cted news.
     The dead man's relatives, as our customs demand, sent out messengers of
woe to the neighbouring villages, a large army cape was stretched across the
yard of his house to make a shelter where the  funeral  feast would be held,
and a grave was dug in the cemetery.
     The collective farm sent its one and only lorry to bring the  dead  man
home because private transport was hard to come by in wartime. In short, the
whole  thing was  arranged  in  proper style,  just as  it  should be.  Yes,
everything was as it  should  be,  except  the dead man  himself,  Shchaaban
Larba, who, so  it was said,  had never given anyone  any peace while he was
alive, and after death became quite unmanageable.
     The day after the sorrowful  news the lorry arrived back in the village
with the body of the dead man, who turned out to be alive.
     Crooked  Arm,  they say, walked  into  the yard  of  his  house  gently
supported by Mustafa and swearing loudly. His indignation was due not to the
news of his death and the  preparations for his funeral but  to something he
noticed at  once  on  glancing at the shelter  made  with the army cape, for
which two  apple trees had been stripped of their branches.  Still swearing,
Crooked  Arm demonstrated  on the  spot how the  cape could have  been  hung
without touching the trees.
     After that, they say, he  made  the  round of  his guests shaking hands
with each and staring keenly into their eyes to discover what impression had
been caused by the news  of his death  and simultaneous,  quite  unexpected,
resurrection.
     Having  done this, they say, he raised that arm  of  his which had been
withering for twenty years but still had not withered away, and, shading his
eyes with  his hand, peered rudely at the women  who had  been hired to weep
for him as though he didn't know what they were there for.
     "What do you want?" he rasped.
     They looked embarrassed. "Oh, nothing special. We just came to weep for
you."
     "Well, get on with it then," Crooked  Arm is said to have replied,  and
put his hand  to his ear to listen to the weeping. But at this point someone
intervened and led the weepers away.
     When he saw  the gifts  that  his  relatives had brought,  Crooked  Arm
pondered for a moment. It is the custom among  my people to hold any kind of
funeral feast on such a grand scale that, were it all done at the expense of
the dead man's family, its surviving members would have  no alternative  but
to lie down and die as well.
     So,  all the relatives and  neighbours help out. Some bring  wine, some
bring roast chickens, some  bring  khachapuri, and someone  may even bring a
calf. And it so happened this time that one of the  relatives from  the next
village had brought  along a  well fattened calf, which  Crooked Arm took an
immediate liking  to. Incidentally, they say that it was  from this relative
that the  measurements  had been taken for digging the grave, because he was
just about the  same height as Crooked Arm. They say that  when  one of  the
lads who had  been told to dig the grave  came  up  to him  with a measuring
string, this relative expressed some displeasure and argued that  there were
other people more suitable for the purpose,  that  he  was probably a little
taller than Crooked Arm and Crooked Arm was more stocky.
     So saying, he tried to get away from  the measuring string, but the lad
would not  let him  get away. Like all grave-diggers, this  lad was given to
joking.  He said that Crooked Arm's stockiness made no  difference  now, and
that if the worst came  to the worst and Crooked Arm was not the right size,
they would have his relative in mind.
     The  relative, they say, sniggered half-heartedly  at  these jokes, but
evidently took offence, because  he withdrew to  the company  of the  people
from  his  own  village  and stood  with them, glancing sulkily at his calf,
which was tethered to the fence.
     At the sight of all these gifts Crooked  Arm announced that it  was too
early yet to rejoice,  that he still felt  very ill,  and that he  had  been
discharged only so that  he should not die in hospital because  doctors were
fined for  that, just as collective farmers were  fined for spoiled produce.
He  then went straight to bed and gave instructions that the grave should on
no account be filled in,  but kept open in readiness. The  relatives,  it is
said, dispersed somewhat unwillingly, the one who had brought the calf being
particularly displeased. But Crooked  Arm calmed him with assurances that he
would not have long to wait, so the calf would not waste away even if it was
not let out of the yard.
     Crooked  Arm stayed in bed for about a week. After a couple  of days he
began  to be  pestered  by  the curious, because by that time the rumour had
spread that Crooked  Arm, having died in  the  hospital, had come to life on
the way home and arrived there for his own funeral. Another  rumour  had  it
that he had not died at all  but had fallen into a deep sleep from which the
doctors had been unable to awake him, but the journey back had been so bumpy
that he had woken up of his own accord.
