ch  time I lifted my head Katya  quivered  and said, "Smashing,
eh?"
     At last I sprang to my feet.
     "The lactometer!"  I yelled and  ran like  mad towards  the  dust-heap.
"Where is it?"
     At the spot where I had stuck it in the snow there was a deep hole.
     "It's exploded!"
     Katya  was still sitting  in the snow. Her face was pale  and her  eyes
shone.
     "Silly ass, it was firedamp that exploded,"  she  said scornfully. "And
now  you'd better run for  it, because the policeman will soon pop-and he'll
nab you. He won't catch me though."
     "The lactometer!"  I  repeated in  despair, feeling that my  lips  were
beginning to quiver and my face  twitch. "Nikolai Antonich sent me for it. I
put it in the snow. Where is it?"
     Katya got up. There was a frost in the yard and she was without  a hat,
her  dark hair parted  in the middle and  one plait stuffed in hef  mouth. I
wasn't looking at her at the time and didn't remember this until afterwards.
     "I've saved your life," she said with a little sniff. "You'd have  been
killed on  the  spot, hit  right in the  back. You owe your life to me. What
were you doing here around my firedamp anyway?"
     I did not answer. I was choking with fury.
     "I would  have you know, though," she  added solemnly, "that even if it
had been  a  cat  coming near the gas I should have saved it just  the same.
Makes no difference to me."
     I  walked out of the yard in silence. But where was I to go? I couldn't
go back to the school-that much was clear.
     Katya caught up with me at the gate.
     "Hey, you, Nikolai Antonich!" she shouted. "Where are you off to? Going
to snitch?"
     I went for her. Did I enjoy it! I paid her back  for everything-for the
ruined lactometer, for the tip-tilted nose, for my not being able to go back
to school and for her having saved my life when nobody asked her to.
     She gave as good as  she got, though. Stepping back, she planted a blow
in my  stomach. I grabbed her by the plait and poked her nose into the snow.
She leapt to her feet.
     "That wasn't fair, your  backheeling,"  she said briskly. "If it wasn't
for  that I'd  have laid into you good and proper. I thrash  all the boys in
our form.  What  form are you in? Wasn't it you  who helped Grandma to carry
her bag? You're in the third form, aren't you?"
     "Yes," I said drearily.
     She looked at me.
     "Fancy  making  all that  fuss  over  a  silly thermometer,"  she  said
contemptuously. "If you like I'll say it was me who did  it.  I  don't care.
Wait a minute."
     She  ran off and was  back in  a few minutes  wearing  a small  hat and
looking quite different, sort of impressive, and with ribbons in her plaits.
     "I  told Grandma you'd  been here.  She's sleeping.  She asked why  you
didn't come in.  It's a good thing that lactometer is broken,  she  says. It
was such a nuisance, having to stick it into the  milk every time. It didn't
show right anyway. It's Nikolai Antonich's idea, but Grandma can always tell
whether the milk's good or not by tasting it."
     The nearer we got  to  the school  the  more pronounced became  Katya's
gravity  of  manner.  She  walked up  the  stairs,  head  thrown back,  eyes
narrowed, with an aloof air.
     Nikolai Antonich was in the teachers' room where I had left him.
     "Don't say anything, I'll tell him myself," I muttered to Katya.
     She gave a contemptuous sniff, one of her plaits arching out from under
her hat.
     It was this conversation  that started off  the  string  of  riddles of
which I shall write in the next chapter.
     The thing  was  that Nikolai Antonich, that suave Nikolai Antonich with
his grand air of patronage,  whom we  were accustomed to  regard as lord and
master of  School 4-vanished the moment Katya crossed  the threshold. In his
place was a new Nikolai Antonich, one  who smiled unnaturally when he spoke,
leaned across the table, opening  his  eyes wide and raising his eyebrows as
though Katya were speaking of  God knows  what extraordinary  things. Was he
afraid of her, I wondered?
     "Nikolai Antonich, you sent him for the  lactometer, didn't you?" Katya
said motioning to me with her eyes in an offhand manner.
     "I did, Katya."
     "Very well. I've broken it."
     Nikolai Antonich looked grave.
     "She's fibbing, " I said glumly. "It exploded."
     "I  don't understand. Shut  up, Grigoriev! What's it all about,  Katya,
explain."
     "There's nothing to explain," Katya answered with a  proud toss  of her
head. "I broke the lactometer, that's all."
     "I see. But I believe I sent this boy for it, didn't I?"
     "And he hasn't brought it because I broke it."
     "She's fibbing," I repeated.
     Katya's eyes snapped at me.
