dagger. We made a sheath for it out of an old boot. Everything else was
in order: stout boots, overcoats in good condition (Pyotr's even had a fur
collar) and a pair of trousers apiece.
I was very gloomy that day and Aunt Dasha made several attempts to
cheer me up. Poor Aunt Dasha! If she only knew that we had put off our
departure because we were counting on her cookies. The next day she
was to take Sanya and me down to the orphanage, and she spent the day
baking cookies 'for the road'. She was baking them all day and kept
taking off her glasses and blowing her nose.
She made me give a solemn promise not to steal, not to smoke, not to
be rude, not to be lazy, not to get drunk, not to swear or fight—more
taboos than there were in the Ten Commandments. To my little sister,
who was very sad, she gave a magnificent ribbon of pre-war
manufacture.
Of course, we could have simply slipped out of the house and
disappeared. But Pyotr decided that this was too tame, and he drew up a
rather intricate plan which had an air of fascinating mystery about it.
In the first place, we were to swear to each other a 'blood-oath of
friendship'. It ran like this:
'Whoever breaks this oath shall receive no mercy until he has counted
all the sand grains in the sea, all the leaves in the forest, all the
raindrops falling from the sky. When he tries to go forward, he will go
back, when he wants to go left he will go right. The moment I fling my
cap to the ground thunderbolts shall strike him who breaks this oath. To
strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.'
We had to utter this oath in turn, then shake hands and fling our caps
down together. This was performed in Cathedral Gardens on the eve of
our departure. I recited the oath by heart, while Pyotr read it 'off the
cuff. After that he pricked his finger with a pin and wrote 'P.S.' on the
paper in blood, the letters standing for Pyotr Skovorodnikov. I scrawled
with some difficulty the initials 'A.G.', standing for Alexander
Grigoriev.
Secondly, I was to go to bed at ten and pretend to be asleep, though
nobody was curious to know whether I was asleep or only pretending. At
three in the morning Pyotr was to give three whistles outside the
window—the prearranged signal that all was in order, the coast was
clear and we could decamp.
This was far more dangerous than it would have been in the daytime,
when things really were in order, the coast clear, and nobody would
have noticed that we had run away. In the night we risked being grabbed
by the patrols—the town was under martial law—and the dogs were let
loose at night all along the river bank. But Pyotr commanded and I
obeyed. And then came the crucial night, my last night in the paternal
home.
Aunt Dasha was sitting at the table, mending my shirt. Though they
provided you with linen at the orphanage, here was one shirt more, to
be on the safe side. In front of her was the lamp with the blue shade
41
which had been Aunt Dasha's wedding presence Mother. It looked sort
of abashed now, as though it felt ill at ease in our deserted house. It was
dark in the corners. The kettle hung over the stove, but its shadow
looked more like a huge upturned nose than a kettle. From a crack
under the window came whiffs of cool air and the tang of the river. Aunt
Dasha was sewing and talking. She took something from the table and
the circle of light on the ceiling began to quiver. It was ten o'clock. I
pretended to be asleep.
'Now mind, Sanya, you must always do as your brother tells you,'
Aunt Dasha was telling my sister. 'Being a girl, you must lean on him.
We womenfolk always lean on the men. He'll stand up for you.'
My heart was wrung, but I tried not think of Sanya. 'And you, too,
Sanya,' Aunt Dasha said to me, and I could see a tear creep down from
under her glasses and fall on my shirt, 'take care of your sister. You'll be
in different sections, but I'll ask them to allow you to visit her every
day.'
'All right, Aunt Dasha.'
'Ah, my God, if only Aksinya were alive...'
She turned up the wick, threaded her needle and took up her work
again with a sigh.
I am not asleep, I am pretending to be asleep. Half past eleven.
Twelve. Aunt Dasha gets up. For the last, the very last time I see her
kind face above the lamp, lit up from below. She places her hand over
the rim of the glass and blows. Darkness. She makes the sign of the
cross over us in the dark and lies down. She is spending that night with
us.
It's all very well to pretend you're asleep when you're not sleepy! I
open my eyes with an effort. What's the time? Three o'clock is still a
long way off. A sound of drunken singing comes from the river. The
pebbles roll on the bank. But still there is no signal. Just the wall clock
ticking and Aunt Dasha sighing as she tosses from side to side.
To keep awake, I sit up and rest my head on my knees. I am
pretending to be asleep. I hear a whistle, but I can't wake up.
Afterwards Pyotr told me he had whistled himself as hoarse as a gypsy
until he wakened me. But he kept whistling all the time I was putting on
my boots and my overcoat and stuffing the cookings into the haversack.
Was he cross! He ordered me to turn up the collar of my overcoat and
we made off.
Everything went well. Nobody touched us—neither dogs nor men. To
be on the safe side, though, we made a detour of about two miles round
the town. On the way I tried to find out from Pyotr whether he was sure
that travelling on the railways these days was free of charge. He told me
he was sure; if the worst came to the worst we could hide under the
seats. It was two nights' travel to Moscow. The passenger train was due
to leave at 5.40.
But when, to avoid the patrols, we jumped the fence some half a mile
from the station we found that there was no 5.40 train. The wet, black
rails glinted dully, and yellow lanterns burned dimly at the points. What
were we to do? Wait at the station till morning? Impossible: the patrols