     At  first  Crooked Arm  received the visitors,  particularly while they
continued to bring him all  kinds of delicacies designed to tempt the palate
of a man who had recently been dead and was still not quite alive again. But
eventually he grew tired  of this, and  in any case the chairman of the farm
said there  was work to be done. So, when he heard the  gate creak, he would
run  out on the veranda and bellow in  his loud voice, "Back! Keep back, you
parasites! I'll set the dog on you!"
     However,  the rumours of his resurrection  grew and multiplied. It must
have been  quite  a  year  later  when  I heard in one  of the  neighbouring
villages that Crooked  Arm  had  come  to  life  not  on  the way home  from
hospital, but actually in his grave, several days after burial. The noise he
had been making was heard by  a boy  who had been  looking for  his goat one
evening in the  cemetery. So the  villagers had to go and dig him out. If he
had not possessed such a powerful voice, they  said, he  would  have died of
hunger, or  even of  thirst, because the site that had been  chosen  for his
grave was a good one--well drained.
     So it came about that Crooked Arm survived or,  at least, prevented his
own funeral, while retaining for himself a grave in complete readiness.
     When they first saw Crooked Arm on his return from hospital, the people
of the village  decided that it was the  secretary of the village Soviet who
had played a joke on them, because he was the man who had said he had talked
with  the hospital or someone who had pretended to be the hospital.  But the
secretary declared that he would never dream of playing such  a joke  with a
war on.
     Everyone believed him,  because to joke like that in wartime would have
been  just a bit too stupid. Eventually, it  was agreed that there  had been
some sort of mix-up at the hospital, that another old man had  died, perhaps
even one of Crooked Arm's namesakes, for in Abkhazia  we have any  number of
people of the very same name.
     I heard Crooked Arm's voice the  first day we started living  with  our
grass widow, even before I had met him face to face. At exactly midday, when
he was coming home for dinner from work on the farm, he would  at a distance
of  some  three  hundred meters from his house  start shouting to his  wife,
scolding her and inquiring furiously if the hominy was ready.
     The old woman would respond with equally frantic yells and their voices
with no loss of power  or clarity would  gradually come together,  overreach
each other and at last fall silent. After a time the old woman's voice would
shoot  up triumphantly from the silence but Crooked Arm's would not respond.
Later on, when I began  visiting  their house, I realised  that  the old man
kept quiet at this stage for the simple reason  that  his mouth was occupied
with  eating;  he ate as frantically as he cursed, so he could  not possibly
eat and curse at the same time.
     Coming home from work in the evening, he would inquire in the same tone
of voice about his horse or  his grandson  Yashka and again about the hominy
for supper.
     Later on, I made friends with this Yashka, who was just  as loud-voiced
as his  grandfather but,  unlike  him, a good-natured lounger.  Crooked  Arm
usually took him to school on the back of his horse, and would curse all the
way there over having to waste his precious time on this  dunderhead. Yashka
would sit  in silence behind  his grandfather, holding  on  to his belt  and
gazing around with a sheepish grin on his face.
     If  his grandfather was  away, he  would  be taken  to  school  by  his
grandmother  on the same horse, and he would sit behind her in the same way,
except that he did not let her ride right up to the school in case  the boys
made fun of him.
     He  and  I  attended school in  different  shifts. On  my way home from
school I would meet them about halfway and Yashka would screw his head round
and stare wistfully after me, thereby touching off a fresh explosion of fury
from his grandfather. Yashka had to be taken to  school because it was three
kilometres from his  home  and Yashka was so absentminded that  he sometimes
forgot where he was going and took the wrong road.
     In the early days, on meeting me in the street, Crooked  Arm would look
at me shading his eyes with his hand, and ask:
     "Who do you belong to?"
     "I am the son of so-and-so," I would  answer politely and give the name
of my mother, whom he had known for many years.
     "Who's she?" he  would thunder, and scrutinise me  even more thoroughly
from under his crooked palm.
     "She  is  Uncle  Meksut's wife's  sister," I would  explain,  though  I
realised he was pretending.
     "So you're one of those parasites from town?"  he  would say with a nod
in the direction of our house.
     "Yes," I would reply, confirming  that we lived there and  at  the same
time reluctantly acknowledging our role as parasites.
     He would stand before me, peering at me in astonishment with his gimlet
eyes, a  rather  short,  stocky  man with a  massive neck as red as a cock's
comb.  And  while he stood there,  peering at me in  surprise, as  though to
achieve a  complete mental  picture  of  me,  he  would  at the same time be
listening to something else, to something that was taking place on the other
side of the fence, in the maize on his allotment, as though he could tell by
whispers, by scuffling, by sounds audible to his ears alone exactly what was
happening on his allotment, in his yard  and perhaps even  inside  the house
itself.