     "That's all  very well, Katya," Nikolai Antonich said, pursing his lips
benignly. "But you see, they've  delivered  milk to the school and  I've put
off breakfast in  order to test  the  quality  of  this milk before deciding
whether or not to continue taking it from our present milk women. It seems I
have been  waiting  for nothing. What's  more, it  appears  that a  valuable
instrument has been broken, and  broken in circumstances  which are anything
but clear. Now you explain, Grigoriev, what it's all about."
     "What a frightful bore! I'm going, Nikolai Antonich," Katya announced.
     Nikolai  Antonich  looked  at her.  Somehow it struck me at that moment
that he hated her.
     "All  right, Katya, run along," he said in  a mild tone. "I'll  have it
out here with this boy."
     "In that case I'll wait."
     She settled herself in a chair and impatiently  chewed  the end of  her
plait while we were talking. I  daresay if she had  gone away the talk would
not  have  ended so amicably. The  lactometer  affair was forgiven.  Nikolai
Antonich  even recalled the fact that I  had been  sent to  his school  as a
sculptor-to-be. Katya listened with interest.
     From  that day on  we became friends. She  liked me for not letting her
take  the blame on  herself and not  mentioning  the firedamp explosion when
telling my story.
     "You thought I was going  to catch it, didn't you?"  she said, when  we
came out of the school.
     "Mmm."
     "Not likely! Come and see us. Grandma's invited you."

     CHAPTER SIX
     / <I>GO VISITING</I>
     I woke up that morning with the thought: should I go or not? Two things
worried  me  - my trousers,  and  Nikolai  Antonich.  The trousers were  not
exactly  picture-look, being  neither  short  nor long, and  patched  at the
knees.  As  for Nikolai  Antonich, he  was  Head  of  the school,  you  will
remember, that's to say  a rather formidable personage. What if  he suddenly
started questioning me  about  this, that and  the other? Nevertheless, when
lessons  were over, I  polished my boots, and wetted, brushed and  parted my
hair. I was going to pay a visit!
     How awkward I felt, how shy I was!  My confounded hair kept sticking up
on the top of my head and I had to  keep it down with spit. Nina Kapitonovna
was  telling Katya and  me something, when  all  of a sudden  she commanded:
"Shut your mouth!" I had been staring at her openmouthed.
     Katya  showed me round the flat. In one of the rooms she lived  herself
with her  mother,  in another Nikolai Antonich, and the third  was used as a
dining-room. The desk-set in Nikolai Antonich's room  represented  "a  scene
from the life of Ilya  of Murom",  as Katya explained to  me.  In  fact, the
inkwell was made in the shape of a bearded head wearing a spiked helmet, the
ashtray represented  two crossed, ancient Russian gauntlets, and  so on. The
ink was  under the helmet, which meant that Nikolai Antonich had to dip  his
pen right into the hero's skull. This stuck me as odd.
     Between  the windows stood a bookcase; I had  never seen  so many books
together.  Over the bookcase hung  a half-length portrait of a naval officer
with a broad brow, a square jaw and dancing grey eyes.
     I noticed a similar but smaller portrait in the dining-room and a still
smaller one in Katya's room over the bed.
     "My  Father," Katya explained, glancing at  me sideways. And I had been
thinking that Nikolai Antonich was  her father! On  second thoughts, though,
she  would  hardly have  called  her  own father by his name and patronymic.
"Stepfather," I thought, but the  next moment decided that he couldn't be. I
knew what a stepfather was. This did not look like it.
     Then Katya showed me a mariner's compass-a very  interesting gadget. It
was a brass hoop  on a stand with a little bowl swinging  in it, and in  the
bowl, under a glass cover, a needle. Whichever way you turned the bowl, even
if  you held  it upside  down,  the needle would still keep swinging and the
anchor  at the tip would point North. "Such a compass  can stand  any gale."
"What's it doing here?" "Father gave it to me." "Where is he?"
     Katya's face darkened.
     "I don't know."
     "He divorced her  mother and  left her," I  decided immediately. I  had
heard of such cases.
     I  noticed  that there was a lot of pictures in the flat, and very good
ones,  too,  I thought. One  was  really beautiful-it showed a straight wide
path in a garden and pine trees lit up by the sun.
     "That's a Levitan," Katya said in a casual, grown-up way.
     I didn't know at the time that Levitan was the name of  the artist, and
decided that this must be the name of the place painted in the picture.
     Then the old lady called us in to have tea with saccharin.
     "So that's the  sort you are, Alexander Grigoriev," she said. "You went
and broke the lactometer."
     She  asked me to tell  her all about  Ensk, even the post-office there.
"What about the post-office?"  she said.  She was rattled because  I  hadn't
heard of some people by the name of Bubenchikov.
     "And the orchard by the synagogue! Never heard of  it? Tell me another!
You must have gone after those apples scores of times."
     She heaved a sigh.
