dy knew how  to make fire, who
hunted with the aid of crude  weapons of stone, but who had not yet  learned
to cultivate the land or to sow grain...."
     Petya, who sometimes joined the circle, discovered a new father-not the
ordinary, domestic  Dad-dear,  kind and  sometimes  unhappy, but  a  capable
teacher presenting his subject in a clear, logical sequence.
     Petya had never realized his father had such a fine, ringing  voice, or
that  mature working men could listen  to him with such childlike attention.
Petya noticed that they even stood a little in awe  of him. Once Uncle Fedya
forgot  where he was and lighted a cigarette. Then  Vasily Petrovich stopped
in the middle of a sentence and fixed such an icy look upon the culprit that
he crushed out  the cigarette  in his palm, flushed  crimson, jumped to  his
feet,  and standing to attention with bulging eyes jerked out  navy-fashion,
"Excuse me, Comrade Lecturer! Won't happen again!"
     "Sit  down," said  Vasily  Petrovich  coldly  and  took  up his lecture
exactly where he had broken off.
     Behind his  back  Terenty  shook  his  fist at Uncle  Fedya, and  Petya
realized that his father not only  himself took  a pride  in his profession,
but made others respect it too.
     Usually they  all spent  the night  with the  Bacheis, rising early  to
work,  so  they cooked their  supper immediately after the lecture to get to
sleep in good time.
     A  fire was lighted  beside  the  twig-and-weed  shanties, and a  great
cauldron of potato-and-pork stew was hung  over it. Night fell; the darkness
under the trees became so intense that from the distance it looked as though
the fire was burning in the mouth of a cave. Black shadowy forms moved round
it; they were gigantic and it seemed that their heads could touch the stars.
It all reminded Petya of a gipsy camp.
     When the stew was ready, Terenty would go to the house to invite Vasily
Petrovich to join them.
     In  a few moments he would  appear, this time  in  domestic garb-an old
Russian shirt and sandals on his bare feet. Someone  would hand him a wooden
spoon and, squatting down, he would eat  the rather smoky stew  with evident
relish and praise it highly.
     Then they would  drink tea, also  smoky, and  eat rye bread.  Sometimes
fishermen from Bolshoi Fontan whom Terenty  knew  would join  them, bringing
fresh  fish. On  those  occasions supper  would  continue  until  long  past
midnight.  Gradually the talk  would  turn to  political  subjects-at first-
cautiously,  in veiled- words, then with  increasing  frankness, with such a
vigour of expression  that  Vasily Petrovich would  produce  a yawn, stretch
himself, rise and say, "Well, I won't trouble you any further. Thank you for
the supper, but now I'm for bed. And I advise you to get some sleep too. The
stew was really incomparable."
     Nobody urged him  to stay. They  would put out the fire  and gather  in
Terenty's  shanty,  light the railway lantern and continue their talk-but it
was talk of a different  nature. Pavlovskaya would join them, bringing along
a  thick, worn, cloth-bound book.  Petya knew that now they would  read Karl
Marx's Capital and the latest issue of the Pravda, and after that they would
discuss Party affairs.
     This, however,  was not for Petya's ears, not  even for Gavrik's. Their
job was to  walk all  round the orchard and the house, keeping an eye on the
steppe and especially  on the roads.  If they  saw anything suspicious, they
were to give the alarm by firing the shot-gun. But who  could appear  in the
middle of the night on  the steppe, so far  from town? Who  could ever think
that  an  innocent orchard  concealed  a  small shanty  lighted by a railway
lantern where eight or ten workmen and fishermen were discussing the destiny
of Russia, the destiny  of the  world, drawing up leaflets, discussing Party
matters and preparing for revolution.
     Petya  and  Gavrik,  however,  did  their  duty conscientiously.  Petya
carried  the  old  shot-gun  they  used  for scaring  birds  slung over  his
shoulder, while Gavrik now and then slipped his right hand into  a pocket to
touch a loaded Browning of which Petya knew nothing.
     At first the girls  would  go round with them, for company.  Marina, of
course, knew what it was all about, but Motya innocently  thought  they were
guarding the orchard  against  thieves, and  followed Petya on tiptoe, never
taking her eyes off the shot-gun.
     She was no longer angry with him for being such a little liar, she even
loved him more, especially now when it was so quiet, dark and mysterious all
round, when  sleep had laid its  hand on  everything but the quails and  the
crickets, when the whole steppe lay silvery in the starlight.
     "Petya, aren't  you even a bit afraid of thieves?" she  whispered,  but
Petya pretended not to have heard.
     He  was  not  in the mood for  love. And  altogether, he  had vowed  to
himself to have no more dealings with girls. He'd had enough! Better to be a
lone, brave, taciturn man for whom women do not exist.
     He  gazed  intently  out on the empty  steppe,  ears  pricked  for  the
slightest sound. But Motya tiptoed after him and asked, "Petya, if you see a
thief will you shoot him?"
