o owned the shooting-gallery, and leaving a  long,
strangely bright trail of red on the grey, dusty road.
     Again Petya  saw the  snow-covered field and the dead bodies. But it no
longer tormented  him with unreality, for now  he understood the  meaning it
held. What it meant was that some people killed others because those  others
did not want to be slaves.
     Rage flooded Petya. He bit the pillow to hold back tears. But they came
nevertheless. In  the  morning he rose, weary from  a sleepless  night, with
dark circles under his eyes, haggard and sombre.
     Gavrik and Terenty  had not  yet come home. Motya, a grey knitted shawl
round  her head and shoulders, silently gave him a mug  of tea and a hunk of
bread and jam. She 'had not yet combed her hair, she stole  fearful looks at
the  boy  and  shivered  in the chill of early morning-probably she  had not
slept all night either. Her mother was washing clothes out in the yard, with
iridescent  soap-bubbles  rising from  her tub. She mournfully  wished Petya
good morning.
     On this day  Petya set off for school alone. The streets looked just as
they always did. Workers walked in groups on their way to the morning-shift.
They seemed to go  faster than  usual. Groups  knotted together  and in some
places  formed crowds. Passing them, Petya  could feel hostile looks cast at
his cap with its badge, his bright buttons and belt with the uniform buckle.
     Although the early sunshine filled the street with warm, rosy light and
the air was  clear and  fresh with the  scents of April, although the little
shunters  whistled  gaily  to  one another as  usual,  an invisible funereal
shadow seemed to lie over everything.
     Petya saw the elderly local policeman pacing his beat down  the street.
But at the cross-roads he saw another policeman, one he did  not know. Petya
greeted the old policeman  as  usual  with a courteous  lift  of his cap and
passed the stranger with head  down; but he could feel the man examining him
from head to foot with fierce eyes in a young, soldierly face.
     News-boys were running  about  the  town  shouting, "Lena events,  full
report, five hundred killed and wounded!"
     It  was strangely  quiet  at the  school, both  at  lessons and  during
recess. On his way home,  before he got to Near Mills, Petya heard a factory
whistle, then another, and a third, until their chorus made the air vibrate.
     At  the cross-roads  where the  strange  policeman  had  stood  in  the
morning, Petya found a thick crowd that swelled with every minute as  people
joined  it singly or in  groups, running out from all  the  nearby  streets,
gardens and waste lots.
     He realized that  this was a strike, and the men in this crowd were the
workers from various mills and factories who had just downed tools.
     He wanted to turn back and go another way, but a fresh crowd swelled up
behind him, carrying him along with it. The  two masses of people joined and
Petya  found himself in the middle, hemmed in on all sides. He  tried to get
out but  his satchel hindered him. One  strap  broke and the satchel slipped
down. With an effort Petya twisted round, slid it off his  shoulder and held
it in front  of him,  pushing away the backs and elbows that pressed against
him.
     Petya was  too small to see what was going on in front, all he knew was
that he was being carried along somewhere, that the crowd had some  definite
objective and  that somebody  was guiding  its movement.  He began to feel a
little calmer and with the corner of  his  satchel straightened the cap that
had been pushed to one side.
     The  people  moved very slowly. There  was  nothing  menacing in  their
movement, as Petya had thought at first,  rather it was resolute,  tense and
business-like.
     The factory whistles which had drowned  out every other sound gradually
died away, and he could hear the hum of voices.
     At last everyone  stopped. Petya  saw  the long  roofs  of  the  repair
workshops and  felt railway lines under  his feet-he stumbled and would have
fallen but  for somebody's big, strong hand. Then  there  was a general move
forward again, and frantic police whistles.
     The crowd separated into groups and Petya saw the familiar gates of the
workshops.  They were closed and before  them the  policeman with the fierce
eyes was running to and fro, sabre in hand, now and then blowing hard on his
whistle and shouting, "Disperse or I fire!"
     Another policeman, the old man Petya knew,  kept moving about aimlessly
in  front of  the crowd, waving his  hands  like  an orchestra conductor and
pleading in lachrymose tones,  "Gentlemen, do be  sensible, gentlemen, do be
sensible!"
     "Come on, break down the gates," said a man in an old railway  cap with
a red band  on the sleeve of his wadded jacket; he was standing  on the roof
of the  engine shop.  His voice  was not  loud  but  it carried  everywhere.
Evidently this was one of the leaders.
     The wrought-iron gates squealed on their rusty hinges and began to give
in under the pressure of the crowd. There was the sound of a chain snapping.
One leaf of the gates, torn away, fell with a  rattle in the yard, the other
hung crookedly from its brick gate-post.
     The crowd rushed in. Everything became confused.
