he business and made me wild with impatience. Apparently in the course of the day's work he had grown hungry for this kind of talk because it certainly did not go down with his father, whose constant contact with bare walls during his long life as a painter had almost deprived him of the ability to converse. All his life he had been busy silently daubing paint on walls and presumably had produced his children in the same silent fashion. And the more children he produced, the more walls he had to paint, so there had been no time left for talking; he had to get on with mixing his paints and obtaining enough whitewash. What was there to talk about anyhow! I think if he could have had his way he would have taken all those ranting and raving politicians and puttied up their mouths, ears and eyes, painted them from head to foot and left them standing deaf, dumb and blind, like those plaster statues we have in our parks. Or he might even have walled them up somewhere, and he would certainly have painted that wall so well that if you scraped it for a lifetime you would never discover the place where they were hidden. Because no matter how many children you brought into the world there would never be enough for their filthy meat-grinder, and no matter how many walls you painted your work would all be wasted because one air-raid would knock down so many, paint and all, that thousands of builders working all the year round still would not be able to restore them. All this was written on his toil-worn, gloomy face, the face of an old workman, and it had taken a tremendous war with all its disasters and hardships for this thought to emerge so that it could be seen by all, to make it show through his gloominess, just as a great fresco shows through on a neglected monastery wall. Unfortunately, neither we children, nor Yura's brother, nor any of the other devotees of international affairs had any notion of this at the time. Yura's brother would go without bread as long as you let him hold forth on the subject of collective security, the machinations of the Vatican or something of that kind. It always seemed to me unfair that he should start holding forth about all this even before he had finished washing and changing. Besides, while he was slapping water on his face he would sometimes fail to hear what other people were saying and, having got everything wrong, have to ask them all over again. Or else he would scoop up some water in his hands and, instead of splashing it on his face, suddenly stop half way and listen while the water trickled through his fingers without his noticing it, and then he would slap his cheeks with empty hands and look suspiciously at Yura as though Yura was to blame for what had happened and for gathering all these talkers round him. Sometimes, with his face all soapy, he would open his eyes, and then get into a temper because he thought he was being misunderstood whereas, in fact, as I could see perfectly well, it was simply the soap stinging his eyes. Or perhaps he would be asked a question just when he had given himself a silent slap on the back of the head indicating the spot where Yura was to pour next and while Yura was pouring, the others would stand round like stuffed dummies, waiting for the brother to raise his dripping head and regale them with his answer. He went on talking while towelling himself, and even while pulling on his shirt he never stopped asking questions and giving answers. Sometimes it was simply ridiculous. Before he got his head out of the shirt he would start muttering away inside it, as though we could understand what he was muttering about. And sometimes he couldn't get his head out at all because he had forgotten to unbutton the collar. But would he unbutton it himself? Oh no, this darling of the family would wait like a baby to be unbuttoned by Yura and meanwhile go on jabbering in this strange head-in-a-tent attitude. He was just like the mad photographer who came to take pictures of us at school. Having pulled his black hood over his head, he would start muttering remarks that we couldn't understand, or at least we pretended we couldn't because we felt we had a right not to. Who likes being talked at from under a hood anyway? In the end he would flap out from under its folds and, having recovered his breath, issue all kinds of instructions about who should sit where, then take another gulp of air and dive under the hood again. Similarly Yura's brother would in the end--admittedly only with Yura's help--get his head through the shirt and go off to his friends, tucking his shirt-tails in as he went. That, thank goodness, he did himself. But then Yura's mother would appear on the porch and call out in Greek that supper was ready and he would ignore her and so persistently that she would begin to scold him and shout at him to finish his "jabber-jabber conference". Who knows, perhaps this expression was coined by her, but to this day that is what the people of our town call any long spell of talking. At one time this expression used to irritate me. It struck me as inaccurate and incomplete. Its meaning seemed to flop about in a much too large envelope of sound. But later I realised that this flopping about is indeed the highest form of accuracy, because even in the actual phenomena of life the concept an expression implies flops about just as uselessly. Luckily, as time went on, Yura's brother returned less and less frequently to his father's profession and I seldom had to suffer their joint washing operation while