ty.  I stuck my shoulder under  his armpit.
The Commissar took a step and fell over heavily on  me. I barely  managed to
steady  him  and  get him  back  into bed.  He  lay  there  panting, looking
miserable and strangely pitiful.
     "That's  it, fellow. Taps. That's for sure.  Go on  home.  What are you
staring at? I said, go on home! Well? What is it? Think the Commissar's done
for? You're mistaken, my boy! I'll show you some real walking yet."
     A large tear made  its  way  slowly  through the  stubble of his yellow
cheek.  I was  really  frightened.  Our  Commissar,  our  cheerful Commissar
Chubarkov, so loud-voiced and hearty, a man  who could out-holler any crowd,
was sobbing softly in his bed, as the Red Army man on the poster pointed his
finger at me accusingly and his eyes bored into me. But it wasn't my fault.
     I rushed over to the table,  poured some  of the  yellow brew from  the
kettle under the quilted  jacket and slipped  my two days' sugar ration into
the mug. The Commissar held it in his trembling hands. He had calmed down  a
bit and took a slow sip. Then he licked his lips.
     "I've never had anything so sweet! Seems like pure honey. How come?" He
looked at me  suspiciously. Then he peered into the mug. The  four lumps had
probably not dissolved completely.  "So you decided  to pamper me? I'll  bet
you  put your  whole  week's rations in here.  You should've left yourself a
lump. Now you'll have to drink yours plain again."
     I hastily poured myself a full mug of brew from the  kettle, took a sip
and  was dazed.  A molasses-thick, sickeningly-sweet syrup stuck to my lips.
It took me a few moments to realize what had happened.
     "Was anyone here to see you today?" I asked.
     "Indeed! I'll bet your whole class was here. Kostya, Labanda,  Zoya and
Stepan, of  course. They  were all here. They lit  the stove and boiled  the
kettle. But they  didn't feel like  having any  tea. What's the matter?  Why
aren't you  drinking yours? See, I  said  it  wouldn't  be  any good without
sugar. Well, if you're  not going  to have it, we  might as well try walking
again. Give  me a hand. I think I  feel  stronger after your brew. Come  on,
give us a hand here!"
     The Commissar leaned on me and tried learning to walk again.


        THE WANDERING SCHWAMBRANIANS, OR THE MYSTERIOUS SOLDIER

     Our wandering school moved from one place to another,  and Schwambrania
wandered along with it. The turbulent events in the life of Pokrovsk and our
school naturally affected the internal affairs and  geographical location of
the Big Tooth  Continent. There were  constant  disorders  in  Schwambrania,
because it was forever changing the order of things in the country.
     Lice had  come out from hiding in  Pokrovsk  and had  become  official.
Typhus had put red crosses on everything. Oska insisted we have a death toll
in  Schwambrania, too,  and  I had  to agree.  The  statistics  of real-life
situations called for a death toll in Schwambrania.  That was why a cemetery
appeared  there. We then went over the  list of Schwambranian kings, heroes,
champions, villains and seafarers, and spent  a  long time  deciding whom we
would  bury.  I  tried  to  limit  the  death  toll  to  such  insignificant
Schwambranians as the former Royal Water-Carrier,  or the Master of  Foreign
Affairs. But my bloodthirsty  brother  would  have nothing  of the kind.  He
demanded great losses, as was only true in real life.
     "What kind of  a game is  it if nobody dies? They just go on living and
living! Let somebody die who we'll feel sorry for."
     After   long   deliberations  Jack,  the  Sailor's  Companion  died  in
Schwambrania.  The  cruel Count Chatelains Urodenal  had  filled his kidneys
with  stones.  As he  lay dying. Jack, the  Sailor's  Companion,  exclaimed,
leafing through the last page of the conversation manual: "Je vais a.... Ich
gehe nach.... Ferma la machinal Finished with engine!"
     He  then departed, and  though he  wanted to  wish everyone well, there
were no such words in the manual. A brass band  played at his funeral. There
were  life  buoys instead of wreaths,  and  a gold anchor and visiting  card
adorned his grave.
     Despite  the  terrible  loss,  the  constant  changes  in  climate  and
politics, the  Big Tooth  Continent extended  across  our  every thought and
deed.
     The Black Queen, Keeper of the Secret, pined away in cobweby loneliness
behind the brass gate of the seashell grotto. Schwambrania lived on.
     One day  Oska came hurrying home from school.  He was terribly excited,
for a soldier  had come up to him on the street  in broad daylight and asked
for directions to Schwambrania. Oska had become so confused he had run away.
We set right out to find the  mysterious stranger, but there was no trace of
him.  Oska said that maybe he was a real live lost Schwambranian. Naturally,
I  made fun of him, reminding him that we had invented Schwambrania and all,
its inhabitants.  Still and  all, I noticed  that Oska had begun to sort  of
believe in its actual existence.