     Later  on Petya learned  that  the management  had tried  to  crush the
strike by bringing in strike-breakers and locking the gates.
     Once inside,  the crowd scattered among  the shops, and then Petya  saw
something like the  kind of game children play, only  the players were angry
men. The shop door opened and men ran wildly out, followed  by other men who
overtook them and flogged them on the  head and neck  with oily rags twisted
into hard ropes as they ducked and dodged. It was like a  game of "tag." But
nobody laughed or shouted,  and one of the fleeing men  had  blood trickling
from his nose; he smeared it over his face with the sleeve of his torn shirt
as he ran.
     A  small  open  truck appeared at the shop door,  pushed by a couple of
dozen workers with tense, determined faces. And there in the truck, his legs
drawn up awkwardly, his hands gripping the sides,  sat the railway  engineer
whom Petya has seen the night he had gone with Gavrik to the  workshops. His
cap was back  to front,  which  gave his handsome  face with its well-tended
beard a very stupid look.
     Zhenya Chernoivanenko  and  the boys  who had shouted "Spoony,  spoony,
kissy-kissy-coo" after Petya and Motya, zealously helped the adults  to push
the truck.
     Petya was not frightened  any longer, nor did the  crowd seem alarming.
He  was caught up  in  the general  mood and ran after the truck, his  brows
drawn tangrily together. He pushed some of the boys aside, got  his  satchel
against the edge of the truck and began shoving with the  others. He felt as
though it were his effort alone that moved it.
     As soon as the truck and its burden emerged from the factory gates they
were greeted with  shouts  and whistles from all sides. Some  of the men had
picked  up the policeman with the fierce eyes.  Holding him by the shoulders
and top-boots', they gave him a swing and tossed him on to the engineer. His
sabre was gone, and so was his revolver.
     The other policeman, the old one, was not thrown into the truck; he got
a couple of  blows  on  the back of the head  with  a  hard  twisted rag and
shambled  away  by  the  fence,  without  sabre,  revolver  or  cap, smiling
foolishly.
     The truck was pushed for about half a mile, then abandoned on the line,
and  Petya,  Zhenya  and the other  boys  went  back  to the  workshop.  But
everybody  had gone,  only a few workers  with shot-guns  and  red arm-bands
paced up and down by the smashed gates.
     Petya and Zhenya made their way home through strangely deserted streets
and  lanes.  Motya  was standing by the gate -and at  once started  scolding
Zhenya:
     "You little ruffian, you tramp, where've you been all this time? And as
for you," she turned on Petya, "you ought to be  ashamed of yourself, taking
a child to a strike! Just look at yourself, if your father could see you!"
     Ever since  that walk to get snowdrops Motya had had a tendency to find
fault with Petya.
     He looked down at his boots  all  scratched by clinker,  at his crushed
satchel with the broken strap, at the buckle of his belt pushed to one side.
     "You're  all  dirty," Motya went on. "Go  and get washed quickly,  I'll
fetch water for you."
     "Stop ordering us about!" said Zhenya.  He pulled out of his pocket the
whistle which had only recently hung round the neck of the old policeman and
blew a shrill blast.
     "You scoundrel! You little ruffian!" Motya threw up her hands, but then
surrendered and burst into a fit of childlike laughter.
     At that moment  an open cab appeared in  the distance. Swaying over the
ruts,  wheels rattling, it  raced down  the  street.  Men with red arm-bands
bumped on the seats and shouted something as they passed each gate.
     Petya saw Terenty  among them, waving  his little cap. His face was red
and excited which  made  the white scar on his temple stand out all the more
sharply.
     "Out to  the common!"  he shouted, pointing  ahead with his cap, hardly
aware that it was his own house he was passing.
     Petya flung his satchel over  the  fence  and  raced  after  Motya  and
Zhenya. The common was already black with people.
     The sun had  only just sunk behind the barrows and great clouds sailing
through the sky  seemed  to shed their own light  over the meeting.  Terenty
stood erect on  the seat of  the cab, surrounded by the crowd. With one hand
he steadied  himself  on the driver's shoulder, and  gestured  energetically
with the  other. His  voice  carried to Petya in fragments borne on gusts of
wind. Sometimes he could make out whole sentences.
     The  wrathful voice that seemed to fly with the  breeze over the silent
crowd, over  the quiet steppe, filled Petya with a burning sense of struggle
for freedom. His  heart beat hard. And when the people sang in discord, "You
fell a victim in the fight"  and  there was a flicker of  movement as  heads
were bared, Petya  too removed his cap and  clutched it  to his  breast with
both hands,  singing with the others. He could  not hear himself, but beside
him he could hear the high  voice of Motya as she stood on tiptoe, her  neck
stretched, singing enthusiastically:
     "... Fresh ranks of the people have risen to fight...."