waiting for Yura. I can still see the long shrivelled figure of Yura's father, his face overgrown with whitewash-like stubble, and Yura beside him, stripped to the waist and spattered with whitewash, a long brush over his shoulder. In the light of the setting sun he looked as magnificent as a young Hercules walking home from work beside his old father. When he had washed and eaten his supper, he would come out into the street, still stripped to the waist as before, and we would all sit together on the sun-warmed steps of the porch and Yura would tell us about the people he and his father had been working for that day. His hands would be lying limply on his knees, his face would be a little pale from fatigue, and I would relish the pleasure he himself and his every muscle felt from being still. If he and his father had been working for a generous employer who knew how to feed his men well, Yura would go on about what dishes they had been given and how much he personally had eaten, and how he and his father had tried to do as good a job as possible just to please their employer. In summer Yura often visited his Greek relatives in the country. On his return he would tell us what the life was like there, what they ate and how much. "I carried a hundredweight sack all the way from Tsebelda in six hours," would be his next bit of information. That was his sports news. "All the way from Tsebelda on foot?" a surprised voice would say. In such cases there would always be one voice expressing the general surprise. "Of course," Yura would reply, and then add, "I did eat a loaf of bread and a kilo of butter on the road." "How could you eat a kilo of butter, Yura?" the expresser of the general surprise would ask. "It's country butter, Greek butter," Yura would explain. "You can eat it without bread if you like." But besides his physical strength, what I would now call his games sense was amazingly well developed too, and showed itself in most unexpected ways. There is no need to relate here the well-known case when he got on a bicycle for the first time and after a push from someone and a couple of wobbles with the handle bars rode away quite calmly. The same kind of thing once happened at sea. For some reason Yura hardly ever swam. Despite his incredible daring I believe he never trusted the water. He knew how to stay afloat and would swim out a little way in country style, but then turn back, find the bottom with his feet and walk ashore. Either it was because he had grown up in a mountain village and not on the coast, or because, like his ancient compatriot, he could do nothing without a good foothold, but it was very hard to tempt him out of his depth; he would swim out a mere five or six metres and then turn back to the shore. As a person already much inclined to indulge in the simple forms of pleasure, I could stay in the water for hours and I was, of course, disappointed by his restrained attitude towards the sea. One day after much persuasion I got him to go with me to the swimming pool. We undressed and went up on to the board over the fifty-meter lanes. Among the foppish, though almost naked, denizens of the pool he looked decidedly out of place in a pair of shorts that came down to his knees. He tried to climb down into the water, but I persuaded him to dive. We decided to swim along together so that I could study his movements, get him used to swimming out of his depth and in the end teach him something like a proper modern style. Yura jumped into the water--feet first, of course. I shall never forget the expression of confusion combined with a readiness to resist that was written on his face when he came up. It was the kind of expression a hunted man might have when leaping out of bed in the middle of the night and grabbing his gun. However, having convinced himself that no one was going to pull him under, he swam off to the opposite end. He swam his usual stern overarm stroke, turning his head after every thrust, as though guarding his rear. After waiting a few seconds I dived in after him. I had to tell him not to turn his head like that. I had decided to go straight into the crawl after my dive and overtake him all in one breath, so to speak, without coming up for air. When I did raise my head out of the water I looked at the lane beside me, but Yura was not there. He was still in front. The distance between us had scarcely lessened. He was still turning his head at every stroke and making good progress. Working hard with my legs, I switched to the breast stroke but, try as I would, the gap between us remained the same. I was baffled. His head went on turning at every sweep of his arm and his eyes gave a grim stare now over the right shoulder, now over the left. When I finally reached him he was already resting, or rather waiting for me, holding on to the bars at the other end of the pool. "Well, how did I swim?" he asked. I looked into his grey eyes but found no mockery there. "Pretty good, but don't keep turning your head," I replied, trying not to show my heavy breathing, and also clutched the bars for support. In answer to this he rubbed his neck a little and silently swam away to the other end. I watched him. The funny way he had of turning his head to right and left and throwing his arm out too straight diverted attention from the powerful underwater work of his arms and legs. He swam like a powerful animal in a strange but manageable environment. That straight neck and indomitable head jutted proudly out of the water. I realised that I should