e from the  table  and with the
clumsy  curtsy  he  had  taught  her, said  for the first time:  "Thank you,
Daddy." I felt like throwing my plate with the unfinished porridge into that
fat face! But I did not do it, and regret it to this day.
     CHAPTER TEN
     <I>AUNT DASHA</I>

     I  would not, perhaps, be recalling this period of  my life were it not
for the dear  figure that rises before me-that of Aunt Dasha, whom, for  the
first time, I then came consciously to appreciate and love.
     I used  to  go  to her  and  just  sit there,  saying nothing-she  knew
everything as it was. To  comfort  me she  used to tell me the  story of her
life. At twenty-five she was already a widow. Her husband had been killed at
the very beginning  of  the Russo-Japanese War. I learnt  with surprise that
she  was  not yet forty. I had thought her an old woman, especially when she
put on her spectacles  of an evening  and read to us those letters which the
flood-water had brought to our yard  (she  was still reading them). She read
one letter every evening. It had become for her a sort of ritual. The ritual
began  with her trying to guess  the contents  of a letter from its envelope
and from the address, which in most cases had been entirely washed away.
     And then would come the reading, performed unhurriedly, with long sighs
and grumblings when any words  were illegible. Aunt Dasha  rejoiced with the
strangers in their  joys  and  shared  with  them  their  sorrows;  some she
scolded,  others  she praised.  In  short,  these  letters  might  have been
addressed to her personally, the way she took them.  She  read books in just
the same way.  She  dealt  with  the family  and love  affairs of dukes  and
counts,  heroes of the  supplements to the <i>Homeland</i> magazine, as  though all
those dukes and counts lived in the yard next door.
     "That Baron L.,  now," she would say  animatedly, "I knew he would jilt
Madame de Sans-le-Sou. My love, my love-and then this! A fine fellow, I must
say!"
     When, escaping  from  the  presence of  Scaramouch I spent the evenings
with her, she was already finishing her mail, with only some fifteen letters
left to read. Among them  was one which I must quote here. Aunt Dasha  could
not understand it,  but it  seemed to  me, already at that time, that it had
some bearing on the letter of the navigating officer.
     Here it is (the opening lines Aunt Dasha was unable to decipher):
     "One  thing I  beg of you: do not  trust that man! It can positively be
said that we owe  all our misfortunes  to him alone. Suffice it  to say that
most of the sixty  dogs he sold to us at Archangel had had  to be shot while
we were still at Novaya Zemlya. That's the price we had to pay for that good
office.  Not I alone, but the whole expedition  send him our curses. We were
taking a  chance, we knew that we were running a risk, but we did not expect
such a  blow. It remains for us to do all we can.  There  is so much I could
tell you  about our voyage! Stories enough to last Katya a whole winter. But
what a price we are having to pay, good God! I don't want you  to think that
our plight is hopeless. Still, you shouldn't look forward too much-"
     Aunt Dasha  read  it hesitatingly, glancing  at me over  her spectacles
with a  schoolteacherish  expression. I  did not realise, listening to  her,
that  within several years I would be making painful efforts to recall every
word of this letter.
     The letter was a long one,  on seven or eight sheets-giving  a detailed
account of life on an icebound ship that was  slowly  drifting northwards. I
was particularly amused to  find out that there  was  ice even in the cabins
and every morning it had to be hacked away with an axe.
     I could recount in my  own words how  sailor Skachkov, while  hunting a
bear, had fallen  to  his death in a  crevasse, or how everyone was worn out
looking after sick engineer Tisse. But  the  only words I remember  from the
original were the  few lines I have quoted here. Aunt Dasha went on with her
reading and sighing, and  shifting  scenes rose before me as through a mist:
white tents on white snow;
     panting dogs  hauling sledges; a huge man, a  giant in  fur boots and a
tall fur cap striding towards the sledges like a priest in a fur surplice.
     CHAPTER ELEVEN
     <I>A TALK WITH PYOTR</I>

     It was  while hunched  over my "popindicular" strokes that the  idea of
running away first occurred  to me. I had not  been  drawing those birds and
clouds above the fence for nothing!  Afterwards I forgot this idea. But with
each passing day I found it harder to return home.
     I  saw very  little of my mother. She left the house while I  was still
asleep. Sometimes,  when I  woke up  in  the  night, I would see her  at the
table.  White  as  chalk  from fatigue,  she  was  eating slowly,  and  even
Scaramouch quailed a little when he met her dark scowling gaze.
     I was very fond of my sister. Sometimes  I wished I wasn't. I  remember
that  beast  Scaramouch  beating  her  cruelly  because   she  had  spilt  a
wineglassful of vegetable oil. He sent Jier from the table, but  I secretely
brought her some potatoes.  She wept bitterly while she  ate, then  suddenly
reminded  herself of the coloured glass beads which she  feared she had lost
when  he was  beating her.  The beads were found. She  laughed, finished her
potato and started crying again.