     Petya had the feeling that in a moment mounted Cossacks  would dash out
from somewhere and a massacre would begin. But everything was quiet, and the
silhouettes  of  the  sentries  stationed on the hillocks  and barrows  were
outlined black against the glow of the sunset.
     The   meeting  ended   and  the  people  dispersed   as   quickly   and
inconspicuously as they had gathered. The common emptied.  But on the  young
grass among  crushed dandelions Petya  saw a great  number  of sticks,  iron
bolts and pieces of brick which the  workers had brought with  them, just in
case.  Then Terenty and  Gavrik  appeared.  They walked in  step,  hands  in
pockets, looking well satisfied with the day's work.
     "Come  on, come on," said Terenty, passing one hand over Motya's  cheek
and holding out  the  other to  Petya.  "Don't dawdle. It's  true  there are
meetings and  demonstrations  all over  the town  and the  police don't know
which way to turn, and Tolmachov's sitting at home wondering what to do, but
all the same.... We'd better be getting along."
     This time,  however, the  police evidently were at a loss, and Governor
Tolmachov  did not venture  to send for  troop's. Throughout the twenty-four
hours  of the strike, not a single soldier or policeman was seen  about Near
Mills, except for the old local policeman who spent the whole day going from
house to house, begging tearfully for his sabre and revolver. He came to the
Chernoivanenkos' too, and Terenty went out into the yard to talk to him.
     "Terenty, lad," he pleaded,  "I knew you when you were in diddies. Have
a good heart. Tell your lads to give me my weapons back, or I'll be put  out
of the police. They're the property of the Crown."
     Terenty frowned.
     "What d'you mean by my lads? Think what you're saying."
     "As if  you didn't know yourself,"  said the  old man with a  wink, and
added  guilelessly, "your lads,  the  ones that are  revolutionaries. You're
their chief, aren't you?"
     Terenty took the man by the shoulder and led him out of the gate.
     "Get  along  with  you,  old 'un! And  don't  babble of things you know
nothing about. Or if you do-better keep off the streets at night. Get that?"
     "Ah, Terenty, Terenty." The old policeman sighed  and shambled along to
the next house.
     The  following day the strike ended and everything went  on as  before.
Factory whistles filled the  air every morning just as  they had, but now it
was  no longer cold and misty, but bright with sunshine  and filled with the
fragrance of flowers and the song of birds. And the people  going to work in
groups  and crowds seemed to  Petya  to be  different too,  they walked more
boldly,  they looked cheerful  and confident and in some  way  brighter  and
cleaner-probably because they had got rid of their clumsy winter clothes and
many were already in light canvas jackets and coloured cotton shirts.
     Coming home from school Petya felt very hot in his heavy uniform jacket
and cap, which soon became quite wet on the inside.
     Lessons finished a week before the exams. From morning  to night  Petya
sat at the table under the mulberry tree, his fingers in his  ears, learning
events and  dates, wagging his head like a Chinese  mandarin. He had made up
his mind to  get top marks in  all the exams whatever  happened, for he knew
full well that  no  leniency would be shown him,  he would be failed  on any
pretext. He got thin, and his hair, long uncut, straggled on his neck.


        THE FIRST ISSUE OF THE "PRAVDA"


     Come to the station with me?"  said Gavrik  one day, appearing suddenly
behind Petya.
     Petya was so  deep in  his  swotting  that  he did not even wonder  why
Gavrik was not at work. He only wagged his head a little faster and mumbled,
"Let me alone."
     Glancing up, however, he saw a very mysterious  smile on Gavrik's face.
Still more surprising was  his  carefully combed hair, the new cotton  shirt
held in by  a new belt, the pressed trousers and the new boots which he wore
only on very special occasions. All this must mean something unusual.
     "Why the station?" Petya asked.
     "To get the newspaper."
     "What newspaper?"
     "Our own. A daily.  The workers' paper,  lad.  Sent straight  from  St.
Petersburg by express. It's called the Pravda."
     Petya had already heard talk of the  new workers' paper the Beks  would
soon  be putting  out in St.  Petersburg. Collections had  been made for  it
among the workers, Petya had seen the money. Sometimes Terenty or Gavrik had
brought it home from work and  after counting it carefully, put it away in a
tin box that had once  held sweet drops. Once  a  week Terenty would send it
away by post, and put the receipt in the same box.
     The money was  mostly in small coins, even in single kopeks. Ruble  and
three-ruble notes appeared but rarely,  and it was  difficult to imagine how
such a big thing as a daily paper could possibly emerge from these coppers.
     But now  it  seemed  that it  could, and  it  was  coming  on  the  St.
Petersburg-Odessa express.
