the
good weather.
     They dragged the boat across  the pebbly beach and  carefully pushed it
into the sea.
     Gavrik,  standing  knee-deep  in   the  water,  put  the  fish   tank-a
boat-shaped box  with small  holes in it-in  the stern  and gave  the boat a
strong push. He ran along with it a few paces and then stretched himself out
prone  on  its  side;  he dangled his  feet  above  the  sliding water,  and
glistening drops fell from them.
     Only after the boat had moved out about  five yards did he crawl in and
sit down at the oar next to Grandpa.
     Each worked one  oar. That was  easy, and besides it was fun to see who
could outpull the other.  But they  both  wore indifferent frowns  on  their
faces and merely grunted from time to time.
     Gavrik felt a pleasant glow in the palms of his hands. When his oar was
in the transparent green of the sea it seemed broken. The narrow blade moved
tautly through the water, sending back little eddies.
     The  boat  went ahead in spurts, swerving  now to the right, now to the
left. First the grandfather leaned on his oar, and then the grandson.
     "Oo-oof!" grunted Grandpa, pulling with all his strength.
     The boat veered sharply to the left.
     Gavrik gave a louder "Oo-oof!" and the boat veered to the right.
     The grandfather braced a bare foot with a  gnarled  big toe against the
thwart and took short sharp  strokes. The  grandson did not  let  himself be
outdone. He braced both feet and bit his lip.
     "Bet you can't outpull me, Grandpa," Gavrik said through set teeth, the
sweat pouring from him.
     Grandpa grunted. He was breathing heavily.
     "Bet I can. "
     "Not on your life."
     "We'll see." 'We'll see."
     But though Grandpa  leaned on his oar as hard as he could, nothing came
of it. He wasn't the man he used  to be! Besides, his grandson had grown  to
be quite a  fellow. He was small, true enough, but as stubborn as they came!
Not afraid to challenge his own grandfather!
     Grandpa  gave  angry  frowns as he  glanced  sidewise  from  under  his
grizzled brows at the boy beside him.  But his old watery eyes twinkled with
merriment and wonder.
     And so, neither outdoing the  other, they  rowed  to the  place about a
mile from shore  where the faded little flags of their  line were bobbing up
and down on corks amid the waves.
     By this time the sea was covered with fishing boats out for the catch.
     The blue beauty Nadya and Vera, a new boat, passed  by under full sail,
her flat notched bottom rearing one-third out of the water and slapping down
hard against the waves.
     Sprawled carelessly in the stern,  with a black sunflower seed stuck to
his lip, lay Fedya, a fisherman from Maly Fontan whom Gavrik knew well.
     From  under the oilcloth peak of  his navy-blue cap with  anchor-design
buttons  there  lazily  looked  out  a  pair  of  fine, languid  eyes almost
completely covered by a spray-darkened forelock.
     Fedya lay with the weight of his back against the sharply turned tiller
and did not even deign a glance at Grandpa's pathetic little boat.
     But when Fedya's brother Vasya, who was wearing a short-sleeved striped
jersey, caught sight of Gavrik  he stopped unwinding the fishing  line  and,
shielding his eyes  against the  sun with his hand, cried out, "Ahoy, Gavrik
old man! Don't give in! Hold on to the water and you'll never drown!"
     The Nadya  and Vera sped by,  dousing  grandfather and grandson  with a
fountain of spray.
     Of course, no offence had been meant. It was a friendly practical joke.
Still, Grandpa pretended he had not heard a word; in his  heart of hearts he
was hurt.
     For  there was a time when  Grandpa, too, had  owned  an excellent boat
with  a  new, strong sail.  He used to fish for mackerel. And what  catches!
There were days  when Grandma, rest her  soul, took two or  three hundred to
market.
     But now his  life  was over. All he had left was a  pauper's hut on the
shore and an old boat without a sail.
     The  sail had gone to pay the doctors during Grandma's illness. But all
for nothing: she had died anyway. Now  he would never be able to get a  sail
like that again.
     And  what  kind  of  fishing  was  this without a sail? It was  a joke!
Catching bullheads with a line. Ah, me!
     Gavrik guessed what Grandpa  was thinking  about,  but gave no sign. On
the contrary,  to divert  the  old  man  from his bitter thoughts  he busied
himself with the line. He began pulling up the first flag.
     The  grandfather at  once crawled over  the  seat to his grandson,  and
together they started to pull in the wet end of the line.
     Soon they came to the  hooks. But they found few bullheads on them, and
small ones at that.
     Gavrik  took the  big-headed  little  fishes  firmly by  their slippery
gills, deftly pulled  the hooks out  of  their rapacious jaws and threw them
into the tank, which had been lowered into the sea.
     But barely three  hooks  out  of ten  had a  real  catch. On the others
dangled small fry or crabs.
     "They don't go for shrimps," Grandpa muttered sadly. "Just think of it.
Nothing but small fry. Meat's the bait to use. They'd go for meat all right.
But  how  to get meat when  it's eleven kopeks a pound at the market! It's a
joke!"
     Suddenly a tremendous hulk pouring forth brown smoke bore down on them.
Two slanting  shadows  flew  over the waves. The  sea  burst  into frightful
noise.  A steamer passed by close to the boat, her red float-boards  working
busily.
     The boat was thrown up, then let down, then thrown up again.
     The  flags  of   the  line   bobbed   frantically,  almost   under  the
paddle-wheels.  A  little  closer  and  they  would  have  been ground  into
splinters.
     "Hi  there, on  the  Turgenev!"  Grandpa  shouted in an  unrecognisable
voice, spreading  out his arms as though trying to  stop  a galloping horse.
"Gone blind? Can't you see the line? Filthy pigs!"
     But the steamer had already passed by.
     She was noisily drawing away-with her tricolour flag at the stern, with
her  life-belts  and  life-boats,  with  her passengers, with her columns of
brown anthracite smoke- leaving behind  a broad, snow-white, lacy pattern on
the clear dark-green water.
     That meant it was seven o'clock in the morning.
     The Turgenev  served the fishermen as a  clock. At eight in the evening
she would pass on her way back to Odessa from Akkerman.
     To get the bullheads to market in time they would have to hurry.
     Grandfather and grandson made a hasty breakfast of tomatoes  and  bread
washed down with water  from the keg, which by now had turned warm and taken
on an oaky flavour. Then they quickly went back to their work on the line.

        12
     "CALL THAT A HORSE?"

     At about nine o'clock  Gavrik was on his way to town, with the tank  of
bullheads on his  shoulder. He could have put them  in a basket, of  course,
but the tank made a better impression. It showed that  he was carrying live,
absolutely fresh fish straight out of the sea.
     Grandpa remained at home to mend the line.
     Although Gavrik was only nine, Grandpa had  no  qualms about entrusting
him with such an important mission as the sale of the fish. He relied on his
grandson fully. The lad had a head on his shoulders. He was not a baby.
     Whom else could the old man depend upon if not his own grandson?
     Gavrik was fully aware of the importance and responsibility of his job,
and it was with a businesslike and preoccupied air that he tramped along the
hot  path among  the  strong-smelling bushes, leaving in the  dust  distinct
imprints of his small feet with all their ten toes.
     His air of concentration and importance  as much as said:  "You may  do
what you like-swim in the  sea, lounge about on the sand, ride a bicycle, or
drink soda water at the stand. Me, I'm  a fisherman,  and my job is to catch
bullheads and sell them at the market. Nothing else concerns me."
     As  he passed the beach house, where over the cashier's  window  hung a
spotted black board  with the  figure "76œ" chalked on  it,  Gavrik  gave  a
scornful  and disgusted smile at what he saw: a chubby white-bodied man with
a handkerchief on  his bald head had stopped up his nose  and ears with  his
fingers and was  ducking himself in the clayey water near the shore, staying
close to the safety-rope, which was covered with a slimy green beard.
     There  were two ways of getting to the top  of the bluff: by  the  long
sloping  path  that  had  three  turns  in  it,  or  by  the  steep,  almost
perpendicular wooden stairway with rotting steps.
     Gavrik, it goes without saying, chose the stairway.
     Compressing  his  lips, he ran  quickly  to  the very top without  once
pausing for breath.