     I suppose autumn was drawing  near,  because Pyotr  and I, strolling in
Cathedral Gardens, were kicking up dead leaves with our bare feet. Pyotr was
making up a story about the old excavation under the hillside being a tunnel
that ran under the  river  to  the opposite  bank. He even claimed  to  have
walked through it half-way.
     "I walked all night," Pyotr said in a  casual  way. "Skeletons all over
the place. Rats too."
     From the hill we could see the Pokrovsky Monastery on the high bluff of
the river-a white  building surrounded by low walls, beyond  which stretched
meadows, now pale green, now'yellow, changing colours in  the  wind  like  a
sea.
     "There are no rats in  Turkestan," Pyotr added thoughtfully. "They have
jumping rabbits there,  and  field rats  out  in  the  steppe.  But  they're
different-they eat grass, like rabbits."
     He often talked about Turkestan. According to  him, it was a city where
pears, apples and oranges grew right in the streets, so that  you could pick
as many as you liked and nobody would plug you with a charge of salt in your
backside the  way  the  watchmen did in our  orchards. People there slept on
carpets  in the open  air, as there was no  winter  there, and went about in
oriental robes-no boots or overcoats for you.
     "Turks  live there.  All armed to the teeth. Curved swords with  silver
trimmings, knives in their  girdles and cartridge belts across their chests.
Let's go there, eh?"
     I  decided  that he was joking. But  he  wasn't.  Paling  slightly,  he
suddenly  turned away and  gazed at the distant bank, where an old fisherman
of  our acquaintance was dozing over his fishing rods, which were mounted in
the shingle at the water's edge. We said nothing for awhile.
     "What about your Dad? Will he let you go?"
     "Catch me asking him! He's got other things on his mind."
     "What things?"
     "He's going to marry," Pyotr said with contempt.
     I was astounded.
     "Who?"
     "Aunt Dasha."
     "Tell me another one."
     "He told her that if she didn't marry him he'd sell  the house  and  go
round the  villages  tinning pots  and pans. She refused  at first, then she
consented. Must be in love, I suppose," Pyotr added contemptuously and spat.
     I couldn't believe it. Aunt Dasha! Marrying old Skovorodnikov?
     Pyotr  scowled  and changed the subject. Two  years ago  his mother had
died, and he, sobbing, beside  himself, had wandered out of the yard and off
such a  long way that they  found him with difficulty.  I remembered how the
boys used to tease him about it.
     We talked a little more, then lay down on our backs with outspread arms
and stared up into  the sky. Pyotr said that if you lay like that for twenty
minutes without blinking  you  could  see  the stars and the  moon  in broad
daylight.  So  there  we  were, lying  and gazing.  The  sky  was  clear and
spacious: somewhere high up the  clouds were chasing each other. My eyes had
filled with tears, but  I was trying with all my  might not  to blink. There
was no sign of any  moon, and as for the stars I guessed  at once that Pyotr
was fibbing.
     Somewhere a motor  started throbbing. I thought at first that it was an
army  truck  revving at  the wharf  (the  wharf  was  below  us,  under  the
ramparts). But the sound drew nearer. "It's an aeroplane," Pyotr said.
     It was lit up by the  sun,  a grey  shape resembling a beautiful winged
fish. The clouds advanced towards it; it was  flying against the wind. I was
amazed to see how easily  it avoided  the clouds.  Now it was already beyond
the Pokrovsky Monastery, and a black  cross-shaped shadow  ran after it over
the meadows on the other side of the  river. Long after it had disappeared I
fancied I could still see its tiny grey wings way out in the distance.


     CHAPTER TWELVE
     <I>SCARAMOUCH JOINS THE DEATH BATTALION</I>
     Pyotr had an uncle in Moscow and  our entire  plan was built  upon this
uncle of his. The uncle worked on the railway-Pyotr would have me believe as
engine-driver,  but I  suspected as fireman. At any rate, Pyotr  had  always
called him a fireman. Five years  before this engine-driver-cum-fireman  had
worked on  Moscow-Tashkent  trains. I  am  so exact about  those  five years
because  there had  been  no letters from this uncle now for five years. But
Pyotr  said this did not  signify, because his uncle had always written very
rarely;  he  was sure that he was still working on the  same trains, all the
more so since his last  letter had come  from Samara.  We looked  at the map
together and found that Samara did indeed lie between Moscow and Tashkent.
     In short, all we  had  to  do was  to find this  uncle.  Pyotr knew his
address, but even if he didn't, one could  always find a man by his name. We
did not have  the slightest doubt about the  name-it  was Skovorodnikov, the
same as Pyotr's.