     To be frank, Petya was already heartily sick  of  grinding  away at his
books all day  and every day, from  morning  to night.  He  was glad of  the
excuse for a break. The idea of going to the station  was enticing. It was a
place  that  always  attracted  him.   The  network  of  rails  spurred  his
imagination to  picture the unknown regions  to which their smoothly curving
lines led.
     The west Petya had already seen. But there was still the north, all its
boundlessly vast expanses-Russia with Moscow, St. Petersburg, ancient  Kiev,
Arkhangelsk, the  Volga,  and Siberia  which  was Bo  hard  to  picture, and
finally  the Lena  River which was now not merely  a  river but  an event in
history,  reeking  with blood-like  Khodynka  (  A  place  in  Moscow  where
thousands of people were trampled to death in May 1896 during the coronation
of  Nicholas  II  due  to  the  authorities'  criminal  negligence.-Tr.)  or
Tsushima. And it was from there, from  the north, from the smoky,  foggy St.
Petersburg, that the express would today bring the newspaper Pravda.
     When Petya  and Gavrik arrived at the station, the train was already in
and stood  by the platform. It consisted entirely of shining  Pullmans, blue
or  yellow,  without a single third-class  green coach.  And there were  two
coaches such as neither Petya nor Gavrik had ever seen before; involuntarily
the lads stopped before them.
     They were faced with brightly polished wood, and  the door handles, the
corners of windows, the foreign letters  of the inscription and the badge of
the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits were of brass that glittered in
the sun. Even the outside conveyed a smart severity, like that of a ship.
     When the boys, nudging one another, peeped in through a window with its
narrow band of painted glass  at the top, they gasped at the luxury  inside,
at the  polished mahogany  panels,  the stamped-plush walls,  the snow-white
rumpled  bedding, the electric-light bulbs  like  milky tulips, the blue net
for light articles, the heavy bronze spittoon and the carpet on the floor.
     In the  other coach they  saw something even more  astounding-a  buffet
with  bottles  and  hors-d'oeuvres,  and  a waiter  in a  tailcoat  clearing
pyramidal  napkins from the  tables,  napkins so white and  stiff that  they
might have been made of marble.
     Even Petya who had been abroad had never  imagined anything  like this,
let alone Gavrik.
     "Oooh, just look!" Petya  whispered, pressing his face  so hard against
the thick glass that his nose left a moist imprint.
     Gavrik's  eyes  narrowed and with  a queer smile he hissed through  his
teeth, "That's how our fine gentry travel."
     "Keep off the coach, please!" said a stern voice with a foreign accent,
and  a  conductor  in  the   uniform  jacket   and  cap  of  the   Compagnie
Internationale des Wagons-Lits shoved the boys  away  with a firm hand as he
passed.
     Gavrik  wrinkled his  nose,  doubled up his  arm  and thrust the  elbow
towards  the  man-in Near  Mills  an  indication of  the utmost mockery  and
contempt. But the conductor, from the height of his superiority, ignored the
gesture, and the boys went on to the luggage coach.
     At  the moment  flat cane  baskets were being brought out; through  the
open  nets  covering them  the lads  could  see fresh,  moist  flowers-Parma
violets  and  roses,  sent through St. Petersburg from Nice to Werkmeister's
flower shop. Werkmeister himself, a gentleman in a short light bell-bottomed
coat with mourning bands on the sleeve and on a top hat, was supervising the
unloading, accompanying each  basket the  porter  carried to the cart with a
gentle touch from a finger bearing two wedding rings.
     The boys could smell  the perfume  of damp  flowers, strange among  the
coal and metal smells of the railway station, and this suddenly brought back
to Petya  that station in Naples, so like this one except  for the palms and
the  agaves,  and  the forgotten girl  with the black ribbon in her chestnut
braid. And again he  felt the bitter-sweet pang of parting. He  even fancied
that he saw her before him.
     But at that moment Gavrik  seized his sleeve and pulled him after a big
truck  loaded with  piles  of St. Petersburg  newspapers and magazines.  Two
porters  wheeled it  with  some difficulty, the  small iron  wheels striking
sparks as they rumbled over the asphalt.
     The boys  ran  alongside,  trying to  guess  which  pile contained  the
Pravda. The truck was wheeled off the platform into the station building and
came to a squealing stop beside a newspaper stall-a carved bookcase of fumed
oak, big as an organ, with hundreds of books, newspapers and magazines lying
.and hanging all over it.
