Vsevolod Nestaiko

— —S?.___l-A
r a d u g ^
Vsevolod N estaiko

Illustrations
BY VLADIMIR SURIKOV

RADUGA PUBLISHERS
Moscow
 REQ UEST T O READERS

Raduga Publishers would be glad to

have your opinion of this book, its transla­
tion and design and any suggestions you
may have for future publications.
Please send all your comments to 17,
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Be. HecTaiiKO
TOPEAflOPbl M3 BAOOKOBKH
Ha a H rjiH ficifO M H3biKe

© cocTaB. H3flaTejibCTBO «Pa/ryra», 1983 r.

English translation © Raduga Publishers 1983. Illustrated

P rin te d in the U n io n of S o vie t S o c ia lis t Republics

4803010102-312 5e3 o6t>aBJ1.

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031( 01)—83
 CONTENTS

The Adventures of Robinson Cuckoorusoe

and His Faithful Friend and Classmate Pav­
lik Zavgorodny in School, at Home and on
a Desert Island Near Vasukovka Village 5

The Stranger from Apt. 13 or the Crooks

Track Down the Victim, an Adventure
Story, as Told by Java Ren and Pavlik Zav­
gorodny .......................................................... 131
 Chapter 1

A SUBWAY UNDER THE PIGSTY

“You scoundrel! You good-for-nothing brat! Ivan! Get out

of there! If you don’t, I’ll paddle you so hard you won’t sit
down for a week. Get out! Hear me? Get out!”
We were lying in a patch of weeds behind the shed with our
noses close to the ground, trying not to breathe.
“Get out, you scamp, or you’ll be sorry! You know me!”
“I sure do,” my pal mumbled faintly. He finally got up the
courage to speak. “Grandpa!” he whined.
“Come on out!”
“Grandpa!” he whined still more pitifully. “You go behind
the house, and we’ll come out.”
7
 “You telling me what to do? I said come on out!”
“It was an accident. We wanted it to be a subway. Like
the one in Kiev. We’ll fill it up so’s it’ll be like it was.
And we’ll clean out the pigsty. You just walk away,
Grandpa.”
The negotiations continued for quite some time. Finally, his
grandfather swore at us a last time, was overcome with a fit of
coughing and trudged off behind the house, dragging his game
leg. We crawled out of the thicket. Outside the pigsty the huge
sow Manuna, as spotted as a map of the world, greeted us with
a deep grunt.
“Ah-h, you beast!”
She was the cause of all our trouble.
W’d had a wonderful idea: we’d dig a subway tunnel under
the pigsty. It was to be a great surprise. The first subway line in
Vasukovka Village! There’d be two stations: The Drying Shed
and The Crooked Pear Tree. The fare would be three kopecks
one way, with relatives travelling free of charge, while the math
teacher would have to pay five kopecks.
We’d tunnelled nearly half-way under the pigsty when catast­
rophe had struck: the darn sow Manuna had come crashing
down into the tunnel. She’d fallen in easily enough, but as for
getting out again, that was another matter entirely. She’d begun
squealing so loud my pal’s grandpa’d come limping over. And
then...
We sighed and began filling in the subway, glancing over our
shoulders every now and then to make sure the old man hadn’t
suddenly come back to box our ears, even though he said he
wouldn’t touch us till we’d done the job. But who could tell?
We had to be on our guard. The things he said when he was
pulling Manuna out! It’s a wonder he’d learned all those words,,
for they weren’t in any dictionary, that’s for sure.
However, the old man was nowhere in sight, and so I’ll intro­
duce you to my friend while we’re digging away (and what
a hard, boring and disgusting job it is).
8
 You certainly know there’s an island named Java. It is in the
Indian Ocean. The one that’s Java, Sumatra, Borneo and
Calimantan.
Well, I want you to know that Java isn’t an island. Java is
my best friend. His name is Java Ren.
You’re probably wondering what sort of a name that is,
I mean Java. Well, it was like this. When he was little, not even
a year old, that’s what he called himself. Maybe he was trying
to say his name Ivan. Anyway, Java stuck to him like burrs to
a dog’s tail. And even Valigura, the village militiaman, calls
him that. Actually, Java’s whole family is rather strange.
His father plays the fiddle. Their cow’s name is Contribution.
And old Grandpa Varava (you’re already acquainted with him)
is a rare old hunter. When he’s out hunting he ties a kerchief
over his left eye when he shoots, ’cause his left eye won’t shut if
his right eye’s open. If he shuts his left eye, his right one
closes all by itself. Even so, Grandpa Varava’s a crack
shot.
The city hunters who drive up from Kiev in their big cars just
gasp to watch him. “You’re the all-around champion,
Grandpa,” someone’s sure to say.
Why, even the lake outside the village was named Lake Ren
after Grandpa Ren.
Java’s mother is a deputy of the District Soviet. She’s also in
charge of a team of corn-growers. One day Java had a fight
with his kid sister Irina. He hit her in public, but instead of
bawling she suddenly began to shout.
“Shame on you! Mama’s a deputy! The whole village is
watching!”
She made so much noise that Java didn’t know what to do.
He stood there for a while, and his face was as red as a beet,
and then he tore off down the street.
Actually, that only happened once, because Java’s a rare
person. He’s made of steel. He’s one in a million. As he
said,
9
 “You and me are two fine fellows, Pavlik. That’s the honest
truth. We’ve got imagination. Don’t we?”
“We sure do.”
“Did you hear what Grandpa Salivon said outside the store
yesterday? He said: ‘There’s Java and Pavlik. They sure are
a pair of comedians. First-class pirates, that’s what. What they
need is a good walloping!’”
“That’s what he said. I heard him.”
“That’s what everyone should be saying about us. We want
our fame to ring out all through the village, just like the radio
does on May Day.”
“That’s right.”
So Java kept thinking up all sorts of things to make us
famous.
We caught an owl in the woods and let it out in the com­
munity centre during a lecture entitled “The Children in the
Family.” The lecturer tumbled off the stage, bringing the
pitcher of water down on his head.
“Let’s have a bullfight,” Java said one day that summer.
“What?”
“ Remember that foreign film, ‘The Toreador’?”
“Yep. What of it?”
“Remember, there was that wild bull in the arena, and a man
in a flat hat was flashing a dagger and prancing about in front
of it?”
“Yep.”
“And then zipp! The bull went plunk! And everybody
applauded.”
“Yep. It was great. But you’ve got to kill it. Who’ll let us kill
a head of cattle?”
“You dope. Kill it! What d’you think we’re going to have,
a slaughter-house? It’ll be a show. At the stadium. Like soccer.
The main thing’s to wave a red kerchief around in front of the
bull’s eyes and then dart away in time so’s its horns won’t nick
you. You saw how it’s done. Toreadors are real heroes. What
10
we need is practice. And you’ve got to be brave, and light on
your feet. Understand? We’ll put on a bullfight for the first
time in the history of Vasukovka. Featuring Ivan Ren, torea­
dor, and Pavel Zavgorodny, toreador. People will flock here
from all over the Ukraine. It’ll be broadcasted over the radio
and TV. Even your relatives in Zhmerinka can watch us.”
I thought it over. It really was a great idea. They’d show us
on TV. We’d be on the radio and, in general ... even my rela­
tives in Zhmerinka would see us.
We sat back comfortably and began going over the details.
First of all, we’d need a bull. We rejected the collective farm’s
prize bull Petka, because he was such a monster that even the
vet was scared of him. His eyes were like a pair of tractor head­
lights, and he was as big as a combine-harvester. When he
pawed the ground you’d think it was an excavator. No one’d
come within a mile of him. He even chased one of the summer
residents up a pole. That was why we decided Petka was not
for us. He was for our enemies.
But since Petka was the only bull in the village, our second
choice was the billygoat Zhora. I nominated him just to get
even. I hated that old goat, because he’d chewed my good shirt
to pieces while I was swimming.
But Java was against it. “No, he’s no good. All he ever does
is bleat. Why, we won’t even hear the applause. And then, it’s
a bullfight, not a goatfight. We’ve got to have something big
that has horns: a bull, or a cow.”
“Listen, maybe we can use a cow? After all, there’s no rule
that says it’s got to be a bull,” I said.
“Maybe you’re right,” he said after thinking it over.
“There’s no better cow than your cow Contribution.”
“Why Contribution? Why not your cow Manka?”
“Because Manka has a calf now, and one of her horns is
broken. D’you want everybody to laugh at us? Two toreadors
fighting a one-horned cow! What a laugh! I bet no one’s ever
seen anything like that.”
11
 “We might use Contribution, but she’s a bit psycho.”
“What d’you mean by psycho? Why don’t you say you’re
scared of your ma?”
“Me, scared? I’ll crack you one to show you how scared
I am. Take your words back!”
“Even if I do, you’re still scared.”
“I’m scared?”
“Yes.”
“I’m scared?”
“Yes.”
This was too much for Java. He cracked me one. I socked
him in the stomach. Then we were at each other, falling into
the grass and rolling down to the road where every bit of dirt
clung to our clothes. I was the first to come to my senses.
“Wait! Stop! We’re having a dope fight instead of
a bullfight.”
“It’s all your fault. All right, let’s try Contribution. Your
Manka’ll look funny on TV. She’s so stupid.”
I was just about to feel hurt on Manka’s account, but
changed my mind, because I was tired of fighting.
The next morning we met on the road to the meadow.
I drove Manka ahead of me, and Java drove Contribution
ahead of him. The cows ambled along, swishing their tails
lazily, never suspecting that this was a historic day in their
lives.
Java was wearing his mother’s wide-brimmed hat, the one she
wore to conferences in Kiev. The hat was too big for him and
kept slipping over his eyes. He had to keep tossing back his
head every few minutes to see where he was going, and this
made it look like he was bowing to someone. Naturally, he’d
taken the hat without his ma’s permission.
I had a little tapestry rug rolled up under my arm. It was
a famous rug. I could remember it from as far back as I could
remember, as it’d been tacked to the wall over my bed since the
day I was born. Three cute puppies were embroidered on a red
12
background. They were all in a row with their heads close
together. My ma had told me so many bedtime stories about
them. For the past two years, though, ever since I was grown­
up, the rag’d been put away in a chest, making the puppies
smell strongly of mothballs.
The rug and the hat were part of our toreador outfit. On the
way to the meadow we cut down two hazel switches to use as
swords. Now we were fully equipped. As we walked down
the road, we sang the few lines we knew of the toreador’s
song from “Carmen”. We had no way of knowing what await­
ed us.
The sky above was as blue as a real Spanish sky. The weather
was just right for a bullfight.
We drove our cows to the far end of the meadow where the
pond was, far from any passersby.
“We don’t want Manka to be in the way. You lead her off,
and then we can begin,” Java said.
I didn’t argue, especially since Manka’s a very nervous cow.
She’d be better off not seeing a bullfight.
Java pushed back his hat, pulled up his pants and took my
rug. He danced about a bit and began approaching Contribu­
tion on tiptoe. Then he was smack up against her, waving the
rug in front of her. I held my breath. This was it.
Contribution nibbled away at the grass.
Java waved harder. Contribution paid no attention to him.
Java slapped the rug against her cheek. Contribution turned
away.
Java grunted and slapped her again, hard. Contribution,
shifting her weight lazily from hoof to hoof, turned her tail end
to Java. He ran around and began dancing in front of her
again.
Half an hour later he said, “She’s used to me. She likes me.
You have a try.”
Half an hour later, by which time I was completely out of
breath, I said, “She’s no cow, she’s a hunk of beef. Too bad
13
Manka has a broken horn, or
I’d show you what a real cow
is.”
So Java tried his luck again.
Every now and then he’d
change his tactics: first he’d
tiptoe up and slap the rug
against her all of a sudden;
then he’d come charging up;
then he’d approach from the
side, but Contribution refused to enter into battle.
Our hair was wet from perspiration, as we flapped the rug
around, and the three puppies looked as if they were about to
start barking. Contribution didn’t bat an eye. Once, however,
when Java grabbed her ear her sad eyes looked at him
reproachfully and she said: “Moo-o-o!” Translated from cow’s
language, it probably meant: “Run along, boys, and stop pes­
tering me.”
But we didn’t understand her, not then, and kept goading her
on and prancing about, challenging her to a battle. I could see
Java was ashamed of the way Contribution was behaving.
Finally, he shouted, “Come on, Pavlik! Sock her good! What’s
the matter? You scared? Then I’ll do it myself!” And he kicked
Contribution.
The next thing I knew Java
was up in the sky, and from
where he was I could hear him
hollering: “Oww-w-w!”
He began running while he
was still up in the air. I could
tell, because when his feet
touched the ground he was
half-way to the pond. I dash­
ed after him. It was the only
escape. We tore into the water,
14
sending up fountains of spray and mud, and didn’t stop
going till we’d reached the middle.
Actually, it was stretching things a bit, calling the pond
a pond. At one time it’d really been a big pond, but that was
long ago. All that was left of it now was a very average-sized
puddle. We stood in the deepest spot, up to our necks in water.
Contribution, meanwhile, was running circles around the
puddle, mooing cow-curses at us. She didn’t want to come in
after us, because she was a sort of squeamish cow.
The bottom of the pond was covered with slime, and the
water was dirty and stank. Java and I stood in the dirty puddle
for a long, long time until Contribution finally calmed down
and went away. Actually, she was a very kind and noble cow,
because she’d tossed Java the Toreador into the air with her
head, not with her horns. When we crawled out at last, feeling
miserable and looking as filthy as pigs, she didn’t say a word
about how unkindly we’d treated her, and so the three of us
remained friends.
Java never hit her again after that. In fact, whenever his
mother gave him some candy, he’d share it with Contribution.
That’s the end of the story about his cow.
Now, as we worked away, filling in our subway tunnel, Con­
tribution watched us from the cowshed. She looked very sorry
for us. We even thought there were tears in her eyes. Dear
old Contribution! You’ve a big,
kind heart. You’re the only one
who understands us or who cares
for us. Thank you, dear old cow!
“Not done yet, you scoundrels?”
Grandpa Varava’s voice suddenly
thundered behind us.
We’d forgotten about being vigi­
lant, and this was our punishment.
Ahead was the pigsty wall; dense
burdocks grew to both sides; and
15
Grandpa Varava was behind us. There was no escape. We
crouched like chicks caught in a hawk’s shadow.
“Don’t worry, I won’t touch you.”
The words pulled us to our feet and straightened our
shoulders. The sound of someone pumping a bicycle pump was
just us letting out our breath. Our lips turned up in disgusting,
pleading sort of smiles all by themselves. But Grandpa Varava
paid no attention to them. He didn’t like those kind of smiles.
Grandpa Varava was a stern man. His face was as gray and
mottled as last year’s rotting leaves. His thin lips were turned
down and pressed so tightly you’d think they were clamped
over a mouthful of water. His eyes had no lashes and were as
round and staring as a rooster’s. Those round, unmoving eyes
gave Grandpa Varava a constantly surprised expression. But it
was misleading. There was probably nothing in the world that
could ever surprise him any more, for he was eighty-two years
old.
“That’s enough, you rascals. Go do your homework. You’ve
got an examination coming up.”
We made faces. We knew it without his telling us, but we
didn’t want to think about it. Who’d ever invented exams? And
in the spring time, too, when the air was full of the smell of
soccer and tip-cat, when all the birds were chirping away, and
when it was so sunny and warm that Java and I had already
gone swimming three times. How nice it’d been to be in the
fourth grade last year! Fourth-graders have no exams. We
wished we hadn’t been promoted. We’d never taken any exams
before. This was going to be the first, and though we made-be-
lieve it didn’t bother us a bit, we got a funny feeling inside at
the thought of it. We’d’ve gladly filled in twenty subway tunnels
to be spared that end-term examination.
“Well, that’s all, Grandpa. It’s like it was before, isn’t it?”
Java said uncertainly, tamping down the fresh earth.
His grandfather cocked an eye at our work. We could see he
wasn’t too pleased, but he said,
16
 “All right, get going. But don’t you forget that if I ever catch
you at any mischief again I’ll whack your ears off and toss
them to the pigs!”
He said nothing about cleaning the pigsty, and we didn’t
want to remind him about it, because it was a job that didn’t
appeal to us at all. We squeezed by, with our backs smack up
against the prickly weeds, and the moment we passed him we lit
off, and just in the nick of time, too, for a moment later his
rough hand would’ve come down on our backsides.
 Chapter 2

BEYOND THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

WHO THE KNYSHES WERE

As I live four doors down from Java’s house, a minute later

we were safe in our garden, though out of breath. We sat under
the cherry tree, beside the high wooden fence that separates
our garden from the neighbour’s. We were so sorry our Metro
project was such a flop. But we were never sad for
long.
“Let’s climb the Great China Wall,” Java said.
“Let’s.”
We scaled the fence.
Our neighbour Knysh had built this huge, three-meter-high
fence which Java and I had named the Great Wall of China.
The spot where our old cherry tree touched the fence was the
only place we could climb it. We’d bored two holes in the
planks near the top and often came here to see what was going
on in enemy territory.
You may think we’d been badly brought up and were just
peeping Toms, but we weren’t. You’ve no idea what our neigh­
bours were like. Would good, normal people ever build such
a huge wall to shut themselves off from their neighbours? And
you know why they’d done it? Knysh’s pear tree grew on the
boundary line between our houses, with one branch reaching
out over our garden. The pears that grew on that branch would
fall on our property, and though we always returned them, our
sow would sometimes pick up a few rotten pears by accident
(she just couldn’t understand what belonged to whom). You
couldn’t expect us to keep watch over her night and day.
Anyway, Knysh had built the Great Wall on account of those
rotten pears. Soon after the pear tree went and dried up
anyway.
18
 Knysh’s wife was big and chunky. Her eyes were as small as
button-holes, and her nose was huge and looked like an axe. If
I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes I’d never’ve believed
a woman could have a nose like that.
Knysh, however, had a very small nose, but he was awfully
hairy. His arms, legs, shoulders, chest and back were all
covered with red hair that was as stiff as bristles. There were
even tufts of hair growing out of his ears (we wondered how
any sounds could get through that dense growth). There was
hair growing out of his nostrils, and hair on the bridge of his
nose, and even on the tip of it, too.
Besides, Knysh was always damp, like a damp cellar wall.
His hands were clammy, his neck was damp, his forehead was
moist. Once he clamped his clammy hand on my shoulder and
it felt as cold as a corpse’s. It made me shudder. Brr! Besides,
whenever Knysh laughed his nose wiggled, and his forehead
wiggled (it didn’t crinkle, it wiggled). It was so digusting
it made you want to turn away so’s you wouldn’t have to
see it.
The Knyshes had no children or relatives, either.
Knysh and his wife hardly ever worked on the collective
farm. He said he was an invalid, and there was a scar on the
right side of his stomach. He was always ready to show it to
anyone and to tell them the terrible story of how he’d been
wounded in action, but no one believed him. They said it was
an appendectomy scar, not a wound, and that he’d had his
appendix out when he’d been a boy, which was a long time
before the war.
Knysh’s wife kept talking about how sick she was. She had
some mysterious, incurable disease. She’d tell the neighbour
women about it in a whisper, rolling her eyes when she said: “I
suffer so. Ah, how I suffer.”
However, this incurable disease never stopped her from drag­
ging heavy baskets of produce to market every day or from
drinking denatured alcohol on holidays. “DT” was what the
2*
19
Knyshes called that terrible bluish stuff that came in a bottle
with a skull and crossbones on the label and the word “POI­
SON” written in capital letters underneath. The Knyshes paid
no attention to the label. They had some way of doctoring up
their DT to make it drinkable. Knysh was a great specialist in
the field.
“DT made in Zhitomir is real rotgut, but the one that’s made
in Chernigov is good for your health. It’s the Ukraine’s ‘elixir
of life’. If you drink it you’ll live to be a hundred,” he’d
say.
The two of them, and especially Knysh, were great drinkers.
Knysh drank nearly every day. On holidays, that is, on New
Year’s Day, Christmas, May Day, Whitsunday, Easter, and also
on every other possible day of note such as National Health
Day (the Knyshes never missed a single religious or civic holi­
day) they’d drink together at the table.
On such a day Knysh’s wife would come outside and cross
herself as she looked up at the TV antenna on top of the com­
munity centre. Then she’d go back into her yard, where a table
had been laid under the cherry tree, and the gala lunch would
be under way. An hour later we’d hear the two of them singing
drunkenly beyond the Great Wall, for they always felt like sing­
ing after they’d had a few drinks. They’d sing like that for two
or three hours: old Ukrainian and Russian folksongs, and
modern songs. And then they’d snore right into the evening,
making so much noise you’d think there were two tractors with
their motors running in the Knyshes’ garden.
The Knyshes never invited anyone to these parties. No one
ever visited them, and they never visited anyone. They were so
stingy they were afraid others might see their possessions, and
always played poor.
“I’m as poor as a churchmouse!” Knysh would say. “We live
on bread and water. May I drop dead on the spot if it’s not the
honest truth! We don’t even have anything put away for the
winter.”
20
 And yet, every morning his wife would set out for the mar­
ket, bent double under the weight of two huge sacks in which
there were baskets and milk cans. Their cow was one of the
best in the village.
I once heard the women saying:
“My, the milk that cow gives! It’s marvellous! It’s so thick
you can cut it with a knife.”
“And no wonder: she feeds it bread. She brings back a sack­
ful from town every day. And you know what’s in that sack?
White bread! If I fed my cow like that she’d give nothing but
cream.”
“Humph! But I saw her selling milk at the market. It’s so
watered-down it’s blue. I’ll bet it’s half-water, no less.”
“Why doesn’t the militia get after her?”
“They’ve more important things to do. They’ve got to catch
bandits.”
“Isn’t she a bandit? She’s a bandit if there ever was one.”
Yes, something fishy was going on beyond the Great Wall,
something Java and I had been aware of for quite some
time.
One day we’d heard Knysh saying to his wife in a very mys­
terious sort of way: “There’s going to be a big change in our
lives soon. Remember what I told you? The information’s
right.”
And then one evening after dark two tall men came riding up
on a motorcycle with a sidecar. They loaded something into the
sidecar and roared off. They came back twice again, and each
time it was after dark. Then one day Knysh, who’d had quite
a lot to drink, shouted,
“I’m not one bit scared of Ivan Shapka! Who does he think
he is? He’s no farm chairman, he’s a ... I’ve got him right
here!” At this Knysh held up his fist. “I’ve sent in some infor­
mation about him to the authorities. He’ll soon be kicked out,
just like this!” And he snapped his fingers.
Ivan Shapka, our collective farm chairman, was a very good
21
manager and well liked by all. By all except the loafers, idlers
and drunks whom he’d always called to account. Knysh was
forever sending in complaints about Shapka to the various
authorities, and he always made sure his fellow-villagers knew
what he was up to. He’d open his gate wide, carry a table into
the yard, sit down, tilt his head like a schoolboy, with the tip of
his tongue protruding, and start scratching away with his pen
on a sheet of paper.
“He’s writing another dispatch,” Grandpa Varava would
snort.
Knysh’s complaints never did harm the chairman, but they
made ignorant people fear and respect him, since they thought
that if Knysh could write those complaints it meant he was
a man of power. I knew there was a time when even decent
people were afraid of Knysh and his complaints. That’s why we
felt he was a very strange, mysterious person. However, we
became quite confused after we overheard a conversation one
day.
During the winter vacation our class went to Kiev on an
excursion. On the way to a concert Java and I fell behind “for
a sec” to have a quick look at the Ferris wheel (we wanted to
have a look at it, even though the rides were closed down in
winter). So we dashed off, had a look (what a shame it was
shut down!) and were about to rejoin our classmates when we
spotted Knysh sitting on a bench beside a man we’d never seen
before. Even though Knysh had his back to us and didn’t see us
we recognized him immediately. What a surprise! What was he
doing here in Kiev near the Ferris wheel? We stopped to listen.
This is what we heard:
“That’ll be twenty-five,” Knysh said.
“I can’t give you more than twenty,” the stranger replied.
“D’you know the risk I’m taking? You think I want to go to
jail? Twenty-Five.”
“Listen, let’s both give in a bit: twenty-three.”
“I said twenty-five. I can’t go down. Understand?”
22
 They stopped talking when they spotted a militiaman coming
their way, jumped to their feet and hurried off.
We’d been mulling over the suspicious conversation ever
since.
“What d’you think they were talking about?” Java said, shut­
ting his left eye slowly.
“What could it be?” I replied, shutting my right eye.
“Listen,” Java said, squinting, “what if Knysh is a spy?
What if he was divulging State secrets?”
“If he was, it was awful cheap. Twenty-five rubles for State
secrets ?”
“How d’you know it was just rubles? Maybe it was thou­
sands, or even millions of rubles.”
“You think so?”
“I wouldn’t put it past him. We’ve got to keep an eye on
him.”
“We sure do.”
We began spying on him. Regularly. Nearly every day. So
far, however, our observations had not produced any results.
Knysh pottered around the house, fed his pigs, cleaned the
cowshed, repaired his bam and, unfortunately, did nothing
a spy should be doing. To tell the truth, I was beginning to get
tired of spying on him. I promised myself that this was the very
last time I was climbing the Great Wall.
Once again we saw nothing that was of any interest. Knysh
was busy in his garden. His wife was nowhere in sight. She was
either inside or not at home. After watching through our pee­
pholes for about five minutes, we were about to climb down
when Knysh’s wife suddenly came out of the house and said,
“Go have a look down the street and make sure nobody’s
coming this way. And lock the gate. We don’t want those
snoops to see us.”
We pricked up our ears.
Knysh looked up and down the street, locked the gate and
followed his wife back into the house.
23
 “Hear that? See?” Java whis­
pered excitedly.
I didn’t know what to say.
“But how will we see what
they’re going to do?” Java
wondered. “Maybe they’re
going to sew up their spy
money in a pillowcase, or trans­
mit something.”
“Let’s climb over the fence
and onto the walnut tree next
to the house. We can look into
the window from there,”
I whispered.
“C’mon.”
A few minutes later we were
up in the branches, peering
hard into their window. It was
dim inside, so we couldn’t
make out what was going on there at first. At last we saw
Knysh and his wife at the table. They were eating something
from spoons. We looked again and then at each other in sur­
prise. The Knyshes were eating ... a cake. An ordinary, store-
bought cake with fancy frosting. They were eating it from
spoons, just as if it were cereal.
“There! He sold out!” Java whispered.
“Sold what?”
“Sold out his country, the rat! If they’re shovelling in cake
with spoons it means he’s done it!” His voice left no doubt that
the cake was proof positive of Knysh’s treachery.
We were so excited we never noticed Knysh, who’d come out
into the garden, and only did when he was already on the
porch, rolling himself a cigarette. This was so unexpected
I jumped, making the branch I was sitting on creak. Knysh
spotted us.
24
 “What’re you doing, tresspassing, you little thieves! You
good-for-nothings! Wait till I get you! I’ll yank your legs out of
your pants! Come on down out of there!” He was standing un­
der the tree now, waving his hands so fast he was blowing up
a wind.
Climbing down meant certain death, so we scrambled higher
up.
Knysh stood there below in a rage.
“Grown-ups should be good to children,” Java called down
in a pitiful voice.
“Yes. You should be good to us,” I chimed in. My heart
sank when I heard the branch crack under me.
“All Soviet people love children,” Java went on. “Our
teacher said so. And it says so in the papers.”
“I’ll be so good to you it’ll make your hair stand on end!
You call yourself children? You’re cutthroats, that’s what!
Children like you should be strangled!” Knysh hollered.
That’s when Java said, “Well, you know, we saw you in
Kiev. We heard you haggling
with that man in the park...”
Knysh stopped shouting. All
at once. It was as if someone
had turned off a radio. Then he
muttered something under his
breath and was silent again. He
seemed stunned.
His wife, who’d come outside
at the sound of his shouting,
now stood on the porch and
also seemed stunned for a mo­
ment, but then she began
shouting at him, “Why’re you
pestering the boys? Look at the
poor dears. See how you’ve
scared them.”
“Why, what did I say?”
25
Knysh mumbled. “I wasn’t going to hit them. I just wanted
to scare them, so’s they wouldn’t climb our tree.”
“Don’t be scared, boys. Climb down and run along home,”
she said kindly.
We didn’t have to be asked twice. We slid down, bounded
past the Knyshes and out into the street.
“Well?” Java said.
“See how scared he got when you told him? He clammed up
right away. That means it’s for real.”
“Didn’t I tell you?”
“And she started purring, that old snake, so’s we’d forget all
about it.”
“Well, we’ve got to keep an eye on them. We’ve got to un­
mask them. No matter what. At any price. Never sparing our­
selves. We’ve got to dedicate our lives to it!”
Too bad we couldn’t devote all of our time to unmasking
Knysh just then. We had to be at school that afternoon, and we
hadn’t done our homework yet. We sighed and trudged off to
my house to do it.
 Chapt er 3
THE EXAMINATION

We’d decided to make a submarine from an old, half-sunken,

flat-bottomed boat. Naturally, it was another one of Java’s
ideas.
“We’ll bail out the water, caulk and tar it, and make
a top out of boards. The periscope’ll be here. The hatch’ll be
here. And we’ll need some ballast.”
“What about an engine?”
“We’ll use oars. It doesn’t have to be a speedboat, just as
long as it’s a submarine.”
“How’ll we breathe?”
“Through the periscope.”
27
 “How’ll we surface?”
“We’ll drop the ballast and surface.”

How swiftly the days passed! We’d barely managed to caulk

and tar our submarine (and hadn’t yet made a cover, or
mounted the periscope) when the day of our examination drew
near. It would be the following day. We sat on the bank, boil­
ing tar in a can over a campfire to finish tarring our boat. The
tar cooked and bubbled like hot cereal, while somewhere deep
inside us a premonition of trouble ahead bubbled, too.
“What’s there to worry about?” Java suddenly said, though
I hadn’t said a thing. “I wouldn’t have had time to review the
whole grammar book anyway. What’s two weeks? Who can
learn all that in two weeks? It took people hundreds of years to
think it up. Think of all the men that got bald inventing all that
grammar. And they expect me to learn it in two weeks.”
I was just about to say: “You had a whole year to learn it,”
but didn’t. It was too late in the game now, and I wasn’t such
a smart fellow myself. I hadn’t put much effort into studying
grammar either, so I could very well expect a D tomorrow, too.
An examination was just that, and who could tell whether I’d
come out on top or on bottom?
“Let’s go over a few things, just in case,” I said.
“It’ll only make us more mixed up.”
“I saw Karafolka and Grebeniuchka are studying.”
“So what? They know it all anyway, so they’ve got things to
brush up on. And we don’t know anything, so we don’t have
anything to brush up on. We have to learn it all. And nobody
can learn a whole book in one day.”
I was glad Java was saying “we” . He knew I was always
ready to share everything with him, joys and sorrows alike.
We worked on the boat till late that evening.

28
 At last the great day dawned, the day of our very first exa­
mination. The school was all decked out. There were runners in
the corridors, potted flowers on the windowsills and a red cloth
on the teacher’s table in our classroom. There was even a ban­
ner in the downstairs hall with the word “WELCOME!” on it.
The girls all had on their white school pinafores, and the boys
all looked strangely clean and combed.
We entered the classroom. I had a sinking feeling, just like
I always did before I dived from the willow tree into the river.
We took our seats. There was no hope of cribbing. The bell
rang.
Galina Sidorovna entered. She had a fancy hairdo and was
wearing a silk dress. Nikolai Pavlovich, our geography teacher,
followed right behind her. He was going to be present at the
examination, too.
Galina Sidorovna stopped by the board, clasped her hands as
if she were going to sing (she looked nervous, too) and said,
“Write the words ‘Examination Dictation’, your name and
grade, and ‘Vasukovka Secondary School’ at the top of the
page.”
We bent over our papers tensely and began writing.
The examination had begun.
My classmates breathed hard as their pens scratched away.
I could feel the perspiration trickling down the collar of my
good shirt. What a terror this examination was!
But it was over at last. We filed out of the classroom in
silence. Everyone seemed to be dragging his feet, like after
a two-day hike.
“How’d you make out?” I asked, walking up to Java.
He shrugged. I could see he hadn’t made out very well. All he
could hope for now was help from his mother, the deputy.
We were free to go home, but kept milling about in the
schoolyard. Everyone was anxious to find out how he’d made
out. Galina Sidorovna and Nikolai Pavlovich remained in the
classroom to check our work. Even the school mutt Sobakevich
29
who always raced around in the yard with us now sat silently
by the door and seemed as anxious as we were.
Nikolai Pavlovich had come out to smoke on the porch
twice, and each time he had said, “Are you still here? Go on
home. We won’t tell you anything today anyway. Come back
tomorrow morning.”
Each time we’d stand around for a while, then head for the
gate and then notice that someone’d dropped behind.
“Oho,” each of us would say to himself. “He’ll hang around
and find out his mark, while dopey me will be at home. Not on
your life!”
And back we’d go. At first we just hung around, but then, to
make the time pass more quickly, the girls began playing hops­
cotch, and the boys began playing tag.
Finally the door opened and Galina Sidorovna appeared. We
crowded around her. The boys said nothing, but the girls all
chattered together:
“Tell us our marks, Galina Sidorovna! Please! Please tell
us!”
Galina Sidorovna shook her head. “Tomorrow, children,”
she said, but the girls kept at her.
“Just give us a hint.”
The teacher smiled and said, “Stop it. Calm down. We’ll read
out your marks at the parents’ meeting tomorrow. Everyone’s
been promoted... Everyone except...” At this her eyes came to
rest on Java, and she continued, “Everyone except Ivan Ren.
You’ll have to take the dictation again before school starts in
September. It’s called a re-examination. I couldn’t even give
you a D. You got an F. It’s your own fault. I ’ve spoken to you
about your studies often enough.”
It pained me to look at Java. He was pale and stared at the
ground. Even his deputy mother would be of no help now.
Never before had I seen Java, who was always so independent
and full of fun, look so humiliated and so like an outcast. Every­
one else was excited about having been promoted to the sixth
30
grade, while all he had to look forward to was a re-examina­
tion. I was afraid he’d burst out crying right there and then. He
seemed to be afraid of the very same thing. He spun around on
his heel and tore off. No one ran after him, not even me. What
could I say to him? How could I comfort him? I’d been pro­
moted to the sixth grade, but he had to have a re-examination.
For the first time in our lives our ways had parted. Nothing
until the end of August and his re-examination could make us
equals again. And who could tell how he’d make out in
August? I headed home with a heavy heart, feeling not a bit
happy at having passed the very first examination in my life.
I didn’t see Java again that day and so don’t know how his
parents received the news. Naturally, there was no cake for the
occasion and no records were played. I do know that his
mother didn’t attend the parents’ meeting the next day. She was
probably too ashamed to.
By the way, I got a B for the dictation, and not a C as I’d
expected. I felt hot all over from excitement when I learned the
news. Still and all, my mark for the year was a C. But all the
same, getting a B for the exam was like ... was like winning
a lottery jackpot. I’d never dreamed of such luck. I’d probably
done it on a wave of nervous excitement.
When the first astonishment had passed it suddenly occurred
to me that Java would probably feel hurt when he found out.
I began to feel uneasy, as if I’d done something bad, something
not at all friendly. But it wasn’t my fault. This made me sad,
though I personally should’ve had every reason to be happy:
I’d passed my exam, I’d been promoted, and in two days’ time
I’d be leaving for Kiev to stay with my uncle and aunt for
a whole month.
I’d dreamed of going to Kiev with Java, of us visiting the
Historical Museum and seeing the Cossacks’ arms, and the per­
sonal belongings of Kovpak, Rudnev, Kuznetsov and other
heroes. In a word, of seeing everything there was to see, as we’d
hardly seen anything during our 2-day school excursion.
31
A whole month in Kiev would be great. I’d talked it over with
my father, and my uncle said it was all right if Java came
along, but now... His mother’d never let him go. I was nearly
certain. But what if... I’d have a try anyway.
I went to see Java. He was sitting outside in his yard, cutting
potatoes and beets into a trough for their sow Manuna. It was
the kind of hateful job he always tried to get out of. He sat
hunched over hopelessly, like an old man, cutting up the bumpy
potatoes and the beets with trailing rat-tail roots with a blunt
knife. And his face was so ... was so...
He nodded to me and went on cutting up a beet.
“Java,” I said in a trembling voice, “it’ll be all right.”
“Don’t worry,” he replied softly, never raising his eyes.
I didn’t know what to say and so stood around in silence.
He, too, was silent. Then, with his eyes still on the ground, he
suddenly said,
“Are you going to Kiev?”
“The day after tomorrow. What about you?”
“Me?” he smiled crookedly. “I’m going to Paris, and then to
Rio de Janeiro.”
I shouldn’t’ve asked. Poor Java. Naturally, he wasn’t going
anyplace. And everybody else was. Karafolka, for instance, had
gone off to a summer camp at the seashore that very morning.
Java and I had never been to the seashore. We’d only seen the
sea in the movies. How we longed to go! Imagine the sea, the
white ships, the seagulls crying over the waves, the albatrosses
soaring overhead and a lighthouse beacon winking in the dis­
tance! “East by northeast!” the captain’d shout.
Such was the sea.
Last year we’d run away from home and gone off to sea
twice, but each time we’d been caught at the railroad station.
Karafolka, however, hadn’t had to run away at all. He’d
sailed off grandly in a railroad coach, with a seat by the open
window. And he’d been eating an ice cream pop on the plat­
form just before. I’d seen him.
32
 “The day after tomorrow,” Java said with a sigh. “Well,
you’ll tell me all about it when you get back.” There was this
terrible submission to fate in his words. Could this be my bold,
brave friend Java?
What had they done to him? To a person like him! You’ve
no idea how good he is at tip-cat, how good he is at soccer, or
how bravely he dives into the river from the very top of the old
willow. (I’d like to see any of the honour pupils try that!) Ah,
nobody understands anything!
Grandpa Varava came out of the house and headed towards
the well in their yard near the dip in the fence. He’d not even
glanced at us. As soon as the chain rattled, sending the bucket
down, who should come walking over from the street side
than... Knysh.
“How d’you do,” he said to Grandpa politely, stopped and
cocked an eye at us. “I heard you’ve had some trouble. Bad
trouble, you might say. Your kid flunked his exam. The only
boy in the village who did. My, my!”
Grandpa Varava frowned, but said nothing. Knysh kept at
him:
“What bureaucrats these are, even in the schools. You’d
think it would’ve killed them to promote the boy. They probab­
ly did it on purpose. They know his ma’s a deputy, so they did
it just for spite. If you ask me all school does is ruin a boy’s
health. What’s the sense of it? Some fellows get to be engineers
and don’t own an extra pair of pants, while others can’t even
sign their names, but have full larders. So you see...”
Grandpa Varava pulled up the pail. “Sorry, I’ve no time to
gab,” he said and headed back into the house without even
glancing at Knysh.
Knysh made a sour face and walked off.
What a shame that we had no time for him now that we had
a re-examination to worry about, and that we couldn’t unmask
him then and there. But beware, Knysh! We’ll get you yet!
We’ll uncover the whole plot!
3-344
 Chapter 4

HOW JAVA BECAME ROBINSON CUCKOORUSOE

I set off for Kiev.

What can I say? Naturally, it was a great month. First of all,
I went to the Historical Museum, as planned. I went with my
uncle who told me all about the history of the Ukraine and the
history of Kiev. We spent most of the day in the museum.
I missed Java awfully all that month. I kept thinking about
him and feeling sorry that he wasn’t there with me.
When I was back home again, I said hello to my folks and
dashed over to Java’s house. My heart pounded like
a hammer as I hurried along. I was nervous. After all, we
hadn’t seen each other for a whole month. When I reached the
yard I saw him sitting there outside the house, bent over the
trough, cutting up potatoes, just like he’d been doing the day
before I left. You’d think he’d been sitting out there the whole
month. I cleared my throat. He raised his eyes and saw me.
“Hey there!” I shouted and slapped him on the back.
“Hey there yourself!” he said and pounded my shoulder.
I began telling him all about Kiev. I was impatient to share
all my impressions with him. Somehow, if you don’t tell anyone
about your impressions, you don’t really feel happy. I kept on
talking, and he kept on nodding and saying: “Oh”, “What
d’you know!” , “You don’t say!” , “That’s great” . It was all so
strange to me, because he’d always done the talking, and I’d
always done the listening. That was because he has a better ima­
gination than I. Now everything was the other way around. At
first I got carried away and didn’t notice anything, but after
a while I noticed that he was getting sadder and gloomier. Then
I stopped short, as if I’d tripped. “And anyway ... and anyway
it wasn’t so special. What about you? What’s Knysh been
doing? Did you find out anything else?”
34
 “Naw,” Java shrugged. “I hardly saw him at all.”
“But how about you?”
He shrugged again and turned away. “ Nohow,” he said.
“But still. You went fishing, and played soccer, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“What d’you mean?”
“I didn’t go fishing once. Or play soccer. Or tip-cat.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I am not. Ma won’t let me go anyplace. All I do is home­
work and look after the pigs and the cow. I ’m a real serf. Like
Taras Shevchenko. And I can write a poem like he did: ‘I ’ve
just turned thirteen...' ”
Java sighed. “It’s been hell, Pavlik. I can’t take it any more.
I’m going to run away.”
“Where to?”
“To a desert island.”
“Don’t be a sap! There’s none left.”
“There is so. You just don’t know.”
“How’ll you reach it if we couldn’t even get as far as the
seashore? They’ll nab you at the railroad station.”
“I ’m not going to the station, so they won’t.”
“What’ll you do?”
“I’ll go to the marsh. You know how many islands there are
in the marsh?”
Indeed, I did. Our marsh is famous. It begins outside the vil­
lage and stretches off for many kilometres to the south. If you
go in there you’ll see nothing but reeds as far as the horizon.
There are stretches of water, too, and small islands. Sedge and
willows grow on the islands, but mostly, it’s reeds. There are
narrow, winding lanes cut through the reeds just wide enough
for a row boat to pass. You could get lost in those lanes. That’s
why, during the war, partisans were based here, and the Ger­
mans could never track them down.
Ducks, teal, snipe and wild geese are as thick as flies there.
It’s a hunter’s paradise, a real El Dorado, as Nikolai Pavlovich,
3*
35
our geography teacher and a good hunter, says.
“But how’ll you live there? You’ll die. Remember Gunka?”
Once, long ago, an idiot named Gunka had come to our vil­
lage and settled there. Nobody knew where he’d come from.
He’d go barefoot and hatless summer and winter. The old
women said he was a saint. He never bothered anyone, he’d just
walk along the village street, laughing and grinning. He liked to
wander about in the marsh. He’d be gone for a couple of days
and then show up again, looking hungry and thin. He’d even go
off to the marsh in winter, when the water turns to ice. He’d go
off in a bitter frost and light a huge bonfire on an island, mak­
ing the villagers think the marsh was burning. But then he’d
come back and say, “Whew! I heated the place up real good.
Now the village’ll be warm.” Two years before Gunka had
gone off to the marsh like that and never returned. Maybe he’d
died, maybe he drowned, or maybe he just continued on his
way from there and left the village for good. No one knew for
sure. No one ever saw him again.
“D’you want to get lost for good like Gunka?” I repeated.
“I won’t,” Java said and pulled a book from under his shirt.
“There was this man who lived on a desert island, and nothing
happened to him. He didn’t die.”
“What’s the book?”
“Robinson Crusoe. Ever hear of it? It’s real interesting.”
“But what’s it got to do with the marsh? You’ve got to think
it over.”
“I have. I’ve made up my mind. You know me. I was just
waiting for you to get back so’s we could talk it over. You’ve
got to help me a little bit.”
What could I say? If a person appeals to you for help it’s
piggish to try to talk him out of it.
“You plan to be on that island long?”
“Robinson Crusoe spent twenty-eight years, two months and
nineteen days on a desert island,” Java said and heaved a sigh.
“Wow! How old’ll you be then? Over forty. By that time
36
we’ll be out of school and college, too, Karafolka’ll be an aca­
demician, and Grebeniuchka’ll be an agronomist. I’ll be
a pilot... if I make it. And you...”
“I’ve no choice,” Java said and sighed again.
“But who’ll keep an eye on Knysh? Who’ll unmask him?
Maybe he really is a dangerous criminal.”
Java looked uncertain. I was beginning to feel good, thinking
that he’d back down, but he said,
“I haven’t forgotten anything. You’ll just have to watch him
yourself now and unmask him yourself. I can’t stay here any
more. I just can’t.”
I said nothing. Then, after a while, I said, “Won’t you
change your mind? Maybe you don’t have to run away from
home. Maybe you can get used to things.”
“No, I’m a man of my word.”
“He should drop dead, that Cuckoorusoe, making you want
to run off to a desert island! You mean we won’t see each other
till we’re old men?” I was getting frantic. “Who’ll I play tip-cat
with? Karafolka?”
Java knitted his brows and stared at me. He was concentrat­
ing. After a while he said, “Why won’t we? You’ll be the only
one who knows about the island, and you’ll come to visit me.
Robinson Crusoe wasn’t alone, either. He rescued a savage
named Friday, and the two of them lived on the island, so...”
“So I’ll be a savage,” said I, frowning. “So you’ll be the
great hero... And I’ll be the savage. Some Cuckoorusoe.”
“Crusoe, not Cuckoorusoe. It’s Robinson Crusoe. Under­
stand?”
“He was Crusoe, but you’ll be Cuckoorusoe. The name suits
you fine. Remember that time in the corn?” * I said and
giggled.
So Java, who was really Ivan, ceased being Java and became
Robinson Cuckoorusoe. It must’ve been his fate to always be
known by an invented name.
“What happened in the corn?” you might ask.
* Corn is kukuruza in Russian.-Tr.
 Chapter 5

WHAT HAPPENED IN THE CORNFIELD

One day last spring Java said, “Listen, Pavlik, let’s grow
a new strain of com.”
I stared at him and wondered if he was sick in the head.
“Corn is an important agricultural crop, and growing new
strains is a task of national importance. In general, selectionists
are respected people, just like cosmonauts. Take my mother, for
example. She’s a deputy, and she goes to conferences in Kiev,
and she always sits on the stage at meetings.”
I listened to him talk on and on and finally couldn’t take it
any more. “What an idea! You sure thought of a job of work
for us to do didn’t you?”
He made a face. “You’re such a dope, Pavlik. You don’t un­
derstand a thing. You know what it’d mean to me if I invented
a new strain of com? It’d solve everything! Wow! I wouldn’t
give a damn for grammar then, or for torn pants, either. As
soon as ma’d begin to scold me for a rip, or a tear, or poor
marks in grammar I’d come up with a new strain of com.
She’d gasp and forget about everything else in the world.
You know corn’s her whole life. I’d be out of trouble
forever.”
Most of Java’s troubles, besides grammar, were caused by his
pants, which seemed to fall apart on him. Any new pair, even
of the toughest material, would turn into rags within two
weeks. He was just made like that. He never walked or ran, he
flew. If you could compare him with a plane (that’s because
I want to be a pilot), you could say Java was a jet, doing thous­
ands of kilometres per hour. His trouser legs were the first to
buckle under the strain of such speeds and overloads. They’d
become so ragged on the bottom they had a fringe. Java’d trim
38
the fringe with a scissors. He had to keep on playing the
barber, and each time his pants would get shorter and shorter.
Besides, he was forever getting stuck on something, leaving
a swatch of them on each “something” , until at last there was
nothing left but the belt.
Yes, growing a new strain of corn would solve all his
problems.
“It’s really very interesting,” he said, trying to convince me.
“Maybe we’ll get to be famous. What’s so bad about that!
Everyone’ll know about us. We’ll have our pictures in the
papers.”
“No,” said I. “That’s not for me. I want to be a pilot. And
there’s no such thing as a corn-growing pilot, because com
doesn’t grow in the sky. It’ll have to be one thing or the other.
And anyway, I don’t think we’ll grow anything amazing.
You’ve got to have the brains for it.” At this I tapped my fore­
head. “And it’ll take an awful lot of work. No.”
“You talk too much.”
“And you don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“And you... I spit on you!”
“And I spit on you!”
It was a serious quarrel. However, we made up two days
later. We never mentioned the com-growing project again.
I went visiting relatives in another village, and when I got back
Java was gone. He’d also gone to camp, so we didn’t see each
other till school began in September. By then I’d completely
forgotten about the conversation we’d had.
“You know, Pavlik, I did plant a new strain of corn after
3.11 ^ lie said
I gaped. “You’re ly... Where? How?”
“On my ma’s plot. One day I went up to the attic to look for
the little wheel you gave me. You know, there’s always millions
of dry ears of corn up there. Anyway, I was poking around,
looking for the wheel, when I suddenly came upon this ear. It
was as big and round as a pig. I’d never seen anything like it
39
before. That’s when I got a brainstorm. Why, it was probably
a new strain of com that had grown all by itself by accident,
and no one knew anything about it. Ma probably hadn’t
noticed it. What luck! It was fate playing into my hands. So
I shucked out the kernels. You’ve never seen the likes of them.
If you were hit on the head with one of them it’d leave a bump
this big. Anyway, I sneaked off to ma’s plot, found the best
spot, dug out whatever’d been planted there and planted
a whole new row of my own com. Then I marked the row with
two sticks so’s I’d know where it was.”
“Then what? How’d it grow?”
“I don’t know, ’cause I went off to camp. Let’s go over today
and have a look, huh?”
“All right. ’Specially since they’re going to harvest it in
a week or so, and after it’s in the bin you’ll never find it.”
This conversation took place during recess. When school was
out Java said, “Come on.”
“Let’s have lunch first.”
“Later. This won’t take long. We’ll just take a quick look
and come right back. And you can eat all afternoon if you want
to.”
He was so impatient that I agreed. What if he really had dis­
covered a new strain? So off we went, out of the village and
along the road through the fields. There wasn’t a cloud in the
sky. The sun was shining. It was a warm, pleasant, September
sun. The com grew high along both sides of the road. It was
like a three-meter-high green wall. Surely, it was a bumper
crop. We walked on and on, out of sight of the village.
“How far is it?” I asked.
“Not far. Just a little bit more.”
We walked on for at least another two kilometres after that.
At last Java said,
“Here it is. See the marker?”
A plywood marker was nailed to a stick by the roadside. An
uneven, hand-written legend read:
40
 Com
Bukovina No. 1 var.
Nadezhda Ren
8.5 hectares

“Right. This is it,” I said.

