orner.
     Gavrik said that his brother wanted him to take Grandpa in for a while.
     "Tell your brother that I shall  do  everything necessary  and that  he
needn't  have any misgivings,"  Joseph  Karlovich said rapidly. "I have some
connections  in town. I  believe  that  sooner or later  I shall  succeed in
finding him a place as night watchman."
     Gavrik left Grandpa  with Joseph Karlovich,  promising to look in  from
time to time, and went out.
     "Tell  Terenti," the  owner of  the shooting gallery  whispered at  the
door, "that Sophia Petrovna wants him to know that she has quite a supply of
nuts, only  she  regrets they  aren't  very  big  ones. Not walnuts. He will
understand. They aren't  walnuts.  Have  him arrange the transportation.  Is
that clear?"
     "Yes,"  said  Gavrik, who  was accustomed  to receiving such  messages.
"They're not walnuts, and have him send someone for them." "That's right."
     Joseph Karlovich rummaged  about in the lining  of his frightful jacket
and produced a ten-kopek piece.
     "Please take this  and buy yourself some sweets. I regret that I cannot
offer  you anything else. I  should, upon my honour, be glad to present  you
with  a Monte Cristo, but-" Joseph Karlovich sadly spread his hands, and his
passion-ravaged   face  gave  a  twitch-"but  unfortunately,   owing  to  my
regrettable character, I haven't a single one left."
     Gavrik solemnly accepted the ten-kopek piece, thanked him, and went out
into the street, which was lit up by the fitful glow of the illuminations.

        35
     A DEBT OF HONOUR

     In  the  morning  Petya took  two pairs  of  leather sandals  from  the
storeroom and on the way to school sold them to an old-clothes man for  four
kopeks.
     When  Gavrik appeared in the afternoon the boys  immediately spread out
their lugs. Petya lost everything he had just bought even more  quickly than
the first time.
     It was easy to see why. The friends were too unevenly matched.
     In Gavrik's pouches lay almost all the lugs of the seaside district. He
could afford  big risks,  while  Petya had to treasure each deuce  and place
miserly bets, which, as everyone knows, always leads to quick losses.
     The next day Petya,  no longer able to control himself, stealthily took
sixteen kopeks from the sideboard, change put there by Dunya.
     This  time he decided to play  more wisely  and  cautiously.  The first
thing he needed in order to win was a good king-lug. "
     Petya's  king-lug was a big and remarkably handsome livery button  with
lions  and  a  count's  crown on  it, but  in  spite  of  its  beauty it was
worthless: it was too light. What he had to do  was make it heavier. He went
to the railway station, made his way over to the  sidings, and on a dead end
siding  beyond the engine-shed he stripped a lead  seal  from  a goods  van,
nearly dying from fright as he did so.
     At home he beat the lead into the bowl of  his king-lug  with a hammer.
Then he went across Kulikovo Field and put the lug on a rail. When he picked
it up after a suburban train had passed over it, the lug  was  hot and heavy
and wonderfully  flattened  out.  Now  it  was  as good as  any  of Gavrik's
king-lugs.
     Gavrik came soon  after, and  they  began to  play. It was  a  long and
bitter contest.
     A good king-lug was not enough, it appeared. Skill was the thing! Petya
ended up by losing everything he had and falling into debt besides.
     Gavrik said he would come for the debt tomorrow.
     The period that now set in for Petya was like a nightmare.
     In  the evening, after dinner, Father said calmly,  "There was  sixteen
kopeks' change on the sideboard. You didn't by any chance take it, did you?"
     The blood rushed into Petya's heart and then out of it.
     "No," he said with all the indifference he could muster.
     "Come now, look me in the eye."
     Father took Petya by the chin and turned up his face.
     "On my word of honour," said Petya, trying his  hardest  to look Father
straight in the eye. "By the true and holy Cross."
     Turning cold with horror, Petya faced the icon and crossed himself.
     He expected a bolt  of lightning to come through  the ceiling and  fell
him the very next instant.
     Surely God would  not fail to punish him  at once for  such out-and-out
sacrilege. But nothing happened.
     "Very  strange," Father remarked coolly. "That  means a member  of  our
household has taken  to thieving. Your Aunt and I obviously have no  need to
take  money in secret  from  the sideboard.  Pavlik has  been  in  sight  of
grown-ups ^all day long, so he couldn't  have  taken it either. You've given
your word of honour. Therefore, we can only assume that the money was  taken
by Dunya, who has served us faithfully for five years."
     At the moment Dunya happened to be in the anteroom, filling a lamp.
     She  set the lamp-chimney and her rag  on the mirror-stand and appeared
in the doorway. Her  neck and even her arms,  which were bared to the elbow,
had  turned  red. Her big good-natured face had broken  out in splotches and
was screwed up in misery.