     We  envisaged the second stage  of  our journey as  a simple  matter of
Pyotr's  uncle taking us from Moscow  to Tashkent on his locomotive. But how
were we to get to Moscow?
     Pyotr  did not try to persuade me.  He listened stonyfaced to my  timid
objections. He did not answer me: all was clear to him. The only thing clear
to  me  was  that but for  Scaramouch  I would  not be going  anywhere.  And
suddenly it turned out that Scaramouch himself was  going away. He was going
and I was staying.
     It  was a  memorable day.  He turned up in  army uniform, in brand-new,
shiny, squeaky  boots,  his  cap  tilted to one side and a cowlick of  curls
protruding from under it, and placed two hundred rubles on the table.
     In those days this was an unheard of sum of money and Mother covered it
with her hands in an involuntary gesture of greed.
     But it was not  the money that staggered me and Pyotr and all the  boys
in our yard-oh, no! It  was a different thing  altogether.  On the sleeve of
his army  tunic  were embroidered a skull and crossbones.  My stepfather had
joined a Death Battalion.
     A  man with a  drum  would  suddenly appear  at  a  public gathering or
outdoor  fete-wherever a crowd assembled. He would beat his drum to  command
silence.  Then another  man,  usually an officer  with  the same  skull  and
crossbones  on  his  sleeve,  would  begin  to speak. In  the  name  of  the
Provisional Government he called upon  all to  join the Death Battalion. But
though he declared that everyone who  signed on would receive sixty rubles a
month plus officer's kit and  dislocation allowance, nobody cared to die for
the  Provisional Government and only  rogues of  my stepfather's type joined
the death battalions.
     But that  day, when  he came home solemn and grim in  his new  uniform,
bringing  two  hundred rubles, nobody thought him a rogue.  Even Aunt Dasha,
who loathed him, came out and bowed to him in a stiff, unnatural way.
     In the evening he invited guests and made a speech.
     "All these procedures carried  out  by  the authorities," he said, "are
designed to safeguard the liberty of the revolution against the paupers, the
absolute  majority of whom  consists of Jews. The paupers and the Bolsheviks
are scheming a vile adventure, which  is bound to jeopardise  all the fruits
of the existing regime. For us, champions of freedom, this  tragedy is dealt
with very simply. We are taking arms into our hands, and woe to him who, for
the sake of gratifying his personal ambition, shall make an attempt upon the
revolution and  freedom! We  have paid a high price for freedom. We will not
surrender  it  cheaply.  Such in general  outline  is  the situation  of the
moment!"
     Mother  was  very gay that  evening. In her white velvet jacket,  which
became  her  so well, she moved round the guests  with a bottle  of wine and
kept  refilling each glass.  Stepfather's friend, an amiable little fat man,
who was also in the Death Battalion, stood up  and respectfully proposed her
health. He had  laughed heartily during  my stepfather's speech, but was now
very grave. Raising his glass aloft, he clinked glasses with Mother and said
briefly, "Hurrah!"
     Everyone shouted  "Hurrah".  Mother was  embarrassed. Slightly flushed,
she stepped into the middle of the room and bowed low  in the  old-fashioned
way.
     "What a beauty!" the fat little man said aloud.

     CHAPTER THIRTEEN <I>JOURNEY'S END</I>
     It  must  have been some time past  two; I had been asleep for  quite a
while  and was  awakened by a cry. Tobacco  smoke  hung motionless over  the
table; everyone had left long  ago, and  my  stepfather  lay  asleep  on the
floor, his  arms  and legs spread wide.  The  cry was repeated. I recognised
Aunt Dasha's voice and went to the window. A woman was lying in the yard and
Aunt Dasha was blowing noisily into her mouth.
     "Aunt Dasha!"
     Not seeming to  hear me, Aunt Dasha  jumped up, ran round our house and
knocked on the window.
     "Water! Pyotr Ivanovich! Aksinya's lying out here!"
     I opened the door. She came in and started to rouse my stepfather.
     "Pyotr Ivanich! Oh,  my God!"  My  stepfather  did nothing but  mumble.
"Aksinya-she must be carried in - she must have fallen in  the yard and hurt
herself. Pyotr Ivanich!"
     My stepfather sat up with closed eyes, then lay down again. We couldn't
wake him and had to give it up.
     We spent the whole night  trying to bring Mother round and she  did not
come  to herself until  dawn. It had been an ordinary  fainting fit, but  in
falling she had struck her head  on the stones. Unfortunately  we learnt  of
this from the doctor only the following evening.  The  doctor ordered ice to
be applied. But we all thought it odd to buy ice, and Aunt Dasha decided  to
apply a wet towel instead.
     I  remember Sanya  running out into  the yard  to  wet the towel  in  a
bucket,  and coming back  wiping the tears away  with  the flat of her hand.