     "Of course," Petya answered.
     "Then I'll stop up my ears," Motya whispered, faint with fear and love.
     "Let me alone!"
     She said  no more,  but in a little  while  Petya heard a  queer  sound
behind him, like a cat sneezing. It was Motya's stifled giggle.
     "What are you sniggering about?"
     "Remember that time Marina and I fooled you?"
     "Idiot! It was I that fooled you both," Petya growled.
     "You let  your  imagination  run away  with you,"  said Marina  in  her
mother's voice. During these nocturnal strolls she was very quiet, reserved,
adult, said little and walked beside Gavrik, even taking his  arm sometimes.
And although that did give Petya a pang of jealousy, he continued resolutely
in his role of a man for whom love does not exist.
     But alas, love  did exist, the  whole  warm night on the  steppe seemed
filled  with it.  It was  in  everything-the  dark sky,  thick  with  summer
star-dust, the crystal choir of crickets, the gentle, warm,  scented breeze,
the distant barking of a dog, and especially the glow-worms that seemed like
fires in the far  distance, yet you  need  but stretch out your hand and the
soft,  weightless little lamp lay on your palm shedding its dead green light
on a tiny patch of skin.
     The girls collected glow-worms and put them in  each other's hair. Then
they began to yawn and soon afterwards went  to their shanty, floating  away
through the darkness like twin constellations.
     Gavrik  and  Petya continued to guard  the  camp  alone until the light
disappeared  in Terenty's  shanty.  Sometimes this  was  only when dawn  was
breaking.
     In those early morning hours  Gavrik talked with unusual frankness, and
Petya  learned  much that  was  new to  him.  He understood now that  a new,
-powerful revolutionary movement had  already begun, and that  it was led by
Ulyanov-Lenin  who, Gavrik said, had moved from Paris to Cracow to be closer
to Russia.
     "And  do  you  think  it'll  really  come-revolution?"   asked   Petya,
pronouncing the dreadful word with an effort.
     "I don't just think it, I'm sure of it," Gavrik answered and added in a
whisper, "If you want to know, it's already-"
     Petya waited breathlessly for what Gavrik would  say next.  But  Gavrik
said nothing, he. could not  find the words for all he  had sensed  or heard
from  Terenty. But Petya  understood. The  Lena  shooting.  The strikes. The
meeting on  the  steppe.  The Pravda.  The fight  with  that  bully. Prague.
Cracow. Lenin. And finally this night, that lantern in the shanty. What else
was it all but a herald of the mounting tide of revolution?


        MOUSTACHE


     Soon the late cherries ripened. There were fewer trees this time but no
less bother.
     At the height of the picking Madame Storozhenko suddenly appeared. This
time  she did  not  enter  but had the  britzka  stop at the far side of the
scrub-grown earth bank that marked  the boundary. For a  long time she stood
on the step,  steadying  herself  with  a hand on the  head of  one  of  the
Persians, watching the work.
     "Ragamuffins,  scamps, proletarians!" she  kept screaming, shaking  her
big canvas sunshade  threateningly. "I'll  teach you to  go  forcing  prices
down! I'll have the police on you!"
     Nobody took any notice and she finally drove away, with a parting yell,
"I'll put a stop to your tricks, so help me God!"
     The next day platforms came for the cherries. While they were still out
on  the  steppe,  a little  distance from the orchard, Petya  saw some heavy
boxes thrown off them which afterwards disappeared.
     "What boxes were those?" he asked.
     "I thought  you  were  asleep,"  Gavrik  replied,  evidently  none  too
pleased. He ignored Petya's question.
     "No, but seriously, what were those boxes?"
     "What boxes?" Gavrik drawled,  with a  look of innocence. "Where'd  you
see any boxes? There aren't any!"
     But Petya had seen them plainly enough.
     "Don't play the fool!" he snapped angrily.
     Gavrik came and stood in front of him, legs apart.
     "Forget them," he  said sternly. But there was such  mysterious triumph
in his face, such a sly gleam in  his eye that Petya's curiosity only flamed
higher.
     "Tell  me-what were they?" he said again. He knew full  well that their
contents was  some important  secret,  and that  Gavrik was aching to  boast
about it. "Well?" he said insistently.
     Then Gavrik brought  his face  up  close, hesitated a moment, and after
looking all round said in a whisper, "A flat press."
     Petya could not believe his ears.
     "What?" he said.
     "A flat  press for printing," Gavrik said  very  distinctly. "Don't you
understand? Dunderhead!"