     "May I never see a happy day  for the rest of my life,"  she cried, "if
the young master didn't lose that change from the  market  playing lugs with
Gavrik!" Father looked at Petya.
     The boy  realised that  he had to make a lightning retort, that without
losing a second he had to say  something proud and noble and just, something
which would crush Dunya and instantly free him from all suspicion.
     A minute ago he still could have confessed. But now that the matter  of
lugs had been brought up-not for anything in the world!
     "You have no right to talk  like that!" he screamed hoarsely. A  bright
flush of false indignation suffused his face. "You're lying!"
     But even  that did  not seem  enough  to him. "You-you're  probably-the
thief yourself!" he blurted out, stamping his feet.
     While Dunya  bustled  about  in  the  kitchen  packing her  things  and
demanding that she be paid off, Petya ran into the  nursery and slammed  the
door so furiously that the enamelled image of the guardian angel on the back
of the bed began to rock.
     He flatly refused to ask  Dunya's forgiveness. He got into bed and made
believe he had fainted. They left him in peace.
     Father did not come in to kiss him good-night.
     Petya  heard Auntie  Tatyana  pleading  with  Dunya to  remain.  Dunya,
sobbing, finally consented.
     Many  times that night  he sprang awake, horrified at what he had done.
He was ready to run to the kitchen and kiss Dunya's feet to beg forgiveness.
But what upset him still more was  the thought of  Gavrik, who would  demand
settlement tomorrow.
     In  the morning Petya waited until Father led Pavlik to the bathroom to
wash. Then he went to the wardrobe and took out the old uniform dress coat.
     Family legend had it that Daddy had had the dress coat made when he was
graduating  from the university  and that  he had worn it  only once in  his
life, at the insistence of  Mummy's strait-laced relatives who demanded when
Daddy married Mummy that  everything  should  be  done the proper  way. Ever
since then it had hung in the wardrobe, forgotten by everybody.
     The dress coat had a great many  lugs but the pity of  it was that most
of them were too small to be of any use in the game.
     There  were   only  four  big  ones.  But  even  these  fell  short  of
expectations: they were cheap, thick white threes which had practically gone
out of circulation.
     The  Odessa tailor who  sewed on those  buttons sometime  in  the  last
century had done a conscientious job:  they did not yield to scissors. Petya
impatiently ripped them off, cloth and all, with his teeth.
     Need we say it? This time, too, Petya had miserable luck.
     He fell deeper in debt to Gavrik than ever.
     He was now hopelessly involved. Gavrik regarded him with a dour sort of
pity that boded no good.
     "Well, Petya, what do you say?" he asked sternly.
     There was no  misunderstanding  those words.  They meant  roughly this:
"Now look here, pal, if  you don't pay back those lugs I'll have to take  it
out of your hide.
     Friendship's got nothing to do with it. That's the law, and you know it
yourself.  Lugs  aren't cigarette pictures- they cost  money.  So  don't  be
sore."
     Petya  wasn't sore. He  knew  that  Gavrik was in the right. He  merely
heaved a deep sigh and asked for a little more time. Gavrik consented.
     All  that evening Petya was in torment. His ears became so hot from the
mental strain that they had a distinct ruby glow in the light of the lamp.
     He thought up a thousand and one  ways of getting rich  quick, but they
were all  either too  fantastic or  too criminal. Finally  a  wonderful  yet
surprisingly  simple idea came to him.  Hadn't his late Grandfather, Mummy's
Daddy, been a major? How could that ever have slipped his mind!
     Losing  no time, he  tore a sheet from his arithmetic copybook and  sat
down  to  write a  letter  to his  Grandmother, Mummy's Mummy,  who lived in
Ekaterinoslav.
     He  showered her  with endearments, reported brilliant  progress at the
Gymnasium (to  tell the truth, a bit of an exaggeration) and then asked  her
to  send him-as quickly as possible-dear  Grandfather's major's uniform as a
remembrance.
     A  shrewd  boy,  Petya.  He  knew  just  the  right  approach  to  that
kindhearted old lady who treasured the memory  of Grandfather, a hero of the
Turkish war, no less ardently than she loved Petya, her eldest grandson.
     Further  he  told  her that  he had  made up his  mind to follow in his
heroic Grandfather's footsteps and become a hero too. He had decided upon an
army career and needed the uniform as a constant spur to his martial spirit.
     Petya  hoped  to get  a  pile of lugs  from the  major's  uniform-about
twenty,  if not  all  of  thirty,  excellent officers'  fives  with embossed
eagles.
     That alone could clear his debt  and  perhaps even give him a chance to
win back his losses.
     The  parcel,  he calculated,  was sure to  reach him  in a week at  the
latest.
     Petya told Gavrik  the  whole story. Gavrik  said it  was  a good idea.
