Valentin Katayev. A White Sail Gleams PROGRESS PUBLISHERS MOSCOW OCR: http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 http://home.freeuk.com/russica2 Translated from the Russian by Leonard Stoklitsky Illustrated by Vitali Goryaev Original Russian title: First printing 1954 Printed in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ________________________________________________________ CONTENTS A Few Words About Myself 1. The Farewell 2. The Sea 3. In the Steppe 4. The Watering 5. The Runaway 6. The Turgenev 7. The Photograph 8. "Man Overboard!" 9. Odessa by Night 10. At Home 11. Gavrik 12. "Call That a Horse?" 13. Madam Storozhenko 14. "Lower Ranks" 15. The Boat at Sea 16. "Turret Gun, Shoot!" 17. The Owner of the Shooting Gallery 18. Questions and Answers 19. A Pound and a Half of Rye Bread 20. Morning 21. Word of Honour 22. Near Mills 23. Uncle Gavrik 24. Love 25. "I Was Stolen" 26. The Pursuit 27. Grandpa 28. Stubborn Auntie Tatyana 29. The Alexandrovsky Police Station 30. The Preparatory Class 31. The Box on the Gun Carriage 32. Fog 33. Lugs 34. In the Basement 35. A Debt of Honour 36. The Heavy Satchel 37. The Bomb 38. HQ of the Fighting Group 39. The Pogrom 40. The Officer's Uniform 41. The Christmas Tree 42. Kulikovo Field 43. The Sail 44. The May Day Outing 45. A Fair Wind A FEW WORDS ABOUT MYSELF Looking back on my life, I recall to mind some episodes that were instrumental in shaping my understanding of the writer's mission. The power of the printed word was first really brought home to me when I landed at the front during the First World War. I mentally crossed out nearly all I had written up until then and resolved that from now on everything I write should benefit the workers, peasants and soldiers, and all working people. In 1919, when I was in the ranks of the Red Army and was marching shoulder to shoulder with revolutionary Red Army men against Denikin's bands, I vowed to myself that I would dedicate my pen to the cause of the revolution. Many Soviet writers took part in the Civil War, and their words and their actions inspired the fighting men. Alexander Serafimovich was a war correspondent. Alexander Fadeyev shared the privations of the Far Eastern partisans. Dmitry Furmanov was the Commissar of Chapayev's division. Nikolai Ostrovsky fought the interventionists in the Ukraine. Mikhail Sholokhov took part in the fighting against Whiteguard bands. Eduard Bagritsky went to the front as a member of a travelling propaganda team. More than 400 Soviet writers gave their lives on the battlefronts of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45. Their names are inscribed on a marble memorial plaque in the Writers Club in Moscow. At the time of the Russian revolution of 1905 I was just a boy of eight, but I clearly remember the battleship Potemkin, a red flag on her mast, sailing along the coast past Odessa. I witnessed the fighting on the barricades, I saw overturned horse-trams, twisted and torn street wires, revolvers, rifles, dead bodies. Many years later I wrote A White Sail Gleams (Written in 1936.-Ed.) a novel in which I tried to convey the invigorating spirit that had been infused into the life of Russia by her first revolution. A Son of the Working People is a reminiscence of the First World War, in which I fought. When construction of the Dnieper hydroelectric power station began I went there together with the poet Demyan Bedny. Afterwards we visited collective farms in the Don and Volga areas and then set out for the Urals. I remember that when our train stopped at Mount Magnitnaya in the Urals I was so impressed by what I saw that I decided to leave the train at once and remain in the town of Magnitogorsk. I said good-bye to Demyan Bedny and jumped down from the carriage. "Good-bye and good luck!" he called out. "If I were younger and didn't have to get back to Moscow I'd stay here with pleasure." I was struck by all I saw in Magnitogorsk, by the great enthusiasm of the people building for themselves. This was a revolution too. It inspired my book Time, Forward! During the last war, as a correspondent at the front, I saw a great deal, but for some reason it was the youngsters that made the biggest impression on me-the homeless, destitute boys who marched grimly along the war-torn roads. I saw exhausted, grimy, hungry Russian soldiers pick up the unfortunate children. This was a manifestation of the great humanism of the Soviet man. Those soldiers were fighting against fascism, and therefore they, too, were beacons of the revolution. This prompted me to write Son of the Regiment. When I look around today I see the fruits of the events of 1917, of our technological revolution, of the construction work at Magnitogorsk. I see that my friends did not give their lives on the battlefronts