the boys, without looking at them. "Locking's not allowed." The convict was led past. Petya wiped his tongue on his sleeve. "Well?" he said. "Well what?" "Well, now tell me." Suddenly Gavrik glared at Petya. Then he bent his arm with a fierce gesture and shoved his patched elbow under his friend's nose. "There, lick that!" Petya couldn't believe his eyes. "But I ate earth!" he said, his lips trembling. He was nearly crying. A wild, crafty gleam came into Gavrik's eyes. He squatted down and span round like a top, chanting in an insulting voice: Fooled you once, Fooled you twice. Tell your Mum I fooled you nice. Petya saw that he had been tricked. Gavrik obviously had no secret to tell and had only wanted to poke fun at him by making him eat earth. That was insulting, of course, but bearable. Next time he'd play a trick on Gavrik that would make him sorry. He'd see! "Never mind, you skunk-I'll pay you back!" Petya remarked with dignity. After that the two friends continued on their way as though nothing had happened- except that every once in a while Gavrik would suddenly dance a jig on his bare heels and chant: Fooled you once, Fooled you twice. Tell your Mum I fooled you nice. 22 NEAR MILLS They had a lot of fun on the way, and they saw many interesting things. Petya had never imagined the city was so big. The unfamiliar streets gradually became poorer and poorer. Occasionally they passed shops with merchandise standing right on the pavement, under the acacias. There were cheap iron bedsteads, striped mattresses, kitchen stools, stacks of huge red pillows, besoms made of millet stalks, mops and upholstery springs. There was a great deal of everything, and it was all big, new, and obviously cheap. Beyond the cemetery stretched firewood yards. They gave off a hot and somewhat sourish smell of oak, a smell which was surprisingly pleasant. After that were fodder shops-oats, hay and bran- with uncommonly large scales on iron chains. The weights were huge-like those in the circus. Next came timberyards where planks were seasoning. Here, too, there was a strong hot odour of sawn wood. This was pine, though, and instead of being sourish the smell was dry and fragrant and turpentinish. It was easy to see that the closer they came to Near Mills the coarser and uglier everything round them was. Gone were the elegant "Artificial Mineral Water Bars" with their gleaming nickel-plated whirligigs and jars of coloured syrup standing in rows. Their place was taken by food shops with blue signs-a herring on a fork-and taverns through whose open doors could be seen white egg-shaped tea-pots on shelves; the tea-pots were decorated with crude flowers which looked more like vegetables. Instead of handsome droshkies, drays rumbled over the uneven roadway littered with hay and bran. But as to finds, there were many more in this part of the city than in the familiar districts. Every now and then the boys came upon a horseshoe, or a screw, or an empty cigarette packet in the dust. Whenever they spotted a find they raced for it, jostling and pushing each other as they ran. "Halves!" they screamed. Or, "Finding's keeping!" Depending upon what had been shouted first the find was regarded, sacredly and inviolably, as either private property or held in common. There were so many finds that at last they stopped picking them up, making an exception only in the case of cigarette packets. These they needed for the game called "pictures". The packets had different values, depending upon the picture printed on the top. A picture of a man or woman counted for five, an animal for one, and a house for fifty. Every Odessa boy was certain to have a deck of such packet tops in his pocket. There was also a game with sweets wrappers, but this was played mostly by girls, and also by boys who were still babies, that is, who were under five. Gavrik and Petya, of course, had long looked upon sweets wrappers with the greatest scorn. They played only with cigarette pasteboards. For some reason or other Gipsies and Swallows were the favourite brands in the seaside districts. What the smokers of the seaside districts found in those cigarettes was a great puzzle. They were the worst cigarettes imaginable. Gipsies had a bright lacquered picture of a dark-eyed Gipsy girl with a smoking cigarette between her red lips and a rose in her blue hair. It was worth a mere five, and even that was stretching a point, for the Gipsy girl was shown only from the waist up. Swallows had a picture of three miserable birds, and they were worth still less than Gipsies-only three. There were some fools who even smoked Zephyrs, which had no picture at all, but only letters. Nobody ever played for Zephyr tops. And the strangest part of it all was that those cigarettes cost more than any