Together,  standing  on  tiptoe, the boys  dropped the  letter into the  big
yellow box with the picture of a registered letter with five seals on it and
two crossed postal bugles.
     Now all they had to do was sit back and wait.
     In  anticipation of rich pickings Gavrik let Petya draw upon  unlimited
credit, and Petya light-mindedly gambled away  the  future legacy  from  his
Grandfather.

        36
     THE HEAVY SATCHEL

     A week passed, then another, and still no parcel from Grandmother.
     Although the Tsar  had  proclaimed "freedom" there  were more and  more
disturbances. The postal service worked  badly. Father stopped receiving the
Russkiye  Vedomosti  from Moscow, and  in  the  evenings he  sat  silent and
disturbed,  not knowing what was going on in the world or what view to  take
of things.
     The  preparatory class was  dismissed  for  an indefinite period. Petya
idled away his  days.  During this time he  lost so much to Gavrik on credit
that chills ran down his spine whenever he thought about it.
     One day Gavrik came and said with an ominous smile,  "You'd  better not
expect those  lugs of  yours  so soon. There's going  to be  a general  in a
couple of days."
     A month earlier Petya  would not have understood  this. But now  it was
perfectly clear: a "general" meant a strike.
     There was no reason to doubt Gavrik's words. Petya  had noted  long ago
that somehow or other everything  was known much earlier  in Near Mills than
in town.
     The news was a knife-thrust in the heart.
     "But couldn't it come before that?"
     "Not likely."
     Petya turned pale.
     "What about that debt?" Gavrik said firmly.
     Petya trembled with  impatience to start playing.  He hastily  gave his
word of honour and swore  by the  true and holy Cross that tomorrow,  in one
way or another, he would pay it all back without fail.
     "See  that you do!  Or  else-" Gavrik planted his legs in  their  broad
lilac-coloured corduroys wide apart, sailor fashion.
     That  evening Petya stole Pavlik's famous  moneybox, locked himself  in
the  bathroom,  and with a table-knife pried  out  its contents: forty-three
kopeks in coppers and silver.
     He performed this complicated  operation  with amazing skill  and speed
and then  filled  the box  with a collection of  rattling trash: nails, lead
seals, bone buttons and pieces of iron.
     This   was   absolutely   necessary,  for   twice   a  day-morning  and
evening-thrifty, methodical Pavlik  checked his  moneybox: he raised the tin
to his ear  and, sticking out his tongue,  rattled the kopeks, delighting in
the sound and the weight of his treasure. One  can imagine the howl he would
raise if he discovered the theft. But everything went off well.
     Before  going to sleep  Pavlik rattled his bank full of trash and found
it in perfect order.
     But  crime,  as we all  know,  never  pays. In  three  days Petya  lost
Pavlik's money to the last kopek.
     There was  no hope of Grandfather's uniform coming  soon. Again  Gavrik
began to press for payment.
     Every morning Petya sat on the windowsill waiting for Gavrik.
     He pictured  with  horror the day it all  came to  light: the lugs, the
sandals,  the dress  coat, Pavlik's moneybox. Inevitably,  sooner  or later,
that day would arrive. Horrors!
     But he  tried not  to think about that. He  tormented himself  with the
eternal  fruitless dream of the  bankrupt gambler-the dream of recouping his
losses.
     Walking the streets was dangerous, yet Gavrik  never failed to  appear.
He would come to the middle of the yard, put two  fingers in  his mouth, and
let out a magnificent  whistle. Petya would hastily nod to his chum from the
window and run down the back stairs. "The lugs come?"
     "Tomorrow, I  swear  it,  on my  word of honour.  By  the true and holy
Cross. This is the last time."
     One  fine  day Gavrik  announced  that he couldn't wait any  longer. In
other words, Petya, as a bankrupt debtor, now became Gavrik's slave until he
paid back in full.
     Such was the harsh but just law of the street.
     Gavrik  tapped  Petya on the shoulder, like a knight-errant  initiating
his servitor into squiredom.
     "Now  you'll  be  my  shadow,"  he  said  good-naturedly.  "Fetch  your
satchel," he added in a stern voice.
     "My satchel? What for?"
     "For the lugs, you bloke."
     A shrewd gleam flickered in Gavrik's eyes.
     To tell the truth, Petya was delighted at the prospect of  such a merry
form of  slavery.  He  had long wanted to  roam about town with  Gavrik  but
because  of what was  going on  he had been forbidden, in  the strictest  of
terms, to set foot outside the yard. Now his conscience could rest perfectly
at ease: he had nothing to do with  it-it was Gavrik's  will, and  he had to
obey Gavrik without  a word. He  didn't want to walk about  town, of course,
but he simply had to: that was the law.
     Petya ran upstairs and came down with his satchel.