        PRIMARY SCHOOL SCHWAMBRANIA

     Schwambrania  soon  became known  to Oska's classmates.  From  the very
start he had made  a name for himself  in  school. One of the boys had asked
the teacher where sugar came from.
     "I know," Oska had replied. "Sugar comes from school."
     That was the day Kocherygin,  the temporary principal,  was keeping the
children  in check, since the botany teacher  was absent.  "That's where  it
comes  from,"  he  said. Then Oska said that sugar came from  kerosene which
spurted up from the ground.
     Kocherygin seemed stumped. The  next day he told  the children  that he
had looked into the matter and learned that saccharine came from the ground,
but from coal, not kerosene. However, he regarded Oska with new respect.
     Oska  immediately  took advantage of  this  and  drew  the  outline  of
Schwambrania on the large wall map in the classroom. Since the geography and
botany teacher was still absent, Kocherygin took over once again. His finger
suddenly got lost in the mountains of the Big Tooth Continent.
     "What  country's this?" he  said, pointing  to the strange  land.  "Hm?
Anybody knows?"
     Nobody did.
     "It's Schwambrania," Oska teased.
     "What's that?"
     "Schwambrania!" Oska became serious.
     "Never heard of it."
     "I did. A soldier I know even left for there yesterday."
     "How come it's not in the book?" his classmates demanded.
     "It's not on the map yet, because it's a very new country."
     "Go on, tell us about it," Kocherygin said.
     And so  Oska  went over to the big map and spent the rest of the lesson
talking about Schwambrania. He spoke in detail of the flora and fauna of the
Big Tooth  Continent, and his classmates listened  with bated breath  to his
story  of the wild 1  rum-toddies who inhabited the canyons of the  Northern
Candelabras. He told  them  of the wars against Piliguinia, of the overthrow
of Brenabor, of the adventures of the deceased Jack, the Sailor's Companion,
of the evil deeds  of Chatelains Urodenal. Kocherygin was quite pleased with
the Schwambranian geography lesson.
     Oska  returned  home  in  the best of spirits. He  was  beaming. "We're
studying about Schwambrania in school now," he said proudly.
     I nearly collapsed.
     However, the  very  next day Kocherygin brought a very embarrassed Oska
home.  He  was  holding  Oska's  hand,  trying  to   talk  him  out  of  his
Schwambranian  fantasy.  A  group  of  his  classmates   followed,  shouting
"Schwamp! Bramp!" The new  principal told our parents of Oska's strange idea
of geography and asked them to somehow influence the stubborn Schwambranian.
Oska  sniffled and  spoke  of  the  mysterious  soldier who  had  asked  for
directions to Schwambrania.
     A few days later  Oska  and  I were out for a walk.  Two poorly-dressed
young peasants came up to us on the square. They were carrying knapsacks. We
were overcome by a terrible premonition.
     "Listen,  boys, can you tell  us  how to get to Red Army  Headquarters?
We're looking for Captain Schambardin."
     So that was who the mysterious soldier had been looking for!


        ENTER FROM THE STREET

     Typhus  rolled along the  streets  in step with the even tread  of  the
stretcher-bearers  and pallbearers. Typhus raged in the  delirious  cries of
the stricken and was a murmur in the funeral  corteges. The Tratrchok camels
pulled the hearses.
     Our school was moving again.
     Schwambrania  dashed about  in  search  of a  stable  policy,  changing
rulers, climates  and latitudes.  Our house alone  stood steadfastly at  its
moorings at the same old latitude and longitude. It had rusted and sunk into
the riverbed and  was no longer a boat  but heavy,  stranded  barge that had
turned into an island. Storms had not yet invaded it, since Mamma was afraid
of draughts and kept the windows closed.
     Still, some changes had taken place. Papa now wore an army field jacket
instead of a morning coat. The red cross on his breast pocket signified that
he was an  army doctor.  He was attached  to the casualty-clearing  station.
Then, the people who we  had once been  told were  undesirable acquaintances
and had  only come up the back stairs were now all coming to the front door.
Even the water-carrier,  who,  it would seem, would  save time and effort by
coming straight into the kitchen,  now rang the front doorbell  insistently.
He trudged through the apartment, leaving puddles  and wet  tracks,  and his
pails were full of dignity.
     Oska and  I welcomed this degradation of the front hall. A  draught  of
disrespect had now been established between it and the kitchen. We could now
strike out the first point on our list of the world's injustices (concerning
"undesirable acquaintances").
     The plumber and the carpenter were the first to ring the front doorbell
after the revolution. Annushka opened the door and asked them to  wait while
she went to tell Papa that "two men wanted to see Comrade Doctor".
     "Who are they?" Mamma wanted to know.
     "Well, sort of men," Annushka said. (She divided all of Papa's patients
into gentlemen, men and peasants.)
     Papa  went out into  the  front  hall. "There's  something we'd like to
discuss," one of them said.
     "What seems to  be bothering you?" Papa asked, for he thought he  was a
patient.
     "They've no sense of  duty," the plumber said. "The town council closed
down the  hospital under Kerensky, and that  means the  working people won't
get any care when they need it. We've been appointed commissars."
     Papa could never forgive Kerensky,  because  during his short  reign in
Russia the rich,  tight-fisted town fathers  had closed  down the  municipal
hospital, saying, as they usually did, "No need for it."
     And now two Bolshevik commissars had come  to see him and tell him that
the Soviets had decreed that  the hospital was to be  opened immediately and
that Papa was to be in charge of it.