     "So  it  was  you  who  fell  into  my  grave?" he would  ask suddenly,
listening  as usual  to what  was  happening  on his  allotment  and already
sensing something amiss that made him snort with dissatisfaction.
     "Yes,"  I would reply, observing him  with secret misgiving,  because I
felt he was packed with some kind of explosive force.
     "And what did you think of it down there?" he would  ask still with one
ear to the fence, as it were, and becoming more and  more agitated over what
was happening on  the  other side  of it, and  even  beginning to mutter  to
himself, "Is  that old woman dead, or what? Curse her eyes... She'll ruin me
one of these days, the old fool..."
     "Very nice,"  I would  reply, trying to  display  my  gratitude for the
hospitality. After all, it was his grave.
     "It's  a  good,  dry  spot,"  he  would  agree,  almost   whining  with
indignation at what was happening on his allotment;  and all of  a sudden he
would let fly and shout to  his old woman, leaping straight to his top note:
"Hey!  There's   something  grunting  in  the  kitchen  garden!  Blast  your
ears--it's the pigs, the pigs!"
     "May  I bury  them with  you  in  that  grave of  yours!  You see  pigs
everywhere!" the old woman would retort at once.
     "But I  can hear  them--they're munching  and  grunting,  munching  and
grunting!" he would  shout,  forgetting  all about me,  and, as usual, their
voices  overlapped and  he seemed to snatch the end  of  her shout  and haul
himself along by it towards the house, tossing  her his  own raging voice as
he went. By and by we  grew accustomed to his voice and stopped paying  much
attention  to it, and when he was  away for a few days and all was quiet and
still, it seemed  strange, as though something was missing and our ears were
full of an empty roar.
     His wife,  a tall old  woman, taller  than he,  and  unbelievably thin,
would sometimes,  when he was  not at  home, come  round for a  chat with my
mother. She would occasionally bring a cheese or a bowl of maize flour  or a
fragrant lump of meat that had been smoked over an outdoor  fire. With a shy
little laugh she would ask  us to hide away  what  she had  brought and, for
goodness sake,  never say thank you, because that  bawling husband  of  hers
must not know anything about it.
     She and my  mother would talk for  hours  and Crooked  Arm's wife would
smoke  all  the  time,  making herself  cigarette  after cigarette. Suddenly
Crooked Arm's  voice would be heard. He would shout  something to her in the
direction of their house and she would prick up her ears at the sound of his
voice  and  shake with silent  laughter, as though  she were afraid he would
hear her laughing at him for shouting in the wrong direction.
     "What do you want now--I'm over here!" she would shout in the end.
     "Aha, idling again! Birds of  a  feather! You're nothing  but a gang of
chatterboxes!" he would bawl, after a  brief pause during which he must have
been struck dumb with indignation at her treachery.
     One day he rode up to our gate and shouted to me to bring  out  a sack.
Grumbling loudly about parasites who  had to have everything chewed and  put
in  their mouths for them to swallow, he filled my sack  half  full of flour
and, still fuming because he was  giving away his own maize that  he had had
to take to the mill on  his own horse, he tied his sack to the  saddle again
and rode  away, bawling over his shoulder that I must be careful not to tell
that woman anything about the flour  because he never had any peace from her
shrieking as it was.
     Time went by and  Old Crooked Arm showed no signs of dying. The  longer
he delayed his  death, the more the calf flourished and  grew fat; the  more
the calf flourished and grew fat, the sadder its former owner became. In the
end he  sent a man to Crooked Arm to drop  a hint about the  calf. Thank the
Lord Crooked  Arm was still alive, the message ran, but now it would be only
right to return the  calf,  because he had not made Crooked Arm a present of
it; he had only brought it to the funeral as a good kinsman should.
     "Brought an egg and wants to go home  with a chicken,"  Crooked  Arm is
said  to have  responded. After this, they say he  thought for  a moment and
added: "Tell  him that  if I die soon he can come to the funeral without any
offering at all and if he dies  I'll come to his  house like  a good kinsman
and bring a calf from his calf."
