guess who would be with me in my compartment. Then I went out on the platform. Soon the platform grew empty as the passengers took their seats in the train. Only the stationmaster paced slowly over the ice-coated platform, glancing at his watch. At last, he straightened up, assumed a dignified air, put his watch away in his pocket and struck three ringing notes on a brass bell.
I showed the conductor my ticket and scrambled up the steep steps into the warm sooty-smelling carriage. It looked as if no one else would get in and I should have to travel alone. !l walked through the empty carriage to the last compartment and took a seat by the window.
Behind the wooden wall, in the toilet, I thought I heard someone cough, but paying no attention to it, I started examining the cosy compartment, which reeked of tobacco smoke.
What a thrill it had been a few years ago, when we were kids, to climb into the long, green carriages like these standing in the sidings! Why, only a few days ago, if someone had told me that I should soon enter such a carriage as a real passenger, I should never have believed him.
In the hush before the train started I could hear two greasers talking to each other by the station warehouse, then behind the wall someone coughed again, more clearly this time, and at last, from the head of the train came the cheerful whistle of the engine.
It had given a similar cheerful whistle several years ago, when Petka and I had seen Yuzik Starodomsky, 'Weasel,' off to Kiev from this same station. How we had envied Yuzik his long train journey! And now I, Vasily Mandzhura, was setting out on a long journey too!... A jerk.
Gazing out of the window, T watched the places I knew gliding past. How many times had I run barefoot over those paths and tracks! The willow pond near the candle factory flashed by. How dismal it looked in the snow! Nothing like as good as in summer. What big crayfish you could catch under its steep banks with a bit of old meat or a dead frog. Half the pond was overgrown with tall bul-rushes with brown cat's tails on their slender stems.. .
The door behind me gave a loud click.
I turned round.
Within two paces of me, holding a little suit-case, stood —Pecheritsa.
'Now it's all up,' I thought. 'Pecheritsa's found out everything, he knows I'm going to the centre, and he's decided to beat me to it. Now, of course, he'll try to scare me. He may even order me to go back at once.'
In the first shock of meeting, I had not noticed that Pecheritsa had shaved off his moustache. Clean-shaven, he looked younger and not quite so bad-tempered as before. I was very: surprised to see that Pecheritsa was not dressed in his usual clothes. He was wearing an old Budyonny hat with the star taken off and a long cavalry . great-coat that reached to his ankles.
I hadn't the courage to look straight at Pecheritsa for long, so I turned away and pretended to be looking out of the window, now and then glancing at him from the tail of my eye. Huddling against the wall of the compartment, I waited for the questioning that I was sure would come. But glancing over his shoulder, Pecheritsa said kindly, and what was more, in Russian: 'Going far, lad?'
'To 'Kiev,' I lied, making up my mind not to confess on any account. 'Here's a swindler,' I thought to myself. 'He sacks other people for speaking Russian, but as soon as he gets in the train, he goes over to Russian himself! Why should he be allowed to when others aren't?'
'So we're travelling together,' Pecheritsa said calmly.
He raised the top bunk and tossed his little suit-case on to it. Wiping the bunk with his finger to see if it was dusty, Pecheritsa asked:
'Who sent you alone on such a long journey?'
Noticing that he was paying rather a lot of attention to my brief case, I lounged back and, without appearing to do so on purpose, covered it with my elbow.
'I'm going to see my aunt. I've got an aunt in Kiev who's ill.'
'Everyone's getting ill now,' Pecheritsa agreed readily. 'It's a rotten time of the year—spring's coming. I'm not well myself, shivering and coughing all the time. I just don't want to do anything but sleep.' And he coughed.
I realized that it was he who had been coughing and fiddling about there, behind the carriage wall, before the train started.
When his spell of coughing was over, Pecheritsa leaned towards me and asked in an even more friendly tone: 'You're not going to sleep yet, are you, laddie?'
'No, I want to read for a bit.'
'Then I'll ask you a favour, old chap. Here's my ticket and travel warrant. If they come round to check up, just show it to them, will you? I'll get up on my bunk now and have a snooze. Don't let them wake me. If they ask anything, just tell them I'm your uncle and I'm ill and you've got my ticket. Understand?'
'All right,' I said, and taking Pecheritsa's ticket and the travel warrant wrapped round it, I put it away in my jacket pocket.
Pecheritsa climbed on to the bunk, turned his face to the wall and, placing the little case under his head, quickly fell asleep with one hand thrust into the pocket of his long great-coat.
And thus we travelled, my new 'uncle' and I.
Needless to say, I was even rather pleased things had turned out as they had. I congratulated myself for tricking Pecheritsa so cleverly. I had expected him to worry me and keep asking whether I was the delegate from the factory-training school who had been sent to Kharkov; but it had not been like that at all, we had just come to a quiet family agreement. 'Where's he going to, then, the old blighter?' I wondered, glancing up at the belt of Pecheritsa's great-coat dangling from the bunk.
I opened my brief case and took out Voinich's wonderful novel The Gadfly. I had promised myself I would read this book in the train and even make a summary of it, so that I should be able to speak about it at the next 'What new books have we read?' evening at school.
Our Komsomol group often held such meetings. And mock trials were even more popular. Whom didn't we put on trial in those days! There was Vanderwelde, the tricky Belgian Foreign Minister, and Don Quixote who wasted his time fighting windmills, and Lord Curzon who sent all those haughty notes and ultimatums to the young Soviet land...
... I could not read properly. The noise of the wheels put me off. The pencil I was using to make notes kept jumping all over the place. And Pecheritsa's presence did not make things any easier. I wanted to have a peep at his travel warrant, but I was afraid he had not fallen properly asleep.
The inspector did not come round until it was quite dark, after we had passed Dunayevtsy, and as if to show that he was not to be wakened, Pecheritsa started snoring so loud that the inspector could hardly make his voice heard.
The candles had not yet been lighted and only the feeble gleam of the inspector's lantern reached my corner. The inspector pulled out his key and was about to tap on the bunk to wake Pecheritsa, when I said hastily: 'Don't wake him up, he's ill. I've got his ticket. Here you are.'
'Pretty loud snorer for a sick man,' grunted the inspector, checking the tickets.
The conductor standing behind him stared at Pecheritsa's boots.
'Where did he get in?' he said in surprise. 'I don't remember him. I thought you were my only passenger, young fellow. Where did he come from?'
'We've been here all the time,' I mumbled.
'Change at Kiev,' the inspector said curtly and handed me the tickets.
Thinking that there might be a bilker hiding on the upper banks, he swung his lantern up to the luggage rack. The light flickered on the ceiling. There was no one else in the compartment. Having set his mind at rest, the inspector went on down the carriage.
Lulled by the monotonous drumming of the wheels. I dozed off...
A hoarse voice wakened me. 'Have they checked the tickets?'
The train had stopped. A lamp hanging from a post outside shed a greenish light through the carriage window and I could see Pecheritsa's head above me.
'Yes.'
'Then I'll have a bit more sleep. If they come round again, just show them the tickets, old chap.'
I nodded silently, looked at the window for a minute and closed my eyes. It was warm and cosy. The gentle swaying was nice. I lay down on the seat in my chumarka and, putting the brief case under my head for a pillow, soon fell asleep. How long I slept, I don't know. I was awakened by the light of a
