d left with  their
whips.
     There was no hiding from them: all the house-entrances and gateways had
been locked tight and were  guarded by  army and police details. Every alley
was a trap.
     The  remnants  of  the dispersed demonstration scattered  this way  and
that, without any hope of  saving themselves. Cossacks overtook them and cut
them down one by one.
     In Malaya Arnautskaya a bow-legged  man without a hat or coat ran  down
the middle of the roadway past the boys. Under  his arm he held a stick with
a red  flag. It  was the owner of the shooting gallery.  He  ran limping and
dodging from side to side.
     At any other time this sight might have surprised  the boys, but now it
only filled them with horror.
     Every ten paces or  so  Joseph Karlovich turned back  a  terribly pale,
tormented face with wild eyes. Two  Don  Cossacks were bearing down upon him
at a fast trot.
     The horseshoes  rang loud  against the  granite cobbles, drawing sparks
that were pale in the daylight.
     A minute later Joseph Karlovich was between the two horses. He let them
pass, slipped aside, and then dashed up to a door and seized the handle.
     The door was locked. He tugged at it in desperation, kicked it with all
his might,  rammed  it with his  shoulder. It  did not  yield.  The Cossacks
turned their horses and rode up on the pavement.
     Joseph Karlovich hunched  himself over, bent his head  and pressed  the
flag  to his breast with both hands.  A sabre flashed. His  back jerked. His
jacket split open crosswise. With a convulsive movement he turned round.
     For  a second  his pain-distorted face with its short side-whiskers was
seen.
     "Scoundrels! Satraps!  Butchers!" he cried passionately, at the  top of
his voice. "Down with the autocracy!"
     But  at that  very instant two sabres  flashed through the air, sharply
and simultaneously. Joseph Karlovich  fell, still pressing the banner to his
open hairy chest with the blue tattooing.
     One of the Don Cossacks bent over him and did something.
     A  minute later the two Cossacks were galloping on,  dragging the man's
body behind them on a  rope. It left a long, red, astonishingly bright trail
on the deathly-grey cobbles.
     A crowd rushed out of a side street and separated the boys.

        39
     THE POGROM

     Petya lost all sense of time that day.
     When  he finally  reached home  he had  the feeling that it was already
dusk, but actually it was not yet two o'clock.
     Near Kulikovo Field  and  the Army Staff  building all was  quiet.  The
events in  town reached  this district  as rumours  and  distant firing. But
everyone was long since used to rumours and firing.
     The sky was low  and almost black and gave off the sharp cold breath of
approaching  snow. On days like  that, evening began in  the morning. A  few
tiny snow-flakes had already flown by in the misty bluish air, but the  hard
earth was still a solid black, without a single fleck of grey.
     Petya  came  in  by the  back  door, dropped his empty  satchel  in the
kitchen  and tiptoed to the nursery. But it was too early for anyone to have
begun worrying about his absence.
     When he saw the quiet, peaceful rooms, when he heard the faint whirr of
the  sewing machine,  when  he smelled  the simmering  borshch,  he suddenly
wanted to throw his  arms round  Daddy's  neck, press his cheek against  his
jacket, burst into tears, and tell all.
     But only for an instant. That feeling immediately yielded, in the boy's
feverish  mind, to another, a new,  feeling: one of reserve, responsibility,
secrecy.  For  the  first time  in his life  the boy understood, simply  and
seriously, with all his heart, that there were things not to be told even to
one's  nearest and dearest, but kept to oneself,  no  matter how  painful it
might be.
     Father was rocking in the rocking-chair, with his hands behind his head
and his pince-nez dangling free. Petya walked in, sat down on a chair beside
him, and folded his hands sedately on his knees.
     "Bored  with being  idle, son? Don't  take it  to  heart.  Things  will
quieten  down  soon,  the  schools will  open again. You'll  go back  to the
Gymnasium, get your fill of Poors, and then you'll feel better."
     He smiled his lovable, nearsighted smile.
     Suddenly  the kitchen  door  banged  and swift footsteps sounded in the
passage.  Dunya  appeared  in  the  dining-room doorway.  She leaned  limply
against the door, clasping her hands to her breast.
     Oh, sir-
     She could not get out another word.
     She was  breathing  heavily, quickly, her half-open mouth swallowing in
air. Her kerchief was awry; a strand of hair with a pin hanging from it fell
on her ghostly-white face.
     Lately the  family had become used  to seeing her  burst in  like this.
Almost every day she came to  announce some piece of town news or other. But
this time  her  crazed  eyes,  her  convulsive  breathing  and  her  general
overwrought   appearance   predicted   something  extraordinary,   something
frightful.
     She brought in  with  her  such a dark, such an ominous silence that it
seemed  as if the clock had begun  to tick ten times louder, and as  if grey
panes had been put into the windows. The whirr of the sewing machine stopped
instantly. Auntie  Tatyana  ran  in, pressing her  fingers to the  tiny blue
veins in her temples.