     "Put it on."
     Petya  obeyed.  From all  sides  Gavrik inspected the  little Gymnasium
scholar in the  long  overcoat  reaching to  his  heels  and with  the empty
satchel on his back. What he saw evidently satisfied him.
     "Gymnasium card?"
     "Yes."
     "Show it here."
     Petya produced his card. Gavrik  opened it and spelled out the words at
the top: "Valuing his honour, the  Gymnasium pupil cannot fail to  value the
honour of his school. . . ."
     "Right," he remarked, returning the  card. "Stow it away. Might come in
handy."
     Then Gavrik turned Petya round and filled  the satchel with  heavy bags
of lugs.
     "Now nobody'll stop us from going anywhere," Gavrik said, fastening the
straps of the satchel. He patted the calf-skin cover with satisfaction.
     Petya did  not quite get the meaning of  those words but following  the
general law of the  street-to ask less and to know more-he held  his tongue.
The boys cautiously left the yard.
     Thus began their wanderings together through the disordered city.
     With  each passing day  it  became more dangerous to walk  the streets.
Gavrik,  however, did  not give up his  thrilling and mysterious life  of  a
roaming  champion. On the contrary, the  more restless  and frightening  the
city became the more stubbornly did he make his way to the remotest and most
dangerous places. So much  so  that at times Petya began to  wonder  whether
there wasn't some inexplicable connection between Gavrik and the disorders.
     From morning  to evening  the two went in and  out  of backyards  where
Gavrik carried on  a  business  in lugs- buying, selling and exchanging-with
the  local  boys.  In  some of  the yards  he collected  debts. In others he
played. In  still  others  he had  strange dealings with  grown-ups who,  to
Petya's extreme astonishment, were just as keen about lugs as children were.
     Petya,  carrying the heavy  satchel on  his back,  obediently  followed
Gavrik everywhere. And again, in Gavrik's presence the city magically turned
itself   about  before   Petya's   wonder-struck   eyes,   showing  him  its
communicating courtyards, cellars, holes in fences,  sheds, firewood  yards,
glassed-in arcades, and all  its other secrets. Petya saw the horrifying and
at the same  time picturesque poverty of the Odessa slums; until then he had
never even known they existed.
     Hiding  in   gateways  when  there  was  shooting  and  passing  around
overturned horse-trams blocking the roadway, the boys roamed up and down the
city, going to the most outlying sections.
     Thanks to Petya's Gymnasium uniform they easily  entered districts that
were cordoned by troops and the police. Gavrik taught Petya to go  up to the
chief of the cordon detail and  say in a tearful voice, "Mr. Officer, please
let  me  and  my pal cross  over to the other side. We live in that big grey
house over there and I'm sure Mummy's worried why we've been away so long."
     The  boy looked so guileless and  respectable in his Gymnasium overcoat
and with the calf-skin satchel on his back that the officer, although he was
not  supposed to  let anyone pass  into the suspected zone,  usually made an
exception in the case of the two frightened kids.
     "Run for it, only  be careful. Keep close to the wall, and don't let me
see you again. Now be off."
     In this way the boys could  always reach districts that were completely
cut off to others.
     They went several times to an old Greek house in Malaya Arnautskaya. In
the courtyard  there  was a fountain-a pyramid  of spongy sea  rocks  with a
green  iron stork  on  top. Once upon  a time  water used to come out of its
beak.
     While  Petya waited  in the  yard Gavrik  ran down  into the  basement,
returning with  a lot of bags  of unusually heavy lugs. He stuffed them into
Petya's satchel  and then  they quickly ran out of the quiet  yard  with its
old, rickety galleries.
     Once  Petya saw Gavrik's  grandfather there. He  was  walking slowly on
bent legs across the yard to the refuse-bin.
     "Oh, Grandpa!"  he  cried.  "I say there,  what  are you doing  here? I
thought you were in jail."
     Grandpa looked at the boy but obviously did not recognise him.
     "I'm here now,"  he mumbled tonelessly,  shifting his pail to his other
hand. "I'm-a watchman-a night watchman now-"
     He continued slowly on his way.
     The boys went to the port, to Chumka, to Duke's Gardens, to Peresyp, to
the Ghen factory-everywhere but Near Mills. To Near Mills Gavrik went alone,
after his day of labours.
     Had Auntie Tatyana and Father had even an inkling of  the  places their
Petya visited during that time they surely would have lost their reason.

        37
     THE BOMB

     Finally, however, this wonderful but weird life of wandering came to an
end.
     On  that memorable  day  Gavrik appeared earlier than usual, and he and
Petya immediately set out.