     Petya loved  to look  at  all these novelties from St.  Petersburg. The
covers  of  love  and  detective  novels excited  him,  so did the  coloured
caricatures  of the Satirikon,  and  Alarm-Ctock,  and  the garlands of  The
Leichtweiss Cave, Nat  Pinkerton,  Nick Carter,  and Sherlock Holmes series,
that hung on lines like washing, with tiny pictures of  these famous foreign
detectives, with pipes or  without, among whom the famous Russian  detective
Putilin   looked   very   tnai've  and  provincial  with   his   ministerial
side-whiskers  and  his  old-fashioned  silk  hat.   Then  there  were   the
illustrated weekly journals-The Spark, Sun of Russia,  All the World,  Round
the World, and especially  that new magazine  which had only just come  out,
the Blue  Journal,  which really was  blue all  through, smelt  strongly  of
kerosene and stained the fingers.
     All these  dozens, hundreds,  thousands of printed sheets  promising  a
fantastic variety  of  ideas and  subjects,  but  actually  offering only an
appalling emptiness,  fascinated  Petya, and he stood before them as  though
spellbound.
     Meanwhile, the bundles of newspapers had been flung one after the other
beneath the counter. The  stout, long-bearded  old  man with  a  gold  chain
across his waistcoat, who rented  the stall, kept putting  a small pince-nez
on his  strawberry-coloured  nose,  leafing  through  his  account  book and
jotting down  notes with a pencil,  while  a very thin, bony  lady in a hat,
whose  pointed  angry  face made  her  look like  a pike,  flung  bundles of
newspapers  on  the  counter,  from  which they were quickly snatched up  by
news-boys and the owners of street stalls who had been queuing up for a long
time.
     "Fifty  New  Times,  thirty Country Life,  a  hundred  and fifty  Stock
Exchange, a hundred Speech. There you are, next!"  she  cried in a  croaking
voice, and in an instant the bundles were carried  off on shoulders or heads
across  the  station  square.  There  they  were  pitched  on to  handcarts,
wheelbarrows  or cabs  to  be distributed over the whole  city  as  fast  as
possible.
     Gavrik  took his place  at the end of the queue with a  little group of
people  who did not look like stall owners or news-boys. More  than anything
else they  looked  like  workers.  Gavrik  greeted some  of  them  and  they
exchanged  a  few quick words, impatiently  eyeing the bundles of newspapers
disappearing from the counter.
     Petya had the feeling they were apprehensive about something.
     At last their turn came.
     "And what do you want?" asked the pike-faced lady, with a stern look at
the strangers. She knew all her regular clients  by sight but these  she had
never seen before. "What have you come for?"
     "Our  paper's the Pravda." An  elderly worker with  a clipped moustache
wearing a  Sunday  jacket  and tie but smelling strongly  of  varnish pushed
forward to the counter. "We are from the Gena Factory,  the Ropit Wharf, the
repair  workshops, the Weinstein Flour Mill, the Schawald  Shipping  Company
and the  Zur and Co.  Furniture  Factory. To begin with we want fifty copies
apiece."
     "What's that you say? Pravda?  I've never heard of such a paper,"  said
the lady in an artificial voice and turned to the old man. "Ivan Antonovich,
does our agency handle the newspaper Pravda?"
     "What's  the  matter?" asked the old  man, and without raising his head
from his accounts  shot a hostile look  at the  customers out  of his small,
piercing eyes.
     "There's an application for three  hundred copies of some Pravda," said
the lady.
     "Not some Pravda," Gavrik corrected her, "but  the workers' daily paper
which has its office at 37, Nikolayevskaya Street, St. Petersburg. Isn't  it
there?"
     "It's not arrived," said the old man indifferently. "Come tomorrow."
     "Excuse me," said an elderly worker,  "but that's  not possible.  We've
had a telegram."
     "It's not arrived."
     "Not arrived, hasn't  it?" the  elderly worker snapped,  frowning. "The
Black-Hundred New Times  has  come, the  bourgeois Speech has come, but  the
workers' Pravda isn't here? Where's your lousy freedom, then?"
     "For  that sort  of  talk I  could-  Sofya  Ivanovna, go quick for  the
gendarme!"
     "What's that?" said the elderly worker very quietly, and his thick grey
brows drew  closer together. "Perhaps you want to send for the soldiers too?
As they did on the Lena?"
     "Don't waste your breath on them, Yegor Alexeyevich!"  shouted a lad in
a  seaman's cap  with  blue  tattooing on Ms  sinewy arm-evidently  from the
Schawald  Shipping Company. "Put  him out!" He made a rush for the  old man,
pushing aside the pike-faced lady, whose hat went askew.
     Petya shut his eyes. Now, he thought,  something terrible  will happen.
But all he heard was the old man whining, "Don't touch me, I'll have the law
on you...."
     When he  opened his  eyes he saw  Gavrik standing  behind  the counter,
triumphantly  pulling out  a  big package  of  the Pravda  printed  on cheap
yellowish paper with  the name in big,  black letters, as straight and stern
as the meaning of the word. (Pravda-truth.-Tr.)