others. One had to be an absolute idiot to buy such trash. The boys spat in disgust whenever they came across a Zephyr packet. Petya and Gavrik burned with impatience to grow up and start smoking. They would not make fools of themselves. They would buy only Kerches, a superior brand with a whole picture on the packet: a port town and a harbour with a lot of ships in it. Even the biggest experts did not know exactly how to price Kerches. There was a difference of opinion on the value of the ships. At any rate, in round numbers Kerches were quoted on the street exchange at about five hundred. The boys were unusually lucky. One might have thought all the smokers near the cemetery had specially set out to make Petya and Gavrik rich, for they smoked Kerches exclusively. The boys tumbled over each other picking them up. At first they couldn't believe their eyes. It was just like a dream where you found a three-ruble note at every other step. Soon their pockets were filled to overflowing. They were now so rich that wealth lost its joys. They were surfeited. Beside a tall narrow factory wall, on whose sooty bricks were painted letters so huge it was impossible to read them at close range, the boys played several rounds of the game, tossing the pictures and waiting to see which side came up. There was no particular zest to it, however. With so many pictures, neither of them minded losing, and that took all the fun out of playing. As they strolled on the city changed in appearance and character every minute. For a time a cemetery and prison atmosphere predominated. That gave way to a warehouse and tavern atmosphere. Then came the factories. Now the railway dominated the scene. Warehouses, block-signal stations, semaphores.. . . Finally, the road was barred by a striped level-crossing that dropped right before their noses. A pointsman carrying a green flag came out of his signal box. A whistle blew. A cloud of white steam shot up behind the trees, and past the entranced boys puffed a real engine, a big one, pushing a tender before it. Oh, what a sight it was! That in itself was worth leaving home without permission. How busily the connecting rods clicked along, how melodiously the rails sang, and how irresistible was the magnetism of those wheels flashing dizzily past, surrounded by a thick and yet almost transparent covering of steam. The soul was bewitched, was seized with a mad urge, was drawn into the inhuman, inexorable movement of the machine, while the body resisted the temptation with all its might and drew back, petrified with horror, deserted for an instant by its soul, which had already flung itself under the wheels! Pale, tiny, the boys stood with shining eyes, their little fists clenched and their feet planted wide apart; they could feel their scalps turning cold. How terrifying, and at the same time how jolly! Gavrik, true, was familiar with this emotion, but Petya was experiencing it for the first time. He was so thrilled that at first he paid no attention to the fact that in the driver's place at the oval window was a soldier, in a visorless cap with a red band, and that on the tender stood another soldier, belted with cartridge pouches and holding a rifle. The minute the engine disappeared round the turn the boys ran up the embankment and pressed their ears against the hot, white-polished rails, which rang out like a brass band. The joy of pressing his ear against the rail over which a real engine had passed-and no more than an instant before-was that not worth having left home without permission, was that not worth suffering any possible punishment? "Why was a soldier there instead of the driver?" asked Petya as they continued on their way when they had finished listening to the noise of the rails and had gathered flints from the roadbed. "Looks like the railwaymen are on strike again," Gavrik replied unwillingly. "On strike? What's that?" "A strike's a strike," said Gavrik in a still glummer voice. "They don't go to work. Soldiers run the trains instead." "Don't soldiers strike too?" "No. They're not allowed to. If they tried it they'd land in a punishment battalion in no time." "But otherwise they'd strike?" "What d'you think?" "Does your brother Terenti strike?" "Depends. . . ." "But why does he do it?" "Because. Stop pestering me. Look-there's the Odessa Goods Station. And over there is Near Mills." Petya stretched his neck and looked this way and that, but not a single mill could he see. There were neither windmills nor watermills. What he did see was: a water tower, the yellow fence of the Odessa Goods Station, red railway carriages, a hospital train with a Red Cross flag painted on it, piles of goods covered with tarpaulin, sentries. . . . "But where's Near Mills?" "There it is, just behind the