     A   dusty  but  shady  lane  brought  him   past  the  "Warm  Sea-Baths
Establishment" to the Military School.
     There he was practically in town.
     In  the  shade  of the dappled plane trees of French Boulevard an  open
horse-tram was lumbering along  towards Arcadia. The sunny side  of the tram
was  covered   with  an  awning.   A  sheaf  of  bamboo  fishing-rods,  with
red-and-blue floats,  jutted out from the rear  platform. Three  lively  old
mares clicked their  hoofs along the  fine gravel. The brakes screeched  and
moaned at the turns.
     But what really drew the boy's attention was the kvass stand.
     It was a big box-like  affair with a double-sloping roof that rested on
two posts. The outside was painted green and the inside  white-thick,  shiny
oil paint.
     As to the kvass man,  he was so  extraordinarily  elegant  and handsome
that every time Gavrik passed by that corner he stopped to marvel and envy.
     Gavrik never gave much thought to  what he  would be when  he grew  up.
There wasn't any particular choice. But if he did have a choice, it would be
a kvass man, of course.
     All the Odessa kvass vendors were as spruce and handsome as a  picture.
And this one especially. He was the dead spit of Vanka Klyuchnik."
     Yes, that was it. With his high merchant's cap of fine navy-blue serge,
his blond curls, and his shiny high boots. And the shirt! Lord, a shirt like
that was fit to be worn only on Easter Sunday: bright-red, with sleeves like
balloons,  and  long-all  the  way to the knees,  with  a hundred blue glass
buttons!
     Over  the shirt  he  wore  a black waistcoat with a  silver watch-chain
fastened in a buttonhole with a little silver rod.
     One  look at  that flaming shirt was enough to make anybody pant  for a
drink of cold kvass.
     And the way he worked! Quickly, deftly, smoothly.
     "Give us a glass, laddie," a customer would say.
     "Which would  you like?  The  sour or the sweet? The sweet's a  kopek a
mug, and the sour's two for a kopek."
     "I'll have the sour."
     "Coming right up."
     In the twinkling of  an  eye one  hand  lifted  the  round cover of the
locker by the ring and dipped into the deep icy darkness for a bottle, while
the other wiped the white counter with a rag-it was dry anyway-rinsed a huge
mug  with a thick false  bottom  in a  pail of water, smartly turned the mug
over and set it down with a bang in front of the customer.
     The small corkscrew bit into the cork. The bottle, pressed between  the
boots, exploded. Out of its neck rose long ringlets of brown foam.
     The  handsome  fellow  turned  the bottle over  into  the  mug, filling
one-quarter with lemon-yellow kvass and three-quarters with foam.
     The  customer eagerly blew off the foam  and then drank  and  drank and
drank. Meanwhile Vanka Klyuchnik wiped the counter with a flourish and swept
the  wet  kopek  with the  eagle on it into a tin  box  which once had  held
Krakhmalnikov Bros, lozenges.
     There was a man! That was the life!
     Naturally, Gavrik was dying for a drink  of kvass, but he had no money.
Perhaps on  the way  back, although  that  was doubtful. The fact  was  that
though there  were  about two  hundred  bullheads in  the tank,  Grandpa was
heavily  in  debt to the fishwife with whom they dealt.  The week before, he
had borrowed three  rubles from her for corks and hooks for the line and had
returned only one ruble forty-five. That  left the debt at more than a ruble
and a half-a huge sum.
     If the fishwife agreed not to  hold back all the money everything would
be fine. But what if she kept all of it? In that case they would be lucky to
have enough to buy meat for bait and bread, let alone kvass.
     Gavrik spat,  exactly the way grown-up fishermen do  when burdened with
cares.
     He shifted  the tank to the  other shoulder  and  continued on his way,
carrying with him in  his mind's eye the handsome picture of Vanka Klyuchnik
and the fragrant coolness of the sour kvass he had not drunk.
     From here  on stretched  real  city streets, with tall  houses,  shops,
warehouses, gateways.
     Everything lay  in the mottled shade of acacias whose leaves shone like
long green grapes.
     A closed  wagon  clattered  down the street. The  patches of shade sped
downwards along the  horses in their high  German collars, along the driver,
and along the white sides with the sign: "Artificial-Ice Plant."
     Cooks carrying baskets walked by. The shade slipped across them too.
     Dogs with tongues hanging  out ran up to the water tins attached to the
trunks  of trees.  With  their tails curled up into a loop, they lapped  the
warm water, extremely pleased with the Odessa city council for seeing  to it
that they did not go mad from thirst.
     All this was familiar, humdrum.
     But here was something to marvel at-a little cart with a pony harnessed
to it. Gavrik had never  seen such a little horse in all his life. It was no
bigger than a calf but otherwise exactly like a real horse.
     A  tan, fat-bellied little  thing  with a chocolate-coloured mane and a
small but bushy  tail, in a straw hat with holes for  the ears,  with shaggy
eyelashes raised,  it  stood  quietly and modestly, like  a well-bred little
girl, in the shade of the acacias at the entrance to a house.
     A group of children had gathered round it.
     Gavrik walked over  and stood for a  long time  in silence. He did  not
know how  to react to this phenomenon. There was no doubt about it: he liked
the little horse, but at the same time it irritated him.
     He inspected it from all sides. Yes, it  was a horse: hoofs,  forelock,
teeth. But how disgustingly small!
     "Call that a horse?" he said with scorn, wrinkling his nose.
     "It's  not  a  horse, it's not a horse," chanted a little girl with two
pigtails, squatting  in glee and clapping  her hands. "It's  not a horse  at
all. It's only a pony."
     "It  is a horse,"  Gavrik said gloomily. The very  next instant  he was
annoyed and ashamed at  having let himself  be drawn into  conversation with
such a beribboned little creature.
     "It's a pony, it's a pony!"
     "From  the  circus,"  Gavrik  remarked  in a  hoarse  bass,  as  though
addressing no one in particular. "An ordinary one from the circus."
     "It's not from the circus,  it's not from the circus! It's a pony,  and
it's delivering Nobel paraffin. See the tins?"
     Yes, in the cart stood shiny paraffin tins.
     This  came as  a  complete surprise to Gavrik. Paraffin,  as  everybody
knew, was bought in a shop in one's own bottle at a kopek a quart.
     But for it to be delivered  to homes in a  cart, and a cart  drawn by a
fancy pony-that was a bit too much!
     "It's a plain horse!" Gavrik retorted angrily as he walked away.
     "It's a pony! It's  a pony! It's a pony!" the little girl  called after
him like a parrot, jumping up and down and clapping her hands.
     "You're a pony  yourself,"  thought Gavrik. But unfortunately he had no
time for a real argument.
     After skirting  the  public  garden, through whose iron fence  came the
hot, dry fragrance of myrtle and thuja with  its tart little cones, the  boy
stopped, threw  back his head and stared for a rather long time at the clock
on the railway station.
     He had learned to tell time  only recently, and now he could not pass a
clock without stopping to reckon.
     He  still counted on his fingers  those strange little  sticks of Roman
numerals which were so unlike the usual figures  in arithmetic. He knew only
that the  top figure was twelve and that it was from there you had  to start
counting.
     He set  the fish tank down at  his feet. His  lips began to move. "One,
two,  three,  four,"  he  whispered, crinkling his forehead  and bending his
fingers back firmly.
     The small hand pointed to nine and the big one to six.
     "Nine and a half," the boy said with a sigh of satisfaction, wiping the
sweat from his nose with the tail of his shirt.
     That was what it looked like, but it would do no harm to check.
     "What time is it?"
     A gentleman in  a pongee jacket and  a  tropical  helmet  put  a golden
pince-nez to  his Roman nose, tilted his short grey beard, threw a glance at
the clock, and said quickly, "Nine-thirty."
     Gavrik was dumbfounded.
     "But doesn't it say nine and a half?"
     "That means it's nine-thirty," the man said sternly, without looking at
the boy. Then he climbed into a cab and drove off, holding his ivory-handled
walking stick between his knees.
     Gavrik  stood there for a while, his mouth with its missing teeth open,
trying to decide whether the gentleman had been making fun of him or whether
it was really so.
     Finally he raised the tank to his shoulder, hitched up his trousers and
continued on  his  way, turning  his  head  from side  to  side  and smiling
mistrustfully.