     "What is it? What's happened?"
     Dunya moved her lips but no sound came out.
     When she  did speak it was in a  voice that could barely be heard.  "In
Kanatnaya they're beating up the Jews. A pogrom-"
     "Impossible!"  Auntie Tatyana  clutched at  her heart and sank  into  a
chair.
     "May I drop dead  on the  spot!  They're smashing all the Jewish shops.
They threw a chest of drawers into the street from the first storey. They'll
be in our street in about ten minutes."
     Father jumped up. He was pale, his jaw quivered. He tried to put on his
pince-nez but his hand refused to obey him.
     "Good Lord! What does this mean?"
     He raised his eyes to the icon and crossed himself twice.
     Dunya, taking that for a sign, came to herself. She climbed on  a chair
and impetuously took down the icon.
     "Dunya, what are you doing?"
     But  Dunya made no reply. She was already in the other rooms collecting
the  icons.  She  quickly  set  them  on the windowsills facing  the street,
propping them up with piles of books, boxes,  tea-caddies, and anything else
she could lay hands on.
     Father followed her with a perplexed look.
     "I don't see- What's the point of all that?"
     "That's what to do,  sir," she mumbled in a frightened voice.  "They're
beating up the Jews but they don't touch Russians. Whoever has icons  in the
windows they leave them alone."
     "Don't you dare!" he screamed, his voice breaking. He pounded the table
with his fist as hard and as fast as he could. "Don't you dare! I forbid it!
Do  you  hear? Stop it this  very minute! That's  not what  icons  are  for!
It's-it's blasphemy! At once!"
     Father's round  starched  cuffs jumped out  of  his  sleeves.  His face
turned deathly pale. Pink spots broke out on his high chiselled forehead.
     Never  had  Petya seen Father like this:  his whole body shook, he  was
terrifying.
     Father  ran to the  window and seized an icon. But Dunya  pounced on it
and would not let go.
     "Oh, don't, sir!" she  cried  in despair.  "They're killing everybody!"
She turned to Auntie. "Tatyana Ivanovna! Dear Tatyana Ivanovna! They'll kill
us all! They won't think twice!"
     "Shut  up!"   yelled  Father.   The   veins  on  his  forehead  swelled
frighteningly. "Shut up! I'm the master here. It's my house and  I'll  never
permit that here! Let them come! Let them murder us all! The swine! You have
no right- you have no-"
     Auntie Tatyana wrung her hands.
     "Vasili Petrovich, I implore you, be calm!"
     But Father had already buried his  face in his hands and  stood leaning
against the wall.
     "They're coming!" Dunya cried.
     Silence fell.
     Faint, harmonious singing drifted in from the street. It sounded like a
religious procession or a funeral somewhere in the distance.
     Cautiously, Petya looked out of the window. There was not a soul in the
street. Over the  deserted  Kulikovo Field hung a sky the  colour of  slate,
darker and lower than before.
     In the wrinkles of  the naked earth lay a few long strands  of  snow as
light as swan's down, collected by the wind.
     The singing grew louder and louder. Now Petya clearly saw that  the low
dark cloud lying  on  the horizon in Kulikovo Field,  to  the  right of  the
railway station, was not a cloud at all but a slowly approaching mob.
     The windows in the house were slammed shut.
     From  the  kitchen  came  the  murmur  of  low,  restrained  voices,  a
shuffling,  and  the  rustle of  skirts. Then, altogether  unexpectedly,  an
elderly woman appeared in the passage holding by the hand a little girl with
bright ginger hair and a tear-stained face.
     The woman was dressed for paying a social call,  in a black silk skirt,
a mantilla, and lisle mitts. Somewhat askew on her head sat a small but high
black bonnet with  cock's  plumes. From behind her shoulders peered  Nusya's
pale, lustreless, round face and Izzy the Dizzy's bowler hat.
     This was Madam Kogan, with her whole family.
     Not daring  to enter the room, she stood  for a long time curtsying  in
the  doorway, raising the hem  of  her skirt with one  hand and pressing the
other to her heart. A honeyed, well-bred and at the same time frenzied smile
played on her wrinkled mobile little face.
     "Mr. Batchei!" she exclaimed  in a shrill, bird-like  voice, stretching
out  both her trembling gloved hands  towards Father. "Mr.  Batchei! Tatyana
Ivanovna! We have  always been good neighbours! Are people to blame  because
they have a different God?"
     All of a sudden she fell to her knees.
     "Save my children!" she wailed. "Let them smash everything but only let
them spare my children!"
     "Mama,  stop  lowering  yourself!" Nusya cried angrily.  He shoved  his
hands in his pockets and turned aside, showing the bluish shaven nape of his
neck.
     "Nusya, will you  shut up  at last?" hissed Izzy  the Dizzy. "Or do you
want  that  I should slap your cheeks? Your mother knows what she  is doing.