railway shops, you blockhead." Petya said nothing: he was afraid of being tricked again. He twisted his head for such a long time that his collar rubbed a sore spot on his neck, but still he did not see any windmills. Strange! Gavrik, though, was not the least surprised at their absence. He walked briskly down a narrow path, past a long sooty wall of huge windows with little square panes, many of them broken. By this time Petya was rather tired. He dragged after Gavrik, shuffling his shoes over the grass, dark from the dust and soot. Every now and then iron shavings, evidently thrown outside through the window, rustled underfoot. Gavrik got up on his toes and looked into a window. "Look, Petya, the carriage shops. This is where Terenti works. Did you ever see the place? Come and look." Petya stood on tiptoe next to Gavrik and looked in through a broken pane. He saw a vast stretch of dusty air and the tiny clouded squares of the windows opposite. Broad belts hung down; everywhere stood big, uninteresting contraptions with little wheels. The place was strewn with metal shavings. The sunlight coming through the dusty windows lay in pale slanting squares all over the endless floor. And in all that huge and weird block of space there was not a single living soul. The place was filled, from top to bottom, with such a deathly, supernatural silence that Petya became frightened. "Nobody there," he said in a barely audible whisper. Gavrik, infected by Petya's mood, replied by moving his lips almost soundlessly, "Probably on strike again." "Hey there, get away from those windows!" a rough voice suddenly shouted from somewhere above. They turned round with a start. Beside them stood a sentry with a rolled greatcoat over his shoulder and a rifle in his hand. He was so close that Petya clearly smelt the dreadful odours of army cabbage soup and boot polish. The soldier's cartridge pouches of bright-yellow leather - heavy, creaking, and probably full of real bullets- were ominously close, and in general he was so tremendous that his two rows of brass buttons ran upwards to a dizzying height, right to the sky. "I'm done for!" thought Petya in horror. He felt that at any moment he might do that shamefully unpleasant thing very small children usually do when overcome by fright. "Hook it!" cried Gavrik in a thin voice and darted past the soldier. Petya dashed headlong after his friend. He thought he heard the soldier's boots stamping after him, and so he ran with every ounce of energy he could muster. But the sound of the boots did not fall behind. His eyes saw nothing but the flashing brown soles of Gavrik's feet in front of him. His heart thumped loud and fast. The soldier was still close behind. The wind roared in his ears. Only after he had run not less than a mile did Petya realise that what he heard was not the soldier's boots but his straw hat flapping against his back. The boys gasped for breath. Hot sweat poured down their temples and dripped from their chins. But a quick change came over Gavrik and Petya the minute they made certain the soldier was nowhere in sight. With an expression of total indifference they carelessly shoved their hands in their pockets and continued their way at a leisurely pace. By their entire manner they were telling each other that nothing at all had happened-and even if something had happened it was a trifling matter not worth talking about. For quite a while now they had been walking along a broad unpaved road. Although the fences and houses had lanterns like those in the city, with numbers on them, and there were the signs of shops and workshops, and even a corner chemist's with coloured pitchers and a golden eagle, it looked more like a village lane than a city street. "Well, where's that Near Mills of yours?" Petya asked in a sour voice. "This is it. Can't you see?" "Where?" "What do you mean where? Here." "Here?" "Of course. "But where are the mills?" "You're a funny bloke," said Gavrik patronisingly. "Ever see a fountain at the Fontan? You're talking like a baby. Asking questions without knowing what you're asking!" Petya was silenced. Gavrik was absolutely right. Maly Fontan, Bolshoi Fontan and Sredny Fontan didn't have any fountains at all. It was just a case of "that's what it's called". This place was called Mills but actually it had no mills. The mills, though, were only a trifle. Where were the shadows of changed widows and pale little orphan girls in patched frocks? Where were the ghostly grey sky and the weeping willows? Where was the weird, mournful land from which there was no return? No use asking Gavrik! To his utter disillusionment Petya saw neither widows, nor weeping willows, nor a grey sky. The sky, as a matter of fact, was hot and windy and the same bright colour as the