     Dozens of times Petya had passed that little gully on the steppe, thick
with tall weeds, without noticing anything special  about  it. But  when  he
looked at it this time he saw the weeds at the  bottom stir and two  figures
climb  out-first  Uncle  Fedya  and  then  the  old  railwayman.  Now  Petya
understood it all. There  must be  a cave in the  rocks at the bottom of the
gully, there were many of these caves all round the city,  opening on to the
steppe or  among the cliffs, and Petya  knew they were the entrances to  the
famous Odessa catacombs. So that was where the boxes had gone!
     "Get it?" said Gavrik and gave Petya such a  keen, almost menacing look
that  the boy was just about  to pronounce  some  solemn vow when  he caught
himself up, and returning Gavrik's look, said merely, "Yes. I got it."
     "I  hope  you do,"  said Gavrik.  "And remember,  you've  seen nothing.
Forget it all."
     "I  know," Petya  said, and they both went unhurriedly to  the  orchard
where the cherries were being poured out in piles on the platform.
     Next morning Terenty reappeared  on the veranda and  put  some money on
the table.
     "You  see how well it works out," he  said. "You help us, we  help you.
There's  a hundred and seventeen here,  and we kept  back fifteen rubles for
small expenses. I hope you don't object?"
     "Oh, of course not, of course not," Vasily Petrovich said.
     He never suspected  that these  "fifteen rubles for small expenses" had
been sent that very day to St. Petersburg,  and  that  in a week's  time the
list of acknowledgements of cash received in the Pravda would include a line
that read, "From a group of Odessa workers, 15 rubles."
     That was how the cherry crop was marketed.
     The  next  thing  would  be  the early  apples.  The summer was passing
quietly, everything was going well-except for a small  incident which passed
unnoticed by all but Petya,  on whom it left an unpleasant  impression. . As
he neared the orchard one day after a bathe he  saw a man coming out of  the
gate. There was something familiar about him. Moved by an inexplicable sense
of danger, Petya slipped  quietly  into  the  maize field and  squatted down
among  the thick stems  and rustling leaves.  The man  passed  so close that
Petya  could have reached out and  touched his dusty serge trousers and grey
canvas shoes.  He looked up and saw against the bright blue sky  and  marble
clouds a head in a summer  cap of loofah with  two peaks-in front and at the
back-the kind of cap dubbed "Hullo-Good-bye!"; he saw the grey moustache and
pince-nez of dark  glass like those worn by the blind. It was Moustache, the
secret police spy whose face  had been imprinted on Petya's mind as a child,
on the Turgenev, and whom he  had seen  again just  before his trip  abroad,
standing with a coastguard officer on board the Palermo.
     The man passed  without noticing Petya, his bluely shaved cheeks puffed
out, trumpeting softly a popular march.
     Petya waited a little while and then hurried home to find out what this
man  had come for. But  he  got little satisfaction. According to Auntie, it
was a summer resident from Bolshoi Fontan who had  simply come for cherries;
Auntie  had told him she was sorry but he was too late. He had  walked round
the orchard, praised it  and  said  he  would  most  certainly  come back in
September when the grapes were  ripe.  That was all. As it was the middle of
the week only the family had been there, and. Petya felt easier in his mind.
Perhaps  the man  really was staying at  Bolshoi  Fontan for  the summer and
really had  come only  for cherries.  After all, he  was a human being,  why
shouldn't he have a summer cottage at Bolshoi Fontan?
     Gavrik,  however, took  it much more seriously, although he agreed that
it might be mere chance".  To be  on the safe  side,  Terenty  increased the
sentries, and Gavrik and Petya paced the steppe not  only on Saturday nights
but during the day as well. It was evidently a false alarm, however, for the
man did not appear again.


        THE SAIL


     One  Saturday at  the  beginning  of  August  Petya  and Gavrik,  after
circling  round the orchard a few times  and seeing nothing suspicious, went
to the  cliffs, lay  down and  gazed out to sea. The  sun had only just set,
there  was  a brisk wind  and  the  glow was  fading from  the  pink clouds.
Dolphins played not far from the  shore, and on the horizon the  white sails
of scows stood out against the sky, for it was the mackerel fishing season.
     The  scows  moved  in various directions  and  frequently changed their
course, now approaching, now withdrawing. Sometimes one of them  would  come
quite close and  pass,  tossing, along the coast; then the two could see the
fountains of  spray  as  its  flat  bottom slapped the  water,  and  the man
standing on  the battered  bow moving a long  rod, bent like a bow, backward
and  forward.  The  boys knew  that at  the end  of  the  long  line  was  a
bait-brightly painted fish of  lead  with a  multitude  of sharp  hooks. The
great art of this kind of fishing was to adapt the speed of the bait  to the
movement  of the  shoal. The  rapacious mackerel would start to  pursue  the
shining bait  and it must not be pulled too far  ahead or made  too easy  to
seize. The fisherman must tantalize the fish before letting it snap, then it
would be firmly caught.
     It was  interesting to watch,  but  Petya and Gavrik  were  thinking of
something else.  They watched the  sails, trying to guess which was  the one
they awaited.