     So nine and a half  was the same as nine-thirty! Queer. Very queer.  At
any rate, it wouldn't hurt to ask someone who knew.

        13
     MADAM STOROZHENKO

     "Lobsters! Lobsters! Lobsters! Lobsters!"
     "Flat-fish! Flat-fish! Flat-fish!"
     "Live mackerel! Mackerel! Mackerel!"
     "Mullet! Mullet!"
     "Middies! Middies! Middies! Middies! Middies!"
     "Bullheads! Bullheads! Bullheads!"
     The loudest and shrillest  voices of all the  market women  belonged to
the fishwives: Fish Row was famous for that.
     You had to have the calm courage of Odessa housewives and cooks to walk
at a leisurely pace along that lane of tables, baskets and  vats piled  with
fish and lobsters and other shellfish.
     Under sheds and huge canvas sun-shades  the quivering,  gleaming riches
of the Black Sea lay spread out for all to behold.
     What a variety of shapes, colours and sizes!
     Nature  had done all she could to safeguard her wonderful creations and
protect them from destruction, to  make them as unnoticeable as  possible to
the human eye. She had camouflaged them in all the tints of the sea.
     Take that noble and expensive fish, the  mackerel, queen  of  the Black
Sea. Her taut body, as straight and smooth as a spindle, was coloured in the
most delicate moire shades ranging from sky-blue to deep-blue.
     This, Gavrik knew, was the colour of the sea  far from  shore, and just
where shoals of mackerel usually passed.
     A crafty creature, the mackerel!
     Although Gavrik saw mackerel every  day and could  spot  a shoal half a
mile away, he never failed to marvel at how beautiful and clever they were.
     Or take bullheads. Their haunt was the rocks near  the shore,  and also
the  sandy  bottom.  That  was  why they  were  brownish like  the rocks  or
yellowish like the sand.
     Just think of it!
     Then there were the big  flat-fish, which preferred the slimy bottom of
quiet   little  bays.   The  striking  thing   about  these  fish   was  the
greenish-black colour of their thick skin, covered with flat bony bumps like
seashells.  Flat-fish  had  both  their eyes  on the  upper  side,  and they
reminded you  of the charcoal drawings  children make  on fences:  a head in
profile, but with two eyes.
     True,  flat-fish  had  wax-coloured bellies, like a  sucking-pig's, but
they never showed them; they always lay at the bottom, hugging the sand.
     The boy marvelled at the craftiness of the flat-fish too.
     There was  also the mullet, a humpbacked little red-and-black fish with
big scales that looked blood-stained.
     Large pink seashells exactly like  them glittered at the bottom  of the
clearest bays.
     As  to silversides, these  swarmed  at the surface of the  sea near the
shore, where they  could  not be  told apart from the  silvery Hashes of the
morning sun.
     Yes,  Nature was crafty. But man, Gavrik knew, was  craftier. He placed
his nets, he cast his invisible fishing lines, he flashed his spoon-bait and
flies-and then these  fish, which  you could never notice in the sea, showed
all the splendour of their magic colours in the baskets and on the stalls of
the marketplace.
     Money for good tackle-that was the main thing!
     Looking for his  fishwife, the boy walked  past baskets  swarming  with
light-green lobsters.  They made  a rustling sound as they  reached  upwards
with nippers spread apart convulsively, like scissors.
     The silversides were glistening heaps of silver coins.
     Under  their wet netting the springy shrimps  made a clicking noise and
shot out salt in all directions.
     Shiny scales stuck to the boy's bare feet. His heels slid on fish guts.
     Scrawny  market  cats, their  eyes  insane,  with  pupils  narrowed  to
vertical  slits,  crept along  the ground in search of prey,  ears flattened
back and shoulder-blades jutting up rapaciously.
     Housewives  carrying  string  bags with  carrots  sticking out  of them
weighed thick slices of flat-fish in their hands.
     The sun was burning hot. The fish were dying.
     The market-woman Gavrik was looking for  sat on a child's bench under a
canvas sun-shade big enough for a giant, surrounded by baskets of fish.
     The  huge woman was dressed, despite the heat, in a winter  jacket with
puffed sleeves, and she had a sand-coloured shawl wrapped crosswise over her
bosom; across one shoulder hung a heavy money-bag.
     Gavrik stopped respectfully at a  distance  to wait until  she finished
bargaining with a customer.
     He  knew  very well that he and  Grandpa were completely dependent upon
this  woman,  and that  meant  he had  to be  as  polite  and  unassuming as
possible. If he had worn a hat he would have removed it. But he wore no hat,
and so he did the best he  could: he set the fish tank gently on the ground,
let  his arms hang at his  sides, and looked down at his bare shuffling feet
with their grey suede socks of dust reaching to the ankles.
     The customer was buying only two  dozen bullheads  but  the  bargaining
went on a frightfully long time.
     She walked away  ten times, and ten times she  came back. Ten times the
fishwife  picked up  the  brass pans of her  balance all  covered with  fish
scales, and ten times she threw them back into the basket of flat-fish.
     The fishwife gesticulated rapidly with her fleshy hands in their  black
knitted  mitts, not forgetting to hold her  little finger out at an  elegant
angle.
     She  ran her sleeve across  her  shiny purplish-red face with its black
moustache and grey ringlets  of hair  on the chin. She nervously  pushed big
iron hairpins back into place in her greasy jet-black hair.
     "Just  look  at  them,  madam,"  she cried hoarsely.  "You  won't  find
bullheads like these  anywhere else.  I  tell you, these bullheads are worth
their weight in gold!"
     "They're tiny," the  customer said, walking away in disdain. "Not  even
worth frying."
     "Come back,  madam! You say they're not worth frying? Where'll you find
bigger  ones?  Maybe from the Jews! Then go to 'em! You know  me. I'd  never
palm off small fry on a steady customer!"
     "Ten  kopeks a  dozen for these bullheads? Never! Not a kopek more than
eight."
     "Two dozen for nineteen."
     "For that money I'd rather go somewhere else and buy salmon."
     "My last  price is eighteen, madam. Take it or leave it. Where are  you
going, madam?"
     At  last the  deal  took  place. The  fishwife  gave  the  customer the
bullheads and threw the coins into her moneybag.
     Gavrik waited patiently until the fishwife took notice of him. She knew
he was there, but she pretended for a long time not to see him.
     Such was the custom of the market-place.  If you needed  money, you had
to wait. Nothing terrible about it. A person wouldn't die if he stood  there
a while.
     "Fresh fish!  Live  bullheads!  Flat-fish!  Flat-fish!  Flatfish!"  The
fishwife  paused  for  breath  and then suddenly  said, without  looking  at
Gavrik, "Well, show it here!"
     The boy opened the fish tank and moved it over to her.
     "Bullheads," he said respectfully.
     She dipped her paw into the tank and pulled some out with  a  practised
hand. She gave them a quick glance and then stared at Gavrik, her round eyes
as blue-black as Isabella grapes.
     "Well? Where's the bullheads?"
     Gavrik was silent.
     "Where's the bullheads, I ask you?"
     The boy sadly shifted his feet and gave a modest  smile, trying to turn
the unpleasant conversation into a joke.
     "Why, there they are, ma'am. You're holding them. Can't you see?"
     "Where's the bullheads?" the fishwife suddenly screamed, turning red as
a beet with rage. "Where are they?  Where? Show me. I don't see  'em.  D'you
mean to say what  I'm holding  in my  hand? These  ain't  bullheads -they're
lice! Anything here  worth  frying? Not a  thing! All  you ever bring  me is
small fry! Take your small fry to the Jews!"
     Gavrik was silent.
     He couldn't call them big bullheads, of course, but still they  weren't
as tiny as the screaming  fishwife made them out to be. However, he was  not
in a position to argue.
     When  the   fishwife  finished  shouting  she  coolly  transferred  the
bullheads from the tank to her basket, deftly counting them off by tens.
     Her  hands moved  so quickly  that Gavrik  was unable to keep count. He
felt she was cheating him. But there was no way  of checking, for there were
other bullheads in her basket.
     Who could tell which was which?
     Gavrik was struck with horror. He broke into a sweat from excitement.