blue the laundress used. In the yards of the houses stood bright-green mulberry trees and acacias. Belated pumpkin blossoms gleamed in the vegetable patches. Over the curly grass walked geese, turning their silly heads to the right and left like the soldiers on Kulikovo Field. From a smithy came the clang of hammers and the swish of bellows. All this, of course, was very interesting in its own lights, but it was difficult to give up the idea of a shadowy world where, in some mysterious manner, "reposed" the relatives of men who had died suddenly. In the innermost recesses of Petya's mind, the struggle continued for a long time-between the shadowy picture of imaginary mills where people "reposed", and the real, brightly-coloured picture of the railwaymen's settlement known as Near Mills, where Gavrik's brother Terenti lived. 23 UNCLE GAVRIK "Here we are." Gavrik pushed open the wicket with his foot, and the two friends walked into a parched-looking front garden bordered with purple irises. A huge dog with straw-coloured eyebrows immediately rushed at them. "Down, Rudko!" shouted Gavrik. "Didn't recognise me, eh?" The dog sniffed, recognised the boy, and gave a sad smile: he had got excited for nothing. Then he rolled his shaggy tail up into a loop, stuck out his tongue and ran, panting, to the back of the yard. Behind him dragged his clanging chain, fastened to a wire strung high overhead. A frightened woman peered from the wooden entrance-way of the clay hut. When she saw it was the boys, she turned and said, wiping her hands on her print apron, "Everything's all right. It's your brother come to see you." Behind her appeared a tall man in a striped sailor's jersey, the sleeves of which were cut short just below shoulders as thick as a wrestler's. But the shy look on his face, pock-marked and covered all over with tiny drops of sweat, did not in the least go with his athletic build. His figure was powerful, sort of frightening, even, but his face was just the opposite- gentle, and almost womanish. The man tightened his belt and walked up to the boys. "This is Petya, from Kanatnaya and the corner of Kulikovo Field," said Gavrik, indicating his friend with a casual nod. "A schoolmaster's kid. He's all right." Terenti gave Petya a passing glance and then fixed his small, twinkling eyes on Gavrik. "Now where are those shoes I bought you at Easter? Why must you walk about like a tramp from Duke's Gardens?" Gavrik gave a long sad whistle. "Ah, those shoes-" "You're a tramp, nothing but a little tramp!" Shaking his head, Terenti went to the back of the house. The boys followed him. There, to his indescribable delight, Petya saw a whole tinsmith's shop set up on an old kitchen table under a mulberry tree. It even had a hissing blowlamp. A strong, clipped, blue flame burst from its short muzzle, like from a tiny cannon. Judging by the baby's zinc bath-tub leaning upside down against the tree and by the soldering iron in Terenti's hand, he was busy at a job. "Repair work?" asked Gavrik, spitting on the ground exactly like a grown-up. "Uh-huh." "Nothing doing at the shops?" Ignoring the question, Terenti put the soldering iron into the flame of the blowlamp and attentively watched it grow hot. "That's all right," he muttered. "Don't you worry on our account. I can always find enough work for us to keep body and soul together." Gavrik sat down on a stool, crossed his bare legs, which did not reach to the ground, braced his hands on his knee and, rocking slowly back and forth, began to "talk shop" with his big brother. Wrinkling his peeling nose and pulling together his eyebrows, which were completely bleached from the sun and the salt water, Gavrik conveyed best regards from Grandpa, informed Terenti of the price bullheads were fetching, and waxed indignant about Madam Storozhenko, who was "such a bitch and has us by the throat all the time and never gives people a chance to breathe", and more in the same vein. Terenti nodded agreement, in the meantime carefully passing the tip of the hot iron across a strip of solder, which melted like butter. At first glance there might seem nothing unusual, let alone strange, in the fact that one brother had paid a visit to another and was telling him about his affairs. But considering Gavrik's worried air, and also the distance he had had to come for no other purpose than to talk to his brother, it would not be difficult to guess that Gavrik had an important matter on his mind. Terenti looked at him questioningly several times, but Gavrik indicated Petya with an unobtrusive wink and calmly talked on. As to Petya, he was so absorbed in the wonderful spectacle of soldering that he forgot everything in the world. He watched round-eyed as the huge shears cut through the thick zinc like so