She knows  that  Mr. Batchei is an intellectual person and will not allow us
to be killed."
     Auntie Tatyana ran to the door and lifted the Jewess to her feet. "Why,
Madam Kogan, what ever are you doing? For shame!  Why, of course, of course!
Goodness me! Please come in, Mr. Kogan, Nusya, Dorochka- What a misfortune!"
     While Madam  Kogan wept  and gushed words of gratitude that made Father
and Auntie Tatyana  feel so ashamed they wished the earth would swallow them
up, and while  she hid  the children and her husband in the  back rooms, the
singing outside grew louder and nearer with every step.
     A  small  crowd  which indeed  looked like a  religious  procession was
coming across Kulikovo Field towards the house.
     In  front walked two grey-haired old men  in winter  coats but hatless,
carrying a portrait of the Tsar on an embroidered linen towel. Petya at once
recognised the  blue ribbon across the shoulder  and the acorn which was the
Tsar's face. Behind the portrait swayed  church banners, raised high  in the
cold, bluish, soapy air.
     Then  came  a  lot  of respectable-looking  men  and  women  in  winter
overcoats and galoshes, high  overshoes  and top boots. White  steam  poured
from their wide-open mouths. They sang:

     Save, O Lo-o-o-ord, Thy flo-o-ock, and bless Thy do-o-o-omains. . . .

     They looked so peaceable and dignified that for a  minute an indecisive
smile played on Father's face.
     "There,  you   see?"  he  said.  "They're  walking  along  quietly  and
peacefully without hurting a soul, and you-"
     Just then the  procession  came  to  a  stop  on the other side of  the
street, opposite the house. Out of the crowd  ran  a burly, moustached woman
with purplish-blue cheeks and  two shawls tied across her bosom. Her bulging
eyes, black as  Isabella  grapes, stared with ferocious determination at the
windows. She planted her  fat  legs in  their thick white  woollen stockings
wide apart, like a man, and shook her fist at the house.
     "Aha,  Jew-faces!" she cried  in  the shrill  voice of a  market woman.
"Hiding, eh? Never mind, we'll get you in a jiffy! Orthodox Christians, show
your icons!"
     With these words she raised  the hem of her skirt and  ran  across  the
street with a determined  air. On  the way  she  picked a cobblestone from a
pile that had been put there for mending the roadway.
     After her,  about twenty long-armed roughs with tri-coloured ribbons on
their overcoats  and  jackets  stepped  out  of the crowd. They  crossed the
street without hurrying, one ofter the other, and as each passed the pile of
cobbles he bent low and nimbly.
     When the last one passed, the place where  the pile of stones had stood
was absolutely smooth ground.
     A deathly silence set in. Each tick of the clock was now the crash of a
pistol-shot, and the panes  in the  windows were black. The  silence dragged
out so long that Father  had  time to say, "I don't understand. Where, after
all, are the police? Why don't they send men from the Army Staff?"
     "Oh, the police!" Auntie Tatyana cried hysterically.
     She stopped short.
     The silence became more terrifying than ever. Izzy the Dizzy sat on the
edge of a chair in the middle of the parlour,  his bowler hat pushed down on
his forehead. His sickly eyes were fixed on a spot in the corner.
     Nusya had been walking up  and down the  passage with his hands in  his
pockets. Now he stopped  to listen. His full lips were curved in a strained,
scornful smile.
     The silence lasted another unbearable instant and then burst. Somewhere
down below the first  rock slammed through a window.  Then a squall hit  the
house. Glass shattered to the  pavement. The iron sign-board was ripped  off
with a thunderous rattle. There  was the crash of breaking  doors and boxes.
Jars of lozenges, kegs, and tinned goods rolled out into the roadway.
     Whistling and  whooping, the brutalised mob  surrounded the  house. The
gold-framed portrait with the crown soared slantwise into the air, now here,
now there. It was as if an officer  in epaulets and a blue ribbon across his
shoulder,  with church banners on all sides of him, was rising up on  tiptoe
all the time to look over the heads.
     "Mr. Batchei! Do you see what they're doing?" whispered Kogan, wringing
his hands. "Two hundred rubles' worth of merchandise!"
     "Papa, keep  quiet! Stop lowering yourself!" shouted Nusya. "This isn't
a question of money!" The pogrom continued.
     "Sir! They're going through the flats  looking  for Jews!"  Madam Kogan
screamed. She began to flutter in  the dark passage like a chicken at  sight
of the  knife. "Dora! Nusya! My children!"  "They're  coming up the  stairs,
sir!"