     Crooked Arm's relative, on  learning of  these terms,  is  said to have
taken offence  and told the messenger to tell  Crooked Arm without any hints
this time that he  did not  want any  calf from  his calf, and certainly not
when he himself was dead; he wanted his own calf, while  he was still alive,
the calf which  he had  brought  to the  funeral  as an  offering as a  good
kinsman should. Since Crooked Arm  still had  not died it was time to return
the calf to its proper owner.  Moreover,  he gave his  word that in spite of
the  fact  that while  he  was  at Crooked Arm's  house he had  suffered the
humiliation of  being measured with a  bit of string, he would nevertheless,
if Crooked Arm really did die, bring the calf back again.
     "This man will drive me to the grave with  that calf of  his," is  what
Crooked Arm is  supposed to have said on hearing these  explanations.  "Tell
him," he  added,  "that  he has not  long  to wait  now,  so  it's not worth
tormenting the wretched animal."
     A few days  after this  conversation Crooked  Arm transplanted from his
allotment to his grave two young peach trees. Possibly he did this to revive
the idea of  his imminent doom. Yashka and I helped him. But apparently  the
two  young peach trees were not  enough for him. Some days later he  went to
the  farm plantation at night,  dug  up  a small tung  tree and  planted  it
between  the two  peach trees. Everyone  soon  got to know  about  this. The
members  of the farm  chuckled among  themselves and  said that  Crooked Arm
wanted  to  poison  the dead  with  the  tung  fruit.  No one attached  much
importance to  the  transplanting  because no one  before or since had  ever
stolen a tung tree for  the simple reason that no peasant farmer had any use
for one,  the fruit  of  the tung  being  deadly  poisonous and consequently
rather dangerous.
     The  former  owner of  the  calf  also  fell silent. Either  he  became
convinced that Crooked Arm  was doomed after having  planted  a tung tree on
his grave, or else, fearing the old man's tongue, which was no less venomous
than the tung fruit, he had decided to leave him in peace.
     Incidentally,  legend has it  that  it was Crooked Arm's tongue in  his
young  days that gave  him his  crooked  arm. It  happened in the  following
manner.
     They say  that after some  feast or other, the local prince was sitting
surrounded by numerous guests in his host's courtyard. The prince was eating
peaches, which he  peeled with a small  penknife attached to a silver chain.
This penknife on its silver chain, by the way,  has  nothing to do with  the
subsequent events, but  all  narrators  of  this  tale have  mentioned  this
penknife, never failing to  add that it  was attached  to a silver chain. In
retelling the incident once again I should have liked to avoid that penknife
on its silver chain, but for some reason I feel that I must mention it, that
it   contains  some  element  of  truth  without  which  something  will  be
lost--though I don't know what.
     Anyway, the  prince  was  eating  peaches  and  complacently  recalling
amorous joys. In  the end, so they say, he surveyed the host's courtyard and
remarked with a sigh, "If I were to  assemble all the women I have had in my
time, this yard wouldn't hold them."
     But Crooked Arm, they say, even in those days, despite his youth, never
allowed anyone to be complacent for  long. He  popped  up from somewhere and
said, "I wonder how many she-asses there would be braying in this yard?"
     This  somewhat  elderly  prince  was a  great  connoisseur of  feminine
beauty,  added to which, they  say, he was modestly proud  of his ability to
strip  a fruit  of its  skin  without once breaking the ribbon of peel. This
skill never  deserted him, not even after a night's hard drinking. No matter
how closely he was  watched, or how  hard people tried to  distract him,  he
never made a slip. Sometimes they would try to catch him out with a fruit of
extremely odd and ugly shape, but he would examine it from all  angles, take
out his little  penknife  on its  silver chain and unerringly set it to work
along the only correct path.
     Having thus produced a spiral wreath of peel, he would usually hold  it
up before  the assembled company.  And if there was a pretty girl among them
he would call her over and hang the ring of peel over her ear.
     It  seems to  me  that Crooked Arm  must  have  been irritated  by  the
Prince's skill. I  think he must have been observing him for a long time and
was sure  that  sooner  or later the  ribbon  of  peel  would  break. He may
actually have placed great hopes  in one particular peach,  but  the  prince
had, as usual,  dealt with it quite  successfully and  even started boasting
about his women.  You  must  agree there  was  enough  to  make Crooked  Arm
explode, particularly as a young man.
     They say that  after Crooked Arm's unexpected remark the  prince turned
purple and stared  speechlessly  at him  with his  eyes popping  out,  still
holding in  his right hand the peeled and oozing peach, and in his left, the
penknife on its silver chain.