in vain. What does being a Soviet writer mean? Here is how I got the answer. Returning home one day, a long time ago, I found an envelope with foreign stamps on it in my letter-box. Inside there was an invitation from the Pen Club, an international literary association, to attend its next conference, in Vienna. I was a young writer then, and I was greatly flattered. I told everyone I met about the remarkable honour that had been accorded me. When I ran into Vladimir Mayakovsky in one of the editorial offices I showed him the letter from abroad. He calmly produced an elegant envelope exactly like mine from the pocket of his jacket. "Look," he said. "They invited me too, but I'm not boasting about it. Because they did not invite me, of course, as Mayakovsky, but as a representative of Soviet literature. The same applies to you. Understand? Reflect, Kataich (as he called me when he was in a good mood), on what it means to be a writer in the Land of Soviets." Mayakovsky's words made a lasting impression on me. I realised that I owed by success as a creative writer to the Soviet people, who had reared me. I realised that being a Soviet writer means marching in step with the people, that it means being always on the crest of the revolutionary wave. In my short story The Flag, which is based on a wartime episode, the nazis have surrounded a group of Soviet fighting men and called on them to give up. But instead of the white flag of surrender they ran up a crimson flag which they improvised from pieces of cloth of different shades of red. Similarly, Soviet literature is made up of many works of different shades which, taken together, shine like a fiery-red banner of the revolution. Once, walking round Shanghai I wandered into the market where the so-called "Temple of the City Mayor" stood. Here they sold candles for church-goers. An old Chinese woman was standing at a table giving out some strange sticks from two vases. For ten yuans you were allowed to take one of these sticks with hieroglyphics on it. Then the woman would ask you what number page was marked on the stick, and turning to her book for reference, she would find the appropriate page, tear it out and give it to you. On my piece of paper was written: "The Phoenix sings before the sun. The Empress takes no notice. It is difficult to alter the will of the Empress, but your name will live for centuries." We haven't got an Empress, and so that part of the prophecy does not apply. It's highly unlikely that my name will live for centuries, and so that part doesn't apply either. All that remains is the phrase "The Phoenix sings before the sun". I can agree with that since the sun is my homeland. A WHITE SAIL GLEAMS 1958 Valentin Katayev 1 THE FAREWELL The blast of the horn came from the farmyard at about five o'clock in the morning. A piercing, penetrating sound that seemed split into hundreds of musical strands, it flew out through the apricot orchard into the deserted steppe and towards the sea, where its rolling echo died mournfully along the bluff. That was the first signal for the departure of the coach. It was all over. The bitter hour of farewell had come. Strictly speaking, there was no one to bid farewell to. The few summer residents, frightened by recent events, had begun to leave in mid-season. The only guests now remaining at the farm were Vasili Petrovich Batchei, an Odessa schoolmaster, and his two sons, one three and a half years old and the other eight and a half. The elder was called Petya, and the younger Pavlik. Today they too were leaving for home. It was for them the horn had been blown and the big black horses led out of the stable. Petya woke up long before the horn. He had slept fitfully. The twittering of the birds roused him, and he dressed and went outside. The orchard, the steppe, and the farmyard all lay in a chill shadow. The sun was rising out of the sea, but the high bluff still hid it from view. Petya wore his city Sunday suit, which he had quite outgrown during the summer: a navy-blue woollen sailor blouse with a white-edged collar, short trousers, long lisle stockings, button-shoes, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. Shivering from the cold, he walked slowly round the farm, saying good-bye to the places where he had spent such a wonderful summer. All summer long Petya had run about practically naked. He was now as brown as an Indian and could walk barefoot over burrs and thorns. He had gone swimming three times a day. At the beach he used to smear himself from head to foot with the red marine clay and then scratch out designs on his chest. That made him really look like a Red Indian, especially when he stuck into his hair the blue feathers of those marvellously beautiful birds-real fairy-tale birds-which built their nests