     From  the  stairs  sounded  the  rumble  of  coarse  voices  and boots,
amplified  tenfold by the box-like front  entrance.  With trembling fingers,
yet extraordinarily quickly, Father  buttoned all the buttons of his  jacket
and rushed  to the door,  tearing open with both hands the choking  starched
collar under his beard. Before Auntie Tatyana could open her mouth he was on
the stairs. "For goodness' sake, Vasili Petrovich!" "Don't sir, they'll kill
you!" "Daddy!" cried Petya, rushing after him. In his black jacket, straight
and agile, his face set, his cuffs rattling, Father quickly ran downstairs.
     Up the stairs towards  him clumped the woman in the thick white woollen
stockings. She wore cotton mitts, and in her right hand she gripped a  heavy
cobblestone. Now  her eyes were not black  but  a  bluish-white, and glazed,
like  the  eyes  of a  dead  bullock. Behind  her came  sweating  roughs  in
dark-blue caps, the kind grocers' assistants wore.
     "Gentlemen!"  Father  cried,  not  at  all  to  the  point, in his high
falsetto, his neck turning a deep red. "Who gave you the right to break into
other people's houses? This is robbery! I won't allow it!"
     "And who might you be? The house-owner?"
     The woman shifted  the  cobblestone  to  her  left  hand,  and, without
looking  at Father,  hit him  in the ear with her right fist as hard  as she
could. Father rocked on his heels, but the men prevented him from falling: a
red, freckled  hand grabbed him  by the silk lapel  of his jacket and jerked
him forward. The old cloth ripped.
     "Stop hitting him! He's  our  Daddy!"  Petya cried  in a voice  totally
unlike his own. "You have no right! Fools!"
     Somebody gave  a sharp, vicious pull,  with all his  might, at Father's
sleeve. The sleeve came off. The round  cuff with its cuff-link  rolled down
the stairs.  Petya  saw  a  bleeding  scratch  on  Father's  nose,  saw  his
nearsighted  eyes full  of tears-his pince-nez had been knocked off- and his
hair, long like a seminary student's, lying in two dishevelled parts.
     Stinging pain  filled  the  boy's heart.  He  was ready  to die at that
minute if only they would stop hurting Daddy.
     "Beasts!  Cattle!  Animals!"  Father moaned through set  teeth, backing
away from the pogrom-makers.
     Auntie Tatyana and Dunya came running down holding icons.
     "Gentlemen,  what  are you doing?  Have you no  fear  of  God?"  Auntie
Tatyana said over and over again, tears in her eyes.
     "Are you  mad?"  Dunya  cried in rage, lifting as high  as she could an
icon  of  the Saviour with  waxen orange-blossoms  under the glass.  "You're
beating  Orthodox Christians! Look what  you're  doing  before you begin. Go
back where you came from. There's no Jews here, not a one! Go away!"
     Police whistles sounded in the  street-as usual, exactly half  an  hour
after  the  start  of  a pogrom.  The  woman in  the white stockings put the
cobblestone on a step and carefully wiped her hand on the hem of her skirt.
     "Well, that'll do for here," she said with a nod of the head. "A little
of  a good thing goes a long  way.  Hear those policemen of ours blowing out
their  guts? Come  on, now let's get  that  Jew at  Malofontanskaya and  the
corner of Botanicheskaya!"
     She gathered her heavy skirts and, grunting, climbed downstairs.

        40
     THE OFFICER'S UNIFORM

     For  several days afterwards the pavement  in  front  of the house  was
strewn  with cobbles,  broken  glass, splintered  boxes,  crushed  balls  of
blueing, rice, rags, and various household articles.
     Among the bushes in the field one suddenly came across a picture album,
a bamboo book stand, a lamp, a flat-iron.
     Passers-by carefully avoided the  wreckage, as if mere  contact with it
would make a person a party to the pogrom and disgrace him for life.
     The children too. When, horror-struck  and curious, they went down into
the pillaged shop, they deliberately hid  their hands in their pockets so as
not to be tempted by a mint cake or a crushed  box of Kerch cigarettes lying
about.
     Father paced  the floor from morning to  night, his chin tensely thrust
forward; he looked somehow younger, sterner, and was unusually brisk; he had
become  noticeably  grey  at  the  temples.  The jacket  had  been mended so
skilfully that there was scarcely any trace of the damage. Life was becoming
normal again.
     There was  no more firing in the streets.  Peaceful silence  reigned in
the city. The first tram-car since  the strike rolled past the house. It was
a clumsy, absurd contraption which looked like  a city coach, with huge rear
wheels and tiny front ones.
     An engine whistled at the railway station. The Russkiye Vedomosti,  the
Niva and the Zadushevnoye Slovo were delivered to the house.
     One day Petya looked  out of the window and saw a  yellow postal van at
the entrance.
     A warm wave flooded his heart, and it missed a beat. The postman opened
the door at the back of the van and took out a parcel.
     "It's from  Grandma!" Petya  cried, smacking  the  windowsill with  his
palms.