     In addition to the fishing boats they could see far out the smart white
sails of  the racing yachts of the fashionable clubs on  the last lap of the
annual handicap for the prize offered by the Odessa millionaire Anatre. They
were just racing for the finish, leaning over  sharply with  the wind-lovely
vessels built at the best wharves of Holland and Britain. At any other time,
of course, Petya and Gavrik  would have had  eyes for nothing else, but  now
Gavrik   only   remarked  contentedly,   "It's   like  Saturday  evening  on
Deribasovskaya Street. Crowded. Easy to slip through."
     "I believe it's that one, look, with the old 'Bolshoi Fontan lighthouse
on her beam,"  said Petya, pronouncing the words  "on her beam" with special
satisfaction.
     "No," said Gavrik, ''Akim Perepelitsky's scow is bright blue, only just
painted, and this is all scaled off!"
     "I believe you're right."
     "I certainly am." "Look! There she is!" -
     "Where?"
     "Opposite Golden Shore, a bit closer, look, bright blue!"
     "It's got a new jib, Perepelitsky's is patched."
     "When did they say they'd come?"
     "When the sun sets."
     "It's set now."
     "It's still too light. Needs to get a bit darker first."
     "Maybe they won't come at all?"
     "Rubbish. This is Party work."
     The boys went on staring intently out to sea.
     Only a  little while before a representative  of the  Central Committee
had  come  to Odessa secretly from abroad, from Ulyanov-Lenin, bringing  the
Party  directives regarding the  elections to  the Fourth  State Duma. For a
week  now he  had been  going everywhere addressing Party meetings about the
political situation.  Now he was expected  at  the farm.  As A precautionary
measure  a  young-fisherman,  Akim Perepelitsky, was  to  bring  him on  his
fishing boat from Langeron.
     The light  faded from  the clouds, the sea  darkened. The yachts passed
and disappeared. The  sails of fishing boats became noticeably fewer. A band
was playing far away, in  Arcadia, and the wind brought the distant music of
trumpets and the dull thud of a drum. And still Akim Perepelitsky's scow did
not appear.
     Suddenly Gavrik cried, "Look, there it is!"
     It  was not at all where  they had  expected it to  appear -instead  of
coming from the Langeron side, it appeared from  near to Lustdorf. Evidently
Akim  Perepelitsky  thought it safer to  keep  far out to sea until  he  was
opposite Lustdorf  and  then turned back to Kovalevsky's dacha. Now the scow
was quite close in, leaping  from wave  to wave before  a brisk wind, making
straight for the shore.
     There were  two  men in it. The one lying  back in the  stern with  the
tiller  under his arm was Akim Perepelitsky, Petya  knew him  at  once.  The
other-short  and thickset,  in an  old, striped singlet  under a fisherman's
canvas  coat, barefoot, trousers rolled to his knees-was sitting astride the
side of the boat, skilfully unlashing the jib-sheet.  This man Petya did not
immediately recognize.
     While the boys  raced down the cliff path  the  sails were furled,  the
rudder taken in  and  dropped  in  the  stern, the keel raised  and the scow
grounded  gently,  the bottom scraping the pebbles as it  buried its nose in
the shingle.
     Following the unwritten law of the coast, Petya and Gavrik first helped
to pull the heavy boat ashore, and then greeted the arrivals.
     "Gosh!  It's Uncle  Zhukov!" cried  Gavrik  like a child, shaking hands
vigorously with the Central  Committee"  representative. "I knew  it! I  was
sure it was you coming!"
     Zhukov looked at  Gavrik for a moment. "Aha!" he said at last.  "Now  I
know you  too. Wasn't it you who pulled me  out of the water opposite Otrada
Villa  seven  years ago? Look  how  you've  shot  up! I'm sorry  about  your
grandad.... Aye, he was a good old man, I liked him! Well, may his soul rest
in peace. I remember how  he kept praying to St. Nicholas,  not that he ever
got  anywhere by it...."  A shadow  from past  memories passed  over  Rodion
Zhukov's face.
     "What's your name, by the way? I'm afraid I've forgotten."
     "Gavrik. Gavrik Chernoivanenko."
     "Chernoivanenko? Any relation to Terenty?"
     "Yes, I'm his brother."
     "You don't say! And following in his footsteps, I  see." "Uncle Zhukov,
I know you too," Petya put in plaintively, tired of seeing the attention  of
the  Central Committee representative  concentrated on Gavrik alone. "I knew
you even before he did. When you hid in the coach, remember? And then on the
Turgenev."
     "Well, of all things!" cried Zhukov merrily.  "So it  looks as if we're
old friends, too, if you're telling the truth."
     "I  am,  I swear it," cried Petya and crossed himself. "Gavrik can tell
you. Gavrik, tell him how I carried cartridges to Alexandrovsky Street!"