never catch up with him on land or sea. I think my liking for the simple forms of pleasure helped me to overcome a mean-spirited envy. Anyway, I decided his victory at sea only proved once again how right I was in my choice of an object of worship. Not far from our street there was a large and ancient park. In recent times some sports facilities had been set up there, including a huge cross-beam on posts to which was fixed a whole system of gymnastic equipment: a pole, rings ropes and a set of wall-bars. Naturally Yura was way ahead of us all on every piece of this equipment. But he, my idol, was not only strong and agile, he was also the boldest of us all, and this caused me a vague feeling of anxiety. He would climb up the wall-bars on to the cross-beam itself, sit astride it for a while, then let go with his hands and carefully stand up. And then came the miracle of daring. As we watched with bated breath he would sway gently until the cross-beam was swaying with him. The posts that held it had been weakened by the constant pull of the rope, which was used as a swing, so the whole structure was soon in motion. When he had got it moving like this, he would suddenly with well timed steps run quickly along the beam from one end to the other. In the few seconds it took him to reach the other end the beam would sway so violently that it looked as if he would lose his balance and fall right off. But he made it every time. The top of the cross-beam was no wider than a man's hand and there were bolts sticking out it, so in addition to everything else he had to be careful not to trip over them as he ran. We all breathed with relief when he finally lowered his hands to the beam and climbed down by way of the wall-bars. This star turn by my idol never failed to astound the spectators and he always performed it with maximum risk--always swaying the beam first and always running, never walking. I don't know why, but I conceived a desperate desire to try myself out at this high-altitude trick. I chose a time when none of our crowd were in the park and climbed the wall-bars. While I still had a foothold on them, the beam did not seem so terribly high. But as soon as my feet were on the beam itself, I felt very high-up and unprotected. I squatted on my haunches, gripping the beam with both hands, and tried to gauge the quiet oscillation of the whole system. It was like being on the back of a sleeping animal. I could feel its breathing and was afraid of waking it. At last I let go and straightened up. Trying not to look down, I took one step and without lifting my other foot from the beam dragged it up to the first. The whole structure was swaying gently under me. Ahead lay a narrow green path studded with protruding bolts that I should have to be careful of as well. I took another step forward and cautiously drew up the other foot, but not quite cautiously enough apparently, because the structure came to life and heaved under me. Trying to keep my balance, I froze to the spot and looked down. The ground, red with fallen pine needles and reinforced with exposed roots, swam beneath me. "Go back before it's too late," I told myself and gingerly turned my head. The end of the beam I had just left was quite close, but I realised at once that I should not be able to turn round. Turning round on such a narrow ledge would be worse than going forward. I felt trapped. Either I must sit down astride the beam and ease myself backwards, or I must continue on my way. Frightened though I was, some inner force prevented me from making so shameful a retreat. I went forward. Sometimes, as I began to lose my balance, I thought I had better jump rather than fall off but somehow I managed to steady myself and go on. I walked right to the other end and, now afraid that sheer joy might topple me, bent down and put my arms right round the beam, hugging it and appreciating its no longer dangerous swaying. It goes without saying that I did not keep my little exploit a secret from the others. Yura himself looked hard at me, then offered his congratulations. I repeated the trick several times afterwards, but my fear grew hardly any less, it was simply that I got used to the idea of mastering a fear of a certain intensity and mastered it. It seems to me that in any kind of action the initial fear is so powerful because it comes as a sensation of stepping into a yawning abyss, into endless horror. When we overcome this fear, we do not remove the sense of danger, but find a measure for that which we used to regard as infinite. The man who finds a measure for non-being will provide us all with the best antidote for the fear of death. Some of the others also learned to walk the swaying beam but neither they nor I ever tried to run along it. We sensed that this was only for the chosen few, and only in our secret dreams did we ever repeat his exploit. ...In the vision of Christ walking across the water there is something of the charlatanism of the Grand Inquisitor. What we see is people being lured into religion by means of a miracle. But the operation would have been equally successful if Christ had turned the pebbles on the shore into gold coins before the eyes of those fishermen. There was nothing spiritual in his walking the waters because he had nothing to overcome. He could walk on water because he was incorporeal or because he was held up with an invisible thread by the Chief Designer. So all he had to do was walk the waters in a Worthy Way, with the kind of modest dignity with which those elected