in the bluff. And now, after all that wealth and freedom, to have to walk about in a tight woollen sailor blouse, in prickly stockings, in shoes that pinched, and in a big straw hat with an elastic that rubbed against his ears and pressed into his neck! Petya lifted his hat and pushed it back so that it dangled on his shoulders like a basket. Two fat ducks waddled past, quacking busily. They threw a look of scorn at this foppish boy, as though he were a stranger, and then dived under the fence one after the other. Whether they had deliberately snubbed him or simply failed to recognise him, Petya could not be sure, yet all of a sudden he felt so sad and heavy-hearted that he wanted to cry. Straight to his heart cut the feeling that he was a complete stranger in this cold and deserted world of early morning. Even the pit in the corner of the garden-the deep, wonderful pit where it was such thrilling fun to bake potatoes in a camp-fire-even that seemed unbelievably strange, unfamiliar. The sun was rising higher. The farmyard and orchard still lay in the shade, but the bright, cold, early rays were already gilding the pink, yellow, and blue pumpkins set out on the reed roof of the clay hut where the watchman lived. The sleepy-eyed cook, in a homespun chequered skirt and a blouse of unbleached linen embroidered in black and red cross-stitch, with an iron comb in her dishevelled hair, was knocking yesterday's dead coals out of the samovar, against the doorstep. Petya stood in front of the cook watching the string of beads jump up and down on her old, wrinkled neck. "Going away?" she asked indifferently. "Yes," the boy replied. His voice shook. "Good luck to you." She went over to the water-barrel, wrapped the hem of her chequered skirt round her hand, and pulled out the spigot. A thick stream of water arched out and struck the ground. Sparkling round drops scattered, enveloping themselves in powdery grey dust. The cook set the samovar under the stream. It moaned as the fresh, heavy water poured into it. No, not a particle of sympathy from anybody! There was the same unfriendly silence and the same air of desolation everywhere-on the croquet square, in the meadow, in the arbour. Yet how gay and merry it had been here such a short while ago! How many pretty girls and naughty boys! How many pranks, scenes, games, fights, quarrels, peacemakings, kisses, friendships! What a wonderful party the owner of the farm, Rudolf Karlovich, had given for the summer residents on the birthday of his wife, Luiza Frantsevna! Petya would never forget that celebration. In the morning a huge table with bouquets of wild flowers on it was set under the apricot trees. In the centre lay a cake as big as a bicycle wheel. Thirty-five lighted candles, by which one could tell Luiza Frantsevna's age, had been stuck into that rich, thickly frosted cake. All the summer residents were invited to morning tea under the apricot trees. The day continued as merrily as it had begun. It ended in the evening with a costume ball for the children, with music and fireworks. All the children put on the fancy dress that had been made for them. The girls turned into mermaids and Gipsies, the boys into Red Indians, robbers, Chinese mandarins, sailors. They all wore splendid, bright-coloured cotton or paper costumes. There were rustling tissue-paper skirts and cloaks, artificial roses swaying on wire stems, and tambourines with floating silk ribbons. Naturally-how could it be otherwise!-the very best costume was Petya's. Father himself had spent two days making it. His pince-nez kept falling off his nose while he worked; he was nearsighted, and every time he upset the bottle of glue he muttered into his beard frightful curses at the people who had arranged "this outrage" and generally expressed his disgust with "this nonsensical idea". But of course, he was simply playing safe. He was afraid the costume might turn out a failure, he was afraid of disgracing himself. How he tried! But then the costume-say what you will!-was a remarkable one. It was a real knight's suit of armour, made of strips of gold and silver Christmas tree paper cleverly pasted together and stretched over a wire frame. The helmet was decorated with a flowing plume and looked exactly like the helmet of a knight out of Sir Walter Scott. What is more, the visor could be raised and lowered. In short, it was so magnificent that Petya was placed beside Zoya to make up the second couple. Zoya was the prettiest girl at the farm, and she wore the pink costume of a Good Fairy. Arm in arm they walked round the garden, which was hung with Chinese lanterns. Here and there in the mysterious darkness loomed trees and bushes unbelievably bright in the flare of red and green Bengal lights. In the arbour, by the light of candles