     Everyone was struck dumb with horror, but the prince continued to stare
unblinkingly at Crooked Arm while the hand that was holding the  peach moved
restlessly in the  air as  though  sensing how inappropriate  it  was to  be
holding a peach at  that moment, not to mention the difficulty of  drawing a
pistol while holding a peach in one's hand, particularly  a peeled one. They
say his hand even lowered to the ground to  get rid of the peach, but at the
last moment somehow could not bring itself to do such a thing. After all the
peach had been  skinned  and a well brought-up princely  hand must have felt
that a skinned peach simply could not be placed  on the  ground.  And so  it
rose again, this hand, and for an agonising second groped  in the air for an
invisible plate,  feeling  that  there must be someone  who would  think  of
providing a plate,  but everyone was  paralysed with fear and no one had the
presence of  mind to  help the prince discard this, by now indecently  naked
peach. And at this point, they say, Crooked Arm himself came to the prince's
aid.
     "Pop it in your mouth!" he suggested.
     The guests had no  time to recover  from this fresh impertinence before
they  found  themselves witnessing the inexplicable  self-abasement  of  the
prince,  who is said  to  have  begun in shameful haste  to push  the juicy,
dripping peach into his mouth, while continuing to stare at Crooked Arm with
hate-filled eyes.  At last, having  somehow coped with the peach, he reached
for his  pistol. Still gazing at Crooked Arm with those bulging, hate-filled
eyes,  he fumbled speechlessly in the region  of  his belt but, owing to his
extreme  agitation, or,  as others  infer more correctly, because his  hands
were sticky with peach juice, he just could not unbutton his holster.
     Perhaps someone  would yet have  come  to his  senses, perhaps  someone
might have managed to seize  the prince's  arm  or, at least, hustle Crooked
Arm aside, making  it  impossible  to shoot  and perhaps dangerous for other
people, but then, they say, Shchaaban's voice rang out  in  the  silence for
the last time.  I don't mean  in the sense  that after this his  voice never
rang out any more. Rather on the contrary, it became  even  louder  and more
scornful.  But  in  the sense that  after this phrase  he ceased to be  just
Shchaaban and became Shchaaban Crooked Arm.
     "I bet he doesn't  take so long over  the other  thing,"  he is said to
have remarked, "judging by the way our Chegem she-asses..."
     They say he did not finish his remark about  the  she-asses because the
old  prince,  at last,  coped with his holster--a shot rang  out, the  women
shrieked and, when the smoke cleared, Crooked Arm was what fate had destined
him  to be, that is, crooked-armed. Afterwards, when he was asked why  after
the first insult he had gone on teasing the prince he would simply reply, "I
just couldn't stop."
     Later on, however, when  the prince went  off  with the Mensheviks  and
Soviet power was  finally and  irrevocably  established  in  our part of the
country, Crooked Arm began to assert that  he had had an old score to settle
with the prince, perhaps  even something  to  do  with the days of  partisan
warfare,  and  that  this  exchange  had  been  merely  a  pretext  for,  or
consequence of, other more important things.
     In short,  despite the  prince's bullet, Crooked Arm went on taking the
rise  out of anyone and everyone and his jokes seemed to  lose none of their
sting as the years went by.
     When I was  roaming round the  village  I  would  often  see him on the
tobacco or tea plantation or weeding the maize. If he was in a  good mood he
would simply play the fool and have everyone doubled up with laughter.
     He had a knack of imitating the voices of people he knew and of animals
as well; and he was particularly good at crowing like a cock.
     Sometimes he would  jab his hoe into the ground,  straighten  his back,
look around and let  out a mighty crow. The cocks in the  neighbouring yards
would answer almost at once. Everyone would  burst  out laughing,  and while
the nearest cock went  on calling him he would resume his hoeing and mutter,
"A fat lot you know, you fool."
     Down our  way,  like everywhere  else probably, people believe that the
crowing  of a cock has a special meaning,  that it is almost an omen  of the
owner's fate. Crooked Arm was debunking these  rural clairvoyants. In  spite
of  his half-withered arm he certainly worked like  the devil. Although when
sometimes there was a rumour that a new national loan was being floated,  to
which contributions  would be  required,  or when  the remaining men in  the
village were  being  mobilised for  tree-felling, he would slip his left arm
into a clean red sling and go about like that for  as long as he  considered
necessary. I don't think this  red  sling was much help to him; it certainly
couldn't get him  out of signing up for the loan. Nonetheless, it apparently
provided him with some additional pretext for argument.