     "It's right, he did," said Gavrik.
     "And I saw you in Naples a year ago. You were with Maxim  Gorky.  Isn't
that right?"
     Zhukov looked at Petya.
     "Yes, it's right," he said. "I remember you now. You were in a sailor's
blouse, weren't you?"
     "Yes," Petya said and looked at Gavrik in triumph.
     "See?"
     "Only there's one thing, lads," said Zhukov sternly.
     "Forget that I was ever called  Uncle Zhukov. That's gone. I'm Vasilyev
now. Don't forget. What's my name?"
     "Vasilyev," the boys said in one voice.
     "Remember, then.... Well, and what's your name?" he asked,  turning  to
Petya.
     "Petya."
     "He's that teacher's son," Gavrik amplified.
     "I guessed it," said Zhukov, thought for a moment and added decisively,
"well, don't let's waste time. Let's go. Have they all come?"
     "Long ago," Gavrik answered.
     "All clear along the way? I gave them my word in Cracow  that I'd be as
prudent as a young lady."
     "Yes, it's all clear," Gavrik said.
     Rodion Zhukov took a round basket of mackerel from the scow and  put it
on his head, like any fisherman taking his catch to sell at the villa doors.
     "A good catch," said Gavrik with respect.
     "A whole basket in  one go and with one  silver bait,"  laughed Zhukov,
with a wink  at  Akim  Perepelitsky. Handsome  young  Akim with  a  forelock
falling over his forehead swung the  oars with lazy grace on to his shoulder
and they began to climb the cliff path.
     Gavrik went about fifty paces  in front of the two  men, Petya the same
distance  behind them; if either of them noticed anything  suspicious he was
to  whistle through his fingers. Petya held  his fingers ready, worried by a
foolish fear that if  he  needed to whistle, he might suddenly be  unable to
make  a sound.  Everything was quiet, however,  and avoiding the  road, they
made their way to the  orchard where Terenty met them by the vineyard. Petya
saw them  hug each other with many  enthusiastic slaps on the back, and then
go  to the shanties  where a  fire was  already  crackling  under the trees,
sending out showers of golden sparks.
     When  Petya  went  up to the shanties a little  later,  Rodion  Zhukov,
smoking  a short pipe  with  a  metal lid,  was  sitting  before  the  fire,
surrounded by a group of people.
     "Let's review the events that have taken place in the six months  since
the Prague Conference, comrades," he was  saying.  "In  the first place, the
Party exists again. That is  the main thing.  I don't  need to  tell you how
this was done, what tremendous difficulties  -we had to  overcome. There was
the rabid persecution by the tsarist  police, the failures, the provocation,
the incessant interruptions in the work of the local centres and the Central
Committee. But  now  that's all past, thank heaven. Our Party's  going ahead
boldly, confidently,  broadening its activities and increasing its influence
among the masses. Not in the old way, but in the  new way.  What was left to
us after the  defeat of  the 1905 Revolution?  Illegal  activities,  nothing
else.  But now  in addition to our illegal cells,  our secret little  groups
even more carefully concealed than  before, we  have broader,  legal Marxist
teaching. It is this combination of legal and illegal that characterizes our
preparations for  revolution under the new conditions. We are advancing to a
new  .revolution,  comrades,  under slogans  of  a  democratic  republic, an
eight-hour working day and complete confiscation of all the big estates. You
know  that these slogans have been caught up over the whole  of Russia. They
have been accepted by all the thinking proletariat. To put it briefly, we've
stopped  the retreat.  Stolypin's  liberal counter-revolution is on its last
legs. There  are  more  strikes, mere  uprisings.  This  is  a revolutionary
movement of the masses, it is the  beginning of the offensive of the working
masses against the tsarist monarchy."
     Petya never  took his eyes off Rodion Zhukov, off that face lighted  by
the leaping, crackling flames of the fire. He was no longer the Zhukov Petya
had seen as a child and had never forgotten.  Nor was it  the Zhukov  he had
seen in Naples, nor even  the Zhukov who had just  walked  barefoot over the
steppe  with  the  round  basket   of  fish  on  his  head.  It  was  a  new
Zhukov-Comrade Vasiilyev, exacting, almost stern,  with narrowed, imperative
eyes, a firm mouth and short  moustache clipped a  foreign way.  It  was the
sailor who had become a captain.
     "Now let's talk  about the  elections to the Fourth State Duma," Zhukov
went   on.   "Despite   persecution   and    mass   arrests,   the   Russian
Social-Democratic  Party  now has  a  clearer,  more definite programme  and
tactics than any other party. This is how Vladimir Lenin-Ulyanov, writing in
the  Workers'   Paper,  formulated  the   situation   on  the   eve  of  the
elections...."
     Gavrik tugged at Petya's sleeve.
     "What  are  you  sitting  here for,  as if  you've nothing  to do?"  he
whispered. "We've got to keep watch."