     "It's a  long time since we left Ensk.  I  didn't want to move, believe
me!  It was  all Nikolai Antonich's doing. He came down. It's no use waiting
any longer,  he says. We'll leave our address, and  if need  be they'll find
us. We  sold all our  things,  this  is all  that's  left, and came here, to
Moscow."
     "Grandma!" Katya said sternly.
     "What d'you mean-Grandma?"
     "At it again?"
     "All right. I won't. We're all right here."
     I understood  nothing-whom  they had been waiting for or why  it was no
use waiting any longer. I did not ask any questions, of course, all the more
as Nina Kapitonovna changed the subject herself.
     That   was  how   I  spent  my  time   at   our  headmaster's  flat  in
Tverskaya-Yamskaya Street.
     When  I  was leaving Katya  gave me the  book <i>Helen Robinson</i> against my
word of honour that I would not bend back the covers or dirty the pages.

     CHAPTER SEVEN
     <I>THE TATARINOVS</I>
     The Tatarinovs had no domestic help, and Nina  Kapitonovna had a pretty
hard time  of it  considering her age. I helped her. Together we kindled the
stove, chopped  firewood, and  even washed up. I found it interesting there.
The  flat was  a  sort of  Ali  Baba's  cave to me, what with its treasures,
perils and riddles. The old lady was the treasure, and  Maria Vasilievna the
riddle, while Nikolai Antonich stood for things perilous and disagreeable.
     Maria Vasilievna  was a  widow-or maybe she  wasn't, because one  day I
heard  Nina Kapitonovna  say  of her  with  a  sigh:  "Neither  widowed  nor
married."  The  odd thing about  it was that she  grieved so  much  for  her
husband.  She always  went  about in  a black  dress, like  a nun.  She  was
studying  at a  medical institute. I thought it  rather strange at the  time
that a mother should be studying. All of a sudden she would stop talking and
going anywhere, either  to her institute or to work (she  was also working),
but would sit with her feet up on the couch and smoke. Katya would then say:
"Mummy's pining," and everybody would be short-tempered and gloomy.
     Nikolai Antonich, as I soon learnt, was not her husband at all, and was
unmarried for all that he was forty-five. "What is he  to you?" I once asked
Katya. "Nothing."
     She  was  fibbing, of  course,  for  she and her mother bore  the  same
surname  as Nikolai Antonich. He was Katya's  uncle, or rather a cousin once
removed.  He was a relative, yet  they weren't very nice to him. That,  too,
struck me as odd, especially since he, on the contrary, was very obliging to
everybody, too much so in fact.
     The old lady was fond of  the movies and did not miss a single picture,
and  Nikolai Antonich  used to  go with her,  even booking  the  tickets  in
advance.  Over the  supper she would start telling enthusiastically what the
film was  about (at such times,  by the way, she  strongly resembled Katya),
while Nikolai Antonich patiently  listened, though he had just returned from
the cinema with her.
     Yet she seemed to feel sorry for  him. I saw him once playing patience,
his head bent low, lingers drumming on the table, and caught  her looking at
him with compassion.
     If anyone treated him cruelly, it was Maria Vasilievna. What he did not
do for her! He brought her tickets for the theatre, staying at home himself.
He  gave her flowers.  I heard him begging  her to take care of  herself and
give up her job. He was no less attentive to her visitors. The moment anyone
came to see her, he would be there on the spot. Very genial, he would engage
the guest in conversation, while Maria Vasilievna sat on the couch,  smoking
and brooding.
     He was  his most amiable when Korablev called.  He  obviously looked at
Whiskers as his own guest, for he would drag him off at once to his own room
or into the dining-room and not allow him to talk shop. Generally, everybody
brightened up when Korablev came, especially Maria Vasilievna. Wearing a new
dress  with  a  white collar, she  would lay the  table herself  and do  the
honours, looking  more  beautiful than ever. She  would even laugh sometimes
when  Korablev, after combing his moustache before the mirror, began  paying
noisy court to the old lady. Nikolai Antonich laughed too .and paled. It was
an odd trait of his-he always turned pale when he laughed.
     He did not like  me. For a long time I  never suspected it. At first he
merely showed surprise at seeing me, then he started to make  a wry face and
became sort of sniffy. Then he started lecturing:
     "Is that the  way to say 'thank  you'?" He  had heard me thank the  old
lady for something. "Do you know what 'thank you' means? Bear  in  mind that
the course your whole  life will take  depends upon whether you know this or
not,  whether you understand it or not. We live in human society, and one of
the motive forces of that society is  the  sense of  gratitude.  Perhaps you
have  heard that  I once  had a cousin. Repeatedly, throughout  his life,  I
rendered him  material  as  well  as moral assistance. He turned  out to  be
ungrateful. And the result? It disastrously affected his whole life."
     Listening to him somehow made  me aware of the  patches on my trousers.