     Why, he had forgotten all about it! Now, at sight of the yellow van, he
instantly remembered: lugs, the dress coat he had turned into a  total mess,
the sandals he had  sold, Pavlik's moneybox-in a word, all his crimes, which
might come to light at any moment.
     The bell rang. Petya ran to the anteroom.
     "Don't you dare touch it! It's for me, for me!"
     And  so  it  was,  to  everybody's  amazement.  "Master Pyotr  Batchei.
Personal" was written in big letters in purple ink on the canvas top.
     The canvas was tightly sewn down with strong thread and Petya split his
fingernails as he tore it off. He did not have the patience to do a neat job
of removing the squeaking cover, which was held in place by long thin nails,
so he grabbed the kitchen chopper and hacked the box open; it was as fragile
as  a violin. Out of it he  took something carefully  wrapped in  a very old
copy of the Russky Invalid.
     It was an officer's jacket.
     "Grandfather's uniform!" Petya exclaimed triumphantly. "There!"
     Nothing else was in the parcel.
     "I-I don't see-" mumbled Auntie.
     "What  a  queer  idea,  sending  military relics  to a  child,"  Father
remarked dryly, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Highly unpedagogical."
     "Oh,  keep quiet! You  don't understand anything!  Grandma's a wonder!"
Petya shouted in delight. He ran to the nursery with the precious parcel.
     Gold buttons gleamed through their neat wrapping of tissue-paper. Petya
hastily undid the wrapping.
     My God! What was this? No eagles!
     The buttons were absolutely  smooth. They differed in  no way  from the
cheapest  lugs  on  the uniforms of  ordinary  privates.  True, Petya  found
sixteen of them.  But  the whole  batch  would bring him no more  than three
fives.
     What could have happened?
     Many  years later Petya  was  to learn  that in  the  time  of  Emperor
Alexander  II  officers'  buttons  were  without eagles. But who  could have
foreseen it? He felt completely crushed.
     Petya  sat on the  windowsill  with  the  useless uniform  in  his lap.
Outside,  snow-flakes  were  flying  past  the thermometer.  He watched them
indifferently, without a trace of the joy he usually felt at the first snow.
     One after  another there passed before his  mind's eye pictures of  the
events he had taken part in and witnessed only a  short time before. But now
it all  seemed as distant, as  hazy, and  as untrue as a dream. As if it all
had taken place in some other town; perhaps, even, in some other country.
     Yet Petya knew that it had not been  a dream. It had  taken  place over
there, not far away,  beyond Kulikovo Field, beyond the milky  smoke of snow
that whirled along between sky and earth.
     Where was Gavrik now?
     What had happened to Terenti and the sailor?
     Had they got away across the roofs?
     But there was no answer to these questions.
     The snow came down  thicker and thicker, covering  the black  earth  of
Kulikovo Field with the clean, bright sheet of winter, come at last.

        41
     THE CHRISTMAS TREE

     Christmas came.
     Pavlik  awoke before  dawn. For him Christmas Eve was a double holiday:
it was his birthday, too.
     You can easily imagine how impatiently the boy had  awaited this joyous
and at  the same time most  curious  day when  he suddenly became four years
old.
     One day  he was  still three,  and the next he was four. When  did that
happen? Probably at night.
     Pavlik had decided long  ago  to  watch for the  mysterious moment when
children become a  year older. He woke  up in the  middle  of the night  and
opened his  eyes  wide,  but as  far  as he  could see nothing had  changed.
Everything was the same as usual: the chest of drawers,  the night-lamp, the
dry palm branch behind the icon.
     How old was he now: three, or four?
     He examined his  arms attentively and gave  a kick with his legs  under
the blanket. No, his arms and legs were the  same as when he had gone to bed
in the evening. But perhaps his head  had grown a bit? He carefully felt his
head-his cheeks, his nose, his ears. . . . They all seemed to be the same as
yesterday.
     Now wasn't that strange?
     It was  all the more  strange because in the morning he was sure  to be
four. That he knew for certain. Then how old was  he now? He  couldn't still
be three. But on the other hand it didn't look very much like four, either.
     It  would be a  good idea to wake Daddy. He was sure to know. But crawl
out from under the warm quilt and walk barefoot across the floor-no, thanks!
A better idea was to pretend to  be asleep and wait with closed eyes for the
transformation to take place.
     Pavlik shut his eyes,  but before  he  knew it he fell  asleep. When he
woke up he  saw at once that the night-lamp had gone out a long time ago and
that  the  dark,  bluish light of early-early  winter morning  was coming in
through the cracks in the shutters.
     Now there couldn't be the slightest doubt: he was four.
     The whole flat was still fast asleep; Dunya had not yet begun to bustle
about  in the  kitchen. Four-year-old Pavlik  sprang nimbly out  of  bed and
"dressed himself"  -that is,  he pulled  on his vest, with the cloth-covered
buttons, back to front and shoved his bare little feet into his shoes.