“Come on. We’ve got to go inside and head towards the mid­
dle,” Java said.
We turned off the road and into the com, with Java leading
the way and me bringing up the rear. It felt like we were in the
jungle, that’s how close together and tall the corn stalks were.
We had to part them with our hands to keep them from brush­
ing against our faces, but this was hard to do, because we had
our satchels and they got in the way, catching on the
stalks. I lost sight of Java from the start and could only tell
which way to go by the rustle he was making. After a while,
I called out,
“D ’we have far to go?”
“No. We’re nearly there,” Java called back from somewhere
far ahead. He was a real jet.
“Wait! Don’t go so fast! I can’t see which way to go!”
I shouted. I’d dropped my satchel twice, and the sharp edge of
a leaf had nicked my cheek. “Did you find it?” I shouted after
a while.
“Not yet. It’s very dense here.” He didn’t sound as confident
as before.
“I know. Get down on your hands and knees and crawl,
’cause you’ll never find your markers otherwise.” And I got
down on my hands and knees, gripped the handle of my satchel
between my teeth and began to crawl. I didn’t shout to Java
again, because you can’t do much shouting with a mouth full of
satchel. I kept looking every which way, trying to spot his
sticks, and finally crashed headlong into Java. He, too, had his
satchel between his teeth. We sat down, laid our satchels on the
ground and panted.
“Well?” I said.
41
 “You know, it’s awfully hard to find anything in this jungle.
It’s got to be someplace here, but I can’t find it.”
“Let’s do this scientifically. We’ll comb through the plot.
You crawl one way, I’ll crawl the other, and then we’ll meet in
the middle. The corn’s been planted in squares, so we’ll comb
through it in squares. See?”
Java brightened. “That’s right. I always said you were
a genius, Pavlik. But let’s leave our satchels here, ’cause it’s
hard going, dragging them around in our teeth.”
We left them and crawled off in opposite directions. I kept
my eyes wide open as I crawled along, but though I said it’d be
easy to search in squares, it turned out to be very hard. If
I kept my eyes close to the ground I could just about make out
the squares, but when I raised my head a bit all I saw were
stalks, and I couldn’t very well keep burrowing along with my
chin. I crawled on and on, first along a straight line, then zig­
zagging, till my knees were sore, but I still couldn’t find his
markers. “Ja-va-a-a!” I hollered.
“Here!” he yelled from far away.
“Let’s turn back!”
“All right!”
I started crawling back. It seemed to me that it was taking
me much longer to crawl back than it had to crawl forward.
We should’ve met up long ago, but Java was still
out of sight, and even out of hearing. “Java!” I shouted
again.
“Here!” his voice came to me from somewhere far to the
right.
“Java! What d’you think you’re doing? You’re crawling in
the wrong direction!”
“You’re the one who’s crawling in the wrong direction! I’m
crawling the right way.”
“What the heck! Crawl towards me.”
“You crawl towards me!”
While shouting back and forth like this, we began crawling
42
towards each other. It was taking an awfully long time. Finally,
we met. We were both as mad as hornets.
“Did you find them?” I asked.
“Find them!” he mimicked. “ D’you think I’d ever have come
back here if I did? I’d have called you!”
“All right, I’ve had enough. I’m sick and tired of this whole
corn business. I’m going home. I’m hungry. Where’s my
satchel ?”
“Just where you left it.”
I lay down on the ground to look, breathing in the dust, but
could see nothing. “It’s all your fault. Why’d you have to go
crawling off like that? We lost our satchels on account of you.
We’ll never find them in this jungle.”
“It is not my fault. You crawled off like a blind kitten, going
every which way, and got all our tracks mixed up.”
“Listen, we’ll fight later. Let’s find our satchels first.”
So we crawled off in search of them, keeping close together,
with my hand on Java’s foot as an extra precaution. Half an
hour later we realized that it would be no easier to find them in
the dense corn-forest than it had been to try to locate the two
little sticks Java’d used as markers. My knees were burning.
When we finally stood up we nearly toppled over, because our
legs were numb and buckled under us.
“Listen, Java, to hell with them. Let’s go home. We’ll have
lunch and come back later. I’m so hungry I can’t even think
straight. There’s this buzzing sound in my head all the
time.”
“All right,” he said quickly. “I feel like my stomach’s stuck
to my backbone. That’s probably why we can’t find them,
’cause we’re so hungry. After we have some lunch we’ll find
them in a jiffy, and my markers, too. Come on.” He set off con­
fidently, leading the way. Despite our aching knees, we were
nearly running. The corn leaves slapped painfully against our
hands and faces, but we paid no attention to them. We were
starved. The going was getting harder all the time.
43
 “Java,” I panted, “don’t
you think we’ve been walking
for an awfully long time?”
Java said nothing.
“Where’s the road, Java?”
I said a while later, panting
still harder.
Java said nothing.
“We’re going the wrong
way, Java!” I shouted gasp­
ing for breath.
Java stopped. “Well, d’you
know which way to go?”
“No,” I said, swaying
from fatigue. “You got me
here, you get me out.”
Java sank down to the
ground. “I would,” he said,
taking a deep breath and
then stretching out, “I would,
if you hadn’t gotten me all
mixed up. Now I don’t
know.”
“What don’t you know?
What don’t you know, yo u -
y o u -”
“I don’t know which way
to go, that’s what. This field
stretches off till nowheres. If
we go the wrong way we can
keep on for days and still
not come out. We can get
lost here forever.”
“What? Are you nuts?
The corn’s not a forest and
44
it’s not the marsh. You can’t get lost in a cornfield. Get up
off the ground and lead me out of here this minute! I’m
hungry! Hear me? I’m hungry!”
“Then get out of here yourself if you think you can’t get lost
in a cornfield.”
“What d’you mean, myself? Your ma’s a corn-grower, not
mine. My ma’s a milkmaid. I can lead you out of a cowshed
with my eyes shut.”
“ Let me rest a while. Look at you, all ready to bawl. And
you say you’re going to be a pilot! You’re no pilot, you’re
a cry-baby. You’re corn mush, that’s what you are.”
We certainly would have lit into each other if we hadn’t been
so exhausted and if our situation was not so terrible. We had
no right to waste our energy on internecine warfare. I heaved
a sigh and stretched out beside Java. That’s when I suddenly
had an idea.
“What if we climb up and have a look around?”
“Climb up? You think these are trees? This is corn. A cereal
crop. I never heard of people climbing cereal crops.”
“So what? See how strong it is? Just like bamboo. Maybe
it’ll hold out.”
“Go on and try if you want to.”
“You try. You weigh less. And your pants are shorter, and
you’ve got less buttons. I’ll give you a boost.”
At first Java balked. He was probably mad because it was my
idea. He was used to being the great brain. Then he shrugged
and said, “All right, let’s give it a try.”
We chose the tallest, thickest stalk. I braced my back against
it and interlaced my fingers to make a step for Java’s foot.
“You lean on me and just hold on to the stalk to keep your
balance,” I said.
“I know,” he said and began clambering up me. His knee
was on my shoulder, his hands were on my head... Oww! One
of his shoes grazed my nose, but I suffered in silence. His other
shoe was pressing into my shoulder, with the heel crushing my
45
collarbone. I began to sway. My knees trembled and began to
buckle.
“Hurry! I’m going to fall!”
Something cracked, snapped and screeched. It was like
a bomb hitting the cornfield. I lay there with my nose in the
dirt, sand in my mouth and ears. I spat it out and shook
myself, rubbed my eyes and yelled, “Where are you? Are you
alive?”
“Yeh... Ahchoo! I am.” Java’s head appeared from under
a pile of broken stalks.
“See anything?”
“Nope. Nothing but corn tassles.”
I looked up at the sky and said to myself: “What a joke.
Cosmonauts fly around among the stars, way high up in the
sky, hundreds of kilometres from the Earth, and nothing
happens to them. And here we are, perishing in a cornfield.”
Aloud I said, “This is crazy, Java. This can’t be true, ’cause it’s
impossible. Nobody in the world ever got lost in a cornfield
before. We just went the wrong way. I remember when we
started out the sun was shining on our backs. Let’s turn back.”
At first Java looked at me suspiciously, but I must’ve spoken
very convincingly, because he got up and said, “Who knows?
Maybe you’re right. Let’s go.”
And we trudged off. How hard the going was! How hard it
was! Our feet felt as if they were made of wood, and we had to
set one before the other with great effort, as if they were stilts.
Why had we wasted so much time and energy crawling around?
It was difficult to say how long we stumbled along: half an
hour, an hour, or two hours, or how far we had come: a ki­
lometre, two,. or ten. I could take it no more.
“I’m all in, Java. I’m going to drop any minute. Let’s rest up
a while.”
We stretched out on the ground again and lay there for quite
some time. It was very still. The only sound we heard was the
rustling of the rough corn leaves all around us. A bobwhite
46
cried out far away, and then all was still again. We couldn’t
even hear the grasshoppers chirring.
“What if we never get out? Nobody knows we’re here.
They’ll never find us. And we’ll die. And in two weeks from
now the combine will harvest our bones together with the
corn,” Java said in a hopeless voice.
“We should’ve at least had lunch. Then we could’ve held out
longer. This way, we’ll die by tomorrow morning.” The very
thought of lunch made me so hungry I nearly burst into tears.
“I was going to have beet soup and meatballs for lunch
today,” Java said sadly.
“And we were going to have soup with dumplings and fried
chicken,” I said, barely able to hold back my tears. I’d come to
the end of my rope. “Let’s call for help, Java.”
But Java was more courageous than I. “You want everybody
to laugh at us? Two big kids like us, screaming for help in
a cornfield in broad daylight?”
“So what? Just as long as somebody shows up to do the
laughing.”
“No. If that’s how you feel, let’s sing something.”
“All right.”
We began to sing the first song that came to mind. For some
reason or other it was a song from a cartoon.
“A grasshopper in the grass...” Java sang mournfully.
“A grasshopper in the grass...” I chimed in, still more
mournfully.
We sang on for a long time. We sang nearly every song we
knew, and the mournful ones that started with the word “Oh”
sounded best: “Oh, There’s a Grave in the Field”, “Oh, How
Wretched I Am” , “Oh, Don’t Shine Down, Moon”, “Oh, Flow
Softly, River” and “Oh, I’m All Alone” .
We bawled those “Oh’s” as if someone was knifing us and
also did very well on a song entitled “Vast Is the Sea” , and
especially on the stanza beginning with the line: “/« vain does
the mother await her young son”. We sang the song three times
47
through, and every time we got to the words “in vain” a lump
rose to my throat. At last we got so hoarse we had to stop sing­
ing. We lay there grief-stricken and faint with hunger and sing­
ing. I put my hand in my pocket mindlessly and my fingers
closed around something hard. I pulled it out. It was a candy
I’d forgotten about! Besides, it was a peppermint. That meant
we wouldn’t feel so hot. “Look, Java!” I croaked.
Java glanced at it. “Just one?”
“Yep.”
The candy had gone soft around the edges, and the wrapper
was stuck so hard I couldn’t even pull it off with my teeth. In
better days I’d’ve just chucked it away, but now it was a trea­
sure. I bit it in half carefully, but didn’t do a very good job of
it, because one half was bigger than the other. There was no
sense trying again, as it would simply crumble. I sighed and
offered Java the bigger piece.
“Why? Give me that one,” he said.
“Go on, take it. You’re hungrier than me.”
“How come?”
“ ’Cause I had a big breakfast. Scrambled eggs, sausages and
a glass of milk.”
“Me, to o ! I had a pile of meat and potatoes, and tomato and
cucumber salad. That means you’re hungrier than me. You take
it.”
“No. I forgot to say I had a whole apple pie and a saucer of
jam. You take it.”
“And I had two pies, and a pitcher of milk, and cottage
cheese, and sour cream, and...”
“And I had meat patties, and over-ripe pears, and...”
Our breakfasts kept growing bigger and bigger. This competi­
tion in nobility ended with Java biting a little piece off the big­
ger half very neatly so that the two were now even. We began
sucking the mints, drawing out the pleasure, but a few minutes
later not even a taste remained in our mouths. We were hun­
grier than ever. And thirstier. Especially thirstier. We soon for­
48
got all about our hunger. All we could think of was water.
Now, we were feeling really wretched. Our parched lips could
barely move. The sun was setting. Evening would soon be upon
us. A long night loomed ahead. Could we last till morning?
“Forgive me, Pavlik, if I ever hurt you,” Java suddenly said
tenderly.
He was bidding me farewell.
“And you forgive me, Java, my friend,” I said hoarsely.
Everything swam before my eyes at the thought of how stupidly
our young, beautiful lives were ending. We turned away from
each other and sniffled, dropping hot tears upon the dusty
ground in expectation of our last hour. I felt pins and needles
in my left leg (probably because I was lying in an awkward
position). “Oh. One of my legs is going dead. That means the
end is near,” I said to myself and sniffled louder.
All of a sudden a voice boomed out: “This is Kiev. The time
is 6 p. m. You are tuned to the evening news.”
We revived instantly.
“It’s the PA system in the village, Java! We’re saved!”
I yelled.
“Come on, let’s run while it’s on! If they turn it off we’ll be
lost again!”
And we streaked off, so fast the wind whistled in our ears.
We had not gone very far when Java tripped and fell, and
I came crashing into him. We sat up in a daze and saw our sat­
chels. It was just like a fairy-tale. We laughed hysterically.
When we reached the village Java said thoughtfully, “You
know, a radio’s really something.”
“So’s corn.”
 Chapter 6

WE SEARCH FOR AN ISLAND

Now you know why Java was really Robinson Cuckoorusoe.

Fate intended him to bear this name.
“You mean you want to run away to a desert island today?”
I asked.
“Humph! Today!” Cuckoorusoe said grumpily, “First I’ve
got to pick the right kind of desert island and get everything
I need, and then I can run away.”
“What’s there to pick? Take any old island and live there.”
“It’s all the same to you, but I’m going to be living there
twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days. Think it’ll be
easy?”
“You got me wrong. Sure you can pick the one you want.
Right now, if you want to.”
“We’ll wait a bit. In an hour from now. After Grandpa goes
to the store.”
“What’ll you tell your folks before you run away? They’ll be
worried. They’ll have the whole village out looking for you.
I can just imagine it.”
“Well, I won’t say: ‘Dear folks, I’m running away from
home to live on a desert island. Be well, and write to me.’ I’m
not that dumb. That’s not the way people run off to desert
islands. And anyway, I won’t have to tell my folks anything.
Ma’s going to a conference in Kiev tomorrow, and she’ll
probably be there for a week. Pa’s taking a course in the di­
strict centre, so that leaves Grandpa. I’ll think of something to
tell him. Maybe I’ll tell him I’m going to Peski to visit my aunt.
My sister’s staying with her now. I’ll think of something so’s he
won’t raise an alarm.”
“But then what? I mean, when your ma gets back and they
see you’re gone?”
50
 “I don’t care. They can look for me all they want to, as long
as they don’t find me. Remember how they searched for Gunka
for three whole days and then stopped? And that was all.
Hardly anyone ever talks about him now. It’ll be the same
when I’m gone.” The thought that he’d soon be forgotten by all
was probably a bitter one, and he quickly changed the topic of
conversation. “The main thing is to find a good island where
the fishing’s good and the hunting’s good...”
“You mean you’re taking your gun?”
“Sure. Robinson Crusoe had a couple of guns. But I’ll
manage with one. You know my shotgun. It’s much better than
Grandpa’s German one.”
He was exaggerating, of course, but I didn’t argue. Here he
was, running away to a desert island for twenty-eight years, so
he might as well have it his way.
The year before his grandfather had given him a shotgun for
his birthday and had begun taking him along when he went
hunting. Java was very proud of his single-barrelled gun and of
the fact that he went hunting like a grown man. I envied him
and dreamed of owning a shotgun, too.
Someone coughed inside the house. The door creaked open
and Grandpa Varava came out into the yard. He flashed an
angry look at us and said, “I’m going to the store for a few
minutes, and I don’t want any monkey business. Hear me?”
“We’re not doing anything. Maybe we’ll just go for a swim,
’cause it’s hot,” Java said in a wheedling kind of voice.
“You’ve got lessons to do, so forget about swimming, you
loafer,” the old man snapped and climbed over the dip in the
fence with a grunt.
I looked at my friend doubtfully.
“Don’t worry, we’ll go,” he said softly. “I know him. He’ll
see Grandpa Salivon there, and they’ll sit around yakking for
hours. Help me finish up the beets. Then we can go.”
We quickly cut up the remainder of the beets, dumped them
into the pig’s trough and set out.
4*
51
 Although there was nothing strange about us paddling in the
marsh (we’d done so many times before when we went fishing,
or just for the fun of it), this time we crept stealthily towards
the river, glancing back, over our shoulders ever so often. We
didn’t take a single one of the good boats, though they were all
tied up on the bank and we were allowed to take them. There
was my pa’s boat and Grandpa Varava’s three boats (two flat-
bottomed ones and a canoe). Instead, we undressed and swam
across to a little sandy island where, hidden behind a large
pussy willow bush, was an abandoned old wreck of a flat-bot­
tomed boat. We’d intended to make it into a submarine, but
never did. However, as you recall, we’d caulked and tarred it
just before our exam, and though it still leaked, it wouldn’t sink
if we remembered to bail out the water. In fact, it’d be quite
seaworthy. There was a long cracked paddle under the boat.
We’d “borrowed” it from Grandpa Varava. He’d never miss it,
as he had about a dozen paddles in his shed, short ones for the
canoe and long ones for the flat-bottomed boats. It took know­
how to paddle, and if you didn’t know how, you could easily
turn over and become fish food. But Cuckoorusoe and I had
known how to paddle ever since we were babies, so it was no
problem to us.
“Don’t forget the can, or you’ll have to bail with your
mouth. The old wreck still leaks,” said Java.
We pushed off into the river, rounded an island and entered
the reeds, moving along a narrow lane. Cuckoorusoe paddled.
I might’ve, too, but he was better at it. He paddled slowly and
carefully, keeping his eyes peeled on the winding, twisting strip
of water. A sharp shove would send the bow deep into the
reeds, and it was some job to back out again.
Cuckoorusoe was a good oarsman and never cut into the
reeds.
I lay in the bow, gazing at the water. It was so clear I could
see the bottom: the water weeds, the roots of water lilies,
sunken trees and fishes darting about. It was fascinating.
52
 We headed farther and farther into the marsh. Suddenly we
turned a bend and came upon a broad, open stretch of water.
Its surface was as smooth as smooth could be. There were white
and yellow water lilies floating in little clusters, just like on the
pictures for sale at the market, except that here there were two
canvasbacks swimming around instead of white swans. The
moment the ducks saw us they disappeared, diving so quickly it
made you wonder whether you’d actually seen them at all. Then
they reappeared again about twenty metres away, making you
think it was another pair.
We soon entered another lane in the reeds Swoosh! Swoosh!
Some ducks flashed by. The hunting season had not yet begun.
That’s why the ducks, who’d never heard the sound of shot,
were flying overhead.
“Too bad I didn’t take my gun,” Cuckoorusoe said.
“Yea.”
The marsh was indeed a hunter’s paradise. I could imagine
how many hunters there’d be the first day of the season. And
those four men would come from Kiev again, the ones that
came every year and stayed at Grandpa Varava’s house. One
was very tall and wore glasses. His name was Oleg. Then there
was the short one named Sidorenko. And the broad-faced,
nearly bald one whose name was Zadvizhka. And fat Batiuk,
who had no hair at all. They were all some kind of scientists.
According to custom, the night before the opening of the
hunting season they’d sit around drinking vodka, telling tall
tales, singing and kidding each other. At the crack of dawn
Grandpa Varava’d wake them up. They’d scramble into their
hunting duds, wince and moan, since they’d all have hangovers,
and shiver in the cold. Batiuk, as always, would say he wasn’t
getting up. He’d pull his hat over his face and mumble in
a hoarse and sleepy voice,
“Go back to sleep. What’d you all jump up for? It’s the mid­
dle of the night. We just went to bed...” and he’d start snoring
again.
53
 They’d keep on shaking him till he’d kick out and yell: “Go
on! I’ll catch up with you.” At last, he’d cufse and get up.
Then they’d set out for the marsh, with Grandpa in the canoe
and the rest of them in the flat-bottomed boats. Grandpa’d
have to stop and wait for them every few minutes, because in­
stead of moving forward they’d be moving in jerky zig-zags: if
they paddled from the left the boat would shoot off to the
right; if they paddled from the right it would shoot off to the
left. And so it was at every stroke, while Grandpa’s canoe
moved along a straight line. Oh, what a canoe he h ad ! It was as
light as a feather and skimmed across the water like a gull. Like
the new hydrofoil boats. Still, there was hardly a person alive
except Grandpa Varava who could keep his balance in it, for it
was as wiggly as an eel. Paddling in his canoe was like walking
a tightrope: you had to think about keeping your balance every
single second.
The year before a whole slew of hunters had arrived for the
first day of the season, and all the boats were taken. The four
scientists from Kiev didn’t arrive till late at night, and so there
was no boat for them, nothing but Grandpa Varava’s canoe.
“The canoe won’t take two grown men nohow. It’ll sink,”
Grandpa said. “I’d take you to your stations if it’d hold two.”
“We can go one at a
time,” said Zadvizhka.
“Right,” said Grandpa.
“But how d’you think we’ll
get the canoe back each
time?”
“Hm,” said Zadvizhka.
“What if we get the boys
to help us?” Oleg suggested.
“I don’t want you to drown
my boys,” Grandpa muttered.
“They won’t! You’ll see!”
I cried. “We’re light. We’ll
54
ferry them across. And even if we turn over, you know we
can swim like fishes.”
“Well, maybe we’ll give it a try,” Grandpa said. “But strip
down to your trunks, boys, because I think you’re going to get
a ducking.”
As I was the first one out that morning, I was the first to be
ferryman. I ferried Oleg, though that’s not really the word for
it, since we turned over right by the bank, before we even nosed
into the river. He’d just gotten in and was settling down when
we turned over, and though it was very shallow by the bank, he
managed to go under.
“That damn canoe! It’s a man-trap, that’s what it is!” he
sputtered as he climbed up onto the bank.
His friends laughed. Sidorenko, who drawled when he spoke,
said,
“Ca-a-n’t sit still! You’d think you had a-ants in your pa-
a-nts! Let me get in.” And he climbed into the canoe.
“Sit right down on the bottom,” Grandpa said.
But there was water on the bottom, and Sidorenko didn’t
want to get his pants wet. “I don’t want to end up with lum­
bago,” he said, put a board across the sides and sat down.
Grandpa steadied the canoe while we got settled. Then he
shoved us off. I began paddling slowly. We were on our way.
Sidorenko sat up as straight and stiff as the best pupil in our
55
school. He held his gun out in front of him with both hands,
balancing like a circus tightrope-walker.
“He’s sitting very still. We’ll make it,” I said to myself. We’d
just reached the middle of the river when three ducks swooshed
overhead. Sidorenko jerked up his gun (he was a hot-blooded
hunter), but never fired a shot, as we were now offbalance and
tilting sharply.
“Watch out!” I shouted. “We’re turning over!”
His hand went Slap ! Slap! Slap! on the water, but who could
ever grab hold of water for support? Kerplunkl The last thing
I saw was a pair of new rubber wading boots flashing through
the air and disappearing beneath the surface. The moment
I found myself in the water I bobbed up again and grabbed
hold of the overturned canoe. A moment later Sidorenko’s head
appeared. I couldn’t see his face, because his wet hair was plas­
tered to it.
“My gun!” he gurgled and disappeared again, like a float
when a fish is biting. Then he popped up again, and gurgled:
“My gun!” again and disappeared again.
“What’s up?” the men on the bank shouted cheerfully.
“I think he drowned his gun!” I shouted.
At this Sidorenko popped up for good, spat out some water
and bellowed, “It’s go-o-ne! It’s pri-ice-less!”
We barely made it back to the bank. I pushed the canoe and
the paddle, and he... I was afraid he might drown himself, what
with being so grief-stricken. He kept moaning as he swam,
“O Lord! What a gun! What a gun!”
“Never you fear. We’ll find it,” Grandpa Varava said, trying
to comfort him when we’d climbed out again. “The boys’ll dive
for it and find it.”
Java and I swam out to the middle of the river and started
diving, but we couldn’t find it. The bottom was covered with
silt, and the gun had sunk into it. It would never be found.
Grandpa Varava’d been trying to comfort Sidorenko, but
when we got back empty-handed, he got mad at him, as if
56
Sidorenko’d lost Grandpa’s gun. “Why’d you jerk like that?
Huh? You should’ve sat still. If you were being ferried, you
should’ve sat still. But no, you wanted to get some ducks. You
wanted to be the first. No one’s fired a shot yet, but there you
were, hopping around. What a gun you lost! You can’t be
trusted with a good gun! You should be shooting a cap pistol,
that’s what!”
Sidorenko looked awfully ashamed, but he didn’t try to jus­
tify himself. He wasn’t even angry at Grandpa for scolding him
(an important scientist!) as if he were a schoolboy. When they
were out hunting and Grandpa got excited he’d often holler at
them or make fun of them, but they never got mad at him.
They couldn’t afford to, because Grandpa Varava knew the
marsh like the palm of his hand. During the war he’d been the
partisans’ guide. They called him “ our chief pilot” . All the
hunters knew that if they were in Grandpa’s party they’d never
come back without a good bag.
The hunters from Kiev would surely come to stay with
Grandpa Varava again this year. No doubt about it.
“Listen,” I said, gazing into the water, “d’you think a gun’ll
be ruined if it’s been in the silt for a couple of years? Or d’you
think after you oiled it, it’d be good again?”
“It can lie in the silt a thousand years, and nothing’ll happen
to it. What d’you think archeologists would do if nothing was
ever preserved in the ground or under water? They’d all be out
of a job, that’s what.”
“I wish we could find that gun. It’s a rare gun. Champions
fired it at shooting contests. You think he moaned about it like
that for nothing?”
“You’ll never find it, ’cause it’s been sucked down into the
silt. You’d have to drain the river to find it. Maybe archeolo­
gists’ll find it in three hundred years from now, but they’ll
never know we saw it sink and dived after it.”
“And nobody’ll ever know that you ran away from home to
57
live on a desert island and lived there for twenty-eight years,
two months and nineteen days. Maybe the island’ll even disap­
pear by then.”
“Don’t worry, it’ll be there.”
We had again reached a rather large stretch of water, so large
there were little waves and whitecaps on it (a wind had just
blown up), just like in a real sea. This was the fifth large area
of water we’d come to, and we’d already passed nearly a dozen
little islands. Each time I had said: “How about this one? See
what a nice desert island this is? What else d’you want?” But
Cuckoorusoe had his own opinion on the subject, and none of
the islands suited him. There were various reasons for this. One
island was too small. Another was too densely covered with
reeds near the banks, making it hard to reach the water.
A third was treeless. How would he make a campfire if he had
no firewood? And so on.
We’d just reached another island. It looked like a green hill,
because it was covered with tall bushes, weeping willows and
poplars, and there were gaps in the reeds that grew on the
banks. Three sides of the island faced on clear water.
“I think this is it,” Cuckoorusoe said. “Let’s dock here.”
“Right!” I said happily, for I’d gotten pretty tired of
searching.
We nosed into the bank. It was a wonderful island. You’d
think it was just made for the kind of project Cuckoorusoe had
in mind. There were lots of trees and brushwood to last for
exactly twenty-eight years. Ducks were quacking in the reeds.
That meant the place was teeming with waterfowl. Fish
splashed around near the bank, just waiting to become
chowder. The clearing in the middle of the island was big
enough to play soccer in, to say nothing of tip-cat, and the
branches of a huge weeping willow that grew at the edge of the
clearing reached down to the very ground. This was a fine place
to find shelter from the rain even if you didn’t have a tent. But
Cuckoorusoe’d have to build a brushwood tent.
58
 “I’ll help you make a tent,” I said. “You know I’m good at
it.” It was the honest truth. None of the village boys was better
at tent-making than me. My pa’d taught me, and he’s a car­
penter. He built half the houses in our village.
Cuckoorusoe looked doubtful. “Robinson Crusoe did every­
thing himself. He landed on a desert island all by himself, you
know.”
“He was Robinson Crusoe, but you’re Cuckoorusoe,”
I objected. “Everything doesn’t have to be exactly the same.”
As I was anxious to help my friend and Cuckoorusoe didn’t
argue the point, I took my large, wooden-sided penknife from
my pocket and began cutting willow whips. I like my knife very
much and always keep it in my pocket. That’s why the wooden
sides are so polished they look like they’ve been lacquered.
Cuckoorusoe helped me, carrying out my orders, accepting
my leadership in the project. He brought me whips, cleared
a space for the tent and sharpened the ends of the sticks for the
frame. In a word, he did all the dirty work.
Some time later we had a fine tent under the old willow. It
was spacious and strong enough to weather any storm or hurri­
cane, and so cozy I would have loved to live in it myself. I was
very pleased with the results of my work. “You won’t have to
repair it even once in twenty-eight years. I’ll give you a guaran­
tee,” I said.
We suddenly recalled that Grandpa Varava was probably
back from the store by now and set out for home in a hurry.
We pulled up to shore, hid the boat, and dashed off to Java’s
house. The old man hadn’t yet returned. Cuckoorusoe was
right: Grandpa Varava’s “a few minutes” usually meant a few
hours.
“Well, since Grandpa’s out, I can pack everything I’ll need
now,” he said. “We’ll pack today and put everything in the
boat. And tomorrow...”
“You mean it’s going to be tomorrow?”
“What’s the use of putting it off? M a’ll be back in a few
59
days, and that’ll complicate everything.” He was walking up
and down the room looking thoughtful as he pondered over
what he’d need. “First of all, I’ll need a wooden spoon.” He
found a nicked old spoon in the sideboard and stuck it under
his belt. “And salt. I’ll be a goner if I don’t have any salt.” He
poured half a package of salt into a piece of cloth and tied it
up. “And bread.” He looked sadly at the hard crust lying on
the table. “It won’t be enough.”
His grandfather had gone to the store for bread.
“I’ll bring you some. Some bread and some crackers,”
I offered.
“What about tea?” He fingered a packet of tea. “No, I’ll
manage without it, or I’ll have to take the teapot. We only have
one.”
“Don’t forget your flashlight. It’ll come in handy.”
“I know. It’s something I’ll really need.” He walked across to
the door and picked up the axe that was standing upright in the
corner. “And I’ll need at least two axes. Robinson Crusoe had
twelve.”
“What’d he do with all those axes? Juggle them? Why’d he
need so many? That Robinson sure was a freak.”
“You think you’re so smart.” Cuckoorusoe sounded
offended. I’d just slighted his idol. “Pipe down. You never lived
on a desert island.”
Just then the door opened and Grandpa Varava came in.
Cuckoorusoe froze, axe in hand.
“Ah,” Grandpa Varava said calmly. “Were you getting ready
to hack up the furniture? Go put it back where you got it.”
“I was ju s t- uh- uh- showing Pavlik our axe. He says theirs
is better. Isn’t ours better, Grandpa?”
His grandfather said nothing. We slipped by him and out of
the house.
“That sure was a close shave!” Java gasped when we reached
the far side of the shed. “How come we didn’t hear him
coming?”
60
 It really was strange and could only mean we’d been comple­
tely carried away, because you could hear Grandpa Varava
coming a long way off. You’d think he was skiing, to look at
him, because he walked without raising his feet from the
ground and made loud scraping sounds at each step. What with
walking so stiff-legged, you’d expect him to topple over any
minute. But you should’ve seen him when he was out hunting!
Why, he could follow a hare in that scraping way of his for
fifty kilometres over rough ground and never bat an eye.
We sat there behind the shed, discussing the best way of
transferring Java’s belongings to the boat, and finally decided
he’d take one thing out of the house at a time and hide it in the
burdocks beyond the shed. Then, as soon as it got dark, I’d
sneak everything into the boat (so Cuckoorusoe wouldn’t have
to leave the house and arouse his grandfather’s suspicion). And
the next day...
 C h a p t e r 7
ROBINSON CUCKOORUSOE LANDS ON A DESERT ISLAND

It was the morning of the following day, a bright, sunny,

noisy morning: roosters were crowing, geese were cackling,
cows were mooing and the women were rattling their pails by
the well.
I crouched by the wattle fence, peeping through a crack to
see what was happening in my friend’s yard.
The preparatory work had been completed, and all of Cu-
ckoorusoe’s belongings were now stashed away in the boat: his
gun, fishing rods, flashlight, wooden spoon, ice skates (for
winter), an axe (just one, and an axehead without a handle at
that, but no matter, he’d cut himself a handle on the island),
and all kinds of odds and ends. I’d dug a whole can of worms
for him. It was a sprats-in-tomato-sauce can (I crossed out the
word “sprats” and wrote “worms” over it, so it was now
“worms in tomato sauce”). There was a whole backful of food
and even two aspirins in case of sickness. We were ready. Now
all Jave had to do was get his grandfather to let him leave for
a couple of days.
Grandpa Varava was sitting on a stump, making a handle for
his pitchfork. Java slouched around him.
“Grandpa!”
“Eh?”
“Let me go visit Aunt Ganna in Peski.”
“Quit pestering me.”
“Grandpa?”
“Eh?”
“I’ll be going. All right?”
“I said quit pestering me. Go do your lessons.”
There was a short pause. Then he started in again.
“Grandpa!”
62
 “Eh?”
“I ’m bored here with you.”
“Want me to stand on my head to amuse you?”
“I’ll go visit Aunt Ganna. Irina’s there. I haven’t seen her for
ages.”
“When she’s home all you do is fight. Now, all of a sudden,
you miss her.”
“And I’ll bring you back some home-grown tobacco. You
know how good Aunt Ganna’s tobacco is.”
“Mine’s no worse. Quit pestering me.”
There was another pause.
“Grandpa!”
“Eh?”
“Well, I’ll be going. All right?”
“Quit nagging! What about your lessons?”
“I’ll take my book along and study there. You can ask Aunt
Ganna later.”
I was listening to every word, saying to myself, “It sure is
hard to run off to a desert island in our days.”
Java went on nagging. At last his grandfather’s patience gave
out.
“You’re a devil, that’s what!” he said. “Nagging the life out
of me. Go on, get out of my sight! You can go for three days,
no more. And if Aunt Ganna says you didn’t do any studying,
I’ll whack you with this here stick, you good-for-nothing!”
Java didn’t have to be told twice. He dashed into the house
before his grandfather had a chance to change his mind,
snatched up his grammar book and dashed out again, out
through the gate. All of a sudden he stopped, turned, shifted his
weight and said, “Be well, Grandfather. You’re real nice...
I always knew you were real nice...”
“Go on,” Grandpa Varava muttered. He had no way of
knowing that Cuckoorusoe was bidding him farewell for twen­
ty-eight years, two months and nineteen days.
I joined my friend out on the street. We walked down to the
63
river in silence, got into our boat in silence and set off for the
marsh in silence, reaching the island without having spoken
a word. In silence, we carried all Java’s things from the boat to
the tent.
Now, for the last time, we stood on the bank beside the boat,
heads lowered and poking at the ground with the tips of our
shoes. It was a difficult moment. We had to say goodbye, but
we didn’t know the proper words for such an occasion. After
all, we weren’t saying goodbye for a month, or even for a year.
We were saying goodbye for twenty-eight years, two months
and nineteen days. No one in the world had ever had to say
goodbye for so long.
“What’re you waiting for? Go on,” Cuckoorusoe said at last.
“Are you in a hurry?”
“No, but I mean... You’ve got to be back home. The kids’re
probably playing soccer in the pasture.”
“Who cares?” I said, letting him see that I didn’t care one bit
about the kids or soccer. To myself, however, I was saying,
“Won’t Cuckoorusoe ever play soccer again? Poor him!” I felt
very sorry for him. He was such a good goalie. I stuck my hand
in my pocket and drew out my penknife. “Here. It’ll come in
handy. You know my knife. It’s like a razor. Nobody else has
one like it. And yours has a broken blade.”
Cuckoorusoe turned pink with pleasure. He’d been eyeing my
knife enviously for years and he’d often suggested we trade, but
I’d never agreed to it. But now I wanted him to have it, since
he’d never be playing soccer again and would be living all alone
by himself.
I sighed, put my other hand in my other pocket and pulled
out a matchbox in which I had my special fishhooks, the ones
my uncle in Kiev had given me. They were wonderful hooks,
a real treasure. There were little ones, medium-sized ones and
large ones. “You can have these,” I said. “You’ll always have
fish if you use these. But when I come to visit you some day, let
me fish with them, too, ’cause I’m used to them.”
64
 I don’t know why I said that, since I’d never used them
before. Probably because I was sorry to give them away, even
more so than my penknife. Cuckoorusoe must’ve sensed it.
“You don’t have to give them to me. I’ve got my own,” he
said. But he couldn’t take his eyes from the box. How could
a person refuse such a gift?
No matter how sorry I was, I wasn’t that sorry.
Cuckoorusoe would be all alone by himself on the desert
island, as solitary as Grandpa Salivon’s only tooth. And no one
would ever see him again. No one would ever write to him.
Ever. Because he didn’t even have an address. Everybody else in
the world had an address, but he didn’t. This sudden thought
worried me.
“Listen, something’s wrong. You won’t have an address any
more. No address at all.”
“So what?”
“What d’you mean? Can’t you understand? You won’t have
an address! It’s like you’re not living anyplace.”
“It’s not my fault.”
“We’ve got to name the island. Right now. If it’s got a name,
you’ll have an address.”
“All right. I’m all for it. What’ll we name it?”
“How do I know? Every island has a name. There’s Sakhalin
Island, Madagascar Island, Taimyr Island. Uh ... I think
Taimyr’s a peninsula, though. Something like that.”
“Well, this’ll be Madagascar Island. It sounds nice. I like it.”
“There’s already one. It has to be a new name.”
Cuckoorusoe began to think. His lips moved as he went over
the various names in his mind. At last he said, “You know
what? I’ll call it Re-examination Island. My re-examination’s
what made me come here, so that’s what I’ll name it. I’ll bet
you anything there’s no other island named that in the whole
world.”
I didn’t argue. And so a new name appeared on the map of
the world (although no one except us knew about it yet): Re-
5-344
65
examination Island. Perhaps, many years from now, school-
children would read about it in their geography books. “Re-ex­
amination Island is famous as the site where Robinson
Cuckoorusoe, a fifth-grade pupil, spent nearly thirty years in
complete isolation.” And some dunce would get a D for not
knowing it.
These thoughts cheered me up and brightened our moment of
parting. “Cheer up, Robinson. It’ll work out fine,” I said.
“Why, you can live on an island like this for a hundred years,
as long as the fish are biting.”
“That’s what I say.”
“So long.”
“So long.”
I got into the boat and shoved off.
Now Robinson Cuckoorusoe’s only link with civilization was
broken. He was alone on a desert island now, and even if he
suddenly decided to return home, he’d be unable to do so with­
out help, because he had no boat, and you could never get out
of the marsh without a boat. You’d surely drown. I’d told him
to take the submarine (we could’ve used one of the other boats
for ferrying him across to the island), but he’d refused.
“That’s like it’s not for real,” he had said. “It’ll be like an
excursion, and when I get tired, I can go back home. If Robin­
son Crusoe had a boat he wouldn’t ’ve stayed on that island all
by himself for so long. No. It’s got to be for real. No boat, and
no chance of going back.”
Yes, indeed, my friend Robinson Cuckoorusoe was a hero.
 C h a p t e r 8

THE FIRST DAY ON RE-EXAMINATION ISLAND

A STORY TOLD BY ROBINSON CUCKOORUSOE
TO HIS FRIEND AND CLASSMATE PAVLIK

Well, when you shoved off and disappeared beyond reeds and
there were only wrinkles left on the water it suddenly got very
quiet. I’d never heard anything as quiet as that before (not even
when I was deafened when I first fired my gun). I stood there
like I’d turned to stone and couldn’t even breathe. All I could
hear was that quiet. I didn’t know what to do. There was no
place to go and nothing to do. I could sit or stand, or do
somersaults. It wouldn’t make any difference. No one’d see me
anyway. No one cared what I was doing.
I began feeling bad, mainly because I kept thinking about
being stranded on the island. I could shout, or hit my head
against a tree: it wouldn’t change a thing. I don’t know what
I’d ’ve done if I hadn’t started feeling hungry all of a sudden.
You know what a rush I was in before I left. I didn’t even have
a decent breakfast. That brought me to my senses in a jiffy.
I decided not to use up any of the food I’d brought, ’cause
I didn’t know how things would turn out. I’d catch some fish.
I found a good spot, baited my hooks and cast my lines. Then
I began waiting for a bite. I sat there, watching my floats and
waiting. I waited and waited, and waited. The floats never
moved. I didn’t even have a nibble. I spat on the worms before
I baited my hooks, I changed the worms and tried a couple of
different places, but the fish werent’t biting. I was getting hun­
grier and hungrier. I had this empty feeling in my stomach.
“Come on, fish! Come on, fish! Please! I’m hungry,” I kept
whispering. But the floats just stuck up out of the water like
nails sticking up in a board. There was no fish. My lunch was
swimming around someplace, but I couldn’t get at it.
5*
67
 I began jerking the lines, but all I pulled up were my own
baited hooks. There was no food in sight but the worms. Ugh!
It was a bad time for fishing. I know you’ve got to go early
in the morning or after the sun goes down, but I had no choice.
I couldn’t wait till evening, I’d be sure to die of starvation by
then. Then my hook caught on a log and my line snapped.
Goodbye hook, one of the best you’d given me. I got mad
and stamped off to my sack of food. I just couldn’t
wait any more. When I got to it I wolfed down half
the sack. Then I stretched out in the clearing, and dozed off.
Finally, I fell asleep. I must’ve slept for a long time, because
I suddenly felt I was roasting and woke up. The sun was blaz­
ing! I touched my face. My cheeks were as hot as fire. I had
a terrible bum. I splashed cold water on my face, but it still
burned. I put wet earth on it, but it still burned. Then I remem­
bered that sour cream or sour milk were good for a sunburn,
but where could I get any? That’s when I first really felt that
a desert island is just that. It’s not our collective farm, where
there’s mountains of sour cream. All I needed was just a spoon­
ful, or half a spoonful. Boy, was it ever hot! I crawled into the
tent. It was dark inside, and cool. I lay there for a while. Even
though my face burned, I had to go on living. After all,
I couldn’t spend twenty-eight years lying on the ground in
a tent. I crawled out, took the axehead and your knife and
went off to cut down an axe handle. I found a good
dry branch, cut a stick the right size and began shaping
it. I suddenly got a splinter
in my finger. It was the real
painful kind, right under my
nail. I began to suck my finger,
but it wouldn’t come out.
Then I tried to get it out
with my teeth, but it still
wouldn’t come out. What I
needed was a needle. That’d
get it out right away. But
where could I get a needle? I’d have to go back home for one.
“Go on, run. Why’re you sitting here?” I said to myself.
I was so mad I could cry. Imagine, forgetting to take along
a needle! I picked up one of the hooks and began poking at the
splinter carefully. I didn’t want the hook to get stuck in my
flesh. Then I’d have a splinter and a hook in my finger!
I worked at it so hard I broke out in a sweat, but I didn’t get
all of the splinter out anyway. A tiny piece remained. It made
my finger sore for a long time. It’s a good thing it didn’t get
infected.
The sun began to set, and I got hungry again. I was afraid to
even look at my sack. I knew that if I went over to it I’d have
nothing to eat but grass the next day. Fish was the only thing
that could save my life.
I cast my lines again. This time I was lucky. You can’t imag­
ine how happy I was, Pavlik, when I pulled in my first gud­
geon. It was only as big as my finger, but it made me happier
than the huge pike we caught last summer. I even kissed it.
Then I caught some baby perch and carp. I was so excited
I never noticed when my can of worms turned over. By the time
I did, they’d all crawled away. Imagine! There’d be no fish if
I didn’t have any worms. I got down on my hands and knees
and crawled around, picking them out of the grass, but most of
them had burrowed into the ground by then. Anyway, it was
getting too dark to see. I only had about a quarter of a can left.
I didn’t fish any more. I decided I’d ration the worms.
I made a fire, cleaned the fry I’d caught and began cooking
some chowder in the old pot. The water kept boiling out fast,
so I had to keep adding more all the time. Something was hiss­
ing underneath the pot. I got down to look and saw that it was
leaking! Why hadn’t I noticed the hole before? I could’ve
howled. Now what? That old pot was only good for mixing
clay, not for cooking chowder. It was more of a sieve than
a pot. But it was the only one I had. I couldn’t get another.
This was a desert island.
69
 Robinson Crusoe was lucky. The sea cast everything he
needed up onto the shore after the shipwreck. Including money.
All he had to do was wish for them and he had twelve axes.
If he wished for a silk shirt he had silk shirts. All I wanted was
one small pot. A tiny little pot. Oh, no! There’ll never be
a shipwreck in the marsh. Not on your life! Not even in
a hundred years. The only real shipwreck was when that hunter
Sidorenko from Kiev lost his gun. What good was it to me?
I had my own gun. So there was no use my counting on
a shipwreck.
I ate the half-cooked chowder and nearly gagged. Then
I chewed on some half-cooked fish. It was very dark by then,
but still I sat there. I couldn’t see a single star. It was a cloudy
night. The only light came from the last of the coals in the fire.
I had a cold, clammy feeling in my stomach, and a slippery,
awful sort of fear crept up from there to my heart. I’d have to
do something and get distracted. I went into the tent, felt
around for my flashlight and turned it on. Then I found my
notebook (you know, I took my grammar book and notebook
along so Grandpa’d think I was studying at my aunt’s. Then
I found a pencil in my sack. If you think I intended to study,
I didn’t. Robinson Crusoe kept a diary when he was on the
desert island. He wrote down everything that happened to him.
I was just like him: I was on a desert island, too. You can’t
manage on a desert island if you don’t keep a diary.
But I couldn’t write every single thing down. That was asking
too much of me. I’m no writer. In fact, I’m supposed to have
a re-examination in grammar. So I decided I’d just list the good
and the bad things that happened to me. I drew a line down the
centre of the page. At the top of the left side I wrote Adventures
(that was the good things. That’s why I went off to a desert
island in the first place. My life would mean nothing if there
weren’t any adventures in it, especially on a desert island). At
the top of the right side I wrote Bad things (too bad they always
seem to happen). I thought about what I’d write for a long time
70
and chewed on the end of my pencil. This is what I
finally wrote:
Adventures Bad things
I caught some fish and ate it. 1. I got sunburned.
2. I got a splinter under my
nail.
3. I lost a hook (one of my
best).
4. I ate half a sackful of food.
5. Most of my worms crawled
away.
6. The pot leaks, and I don’t
know what I’ll use for cook­
ing chowder.