        TRIAUNTS

     Papa asked the commissars to have tea with him. After they had gone, he
paced up  and  down humming happily,  "Marusya  took  some  poison,  to  the
hospital she'll go."
     "This is a real government! It's  showing good  cultural sense. How can
you  even compare your Constituent  Assembly  to  it? It was  just like  our
district meeting. 'No need for it' on a nation-wide scale."
     "Your  Constituent Assembly" was said especially to spite  my aunts. At
the  time, starving aunts seemed to have  descended  upon us  from  all over
Russia.  One had come from Vitebsk  the  other had escaped from  Samara. The
Samara and  Vitebsk  aunts  were  sisters. Both wore pince-nez on black silk
cords and  looked very much  alike. Papa had nicknamed them  the Constituent
Assembly. Oska and I nicknamed them Aunt Neces and Aunt Sary.
     They were both terribly educated and spent hours  discussing literature
and arguing over politics, and if some of  their information jarred with the
encyclopaedia, they would say it was a printing error.
     Then a third aunt arrived from Petrograd. She said she was as good as a
Bolshevik.
     "Will you be better'n a Bolshevik soon?" Oska asked.
     However, months passed, but  our aunt still did not become a Bolshevik.
She  was  now  saying  that to all  intents and purposes  she  was nearly  a
Communist.
     The  Petrograd aunt found a job at Tratrchok, while Aunt Neces and Aunt
Sary both went  to work for the District Food  Committee. In their free time
they told us "true life  stories", had heated discussions and meddled in our
upbringing.  Our  aunts insisted that we be tutored at  home, for they  were
firmly convinced that the Soviet school system was detrimental to upbringing
of a child  from an  intellectual family and to his sensitive personality (I
believe that is the way they put it).
     They took it upon themselves to tutor us, as they considered themselves
authorities in the field of  child  psychology.  Their  constant admonitions
exhausted us. They wanted to take part in everything we did, to play all our
games.  They  were  overjoyed   when  they   discovered  the  existence   of
Schwambrania and said it was so-oo exciting and simply  divine. They  begged
to be let in on the secrets of  our world of make-believe and promised to be
of help. Schwambrania was in danger of being overrun by aunts.
     That was when the Schwambranian commanders played a trick on them. They
led  the  aunts  off  into the heart of  Schwambrania  and  there, during an
initiation ceremony, painted them with water colours, made them crawl  under
beds, locked them in a cave with wild beasts, which meant locking  them in a
storeroom with  wild rats, and made  them  sing the Schwambranian anthem ten
times in a row.
     "'Hoo-ray, hoo-ray!' they all shouted, the Schwambranians,"  our tired,
painted aunts sang in  the darkness. " 'Hoo-ray!' Eeek! Something's crawling
up my skirt! 'Hoo-ray, hoo-ray!' They were clouted! Do-re-mi-nians!"
     However, when we  then  explained the rules  and holds of wrestling and
told them to wrestle without breaks or a time limit  to a final victory, our
poor aunts became indignant. They said Schwambrania was  a crude game and  a
stupid country,  unworthy of well brought  up boys. This was why the  famous
Schwambranian poet (obviously inspired  by  Lermontov)  wrote  the following
stanza in his Aunt Neces' autograph book.
     Three lively aunts all live in our apartment,
     Thank God there are no more in this department!