     Cautiously opening the heavy, squeaky door with both hands,  he set out
for the parlour. It was a little boy's big journey through a deserted  flat.
In the  middle of the darkness, filling the  entire  parlour with the strong
smell  of  fir  needles, stood something  huge  and  vague, with black  paws
reaching all the way to the floor and hung with dangling chains of paper.
     This,  Pavlik  already knew,  was  the Christmas  tree.  While his eyes
accustomed themselves  to the  gloom  he  cautiously walked round the  thick
velvety  tree  whose silver threads cast  the faintest possible flickers  of
light.
     The tree  echoed the boy's every step with a papery stir, a tremble,  a
rustle of cardboard and of  Christmas  crackers, a delicate tinkle  of glass
decorations.
     Now that he was accustomed to the darkness Pavlik saw, in the corner, a
table heaped with presents.  He  rushed  to  it, forgetting the  tree  for a
moment.  They  were  first-rate  presents, much  better  than  what  he  had
expected: a  bow  with  arrows in  a  velvet quiver,  a beautiful book  with
coloured pictures, Grandma Tatyana's Poultry Yard, a  real "grown-up"  lotto
game, and a horse which  was bigger,  handsomer, and, most important of all,
much  newer  than  Kudlatka.  Besides,  there  were  tins  of George  Borman
Lozenges, bars of chocolate with picture cards, and a cake in a round box.
     Pavlik had never  expected such riches. The table was laden  with  toys
and sweets-and all his very own.
     Still,  he felt that something was lacking.  He quietly dragged all his
old toys, including the tattered Kudlatka, into the parlour from the nursery
and added them to  the new ones.  Now there were as many toys as in  a shop.
But even this did not seem enough.
     He brought out the famous moneybox and put it on top of the drum in the
middle of the table, as the chief symbol of his wealth.
     After building this triumphal toy tower and feasting his eyes upon  it,
Pavlik returned to the Christmas  tree.  For a long  time now  a honey  cake
covered  with  pink  frosting, hanging not very high  at all,  by  a  yellow
worsted thread, had been disturbing him. It was shaped like a star and had a
hole in the middle, and  it was  so beautiful  that he felt an  overpowering
desire to eat it as quickly as possible.
     Deciding that it would be  no great harm  if there  were one honey cake
less on the tree, Pavlik untied it from the branch and put it in  his mouth.
He took a sizable bite, but to his amazement he discovered that the cake was
not at all as tasty as one might have thought. As a matter of fact, it was a
simply disgusting cake: it was stale,  it was  made of  rye flour, it wasn't
sweet, and it had a strong smell of treacle. And yet by the looks  of it, it
was the kind of cake the snow-white  Christmas  angels,  who sang so sweetly
high up in heaven, lived on.
     With a grimace Pavlik hung  the nibbled cake back on the  branch. There
was clearly some misunderstanding here. No doubt a spoiled cake had been put
in with the others by accident in the shop.
     At  this  point Pavlik noticed  another and  still more beautiful honey
cake, covered with blue  frosting. It hung quite high, and he had to pull up
a chair. This time  he did not untie the cake from the branch but simply bit
off a corner. It was so unpleasant that he spat it out at once.
     But it was hard to believe that all the other cakes were worthless too.
     Pavlik  decided  to  try every  single one. No  sooner said than  done.
Grunting, wheezing, his tongue  sticking  out,  he dragged the  heavy  chair
round the tree, climbed up on it, bit  off a  corner of a  cake, saw that it
was foul, and dragged the chair farther.
     Before long he had tasted all the honey cakes except  two near the very
ceiling and  far out of reach. For a long  time  he stood with his head bent
back,  thinking  about  them. They attracted  him  because  they were beyond
reach, and hence all the more beautiful and desirable.
     These cakes, he was certain, would  not trick him. He was planning  how
to put the  chair on top of the table and try to get them from there when he
heard the  fresh rustle  of a  holiday dress. Auntie Tatyana's beaming  face
looked into the parlour.
     "Aha, our little birthday-boy is up  before everybody else, I see. What
are you doing?"
     "Walking round the Christmas  twee," Pavlik replied modestly. He looked
up at Auntie  Tatyana  with the trusting,  truthful  eyes  of a well-behaved
child.
     "Oh, my precious little tadpole! Twee! Not twee but tree. When will you
finally learn to say that word properly? Well, happy birthday!"
     The next  moment  the  boy  found himself  in  Auntie  Tatyana's  warm,
fragrant, tender embrace.
     Dunya,  her  face  flushed  with  embarrassment, hurried  in  from  the
kitchen, holding out a dainty sky-blue cup with "Happy  Birthday" written on
it in gold letters.
     So  began that happy  day which was destined to have such an absolutely
unexpected and frightful ending.
     In the evening, Pavlik had guests-little boys and  girls. They were all
such kids that Petya felt it beneath his dignity to talk  to them, let alone
play with them.