Yes, I wore broken-down boots, I was small,  grubby and  far too pale. I was
one thing and they,  the Tatarinovs, quite another. They were rich and I was
poor. They were clever and learned people, and I was a fool. Here indeed was
something to think about!
     I was not the only  one to whom  Nikolai Antonich  held forth about his
cousin. It was his pet subject. He claimed that he had cared for him all his
life, ever since he  was  a child at Genichesk, on the shores of the Sea  of
Azov. His cousin came  from a  poor fisherman's family, and  but for Nikolai
Antonich, would have remained  a fisherman, like his father, his grandfather
and seven generations of his forefathers. Nikolai Antonich, "having  noticed
in the boy remarkable talents and a penchant for reading", had taken  him to
Rostov-on-Don and  pulled  strings to get  his cousin enrolled in a nautical
school.  During  the winter he  paid him a "monthly allowance",  and in  the
summer he got him  a  job  as seaman  in vessels plying  between  Batum  and
Novo-rossiisk.  He  was instrumental in getting his brother a billet  in the
navy,  where he passed  his exam  as naval ensign.  With  great  difficulty,
Nikolai Antonich got  permission for him to  take his exams for a course  at
Naval College and  afterwards assisted him  financially when, on graduation,
he had to get himself a new uniform. In short, he had  done a great deal for
his cousin,  which  explained why  he  was so  fond of talking about him. He
spoke slowly, going  into great detail, and  the  women listened to him with
something akin to awed reverence.
     I don't know why, but it seemed to me that  at those moments  they felt
indebted to him, deeply indebted for all that he had done for his cousin. As
a matter  of fact they did  owe him an unpayable debt, because  that cousin,
whom  Nikolai  Antonich alternately  referred  to  as "my poor" or "missing"
cousin, was Maria Vasilievna's husband, consequently Katya's father.
     Everything in the flat used to belong to him and now belonged to  Maria
Vasilievna and Katya.  The  pictures, too,  for which, according  to the old
lady, "the Tretyakov  Gallery was offering  big money",  and some "insurance
policy" or  other for  which  eight thousand  rubles was payable  at a Paris
bank.
     The  one person least  interested  in all these  intricate affairs  and
relationships among  the grown-ups was Katya.  She had more important things
to attend to. She carried on a correspondence with two girl friends in Ensk,
and had a  habit of  leaving these letters lying  about everywhere, so  that
anyone who  felt  like it, even visitors,  could  read them.  She wrote  her
friends exactly what they  wrote her.  One friend, say, would write that she
had dreamt of  having lost her handbag, when all of a  sudden Misha Kuptsov-
"you remember  me  writing about him"-came towards  her with the bag in  his
hand. And Katya would reply to her friend that she  dreamt she had lost, not
a  handbag,  but a penholder or a  ribbon, and that Shura Golubentsev - "you
remember  me  writing  about him"-had found  it and brought  it to her.  Her
friend  would  write that  she had been to the cinema, and Katya would reply
that so had she, though in fact she had stayed indoors. Later it occurred to
me that her friends were older than her and she was copying them.
     Her classmates, however, she treated  rather  high-handedly.  There was
one little girl  by the name of Kiren-at least  that was what the Tatarinovs
called  her-whom she ordered about more than  anybody else.  Katya got cross
because Kiren  was  not fond of reading. "Have you  read  <i>Dubrovsky,</i> Kiren?"
"Yes." "Don't tell lies." "Spit in my eye."
     "Then  why  didn't  Masha marry Dubrovsky  - tell me that." "She  did."
"Fiddlesticks!" "But I read that she did marry him."
     Katya  tried the same thing on  me when I returned <i>Helen Robinson,</i>  but
there  was  nothing  doing. I could  go on reciting word  for word from  any
point. She did not like to show surprise and merely said:
     "Learned it off by heart, like a parrot."
     I daresay she considered herself as good as Helen Robinson and was sure
that in a similar desperate plight she would have been just as brave. If you
ask me, though, a person who was preparing herself for such an extraordinary
destiny  ought  not  to  have spent  so  much time in  front  of the mirror,
especially  considering  that no mirrors are to  be found on desert islands.
And Katya did stand a lot in front of mirrors.
     The  winter I  started visiting the  Tatarinovs Katya's latest  fad was
explosions.  Her  fingers were always burnt  black  and she  had  a smell of
percussion  cap  and  gunpowder  about her,  like Pyotr once  had. Potassium
chlorate  lay  in the folds  of the books she gave  me. Then the  explosions
stopped abruptly. Katya had settled down to read <i>The Century of Discovery.</i>
     This was an  excellent book  which gave the life-stories of Christopher
Columbus, Hernan  Cortes and  other famous seafarers and  conquerors of  the
fifteenth  and sixteenth centuries. Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America  is
named, was pictured in front of a globe, with a pair of compasses, which  he
held over an open book-a bearded,  jolly-looking man. Vasco Nunez de Balboa,
armour-clad, with plumed helmet, was knee-deep in the water. He looked to me
like some Russian Vaska who had turned up in the Pacific. I  was keen on the
book too. But Katya! She  was simply mad on it. She mooned about like one in
a dream, only awakening to impart the information that "Cortes,  accompanied
by the good wishes of the Tiascalans, set out on his expedition and within a
few days reached the populous capital city of the Incas."