     "To make it a round number, two hundred and fifty," said  the fishwife,
covering the basket with  a  strip of sacking. "Take you tank, and good-bye.
Tell  your  grandfather  he  still  owes  me  eighty kopeks. Tell him not to
forget. And tell him not to send me any more teenies-I won't take 'em!"
     The boy  was  dumbfounded. He tried to  say  something  but his  throat
contracted.
     The  fishwife was  not  paying  him  the  slightest  attention. She was
calling her wares again.
     "Flat-fish, flat-fish, flat-fish! Bullheads, bullheads, bullheads!"
     "Madam  Storozhenko,"  the  boy  finally  managed to  get  out,  "Madam
Storozhenko. . . ."
     She turned her head impatiently. "You still here? Well?"
     "Madam Storozhenko, how much are you paying me for a hundred?"
     "Thirty kopeks a hundred, seventy-five for the lot. You owed me a ruble
fifty-five and now you owe  me eighty kopeks. Tell that to your grandfather.
Good-bye."
     "Thirty kopeks a hundred!"
     Gavrik was so hurt and so angry he wanted to shout, to punch her in the
nose with all  his might, so that  blood flowed  from it.  Yes, so that  the
blood flowed. Or to bite her.
     But  instead he  gave  a quick, fawning  smile. "Madam Storozhenko," he
muttered, almost in tears, "but you always used to pay us forty-five."
     "You're lucky you're getting thirty for such trash. Now be off!"
     "But Madam Storozhenko, you're getting eighty for 'em. . . ."
     "Clear out and stop pestering me! It's my fish and  I set my own price.
I don't take no orders from you. Flatfish! Flat-fish! Flat-fish!"
     Gavrik looked at  Madam Storozhenko. She sat on her child's bench-huge,
unapproachable, stony.
     He could have told her  that Grandpa and he had no  money  at all, that
they  absolutely  had  to  buy bread,  and meat for bait, and that all  they
needed was fifteen or twenty kopeks. But was it worth humbling himself?
     The pride of fisherfolk spoke up in the boy.
     With his sleeve he wiped away the tears that  were  stinging his peeled
nose, blew  his nose into  the dust with two fingers, raised the  light fish
tank to his shoulder and walked off with  his rolling gait of the Black  Sea
fisherman.
     As he walked along he wondered where he could get some meat and bread.


        14
     "LOWER RANKS"

     Although,  as we have seen, Gavrik had a life of toil  and cares, quite
like  a grown-up, we must not forget that he was, after  all, only a  boy of
nine.
     He had friends with whom he  liked to play, run, scrap, catch sparrows,
shoot with catapults and do everything else all Odessa boys of poor families
did.
     He  belonged  to the category known as "street urchins",  and this gave
him a wide acquaintance.
     Nobody prevented him from  going into  any  courtyard or playing in any
street.
     He was as free as a bird. The whole city was his.
     Even the  freest bird, however, has  its favourite haunts, and Gavrik's
were the seaside streets in the  Otrada  and Maly Fontan districts. There he
was  an  unchallenged  king  among  the  boys,  who  envied  and admired his
independent life.
     Gavrik had many friends, but only one real chum, Petya.
     The simplest thing  would be to go and see  Petya  and put their  heads
together about bread and meat.
     Naturally, Petya  didn't have any  money,  especially  a  big  sum like
fifteen kopeks. There was no  use even thinking about  that. But Petya could
take a chunk of meat from the kitchen and some bread from the cupboard.
     Gavrik had been inside Petya's house once, as his guest last Christmas,
and he knew  very well that they had a  cupboard piled with bread  and  that
nobody gave it any notice. It would be no bother at all to bring out as much
as half a loaf. Those people didn't pay any attention to things like bread.
     But the trouble was he didn't know whether Petya had come back from the
country. He ought to  be back by now, of  course.  Several  times during the
summer Gavrik had gone to Petya's yard to find out. But Petya had been still
away.
     The  last time their cook, Dunya,  said they would  soon come. That was
about five days ago. Perhaps they were already there.
     From the  market Gavrik set out for  Petya's.  Luckily, it  was not far
away: Kulikovo Field and the corner of Kanatnaya, just opposite  the railway
station and next  to the Army Staff building. It was a big four-storey house
with  two front entrances.  And a  wonderful house it was; if you  wanted to
live like a lord, you couldn't find a better.
     In the first place, it was just the thing for street fights because  it
had two gateways: one leading out to Kulikovo Field, or simply Kulichki, and
the other  to  a marvellous vacant  lot with bushes, tarantula holes, and  a
rubbish-heap;  only a small  rubbish-heap,  true,  but an exceptionally rich
one.
     If you dug  properly in it, you could  always collect a  mass of useful
things-from chemist's vials to dead rats.
     Petya was lucky. It wasn't every chap had  a refuse-heap like that next
to his house!
     In the second place, little suburban trains drawn by  a tiny engine ran
past the house, so that you  didn't  have to go very far  to put a  cap or a
stone under the wheels.
     In the third place, the Army Staff building was next door.
     Behind  its  high stone  wall facing the  field lay a  mysterious world
guarded  day  and  night  by  sentries. Behind  that  wall were the rumbling
machines  of the Army  Staff printing  plant. And what interesting scraps of
paper the wind carried over the wall: ribbons, strips, vermicelli!
     The  windows  of  the staff clerks' quarters faced  the  field  too. By
standing on a rock one could look through the grating and see how the clerks
lived, those extraordinarily handsome, important  and dashing  young  men in
the long trousers of officers but with the shoulder straps of privates.
     Gavrik had  learned  from reliable sources  that the clerks belonged to
the ordinary "lower ranks", that is to say, were plain soldiers.  But what a
world of difference between them and the soldiers!
     With the possible exception of the kvass vendors, the staff clerks were
the most elegant, best-dressed and handsomest fellows in town.
     When they saw a clerk the  chambermaids from  the nearby houses  turned
pale and began to tremble and looked as though they would  faint any minute.
They mercilessly scorched their hair  and temples  with  curling-irons, they
dabbed their  noses  with tooth powder  and they  rouged  their  cheeks with
toffee paper. But the clerks paid no attention to them.
     To any Odessa soldier  a chambermaid  was a superior and unapproachable
being, but to a staff clerk she was no  more than  "a dull peasant" and  not
worthy of a glance.
     In their rooms  behind  the  grating the staff clerks sat on  iron beds
softly  strumming guitars; they were sad and lonely. They  sat without their
jackets, in  long trousers  with a  broad red  stitched  belting, and  clean
shirts with black neckties such as officers wore.
     If a staff  clerk appeared in the street of a  Sunday  evening, it  was
always arm in arm with two seamstresses wearing their hair puffed up high in
front.
     Staff  clerks were unbelievably rich. With his own eyes Gavrik once saw
one of them riding in a droshky.
     But strange as it  seemed, staff clerks  belonged to the "lower ranks".
At  the corner of Pirogovskaya  and Kulikovo Field Gavrik once saw, with his
own  eyes, a general  in silver shoulder straps striking a  clerk across the
mouth and shouting in a voice that sent shivers down Gavrik's back, "Is that
the way to stand, you dog? Is that the way?"
     The  clerk  stood  stiffly  at  attention  and  rolled  his  head,  his
light-blue  peasant  eyes bulging  like  a  common  soldier's.  "Sorry, Your
Excellency!" he muttered. "I'll never do it again!"
     It  was this  dual position that  made the staff  clerks, such strange,
wonderful and at the same time pathetic creatures, like fallen angels exiled
as punishment from heaven to earth.
     The life of the ordinary sentries, whose quarters were next door to the
staff clerks, was very interesting too.
     These soldiers also had two natures.
     One was when  they stood in  pairs, in full sentry uniform,  with their
cartridge belts, at the alabaster front entrance of the Army Staff building,
springing smartly  to attention  and presenting arms the  way sergeants did,
that is, shifting their well-greased bayonets slightly to the side  whenever
an officer came in or went out.
     The other was a plain, domestic, peasant nature, when they sat in their
barracks   sewing   on   buttons,   polishing   their   boots   or   playing
draughts-"dames", as they called it.
     Bowls  and  wooden spoons  were always drying on their windowsills, and
there were many left-over pieces of black army bread which they readily gave
to beggars.