much paper. One of the most fascinating occupations of Odessa boys was to gather round a tinsmith in the middle of a courtyard and watch him practise his magic art. But there they watched a stranger, a man who was here one minute and gone the next, something like a sleight-of-hand artist on the stage. Quickly and skilfully he would do his work of soldering a tea-kettle, then roll up his pieces of tin into a tube, strap it over his shoulder, pick up his brazier and walk out of the yard, calling, "Pots to mend, kettles to mend!" Here, however, Petya was watching someone he knew, his friend's brother, an artist who displayed his skill at home, to a chosen few. At any moment he could ask, "I say there, what's in that little iron box? Is it acid?" without getting a rude answer like "Run along, young 'un, you're in the way". No, this was quite, quite different. From sheer delight Petya stuck out his tongue-which was not at all becoming in such a big boy. It is likely that he never would have left that table under the mulberry tree had he not suddenly noticed a girl with a baby in her arms approaching. With an effort she held up to Gavrik the plump one-year-old infant, who had two shining white teeth in his little coral mouth. "Look who's come, goo-goo! Gavrik's come, goo-goo! Now say, 'Hello, Uncle Gavrik.' Goo-goo!" With an extraordinarily grave expression Gavrik reached inside his shirt and, to Petya's boundless amazement, produced a red lollipop in the shape of a cock. To carry about such a treasure for three hours without tasting it, and what's more without showing it, was something only a person with incredible willpower could do! Gavrik held out the sweet to the child. "Here," he said. "Take it, Zhenechka," urged the girl, raising the child up close to the lollipop. "Take it with your little hand. See what a present Uncle Gavrik's brought you? Take the cock in your hand. That's right, that's the way. And now say, 'Thank you, dear Uncle.' Well, say it, 'Thank you, dear Uncle.' " The child gripped the bright red lollipop tight in his grimy chubby little hand and blew big bubbles from his mouth. His light-blue eyes stared blankly at his uncle. "See? That means he's saying, 'Thank you, Uncle'," said the girl, her eyes fixed enviously on the sweet. "But you mustn't put it in your mouth right off. Play with it first. And then after your porridge you can have the lollipop," she continued sensibly, casting quick curious glances at the handsome young stranger in a straw hat and new shoes with buttons. "This is Petya, from Kanatnaya and the corner of Kulikovo," said Gavrik. "Why don't you go and play with him, Motya?" The girl became so excited that she turned pale. Hugging the child close, she edged away backwards, looking distrustfully at Petya, until she bumped into her father's leg. Terenti patted the girl on the shoulder and straightened the beruffled white bonnet on her close-cropped head. "Play with the boy, Motya," he said. "Show him the Russo-Japanese pictures I bought you when you were lying sick in bed. Play with him, my pet, and give Zhenechka to Mama." ' Motya rubbed her back against her father's leg and then turned up a face red with embarrassment. Her eyes were full of tears; her tiny turquoise earrings were trembling. Earrings such as those, Petya had noticed, were usually worn by milkwomen. "Don't be afraid, my pet. He won't fight with you." Motya obediently took the child into the house. She returned holding herself as stiff as a poker, with her cheeks drawn in and her expression frightfully grave. She stopped about four paces away from Petya, took a deep breath, and, stammering and looking to the side, said in an unnaturally thin voice, "If you like, I'll show you my Russo-Japanese pictures." "Very well," said Petya in a hoarse, careless voice- the voice demanded by good form when speaking to little girls. At the same time he painstakingly, and rather successfully, spat over his shoulder. "Come along, then." Not without a certain amount of coquetry the girl turned her back to Petya and, moving her shoulders much more than was necessary, went, skipping now and then, to the back of the yard. There, behind the cellar, she had her doll household. Petya swaggered along behind. As he looked at the hollow in Motya's thin neck and the little triangle of hair above it, he grew so excited that his knees wobbled. One could not, of course, call it passionate love. But that it would develop into a serious love affair was beyond all doubt. 24 LOVE To tell the truth, Petya had been in love many times in the course of his life. First of all, that little brunette- Verochka, wasn't it?