     Petya's heart was unutterably sad and heavy as he sat on the windowsill
in the dark nursery, looking at the decoratively frosted window on which the
golden nut of the street lamp glimmered among icy ferns.
     Ominous forebodings darkened his spirits.
     From  the parlour  streamed  the  hot, crackling light of the Christmas
tree-a  flaming  bonfire of  candles  and  golden rain.  He  could  hear the
enticing music of the piano. That was Father pounding  out a seminary polka,
the tails of  his dress coat spread apart and his starched cuffs rattling. A
great many children's sturdy little legs were stamping senselessly round the
Christmas tree.
     "Never mind, Petya,"  said  Auntie Tatyana as she passed by. " Don't be
envious. You'll have your day too."
     "Oh, Auntie, you don't understand  anything  at all," the boy said in a
piteous voice. "Leave me alone."
     At last came that long-awaited moment-the distribution of the nuts  and
cakes. The children surrounded the Christmas  tree  on tiptoe  and stretched
their hands towards the cakes, which shone like medals. The tree rocked. The
chains rustled.
     "Oh,   look,"   a  ringing,  frightened  little  voice  suddenly  said,
"somebody's bitten my cake!"
     "Mine too!"
     "I have two, and they're all bitten."
     "Huh," someone said in disappointment, "they're not new at all. They've
been eaten once already."
     Auntie Tatyana flushed to the roots of her hair  as nibbled cakes  were
stretched out to her from all sides.
     Finally her eyes came to rest  on Pavlik. "Did you do that, you naughty
boy?"
     "Auntie  dear,  I only  wanted  a  teeny-weeny  taste,"  Pavlik  looked
innocently at his angered aunt with  wide-open eyes that were amber-coloured
from  the Christmas  tree lights. "I thought," he added with a  sigh,  "they
were good, but it turns out they're only for guests."
     "That's enough, you bad, bad boy!" Auntie Tatyana cried. With a gesture
of  despair she ran  to the sideboard. Luckily,  there  was still plenty  of
other  sweets.  Satisfaction  was immediately  given  to  all who  had  been
slighted. The scandal was hushed.
     Soon the sleepy guests were carried away to their homes.  The party was
over. Pavlik set about putting his treasures in order.
     Just then  Dunya  appeared  in  the  doorway  of  the  nursery  with  a
mysterious air and beckoned to Petya.
     "Young  master,  that  crazy  Gavrik  is waiting for  you in  the  back
stairway," she whispered, glancing round.
     Petya dashed into the kitchen.
     Gavrik was sitting on the high backstairs sill, leaning against the icy
window on which danced blue sparks from  the  moon. Under his hood glittered
small angry eyes. He was breathing heavily.
     Petya's first thought was that Gavrik had come to  collect his debt. He
was about to tell the sad story  of Grandfather's buttons and promise honour
bright to settle the debt  in two days,  at the  latest, when Gavrik quickly
reached inside his padded jacket and pulled out four familiar-looking bags.
     "Here,"  he said  in  a  low, firm voice, handing them to  Petya. "Hide
these and we'll call it quits. They're left over from Joseph Karlovich,  God
rest his soul."
     As  he said these  last  words Gavrik  fervently made  the  sign of the
cross.
     "Hide them and keep 'em until they're needed."
     "Right," whispered Petya.
     Gavrik said nothing  for a  long time. Finally  he wiped his  nose hard
with his fist and climbed down from the windowsill.
     "Well, Petya, so long."
     "Did-did they get away?"
     "They did. Across the roofs. Now they're looking for 'em high and low."
     Gavrik paused for  a moment,  considering whether  he  hadn't  said too
much. Then he leaned forward trustfully.
     "If you only knew how many were caught!" he whispered into Petya's ear.
"But they  won't  be caught!  Take my  word  for it. They're hiding  in  the
catacombs. Like all the revolutionaries. In the  spring they'll start again.
You know, the landlord's throwing Terenti's wife and the kids, Zhenechka and
Motya, out in the street. That's the way things are."
     Gavrik scratched his eyebrows with a worried air.
     "I don't know what to  do with 'em now. Looks as we'll all have to move
from Near  Mills to Grandpa's hut. Grandpa's in a  bad way. Looks as if he's
going to die soon. Why don't you drop in  some day, Petya? Only not so soon.
The  main  thing  is  to hide these bags  in a  good place.  'Weep  no more,
Marusya, you will yet be mine.' Shake, pal."
     Gavrik  shoved a flat hand into  Petya's and  then ran  off, beating  a
tattoo on the stairs with his broken boots.
     Petya went back  to the nursery and hid the bags under the books in his
satchel.
     Just then the door flew open with an unearthly  bang and Father marched
into the room holding the mutilated dress coat.
     "What's the meaning of this?" he asked in such a quiet voice that Petya
nearly fainted.