     The cat, who before <i>The Century of  Discovery</i> was called simply Vasena,
she renamed Ixtacihuatl - it appears that there is a mountain by the name in
Mexico. She  tried  Popocatepetl  -  the name  of  another mountain-on  Nina
Kapitonovna, but it wouldn't  work.  The  old lady refused to  answer to any
name but "Grandma".
     In short, if there was anything that Katya regretted at all  seriously,
it was that she had not conquered Mexico and discovered Peru.
     But there was more  to this, as the future showed. I  knew what she was
dreaming about. She wanted to become a ship's captain.
     CHAPTER EIGHT <I>KORABLEV PROPOSES</I>
     Now  what  but  good,  one  would  think,  could  I  expect  from  this
acquaintance? Yet in a little less than six months I was kicked out.
     It was a Sunday and the Tatarinovs were  expecting  visitors. Katya was
drawing a picture of "the Spaniards' first encounter with  the Indians" from
<i>The Century of  Discovery,</i> and Nina Kapitonovna drafted me into the kitchen.
She was  rather excited and kept listening and saying  to me:  "Sh-sh, there
goes the bell."
     "It's out in the street, Nina Kapitonovna."
     But she kept listening.
     In the end, she went out into  the dining-room and missed the bell when
it did ring. I opened the door.  Korablev came in  wearing a  light overcoat
and a light-coloured hat. I had never seen him looking so smart.
     His voice shook slightly as he inquired whether Maria Vasilievna was at
home.  I said she was. But he  stood there for several  more seconds without
taking his things off.  Then  he went  in to Maria Vasilievna and I saw Nina
Kapitonovna tiptoeing back  from the dining-room.  Why the tiptoes  and that
excited mysterious air?
     From  that  moment  on everything  started  to  go  wrong with us. Nina
Kapitonovna,  who was  peeling  potatoes,  found the knife slipping from her
fingers.  She kept  running  out  into the dining-room,  as  though to fetch
something, but  returned  empty-handed.  At first she  returned in  silence,
making sundry  mysterious  signs  with her hands, which could be interpreted
roughly as: "Goodness gracious, what's going to happen?"
     Then  she started  muttering. After that she sighed and broke the news.
And amazing news it was! Korablev had come to propose to Maria Vasilievna. I
knew, of course, what "propose"  meant. He wanted  to marry her and had come
to ask whether or not she would have him.
     Would she  accept  or  would she not? If I had not been  in the kitchen
Nina Kapitonovna would  have  debated this point with her pots and pans. She
could not keep silent.
     "He says, I'll give  my all, my whole life," she reported on her  third
or fourth trip to the dining-room. "I'll live for you."
     "Is that so?" I threw in.
     "I'll  live for you," Nina  Kapitonovna solemnly  repeated. "I see  the
life you lead. It's unenviable, I can't bear to see it."
     She started on the potatoes, but soon went out again and returned  with
moist eyes.
     "He's always  yearned for a family, he says. I was a lonely  man, and I
need nobody but you, he says. I've been  sharing your grief for a long time.
Something like that."
     The "something  like that" was Nina Kapitonovna's own contribution. Ten
minutes later she went out again and came back looking puzzled.
     "I'm tired of these people," she said blinking. "They  don't let me get
on with my work. You know who I mean. Believe me, he's a terrible man."
     She sighed and sat down.
     "No,  she  won't  marry him.  She's heartbroken and he's getting on  in
years."
     For nothing better to say, I could only repeat: "Is that so?"
     "Believe   me,  he's   a  terrible   man,"  Nina  Kapitonovna  repeated
thoughtfully. "Maybe! Good Lord! Maybe!"
     I sat as quiet as  a  mouse. The  dinner was  forgotten. White beads of
water rolled over the stove as the water in which the potatoes were swimming
kept boiling and boiling.
     The old lady went out again and this time spent some fifteen minutes in
the dining-room. She came back frowning and threw up her hands.
     "She's turned  him down!" she announced.  "Rejected him. My God! Such a
man!"
     I don't think she quite knew herself whether to be glad or disappointed
that Maria Vasilievna had refused Korablev.
     "It's a pity," I said.
     She looked at me in astonishment.
     "She could marry," I added. "She's still young."