So you see, there was only one small adventure, as small

as that first gudgeon (I even included it as an adventure out
of the goodness of my heart). But there were six bad things
and all of them as big as sharks.
I wrote all this as I leaned my notebook on my knee and
worked the flashlight with my other hand, because the fire’d
gone out, and I didn’t want to build another one (and don’t
think it was because I hated going off into the dark for
firewood).
Your flashlight is really everlasting. Thanks a lot. But that
whirring... You whirr, and you have some light. You don’t
whirr, and you have no light. I whirred. For half an hour
after I could hear that whirring in my head, and my hand
went numb. After I got through writing I thought the day
was over and nothing more would happen, but I didn’t know
the biggest adventure still lay ahead. This was no shark. It
was a whale.
71
 I wasn’t sleepy, because I’d had all that sleep during the
day. I crawled out of the tent, sat down on the bank and
began to think. My head was full of thoughts about the vil­
lage, about school, and about you. What were you doing
now? You were probably sound asleep.
The new moon came out from behind a cloud. It was as
curved as a Turkish sword. It made the water look sort of
silvery. Some ducks that I couldn’t see in the dark swooshed
by. Then everything was quiet again. There was no wind, so
the reeds weren’t rustling. I kept thinking about everything
and looked at the water.
All of a sudden a very long shadow fell across the water,
and a boat sailed out from behind the reeds. It was like
a ghost ship. It didn’t make a sound, not even a little splash.
That was the spookiest part. It was like I was dreaming.
Somebody very tall was standing in the boat, paddling.
I blinked a couple of times to make sure I wasn’t seeing
things. I wasn’t. The boat was heading straight towards me,
getting bigger and bigger, like things do that are coming
towards you on the screen in the movies. When it got very
close it turned and disappeared beyond the bushes.
Was my heart pounding! Who was it? A bogey-man?
A water goblin? The devil? I sure am stupid! Only ignorant
old women believe in that kind of stuff. I believe in radios,
TV and rocket ships. It’s all silliness. There was nothing to
be afraid of. Then all of a sudden I thought of Gunka.
Crazy Gunka who got lost forever in the marsh two years
ago. What if it was him? What if he’s still living in the
marsh on some desert island, just like me? Why, he’s crazy.
He never knows what he’s doing. He might see me and think
I ’m a devil (because what would a normal kid be doing in
the marsh in the middle of the night?), and strangle me.
He’d be choking me, and I wouldn’t be able to talk him out
of it. There’d be no use shouting, or crying, or begging him
to let me go. I felt like there were worms crawling down my
72
back, wet, gooey, cold worms. And I felt as if somebody was
pulling a noose tight around my neck, so tight I could hardly
breathe. I began listening hard. I even think my heart
stopped beating, so’s it wouldn’t make any noise while I was
listening. I heard a splash behind the bushes. Something fell
into the water. Maybe somebody’d been tossed out of the
boat. Maybe Gunka’d brought somebody out to the marsh
and drowned him. It’d be my turn next. I couldn’t just sit
there. I took a couple of steps towards the tent. My feet felt
like they were made of lead. Then I bumped into somebody.
Somebody huge clutched my shoulders. I kicked, jerked and
fell. That somebody fell on top of me, scratched my face
and...
Robinson Cuckoorusoe’s story was cut short here, because
Pavlik gasped and interrupted him. The reader will not un­
derstand what they spoke about until he learns what hap­
pened to Pavlik Zavgorodny that day and night.
 C h a p t e r 9
PAVLIK ZAVGORODNY
RECOUNTS WHAT HAPPENED
TO HIM THAT DAY AND NIGAT

Well, I left Robinson Cuckoorusoe on the desert island

and headed back home, but before I’d gone half the way
I was in the middle of an adventure. There was an awful lot
of water in the boat, but there were no waves splashing over
the sides. What could it be? I looked hard, and there it was:
a hole in the bottom, three fingers wide, with the water
pouring in and even bubbling up. This hole had already
given us a lot of trouble. We’d filled it with a birch plug and
caulked it, but now the plug had come out. It was lost, and
the water was pouring in again just like in those problems
we did in arithmetic: “Water pours in through one pipe and
74
pours out through another.” The only difference was that
nothing was pouring out. There was only one answer to this
kind of a problem, and it wasn’t a very good one. In another
couple of minutes the water’d reach the top and... I’d never
make it back to the village without a boat. It was too far. If
I tried to swim my arms and legs would get all tangled up in
the water lilies’ stalks, and all that’d be left of me would be
bubbles on the water. Everything inside of me got icy-
cold and began to shiver, but on the outside I broke out in
a sweat. “Is this the end?” I said to myself. “I ’m still so
young. I want to live! I want to grow up and be a pilot. And
marry Grebeniuchka (if I don’t meet any one else I like).”
No. I just couldn’t die. I had to pull up at some island im­
mediately, plug up the hole and bail out the water. I paddled
fast. There were reeds all around me, blocking my view. The
water kept pouring in. It was nearly up to my knees. I kept
looking this way and that, trying to see some land. At last
I noticed a little island and headed towards it. And just in
the nick of time, because by then there was only a little bit
of the rim showing above the water. It looked like a wooden
frame floating along with water in the middle and water all
around, and the water-level both inside and out was the
same. I was standing in the middle of the frame like a por­
trait. A few more minutes,, though, and no one would have
ever seen that portrait again. I jumped out and tried to pull
the boat up to bail out the water, but it wouldn’t budge.
I pulled, but it wouldn’t budge. You’d think it was nailed to
the bottom. What was I to do? Wouldn’t I ever pull it out?
Besides, I was now on a desert island, too. Help! I didn’t
want to be shipwrecked. I wanted to go back home. I didn’t
have any provisions, or anything. Just naked me under my
clothes. I didn’t even have my penknife. I wasn’t prepared
for this. Cuckoorusoe was. He had all he needed: a sack full
of food, a flashlight and even a gun, to say nothing of fish­
ing rods and worms. Besides, he’d chosen a peach of an
75
island. As for this place I was on, why, it was about the size
of a dried cake of cow dung. Both in size and in quality.
There wasn’t a single bush or tree on it, and not any land to
speak of. No place to sit down even. Nothing but stinky
mud. If anybody wanted to live on it, he’d have to stand on
one foot at a time with the other curled up like a heron. And
I was no heron. I was a twelve-year-old boy going on thir­
teen. I couldn’t live on that island. I’d die there. Help!
Somebody! Where are you?
As if anyone could hear m e! There was nothing but croak­
ing frogs all around. No one’d rescue me if I didn’t rescue
myself, no doubt about it. So that’s what I’d have to do.
I squished around in the mud by the boat, sniffling and
not knowing what to do. I tried bailing the water out, but it
was no use, because it kept on pouring in through the hole.
It was the same as trying to bail the water out of the river.
What if I plugged up the hole again? What a brainstorm!
I pulled up a clump of grass, which was the only thing that
grew on the island, felt around for the hole and plugged it
up. Then I started bailing out the water. Oho! I was making
progress! Slowly but surely, bit by bit, the sides of the boat
began to appear. Now I could try pulling it up again.
I grunted and pulled. The boat was inching up onto the
bank. There! Now I’d tip it over to pour out the water
I hadn’t been able to bail out. Heave-ho\ It was a tough job.
I saw stars. Once again now! Once again now! Heave-ho\
Whew! At last! Good for me! Wasn’t I smart? I was so
proud of myself I was nearly purring. Now I’d have to
plug up the hole real good to make sure it wouldn’t come
unplugged again.
I waved goodbye to the island that would remain uninha­
bited for ever more and sailed off, reaching the village with­
out any further trouble. I did keep an eye on the hole,
though, to make sure I hadn’t sprung another leak. Some
water was oozing in, but not enough to be dangerous.
76
 I began fixing the boat as soon as I got back. It took me
till dinnertime, but I caulked all the cracks and tarred them.
Things weren’t too bad while I was busy working. But when
I got through, went outside after dinner and looked up at
the high poplar by the gate where Java and I used to meet
every morning, not to part until evening, I became so
depressed I could’ve cried. The street, the village, the whole
world seemed empty and lifeless, just like a desert island.
There were people all around me, but they might as well not
have been there, because my best friend was not among
them. I slouched around the village feeling miserable. Every
spot, every bush and tree reminded me of Java. This was
where we played tip-cat. We hid in those bushes when we’d
decided to catch some goldfinches. We’d tried to see who
was best at climbing that tree. Remember, Java? The branch
I was standing on broke, and I hung upside-down and then
fell on my head. It felt as if my head had gone right into my
shoulders. That fall knocked the breath out of me. Ha-ha.
But you didn’t laugh, you applied artificial respiration. You
think I’ll ever forget that?
And I can’t even look at the Great Wall of China. Our
common enemy, Knysh, whom I’ll now have to tail and un­
mask all by myself, lives beyond the wall. How awful it is to
have to do all those interesting things by myself!
And there’s the willow by the river. D ’you think any of
the boys’ll ever dive from the top branch? Not on your life
they won’t! Your record’ll remain unchallenged forever. And
you could’ve set so many other records!
I wandered about till dark, visiting all the places we’d
been together. At last I went home and got into bed. I lay
there, but couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking. It was as dark as
pitch outside. There were clouds in the sky that blocked out
the stars.
What was my friend Cuckoorusoe doing on the desert
island right now? Was he asleep? There was no one else on
77
his island. His fire had died down. And weird, spooky shad­
ows were probably closing in on him. He was all alone. He
had no one to talk to. All he could do was listen to his heart
pounding. What if something had happened to him? What if
he was shouting, calling for help, and not a soul in the whole
wide world could hear him? There’d only be the goggle-eyed
frogs croaking away and the ducks quacking in the reeds.
The echo of his shouts roll on through the marsh and never
reach human ears, for it’d die away in the reeds. Who’d ever
come to his rescue?
I lay there tensely, holding my breath, and suddenly
I heard a faint, far-away, mournful: “A-a-a-ahh!” It was
either a train whistle or a human voice, but it was too faint
to tell. For some reason, though, I felt that my friend was
in trouble. No one in the world knew where he was. No one
except me. And no one would ever know where to find him.
No one except me. And no one could rescue him. No one
except me. I couldn’t go to sleep when my friend was in
trouble. I just couldn’t.
“I’ll go out and sleep in the bam, Ma. It’s stuffy in here,”
I said.
“All right,” my mother said sleepily. “But take your blanket
along and see that you’re covered.”
I took my blanket, went outside and was immediately
78
plunged into dense, sticky darkness. I felt my way along, as if
I were blind. I didn’t want the gate to creak, so I made my way
into the garden and climbed over the fence. I walked down the
village street as if I were in the middle of a forest: everything
was pitch-dark and still. Ahead a small light flickered. It was
the street light outside the village Soviet. The wind made the
lamp sway, and the round spot of light it cast moved back and
forth across the ground like a swing. Farther on everything was
pitch-black again. I tripped twice and nearly fell. There was the
river. It was a little lighter there. The water gleamed dully. I got
into the boat, placed my blanket carefully in the bow to keep it
from getting wet (I don’t know why I took it along) and pushed
off. My hands and arms seemed to belong to someone else.
I didn’t feel them paddling, they were doing it mechanically.
The rest of my body also seemed to be made of wood. It was as
if I was imagining all this, as if it wasn’t for real.
No, I couldn’t get lost. I had to find him. Here was the first
patch of water and the lane. Now the second patch. Turn right.
There was the muddy little island on which I’d nearly been
stranded for good. I was on the right track, retracing our route.
The moon appeared from behind the clouds. Now the marsh
and my spirits as well became lighter and brighter. It was just
a little way more to go. I was getting close. One more lane and
a turn. It was like coming out on a huge square from a narrow
little street. The large stretch of water reflected the curved
moon and the silvery clouds. The green, looming island sud­
denly seemed like a huge fairy-tale mountain set in the middle
of a great sea. It was still very far to that mountain, it was on
the horizon, and I was like a tiny little bug. It even seemed to
me that I could see magic cities, palaces, church spires, and
towers on the slopes (actually, they were willow branches), and
riders galloping along the winding mountain roads. I thought
I could hear the sound of the horses’ hooves (actually it was the
stillness ringing in my ears).
That’s the strange kind of things people sometimes imagine.
79
And that’s why what I suddenly saw for real seemed so weird
and unreal. What I saw was a huge somebody standing up in
a boat close to the bank. He looked like Gulliver in the land of
the Lilliputs. I started. Who was it? Robinson Cuckoorusoe?
But he didn’t have a boat! A fisherman? But the fishermen of
our village never go this far into the marsh, especially at night.
There was plenty of fish near the village.
Was it a criminal? A pirate? My heart sank. Meanwhile, the
boat had disappeared in the reeds. All I wanted to do was to
turn around and get out of there as fast as I could but I forced
myself to stay put. Cuckoorusoe, my best friend, was all alone
on the island. I was coming to his rescue. Maybe at this very
moment he needed me badly. After all, I had a boat. If the
stranger I’d just seen was really dangerous and wanted to
murder Java I’d rescue him and we’d escape in our boat. I had
to hurry! I put my weight on the oar, nosed the boat into the
bank, pulled up, got out and began creeping towards the clear­
ing. Cuckoorusoe was probably in the tent. He was probably
sleeping unsuspectingly, because I couldn’t hear a sound. It was
too dangerous to call to him, since that would alert the
stranger.
How dark it was! How dense the underbrush was! I couldn’t
see a thing. Suddenly I heard a loud splash beyond the reeds, in
the place where the stranger probably was. Something fell into
the water. My heart skipped a beat. What was it? What if-
What if he’d drowned Java? I broke out in a cold sweat.
A minute passed... And another. I stood there in the darkness
with my hands stretched out in front of me and couldn’t move
a muscle. Suddenly... Suddenly someone bumped into my out­
stretched hands. Somebody as big as a bear. My hands gripped
at him convulsively. The next moment I felt a terrible blow to
my legs and pitched forward onto him instead of falling back­
ward (that’s one of the grips in sambo fighting, Java and
I know it). I yelped and began thrashing about, trying to break
free. I scratched something soft. It felt like a face. Then I pulled
80
free, jumped up and dashed off. I sped through the thicket,
breaking branches, stumbling and crashing into tree trunks, but
I didn’t feel the pain of those scratches and blows. I took a fly­
ing jump into the boat, snatched up the oar and shoved off.
I never paddled so frantically in my life. The boat sped off
like a rocket. Every few minutes I’d look back to see whether
whoever it was was after me. He wasn’t. No one was. I didn’t
come to my senses till I nosed into the bank by the village.
I couldn’t stop shivering, but no matter how scared and tired
I was, I ran most of the way home, for I couldn’t feel safe till
I was back in my own yard again. The wet end of the blanket
(I’d gotten it wet after all) slapped against my back, whipping
me on. I fell into the hay outside the bam like a ton of bricks
and lay there for a long time as if I were unconscious and com­
ing to my senses slowly. Scenes of what had just happened
flashed through my mind. What actually had happened? Who
had it been? Had Robinson Cuckoorusoe perished? What was
I to do? Should I waken my father, tell him what had hap­
pened, get up a rescue party and set out? But what if Cuckoor­
usoe hadn’t perished? What if my encounter with the stranger
(by then I was beginning to feel rather proud of it) had awak­
ened Java and given him a chance to escape? But I couldn’t be
sure. Then again if I showed up with a rescue party Cuckooru-
soe’s secret would be revealed, and I’d be the traitor. Oh, no!
I’d never betray my friend. I’d never choose treachery. Never,
no matter what. But what was I to do? What could I do?
I tossed about for a long time, but could find no solution. At
last I was overcome by sleep and weariness.
My night’s adventure seemed so impossible that when
I awoke the next morning I began to wonder whether it hadn’t
all been a dream. Then my mother came over to me and said,
“How’d you sleep out in the yard, Pavlik? Oh, look! The blan­
ket’s wet. Did it rain last night?”
“Uh, I... I... wanted a drink. I brought the mug over here
and spilled it by accident.”
6-344
81
 Luckily, ma had to milk the cow and didn’t ask me any more
questions.
I recalled every detail of what had happened that night, but
now, for some reason or other, it didn’t seem as terrible as it
had. Perhaps this was because it was such a bright, sunny
morning and, as you know, all the fears of the night vanish in
daylight. At night everything seems scary, because it’s dark and
quiet, and everyone’s asleep. But in the morning the sun is shin­
ing, the birds are chirping, the women rattle their pails by the
well and there are people everywhere. I was full of pep and
energy. Onward to the island! To find out whether Cuckooru-
soe was alive.
I washed quickly and dashed into the cowshed. My mother
was still milking the cow. “Ma! Give me some milk, please. I’m
in a hurry. I’ve got to run.”
“Where to? You haven’t had your breakfast.”
“I’ll have it later. I’m not hungry. I’ll just have some milk.
We’re going fishing.”
“Well, take some bread along.”
I gulped down a glass of milk, cut a large chunk of bread
from the loaf, stuck it under my shirt and raced outside, out
through the gate and right into Grandpa Varava, nearly knoc­
king him over. He swayed and muttered:
“What the devil! Just like a jack-rabbit streaking off from
a cabbage field.”
“ ’Scuse me! Good morning.”
“It is. Where are you going in such a hurry, knocking people
over on the way?”
“To the river. Fishing with the boys.”
“Ah, so you’ve overslept?” he said. His voice sounded more
friendly, but it was reproachful all the same.
“Yep. I’ll be going. ’Scuse me!” But to myself I said, “You
don’t know where I ’m going. If you did, you’d sing another
song.”
 C h a p t e r 10

A REAL PIRATE

The closer I got to the island the more excited I became and
the harder my heart pounded. Was he alive or not? Was he
alive or not?
And suddenly... There was Robinson Cuckoorusoe, standing
on the bank, looking out of the bushes, hale and hearty and
grinning at m e! His nose was peeling. There was a long scratch
down his right cheek, but what was a scratched cheek to a hero
like Cuckoorusoe? A piffle! When I pulled up I wanted to jump
out and hug him, but I held back. I just thumped him on the
back and said, “Well? How was it?”
“You won’t believe me anyway. You’ll say I’m a liar.”
“Come on.”
“Pirates attacked me last night, that’s what. I fought them
off. I never fought like that before in my whole life! I thought
I’d get killed. Look,” he said and jabbed a finger at his
scratched cheek. Then he pulled up his shirt and showed me
a black-and-blue mark on his side.
“Then what? Then what happened?”
“Don’t rush me. I’ll start from the beginning.” And Cuc­
koorusoe told me the above story.
When he got to the part about his fight with the stranger
who’d tripped him and then fallen on top of him and began
scratching him, something began to tickle my insides, then it
rose to my throat and burst out of my mouth as a giggle.
“What’s the matter?” Cuckoorusoe sounded hurt. “Sure, go
on and laugh. I’d like to have seen you here last night.”
6*
83
 “Tell me about the fight again.”
He repeated his story, I shook my head and said,
“It was me.”
He stared at me goggle-eyed, then said, “Like hell it was!”
“It was me,” I repeated. “Honest. Look.” I pulled up my
trouser leg and showed him the huge bruise near my knee.
“You did it.” And I told him of my adventures that night. He
stood tfifere blinking hard.
“You mean- it was- it was- You mean we were fighting each
other? I thought I was fighting somebody real big.”
“Me, too. I thought it was a giant.”
We both burst out laughing.
“What about the stranger? Didn’t he get out of his boat?”
“No.”
“Where’d he go?”
“I don’t know. He just disappeared. I was so scared
I climbed a tree and sat on a branch like a monkey till it got
light. I didn’t even shut my eyes. When it got light I climbed
down and had a nap.”
“Why d’you think he came here?”
“How do I know? It wasn’t to visit me, that’s for sure.”
“Did you hear something fall into the water with a big
splash?”
“Sure. It made my blood freeze.”
“Maybe it was a murderer drowning his victim. Or a thief
hiding his loot. Hm?”
“Who knows? Let’s go have a look.”
“Didn’t you have a look yet?”
“No. I was just getting ready to when you got here. Anyway,
the reeds are too thick there, so you won’t really see anything
from the bank. We’ve got to paddle over.”
We got into our boat and rounded the bend, approaching the
place where we’d both heard the splash. Though it was now
morning and the sun was shining, our hearts were pounding,
for we didn’t know what awaited us there. What if it was really
84
something terrible! I paddled
and Cuckoorusoe sat in the
bow, peering ahead. The
boat was slowly moving past
the reeds of the island. I still
couldn’t see anything when
he suddenly shouted.
“Now I know!”
I paddled harder. A mo­
ment later I, too, saw the
white floats of a large fishing
net stretching off across the
dark water like a huge dott­
ed line.
“That’s what it was! That’s
what made the splash! You’re
right, Cuckoorusoe. It was a pirate. A real, genuine pirate.
A poacher.”
We knew only too well what poachers were. A poacher was
not a hunter or a fisherman. He was a thief. We hated
poachers. Fishing with a big net was poaching. It wasn’t sport,
it was criminal destruction of the fish.
“How d’you like that? Who d’you think it could be?” Cuc­
koorusoe asked.
“I don’t know. D ’you think it’s somebody from the village?”
“Whoever he is, he’s a poacher. What’re we going to do
about it?”
“I don’t know. Go back to the village for help? We won’t
make it in time. He’ll be back soon. If he cast the net last night
and didn’t come for his catch at dawn, it means he’ll be here
any minute. No doubt about it. Maybe he’s real close now.
Maybe he’s right behind those reeds.”
“You mean we’re going to stand here and watch him?”
“What can we do? Tell him to go away? He’ll drown us like

85
a couple of kittens. Nobody’ll ever find out. Nobody’ll hear us
or see us.”
“You sure are a scaredy-cat!”
“Think you’re so brave? Sitting up in a tree all night like
a roosting hen.”
“If you go on yakking like that he’ll be here before we know
it, and we won’t have time to do anything.”
“What d’you want to have time to do?”
“What? Well, we can let the fish go, so there won’t be any
left in the net when he gets here.”
“What if he catches us at it?”
“You sound just like Karafolka! If we waste any more time
he’ll be sure to catch us, and- You give me a pain!” Cuckooru-
soe leaned over the side, grabbed hold of a comer of the net
and began pulling it up into the boat. A moment later a carp as
big and round as a plate began thrashing in the boat, its scales
sparkling in the sun. “Come on, help me!”
I pitched in. I’d never seen so many fish, or fish that were
that big. We picked them out of the net and tossed them as far
from the boat as we could, to make sure they wouldn’t get
caught in the net again. We worked
fast and kept glancing over our
shoulders, expecting whoever it was
to come into sight at any moment.
Our fingers bled from the fishes’
sharp fins and gills, but there was
no time to stop.
We could hardly pull one of the
pikes over the side. What a pike
that was, as big as a calf and over a
metre long! We just gazed at it in
awe. After all, we were fishermen.
We’d never seen such a pike in our
lives. Perhaps we never would again.
What a shame. Then, straining
86
hard, we rolled it over the side. It slapped against the water
so hard it nearly turned us over. We were having more and more
trouble getting the fish out of the net, because we were
tired and it was hard work. Still and all, we’d only gotten
about half of them out.
“You know what?” I said. “Let’s cut the net! To hell with it!
Its a poacher’s net anyway. Why feel sorry for it?”
“Right,” said Cuckoorusoe and got what used to be my
penknife from his pocket. It was as sharp as a razor. Things
went much faster after that. Finally, the last fish was gone. We
dropped the net back into the water.
“That’s it! Let’s go,” said Cuckoorusoe.
We really were lucky. Dam lucky. We’d just pulled the boat
up onto the bank and hid it in the reeds when we heard voices
coming from the spot where we’d been a few minutes before. At
first we couldn’t hear what they were saying. All we could make
out was that one was a man’s voice and the other was
a woman’s. We crept through the reeds and waded in to listen.
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 “What the hell... It’s empty...” the man was saying.
“It’s because you cast it wrong, you fool!” the woman
screeched.
“I did it like I always do. It’s the same spot. There was
always so much fish here.”
“Look! The net’s tom !”
“What? Yes! And here, too. And here. What happened?”
“You tore it, you idiot! How many times did I say be care­
ful? This net cost us a fortune! It’s goodbye to all that money
now. Oh, why’d I ever marry you? Look at it! O Lord!”
“It’s not my fault. I swear it isn’t. I didn’t tear it. It wasn’t
tom last night. May I drop dead on the spot if I’m lying!”
We were as still as mice.
“It’s the Knyshes!” Cuckoorusoe whispered in my ear.
I nodded silently. I’d recognized their voices from the start,
and when Knysh had said: “May I drop dead on the spot!” it
had settled it.
 Chapter 11

UNEXPECTED VISITORS:
IGOR, VALYA AND THE REST

I don’t know what border guards feel like when they’re lying
in ambush and listening in on the conversation of spies, but
I think that what we felt then must’ve been something very
much like it. Our only thoughts were of not missing a word or
revealing our presence.
Knysh’s wife was speaking. She was as mad as a hornet.
“Well! What’ll I tell them? They’ll be here tomorrow night.
And that’s some trip, driving up by motorcycle all the way
from Kiev. And there won’t be any money. You’ll stay up all
night till you’ve mended this net. It’s got to be in the water by
tomorrow night! I’ll talk them into staying over. I’ll have to get
them a bottle of vodka. Oh, G od! Just you w ait! I’ll make you
pay for that bottle! It’ll be a bottle of my tears! You’ll be
sorry, you murderer!”
Knysh just sighed.
“Come on, let’s go. You’re as slow as molasses!”
Those were the last words we heard. We couldn’t see them
from behind the reeds and so kept on listening for a few
minutes more till we became convinced they were gone.
“Now we know what it’s all about!” Cuckoorusoe said.
“And you said he was a spy.”
“So what? Maybe he is. He’s a rat, that’s what. A louse.”
“Now we know. Remember them haggling in the park? And
those two guys on the motorcycle? And all the rest of it? What
a rat! He’ll catch all the fish in the river if we don’t stop him.”
“What’ll we do? He’ll be back tomorrow night. If-” He
89
stopped short at the sound of loud singing. It was coming from
the stretch of water just ahead:
May there always be sunshine
May there always be blue skies,
May there always be Mama,
May there always be me.

The voices belonged to boys and girls. It seemed as if

a happy group of Young Pioneers was marching straight over
the water and the marsh, and through the reeds. We looked at
each other in wonder. What could it be? Then we dashed up
the bank to where we could see the water. Still, we saw nothing.
The reeds were too high.
“Let’s climb the tree!” Cuckoorusoe shouted.
We scrambled up the old willow, the one under which we’d
built the tent, as it was the tallest tree on the island. Then we
saw them. Rowboats were coming out of the lane, sailing into
the stretch of clear water like swans. Young Pioneers wearing
white T-shirts and white caps were in the boats. A tall, shirtless
young man wearing white slacks was standing in the first boat.
He was probably the Pioneer leader. His powerful muscles
bulged all over his tanned chest and arms. He looked like some­
body on a physical fitness poster. When the song ended he
called out,
“ I suggest we stop off at this island. What d’you say, Pilot?”
He turned to the small, serious-looking boy who sat in the
stern.
“ Right!” the boy replied gravely.
For some reason or other everyone laughed.
“Then head for the island,” the leader said just as gravely.
“ Right!” the boy repeated.
And again everyone laughed, but the boy paid no attention

90
to the laughter. The boats began pulling up at the island, trans­
forming it into a summer camp with kids racing ar-ound, laugh­
ing and shouting. Some were playing ball, some were splashing
around in the water, some were running around with butterfly
nets. We sat there in the tree, not knowing what to do. Should
we let them know we were there, or not? We didn’t have to
make up our minds after all, because a tall, leggy girl spotted
our tent and shouted,
“Hey! Look! Somebody lives here!”
Everybody came running. Then the young man came up.
A tanned boy who had a camera on a strap over his shoulder
darted into the tent and came out a moment later carrying the
flashlight I’d brought Java as a present from Kiev.
“It’s a flashlight,” he announced. “A mechanical one. It’s got
a magneto. It won’t work unless you pump it.” And he began
pumping it, making a whirring sound. Cuckoorusoe fidgeted on
the branch beside me. Then the tall, leggy girl darted into the
tent. When she came out she was holding Java’s gun.
“ Look! It’s a real shotgun.”
“Careful! What if it’s loaded? It might go off!” one of the
girls shrieked.
“ Put that back!” Cuckoorusoe shouted.
They all raised their heads. There was no sense in us hiding
anymore. We got down and were immediately surrounded.
“Who’re you?”
“What’re you doing here?”
“ Is this your tent?”
“Is this your gun?”
“Are you hunters?”
“D’you live here?”
I looked at Cuckoorusoe, not knowing what to say. He
frowned and said nothing.

91
 “They’re probably just fishing here.”
“Maybe they ran away from home.”
“Maybe they’re playing Indians, like the boys in Seton
Thompson’s Little Savages.”
“Or Robinson Crusoe. Huh?”
I looked at Cuckoorusoe. My friend turned beet-red. Then he
said,
“We’re not playing anything. We’re on an important assign­
ment. We’re going to trap a poacher.”
“You are?”
“Boy!”
“Who told you to?”
“Nobody told us to,” Cuckoorusoe said haughtily. “We
tracked him down, and now we’re lying in wait.”
Then, seeing their amazement, he spoke more boldly. “Put
that gun back. And the flashlight, too.”
The flashlight and the gun were quickly put back in the tent.
“How’d you track him down? And how’ll you trap him?” the
boy with the camera asked.
“Is that what the gun’s for? To trap him?” the tall girl asked.
I decided we had to change the subject. “Are you on a camp­
ing trip? Or is this just an outing? Where are you from?”
“Kiev. We’re amateur historians. We’re searching for places
where the partisans fought the nazis,” the boy with the camera
said.
“Right!” said Pilot.
“We’re on our way home now. We’ve been gone three
weeks,” the tall girl added.
“Don’t exaggerate, Valya. It’s only been nineteen days.
Today’s the twentieth,” a girl wearing glasses said.
“Aren’t you afraid to get lost in the marsh? D’you know
what it’s like?”

92
 “We’ve got a map and a compass, so we can’t get lost.”
“Listen, Igor,” the leader said to the boy with the camera, “if
they’re really tracking down a poacher we may be in their way.
There’s so many of us. And we’re making so much noise. We
don’t want to scare him off. Come right out and tell us, boys.
We can move to some other island. They’re all the same to us.”
Cuckoorusoe and I exchanged glances.
“You can stay,” Cuckoorusoe said. “He won’t be back till
tomorrow night. So you won’t be in our way till tomorrow
night.”
“All right, if you’re sure we won’t,” said the leader. Then he
turned to the kids and said, “Build a fire and get out the provi­
sions. We’ll have breakfast here.”
“Right!” the little helmsman said gravely.
A happy shout went up as the kids ran down to the boats.
“You start the campfire, Igor. You’re good at that,” the
leader said.
“Come on, I’ll show you where there’s lots of brushwood,”
Cuckoorusoe offered.
The three of us headed inland. We walked along in silence,
not knowing what to talk about, as is usually the case when
kids first meet. Suddenly Igor made a loud, funny sound. It
sounded like a bark or something. But he hadn’t opened his
mouth (we’d both been looking at him). And then music started
playing inside of him. Real music. Jazz. You know, the boop-a-
doop kind. We stopped and stared at him. It was weird! He
laughed and slung his camera around to the front.
“It’s a transistor. I made it myself. But I had to use an old
camera case, because I didn’t have anything else. Anyway, it’s
convenient. I can wear it on a strap.”
“Gee! How come we didn’t guess right away?” I said.
“It’s not bad,” Cuckoorusoe said condescendingly after he’d

93
gotten over the first shock.
“How much was it?”
“Was what?”
“How much did it cost?”
“Nothing. I made it my­
self.”
“What was that?” Cuckoo-
rusoe made a face and cupp­
ed his hand to -his ear as if
he were deaf.
I giggled.
“I said I made it myself,”
Igor said seriously.
I giggled again.
“Ah,” Cuckoorusoe said
with a crooked smile. “I see.
What I said was how much does it cost? There were ‘Tourist’
transistors at the village shop. They cost thirty-five rubles. They
were real nice-looking. How much does yours cost?”
“Boy, you sure are funny.”
“What’re you arguing about, boys?” the leader said, appear­
ing from the bushes.
“Nothing special,” Cuckoorusoe replied. But then, looking
up at the leader, he suddenly said spitefully, “Are all the
Pioneers like that, or just him?”
“What d’you mean?”
“He says he made this transistor all by himself. Maybe that
girl built a real car by herself, and Pilot there flew
a rocketship?”
“Real cars and rocketships are out, but he really did make
his transistor. I know he did. He’s a whiz. He’s been a member
of an amateur radio club for over two years. He’s going to be

94
a great inventor when he grows up.” He was speaking very se­
riously and not joking at all, so we had to believe him. Cuc-
koorusoe looked deflated. He looked like a rubber balloon
when the air’s gone out of it. The corners of his mouth
drooped, and the taunting look in his eye vanished. I was just
as surprised. Somehow, I’d always thought that all those ideal
kids who made working models of ships and planes, and fancy
plywood shelves, working away with their jigsaws like mad, and
all those other things that’re usually put on exhibit and which
make the teachers and parents ohh and ahh, that all those
young geniuses were puny, long-nosed and wore glasses. And
that all of them were slightly nutty. That’s what I’d always
thought. But here was this normal, pug-nosed boy, a well-built
and tanned kid, and you could tell he was good at sports.
I could just see him racing around the track with a pack of
other athletes at some stadium, but I couldn’t imagine him
stuck away in some quiet laboratory, poking around in the
scrambled insides of a transistor.
Cuckoorusoe and I felt very small and insignificant.
The leader looked at us closely and spoke in a seemingly
gruff voice, “Come on, kids. Don’t waste time. Everybody’s
hungry. Where’s that firewood? Come on!”
This brought us back to our senses, and we began gathering
dry branches hastily (even too hastily). Soon we were carrying
big armfuls of brushwood back to the clearing. Cuckoorusoe
was trying the hardest. He had such a load I was afraid he’d
topple over.
“What d’you know!” the girl named Valya shouted when she
saw us.
I don’t know why Robinson Cuckoorusoe got so red in
a face. Maybe it was because he was carrying such a big load.
Or maybe it was because of the way she’d shouted: “What

95
d’you know!” Actually, he’d been looking at Valya quite a lot.
Wasn’t that stupid? She was just like a scarecrow: tall, skinny,
long-legged and goggle-eyed. A hundred times uglier than
Grebeniuchka.
Everybody stood around watching Igor build a campfire. He
was a city boy, but he sure knew a lot about building a fire.
Soon there was a large blaze in the middle of the clearing.
“Whose turn is it to be cook today?” the leader asked.
“Sashko’s!” Valya shouted.
“Yes, Sashko’s!” all the rest shouted and everyone looked at
Pilot.
“Is it?” the leader asked.
“Right!” Sashko replied.
“Today’s one lucky day,” the leader said and smiled.
“Hurray! We want chowder!”
“Chowder!” everyone was 'now shouting.
“ Right,” Sashko said and smiled for the very first time.
Now, as we all stood around the campfire, we could see that
he was the shortest one of all. Maybe that was why he acted so
serious: so’s he’d look older. We could also see he was very
popular, and if he was kidded it was always good-naturedly.
Sashko began cooking their breakfast. The girls, and Valya,
too, all pitched in. They peeled potatoes and cleaned the fish
which they had in a net in the water that was tied to one of the
boats. All the other kids scattered. We soon came to where Igor
was sitting on a stump, whittling. Java and I squatted beside
him and poked at the ground idly. Java cleared his throat,
frowned (to hide his embarrassment), and said,
“Let’s have a look... at the transistor... Huh?”
Igor put down his knife and stick and said, “Sure. Here.”
He opened the lid. “This is the tuning, this is the frequency,
this is the volume.” He touched the three knobs in turn.

96
 Cuckoorusoe bent over the radio. I leaned over it, too, but he
elbowed me away and said, “Don’t breathe on it. It’ll get damp
and spoil.”
Igor smiled. “That’s all right. Breathing won’t spoil it.”
Cuckoorusoe kept turning the knobs, tuning in on voices in
distant lands. “Mmm... It’s a valuable thing,” he said at last
and added, “I bet you’ve got an A in physics.”
“I do,” Igor said. He didn’t sound at all boastful.
“Did you ever get a D?” Java asked hopefully. “I mean, in
deportment, or singing, or shop, or anything? Or are you
a straight-A pupil?”
“I am.” Igor seemed to be apologizing. “All the members of
our expedition are. That was one of the conditions.”
Cuckoorusoe heaved a sad sigh. Just then Valya stuck her
head out of the bushes. The girls must have finished their work.
I could see her, but Igor, who had his back to her, couldn’t.
Valya crept over to him, and before I had a chance to say any­
thing, shoved him off the stump. It was so unexpected Igor
went sprawling into the grass.
“A gentleman always offers a lady his seat,” Valya said, sit­
ting down on the stump.
Igor got up and smiled. Java and I exchanged puzzled
glances. That was a nice how-d’you-do! A long-legged scare­
crow had shoved an athlete who was smart enough to make
a radio all by himself just as if he’d been a sack of potatoes.
And all he did was smile! If even Grebeniuchka had ever tried
to shove me like that I’d ’ve knocked her senseless. But what
was happening to Cuckoorusoe?
“Let’s have it,” Valya said brazenly and held out her hand.
And Cuckoorusoe, like some dumb calf, just handed it over.
What a sap! It wasn’t her transistor, so why was she ordering
everybody around? I was only thinking all this. I didn’t say
7-344
97
a word. It wasn’t my transistor, and nobody was taking it away
from me. Valya tuned it, cocking her head to a side like a bird
and staring up into the sky. She tuned in to some awful music
and said: “Ohh.”
We stared at her.
She kept gazing off at the water as she listened to the music.
“That’s the adagio from Swan L a k e she said softly.
I made a face. She sure was stuck up, using words nobody
knew. But Java looked serious, frowned again and said,
“I’d say it’s a duck lake, not a swan lake. There’s no swans
here, but there’s thousands of ducks.”
“Oh, no!” Valya shrieked. “I didn’t mean this lake. I meant
the music. It’s a ballet by Tchaikovsky called Swan Lake.
That’s what they’re playing.”
You’d think somebody’d poured hot water on Cuckoorusoe’s
head, because all the blood there was in his body rushed to his
face. “I know. I know it’s a famous ballet. I just said that for
laughs.”
 I turned away. I can’t look at a person who’s lying to your
face. Naturally, Java’d never heard of Swan Lake in his life.
Anyway, he had no ear for music. He could only sing along
when I was singing, All the songs he sang, if he sang them
alone, sounded the same. I was mad at Valya for making my
friend lie. Besides, who did she think she was anyway?
Valya switched off the radio suddenly, as if she’d guessed my
thoughts, and said, “Are you mad at me for coming out here
and annoying you? Don’t be. I can go away. I just wanted to
get to know you.”
She said it so simply it made me uncomfortable. Neither Java
nor I could think of anything to say. Valya got up, thrust the
radio into Cuckoorusoe’s hands and ran back to the campfire.
“She sure is funny, isn’t she?” he said and sounded
embarrassed.
“She’s a good guy,” Igor replied and then he turned red.
“Everybody’s friends with her. Why don’t you turn it on? Go
on. I just changed the batteries.”
It seemed to me he’d changed the subject just so we wouldn’t
be talking about Valya any more. I knew what he felt like,
because I would’ve been uneasy if anybody’s been talking about
Grebeniuchka.
We sat on the bank by the stump for some time. Then we
heard the leader shouting,
“Igor! Boys! Come on! The chowder’s ready!”
“Come on,” said Igor.
I’d only had a glass of milk that morning and not a bite to
eat since then, so the invitation was more than welcome. I’m
sure Cuckoorusoe was just as hungry as me, but he suddenly
said,
“You go on. We’ll stay here. We had a big breakfast just
before you came.”
7*
99
 I blinked and gaped. Naturally, I said nothing.
“Come on! I bet you never had chowder as good as this.”
Still, Cuckoorusoe refused. I swallowed hard and also
refused. Then Igor said,
“Just you wait! I’ll sic the leader on you!” and ran off.
A moment later Valya came running instead of the leader.
She started shouting the moment she got close enough: “What
d’you mean? Come on and eat! If you’d’ve invited me, I’d
never’ve refused. Never! Come on!”
To my great joy Cuckoorusoe, who had flatly refused Igor’s
invitation, gave in at once and trotted off meekly behind her.
For some reason or other I again thought of Grebeniuchka.
I don’t know whether it was because I was starved or
whether the chowder was really that good, but I don’t
think I’ve ever eaten anything as good before. And I’m a good
judge of chowder. Everyone in our fishing village knows how to
make chowder. I’ve often made it myself. But this was really
something. We all praised Sashko the Pilot. He sat there beside
the pot, holding the ladle, frowning as always and waiting to be
asked for seconds. Now I knew why they’d all been so happy
when they found out it was his turn to be cook. He was their
best cook.
When everyone had had his fill the kids sprawled on the
grass around the campfire. Someone began to sing softly, and
someone else joined in. Then others joined in and the song grew
louder and rose over the water until it seemed it was making
the reeds bend and sway.
How nice it was to be lying in the grass, looking up at the sky
and singing all together. I felt that the whole world could hear
us. The leader got up and went down to the boats. When he
came back he was carrying an accordion. Now the song
sounded still better. When we finished singing it he said,

100
 “Now let’s sing ‘Campfires Blaze’. You start, Sashko.”
“Right,” said Sashko, cleared his throat and waited till the
first bars of the introduction ended.
I’d never have thought he had such a clear voice. “Right”
was all right! Not only was he a famous cook, he was a great
singer, too!
We sang for about an hour and a half, or even more. We
sang Ukrainian folk songs, revolutionary songs, old and new
Komsomol songs and songs from the movies. Then Igor said,
“Let’s ask Valya to dance for us.”
“She’ll start putting on airs and saying she can’t, and then
everybody’ll have to coax her,” I said to myself.
“All right,” she said simply.
That’s when I noticed that Cuckoorusoe had gotten red in
the face again and was fidgeting. By the way, while we’d been
singing he had kept glancing at Valya, and whenever she’d look
his way he’d look away.
The leader played a few bars and announced: “The Kaza­
chok, a Ukrainian folk dance.”
Valya began to dance. Java was breathing so hard into
my ear you’d think he was dancing and was out of breath. But
he didn’t clap when the music stopped and everyone else
clapped. He just frowned and looked away.
Then the girl who wore glasses recited a poem by Mayak­
ovsky. She recited it very well, but she shouted the words so
loudly I bet they could hear her back in the village. All in all, it
turned into a real show. Then everybody went swimming. Igor
did the crawl, Sashko did the breast stroke and Valya was
a good swimmer, too (though she swam the way a lot of girls
do, with her head out of the water and blowing bubbles). But
no one could dive from a high branch. That’s when my pal
Cuckoorusoe showed them what us boys of Vasukovka were

101
 like. He climbed to the very top of
a willow and started swinging back
and forth like a monkey. Then he
dived. It took him nearly a minute
of flying through the air to reach
the middle of the stretch of water.
Everyone gasped.
“Good for you!” said the leader.
“You may be a famous diver some
day. You’ve got to sign up in a div­
ing school. Good for you!”
I was burning with envy and
wanted to show them that I was
brave, too. I spat on my hands and
began climbing the willow, but this
wasn’t my lucky day. Misfortune
lay in wait for me. I caught my
shorts on the end of a short branch and ripped them.
But what a rip that was! It ran from the very top to the
very bottom (including the elastic waistband). I was so ashamed
I could’ve wailed, and I climbed down in disgrace. But nobody
laughed at me. On the contrary, they all tried to comfort me.
“Forget it.”
“It was an accident.”
Each of the girls offered to sew up the rip, but I refused. Im­
agine me sitting there in the raw while some girl was sewing up
my shorts! I’d’ve shot myself before that ever happened! So
I borrowed a needle and thread and crawled into the tent.
There, in the semi-darkness, I worked away clumsily, pricking
my fingers and swallowing my tears. Suddenly in a corner
I noticed a book under some leaves. I leaned over to pick it
up. It was a grammar book. I was surprised at first, but then

102
I recalled that Cuckoorusoe’d brought it along to fool grand­
father.
There was a notebook inside the grammar book. I opened it.
(I hope my pal forgives me for being nosey.) The heading on
the first page read: “The Diary of Robinson Cuckoorusoe” .
You know all about the first day. There was the page with
“Adventures” and “Bad things” . I wanted to see what followed,
turned the page and- I couldn’t believe my eyes. There were
pages filled with exercises on verbs, nouns, adjectives and even
suffixes. All, like the diary, were written in pencil. That meant
they’d all been written on the island. No doubt about it. What
a discovery!
Robinson Cuckoorusoe, who was going to live on a desert
island for twenty-eight years, two months and nineteen days,
was studying for his re-examination! What a sly fox he was! He
was proud, because he’d always been a leader, and his pride
had kept him from telling me he was studying for his
re-examination. That’s why he’d run off to the island:
so’s he could study grammar. Now I knew why he named the
island the Re-examination Island. Just you wait, Cuckoorusoe!
I’ll show you!
But what was I going to show him? I’d never breathe a word
about the notebook to anyone. I was no enemy of his. I didn’t
want him to botch things up again and be left back. By no
means! I’d never say a word to him about it. Not even half
a word. Let him go on thinking I didn’t suspect a thing.
I pushed the notebook and grammar back under the leaves.
He’d never guess I’d seen them.
Discovering them suddenly made me feel as happy as I was
when the sun would come out after a rain. I forgot all about
my disgrace, quickly sewed up the rest of the rip and rushed
out of the tent in a very different mood. Everyone noticed the
change in me and began to smile.
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 “Shorts make the man!” Cuckoorusoe said. “No shorts, no
man. But when he’s got his shorts on, he can even smile,” he
said, glanced at Valya and giggled. He was trying to impress
her.
Though what he’d said was stupid, I didn’t get mad at him.
I forgave him.
“Break camp! Break camp!” the leader called out.
Everyone fell to work. It was so unexpected that Cuckooru­
soe and I were dumbfounded.
“You mean you’re leaving?” I mumbled.
“Yes. We’ve spent a lot of time here as it is. We hadn’t
planned on stopping here. We spent the night on a meadow
near some haystacks, but early this morning a herd of cows
came to graze there. We’ve a fine bunch of girls, but they’re
scared of cows. So we had to relocate. We didn’t even
have time for breakfast. According to our schedule, we
should be in Andrushovka before dark. D’you think we’ll
make it?”
“Sure. You’ve got good boats,” I said.
Cuckoorusoe looked glum. Igor, Valya, Sashko and some
other kids crowded around us.
“Goodbye!”
“So long!”
“Good luck!”
We shook everyone’s hand in turn. As Valya shook
Cuckoorusoe’s hand she said:
“Too bad we have to leave now. We’ll never know if you
caught the poacher. What a shame!” She said this very
sincerely. Java turned red again. “You know what?” she said.
“Write to us. I’ll leave you the address, and you can both write
to us. All right?”
“Write to us!”

104
 “Sure!”
“By all means.”
“Write to us!”
“Right!” said Sashko the Pilot.
Meanwhile, Valya was jotting down the address on a scrap of
paper torn out of a notebook. “Here,” she said and handed it
to Cuckoorusoe. “ Don’t lose it.”
He put the slip in his pocket.
The Young Pioneers got into the rowboats.
“Let’s sing them one last song!” Valya shouted. “You
start, Sashko!”
They all began to sing. We stood there on the bank for
a long time after they disappeared from view, listening to the
song carrying back to us over the marsh.
Then Cuckoorusoe lay down on the grass in the clearing and
stared up at the sky.
I, too, lay there, looking up in the sky. The sky is something
you can look at for hours. You look at it and think. I don’t
know what Cuckoorusoe was thinking about, but I wasn’t at all
surprised when he suddenly said,
“Sure, technology is really something nowadays. I read about
a transistor radio mounted in a button, a TV set in a cigarette
case, and a camera no bigger than your nail.”
“Sure, that’s because they use transistors, semi-conductors,”
I said. Now it was my turn to become red in the face, because
I hadn’t the slightest idea what either of them was.
Neither did Cuckoorusoe. We didn’t know a thing. Not a dam
thing. But Igor did. You could tell he did. Why, he put a radio
together that was all full of transistors, whatever they were.
“Gee, wouldn’t it be great to make something that had tran­
sistors in it?” Cuckoorusoe said. “Something real special.
Something nobody’s ever made. Like- Like a cow that’s run by

105
remote control. By radio. We’d have an antenna strung between
its horns and a little radio (a transistor, naturally) mounted in
its ear. It’d be a pleasure to care for a cow like that. Say you’d
be smack in the middle of Grandpa Salivon’s watermelon patch
(and you know what his watermelons are like!), enjoying
a chunk of watermelon. You’d look at your pocket TV and see
that your cow Manka’d strayed into the millet field. That darn
cow! But you wouldn’t have to worry, you wouldn’t have to
jump up and race over there like mad. You’d just press a but­
ton and speak into the mike: ‘Man-ka-aa! Get out of there, stu­
pid! Come on!’ And Manka’d come galloping out so fast you’d
think somebody’d cracked a whip at her. Then you’d sit back
and go on enjoying your watermelon. Wouldn’t that be some­
thing? Huh?”
“Oh, boy!” I was astounded.
“We can’t make anything on this island... Not anything with
transistors,” he said sadly.
“Right! What’s so special about this stupid island? Let’s go
home. Huh? Let’s go home, Cuckoorusoe.”
He scowled and then glared at me. “Think I’m chicken?
Think you can trick me that easy? Well, you can’t!”
“But you said...”
“What’d I said? I said I was going to live on a desert island
and I am! So let’s not talk about it.”
There was a strained silence, the kind that comes about when
two friends feel one of them is being insincere. Finally, he
said,
“Let’s think about how we’re going to trap Knysh.”
I looked at him in surprise. When he’d told those kids about
trapping a poacher he’d done the right thing: after all, he
couldn’t tell them the truth about Re-examination Island. But
now... He couldn’t be serious.