        THE WORLD AND THE INDIVIDUAL

     "Your father's an  intellectual, but  he's  all right," Stepan Atlantis
said. "You can see he's on  our side. And you're an all-out sympathizer. One
of your aunts  has an  idea of what's going on,  but  those  other  two  are
awfully backward." He was leaving our house after a two-hour long discussion
on the individual and society.
     The Constituent  Assembly  aunts used such long words that I caught  my
Petrograd aunt sneaking off to the dictionary every  now and then to look up
unfamiliar  "isms" and "substances". According  to my first two  aunts,  the
free intelligent  self was the core, and everything else revolved around it.
And whatever the self believed,  was so. Whatever it wished things to be was
the way they were, and to hell with everything else! Stepan, however, argued
that, like the saying went, you  didn't call off a wedding  if one guest was
missing. He said that the  group, with  everyone  pulling together, was  the
main thing. As for the  self, if it got too stuck-up you  could always catch
it by the collar and give it a good shake. My  aunts replied that Stepan and
I were crude realists,  believing only  in that which everyone could see and
feel. Realists  were also called materialists. They believed  that the world
undoubtedly existed and governed all ideas and individuals. But my aunts did
not agree with this. They got terribly excited  and even  shouted. They said
the  world  had  no  right  to order free ideas and the  individual  around,
because, they  said,  perhaps  the  world would  never have existed  without
ideas.  Yes, undoubtedly,  only  the reasoning  individual  existed. Perhaps
everything else existed only as it appeared to it, only as in a dream.
     "Are we individual?" Oska wanted to know.
     "As far as you yourselves are concerned, undoubtedly," Aunt Sary said.
     We thought this was a great idea and decided  it would all come in very
handy in Schwambrania.
     Indeed, what if we were really Schwambranians and Pokrovsk, our school,
home and the  revolution were  all a part of  some dream? We were stunned by
the very thought of it.
     Our aunts sat down on the couch and Aunt Neces began reading aloud from
a Russian history book: "The Vikings, Rurik, Truvor and Sinehus came to rule
Ancient Rus."
     Oska and I decided  to have a look at Schwambranian history, meanwhile,
and began singing, throwing chairs around and making  as much of a racket as
possible. Our aunts asked us  to be a little more considerate.  They said it
was a lack of respect for the individual.
     "Our individual is dreaming that you're not here at all," Oska said.
     "Maybe we just imagined you?" I added.
     Our  aunts spoke  about our behaviour  to Mamma.  She came in to have a
look but we were doubtful of her existence as  well. Mamma burst into  tears
and spoke about our behaviour to Papa.
     "What sort of nursery solipsism is this?" Papa demanded. "I'm going  to
suddenly imagine  that the two of you have been sent to stand in a corner at
this advanced age."
     We were given no dinner. Papa said that, after all, the soup was only a
dream, and Oska and I were such  free-thinking individuals, it wouldn't take
any  effort on our part to imagine that  we were full, while he said that he
recalled dreaming  that we had had our dinner and had even said "thank you".
In  a  word, we  had to accept the  fact  that our soup  was not an idea but
reality, and that there were millions of other individuals except ourselves,
and that we could not exist without them.


        AROUND THE SUN

     The self had been tossed out of the centre of the universe as far as we
were concerned. We were caught up in the great whirl of events in school and
on the street. However, the centrifugal  forces could do nothing  about  the
state of  affairs at home. Our home staunchly  remained the reliable core of
our existence. We felt that everything else was whirling around it like some
great and dangerous merry-go-round. Such was the case until the day on which
a stocky  man appeared in the front hall during Papa's  office hours. He had
on a  pair of black boots protected by galoshes and a holster, and carried a
briefcase. Annushka said it was one of the commissars.
     "Sorry  to  inconvenience  you,  but  I'm going  in next.  I'm  here on
business,"  he said to the patients  in the waiting room. "We're all here on
business!" "Who does he think he is?"
     "He thinks he's a  gentleman," a fat farm woman said. A sack on her lap
moved, and a live duck-offering quacked inside it.
     Water splashed in the washstand in the office. Then the door opened and
a man came out, buttoning his shirt collar. The Commissar went right in.
     "Good day. I'm  sorry to bother you, coming in  out of  turn, but  it's
revolutionary  duty, Comrade Doctor. You see, I'm here  as the Commandant of
Pokrovsk."
     "Sit down,  Comrade Usyshko," Papa said, recognizing  the shoemaker who
had formerly made all our  shoes  and had often  borrowed  books from Papa's
library. "What's the good news these days?"
     "You'll have to move to another apartment, Comrade Doctor. Tratrchok is
expanding. They  don't have enough space any more. I'm  sorry to bother you,
but you'll have to move in two days."
     "Well. They've finally got to me," Papa said to himself. Aloud he said,
adjusting  his breast-pocket  flap with the red  cross on it. "I'm going  to
protest. Comrade Usyshko. I won't  let anyone throw me out  so high-handedly
in two days'  time, as if  I were some bourgeois. I believe that the working
intelligentsia has  the right  to  expect a more considerate approach on the
part of the government with whom it is working in complete contact."
     "All right.  I'll  give  you an extra day, but  no more.  I won't argue
about  that  contact part. And I've  personally found  you a fine  place  on
Kobzar Street.  It's  in Pustodumov's  former house.  A fine apartment.  And
we'll take care of the moving."
     "You understand that I'll have to see it first."
     "As you like. We don't  charge any for looking. So I'll send the wagons
over on the sixth. I'll be going now." As he turned, his eyes fell on Papa's
shoes. "You still wearing them?"
     "Yes!" Papa said angrily.
     "How's the left one? Not too tight? Remember, I said it'd only be tight
at first and that it'd stretch?"
     "To  be frank. Comrade Usyshko, I think you  were better at  that  job,
ah...."
     "That depends which way you look at it. Comrade Doctor." The Commandant
chuckled.  "You used  to order your shoes, but now  some  things, if  you'll
pardon my saying so, aren't done to your  measurements any  more. Maybe some
things don't fit very well."
     The news of the coming move stunned Oska and me. We saw  that centre of
the world had shifted, and  history was not made  according to the wishes of
our home.
     Copernicus' contemporaries  had  most  probably found themselves in the
same predicament. They had always believed that  Man was the centre  of  the
Universe and that the Earth was the  centre of Creation. Then they were told
that the Earth was only a speck among thousands of similar planets, and that
it  travelled around  the  Sun,  governed  by  forces that  were  not of its
creation.