to the presidium mount the platform at meetings. Our Yura was quite a different case. There he stands on that cross-beam. He is preparing himself for an heroic exploit, for a man-made miracle. His whole figure, the aggressive thrust of his body, the bunching of his limbs as if for a spring, the concentration in his face, all express the fierce contest between courage and fear. He takes off and for a few seconds of Olympian victory spirit conquers flesh! Before our eyes he drove his body from one end of the beam to the other like an audacious rider forcing his unwilling steed across a foaming mountain torrent. It was beautiful and we all felt it, although none of us could have explained why, at the time. One day Yura suggested to me that we should rob the school cafeteria, and although we had never done anything of the kind before I agreed without a second thought. Neither of us felt any pangs of conscience because this was not our school and because it was also very convenient for burglary, being next door to our house. The temptation arose from the sausages that, according to reliable rumours, had been brought to the cafeteria that day. The plan was simple. We were to break in, eat all the sausages, take all the change out of the cash-desk and make our getaway. We were not going to steel any paper money because we knew that it was never left in the till. Curiously enough, we never considered taking any of the sausages with us; we simply couldn't imagine that there might be too many. This was not because in an operation run by my idol with his Tsebelda experience there was no need to worry on that score, but because our general experience told us that no one anywhere ever left sausages uneaten. Neither of us had ever heard of such a thing. In the afternoon we strolled into the cafeteria to spy out the lie of the land. A large bowl festooned with sausages was standing on the windowsill. It was bathed in a pink radiance from the slanting rays of the evening sun. Yura stared at this apparition with such sentimental candour that in the end I had to steer him away because his curiosity was beginning to look indecent and dangerous. "It's too much for me," he said, taking a deep breath when we stopped in the corridor by the window. "What's too much?" I asked quietly. "When they're burst like that," he replied drawing breath with a whistling sound, as if he had taken a sausage that was too hot for him. I felt my mouth watering too. "Wait till this evening," I whispered, appealing for fortitude. We left the building. The best way of entering the school at night was through the permanently locked back-door. The door had glass panels, but one of them was broken and the opening was wide enough to climb through. There was a store-keeper who lived on the premises and in addition to his other duties performed that of watchman. We had been at war with him for many years because we liked to use the school yard for football and he tried to keep us out. He was, unfortunately, a hale and hearty old man. As soon as it grew properly dark we climbed into the school yard and crept over to the locked door. It showed up faintly in the dim light from the street and the black hole left by the missing pane looked menacing. From the street came the voices of our lads. They sounded remote, like distant echoes of a peaceful life that we had left irrevocably behind us. A large puddle glistened oilily just in front of the door. I stepped round it carefully and looked in through the hole. "In you go," said Yura, and I climbed in. With one hand I found a hold on the wall and with the other gripped the door handle, pulled my legs up and pushed them through the hole, trying to feel the floor inside with my feet. In this position of moral and physical suspense I dangled for a time, wiggling my toes and slipping gradually until I felt the floor and was able to pull the upper part of my body inside. Overhanging the corridor was the first flight of the stairs leading to the attic. We had to go along the corridor, then turn down another corridor at the end of which was the cafeteria. Yura climbed in quickly after me and we advanced along the corridor, stopping every now and then and listening to the eerie silence of the locked classrooms and the dark deserted school. My heart beat so hard that with every step I had to overcome its recoil. When we passed a window my friend's stern profile would appear in the darkness and I would feel less frightened. I have forgotten to say that for some reason I was wearing a white shirt. More suitable for a ghost than a burglar, it loomed a ghastly white in the darkness, as though I were dressed in my own fear. I tried not to look at it to keep my anxiety at bay. We reached the door of the cafeteria. A faint ray of light shone through the crack. Yura pressed on the door; the crack widened and he put his eye to it. He kept his eye to that crack for a long time, as though trying to get a glimpse of the night life of the sausages or the other inhabitants of the cafeteria. Finally he turned a more cheerful face towards me and signalled me to look through the crack as well, as if offering me a portion of good cheer before engaging in the most dangerous part of our enterprise. I peeped in and again saw our sausages. They were still in the same place, but now, covered with a piece of cheesecloth, they looked even more tempting. Yura took a pair of pincers that we had obtained beforehand and set to work on the pad lock. It was a matter of pulling out one of the rings