Mother lay  still, as pale as she always was. Not once did she ask  about my
stepfather, who the next day had joined his battalion, but she would not let
me or my sister out other  sight. She was racked  by fits of nausea and kept
screwing up her eyes every minute  as though trying to make  something  out.
This, for some reason, upset Aunt Dasha very much. She was laid up for three
weeks and seemed to be on the mend. And then suddenly it "came over" her.
     One morning I woke up towards daybreak to find  her sitting on the bed,
her bare feet lowered to the floor.
     "Mum!"
     She looked at me sullenly, and it  dawned on me that she could  not see
me.
     "Mum! Mamma!"
     Still with the same intent, stern expression, she pushed my hands aside
when I tried to get her back into bed.
     From that day she stopped eating  and the doctor ordered her to be  fed
forcibly with eggs and butter. It was  excellent advice, but we had no money
and there were neither eggs nor butter to be had in the town.
     Aunt  Dasha scolded her  and wept, but  Mother lay  brooding, her black
plaits lying  across her  breast,  and not uttering  a word. Only once, when
Aunt Dasha announced in  despair that she  knew why  Mother wasn't eating-it
was because she did not want  to live-Mother muttered something, frowned and
turned away.
     She had become very affectionate towards me since she was taken ill and
even seemed to love me as much as she did my  sister. Very often she  looked
at  me steadily for a  long time with a sort of surprise. She had never wept
before  her  illness, but now she cried every day  and  I guess why. She was
sorry she hadn't loved me before this and was remorseful at having forgotten
Father, and maybe begging forgiveness for Scaramouch and for all that he had
done to us. But a sort of stupefaction came over me. I couldn't put my  hand
to anything and my mind was a blank. Our last conversation together was like
that too-neither I nor she had uttered a word. She only beckoned me and took
my hand,  shaking her head and trying hard  to control her quivering lips. I
realised that she wanted to say goodbye. But I stood there like a  block  of
wood with my head lowered, staring doggedly down at the floor.
     The next day she died.
     My stepfather, in full  dress uniform, with  a  rifle  slung  over  his
shoulder and a  hand grenade  at his belt, stood in the passage weeping, but
no one paid any attention to him.
     On the day of the funeral my sister had a headache and was made to stay
at  home.  My stepfather,  who had  been  called out  to his battalion  that
morning, was  late  for the carrying-out, and after waiting a good two hours
for him, we set out behind the coffin on our own- "we"  being Skovorodnikov,
Aunt Dasha and myself.
     They walked. Aunt Dasha holding on to an iron ring to keep from lagging
behind, while me they sat in the hearse.
     As we were passing through Market Square I saw a sentry standing at the
gates of  the "Chambers" and some men in civilian  clothes bustling about in
the garden behind  the railings,  one  of them dragging a machine  gun.  The
shops were closed, the  streets deserted, and after Sergievsky Street we did
not meet a soul. What was the matter?
     The hearse driver in his dirty robe was in a hurry and kept whipping up
the horse. It was all  Aunt Dasha and Skovorodnikov could do to keep up with
it. We came out onto Posadsky Common-a muddy patch of wasteland between  the
town and Posad  suburb leading down to the river across Mill Bridge. A short
sharp crackle rang  out in the distance; the driver cast a frightened glance
over his shoulder and hesitantly raised his whip. Aunt Dasha caught  up with
us and started to scold.
     "Man  alive! Are  you  crazy?  You're not  carting  firewood!" "There's
shooting over there," the driver growled. A path was dug out in the hillside
leading down to the river, and  we drove down it for several minutes without
seeing  anything on the sides. They  were shooting somewhere,  but  less and
less frequently. Mill Bridge,  from which I  had often  fished  for gudgeon,
came into view. Suddenly the driver stood up and lashed out at the horse; it
dashed off and we raced along the bank, leaving Skovorodnikov and Aunt Dasha
far behind.
     It must have been bullets, because  chips  of wood flew from the hearse
and one of them hit me in the face. The carved wooden upright I was gripping
for  support  creaked, shook loose and fell into  the roadway as the  hearse
jolted. I heard Skovorodnikov shouting somewhere behind  us,  and Aunt Dasha
scolding in a tearful voice.
     Pulling his cap  down lower  and twirling  his whip  over his head, the
driver drove the horse  straight towards  the bridge, as though  he couldn't
see that the approach to  it was  blocked with logs,  planks and bricks. The
horse reared, and stopped dead in its tracks.
     Among  the men  who ran  out from behind  this barrier I recognised the
compositor who had rented a room the previous summer at the fortune-teller's
in the next  yard to ours. He  was carrying a rifle  and inside the  leather
belt,  which  looked so  odd  over  an ordinary overcoat,  he wore a service
revolver. They were all armed, some even with swords.