106
 “You mean you really want to trap him?”
“You mean you want that rat to get away?”
“Are you nuts? He’ll drown us before we have a chance to
peep.”
“He will? What’s my gun for? You think you need an army
to trap him? A gun’s serious business. A gun’s a firearm. Bang\
And that takes care of that. Understand?”
“You mean you’re going to shoot him?” I was getting
scared.
“You think I’ll start out by shooting him? I won’t. But- If he-
I mean, anybody’ll get scared of a gun. And he’ll follow my
orders.”
“Oh. Yes, of course he will. But you know, I’d better be get­
ting back. See? The sun’s going down. I’m afraid ma’ll be mad
as anything.”
“I’m not keeping you. Go on,” he said grumpily. “But
Knysh’ll be back here tomorrow and- I don’t know. It’s up to
you. Sure, I can get him myself. If you’re scared, I don’t
mind” .
“That’s not what I meant. I’ll be back tomorrow. Hon­
est.”
“Come in the evening so you can sleep over,” he said cheer­
fully. “He’ll cast his net tomorrow night and come back for the
fish in the morning.”
“I don’t know about sleeping over, but I’ll think of some­
thing. I can always sneak out. The main thing’s not to fall
asleep by accident.”
“Put a stick of wood under your head, or some thistles in
your shirt.”
“ Don’t worry, I’ll manage.” With these encouraging words
I got into the boat.
Cuckoorusoe’s face was glum. I could see he hated to have to

107
spend another night on the island all by himself. He waded
around the boat, checked the sides and said, “This should be
caulked. This should be tarred. And this board should be
changed.” He wanted to add something else, scratched his ear,
sniffled and finally said, “You know- Would you bring me
a squeaker? Just one. I’ve got a yen for one, like you do before
you’re going to die. ’Cause all I’ve got to eat is fish.”
Squeakers were the honeycakes that were sold in the village
shop. They were stale, as hard as hard tack, and squeaked when
you bit into them. One squeaker could last a whole day. Maybe
that’s why we liked them so.
“All right. You can depend on me,” I said and shoved off.
 C h a p t e r 12

WAKING AND SLEEPING

“Where’ve you been all day with not a thing to eat?” ma said
when I got home. “You’re nothing but skin and bones.”
“But I had chowder! It was great! That boy Sashko can cook
better’n real cook,” I said before I knew what I was saying and
stopped short in time to keep from spilling the whole secret.
Ma noticed this. She looked at me suspiciously. “What
Sashko?”
“You know-. The one that lives near the mill. Uncle Mik-
hailo’s son,” I lied, saying to myself: “What if she saw him
today?” Whew! she said nothing. That meant she hadn’t seen
him. I was off the hook.
“How was the catch?” she asked.
“Boy! You should’ve seen them! Some were this big!” I lied
without batting an eye. “I wanted to bring you a couple, but
they all went into the chowder. Too bad. But I’ll bring you
some. We’re going to the marsh tomorrow evening, and we’ll
stay out all night. Can I?”
“We’ll see. Go chop some firewood. We’re all out of wood.”
What a relief! It’d gone off smoothly. I ran outside to chop
the wood.
I kept close to ma all day, bringing water from the well,
sweeping the house. I was so good you could’ve hung my pic­
ture on the wall. But I had to be, because I wanted her to let
me go for all of next night. Cuckoorusoe’d be waiting for me.
I worked so hard all day long that when I finally fell into bed
I went out like a light. I had a crazy dream. It was better than
the movies. I’ll never forget it as long as I live.
I dreamed that I was on Re-Examination Island. Suddenly
I saw a ship sailing into our stretch of water. It was a huge
white ocean liner (I’d seen them in the movies). It had three
109
decks, swimming pools, restaurants and a volleyball court. The
smokestack was as big as our house. I stood looking at it and
wondering how it could’ve come down through the narrow
lanes in the reeds. But before I was through being amazed the
gangway was lowered, and walking down it was- Gre-
beniuchka. She came over to me and said,
“How do you do? A delegation of German Young Pioneers
is visiting the island. You’ll be their interpreter.” I was too
stunned to say anything for a moment, but then replied politely,
“With the greatest of pleasure. However, I’d like to remind you
that, as you certainly know, my foreign language at school is
English, so I don’t speak German too fluently. T only know
three words in German: der Tisch (the table), der Stuhl (the
chair), and der Bleistift (the pencil).”
“That’s all right,” she said. “It’s quite sufficient. Come and
greet the visitors.”
And there were Igor, Sashko the Pilot and Valya coming
down the gangway.
“So that’s it! So they’re German Pioneers.”
I led them to the clearing. Cuckoorusoe was standing outside
the tent.
“I’d like you to meet Robinson Vasilyevich Cuckoorusoe,
Governor of Re-examination Island,” I said in what seemed to
me to be fluent German.
“This way, please,” Cuckoorusoe said and showed us into the
tent.
We entered and found ourselves in a large, bright room
where everything was as white as in a hospital. A shiny pot was
set on a table in the middle of the room.
“This is a pot,” Cuckoorusoe said. “It’s run on transistors. It
cooks by itself. There are no flames.”
Imagine that! Good for him! He’d invented something after
all. Something that was run on transistors. And he said you
couldn’t construct anything on the island.
“Der Stuhl?” Valya suddenly asked.
no
 “Der Bleistift,” I replied and wondered at the ease with
which I spoke German, because she’d asked: “Hey, did you
trap that poacher?” and I had replied: “Sure. Everything’s all
right. Don’t worry.”
German was really a swell language: all you had to do was
say a couple of words and everyone understood you. Next Sep­
tember I’d surely ask to be transferred to the group studying
German. I’d be an honour pupil as easy as anything. Now
I knew why all of them, Valya, Igor and Sashko, were all
honour pupils.
Just then Grebeniuchka came over to me and said, “A
gentleman always offers a lady his seat,” and shoved me
hard.
“Right!” Sashko the Pilot said.
And I flew off, falling lower and lower into a chasm. Bang\
I woke up. I was lying on the floor. My shoulder hurt. I’d
fallen out of bed in my sleep.
That’s the crazy dream I had.
It was late. My parents had gone to work. Breakfast was on
the table, with a napkin over my plate and a note beside it. It
was a list of chores for me to do. M a’d probably decided, judg­
ing by my behaviour the day before, that I loved housework.
I made a face. Being good was hard work.
I pottered around the house till noon and then climbed the
Great Wall to our observation post, to see what was going on
in the poachers’ house.
Not a sound was coming from their yard. Knysh’s wife was
probably at the market, and Knysh... Knysh was sound asleep
under the pear tree. He’d probably been mending his net all
night and was now catching up on his sleep. He was lying on
his back, shielding his face from the sun with his arm. When
I looked at that hairy arm and at the spread fingers of his hand
I imagined there were claws on the tips of them instead of nails.
How would we ever trap such a big, hairy, scary beast? It was
beyond me. I climbed down and walked along the street, look-
lll
ing in at Java’s house as I passed by. Grandpa Varava was sit­
ting on a little bench, sharpening his scythe.
“Oh, you haven’t the faintest idea where your darling grand­
son is this very moment,” I was thinking. “If you only knew
you sure wouldn’t be sitting around here. And who can tell
what’ll happen to him tonight? It’s going to be a real military
operation. Maybe he’ll even have to shoot!”
But Grandpa Varava didn’t even raise his head. I sneaked by
the open gate so he wouldn’t see me (I didn’t want him to start
questioning me) and continued on my way. I felt uneasy. Trap­
ping a poacher was no joke. This was no kid’s prank. It was
a real, serious thing. Maybe we’d better tell the grown-ups
about it, and then all together we could- But that would be
revealing the secret of the desert island and betraying Cuckoo-
rusoe. That would be treason. I’d never be a traitor. Never!
“What’re you so glum about again? Did your mother paddle
you for getting into trouble again?” someone was saying.
I looked up. Ganna Grebeniuk was standing by the well, smil­
ing at me. She had two pails on a yoke over her shoulder.
“And why’re you alone? Where’s your left-back friend? Did
you have a fight?”
I should’ve said something to put her in her place, something
like: “It’s none of your damn business,” but I didn’t want to be
rude, so I said, “He’s visiting his aunt in Peski.”
“And poor little you are weeping your eyes out.”
Once again I stopped myself from saying what I should have
said in such a case: “Wipe your own snot, cry-baby.” Instead,
I said, “I am not weeping, but I sure do miss him.”
This kind of a meek reply probably astonished her, because
she looked at me with sympathy and said,
“Then why don’t you come around to the playground? We
play volleyball every day.”
“Ahh...” I said sort of vaguely. All of a sudden I felt that
I wanted to tell her about the island and Knysh, the poacher,
and the Young Pioneers, and even about the dream I had that
112
night. It took a lot of will-power not to. If it’d been my secret
I’d ’ve probably told her, but Cuckoorusoe would never forgive
me if I did. Sometimes it’s very hard to be a faithful friend.
Then, for some strange reason, I began to wonder whether she
could dance the Kazachok and decided that she probably
could.
While we were talking she’d lowered one of her pails into the
well and was now pulling it up, turning the wheel with both
hands. I stood watching her for a while and then said to myself,
“What the heck! Java can’t see me anyway.” So I said, “Let me
help you.”
She didn’t say anything. I took hold of the handle and we
began turning the wheel together. We turned it so fast the pail
kept hitting against the walls, and the water kept splashing out.
It was only half-full when we finally raised it. We looked at each
other and laughed.
“ Let’s try again.”
I liked us turning the wheel together. We kept jostling each
other, and once we even bumped heads. We kept laughing all
the time and were sorry when the pails were full at last.
She hooked them onto the yoke, raised it to her shoulder and
started off, swaying as she walked. Somewhere inside of me
I felt I should be helping her carry the pails, at least as far as
her gate, but I didn’t have the spunk to. So I just watched her,
saying to myself that I’d never go off to live on desert island,
not even if someone’d give me a bicycle if I did.
“Oh! Java asked me to get him some squeakers. The shop’ll
be closing soon,” I suddenly recalled, but my next thought was:
“I don’t have any money! What’ll I do? The shop’ll close by
the time my folks get home.”
Grebeniuchka was just opening her gate.
“Ganya!” I shouted, calling her by her first name for the first
time in my life.
This was so unexpected she stopped short and spilled some of
the water.
8-344
113
 I ran up to her, shouting, “Wait, Ganya! Can you lend me
nine kopecks? I’ll give it back as soon as my ma gets home.”
“What for?” She looked at me slyly. “Gigarettes?”
“ ’Course not! I need the money- I’m going fishing overnight.
I ’ve got to buy some hooks before the shop closes. I’ll give it
back. Honest. Huh?”
“I don’t have nine kopecks. I’ve got a 50-kopeck piece. I’m
going to buy a book. A very interesting one. It’s called Kon-
Tiki, and it’s about some men who crossed the ocean on
a raft.”
“I’ll bring you the change. It won’t take a minute.”
“Wait. I’ll get the money.”
Well, I bought the squeakers, gave Grebeniuchka the change
and, when my mother got home, returned the debt. It all went
off very nicely. I didn’t even have to beg ma for the money. She
gave it to me right away and let me go fishing at night. That’s
what comes of being good and doing everything your mother
tells you to! She also gave me a sackful of food. You’d think
I was going away for a month.
When the sun went down I started out for the marsh. Before
leaving, I picked up a long rope in the shed, the one ma used to
tie the calf to a stake in the pasture. “Who knows? We might
have to tie him up,” I said to myself, sounding braver than
I felt.
 C h a p t e r 13

“HANDS UP!”

Cuckoorusoe, rod in hand, was standing waist-deep in the

water by the bank. He must’ve been standing there for a long
time, because his lips were blue and his teeth were chatter­
ing.
“I thought you weren’t going to come,” he grumbled, but
I could see he was happy. He must’ve been real worried, think­
ing I wouldn’t come. He got out of the water and began doing
knee-bends and slapping his sides to warm up. “Well? How’re
things?” he said. “What’s new? How’s my grandpa? Did he
start a search for me yet?”
“Don’t be silly. He was sharpening his scythe when I last saw
him. He wasn’t even thinking about you.”
Cuckoorusoe frowned. I realized he wasn’t very pleased at
the news. He probably felt as if he’d been on the island for
years, and here nobody’d even noticed his absence.
“That’s right. That’s fine. Soon they’ll all forget I was ever
bom. That’ll be just fine,” he was saying, trying to sound jolly.
But I could hear the misery in his voice. Nobody wants to be
forgotten.
I pulled the packet of squeakers from my pocket and handed
it to him.
“You brought them! Gee, thanks! Boy, did I ever miss
them!” he said and sank his teeth into a honeycake.
“What’d you do? Last evening and all of today?”
“Oh, I went fishing and loafed around.”
“Are you still keeping a diary?”
“Nah,” he said off-handedly, chewing on the honeycake. “I
decided not to. It’s just the same as doing homework. That’s
not what I came out to a desert island for.”
I said nothing. I knew what was in the diary.
115
 “How about a game of tip-cat? I haven’t played it a long
time,” he said.
“All right.”
The old ducks, the pop-eyed toads, the busy water hens and
the other inhabitants of the marsh now witnessed their first
game of tip-cat. We played until it got dark and we could no
longer even see the bat.
All the while we’d been playing an uneasy feeling had gripped
me. It kept getting worse and worse. Naturally, I tried not to
let on, but with each passing minute something inside me was
making me feel sicker and sicker. I was fully seasoned by the
time it got dark and could hardly keep my teeth from
chattering.
“We’ve got to be very quiet now. Don’t make a sound. He’ll
be here soon. He’ll cast his net and then...” Cuckoorusoe
whispered.
This “then” scared me more than anything else.
To make things still worse, the sky was cloudy and star­
less.
“Now this is our plan of attack,” Cuckoorusoe whispered
again. “We approach him in the boat. I’ll be in the stern, and
I’ll have my gun. You’ll be in the bow, and you’ll have the
flashlight. I’ll say: ‘Hands up!’ Then you shine the light on him
and shout. ‘You come in from the right, Valigura! And you
come in from the left, Nikolai Pavlovich!’ We want him to
think there’s a whole lot of us. That’s what real border guards
do when they trap a spy.”
“But what’ll we do after we’ve trapped him?” I asked.
“We’ll hand him over to the militia. To Valigura.”
“Then you’ll leave the island and won’t be Robinson
Cuckoorusoe any more. Everybody’ll know about it.”
Why had I said that?
“Oh, no!” Cuckoorusoe whispered. “I’ll stay here on the
island. You’ll take him in.”
My knees felt weak. “But- But how- Oh, no,” I mumbled.
116
 “It’s easy. You’l take him to the precinct and hand him over
to Valigura. That’s all you have to do.”
“But Valigura’ll be sound asleep in bed,” I wailed. “What’ll
I do in the middle of the night when it’ll be just me and that
bandit Knysh? He’ll strangle me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll give you my gun. You can bring it back
later.”
“Oh, no! D-don’t! I’m sc-scared. I’m more scared of the
g-gun than of Knysh. What if it goes off by accident and
I k-kill him? I’ll be t-tried for mur-murder.”
It finally dawned on me that Cuckoorusoe had no plan of
attack. He’d only figured it out up to the part when he’d say:
“Hands up!” Knysh would stand up shakily in the boat with
his hands up. But then, it seemed, I’d have to do all the rest.
Not on your life! “No! Never! I don’t care what you say, I ’m
not taking Knysh in by myself.”
“All right, quit whining. We’ll take him in together, as far as
the village. Then I’ll come back. I didn’t know you were
chicken.”
I felt awfully ashamed Java was so much braver than me.
He didn’t look a bit scared. I tried to get a grip on my­
self.
We said nothing for a while. Then we heard a rustling. And
a splash. And a lot of little splashes: plop-plop-plop. We didn’t
dare breathe. No doubt about it, Knysh was casting his net. We
waited. At last everything became very still. He was gone. We
waited a little while longer. All was quiet. There was not
a sound to be heard. Knysh was gone.
“Now we get into the boat and lie in ambush,” Cuckooru­
soe whispered. He loaded his gun and handed me the flash­
light.
We got into the boat and rowed slowly along the bank.
“There it is!” I whispered. I was in the bow and was the first
to spot the white floats on the water.
We cut into the reeds opposite the floats and camouflaged
117
the boat. Now we’d have to wait. All through the night, maybe,
till Knysh came back for the fish.
“We mustn’t fall asleep, not even for a second. If we get all
sleepy we’ll be half-dead and won’t be able to trap him,” Java
said.
“Right,” I said and yawned. I was dying to sleep. I opened
my eyes wide, staring into the dark and at the barely visible
outline of the reeds, but my eyes kept closing by themselves.
I had to keep dipping my hand into the water to rub them
open. There’s probably nothing harder than trying to keep
awake when you’re dying to sleep. And the minutes probably
never drag as slowly as when you’re sitting in the dark, fighting
off sleep, waiting for something to happen.
“Keep awake. We don’t want to miss him,” Cuckoorusoe
hissed.
I couldn’t see him in the dark. If only he knew how I wished
we’d miss Knysh! But there was no hope that we might, not
with Java around. Wasn’t he scared at all?
My mind cooked up all sorts of terrible scenes: Knysh, his
teeth bared, was cracking me over the head with his oar. I was
falling overboard, gulping water, gasping for air as the water-
weeds entangled me and- Yes, I really was gasping. Why, oh
why had we ever got mixed up in this? Who knows how it
would all end? What if the end would really be like I’d just im­
agined it? We’d be lucky if they ever found our bodies. Then
we’d have a big funeral. There’d be weepy music and speeches.
All the kids from school would be there and everyone else from
the village, too. And they’d all be crying. And Grebeniuchka,
wiping her tear-stained cheeks, would sob: “I saw him the day
before he drowned. He was so nice, so polite. He helped me fill
my pails at the well. And he called me Ganya. I lent him nine
kopecks, but if I’d ’ve known what’d happen I’d ’ve given him
my fifty kopecks for keeps. He was such a fine boy!”
This made me feel so sorry for myself that a lump rose to my
118
throat. Cuckoorusoe, who knew nothing of this, hissed at me
again,
“Don’t sleep!”
“I’m not! I’m not!” I whispered in a tragic voice.
The hours dragged on.
Either my eyes had become accustomed to the dark or it was
really getting lighter, but whatever it was, I could now make
out the reeds, the glittering water and the billowing clouds.
Maybe it was getting light? I felt like we’d been sitting there for
years. All of a sudden I felt as if someone’d poked me in the
chest. A boat appeared from the darkness. It was coming
straight at us: closer, and closer, and closer. I could see the
monster Knysh in it.
My heart hung by a tiny thread which was about to break at
any moment. I gripped the sides of the boat.
At that very moment Cuckoorusoe shot the bolt of his gun
and shouted in a deep voice: “Hands up!”
 I forgot all about the flashlight. I forgot what I was supposed
to shout and shrieked in a terrified voice: “Help! This way!
Over there!” And I froze, terrified by the sound of my own
voice.
“Hands up! Hands up!” Cuckoorusoe shouted in a voice that
wasn’t as deep as it was the first time. Now he, too, was silent.
He didn’t know what to do.
For a long moment everything was very still. Then...
“Eh?” the monster said, as if it hadn’t understood us.
Then something fell with a thud into our b o at-Jav a’d
dropped his gun. All this was so unexpected that all I could do
was gape. I finally remembered the flashlight and began pump­
ing it like mad.
Standing in the other boat was- Grandpa Varava.
“Is that you, Grandpa?” Cuckoorusoe finally managed to
squeak.
“ ’Course it’s me,” said Grandpa Varava, coming closer.
“Don’t you recognize me? What’s going on here? You decide
to become a robber? Holding up people at gunpoint? You
figure since you didn’t make out at school you’d try your hand
at highway robbery?”
“No, Grandpa!” Cuckoorusoe shouted. “How can you
say that? We’re no robbers! Look! Give him some light,
Pavlik.”
I began pumping the flashlight again. I was ready to pump it
all night. That’s how happy I was to see Grandpa Varava.
I was ready to throw myself into his arms. My terror was gone.
With him here I wasn’t afraid of anything. I shined the light on
the floats.
“So that’s it,” he said. “So you’re not robbers, you’re
poachers. You think it makes me any happier? It’s the same
pair of pants put on backwards.”
“No, Grandpa! It’s not our net. It’s Knysh’s. We trailed him.
And we’re going to catch him red-handed.”
“You don’t say? Sure it’s Knysh?”
120
 “We saw him!” I said excitedly. “We saw him cast it. And he
came for his catch once. Him and his wife.”
“That’s a different story. Good for you, boys. But you’re
waiting at the wrong time. He won’t come till dawn, not
till about three or four o’clock. And it’s not even midnight
yet.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe it.
“Did you think the night’s over? You been waiting here
long?”
“Since sunset.”
“Poor you. And trying to keep awake all this time. Well, you
can get some sleep now. I’ll stand watch for you. I’ll wake you
up in time.”
“I’m not a bit sleepy,” Cuckoorusoe said.
“Me, neither,” I had to say.
“Do as you like,” Grandpa Varava said and moved his canoe
up alongside of us.
Nobody said anything. I knew Java was afraid his grand­
father might start questioning him, but the old man was
busy camouflaging his canoe. In such cases it’s always best
to be the first to start asking questions, and Java finally
said,
“How come you’re here, Grandpa?”
“I decided to drown myself. What with the misery of it all.
Having such a good-for-nothing grandson, that is.”
“I’m not joking.”
“Neither am I.”
“Come on, tell me.”
“You lied to me, so why should I tell you the truth?”
“Why, I - ” Java said and stopped. What could he say?
“Eh-heh.” The old man heaved a sad sigh. “Where could
I be going except to look for dopey you? I went to clean my
gun today. The season opens on Sunday. And I decided to
clean yours, too. Even though you’re a no-good pupil, I was
sorry for you. The least I can do is see that you grow up to be
121
a good hunter. Well, your gun was gone. I looked high and
low, but couldn’t find it. Did somebody steal it? Then I saw
that nearly half the cartridges were gone. You never thought
I counted them, did you? That made things a bit clearer. Spe­
cially since the padded jacket you wear when we go hunting
was gone, too. Still, I decided to double-check and went all the
way to your Aunt Ganna’s in Peski. You’ve no pity on my old
legs: seven kilometres there and seven back! Well, you weren’t
there. I didn’t say anything to her so’s she wouldn’t worry. ‘I
bet the kid’s gone off into the marsh,’ I said to myself. I did
too, when I was a kid. It was getting dark by the time I got
back home. I should’ve waited till morning to go looking for
you, but I was getting worried. This marsh is no playground.
There’s many a nazi found himself a watery grave here. So
I decided to come out now and look for you instead of waiting.
And here I am.”
We expected the old man to scold us, and even to box our
ears as he’d sometimes done before, but we never expected him
to speak to us as if we were grown up. Neither of us said
a word.
“I don’t want to think I’ll die before I see you amount to
something,” Grandpa Varava said sadly.
“Don’t talk like that, Grandpa. You won’t die!” Java
croaked.
“You think your grandpa will live forever? Why, I’ve turned
eighty! Before you know it they’ll be laying me to rest. It won’t
be long now.”
“Why, I might even die before you do. Remember that boil
I had on my leg? And I was burning up? So-”
“Ah, my boy, there’s a law that says the young may die, but
the old must die. That’s the way the world goes round. And
don’t you try to get ahead in this. Try to get ahead in some­
thing else.”
We were silent again. Java was very upset. So was I. I’d
never heard Grandpa Varava talk like this before. He was for­
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ever grumbling, scolding, even cuffing us at times, but now...
I’d rather he boxed our ears.
“Don’t tell ma, Grandpa,” “Java pleaded. “Please. Huh?”
“What’s there to tell? I don’t want to get her still more wor­
ried about you.”
“I’ve been studying grammar. Honest. And I’ll pass my
exam.”
“We’ll see. Try to get some sleep, both of you. Otherwise
you’ll be like two worms in a dead faint when I’ll need you
most. It’s a long wait.”
“What about you? You get some sleep. We’ll stand
watch.”
“No back talk!” the old man grumbled. His familiar grumbl­
ing was like old times and cheered us up.
Java didn’t argue any more. He curled up in the bottom of
the boat. Naturally, I did, too. A moment later I was sound
asleep. I felt I’d just closed my eyes when someone touched my
shoulder. I felt Grandpa Varava’s rough finger pressed to my
lips. That meant I wasn’t to make a sound.
It was daybreak. In the first light of dawn I saw Cuckoorusoe
sitting up in the stem, blinking sleepily. I rose slowly and
looked at the stretch of water ahead. Knysh was sitting in his
boat, picking fish out of the net. He was alone. Large pike,
carp and breams were plopping into his boat. It was a fine
catch.
“Come on, boys,” Grandpa Varava whispered and coughed
loudly several times.
Knysh started, cringed and drew his head into his shoulders.
Grandpa Varava was slowly steering his canoe out of the reeds.
We followed close behind.
“How’re you doing, my good man?” Grandpa Varava said
calmly as he sailed up to Knysh.
“Uh... He-hello,” Knysh said and smiled foolishly. “You
sure did scare me. I didn’t know what to think. Heh-
heh.”
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 “You fishing?” Grandpa Varava asked in the same calm tone
of voice.
“Yep,” Knysh said and squirmed. “Look at them! What
a catch! I never expected it. I was just thinking about you.
I was just saying to myself that I’d stop by and give you some
of the biggest ones. I’m glad to see you. Here, take whichever
ones you like. Here, take this pike, and these carp, and this
bream. Where do I put them?” Knysh picked up the biggest
pike and bent over to toss it into Grandpa Varava’s canoe, but
the old man pushed his hand aside, and the pike slipped into
the water with a splash.
“Come on. You’re coming with us,” Grandpa Varava said
sternly.
“What? Where to? You sure like to joke. Heh-heh,” Knysh
said, grinning again.
“I said come on!”
“What’s the matter? What for? You’re fooling. Wait. Want
me to give you half of my catch? And I’ll stand you to some
drinks. And I’ll buy the boys some candy.”
“Eh, man, I don’t know why you’ve been put in this world.
All you do is poison the air and use up food for nothing. Come
on.”
We were very still as we sat in our boat, watching them. How
come Grandpa Varava wasn’t afraid of him? He was unarmed,
and Knysh was twice as big as he! If Knysh just shoved him
lightly he’d send him flying, and that’d surely be the end of
Grandpa Varava. He’d disappear like a bubble on the water.
But Knysh was acting like a whipped dog. It even seemed like
he had a tail and that it was tucked between his legs. And his
eyes were like the eyes of a whipped dog. He was hastily pulling
in the net, glancing at Grandpa Varava quiltily. But Grandpa
Varava stood his ground. When Knysh finally pulled in the net
he said sternly, “You go first.”
Knysh led the way obediently. Grandpa Varava followed,
and we brought up the rear. As soon as we moved away from
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the island Knysh began to plead: “ Lemme go! Please!” His voice
was just like a cry-baby’s. I couldn’t believe it was coming from
a huge man like him and stared at him in wonder. What a ban­
dit, what a monster, indeed! I’d been so scared of him I’d
nearly died of fright.
Knysh kept pleading all the way back. “It’s no skin off your
nose! Lemme go. I didn’t steal nothing from you. Why’re you...
Lemme go... Please! Think of the trouble I’ll be in. Lemme
go!”
Grandpa Varava never said a word. You’d’ve thought he was
deaf. At last we reached the village.
“Put the fish in the net, swing it over your shoulder and let’s
go!” Crandpa Varava said.
And Knysh followed his orders. I was amazed: everything’d
gone off without a hitch. Not a shot had been fired. There’d
been no fight. And we didn’t even have to tie Knysh up. There
was some kind of power on Grandpa Varava’s side that Knysh
didn’t dare disobey.
It was all as easy as pie from then on. We went to Valigura’s
house and called him. The militiaman came out to the porch in
his slippers. He looked sleepy, but he had on his uniform and
even his cap.
“Ah. I see. Come on inside,” he said when he saw us.
We followed him in. He sat down at the table and began
writing a report. He kept on writing for a long time, stopping
to cock his head and read over what he’d written.
“Will the witnesses please sign here,” he finally said and
poked his finger at the bottom of the page.
Cuckoorusoe and I turned red. We’d never signed anything
before.
“Come on,” said Grandpa Varava after he’d signed his name
and handed me the pen.
I scrawled my name and handed it to Java. He signed his
name with a flourish, just like a grown man. I was so sorry
I hadn’t done the same and was ashamed of my childish scrawl.
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 Valigura smiled, patted Java on the back and said, “Good
for you. You’ve a fine signature.” Then he added, “Thank you
very much, all of you,” and shook Grandpa Varava’s hand and
then each of ours.
After that we left, but Knysh stayed on. As I walked along
I was saying to myself, “That takes care of that. We’re really
heroes! We caught a real poacher. Well, maybe we didn’t do it
all by ourselves, but if not for us he wouldn’t have been caught
at all. That’s for sure. Now the whole village’ll know about us.
And even the whole district. And maybe even the whole region.
And there might even be something about us in the papers.
And on the radio. And on TV, too. Why not? And Gre-
beniuchka’s eyes’ll shine when she looks at me, and she’ll feel
proud to say she knows me. And Karafolka’ll die of envy,
choking on all those good marks of his. And everybody’ll be
saying: ‘What d’you know? What fine boys they are! Real
heroes’.”
Unfortunately, nothing of the kind would happen, because
Java didn’t want anyone to know about the desert island, or
about him being Robinson Cuckoorusoe, or about any of the
rest of it. That’s why we wouldn’t be able to talk about it. He
even asked Grandpa Varava and Valigura to keep it a secret.
We’d be just as unknown to the world as ever. “Oh, well,”
I said to myself.
That evening Robinson Cuckoorusoe left his desert island (to
be known forever after as Re-examination Island) and moved
back to the mainland. No bands were playing, no photogra­
phers were snapping pictures, and thousands of people carrying
bouquets of flowers were not crowding the banks to welcome
the returning hero.
All was still except for a dog barking here and there in the
village and the frogs croaking in the reeds.
 The Last, C o n c l u d i n g C h a p t e r

The summer was over. Our carefree vacation had ended, and
once again we sat at our desks. Once again the bell rang for
recess every forty-five minutes. Once again we heard the fami­
liar: “Those who have not done their homework will please
raise their hands” , “Go to the board” and “Leave the class­
room!” The everyday life of 6B, formerly known as 5B, was
proceeding uneventfully.
I sat at my usual place by the window watching Sobakevich,
the school mutt, racing around the yard. I was thinking of all
that had happened during the summer: the desert island, Knysh
and the young pathfinders.
Once again I wondered whether Java had come to the island
by chance, whether it had been luck and fate working together
that had taken him to where Knysh poached.
I asked Java about it, but all he did was smile. Somehow,
though, I feel it was no accident. When I’d been away visiting
in Kiev he’d probably tailed Knysh and hatched the plan of
going off to the island. That Cuckoorusoe was a smart kid!
The teacher’s voice interrupted my thoughts. “Go to the
board, Ren,” she said.
Someone jostled my right elbow. It was my friend and neigh­
bour Cuckoorusoe standing up. Yes, he’d passed his exam (did
you ever doubt it?) and had been promoted to the sixth grade,
too.
Ah, those had been terrible days after we returned from the
desert island. At first I spent my time outside his house, shush­
ing everyone. I shushed their dog Polkan, to keep him from
barking. I shushed their cow Contribution, to keep her from
mooing. I shushed their pig Manuna, to keep her from grunt­
ing. I made sure no one interfered with his studies. Then I said
it’d be better if we studied for the exam together, since I’d for­
gotten all I knew and had to review it, too.
128
 “I don’t need any sacrifices from you,” Java said.
“D’you want to be better than me? To know everything
when I don’t know a thing? That’s not fair. Friends aren’t like
that,” I said.
We spent all of August studying. I can’t say it was fun, more
fun than playing soccer, or tip-cat, or going fishing, but who
ever said you’ve only got to do things that’re fun for your
friends?
I went along with Cuckoorusoe on the day of his re-examina­
tion, and we took the dictation together. Galina Sidorovna, our
teacher, guessed why I’d come.
“Take a seat. You can take the dictation, too. It’ll do you
good,” she said.
And you know, Java made out better than me, ’cause he only
made two mistakes, but I made three. That’s because he’d taken
his grammar book along to the desert island, and all the time
I was in Kiev he must’ve been doing something else besides cut­
ting up beets and potatoes.
Java went up to the board and wrote out a column of diffi­
cult words. And he didn’t make a single mistake.
By the way, he has a slip of paper with an address written on
it stuck between the pages of Robinson Crusoe. I don’t think
anybody’d keep an address if he wasn’t going to write any
letters.
That’s why I think knowing grammar is something Java
needs for his own good, too. You can’t write an honour pupil
a letter that’s full of mistakes. Why, you might as well go jump
in the lake before you ever start.
“Good for you, Ren! Go back to your seat,” Galina Sido­
rovna said.
My friend walked down the aisle proudly and slowly. He was
silent for a few minutes after he sat down, waiting till the plea­
sure the teacher’s praise had brought on had settled a bit. Then
he leaned over to me and whispered, “Let’s give it a try.”
“Let’s.”
9-344
129
 We bent down under our desk. Java pulled a flat, round little
tin box from under his jacket. There were tiny wires and screws
in the lid. It was our invention, a mechanical button-unbut-
toner.
We hadn’t thought of a name for it yet and so just called it
a thingamajig. It was easy to work it. You held it close to your
button and pressed a screw. That was all there was to it. Except
that you had to wind it up first. Java began winding it up. This
wasn’t a transistor-run device, and there weren’t any semi-con­
ductors in it, but still—
Zzz-inng! went the spring inside the box as it flew out and hit
Karafolka, who had the desk in front of us. Smack on the
K o p ]/ c iH p

“Owww!” Karafolka yelled.

“Stupid!” I whispered to Java.
But it was too late. We could hear Galina Sidorovna’s voice
above us: “Zavgorodny and Ren! Leave the classroom!”
We crawled out from under the desk shamefacedly and
headed meekly towards the door.
The new term had begun.
 Chapter 1

“AH,” SAID JAVA AND I

I fixed my sideburns, stood on tiptoe and peeped through the

peephole in the curtain. My heart was pounding. I felt faint.
I’m sure I wasn’t the first person ever to look through
a peephole in a curtain. I’m sure every famous actor’s done the
same. They all saw the audience talking and smiling as they
took their seats. And the actors all felt as faint-hearted, espe­
cially if it was a premiere. Today was our premiere.
“Move! Let me have a look.”
Someone’s hot cheek was pushing my head away from the
peephole. It belonged to Stepan Karafolka. At any other time
133
I would’ve socked him hard, but this time I had no strength to.
My strength was being used up on stage fright.
A normal person inhales and then exhales, but when a per­
son’s got stage fright I think he only exhales, though I don’t
know where he gets all the air to do it.
I was walking up and down the stage, exhaling. In case you
think I was the only one doing that, you’re mistaken. All the
other actors and actresses were walking up and down, exhaling.
All that air blowing around raised a wind that made the back­
drops sway. It riffled the curtain and raised a cloud of dust
from the floorboards. If our village community centre had been
made out of rubber instead of bricks it would’ve blown up and
burst like a balloon. Then we would’ve all flown off into
outer space: the actors, the sets, Miron the accordionist
who was now playing the last polka before the curtain
went up, Dora Semyonovna, the ice cream vendor, and the
audience.
Oh, that audience! That was the cause of all my trouble. Just
yesterday these were all such nice, kind people, old friends
who’d always lend a helping hand if called upon: Nikolai Pav­
lovich, Grandpa Varava, Grandpa Salivon, Andrei Kekalo,
the director of the community centre, Aunt Ganna, Grand­
ma Marusya, and Papa and Mama. They’d do anything
for me.
But now? Now even my own mother wasn’t my mother any
more. She was a part of the audience.
There wasn’t a single living soul on my side of the curtain
who wasn’t wobbly in the knees, from Galina Sidorovna, our
literature teacher and the director of the play, all the way down
to Petya Pashko, a frog-voiced third-grader who was in charge
of raising and dropping the curtain. Everyone was worried.
Still Java and I had a worse case of stage fright than any­
body else. There was a reason for this: we’d started the
whole business. We’d cooked up the whole idea of a
theatre.
134
 Why, Java and I were like Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-
Danchenko in our Yasukovka Art Theatre (to be known as
VAT).
“Yes, we can!” Java’d shouted excitedly last autumn. “You
know what kind of a theatre we’ll have? It’ll be famous through­
out the district! It’ll be a real Art Theatre! Except that it
won’t be in Moscow, it’ll be our own Vasukovka theatre. It’ll
be called the Vasukovka Art Theatre. Why not? We’ll go on
the road. The Moscow Art Theatre just got back from an
American tour. Not bad, eh?”
He didn’t have to convince me, because I was already Nemir­
ovich-Danchenko. He’d have to convince Galina Sidorovna and
the school board. Actually, we didn’t even have to work
on Galina Sidorovna, because she was all for it from the
start.
“Good for you, boys! That’s a wonderful idea!” she’d
said. “I’ve been thinking about a school drama group, but I
just haven’t gotten around to it. Since it’s your idea, you
draw up a list of children who want to join. You’ll be in
charge.”
We felt as proud as peacocks that day. We never giggled once
or tripped anyone up. We canvassed all the grades, feeling very
serious and important as we made up the list. At first it was as
long as a streamer, because most of the kids signed up. (Lucki­
ly, as is usually the case, ninety per cent soon dropped out.) We
got so tired making that list that towards the end we began get­
ting choosy.
“You’re too- quiet,” Java said to Kolya Kagarlitsky.
“You’re just like a mouse. When you get up on the stage no­
body’ll even hear you.” When Kolya blushed Java felt sorry
for him and said, “Well, maybe you can be in the crowd
scenes. You’ll be an extra.” And he wrote Kolya’s name
down.
At the first session of our drama group we were to choose
a play. There was a big discussion. There were dozens of plays,
135
from “Othello” to “Three Sisters”, but they were all love
stories and, as Galina Sidorovna said, we were still too young
for that. She was right. After all, you couldn’t expect me to kiss
Ganya Grebeniuchka with everybody watching, could you? I’d
rather kiss a goat.
At last Galina Sidorovna said, “We’ll put on ‘The Inspector
General’. In the first place, it’s not a love story. Secondly, we’ll
soon be studying the works of Gogol and this will help you
greatly. Thirdly, ‘The Inspector General’ is a very funny and in­
structive play. And the cast of characters is very big, so there’ll
be a part for everyone.”
We all began reading the play. It was a great comedy, and if
we did a good job of it the audience’d be rolling in the aisles.
The roles had to be parcelled out, and there was a hitch from
the very start. Java and I, as the founders of VAT, each wanted
to star, and that was only natural. But in this play there was
only one starring role: Khlestakov. I felt the part was written
especially for me. Didn’t Gogol write that Khlestakov was
“very thin and lean ... addle-brained ... incapable of focusing
his attention on any thought whatever...” ? There could be no
doubt about it.
But Java said, “Ha! Go look at yourself in the mirror. You’ll
see you’re as much like Khlestakov as a pig’s like a horse. The
only thing that’s the same is you’ve got two hands, two feet and
a head. Khlestakov’s a spitefire! He’s- like this!” And he thrust
out his chest, raised his chin and made his lower lip
droop.
“Ha!” said I. “Just look at you! Yikes! Khlestakov! You’re
a scarecrow, that’s what! A crocodile! Leggo! I said leggo of
my shirt or I’ll crack you one!”
Galina Sidorovna said Kolya Kagarlitsky would be Khles­
takov.
We had just as hard a time with the other roles. There was
only one mayor, Skvoznik-Dmukhanovsky, only one judge,
only one supervisor of charitable institutions, and- still and all,
136
“The Inspector General” is a great play. Gogol was a real
genius. You’d think he’d known that Java and I were going to
play in “The Inspector General” and so put in Dobchinsky and
Bobchinsky. Two identical roles. Especially for us, so’s neither
of us’d be offended. They weren’t really starring roles, but you
can take my word for it: everything would’ve been in a big
mess without Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky. In fact, there
wouldn’t have been any play to begin with. Kolya Kagarlitsky
wouldn’t have been Khlestakov, because Bobchinsky and Dob­
chinsky were the ones who decided Khlestakov was an inspec­
tor general. That’s what.
The moment we understood how important they were we
made up.
Rehearsals began.
Golly!
For some reason Java and I were positive we could act. After
all, all you had to do was prance around and do all sorts of
tricks, and we were famous for that.
“You’re a bunch of comedians!” That’s what Grandpa Sali-
von called us.
He was a good judge about things like that, because long
ago, when he’d been young, he’d played the bass tuba in an
army band. He still had his tuba up in the attic. It looked like
a great big snail. On holidays, when Grandpa Salivon has
a couple of drinks, he gets down his tuba and plays it. The old
women cross themselves when they hear the booming and say
it’s like the Archangel Gabriel playing his horn. The village
dogs like his playing best of all. They go on barking far into the
night after each of his performances. That’s why, if Grandpa
Salivon said we were comedians, you could take his word
for it.
But something seemed to happen to us during rehearsals. We
couldn’t even recognize ourselves. We were like a couple of
slugs, like a couple of sacks of sawdust. That’s when we real­
ized that it was one thing to say whatever came into your head
137
and play the fool (as my pa would say), but quite another thing
to say words that’d been written by somebody else, that is, to
play a role.
We didn’t speak our parts, we sounded like we were chewing
our cud. We felt miserable. There was a bitter taste in my
mouth and an icy feeling in my stomach.
“Never mind,” said Java. He was trying to sound cheerful.
“We’ll show them at the opening. Just you wait!”
“What for? For us to flop?”
“You sure are chicken-hearted. Even the greatest actors got
nervous during rehearsals. Galina Sidorovna said so.
Remember? So cheer up.”
I was trying to cheer up as best as I could, and I was grateful
to Gogol for not giving Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky any more
words to speak than he did, because we were having a hard
enough time as it was. It was worse than the worst kind of
homework. Learning a poem by heart for school is torture.
Well, at least in a poem there’s some rhyming words at the end
of the lines to help you remember it. But here it was just sen­
tences with nothing to hold onto. As long as you looked at the
paper with all your words written down they sort of hung
together, but the minute you put the paper away they’d fly off.
And you can’t hold a piece of paper up in front of your face
onstage.
“ Let’s learn our parts, Java,” I said. “See how hard Kara-
folka’s studying his? And Grebeniuchka even stayed home from
the movies twice.”
“You want me to cram? Never! Cramming’s for dopes.
We’re both smart. How about thinking up an emblem for our
theatre? There’s a seagull on the curtain of the Moscow Art
Theatre. What if we have a duck, or a goose, or a rooster with
a lot of bright feathers? Hm?”
“I don’t know.”
“We still have time to think of something. Let’s go down to
138
the river. I found a fox’s burrow on the bank. Maybe we can
flush it out.”
I trudged off after him.
A day passed, and another.
“Listen, Java,”I said a week later, “let’s start learning our
parts. I don’t know any of mine yet.”
“Aw, if we get stuck the prompter’ll help us. He’s real good.”
It was true. The prompter, Kuzma Barilo, was the school
champ in prompting. He sat in the last row, but you felt
he was whispering right in your ear when he prompted
you.
Vasukovka village was waiting for the opening as anxiously
as if we were the best company in the country. ’Specially after
Grandpa Salivon was at one of our rehearsals. He’d been
repairing the chairs in the auditorium when we trooped in. At
first he hadn’t paid any attention to us. He just went on ham­
mering. But after a while the hammering stopped. He was lis­
tening to us murdering the first act. Stepan Karafolka, the
mayor, was onstage. He thrust out his stomach (puffed up with
pillows) and in a deep bass voice (it’s a wonder where it came
from!) he was saying to the police captain (played by Vasya
Derkach): “...Sergeant Pugovitsyn ... he’s tall, so you can post
him on the bridge to keep law and order. Then clear away the
old fence next to the shoemaker’s as quick as you can, and put
up a straw marker, as if surveyors were doing some leveling.
The more pulling-down there is, the more proof of activity it is
on the part of the mayor. Drat! I’ve forgotten that there’s
about forty cartloads of trash piled up against that fence. What
a rotten town this is: you no sooner set up some monument, or
even a fence, than you discover everyone’s heaping trash up
there, and the devil only knows where they find it!”
At this point in the play it says: “He sighs.” Karafolka, fol­
lowing the author’s instructions, heaved a sigh and paused.
Grandpa Salivon, who’d apparently been dying to put in a few
words, rushed into the breach.
139
 “That son-of-a-gun!” he yelled. “That specialist!” (For some
reason or other “specialist” was one of his worst curse words.)
“That faker! Why, he’s the spitting image of Pripikhaty, our
former chairman! That’s just what he used to do whenever the
brass came checking. It’s a good play. That fellow who wrote it
knows his beans!”
By evening the whole village was talking about the play. Even
the oldest of old women who’d never heard of such words
before, were mumbling: “The Inspector General”. What a joke!
Old Granny Garbuzikha who was quite deaf told her cronies
that play was written by Kurochka, a correspondent of the dis­
trict newspaper who’d once visited Vasukovka, and not by
somebody named Gogol; and that the play was all about Pri­
pikhaty, the former chairman. But since he now had an impor­
tant job in the region, Kurochka’d made up a play about olden
times and signed it “Gogol” on purpose.
Ivan Shapka, the present collective farm chairman, had
a good laugh when he heard about all that talk. He allotted us
a big sum of money for sets and costumes. We really were
lucky. Our drawing teacher helped us with the sets, and a whole
bunch of girls worked on the costumes. We’d been busy all
winter preparing and rehearsing. And now...
If a thief had wandered into Vasukovka that evening he
could’ve walked off with anything from any of the houses,
because there wasn’t a single person in any of them. Every last
village dog was also outside the community centre, attending
a dog party.
Why, even Trindichka, the vet’s great-great grandmother who
was a hundred and seven years old and who, according to
Grandpa Salivon, would soon be cutting her third set of teeth
and was starting out on her second round of life, and whom
some doctors from Kiev came to see to find out how she’d
managed to live so long (Java and I knew why: she ate worm­
wood, we’d seen her eating it. We tried some, but it was too
bitter, so we only ate it once. But when we’re old, maybe then...
140
But maybe we won’t want to live that long if we have to eat
such awful stuff), even Trindichka, who hadn’t left her yard in
thirty years, had never been to the movies and had stopped
going to church, to say nothing of the community centre, even
she came hobbling over to see the play.
“There! What’d I say!” Grandpa Salivon bellowed. “See?
She’s learning to walk again. She’ll soon start dancing.”
Granny Trindichka whacked her cane across his neck to
everyone’s delight. But wait...
R-ring! R-ring! R-ring! The third and last bell rang. The
lights went down.
“Into the wings! Into the wings!” Galina Sidorovna hissed at
us (at those of us who weren’t supposed to be onstage in
Scene I).
The curtain parted creakily (the iron rings were strung on
a rusty wire). This was it. We were on. There was no backing
out now.
“I have invited you here, gentlemen, in order to...” Stepan
Karafolka began.
We were off and running.
I stood in the wings. My eyes were shut tight. I pressed my
fists to my chest and whispered: “It’ll be all right! It’ll be all
right! It’ll be all right!” Like a charm. I’d felt the same way
when I first got up the courage to dive into the river from the
top of the old willow. I’d stood there on a branch looking
down, feeling as if my heart had jumped out of me and was fly­
ing down into the water, but I’d just stood there, clutching the
trunk, unable to let go. My head had spun and my stomach
had heaved. Still, that was child’s play compared to what
awaited me now. I’d ’ve gladly dived from a TV tower just to
know that everything’d end well.
“Ha-ha-ha!” the audience laughed. What a devil that Kara­
folka was! He’d even sounded funny during rehearsals.
“You’ve nothing to worry about, stupid,” I said to my­
self.
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 We’d be on in another moment now. As soon as Karafolka
said- There was our cue!
“You just wait for the door to open and bangV’ Karafolka,
mayor, said.
My heart skipped a beat and Java and I shot out onto the
stage.
“An extraordinary event!” Java yelled.
“Such unexpected news!” I yelled just as loudly.
“Why, what is it?” everyone onstage said anxiously.
We were great. There wasn’t a peep from the audience.
“A most unforeseen affair,” I shouted. “We were just at the
• __ 99
inn...
“Pyotr Ivanovich and I were just at the inn...” Java
interrupted.
The audience was silent. “Good for us! We’ve slayed them!”
I said to myself and, like a conqueror, looked out at the rows.
I saw dozens of eyes. And all of them were staring at me.
And-
“Ah!” I said, interrupting Java. I knew that at that moment
I was supposed to say “Ah!”. But after that... I felt as if
someone’d blown air into my ear, sending all my thoughts out
through the other ear. My head was empty. There wasn’t a sin­
gle word left in my memory and not a trace of any thoughts.
Nothing. You’d think I was a calf that could only moo. All
that was left in my head was that “Ah!” It was rattling around,
knocking against the insides of my skull.
“Ah!” I repeated and looked at Java. He was looking at me.
I guessed that all his thoughts had vanished, too. So I said
“Ah!” a third time.
“Ah!” Java replied, just to say something. He couldn’t just
stand there with his mouth shut.
We stared at each other.
“Ah!” I shouted.
“Ah!” Java replied.
Then we stared at each other again. There was laughter in the
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audience. They probably thought this was all in the play. There
was old Granny Trindichka smiling toothlessly. Her chin shook,
her face was all crumpled up. (I bet she hadn’t laughed like that
in years.)
“He-he-he! Ha-ha-ha! Ho-ho-ho!” Everybody was laugh­
ing.
Kuzma stuck his head out of the prompter’s box. He
mouthed each syllable. He was telling us what to say. A deaf
mute would’ve understood him. Then the mayor, Stepan Kara-
folka, began prompting us. Then Sashka Guz, the postmaster,
began to also. The people sitting in the front rows caught on,
and others, who’d heard Kuzma prompting us, began prompt­
ing us, too.
I could understand the words, but they kept scattering, like
a flock of sheep. Like some halfwit shepherd, I couldn’t herd
them together. If somebody had asked me my name then
I probably wouldn’t’ve been able to say anything, either. The
people in the back rows were still laughing. They thought every­
thing was coming along just fine. I could even hear someone
shout: “Good for you, boys!”
That did it. I dashed into the wings, knocking over one of the
props on the way, and kept on running down the deserted vil­
lage street with the wind whistling in my sideburns. I finally
came to my senses in the willow thicket by the river. I fell into
the grass, rolled around and groaned. I was disgraced, ashamed
and completely crushed. When my first attack of despair ended
I saw that my friend Java-Bobchinsky was rolling around and
groaning, too.
We didn’t say a word when we looked at each other squarely.
What had we done? We’d not only been a terrible flop, the dis­
grace of Vasukovka, but we’d let everyone else down, too. We’d
ruined a great play! Though Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky aren’t
the stars, this wonderful play was written in such a way that the
whole piece hangs together because of them.
We had run away, leaving everything in a shambles. It was
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awful. We’d created a panic. Now Karafolka and all the other
characters would never find out that Khlestakov (Kolya Kagar­
litsky) had just arrived, was in the inn and was supposed to be
an inspector general. The two of us, Bobchinsky and Dob-
chinsky, were supposed to announce this piece of news. No one
else could do it. Only us! That fine actor Karafolka was now
standing in the middle of the stage, not knowing what to do.
And all the other actors who were onstage in Scene I were
standing around looking miserable. And there in the wings was
Kolya Kagarlitsky, the most gifted of us all, who’d never have
a chance to go on at all. He’d been so good as Khlestakov dur­
ing rehearsals! How’d he been able to act like that? None of
us boys had ever palled around with him. He’d always
been so mousey. He couldn’t dive from a tree; he couldn’t
shoot a slingshot good enough to hit a window. He usually
sat around under a tree with his nose in a book. But you
should’ve seen him onstage! No one would ever see him act
now.
Granny Trindichka, who may have come to spend a cultural
evening for the very first
time in a hundred years,
would now have to trudge
back home and listen to
the crickets on the hearth.
The audience was probab­
ly on their way home
now, cursing a theatre
which had such no-account
actors.
Meanwhile, the no-ac-
count actors were lying on
the grass, staring up at
the sky and feeling mise­
rable. No one in the world,
no one in the Universe could ever’ve felt so miserable.
How could we ever show our faces in the village again? How
could we go on living after what’d happened? What had we
done? Woe is us! Why’d we ever have to invent VAT? Life had
been so happy and gay. What more did we want? We wanted
to go on tour, that’s what. To become famous and hear the
crowds roar. We deserved to be whipped.
It was all because of Kiev. Kiev was to blame. And the Kiev
militia. And that dam trough. And Valya. And Maxim Valer­
ianovich. And the gold-plated watch. And the- drowned man.
The drowned man was to blame most of all. But let’s start from
the beginning.
 Chapter 2
A CHASE IN THE METRO.
THE METRO COSMONAUT.
A RUN-IN WITH THE KIEV MILITIA