        TOWARDS A NEW GEOGRAPHY

     A  most unusual caravan was moving along Breshka Street.  Ten camels of
the Tratrchok were carrying our possessions.
     The  drapes and  curtains were  rolled  up  like campaign banners.  The
dismantled beds, adorned by shiny brass knobs, clattered and jangled like  a
collection of maces  belonging to a Cossack chief. The armoured coats of the
samovars gleamed. The large pier glass spread out like a  lake, with Breshka
Street splashing in it upside-down.  The innerspring jelly of the mattresses
jiggled. A  set of hobbled bentwood chairs jostled and trotted atop  another
wagon like a little herd of colts.
     The piano in its white cloth cover rode along  in an upright  position.
Seen from  the side, it resembled a surgeon in a white smock,  but  from the
front it was a steed wearing a horse-cloth. The merry driver had one hand on
the reins and the other stuck through the slit in  the cloth.  He was poking
at the keys, trying to pick out a simple tune as the wagon rolled along.
     Our belongings looked indecent. The washstand and sideboard,  which had
always been upright, lay  on their backs with  the doors gazing at the  sky.
Passers-by  stared  at us. Our personal, private life was bared to all eyes.
We felt uneasy  and wished we could renounce  it all. Papa walked along  the
sidewalk, as if none of this had anything to do with  him,  but Mamma walked
bravely on at  the head  of the procession, right behind the first wagon, as
wan and unhappy as a widow following the pallbearers. She was holding a list
of our belongings, quite like a list of the dead for a church service.
     Oska walked ahead of us, carrying the cat. Annushka sat on a  high pile
of things on the first wagon like a maharaja atop an elephant, and the front
of  a potted  palm served  as a fan. She was  holding a stuffed owl. I  came
next,   carrying  the  precious   grotto  and  its   chess-piece   prisoner.
Schwambrania was moving to a new geographical location.
     A line of aunts brought up the rear.
     The new  apartment  greeted  us  with a hollow chill.  A  taunting echo
mimicked us.
     The drivers were busy moving our heavy bookcases. Papa poured some pure
alcohol into a measuring glass, added water and treated the drivers to it. I
could hear the' men talking.
     "It goes right through you!"
     "It's the best medicine! Castor oil for your brains. Cleans them out in
a flash."
     "Get over on the other side. Look  at all them books! What do they want
with so many?"
     "You think it's easy poking about in somebody's insides? It takes a lot
of reading, maybe a thousand books, and  then you can make a mistake and sew
up the wrong thing."
     Our aunts  tracked  along behind the drivers  to  see  that they didn't
pinch  anything, for, as our aunts said, nowadays people were very  free and
easy with other people's possessions. There was an elegant chandelier with a
fringe of glass beads in  one of  the rooms. It  had  been  left  behind  by
Pustodumov. My aunts stood admiring it.
     "Well? I see you've  put up  a chandelier," the commandant said, for he
had just arrived on the scene. "That's some fine light! I'll bet it came all
the way from Petrograd."
     My aunts seemed embarrassed. As I opened  my mouth to tell him whose it
was, my Aunt Neces stepped  in front of me, blocking me like a screen. "Yes,
you're right. It was made in Petrograd," she said quickly.
     After he  had gone my aunts  explained rather sheepishly that what they
had done was right, since Pustodumov would never get it back anyway, and the
country would manage without it.