     The driver clambered down, hitched up the skirt of Us robe,  stuck  his
whip into his high boot and began to swear.
     "What  the hell-couldn't  you see it's  a funeral?  You nearly  shot my
horse!"
     "We weren't shooting, you  came under the cadets' fire," the compositor
said. "And couldn't you see there was a barricade here, you dolt?"
     "What's  your name?" the driver shouted. "You'll answer for this! Who's
going to pay for repairs?"  He walked round the hearse, touching the damaged
places. "You've smashed one o' the spokes!"
     "Fool!" the compositor said again. "Didn't I tell you it wasn't us! Why
should we fire on coffins! Fathead!"
     "Who are you burying, lad?" an elderly man  in a tall fur cap, on which
hung a piece of red ribbon in place of a cockade, asked me quietly.
     "My mother," I brought out with difficulty.
     He took off his cap.
     "Quiet there, comrades," he said. "This is a funeral. This boy here  is
burying his mother. You ought to know better."
     They all stared at me. I must have looked pretty wretched because, when
everything was  patched up  and Aunt Dasha, weeping,  had caught up with us,
and we had driven onto the bridge through the mill, I found in the pocket of
my coat two lumps of sugar and a white biscuit.
     Tired  out, we returned home  after the funeral by way  of the opposite
bank.
     There  was  a  glow  in  the sky  over the town:  the  barracks of  the
Krasnoyarsk Regiment  were  on  fire.  At the  pontoon bridge  Skovorodnikov
hailed  a man of  his acquaintance who was on point-duty, and they started a
long  conversation, from which  I understood nothing: someone  somewhere had
pulled up the track, a cavalry corps was making for Petrograd, and the Death
Battalion was holding the railway station. The name "Kerensky" kept cropping
up all the time with various additions. I could hardly stand on my feet, and
Aunt Dasha moaned and sighed.
     My sister was asleep  when we returned.  Without undressing, I sat down
next to her on the bed.
     I don't know why, but Aunt  Dasha did not spend that night with us, the
first night we were  left alone. She brought me some porridge, but I did not
feel  like  eating,  and  she  put  the  plate  on  the window-sill. <i>On</i>  the
window-sill,  not  on  the table where  Mother had lain  that  morning. That
morning.  And now  it was night. Sanya was sleeping in <i>her</i> bed, in the place
where she had been lying with that little wreath on her brow.
     I got up and went over to the window. It was dark outside, and a  fiery
glow hung over the river,  where bands of black smoke flared  up with yellow
streaks and died down.
     The barracks were on fire they said, but it was beyond  the railway,  a
long way  off and in quite a  different direction.  I recalled  how she  had
taken my hand,  shaking her head and  fighting back her tears.  Why hadn't I
said anything to her? She had so wanted  me to say something, even if it was
a single word.
     I could hear the pebbles rolling up on the shore; the wind had probably
risen and it  started  raining. For  a  long time,  thinking of  nothing,  I
watched the big heavy raindrops rolling down the  window-pane, first slowly,
then faster and faster.
     I dreamt that someone pulled the door open, ran into the room and flung
his wet army coat on the floor. It was some time before I realised that this
was no dream. It was my stepfather, dashing about the house, pulling off his
tunic as he ran. He tugged away at it, gnashing his  teeth, but it  clung to
his back. At last, clad only in  his trousers, he rushed over to his box and
pulled a haversack out of it.
     "Pyotr Ivanich!"
     He  glanced  at  me  but  did not  answer.  With matted hair, his  face
glistening with  sweat,  he  was hastily thrusting  linen into the haversack
from  the box.  He  rolled up  a blanket, pressed  it down with his knee and
strapped it. All the time  his mouth worked with vicious  fury,  and I could
see his clenched teeth-the big, long teeth of a wolf.
     He  put on three shirts and shoved a fourth into his haversack. He must
have  forgotten that I was not asleep, or he would not have had the nerve to
snatch  Mother's velvet jacket from the nail on which  it hung and thrust it
into the haversack along with the rest.
     "Pyotr Ivanich!"
     "Shut up!" he said, looking up. "Go to hell, all of you!"
     He changed his boots  and put  on his coat,  then suddenly  noticed the
skull and crossbones on the sleeve. With an oath he threw the coat off again
and started ripping off the emblem with his teeth. He flung his haversack on
his back and was gone-gone  out of my life. All that remained were his muddy
footmarks of the floor and the empty tin box of Katyk cigarettes in which he
kept his studs and ' tiepins.
     Everything  became  clear the  next  day.  The  Military  Revolutionary
Committee proclaimed Soviet  power in the town. The Death Battalion  and the
volunteers who had come out against the Soviets had been defeated.