     They readily talked to boys, too, but the questions they asked and  the
words they used made the boys blush to their ears and run away horrified.
     The two courtyards were asphalted and were just the place  for  playing
hopscotch. Fine squares  and  numbers  could be  drawn  on  the asphalt with
charcoal or chalk. The smooth sea pebbles slid across it wonderfully.
     If the  janitor lost his temper at the hullabaloo raised by the playing
children and  went  after them with his broom, there was nothing easier than
running into the next courtyard.
     Besides, the house had wonderful and mysterious cellars with woodbins.
     It  was simply marvellous to hide in those cellars  among the  firewood
and  various junk, in the dry, dusty darkness, while out in the yard  it was
bright daylight.
     In a word, the house where Petya lived was an excellent place  in every
respect.
     Gavrik entered the yard and stopped  under the windows of Petya's flat,
which was on the second storey.
     The  yard,  split  diagonally  by  the  distinct  midday   shadow,  was
absolutely empty. Not a boy in sight. Evidently they were all in the country
or at the seaside.
     Shuttered windows. The hot, lazy stillness of noon. Not a sound.
     But  from somewhere  far  away-perhaps even  as  far as  Botanicheskaya
Street-came  the  spluttering and  popping  noise of  a red-hot  frying pan.
Judging by the smell, it was grey mullet being fried in sunflower oil.
     "Petya!" Gavrik called, his hands cupped round his mouth.
     Silence.
     "Pe-et-ya!"
     Closed shutters.
     "Pe-e-e-et-ya-a-a!!"
     The kitchen window opened and the white-kerchiefed head  of Dunya,  the
cook, looked out.
     "They haven't come yet." It was the usual reply, spoken quickly.
     "When will they?"
     "We expect them this evening."
     The boy spat on the ground and rubbed the spittle with his foot. He was
silent for a while.
     "Please, ma'am, as soon as he comes tell him Gavrik was here."
     "Yes, Your Honour."
     "Tell him I'll drop round tomorrow morning."
     "It'll be  quite all right  if you  don't. Our  Petya will be going  to
school this year. And that means good-bye to all your monkey-business."
     "Never mind," Gavrik muttered dourly. "Only don't  forget  to tell him.
Will you?"
     "I'll tell him, don't cry."
     "Good-bye, ma'am."
     "Good-bye, you beauty."
     Dunya, it seemed, was so fed up with doing nothing all summer long that
she had descended to an exchange of banter with a little ragamuffin.
     Gavrik hitched up his trousers and strolled out of the yard.
     A bad business! What next?
     He could,  of course, go to  his big brother Terenti at Near Mills. But
in the first place, Near Mills was  a long  way off, and  the walk there and
back  would take  a good four  hours. And in the  second  place,  after  the
disturbances he didn't know whether Terenti  would be at home  or not. Quite
likely he was in hiding somewhere or else had nothing to eat himself.
     What sense was there in wearing out his feet for nothing? They were his
own, weren't they?
     The  boy walked out on the field and  looked in at the barracks windows
as he passed by.
     The soldiers had just finished their midday meal and were rinsing their
spoons on the windowsill. A pile of leftover bread was drying  under the hot
sun.
     The bread was black  and  spongy, with  a  chestnut-coloured crust that
actually looked sour, and flies were crawling over it.
     Gavrik stopped near a window, entranced by the sight of such abundance.
     He  was silent for a while, and then to his own surprise he blurted out
roughly, "Give me some bread!"
     But he immediately remembered himself, picked  up his  tank  and walked
away. "I didn't  mean it,"  he  said, showing the soldiers  his  gap-toothed
smile. "I don't want any."
     The soldiers  crowded at the windowsill, calling  and whistling to  the
boy. "Hi there! Where you running to? Come back!"
     They stretched out pieces  of bread  to him through  the grating. "Take
it. Don't be afraid."
     He stopped in indecision.
     "Hold out your shirt."
     There was so much  good-natured gaiety in their shouts  and in the fuss
they were making that Gavrik saw there would be nothing humiliating about it
if he did take some bread from them. He walked back and held out his shirt.
     Chunks of bread flew into it.
     "Won't do you any harm to try our army bread and get used to it!"
     In addition to about five pounds of bread, the  soldiers  gave Gavrik a
good helping of yesterday's porridge.
     He stowed it all neatly into the fish tank, accompanied by earthy jokes
about the  effect  of army rations on the stomach, set out for home to  help
Grandpa mend the line.
     Late that afternoon they put out to sea again.

        15
     THE BOAT AT SEA

     When he saw that the steamer did not stop and did not lower a boat, but
continued  on her course, the sailor  calmed down a bit  and  began to think
clearly.
     His first concern was to throw off some of his clothes; they interfered
with his swimming.
     The  jacket was  water-logged  and as heavy  as iron,  but it  came off
easiest of all. He did it in three movements, turning over several times and
spitting out the bitter, salty sea water.
     For a while the jacket floated along after him with its  sleeves spread
out, like a living thing; it did not want to part from  its master and tried
to wind itself round his legs.
     After the sailor had kicked  the jacket a few times it  fell behind and
slowly sank, swaying and dropping from layer to layer until it  was lost  in
the depths  to which the  cloudy shafts of the late afternoon light  faintly
penetrated.
     The boots gave him the most trouble of all. They stuck as though filled
with glue.
     He furiously scraped  one  foot against  the other to  throw off  those
coarse navy boots with the  rust-coloured  tops which  had given  him  away.
Paddling with  his  arms, he danced in  the water;  one minute his head went
under, the next his shoulders reared up over the surface.
     But the boots would not yield. He filled his lungs  with air  and then,
dropping his  head under the surface, tugged at the slippery  heel of one of
the  boots,  mentally letting out a string  of the vilest oaths  and cursing
everything under the sun.
     At last he pulled off that damned boot. The second came easier.
     However, the  relief Rodion felt  when he had got rid  of his boots and
trousers  was accompanied  by  an overpowering weariness. The  sea water, of
which he had swallowed a good deal despite all his  precautions, had set his
throat afire. Besides, he had smacked the  water painfully  hard in his dive
from the ship.
     The past two  days he had had hardly any  sleep, had walked about forty
or fifty miles, and had been under  great nervous strain. Now everything was
going dark before his eyes. Or was that because evening was falling fast?
     The water had lost its daytime colour. The surface had become a bright,
glossy heliotrope, while the depths were a frightening colour, almost black.
     From  where  he  was, the sailor could not see  the shore  at all.  The
horizon  had narrowed  almost  to nothingness. The edge of the cloudless sky
was  touched  with  a  transparent  green  afterglow, and  a  faint,  barely
perceptible star twinkled in it.
     That showed where the shore was and which way he had to swim.
     All  he now had on  was his  shirt and underdrawers,  and these were no
hindrance. But his head  whirled, and the joints of his arms and legs ached.
With every minute he found it harder to swim.
     At  times he felt  he was losing consciousness. At others he was on the
verge of vomiting.  Every  now  and then he  was seized  by  a brief, sudden
paroxysm of fear. His loneliness and the depth frightened him.
     Never before had he felt like that. He must be ill, he thought.
     His  short wet  hair  seemed dry and hot  and  so coarse that  he could
almost feel it pricking his head.
     There was not  a soul in sight. Overhead, in the empty darkening air, a
sturdy-winged gull with a body as plump as a cat's flew by. In its long bent
beak was a small fish.
     A new spasm of fear gripped the sailor. He felt that any minute now his
heart would burst and he would go to the bottom. He wanted to cry out but he
could not unclench his teeth.
     Suddenly he heard the  soft splash of oars. A few  moments later he saw
the black silhouette of a boat.
     He mustered all his strength  and struck out after the  boat, thrashing
his feet desperately. He caught up with it and succeeded in grabbing hold of
its high stern.
     Hand over hand he managed somehow to pull himself to  the  boat's side,
which was lower, and with an effort he looked in; the boat tilted.
     "Come now, none  of your tricks!" Gavrik shouted  in a threatening bass
when he saw the wet head sticking out over the gunwale.
     The boy was not at all surprised to see the head. Odessa was famous for
its swimmers.
     Some swam out  as far as  three  or four miles  from shore and returned
late in the evening. This was probably one of them.
