'Fancy not knowing that!'
I was soon to discover who it was that everyone in School 4 called
'Whiskers'.
52
He was the geography teacher, Korablev, whom the whole school
heartily disliked. For one thing, the consensus of opinion was that he
was a fool and an ignorant one at that. Secondly, he turned up for his
lesson every blessed day and sat it out, even though there might be only
three pupils in his class. This simply got everyone's goat.
I looked at Korablev. I must have been staring, because all of a sudden
he stared back at me, ever so faintly aping my goggled look. I even
fancied that he smiled into his moustache. But Shrimpy was holding
forth again, and Korablev, turning his twinkling eye away from me,
listened to him with close attention.
CHAPTER THREE
THE OLD LADY FROM ENSK
I remember that day distinctly—a sunny day, with spring rain that
kept coming and going-the day I met the thin old lady in the green
velvet coat in Kudrinskaya Square. She was carrying a shopping bag full
of all kinds of things-potatoes, sorrel leaves, onions-and in her other
hand a big umbrella. Though she obviously found the bag heavy, she
walked along briskly with an air of preoccupation, and I could hear her
counting to herself in a whisper: 'Mushrooms-half a pound-five
hundred rubles; washing blue-a hundred and fifty; beetroot-a hundred
and fifty; milk-a pint-a hundred and fifty; prayer for the dead-seven
hundred and sixty rubles; three eggs-three hundred rubles; confession—
five hundred rubles.' Prices were like that in those days.
Finally, she drew a light sigh and put the bag down on a dry stone to
recover her breath.
'Let me help you, Grandma,' I said.
'Go away, you rascal! I know your kind!'
She shook a threatening finger at me and picked up her bag.
I walked on. But we were both going in the same direction and
presently drew level with each other again. The old lady was obviously
anxious to get rid of me, but her burden made it difficult for her to get
away.
'Look here. Grandma, if you think I'm going to steal anything, then
I'll help you for nothing,' I said. 'Cross my heart I will, I just can't see
you dragging that load.'
The old lady got angry. She clutched her bag to her with one arm and
began to wave her umbrella at me with the other as though fighting off a
bee.
'Get along with you! I've had three lemons* stolen already. I know
you.'
'Just as you like. It was the street boys who stole them from you, but
I'm from a children's home.'
'You're just as bad a lot as the others.'
She looked at me and I at her. Her nose was slightly tilted and had a
purposeful look about it. She seemed a kind old soul. Maybe she took a
fancy to me too, because she suddenly stopped brandishing her
umbrella and demanded: 'Who are your parents?'
53
'I haven't any.'
'Where d'you come from? Moscow?'
I realised at once that if I said I was a Muscovite, she would chase me
away. She probably thought it was Moscow boys who had stolen her
money.
'No,' I said, 'I'm from Ensk.'
Would you believe it, she was from Ensk too! Her eyes lit up and her
face grew kinder still.
'You're fibbing, you little liar,' she said sternly. 'The one who stole
the lemon from me said he wasn't from Moscow either. If you're from
Ensk, where did you live there?'
'On the Peshchinka, back of the Market Square.'
'I don't believe you.' This without conviction. 'Peshchinka, you say?
There may be Peshchinkas in other places too. I don't remember you.'
'You must have left the town a long time ago, when I was still little.'
'It wasn't long ago, it was only recently. Come on, take the bag by one
handle, I'll take the other. Don't jerk it.'
We carried the bag and chatted. I told her how Pyotr and I had
headed for Turkestan and got stranded in Moscow. She listened with
interest.
'Hoity-toity! What cleverdicks! Globe-trotters, eh? Of all the crazy
ideas!'
As we passed our street I pointed out our school to her.
'We do belong to the same places, I see,' the old lady said
enigmatically.
She lived in the Second Tverskaya-Yamskaya, in a little brick-built
house. I knew it by sight.
'That's where our headmaster lives,' I said. 'Maybe you know him—
Nikolai Antonich.'
(*In those days of inflation a million ruble treasury note was
popularly called a 'lemon'. –Tr.).
'Is that so!' the old lady said. 'And what's he like? Is he a good
Head?'
'Rather!'
I couldn't make out why she laughed. We went upstairs and stopped
in front of a door upholstered in clean oilcloth. There was a name on the
doorplate written in fanciful lettering which I hadn't time to read.
Whispering to herself, the old woman drew a key from her coat. I
turned to go, but she stopped me.
'I did it for nothing. Grandma.'
'Then sit with me a bit for nothing.'
She tiptoed into the little entrance hall and began to take her coat off