     Gavrik's  face was grey and extraordinarily  grim.  His tightly-pressed
lips had turned  different  colours from  the cold. He  walked along  with a
quick, rolling gait, his hands deep in the pockets of his broad corduroys- a
small, hunched, determined figure. Every now and then a hard light came into
his  clear, fixed  eyes so like Grandpa's.  Petya barely managed to keep  up
with his  friend.  They  practically  ran  through the  streets, which  were
deserted like the streets in a dream.
     Tense expectation hung in the grey air. The boys' footsteps rang on the
paving stones. Occasionally the pane of ice covering  an empty  puddle broke
underfoot.
     All  of  a sudden a  faint rumble  sounded somewhere far  away,  in the
centre of town. It was as  if a pyramid  of empty  crates had crashed to the
roadway from a waggon.
     Gavrik stopped and listened to the feeble echo.
     "What's that?" Petya whispered. "Crates?"
     "A  bomb," Gavrik said dryly  and with assurance. "Somebody's been done
in."
     Two  streets  farther  on  a  woman  with a  basket from which lumps of
charcoal and quinces were dropping turned the corner at a run.
     "Oh,  Lord!  Oh, Holy  Mother!" she said over and over again, trying to
straighten her  kerchief with a trembling hand. "Oh, Lord, it was awful! The
man was torn to pieces."
     "Where?"
     "In Police Street. There I was, walking along, and  here he was,  in  a
carriage. And then it exploded. Tore him to bits. Lord forgive us! It killed
the horses and tore the carriage to bits-"
     "Who was it?"
     "The chief of police. From the Alexandrovsky  station. There I was, and
here he was. And that revolutionary stood just  opposite. And just  imagine,
he was carrying an ordinary little package, done up in newspaper-"
     "Did they catch him?"
     "The revolutionary? Never!  Everybody ran away and he did too. They say
he was a sailor in disguise."
     The  woman  ran  off. Despite his  grimness, Gavrik  took  Petya by the
shoulder and did a couple of jig steps.
     "That's the one  who punched Grandpa's face," he said in a quick, fiery
whisper. "That'll teach him to use his fists! Right?"
     "Right," said Petya, turning cold.
     That day the boys made two trips to the courtyard in Malaya Arnautskaya
with  the fountain and stork,  where they took  on "goods", as Gavrik called
it.
     The first time that they set out with the "goods" for the Alexandrovsky
Prospect, which was cordoned  off by  troops, they were let  through without
any particular difficulty.
     After passing several houses  Gavrik led Petya through a gateway into a
big deserted yard with a  Cossack tethering post; the  ground there was hard
and  frozen and studded with empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases  that
had been pressed into it by soldiers' boots.
     They crossed the yard, went  down  into a cellar  and walked for a long
time in the damp darkness, past wood-bins, until  they came out into another
yard. From there they  followed  a narrow opening which led between two tall
and gloomy brick walls into still another yard.
     Gavrik  obviously  knew all the ins and outs  here.  The opening was so
narrow that Petya, making his way  behind Gavrik, found his satchel scraping
against the walls. Finally they reached  the other yard, which was as narrow
and high and dark as a cistern.
     Judging by the long distance they had come and the number of  turns and
zigzags, they were in the yard of a building that faced some other street.
     The whole yard was strewn with broken glass and plaster.
     The windows of the building were tightly shuttered.  There seemed to be
no one living in it.
     A hollow silence hung in the air.
     But beyond that silence, in the unknown street on the other side of the
building,  there  was the alarming noise  of some sort of  movement, a noise
more sensed than heard.
     Besides,  every  now  and then loud shots  barked from above, seemingly
from  the sky, and they  filled the yard with  the echoings of a well. Petya
pressed  his back  to the wall and, trembling, shut  his  eyes. But  not  so
Gavrik.
     Without hurrying he put two fingers in his mouth and whistled.
     Somewhere up above a shutter banged. "Coming!" a voice called.
     A  minute later-to  Petya  it seemed an  hour-a  sweating red-faced man
without  an  overcoat, in a  jacket  smeared  with  chalk,  flung  open  the
backstairs door.
     Petya gasped. It was Terenti.
     "Let's have it-quick!" Terenti muttered,  wiping his wet  face  on  his
sleeve.
     Paying no attention  to Petya himself, Terenti  went  straight  to  the
satchel.
     "Thanks! Just in time! We didn't have a damn thing left!"
     Breathing  heavily, he unfastened the straps with impatient fingers and
transferred the bags from the satchel to his pockets. "Tell Joseph Karlovich
to  send some  more right  away,"  he  called  out as  he  ran back.  "Bring
everything there is or else we won't hold out."
     "Right," said Gavrik.
     Just then a bullet struck the wall  near  the roof, and a spray of pink
brick dust came down on the boys.
     They quickly  retraced their  route to Malaya  Arnautskaya and took  on
another  load  of "goods". This  time the satchel  was  so  heavy that Petya
staggered under its weight.