        THE POWER OF POSSESSIONS

     The  rooms were no longer as hollow-sounding, for our furniture muffled
the echoes. We found a cosy corner for the Queen's grotto that we could turn
into a circus, railroad station or prison.
     Schwambrania was re-established.
     Papa climbed the stepladder and stood there, hammer in hand, to hang up
a  portrait  of  Doctor  Pirogov  and  a  portrait  of  Lev Tolstoy  by  the
Academician Pasternak. Papa was making a speech. The ladder was his rostrum.
     "Today  I  had occasion once again to see that we are all the miserable
slaves of our possessions. This tremendous pile of junk has us in its power.
It has  bound us hand and  foot.  I would have gladly left half of all  this
behind! Children! (Take  that  nail  out  of your  mouth this minute, Lelya!
Haven't you ever heard about hygiene?) As I said, children, learn to despise
possessions!"
     Then Oska and I went off to the dining-room  to hang up  a hand-painted
plate in bas-relief. Sticking up  from the surface of the plate was a castle
and  knights  on  prancing steeds.  The nail came  loose, sending the  plate
crashing to the floor. The knights perished. The castle was in ruins.
     Papa came running at the  sound of china breaking. He shouted at us. He
called us vandals and barbarians. He said that even bears could be taught to
handle things carefully. He went on to enumerate a long  and woeful list  of
things which we had  annihilated: the  black  queen, his cane, fountain pen,
etc., etc.
     We sighed.  Then I reminded Papa that  he  had  just told us to despise
possessions. At this he hit the ceiling. He said that one should first learn
to take care  of things, then  to earn the money to buy  them, and then only
could one begin to despise them.
     That evening Mamma wandered about desolately. She  had  made a list  of
all the small things, so as not to misplace them and then waste time looking
for them. She had been searching for the list for over an hour.


        THE FOLLOWING OFFICIAL PAPERS HAVE BEEN LOST

     The  sand  went  slowly  to  the  bottom in the  stirred water  of  the
fishbowl.  Fish   darted   through  the  emerald-green   water  plants  like
brightly-plumed hummingbirds, swishing  close to the green-glowing glass and
feeling quite at home.
     The walls of our new apartment had lost their chilling strangeness. The
rooms  were  becoming  lived  in.  The  cosiness  of  our  former  home  was
transported to our new one. Gazing up at the  chandelier during supper. Papa
said,  "The  revolution  ...  (eat  your  carrots,  Oska,  they're  full  of
vitamins!) The revolution is full of cruel justice. Indeed. Whom should this
apartment belong to? A moneybags  merchant  or a doctor? Actually, I believe
that the proletariat and the intelligentsia can find a common language."
     "Goodness! Aren't we all Communists at heart!" my aunts exclaimed.
     The following day our piano was rolled away.
     A gala event was being planned  by the Tratrchok offices. An army choir
was rehearsing a  Red Cross Cantata. The choir needed the use of a piano for
a week, and so they requisitioned ours.
     Mamma had  gone out. In her purse was the license, issued to her by the
District Department of Education. It stated that she was a music teacher and
verified  her  ownership  of  the piano. Papa  made  a  small  speech to the
abductors on the subject of the intelligentsia and the proletariat, and also
mentioned the need for mutual contact. However, this  made no  impression on
them.  Then Papa  said that  it wasn't a  matter of  the  piano,  it was the
principle of  the thing that counted, and that he would not sit idly by, but
would  go as high as Lenin if need be. Then Papa sat  down to write a letter
to the editors of Izvestia, a newspaper published in the capital.
     They carried the  piano  out like a body  at  a  funeral, with Annushka
bewailing its fate and my aunts dropping copious tears.
     When Mamma returned and learned of what had happened she sank down on a
chair and  blinked rapidly.  Then she spoke very  quickly, saying: "Did  you
take out the package?"
     At this Papa,  too, plopped into a chair. My aunts seemed petrified. We
then learned that  Mamma had tied a little bundle to the inside of the piano
top.  It  contained four  pieces  of  expensive  toilet soap and a sheaf  of
now-worthless, pre-revolutionary paper money. It was Oska's and my  turn  to
become terror-stricken now, for a week before we had seen Mamma tying up the
little bundle and had decided that she would hide it  in  a very safe place.
Since we, too, had quite a few things that were to be kept in secret, we had
stuck a sheaf of official  Schwambranian papers into  the  bundle when Mamma
had gone out of the room. Our sheaf contained maps, secret  campaign  plans,
Brenabor's manifestoes,  coats-of-arms,  letters of famous men, metaphorical
posters and other secret manuscripts from the Schwambranian chancellery. Now
all this  had been carted off to Tratrchok. Schwambrania  was in danger. The
piano tuner might discover our cache.
     Mamma rose, wiped her eyes and set out  for  Tratrchok.  I said I would
accompany her. She was very touched and did not suspect that  we were on our
way to salvage Schwambrania's valuables.