     If  he was  such a hero he had no  business catching  hold of  people's
boats for a rest. He ought to keep right  on swimming. They'd put in  a good
day's work and were tired enough as it is, without dragging him!
     "Come  now, stop fooling! Push  off  or I'll let  you have it with this
oar!"
     To give more weight to his words he bent over as if to take the oar out
of the rowlock, exactly the way Grandpa did on such occasions.
     "I'm-ill-" the head said, panting.
     Over  the  side stretched  a  trembling arm  to which  the sleeve of an
embroidered shirt was plastered.
     This, Gavrik saw at once, was not a swimmer: people didn't  go swimming
in the sea in embroidered shirts.
     "What's the matter-your boat sink?"
     The  sailor was  silent. His head and arms  hung lifelessly  inside the
boat while his legs, clad in drawers, dragged in the water. He had fainted.
     Gavrik and  Grandpa dropped  their oars and with difficulty  pulled the
limp but frightfully heavy body into the boat.
     "How hot he is!" said Grandpa, catching his breath.
     Although the sailor was wet and shivering, his whole body burned with a
dry, unhealthy heat.
     "Want a drink?" asked Gavrik.
     The  sailor did not reply. He merely rolled  his glazed,  unseeing eyes
and stirred his swollen lips.
     The  boy offered  him  the water-keg.  He  pushed it  aside weakly  and
swallowed his saliva in revulsion. A second later he vomited.
     His head fell and banged against the thwart.
     Then, like a blind  man, he reached  out  in the darkness for  the keg,
found it and, his teeth chattering  against the oaken side, managed to  gulp
down some water.
     Grandpa shook his head. "A bad business!"
     "Where are you from?" asked the boy.
     Again  the sailor swallowed his  saliva. He tried  to say something but
only managed to stretch out his arm and then dropped it lifelessly.
     "To the  devil with him!" he muttered indistinctly. "Don't  let anybody
see  me. I'm  a  sailor-hide me somewhere-or else they'll  hang  me-it's the
truth, so help me God-by the true and holy-"
     He  evidently wanted  to make the sign of the Cross  but couldn't raise
his hand.  He tried to smile at  his weakness but instead a film passed over
his eyes.
     Again he lost consciousness.
     Grandfather and grandson exchanged glances but neither said a word.
     Times were such that keeping mum was the best policy.
     They carefully  laid  the  sailor on  the  floor-slats,  through  which
unbailed  water splashed up,  placed the keg under his head and sat  down at
the oars.
     They  rowed slowly,  idling along  so  as to  reach shore  when it  was
altogether dark.  The darker  the better. Before landing  they circled about
for a while near the familiar crags.
     Fortunately, there was no one on the shore.
     It was a warm, dark night full of stars and crickets.
     Grandfather and grandson pulled the  boat up on the beach.  The pebbles
rustled mysteriously.
     While Grandpa remained behind to guard the sick man Gavrik ran ahead to
make certain the coast was clear.
     He soon  returned. From his soundless footsteps,  Grandpa gathered that
all was well.  With great difficulty, but gently, they pulled the sailor out
of the boat and stood him on his legs, propping him from both sides.
     The sailor put his arm round  Gavrik's neck and pressed him to his  now
dry and extraordinarily hot body. He did not realise, of course, how heavily
he was leaning on the boy.
     Gavrik  braced  his  legs  more firmly.  "Can you walk?" he  asked in a
whisper.
     The sailor did not reply but took a  few swaying  steps forward, like a
sleepwalker.
     "Easy does it, easy does it," urged Grandpa, supporting the sailor from
behind.
     "It's not far. Only a couple of steps."
     They finally made their way up the little  hill. No one  saw them.  And
even if anyone had, he would hardly have paid any attention  to that reeling
white figure supported by an old man and a boy.
     It was a familiar enough scene: a drunken  fisherman was being led home
by his relatives, and if he wasn't swearing or bawling songs that was simply
because he had taken too much.
     The minute  they got the sailor into the hot and smelly darkness of the
hut he collapsed on the plank-bed.
     Grandpa covered  the tiny window with a piece of plywood from  a broken
box  and  closed the  door tightly.  Only  then  did  he  light  the  small,
chimneyless paraffin lamp, turning down the wick as low as possible.
     The lamp stood in the corner, on a shelf covered with an old newspaper.
     On the same shelf lay  the army bread wrapped in a damp rag  to keep it
fresh, a cup made out of a tin can, the soldiers' porridge  in a  tin  bowl,
two wooden spoons, and a big blue seashell with coarse grey salt in it-in  a
word, a poverty-stricken but neat household array.
     An  old smoke-blackened icon was nailed in the corner  above the shelf:
an  oblong  coffee-coloured stain that was  the face  of  St.  Nicholas  the
Miracle Worker-the protector of fishermen-looked  down  with glittering eyes
painted in the manner of the old Kiev school.
     A  wisp of smoke and the lamp-light  streamed  up the ancient face from
below. It seemed to be alive, to be breathing.
     For a long time now Grandpa had believed in neither  God nor the devil.
He had  not seen them bring either good or evil into his  life.  But in  St.
Nicholas the Miracle Worker he did believe.
     How could he not believe in this saint who helped him  in his difficult
and dangerous occupation? Especially since this occupation, fishing, was the
most Important thing in Grandpa's life.
     But lately, to tell the truth, the miracle worker had been falling down
on the job.
     When Grandpa was younger and  stronger, when he had had good tackle and
a sail, the miracle worker had been of some use.
     But the older Grandpa  became  the less help did he get from his patron
saint.
     Of course, when there was no  sail,  when  the old  man's  strength was
waning from day  to day, and when there was no money to buy  meat for  bait,
the fish  caught would  be  small  and  good  for nothing, be  he  the  most
miraculous miracle worker the world had ever seen. And so there was no sense
expecting anything of him.
     Yes, even the miracle worker was stumped when it came to offsetting old
age and poverty.
     For all that, there were times  when Grandpa felt bitter and hurt as he
looked at the stern but useless  saint.  True, he  was no  expense and  hung
there in his corner without disturbing anybody. Oh well, let him hang there:
perhaps he'd do a good turn some day. In time the old man had come to take a
patronising and even somewhat ironical attitude towards the miracle worker.
     Returning to the hut with a catch-and the catch  these  days was almost
always pitifully small-Grandpa would  grumble,  looking  at  the embarrassed
miracle worker out of the corner of his eye, "Well, you old codger, so we're
empty-handed again, eh? This is such trash  it  makes me blush to take it to
market. They're not bullheads but lice."
     Then, so as not to hurt  the saint's feelings too  much,  he would add,
"It's only  natural. Would a real big bullhead ever go for shrimps? A  real,
well-fed  bullhead's  ready  to spit  on a  shrimp.  What  a  real, well-fed
bullhead wants is meat. But where'll we get it, eh? You can't  buy meat with
a miracle, can you? So you see?"
     Now,  however,  the  miracle  worker was  farthest from the  old  man's
thoughts. He  was greatly worried about the sailor.  And not  so much by his
fever  and  unconsciousness as by his premonition of mortal danger from some
unnamed source.
     Naturally, Grandpa did  have  an idea of what it  was all about, but to
help the man he would have to know a little more.
     As  luck  would  have  it, however,  the  sailor  was  unconscious  and
feverish; he lay sprawled out on  the patchwork  quilt,  staring straight in
front of him with open but unseeing eyes.
     One of his hands hung down from the bed. On the other, which lay on his
chest, Grandpa saw a blue anchor.
     Every now and then the  sailor attempted to spring up; moaning, the hot
sweat pouring from him, unconscious, he would bite his hand as though trying
to bite out the anchor, as if once the  anchor were gone he  would instantly
feel better.
     Grandpa forced him to lie down again and wiped his forehead. "Lie down,
now," he urged. "Lie quiet, I tell you. And go to sleep, don't be afraid. Go
to sleep."
     Out in the  vegetable patch Gavrik was boiling  water in  a cauldron to
make the  sick man some  tea. Not real tea,  that is,  but  a  brew  of  the
fragrant  herb which Grandpa gathered  in the nearby hills in May, and  then
dried and used instead of tea.

        16
     "TURRET GUN, SHOOT!"