     Now, of course, he knew very well what kind of lugs these  were. At any
other time he would have thrown  the whole thing up and run home. But  today
his entire being  was gripped by the thrill  of danger, by  a  feeling  more
powerful even than the gambling fever,  and  not for anything  in  the world
would he have deserted his pal. Besides, he would be able to  share Gavrik's
glory.  The very  thought that  he  might lose the  right to tell  about his
adventures made him instantly disregard all danger.
     Gavrik and  Petya set  out  on the return  trip.  But how the  city had
changed in the meantime! Now it was seething.
     One minute  the streets  would be  filled  with  people running in  all
directions, and the next they  would be swept clear  in a flash  by the iron
broom of a fusillade.
     As they approached  the  cordon  Gavrik  caught  Petya by the  arm  and
quickly pulled him into a gateway.
     "Stop!"
     "Why?"
     Still  holding Petya's  arm  Gavrik  cautiously  peeped  out.  The next
instant he shrank back and pressed himself against the wall of the  gateway,
under the black board listing the tenants of that house.
     "Listen, Petya,  we're stuck.  I just saw that skunk who nearly tore my
ear off. Look, there he is."
     Petya tiptoed to  the edge of the gateway and looked out. At the cordon
post a gentleman in a heavy overcoat and an astrakhan cap was walking up and
down the roadway past the  stacked rifles and the torn-up  iron fence of the
public garden.  When  he turned, Petya saw a coarse clean-shaven  face and a
fleshy nose. There was something  very familiar about  that unfamiliar face.
He had  seen it  somewhere before.  But where? Something prevented him  from
remembering. Could it be that bluish upper lip? Then suddenly he remembered.
Of course, it  was Moustaches! The  man  from the Turgenev, only now without
the moustache. That face had impressed itself on Petya's memory for the rest
of his  life. He would  have recognised  it in a thousand,  moustache or  no
moustache.
     "It's  Moustaches,"  whispered  Petya, taking his  place beside Gavrik,
with his  satchel pressed against the wall.  "The  one who was  chasing  the
sailor. Only now  he's without his moustache. Remember? I told you about him
and you laughed at me."
     "Shaved it off so nobody  would  know  him. But he knows me,  the rat,"
Gavrik said angrily. "We'll never get past."
     "But perhaps we can."
     "Not on your life."
     Gavrik peeped out. "He's walking up and down."
     He clenched  his fist  and  angrily began  to chew  his  knuckles. "And
they're sitting there waiting for us. The dirty snake!"
     There was a minute of deep and utter silence in the uprising, a silence
broken by scattered shots in the distance. They reverberated  over the roofs
of the city.
     "Listen,  Petya," Gavrik  said  all of a  sudden,  "do  you understand?
They're  sitting there waiting  all for nothing- without the goods.  They'll
all be shot as easy as anything. And I can't  go because  that skunk is sure
to follow me!"
     Gavrik's eyes filled with tears of anger.  He  gave a  loud sniff, blew
his nose on the ground, and then looked angrily into Petya's eyes.
     "Understand?"
     "Uh-huh," said Petya with his lips alone, turning pale under his chum's
angry, friendly, insistent and at the same time pleading look.
     "Can you get through by yourself? You won't let 'em down?"
     Petya's excitement was such that he could not get out a single word. He
swallowed hard and nodded his head. Gavrik, first  glancing round  furtively
and peeping out of the gateway, began to fill Petya's pockets with his bags.
     "Give them all  the goods, everything, you hear? What's in your satchel
and what's in your pockets too. If you're caught  shut up and say  you found
it in the street and don't know anything. Clear?"
     "Uh-huh."
     "When you hand it over come back here. I'll be waiting for you here  in
the gateway. Clear?"
     "Uh-huh."
     Petya, his pockets bulging, walked up to  the cordon.  He was so scared
and excited he hardly knew what he was doing.
     "Hey, where are you going? Are you  blind?" Moustaches shouted, running
up to him.
     "Please," Petya whimpered in the thin voice he had learned from Gavrik,
"please let me through.  I live  nearby, in the  Alexandrovsky Prospect,  in
that big grey house, and my Mummy's awfully worried. She probably thinks I'm
killed!"
     Real  tears  poured out  of  his eyes  and rolled down  his plump grimy
cheeks. Moustaches gave the little preparatory class pupil a  disgusted look
and took him by the satchel.
     He led the boy to the edge of the roadway and gave him a light shove in
the behind with his knee.
     "Run along!"
     Beside himself with joy, Petya raced towards the house.

        38
     HG OF THE FIGHTING GROUP

     Petya slipped through the gateway and started across the yard.
