These were baited with frogs and lured with a bonfire. But the blue crab,
as all of us boys firmly believed, could only be taken with rotting meat.
The day before I had had a stroke of luck at last: I had managed to steal
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a piece of meat from Mother and kept it in the sun all day. It was putrid
now—one did not have to take it into one's hand to find that out.
I ran down to the Gap along the river bank: here brushwood had been
piled up for a fire. In the distance one could see the towers, Pokrovsky
Tower on one bank, Spassky on the other. When the war broke out they
were used as army leather goods depots. Pyotr Skovorodnikov used to
say that devils once dwelt in Spassky Tower and that he had actually
seen them ferrying over to our side, after which they had scuttled their
boat and made their home Pokrovsky Tower. He said the devils were
fond of smoking and drinking, they had bullet-heads, and many of them
were lame, having hurt themselves when they dropped from the sky. In
Pokrovsky Tower they raised families and in fine weather went down to
the river to steal the tobacco which the fishermen tied to their nets to
appease the water-sprites.
So I was not really surprised when, as I was blowing up my little fire, I
saw a thin black shape in the gap of the old ramparts.
'What are you doing here, shaver?' the devil said, just like any
ordinary human being.
I couldn't have answered him even if I had wanted to. All I could do
was just stare and shake.
At that moment the moon sailed out from behind the clouds, and I
could make out the figure of the watchman across the river, walking
round the leather depot—a burly man with a rifle sticking up behind his
back.
'Catching crabs?'
He sprang down lightly and squatted by the fire.
'What's the matter with you, swallowed your tongue, silly?'
No, it wasn't a devil. It was a skinny hatless man with a walking stick
which he kept slapping against his leg. I couldn't make out his face, but I
noticed he had nothing on under his jacket and was wearing a scarf in
place of a shirt.
'Don't want to speak, you rascal, eh?' He prodded me with his stick.
'Come on, answer me! Answer! Or I'll-'
Without getting up, he grabbed my leg and pulled me towards him. I
gave a sort of croaky sound.
'Ah, you're a deaf mute, I see!'
He let go of me and sat there for quite a while, poking among the
embers with his stick.
'Fine town, this,' he said disgustedly. 'A dog in every blessed yard;
brutes of policemen. Damned crab-eaters!'
And he started to swear.
Had I known what was to happen within the hour, I should have tried
to remember what he said, although just the same I could not have
repeated his words to anybody. He went on swearing for quite a time,
and even spat in the fire and gnashed his teeth. Then he fell silent, his
head thrown back and knees clasped in his hands. I stole a glance at him
and could have felt sorry for him had he not been so unpleasant.
Suddenly the man sprang to his feet. In a few minutes he was on the
pontoon bridge, which the soldiers had recently put across the river, and
I caught a last glimpse of him on the opposite bank before he
disappeared.
My fire had gone out, but even without it I could see clearly that there
wasn't a single blue crab among my catch, and a pretty good catch it
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was. Just ordinary black crabs, none too big either—they went for a
kopeck a pair at the local pub.
A cold wind began to draw from somewhere behind me. My trousers
billowed out and I began to feel cold. It was time to go home. I was
casting my line, baited with meat, for the last time when I saw the
watchman on the opposite bank running down the slope. Spassky Tower
stood high above the river and the hillside leading down to the river
bank was littered with stones. There was no sign of anybody on the
hillside, which was lit up brightly by the moon, yet for some reason the
watchman unslung this rifle as he ran.
'Halt!'
He did not fire, but just clicked the bolt, and, at that very moment I
saw the man he was after on the pontoon bridge. I am choosing my
words carefully, because even now I am not quite certain it was the man,
who, an hour ago, had been sitting by my fire. But I can still see the
scene before my eyes: the quiet banks, the widening moon path on the
water running straight from where I was to the barges of the pontoon
bridge, and on the bridge the long shadows of two running figures.
The watchman ran heavily and once he even stopped to take breath.
But the one who was running ahead seemed to find the going still
harder, for he suddenly stopped and crouched down by the handrail.
The watchman ran up to him, shouting, then suddenly reeled back, as if
he had been struck from below. He hung on the handrail, slowly
slipping down, while the murderer was already disappearing behind the
rampart.
I don't know why, but that night no one was guarding the pontoon
bridge. The sentry-box stood empty, and except for the watchman, who
was lying on his side with his arms stretched forward, there was not a
soul in sight. A large undressed hide lay beside him, and when, shaking
with terror, I went up to him, he started to yawn slowly. Years
afterwards I learned that many people yawn just before they die. Then
he heaved a deep sigh, as though with relief, and grew still.
Not knowing what to do, I bent over him, then ran to the sentry-box—
that was when I saw it was empty—and back again to the watchman. I
couldn't even shout, not only because I was a mute at the time, but from
sheer terror. Now voices could be heard from the bank, and I rushed
back to the place where I had been fishing for crabs. Never again in my