-whom he had met at a Christmas party last year in the home of one of Father's colleagues. He had been in love with her all evening; they had sat next to each other at the table, and then, when the candles were put out, they crawled under the Christmas tree in the dark, and the floor was slippery from the fir needles. It was love at first sight. When, at half past eight, they made ready to take her home, he was overwhelmed with despair. So much so that at the sight of her braids and ribbons vanishing under her hood and fur coat he began to whimper and misbehave. Then and there he vowed to love her to the grave. In parting he bestowed upon her the cardboard mandolin given him from the Christmas tree, and four nuts: three gold and one silver. But two days passed, and nothing remained of that love affair except bitter regret of having so foolishly lost the mandolin. Then, of course, in the country he had fallen in love with Zoya, the girl who wore the pink stockings of a fairy; he even kissed her, by the waterbutt under the apricot tree. But falling in love with Zoya turned out to be a mistake, for the very next day she cheated so brazenly at croquet that he was forced to rap her over the shins with his mallet. After that, naturally, a love affair was out of the question. Then there had been his fleeting passion for the lovely girl on the steamer, the one who was travelling first class and had argued all the way with her father, Lord Glenarvan. But all that did not count. Who, after all, has not experienced such heedless attachments? Motya was another matter entirely. Besides being a girl, besides having turquoise earrings, besides turning so frightfully pale and red and moving her thin little shoulder-blades so adorably-besides all that, she was the sister of a pal. Actually, of course, not a sister but a niece. But considering Gavrik's age, she was the same as a sister. His friend's sister! Can anything make a girl more attractive and lovable than the fact that she is a friend's sister? Does not this in itself contain the seed of inevitable love? Petya was smitten. By the time they reached the cellar, he was over head and ears in love. However, to prevent Motya from guessing it he assumed a nasty, high-handed, indifferent manner. No sooner had Motya politely displayed her dolls, neatly tucked in their little beds, and the little stove with real pots and pans, only little ones, which her father had made from scraps of zinc, than Petya-though, to tell the truth, he found them awfully nice-spat contemptuously through his teeth and, with an insulting snicker, asked, "I say, Motya, why is your hair cut so short?" "I had typhus," Motya replied in a thin, hurt voice, and she gave such a deep sigh that a tiny peep, like a bird's, sounded in her throat. "Do you want to see my pictures?" Petya condescended. They sat down on the ground side by side and began to look at the patriotic coloured lithographs, most of them depicting naval battles. A sticky, dark-blue sky was criss-crossed with thin searchlight rays. Broken masts topped by Japanese flags were crashing down. Out of the sharp-edged waves rose the white jets of explosions. Shells burst in the air like stars. A Japanese cruiser was sinking; its sharp nose was tilted, and it was enveloped in yellow-red flames. Little yellow-faced men were tumbling into the sea. "Jappies!" breathed the enchanted girl as she crawled round the picture on her knees. "Not Jappies but Japs," Petya corrected her sternly. He knew what was what in politics. In another picture a dashing Cossack with red stripes down the sides of his breeches and a high black fur cap worn at an angle had just sliced off the nose of a Japanese who had stuck his head up from behind a hill. A thick stream of blood gushed in an arc from the face of the Japanese soldier. His stubby orange-coloured nose with its two black nostrils lay all by itself on the hill, and this sent the children into peals of laughter. "Don't poke your nose where it doesn't belong!" cried Petya, laughing and beating his hands against the warm dry earth spotted with white hen droppings. "Don't poke your nose!" chanted Motya, looking over her shoulder at the handsome boy and wrinkling her thin sharp nose, which was as motley as Gavrik's. The third picture showed the same Cossack and the same hill, on the other side of which the puttees of a fleeing Japanese could now be seen. At the bottom was this inscription: There was a Jap general Nogi, Ha-ha! And Ivan, he just knocked him groggy, la-la! "Don't poke your nose, don't poke your nose!" Motya sang in glee, nestling trustfully against Petya. "Isn't that right? He shouldn't go poking his nose in either, should he?" Petya, frowning, turned a deep red and did not reply. He was trying hard to keep his eyes from the girl's thin little bare arm with its two shiny vaccination marks, which were the same delicate flesh colour as paper