to which the lock was attached. But this was not so easy. Excited by the sight of the sausages, he began to hurry and the pincers slipped off the ring several times with a rather loud clank. And suddenly I heard quite distinctly the sound of footsteps on the floor above us. Whoever it was walked on for a few more steps, and then stopped, as if listening. "Let's run for it!" I whispered in panic. but at once felt his fingers gripping my forearm. We stood stiff and silent in the long stillness of the corridor. "You imagined it," Yura whispered at last. I shook my head. We stiffened again. I don't know how long we stood like this. In the end Yura turned back to the door, as though comparing the degree of risk with the degree of temptation. He listened again peeped through the crack, listened, and then set about the lock in real earnest. And suddenly those footsteps came again! Once more Yura's hand, forestalling my reflex of desertion, gripped my arm. But the footsteps did not stop. Now they were clearly approaching down the stairs. They hesitated for a moment and suddenly a beam of light, reaching us sooner than the click of the switch descended, from the upper floor like the blast of an explosion and the footsteps started again. Yura's hand relaxed its grip on my arm. The wild and unerring horse of fear carried me off and threw me out of the school building. I didn't stop for a second at the hole in the door. I shot straight through it and opened my eyes when I landed in the puddle. Only when I had scrambled over the fence did I notice that Yura was not with me. I did not know what to think. Surely the watchman hadn't caught him? If he had, why hadn't I heard anything? I observed the school through the fence, waiting for a flashing of lights and buzzing of angry little alarm bells, and then for the militia to arrive... But time passed and all was quiet and I began to notice how dirty my white shirt was. I should be in trouble for that at home and would have to slip in quietly, throw the shirt in with the dirty linen and put on something else. Lost in these depressing thoughts, I noticed Yura only when he swung himself over the fence and landed beside me. What had happened? Apparently, when we were running away from the watchman, he had sensed that we should not be able to get out of the building together and had had the presence of mind to run up the attic staircase and wait there for the danger to pass. And he had thought of that in the few seconds while we were running away! I could never have thought of such a thing so quickly. I had darted like an animal back through the hole I had come in by, but Yura... Well, that was what he was like, my old friend Yura Stavrakidi. Reading over what I have written I recall that according to the best literary formulas one should also say a few words about shortcomings of one's hero. They were, of course insignificant and did nothing to darken his shining aspect, they merely shaded it in a little. The existence of such defects--only small ones, I must repeat--should bring him nearer to us, make him more human and even, perhaps, evoke an understanding smile. People are only human, after all. I must admit that Yura liked a fight. In those days we all liked fighting, but Yura for quite natural reasons was particularly fond of this pastime. He would fight to defend his own honour, or Greek honour, or simply that of the weak and defenceless, or the honour of painters, quite often the honour of our street and, less often, that of our class. And sometimes he would fight for no particular reason, when the two sides merely wanted to measure their strength so that they could afterwards jump to a higher branch of the genealogical tree of chivalry, or yield their own branch, as the case might be. "I want to fight him," Yura would say to me quietly, nodding at some boy or other. Usually this was a newcomer who had only just appeared at our school or in the neighbourhood of our street. Or sometimes this was one of our old acquaintances who had suddenly grown much bigger or filled out during the summer and now required--though he might not wish it himself--a reassessment of his potential. So Yura would nod in his direction and there was such ardour and secret happiness in his face that I could not help admiring him. Such probably is the admiration of the gardener who finds a prematurely ripened fruit in his orchard and carefully bends the branch to examine it, or perhaps of a Don Juan viewing from afar a new beloved with a similar significant tenderness. Usually the boy would sooner or later become aware of Yura's secret passion and a shy embarrassment would appear in his movements that would eventually break out into arrogance. "He feels it too," Yura would say, nodding joyfully in his direction and his eyes would glow with the goat-like cunning of a little satyr. One day Yura and I were standing at the entrance to what was at the time I am writing of our best cinema, the Apsny. There was some fabulous film on and the street around us was surging with youngsters. Many were looking for tickets and would peer into our eyes, trying to spot someone who had bought a ticket for the purpose of reselling it. How pleasant it was to be able to stand in the crowd before the show began and feel the ticket in your pocket, knowing there were so many yearning to get one but you had yours so you had nothing to fear. And when the doors opened you would also be able to stroll round the foyer, inspecting for the hundredth time the delightful daubs of