        THE SHOW AT TRATRCHOK

     When we  got to  Tratrchok  Mamma  told a commander who had a  drooping
moustache that she had to  remove a package of personal letters from  inside
the piano. He winked at her meaningfully, said "Aha! Love letters!" and told
her to go right ahead.
     The piano was in a large hall. It seemed to be crouching fearfully in a
far  corner.  Red  Army  soldiers  sat  around  on  the benches, chewing  on
sunflower  seeds. Two  men were  sitting on crates  by  the piano. They were
trying to play "Chopsticks". They stopped when they saw us.  Mamma went over
to  the piano and caressed the keys with  a  delicate, rippling  scale.  The
piano whinnied  like a horse that has recognized its  master.  The  soldiers
stared at us. The  commander untied the package,  winked at  Mamma again and
again said, "Love letters".
     "  'Hooray!  Hooray!'  they all  shouted,"  I  hummed as  we  left  the
Tratrchok premises.
     As  we  were crossing  the  square,  someone  behind us  shouted: "Hey,
Madame! Come on back!"
     It was the commander. He was out of breath from running when he reached
us. Mamma trembled as she pressed the package to her breast. At  that moment
an earthquake shook Schwambrania.
     "Come on back, lady. The boys are awfully mad. They say you spoiled the
piano on  purpose,  so  it won't be of any  use  to us.  They  say you  took
something out of it and now it's ruined."
     "You're talking nonsense! That's probably because none of you  know how
to play."
     "You're  wrong there. It was all right until you took that package out.
So you'll have to come back and tie it inside again."
     We trudged back to Tratrchok.
     The  soldiers greeted us with an angry rumble.  They crowded around the
piano.  They  were  shoving  and shouting,  saying  that  Mamma had  spoiled
national property on  purpose, that this was sabotage, and that  people  got
themselves shot for being saboteurs.
     "Take it  easy,  boys," their commander said, but  we could see he  was
also upset.
     Mamma  strode  over  to  the piano.  The soldiers stopped  talking. She
played a chord, but the piano did not respond with its usual fine sound. The
sound it made was dull and  barely audible. It  rose and died away like some
distant thunder.
     Mamma looked at me.  She was aghast. Then she brought her hands down on
keys as hard as she could, but the chord was a whisper again. The  soldiers,
however, roared.
     "You spoiled it! She did it on purpose!"
     "It's the soft pedal!" I cried, guessing what the matter was.
     When the commander had pulled the package  out he  had tripped the soft
stop, lowering the strip  of felt  onto the  strings. Mamma yanked at it and
the piano responded with such a loud chord it was as if cotton wads had been
removed from our ears.
     The soldiers  beamed. They asked us to tie the package  back inside the
piano  again, just  to make sure.  We did, but the piano did not  sound  any
louder.  We were  then  told we  could have our package back. The shamefaced
young soldiers asked Mamma to play something lively.
     "I don't play polkas, comrades," Mamma said acidly. "You had better ask
my son."
     They  did and I clambered up onto a crate. I was surrounded  by beaming
faces. As  I  could  not reach the  pedals from my high  perch,  one of  the
soldiers volunteered to help. He depressed it carefully and kept his foot on
it all through my performance. I played every single march,  polka and ditty
I knew, and all of  them  as loudly as  possible. Some  of the men were soon
tapping in time, and then, suddenly, a young soldier dashed to the middle of
the room, spread his  arms wide, as if he were going to embrace someone, and
tapped  his foot gingerly, as  though to test the  floor. Then  he  began to
dance inside the wide  circle that formed in an instant. He tossed his  head
and stamped as he danced. Then he began to sing a ditty in a clear voice:

     It's a pity, it's a shame,
     It's an awful darn disgrace!
     See the bourgeois and their dames
     Crawling out from every place!