     CHAPTER FOURTEEN
     <I>WE RUN AWAY.
     I PRETEND TO BE ASLEEP</I>
     Where did Pyotr get the idea that you could travel free now on all  the
railways? The  rumour about free  tramcars  must have  reached  him  in this
exaggerated form.
     "Grown-ups  have  to  have  official   travel  papers,"  he  said  with
assurance. "But we don't need anything."
     He was no longer silent. He remonstrated with me, teased me, accused me
of cowardice,  and sneered.  Everything that was happening on Earth,  merely
went to prove, in his view, that we had to make tracks for Turkestan without
a moment's delay. Old Skovorodnikov proclaimed himself a Bolshevik and  made
Aunt Dasha take down the icons. Pyotr cashed in on this situation by arguing
that life in the yard would now be impossible.
     I don't  know whether  he would  have succeeded in the end in taking me
into the venture had not Aunt Dasha and Skovorodnikov
     decided in family council to place Sanya and me into an orphanage. With
tears  in her eyes Aunt  Dasha declared that  she  would  visit  us  at  the
orphanage every day, that she would put us in there only for the winter, and
we  would return for sure in the  summer. In the  orphanage we would be fed,
taught and  clothed. They  would  give us  new boots,  two  shirts each,  an
overcoat and  cap, stockings and drawers. I remember  asking  her, "What are
drawers?"
     We knew the  orphanage  children. They were sickly looking kids in grey
jackets  and  crumpled grey trousers. They were  ever  so smart  at shooting
birds with their catapults; they  afterwards roasted  and  ate the birds  in
their garden.  That's  how  they  were fed in the orphanage! Altogether they
were a  "bad  lot", and we had scraps with them, and now I was to become one
of them!
     I went to Pyotr the same  day  and  told him I was willing. We had very
little money-only  ten  rubles.  We sold Mother's boots  in  the second-hand
market for another ten. That made it twenty.  With the utmost precautions we
removed a blanket  from the  house; with equal  precaution we  returned  it;
nobody had wanted to buy it,  though we asked very little for it-four fifty,
I believe. That  was  just the amount we had spent on food as we  hawked our
blanket round the market. Total: fifteen rubles fifty kopecks.
     Pyotr wanted  to flog his books, but luckily nobody  bought them. I say
"luckily", because  those books now occupy a place of  honour in my library.
On  second thought,  we did  manage to sell one of  <i>them-Yuri Miloslavsky,</i> I
believe. Total: sixteen rubles.
     We figured  that  this money would  get  us to Pyotr's uncle,  and once
there we had the thrilling prospect of life aboard a railway engine to  look
forward  to.  I remember the question whether  we should  carry arms  or not
caused no little argument. Pyotr  had a knife;  which he called a dagger. We
made a sheath for it out of an old boot. Everything else was in order: stout
boots,  overcoats  in  good condition (Pyotr's even  had a fur collar) and a
pair of trousers apiece.
     I  was  very gloomy that  day and  Aunt Dasha made several attempts  to
cheer  me  up. Poor  Aunt Dasha! If she  only knew  that we  had put off our
departure because we  were counting on her cookies. The next day she was  to
take Sanya  and me down  to  the orphanage,  and she  spent  the  day baking
cookies "for the  road". She was baking them all day and kept taking off her
glasses and blowing her nose.
     She made me give a solemn promise not to steal, not to smoke, not to be
rude, not to be lazy, not to  get drunk, not to swear or  fight-more  taboos
than  there were  in the Ten Commandments. To my little sister, who was very
sad, she gave a magnificent ribbon of pre-war manufacture.
     Of  course,  we  could  have  simply  slipped  out  of  the  house  and
disappeared.  But Pyotr decided that  this was too  tame,  and he  drew up a
rather intricate plan which had an air of fascinating mystery about it.
     In the  first place,  we were to  swear to  each other a "blood-oath of
friendship". It ran like this:
     "Whoever  breaks this oath shall receive no mercy until he  has counted
all  the sand  grains  in  the sea, all the  leaves  in the forest,  all the
raindrops falling from the sky. When he  tries  to go  forward, he  will  go
back, when he wants to go left he will go right.  The  moment I fling my cap
to the ground thunderbolts shall strike him who breaks this oath. To strive,
to seek, to find, and not to yield."
     We had to utter  this oath in turn, then shake hands and fling our caps
down together.  This  was performed in Cathedral Gardens  on the  eve of our
departure. I  recited the oath by heart, while Pyotr read  it "off the cuff.
After that he pricked his finger with a pin and wrote "P.S." on the paper in
blood,  the letters standing  for  Pyotr Skovorodnikov. I scrawled with some
difficulty the initials "A.G.", standing for Alexander Grigoriev.