a local artist on themes from Pushkin's fairy-tales, relishing the knowledge that these little pleasures were all for free and the main pleasure was yet to come. And after that, when they let you into the hall, which would be positively steaming from the previous show and redolent of the pleasure that had just been experienced by others and was still in store for you, there would be the newsreel, a feeble one perhaps but also in the nature of a free gift with the real pleasure yet to come, and perhaps the sweetest thing in life was to keep putting it off and putting it off since happiness, once begun, could not be stretched for ever, because it might break, like the film itself. And this was the state of blissful suspense in which I was standing when a boy came up to Yura. "Got a ticket?" Yura looked at the lad, such a puny, such a ticket-less little fellow, and paused as if to let him feel the full depth of his nothingness, and said, "Yes, I have, but I'm going myself." "I see you're trying to be funny," the boy retorted cheekily, emboldened by disappointment. "Yes, I was," Yura agreed. He seemed unable to believe his ears, unable to comprehend that from this depth of nothingness anyone could possibly answer him back, and was now testing his own senses to see if he had not perhaps imagined this impudent voice. "But it didn't come off, did it?" the boy said and with a vengeful nod turned to go away. "Wait a minute," Yura started forward. The boy halted fearlessly. "So I'm a speculator, am I?" Yura asked unexpectedly and, seizing him by the lapels of his jacket, shook him. "I'm a speculator, am I?" he repeated. I felt a sour taste in my mouth. This was my body's as yet unconscious reaction to what was dishonourable and unfair. I sensed that Yura wanted to fight the boy, but that would have been beyond all borings. The boy obviously did not want to fight, he was obviously the weaker of the two, he had not said that Yura was a speculator, and he wasn't even a ginger-head. "So I'm a speculator, am I?" Yura repeated, and tried to shake him into fighting form. "I didn't say that," the boy's voice began to quaver, and he looked round in search of friends or protectors. "Yes, you did!" Yura shook him again, striving to elicit some further insult, so that he could let fly. But the boy would not be provoked and this annoyed Yura even more because he might have to take the final step himself. And it looked as if he was going to. But at that moment half a dozen Greek boys appeared from nowhere and surrounded us, chanting in one voice, "Aren't you ashamed, Greek? ... Kendrepeso..." came the familiar words out of the din. Apparently they knew both Yura and the other boy well and Yura for some reason had to reckon with them. And this boy, so obviously Russian in appearance, suddenly, as if from sheer fright, also began to babble in Greek so fluently that even Yura was confused. Apparently the boy lived in the same yard as these lads. They went on like this for some time, raising and lowering their voices, going over from Russian to Greek and back to Russian. Yura maintained that although the boy had not actually called him a speculator, he had asked how much he would sell his ticket for, which obviously meant ... and so on. "I didn't say that. It's not true," the boy argued, boldly now that he was surrounded by his Greek friends. "Aren't you ashamed, Greek?" again the Greeks appealed to Yura's conscience in their own language. "Ask him, if you don't believe me," Yura said, and turned towards me. I had been expecting this. I hated him at that moment. I would have liked to tread on his handsome, lying face, but he was my friend and by some ancient law of comradeship, fellow-countrymanship, kinship or whatever, I was bound to defend him, while another, stronger but for some reason illegitimate feeling prompted me to take the side of the other boy. Everyone looked at me, confident that I would take Yura's side, if only because he had appealed to me. But for the first second I hesitated and by so doing at once roused intense curiosity, because if I was his friend and had not leapt to his defence I must be going to say something unusual or perhaps even tell the whole truth. They all stared at me in hushed expectation and I felt that every moment of my silence was lifting me to intrepid heights in their eyes. Indeed, I myself felt how high I was rising in my silence, how fruitful it was in itself, and yet at the same time, knowing in advance that I should fail them as soon as I opened my mouth, I waited for the moment when it would be simply too dangerous to go any higher in view of the inevitable subsequent fall. "I didn't hear," I said, and acid spurted into my mouth as if I had bitten into the crabbiest of all crab apples. Both sides instantly lost interest in me and returned to their argument, now relying only on their own forces. The bell rang. We sat together watching the film. Sometimes from the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of my friend's stern face that was becoming more and more estranged. On the way home I tried to explain something, but he was unresponsive. "Let's not start a jabber-jabber conference," he said as we reached his house and he turned into the courtyard. That was the beginning of the end of our friendship. We did not quarrel. We simply lost our common aim. Gradually we left the childhood we had shared and entered a youth that we could not share because youth was the beginning of specialisation of the soul. And in purely physical