     "But mark this, gentlemen, we don't sell retail!" hissed the lady. "And
don't  expect  credit.  Either  you  take  the whole  consignment-a thousand
copies, and pay  on the spot, or you  can get out and tomorrow your beggarly
Pravda  goes  back  to St.  Petersburg,  and  the sooner  it goes  smash the
better."
     The paper was a cheap  one, fitted for lean pockets. Other  papers cost
five kopeks, the  Pravda  only two.  But even so,  a  thousand copies  meant
twenty rubles, a big sum in those days.
     The six turned out their pockets  but found that they could only scrape
up sixteen rubles seventy-four kopeks.
     "Ragamuffins,  beggars,  rabble,  and  want to  push  your  noses  into
politics," rattled the lady all in one breath,  turned  her back and put her
lace-mittened hand on the pile of papers.
     "Just  a  minute,"  said  the young  fellow from  the Schawald Shipping
Company.
     He raced into the first-class  waiting-room, handed  his  silver  watch
over the refreshment counter and was back in a moment with a five-ruble note
crumpled in his hand.
     So ten minutes later Gavrik and Petya were marching towards Near Mills,
each with a package of papers on his shoulder.
     Although  the  newspaper  was  published  legally,  with  the necessary
permit, Petya felt like a  law-breaker. Whenever the boys passed a policeman
he  felt the  man was looking  at them with great  suspicion. As a matter of
fact, he was often right.
     It would have been hard not to notice two youths, one in school uniform
and the  other  dressed  as  a  workman, striding along very  quickly,  with
sizeable bundles on their shoulders and obviously excited, the boy in school
uniform looking round apprehensively  at  every  step and  the young workman
whistling the "Varshavyanka" as  loudly  as he could, beating out the rhythm
with his stride.
     The nearer  they  came to their house, the faster the  boys  went until
they were almost running. Sometimes Gavrik tossed his bundle in the air and,
imitating  newsboys, shouted, "New daily workers' paper, the Pravda!  Latest
news! All about the Lena massacre!" His eyes burned.
     When  they  came to  Sakhalinchik, quite close  to Near  Mills,  Gavrik
pulled out a number of copies and raced  ahead at full  speed,  waving  them
over  his head and  shouting, "The  Tsar's  Minister Makarov tells the State
Duma, 'What has been will be!' Down with the butcher Makarov! Long  live the
workers' Pravda! Buy  the workers' Pravda\ Two kopeks  a copy! What has been
won't be!"
     They came  to the  factory district and here Gavrik was quite  at home.
This was his own world, where he  felt free and independent. Big  gates with
brass lettering on wire  netting. Square  brick buildings and tall chimneys.
The squat concrete tower of the  "Cocovar" margarine factory  with  its huge
placard of a bulldog-faced chef offering a dish with a steaming pudding. The
waterworks, the depot, the elevators.. ..
     Here and there workers in blue shirts  and greasy overalls came running
out, drawn by Gavrik's cries. Some of them bought  papers and handed coppers
to Gavrik which he slipped into his mouth like a real news-boy.
     Once  a  policeman  noticed the disturbance  and  whistled, but  Gavrik
showed his elbow  from  the distance  and  the  boys dived  quickly  down an
alleyway.
     Petya's fears had almost left him, it was as though they  were  playing
some exciting, risky game.
     Suddenly they heard the  beat of running feet behind them. They turned.
A man with his jacket open and flying was racing after them. He had bow legs
and weaved from side to side, shouting, "Hi! You lads there! Stop!"
     At first  Petya thought  he  wanted  to  buy a paper and  waited, but a
second  glance showed  him his  mistake. The man running  after them  held a
short rubber truncheon  and  on his lapel was the badge of the Black-Hundred
Union with its tricolour ribbon.
     "Run!" shouted Gavrik.
     But the  man with the truncheon  was  there already; Petya felt a heavy
blow  which luckily missed  his head and  descended on the bundle of papers,
just clipping his ear in passing.
     Fragments of newsprint flew on all sides.
     "Hands off!"  Gavrik snarled, hoarse with rage; with  his free  hand he
gave the man such a blow that he staggered back and almost fell. "Hands off,
you blackguard! Murderer, bastard! I'll kill you!"
     Without removing his  eyes from  the man,  Gavrik slipped the bundle of
papers from his shoulder and reached them back to Petya.
     "Take those and run  to the repair shops, call the workers' squad,"  he
said rapidly, licking  his lips and forgetting Petya  might  not  know  what
workers' squads were.
     But Petya knew. Hugging the papers, he raced along the narrow street at
top speed.
     Gavrik and the man faced each other on the road. Still licking his lips
and breathing  heavily  through his nose, Gavrik  slowly slid his right hand
into  his  pocket. When he just  as  slowly  took  it  out,  it held a steel
knuckleduster.