     When  he came  this way  an hour earlier, with Gavrik,  he had not been
troubled by anything in  particular. He knew he was under the  reliable wing
of a resourceful and experienced friend. He  was freed from the necessity of
thinking for himself; he was merely an obedient companion without  a will of
his own. Someone else, someone stronger than he, thought and acted for him.
     Now  he  was completely  alone. There was no  one but himself to depend
upon.
     Without Gavrik the world around Petya immediately  became  threatening,
huge, full of lurking dangers.
     Danger skulked  in the stone arches of  the inner galleries, among  the
ominous boxes  and the old broken  furniture. It stood waiting in the middle
of the yard, behind the mulberry tree whose trunk had been gnawed by horses.
It peered out of the black hole of the refuse-bin.
     Everything the boy saw took on an exaggerated size. Huge Cossack horses
pressed their smooth, golden, dancing cruppers against him.  Monstrous tails
swished across his satchel. Don Cossacks in blue breeches  with red  stripes
hopped on one foot while the other was in the stirrup.
     "From the  right,  by  threes!"  cried  the  hoarse voice  of a Cossack
ensign.
     The mirror-like crescent of a drawn  sabre  hung in the air above the j
aunty forage caps.
     Petya went down into the cellar.
     He  walked a long time, feeling his way in the stuffy but cold darkness
and  breathing the dusty air of storage rooms. Every time  a  cobweb touched
his eyelashes he took it for a bat's wing, and horror gripped him.
     Finally he reached the second yard. It was deserted.
     Only now, in the  midst  of  this strange emptiness,  did Petya  become
really  aware  of  how terribly alone  he was. He  wanted  to  run  back-but
thousands  of miles and  thousands of fears separated him from  the  street,
from Gavrik.
     In the opening between the second and third yards  it was so unbearably
quiet  that he felt  like shouting with all his might; shouting desperately,
passionately, frenziedly-anything so as not to hear that silence.
     It was  the kind of silence that comes only in the interval between two
shots.
     Now he had to put two fingers in his mouth and whistle. But suddenly he
realised that  he  did  not  know how  to whistle with his  fingers. He  had
learned long  ago to spit  through his  teeth, but not to whistle. He hadn't
thought of it. It had slipped his mind.
     Clumsily he put his fingers in his mouth and blew, but no  whistle came
out.  In  desperation he  blew again,  as  hard  as he  could. Nothing. Only
spittle and a hiss.
     Then Petya mustered all his spiritual powers.
     "Hey!" he yelled, closing his eyes.
     His voice sounded very weak. Still, a booming echo instantly filled the
empty cistern of a yard.
     No one answered, however. The silence became more terrifying than ever.
     High  above  there  was a deafening crackle.  Down flew the joint  of a
drain-pipe, carrying with it pieces of brick, spikes, and mortar.
     "H-e-y! H-e-y! H-e-y!" Petya shouted at the top of his lungs.
     A shutter in the top storey opened and an unfamiliar face looked out.
     "What's all the shouting about? Bring it? Come up here! And be lively!"
     The face disappeared.
     Petya looked about in indecision. But he was all  alone, with no one to
advise him. There was another crackle overhead. A big chunk of plaster  flew
down and crashed into bits at Petya's feet.
     Bending  over, he  dashed to  the backstairs  door.  He  started up the
clanging  iron stairway, tripping on  the hem of  his overcoat; it had  been
bought several sizes too large, so that he could grow into it.
     "Faster! Faster!" an angry voice cried from above.
     The  heavy  satchel  banged  painfully  against his  back. The  bulging
pockets got in his  way. He suddenly felt hot. The inside of his cap  became
warm and wet. Sweat poured down on his eyebrows and eyes. His face flamed.
     Upstairs, the irritable, pleading voice kept shouting, "Faster! Faster,
damn you!"
     Petya breathed heavily, sticking out  his tongue from  the exertion. He
had barely reached the third-storey  landing when a man in an expensive  but
soiled overcoat with a lambskin collar grasped him by the shoulders.
     The man was hatless and his forehead was plastered with  strands of wet
hair. He had a foppish little moustache and beard which didn't at all fit in
with his ordinary, snub-nosed face, now red and powdered with plaster.
     His eyes,  under bushy brows white with plaster,  had a gay, dare-devil
gleam,  and at the same time a sort of alarmed  expression. He looked like a
man who had been torn away from a very difficult and urgent job and was in a
terrible hurry to get back to it.
     When Petya felt the  strong fingers  grip his shoulders he thought  the
man was going to shake  him, the  way Daddy did when he  was very angry. His
legs buckled under him from  fright.  But the man looked affectionately into
his eyes.
     "Bring it?"  he  asked  in a  hurried whisper. Without waiting  for  an
answer he pulled  the boy  into  the empty kitchen of a  flat where-as Petya
sensed  immediately-  something  tremendous  and  frightening  was going on,
something that usually never happened in flats.