under glass shades, the grown-ups had their supper. Moths flew to the light from all sides and fell, singed, to the table-cloth. Four hissing rockets rose out of the thick smoke of the Bengal lights and climbed slowly into the sky. There was a moon, too. Petya and Zoya discovered this fact only when they found themselves in the very farthest part of the garden. Moonlight so bright and magic shone through the leaves that even the whites of the girl's eyes were a luminous blue-the same blue that danced in the tub of dark water under the old apricot tree, in which a toy boat floated. Here, before they knew it, the boy and girl kissed. Then they were so embarrassed that they dashed off headlong with wild shouts, and they ran and ran until they landed in the backyard. There the farm labourers who had come to congratulate the mistress were having their own party. On a pine table brought from the servants' kitchen stood a keg of beer, two jugs of vodka, a bowl of fried fish, and a wheaten loaf. The drunken cook, in a new print blouse with frills, was angrily serving the merry-makers portions of fish and filling their mugs. A concertina-player, his coat unbuttoned and his knees spread apart, swayed from side to side on a stool as his fingers rambled over the bass keys of the wheezing instrument. Two straight-backed fellows with impassive faces had taken each other by the waist and were stamping out a polka, with much flourishing of the heels. Several women labourers in brand-new kerchiefs and tight kid pumps, their cheeks smeared with the juice of pickled tomatoes- for coquetry and to soften the skin-stood with their arms round one another. Rudolf Karlovich and Luiza Frantsevna were backing away from one of the labourers. He was as drunk as a lord. Several men were holding him back. He strained to get free. Blood spurted from his nose on his Sunday shirt, which was ripped down the middle. He was swearing furiously. Sobbing and choking over his frenzied words, and grinding his teeth the way people do in their sleep, he shouted: "Three rubles and fifty kopeks for two months of slaving! Miser! Let me get at the bastard! Just let me get at him! I'll choke the life out of him! Matches, somebody! Let me get at the straw! I'll give them a birthday party! If only Grishka Kotovsky was here, you rat!" (Grigori Kotovsky (1887-1925) was active in the agrarian movement in Bessarabia in 1905-1906; he was a leader of the Bessarabian peasants' partisan actions against the landowners. In 1918-1920 this son of the people was an army leader and Civil War hero.-Tr.) The moonlight gleamed in his rolling eyes. "Now, now," muttered the master, backing away. "You look out, Gavrila. Don't go too far. You can be hanged nowadays for that sort of talk." "Go ahead, hang me!" the labourer shouted, panting. "Why don't you? Go ahead, bloodsucker!" This was so terrifying, so puzzling, and, above all, so out of keeping with the spirit of the wonderful party, that the children ran back, screaming that Gavrila wanted to cut Rudolf Karlovich's throat and set fire to the farm. The panic that broke out is difficult to imagine. The parents led the children to their rooms. They locked all the doors and closed all the windows, as though a storm were brewing. The rural prefect Chuvyakov, who had come to spend a few days with his family, marched across the croquet square, kicking out the hoops and scattering the balls and mallets. He carried a double-barrelled gun at the ready. In vain did Rudolf Karlovich plead with the summer residents to be calm. In vain did he assure them that there was no danger, that Gavrila was now bound and locked up in the cellar, and that tomorrow the constable would come for him. Once, in the night, a red glow lit up the sky far over the steppe. The next morning it was rumoured that a neighbouring farm had been burned down. Labourers had set it on fire, it was said. People coming from Odessa reported disturbances in the city. There were rumours that the trestle bridge in the port was on fire. The constable arrived at dawn the next morning. He led Gavrila away. In his sleep Petya heard the bells of the constable's troika. The summer residents began to leave for home. Soon the farm was deserted. Petya lingered under the old apricot tree, beside the tub of such fond memory, and struck the water with a twig. No, the tub wasn't the same, the water wasn't the same, and even the old apricot tree was not the same! Everything, absolutely everything, had become different. Everything had lost its magic. Everything looked at Petya as out of the remote past. Would the sea also be so cold and heartless to him this last time? Petya ran to the bluff. 