     I  believe  he  acquired  this red sling  to give  his arm a soldierly,
partisan appearance.  Whenever  he was summoned by  the management  board he
would put his arm  in its sling before  leaving. Mounted on horseback with a
black sheepskin cloak draped over his shoulders and his arm  in a red sling,
he certainly did have the rather dashing air of the partisan fighter.
     All  was well in the village, when suddenly  it became  known that  the
chairman  of  the  village Soviet had  received an  anonymous letter against
Crooked Arm. The letter declared that the planting of a tung tree on a grave
was an insult to  this new industrial crop, a hint that the  plant was of no
use  to living collective  farmers, and  that  its proper place was  in  the
village cemetery.
     The  chairman of the village Soviet showed this letter to the  chairman
of the collective farm, who, they  say,  was properly scared by it,  because
someone might think that he had given Crooked Arm the  idea of transplanting
the tung tree to his own grave.
     In those  days I just couldn't understand why things had taken  such  a
threatening  turn--after all,  everyone had known before the letter was sent
that Crooked  Arm had planted the tung tree  on his  grave. In those days  I
didn't  realise  that a  letter  was a  document, and a document  had  to be
presented on demand, had to be answered for.
     To  be sure, some people  say that  the chairman of the village  Soviet
need not have passed  it on, but  that  he had a grudge against Crooked Arm,
and that was why he showed it to the chairman of the farm.
     In short,  the letter was set in motion  and one day a man arrived from
the district centre  to find out the truth  of the matter. Crooked Arm tried
to laugh it  off, but,  so  they say, he had clearly lost his nerve  because
afterwards he had a shave, put his arm  in the red  sling and went about the
village staring at it as  if it was just about to blow up and the only thing
he and everyone else around could do would be to dodge the splinters.
     "Now you've done  it," said  Mustafa,  an old horseman, the friend  and
eternal rival of  Crooked Arm. "Now you'd better guzzle your tung apples and
jump into your grave, otherwise they'll pack you off to Siberia."
     "I'm not afraid of Siberia.  I'm afraid you'll step into my grave while
I'm away," Crooked Arm replied.
     "In Siberia, they say,  they ride on dogs," Mustafa  suggested  meanly.
"You'd  better take  a bridle  with  you  and  try breaking  in  a  dog  for
yourself."
     The long-standing  rivalry  between Crooked  Arm  and Mustafa was  over
horses and horsemanship. They both had their feats and failures behind them.
Crooked  Arm  had  covered  himself with undying glory by stealing a  famous
stallion at  a certain  race meeting in full view of thousands of spectators
(personally, I  doubt whether there  were  thousands). They say that Crooked
Arm had been mounted on such a wretched, broken-winded nag and had looked so
pathetic that when he asked the owner  of the stallion permission to put his
famous race-horse through its paces, the  latter had  granted the permission
as a joke,  because he was sure the stallion would  throw Crooked Arm  right
away and thus add still further to its renown.
     Crooked Arm, they say, slithered awkwardly off his doleful jade and, as
he passed the reins to the owner of the stallion, said, "Let's count it that
we've swopped."
     "Done," the owner replied, taking the reins from him.
     "Whatever you  do, don't  let  this one throw  you first time, or he'll
trample you  to  death,"  Crooked  Arm  warned him,  and  went  over to  the
stallion.
     "I'll be careful," the owner is  said  to have replied and, as  soon as
Crooked  Arm mounted the  stallion, gave  a  sign to a lad  standing  in the
background, and the lad gave the stallion a tremendous whack with his whip.
     The stallion  reared  and galloped  off towards  the  River  Kodor, and
Crooked Arm, they say, hung on at first like a drunken mullah on a galloping
donkey.
     Everyone was expecting him to fall off,  but he went on  and on and the
owner's jaw began to drop as Crooked Arm  reached the end  of the field and,
instead of following the bend of the race-course, went  careering on towards
the river. For another  few minutes they hesitated,  thinking the  horse had
taken the bit between its teeth and he could not make it turn, but then they
realised  that  this  was a robbery  of quite unprecedented  daring. Fifteen
minutes later a  dozen horsemen  were galloping in pursuit, but  it was  too
late.
     Crooked Arm had leapt headlong down the cliff  to the river and  by the
time his pursuers reached the edge he was climbing  out on the far bank; for
an instant, the stallion's wet crupper gleamed in the  alders at the water's
edge. The bullets  flew wide  and no  one  dared take a flying leap down the
cliff. Since then the spot has been known as Crooked Arm Cliff. Crooked  Arm
himself never told this story in my presence, but he allowed others to  tell
it, listening with pleasure and making a  few corrections. He  would  always
wink at Mustafa if  he was  present, and Mustafa  would  pretend  not  to be
listening, until in the end he could  not refrain from trying to belittle or
ridicule the exploit.