     Petya  slipped quietly out of the circle,  and suddenly saw his father.
Vasily Petrovich stood  leaning  against a tree,  arms folded,  listening so
intently  to Rodion  Zhukov that  he did not  even  turn his head when Petya
jolted  his  shoulder in passing. His hair  fell in disorder over his  lined
forehead and a tiny reflected fire sparkled in each glass of his pince-nez.


        AT THE CAMP-FIRE


     Petya and Gavrik circled the orchard and turned on to  the road leading
to the terminus.  The  old  horse-tram  had  recently  been replaced  by  an
electric tram; its deep cello note  came to  them from the distance,  a blue
electric spark travelled along  the  wire past the gardens,  and  the bright
light from the windows made the  steppe  seem still darker.  Suddenly Gavrik
stopped and  gripped  Petya's  arm. A number of white figures  were  walking
along the side of the road in single file, making straight  for the Bacheis'
orchard. Before  Gavrik  had time  to whisper, "Police!" Petya distinguished
the white summer tunics. The boys raced breathlessly back to the fire.
     "The  Liquidators shout  about  a  decent,  licensed  platform  for the
elections. But  we Bolsheviks  consider that what's needed isn't a  platform
for  the  elections,  but   elections  for  carrying  out  a   revolutionary
Social-Democratic platform. We have already used the elections  for this and
we shall continue using them, we shall use even the most reactionary tsarist
Duma for revolutionary teaching, agitation, propaganda. That's how it is!"
     Rodion Zhukov  coughed angrily and reached out to the fire for an ember
to  relight his pipe; at that moment Gavrik whispered to Terenty  who raised
his hand without getting up.
     "Just a minute, comrades. A point of order," he said in a quiet, almost
business-like  tone.  "First  of  all  please  preserve  absolute  calm  and
revolutionary self-control. We're surrounded by police."
     Petya  expected  everyone  to jump up and seize weapons. He  pulled his
shot-gun off his shoulder-he had not had time to fire it as they ran back to
the farm. Now it's going to start, he thought, fearful yet thrilled.
     To his great surprise, however, all remained  sitting quietly round the
fire. Only Rodion Zhukov with a sharp movement  knocked out his pipe  on the
ground and slipped it into his pocket.
     "All  stop where you are; you, Rodion, and you, Tamara," Terenty turned
to  Pavlovskaya, "will have  to hide for a little while.  We've  got a  good
place not far from here. Gavrik, off you go! Take our illegal workers to the
gully. They can sit it out there."
     "Damn them, they  interrupted us at  the  most  important point,"  said
Rodion Zhukov gaily. "Well, comrades, here you've got a splendid instance of
our  tactics-the  combination  of  legal  and  illegal."  His  eyes  flashed
mischievously yet somehow menacingly in the light of the fire.
     "Go on, go on underground," said Terenty impatiently.
     Pavlovskaya and Zhukov followed Gavrik, passing  beneath the  trees and
disappearing  into  the darkness.  A  slight shadow that was Marina  slipped
after them.  Petya  made  to follow her, gripping  his shot-gun, but Terenty
shook  his finger in warning and he  halted. Everything happened quickly and
quietly,  without any stir. When the police officer with  three of  his  men
followed Moustache into the orchard, trying to step quietly and  keep  their
sabres from  rattling,  they  found  a picture  of  perfect peace-a group of
people sitting by a camp-fire quietly eating supper.
     "Who are you?  What's the reason for  this assembly?" the officer asked
sternly, advancing out  of the darkness.  Without  a  doubt  he expected his
appearance to be as startling as a clap of thunder. But they went quietly on
with their supper, only the old railwayman carefully licked his wooden spoon
clean, wiped it  on  his  trousers  and  held it out to the officer  saying,
"You're welcome to join us, to have a bite of supper. Akim, move over a bit,
so there's room for His Honour to sit down."
     "Nay, what's  the good  of  that,"  drawled  Akim  Perepelitsky lazily.
"They've got a whole squad, our stew'll not  go round them all.  They'd best
go back to the station and eat their prison skilly."
     "Get up!" snapped the officer. "Who d'you think you're talking to?"
     "No need to be so  free, Your Honour, we haven't tended pigs together,"
drawled Akim more lazily still, raised himself on his elbow  and spat in the
fire.
     "Ugh-rabble!" said the officer viciously, blowing his reddish moustache
and wrinkling his fleshy nose. "You- I'll make you...."
     Meanwhile,  the  policemen stood in the darkness under the trees, ready
at any moment to  seize anyone  they could lay  hands  on, although what was
happening was very different from what they had expected.
     They had  thought they would  catch dangerous bomb-throwers red-handed,
that  they would have  to use  their sabres and  perhaps fire-arms too.  But
instead of that, this man with  the moustache had brought them to an orchard
where people  sat  round  a camp-fire peacefully eating their supper and not
only  showed no  fear of  the police  but  even  talked impertinently to the
officer. It looked as though they'd come on a fool's errand.
