I don't know why, but Aunt Dasha did not spend that night with us,
the first night we were left alone. She brought me some porridge, but I
did not feel like eating, and she put the plate on the window-sill. On the
window-sill, not on the table where Mother had lain that morning. That
morning. And now it was night. Sanya was sleeping in her bed, in the
place where she had been lying with that little wreath on her brow.
I got up and went over to the window. It was dark outside, and a fiery
glow hung over the river, where bands of black smoke flared up with
yellow streaks and died down.
The barracks were on fire they said, but it was beyond the railway, a
long way off and in quite a different direction. I recalled how she had
taken my hand, shaking her head and fighting back her tears. Why
hadn't I said anything to her? She had so wanted me to say something,
even if it was a single word.
I could hear the pebbles rolling up on the shore; the wind had
probably risen and it started raining. For a long time, thinking of
nothing, I watched the big heavy raindrops rolling down the window-
pane, first slowly, then faster and faster.
I dreamt that someone pulled the door open, ran into the room and
flung his wet army coat on the floor. It was some time before I realised
that this was no dream. It was my stepfather, dashing about the house,
pulling off his tunic as he ran. He tugged away at it, gnashing his teeth,
but it clung to his back. At last, clad only in his trousers, he rushed over
to his box and pulled a haversack out of it.
'Pyotr Ivanich!'
He glanced at me but did not answer. With matted hair, his face
glistening with sweat, he was hastily thrusting linen into the haversack
from the box. He rolled up a blanket, pressed it down with his knee and
strapped it. All the time his mouth worked with vicious fury, and I could
see his clenched teeth—the big, long teeth of a wolf.
He put on three shirts and shoved a fourth into his haversack. He
must have forgotten that I was not asleep, or he would not have had the
nerve to snatch Mother's velvet jacket from the nail on which it hung
and thrust it into the haversack along with the rest.
'Pyotr Ivanich!'
'Shut up!' he said, looking up. 'Go to hell, all of you!'
He changed his boots and put on his coat, then suddenly noticed the
skull and crossbones on the sleeve. With an oath he threw the coat off
39
again and started ripping off the emblem with his teeth. He flung his
haversack on his back and was gone—gone out of my life. All that
remained were his muddy footmarks of the floor and the empty tin box
of Katyk cigarettes in which he kept his studs and ' tiepins.
Everything became clear the next day. The Military Revolutionary
Committee proclaimed Soviet power in the town. The Death Battalion
and the volunteers who had come out against the Soviets had been
defeated.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WE RUN AWAY.
I PRETEND TO BE ASLEEP
Where did Pyotr get the idea that you could travel free now on all the
railways? The rumour about free tramcars must have reached him in
this exaggerated form.
'Grown-ups have to have official travel papers,' he said with
assurance. 'But we don't need anything.'
He was no longer silent. He remonstrated with me, teased me,
accused me of cowardice, and sneered. Everything that was happening
on Earth, merely went to prove, in his view, that we had to make tracks
for Turkestan without a moment's delay. Old Skovorodnikov proclaimed
himself a Bolshevik and made Aunt Dasha take down the icons. Pyotr
cashed in on this situation by arguing that life in the yard would now be
impossible.
I don't know whether he would have succeeded in the end in taking
me into the venture had not Aunt Dasha and Skovorodnikov
decided in family council to place Sanya and me into an orphanage.
With tears in her eyes Aunt Dasha declared that she would visit us at the
orphanage every day, that she would put us in there only for the winter,
and we would return for sure in the summer. In the orphanage we
would be fed, taught and clothed. They would give us new boots, two
shirts each, an overcoat and cap, stockings and drawers. I remember
asking her, 'What are drawers?'
We knew the orphanage children. They were sickly looking kids in
grey jackets and crumpled grey trousers. They were ever so smart at
shooting birds with their catapults; they afterwards roasted and ate the
birds in their garden. That's how they were fed in the orphanage!
Altogether they were a 'bad lot', and we had scraps with them, and now
I was to become one of them!
I went to Pyotr the same day and told him I was willing. We had very
little money—only ten rubles. We sold Mother's boots in the second-
hand market for another ten. That made it twenty. With the utmost
precautions we removed a blanket from the house; with equal
precaution we returned it; nobody had wanted to buy it, though we
asked very little for it—four fifty, I believe. That was just the amount we
had spent on food as we hawked our blanket round the market. Total:
fifteen rubles fifty kopecks.
Pyotr wanted to flog his books, but luckily nobody bought them. I say
'luckily', because those books now occupy a place of honour in my
40
library. On second thought, we did manage to sell one of them-Yuri
Miloslavsky, I believe. Total: sixteen rubles.
We figured that this money would get us to Pyotr's uncle, and once
there we had the thrilling prospect of life aboard a railway engine to
look forward to. I remember the question whether we should carry arms
or not caused no little argument. Pyotr had a knife; which he called a