     "Stuff and  nonsense!" Nina  Kapitonovna began angrily.  Then  suddenly
becoming  sedate  and  dignified, she sailed  out  of  the kitchen  and  met
Korablev in the  hall.  He  was  very  pale. Maria  Vasilievna  stood in the
doorway silently watching him as he put  on his coat.  Her eyes  showed that
she had recently been crying.
     "Poor man, poor man!" Nina Kapitonovna said as though to herself.
     Korablev kissed her hand and she kissed him on the forehead, for
     which she had to stand on tiptoe and he had to bend down.
     "Ivan Pavlovich, you are my  friend  and  our friend," Nina Kapitonovna
said gravely. "I want you to know that this house is like your own home. You
are Maria's best friend, too, I know. She knows it
     too."
     Korablev bowed in silence. I felt very sorry for him. I simply couldn't
understand why Maria Vasilievna had refused him. I thought
     them a suitable pair.
     The old lady must have been  expecting Maria Vasilievna to call  her in
and tell her all about it-how Korablev had proposed and how  she had refused
him. But Maria  Vasilievna  did not  call  her. On the  contrary, she locked
herself in her room and could be heard pacing the floor inside.
     Katya finished her drawing of "the Spaniards' first encounter with  the
Indians" and wanted to show it to her mother, but Maria Vasilievna said from
behind the closed door: "Later on, darling."
     Somehow  the place became dreary after Korablev  had left  and drearier
still when Nikolai Antonich came home and briskly announced that there would
be six for dinner, and not three as he had expected.
     Willy-nilly,  Nina Kapitonovna was obliged to set about  it in earnest.
Even Katya was called in to help cut out little rounds of dough for the meat
pastries with a tumbler. She fell  to work with a will, getting flushed  and
covering herself with flour-nose, hair and  all  - but she  soon tired of it
and  decided  to  cut  out the  rounds with an old  inkwell instead  of  the
tumbler, because it made star-shaped rounds.
     "It's so much prettier. Grandma," she pleaded.
     Then she heaped the stars together and announced  that she was going to
bake a pie of her own. In short, she was not much of a help.
     Six people  to  dinner! Who could they  be? I looked out of the kitchen
and counted them coming in.
     The  first  to arrive was  the Director of Studies Ruzhichek, nicknamed
the Noble Thaddeus. I  don't know  where he got that nickname-everybody knew
only too well how noble he  was! Next came the teacher Likho,  a stout, bald
man with  a  peculiar elongated  head. Then the  German-cum-French  teacher,
herself  a German. Our Serafima arrived  with  the watch on  her breast, and
last  of all an  unexpected guest in the person ofVozhikov  from the  eighth
form. In fact, we had  here  nearly all the members of the  School  Council.
This was rather  odd,  inviting particularly the  whole  School  Council  to
dinner.
     I sat in the  kitchen, listening to their conversation. The  doors were
open. They started talking about Korablev. Would you believe it! It appeared
that he was sucking up to the Soviets. He  was trying his  damnest "to carve
out  a  career" for himself. He  had dyed his  moustache. He had organised a
school theatre only to "win popularity". He had  been married and had driven
his  wife into an early grave. At meetings, they  said,  he shed  "crocodile
tears".
     So far  this had been conversation, until I  heard the voice of Nikolai
Antonich  and  realised that it wasn't  conversation  but a conspiracy. They
wanted to kick Korablev out of the school.
     Nikolai Antonich worked up to his subject from afar:
     "Pedagogics  has  always  envisaged  art  as  an  external   factor  in
education..."
     Then  he got round to Korablev  and first of all "gave  him his due for
his  gifts". It appeared  that  "the  cause of his  late  wife's death"  was
nothing to do with us. All that concerned us was "the  measure and extent of
his influence  upon the  children". "What worries  us  is  the harmful trend
which Ivan  Pavlovich is giving to the  school, and  that is the only reason
why we should act as  our pedagogic  duty prompts us to act-do  our duty  as
loyal Soviet teachers."
     Nina Kapitonovna raised a chatter of empty plates and I could not catch
exactly  what his  pedagogic duty prompted Nikolai Antonich to  do. But when
Nina  Kapitonovna  served  the  second  dish  I gathered  from  the  general
conversation what it was they were after.
     First, at the next  meeting of the School Council Korablev  was  to  be
asked to "confine himself to the teaching of  geography as prescribed by the
syllabus". Second, his activities were to be assessed as "a vulgarisation of
the idea  of manual education".  Third, the school  theatre was to be closed
down. Fourth and fifth, something else. Korablev, of course, would resent it
and would leave. As the Noble Thaddeus said: "Good riddance."
     Yes, this was  a mean plan  and  I was surprised that Nina  Kapitonovna
said nothing. But I soon realised what it was. Round about the middle of the
second  course she  started lamenting  the fact  that  Maria Vasilievna  had
rejected Korablev. She thought of nothing else, heard nothing else. She kept
muttering and shrugging her shoulders, and once even said  out aloud: "Well,
well! Who asks Mother these days?"