     "By the true and holy Cross-" he muttered, but  he  could not gather up
the strength to cross himself.
     "What's the meaning of  this?" Father shouted, turning red and  shaking
from head to foot.
     That very second Pavlik let out a heart-rending howl in the parlour, as
though echoing Father's angry shout.
     The  little  boy ran in on legs wobbling from horror and threw his arms
round Father's knees. His mouth was such a wide-open square that his yelling
throat, with  its tiny, quivering  lobe at the back, could clearly  be seen.
The tears came in streams. In his trembling hand lay the open moneybox, full
of bits of tin and iron instead of money.
     "D-da-da-dy," babbled Pavlik, hiccuping. "Pe-etya- rob-hie-robbed me!"
     "On my word of hon-" began Petya, but Father already had a firm grip on
his shoulders.
     "You good-for-nothing!" he  roared. "You  scalawag! I  know everything!
You're a gambler, and a liar besides!"
     He began to  shake Petya-so furiously that it seemed he wanted to shake
the very life out  of  the boy. His jaw  bounced up and down, and so did his
pince-nez, which had slipped  from  his  perspiring  nose with its cork-like
pores, and dangled on the black cord.
     "Give  them to me  this very instant, those-what do  you call 'em-mugs,
jugs-"
     "Lugs,"  Petya said  with a crooked  smile,  hoping somehow to turn the
matter into a joke.
     But when Father heard the word "lugs"  from the lips of his son he flew
into a still greater rage.
     "Lugs, eh? Excellent! Where are they? Give  them here this very minute.
Where is that street filth? Where are  those germs? Into the fire with them!
Into the stove! I don't want to see a single trace of them!"
     He took in the room with a  swift glance and then made straight for the
satchel.
     Father  walked  down  the passage  with long, quick,  nervous  strides,
carrying the bags squeamishly,  as  though they  were  dead kittens.  Petya,
sobbing, ran after him all the way to the kitchen.
     "Daddy! Daddy!" he shouted, tugging at his sleeves. "Daddy!"
     Father roughly pushed Petya aside, moved a clattering  pot and fiercely
shoved the bags into the flaming stove, getting soot on his cuffs.
     The boy froze in horror.
     "Hook it!" he screamed.
     But  at that  instant  shots resounded inside the stove, followed by  a
small explosion.
     A multicoloured flame shot through the stove ring. Noodles  flew up out
of the pot and plastered themselves  against the ceiling. The stove cracked.
Out  of  the  crack  poured acrid smoke,  filling the entire kitchen in  one
minute.
     They flooded  the stove. Later, when  they  raked out  the ashes,  they
found a pile of charred revolver cartridge cases.
     But Petya knew none of this. He had  fainted. They put  him to bed. His
whole body was on  fire. When they took his  temperature  it was one hundred
and three and five-tenths.

        42
     KULIKOVO FIELD

     No sooner had the scarlet fever passed when pneumonia set in.
     Petya was ill  all winter. Only in the middle  of  Lent did he begin to
walk about inside the house.
     Spring was on the way. First early spring-in  fact, early-early spring.
No longer winter but by no means real spring.
     The short-lived southern snow had long since  vanished, without  giving
Petya a taste of its delights. It was now the dry, grey Odessa March.
     On shaky legs, Petya  wandered idly through the rooms which had  become
small and very low the minute he climbed out  of bed. He stood  on tiptoe in
front of the  pier-glass in  the dark anteroom and  with a tug  of self-pity
examined  his  peaky  white  face with the shadows under  eyes  that  seemed
somehow startled and hard to recognise.
     The whole  first half of  the day he was all alone in the  flat. Father
was at school, and Auntie Tatyana took Pavlik out walking.
     The  noises of  the deserted rooms made Petya pleasantly  light-headed.
The  sharp  click  of  the  pendulum  came  with a  persistent,  frightening
inevitability. Petya went to the window. It was still sealed for the winter;
there was  a roll of yellowed cotton  wool  sprinkled with pieces of clipped
worsted between the two frames.
     He saw  the  mean, grey, dry roadway, the hard earth of Kulikovo Field,
and a  grey sky with  the faintest watery traces of blue.  From  the kitchen
window he could see the blue twigs of the lilacs in the  vacant lot. He knew
that if  you stripped  the bitter  bark with your teeth you would uncover  a
wonderfully green, pistachio-coloured stem.
     At long intervals the low, funereal  bass of the  Lenten bells quivered
in the air, bringing to the heart a feeling of emptiness and sadness.
     Yet latent in this bleak world were the powerful forces of spring. They
were merely awaiting their hour.  They could be felt in everything, and most
of all in the hyacinth bulbs.
     The indoor spring was still  hidden in the dark storeroom,  where, amid
the mousy odour  of household  odds  and  ends,  Auntie  Tatyana  had placed
shallow little  bowls along the  wall. The Dutch  bulbs,  Petya knew, ne