stickers. But it was too late. He was already hopelessly in love. And when it turned out that besides pictures of the Russo-Japanese War Motya had first-class flints, nuts with which to play "king and prince", sweets wrappers, and even cigarette pictures, Petya's love reached its apogee. Ah, what a day of rare and wonderful happiness that was! Never in his life would Petya forget it. He became curious as to how the earrings held on, and the girl showed him the holes, which had been pierced only a short time before. He even ventured to touch the lobe of her ear; it was soft, and still slightly swollen, like a piece of tangerine. After that they played pictures. Petya cleaned her out, but she looked so downcast that he took pity on her and not only returned all the pasteboards he had won but made her a present of all his. Let her know how generous he was! Then they gathered dry weeds and kindling and lighted the doll's stove. There was a great deal of smoke but no fire. They gave this up and began to play hide-and-seek. In hiding from each other they crawled into such distant and out-of-the-way spots that it was a bit scarey to remain there alone. Yet what burning joy it was to listen to the approach of cautious footsteps as you sat in the hiding place, mouth and nose covered with both hands to keep from giggling! How furiously your heart pounded, how wildly your ears rang! All at once half of a face pale with excitement, its lips tightly pressed together, slowly appears from behind a corner. The peeling nose, the round eye, the pointed chin, the little white bonnet with the ruffles. Their eyes suddenly meet. Both are so startled that they feel they are about to faint. And then the wild, blood-curdling cry of triumph and victory: "Petya, seen you!" And both dash off for all they are worth to reach the rapping stick first. "Seen you!" "Seen you!" Once the girl hid so far away that the boy spent all of half an hour looking for her, until finally he thought of climbing over the back fence and trying the pasture. There, in a pit overgrown with weeds, sat Motya, her thin chin resting on her scratched knees, and her eyes fixed on the sky, across which a late-afternoon cloud was floating. Around her crickets were chirping and cows were grazing. It was all very frightening, and she was scared to death. Petya looked down into the pit. For a long time they gazed into each other's eyes, experiencing a strange, burning embarrassment which was not at all like any of the feelings connected with the game. "Seen you, Motya!" the boy wanted to shout, but he could not get out a single sound. No, decidedly, this was no longer part of the game but something altogether different. Motya climbed carefully out of the pit and they strolled back to the yard. They were embarrassed; they nudged each other with their shoulders, yet at the same time they discreetly refrained from holding hands. Over the immortelles of the pasture glided the cool shadow of the cloud. The minute they climbed the fence, however, Petya came to his senses. "Seen you!" the sly boy cried wildly, and he raced for the stick so as to rap the napping girl with it. In a word, it was all so unusual and so engrossing that Petya at first paid no attention to Gavrik when he came up to them at the height of the game. "Say, Petya, what was that sailor's name?" Gavrik asked with a preoccupied frown. "Which sailor?" "The one who jumped off the Turgenev." "I don't know." "But don't you remember you told me how that skunk with the moustaches, the detective, called him by his name?" "Why, yes, that's right! Zhukov. Rodion Zhukov. And now don't bother us, we're playing." Gavrik left, wearing the same preoccupied frown. As to Petya, he was so completely absorbed in his new love affair that this conversation immediately flew out of his mind. Soon after, Motya's mother called them to supper. "Motya, invite your gentleman friend to come in and have some gruel with us," she said. "He must be hungry." Motya blushed furiously, then turned pale and drew herself as erect as a stick, the way she had before. "Would you like to have some gruel with us?" she said in a choky voice. Only then did Petya realise that he was hungry. Why, he hadn't had any dinner that day! Never in all his life had he eaten such thick, delicious gruel with hardish, smoke-flavoured potatoes and little cubes of pork. After that marvellous supper in the open air, under the mulberry tree, the boys set out for home. Terenti accompanied them back to town. He ran into the house for a moment and came out wearing a short jacket and a lustrine cap with a button on the top of it. He carried a thin iron rod from an umbrella, the kind Odessa artisans usually took with them when they went out walking on a holiday. "Don't go, Terenti