2 THE SEA The low sun beat blindingly into his eyes. Below, the entire sweep of the sea was like burning magnesium. Here the steppe ended suddenly. Silvery bushes of wild olive quivered in the shimmering air at the edge of the bluff. A steep path zigzagged downwards. Petya was used to running down the path barefoot. His shoes bothered him; the soles were slippery. His feet ran of themselves. It was impossible to stop them. Until the first turn he still managed to resist the pull of gravity. He dug in his heels and clutched at the dry roots hanging over the path. But the roots were rotten and they broke. The clay crumbled beneath his heels. A cloud of dust as fine and brown as cocoa enveloped him. The dust got into his nose; it tickled his throat. Petya very soon had enough of that. Oh, he'd risk it! He cried out at the top of his lungs, and, with a wave of his arms, plunged headlong. His hat filled with air and bobbed up and down behind him. His collar fluttered in the wind. Burrs stuck to his stockings. After frightful leaps down the huge steps of the natural stairway, the boy suddenly flew out on the dry sand of the shore. The sand felt cold; it had not yet been warmed by the sun. This sand was amazingly white and fine. It was deep, soft, marked all over with the shapeless holes of yesterday's footprints, and looked like semolina of the very best quality. The beach slanted almost imperceptibly towards the water. The last strip of sand, lapped by broad tongues of snow-white foam, was damp, dark, and smooth; it was firm, easy to walk on. This was the most wonderful beach in the world, stretching for about a hundred miles under the bluffs from Karolino-Bugaz to the mouth of the Danube, then the border of Rumania. At that early hour it seemed wild and desolate. The sensation of loneliness gripped Petya with new force. But this time it was quite different; it was a proud and manly kind of loneliness. He was Robinson Crusoe on his desert island. The first thing Petya did was to study the footprints. He had the experienced, penetrating eye of a seeker after adventures. He was surrounded by footprints. He read them as though he were reading Mayne Reid. The black spot on the face of the bluff and the grey ashes meant that natives had landed from a canoe the night before and had cooked a meal over a camp-fire. The fan-like tracks of gulls meant a dead calm at sea and lots of small fish near the shore. The long cork with a French trademark and the bleached slice of lemon thrown up on the sand by the waves left no doubt that a foreign ship had sailed by far out at sea several days before. Meanwhile the sun had climbed a bit higher above the horizon. Now the sea no longer shone all over but only in two places: in a long strip at the very horizon and in another near the shore, where a dozen blinding stars flashed in the mirror of the waves as they stretched themselves out neatly on the sand. Over the rest of its vast expanse the sea shone in the August calm with such a tender and such a melancholy blue that Petya could not help recalling: A white sail gleams, so far and lonely, Through the blue haze above the foam. . . although there was no sail in -sight and the sea wasn't the least misty. He gazed spellbound at the sea. . . . No matter how long you look at the sea, you never tire of it. The sea is always different, always new. It changes from hour to hour, before your very eyes. Now it is pale-blue and quiet, streaked here and there with the whitish paths you see during a calm. Or a vivid dark-blue, flaming and glistening. Or covered with dancing white horses. Or, if the wind is fresh, suddenly dark indigo and looking like wool when you run your hand against the nap. When a storm breaks, it changes threateningly. The wind whips up a great swell. Screaming gulls dart across the slate-coloured sky. The churning waves roll and toss the shiny carcass of a dead dolphin along the shore. The sharp green of the horizon stands out like a jagged wall over the mud-coloured storm clouds. The malachite panels of the breakers, veined with sweeping zigzag lines, crash against the shore with the thunder of cannon. Amid the roar, the echoes reverberate with a brassy ring. The spray hangs in a fine mist, like a muslin veil, all the way to the top of the shaken bluffs. But the supreme spell of the sea lies in the eternal mystery hidden in its expanses. Is not its phosphorescence a mystery-when you dip your arm into the warm black water on a moonless July night and see it suddenly gleam all over with blue dots? Or the moving lights of unseen ships and the slow faint flashes pf an unknown beacon? Or the grains of sand, too many for the human mind to grasp? . . . And finally, was not the sight of the revolutionary battleship which once appeared far out at sea, full of mystery? Its appearance was preceded by a fire in the port of Odessa. The glow could be seen forty miles away. At once rumours spread that the trestle bridge was burning. Then the word Potemkin was spoken. (A battleship of the Black Sea Fleet whose sailors mounted a heroic revolt in 1905 and went over to the side of the revolution. Warships were dispatched to put down the revolt, but the sailors of these vessels refused to fire on the insurgents. However, the red flag did not wave from the mast of the Potemkin for long. The absence of a united leadership of the revolt, and the shortage of provisions and coal compelled the sailors to surrender. The revolt of the battleship Potemkin played a role of immense importance in the development of the Russian revolutionary movement.