     "I'll kill you!" he repeated, his hard eyes fixed on the man as  though
he wanted to fix in his  mind that puffy dark face that looked  as though it
had  been stung by  bees,  the little  pig's eyes, the bullet-head with hair
parted at the side and combed across  the low forehead, and the crooked grin
of a bully.
     "Now  then, you  scum!"  said  the man and aimed a blow with his rubber
truncheon; but Gavrik dodged it and raced after Petya.
     He heard the beat  of boots behind him, and  when the sound came  close
Gavrik  suddenly threw himself down on the ground;  the man caught his foot,
tripped and measured his length. Gavrik promptly sat down on him and started
hammering the man's black head with his knuckle-duster, repeating  fiercely,
"Hands off! Hands off! Hands off!"
     The man  got his  hand into his pocket  with a groan  and pulled out  a
small black Browning. A number of shots rang out, but Gavrik managed to  get
his foot on the man's  arm and  the bullets only struck harmless sparks from
the cobbles.
     "Help! Police!" sobbed  the man and,  twisting his head round, suddenly
hit Gavrik on the leg.
     Gavrik gasped and  the next  minute they were rolling  over and over on
the ground. It is hard to say how it would have ended,  for  Gavrik was much
smaller  and  weaker than his  opponent, but at  that moment assistance came
from the repair workshops.
     Five men of the workers' squad armed with pieces of piping and spanners
tore the Browning and the rubber truncheon out of the bully's hand, gave him
a  couple  of  buffets  and all but  carried Gavrik into the  yard.  It  all
happened so  quickly that when  a policeman  came  running up, drawn by  the
firing, he found nobody  in  the street except Gavrik's assailant sitting on
the ground, slumped against the fence of  the  "Cocovar" margarine  factory,
spitting out blood-covered teeth.
     From  then  on  the  new  paper   was  sold  regularly,  first  in  the
working-class districts  and round the factories, and then here and there in
the centre of the city.


        THE COTTAGE IN THE STEPPE


     A few days later exams  began. It cost Motya and her mother a good deal
of work to clean  and mend Petya's uniform, for it had been in more than one
adventure since its owner had come to live in Near Mills.
     Petya's ear, which caught a glancing  blow by the rubber truncheon, was
no longer painful but was still blue and swollen, and in general presented a
disreputable appearance. Petya hoped a dusting of tooth-powder would make it
look a little more presentable and allowed Motya to do the powdering,  which
she did, passing a rag very gently and carefully  over the injured  ear, her
tongue thrust out in concentrated effort.
     Petya  did not do at all badly  in  his  exams, although the  examiners
tried hard to fail him.
     The  tense, tiring examination period, which as always  coincided  with
the first May thunderstorms, thickly flowering lilacs, summer heat and short
sleepless  nights  filled  with  moonlight  and  the  whispers   of  lovers,
thoroughly exhausted Petya. When  he finally returned to Near Mills from the
last exam-eyes  sparkling,  hair rumpled, hands covered  with ink and chalk,
perspiring and happy-it would have been hard to recognize him for  the  same
boy he  had been a couple  of months before, so  much  older and  thinner he
looked.
     The next day he shouldered his pillow and blanket and set off for home.
     The first person  he  saw there was his father.  Vasily  Petrovich  was
weeding round the cherry trees, tearing out grass and chamomiles and tossing
them  into a  basket.  Petya  looked at  the kindly,  unshaven  face and the
noticeably greyer hair, the  dark-blue shirt, faded at the back and bleached
almost white under the arms, the old trousers, baggy at the knees, the dusty
sandals and the pince-nez that fell off and dangled on its  cord  every time
his father bent down-and a flood of warmth filled him.
     "Dad!" he called, "I'm through!"
     His father turned and a  happy smile lighted up the  wet  bearded  face
with a swollen vein running across the forehead.
     "Ah, Petya! Well, congratulations, that's fine."
     The  boy dropped his pillow  and blanket on the  dusty  grass and flung
both arms round his father's hot, sunburned neck, noticing with surprise and
a secret thrill of pride that they were almost the same height.
     Auntie appeared  from the flowering  lilacs with  the hoe in her hands.
Petya did not recognize her at once, for she had a kerchief fastened tightly
round her head, making her look like a peasant woman.
     "Auntie, I've passed them all!" Petya cried.
     "I  know,  I heard  you, congratulations," said Auntie, wiping  her wet
forehead with her arm. She beamed,  but she could not refrain from improving
the occasion. "Now you're in the seventh form, I hope you'll behave better."
     Dunyasha,  her head in a kerchief and a  hoe in her hands  like Auntie,
also congratulated the young master on his success.