     She  must have felt sore  about Maria Vasilievna not having  sought her
advice before refusing Korablev.
     The guests had gone, but I still couldn't make up my mind what to do.
     What beastly  luck that Korablev had come to propose on that day of all
days. He would have done better to stay at home. I would then have been able
to tell  Maria Vasilievna all I  had heard.  But  now it  was  awkward, even
impossible, because she had not come out for dinner; she had  locked herself
in  and would not admit  anyone. Katya had  sat down  to her  homework. Nina
Kapitonovna  suddenly announced that she  was dog tired and  sleepy. She lay
down and fell asleep at once. I sighed and took my leave.



     CHAPTER NINE
     <I>THE REJECTED SUITOR</I>
     Lame  Japhet, the  duty man at the Children's Home, had looked in twice
to see if we were asleep or larking about.
     The night  lamp had been  switched  on in the corridor.  Valya Zhukov's
eyelids quivered in  his  sleep  like a  dog's. Maybe  he was dreaming about
dogs? Romashka was snoring. I was the only one awake, thinking all the time.
Each thought more  daring  than  the  other. I saw myself getting up at  the
meeting of the school and denouncing Nikolai Antonich, revealing to everyone
the mean plan to drive Korablev out of the school. Or I saw myself writing a
letter to Korablev. While composing it I fell asleep.
     Strangely enough, when I woke up  (while the  rest were still asleep) I
continued the  letter  from  the very point  I had  left  off. I  started to
recollect the letters which Aunt Dasha had once  read to me.  At last I made
up my mind.
     It was still quite early-just gone  seven o'clock and it was as dark as
night  outside. But that did  not deter me, of course. Lame Japhet  tried to
stop me, but I dodged past him and ran out by the back way.
     Korablev lived in Vorotnikovsky Street,  in a one-storey  wooden  annex
with shutters  and a veranda  like  a summer bungalow. For some reason I was
sure that he was not asleep. Obviously,  a  rejected suitor who had received
his rebuff from Maria Vasilievna only the  day before, could  not be asleep.
As a matter of fact, he wasn't. A light was burning in the  room and  he was
standing at the  window staring out  into  the yard-staring so hard that one
would think there was God knows what out there. So hard and absorbed that he
did not  notice me, though  I was standing right under the window and making
signs to him with my hands.
     "Ivan Pavlovich!"
     But Ivan Pavlovich frowned, shook his head and moved away.
     "Ivan Pavlovich, open the door, it's me!"
     He returned a few minutes later with his coat thrown over his shoulders
and came out on to the veranda.
     "It's me, Grigoriev," I  repeated, afraid that  he might have forgotten
me. He looked at me in an odd sort of way. "I've come to tell you something.
They want to shut down the theatre and have you-"
     I don't think I said "kicked out". But maybe I did, because he suddenly
came to himself.
     "Come in," he said tersely.
     His place was always clean and tidy, with books on the shelves, a white
counterpane on the bed and a cover  on the pillow. Everything shipshape. The
only  thing that wasn't was  the host himself, it seems.  At one  moment  he
screwed up his eyes, the next he opened them wide, as though things in front
of him  were getting blurred. I'm sure he had not been  to bed that night. I
had never seen him looking so tired.
     "Ah, Sanya," he said haltingly. "What is it?" "I was going to write you
a letter, Ivan Pavlovich," I said earnestly. "It's all because of the school
theatre, really. They say you've driven your wife to an early grave."
     "Hold on!" he laughed. "Who says I've driven my wife to her grave?"
     "All of 'em. 'The cause of his late  wife's death is nothing to do with
us. Vulgarisation of the idea-that's what worries us.' " "I don't understand
a thing," Korablev said gravely. "Yes, vulgarisation," I repeated firmly.  I
had been memorising these words since the previous day:
     "vulgarisation",    "popularity",    "loyal    duty".   I   had    said
"vulgarisation", now there remained "popularity" and "loyal duty".
     "At the meetings  he sheds  crocodile tears," I plunged on. "He started
that theatre stunt in  order to win popularity.  Yes, 'popularity'. He sucks
up to the Soviets. We must do our loyal duty."
     I may  have got it  a bit mixed up, but it was easier for me to  rattle
off by  heart what I had  heard the night before than to tell  it in my  own
words. Anyway,  Korablev understood me. Understood me  perfectly  well.  His
eyes  immediately  lost their  former  clouded look  and  a  tinge of colour
mounted to his cheeks and he paced up and down the room.
     "This is great fun," he muttered, though there was no fun in it for him
at all. "And, of course, the boys and girls don't  want  to  see the theatre
closed down?" "Sure they don't."