     "My good sir, I haven't the honour of knowing who you are," said Vasily
Petrovich  in a voice trembling  with indignation, drawing himself up to his
full height and coming up close to the officer.  "What do you want  here? By
what right  do you  break into  this orchard? And- and-and interrupt  people
having their supper," he added, his beard shaking.
     "And who might you be?" asked the officer sternly.
     "I not only might be,  I am the tenant and full master here, on a fully
legal agreement," said Vasily Petrovich, assuming a lofty schoolroom manner.
"These  are my labourers ...  seasonal labourers, if the  term  pleases  you
better,  whom I  hired to work in the garden and vineyard."  (Terenty nodded
approvingly.) "I am Councillor  Bachei, and I won't stand any trespassing on
my grounds at night!" he cried, his voice rising to a  shout, and he stamped
his sandaled foot angrily.
     "Excuse me,  we  are not  trespassing,  we  are the  police,"  said the
officer, falling back a step.
     "To me you are trespassing!" Vasily Petrovich shouted. "I wish to  have
nothing to do  with you. Why do  you  persecute me? Great heavens,"  and his
voice became plaintive.  "When  will it all end? First it was that official,
then  Faig, then Madame Storozhenko. And now the police. Leave me alone!" he
yelled, beside himself. "Let me live  in peace! Lea-ve m-ee a-lo-ne! Or I'll
lodge a complaint-with the Governor, with Major-General Tolmachov!"
     Strange  as  it  might seem, his  confused  speech  produced a  decided
impression  on  the officer, especially the mention of Tolmachov. After all,
who could  say what he was, this Bachei? Suppose he really did  complain  to
General Tolmachov?
     "You  don't  need  to raise  your voice,"  said  the  officer, more  in
expostulation  than  threat,  and  went  over  to  Moustache  who  had  been
sauntering about in the darkness under the trees, carefully looking over all
the  men round the fire, one after  the other. The officer whispered to him,
coughed, and turned back to Vasily Petrovich.
     "We have information  that  various illegal assemblages  are constantly
held  here, that  banned pamphlets are  read and-well, that people assemble.
And all assemblages are at present strictly forbidden."
     "But,  Your  Honour," said  Akim  Perepelitsky  insinuatingly,  "people
assemble for work here, to earn a bit- well, to dig round the trees  and tie
up the  vines, and do the watering.... It's a bit of  extra money for a poor
man."
     "I'm not  talking to  you," the officer snapped. "I'm  talking  to  the
tenant."
     "I don't see  that we have anything to discuss," said Vasily Petrovich.
"As for your assertion  that some kind of banned pamphlets are read here and
all the rest of it, that is simply  a figment  of your diseased imagination,
nothing more."
     "Then  why do  you  assemble these  people here  at night?"  asked  the
officer  wearily-he  had realized  long ago that the  raid  was  a  failure,
because nothing could be proved.
     "They  'assemble,'"  said  Vasily Petrovich with a  delicately ironical
emphasis on the word, "because with your kind permission I read lectures  to
them."
     "Aha, lectures?" The officer pricked up his ears.
     "Yes,"  Vasily Petrovich  said,  straightening his pince-nez.  "Popular
educational  lectures  on  the  history  of  civilization,  literature   and
astronomy-following the programme  authorized by  the Ministry of Education.
Have you any objections?"
     "Astronomy." The officer shook his head disapprovingly and wrinkled his
fleshy nose. "Of course,  if you follow the authorized programme, then  it's
all right, you can go on."
     "Ah, so you permit it?"  cried Vasily  Petrovich  in mock delight. "You
permit it! How very condescending! Well then-in that case I will not venture
to detain  you  any  longer. Or  perhaps you would  like  to make  a search-
confiscation-or whatever you  call it? In that case, be so kind. The orchard
is at your disposal!" exclaimed Vasily Petrovich ceremoniously with a broad,
hospitable  gesture of  both  arms  as  though wishing  to  embrace all this
wonderful night with its dark trees, camp-fire, glow-worms and starry sky.
     "Dad's grand!" thought Petya, his eyes fixed  admiringly on his father.
At that moment there was the rustle of skirts and Auntie came running out.
     "What's this? What's this? What's  going on  here?" she panted, turning
alarmed eyes on the officer and the policemen.
     "Don't  get  excited,  it's nothing  dreadful,"  said  Vasily Petrovich
calmly.  "This gentleman had  been given false information-that some kind of
illegal assemblages took place here, but fortunately it all turned out to be
a mistake."
     "Aha, I understand," said Auntie. "That's probably Madame Storozhenko's
doing."