     They passed a fitful night.
     The sailor tore at the shirt on his chest. He was suffocating.
     Grandpa put out the lamp and opened the door to let in fresh air.
     The sailor saw the starry sky but he could not understand what it  was.
The night breeze blew into the hut and cooled his head.
     Gavrik lay in the weeds near the door, his ears attuned to the faintest
rustle. He did not close an eye  until morning.  His  elbow turned numb from
lying on it.
     Grandpa made a bed for himself on the  earthen floor of  the hut but he
did not sleep either; he listened  to the  crickets, to the waves and to the
moans of the sick man, who from time to time sprang up excitedly and shouted
in a weak, colourless voice, "Turret gun, shoot! Koshuba! Turret, give it to
them!" and other such nonsense.
     Grandpa would take him firmly by  the shoulders,  shake him  gently and
whisper  straight into his hot, feverish mouth, "Lie quiet. For the sake  of
the Lord God himself, don't raise a row. Lie quiet. What a trial!"
     Little by little the sailor, grinding his teeth, would quieten down.
     Who was this strange patient?
     Rodion Zhukov  was  one  of  the seven hundred  men of  the  battleship
Potemkin who had gone ashore in Rumania.
     He in no way stood out among the other men of the mutinous ship.
     From the first  minute of the uprising,  from that very minute when the
commander of  the battleship  dropped  in horror  and despair  to his  knees
before the  crew, when the first rifle shots rang out and the dead bodies of
certain officers were  thrown  overboard, when  the sailor named Matyushenko
ripped off the door  of the Admiral's cabin, that very cabin past which they
still  could  not walk without  a feeling  of  fright-from  that very minute
Rodion Zhukov lived, thought, and acted as did most of the other sailors: in
a sort of haze, in a  state of feverish exaltation until the time  when they
had to surrender to the Rumanians and disembark at Constantsa.
     Rodion had never before set foot in a foreign land. And a foreign land,
like useless freedom, is broad and bitter.
     The Potemkin stood quite close to the pier.
     Among the  feluccas, freighters, yawls, yachts and cutters, and side by
side  with  an emaciated-looking  Rumanian cruiser, the grey three-funnelled
battleship was absurdly huge.
     The flag of St.  Andrew, like a white envelope crossed with blue lines,
still hung aloft, above the gun-turrets, boats and yards.
     But suddenly it quivered, fell limp, and slid down in short spurts.
     Rodion then took off his  sailor cap with  both hands and bowed so  low
that  the ends of the new ribbons of  St. George spread out gently over  the
dust, like those orange-and-black country flowers.
     "It's  a dirty  shame! Twelve-inch  guns,  enough  ammunition to last a
month,  and  crack  gunners, every mother's son of  them.  We ought  to have
listened to Dorofei Koshuba. He was right when he said we ought to throw the
lousy  petty officers  overboard, sink the  Georgi  Pobedonosets and land  a
force in Odessa. We would have  roused the whole  Odessa  garrison,  all the
workers, the whole Black Sea! Oh, Koshuba, Koshuba, if only we'd listened to
you! What a hell of a mess we're in!"
     Rodion bowed to his beloved ship for the last time.
     "Never mind," he said through his teeth, "never mind. We won't give in.
We'll rouse the whole of Russia all the same!"
     With his last money he bought a  civilian outfit, and a few days later,
at night, he reached Russian territory by crossing the estuary of the Danube
near Vilkovo.
     His plan was to make his way across the steppe to Akkerman, and then on
a  barge  or a boat to Odessa. From Odessa  it would be  simple to reach his
native village of Nerubaiskoye, and there he would decide his next move.
     He knew only one thing for certain: that all the roads to the past were
closed  to him, that  he was cut  off once and for all both from the servile
life of a sailor on the tsar's battleship, and from the hard peasant life at
home,  in  the  clay  hut  with  the  dark-blue  walls  and  the  light-blue
window-frames, standing among pink and yellow hollyhocks.
     Now  it  was either  the  gallows  or  going into  hiding, starting  an
uprising, setting fire to landowners' manors, reaching the city and locating
the revolutionary headquarters.
     He began to feel ill on  the road but stopping was out of the  question
and he continued on his way.
     And now.. . . What's the matter with him? Where is  he? Why  are  stars
rocking in the doorway? And are they really stars?
     Like a dark sea, night engulfs Rodion.
     The stars gather into clusters, flare up, and form  a low-lying row  of
Quarantine lights before his  eyes. The  city  breaks  into  commotion.  The
trestle  bridge  in  the port  bursts  into flames.  Running men  lose their
direction in the raging fire.  Rifle volleys smack  down on the roadway like
long steel rails.
     The night is a rocking  ship's deck. The bright circle of a searchlight
skims along the winding  shore, making  the corners of houses glow white-hot
and  windows  glare  dazzlingly; and  out  of the  darkness it snatches  the
figures  of  running   soldiers,   ragged  red   flags,   ammunition-wagons,
gun-carriages, overturned horse-trams.
     And then he sees himself in the gun-turret. The gunner glues his eye to
the range-finder. The turret revolves smoothly, bringing the empty, shining,
mirror-like, grooved barrel to bear on the city. Stop! Now it is directly on
a line  with  the blue  cupola of the  theatre where an imposing  general is
holding a war council against the insurgents.
     The turret telephone buzzes faintly and monotonously.
     Or can that be crickets in the  steppe? No,  it's the telephone. With a
slow clang the electric hoist brings up a shell from the magazine. It  sways
on the chains and comes straight into Rodion's hands.
     Or can that be a cool melon instead of a shell? Ah, what a joy  to bite
into a juicy melon! But no, it's a shell. "Turret, shoot!"
     That very same instant there is a ringing in his ears, as if some giant
hand outside has struck the armour of the turret like a tambourine. There is
a flash of fire. The smell of a burning celluloid comb pours over him.
     The entire breadth of the roadstead shudders. The boats  begin to rock.
A strip of iron comes down between the ship and the city. An "over".
     Rodion's hands  are flaming hot. Then again the  crickets meander in  a
crystal stream among the close-set stars and the weeds.
     Or can that  chirping be the telephone? Now the second shell crawls out
of the hoist  and into Rodion's  hands. Now we'll  finish  off that general!
"Turret, shoot!"
     "Lie down and stop your yelling. Want a drink? Lie quiet."
     A  second strip  crosses the bay.  Again an "over". But never mind, the
third time we won't miss. And there are plenty of shells. A magazine full of
them.
     In his weary hands the third shell feels lighter than a feather and yet
heavier than a house.
     Fire it  as quickly  as possible, send smoke pouring  out of  that blue
cupola-and then things'll roll along!
     But  why has  the telephone  stopped  chirping, why  have  the crickets
stopped tinkling? Have they all dropped dead there overhead?
     Or is that the  dawn, so  quiet and so pink? Smoothly the turret  turns
back.  "Cease firing!" The  shell slips  out  of his  lowered hands  and  is
carried  back into the  magazine,  with  a rattle  of  the hoist chains. But
no-the cup has slipped from his fingers  and water  is trickling slowly from
the bed to the floor. And then all is quiet, oh, so quiet.
     "What's  this? They  betrayed freedom,  the  damned swine! They  turned
cowards! Once  you start fighting you've got  to fight to the end! To  leave
not a single stone standing!"
     "Shoot, turret gun, shoot!"
     "Oh, Lord, oh, St.  Nicholas, holy  miracle worker! Lie  down and drink
some more water. What a misfortune!"
     The pink quietness of dawn lays a tender and soothing hand on  Rodion's
inflamed cheek. Far away on the gilded bluff the cocks begin to crow.

        17
     THE OWNER OF THE SHOOTING GALLERY

     After talking things over, grandfather and grandson decided not to show
the sick man to anybody for the time  being, let alone  send him to the city
hospital, where they would most certainly ask to see his papers.
     In  Grandpa's  opinion the sailor had a plain, ordinary  fever,  and it
would soon pass. Then it would be up to him to think of what to do next.
     Meanwhile it had  grown completely light. It  was time to take the boat
out again. The sick man no longer slept.
     Weakened by his sweating during the  night,  he lay  motionless  on his
back, looking up with  conscious, attentive eyes at the  icon of the miracle
worker and the bunch of fresh cornflowers stuck behind its dark, time-warped
board.