     Mustafa would say that a  man  with one  arm  shot through was disabled
anyway, so he had  not risked all that much for the sake of his exploit. And
if he had jumped down the cliff he had done it, first, because he was scared
and, secondly, because  there was nothing else he  could do, since he  would
have been shot dead in any case if he had been caught by his pursuers.
     In short, there was a deep  and long-standing rivalry  between them. In
their young days they used to thresh it out at  the races;  now, in old age,
though they still kept horses, they solved  their disputes theoretically, in
the  course  of   which  they  would   become  involved  in   a   jungle  of
ominous-sounding riddles.
     "If a man shoots  at you from  over there and you, say, are riding down
that path, where would you turn your horse at the  sound  of  the shot--and,
mind you, there's not a single tree around?"
     "Suppose  you're galloping down  a hill with someone chasing you. Ahead
on  the right there's some scrub, and on the left there's a ravine. Where do
you turn your horse then?"
     Such were the disputes  these two men would hold  as  they trudged home
with hoes or axes on their shoulders, after a long day's work.
     These disputes had been going on for many years, although it was a long
time since anyone had done any shooting round  our way, and certainly not at
these  old  men for  people had  learned  how to avenge  an insult  by safer
methods. And to  one of  these methods, namely, the anonymous letter, it  is
now time for us to return.
     The representative  from the district centre tried to make  the old man
say what  his real purpose had been in moving the tung tree, and, above all,
to reveal who  had instigated him to do so. Crooked Arm  replied that no one
had instigated  him, that he himself had suddenly wanted to have a tung tree
growing at his  head when he lay dead and  buried, because he had long since
taken a fancy to this plant that till recently had been quite unknown in our
district. The man from the centre did not believe him.
     Then  Crooked  Arm confessed  he had  been  relying  on  the  poisonous
properties not only of the fruit  but  of the roots of the tree; he had been
hoping that  its  roots would kill all  the grave worms and he would lie  in
peace  and cleanliness because he had had  enough trouble from the fleas  in
this world.
     But at this  point,  they say, the man  from the centre asked  what  he
meant by  fleas. Crooked  Arm replied  that by  fleas he  means dog's fleas,
which should not be confused with poultry lice,  which did  not worry him in
the least, any more  than buffalo ticks did. But if there was one thing that
he couldn't stand it  was the horse flies, and if  he did throw a  couple of
handfuls of superphosphate under a horse's tail during the heat  of the day,
it was no  great  loss to the collective farm and the horse  had a rest from
the flies.  The man  from the centre  realised that he couldn't  draw  blood
there either, so he went back to the subject of the tung.
     In short, no  matter what excuses Crooked Arm produced, things began to
look black for him. The next day he was not even summoned before the comrade
from the district centre. Ready  for  anything,  he sat in  the yard  of the
management  office in  the shade of a mulberry tree and, keeping  his arm in
the red sling all the time, smoked and waited  for  his fate to be  decided.
Then it was, they say, that Mustafa turned  up  and walked straight into the
management office,  where the chairman of the collective farm,  the chairman
of the village Soviet and the man from  the district  centre were conferring
together. As he  walked past Crooked Arm, he looked  at him and  said, "I've
thought of something. If  it doesn't help, you'd better lie down quietly  in
your grave,  just as  you are, with your sling on, and  I'll shake some tung
fruit down on you."
     Crooked Arm made  no reply to these  words. He merely  glanced sadly at
his arm  as much as to  say that  he was ready to put up with any  amount of
suffering but why should his arm, which had already suffered enough from the
Menshevik's bullet, suffer again?
     Mustafa had a great reputation with the local authorities for being the
shrewdest man  on  the  farm. His house was the biggest  and  finest  in the
village, so if any top people came to visit us they were promptly dispatched
to Mustafa's hospitable house.
     What Mustafa had thought  of was  splendidly simple. The  man from  the
centre  was an Abkhazian, and if a man is  an Abkhazian, even if he has come
from Ethiopia, he is bound to have relatives in Abkhazia.