We spent a month in Kiev last summer, visiting my aunt and

uncle. It was great. We’d been looking forward to the trip all
year. Naturally, we’d been in Kiev before: Java once and
I twice. But the first time was only for two days with a class
excursion, and the second time I was there alone, without Java.
And that wasn’t much fun. Everyone knows that if you can’t
share the fun with your best friend it’s not really the best kind
of fun. Not even half of the best kind of fun. Probably only
about maybe a quarter.
What d’you start with if you’ve just come to Kiev? Right!
You go to Kreshchatik. That’s what everybody does. You
take your bags to wherever you’re staying and go straight
to Kreshchatik. My aunt only had time to shout: “Don’t
get lost! Be back in time for din...” We didn’t hear the
rest.
Twenty minutes after we got off the train we were walking
down Kreshchatik. Did I say walking? We were sailing, we
were soaring, we were marching as if we were on parade. You
can’t just stroll down Kreshchatik, because it’s a most unusual
street. Anyone who goes there seems to become a different per­
son, as happy as if he’s going to a party, and very polite and
friendly, too. And everybody keeps smiling. Though it’s always
crowded, I never saw anyone jostling anyone else there, or
snapping at anyone else. If somebody shoves somebody else by
accident he’ll say “Excuse me”, smile and go on. The people on
Kreshchatik are really nice. That’s how they should be on every
other street, too. Well, we sailed, and soared, and marched
along.
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 The Kreshchatik is as broad as the Dnieper River (that’s
what the announcers say on holidays). Its banks are sidewalks,
with cars streaming down the middle. You’ll never see a car on
the sidewalk, and you’ll never see a person on the road. Each
has his own place. There are underpasses all along the street
so’s the cars and people don’t get into each other’s way.
“I bet it’s easier to get hit by a wagon back home than to get
hit by a car here,” I said to myself. Just as I said that a man
dashed across the street. He was bald, wore sunglasses and had
a camera slung over his shoulder. He was wearing shorts, and
his legs were lumpy and hairy. You could see he was a tourist
right away.
We stopped in our tracks. Would he make it across the
street? A whistle blew, and a young mustached militiaman
appeared from nowhere. The man stopped before he’d gotten
very far and dashed back again. The militiaman smiled and
shook his finger at him, like a teacher would at a naughty boy,
even though the man was twice his age.
“See that?” Java said, looking at the handsome militiaman.
“You know, Pavlik, there’s nothing better than being a militia­
man. In the first place, you’re doing a good job, because you’re
fighting crime; in the second place, everybody respects you and
does as you say. I think I’m going to be a militiaman when
I grow up. How about you?”
“You know I’m going to be a pilot.”
“That’s up to you.”
Java changed his mind about what he was going to be when
he grew up every day in the week. One day he was going to be
the captain of an ocean liner, the next he was going to be
a geologist. Then he decided he’d be the manager of a candy
factory so he could eat as much candy as he wanted to every
single day. Then he was going to be a soccer player, then an
artist, then a big game hunter. And now he decided he was
going to be a militiaman.
10*
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 I wasn’t like him at all. I’d decided I was going to be a pilot
way back in the first grade, and that was what I was going to
be. Even Grandpa Salivon’d said a while back: “Look at that
stubborn mule! I guess he’s going to be a pilot after all, drat
him!”
Sometimes, though, the temptation’s too great and I go along
with Java, but in such a way that I can be a pilot and still do
whatever he’s going to be doing. I was going to be a navy pilot,
and a soccer-pilot and an artist-pilot, and a big game hunter-pi-
lot, and a geologist-pilot, and even a candy factory pilot (the
one who delivers the candy by air).
But this time I didn’t go along with him, because I couldn’t
imagine how I could be a militiaman-pilot. What could I do up
in the air to fight crime? Arrest birds? No, this time I’d just be
a pilot.
We sailed, and soared, and marched down Kreshchatik.
The large houses looked like huge tiled ovens climbing the
hill to Pechorsk. A department store’s big windows glittered in
the sun. Farther on was the City Soviet. In the distance the TV
tower stuck straight up into the sky. I’d never seen anything
higher. What a neat place to hide from ma when I’d gotten
a D! You couldn’t compare it to our pear tree. Why, she’d
never drag me off that tower. In fact, I wouldn’t even hear her
scolding me.
After a while we came to a Metro station. I’d like to see
anyone come to Kiev from Vasukovka Village and pass up the
Metro! We turned towards the station together. A blast of
pleasant cool air that had a smell you’ll only find in the Metro
hit us. We weren’t going to try and slip between the turnstiles
with the lighted words “Deposit 5 kopecks” without paying our
fare. Somebody who’s stupid can try that. We tried it once. No
matter how fast you run by two arms pop out of the sides and
kick you in the stomach. Wow!
We changed some coins into 5-kopeck pieces, each dropped
one in the slot and passed through like decent folks.
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 “We’re real grownup,” I was saying to myself proudly. If I’d
only known what was about to happen.
“Look! Look! There’s Sergeant Palyanichko!” Java shouted.
“Let’s catch up with him!”
I’d just had time to open my mouth and say: “Huh?
Where?” when Java dashed down the escalator.
There was a fat man standing a few steps below us. He
had two baskets on his arm, two sacks were slung over his
shoulder, front and back, and he was clutching a new
trough.
A few steps below him was a young lady with a fancy hairdo
who looked just like a movie star. Still farther down was a mili­
tiaman whose back really did look just like Sergeant
Palyanichko’s. We’d met him in Kiev the year before. It’d
be great to meet him here again and have a chat, especially
since Java was going to be a militiaman, starting from
today.
I clattered down the escalator steps after Java. He’d managed
to slip by the fat man whose baskets and trough were blocking
most of the free space around him. When I tried to squeeze by
I knocked against the trough which he’d stood on edge and was
holding with a couple of fingers. The trough went banging and
clanging down the escalator.
Bang! It bumped into the backs of the movie star’s legs. She
plopped into it and went scooting on down.
We were stunned.
The gorgeous movie star was sitting in a trough, clutching at
the sides and speeding downwards. She hadn’t screamed or any­
thing. Maybe she was very brave. Or maybe she was so stunned
she didn’t know what’d hit her. A moment later the militiaman
went tumbling. The movie star sped on.
By now the fat man was racing down the stairs after his
trough. He didn’t even glance at us. He was galloping down the
stairs with his baskets and sacks joggling, and shouting:
«Watch out! Watch out!»
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 The young lady in the trough knocked some other people
over, shot off the last step of the escalator, scooted across the
long platform and came to a stop beside an elderly man who
looked at her in surprise and said sternly:
“What kind of a game is this, young lady?”
The fat man was still clumping down the stairs, shout­
ing, “My trough, my trough!” But he didn’t sound very wor­
ried.
The militiaman who’d been knocked over (it wasn’t Sergeant
Polyanichko after all) was now hurrying after the fat man,
straightening his jacket on the way and shouting, though
you couldn’t tell who he was shouting at, “Wait! Stop!
Wait!”
We were still running after the militiaman. It was the only
thing we could do, since we were on the down escalator. Luck­
ily, the militiaman had no idea of who had started the commo­
tion. He was chasing after the fat man and wasn’t paying any
attention to us, but he’d soon discover the truth. At any
moment now he’d catch up with the fat man, who’d say-
My knees felt weak. Happily, we reached the bottom just
then.
The movie star, who had probably just come to her senses,
was smiling. She was still sitting in the trough, and she sounded
very cheerful as she said, “Touchdown. Weightlessness and
overloads had no harmful effects.”
Everyone laughed. We didn’t see the rest of the welcome she
got from the militiaman and the other passengers who crowded
around her, because we dashed into a waiting train. The doors
slid shut, and we were off.
At the next station, Arsenalskaya, we ran out and up the
escalator. We were running so fast I thought my heart was
going to burst. There are two escalators on that station:
one starts where the other leaves off, and both are very
long.
We ran out of the Metro, turned the corner into the yard of
150
a large gray house and collapsed near some bushes. We were
both winded. I couldn’t move an arm or a leg. I couldn’t even
speak. I couldn’t even breathe. We were gasping for air like
fishes out of water. A three-year-old girl could have easily take
each of us by a foot, slung us into a sack, taken us to the
market and sold us there at two kopecks apiece. That’s all
we were worth right then. After about ten minutes Java
said,
“Whew!”
“Ohh,” I said.
“Golly!”
“You said it.”
That’s the only kind of conversation we were up to. About
twenty minutes later we finally came to our senses and were
able to discuss what’d happened.
“Gee, you sure did mess everything up. Who’ll let me be
a militiaman now?”
“I did not! What’s it got to do with me? Nobody saw me.
And nothing happened, did it?”
“That’s what you think. The fat man saw you, and the mili­
tiaman saw you. He was looking at us when we raced by. And
militiamen have good memories. They’ve got to.”
“Dry up.”
“Maybe they’re looking for us right this minute. Maybe
they’ve sent out our descriptions, and you know what that
means.” Java held up his fist to show me how much weight
that carried. He knew all about things like that from
the time he’d been in training to become an intelligence
man.
“Well, what’s so awful? We didn’t do anything!” I said, try­
ing to calm my own fears even more than his. “I knocked over
a trough by accident. I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“You try to prove that. That fat man’ll say you did it on
purpose to get himself out of the mess. And anyway, I bet you
151
nothing like that ever happened in the Metro before, and you
say...”
“The Metro’s an unlucky place. Remember the trouble we
had last time? And how...”
“Everything happens in pairs,” Java said.
Maybe there really was a law of pairs, the one Pa’d told me
about. I don’t know whether he was kidding me when he said
that all kinds of trouble always come in pairs: if something bad
happens, you can be sure something else that’s bad is going to
happen real soon.
“It’s a lousy law. We don’t want any more trouble today,”
Java said. All of a sudden he smiled. “Boy, did she ever zoom
down the escalator in that trough!”
“You’d think she was in a rocket ship. Swoosh\ And she was
gone! I wouldn’t have minded taking a ride like that myself,”
I said. It was a relief to see that Java wasn’t talking about us
being hauled in any more.
“Where do we go now?” he said, getting up.
“It’s all the same to me. We can go to the Fun House, or to
the movies, or to the Zoo.”
“Sure, but...”
“But what?”
“But if...”
“Well? If what?”
“Just the two of us—. If we could find them - You know,
the kids from Kiev. Igor, Sashko the P ilo t- They’re great,” he
said, looking up at the sky so’s not to have to look at
me.
I stared at him and smiled to myself. So he was dying to look
up the boys, was he? Why, I could see right through him. As
clear as through glass! I wasn’t one of those Kiev hunters who
could be tricked as easy as pie. Why, those hunters, the ones
who came to Vasukovka to hunt or fish, would ask us to catch
them grasshoppers for bait. A little matchbox full was worth
five kopecks. I’d be killing myself, catching those grasshoppers,
152
like I was some galley-slave or something. But Java’d put
a pinch of hay in the bottom of the matchbox, then lay a couple
of grasshoppers on top of it and run off to collect his five
kopecks. If he was caught at this kind of cheating he’d look at
them real innocent-like and say: “I had to give the grasshop­
pers some food, didn’t I?”
Well, I wasn’t as dumb as those Kiev hunters. “Sure, that’ll
be great. But how’ll we find them? We don’t know their
addresses. Oh, remember, Valya gave you hers? You must’ve
thrown it out, though, didn’t you? Keeping a girl’s address sure
would be a dumb thing to do.”
Wow! Java’s cheeks got so red you’d think somebody’d
slapped him. I wonder what comes over people sometimes?
You take a big brave fellow like Java and look what happens to
him. You’d think he was a wilted flower. On account of what?
On account of some beanpole of a girl. Ugh!
Back on Re-examination Island Java’d turned into a real
wilted flower after talking to Valya for exactly one minute. And
she’d left him her address, so’s we could write and tell her
all about the rest of our poacher mission. You’d think it
was the most interesting thing in the world to her all of a
sudden.
After we’d become such heroes in the Knysh case Java kept
suggesting we write to Valya, and he always tried to sound as if
he was kidding. “Are you nuts?” I said to him. “I never even
get around to writing to my folks when I’m in camp, and you
want us to...” He didn’t dare write himself, because he wasn’t
too sure of his spelling, so nothing ever came of it. But he’d
saved her address.
Even before we got to Kiev I was sure that sooner or later
he’d get around to talking about Valya, but I didn’t think it.
would be this soon. If not for the trough business, I’d never’ve
given in so fast. I was glad he’d forgotten about the militia hav­
ing our descriptions and looking for us, and so I decided to
meet him half-way.
153
 “Come on, cheer up! Sure, it’ll be great to see Igor and
Sashko, and Valya. They’ll take us around and show us all
the interesting sites. What’s Valya’s address again? I forgot it.”
Java mumbled the address.
“Why, this is the street! It starts right here near the Metro
and goes off as far as the monastery. Come on!”
Java smiled crookedly.
 Chapter 3
JAVA’S IN A HURRY TO SEE A GIRL.
THE EAR

A few minutes later we were outside Valya’s house, but when

we started looking for her apartment, we couldn’t find it. We
checked every single one. The last apartment on the top floor
was No. 18. We were looking for No. 25. Had she fooled us?
Had she given us a fake address? It broke my heart to look at
Java. I decided to ask an old lady for directions. She said that
No. 25 was in the wing around the comer.
“All those wings and feathers just to get you mixed up,” Java
muttered and tried to sound angry. Actually, he was trying not
to grin. That’s how happy he was.
There was another big six-storey apartment house in the
yard. It was just like the one we’d been in. I couldn’t see why it
was called a wing.
In the downstairs lobby Java stopped by the big, old-fash­
ioned glass doors for a second. He looked at his reflection in
the glass and smoothed down his hair. I made-believe I hadn’t
noticed.
We had no trouble finding apt. 25 on the third floor. There
was a name plate under the bell, and the name on it was
“Malinovsky” . That was Valya’s last name.
“You ring,” Java whispered.
“You ring,” I whispered back and a chill ran down my spine.
“Go on, you’re taller than me. You can reach the bell
easier,” Java said.
“She gave you the address, so you ring.” He wasn’t going to
tell me what to do.
155
 “To hell with you!” Java whispered angrily and pressed the
button. We could hear a bell ring inside.
Java darted behind me. Oh, no, you don’t! I spun around
and tried to push him forward. Just then something unbeliev­
able happened. A huge hand attached to a huge man appeared
from someplace and grabbed Java by the ear and as it did
a voice roared so loudly the echo went rolling down the stairs,
“Aha! I got you! I caught you at last!”
Both Java, whose ear was being tweaked, and I, too, froze to
the spot.
The terrible voice thundered on: “So this is who’s been
annoying us! So this is who’s been ringing our doorbells and
running away! And poor old granny on her tired old feet has to
come to the door every time to find out that there’s no one
there. Well, we’re going to have a little talk.”
 That’s when we heard Valya calling out from behind her
door: “Who’s there?”
Oh-oh! I was panic-stricken and glanced at Java. He tensed
and jerked so hard that I could see he was ready to leave his
ear in the man’s clutches just to get away. What was an ear? At
that moment Java was ready to sacrifice half of his head,
half of his body, just to be free and escape with whatever was
left of him, to get as far away as possible from Valya’s
door.
Imagine: at the very first moment of a meeting he’d been
looking forward to for so long his friend Valya’d see (ye gods!)
the huge fellow dangling him by the ear as if he was a puppy
who’d left a puddle on the floor. And Java would be dangling
there miserably. He’d dreamed of the great moment the door
would open... She’d be standing there. Her long lashes would
flutter in pleasant surprise, her eyes would shine, and her
cheeks would become rosy-red. And she’d say: “Oh!”, and then
she’d say: “My!” , and then she’d say: “Hello. Is it really you?
I’m so glad to see you.” And everything would be just
wonderful.
But instead...
We rattled down the stairs so fast you’d think we’d been shot
out of a cannon. Then we dashed into the yard and from there
to the street, and we kept on running to the end of the block
without even looking back. Not until we were positive that no
one was chasing us did we finally slow down to a walk. We
kept on walking in silence, breathing hard, not caring where we
were going.
Tears were running down Java’s cheeks. He kept wincing and
turning his face away, but I understood. It wasn’t his fault. It
was just that somehow a person’s ears are connected to the
place that produces tears. And if your ear got twisted hard the

157
tears would just start streaming down your face by themselves.
That didn’t mean you were crying. Java’d never cried in his life.
His ear was all swollen. It was twice as big as the other one,
and it was flaming red. He could never go back to see Valya
looking like that.
It wasn’t hard to figure out what’d happened. It was all
a terrible mistake. Some jerk was getting a kick out of ringing
doorbells and running away. The man’d come up behind us and
seen us shoving each other by the door after we’d rung the bell.
And he’d decided it was us. Yes, it was all a terrible mistake,
but that didn’t change anything. Especially as far as Java was
concerned. And not so much on account of his ear, as because
he hadn’t seen Valya after all, and who knows if he’d ever see
her again.
I was afraid he’d blame me for all that’d happened: if I’d
have rung the bell as he’d asked me to in the very beginning in­
stead of pushing him towards the door nothing would’ve hap­
pened. But Java was noble. He didn’t say a word. All he
did was brush away his tears. I wanted to cheer him up,
but I couldn’t think of anything to say. At last I had an idea.
“Boy, if we could ambush the rat who got
us into this mess, we’d sock him in the ear so hard he’d forget
his own name! His head’d ring for a week! That’d teach him
a lesson! Boy, I could murder him.”
But this had no affect on Java. I sighed. We walked through
the park on top of the cliff, crossed a little bridge and came to
the Dniepro movie theatre.
“Hey!” I shouted like a sailor who sights land. “Let’s go to
the movies! My aunt gave us money for the movies. Come
on.”
But Java turned away. “I don’t want to,” he blurted.

158
 “Ah, come on. You don’t want everybody to see you looking
like this. A couple of hours in the dark’ll make your ear go
back to normal.”
“All right. Come on,” Java muttered. He still had his face
turned away from me.
I raced over to the box office.
The movie was “The Seven Brave Ones”. It was about polar
explorers. A blizzard raged on the screen from the beginning to
the end. The seven brave explorers, all covered with ice, made
brave sounds as they climbed icy hills, fell into snowdrifts and
carried their weak comrades. This cheered Java up a bit. By the
time we got out the look of hopeless despair was gone from his
eyes, though his ear was still swollen.
My stomach felt hollow. I was hungry and hoped we’d go
home, but Java wouldn’t even hear of it. He was afraid my
aunt’d begin asking him questions. Silly him! All he had to do
was say he tripped and hit his ear, or that he’d gotten his ear
caught in a bus door, or something just as good. So many
things could happen to a person in a big city like Kiev. But
I couldn’t convince him. We started walking again and finally
came to Vladimir’s Hill, where the ice cream parlor is. Java
stopped. He touched his ear gingerly, looked at me out of suf­
fering eyes and said,
“What if I hold something cold to it? Maybe it’ll get better.
Huh?”
I touched my chest and shrugged. I knew what he was getting
at. We’d spent the money my aunt’d given us on the movies,
but we still had three rubles. The bill was tucked away in a sec­
ret pocket in the lining of my jacket. It’d taken us six months
to save up the three rubles, and we were counting on it for
something big. We’d agreed not to spend it on anything except

159
something very special or out of bounds, something my aunt’d
never give us money for: a helicopter ride over Kiev, or an
X-rated movie. Since Java wasn’t as strong-willed as I and
could spend the money in no time, we decided I’d keep it,
and that we’d only spend it on something we both wan­
ted.
That’s what he was hinting at now suggesting we spend some
of it on ice cream. I was all for ice cream, but that’s not what
we’d been saving up for. I could see Java was in terrible pain
by the way he kept touching his ear. And his eyes were like the
eyes of a puppy when somebody’d stepped on its tail. I sighed
and went inside. Java followed me. We sat down at one of the
tables and ordered two vanilla ice creams, the cheapest there
was on the menu, only a measely thirteen kopecks apiece. It
wouldn’t ruin us. We ate in silence, licking our spoons and
enjoying our treat. Every now and then Java’d hold the cold
spoon to his ear. But what’s one little dish of ice cream? Three
minutes later we were looking at the metal cups that we’d
licked clean and that reflected our drooping faces like two mir­
rors. Java touched his ear sadly. His ear demanded new sacri­
fices. I licked my sticky lips and with a pang of desperate cour­
age, like diving into a river from a bridge, I ordered two more
dishes of ice cream.
The ice cream they sell in Kiev is really something!
If you think Java’s ear stopped hurting after those double
scoops, you’re mistaken. After that we had chocolate ice cream,
and strawberry ice cream, and almond ice cream. And as a side
dish to go with each portion we had a glass of soda pop. Java’s
ear cost us quite a lot. Our money was melting away. I nearly
cried when the time came to settle the bill. All that was left was
a handful of coins.
We were tottering by the time we left the ice cream parlour.

160
We sat on a bench outside for about half an hour in a blissful
stupor. If only we could have ice cream dinners every day! And
ice cream breakfast! And ice cream suppers!
After a while Java looked off to the left and said, “What
d’you think that is over there?”
“The Ferris wheel.”
“Then why’re we sitting here?”
“ Let’s go.”
“What about money?”
“We’ve got enough for a ride.”
I was ready to spend our last kopeck on the Ferris wheel,
because it was something that was very important to me. After
all, I was going to be a pilot.
We were just in time. There was only one vacant car left. The
minute we got in the wheel began to turn. Wow! Golly! We
were rising higher and higher, and higher, and it gave me
a sinking feeling. Then we began dropping lower and lower,
and lower, and that gave me a rising feeling! Just like in
a plane! When we were going up we were gaining altitude.
When we were going down it was like coming in for landing.
(I’d been up in a plane once. It was a plane that sprayed the
fields.)
The Ferris wheel was built on the high bank of the Dnieper.
You could see so far when you were up in it, it was like being
in an airplane. The Podol, the Dnieper and the broad Left
Bank which stretched off as far as the horizon were all below
us. And there was Trukhanov Island and the beach. Boy, was it
crowded! You couldn’t even see the sand. It’s a wonder all
those people didn’t crush each other. Now what was that over
there behind the trees? Gee! It w as-a parachute jump! A real
parachute jump! If only I could jump from it! I just had
11-344
161
to. Why, parachute jumping to a pilot is like swimming to a
sailor.
“Java! See the parachute jump? Let’s go!”
“Sure. Let’s.” Java’s not going to be a pilot when he grows
up, but he’s always ready to jump from anything or do any­
thing that’s dangerous.
 Chapter 4

THE BEACH. THE PARACHUTE JUMP.

THE DROWNED MAN.
THE STRANGER FROM APT. 13

We were running down the stairs that led from the amuse­
ment park to the embankment. It was a nice stairway, except
that it was so long you felt out of breath even when you were
running down.
“Why’re we running? What’s the mad rush?” I said out loud,
but to myself I said: “I’ve got to save my strength for the jump.
You never can tell. It’s my first jump.”
We slowed down to a walk. Below we could see something
that was either a gate or an arbor with a huge column on top
and something else on top of that.
“Wait,” Java said. “There’s something written on it.” He
likes to read historical and memorial plaques.
There was a little marble plaque on the wall. It read:

TO COMMEMORATE KIEV’S RECEIVING

M AGDEBURG RIGHTS
Erected in 1802
A. I. MELENSKY,
architect

I’d never’ve thought that this was a monument! A monument

is usually a man on a horse, or a man without a horse, but
always some great hero, a general or a genius. But this was
something called “Magdeburg rights” . What d’you know!
II*
163
 Those weren’t the only words on the plaque. There were a lot
of others besides. All the others were hand-written and added
on much later. “Magdeburg rights” was all filled in with things
like: “ Kolya loves Olya” , “Vasya loves Tasya” , “Yura loves
Nyura”, etc.
You could see that none of them were good at penmanship,
because all the writing was wobbly and crooked. And another
thing. Maybe they did love each other, but they sure as any­
thing didn’t love anybody else, not with messing up the monu­
ment like that.
“Is that what they learned to write for?” Java sounded
mad.
“My, aren’t you a good boy! Don’t you remember the time
you wrote all those slogans on the barn in back of the school-
house, calling for the downfall of our assistant principal Savva
Kononovich?” I said to myself. But I didn’t say it out loud,
because I’d written all kinds of silly things on fences, too.
I could see how awful it was now and swore I’d never do it
again.
Feeling quite superior, we headed for the pedestrian bridge
that would take us to Trukhanov Island. People were streaming
across the bridge. They must’ve all been crazy, because there
wasn’t a single grain of sand to be seen under all those people
on the beach. I just knew somebody’d be crushed to death.
I was sure there’d be casualties.
Casualties... The closer we got to the parachute jump the
harder something slimy and cold began clutching at my heart,
something really icky. That jump sure was high. This was no
willow tree like the one we dived from back home. What if the
parachute didn’t open? Scrunch\ And that’d be the end of us.
I was wondering whether there’d been times when the parachute
didn’t open. Were there ever accidents? And casualties?

164
 We crossed the bridge and turned left to the jump. I was
wondering what Java was thinking about. He was walking
along briskly. He looked too cheerful. Serious people don’t
walk like that when they’re on their way to take their first para­
chute jump.
I looked up at the top of the tower. I couldn’t see anybody
getting ready to jump. Maybe there’d already been a casualty
today, and here we were, two stupid fools, in a hurry to be
next.
Smart people played ping-pong. That was a good game.
You’d never lose your life playing ping-pong. We passed twenty
tables where white little balls were flying back and forth like
bubbles in the rain.
Here was the tower. How strange. There wasn’t a parachute
in sight. The rope it was supposed to hang by was tossed over
a high beam. A man dressed only in canvas slacks was sitting
under a nearby tree. Since he wasn’t wearing swimming trunks,
I decided he was in charge of something.
I walked over and said, “Can you please tell me if the para­
chute jump is open?”
He looked at me and grinned “Sure it is. Why not-? ’Cept
that there’s no parachute. They say someone stole it. It’s dan­
gerous to jump without a parachute, but you can try if you
want to, boys. I see you’re both brave fellows, so you don’t
really need a parachute.”
He was teasing us. The parachute jump was closed down,
that’s what. Hooray!
“Too bad,” I said.
There was a swing ride close by. The swings on chains were
attached to a big wheel set on top of a high iron post. “How
about it?” I said to Java.
“Sure.”

165
 We scraped up enough money for the ride, paid for our tick­
ets and each took a swing. We were off, turning slowly at first
and then faster and faster.
“H-e-e-y!” I shouted. I felt just like a bird in the air. There
was nothing to hold me down on the ground. Ohhh!
“Rrrrrl” that was me trying to sound like a motor, imagining
I was flying a plane. “Rat-tat-tat-tat\” I yelled, training my
machine-gun on Java.
He turned towards me and shouted: “Rat-tat-tat-tatV
“I’m going to ram you!” I yelled and swung around towards
him, kicking the swing seat from behind and making him fly off
in an arc. When he swung back he kicked the seat of my swing,
sending me off to a side. Wheee\ What a ride! And there
weren’t any accidents! And no casualties. The chains were
strong enough to support an elephant. I felt like spinning
around and around forever. But suddenly we began slowing
down. We were moving slower and slower, and then stopped.
“That’s all. Everybody out!”
“Is that all?”
“Buy another ticket and take another ride,” the attendant
said.
We would have gladly done that, but where could we get the
money for tickets if it was in our stomachs? Why’d we have all
that ice cream? We could’ve easily done without the last three
portions. Then we would’ve had the money for the swings. But
now, on account of that stupid ice cream, I had to lose out on
something that was just made to order for a pilot. It was a real
piloty ride. What a dope I was. Sure, Java’s ear hurt and he
needed something cold, but what about me? Why did I go
along? I could’ve saved my half of the money. He could’ve had
ice cream. There was plenty of ice cream back home, but who

166
knows when they’d build rides like this in Vasukovka? I’d be
a grown man by then. Java saw how I felt.
“Come on. At least we can go for a swim,” he said.
“You think I came to Kiev to go swimming? I can swim all
I want back home. And where’ll we go? We’ll get lost in this
crowd just as easy as in the woods. We won’t ever reach the
water. Can’t you see there’s no water left by the bank? There’s
nothing but people.”
I only said that to let off steam. Only a nut would stay out of
the water if he’d got as far as the beach in Kiev. Especially
on such a hot day. So we began picking our way over to the
water.
I can’t imagine what a million people look like, but if I try to
I guess I’d think of the beach in Kiev. There must’ve been at
least a million people there. If you don’t believe me, go see for
yourself.
The place looked like a great big bazaar where everyone was
nearly naked and nobody was selling anything. I’d never seen
so many nearly naked people before. A million of them!
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Those people who thought up the hellfires in ancient times
had no imagination at all. What they thought up wasn’t any
hellfires. If you want to know what the hellfires are really like,
just go to the beach in Kiev on a Sunday. That’s where you’ll
see people roasting in the sun. Half of them’re lying flat on
their backs with their eyes closed. You might think they’re
already dead, but then you notice that their stomachs’re going
up and down a bit, so that means they’re still alive and breath­
ing. That’s the only way you can tell. The other half is eating,
eating all the time: chewing, swallowing, chomping and drink­
ing milk from paper cartons and beer and soda pop from
bottles.

167
 It makes you think this other half s come to the beach to eat
and drink. Only a fraction of all those people were splashing
around in the water, but even this was enough for their bodies
to force out half of the water in the Dnieper. Another group
was forever on the go, heading someplace, stepping over bodies
and trodding on people’s hands, feet, heads and other parts.
This group of people was enough to make you think you were
watching a crush at a railroad station. And there, whack,
whack, whack, people were playing a kind of volleyball under
the trees. They were standing around in a circle, volleying a ball
back and forth, hitting it as hard as they could, trying to
bounce it off the sunbathers’ heads. The coloured balls kept
rolling across the sand and over the people lying there more
often than they were in the air. That’s what beach volleyball is
like. And there were the muscle men parading around, flexing
their muscles, thrusting out their chests. Each one had a check­
room tag on a rubber band around his wrist, as if they’d all
been numbered.
“Hello, Garik!”
“Hey, Shurik!”
“ C/flo, Marik!”
That was the muscle men greeting each other. They didn’t
bother to stop or turn their heads when they greeted each other
so’s not to spoil their athletic postures. And all those strutting,
numbered Mariks, Gariks and Shuriks were tattooed all over.
They had tattoos on their arms, chests, legs and backs. You
can’t imagine the pictures on them! There were sailing ships,
eagles, lions, women, daggers and all sorts of wise sayings like:
“Infidelity brings death” and such like. That was in the first
place. In the second place, each of them had something hanging
around his neck. They wore chains, charms, keys and crosses. It
was strange to see a cross lying on a tattooed sailing ship,

168
a dagger or “Infidelity brings death” . You could see the cross
wasn’t something religious, it was just a fad.
We saw a strange-looking man who had nothing but skin on
his head and thick reddish hair, just like a bear’s, where every­
body else has skin. He was lying in the sun, getting a tan. He
sure was stupid. How could he get a tan if the sun couldn’t
reach his skin through all that fur?
Then we saw a funny old man. He popped out of the water
and began doing sitting-up excercises, and then hopped around
like a kid. He was skinny and bald on top, with long hair down
to his shoulders all around the rest of his head. He kept grin­
ning and winking. That was some old man! And there was
a gray-haired, wrinkled old lady playing badminton. She sure
swung a mean racket. Boy! I’d like to see old Granny Trin-
dichka back home try to wave a racket around like that. The
whole village’d come running to watch her. But here nobody
paid any attention to the old lady.
The old people in Kiev aren’t at all like the ones back home.
They’re all like kids. Like old kids. And the young people were
like old people, and some even had beards.
There was a lady wrapped up in a blanket snoring away un­
der a tree. Why’d she come to the beach? It’s much more com­
fortable to sleep in your own bed.
And there were so many children! All you heard was parents
shouting:
“Get out of the water, Roman! Get out this minute!”
“Don’t go so far, Vera! Turn back!”
“Where are your sandals, Sasha? Don’t you hear me?”
“Take off your wet trunks, Alik.”
“Give him the ball, Tolya! It’s his ball.”
“You’re not going into the water again, Yasha! You’re being
punished. No more swimming.”

169
 “Did you put sand in my shoes, Fanya? Pour it out this
minute!”
“Just have an egg, dear. Just one egg,” a fat lady in a striped
bathing suit was saying to a big, chunky boy of about twelve.
She was holding out a shelled, hard-boiled egg. He made a face.
“Come, darling. Please?” she cooed.
A little boy of about six began chirping: “Mama! I’m in the
water! Mama! I’m in the Dnieper! Mama! I’m swimming!”
You’d think he’d never seen any water before.
We went down to the very edge and began hunting for
a place to leave our things. I looked at the river. It was swarm­
ing with people. “What if somebody was drowning and we
saved him?” I said to myself. “I’d rather it was a kid. They’re
easier to save.”
It was a long-standing dream of ours. We’d save somebody
and become famous. It would be great if we could save some­
body here, with hundreds of people watching us. What if that
chirping little boy suddenly went under? We’d pull him out in
a flash. The next day the papers’d carry a piece headed: “Two
Brave Boys From Vasukovka” .
“I had a call from the paper yesterday...” I suddenly heard
someone saying. I started: had somebody tuned in on my
thoughts?
No, it was two men talking. One was short and round-faced.
He was standing in the water. The other was broad-shouldered
and had a hooked nose. He was standing at the water’s edge
and was completely dressed (maybe he was on his way home),
but he was barefoot and was holding his shoes.
“He wanted to know about my new role. I play a tsar,” the
round-faced man continued. “But I said it was too early to
speak of it yet and that he could come to rehearsals later
on.”

170
 “That’s right,” the other man said. “Never let them see any­
thing that’s half-done. That’s no way to do things. Well,
good luck. I’ve got to run or I’ll be late for the broadcast.
Give my regards to Galinka. I’ll drop in one of these
days. I remember the house. It’s apartment thirteen, isn’t
it?”
“Yes. We’ll be looking forward to seeing you. So long,” the
round-faced man said with a smile. He turned, walked farther
into the water and was about to swim off when he suddenly
stopped and raised his hand. “Ah, I forgot to take off my
watch!” He turned around, saw us and said, “Hey, boys! Do
me a favor, put my watch on those gray pants, will you?” He
held out his watch.
I was closer to him than Java, so I took the watch. The man
turned around, dived into the water and swam off. He was
doing the crawl, and his feet were working so fast he looked
like a motorboat. He was a good swimmer. We were still
watching him when we heard someone yell:
“He’s drowned! Drowned! The man’s drowned!”
“Where?” We spun around and raced after a crowd of run­
ning people. And why not? If someone’d shouted that and
you’d’ve heard him, would you have stood still? Besides, I’d
just been dreaming about saving someone. And I’d never seen
a real live drowned man before. I mean, not a live one, b u t-
well, anyway, a drowned man.
“Where? Where is he?” we shouted, darting among the peo­
ple, trying to get a look.
But the crowd was standing close together. We couldn’t see
him. We dropped to our hands and knees and crawled through
dozens of legs like puppies! At last we saw him. A huge, bulg­
ing man was stretched out on the sand. Sitting on top of him
was a skinny, sharp-nosed, middle-aged man with a brush of

171
gray hair on his chest. He was applying artificial respiration.
One! Two! One! Two!
“I’ll relieve you,” the muscular, tanned lifeguard said. He’d
just rowed up in his lifeboat and looked very embarrassed,
probably because such a puny little man and not he, whose job
it was, had rescued the drowned man.
We had a good look at the drowned man. We could tell he
was one of those body-building muscle men, because there was
a horseshoe charm on a chain around his neck and a tattoo on
his arm. It was a heart pierced by an arrow. Under that were
the words: “I’m looking for you, Luck.”
The sharp-nosed man and the lifeguard had already relieved
each other twice, but the drowned man wasn’t coming to. Peo­
ple in the crowd were saying:
“He’s so young.-”
“What a tragedy!”
“How did it happen?”
“They say he swam out too far and had cramps or
something.”
“The Dnieper carries off so many lives!”
All of a sudden the drowned man opened his eyes. A murmur
went through the crowd. The man raised his head, looked
around blearily and leaned on his elbow. The sharp-nosed man
who was sitting on him applying artificial respiration, drew in
his breath, made a face and said,
“Why, he’s drunk!”
The lifeguard leaned over the drowned man and said,
“You’re right! He’s dead drunk!”
“What the hell!”
“For shame!”
“Going swimming when he’s stoned.”
“ Drinking in this heat’s enough to kill anyone!”

172
 “Who said cramps?”
That’s what the crowd was saying. The sharp-nosed man
stared hard at the revived drunk and then raised his hand
and slapped him hard, first on one cheek and then on the
other.
“Good for you!”
“Serves him right!”
“That’ll teach him a lesson!”
“We thought it was an accident, but he...”
“Slap him again!”
“Go on!”
The crowd’s mood had changed. The tension was gone. The
sharp-nosed man got up quickly, stepped over the “drown­
ed man” and strode off. The crowd parted to let him
through.
“You could’ve at least said thank you to the man who pulled
you out!” the lifeguard snapped.
“You should’ve asked him his name!”
“You think it was easy towing a hunk like you in?” people
were shouting at the drunk, but he just blinked at them stu­
pidly. He still hadn’t come to completely. The lifeguard rowed
off and the crowd melted away.
“Oh! I forgot about the watch!” I said suddenly, seeing that
I was still holding it. We ran back. Where were those gray
pants? They were gone. Maybe they were over there? No.
Where were they? Where was the man? There were hundreds of
people all around us, but all of them were strangers. It must be
someplace farther on. No. We must’ve passed the place. Or did
we? Java said we’d passed it. Maybe we hadn’t reached it yet.
We kept running around in circles, but couldn’t find the gray
pants or the actor. How could we, if there was nothing but
sand and half-naked people all around, and no clues to go by?

173
Oh, why’d that drunk have to get rescued just then? What were
we to do?
“Look for him in the water, Java! Maybe he’s still
swimming.”
Java stripped down to his trunks and dived in. I stood on the
bank. I was afraid to move away from the spot so’s not to lose
sight of him, but meanwhile I kept looking into the faces of the
people all around me, just in case. Half an hour later Java
stumbled out of the water.
“He’s not there,” he panted.
“Maybe he drowned?”
“What about his pants? They’re gone. He didn’t have them
on in the water. And a swimmer like him can cross the ocean
and never drown.”
“What’ll we do?”
“How do I know?”
I was so upset I didn’t know what to do. The man’d asked
me to do him a favour. Instead, I’d gone off with his watch.
“He’ll think I stole it,” I said miserably.
Java shrugged.
I’d never felt so awful in my life. Sure, there’d been times
when we’d done things we shouldn’t have. We’d shaken pears
off the wild pear tree in Knysh’s yard, but there were so many
pears on it they rotted in the grass anyway. And Knysh’s wife
was so stingy and mean that everybody hated her. Actually, we
shook them down more to get even with her than because we
liked those bitter little pears.
Once when I was little I swiped a poppyseed bun when I was
staying at my aunt’s house. But I’d swiped it from my own
aunt, and it was only a little bun. Now here I was, holding
a stranger’s expensive watch. How could we ever fight crime
and catch thieves when we were thieves ourselves?

174
 I wanted to stand up and shout loud enough for everyone on
the beach to hear: “Where’s a militiaman? Take me in! I ’m
a thief! I stole a man’s watch! He trusted me. Arrest me!”
But I didn’t stand up, and I didn’t shout, because, luckily,
there wasn’t a single militiaman in sight. Maybe there was, but
he was wearing trunks, and how could you recognize a militia­
man if he was half-naked? And anyway, a half-naked militia­
man wasn’t a militiaman. He didn’t make you feel small.
Now you take Valigura, our village militiaman, for instance.
Burmilo, the local drunk, won’t pay any attention to Valigura if
he’s out of uniform. When Valigura’s working in his garden in
his old clothes and somebody calls him to make Burmilo cool
off, Valigura never goes after him in his old clothes. Burmilo
won’t even look his way if he does. He’ll say, “Who’re you?
I never saw you before! Get going!” But as soon as Valigura
puts on his uniform and cap Burmilo becomes as meek as
a lamb and says, “Pardon me, Chief,” and trots off home to
bed.
A half-naked militiaman’s no militiaman at all. That’s for
sure.
“We’ll never find that actor here,” Java said.
“What do we do, go to the militia station?” I said, feeling icy
fingers on my heart.
“Oh, sure. They’d love to see us. Run along. And say hello
to the militiaman we knocked over on the escalator while
you’re at it.”
“What’ll we do?”
“How’d we get here? Over the bridge. How’s everybody
going home? Over the bridge. There’s no other way. Let’s go to
the bridge and wait for him there. Maybe we’ll spot him. Or
maybe he’ll spot us. He’s still here someplace. He’s got to be.
He can’t leave without his watch.”

175
 “Maybe Java’s right,” I said to myself. “We’ve more of
a chance of finding him if we wait by the bridge than if we race
around in circles here.”
We sat on the railings: Java on the right side and I on the
left. We sat there, waiting. The sun would soon be setting. Peo­
ple were beginning to leave the beach in droves. It made me
dizzy to keep scanning all those faces. We’d never spot him in
this crowd. Our only hope was that he’d see us.
I must have looked miserable, because a woman suddenly
stopped beside me, said: “Poor child” and pressed a coin into
my hand. I nearly toppled over. She thought I was a beggar!
When I came to she was gone. That’s how low I’d fallen! Luck­
ily, there was such a crowd between us that Java hadn’t seen
her. I slid off the rail and leaned against it, with my hands
behind me, so nobody else’d get the idea I was begging.
It was dark by now, and the crowd was down to a trickle.
Still, we hadn’t found the actor. My stomach was rumbling.
We’d had nothing to eat except ice cream. Java came over and
said,
“Boy, are we dopes! What’re we standing here for? He’s an
actor, isn’t he? We’ll make the rounds of the theatres tomorrow
and find him. We know he plays a tsar.”
Why hadn’t I thought of it? Java sure is smart. He has
a good head on his shoulders. That was what we’d do. There
were only about five or six theatres in Kiev, so we’d find him
soon enough, return the watch and tell him what’d happened,
including the part about the drunk who’d drowned, and every­
thing else.
Life really is beautiful when you find a way out of a hopeless
mess.
“Let’s have a look at the watch,” Java said.
We went over to a street light (the lights were on by then)

176
and had a good look at it. It was round and as slim as a five-
kopeck piece. The dial was black, and there were tiny gold bars
instead of numerals. The hands were also gold. We’d never seen
such a fine watch before.
“Try it on,” said Java.
“I don’t want to.”
“Go on! You might as well try it on and wear it for a while,
since you sort of stole it anyway. You won’t have a chance
tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to wear somebody else’s watch.”
“Let me wear it if you’re that proud, ’cause I ’m not,” he
said, took the watch and put it on. All of a sudden Java looked
about five years older. His face became very stem and serious.
He walked along, holding his arm out stiffly, glancing at the
watch all the time and feeling very important. He’d bend his
elbow every so often and bring the watch up to his face to see
what time it was. Java paid no attention to me. He didn’t say
a word. You’d think I wasn’t there at all. That’s when I began
feeling sorry I hadn’t put it on first. After all, you might say it
was mine. And I’d been the one who’d suffered on account of
it. Now here was Java, wearing it and looking snooty besides.
When we came to the end of the embankment and Paton
Bridge I’d reached the end of my rope. “That’s enough! Take it
off!” I said. “I don’t want you to break it. I’ll have to pay for
it if you do.”
Java sighed, took it off and immediately became five years
younger, a kid like he was before he put it on.
The minute the watch was back in my pocket I felt relieved.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you, a lady on the bridge gave me three
kopecks.”
“She did?” Java sounded happy. “Then why’re we walking?
Let’s take the trolley. I ’m pooped.”
12-344
177
 “That’s called alms, stupid! Nobody uses alms for carfare.
She gave me the money because she thought I was a beggar.”
“What’re you going to do with it?”
“I told you, I don’t know.”
What a crazy situation: I could never spend the money, but
then again, you don’t just throw money out. We thought
and thought, and finally decided we’d give the coin to a real
beggar as soon as we saw one. (But since we never did, I still
have it.)
“You know, this is just like a real detective story,” Java said
excitedly. “We know he lives in apt. 13. That’s a very important
clue.”
“It sure is. How many apartments d’you think there are in
Kiev with that number? We’ll get old and die before we get to
every one.”
“So what? It’s still a real adventure,” Java insisted. “It’s like
tracking down a robber. Only this is the other way around. Un­
derstand? The crooks’re tracking down the victim so they can
return what they stole. How about that?”
“I’ll tell you how about that. What d’you think my aunt’s
going to say when we finally show up? She’s probably out of
her mind worrying.”
My aunt didn’t say a word. She was lying on the couch with
a cold compress on her head. But my uncle had a few words to
say to us. This is what he said:
“If you were my sons I’d paddle you so hard you wouldn’t
be able to put your pants on tomorrow. But since I’ve no right
to lay a hand on you, I’ll tell you outright: if this ever happens
again, I’m buying you two tickets on the first train back to
Vasukovka. I don’t want you to make me a widower. Your
aunt nearly had a heart attack. Look at her. She can’t even
raise her head.”

178
 We stood there looking at the floor, mumbling excuses, say­
ing we’d gone to the movies, and then had a ride on the Ferris
wheel, and then went to see a girl we knew (her name was
Valya Malinovskaya, honest, here was her address, you could
go and see for yourself), and we even had dinner at her house,
and then we all watched TV, and they kept asking us to stay
a while longer, and, honest, we’d never do it again!
Then we each had a glass of tea (“We had a huge dinner at
Valya’s house”) and went to bed feeling famished. We lay there,
but couldn’t fall asleep. I was suddenly awfully ashamed of
myself. My conscience was killing me.
“Look at what’s happened!” I whispered to Java. “We
wanted to do something big and brave, but all we seem to do is
lie and cheat. And all of it in just one day! We robbed the
actor, even if it was an accident, we tripped up the militiaman,
we wasted three rubles, we lied to my aunt, we lied to my uncle,
a n d - We were even given alms. You mean we’ve got to keep
on lying and acting like that if we want to become heroes?
Well, that’s a lousy kind of heroism. Real heroes are honest
men like Karmeliuk, Dovbush, the Count of Monte Cristo,
Captain Nemo, Katigoroshko and Pokryshkin. They never lied.
We’re just a couple of liars and crooks.”
Java sighed to show me that he agreed. “I know,” he said,
“It’s no good. Let’s not lie anymore.”
“Right. But we’ve got to think of something that’ll make us
keep our promise. Let’s swear an oath (and sign it in blood),
never to lie again. If you can’t tell the truth, or don’t want to,
then don’t say anything. No matter how they keep at you, don’t
say a word.”
“All right. But we’ve already sworn an oath and signed it in
blood, and it didn’t change anything. I know! If one of us lies,
then ... then the other one socks him three times. Right away,
12* 179
no matter where we are: out on the street, in class, or even up
on the stage. And the one who lied has no right to put up
a fight or duck. By no means. You get three socks for the first
lie, six for the second, twelve for the third, and so on. Golly!
It’ll help us improve our will-power, and that’s something we’ll
need a lot of, if you ever want to be a hero.”
Java always has to think up something special. I had a feeling
he wasn’t all that keen on getting cured of lying by being
socked. He just wanted it to be done in some special way.
I didn’t argue. All I cared about was having it work. And so it
was settled. Now, since we were nearly one hundred per cent
honest, we dropped off to sleep without a care in the world.
 Chapter 5

WE SEARCH FOR THE UNKNOWN TSAR FROM ART. 13.