     Secondly, I was  to go to bed at ten  and pretend to be  asleep, though
nobody was curious to know whether I was asleep or only pretending. At three
in  the morning  Pyotr was  to give  three  whistles  outside the window-the
prearranged signal that all was  in order, the  coast was clear and we could
decamp.
     This was far more  dangerous than it  would  have been in the  daytime,
when things really were in order,  the coast clear,  and  nobody would  have
noticed that we had  run away. In the  night we risked being grabbed by  the
patrols-the town was under martial law-and the dogs  were let loose at night
all along the river bank.  But Pyotr commanded and I obeyed.  And  then came
the crucial night, my last night in the paternal home.
     Aunt Dasha was sitting at the  table, mending  my  shirt.  Though  they
provided you with linen at the orphanage, here was one shirt  more, to be on
the  safe side. In front of her  was the lamp with the blue  shade which had
been Aunt Dasha's wedding presence Mother. It looked sort of abashed now, as
though  it  felt ill  at ease  in our  deserted house.  It  was dark in  the
corners. The kettle hung over the stove, but its shadow looked  more  like a
huge upturned nose than a kettle. From  a crack under the window came whiffs
of cool air  and the tang  of the river. Aunt Dasha was sewing and  talking.
She  took something  from the table and the  circle of light on  the ceiling
began to quiver. It was ten o'clock. I pretended to be asleep.
     "Now  mind, Sanya, you must always do  as your brother tells you," Aunt
Dasha  was  telling  my  sister.  "Being a girl,  you must  lean on  him. We
womenfolk always lean on the men. He'll stand up for you."
     My  heart  was  wrung, but  I tried not think of Sanya. "And  you, too,
Sanya," Aunt Dasha said to me, and I could see a tear creep  down from under
her glasses  and fall on my shirt, "take care of your sister.  You'll be  in
different sections, but I'll ask them to allow you to visit her every day."
     "All right, Aunt Dasha."
     "Ah, my God, if only Aksinya were alive..."
     She turned up the wick, threaded her needle and took up her  work again
with a sigh.
     I  am  not asleep,  I  am  pretending to be  asleep. Half past  eleven.
Twelve. Aunt Dasha  gets up. For the last, the very last time I see her kind
face above the lamp, lit up from below.  She places her hand over the rim of
the glass and blows.  Darkness. She makes the sign of the cross over  us  in
the dark and lies down. She is spending that night with us.
     It's  all very well to  pretend you're asleep when you're not sleepy! I
open my eyes with an effort. What's the  time? Three o'clock is still a long
way off. A  sound of drunken singing comes  from the river. The pebbles roll
on the  bank. But still there is no signal. Just the wall clock  ticking and
Aunt Dasha sighing as she tosses from side to side.
     To keep awake, I sit up and rest  my head on my knees.  I am pretending
to be asleep. I hear a whistle, but I can't wake up.
     Afterwards Pyotr told  me he had whistled  himself as hoarse as a gypsy
until he wakened me. But he kept whistling all  the time I was putting on my
boots and my overcoat and stuffing the cookings into  the  haversack. Was he
cross! He ordered me to turn up the collar of my overcoat and we made off.
     Everything went well. Nobody touched us-neither dogs  nor men. To be on
the safe  side, though, we made  a detour of about two miles round the town.
On  the  way I  tried  to  find  out  from Pyotr  whether he  was sure  that
travelling on the railways these  days was free of charge. He told me he was
sure; if the worst came to  the worst we could hide under  the seats. It was
two nights' travel to Moscow. The passenger train was due to leave at 5.40.
     But when, to avoid the patrols, we  jumped  the fence some half a  mile
from the station we found that there was no 5.40 train. The wet, black rails
glinted dully, and yellow  lanterns burned dimly at the points. What were we
to do? Wait at the station till morning? Impossible: the patrols might catch
us. Return home?
     At that moment a  bearded coupler all covered with grease, crawled  out
from under a freight train and came towards us, stepping over the sleepers.
     "Please,  mister,"  Pyotr accosted him boldly, "how do we get to Moscow
from here-on the right or on the left!"
     The man looked  at him, then at me.  I  turned cold. "Now he'll hand us
over to the commandant's."
     "It's three hundred miles to Moscow, my lads."
     "Please, mister, we only want to know-is it on the right or on the
     left?"
     The coupler laughed.
     "On the left."
     "Thank you. Come along to the left, Sanya!"

     CHAPTER FIFTEEN
     <I>TO STRIVE. TO SEEK, TO FIND AND NOT TO YIELD</I>
     All journeys are much  alike  when the travellers are  eleven or twelve
years  old, when they travel under the carriages and do not wash for months.
You only have to scan a few books dealing with the life of waifs to see this
for  yourself. That is why I am not going  to describe our journey from  our
town of Ensk to Moscow.