dear, it's late," his wife pleaded as she saw him off to the gate. The anxiety in her eyes made Petya feel somehow uneasy. "Stay at home instead. You can never tell what-" "I have things to do." "You know best," she said submissively. "Everything'll be all right," Terenti said with a gay wink. "Don't go past the goods station." "Never fear." "Good luck, then." "Same to you." Terenti and the boys set out for town. But the route they took was altogether different from the one by which the boys had come. Terenti led them through vacant lots, backyard vegetable patches and side streets. This route turned out to be much shorter, and they met fewer people on the way. Quite unexpectedly they came out on familiar Sennaya Square. Here Terenti said to Gavrik, "I'll drop in later this evening," and with a nod of his head he disappeared in the crowd. The sun had already set. In some of the shops the lamps were being lit. "What will they say at home!" Petya thought in horror. His happiness was over. Now he would have to pay for it. He tried to keep his thoughts from dwelling on this, but he found it impossible. Lord, what his new shoes looked like! And his stockings! Where had those big round holes in the knees come from? They hadn't been there in the morning. His hands were a sight-as filthy as a cobbler's. And the spots of tar on his cheeks. Good God! No doubt about it; there'd be a terrific row when he got home! If they'd only give him a whipping it wouldn't be so bad. But the whole trouble was they would never do that. They would groan and moan and wring his heart with reproaches-and the worst of it was that the reproaches would all be just. Father might even grab him by the shoulders and shake him as hard as he could, shouting, "Where have you been, you good-for-nothing! Do you want to drive me to my grave?" And that, as everybody knew, was ten times worse than the worst possible whipping. These and similar bitter thoughts put the boy into a thoroughly depressed mood, aggravated by infinite regret at the burst of passion which had moved him so foolishly to give away those pictures to the first girl he met. 25 "I WAS STOLEN" No power on earth, it seemed, could save Petya from an unprecedented row. It was not for nothing, however, that the hair on Petya's crown grew in two whorls instead of one, as it does on most boys, and this, as anyone will tell you, is the surest sign of luck. Providence sent Petya an unexpected deliverance. He could have expected anything under the sun, but never this. Not far from Sennaya Square, in Staro-Portofrankovskaya Street, he saw Pavlik running along the pavement. He was all by himself. He stumbled as he ran, and tears streamed down his grimy cheeks as though they were being squeezed out of a rag. His pink little tongue quivered ruefully in the open square of his mouth. From his nose hung two pearly drops. He was emitting a steady wail, but since he was running at the same time what he produced was not a smooth "Ahhhh" but a jerky and hiccupy "Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah! Ah!" "Pavlik?!!" At sight of his brother, Pavlik ran up to him as fast as he could and clutched his sailor blouse with both hands. "Petya! Petya!" he cried, trembling and panting. "Oh, Petya dear!" "What are you doing here, you bad boy?" Petya asked sternly. Instead of replying, Pavlik began to hiccup. He could not utter a word. "Answer me: what are you doing here? Well? Where have you been, you good-for-nothing? I see you want to drive me to my grave, eh? Say something or else I'll have to slap some sense into you." Petya seized Pavlik by the shoulders and shook him until he cried out through his hiccups, "I-hie!-I was- st-stolen!" Then again he gave way to tears. What had happened? Petya was not the only one, it appeared, who had got the happy idea of taking a stroll on his own the day after returning to town. Pavlik had dreamt of the same thing a long time. He had not intended, of course, to wander off as far as Petya did. His plans included a visit to the rubbish-heap, and, at the outside, a walk round the corner to watch how the soldiers at the entrance to Army Staff building presented arms. Unfortunately, who should come into the yard just then but Vanka-Rutyutyu, or Punch. Together with the other children, Pavlik watched the show from beginning to end. But he found it too short. A rumour spread, though, that in the next yard a longer performance would be given. The children followed Vanka-Rutyutyu into the next yard, but there the show was still shorter. It came to an end at the part where Vanka-Rutyutyu-a long-nosed puppet with the stiff neck of a paralytic, wearing a cap that looked like a pod of red pepper-killed the policeman with a blow of his stick. But absolutely everybody knew