     Then came  a creaking of wheels followed by a big, bony, very old horse
in funereal black blinkers pulling  a long water-cart. The horse was  led by
the lanky youth, Gavrila, whom Petya had seen before, and Pavlik sat astride
the barrel, barefoot and in a big straw hat, holding the reins and whip.
     "Hey,  Petya!  Hullo!"  he  called, spitting to  one  side like  a real
carter.  "Look, I can drive  him a bit already!  Here you,  stop!  Whoa!" he
shouted at the  horse, which at once stood motionless on its trembling legs,
evidently glad to do so.
     Gavrila set to  work watering the  trees,  pouring a bucketful into the
hollow dug round each. The dry earth absorbed  the water instantaneously. In
a few minutes Petya realized the work entailed in looking after an orchard.
     Summer  was  beginning and there  had  not  been a single  really  good
rainfall. In the cistern the water was right down to the bottom.  Now it had
to be brought from the horse-tram terminus.
     The orchard was  in blossom and the  trees  were covered  ,with ovaries
that  needed  moisture  all  the  time. It  was a good  thing  that with the
Vasyutinskaya orchard they had got that  old  horse, called Warden,  and the
water-cart. But a  tremendous amount  of water was needed, and  Warden could
barely crawl.
     From morning to night there was the creaking of  un-greased wheels from
the water-cart, the crack of the whip  .and the  heavy breathing of the bony
black nag  that  looked  ready to  fall down and  give  up the  ghost at any
moment. It was  hard  to make him rise from his wet straw in the morning. He
trembled all over,  weakly  shifting his great cracked hoofs, and  the flies
crawled round his blind, watering eyes.
     This somewhat  dashed their  spirits, and at times  seemed like  a  bad
omen. But the weather was wonderful and the crop promised to be so rich that
the Bachei  family, busy from  morning to night with their unaccustomed  but
enjoyable physical work, felt splendid.
     At first Petya thought he never would learn to dig round the trees. The
heavy spade  twisted awkwardly in his hands  and  seemed  too  blunt to  cut
deeply into the ground with its thick growth  of grass and  chamomiles.  His
hands smarted and he rubbed blisters on the palms. But by  the time they had
burst and turned into calluses, he began to understand the way of it.
     It seemed that the spade should be put down at  an angle, and he should
press not only with his hands but also, and mainly, with his foot-slowly and
evenly; there  was a crack of tearing roots and the spade went down into the
black soil right to the very top. Then came the blissful moment when he bore
down with all his  weight on the handle, felt it bend  a  little, and with a
pleasant effort turned over the heavy layer of soil  with its imprint of the
spade and half a wriggling red worm.
     At first Petya  worked in sandals, but then  began  digging barefoot to
save them, and the contact of his skin  with the warm iron was another thing
he enjoyed. He ^realized that  this was not play, it was work, the future of
the family depended on it.
     All of them worked in the sweat of their brows, it  was a real struggle
for  existence. They had dinner at midday on the big glassed-in veranda, hot
from the  sunshine. They ate  borshch,  boiled beef, and grey wheaten  bread
which  they bought from the German settlers at> Lustdorf. They were so tired
they  ate almost in silence, and  what  talk  there  was concerned  only the
weather, rain and the crop.
     Although  they were living in a summer cottage  they were quite  unlike
the usual holiday  crowd. They slept on folding beds in the big, comfortless
rooms,  with spades, hoes, buckets, watering-cans and other implements lying
about in the corners. They washed  at  dawn by  the water-cart, and although
the sea was  not  far away,  only about a  mile and a half, they seldom went
bathing- there was no time.
     Vasily Petrovich  became thin and haggard; he  was evidently overtaxing
his  strength but he refused to slacken off,  and  worked so hard that Petya
often worried about him.
     Everything appeared to be going  well.  It was the kind  of life Vasily
Petrovich  had  often  dreamed  of in secret, especially  after his European
tour-with something of Switzerland, something of the Rousseau spirit, a life
independent of the government or society. A little plot of land, an orchard,
a vineyard, healthy physical  toil  and leisure devoted to reading, walking,
philosophical conversation and all the rest of it.
     So far, it is true,  there had been only the healthy physical  toil, no
time was left for the leisure devoted to spiritual joys. But after all, that
was natural, the new life was only just beginning.
     Nevertheless, Vasily Petrovich  was never free from a  nagging sense of
worry. He was uneasy about the crop.
     The  ovaries stood thick  on the cherry  trees, fine, green balls  that
swelled day by  day, but who could  say how they would  go on? Suppose there
was no rain, the water carried proved insufficient  and the  crop  was lost?
And even if it was not lost, how were they to sell it?
     Up  to  now  the question of  selling the crop