-Tr.) Several times the revolutionary battleship, solitary and mysterious, appeared on the horizon in sight of the Bessarabian shore. The farm labourers would drop their work and come out to the bluff to catch a glimpse of the distant thread of smoke. Sometimes they thought they saw it. They would snatch off their caps and shirts and wave them furiously, greeting the insurgents. But Petya, to tell the truth, could not make out a thing in the desert vastness of the sea, no matter how much he screwed up his eyes. Except once. Through a spyglass which he had begged for a minute from another boy, he made out the light-green silhouette of the three-funnelled battleship flying a red flag at its mast. The ship was speeding westward, in the direction of Rumania. The next day a lowering cloud of smoke spread out along the horizon. That was the whole of the Black Sea squadron in pursuit of the Potemkin. Fishermen who sailed up in their big black boats from the mouth of the Danube brought the rumour that the Potemkin had reached Constantsa, where she had to surrender to the Rumanian government. Her crew went ashore and scattered in all directions. At dawn one morning, after several more days of alarm, a line of smoke again covered the horizon. That was the Black Sea squadron returning from Constantsa to Sevastopol with the captured insurgent in tow, as if on a lariat. Deserted, without her crew, her engines flooded, her flag of revolt lowered, the Potemkin, surrounded by a close convoy of smoke, moved slowly ahead, dipping ponderously in the swell. It took the ship a long time to pass the high bluffs of Bessarabia, where her progress was followed in silence by the farmhands, border guards, fishermen. . . . They stood there looking until the entire squadron disappeared from view. Again the sea became as calm and gentle as though blue oil had been poured over it. Meanwhile details of mounted police had appeared on the steppe roads. They had been sent to the Rumanian border to capture the runaway sailors from the Potemkin. . . . Petya decided to have a last quick swim. But no sooner had he taken a running dive into the sea and begun to swim on his side, cleaving the cool water with his smooth brown shoulder, than he forgot everything in the world. First he swam across the deep spot near the shore to the sand-bank. There he stood up and began to walk about knee-deep in the transparent water, examining the sandy bottom with its distinct fish-scale pattern. At first glance the bottom seemed uninhabited. But a good close look revealed living things. Moving across the wrinkles of the sand, now appearing, now burying themselves, were tiny hermit crabs. Petya picked one up from the bottom and skilfully pulled the crab-it even had tiny nippers!-out of its shell. Girls liked to string those little shells on twine. They made fine necklaces. But men didn't go in for that sort of thing. Then Petya caught sight of a jellyfish and went after it. The jellyfish hung like a transparent lamp-shade, with a fringe of tentacles just as transparent. It seemed to hang motionless-but that was not really so. The thin blue gelatinous margin of the thick cupola was breathing and rippling, like the edge of a parachute. The tentacles stirred too. The jellyfish moved slantwise towards the bottom, as though sensing danger. But Petya caught up with it. Carefully, so as not to touch the poisonous edge which stung like nettles, he picked the jellyfish out of the water with both hands, by its cupola. Then he flung its weighty but flimsy body to the shore. The jellyfish flew through the air, dropping some of its tentacles on the way, and then slapped against the wet sand. The sun immediately flared up in its slime like a silver star. With a cry of delight Petya plunged from the sandbank into the deep water and took to his favourite sport: swimming underwater with eyes open. What rapture! Before the boy's enchanted gaze there spread the wonderful world of the submarine kingdom. Clearly visible, and enlarged as if by a magnifying glass, were pebbles of all colours. They made a cobble stoned road of the sea