'And do you know what a lactometer is?'
I said that I didn't.
'It's an instrument which tells you how much water there is in the
milk. As we know,' he went on, raising a finger, 'the women who sell
milk on the market dilute their milk with water. If you put the
lactometer in such milk you will see how much milk there is and how
much water. Do you understand?'
'Yes.'
'Well, go and fetch it to me.'
He wrote a note.
'Mind you don't break it. It's made of glass.'
I was to give the note to Nina Kapitonovna. I had no idea that this was
the name of the old lady from Ensk. But instead of the old lady, the door
was opened by a spare little woman in a black dress.
'What do you want, boy?'
'Nikolai Antonich sent me.'
The woman, of course, was Katya's mother and the old lady's
daughter. All three had the same purposeful noses, the same dark, lively
eyes. But the granddaughter and her grandmother were brighter
looking. The daughter had a drooping careworn expression.
'Lactometer?' she said in a puzzled tone, after she had read the note.
'Ah, yes!'
She went into the kitchen and returned with the lactometer in her
hand. I was disappointed. It was just like a thermometer, only a little
bigger.
'Be careful you don't break it.'
'Me break it?' I replied with scorn.
58
I remember distinctly that the daring idea of testing the lactometer for
snow salt struck me a minute or two after Katya's mother had shut the
door behind me.
I had just reached the bottom of the stairs and stood there gripping
the instrument with my hand in my pocket. Pyotr had once said that
snow had salt in it. Would the lactometer show that salt or was Pyotr
fibbing? That was the question. It needed testing.
I chose a quiet spot behind a shed, next to a refuse dump. A little
house was built of bricks in the trodden-down snow, from which a black
thread, resting on pegs, ran round the back of the shed- the children had
probably been playing a field telephone. I breathed on the lactometer
and with a beating heart stuck it into the snow next to the little house.
You can judge what a stupid head I was when I tell you that, after a
while, I pulled the lactometer out of the snow and finding no change in
it, I stuck it back again upside down.
Nearby, I heard someone gasp. I turned round.
'Run! You'll be blown up!' came a shout from inside the shed. . It all
happened in a matter of seconds. A girl in an unbuttoned overcoat
rushed out of the shed towards me. 'Katya,' I thought, and reached for
the instrument. But Katya grasped my arm and dragged me away. I tried
to push her off and we both fell in the snow. Bang! Pieces of brick flew
through the air, and powdery snow rose behind us in a white cloud and
settled on us.
I had been under fire once before, at my mother's funeral, but this was
much more terrifying. Rumblings and explosions still came from the
refuse dump, and each time I lifted my head Katya quivered and said,
'Smashing, eh?'
At last I sprang to my feet.
'The lactometer!' I yelled and ran like mad towards the dust-heap.
'Where is it?'
At the spot where I had stuck it in the snow there was a deep hole.
'It's exploded!'
Katya was still sitting in the snow. Her face was pale and her eyes
shone.
'Silly ass, it was firedamp that exploded,' she said scornfully. 'And
now you'd better run for it, because the policeman will soon pop—and
he'll nab you. He won't catch me though.'
'The lactometer!' I repeated in despair, feeling that my lips were
beginning to quiver and my face twitch. 'Nikolai Antonich sent me for
it. I put it in the snow. Where is it?'
Katya got up. There was a frost in the yard and she was without a hat,
her dark hair parted in the middle and one plait stuffed in her mouth. I
wasn't looking at her at the time and didn't remember this until
afterwards.
'I've saved your life,' she said with a little sniff. 'You'd have been killed
on the spot, hit right in the back. You owe your life to me. What were
you doing here around my firedamp anyway?'
I did not answer. I was choking with fury.
'I would have you know, though,' she added solemnly, 'that even if it
had been a cat coming near the gas I should have saved it just the same.
Makes no difference to me.'
I walked out of the yard in silence. But where was I to go? I couldn't
go back to the school-that much was clear.
59
Katya caught up with me at the gate.
'Hey, you, Nikolai Antonich!' she shouted. 'Where are you off to?
Going to snitch?'
I went for her. Did I enjoy it! I paid her back for everything-for the
ruined lactometer, for the tip-tilted nose, for my not being able to go
back to school and for her having saved my life when nobody asked her
to.
She gave as good as she got, though. Stepping back, she planted a
blow in my stomach. I grabbed her by the plait and poked her nose into
the snow. She leapt to her feet.
'That wasn't fair, your backheeling,' she said briskly. 'If it wasn't for
that I'd have laid into you good and proper. I thrash all the boys in our
form. What form are you in? Wasn't it you who helped Grandma to