     That night,  apparently, Mustafa had secretly assembled all the old men
of the village at his house, dined them and wined them, and with their  help
thoroughly investigated  the family origins of the comrade from the district
centre.  Careful  and all-round analysis had shown  quite  clearly  that the
comrade  from  the district centre was through his  great aunt, once a  town
girl and now living in the village of Merkheul, related by blood to my Uncle
Meksut. Mustafa was quite satisfied with the results of this analysis.
     With this trump card in his pocket he marched past Crooked Arm into the
management office.  They say that when Mustafa informed the comrade from the
district centre of  this  fact, the latter turned pale and began to deny his
being related  to  the great aunt from Merkheul village and  particularly to
Uncle Meksut. But the trap had worked. Mustafa merely laughed at his denials
and said, "If he's not a relative of yours, why are you so pale?"
     He said no more and left the office.
     "What shall I do?" Crooked Arm asked when he saw Mustafa.
     "Wait till evening," Mustafa replied.
     "Make up your mind soon," Crooked Arm said, "or my arm will wither away
altogether in this sling."
     "Till evening," Mustafa repeated, and walked off.
     The fact of the  matter was that in denying his relationship with Uncle
Meksut the  comrade from the district centre had mortally insulted my uncle.
But Uncle Meksut kept his temper. Without  saying a word to anyone he merely
saddled his horse and rode away to the village of Merkheul.
     By  evening  he returned  on  his sweating  mount,  reined  up  at  the
management office, and handed the  bridle to Old Crooked  Arm, who was still
waiting there in suspense. The chairman was standing on the veranda, smoking
and surveying Crooked Arm and the surrounding scenery.
     "Come in," the chairman said at the sight of Uncle Meksut.
     "Just a minute," Uncle Meksut replied and, before mounting  the  steps,
ripped the red sling off the old man's arm and tucked it without a word into
his pocket.
     They say the old man just stood there with his arm suspended in midair,
as though unable to comprehend this symbolic gesture.
     Uncle Meksut placed in  front of  the comrade from the district  centre
the  yellowed, crumbling birth certificate of  his  great aunt  of Merkheul,
issued by the notary public's office of the Sukhumi Uyezd in the days before
the  revolution. At the sight of this birth certificate the comrade from the
district centre, they say, again turned pale, but  could no longer offer any
denials.
     "Or shall  I bring you your great aunt here over my saddle bow?"  Uncle
Meksut asked him.
     "You needn't  do that," the comrade  from  the district centre answered
very quietly.
     "Will you take  your brief-case with you or put it in the safe?"  Uncle
Meksut asked.
     "I'll take it with me," the comrade replied.
     "Come along then," Uncle Meksut said and they left the office.
     That evening there was  a  party at  Uncle Meksut's house and the whole
case was  considered.  The  next  morning after a long  discussion in  Uncle
Meksut's house a statement was drawn up in Russian-Caucasian officialese and
dictated to me personally.
     "At last  this  parasite has come in useful," Crooked  Arm said, when I
moved the inkstand towards me and sat poised to take the dictation.
     The leaders  of the  collective farm  discussed the statement  with the
comrade from the district centre. Crooked Arm listened attentively and asked
for every  phrase to be translated into the Abkhazian language. Moreover, he
made  several amendments  to  the  wording which,  as  I realise  now,  were
designed to enhance his social and practical merits.
     The passage  dealing with  his crooked  arm gave rise  to  particularly
furious disputes.  Crooked Arm demanded that it should be stated that he had
suffered from  the bullet of a Menshevik hireling in  view of the  fact that
the prince who had wounded him had afterwards gone  off with the Mensheviks.
The comrade from the district centre clutched his temples and begged them to
stick to the  facts  because he  also had  to answer  to his superiors, even
though he did respect his relatives. In the end they  arrived  at  a version
that satisfied everyone.
     The statement took so long to draft that while I was writing it down in
my wavering hand I actually learned it off by heart. Its authors asked me to
read it out loud, which I did with great feeling. After this it was given to
the secretary of the village Soviet to be copied. This is what it said:
     "The old  man  Shchaaban  Larba,  otherwise  known  as  Crooked Arm,  a
nickname  he  acquired  some time  before  the  revolution  together  with a
prince's bullet, which later turned  out  to he a Menshevik bullet, has ever
since the organisation of the collective farm worked actively on the farm in
spite of the handicap of his partly withered arm (left).
     "The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked Arm, has a son
who  at the present time  is fighting at  the front in the Patriotic War and
has  won  government  decorations  (field  post-office number  indicated  in
brackets).
     "The old man Shchaaban Larba, otherwise known as Crooked  Arm,  despite
his advanced age, is in these difficult times working without re