     "Is it because of the  theatre that you've come?" I was silent. Perhaps
it was because of the theatre. Or perhaps because the school would be a dull
place without Korablev. Or perhaps because I didn't like the  mean  way they
were plotting to get rid of him.
     "What fools!" Korablev said suddenly. "What abysmally dull fools!"
     He  squeezed  my  hand,  and  started pacing  the  room  again  with  a
thoughtful air.  During  his pacing he went out, probably into the  kitchen,
fetched  a  boiling kettle,  brewed tea and  got  glasses  down from a small
cupboard on the wall.
     "I was thinking of leaving, but now I've  decided  to stay,"  he  said.
"We'll fight. What d'you say, Sanya? And now let's have some tea."
     I don't  know  whether they ever  held  that School Council  meeting at
which Korablev  was  to  pay  heavily  for "vulgarising  the  idea of manual
education". Obviously  it  wasn't  held, because he had not been made to pay
for it. Every  morning  old Whiskers combed his moustache  in front  of  the
mirror as though nothing had happened and went in to take his lessons.
     Within a few days the theatre announced  production of Ostrovsky's play
<i>Every Man Has a Fool in His Sleeve,</i> with Grisha Faber in the leading role.
     Two dark, curly-haired boys  from the local branch of the Komsomol came
down to  organise a Komsomol group in our school. Valya asked from the floor
whether  Children's Home boys could enrol  in the group, and they said, yes,
they could,  provided they  had reached the  age of fourteen. I did not know
myself how old I was. I figured that I was getting on for thirteen. To be on
the safe side  I said I was fourteen. All the same they wouldn't believe me.
It may have been because I was small for my age that time.
     The only teachers  who attended this  meeting were Korablev and Nikolai
Antonich. Korablev  made a rather impressive speech, first congratulating us
briefly  on the formation of  the  Group, then  criticising us at length for
being poor pupils and hooligans. Nikolai Antonich also made a speech. It was
a  fine  speech,  in  which he  greeted the Branch representatives,  whom he
described as the  young  generation, and ended  up by  reciting  a  poem  of
Nekrasov's.
     After the meeting I met him in the corridor  and  said:  "Good morning,
Nikolai Antonich!" For some reason he did not answer me.
     In  short,  all was  in order, and  I don't know  what made me suddenly
change my mind about going to the Tatarinovs and decide to meet Katya in the
street the next  day and give her the modelling-knife and clay she had asked
for. Within half an hour, however, I had changed my mind again.
     The old lady answered the door, but kept it on the chain, when  she saw
me. She seemed to be debating with herself whether to let me in or not. Then
she quickly opened the door, whispered to me:
     "Go into the kitchen," and gave me a gentle push in the back.
     While  I hesitated,  rather  surprised, Nikolai Antonich  came into the
hall, and seeing me, he switched on the light.
     "A-ah!" he said in a suppressed voice. "You're here."
     He gripped my shoulder roughly.
     "You  ungrateful sneak, scoundrel, spy! Get out of  this house and stay
out! Do you hear?"
     His lips drew back in a snarl and I caught the glint of a gold tooth in
his mouth. This was the last thing I saw in the home of the Tatarinovs. With
one hand Nikolai Antonich opened the door and with the other he threw me out
onto the landing like a pup.

     CHAPTER TEN
     <I>I GO AWAY</I>
     There was nobody in the Children's Home, nobody in the school. Everyone
had gone out-it  was a Sunday. Only Romashka wandered about the empty rooms,
counting something to himself-probably his future wealth-and the cook in the
kitchen sang as he  prepared dinner. I  settled myself in a warm cozy corner
by the stove and fell to thinking.
     Yes, this was Korablev's  doing. I had  tried to help him, and this was
how he had repaid me. He had gone to Nikolai Antonich and given me away.
     They had been right-Nikolai Antonich, and the German-cum-French teacher
and even  Likho,  who  had  said that  Korablev  shed "crocodile  tears"  at
meetings. He was a cad. To think that I had been sorry for him because Maria
Vasilievna had rejected him!
     Romashka was sitting by the window, counting.
     "Goodbye, Romashka," I said to him. "I'm going away."
     "Where to?"
     "Turkestan," I  said, though a  minute  before  that  I  had not  had a
thought about Turkestan.
     "You're kidding!"
     I  slipped off the pillow-case and stuffed all my belongings into  it-a
shirt,  a spare  pair of trousers,  and the  black  tube which  Doctor  Ivan
Ivanovich had  left with me long ago. I smashed all  my toads and hares  and
flung them into the rubbish-bin. The figure of the girl with the ringlets on
her forehead who looked a little like Katya went in there too.
     Romashka watched me with interest. He was still counting  in a whisper,
but with nothing like his previous fervour.
     "If for one ruble forty th