terms, through circumstances beyond our control we lost touch with each other. It was only many years later that we met again in our town on the upper floor of the off-shore restaurant Amra I had dropped in for a cup of coffee. He was sitting with a group of local lads. We recognised each other from a distance and he rose, smiling broadly, from his table. I sat down with him and, as custom required, we recalled our schooldays and old friends. Yura was now a naval officer, serving somewhere up north. He was on a long leave. He had come here for a holiday and a good time and was then going to spend the rest of his leave in Kazakhstan, where his parents were now living. I reminded him of his running along the beam and confessed that this feat of his had remained for me a great and never-to-be-fulfilled ambition. "I could never have walked it," Yura said, with a shrug. "Couldn't you?" "I was far too scared to take it slowly," he said, and a ghost of the old fearlessness appeared in his eye for a moment. "You don't mean it!" I exclaimed, feeling that his confession imposed some sort of obligation on me, though I did not know yet what it was. "Do you know why I used to make it sway?" he asked and, without waiting for my answer, replied, "I thought a steady rolling would be better than sudden plunges... Like at sea," he added, consoling me with a more universal application of his discovery. No, I had no regrets about my adolescent enthusiasm for his feat. I merely felt that courage, like cowardice, too, probably, was of a more complex nature than I had previously suspected, and much of what I had once believed to be clearly solved after all had probably not been solved so exactly. It made me sad. Scraps of half-formed thoughts prevented me from enjoying myself, as exams still waiting to be taken had done when I was a student. I wanted to go home at once and form a final opinion at least about something. But I had to stay because the waitress arrived with what had been ordered. She had brought a bottle of brandy and a skillfully cut water melon, which as soon as the plate was on the table opened out trickling with juice, like a huge lotus with blood-stained petals. Yura's hand went out to the bottle. No, of course, I couldn't leave. -------- Old Crooked Arm I have told the story of how in my childhood, when finding my way at night to the house of a relative of ours, I fell into a freshly dug grave, where I spent several hours in the company of a stray goat, until I and the goat were rescued by a passing peasant. That was during the war. Some time after this nocturnal adventure, we, that is, my mother, sister and I, went to live in that very village. At first we stayed with my mother's sister, then we found a room in another house and moved. The house had been occupied before the war by three brothers. They were all in the army. One of them had married before enlisting and now his young, blooming and not too grief-stricken wife was all alone in the house. Remembering her now, I am drawn to the conclusion that a grass widow is called a grass widow because she catches fire as easily as dry grass. While we were living there, one of the brothers came home. Yes, the one that was married. He came home a little too quietly somehow. We noticed him in the kitchen one morning. He was sitting in front of the fire roasting a corncob on a spit, as though to remind himself of his pre-war childhood. There was something about him that made one think he ought not to have come home just yet. Or perhaps, he ought not to have married quite so soon; because I think it was missing his wife so badly that brought him home too early. He pottered about in the garden with a kind of desperate eagerness for a week or so, then he was arrested; and shortly afterwards we heard that he was a deserter. He was arrested just as quietly as he had arrived. We gradually settled down in the new place. My sister obtained work at the local collective farm as a time-keeper; we were allotted a patch of land, on which we grew melons and maize. We also grew pumpkins on it, and cucumbers and tomatoes, too. In those days we used to grow everything. Well, it so happened that not far from our house there lived the very man whose grave I had fallen into. Incidentally, people in the village used to say that everyone had fallen into that grave except the man it was meant for. The story turned out to be long and complex. The grave's future owner, if one may so describe him, old Shchaaban Larba, nicknamed Crooked Arm, had been in hospital with either appendicitis or rupture. (In Russian, it would probably be more correct to call him Withered Arm, but Crooked Arm corresponds more closely to the spirit and, hence, the meaning of the nickname.) Well, as I was saying, Crooked Arm had had an operation, and he was still in hospital, calmly recovering his health, when someone telephoned from the hospital to our village Soviet to say that the patient had died and would have to be collected and taken home immediately because he had been lying dead for more than a day already. None of the sick man's relatives had been visiting the hospital just then because he had been about to be discharged. True, a fellow villager, Mustafa, had been in town at the time on business of his own and had, incidentally, been asked to call at the hospital and find out why Crooked Arm was still there, and whether he had not perhaps decided to have his crooked arm put right as well as the appendicitis or rupture. And then, all of a sudden, such unexpe