THE MEETING IN THE THEATRE.
THE RISE AND FALL OF JAVA REN

The morning began with a surprise. When I awoke I saw that

Java was already dressed. While I was dressing he winked at me
and tossed his head, as if to say: come on, I want to tell you
something in secret.
I followed him into the bathroom. He looked at me suspi­
ciously and whispered:
“Why didn’t you say your uncle was a Counter-intelligence
man?” And he raised his fist to start socking me.
I was so surprised I could hardly say, “What counter-intelli­
gence ?”
“The one that catches spies.”
“If you ask me, you’re spy-crazy.”
“I am not. You think I’m a dope? Pistols are only issued
to militiamen, border guards, and Counter-intelligence men.
That’s a fact. And since your uncle isn’t a militiaman or
a border guard, it means he’s a Counter-intelligence
man.”
“What pistol?”
“A real one.”
“How d’you know?”
“It’s in his desk, in the drawer that’s open a bit. I saw
it.”
“You did? Show me!” Now I curled my fingers into a fist.
“You’ll be sorry if you’re lying.”
We left the bathroom and strolled through the apartment as
if there was nothing on our minds. Then we made a beeline for
the desk, our eyes darting to the open drawer. It was no lie.
I saw the pistol. The gunmetal glinted. My heart skipped
181
a beat. I glanced quickly at my uncle, who was doing
calisthenics on the balcony. I waited a few moments and
said,
“Uncle Grisha! What’s this?”
“What’s what?” he said, coming into the room.
“Here, in the drawer.”
“A pistol.”
“What’s it for?”
“Why, it’s a starter’s pistol. Didn’t you ever see a judge shoot
one off at a track meet?”
Golly! How could I’ve been so dumb? I’d completely for­
gotten that in his spare time Uncle Grisha was a judge (he was
a Master of Sports in track-and-field). I should’ve guessed what
kind of a pistol it was. Actually, though, I’d never seen any
kind of pistol close-up. Neither had Java. He was getting red in
the face for having made such a stupid mistake, so to hide his
embarrassment he said,
“How does it work?”
“I’ll show you.” Uncle Crisha picked up the pistol. “First,
there’s the command: ‘Get ready!’ Then: ‘Get set!’ And th e n -”
he raised the pistol.
Bang\ The explosion was deafening. At that very moment

182
someone screamed. There was a
crash and a thud in the kitchen.
We dashed in to see what had hap­
pened. My aunt was sitting on the
floor. Lying beside her was a
smashed china mortar. She’d been
crushing poppy seeds for a poppy­
seed cake and had been so frightened
by the shot that she’d jumped, skid­
ded and sat down in a heap.
She looked so funny we couldn’t
help laughing.
“Gri-sha!” she moaned, tilting
her head. “What a baby you are!
How could you? I nearly died.”
“I’m not to blame if vou’re as
timid as a mouse,” he said. He was
still smiling as he helped her up.
“It sure did bang. It’s enough to
scare the daylights out of anyone,”
I said, feeling sorry for my aunt.
“It’s a swell gun for catching
spies,” Java said. “It sounds just
like a real one.”
“Can I shoot it, Uncle Grisha?”
“I guess so. B u t-” he looked at
my aunt.
“We can fire it in the bed­
room,” Java said quickly.
“All right.”
But before I did I shouted, “Get
ready, Auntie! Get set!” Then
only did I pull the trigger with
both index fingers (it was too stiff
to do it with just one). Boy, did
183
it ever bang! It sounded louder than when my uncle’d
fired it. Java and I each had two turns. My uncle wouldn’t
let us fire it any more. He said we’d have the neighbours
breaking down the door if we did.
Shooting the pistol distracted me a bit, but when I thought of
the watch again I began to feel awful. How would it all end?
Would we find the actor? And what would he say?
I ate my breakfast in silence, feeling very depressed. Java
kept glancing at me and winking to cheer me up. I chewed my
bacon and eggs unhappily, wondering how we’d manage to slip
out of the house to hunt for the actor and still not tell any lies
(by no means!).
But why lie? One of the things on our list of things to do was
going to see a play at the Children’s Theatre. We’d go today in­
stead of putting it off, and on the way we’d stop off at all the
other theatres and look for the actor. The matinee began at
noon. It was only nine now, so we had plenty of time.
My aunt and uncle didn’t object to our going to a matinee,
but my uncle said, “What if I join you? How about it?”
We didn’t want him to come along at all. That’d ruin all our
plans, so I hurried to say,
“You’ll be awfully bored. It’s kid stuff. If I was grown u p - ”
I don’t know whether he guessed my thoughts or not, but he
smiled and said, “You’re probably right, Pavlik. Run along.
I was only joking. But I’ll send you home tomorrow if you
get lost again!”
He gave us some pocket money. We put on our new starched
shirts, pressed pants and shiny new shoes, and were off.
I don’t know about other people, but when I’m wearing new
clothes I feel like I’m naked. I think everybody’s looking at
me, and I’m so embarrassed I want to hide. I end up by rubbing
my sleeve on a wall so my shirt won’t look so new, or getting
a spot on my pants, or scuffing my shoes. Then I feel better.
So the minute the door closed behind us I wiped the dust off the
banister with my sleeve and got a nice dirty streak on my shirt.
184
Still, wearing everything new was very uncomfortable: my feet
felt like they were boxed in wooden clogs, my stiff collar
rubbed my neck like a grater, and I had to turn my whole body
if I wanted to turn my head. Why can’t people dress normally
when they go to the theatre? The idea was to see the play, not
to make a show of ourselves. If I ever get to be somebody im­
portant I’ll pass a law saying nobody can go to the theatre
wearing new clothes. But I’ll never be a lawmaker. I’m going to
be a pilot.
We took the trolleybus to the Theatre of Musical Comedy
first. We’d decided to start there, because I thought a nice-
looking, round-faced actor like him just had to be a come­
dian.
The theatre lobby was deserted. The box office was in the
lobby, to the right. Then came two huge doors. We climbed the
stairs to the doors. They weren’t locked. We looked inside, but
there was no one there, either.
“Maybe we’re too early?” I said.
“We are not. It’s ten o’clock. Actors go to work in the morn­
ing just like everybody else. That’s their job.”
“Then why isn’t anybody here?”
“You think they all stand around in the lobby? Nobody’s
here because they’re all onstage, rehearsing. Come on.”
Just as we were passing through the doors a woman wearing
a blue uniform appeared. She was coming towards us.
“Are you looking for anyone, boys?”
We didn’t know what to say and just stood there. Why, we
didn’t even know his name.
“Are you looking for anyone?” she repeated.
“We’re looking for the tsar,” Java said.
“The tsar?” Her eyebrows shot up.
“The round-faced one. The bald one,” I added.
She smiled. “You’ve come too late, boys. There’s been no
tsar for sixty years. You should’ve come sooner.”
“We don’t mean the real one,” Java said. “We’re look­
185
ing for the actor who plays the tsar. Didn’t you under­
stand ?”
“He lives in apartment thirteen,” I added.
“Ah, I see,” she said. “But we’ve no one like that here.
There’s no play in our repertory now that has a tsar. Why are
you looking for that actor here? Did he say he was in our
troupe? What’s his name?”
Java and I looked at each other.
“We don’t know. All we know is that he plays the tsar,”
I said.
“Where? In which theatre?”
“We don’t know.”
“Well! Are you sure you didn’t make him up? How d’you
know he plays a tsar?”
“He said so.”
“So you do know him?”
“Just a little,” I said and looked at Java. Why didn’t he say
anything? He was usually the one to do the talking, but now
you’d think he was deaf and dumb.
“How d’you know him if you don’t know his name or the
theatre he’s in?” the woman asked.
“U h - We didn’t have time to ask him.”
“Then why’re you looking for him?”
“We want to see him. We’ve got to talk to him.”
“About his work in the theatre?” she said and smil­
ed.
“Yep.”
No sooner had I said that th a n - Pow\ Fowl Pow\ I saw
stars. The woman gasped and threw up her hands.
“Why’d you hit him? You ruffian! He gave you no
cause...”
I didn’t hear the rest of what she was shouting, because by
then we were out on the street.
I still felt dizzy, and there were tears in my eyes. So that was
why Java hadn’t said a w ord! He was afraid he’d lie, too, and
186
was waiting to see if I would. But it wasn’t really lying. All I’d
said was: “Yep” when she’d jokingly asked that last question.
You might say I was sort of joking, too, when I answered.
There was no law against that. If that’s the way you looked at
things, you’d be black-and-blue all your life.
“You mad at me? We had an agreement, remember?” Java
said innocently. “Nobody’s to blame.”
I said nothing.
“You’ve no right to be mad. That’s not fair. Why’d we make
the pact then?”
Here he was, lecturing me after what he’d done! Sure, it was
stupid to be mad at him. We did have a pact, but when you get
conked on the head with others looking at you and you’ve no
right to hit back it’s not something that’ll make you feel like
laughing or singing.
“Come on,” Java said. “If I lie, you’ll sock me, and I won’t
even bat an eye. You’ll see.”
He was right. Still, I was silent all the way to the Opera.
When we reached the square in front of the building I rubbed
my forehead and finally said,
“We’ve got to do it differently. We’ve got to begin by finding
out about the what’s-it-called - the repertory. We can’t just say:
‘Where’s the tsar?’ Not when they’re not even putting on a play
about a tsar.”
“Right,” Java said quickly. He was relieved now that I’d
started talking again. We decided we’d tell the truth. We’d say
we had to return something an actor’d given us for safekeeping
while he was in swimming. (We just wouldn’t say what it was.
It was too awful to confess it was a watch.)
We had more luck with the tsars at the Opera than at the
Theatre of Musical Comedy. We read the playbills and saw
there was a tsar in “Boris Godunov” , one in “The Tale of Tsar
Saltan” , one in “The Decembrists” and one in “The Snow
Maiden”. I was positive we’d find the bald, round-faced actor
among all those tsars, but none of them were the one we
187
wanted. They were all the wrong kind of tsars. Not a single
one was bald. Besides, they were all tall and broad-shouldered.
The ticket taker showed us where photographs of the
troupe’s actors and actresses lined the walls in the lobby.
Our man wasn’t there. We trudged out of the Opera un­
happily.
“Never mind,” said Java. He was trying to sound cheerful. “I
knew we wouldn’t find him here. Opera singers’re afraid to
catch cold and ruin their voices. They’ll never go splashing
around in a river. Only real actors go swimming.”
Our next stop was the Russian Drama Theatre, but there
were no tsars in the cast there or at the Ivan Franko Theatre,
either. Now all that was left was the Children’s Theatre. As we
walked up the street, we passed a strange-looking house covered
with stone sculptures of elephants, snakes, weird birds and
monsters. If this was any other day I’d have stood there gaping,
because I was positive there wasn’t another house like it any­
place, but now I just walked by. My heart was a black pit. If all
those monsters had suddenly come to life and had looked into
it, they’d have gotten scared.
“Don’t worry,” Java said. “He’s got to be at the Children’s
Theatre. Just you wait. He’s probably the tsar in some
fairy-tale. He’s a comedian. T think we saw him on TV. Re­
member the guy who tripped at the door and went sprawling?
Ha-ha-ha!” He was trying to cheer me up, thinking
up all sorts of funny things on the way, but it was no
use.
When we finally got to the theatre it was just like being back
in school during recess. Kids were running around, shoving,
laughing and screaming. The kids were so young you could
see they were still in primary school. We went up to the
box office. Sure enough, it was a fairy-tale, a matinee for
tots.
“There’s no tsar in this,” I said.
“Not in ‘Little Red Riding Hood’,” said Java.
188
 We both made a face, but we couldn’t turn around and go
home, because we had to see the pictures of the actors
inside.
“I guess we’ll have to see ‘Little Red Riding Hood’,” Java
said.
We bought two tickets and went in, making our way through
the crowds of small fry to get a closer look at the photographs.
We went up to each one in turn, hoping against hope. This was
the last theatre. This was our last chance. After we’d inspected
every single photograph I lost all hope. The man we were look­
ing for wasn’t there. Noplace. What were we to do? Where
could we find him? That meant he wasn’t an actor after all. But
we’d heard him say he was. And we’d heard him say he’d been
given the role of a tsar. How come?
“Don’t worry yet,” Java said. “Maybe his picture’s missing.
Remember the time Misha Gonobobel didn’t get his picture on
the Honour Roll Board, because when everybody had their
pictures taken a bee stung him, and his face swelled up
like a balloon? Maybe the same thing happened to the
actor.”
“Oh, sure.” I knew it couldn’t’ve happened, but who could
tell?
“Hello, boys!” somebody said. We turned around. There was
Valya. She had on a white dress and was wearing a big white
bow in her hair. Holding her hand was a little first-grader wear­
ing his school uniform. “I recognized you right away,” Valya
was saying. “Have you been in Kiev long? Are you here on
a class excursion, or on your own?”
I said nothing. She was his friend, so he could do the talking.
But Java didn’t say anything, either. I wish you could’ve seen
him. First he turned pale, then he turned red, then he
turned pale again. And then his face became all covered
with red splotches. He hadn’t looked this bad ever, not
even when he’d fallen down into the old well the year
before.
189
 Valya kept on chattering. “Will you be here long? Did you
catch those poachers? You promised to write. Did you lose my
address? Did you? Why don’t you say anything? Don’t you
want to talk to me?”
At last Java forced his mouth open. What he said was,
“W hy- Of course- W e -”
It wasn’t much of a speech, but I didn’t interrupt. I was giv­
ing them a chance to talk. It was too late to interrupt them
anyway, because the third bell for the performance had rung,
and everybody was in a hurry to get to their seats. The curtain
went up. We were in Row 7, and Valya was in Row 9. Instead
of looking at the stage, Java kept squirming in his seat, twisting
his neck to look at Valya.
“You’ll end up with your chin on your back for good, and
you’ll have to walk backwards,” I said.
He paid no attention. Meanwhile, things’d been progressing,
and by now the Big Bad Wolf was making his way into
Grandma’s cottage so’s to eat her up. That quick-witted granny
was putting on a good show: building a barricade of furniture,
scampering around the stage, tossing pots, pans, pitchers and
other household utensils at the Big Bad Wolf.
A real, live hen was tied to the fence outside Grandma’s cot­
tage. During the fast action on stage the hen got all tangled up
and began thrashing about and flapping its wings. The Big Bad
Wolf and Grandma were so busy running around they didn’t
notice what had happened, but the audience was watching the
poor hen and worrying. It looked half-dead by then. Still, what
could anybody do? You couldn’t just jump up and shout, and
interrupt the performance, could you?
Java was fidgeting like he had ants in his pants. All of
a sudden he stood up and walked down the aisle to the stage.
I held my breath. So did everybody else. All heads turned to
follow him, like soldiers on parade when a general inspects the
troops. He just kept on walking, on and on, then up the steps
to the stage on over to the hen. Then he bent down and began
190
untangling it. Meanwhile, the actors went on with the play,
paying no attention to him. Java untangled the hen and came
back to his seat as if it were nothing, but when he sat down
beside me I could hear him breathing hard, and his heart was
pounding. A few minutes later the Big Bad Wolf finally swal­
lowed Grandma, and Act One ended. The curtain fell. The
lights went up. Everyone clapped. Since most of the audience’d
turned to look at Java, you couldn’t tell whether they were
applauding the actors or him. Valya came hurrying over.
“Good for you! You sure have a lot of nerve. I’d never have
been able to do that. Good for you!” She was speaking very
loudly. Too loudly, in fact. She probably wanted everybody to
see that she knew Java. She was very proud she knew him. All
the kids were looking up to him, and when we went out to the
lobby we could hear them saying excitedly: “There he is! That’s
him! The one in the white shirt.”
It was something Java could only have dreamed about. He
was in seventh heaven. He was beaming, walking up and down
the lobby like he was on stilts and taller than everybody else in
the world. His eyes shone like ordinary people’s eyes never
shine. I felt there was a great big distance between us. What did
he care about me and my worrying over the watch now? Sure,
he was a hero. It hurt me to look at him.
“This is my brother Mikola,” Valya said, because Java kept
looking at the little boy who was hanging around us. Her kid
brother turned red, just like he was being introduced to
a famous cosmonaut, or movie star, or some other famous
person.
“The only reason I ’m here is because of him. Mama won’t let
him go out alone yet,” Valya said, and she sounded like she
was apologizing.
Java sized up her kid brother condescendingly. That made
Mikola turn still redder.
“Well? Did you catch them or not?” Valya said.
“Sure we did,” Java said.
“And you didn’t write to tell me? Some friends you are! Did
you lose my address?”
“No, but...” Java shrugged, and his shrug was meant to
mean: “what’s all this about writing anyway?”
Now Valya blushed, but she went on anyway, “Well, I ’m
sure some grown-ups helped you catch them. Or else, you
helped the grown-ups.”
“Well, in fact, we trapped him ourselves,” Java said snootily,
glanced at me quickly and bit his lip. It was too late.
I took a deep breath, raised my fist and conked him on the
head three times. Valya cried out. Her kid brother Mikola gig­
gled. Somebody nearby laughed. The stilts broke, and Java
came crashing down to earth. He was stunned. He was as red
as a beet. And his eyes looked wild. I even felt sorry for him,
but it wasn’t my fault. He shoudn’t’ve invented the punishment.
When Valya (kind soul that she was) saw that Java wasn’t
going to put up a fight, she shouted at me, “Are you nuts?
What d’you think you’re doing?”
There was a crowd of little kids around us by then, and
Java’s eyes began darting back and forth like a cornered ani­
192
mal’s. He managed a pitiful sort of a smile (like the kind when
you’re up in somebody else’s pear tree and that somebody else
comes along and sees you there) and said,
“Never mind. It’s all right. Now we’re quits.” Then he turned
to the crowd of little kids and said, “What’re you staring at?
The show’s over.”
The tots drifted off, talking and laughing. Soon they were
hurrying back to their seats, because the bell ending intermis­
sion was ringing.
“Can’t you tell me what happened? Did you have a fight?”
Valya kept at us.
“No, we didn’t. It’s just an agreement we have.” Java didn’t
want to go into any details, because we were walking down the
aisle to our seats.
“What kind of an agreement?” Valya asked. (Girls sure are
nosey.)
“I’ll tell you later.”
“All right. But don’t sneak away.”
“We won’t.”
 Chapter 6

BUDKA. AN EAR FOR AN EAR

Java’d gotten over my three thumps by the time the play

ended ana we left the theatre. He was stretching his neck like
a rooster (you’d think he was about to crow), looking over the
heads of the other kids. He was searching for Valya.
“Come on, let’s go. We don’t want to be stuck with her. She
just rattles on and on,” I muttered.
I was still feeling awful. My conscience was bent double un­
der the weight of the watch I felt would never be returned to its
owner now. I might just as well go shouting up and down the
streets, trying to find him. But how could I ever find him by
shouting if I didn’t know his name or address, and Kiev was
a city of a million and a half inhabitants, to say nothing of the
five hundred thousand visitors who passed through it each day?
It was a hopeless situation. It was enough to make me howl.
But Java was tuned in to another station, and my worries were­
n ’t his worries now.
“What d’you mean let’s go?” he said. “We promised to wait
for her, didn’t we? D’you want to make me lie again? I’ll start
socking you if you don’t watch out.”
Oh, so we promised, did we? That was a nice how-d’you-do!
He’d been the one who’d done all the promising. There was no
reason dragging me into it. I had nothing to do with it, but
before I had a chance to say a word Valya darted out of the
crowd with her kid brother Mikola in tow and came hurrying
towards us.
“I was looking for you in the lobby. I thought you’d be wait­
ing for me there. Come on,” she said.
We started down the street towards Vatutin Park. Valya kept
yakking all the way, but I wasn’t listening. Nothing she had to
194
say was of any interest to me. Then all of a sudden I heard her
say my name.
“Why is Pavlik such a sour puss? And angry, too. He isn’t
sick, is he? Or maybe something’s happened?” Valya was
saying.
“You’re the one who’s sick,” I said to myself and glared at
her. I was no concern of hers.
Java’s eyes bored holes through me. I could see he was say­
ing: “I’m sorry, pal, but I can’t lie. You’ll have to forgive me.”
Aloud he said, “It’s like this.” He sighed. “Something hap­
pened.” And he went on to tell her all about it: about the
watch, and about our going from one theatre to another all that
morning.
At first I wanted to stop him from telling her about it, but
then I decided it didn’t really matter, because even if he did tell
her, it wouldn’t change anything. As Valya listened she kept
gasping and when he finished she began babbling excitedly:
“What d’you know! It’s so exciting! What a story! Of course
you’ve got to find him.” All of a sudden her eyes lit up. “You
know what? I think I know somebody who can help you. He’s
an old retired actor. His name’s Maxim Valerianovich, and he
lives near me. He’s on pension now, but he still knows all the
actors and actresses. You tell him what the actor you’re looking
for looks like, and I bet you he’ll know who he is. Want me to
introduce you to him?”
We looked at each other. Java was beaming. We had no
guarantee that Maxim Valerianovich could help us, but there
was no harm in trying. I couldn’t afford to turn down the
offer.
“D’you think he’s home now?” I asked. This meant I was
going along with the idea.
“He should be. He’s a sick man and stays home a lot. Come
on.”
As we entered the familiar yard we heard loud dance music.
It was coming from a second-floor balcony where some big kids
13*
195
were playing a tape recorder. I decided this was a good omen,
because when things’re going well in a movie the music on the
sound track’s always lively. We started walking in step to the
music, thinking that Maxim Valerianovich lived in the same
house as Valya. But she said, “No, this way,” and turned into
an archway. We felt uneasy. We didn’t want her to guess we’d
been in her house before. Luckily, it was dark in the archway,
so she didn’t notice our funny expressions. We came out into
a back yard. It was lined with old sheds. There were an awful
lot of them, of all sizes and shapes, some two-storied with rail­
ings on the second floor. Cats peered out at us from the dark
spaces between the sheds, and their eyes flashed like green
flames.
We passed the row of sheds and started down a path that led
through a thicket of boxthorn. The monastery was off to the
left. Its ancient brick fortress wall with loopholes cut in it
would suddenly come into sight and then be lost again behind
the trees and bushes. The thicket was dark and mysterious close
up near the wall, and the air smelled of dampness, cold and rot­
ting leaves.
“What a place for playing Cossacks and robbers!” Java
whispered.
True, it was a perfect place for Cossacks and robbers. The
golden cupola of a belfry suddenly blazed up ahead of us. To
the right of the cupola- Ha! I knew what that was! It was
a high-voltage line tower. Those tall if on towers were strung
out clear across the fields back home, going off as far as the
horizon. We went down to the belfry. The huge iron gate
was open. A vaulted entrance led to the monastery’s inner
yard. Valya was about to walk by the gate when Java said,
“How about popping in for a minute? Just to have a
look.”
“Oh, no!” I said and made a face. I was in a hurry to get on
with the watch business.

196
 But Java’s eyes were shining with nearly the same kind of
green fire I’d seen in the backyard cats’ eyes. I guessed he was
busy filling up the ancient loopholes and monastery yard with
mysterious strangers, detectives and spies. He could probably
hear the sound of gunfire, of somebody shouting: “Hands up!”,
of a chase, and of everything else you’ll find in a good movie. It
was no use arguing.
“We’ll just have a quick look, that’s all,” he said and looked
at me hopefully.
“Why, sure! You’ve never been inside. Come on, let’s go!”
Valya said.
What could I do but follow?
“The monastery ends here,” Valya was saying. “This is the
Belltower in the Far Caves and this is the Church of the Na­
tivity of the Mother of God.”
But she might’ve saved her breath. You could read all about
it on the plaques. That was exactly what Java was doing, since
reading plaques was one of his hobbies.
“The Church of the Nativity of the Mother of God, erected
in 1696,” he read aloud.
“That’s why it’s coming apart at the seams,” I said. “What
they need here is general repairs.”
Yes, indeed, the old church next to the newly restored gold-
cupolaed belfry looked down-at-the-heels and abandoned. Its
cupolas were dark in spots and peeling. The walls were cracked.
The windows were broken. Some lopsided scaffolding made of
rusty pipes had been left outside the church. Now it looked as
old as the church itself. The entrance was bricked up.
The small churchyard was surrounded by the fortress wall in
which there were square little windows and narrow loopholes.
Some old graves marked by crosses, iron grates and marble
monuments were scattered around in a quiet, grassy nook
among the trees. We walked all around the church. Then, just
as we were about to leave, Java stopped to look at the inscrip­
tions on two of the tombstones. They read:
197
 GENERAL P. S. K A I S A R O V ,
HERO OF THE PATRIOTIC WAR OF 1812,
AIDE DE CAMP TO
FIELD-MARSHAL M. I. K U T U Z O V
ER EC T E D IN 19 51 B Y H IS G R A TEFU L CO U N TR YM EN

and:

GENERAL A. I. K R A S O V S K Y ,
HERO OF THE PATRIOTIC WAR OF 1812,
COMRADE-IN-ARMS OF M. I. K U T U Z O V
ER EC T E D IN 19 51 B Y H IS G R A TEFU L CO U N TR YM EN

“See?” Java said. “See the historic generals that’re buried

here? And you didn’t even want to stop for a minute.”
“We’ve a lot of historic people here,” said Valya. “Kochubei
and Iskra are buried in the monastery. Ushinsky’s buried in
Vydubechi Monastery. Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of
Moscow, is buried in the Church of Our Saviour of Bere-
stovo.”
Java looked at me proudly. You’d think he’d just said all
that.
“We’ll go have a look at some of them later,” I said. “We’ve
got to find that Valerianovich guy first.”
“Right. Come on,” Valya said.
We went out through the gate and followed the fortress wall,
going downhill all the time. Those monks, sure picked a good
spot for their monastery. It was on top of a hill on the bank of
the Dnieper River and gave them a perfect view of everything.
Down the winding path we went to a paved walk. That took us
to a crooked little street lined with lopsided whitewashed huts.
198
Each had a front garden. The TV antennas sticking up from the
roofs were the only sign that people still lived in these houses,
that they weren’t something out of the past.
Valya stopped at one of the huts. It looked like the worst one
of all. Dirty white hens were scratching around in the tiny yard,
bobbing their heads up and down nervously, while a bright
rooster with a flashing red comb was strutting around. There
were no rows of vegetables or berry bushes like there were in
front of the other houses on the street, nothing but flowers:
roses, peonies, hollyhocks and phloxes. The little hut looked
like a toy house set in the middle of a flower garden. The walls
were freshly whitewashed, just like those of huts in any
Ukrainian village, with a broad blue strip running around the
bottom of the house. Hanging high up under the roof were
little bunches of drying herbs.
We followed Valya into the yard, then to the creaky wooden
porch that was nearly level with the ground. Valya knocked.
Nobody answered. She shrugged, then went to the window and
held her hands over her eyes as she pressed her face to the
pane.
“He’s gone,” she said apologetically. “He must’ve gone to see
his nephew. He visits him on Sundays when he’s feeling all
right. But don’t worry, he’ll be back soon. He usually goes
early in the morning and comes back in time for lunch.”
The street with the little whitewashed huts was so like the
village streets I’d always known that I relaxed. I felt that the
man who lived here would certainly help us. I was ready to wait
for him till dark if I had to.
“Let’s go to my house. I’ll show you my books and my
photographs. I ’ve got two albums full of photographs. He’ll be
back soon, don’t worry,” Valya said. You’d think it was her
fault that Maxim Valerianovich was feeling good enough to go
visiting his nephew.
We turned back. All we’d just seen was so strange. First
there’d been the busy city street full of traffic, then the old
199
church, the quiet, the old graves and the inscriptions Java’d
read; then the dark brick fortress wall, and then zowiel the
towers of the high-voltage line sticking up into the air; and then
a crooked little village street, Maxim Valerianovich’s hut, the
clucking hens, and the hollyhocks and peonies by the window.
Down below was the embankment, the trolley cars, buses,
motorcycles and cars. To the right was Paton Bridge. To the
left was another fine bridge with the rails of the Metro line
coming out of the ground and crossing it over the Dnieper. It
was amazing to see all this old and new side by side.
We were soon back near the sheds. A big-headed,
broad-faced boy wearing a plaid shirt and jeans was sitting on
the second-story rail of one of the sheds. When Valya saw him
she shouted,
“Hey, Budka! Did you ring our bell again yesterday? If you
don’t quit it, you’re going to be in a lot of trouble!”
“Dry up,” Budka said and spat through his teeth.
“Just you wait!”
“Shut your coffin and stop rattling your bones!” Budka
sneered.
“What’s the matter?” Java said icily.
It was all as clear as day to us, but we decided to wait till she
explained.
“Can you imagine? He rings our bell and runs away. That’s
how he gets his kicks.”
The look Java flashed at me made me feel hot all over.
“Come on, Pavlik!” he said.
We dashed to the stairs leading up to the second floor.
“Stop, boys! Don’t mess around with him! He’s mean!”
Valya shouted (she thought we were just being brave and
standing up for her).
We stamped up the stairs like sailors running up a gangway,
paying no attention to her. Budka had no place to retreat to.
200
Besides, he didn’t look like he wanted to. He slipped off the
railing, leaned against it and crossed his arms on his chest.
He was about our age, but heavier and stronger. No matter.
We’d fought enemies bigger’n him in the pasture back
home.
“So you like to ring doorbells, do you?” Java hissed,
advancing on him.
Budka didn’t move a muscle. He just stood there with his
arms crossed on his chest. “Don’t strain too hard, or you’ll
bust a gut,” he muttered. “I’m studying karate, and I know
a few holds that’ll send you flying.”
“That’s what you think!” Java hissed again and grabbed
hold of Budka’s ear with all five fingers, making it a handful.
Budka jerked and tried to punch Java in the stomach, but
Java used his free hand to grab hold of Budka’s fist, while
I grabbed his other hand. Besides, we were each standing on
one of his feet: Java on his left and I on his right. That’s so he
couldn’t kick us. It was plain old village karate, and we’d
learned it when we were babies.
Budka squirmed and jerked, but we had him in a vice. Java
kept working on his ear, saying,
“You’re lucky we’re not messing up your mug. We’re just
delivering what’s coming to you. Somebody asked us to give
you the message.”
At first Budka kept muttering, “Quit it! Lay off!” Then he
tried to break free. He was panting. Then tears sprang to his
eyes and he begged us to let him go. “Leggo! Come on! Leggo!
L e”
“You going to keep on ringing those bells?”
“N-no,” Budka bleated, swallowing his tears.
We led him over to the stairs and let him go, though I did
knee him in the backside as a parting shot, sending him
tumbling down. He landed on the ground, jumped up, ran
off a few steps, turned, wiped his tears, smearing them all

201
 over his face, and yelled,
“Just you wait! Wait’ll I get
you!” He shook his fist at us
and galloped off.
Valya and Mikola welcomed
us like we were cosmonauts
coming down the gangway of a
TU-134 at Vnukovo Airport
after a space flight. All we
needed now was a brass band
and flowers. Mikola was jump­
ing up and down, shouting,
“Boy, oh, boy! Boy, oh, boy!
All the kids’re scared of Budka
and you’ve ... boy, oh, boy!
Wait’ll I tell them!”
We tried to look like it was
nothing special, just everyday
stuff.
“What kind of a name is
Budka? That’s no name,” I
said.
“That’s his nickname. His
real name’s Tolik. He’s aw­
ful,” Mikola said. By the way
he said it I guessed he’d
had his share of whacks from
Budka.
All of a sudden Valya shou­
ted, “Look! There’s Maxim
Valerianovich!”
Coming through the gate,
leaning on a cane and walking
slowly, was a tall man.

S r
 Chapter 7

MAXIM VALERIANOVICH

If not for the way he dragged his feet, it would probably be

hard to tell whether he was young or old, because his bright
blue eyes sparkled, he had a lot of hair that was just turning
gray, and his cheeks were as shiny and rosy as polished apples.
All this made him look very youngish. I wondered, as I had
when we’d been on the beach, about the old people in Kiev
being so different from the old folks back home.
“Hello, Maxim Valerianovich. We came to see you, but you
were out,” Valya said, running up to him.
“Hello there. What seems to be the trouble?” Maxim
Valerianovich said and smiled. He had two rows of very white
false teeth.
“It’s very serious, you can’t imagine,” Valya began, speaking
non-stop, as always. “You’ve got to help.”
“I certainly will if I can, my dear friends. Everything I have
at the disposal of my seventy-six years is yours.”
Valya opened her mouth to start telling him all about
everything when he raised his hand and said,
“No, no, child! I beg of thee! May your lips be sealed for
now. Not a word. If it’s a serious matter, it cannot be resolved
on the spot, out on the street like this. Welcome to my abode.
There we shall find joy in concourse.”
This joking sort of lofty tone made me like the old actor
right away. Java and I both grinned. We felt like we’d known
him for years.
“You’re probably surprised to see that I live in such a little
hut,” Maxim Valerianovich said with a smile when we reached
the door. “I’ve been offered many fine apartments, but I don’t
want to move. I can’t live without these flowers, without this
quiet street. Do come in.”
203
 The house had two little rooms and a tiny kitchen, and the
ceilings were so low he could touch them. This was probably
why, or maybe it was because of the bushes and trees outside
which covered part of the windows, everything inside seemed
a shadowy green even though it was a bright, sunny day. It was
even hard to picture these little rooms as being bright and
sunny. They looked much better in the shade. There were big
and small flower pots in the rooms and in the kitchen. They
were set on the window-sills, on stools, on special little shelves
and right on the floor. I recognized the lilies, primulas and
rubber plants, but there were more cacti than anything else.
I never knew there were so many different kinds: small little
round ones like prickly green hedgehogs and large floppy ones
that looked like prehistoric lizards, and some that had nothing
but prickles, and others that had hardly any. They were of all
shapes and colors, and of all sizes. There were grown-up,
solemn-looking ones and fuzzy little baby ones. It was a real
cacti kingdom out of some book of fairy-tales.
The house was also filled with photographs. Framed photo­
graphs lined the walls. Most of them were of Maxim Valeriano­
vich in different costumes and poses: Maxim Valerianovich in
a top hat. Maxim Valerianovich in an astrakhan fur hat.
Maxim Valerianovich in an embroidered skullcap. Maxim
Valerianovich with a mustache and without a mustache. Maxim
Valerianovich as a sailor. Maxim Valerianovich as a Cossack.
Maxim Valerianovich as a vagabond (in rags). Maxim Valeri­
anovich in a fur coat. Maxim Valerianovich in a dressing-gown.
Maxim Valerianovich-naked. He wasn’t actually naked,
because he did have on a loincloth. That was probably in some
jungle role. It made me dizzy to see all those Maxim Valeriano-
viches looking down at us.
In the comer where religious people hang their icons there
was something I thought was an icon, too. It was set on an
embroidered runner, and the frame glinted like gold. I had
another look. It was a photograph of a man in a pince-nez with
204
a cigarette dangling out of the comer of his mouth. This was no
icon.
Valya later told us it was a portrait of Konstantin
Stanislavsky, the famous actor and founder of the Moscow Art
Theatre whom all the actors and actresses thought of as their
god. He was kind, and smiling, and jolly. Valya said he created
a very good system, but she didn’t know exactly what it was,
even though, as she said, the Stanislavsky System was being
used all over the world. But this was later.
Meanwhile, while Java and I looked at the photographs,
Valya told Maxim Valerianovich all about the watch and our
adventures. She told it all so well you’d have thought it’d
happened to her. Since Maxim Valerianovich was her friend,
and since she wasn’t at all shy in his presence, we let her tell it.
All we did was put in a word here and there. Maxim
Valerianovich listened carefully. When she was through he
smiled and said,
“Well now, my dear fellow-citizens, the plot is clear. You’ve
205
become villains through no fault of yours. Such things will
happen, but one must never lose heart. If the man really is an
actor and if he’s in Kiev, we’ll find him if we have to turn the
whole city upside-down. The fact that you didn’t find his
photograph in any of the theatres you went to doesn’t mean
a thing. He might be here on tour. There are three or four
theatres from other cities on tour in Kiev now, so there are still
quite a few places to look. However, my friends, we’ll have to
put off our search till tomorrow, for these two damsels (he
pointed to his feet) are very capricious. They simply refuse to
do any amount of walking, especially Miss Lefty. .Miss Righty
is not as stubborn, but I cannot manage Miss Lefty at all. I’ve
got a helper for them (at this he nodded at the gnarled cane
with a carved dog’s head for a handle), but they still won’t co­
operate. I shan’t be able to coax them into setting out before
morning, no matter how I try. Besides, it’s getting late now,
and the evening performances will soon begin. No actor must
be disturbed before he goes on. He must never be distracted
from the role he is to play.
“Now then, this is our plan: we meet tomorrow morning and
proceed to the set together. Yes, to the film studios. I appear in
one of the scenes they’re shooting tomorrow. I can only play
sedentary roles nowadays. Anyway, while we’re there we’ll set
up our search headquarters and get on the trail of your ‘tsar’
with the aid of young talent (I mean fleet-footed young
actors), on the one hand, and, on the other, with the aid
of that 20th century marvel, the telephone. We’ll spread
out our network, go into action an d -th e watch finds its
owner!”
He said this so simply and so convincingly that I just knew it
would all end well. I was smiling. And Java was smiling. And
Valya was smiling. And her kid brother Mikola was smiling,
too. I so wanted to say something nice to Maxim
Valerianovich, to show him how I appreciated what he was
doing. I looked up at the photographs and said,
206
 “You mean you acted in so many plays? Golly!”
He smiled slyly, as if he’d understood why I’d said that.
“Yes, I’ve appeared in some few plays in my lifetime, my dear
friends. Yes, indeed.” then he looked up at the walls that were
covered with photographs, and his eyes came to rest on a large
picture of the Kiev Opera House. “This is a most venerable
building,” he said. “This is where I first attended
a performance, where I first saw a stage and actors. This is
where I first saw a curtain go up.”
Maxim Valerianovich was silent for a moment. Then he
continued. “Yes, it was all very long ago. Strange as it seems,
and you can take my word for it, I was a very little boy at the
time. Much younger than you are now. We had just moved to
Kiev from the country, and my mother was taken on as
a cleaning, lady in the opera house. One day she took me along
to hear ‘La Traviata’. That’s an opera by Verdi. Have you ever
heard of it?”
“Sure. We heard it over the radio,” Java said proudly, and to
put the final touch on it, so’s there’d be no doubt about it, he
sang a few bars of the music “La-la-la la-la la-la” in a piping
voice.
“Yes, yes,” Maxim Valerianovich said and smiled. “Yes,
that’s from ‘La Traviata’. I was sitting in the electrician’s
booth, right above the stage (my mother had asked him to let
me watch the performance from there). I could hear every
word, see every movement. I sat there wondering whether it was
not all a part of some dream, of some fairy-tale. I could not
believe I was seeing it all with my own eyes. In the last act,
when Violetta dies, I was so carried away and believed so
sincerely that she was truly dying that I became enraged by
what I considered to be the abominable behaviour of Alfred
and Germont. Here was a poor dying woman, and there were
those two scoundrels, singing away. I was unable to contain my
wrath and shouted: ‘Stop singing! She’s dying! Do something!’
The electrician, who was sitting beside me, nearly tumbled off
207
his chair. Luckily, the. orchestra was playing a powerful
crescendo just then, and Germont and Alfred’s voices were
soaring, so that no one actually heard my enraged squeaks. It
all ended with the electrician cuffing me and putting me out
into the corridor, so that I did not actually hear the end of the
opera. But I was captivated by the theatre for life.
“No matter how hard my mother tried to make a decent man
of me (in her opinion a decent man was a clerk in some office),
she failed. I clerked for less than two years, quit my job at the
first opportunity and was taken on as an extra in Kruchinin’s
troupe. An extra is an actor who has no lines to speak and only
takes part in the crowd scenes. His name never appears on the
playbill. All this was very long ago.”
Maxim Valerianovich looked excited. His eyes sparkled, his
cheeks were crimson. I always like to listen to old people’s
stories about when they were young. Why is it that even though
they might be telling you about something that wasn’t
important at all it’s still interesting? If it’d all be happening
right now I’m sure it wouldn’t sound a bit interesting.
“Ah, my dears, those first years in the theatre were like
a first love. I don’t believe anyone else was as devoted to his
work as I, spent as much time making up as I, or was as
nervous as I was before he went on, even though I was only
onstage for a minute, one of a crowd of extras. I never opened
my mouth. I was never noticed by the audience. But it seemed
to me that all eyes were on me. After a while I was given
a small part. It was actually an infinitesimal part. I’d come
onstage and deliver but a single line: “The Countess is ill and
will be unable to receive you.’ Then I would turn and exit. That
was my entire part. Yet, I was convinced that the gist of the
play lay in my words, and I delivered them as though I
were announcing the advent of Doomsday. Now, for the first
time in my life, all eyes really were on me. Everyone was
listening to me. I cannot tell you what that feeling was like,
especially since my line completed Act One. The curtain
208
fell. Everyone applauded. I felt they were applauding me
alone.”
Maxim Valerianovich then went on to tell us more about the
theatre and his life.
Java and I were silent all the way home. We were thinking.
This was the first time we’d ever met a real, live actor, an actor
of the stage and screen.
 Chapter 8
“YOU’RE UNDER ARREST, MR. TSAR!”
“I’VE GOT YOU NOW!”

It was evening. We were stretched out on the big couch by

the open window. The day had been crammed full, we’d have
to be blocks of wood to pop off to sleep the minute our heads
hit the pillows. Java kept tossing around like something was
biting him. I know all there is to know about my friend. I knew
what was biting him. A new idea was biting him, that’s what.
That’s why he was tossing around.
“Well? What is it?” I said.
Java sighed, but de didn’t say anything.
“Come on. Shoot.”
He sighed again and said, “You know, Pavlik, I’ve
decided I’m probably going to be an actor when I grow
up.”
“But who’s going to be a militiaman? Who’s going to battle
crime?” I snickered. “If every militiaman decides to be an actor
there’ll be more criminals running around than ants in an
anthill. Did you ever think of that?”
“ Don’t worry. There’ll still be enough militiamen left to bat­
tle crime if I change my mind.”
“Remember what you said yesterday? Not the day before
yesterday, but yesterday?”
“That was yesterday. This is today. Time marches on.”
“By the way, in case you’re interested, you’ve got to have
talent to be an actor. In case you didn’t know.”
“That’s the last thing I’ve got to worry about. You and
me’ve got more talent than we need. In case you’re interested.
Why, you’d be a great actor, too! You’d make audiences
weep!”
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 “I sure would,” I giggled. “They’d be crying over the money
they wasted on theatre tickets.”
“Ah, shut up! Isn’t Grandpa Salivon forever saying we’re
a couple of comedians?”
It’s hard to argue when somebody tells you to your face that
you’ve got talent and then goes on to prove it. I mumbled
something, but didn’t argue any more.
Java talked on without any interruptions now. “Being an
actor’s the best kind of thing. They live the best kinds of lives,
full of music, and singing, and applause. Every day’s a holiday
to them. And the fame! Think of the fame! Everybody recog­
nizes an actor. They’re more famous than the greatest profes­
sors. Would you ever recognize a great professor if you saw his
picture? Never! But every dumb kid knows all the movie
actors. Why, everybody even knows an actor who’s only
been in one lousy movie, even if he only flashes by on the
screen. When he goes down the street everybody points
at him and says: ‘There he is! That’s him!’ Aren’t I
right?”
I had to agree.
We went on talking about how great it’d be to be a famous
actor until we finally fell asleep. And I had a dream. By the
way, my dreams are usually all mixed up and full of crazy
adventures. I like to tell my friends about them. Java always
asks me to. He says my life’s much more interesting when I’m
asleep. He says I’d probably have more fun if I just kept on
sleeping and never woke up.
Anyway, I had a dream. I dreamed I was sitting on a tsar’s
throne in the middle of a stage wearing a tsar’s huge fur coat.
For some reason or other the fur coat stank just like Grandpa
Salivon’s mutt. I had a gold crown on my head and held a big
club called a sceptre.
I could see cows looking at me from the dark of the theatre,
from the orchestra and the balconies. I wasn’t at all surprised
to see them and other cattle in the seats. It seemed all right to
14*
211
me. There in the first row were our one-horned cow Manka,
Java’s Contribution, Zhora the goat, and Petka the farm’s
bull. Every now and then I’d wink at them on the sly so’s
the rest of the audience wouldn’t notice, just like an actor
probably winks at his relatives who’ve come to see the
show.
Meanwhile, I was delivering a long speech. There were no
words in it, but it was very clever and interesting. After a while
I ended and bowed my head, waiting for the audience to
applaud. There was a dead silence. That’s when I finally real­
ized what the matter was: how could they clap if they had
hooves instead of hands? Did you ever hear of anybody with
hooves clapping? What a sap I was! The audience couldn’t
applaud. All they could do was bleat and moo, but they didn’t
dare out of respect for me. So they were silent. That’s how they
expressed their admiration for my acting. Manka and Contribu­
tion sighed emotionally. Zhora the goat wiped his eyes with
the tip of his beard, while Petka the bull, who’d always
been a bully, was crying like baby. I was so overcome
that I stood up, but instead of bowing I suddenly cracked
my whip (I had a whip in my hand now instead of the
sceptre). The audience jumped to its feet with a terrib­
le clatter, and a moment later the theatre was empty.
There was not a living soul left in it. Nothing but rows of
seats.
Just then who should come out of the wings but Java. He
was dressed in a militiaman’s uniform. He clumped over to me
in his big boots and said, “Why’re we breaking the law? Stop
breaking the law or I’ll arrest you.”
“You’ve no right to talk to me like that. Don’t you know I’m
the tsar?” I said.
“That’s what you think! You’re a thief! You stole the real
tsar’s watch. I’ve a warrant for your arrest. You’re under
arrest, Mr. Tsar!” And Java shoved a piece of paper at
me.
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 I was really scared. “Don’t be like that, Java,” I said. “You
know what happened. It was an accident.”
“A thief like you has to right to talk to me, a militiaman on
duty, like I was a friend of yours! That’s breaking the law
again!”
“Excuse me. I thought we were friends.”
“Well, you thought wrong,” Java said sternly. Then, all of
a sudden he threw a square of canvas over my head. Now I was
bound hand and foot. I couldn’t see a thing. A frayed thread in
the canvas tickled my face, but I couldn’t brush it away.
I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to scream, but the scream died in
my throat a n d - I woke up.
There was a fly on my face. When I opened my eyes it was
right on the tip of my nose, rubbing one front leg against the
other busily. I blew it off. It buzzed around near the ceiling and
then landed on my forehead. That put an end to my
sleep.
I sat up and looked at Java, the militiaman of my dream. He
was sound asleep, lying on his side with his hand under his
cheek like a baby.
“Don’t break the law, huh? Some friend you are!” I mut­
tered and poked him hard.
He sat up with a jolt, blinked sleepily and said, “Mm... What
is it?”
“Get up. I’m up, and I’m bored.”
“You’re a stupid idiot, that’s what!” he said. He fell back on
his pillow and shut his eyes.
“Don’t break the law!” I snapped, just like a militiaman.
“ Leave me alone! I want to sleep.”
“To hell with you, sleepyhead!” I tumbled out of bed and
went to the balcony to get a breath of fresh air.
What a morning it was! It was bright and shiny, and full of
singing. Radios, record players and tape recorders were playing,
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and sad and happy songs were floating out of many windows.
All of them that morning were being sung by an Italian boy
named Robertino Loretti, whose songs were very popular in
Kiev that summer.
Boy, if Java and me could sing like that! We wouldn’t have
to waste any more time trying to think of a way to get famous.
We’d just stand on a stage next to a grand piano, push out our
chests and open our mouths.
But no, the kind of voices we had were only good for shout­
ing: “Fire!” or “Help!” . Maybe we could be movie actors,
though. Yes, that’s what we’d be! We’d be in the movies! It
was such a happy thought it made my stomach feel all warm.
We were going to a real studio in a couple of hours. We’d be
on a real set where they were shooting a real movie. We’d see
a lot of famous movie actors, and we’d see how a real movie
was shot. And a lot of other interesting things, besides.
I couldn’t wait.
By then Java’d gotten up. We had a quick breakfast and were
off.
People in the morning look different than at any other time
of the day: they all look clean and fresh, and as crunchy
as new cucumbers, and their eyes are as bright as fresh
flowers.
I kept looking at everyone and at everything as we rode
along in the bus. I was feeling great. I loved everybody, and life
was beautiful.
We marched smartly into Valya’s yard. We were going to call
for her, and from her house we were all going to call for
Maxim Valerianovich. All of a sudden we saw a crowd of boys,
twenty at least. One of them was Budka. They were play­
ing some game right outside the door to Valya’s house.
We stopped. Just then Budka noticed us. A mean smile
lit up his face. He said something to the boys. They all
started running towards us. A minute later we were surro­
unded.
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 “This is it. They’ve got us now,” I said to myself.
“Back to back, Pavlik!” Java shouted.
I spun around in a flash and got my back up against his. We
stood there, back to back, with our fists up, as the circle of
boys got smaller and closer. Budka was waving his fists in
Java’s face, shouting,
“I’ve got you now!”
By then I was shoving away a lanky, pasty-faced kid who was
closing in on me. Someone kicked my ankle hard. There’d be
a free-for-all in another minute, but it wouldn’t be a fight, it’d
be a massacre. It’d be the end of us. My skin crept as I waited
for them to begin hitting me. Then I heard Java saying in
a loud, taunting voice,
“Boy, there sure are a lot of you. It’s all of you against just
the two of us. Aren’t you brave?”
“What’s he saying? They’ll kill us!” I said to myself. I was
terrified.
“Say that again, you rat!” Budka snapped. “Wait’ll I get my
hands on you!” And he swung.
“He’s right, you know,” someone said calmly. “Ganging up
on them is chicken. You fight one of them, Budka. That’ll be
fair. And honest. And you’ll get your revenge. We’ll judge the
fight, to see that all’s fair and square.” The boy who’d said that
was about fourteen. He was standing in back of the others, but
he was taller than them so we could see his curly head above
the ones in front. Budka dropped his fist. He didn’t like the
idea, but there was nothing he could do. He sized Java up, then
me, and muttered,
“All right. I’ll fight this one,” and he poked me in the chest.
“He looks stronger.”
That was a lie. Java looks much stronger than I, but none of
the boys said anything.
“Let’s go to the ravine,” the curly-haired boy said.
215
 They herded us towards the ravine. Something in my stomach
kept sinking lower and lower.
“Why did he have to pick me?” a tiny little voice bleated in­
side of me, but I didn’t say a thing. Couldn’t. After all, I was
a man.
Java didn’t say a word, either. I knew what he was feeling:
he was feeling guilty (He’d been the one to mangle Budka’s ear.
I’d only held him). I could see Java was worried, because I’d
have to fight Budka instead of him. But there was nothing he
could do about it. He couldn’t say he wanted to fight him
instead of me. That’d be the same as saying I was a
weakling. That’d be like spitting in my face. No, he could
never do that. I understood him. I’d die before I’d be dis­
graced.
We went down into the ravine, making our way through the
prickly, dusty boxthorn bushes.
“Here,” the curly-haired boy said, and we all came to a halt
on a small clearing facing a steep rise on one side and ringed by
boxthorn on the other three sides.
The boys spread out, forming a semi-circle by the bushes.
I stood in the middle, facing my enemy. For a few moments we
just stood there, leaning forward, swaying slightly, sizing each
other up. Budka was taller than I, and broader, and stronger.
I had no choice, though. At any rate, it was better to fight
one kid, even though he was Budka, than a whole pack of
them.
You probably know you feel scared before a fight actually
begins. Then your fright vanishes. Instead, there’s rage, pain
and hot temper.
Budka swung. Though I ducked, he still slipped me hard.
I saw red. Ah, you louse! Ah, you rat! Getting a gang of your
pals to watch you show off! But when you fought us alone you
ran away, smearing snot all over your face! Why, you...
And I threw myself into battle, springing back and forth,
socking and ducking, while he just stood there, shifting his
216
weight from one foot to the other, swinging his long arms
wide.
“Come on, Budka!”
“Hit him!”
“Sock him in the stomach!”
“Get him on the chin!”
But Budka just stood there, huffing and swinging his arms
like a windmill. At last he got hold of my shirt and locked his
arms around me. We fell and rolled in the dust.
“Keep him under!”
“ Keep him down!”
“Flat on his back!” Budka’s pals shouted.
But Budka’s goose was cooked. He, not I, was now flat on
his back. I had him under me and was pressing him to the
ground. Our faces were nearly touching. We were both panting.
In a few more seconds Budka stopped wriggling and gave up.
I’d won!
“Oh, no! That’s not fair! It’s against the rules!” I heard them
shouting. Somebody was dragging me off him.
I raised my head. It was the lanky kid whom I’d poked in the
chest. He was pulling me off Budka. I knew I’d fought clean
and honest, but I was so out of breath I couldn’t talk. I looked
at the curly-headed boy hoping he’d say something, but he
didn’t. It looked like he didn’t want to interfere. That’s when
I knew my luck’d run out. They were all Budka’s pals. They
wanted him to win. Otherwise, what was the use of having us
fight one to one? Why, they could’ve beaten Java and me up
easily. My victory was their disgrace. They’d never let me get
away with it. You can only fight well if you’ve got some hope
of winning, but when there’s no hope... I was on my back now,
and a revived Budka was sitting on top of me, knocking my
head against the ground, getting his revenge. Java was shouting
something, but what could he do?
Bang\ Bang\ Bang\ went my head. It was ringing like a bell.
217
I saw stars. I couldn’t think straight. All of a sudden someone
shouted,
“Shame on you! Shame on you! Let him go! This minute!
Get off him!” It was Valya.
The ringing in my head stopped the same moment. Budka
tumbled off me. I could see the clear blue sky up above and
white doves circling there. Valya’d obviously appeared from
someplace. She’d obviously shoved Budka off me, and she
was now standing over me, waving her arms and shout­
ing,
“Shame on you! You’re supposed to be Young Pioneers!
You’re thugs, that’s what you are! Wait’ll I tell on you! I’ll tell
your teachers! And your parents! Your parents, Alec! And
yours, Volodia! And yours, Edik! And as for you, Budka, I’ll
report you to the militia, and you’ll be arrested as a juvenile
delinquent! Just you wait! These are country boys. They’ve
come on a visit. And you ganged up on them ! That’s great hos­
pitality, isn’t it? Shame on you!”
While she was shouting she pulled me up from the ground,
took me by the hand, got hold of Java on the way and dragged
us off. Our enemies made way for us. No one tried to stop us.
No one said a word. After we’d gone off a ways someone whis­
tled loudly. Then the whole gang ran off along the ravine. They
looked just like peas spilling out of a sack. Maybe they
would’ve acted differently if Valya hadn’t shown up, but they
seemed to have decided that Budka’d gotten even after all.
I felt wobbly and wiped the sweat off my face with my
sleeve.
“Good for you, Pavlik! Boy, did you lay him flat! All he
could do was wriggle,” Java shouted, throwing an arm around
my shoulders. “You sure showed them what Vasukovka kids
are worth! Good for you!”
I was glad he said it, but sorry that Valya hadn’t been
there to see it. She’d only showed up when I was flat on my back.
She’d sort of rescued me. I was grateful to her, no doubt about
218
it,’ cause who knew how long Budka would’ve gone on banging
my poor head on the ground? All the same, though, I was
ashamed: I’d been rescued by a girl. It was like she’d seen me stark
naked. Still, I was happy. I’d won the first time, and that’s
what counted. And Budka was bigger and stronger than I.
He’d only picked on me because he thought I couldn’t
fight.
Mikola was waiting for us on the path. He said he’d seen the
gang herding us towards the ravine and guessed we were
in for a rough time, so he’d run off for help, meaning
Valya.
“You were great, too, Valya,” Java said. “You weren’t
a bit scared of them. They might’ve ganged up on you,
too.”
“I’d like to see them try! I’d’ve screamed so loud I’d’ve wak­
ened the dead, and I can scratch real hard. If anybody had laid
a finger on me his own mother wouldn’t have recognized
him.”
Java looked at her admiringly and nudged me, as if to say:
isn’t she something? I nodded, as if to say: yes, she is, but let’s
not go on talking about it.
Though Valya and Java tried hard to brush the dirt off me,
I still looked like a mess. Maxim Valerianovich was probably
worrying about us by now, and we had to hurry.
He greeted us with a smile and said, “Good morning, lady
and gentlemen,” Then he had another look at me and held up
his hand, even though I’d no intention of saying anything. “Not
a word! It’s all clear to me. There was an armed skirmish.
A border incident. I won’t inquire as to the reasons, but
I assume it was of major importance. A question of honour.
The desire for justice to be done. A duel. Despite the difficul­
ties, you emerged the victor. Am I right?”
I smiled and nodded. What a terrific man he was! He could
make you feel good, no matter what.
Maxim Valerianovich didn’t ask us any more questions. All
219
he said was, “A car’s coming for me in ten minutes. You’re
just in time. You can all come along to the set with
me.”
We didn’t have to wait ten minutes. About two minutes later
we heard a car stop outside Maxim Valerianovich’s house.
The car door opened, then slammed shut, and a man called
out.
“Here I am, Maxim Valerianovich! Ready?”
 Chapter 9

ON THE SET. THE FIRST SURPRISE.

