At the end of the week the Master brought from the city a letter addressed “to Cook Nadejda.” When he had read it over to her she began to cry, and smeared her face all over with the soot which was on her apron. From the fragmentary remarks which accompanied this operation, it might be deduced that the contents of the letter affected Petka. This took place in the evening. Petka was playing athletic sports by himself in the back court, and puffing out his cheeks, because that made it considerably easier to jump. The schoolboy Mitya had taught him this stupid but interesting occupation, and now Petka, like a true “sportsman,” was practising alone. The master came out, and laying his hand on his shoulder, said:
“Well, my friend, you have to go!”
Petka smiled in confusion and said nothing. “What a strange lad,” thought the master.
“Yes, have to go.”
Petka smiled. Nadejda coming up with tears in her eyes repeated:
“You have to go, sonny.”
“Where?” said Petka in surprise. He had forgotten the city; and the other place, to which he had always so wanted to go away—was found.
“To your master, Osip Abramovich.”
Still Petka failed to understand, though the matter was as clear as daylight. But his mouth felt suddenly dry, and his tongue moved with difficulty as he asked:
“How then can I go fishing tomorrow? Look, here is the rod.”
“But what can one do? He wants you. Prokopy, he says, is ill, and has been taken to the hospital. He says he has not enough hands. Don’t cry! See, he’ll be sure to let you come again. He is kind is Osip Abramovich.”
But Petka was not thinking of crying, and still did not understand. On one side there was the fact, the fishing-rod—on the other the phantom, Osip Abramovich. But gradually Petka’s thoughts began to clear and a strange metamorphosis took place: Osip Abramovich became the fact, and the fishing-rod, which had not yet had time to dry, was changed into the phantom. And then Petka surprised his mother, and distressed the master and his wife, and would have been surprised himself if he had been capable of self-analysis. He did not begin to cry, as town children, thin and half-starved, cry; he simply bawled louder than the strongest-voiced man; and began to roll on the ground, as the drunken women rolled on the boulevard. He clenched his skinny fists, and struck his mother’s hands and the ground, in fact everything he came across, feeling, indeed, the pain caused by the pebbles and sharp stones, but striving, as it were, to increase it.
In course of time Petka became calm again, and the master said to his wife, who was standing before the glass arranging a white rose in her hair:
“You see he has left off. Children’s grief is not long-lived.”
“All the same I am very sorry for the poor little boy.”
“Yes, indeed! they live under terrible conditions, but there are people who are still worse off. Are you ready?”
And they went off to Bigman’s Gardens, where dances had been arranged for the evening, and a military band was already playing.
The next day Petka started for Moscow by the 7 a.m. train. Again he saw the green fields, grey with the night’s dew, only they did not now run in the same direction as before, but in the opposite. The secondhand school jacket enveloped his thin body, and from the opening at the neck stuck out the corner of a white paper collar. Petka did not turn to the window, indeed, he hardly looked at it, but sat so still and modest, with his little hands primly folded upon his knees. His eyes were sleepy and apathetic, and fine wrinkles, as in the case of an old man, gathered about his eyes and under his nose. Suddenly the pillars and the planks of the platform flashed before the window, and the train stopped.
They pressed through the hurrying crowd, and came out into the noisy street; and the great, greedy city callously swallowed up its little victim.
“Put away the fishing tackle for me,” said Petka, when his mother deposited him at the door of the barber’s shop.
“Trust me for that, sonny! Maybe you will come again.”
And once more in the dirty, stuffy shop was heard the sharp call, “Boy, water!” and the customer saw a small, dirty hand thrust out to the ledge below the mirror, and heard the vague, threatening whisper. “Just you wait a bit!” This meant that the sleepy boy had either spilled the water, or had bungled the orders. But at nights from the place where Nikolka and Petka lay side by side, a little low and agitated voice might be heard telling about the bungalow, and speaking of what is not, and what no one has ever seen or heard. And when silence supervened, and only the irregular breathing of the children was audible, another voice, unusually deep and strong for a child, would exclaim:
“The devils! May they bu’st!”
“Who are devils?”
“Why, the whole blooming lot, of course!”
A string of cars passed by, and drowned the boys’ voices with its noisy rumbling; and then that distant cry of complaint was heard, which had for long been borne in from the boulevard, where a drunken man was beating an equally drunken woman.
When late at night he rang at his own door, the first sound after that of the bell was a resonant dog’s bark, in which might be distinguished both fear that it might have been a stranger, and joy that it was his own master, who had arrived.
Then there followed the squish-squash of goloshes, and the
