life did I run so fast; my heart hammered wildly and I could scarcely
breathe. I had no time to cover up the crabs with grass and I lost half of
them by the time I got home. But who cared about crabs then!
With a thumping heart I opened the door noiselessly. In the single
room of our home it was dark, all were fast asleep and no one had seen
me go and come. In a moment I was lying in my old place beside my
father, but I could not fall asleep for a long time. Before my eyes was the
moonlit bridge and on it the two long running shadows.
14
CHAPTER TWO
FATHER
Two vexations awaited me the next morning. For one thing, Mother
had found the crabs and cooked them. There went my twenty kopeks
and with them the hope of new hooks and spoonbait for catching pike.
Secondly, I had lost my penknife. It was Father's knife, really, but as the
blade was broken he had given it to me. I searched for it everywhere,
inside the house and in the yard, but it seemed to have vanished into
thin air.
The search kept me occupied till twelve o'clock when I had to go down
to the wharf with Father's lunch. This was my duty, and very proud of it
I was.
The men were still at work when I arrived. One wheelbarrow had got
stuck between the planks and all traffic between the ship's side and the
bank was stopped. The men behind were shouting and swearing, and
two men were leaning their weight on a crowbar, trying to lift the
barrow back into the wheel-track. Father passed round them in his
leisurely way. He bent over and said something to them. That is how I
have remembered him-a big man with a round, moustached face, broad-
shouldered, lifting the heavily-laden wheelbarrow with ease. I was never
to see him like that again.
He kept looking at me as he ate, as much as to say, 'What's wrong,
Sanya?' when a stout police-officer and three policemen appeared at the
waterside. One of them shouted 'Gaffer! '-that was what they called the
ganger-and said something to him. The ganger gasped and crossed
himself, and they all came towards us.
'Are you Ivan Grigoriev?' the officer asked, slipping his sword round
behind him.
'Yes.'
'Take him!' the police-officer cried, reddening. 'He's arrested.' Voices
were raised in astonishment. Father stood up, and all fell silent.
'What for?' 'None o' your lip! Grab him!'
The policemen went up to Father and laid hold of him. Father shook
his shoulder, and they fell back, one of them drawing his sword.
'What is this, sir?' Father said. 'Why are you arresting me? I'm not
just anybody, everyone here knows me.'
'Oh no they don't, my lad,' the officer answered. 'You're a criminal.
Grab him!'
Again the policemen stepped towards Father. 'Don't wave that herring
about, you fool,' Father said quietly through clenched teeth to the one
who had drawn his sword. 'I'm a family man, sir,' he said, addressing
the officer. 'I've been working on this wharf for twenty years. What have
I done? You tell'em all, so's they know what I'm being taken for.
Otherwise people will really think I am a criminal.'
'Playing the saint, eh?' the officer shouted. 'Don't I know your kind!
Come along!'
The policemen seemed to be hesitating. 'Well?'
15
'Wait a minute, sir, I'll go myself,' Father said. 'Sanya,' he bent down
to me, 'run along to your mother and tell her—Oh, you can't, of course,
you're...'
He wanted to say that I was dumb, but checked himself. He never
uttered that word, as though he hoped that one day I'd start speaking.
He looked around in silence.
'I'll go with him, Ivan,' said the ganger. 'Don't worry.' 'Yes, do, Uncle
Misha. And another thing...' Father got three rubles out of his pocket
and handed them to the ganger. 'Give them to her. Well, goodbye.'
They answered him in chorus.
He patted me on the head, saying: 'Don't cry, Sanya.' I didn't even
know I was crying.
Even now I shudder at the memory of how Mother took on when she
heard that Father had been arrested. She did not cry, but as soon as the
ganger had gone, she sat down on the bed, and clenching her teeth,
banged her head violently against the wall. My sister and I started
howling, but she did not as much as glance at us. She kept beating her
head against the wall, muttering something to herself. Then she got up,
put on her shawl and went out.
Aunt Dasha managed the house for us all that day. We slept, or rather,
my sister slept while I lay with open eyes, thinking, first about my
father, how he had said goodbye to them all, then about the fat
police-officer, then about his little boy in a sailor suit whom I had seen
in the Governor's garden, then about the three-wheeler this boy had
been riding (if only I had one like that!) and finally about nothing at all
until mother came back. She looked dark and haggard, and Aunt Dasha
ran up to her.
I don't know why, but it suddenly occurred to me that the policemen
had hacked Father to pieces, and for several minutes I lay without
stirring, beside myself with grief, hearing nothing. Then I realised that I
was wrong: he was alive, but they wouldn't let Mother see him. Three
times she repeated that they had arrested him for murder—the
watchman had been killed in the night on the pontoon bridge-before I
grasped that the night was last night, and the watchman was that very
watchman, and the pontoon bridge was that very same bridge on which
he had lain with outstretched arms. I jumped up, rushed to my mother
and cried out. She took me in her arms. She must have thought I had
taken fright. But I was already 'speaking'...