     "I can  tell  you  nothing about that, madame," said  the  officer, and
after whispering  to Moustache, he gestured angrily to the policemen.  These
shuffled about a little,  then moved away through the orchard in single file
like geese, their white  tunics  adding to the resemblance in the  darkness.
Soon they disappeared through the gate.
     "As for  those  lectures of yours,  I  shall have  to report them to my
superiors,'' the officer said.
     "To  the Governor himself if you like,"  replied Vasily  Petrovich  and
without waiting for them  to leave, he lay  down by the fire and said in his
ringing teacher's voice,
     "Well, gentlemen, let us continue. Last time I  acquainted you with the
elementary foundations of astronomy, the wonderful science of the stars. Let
me repeat briefly what I  told  you. Astronomy is  one of the  most  ancient
sciences of mankind. The Egyptians...."
     Petya  slipped cautiously out of  the  circle  of fire-light, slung the
shot-gun  over his shoulder and followed  the police, hugging the shadows of
the trees. As he came up  level with the officer and Moustache  he heard the
officer saying angrily,  "With  agents like you, I might as well sit down on
the  stove and wait for my belly  to boil." "But  I  swear  I  had  the most
reliable information!"
     "Oh, go to hell. Madame  Storozhenko greased  your  palm handsomely and
you went  and made  fools of us. Coming out here for nothing  on a  Saturday
night.  Thank heaven there's  the electric tram  now,  or we'd  have had  to
rattle back on that horse-tram!"


        STARS


     So they were leaving. But Petya felt he must see them on the  tram with
his  own  eyes. Then he went back.  On  the road he  saw a small, motionless
figure. It was Motya.
     "What are you doing here?" he asked sternly.
     "Waiting," she whispered. "I was so worried about you...."
     "Nobody asked you to," he said. "Go home."
     "Have they left?"
     "Yes."
     "On the electric tram?"
     "Yes."
     Motya laughed softly.
     "What's so funny?"
     "It's queer-you  and I  alone  in  the empty field,  and the night  all
round.... Petya," she said after  a pause, "weren't you  frightened when you
followed them?"
     "Silly! What about the gun?"
     "Yes, that's right." Motya sighed. "But I nearly died of fear."
     The night was dark and warm, with a slight breeze. Now and then a faint
report like a shot came from Arcadia, where  fireworks were being let off. A
number of rockets  soared  into the air, glowing orange, and burst  in great
fiery  stars  that floated slowly down,  and then  their dry  cracks came to
Petya and Motya.
     "How lovely!" said Motya and sighed again.
     "Go home," was all Petya answered.
     She turned and went  obediently down the road,  and soon disappeared in
the dim silvery light.
     Petya turned into the steppe and ran to the familiar gully.  Nobody had
told him  to see  the police safely away, and  nobody had  told him to go to
Rodion Zhukov  afterwards. He was impelled  by an unconscious but sure inner
urge. It was as though some force moved him.
     It was  quite warm in the gully. Rustling through the weeds, Petya felt
his way along the steep rocky side, seeking the opening.
     "Is that you, Petya?" Gavrik's voice asked out of the darkness.
     "Yes, it's me."
     "What's happening?"
     "Everything's all right. They've gone."
     "And not taken anyone?"
     "No, no one."
     "That's good. Here, reach out your hand."
     Petya did so, and  Gavrik pulled him into the cave. For some  time they
moved ahead in complete darkness, their shoulders now and then touching  the
wall, bringing down  trickles of dry soil. Then the passage-way became lower
and narrower so that they had to crawl on all fours. At  last a faint  light
appeared, the passage widened, and Petya found himself in a  large cave hewn
out in the rock, with a sloping, smoke-blackened roof.
     A lantern hanging on the wall cast a light, crisscrossed by the shadows
of its bars, so that the cave looked like a cage. It was damp  and cool, yet
stuffy. The lack of fresh air was very noticeable. In the corner beneath the
lamp Petya saw  a  small flat  printing-press  and guessed  this was the one
brought in  the boxes he  had  seen. In  a case alongside lay the type which
Gavrik had  been bringing from the  Odessa Leaflet print-shop for two years.
On the wall hung his familiar blue overalls stained with printer's ink.
     Rodion Zhukov  w-as sitting on  the floor  his  back  against the wall,
smoking his pipe and reading a book, making pencil notes in the margin.  The
Pavlovskayas were  settled  on the boxes in  which the press had  come.  The
mother sat with her old  waterproof drawn round her, and  Marina was asleep,
her head with its  black hair-ribbon resting on her mother's knees, her feet
in their dusty little buttoned shoes, one worn  through at the  toe,  tucked
under her.
     All  of  their belongings lay on  the floor beside them-  the  kerosene
stove  wrapped in newspaper, the bundle and  the small travelling-bag, which
led to the conclusion that they always had  their things packed. They looked
like people sitting in  some small,  out-of-the-way railway station  waiting