'Pecheritsa?' Petka repeated. 'Look out, Vasil, he's starting again. Where's the thermometer? It's time to take his temperature. Feeling shivery, Sasha, old chap?'
'What thermometer! What do you need a thermometer for!' Sasha gave a positive screech of indignation. 'I'm telling you the truth, you laughing loons!'
'Hold on, Sasha, old pal,' I said. 'Who did you say you saw?'
'Pecheritsa!'
'Really?'
'Of course!'
'Where did you see him?'
'Near the station.'
'Near the station?' Petka asked more seriously.
'Yes, near the station,' Sasha rattled on. 'He was drinking buza.'
This was too much, and Petka and I yelled with laughter.
'Hear that, Vasil?' Petka asked gurgling. 'He saw Pecheritsa, Pecheritsa was drinking buza, and the buza went to this freckle-faced boozer's head, and he's come back here to booze us up too...'
'All right!' Sasha shouted, by this time thoroughly put out. 'If you don't want to believe me, you needn't! But I'm not making anything up. Buza is what people drink round here, it's made of millet. It's on sale at all the stalls. I've tried it, and if you don't know about it, it's not my fault. . .'
Much as we should have liked to spare Sasha's feelings, we could not restrain our laughter.
Sasha was not the only factory-school trainee who had dreamed of catching Pecheritsa. When we set off for our various destinations in the Ukraine, we had made a vow that if any of us ran into Pecheritsa we should not let him slip through our fingers.
But the one among us who longed most of all to nail Pecheritsa was Sasha Bobir. By catching Pecheritsa he hoped to make amends for the unfortunate blunders he had committed back in our town. After a time, our hot- headed Sasha simply started seeing things. He imagined he saw Pecheritsa
everywhere.
On his way here, to the Azov Sea, Sasha had twice been on the point of catching Pecheritsa. Once, when the train stopped at Fastov, Sasha, who was looking out of the window, suddenly shouted hoarsely: 'There he is, chaps! Grab him!' and made a dash for the door.
The man strolling about the platform whom Sasha had taken for Pecheritsa bore little resemblance to the runaway.
He turned out to be a little hump-backed old man in a tarpaulin coat. Only his big ginger moustache made him look anything like Pecheritsa.
In Yekaterinoslav, when we were having dinner in the station buffet, Sasha nearly upset a plate brimming with rich Ukrainian borshch, and croaking 'Look!' pointed with his spoon at the newspaper kiosk.
A man' in a grey rain-coat was buying postcards. This time Sasha had decided that he was Pecheritsa. As soon as the traveller in the grey rain-coat looked up from the kiosk, we -all saw at once that he was a young lad a good head taller than Pecheritsa...
Now, knowing the illusions that Sasha had suffered from the journey, could we be expected to take his words seriously?
I said: 'All right, Pecheritsa was standing there drinking buza. What did you do?'
'I just took a look and dashed back here.'
'Why didn't you grab him? You ought to have grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and laid him flat.'
'All very well for you to talk! What about the things?'
'What things?'
'Our things, of course! I was afraid to leave them. Suppose he ran away and I went after him, someone might have nabbed our stuff.'
'What about Volodya, where was he?'
'I didn't go with Volodya, you see. Another driver brought me here. Volodya let us down.'
'Wait, had he got a moustache?' I asked, deciding to test Sasha.
'A moustache?... No, not a moustache. . . Just little bristles, like a glue brush.'
'He got it trimmed at the barber's to please Sasha,' Petka remarked sarcastically.
'Go on, go on, laugh if you're so cheerful!' Sasha grunted huffily. 'But I'm going to report this to the proper place.'
'All right, give it a rest for a bit, Sasha, old chap,' I said gently. 'Better tell us what you've bought for supper.'
'Here's some goat's cheese,' Sasha said quite subdued, and unwrapped a piece of grease-proof paper in which lay a piece of goat's cheese that must have weighed well over a pound.
'Is that all?' Petka snorted.
'No, why? Here's some fish I brought... Don't touch that, they're radishes. This is the fish.' Sasha unwrapped an oily package. 'Look how small they are!' And he lifted three strings threaded with tiny smoked fish out of an old newspaper. The fish had little fat bellies and were glistening with oil. 'They're called tulka!' Sasha announced proudly, and hung a string of fish on his wrist, like a bracelet.
'Couldn't you have found something smaller!' Petka grunted disapprovingly. 'What trashy stuff!
Who's going to clean 'em?'
'Why clean 'em!' Sasha exclaimed. 'They don't need cleaning. You eat 'em whole. Look, they showed me at the stall.'
Our 'quartermaster' pulled a couple of oily fish off the string and popped them in his mouth. After munching for a bit, Sasha opened his mouth like a conjuror, then boldly swallowed the tulkas, heads, tails, and all.
'You'll be getting appendicitis next!' Petka said. For some reason, Petka was more afraid of appendicitis than of any other illness. He was even frightened of swallowing a cherry-stone.
But Sasha's bold example made Petka forget the illness that threatened him. He carefully broke one fish off the string and started nibbling it.
'Tastes all right. . .' he murmured. 'You can't even feel the bones. Kamsa, isn't it?'
'Not kamsa, tulka!' Sasha corrected him pompously.
' 'Tulka, tulka!' ' I mimicked Sasha. 'You didn't bring back some buza, by any chance?'
'I hadn't got a bottle,' Sasha replied, thinking I was serious. 'But if you want some, we can go and have a glass after supper. There's a kiosk round the corner that sells it.'
'Listen, Petka,' I commanded. 'Buzz downstairs and get some hot water and a bowl from the landlady. We've got to soak the cheese.'
While we polished off the tulka, the marble-like goat's cheese, rid of some of its salt and bitterness by the boiling water, grew soft and very good to taste.
We cut it with an old sheath knife and ate it with our tea.
When we had had supper, we took the crockery downstairs and spent a long time washing ourselves by the well in the yard. Then, refreshed and contented, we climbed up into our attic and lay down on the bulging mattresses.
The window was still open. Outside, it was already dark. Now and then a young moon peeped through the ragged, scurrying clouds and the room grew lighter.
'Isn't it quiet here, chaps?' said Petka, breaking the silence. 'No shooting, not even a whistle. Makes all the difference when the frontier's a long way away! Only a couple of militiamen in the whole town, probably, and I expect they're asleep...'
Maria Trofimovna clattered some pots and pans downstairs. A primus was hissing in the kitchen. Our landlady must be making breakfast for us overnight.
'We're daft, you know!' Petka spoke again. 'When we started at the factory-training school we ought to have all gone in for one trade. Then we'd all be working together in one shop. It'd have been much more fun. Now we're split up...'
And again no one answered Petka. I realized that Sasha, too, who had been making himself out very brave, must be wondering how his work would go tomorrow.
It grew darker and darker outside. Again the sky was wreathed with clouds and the moon showed no more.
