fairy-tale about Sister Alyonushka and Brother Ivanushka.
50
Sister, dear sister, Swim out, swim out to me. Fires are burning high,
Pots are boiling, Knives are ringing, And I am going to die.
All Baba and the Forty Thieves made a particularly strong impression
upon me. 'Open Sesame!' It grieved me to learn, years later, upon
reading the Thousand and One Nights in a new translation, that the
word should be Simsim and not Sesame, which was a plant, something
like hemp. Sesame had magic, it was a wonder-working word. I was
terribly disappointed to learn that it was just ordinary hemp.
Without exaggeration it can be said that these tales simply knocked
me flat. More than anything else in the world now I wanted to learn to
read, like Serafima Petrovna.
On the whole, I liked the life in the children's home. It was snug and
warm there, and they fed and taught you in the bargain. It wasn't dull,
at least not very. The other boys treated me well—probably because I
was a small chap.
At the very outset I made friends with two boys and we did not waste
a minute of our spare time.
One of my new chums was Romashov whom we nicknamed
Romashka which means 'a daisy'. He was a skinny lad with a big head
on which grew yellow matted hair. He had a flattened nose, unnaturally
round eyes and a square chin—altogether a wicked-looking piece of
work for a face. We became friends over some picture puzzles. I was
good at guessing them and this won his admiration.
The other one was Valya Zhukov, a lazy boy with a head full of plans.
At one moment he was all for getting a job at the Zoo, learning to tame
lions, the next he was raving to join the fire brigade. After a visit to the
bakery he wanted to become a baker; he would come away from the
theatre with the firm intention of becoming an actor. Valya was fond of
dogs. All the dogs in the neighbourhood treated him with great respect.
But all the same, Valya was just Valya, and Romashka was just
Romashka. Neither of them came anywhere near Pyotr.
I can't describe how I missed him.
I went round all the places we had roamed together, inquired about
him from all the street waifs and strays, and hung round the reception
centres and children's homes. He was nowhere to be found. Had he
gone to Turkestan, travelling in some box under an International
Sleeping Car, I wondered. Or had he returned home on foot from
hungry Moscow? Who could say?
It was then, during my daily wanderings, that I came to know Moscow
and to love it. It was mysterious, vast, snowed-up, preoccupied with
hunger and war. Maps were hung up in public places, and the red thread
held by little flags passed somewhere between Kursk and Kharkov and
was nearing Moscow. Okhotny Ryad, the old shopping centre, was a
long, low row of painted wooden stalls and shops. Futurist artists had
daubed strange pictures on its walls-people with green faces, churches
with falling cupolas. Similar pictures decorated the tall fence on
Tverskaya. ROSTA placards (Caricatures, often with verse, put on the walls in the
street for propaganda purposes in the '20s.) hung in the shop windows, saying:
Munch your pineapples,
Chew your grouse,
Your last day is coming, Bourgeois louse!
These were the first verses I learned to read by myself.
51
CHAPTER TWO
SCHOOL
I believe I have already mentioned that the Education Department
regarded our children's home as a sort of hatchery for budding talent.
The Department considered that we were distinguished by having gifts
for music, painting or literature. Therefore, after lessons we were
allowed to do as we pleased. We were supposed to be freely developing
our talents. And so we were. Some of us ran down to the Moskva River
to help the firemen catch fish in the ice-holes, while others loitered
about the Sukharevka Market, helping themselves to anything that lay
in temptation's way.
I spent most of my time indoors, however. We lived on the floor below
the school rooms and all school life passed before my eyes. It was an
odd, puzzling, complex life. I hung around groups of senior pupils,
giving an ear to their conversation. New attitudes, new ideas, new
people. All this was as unlike life in Ensk, my home town, as Ensk was
unlike Moscow. For a long time it all baffled me and kept me wondering.
One day I happened upon a meeting of fifth-formers, who were
discussing the question of whether or not to study. One scruffy-looking
schoolboy, who was greeted with cries of 'Go it, Shrimpy!', argued that
on no account should they be forced to study. Attendance at school
should be voluntary, and marks given only by a majority vote.
'Bravo, Shrimpy!'
'Hear, hear!'
'Generally speaking, comrades, it's just a question of teaching staff.
Now take those teachers whose lessons are attended by an absolute
minority. I suggest that we set them a limit of five pupils. If less than
five come to the lesson, the teacher should get no rations that day.'
'Hear, hear!'
'Sap!'
'Go and eat coke!'
'Bravo!'
Evidently they had in mind not all the teachers, but only one of them,
because they all suddenly turned their heads, whispering and nudging
one another, at the sight of a tall man with walrus moustache who
appeared in the doorway, and stood with folded arms, listening
attentively to the speaker.
'Who's that?' I asked Varya, a fat girl with thick plaits.
'That's Whiskers, my boy,' Varya answered.
'What do you mean, whiskers?'
