dozen and then take a sponge down with cold water straight from the
tap. Or get through the year in arithmetic with 'excellent' marks. But all
this could wait until I went back to school. Meanwhile I must think and
think.
At last Ivan Ivanovich examined me for the last time and said I was fit
to be discharged from hospital. What a glorious day that was! We
parted, but he gave me his address and told me to call on him.
'Not later than the twentieth, mind,' he said. 'Or you may not find
me in, old chap.'
I left the hospital, bundle in my hand, and after walking a block, sat
down on a curbstone—I was that weak. But how good I felt! What a big
place Moscow was! 1 had forgotten it. And how noisy the streets were! I
felt dizzy, but I knew that I wouldn't fall. I was well and would live. I had
recovered. Goodbye, hospital! Hail, school!
Truth to tell, I was a bit disappointed at the rather cool reception I was
given at the school. Romashka was the only one to ask me: 'Better?'
And that in a tone of voice as though he was rather disappointed that I
had not died.
Valya was glad to see me, but he had other things on his mind. His
hedgehog had got lost and he suspected that the cook, on Nikolai
Antonich's orders, had thrown it into the dust-bin.
Big changes had taken place in the school during those six months.
For one thing it was half its size, some of the senior classes having been
transferred to other schools.
Secondly, it had been painted and whitewashed—the once dirty rooms
with their grimy windows and black ceilings were simply
unrecognisable.
Third, the Komsomol Group was now the talk of the school. The
tubby Varya was now its secretary. She must have been a good secretary,
because when I got back I found the little room of the Komsomol office
the most interesting place in the school. Though I wasn't a member of
the Komsomol yet, I was given an assignment by Varya only two days
after coming out of the hospital. I was to draw an aeroplane soaring
among the clouds and write over it the motto: 'Young people, join the
S.F.A.F.!'(S.F.A.F.-Society of Friends of the Air Force.-translator)
My fingers were still stiff and not like my own, but I set to work with a
will
78
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THE SILVER FIFTY-KOPECK PIECE
The day I intended to call on Doctor Ivan Ivanovich the school was
thrown into commotion first thing in the morning.
Valya's hedgehog had been found. It appears that he had somehow
got into the attic and landed inside an old cabbage cask, where he had
spent over a fortnight. He was in very bad shape and there was nothing
for it but to take him to the university, where a laboratory of some kind
bought hedgehogs. Valya wrapped him up in an old pair of trousers and
went off. He was back within an hour, looking sad, and sat down on his
bed.
'They'll cut him open,' he said, fighting back his tears.
'What d'you mean?'
'What I said. They'll slit his belly open and rummage about inside.
Poor thing.'
'Never mind,' I said. 'You'll buy another one. How much did you get
for him?'
Valya opened his fist. The hedgehog had been more dead than alive
and they had given him only twenty kopecks.
'I have thirty,' I said. 'Let's put them together and buy a spinning-
tackle.' I said that about the spinning-tackle on purpose, to cheer him
up.
We put our money together and even exchanged our ten and fifteen-
kopeck coins for one new silver fifty-kopeck piece.
This hedgehog business of Valya's had detained me, and by the time I
started out for the doctor's place darkness had begun to fall. He lived a
good distance away, on Zubovsky Boulevard, and the trams were no
longer free of charge like they were in 1920.1 wangled it, though, took a
free ride.
Only one window had a light in it in the house on Zubovsky
Boulevard—a white house with columns, standing back in a garden—
and I decided that this must be the doctor's room. I was wrong. The
doctor, as it happened, lived on the first floor, whereas the light was
burning on the ground floor. Flat No. 8. Here it was. Under the number
was scrawled in chalk: 'Pavlov lives here, not Levenson.' Pavlov was my
doctor Ivan Ivanovich.
A woman with a baby in her arms answered the door and kept
'shushing' all the time while she asked me what I wanted. I told her.
Still shushing, she said the doctor was in, but she thought he was asleep.
'Knock at the door, though,' she whispered. 'He may be awake.'
'I'm not asleep,' the doctor called out from somewhere. 'Who is it?'
'A boy.'
'Let him in.'
This was my first visit to the doctor and I was surprised to find his
room in such disorder. On the floor, amidst a jumble of packets of tea
and tobacco, lay leather gloves and curious but handsome fur high
boots. The whole room was cluttered with open suitcases and rucksacks.
79
And amidst this chaos, a tripod in his hand, stood Doctor Ivan
Ivanovich.
'Ah, Sanya,' he said cheerfully. 'You've come. Well, how goes it? Alive
and kicking?'
'Fit as a fiddle.'
'Fine! Do you cough?'
'No.'
'Good lad! I've written an article about you, old chap.'
I thought he was joking.