     The commander cut him short. Then he turned to Mamma and said in a very
polite and respectful manner: "Madame, I mean, as we now say. Citizen, would
you please  play us something yourself? Something  more inspiring. The  boys
and I would all appreciate it very much. Say, some overture from an opera."
     Mamma sat down on the crate. She  wiped the keys with her handkerchief.
My pedal specialist offered his help  and foot again, but  Mamma said  she'd
manage herself.
     Mamma played the  Overture  from "Prince Igor" for them.  She was  very
serious and played exceptionally well.
     The  soldiers  stood around  the piano in  silence.  They  followed her
fingers  with  rapt attention, leaning over each other's shoulders. Finally,
Mamma removed her hands slowly and gently  from the keyboard. The last chord
drifted up in their wake like a wisp of cobweb and then died away.
     The men all moved back  as she raised  her  hands, but were  silent for
several  seconds  after. It seemed  they were listening to the  last, fading
notes. Then only did they begin clapping wildly. Their arms were extended as
they clapped, and  they held  their hands close  to  Mamma's face,  for they
wanted her to see that they were clapping, not merely to hear them.
     "A great talent. No doubt about it," the commander said and sighed.
     We had once again  reached  the middle  of the square, but the applause
coming from the porch of Tratrchok continued. Mamma listened to it modestly.
     "You can't  imagine the ennobling effect music has on people!" she said
later to my aunts.
     "You can't ennoble  such  people. If they'd been ennobled, they'd  have
returned the piano," Aunt Sary said.
     A  month later,  after  the  piano had long  since  been returned,  the
following lines appeared in the "Replies to Our Readers" column of Izvestia:
     To a Doctor from Pokrovsk
     You  piano  has  been  illegally  requisitioned  as  it  is a  means of
livelihood.

     Papa was  jubilant.  He carried the clipping  around  in his wallet and
showed it to all his friends.
     When Stepan Atlantis found out about it,  he said, "Was that your piano
they  wrote about in the paper? Hm! You sure spread it all over the country!
That's what private ownership does to you!"


        THE COMMISSAR AND THE KINGS

     The secret package was now  tucked away into a drawer  of Mamma's desk,
and the  desk was now  a  part of the  furnishings belonging to  one of  our
neighbours, for we now shared our apartment with others, having had three of
our rooms borrowed in succession. Chubarkov, who was recuperating, was given
one room, something that pleased us both immensely.
     "Now we  can be like Robinson Crusoe and Friday," he  said,  unbuckling
his belt and holster and laying them  on the table. "Will  you  lend me  the
book?"
     "Sure!" I examined the gun. "Is it loaded?"
     "Sure. Don't touch it."
     My  aunts peeped  in,  examined  the  Commissar's  broad shoulders  and
uptilted  nose  critically and departed with an indignant sniff. "No manners
at all! He's a regular martinet!"
     The Commissar winked in their direction  and said, "They don't look too
happy."
     "They never are," I said.
     "But we are," Oska said.
     "That's that then.  If boys  like you  are,  I'll make out."  Chubarkov
smiled  fondly.  Then he  lifted Oska up and sat him on his knee.  The  blue
cloth  of his  narrow  breeches  was  stretched  tight. "Anybody  here  play
checkers?" His question was unexpected.
     "That's no fun. Chess is much better. Do you play chess?"
     "No. Never had a chance to learn."
     "Lelya'11 teach you  quick.  He  knows all the movings. The white ones,
and the  black ones, and the back and front ones, too. All I know is how the
horse  moves." Oska jumped down and began  hopping  in  the  squares of  the
linoleum. He stopped  suddenly, stood on one foot and said, "We  put a queen
in jail. We put her away  in a kennel  long ago, when there  wasn't any war,
but there was a tsar. That's how long ago!"
     I glared at him, and he said no more.
     In  order  to cut  short  this unnecessary  and  risky conversation,  I
suggested that  the  Commissar and I  have  a game of  checkers.  He took  a
printed  checkerboard from  his  knapsack and dumped the checkers  out  of a
little  pouch. Then he set  them up, and  we bent  over the cardboard field,
forehead to forehead.
     "Your move," he said.
     In no time I saw I  was up against a  serious  opponent. The  Commissar
would send his pieces into the most unexpected squares with a light flick of
his middle finger.  He set up traps and made two-for-one shots, scooping  my
checkers up  lightly and  saying as he did, "Haven't had time to learn chess
yet, but I  know a bit about checkers. What are you  doing? Look here! You'd
better jump  or I'll huff, that's for  sure. Ah, that's  better.  Now here's
where we plaster back your ears. And reach the king row. My king. And that's
that."
     Five minutes  later I found myself with one blocked piece on the board.
It was a disgraceful defeat.
     I immediately  set  up the pieces  again and suggested we  have another
game. Ten minutes later my  last two pieces were blocked  in a  corner.  The
Commissar had  rolled himself a cigarette and  was cheerfully blowing  thick
clouds of smoke at that unhappy corner.


        CAT-AND-MOUSE

     Oska was crushed by  my defeat. He decided to try his  own hand against
the invincible Commissar.
     "Do you know how to play cat-and-mouse?"
     "Cat-and-mouse?" The Commissar sounded genuinely puzzled.
     "I'll show you," Oska said and got  up  on  the Commissar's  lap again.
"You put your hand  out like this, and I'll try to slap it. But  you have to
yank it away,  so's I don't.  If I miss,  it's your turn to slap me. We  all
play it in school."
     "Let's give it  a  try."  Chubarkov  laid h