THE SECOND SURPRISE

We drove up to a big gate, the gate that separated the every­

day world from the magic, fantastic, fairy-tale world of the
movies. I was disappointed to see that it was a very ordinary
kind of gate and so low you wouldn’t even have to climb it.
You could just vault over it. That’s not the kind of gate I’d
have in front of a movie studio if it was up to me. I’d have
a huge, double, wrought-iron gate five-stories high, like the one
in front of the Winter Palace in Leningrad that I saw in
a movie. Or even higher. This was where they made movies,
after all! Anyway, the little gate swung open and we drove into
the studio yard.
To the left was a fruit orchard, so huge you’d think we were
on a fruit-growing farm. I couldn’t see the end of it. To the
right was a row of billboards. On one of them we read: “Art
belongs to the people” “ ... Of all the arts films are the most
important in our times (V. I. Lenin)” . On another
we read: “Everything about a person should be beautiful: his
face, his clothing, his soul, his mind (Anton Chekhov)”.
I sighed. My face was a mess, my clothes were crumpled and
dirty, and every time I thought about the watch my soul curled
up and died. Only in my mind was I great and did fine, noble
deeds. But no one could read my mind.
We followed Maxim Valerianovich out of the car and
through the revolving door into the building. Java sniffed and
made a face. So did I. The place smelled like a hospital. A
door on the left led into something that looked like a dis­
pensary. I decided that shooting a film was probably a dan­
gerous business if the medics had to be on the job and
ready.
221
 We climbed a short staircase and started down the longest
corridor I’d ever seen. Java and I’d once read a piece about
a movie studio. It said that miracles began the minute you
crossed the threshold. You might see Peter the Great talking to
a cosmonaut, a Roman gladiator getting a light from a World
War II ace, and the fairy queen of some underwater kingdom
telling a farm girl about the gorgeous blouse she’d bought the
day before.
We couldn’t wait to see it all begin. We kept craning our
necks, but all we saw in that long corridor were ordinary people
dressed in very ordinary clothes. Some even had on overalls.
There wasn’t a single gladiator or mermaid in sight. We’d prob­
ably come on an off day. Too bad. And then, all of a sudden-
“Look!” Java’s elbow jabbed my side.
Coming towards us was a man in a khaki uniform. He was
tall and stern-looking.
“I think that’s Kadochnikov. He’s probably a partisan in
some movie,” Java whispered.
The partisan smiled and saluted Maxim Valerianovich, who
also smiled and said hello. When we’d passed the man I got up
the courage to say,
“Uh... Who’s he, Maxim Valerianovich? What’s his name?”
“Petrenko,” Maxim Valerianovich said, and I thought he
sounded surprised. “He’s a fine man. He’s the studio fire
chief.”
Yuk!
“I like the old-fashioned kind of firemen better, the ones that
wore big brass helmets. This kind’s awful mousy-looking,” Java
muttered. He was trying not to look at me.
We kept on walking. The corridor was narrow and dim, and
nearly everyone we met, and it seemed like an awfully crowded
place, said hello to Maxim Valerianovich. It was just like walk­
ing down the village street back home where you said hello to
everybody.

222
 At last Maxim Valerianovich stopped outside a door with
a cardboard sign on it that read: “Kiss Me, My Friends!”
There was a terrible commotion going on inside. It sounded like
a big crowd, with everybody shouting and arguing, but when
Maxim Valerianovich opened the door and we went in all we
saw was an elderly man with bushy black hair. Even though he
was about fifty he still looked full of pep. He was sitting on
a table, shouting into a telephone:
“You’re ruining my shooting schedule! What’d you promise
me yesterday? You promised me it’d be sunny and fair. No
rain! And what’ve we got? What’d you give me? Look out the
window!” He pointed at the window. “D’you have a window
there? Well, look out of it! Rain! Nothing but rain! A sky full
of rain! And no let-up!”
Sure enough, the sky suddenly became gray. It was beginning
to drizzle.
“It’s a darn shame,” he said, hopped off the table and
pumped Maxim Valerianovich’s hand. “Hello! I’ve been giving
those weathermen a piece of my mind. They think they’re ora­
cles!” He shook his finger at the phone. “If you don’t know
what you’re talking about, at least have the decency to shut up!
You know, Lenfilm Studios are snatching Yulia away tomor­
row. She has her plane reservation, and I haven’t been able to
shoot the last scene on account of this rain. We’ll have to
shoot indoors again today. Everyone’s ready. Come on, let’s
run.”
“There’s something these boys want t o - “Maxim Valeriano­
vich said, but “Kiss Me, My Friends!” interrupted him
politely:
“Not now. Later. Please!” He pressed his hands to his breast
and bowed his head. “After the shooting’s over. We’ll see to
everything after that. The shooting is first on the agenda.
Come, let’s hurry. You, too, boys. You’re both invited. But
you’ll have to be very still. Not a peep out of you o r - You
understand.”
223
 “Indeed,” Maxim Valerianovich said and smiled at us.
“Come along. I’m sure you’ve never been on a set before.
You’ll find it most interesting. What d’you say?”
We didn’t have to be asked twice. Valya clapped her hands.
“That’s great!” she said. Java looked at her proudly. When you
came to think of it, she was only at the studio now on account
of us, and here she was, about to see the making of a movie.
That’s something she’d never’ve seen otherwise, even though
she did live in Kiev.
We started down the long corridor again. As I walked along,
I was saying to myself: “They sure have a lousy weather bureau
here. They don’t even know when it’s going to rain. Why, back
home any old lady’ll tell you if it’s going to rain or not. There’s
so many signs. The way the wind’s blowing: into the house, or
out of the house, or how the chickens are behaving, or how the
sun sets. Sometimes they can tell by just looking at the trees.
What those weathermen need here are some chickens for their
weather bureau. That’d end all their troubles. Then they
wouldn’t foul up any shooting schedules.”
We went down some steps and came into place that looked
like the inside of a big factory. The ceiling was miles away, and
that made us feel like midgets. We kept on walking, and walk­
ing, and walking, but didn’t seem to be getting anyplace.
A skinny, bald little man was hurrying towards us. His heels
were making clopping noises on the cement floor. He waved
and shouted when he was still far off,
“Hi, Vitya!”
“Hello, Zhenya!” “Kiss Me” said.
When we got closer old Zhenya slapped old Vitya on the
back and shook Maxim Valerianovich’s hand. Then he said to
us, “Hi, fellows!”
We smiled at him. He probably had grandchildren by now,
but here he was, talking like he and old Vitya were a couple of
kids. Old Zhenya had tufts of gray hair sticking up all around
his bald pate like cattails around a lake, and his face was as
224
wrinkled as a baked apple. The wrinkles were very strange: they
spread out like rays from the comers of his eyes and made his
face look like he was beaming all the time. His dark eyes were
very lively. I thought he was a very nice man. He kept looking
at Java and me as he’d hurried towards us, and when he’d
pounded old Vitya’s back and pumped Maxim Valerianovich’s
hand he still kept looking at us. Then, after he’d said hello, he
asked old Vitya, nodding towards us,
“Whose’re they?”
Vitya shrugged. He looked at Maxim Valerianovich.
“Mine,” said Maxim Valerianovich and smiled.
“Members of the cast?” Zhenya asked Vitya, and Vitya
shook his head. “Why didn’t you say so? I need them! Look at
these types! I’ve a crowd scene tomorrow. They’re just what
I’m looking for. Do me a favor, friends,” he said and pressed
his hands to his breast. “I beg of you! I’ll send a car over for
you! Tomorrow. At noon. We’ll be shooting. Right here in the
studio. I’ll settle the matter with your parents. It’ll only be for
a day. Where d’you live?” He whipped out a notebook. “Oh,
and bring along a few more boys,” he added as he wrote down
our address. “My assistant will call for you at 11:30 sharp.
Fine. So long. See you tomorrow.”
Not until he’d hurried off did it finally dawn on me: we were
going to be in a movie! Tomorrow. TOMORROW we were
going to be movie actors! The whole country, and maybe even
the whole world, would get to know us. It was like a fairy-tale
in which all your dreams came true. Something was bubbling
up inside. I was afraid steam would come out of the top of my
head when that happy feeling reached the boiling point.
I looked at Java. I’d never seen such a happy, stupid smile on
his face before.
“Congratulations!” said Maxim Valerianovich. “The man
who asked you to come to the set tomorrow is Evgeny Mikhai­
lovich. He’s a film director. You’ll be actors, as of tomorrow.
The movies are a great institution, my friends.”
15-344
225
 “The most important of all the arts!” Java said.
“I’m so happy for you!” Valya piped up. She envied us. In
fact, she was green with envy. I’m sure she’d never been as
sorry as she was now that she wasn’t born a boy.
“Next time they’ll need some girls. You’ll see,” I said in the
kind of voice you use when you’re talking to babies or sick peo­
ple. I was feeling very generous. Butterflies were flitting around
inside of me.
We turned left and went through a little door. Now we were
in a big, dark room. We zig-zagged and stumbled by partitions
and dark objects, and stepped over thick rubber hoses. At last
we came to a brightly-lit space. Golly! There was a real air­
plane there. Actually, it was only part of a plane, the front sec­
tion of a TU-104 sliced down the middle, but everything in it
was just like a real plane. The seats, and the round windows,
and everything else. The shooting hadn’t started yet. Mean­
while, the passengers, the stewardess and the pilots were walk­
ing around the set. Men in overalls were working near some
huge spotlights. There were rails laid across the floor the whole
length of the plane. A young man in a plaid shirt was pushing
a dolly with a camera mounted on it along the rails. Another
man had his eye pressed to the camera.
“Cut No.4!” he shouted as we came up.
There was a loud click. A spotlight that was mounted on a
bridge high over our heads went off.
Just think: there was even a plane! (As if they all knew I was
going to be a pilot.) I was so excited I was nearly jumping.
Everything was so strange here and so wonderful. We felt like
we were at a double birthday party with everybody ready to
take their seats and us at the head of the table. In a few
minutes now it’d all begin. They’d begin shooting a
MOVIE.
“Where’s Vasya?” “Kiss Me” said. “Is he late again? Well,
we’ll just have to sit back and wait.” He sank down on a chair
and leaned his elbows on his knees. His face looked grim.
226
 A few seconds later a young man wearing a pilot’s uniform
dashed out of the dark. “I’m sorry everybody! My watch
stopped. I forgot to wind it. I’m sorry,” he said.
“So did I,” I said to myself. “I forgot to wind the actor’s
watch. A watch should be wound regularly. Pa winds his every
day. It might break down if you don’t wind it regularly.”
I stuck my hand into my pocket. I had a funny feeling, like the
huge spotlight was trained right on me. I felt sick.
There was nothing in my pocket.
 C h a p t e r 10

WHERE’S THE WATCH?

WE HEAD INTO ENEMY TERRITORY

“They’re going to start now!” Java whispered. “Doesn’t that

tall guy in the cap look just like Phillipov?”
“Java...” I said in a voice that sounded dead and like it
was coming from far away, maybe even from some distant
planet.
“Maybe he really is Phillipov. Maybe we can get introduced
to him. We could go over to him and say: ‘How d’you do?
We’re going to be in this movie tomorrow, too. Maybe you
could give us a few tips.’”
“Java!”
“The boys back home’ll die of envy! Golly, this sure is
a stroke of luck. It sure is.”
“Java!”
“I told you we’d be actors. And all you ever said was: ‘I ’m
going to be a pilot’.”
I grabbed his arm and dragged him off into the dark space
behind one of the partitions.
“What’s the matter?” He was trying to yank his arm
away.
“The watch.”
“Huh?”
“It’s gone.”
“What?”
“The watch is gone.”
“W here-”
“It was in my pocket, and it’s gone now.” I turned my
228
pockets out, even though it was dark and he couldn’t see a
thing.
Java was too stunned to speak.
“Now, after they’re through shooting for today, they’ll find
the actor a n d - ” I was frantic.
“You lost it when you were fighting. That’s when. It fell out
of your pocket when you were rolling around in the dust. Come
on! We can look for it while they’re shooting. I’ll call Valya.”
He slipped through the small crowd of people and whispered
in Valya’s ear. Her lips formed a circle when she said:
“Oh!”
They were back beside me in a flash. We began picking our
way towards the exit, trying not to attract any attention.
Actually, there was such an uproar going on behind us on the
set that nobody would have noticed anyway. A fat lady wearing
a white smock was the only one who did notice us, but she mis­
understood, because she tiptoed over and whispered, “The
second door on the left is the ladies’ room, and the third door
is the men’s room.”
We felt awfully embarrassed, but we didn’t say anyth­
ing.
I never ran such a race against myself in my life. I felt I was
two people: the first was running like mad, and the second was
trying to keep up.
We sped down the down escalator in the Metro, though the
PA system kept blaring: “No running on the escalators!” Then,
when we reached Arsenalnaya Station, we raced up the up esca­
lator so fast I thought my heart would burst. When we boarded
a trolleybus we began crawling along so slowly that my one
wish was to get off and run on ahead of it. We dashed down
the hill past the old church like we were flying. Our feet barely
touched the ground.
At last. Here it was. That awful place. We all got down on
our hands and knees and began crawling around. The prickly
229
boxthom scratched our faces. It got tangled in our hair. It tried
to get at our eyes. The actor’s watch wasn’t there. You can
laugh if you want to, but I even pressed my ear to the ground
to see if I could hear it ticking (that’s how sappers use a mine
sweeper). There was no ticking. For a moment I thought
I heard the Earth’s heart thumping below me, but it was only
my own heart thumping.
“This is where you tripped him up,” Java said. He was crawl­
ing around nearby. “This is where you rolled around. This is
where you sat on him. This is where that skinny kid pulled you
off.”
I sat up, feeling that my body’d suddenly gone limp. “Java,”
I said blankly. “He swiped it when he was pulling me off
Budka. I’m positive I felt a hand in my pocket, but I didn’t
th in k -”
Java and Valya both sat down on the ground. There we sat,
looking at each other and saying nothing. Things were going
from bad to worse. If I’d been an unwilling sort of thief up till
then (since I hadn’t stolen the watch, and I wanted to return it,
and, what was most important, I was able to return it), every­
thing had changed now: I couldn’t return it. I hadn’t stolen it,
but since the owner didn’t have his watch on account of me,
and since I was responsible for it, I was legally a thief, no mat­
ter which way you looked at it.
“Let’s find Budka!” Valya said and jumped up.
I sighed hopelessly and looked at her as if she was a baby.
Couldn’t she see it was no use? Say we’d find Budka and tell
him to give it back. He’d only sneer at us. He’d say he didn’t
know what we were talking about. We could never prove his
pal had swiped it. Did she actually expect my sworn enemy to
be kind and helpful after I’d knocked him flat and disgraced
him? She sure was a baby.
“Let’s find Budka!” Valya repeated. “If you’re not coming
with me, I’ll go by myself.”
“We’re coming,” Java mumbled. He got up and glanced at
me.
“Ah,” I said hopelessly, but I got up anyway (I didn’t want
them to think I was scared).
We went down the path in single file: Valya leading the way (she
was convinced we’d get the watch back), then Java (he wanted
to believe we would for her sake) and me bringing up the rear
(I didn’t have any hope at all).
We were heading into enemy territory. I felt like an army
scout being parachuted behind enemy lines. I wasn’t scared
of getting hit, I just didn’t want to get hit for noth­
ing.
“D’you know where he is?” Java asked.
“He’s either behind the sheds where they hang out, or
playing soccer, or home. I know where he lives,” Valya
said.
There was nobody behind the sheds and nobody on the
soccer field.

231
 “Let’s go to his house. We’ll tell his mother that we’re going
to report him to the militia, and he’ll be arrested as a juvenile
delinquent!” Valya said.
“There he is!” Java shouted.
Budka had just come out of Valya’s house. We ran towards
him, but he didn’t look like he was going to run away. I even
thought he was glad to see us.
“Where’s the watch?” Valya said.
“In the first place, why don’t you say hello?” Budka said
with a nasty smile. “Such bad manners. Didn’t your mamas
teach you any manners?”
“Quit stalling! Where’s the watch?” Java demanded, thrust­
ing out his chin.
“My, don’t you look scary! I’m going to cry! Don’t scare me
like that!” Budka taunted.
“Where’s the watch?” Java repeated.
“What watch?” Budka asked innocently.
“The one your pal pulled out of his pocket!” Valya shouted,
pointing at me.
“A gold-plated one? With a black dial?”
“Yes!” I cried.
“Nope. I didn’t see it.” Budka shook his head sadly.
“You louse!” Valya screamed.
“Don’t scream at me. I’m very high-strung. My own mother
never shouts at me.”
“I knew it. And we’ve no proof,” I said to myself. Aloud
I said, “Give back the watch o r - ” I stopped short, because
I really didn’t know what to say.
“Would you like it gift-wrapped?”
“All right,” Valya hissed. “If you don’t want to give it back,
we’ll go to your mother. We’ll go to the militia. If you’re
a thief, if you steal things-you’ll be arrested! Come on, boys,”
she said.
“Don’t you think you’re smart! Threatening me. Ha! You try
to prove we stole it. Go on, prove it!”
232
 “And I will! I will too!”
“No, you won’t. Now, if you were more polite, I might even
help you. I just might know a thing or two.”
“What d’you know?” we all asked together.
“Well, I know that I didn’t swipe it, because my hands-he-
he-w ere busy doing something else. Weren’t they?” he said
and looked at me with a smile.
“So?” I felt my face getting red when I thought of him bang­
ing my head on the ground. True enough, his hands had been
busy doing something else.
“But I know who swiped it. There’s this guy... He’s not
a member of our gang. He was just passing by. He’s been in jail
before, and....”
I’d had it. If Budka wasn’t lying, a real thief had stolen the
watch.
“So?” I said, feeling a chill run down my spine.
“So what? That’s the last you’ve seen of your watch. But the
guys in my gang aren’t criminals. We don’t like crooks, and
since it happened on our hunting grounds, we decided to
straighten out the record. It won’t be easy, though. He’s gone
off with it. Now let’s get things clear. If you want to know,
I was even looking for you. I ’ve just been to her place,” he
nodded at Valya.
“So?”
“The gang’ll be at the stadium today. We’ll be waiting for
you guys on the corner near the Theatre of Musical Comedy
half an hour before the game. We got two tickets for you. I’m
in a hurry. Ciao!” he said and trotted off.
We looked at each other. It was all so strange. We could’ve
expected anything, but not this. Budka and his pals acting like
knights in shining armor and fighting crime? The whole thing
sounded fishy. But why should they want to trick us? We really
had no proof that they’d swiped the watch. And there was no
233
way we could get it back. But now, since he just admitted it, we
could report it to the militia. Which meant Budka wasn’t fool­
ing. They really wanted to help us.
We had an emergency meeting right there and then and
decided that Java and I’d meet the enemy, while Valya’d race
back to the set and tell Maxim Valerianovich about what’d
happened. Why, he didn’t even know where we were! Mean­
while, since the soccer game was still a long way off, Java and
I’d go home and have dinner.
My uncle was beaming when he opened the door. “Do I have
a surprise for you kids!” he said. “Guess where we’re going
today? Give up? To the soccer match of the season! The Kiev
Dynamo’s playing the Moscow Torpedo. It’s the National Cup
game! I see you look dazed. No wonder. You’ll never see any­
thing like it in Vasukovka. Maybe you don’t feel it’s a treat?
Hm? Maybe you don’t want to go? Eh?”
“You’re a soccer fan, so it’s a great event in your life, but
they’re normal children,” my aunt said. “Aren’t I right,
boys ?”
“Every normal person enjoys a soccer game,” Uncle Grisha
said.
“Sure, it’s great... What a surprise!” I finally mumbl­
ed.
“We’ve got the best seats. They’re in Section A,” my uncle
proudly produced the tickets.
“Golly!” I said.
In the time that remained before dinner, and all through din­
ner, and after dinner I kept racking my brains, trying to figure
out a way that would get us to the game on our own, minus my
uncle. On the one hand, we needed the tickets badly (so’s not to
be indebted to our enemies); on the other hand, Uncle Grisha
was what we didn’t need, because he’d surely mess everything
up by just being there. I hung around him like a bee near
a honey pot and finally said, “Could you give us our tickets
now? Then we could go early.”
234
 “Why don’t you want to go with me?”
“Uh... We’re going to meet somebody...” I stopped and
stared at the floor.
Uncle Grisha looked at us, smiled and winked. “I see. In­
deed. But don’t you think it’s a bit early to start dating,
boys ?”
We decided it was best not to answer.
“Well, do as you wish. Here are the tickets. But be careful.
The crowds are terrible.”
 C h a p t e r 11

THE KIEV DYNAMO PLAYS THE MOSCOW TORPEDO

The trolleybus was about to pull away from the stop. We just
made it. The doors closed behind us, and we were off. It was
very crowded inside. We were standing on the bottom step with
our faces pressed against the back of someone’s knees. While
we were trying to squirm around and get some air the driver
announced: “Ivan Kudry Street.” The trolleybus stopped. The
doors opened. We were sure we’d topple out, but no! There
was such a crowd rushing in that it lifted us off our feet and
stuffed us back inside. Other people’s bodies were crushed
against us, squeezing us upward until our feet were off the
floor. I’d rather walk any day than ride like that.
Despite the crush, eve­
ryone looked excited.
Strangers were talking
to each other, and by
the way they were say­
ing: “We’ll murder the
Torpedo!”, “I hope they
don’t murder us”, and
“Bazilevich’ll score at
least three goals!” we
realized that most of
them were going to the
game.
We were carried out
of the trolleybus at one
of the stops and became
a part of the human stream that was flowing towards
the Central Stadium. We began working our way to the
Theatre of Musical Comedy, wondering why everyone was in
such a mad rush when there was still forty minutes
till the game began. Looking at all those people rushing and
shoving, you’d think it’d already begun. We were ten minutes
early and thought we’d have to wait for Budka and his pals,
but I heard a loud whistle and Budka shouted,
“There they are!”
Soon his gang was crowding around us. Their faces weren’t
mean now. They looked curious.
“Here,” Budka said, rummaging around in his pocket.
“Here’s your tickets. No, they won’t cost you anything. It’s on
the house,” he said and held up his hand, though we’d no in­
tention of paying him. He’d probably rehearsed the scene. He
was showing us how noble he was.
“No, thanks,” I said politely. “We’ve already got tickets.”
I fished them out of my pocket.
One of the kids snickered. Budka looked disappointed, but he
wasn’t giving in that easily.
“Let’s see’ em. They’re probably just passes to get in.
Hm... Section A. Well, that’s different. Well, that’s just fine.
I’ll sell mine.” And he shouted: “Anybody want two
tickets ?”
The moment he said that he disappeared. He was attacked by
a crowd of eager fans, those miserable, unhappy-looking people
we’d seen lining the sidewalk all the way from the bus stop to
the stadium. They’d all been wailing:
“Anybody have an extra ticket?”
All of us who had tickets passed them proudly, jostling them
and stepping on their feet.

237
 A moment later Budka reappeared. He was so crumpled and
disheveled you’d think he’d been beaten up. “Selling an extra
ticket here is like diving under a steam roller,” he said with
a crooked smile. “Come on! We don’t want anyone to take our
seats,” he added.
“But when- When’ll we talk about you-know-what?”
I asked.
“Later. After the game. We’ll meet right here again.”
It was no use arguing.
I think it’s easier to sneak across the border of some country
than sneak into the Central Stadium in Kiev without a ticket.
Our tickets were checked at least five times before we finally
got to our seats.
The players were warming up as we sat down. They were kick­
ing balls at the goalies, and each player had a least one
ball to himself. The poor goalies were hopping around like mad
and missing a lot of the balls.
Then my uncle showed up. When we moved over to
make room for him he looked at us slyly and winked again.
We lowered our eyes. He could think whatever he want­
ed to.
A few minutes later the players left the field. After a while
three men appeared: the one in the middle was carrying a ball,
and the ones on either side of him were each carrying a little
flag. These were the referees.
The chief umpire set the ball down in the middle of the field
and blew his whistle. The two teams came trotting out from an
entrance under the main section. They lined up opposite each
other and then greeted each other. Then some fans came run­
ning out with bouquets of flowers for their favourite players,
but the players tossed the bouquets to the news photographers
who were sitting nearby on a bench (what was the use of giving

238
the players the flowers?). Then the chief umpire blew his whistle
again, and the game began.
“Hey-y-y!”
“Come on, Kaneva!”
“Ahh!”
“Come on, Serebro!”
“Ohhh!”
“Pass to Basil!”
“Ohhh!”
“Pass it to Biba!”
“Ahhh!”
The great bowl of the stadium was like a boiling kettle. It
seemed like steam was rising in clouds over it. The man sitting
next to us was either a university professor or a circus per­
former. On the one hand, he looked just like a professor: he
had an intelligent face, a small beard, wore glasses and had
a briefcase on his lap. On the other hand, he was just like
a circus performer. He kept jumping up, bleating, whistling and
whinnying like a horse. Whenever the Kiev Dynamo scored
he’d toss his briefcase into the air and catch it with one hand.
Not every juggler could do that! The circus professor couldn’t
keep still for a minute. Whenever one of his home team players
broke free with the ball he’d egg him on and shriek, “Come on,
come on, come on!” in such a terrible voice you’d think he was
shouting: “Help! Murder!” He’d keep it up until someone in­
tercepted the ball. Then he’d wave his hands in disgust and
shout, “I knew it! You should’ve passed! You should’ve passed
it to Basil!” And he’d latch his eyes onto some other player and
shout, “You think you’ve been put out to pasture? Run,
man, run! You’re a player, not a cow!” You’d think the
poor, panting player didn’t even have a right to catch his
breath!

239
 The woman beside him was probably his wife. She was fat
and had on a hat she’d made out of a newspaper. She was wor­
rying about the game in silence, but she was breathing so hard
and so loud I thought she was using up all the air there was
in the stadium. The circus professor kept saying, “Don’t
worry, sweetie! Don’t worry! It’ll all end well. Our team’ll
win.”
Java winked at me and said, “That’s the sourest-looking
sweetie I ever saw.”
“She sure is,” I grinned.
We looked away from the circus professor and his sweetie,
because the game was so interesting we couldn’t waste any
more time on them. We’d become a tiny part of a huge
creature called “The Stadium” which was shaking like it
had a fever. And when the referee unfairly (so the Stadium
decided) didn’t rule a penalty kick to the Dynamos, we
joined the crowd in howling and yelling at the tops of our
voices:
“Kill the referee! Kill the referee!” You’d think we were all
murderers.
Soccer’s a great game. It’s good for when you’re feeling bad
or for when you’re in trouble. At any rate, I forgot all
about my troubles and didn’t think of them till the game
was over. Then it was time to get rid of Uncle Grisha
again.
“You go on home. We still have to see about something,”
I said. You’d think we were the grown-ups and he was the
kid!
“You be careful about that something,” Uncle Grisha said.
“You’re too young to be having dates. You don’t want your
girlfriends’ fathers to box your ears.”

240
 But since Kiev won (3:2), my uncle was feeling great and let
us go.
This time we had to wait. We waited for about ten minutes,
or even more, and it wasn’t easy, because it wasn’t just waiting.
We were fighting. Fighting the human river that was rushing
past us, trying to carry us off and toss us out on some other
street. It wasn’t easy to stand our ground. At last the kids
showed up.
“Come on,” Budka said.
We entered the stream and were carried off with the current.
“Well?” I said impatiently, steering over to Budka.
“Wait. Not here.”
He sure was dragging it o u t! We came ashore on a side street
and ducked into a connecting yard. Here, in a dark archway,
Budka stopped. Looking back over his shoulder, he said in
a mysterious voice,
“It’s like this. We had a talk with him. We had a hard time
making him come around. They’ll tell you.”
“We sure did!”
“You bet!” his pals said.
“He said he’d give it back, but only at night. Tonight.
Tomorrow’ll be too late, because he’s getting out of Kiev
tomorrow. The militia’s after him.”
“So?”
“It’s all set. He’s got it stashed away in a safe place. In
a cave near the monastery. We can’t go there in the daytime,
because somebody might see us. Anyway, we’re to meet at mid­
night near the old church. Near Kaisarov’s grave. Know where
it is?”
Java and I looked at each other. Were they fooling us? If so,
why? Just for the neck of it? What were we to do? What could
we do?
16-344
241
 “You’re not yellow, are you?” Budka said. He looked at us
scornfully. “It’s up to you. It’s your watch. It’s no skin off my
nose. We’re not going if you’re not.”
“All right. We’ll be there,” I said. I might’ve thought twice if
it was my watch, but it wasn’t. I had no choice.
“See you soon,” Budka said cheerfully. “And don’t sleep
through till the morning.”
 Chapter 12

THE COSSACKS WILL LIVE ON. KARAFOLKA THE CHIEFTAIN.

THE LETTER OF THE ZAPOROZHIAN COSSACKS.
A NIGHT AT THE CEMETERY (RECOLLECTIONS)

It was a little past ten p. m. We were lying on the big couch

by the open balcony door, pretending we were asleep, waiting
for my aunt and uncle to fall asleep so’s we could slip away.
There’s probably no more awful kind of waiting than lying in
bed, wide awake and afraid to move. Waiting, and not knowing
what awaits you, knowing you have to get up at midnight and
head through the darkness to a place full of old graves.
I kept remembering the past. That made me still more scared.
I’m no magician and can’t read anybody’s mind, but I was
ready to bet anything Java was thinking about the same things
I was. I’d bet anything in the world he was. He couldn’t possi­
bly be thinking of anything else. It’d all happened at night, too.
And at a cemetery, too. My throat had gone dry then, too, and
my heart had frozen, and my feet had felt numb.
It had all happened last September, after we’d returned from
the desert island. A group of archeologists had descended on
Vasukovka. Actually, it wasn’t all that unexpected, because we
knew two of the men. They were hunters from Kiev who came
to Vasukovka every year. We used to catch grasshoppers for
them for bait when they went fishing, and we always felt superi­
or, like we did towards all city people who looked so out of
place in the country. We’d grin when they groaned, as they got
up at dawn to go hunting, or when they turned over in our
boats in the marsh, or when they cleaned fish and pricked their
fingers on the fins.
We never imagined they knew so many interesting things.
They used to come to Vasukovka to go hunting and never
thought about diggings or archeology. They were on vacation
16* 243
and having a good time. But one evening when they were sitting
around a campfire, waiting for the millet to cook, they began
talking about archeology. Grandpa Varava and Grandpa Sali-
von were with them there, and a few minutes later the hunters
forgot all about the millet, the hunt and everything else. The
very next day they went back to Kiev, even though they were
both still on vacation and were supposed to stay a whole
month. Soon they were back again with an expedition.
We discovered that our region was very historic and that our
village was extremely historic and very ancient. We always
knew it was ancient, but we never thought it was historic, too.
Well, Vasukovka was one of the stopping points on the Route
from the Vikings to the Greeks (Java and I’d both gotten D’s
for that chapter in history). It was also at the crossroads of the
Zaporozhian Cossack campaigns.
We found out that such historical personages as Vladimir
Monomakh, Princess Olga and Bogdan Khmelnitsky had all
stopped to rest in the shade of the old oak tree just outside the
village.
We gaped as we listened to the archeologists’ stories about
Zaporozhian Sech and Ivan Sirko, the legendary Cossack chief­
tain who was re-elected to his post fifteen times in a row, some­
thing no other man in the history of the Zaporozhian Sech had
achieved. His enemies feared Ivan Sirko more than anything
else in the world. The archeologists told us all about Pyotr Kal-
nishevsky, the last of the Cossack chieftains, whom Catherine
the Great exiled to Solovetsky Monastery. He spent twenty-five
years in a deep, cold, damp pit, but did not submit, did not
denounce the Cossacks and despite his terrible suffering lived
for one hundred and twelve years! Such was his mighty
constitution.
We hung on their every word. We’d never dreamed our
ancestors were such men!
That very same day the expedition began its diggings at the
side of a Cossack burial mound in the steppe, about two kilo­
244
metres from the village. Naturally, all my pals hung around
there till dark. We were so excited we nearly tumbled into the
trench when the archeologists dug up some Cossack arms (a
sword and a pistol), a cut glass vodka bottle (so what if it was
empty?) and a wooden pipe inlaid with pearls on the bowl.
We’d never forget that day. First the archeologists broke up the
ground with crowbars. Then they picked away the clods of
earth by hand. Then, whenever their fingers felt something, they
brushed away the dirt with special little brushes. We were spell­
bound. Here they were, picking things out of the ground that’d
been buried for over three hundred years!
The archeologists said one of Ivan Sirko’s commanders had
been buried under the mound, because Sirko’d made camp here
on his way back from the Crimea after defeating the Crimean
Khan near Sivash. They said one of Sirko’s comrades-in-arms
had probably died of his wounds and been buried here. Accord­
ing to the custom of Zaporozhian Sech, a Cossack’s arms, his
pipe and a bottle of vodka (to make him happy in the next
world) were always placed beside him in his grave.
We kept staring at a pistol and a sword. The sword had an
ivory hilt, and the scabbard was inlaid with silver.
Java sighed. “If we had only known about them, we’d have
dug them up ourselves,” he whispered to me.
The expedition also began digging by the old oak tree. All
they found there was a rusty old tankard, but they said they
thought it might’ve belonged to Ivan Sirko.
Then they began calling on all the old men and women in
Vasukovka, asking them about the legends and stories they’d
heard in their youth. They also wanted to know which of them
were descendants of the Zaporozhian Cossacks. The archeolo­
gists spent a long time talking to Granny Trindichka who was
a hundred and seven years old.
“Can you tell us about your father and grandfather?” the
short, fat archeologist named Sidorenko (the one who’d
dropped his gun in the water in the marsh) asked her.
245
 “Yes, I had a father and a grandfather, sonny,” Trindichka
said, nodding and smiling.
“What was their occupation?”
“Yes, yes,” she went on nodding happily.
“Were they just peasants? Did they sow buckwheat?”
“Yes,” Granny Trindichka nodded.
“So they sowed buckwheat?” Sidorenko said. He sounded
disappointed.
“Yes, they sowed buckwheat. That they did,” Granny Trin­
dichka said and nodded. “And millet, and oats, and poppies in
the front garden.”
It was no use talking to her.
Then the expedition went searching for all the old cottages,
the ones that had thatched roofs, were half-sunk into the
ground and had moss growing on them. There were just a few
of them. The archeologists didn’t miss a nook or a cranny in
those cottages. We had a very sudden and unpleasant surprise
when they were examining the Karafolkas’ house. Sidorenko
suddenly yelped so excitedly you’d’ve thought he’d found a pot
of gold. What he did find was an inscription on one of the
rafters. It’d been covered over with whitewash, but he’d scraped
it off. This is what it said: “Gavrila Karafolka, a Cossack of
the Titarov Troop, completed this cottage on April 10, 1748” .
“Look! Look!” Sidorenko kept shouting. “This is living his­
tory! It’s untouched relic. Take care of this house you live in!
Take very good care of it. We’re putting it in the records. It’s
unique.”
Karafolka’s family were very pleased, because they’d never
dreamed they were living in such a famous relic. That same day
we found out that Grandpa Salivon was a great-great-grandson
of a Zaporozhian Cossack lieutenant and that Ivan Shapka, the
collective farm chairman, was a descendant of the Zaporozhian
Cossacks, too. So was our teacher, Galina Sidorovna.
The villagers have always respected the old folks, but they
were never as popular as they were now. They kept talking
246
away all day, remembering what they knew about their grand­
fathers and great-grandfathers, their grandmothers and great­
grandmothers. To hear them tell it, all those grannies were the
greatest of beauties, and all those grandfathers were the strong­
est men ever: this had wrestled a bull and won; that one had
lifted a wagonload of potatoes; another had pulled up an oak
tree. Not a single Vasukovka villager had any ancestors who
were skinny, cross-eyed, hunchbacked or bow-legged. The only
difference about their ancestors was that half of the beauties
and strong men were of Cossack descent and the other half
were of peasant stock, but there was nothing they could do
about that, because you didn’t chose your ancestors, you were
just stuck with what you had. Kuzma Barillo was of Cossack
descent, and so was Vasya Dergach, and so was Ganya Gre-
beniuchka, while we ... The worst of it all, the thing that nearly
killed us, was that Stepan Karafolka, the class monitor, honour
pupil and goody-goody who was set up as an example to us
every single day of our lives and whom we hated like poison
because of that, well Stepan Karafolka, who looked like a sissy
if there ever was one, was a direct descendant of a glorious
Cossack of Zaporozhian Sech, while we ... I, at least, had
a lone Cossack vagabond among one of my mother’s very, very
distant relatives, but Java had not a one. Nothing but buck-
wheat-somers all the way down the line.
“Wasn’t there even a single Zaporozhian Cossack in our
family anyplace, Grandpa?” Java said hopefully.
“Nope. Not that I know of,” Grandpa Varava replied.
“See?” Java said crossly and turned away. (You’d think it
was his grandfather’s fault.)
“Silly,” Grandpa Varava said. “Where’d all those fine Cos­
sacks have been if there hadn’t been any buckwheat-sowers? In
their graves, that’s where. Who would’ve fed them? They’d
have all starved to death. And if an enemy attacked, the buck­
wheat sowers took up their scythes and pitchforks and went off to
battle the foe no worse’n the Cossacks.”
247
 Nothing his grandfather said had any effect on Java. He mut­
tered, “Sure, but you could’ve at least married a grandma of
Cossack descent for me.” And he stalked off.
“All they kept talking about was a new house! You’d think
something would’ve happened to them if they had gone on liv­
ing in our old house for a while,” Java seethed as he glared at
their brand-new house. “Maybe there was something written on
one of the old rafters, too. Grandpa’s old and he knows a lot,
but there’s an awful lot that he’s forgotten.”
Java wouldn’t take it lying down. He was really suffering,
especially since Karafolka was now strutting around, spitting
through his teeth in our direction whenever he passed us (he
wouldn’t dare say anything out loud, ’cause he knew we’d
knock his block off, famous ancestor or no). Still, we might’ve
ignored his stuck-up nose and spitting through his teeth, but he
got to us in another way. He started up a game of Zaporozhian
Cossacks on the meadow. His army was made up of descen­
dants only, and Karafolka was unanimously elected the chief­
tain. He strutted around in front of his men, led them into bat­
tle, organized Cossack revels and contests. When Karafolka
went out to play Cossacks he’d put on an embroidered shirt,
a pair of wide, loose crimson trousers which were a part of his
brother’s folk-dancing costume. He also wore his grandfather’s
lambskin hat. It’d been lying around in the chicken coop for so
long and was so old that even the hens hated to lay eggs in it.
We sat in the bushes listening to the merry Cossack songs ris­
ing over the meadow:
I t ’s d o o r d ie , m e n , a n d y o u c a n ’t d ie t w i c e !
H o , m en, m ount y o u r h o rse s!
H e w h o r id e s o f f to b a t t le r id e s o f f to g l o r y !

We ground our teeth. We’d never felt so left out, miserable

and insulted in all our lives. It was us, Java and me, who were
full of fire and spirit! It was us who should’ve been the Cossack
chieftains! Java and me, not goody-goody Karafolka. Ah, what
248
wouldn’t we give to sock him in his snooty puss! But how
could we get even?
“Listen, Java! Remember the Letter o f the Zaporozhian Cos­
sacks to the Turkish SultanT’
“Huh? So what?”
“Let’s write them a letter like it.”
“How can we? They’re the Zaporozhian Cossacks!”
“They are not! Look at them! You know who they are?
They’re a bunch of fakes, that’s what. So what if they had some
famous ancestors? That’s just what we’ll say. We’ll say: your
ancestors were great, but you’re a bunch of nobodys. The let­
ter’s printed on one of my books. We’ll change it around a lit­
tle, and it’ll be swell!”
“Come on!”
We stopped off at my house for the book and then went on
to Java’s. He had a print of a painting by Ilya Repin hanging
over his desk. It was a picture of the Zaporozhian Cossacks
writing their famous letter to the Turkish Sultan. We sat down
under the picture. We could see how happy those Cossacks
were and what fun they were having writing the letter. So we
began on our own. It was murder.
After sweating over it for hours we finally finished our mas­
terpiece. We put a title on it: “The Letter of the Real
Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Fake Chieftan, the Snotty Honor
Pupil Karafolka, and to his Rageddy Army”. This was what
we’d written:
Y o u ’r e a s t u p id f o o l , th e b r o t h e r a n d c o m r a d e o f th e a c c u r s e d
d e v il, a n d s e c r e t a r y to L u c i f e r h i m s e l f ! W h a t k i n d o f a k n ig h t a r e
y o u ? W h a t k i n d o f a Z a p o r o z h ia n a r e y o u , a n d a c h ie f t a in b e s id e s ?
Y o u ’r e a s t u t t e r in g s i s s y ! T h e h o le o f a r i n g ! A b u r r o n a b o g ’s t a i l !
A p a t c h o n a p a i r o f to rn p a n t s , a s c r a p o f h a lf -c h e w e d h o n o r p u p i l !
W e ’r e n o t a f r a i d o f y o u r m a n g y a r m y ! W e ’l l f i g h t y o u to th e e n d ,
t h ro u g h f i r e a n d w a t e r ! Y o u ’r e n o C o s s a c k ! Y o u s h o u ld b e o u t p l a y ­
in g d o lls w ith b a b ie s ! Y o u ’r e n o t e v e n w o rth o u r w a s t in g o u r b r e a t h
o n y o u , a n d w e h o p e a s p o t t e d c o w s w a llo w s y o u h o l e ! Y o u ’ve s a w ­
d u s t in y o u r h e a d in s t e a d o f b r a in s , y o u s c a r e c r o w ! T a k e th a t , y o u

249
 id io t ! Y o u c a n k is s our cra k e d and d ir t y h e e ls , b e c a u s e y o u ’re
b r o t h e r to a p i g !