     The man ran his eyes over Petya and without saying a word went straight
for his  bulging pockets.  He  hastily pulled the  heavy  little bags out of
them. Petya stood in front of him with his arms spread apart.
     There was something  very familiar  about  his unfamiliar face with the
little moustache and beard.
     Petya had surely seen it somewhere before. But when? Where?
     He searched the recesses of his memory, but  with no results. Something
kept putting him off. Could it be the moustache and beard?
     In the meantime the man  had deftly extracted  the four  bags  from the
boy's pockets.
     "Is that all?"
     "No, there's more in the satchel."
     "Good boy! Thanks! And just think-a Gymnasium pupil!"
     As a sign of his admiration  he gripped  Petya's cap by  the visor  and
pulled it down hard on top of his ears.
     And now  Petya  saw,  an inch from his nose,  a strong sooty hand which
gave off the sour smell of gunpowder. On it was a little blue anchor.
     "The sailor!" he exclaimed.
     But  that same instant something crashed in the other part of the flat.
There was a  blast  of air. A pot tumbled from a shelf. With soft,  cat-like
steps the sailor ran into the passage, shouting, "Wait here!"
     A minute  later six jerky shots resounded  somewhere  close  by.  Petya
threw off his satchel and began to unfasten it with trembling fingers.
     Just  then  Terenti  came into the kitchen  from  the  passage. He  was
swaying on  his feet. He was coatless,  in a shirt with only one sleeve. The
other sleeve  was wound about his  head. Blood trickled down his temple from
under the bandage. He held a revolver in his right hand.
     When he saw Petya he started to say  something but waved  his  hand and
first took a drink of water, putting his mouth to the tap.
     "Bring  it?" he asked,  pausing for air  between two gulps.  The  water
flowed noisily over his startingly white face. "Where's Gavrik? Alive?"
     "Uh-huh."
     But there was obviously no time for questions. Without stopping to wipe
his face Terenti took the bags out of the satchel.
     "All the same we won't hold  out," he muttered. He could scarcely stand
on  his  feet. "We'll get away across  the roofs.  They're setting up a gun.
You'd better clear out, kid, before  a  bullet gets you.  Clear  out  quick.
Thanks, and good luck!"
     He  sat  down  on a  stool but a moment  later got  up, and, wiping his
revolver on his knee, ran down the  passage to the room from  which came the
steady bark of shots and the crash of glass.
     Petya  picked up  his light  satchel and  ran  to the  door. Curiosity,
however, made him  pause for a minute and look down the passage. Through the
wide-open door he saw a room piled with broken furniture.
     In the middle of the wall, papered in  a  design of  brown bouquets, he
saw a yawning hole round which the lath framework was bared.
     Several  men  were leaning against  the  sills of  the smashed windows,
firing one shot after another down into the street from their revolvers.
     Petya saw Terenti's bandaged  head and the sailor's lambskin collar. He
also caught  a  glimpse of a shaggy  black Caucasian  cloak  and  a  college
student's cap.
     The room swam and surged in bluish threads of smoke.
     The sailor knelt at a windowsill on which stood a boudoir  night table.
He kept shoving out his arm, and it jerked as he fired shot after shot.
     "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" he yelled madly.
     In the midst of all that movement, chaos, commotion, and smoke only one
man was  completely calm-a man with a yellow, indifferent, waxen face, and a
small black hole above his closed eyes.
     He lay on the floor in the middle of the room, in an awkward pose, face
up, surrounded by empty cartridge clips and cartridge cases.
     His broken pince-nez, with the black cord  looped behind his firm white
ear,  lay  beside his  head on  the  plaster-sprinkled  parquet.  A very old
technological student's  cap  with  a cracked visor  also  lay neatly on the
floor.
     Petya looked at the man and suddenly realised that he  was looking at a
corpse.
     He ran back. How  he got out of the house and reached the gateway where
Gavrik was waiting for him he did not remember.
     "Well? Deliver it?"
     "I did."
     Breathlessly  Petya  told  Gavrik   everything  he  had  seen  in  that
terrifying flat.
     "All the same they won't hold out. They'll get away across the  roofs,"
he whispered, breathing heavily. "They're putting up a cannon against them."
     Gavrik turned pale and made the sign  of the cross. Never  in his  life
had Petya seen his friend so scared.
     Nearby,  almost next  to them,  a gun roared. An iron echo rumbled over
the roofs.
     "Done for!" Gavrik cried in despair. "Hook it!"
     The boys rushed out into  the street and ran across the city, which had
changed for the third time that morning.
     Now  the Cossacks were complete masters of the  situation. The  streets
resounded with the clatter of hoofs.
     Squadrons of  Don  Cossacks that had been lying  low  in the courtyards
sped through the  gateways, lashing  out to the  right  an