bed. The stems of the sea plants were a fairy-tale forest shot through with the cloudy green rays of a sun now as pale as the moon. A huge old crab was scampering along sidewise among the roots, his terrifying claws spread out like horns. On his spider-like legs he carried the bulging box that was his back; it was dotted with white stony warts. Petya wasn't the least scared. He knew how to deal with crabs. You had to pick them up boldly, by the back, with two fingers. Then they couldn't bite. But he was not interested in the crab. Let it crawl along in peace-crabs were no great rarity. The whole beach was strewn with their dry claws and red shells. Sea horses were much more interesting. Just then a small school of them appeared among the seaweed. With their chiselled faces and chests they looked for all the world like chess knights, except that they had tails, curled forward. They swam, standing upright, straight at Petya, spreading out their webbed fins like tiny underwater dragons. It was clear they had never expected to run into a hunter at that early hour. Petya's heart leaped with joy. He had only one sea horse in his collection, and a wrinkled old creature it was. These were big and handsome, every single one of them. To let such a rare opportunity slip by would be sheer madness. Petya rose to the surface to fill his lungs and start the hunt at once. But all of a sudden he caught sight of Father at the edge of the bluff. He was waving his straw hat and shouting. The bluff was so high and the voice made such a hollow echo that all Petya caught was a rolling ". . . ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh!. . ." But he understood very well what that "ooh-ooh-ooh" meant. It meant: "Where did you disappear to, you rascal? I've been looking for you all over the farm. The coach is waiting. Do you want us to miss the boat because of you? Get out of the water at once, you good-for-nothing!" Father's voice brought back to Petya the bitter feeling of parting with which he had awakened in the morning. He lifted his voice in such a desperate shout that it made his ears ring: "I'm coming! I'm coming!" ". . . ming-ming-ming!" the bluffs echoed. Petya pulled on his suit right over his wet body-very pleasant that was, too, if the truth be told-and hurried up the bluff. 3 IN THE STEPPE The coach already stood in the road, in front of the gate. The driver had climbed up on a wheel and was tying to the roof the canvas camp beds of the departing summer residents and also round baskets of blue egg-plants which the farm owner, taking advantage of the occasion, was sending to Akkerman. Little Pavlik, dressed for the journey in a new blue pinafore and a stiffly-starched pique hat that looked like a jelly-mould, stood at a prudent distance from the horses. He was making a deep and detailed study of their harness. He was amazed beyond words to find that this harness -the real harness of real live horses-was totally unlike the harness of his beautiful papier mache horse, Kudlatka. (Kudlatka, who had not been taken to the country, was now awaiting her master in Odessa.) The shopkeeper who sold them Kudlatka had probably got something wrong! At any rate, he had to remember to ask Daddy as soon as they came home to cut out a pair of those lovely black things for the eyes and sew them on. At the thought of Kudlatka, Pavlik felt a twinge of anxiety. How was she getting along in the attic without him? Was Auntie Tatyana giving her hay and oats? The mice hadn't chewed off her tail, had they? True, there wasn't much of a tail left-two or three hairs and an upholstery nail, but still. . . . Then, in a fit of impatience, Pavlik stuck his tongue out of the corner of his mouth and ran off to the house to hurry Daddy and Petya. But worried though he was about the fate of Kudlatka, he did not for a moment forget about his new travelling-bag, which hung across his shoulder on a strap. He held it tight with both his little hands. For in that bag, besides a bar of chocolate and a few Capitain salty biscuits, lay his chief treasure, a moneybox made out of an Ainem Cocoa tin. Here Pavlik kept the money he was saving to buy a bicycle. He had put aside quite a sum already: about thirty-eight or thirty-nine kopeks. Now Daddy and Petya were coming towards the coach after their breakfast of grey wheaten bread and milk still warm from the cow. Under his arm Petya carefully carried his treasures: a jar of needle fish preserved in alcohol and a collection of butterflies, beetles, shells, and crabs. All three bid a warm farewell to their hosts, who had come to the gate to see them off. Then they climbed into the coach and set out. The road skirted the farm. Its water pail rattling, the coach rolled along past the orchard, past the arbour, and past the cattle and