     "Your head clear?" asked Grandpa, coming up to the bed.
     The  patient moved  his lips as though  trying to  say "yes".  "Feeling
better?"
     He dropped his eyelids in sign of  affirmation.  Grandpa glanced at the
bread and porridge on  the shelf. "Like something to eat?" The sailor  shook
his head weakly.
     "Well, as you like.  Listen, son.  We have to go  out in  the boat  for
bullheads, understand? We'll leave you here by yourself  and lock the  door.
You can trust us. We're Black Sea folk, the same as you. Understand? You lie
here nice and quiet. If anybody knocks, don't say a word. Gavrik and I'll do
our work and then we'll come right back. I'm leaving you  a cup of water. If
you feel  thirsty  take  a drink, it  won't hurt you.  And don't worry about
anything at all. You can depend on us. Understand?"
     The  old  man said "Understand?" after every other word, talking to the
sailor as though he were a child.
     The sailor forced a smile to his eyes, and from time to time he dropped
his lids, as if to say, "Don't worry. I understand. Thanks."
     The  fishermen locked him  in  and went out in the  boat. They returned
four hours later to find everything in order. The patient was asleep.
     This time they had had luck.
     They had taken about three hundred and fifty fine big bullheads off the
line.  Grandpa gave the  miracle worker a pleased look, chewed  his wrinkled
lips,  and  remarked, "Not bad. Not at all bad today. They're big ones, even
though we did use shrimps. God bless you."
     But the miracle  worker,  fully conscious of his powers, looked down at
Grandpa sternly, haughtily even, as if he wanted to say,  "And  you  doubted
me, called me an old codger. You're the one who's an old codger."
     Grandpa  decided to take the bullheads  to market himself. It  was high
time  he had  it  out with Madam Storozhenko. After all, no matter how  much
fish he brought her he always remained in debt  and never saw any hard cash.
In that case what was the use of fishing?
     Today  was just  the day for that talk. With these select  bullheads he
could look her straight in the eye.
     Naturally Gavrik would have liked to go along with him to market. Then,
on the way back, he could see Petya and  finally get a drink of kvass at the
corner.
     But  leaving the sailor alone was risky  because this was Sunday and  a
crowd of people would probably come down to the beach from the city.
     Grandpa lifted  the wet  fish tank to his  shoulder and shuffled off to
market. Gavrik poured fresh  water into the  cup, covered the sailor's  feet
against the flies, hung the padlock on  the door, and went out for a stroll.
Not far away, on the  beach, were various places of  entertainment: a little
restaurant  with  a  garden  and  a  skittle-alley,  a  shooting gallery,  a
merry-go-round,   automatic  dynamometers,   stands  where  you  could   buy
soda-water and Turkish delight-in short, a small  fair-ground. The place was
a real feast for the boy's eyes.
     The  morning  service had not yet  ended. The pealing  of church  bells
floated above the bluffs.
     And every now  and  then a snow-white cloud as round and bright as that
sound of the bells was wafted across the sky by the breeze, although down at
the beach no wind could be felt at all.
     It  was  early for  the real  fun, but several well-dressed city people
were  hovering  about the merry-go-round waiting for the  canvas cover to be
taken off.
     From  the skittle-alley came the slow, cast-iron rumbling of the  heavy
ball as it rolled down the  narrow board. The ball  rolled  an awfully  long
time and its  noise  grew fainter and fainter until suddenly, after a  short
silence, the  soft musical clink of scattered  pins came  through the yellow
acacias growing by the fence.
     Every once in  a while a report  resounded from  the shooting  gallery.
Sometimes it would be followed by the crash of a broken bottle, or the whirr
of a moving target.
     The shooting gallery lured Gavrik irresistibly.
     He walked over to it and stopped near the door. Greedily he breathed in
the smell of gunpowder, a bluish-leaden smell like nothing else on earth. He
could even feel its peculiar sourish and choky taste on his tongue.
     And those guns, so tantalising in their special racks! The small butts,
expertly made out  of wood as heavy  as iron, with a  sharp network of lines
cut into  it  on the places where you held  it, so  that your hand would not
slip. The thick, long barrel of burnished blue steel with the small hole  of
the muzzle, no larger than  a pea. The blue steel sight, and the bolt handle
that moved up and down so smoothly and simply.
     Even the very richest  boys dreamed of owning a gun like  that, a Monte
Cristo.  This  was a word that made  your  heart  miss a  beat.  It  had  an
all-embracing  meaning: fabulous wealth, happiness, glory, manliness. Owning
a Monte Cristo was even more than having your own bicycle.
     A boy  who had  a Monte Cristo was known far beyond the street in which
he lived.  And he was referred to in this way:  "You  know, the Volodka from
Richelieu Street who has a Monte Cristo."
     Gavrik, of course, could never dream  of owning a Monte Cristo. Or even
of firing one, for that was terribly dear: five kopeks a shot. You had to be
awfully rich for that.
     Gavrik could dream only of aiming from the  wonderful gun. Occasionally
the owner of the shooting gallery gave him that pleasure.
     Now there was a visitor in the gallery,  so it was out of the question.
Perhaps when he left Gavrik would ask the owner, and then. . ..
     But  the visitor  was in no hurry  to leave. He  stood  there with  his
sandaled  feet planted wide apart and instead  of shooting  was talking with
the proprietor.
     When  the  proprietor happened  to  glance his way, Gavrik  greeted him
respectfully, "Many happy returns of the day."
     He acknowledged the greeting with a dignified nod, as became  the owner
of such  an unusual  place of amusement.  That was a lucky sign. It meant he
was in a good mood and might very well let you handle a Monte Cristo.
     Encouraged, Gavrik came closer, right into the doorway.
     With eager, admiring  eyes  he  examined the  pistols hanging above the
counter, the branched rifle-support, and the various mechanical targets, one
of which appealed to him especially.
     This was a Japanese battleship, with guns and a flag, riding the garish
green  waves of a  tin sea.  Out of the  sea jutted a rod topped by a little
metal circle, and if you hit that circle the battleship broke in  two with a
bang and went to the bottom, a fan-shaped tin geyser rising in its place.
     Naturally,  among the hares with  the drums,  the  ballet  dancers, the
anglers with  a shoe at the end  of their line, and the bottles moving along
one after  another on  an  endless belt,  the Japanese battleship held first
place both for the brilliance of its idea and its superb execution.
     Everybody knew that only a short while  ago  the Japanese had  sent the
whole  Russian  fleet to  the  bottom at  Tsushima,  and  there were  always
visitors who thirsted for revenge on the "Japs".
     The gallery had, besides, a real fountain. It was set going only when a
visitor asked  for  it.  A celluloid  ball  put on  top of  the jet  by  the
proprietor would be flung  up and turned round,  then  suddenly dropped  and
just as suddenly lifted. This was  a real  miracle, a mystery of  nature. To
hit that ball was one of the hardest things in the world.  Sometimes men got
so  excited they  shot  at it ten  or fifteen times, and almost always  they
missed.
     But whoever  did hit  the  ball was entitled to an  extra  shot free of
charge.
     "So  you  say  nothing unusual happened here  yesterday  evening?"  the
visitor  remarked,  continuing  the  conversation.  He  was  toying  with  a
beautiful gun; in his huge paws it seemed tiny.
     "Not as far as I know." "Hm."
     The man ran his eye over the targets.  He took off  his blue pince-nez,
which left two coral dents on his fleshy nose, and aimed at a hare holding a
drum. But then he changed his mind and lowered the gun.
     "Didn't any of the fishermen hereabouts mention anything?"
     "Not a thing."
     "Hm."
     The visitor picked up the Monte Cristo, then lowered it again.
     "I heard, though, that a man fell  off the Turgenev yesterday  evening,
opposite the shore here. Heard anything about that?" "Not a thing."
     Gavrik  caught  his  breath  sharply.  He felt as  though a  bucket  of
ice-cold  water had been poured  over him. His heart contracted  so that  he
could no longer hear it. His legs grew limp. He was afraid to move.
     "I  heard that  a  man  jumped off the  steamer,  a man  the police are
looking for. Just opposite the shore here. Know anything about it?"
     "This is the firs