     Aunt Dasha's  commandments  were soon  forgotten.  We swore, fought and
smoked  (sometimes dried  dung, to  keep warm);  sometimes  it  was an  aunt
travelling to Orenburg  for salt who had lost  us on the way; at other times
we were refugees  who were  going  to join our grandma  in  Moscow. We  gave
ourselves out to be brothers-this made a touching impression. As we couldn't
sing, I recited on  the  trains  the  letter from  the navigating officer. I
remember how, at Vyshny Volochok station, a young-looking though grey-haired
naval man made me repeat the letter twice.
     "Very strange,"  he said,  looking at  me closely  with  his stern grey
eyes. "Lieutenant Sedov's expedition? Very strange."
     We were  not waifs, though. Like Captain Hatteras (Pyotr told me  about
him with a wealth of detail which Jules Verne himself had  never suspected),
we were going forward,  forever forward. Not only because in Turkestan there
was bread, while here  there were none. We were going out to  discover a new
land of sunny cities and rich orchards. We had sworn an oath to each other.
     What a help that oath was to us!
     Once at Staraya Russa we strayed from the road and lost our  way in the
forest. I  lay down in the snow and closed my eyes. Pyotr tried to scare  me
with talk  about wolves,  he swore  and  even  hit  me, but  all in vain.  I
couldn't take another step. So then he took off his cap and flung it down in
the snow.
     "You swore an oath, Sanya," he said, "to  strive, to seek,  to find and
not to  yield. D'you  mean  to  say  you've  sworn  falsely? Didn't you  say
yourself-no mercy for whoever breaks the oath?"
     I started to cry, but  I got  up. Late  that  night  we  arrived  at  a
village. It was a village of  Old  Believers, but one old woman nevertheless
took us in, fed us and even washed us in the bathhouse.
     And so, passing from village to village, from station to station, we at
last reached Moscow.
     On the way  we had sold or  bartered for food nearly everything that we
had brought with us. Even Pyotr's knife and its sheath, I remember, was sold
for two pieces of meat-jelly.
     The  only  things that remained unsold were the  papers  with the  oath
written on them in blood "P.S." and "A.G." and the address of Pyotr's uncle.
     That uncle! How often we had talked about him! In  the  end I -came  to
see him as a sort of Grand Patriarch of Steam Engines-beard streaming in the
wind, funnel belching smoke, boiler ejecting steam...
     And  then, at last, Moscow! One frosty February night  we clambered out
through the  window of the lavatory in which  we had been  travelling during
the last stage of our journey, and  jumped down on to the track. We couldn't
see Moscow, it was hidden in the dark, and besides, we weren't interested in
it. This was  just  Moscow, whereas that Uncle lived at Moscow Freight Yard,
Depot  7,  Repair  Shop.  For  two hours  we  blundered amidst  the  maze of
diverging tracks. Day began to break by the time we reached Depot 7, a bleak
building  with dark  oval  windows and  a tall  oval  door  on  which hung a
padlock. The uncle wasn't there. And  there  wasn't  anybody  you  could ask
about him. Later in the morning we learned at the Depot Committee that Uncle
had gone off to the front.
     So that  was that! We went out and sat  down  on  the platform.. It was
goodbye to the streets where oranges grew,  goodbye to the nights under  the
open  sky,  goodbye  to  the  knife  under the girdle  and the curved  sword
ornamented in silver!
     Just to  make sure, Pyotr went back to the committee to ask whether his
uncle was married. No, Uncle was a single man. He lived, it transpired, in a
railway truck and had gone off to the front in the same truck.
     It was quite light by this time and we could now see Moscow-houses upon
houses  (they all looked like railway stations to me), great heaps of  snow,
an occasional tramcar, then again houses and houses.
     What was to be done! The weeks that followed were about the toughest we
had known. The things we  did for a living! We took up queues for people. We
did jobs for ex-bourgeois, shovelling snow off the pavements in front of the
houses  when  "compulsory  labour  service"  was introduced. We cleaned  the
stables at the circus. We slept on landings, in cemeteries and in attics.
     Then, suddenly, everything changed.
     We were walking, I remember, down  Bozhedomka Street, yearning only for
one thing-to come across  a bonfire somewhere; in  those days  bonfires were
sometimes  lighted in the centre of the city. But there was  nothing  doing.
Snow,  darkness,  silence!  It  was a cold night. All  house  entrances were
locked. We walked  along in silence, shivering.  It looked as if Pyotr would
have to fling  his cap down  again,  but at that  very moment,  tipsy voices
reached us from one of the gateways we had just passed. Pyotr went into  the
yard. I  sat on a curb stone, my teeth chattering with  cold and my freezing
fingers thrust into my mouth. Pyotr came back.
     "Come on!" he said joyfully. "They'll let us in!"