poultry yards. Finally it reached the garman, the level, well-stamped platform where the grain is threshed and winnowed. In Central Russia this platform is called a tok, but in Bessarabia it is a garman. The straw world of the garman began just beyond the roadside embankment, overgrown with bushes of grey, dusty scratch weed on which hung thousands of tear-shaped yellowish-red berries. There was a whole town of old and new straw ricks as big as houses, a town with real streets, lanes, and blind alleys. Here and there, beside the layered and blackened walls of very old straw, shoots of wheat broke their way through the firm and seemingly cast-iron earth; they glowed like emerald wicks, amazingly clear and bright. Thick opalescent smoke poured from the chimney of the steam-engine. An unseen thresher whined persistently. The small figures of peasant women with pitchforks were walking knee-deep in wheat on top of a new rick. The wheat on the pitchforks cast gliding shadows against the clouds of chaff pierced by the slanting rays of the sun. Sacks, scales, and weights flashed by. Then a tall mound of newly threshed wheat covered with a tarpaulin floated past. After that the coach rolled out into the open steppe. In a word, at first everything was the same as in the other years. The flat, deserted fields of stubble stretching on all sides for dozens of miles. The lone burial mound. The lilac-coloured immortelles gleaming like mica. The marmot sitting beside his burrow. The piece of rope looking like a crushed snake. . . . But suddenly a cloud of dust appeared ahead. A police detail was galloping down the road. "Halt!" The coach stopped. One of the horsemen rode up. Behind the green shoulder strap with a number on it bobbed the short barrel of a carbine. A dusty forage cap, worn at a slant, also bobbed up and down. The saddle creaked and gave off a strong hot smell of leather. The snorting muzzle of the horse came to a stop at a level with the open window. Big teeth chewed at the white iron bit. Grassy-green foam dripped from the black rubbery lips. Out of the delicate pink nostrils a hot steamy breath poured over the three passengers. The black lips stretched towards Petya's straw hat. "Who's that inside?" a rough military voice shouted somewhere overhead. "Summer residents. I'm taking them to the boat." The driver spoke quickly, in an unrecognisably thin and sugary voice. "They're bound for Akkerman and then straight to Odessa by boat. They've been living on a farm out here all summer. Ever since the beginning of June. Now they're on their way home." "Well, let's have a look at 'em." With these words a red face with yellow moustaches and eyebrows and a close-shaven chin, and above it a cap with an oval badge on a green band, appeared at the window. "Who are you?" "Holiday-makers," said Father, smiling. The soldier evidently did not like the smile or that breezy word "holiday-makers", which sounded to him like a jeer. "I can see you're holiday-makers," he said with rough displeasure. "That don't tell me anything. Just what kind of holiday-makers are you?" Father turned pale with indignation. His jaw began to quiver, and his little beard quivered too. He buttoned all the buttons of his summer coat with trembling fingers and adjusted his pince-nez. "How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice?" he cried in a sharp falsetto. "I am Collegiate Counsellor Batchei, a high school teacher, and these are my two children, Peter and Paul. Our destination is Odessa." Pink spots broke out on Father's forehead. "Excuse me, Your Honour," the soldier said smartly, his pale eyes popping out of his head. He saluted with his whip hand. "I didn't know." He looked as if he had been frightened to death by the "Collegiate Counsellor", a grim-sounding title he probably had never heard before. "To the devil with him!" he thought. "He might land me in hot water. I might get it in the neck." He put the spurs to his horse and galloped off. "What an idiot!" Petya remarked, when the soldiers had ridden off a good distance. Father again lost his temper. "Hold your tongue! How many times have I told you you mustn't dare say that word! People who regularly use the word 'idiot' are usually themselves-er-none too clever. Remember that." At any other time, of course, Petya would have argued, but now he kept his peace. He knew Father's state of mind perfectly. Father, who always spoke of titles and medals with scornful irritation, who never wore his formal uniform or his Order of St. Anna, Third Class, who never recognised any social privileges and insisted that all the inhabitants of Russia were no more and no less than "citizens", had suddenly, in a fit of anger, said God knows what. And to whom! To an ordinary soldier. "High school teacher" .. . "C