It was all in capital letters on the reverse side of a long piece

of wallpaper left over after Java’s new house’d been papered.
We tied a piece of string to one of the bottom corners and
attached a dried pancake of cow dung to it for a seal. It looked
terrific. Then we marched off to the meadow, booming out
a march on the way and solemnly handed Karafolka our
“Parchment”. We were sure that after the kids read our letter
they’d never look up to Karafolka again. He’d be a perfect
nobody.
Later that day we received a polite reply:
D e a r f r ie n d s ,
I t w a s v e r y c le v e r o f y o u to t h in k u p a l l th o s e n a m e s f o r m e .
T h e o n ly r e a s o n y o u d id it is b e c a u s e y o u ’r e s o r r y y o u ’r e n o t o f C o s ­
s a c k d e s c e n t . W e c a n u n d e r s t a n d th a t. W e r e a d y o u r le t t e r w ith
p le a s u r e a n d a g r e e to e n lis t y o u in o u r C o s s a c k A r m y a s s c r ib e s ,
e v e n th o u g h y o u ’r e n o g o o d a t s p e llin g .
B y th e w a y , “ w h o le ” s t a r t s w ith a “ w ” a n d “ c r a c k e d " h a s
a “ c ” in it.

S in c e r e l y ,
O n b e h a l f o f th e g lo r io u s
Z a p o r o z h ia n A r m y ,
S t e p a n K a r a f o l k a , C h ie f t a in

This was worse than if he’d knocked us over in a wrestling

match. We tried not to look at each other. It was our worst
defeat. What would our pals in Vasukovka say now? We had to
do something about it. If things went on like this, why, before
you knew it snot-nosed little first-graders would be snubbing us.
“If we had a real Cossack sword ... or a pistol like the one
the archeologists found, Karafolka wouldn’t be chieftain any
more,” I said. “Right! A sword, or a pistol. Why, we’d - Boy!
We’d be the chieftains if we had a real Cossack sword,” Java
said.
250
 “Where’ll we get them?” It was hopeless when you got down
to it.
“We’ll dig them up!”
“Where? You think they’re just lying around, waiting to be
dug up? There was that Cossack burial mound, but now they’ve
gone and dug it up. It’s all used up.”
“What about the cemetery?”
“The what?”
“You dope! I didn’t say we’re going to dig up fresh graves,
did I? Are you ever stupid! You know the old graves over at
the edge by the road? The ones that don’t have any crosses on
them. The ones that’re just little grassy bumps on the ground.
How long d’you think they’ve been there? Two hundred years
at least. Grandpa Salivon once said his great-grandfather was
buried there. You know who he was? A Cossack from Zapor-
ozhian Sech. And you know how they were buried? With their
weapons. So figure it out.”
“Yeh, sure, but still... It’s a cemetery. And it’s full of
corpses.”
“What’re you talking about? All that’s left is a skull and
a couple of crossbones. You saw what the archeologists dug up.
There can’t be much left of him if he’s been lying around in the
ground for two hundred years. Wait till you see what’s left of
you in two hundred years.”
“But... Even if it’s just a skull... Still, it’s...”
“We won’t touch it,” Java snapped. “We’ll just dig up the
pistol and sword. Then we’ll fill the grave in again. Nobody’ll
ever notice.”
“Shouldn’t we ask Grandpa Salivon for permission?”
“It’s not his property. It’s not like digging potatoes in his
garden. And anyway, what’ll you say? ‘Can we dig up your
great-grandfather?’ Won’t that sound great?”
“When’ll we go? Let’s go in the daytime.”
“If we start digging when it’s light, somebody might see us.
We’ll be in plenty of trouble then.”
251
 “When do we go?”
“At night.”
“What?”
“You scared?”
“No, but...”
“Aren’t you smart! You want to get a real Cossack pistol
and sword, but you don’t want to go to any trouble, you want
to get them as easy as if you’d be buying them in store.”
“All right. I’ll go.”
Were you ever in a cemetery at night? If not, don’t go. It’s
scary. It’s so scary it makes your hair stand on end. I know all
about it now, but then... I didn’t dare let Java see I was scared
when he was acting like he was going to the movies. You’d
never guess he was on his way to a cemetery in the middle of
the night.
“You know who invented the story about cemeteries being
spooky places? Cry-babies, that’s who.” He sounded very
cheerful. “What’s there to be scared of? Huh? If you want to
be scared of somebody, you might as well be scared of some­
body who’s alive, not somebody who’s dead. Dead people can’t
hurt you. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn went to a ceme­
tery at night, too. And nothing happened to them.”
“That’s what you say. What about Indian Joe? He killed the
doctor there, remember? And they saw him do it.”
“So what? He didn’t kill them, did he?” Java’d forgotten
the part about Indian Joe. “Why don’t you just say you’re
scared?”
“What’s there to be scared of?” I was trying to keep my
voice from sounding squeaky. Now why did I have to
remember that part about Indian Joe murdering the doctor?
We passed the last cottage on the street and headed out of
the village towards the cemetery. The crosses were black against
the cloudy sky. The moon kept disappearing behind the clouds.
It was only lighting up the road in snatches. Behind us in the
dark the village was fast asleep. Not a single dog was barking.
252
There was a small wood off to the left beyond the cemetery. To
the right there was nothing but steppe as far as the horizon. We
began picking our way across the cemetery, keeping our eyes on
the ground so’s not to see the graves. We each had a shovel. I’d
also brought along a shoebrush (we couldn’t get any of the spe­
cial kind the archeologists used), and Java had the mechanical
flashlight I’d given him.
The leaves on the trees rustled. A dry branch was creaking.
It sounded as if somebody with a squeaking artificial leg was
clumping along beside us in the dark. I suddenly remembered
that Petya Peshko’s great-grandmother’d been buried here
a couple of months ago. People don’t often die in Vasukovka,
and when they do the whole village goes to the funeral.
I remembered her face: it was all wrinkled, and she looked like
she was smiling to herself. That’s when I thought of her, lying
someplace real close, in a coffin under the ground. Right now
she was opening her eyes and beginning to move. She was try­
ing to get up. I’d heard someone say that sometimes people
who’re in a kind of a death-like sleep are buried by mistake,
and then they come to after they’re buried, and then... I could
feel my hair standing on end.
I couldn’t breathe. Zipp\ Zipp\ Was that her making that
sound?
No, it was only Java, pumping away on the flashlight. “It’s
someplace here,” he whispered and shined the light on a little
bump in the tall grass. It was a grave.
“D-d-don’t zipp it like th-that! L-let’s d-dig in the d-dark.”
Java’d probably realized by now that a cemetery was no
place to be shining a flashlight. He stuck it back into his poc­
ket. We stood there for a couple of minutes, listening. Then we
raised our shovels, stuck them into the ground together and
drove them in.
All of a sudden- We froze. Two big green eyes were staring
at us out of the dark. They were right on top of the grave. Stic­
king up over the eyes were- a pair of horns. And then (it gives
253
 me goose pimples to even think of
it) we heard a terrible, inhuman
scream. I’d never heard anything
like that scream in my life. The
very next moment-
“ A-a-agh \ ”
I don’t remember who screamed
first, Java or I, but I know as sure
as anything that we were both
screaming. We didn’t run, we flew.
I don’t even think our feet touched
the ground. In all the centuries
since Vasukovka was founded no­
body from the village’d ever run
that fast. We burst into Java’s yard
(it was closer), slammed the gate
and jammed a stick of firewood against it just in case.
It may sound funny, but we spent the rest of the night in
a dog kennel pressed close to Ryabka, Java’s big dog. Ryabka’s
such a mean customer he could kill the devil himself if he
wanted to. Even though we sneered at ourselves the next morn­
ing, saying that we were the world’s biggest clunks, because all
we’d seen was a plain, ordinary cat (cats sometimes yowl like
that), even so, we weren’t setting out for any cemetery at night
again. We sneaked
back for our shovels
the next day and never
breathed a word about
our outing to anyone.
Soon the autumn
rains set in. Then it
was winter, and the
game of Cossacks on
the meadow was for­
gotten. Java and I
made an ice-scooter out of an old three-wheeler, and we were
back in the saddle again.
After that night at the cemetery I said to myself, “You’re
never going to go to a cemetery at night again, Pavel. You’re
going to be a pilot, but you never will if you have a nervous tic
or a stutter, and you will have one as sure as anything if you go
there again. That’s something your enemies can do if they want
to. They can twitch and stutter if they want to.”
And here I was, less than a year later, getting ready to go to
a cemetery at night again. This time, even though it made me
sick just to remember that night in Vasukovka and the cat’s
green eyes, I said to myself, “You’ve got to go, Pavel. You’d
never go, not for anything, if it was just for yourself, but it’s
not. You’re going because you’ve got to return his watch. No
matter what.”
I could hear Java sighing beside me and knew just what he
was thinking. We lay there, waiting for my aunt and uncle to
fall asleep. Even though their bedroom door was shut we knew
they weren’t asleep yet, because it was so quiet. The moment
they’d fall asleep we’d know it, and so would everybody else in
the house, because it was summertime, and all the windows
were open. I certainly respect my uncle and aunt. They’re very
nice, good, kind people. Besides, my uncle’s a Master of Sports.
And my aunt’s cakes are better’n anything anybody ever tasted.
It’s not their fault if they- Shh! Wait. Sure enough! They were
asleep at last. It sounded like the lion house in the Zoo. If
there’s ever going to be a snoring contest I know my uncle and
aunt’ll take all the prizes. They’ll be the world champs.
We got up and began to dress. Even if someone fired a can­
non at their door now they’d never hear it.
 Chapter 13

A NIGHT’S ADVENTURES. THE SHOT IN THE CAVE

We went to the balcony, got out the rope we’d hidden under
a box earlier, and tied it to the railing. We weren’t trying to be
brave and daring. By no means. We just had to get out of the
house, and if we left by the front door there’d be no one
to lock it behind us. The second floor wasn’t very high
off the ground, and anyway, we were both good at climb­
ing.
We’d tied a lot of knots in the rope, just in case, and slid
down. All the windows in the house were dark, all except two
on the fifth floor that looked like the eyes of the house. We
could hear music, and there were shadows flitting back and
forth up there. They were probably having a party. Seeing
a whole crowd of people still up and having a good time this
late at night took some of the scare out of going to the
cemetery.
I had my hand on Uncle Grisha’s starter’s pistol. Having it in
my pocket made me feel braver. We’d had a long discussion
about whether to take it or not and finally decided we would.
Since we’d vowed never to lie again, we wrote Uncle Grisha
a note and left it in the drawer instead of the pistol. This is
what we wrote.
D e a r U n c le G r i s h a ,
D o n ’t b e m a d . W e t o o k y o u r p is t o l. W e r e a lly n e e d it. W e ’r e
g o in g o n a v e r y d a n g e r o u s m is s io n . W e m a y n e v e r c o m e b a c k . I f w e
d o n ’t, lo o k f o r o u r b o d ie s in th e m o n a s t e r y v a u lts . W e 'v e n o c h o ic e .
W e ’ve g o t to g o . I t ’s a q u e s t io n o f o u r h o n o u r . W e h a v e to r e t u r n
s o m e t h in g t h a t b e lo n g s to s o m e b o d y . W e d o n ’t w a n t h im to t h in k
w e ’r e th ie v e s .
J u s t in c a s e , f a r e w e ll.
P a v lik , J a v a

256
 P . S . S e n d m y n e w s u it b a c k to m y m o t h e r i f I d o n ’t c o m e
b ack.
Java

P. S. T e ll m y f o lk s to g iv e m y b ik e to m y c o u s in V o lo d y a .
P a v lik

No matter what you say, it’s spooky to be going to a monas­

tery in the middle of the night, to a place that’s full of graves
full of corpses. I wanted to stay near those two lighted win­
dows, near the music and the party. But we had to hurry.
We boarded an empty trolley car. It sped off down the streets
at twice the speed it did in the daytime. The bell kept jangling
all the time, as if it was scared, too. We got off at the last stop
and began walking towards the monastery, taking a short cut
across Valya’s yard. (If only she knew we were there! But she
was sound asleep now.)
We turned the corner of her house and followed the winding
path down through the thickets of boxthorn, lower and lower,
past the old church. My heart began pounding louder and
louder. There’s something special about the dark that makes
every bush look like it’s full of big, hairy creatures that’re mov­
ing their long arms and just waiting to pounce on you. Even
places that’re bright and sunny in the daytime seem spooky at
night. So you can imagine what a cemetery, an abandoned
church and underground vaults and tombs that you’d never go
to in the daytime are like in the middle of the night.
All of a sudden, as if to announce our arrival, the whole
world became full of ringing. One ... Two ... Three ... We
stopped in our tracks, staring up at the black sky. I felt like the
bell was driving icy nails into my heart. Bongl Bong\ Bong\
“I-it’s the c-clock on the monastery tower. It’s striking mid­
night!” Java whispered.
We began walking again. Though we didn’t say a word to
each other, we were both trying to step as softly as we could.
Soundlessly, actually. And all this just so’s whoever it was that
17-344
257
was lying in wait for us behind every bush wouldn’t hear us
coming. Chills kept running up and down my spine. You’d
think it was icy fingers stretching out at me from the dark
and sliding down my back. I tried not to look around so’s
not to find myself staring into a pair of blazing green
eyes.
When we’d nearly reached the gate something rustled in the
bushes. Someone darted out and screamed. We crouched, held
our breaths and shrivelled up. I clenched the pistol so hard it
nearly went off. Luckily, the trigger was very tight. It was made
for an athlete’s hand. If not, I’d have certainly fired it off in my
pocket, and goodbye to my new pants then.
A long minute passed. No one attacked us. “It’s probably
one of Budka’s pals being funny,” I said. We raised our heads
and straightened our shoulders. “We don’t want them to think
we’re scared,” I said. “We’ve got to walk along, stepping lively
and laughing.”
But our feet just wouldn’t listen to us, so we crept on again
as softly as cats, across the flagstones of the vaulted courtyard,
past the belfry. My laughter was stuck someplace so far down
inside of me that even I couldn’t hear it. But I did hear some­
thing else. It was a muffled voice. It was coming from behind
General Kaisarov’s tomb.
“Don’t. We might as well wind it. They’re not coming. They
probably couldn’t sneak out.”
The voice sounded familiar, though it wasn’t Budka’s.
“Yes, we could! Here we are!” Java called out loudly. So
loudly that I jumped.
“Oh!” someone exclaimed. The voice coming from behind
the tombstone sounded scared. Then three heads popped up.
“Oh, it’s you,” Budka said, and the way he said it made me
think he was disappointed, or even mad, like he’d been expect­
ing somebody else.
They came out from their hiding place and walked over to
us: Budka, a short kid I’d noticed when we’d been fighting, and
258
a tall, lanky guy wearing a black mask. He was probably the
crook.
I shuddered. When you see somebody in a black mask at
midnight in a cemetery it gives you the willies. “Golly, I sure
am jumping every minute. If I don’t quit soon I’ll be just
like a jumping-jack. I’ve got to get a grip on myself,” I
said to myself. But it wasn’t all that easy to get a grip on
myself!
“You got a flashlight?” Budka asked.
“No.”
“Too bad.”
We knew it was too bad, but it wasn’t our fault. Something’d
gone wrong with Java’s mechanical one, and we didn’t have any
other. Uncle Grisha didn’t have a flashlight, either. And
anyway, how could we’ve known we’d be going to a cemetery
at midnight? We had a small box of matches, though. But
a small box of matches wasn’t a flashlight.
“Never mind, we’ve got one. We’ll manage.” It sounded like
Budka was glad we didn’t have a flashlight. “Come on!” he
said.
We left the monastery yard and went out through the gate in
the fortress wall. A very narrow railed wooden staircase led
down and away from the foot of the wall. Trees branched over
the staircase, making it as black as pitch. It felt like we were
going down to the middle of the earth. I was scared stiff, and
I wanted those thugs to know I had a gun, and if they tried
anything funny I’d... But I didn’t know how to let them know
I had it.
Budka and the crook lit the way with their flashlights, but
those two jumping dots of light darting down the wooden steps
made everything else seem still more spooky. After we got to
the bottom of the stairs we began climbing again for some rea­
son or other, but now we were going up along the bottom of
the fortress wall. We climbed higher and higher, then turned
right and came out on a little paved walk that led off among
17*
259
some huge trees. No one said a word. I finally got up my cour­
age to whisper to Budka, who was walking beside me,
“Why’s he got on a mask?”
“For secrecy,” Budka whispered mysteriously. “I told you
he’s wanted by the militia.”
“Ha,” I said to myself.” If you ask me, anybody who wears
a black mask nowadays’ll stick out like a sore thumb. If you’re
barefaced you can get lost in a crowd, and no militiaman’ll ever
notice you, but if you have on a black mask, he’ll spot you
right away and run you in.” Aha! This was just the time to tell
them! “That’s all right,” I said out loud. “We’re not scared of
the militia. We’ve got something here to protect us. Give us
a light.”
Budka trained the flashlight on me, and I pulled the pistol
out part ways.
“W ha-?”
“My uncle, uh... (I nearly slipped up and said he was a mili­
tiaman, but caught myself in time. That would’ve been stupid,
because I’d just said we weren’t scared of the militia.) My un­
cle’s an Army officer. We borrowed his gun for tonight. In case
we bump into the militia.”
“Uh... that’s ... That’s... uh... real good,” Budka mumbled.
He’d never expected this.
Java was staring hard at me. He was standing real close.
I could see his eyes in the light. What he wanted to say was:
“How about our vow never to lie and the three socks for
lying?” I nodded, as if to say: “Don’t worry. It’s all right. If
you lie to an enemy, it’s not a lie. It’s strategy.”
The crook and the short kid were up ahead. They didn’t
know about the pistol, because they hadn’t heard our conversa­
tion. When we started out again Budka walked fast to catch up
with the crook.
“What’s up?” the crook asked.
“They’ve got a gat,” Budka said softly, thinking we wouldn’t
hear him, but I’ve got very good ears.
260
 “Is it real?” The crook sounded worried.
“Yeh. His old man’s an officer.”
“Oh. Well, I bet it’s not loaded.”
They couldn’t say anything more, because we caught up with
them just then. We made believe we hadn’t heard a thing. We
had them worried, and that was just fine. They might as well
know they couldn’t pull anything on us. If they were planning
anything funny we’d... We turned off the paved road and
headed down the slope, making our way through the thicket.
After a while we stopped. By the dim light of the two flash­
lights we saw a mossy, bricked entrance to an underground pas­
sage. A little stream came gurgling out of the tunnel.
“Here it is... The cave,” Budka said.
A blast of cold, damp air hit me in the face. It smelled like
a grave. Brrrl
“We can wait out here while he gets the watch,” I said, look­
ing at the crook.
“Sure, if you’re scared,” Budka sneered.
What a rat he was!
“All right, come on,” I muttered. I had to get that watch. No
matter what.
“Let’s go,” Budka said.
The crook led the way, Budka followed, then me, then Java.
The short kid was supposed to bring up the rear, but, as we later
found out, he didn’t go into the cave. He raced off home the
minute we disappeared in the passage.
The tunnel was so narrow and low that we had to walk in
single file and all stooped over. We splashed through the mud
in our bare feet, and it was so cold our feet froze. I suddenly
felt I was really underground. Everything here was damp, dark
and spooky. The earth seemed to be pressing down on top of
me, choking me. It was like a grave. The crook and Budka were
walking up ahead, lighting their way with their flashlights. They
blended into a single two-headed, four-armed, four-legged sha­
dow. We turned once and then again, first right, then left. I was
261
beginning to think that at any minute now (just like what you
read about in adventure stories) we’d come into a high, bright­
ly-lit chamber deep inside the cave and see the watch in a huge
chest full of stolen treasure.
And then all of a sudden...
All of a sudden I felt as if somebody’d thrown a blanket over
my head. The double shadow disappeared. There was nothing
but blackness all around me. I stopped in my tracks. A moment
later Java bumped into me.
“What’s the matter?” he whispered.
“Hey! Where are you?” I shouted in a choked voice.
I strained to hear them say something.
There wasn’t a sound. Nothing but the cold black silence of
the cave. Then, in the distance, we heard something splashing.
It was like water pouring out of a pipe.
“You rats!” I shouted. “Don’t move, or I’ll fire!” I jerked
the gun out of my pocket and pulled the trigger as hard as
I could.
Bang\ There was a flash of light and the thunder of the
shot.
“Let’s blow!” somebody shouted close by.
Something squished across the mucky mud. It sounded like
a crateful of toads hopping off in all directions. Then something
splashed far up ahead and someone cried out.
Java made a funny sound. He’d been pulling our box of
matches from his pocket and then, all of a sudden - oh, n o ! - so­
mething fell into the mud.
“I dropped them,” he said.
I heard him feeling around in the mud, but it was no use.
Even if he found the box, the matches’d be wet by now. That’s
when I felt we were doomed. We had no light, we were all
alone in the underground maze, and we were in complete dark­
ness. We could try to feel our way out along the wall, but we’d
have no way of knowing if we were getting out or going father
into the maze. Besides, there were usually poisonous snakes,
262
bats, man-eating rats and other horrors in caves like this, so
that...
“Fire again. I’ll find them by the flash,” Java said from
where he was crouching beside me.
I jerked the trigger again. Bang! In the instant flash I saw my
unhappy friend. “He sure must feel guilty for dropping our
matches,” I said to myself (you always feel sorry for a friend
who’s in trouble).
Suddenly, he heard Valya’s shaky voice calling out, “D-don’t
shoot, boys! Don’t shoot!”
“How’d Valya ever get here?”
“Hey! Where are you?” I shouted.
“H-here,” she said, and a flashlight went on right behind
Java.
“Golly, you’ve got a flashlight! Good for you! We just lost
our matches,” Java said and straightened up. He looked at me
proudly (like he’d done so many times before), as if to say that
his Valya had come to our rescue again. And just in the nick of
time, too. It was like a real thriller.
“How’d you find us?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you later. Let’s get out of here. It’s awful down
here.”
She was right. We’d have time to talk later. We squished
back through the mud. Ahh! How wonderful it was to get out
of the icy cold, out into the warm summer night again, with the
sky full of stars. And how beautiful those scary black trees
looked! How much better it was up here on earth than
underground.
“What kind of a cave is it?” I asked, looking back at the big
black opening in the ground.
“It’s a drainage system. To drain off underground water,”
Valya said.
Everyday words like “drainage system” made the spooky tun­
nel lose all of its mystery. It became something like a sewer
(even though I’d never go down into a sewer at night, either).
263
 “What’d they do, take you in and leave you there?” she
asked.
“We don’t know. They all hid. They didn’t answer us. And
when I fired they shouted: ‘Let’s blow!’ Then they ran away.
One of them slipped and fell. You should’ve heard him! If we
had had a flashlight...”
“Oh,” Valya gasped and brought her hands up to her face
(she even knocked the flashlight against her head). “There are
wells there! Maybe he drowned!”
“Where? What wells?”
“The drainage wells! Didn’t you hear the water splashing?
There’s a long tunnel and then there’s a well, and then there’s
another tunnel. One end of this tunnel leads outside to the
slope, where you entered and the other end leads to a well. It’s
deep. Maybe two metres deep. Or even deeper. Oh!”
Java and I looked at each other.
“Do we go?” he said.
I nodded. It was like going back into the water if you’d been
drowning and had just been pulled out.
“Give me your flashlight,” I said to Valya.
I gripped the flashlight and the gun, took a deep breath and
ran into the tunnel. Somehow, I seemed to be always leading
the way in this adventure of ours. Since I was responsible for
the watch business to begin with, it was up to me to lead the
way till it was over.
I blazed the trail back like a scout going off on a dangerous
mission, but I wasn’t a bit scared. Java was right in back of me,
breathing hard, and Valya was right in back of him. Besides,
this whole place was just a plain, ordinary drainage system. Big
deal! But why did I have that sinking feeling in my stomach?
What was there to be scared of? We were going to rescue
Budka, who might’ve fallen into the well and gotten hurt. Help!
A huge toad jumped out from under my foot. Dam it!
This was the spot. This was as far as we’d gotten. There was
our soggy box of matches. The tunnel branched here. Now
264
I knew what had happened. They’d turned off their flashlights
and hidden around the comer. Then, when I’d fired, they’d run
off. One of them ran down this branch of the tunnel. What if
they both had? Then neither of them had fallen into the well
and got himself killed or hurt. That meant we were on a fool’s
errand. So what? That was fine. I didn’t want anybody to get
himself killed, did I? Of course not. But still, we’d have to go
all the way to the well to make sure. And what if... The sound
of water splashing was getting louder and louder. That was no
pipe. It was a waterfall! The beam of light lit up the well. Its
brick wall began someplace up on top and went someplace far
down. I walked over to it slowly and decided to look up first.
I could see a round circle of sky and stars about three
metres overhead. The circle was criss-crossed by the bars of a
grate.
Then I turned the flashlight down. At first I saw the water-
washed brick bottom of the well. There was no one there. Just
as I decided that we’d come for nothing-W hat I saw was so
unexpected that I nearly toppled into the well. There, right by
my feet, was Budka’s head. His fingers were clutching at the
cracks between the bricks on the inside of the wall. He was
hanging on for dear life just below my feet. The waterfall was
pouring over his left shoulder, drenching him. I didn’t know
what he was trying to do, but I could see he couldn’t hang
on much longer. I flopped down and stretched out in the
muddy water, shoving the flashlight and gun into Java’s
hands before I dropped. Then I grabbed hold of Budka’s
shoulders and croaked, “Give her the stuff and help me,
Java!”
A second later Java was stretched out in the mud beside me.
Now we each had a grip on Budka’s shoulders. He wouldn’t
fall, but we couldn’t pull him up from a lying position. He was
much too heavy, and we weren’t that strong. So there we were,
lying in the mud, hanging on to him, with the water pouring in
through our pants, sloshing over our bodies and running out
265
 through our collars
into the well. Only so­
mebody who’s had it
happen to him will
know what I’m talk­
ing about. Especially
if I say that the water
was ice-cold.
“What’s the matter,
boys? Tell me!” Va­
lya shouted, hopping
around in back of us.
She couldn’t get close
enough to see Budka,
because we were in
her way. I think she
might’ve even walked
over us (you know
how curious girls are!)
if she hadn’t managed
to step between us,
with one of her feet
right next to my
nose. Then she looked
down. “Oh, Budka!
Hang on! Try to pull
yourself u p ! Come o n !
Just a teeny bit more.
Come on, dear! Just
a little bit more,” she
pleaded.
I was about to tell
her to shut up (she
was clucking like a
hen, and a lot of help
that was!) when I sud­
denly felt Budka be-
ginning to move upwards. Valya’s clucking had had more
effect on him than all our tugging. And we really were trying.
I was pulling so hard I thought I’d bust a gut. I never dreamed
we were such weaklings. We thought we were the strongest kids
in Vasukovka. Back home we each do weight-lifting with
a piece of rail that’s hung on a rope and is used as a dinner
gong. Java can lift it nine times, I can lift it seven, Karafolka,
that brave descendant of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, can hardly
lift it three times and Kolya Kagarlitsky can’t even lift it once.
When we flexed our muscles we thought they were harder than
steel. But now... A sentence kept going through my head again,
and again, and again like a broken record. It was a line from
a children’s poem: “It’s like dragging a hippo out of a swamp.”
That’s what happens sometimes: a snatch of a song, or a say­
ing, or something’ll get stuck in your head, and you can’t get
rid of it.
Budka was clutching the edge of the well. We were on our
knees now and pulling him with all our might. Valya was grip­
ping his collar with her free hand and pulling, too. First he got
his elbows over the edge, then his knees... Whew! I stood up.
My own knees were trembling.
“Let’s get out of here,” Valya said. “You’re soaked! You’ll
catch cold.”
“Wait! Shine the light over here,” Java said and bent down.
“I dropped the gun someplace here. There it is!” It was all
covered with mud.
Budka stared at it. “Is it a starter’s pistol?” he said. “I
guessed it r-right away.” His teeth were chattering and his nose
was running.
“Then why’d you race off so fast you fell down the well?”
I said to myself. I couldn’t say it out loud. I didn’t want to hurt
his feelings.
“Hurry. You’ll catch cold. We can talk outside,” Valya said,
pulling us along.
We had no intention of hanging around in the tunnel. Our
267
wet clothes stuck to our bodies, and our teeth were chattering.
A few minutes later, we were out in the warm, starry night
again.
“Wring out your clothes, boys! This minute! I’ll walk away.
I won’t look. Hear me? Are you crazy? See? I’m looking the
other way. Come on!”
Was she ever stubborn! We stood there, wringing out our
pants and shirts with whatever strength we had left. The water
ran out of our clothes in streams. We grunted and huffed. It
was hard work. Valya stood off to a side with her back to us,
issuing orders:
“Come on! Wring harder. Don’t be lazy.”
“Aren’t you smart?” I muttered.
“You try wringing them out when they won’t wring,” Java
grumbled.
“It’s easy to talk,” Budka added.
The fact that all three of us were stark naked, that our teeth
were chattering and that we were all grumbling at Valya
brought Budka and us closer together. I didn’t feel as mad at
him as I had before. I didn’t hate him like I had before, even
though he’d scared us silly when we first went down into the
tunnel. (And I still didn’t have the watch!) How strange it is: if
you help a person, you begin to like him, and if you hurt a per­
son somehow, you begin to hate him.
“Where’s the w-w-watch?” I chattered as I wrung out my
pants.
“You’ll g-get it... D-don’t w-worry,” Budka chattered as he
wrung out his shirt. “Boy, that crook’s a clunk if I ever saw
one! He scrammed. Anyway, he’s no crook. I made that part
up. He’s Volodia Ivanov. She knows him.”
“He isn’t? But where’s the watch?”
“Don’t worry. He has it. It fell out of your pocket when he
was dragging you off me. We wanted to give it back, but then
I thought up the part about him being a crook to make it
sound more interesting. And to scare you.”
268
 “Ha!” I said. (That was supposed to mean: I’d like to see
you try to scare me!)
“We wanted to take you down into the tunnel and hide. And
then, when you were really scared, we’d come out and lead you
back. The whole gang was supposed to come. But only two
other guys showed up: Volodia and his kid brother. That’s
why...”
“You think it is easy to sneak out of the house at night?”
Valya said. “I spent a whole hour in the john, waiting till every­
body forgot about me and fell asleep. Then I sneaked down the
back stairs. You’re lucky. Your mother’s on the night shift.
And Volodia and his brother sleep on the porch in the summer­
time. I know.”
“How’d you get here?” I asked, jamming my feet into my
pants. (Java and Budka already had theirs on). Now that she’d
started talking she’d be sure to turn around. Ever hear of a girl
talking for more than a minute if she has her back to you?
“Yuri told me. Oh! I’m not looking. I’m not looking. Yuri
told me. I went to the studio and told Maxim Valerianovich all
about what happened. All about the watch and everything.
Anyway, when I got back I saw Yuri Skripnichenko. He said,
‘We’re going to murder your pals in the cave tonight.’ And
I said, ‘How?’ And he told me what you planned to do. Golly,
was I mad! And I said to him, ‘You’re all bandits! And you’re
a traitor, besides, ’cause you sold out your own pals.’ He was
going to pull my braids, but I socked him hard.”
“I’ll see to him later. Let’s go look for Volodia first,” Budka
said. “I don’t think he ran away. He’s got to be someplace
around here.” He led us off through the bushes, the stinging
nettles and the sharp thorns, down into the ravine.
“So that’s what it was all about! They wanted to scare us,”
I said to myself. “They invented that story about a crook, and
about the militia looking for him, and about a secret hiding
place in the cave. And we believed them! What dopes we were!
We’re as trusting as babies. A blind man could’ve seen it was
269
all a pack of lies: the dark tunnel, meeting at midnight and the
black mask. They don’t even put such junk in books any more.
Oh, well, I don’t care. Just as long as they return the watch.
This whole mess is all on account of it. If not for it, or if it’d
been my watch, I’d ’ve never... Wait till I get it back! But what
can we do to him? Beat him up?” Somehow, that wasn’t what
I wanted at all.
“Good for you!” Budka said. “You didn’t chicken out.
Come to think of it, the watch isn’t even yours. You could’ve
said to hell with it. You’re a couple of bricks, that’s what.”
How could we beat him up after that? His words were like
balm to us. When an enemy praises you it’s the highest kind of
praise there is. But how did he know it wasn’t our watch? I just
opened my mouth to ask him when we heard someone whistle
softly in a bush nearby. Then Budka whistled. The branches
rustled, and Volodia the ex-crook climbed out. He still had on
his black mask.
“Hand over the watch, stupid,” Budka said.
“Who d’you think you are?” Volodia said and pulled off his
mask. He was the lanky guy who’d kicked me in the ankle.
“Come on, fork it over!”
“Here. Think I need it?” Volodia pulled the watch from his
pocket.
“Oh, joy! At last! Right up to the very last moment I’d been
thinking that something awful would happen at the very end,
and that I’d never see the watch again.
Budka took the watch from Volodia and handed it me (I
guess he wanted to hand it to me personally). “Here,” he said.
“Thanks,” I said before I knew what I was saying. “You’re
welcome,” Budka mumbled. He sounded embarrassed.
“I didn’t put the watch in my pocket. I had no faith in
watches lying around in pockets any more. I curled my fingers
around it and decided not to let go of it till I was back home.
Then I’d put it under my pillow. Nothing in the world would
make me let go of it now.
270
 We went back up the same way we’d come down. Once again
we climbed the narrow, wooden staircase at the foot of the
wall. It was pitch dark. The only light there was came from the
beams of the two flashlights (this time one of them was Valya’s.
Budka’d dropped his in the well).
“How d’you know it’s not our watch?” I finally said.
“We know all about everything,” Budka said. He was trying
to sound mysterious.
“I mean it.”
“Her kid brother,” he nodded in Valya’s direction, “told his
kid brother,” he nodded in Volodia’s direction. “It’s as simple
as that. Those two little kids are friends.”
“Oh.”
“Listen, Budka,” Valya said, “why’d you go as far as
the well? You could’ve taken the lower tunnel out to the
slope.”
“Ah!”
“Why didn’t you?”
“What if they had taken the wrong turn and gotten lost?
Then we’d have been responsible for them, wouldn’t we? And
they didn’t even have a flashlight or anything.”
“Weren’t you scared of the gun?”
“Nah.”
What d’you know? So Budka was a great big hero. He’d
stayed on in case he’d have had to rescue us. You never could
tell about people. He sure looked like an ugly customer and
then...
“How’ll you get home? There aren’t any trolley cars running
this late at night,” Valya said.
“We’ll manage,” Budka said. “We’ll take the short cut across
the boulevard. I’ll show them the way. Ciaol”
“ C/flo,” said Volodia.
“Be seeing you,” said Valya.
“So long,” said Java.
“Good night,” I said.
271
 We each went our own way: Valya to her house (up the back
stairs), Volodia to his (he lived nearby), and we followed Budka
through a large brick archway, then through another, then
down a narrow cobblestoned street. Nobody said a word. Bud-
ka’d been talkative enough when Valya and then Volodia were
with us, but as soon as we were alone he stopped talking.
I guess he felt embarrassed. We would’ve liked to get rid of him
as soon as we could, too. When we reached the boulevard he
said,
“Keep going straight till you see the bridge. Ciao.” He waved
goodbye.
I hate people using words I don’t understand. Here was that
“ciao” again, and I didn’t know what it meant. What could
I say to him that he wouldn’t understand? I had no time to
think of anything real good so I said, “Harrow!”
“Winnower!” Java said, catching on right away.
I was sure that Budka, a city boy, would think these were
some kind of real smart slang words he didn’t know. Sure
enough, he nodded seriously, waved and headed back into the
dark.
We started off down the boulevard, but if you think that was
the end of our night’s adventures, you’ve got another think
coming.
We finally reached my uncle’s house. There was the balcony.
The rope was hanging just where we’d left it. Now the whole
house was asleep, including the two windows on the fifth floor
where there’d been a party. Java wanted to climb up first, as
always, but I elbowed him aside. I didn’t want him to forget
that I was leading the way in this. Boy, was I stupid! If I’d only
known. But I didn’t.
I started climbing up the rope. I never thought it’d be so
hard to pull myself up. I didn’t know how tired I was from
pulling Budka out of the well. I had charley horses in every sin­
gle muscle. I never thought I’d feel this bad. My arms ached.
I felt someone was sticking a knife into my shoulders. My feet
272
kept losing the rope, so I had to kick out to try and find it
again, just like a baby kicking in its crib. It was only about
three metres from the ground to the balcony, but what torture
those three metres were! I was puffing like a steam-engine by
the time I got halfway up. There was just a little more to
go before I could grab hold of the balcony railing. All of a
sudden I heard somebody shriek: “Burglars!” I saw some­
thing white leaning out of the black square of the window
right over me. (It was my aunt and uncle’s bedroom win­
dow.)
All the rest happened so fast I was caught off-guard. My aunt
appeared on the balcony looking like a ghost in her long white
nightgown. She was holding something black. Then she leaned
over the rail and shouted: “There!” And she turned whatever
that black thing was over. Right on top of me. Something
plopped on my head and ran down into my eyes and my ears,
down under my collar, under my shirt and my pants, and into
my shoes. Whatever it was tasted sweet. She’d grabbed a pot of
stewed cherries and dumped it out on me. I was stunned.
I don’t know how I managed to hang on to the rope. I blew
bubbles and spat, and tried to shake stewed cherries off my
head.
But my aunt decided that wasn’t enough. A few seconds later
I saw a knife flash in her hand. She was going to cut the rope
and send me crashing to the ground!
“Don’t cut the rope, Auntie!” I screamed.
She dropped the knife. The handle hit my head with a thud.
My grip loosened, and I slid down, but when I touched the
ground my knees buckled under me, so that instead of land­
ing on my feet I plopped right into a puddle of stewed
cherries.
“Oh! Is that you, Pavlik?” My aunt gasped.
“No, it’s somebody else,” I said. I was still sitting in the
puddle.
Java giggled.
18 344
273
 My aunt was wide awake now.
“O Lord! How’d you get there?”
she moaned. “What’re you doing
there in the middle of the night?
Is Vanya there, too? Are you
out of your minds? What’re you
doing there?”
“ Don’t shout! You’ll wake the
neighbours,” I muttered, picking
myself up off the ground and
brushing squashed cherries off
the seat of my pants in disgust.
She finally realized she was out
there in her nightgown and not
in an evening gown, and pro­
bably decided she didn’t want
the neighbours to see her like
that. “Come around to the door.
I’ll open it for you,” she said
and disappeared.
As we climbed the stairs I had
a feeling that this was what
soldiers felt like when they were
on their way to surrender.
The thing that worried me most
was what we’d tell her. How
could we explain? We were too
pooped to start at the beginning
and tell her all about everything
that’d happened, but she’d be
sure to keep at us, asking all
sorts of questions. And we’d
have to say something.
“Let’s put off our pact till
tomorrow morning, Java. No
C
274
socks now. All right? I’ll agree to anything you say tomorrow
morning.”
“All right.”
We only had a few minutes to think of something. Our brains
were buzzing like electronic calculators, doing a million ope­
rations a second, but all we came up with was a silly little lie
about having had a bet to see who could climb a rope to the
balcony the fastest. Why had we done it in the middle of the
night? Because we wouldn’t have been allowed to in the
daytime.
When my aunt (who now had on a housecoat) opened the
door we told her our little lie. We tried to look as innocent as
possible. My aunt was a brave woman (as you’ve just seen). She
was very good and loved me very much (maybe because she
had no children), so she believed us. And the stewed cherries
actually came in handy, because she didn’t notice how wet and
creased our clothes were. We said it was the cherries. I told
Java to splash some syrup from the puddle on himself to make
it look like he’d gotten doused, too. But he’d gotten off easy.
She’d dumped the whole pot on me.
My aunt felt awful. She kept apologizing. After a while she
said, “It was such a nice pot of stewed cherries. There was
enough to last three days. But I thought you were burglars.
What a shame.”
You couldn’t tell whether she was more sorry for us or for
the cherries.
“Don’t tell Uncle Grisha yet,” I said, hearing my uncle snor­
ing away in the bedroom and hoping he wouldn’t wake up. He
was a hot-tempered man. He could easily put us on the next
train back to Vasukovka.
“All right. I’ll make another potful of cherries, but don’t you
ever do such a thing again! Come on, off with your clothes and
into the tub. I’ll wash your things and hang them up to dry.
Come on, don’t waste time.”
We undressed quickly, but before I did I slipped the watch
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off my wrist when my aunt wasn’t looking and stuck it under
my pillow. I’d had to put it on before I started climbing the
rope.
When Java and I got into the tub the bathroom began to
smell as if there were two pots that had stewed cherries in them
soaking there instead of two human beings.
Now at last we were in bed and drifting off to sleep. Now at
last the night’s adventures were over. Now at la...
 C h a p t e r 14

“LIGHTS! CAMERA! ACTION!” THE WATCH FINDS ITS OWNER.

THE APPEARANCE OF JAVA STANISLAVSKY
AND PAVLIK NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO

I had a terrible dream. I dreamed I was in a damp, under­

ground place, crawling along all by myself. Somehow, though,
I could see in the dark. Bats were hanging upside-down on the
vaulted ceiling, water was running down the walls, and there
were muddy streams underfoot. Horrible pop-eyed toads were
lined up along the walls. I kept saying to myself: “Golly, I can
see in the dark! I never knew I could. I don’t even need a flash­
light. I can see just as good as in broad daylight.” And
I crawled on. I wasn’t a bit scared, because I could see in the
dark. Suddenly, I saw a niche in the wall. Old Granny
Trindichka was sitting on a real royal throne there. When
she opened her mouth and started talking she sounded just
like our teacher, Galina Sidorovna. This is what she
said:
“Why haven’t you returned my royal watch yet, you
scoundrel?”
Well!
“Don’t worry, I will,” I said. “Why’d you call me that? You
always said we shouldn’t use bad words in school, and now you
are. That’s not nice.”
“Are you talking back to me, you brat? I’ll sock you one!”
Granny Trindichka said. But now she sounded just like Java.
She grabbed me by the scruff of my neck and tossed me down
a well. There I was, flying down, down, down. All of a sudden
I felt someone gripping my shoulders. It was me. I was hanging
over the edge of a well, holding myself up by my own
shoulders, I was the one in the well, and I was the one hanging
on to the one in the well! I wasn’t a bit scared to see there were
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two of me. It’s the law of pairs,” I said to myself. That’s when
I heard my uncle saying,
“Whose bodies are lying here? Hm?”
I opened my eyes. I felt I was still dreaming. My uncle was
standing by the couch. He had his pistol in one hand and in the
other- our note. The one we’d left in the drawer when we’d
borrowed the gun. (Oh-oh! We’d forgotten all about the
note!)
“Time to get up, you corpses! It’s after ten. Where’d you say
your bodies were last night? Come clean,” Uncle Grisha said
sternly. He read a line from our note: Look for our bodies in the
monastery vaults. “That was a mighty fine job you had lined up
for me, didn’t you? By the way, did a pot of stewed cherries get
poured out on your bodies? Hm? I don’t really believe this
woman’s story,” he said and nodded at his wife.
My aunt was standing beside him, looking at us unhappily,
as if to say, “It’s not my fault, boys. Why did you lie to me?”
Java and I looked at each other and sighed. Then I sat up in
bed and said to him, “Go on. Six at least.”
Java sat up and said, “Me, too. We’ve earned them. Six
each.”
And so we socked each other six times. While we were doing
this Uncle Grisha kept looking from Java to me and then back
to Java again. Finally he said,
“I don’t know what this is all about and I don’t care, but
you’re on the right track, boys. I’m all for it. In fact, I can con­
tribute a bit myself.”
And my uncle clonked our heads together hard. I thought
mine had surely split in half like a watermelon and that sparks
were flying out of each half.
“Now tell me all about it,” he said.
“Wait. You knocked my brains out. I can’t even see
straight,” I moaned, clutching my head like I was pressing the
two broken halves together.
I felt a bump rising on my forehead. I looked at Java. He
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had one swelling in the middle of his forehead as well, deep
purple in colour.
“What did you do?” my aunt cried. “You might’ve killed
them!”
“Don’t worry,” Uncle Grisha said. He didn’t sound a bit
worried. “Their heads are nearly solid bone. Nothing’ll happen
to them.”
“That’s what you think! How’ll we remember our parts in
the movie now?” I groaned.
“What movie? Come on, come clean.”
“Put something cold on your foreheads, so there won’t be
any bumps,” my aunt said and brought us two cold cloths.
We held them to our foreheads and then began our story
from the beginning, with no lies. Our confession was, as they
say in the papers, interrupted by applause. And exclamations,
because my aunt kept throwing up her hands and exclaiming:
“My Lord!”, “What d’you know?” and “My goodness!”
We told them the most important part first: about the watch,
and showed it to them (“My Lord!”). We told them about
Valya and Budka, and about our skirmish, and about our
adventures that night (“My goodness!”). We told them about
Maxim Valerianovich and the studio (“What d’you know?”).
We ended by saying that the assistant director would be calling
for us in a studio car in a few minutes. And what would we
say?
“I didn’t know you were actors, boys,” Uncle Grisha said.
“The newsstands aren’t selling your autographed pictures yet.
That’s a shame. I wouldn’t have knocked your heads together if
I’d known. But you should have told us the truth to begin with.
What’ll we say now?”
It was all just like the movies. Uncle Grisha’d just got
through talking when the doorbell rang. While my aunt went to
open the door Java and I began dressing fast. As fast as people
scamper around in the old silent movies. We had our pants on
and were just pulling on our shirts when the assistant director
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came into the room, so he didn’t see our faces right away.
“Hallo, everybody. I’ve come for your young men,” he said
cheerfully. “They’ve probably told you all about it.”
“Yes, of course,” Uncle Grisha said. He sounded guilty. “I’m
sorry to say that they don’t... um... look very photogenic this
morning.”
That’s when our heads came through our shirts and the assis­
tant director saw the bumps on our foreheads.
“Hm,” he said. “Hi, boys. What a shame. But you know...”
He took a few steps back, squinted at us like he was sizing us
up and said, “it’s not too bad. It’s true to life. Yes, indeed.
Come along.”
“They haven’t had their breakfast yet,” my aunt said and
hurried off to the kitchen.
“No? Why, it’s nearly lunchtime,” he said.
“We’re not hungry!” The way we shrieked, you’d think
somebody was killing us. What if he changed his mind and
called it all off while we were having breakfast?
“Don’t make us anything,” I said, following my aunt into the
kitchen. When I was close beside her I whispered, “I’ll never
forgive you if he goes away while we’re having breakfast.
Never.”
“Well, then, at least take along a sandwich apiece.”
“All right. But hurry. He might leave any minute.”
She began zipping back and forth across the small kitchen,
clucking like a hen all the while. At last she handed me two
wrapped-up sandwiches, each weighing a ton, but I didn’t
argue, so’s not to waste any more time.
“We’ll call for Maxim Valerianovich on the way,” the assis­
tant director said when we got into the car.
As we drove towards the monastery I was thinking about
Valya. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t she come along, too? After
all, she’d done so much for us. Why couldn’t she be in the
movie, too? She could stand around in the crowd. She didn’t
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 “Everything is as it should be. There’s no misunderstanding,”
the gendarme-stranger said. “As for the tsar, you’re right. I am
the tsar. In this movie. I’ve two parts. I play a gendarme and
a tsar. Evgeny Mikhailovich asked me to. I really am sorry you
had so much trouble trying to return it. I was in such a hurry
that day. I didn’t want to be late for rehearsal. Maxim Valeria­
novich told me all about your adventures. Why didn’t you
think of going to the Lost and Found room at the beach?
I stopped by there when I couldn’t find you and left my
address.”
“All right, that’s enough. You’ll tell them all about it later,”
Evgeny Mikhailovich said and smiled. “Your story has a happy
ending. As for me... Hurry and change. We’ll do another take.
It’s all on account of your watch.”
“I’m afraid I’ve nothing more to change into,” the tsar-gen-
darme said. “This was the last dry uniform.” He held out his
arm. Water trickled down his sleeve.
“What? Klava! Where are the dry uniforms for the gen­
darme? We need them! Quick! Right now! You’re killing the
schedule!”
“We had six uniforms his size. They’re all wet now. We can’t
get any more today. We’ll have to wait till they dry.”
“Wait? Wait for what? The sun won’t wait! It’s about to
set!” he roared, even though the sun was still high over our
heads.
“I don’t think there’s any need to do another take,” the
cameraman said calmly. “I’m sure the watch won’t be notice­
able. I’d have spotted a flash. We’ll develop the film and you’ll
see for yourself.”
“What if it is?”
“Then we’ll do a retake.”
The cameraman finally convinced him, and Evgeny Mikhailo­
vich called a break for lunch.
“We’ll do the ‘Artem and Maria’ scene after lunch,” he
said.
“Don’t you run off,” the tsar-gendarme said to us. “I’ll
change and meet you here. I’m through for the day, since I’m
not Maria. Wait for me. This calls for a celebration. Let’s meet
by the main building, Maxim Valerianovich.”
Maxim Valerianovich, who’d been sitting on a chair near the
truck since the third take, nodded.
We, too, went off to change. The assistant director came over
to us and handed each of us three rubles. He said extras were
paid three rubles a day. We’d never expected it. Imagine! We
were in a movie, we were going to be famous, and we got paid
besides!
Then Evgeny Mikhailovich came over and said, “Thank you,
children. You were a big help. You were very convincing. If we
have to do a retake we’ll call you. Goodbye.” And he shook
our hands in turn.
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 The handshakes plus our three rubles apiece really impressed
us. We felt great. I think real happiness begins when you’re
feeling like that.
When we left the studio grounds Oleg Ivanovich (he was the
stranger from apt. 13) hailed a cab, and we set off. We were on
our way to the Moskva Restaurant. It’s on top of a hill, on the
roof garden of a sixteen story building, the highest point in
Kiev.
We looked down at the city. Toy cars and buses were crawl­
ing along Kreshchatik, and tiny little ant-like people were scur­
rying along the sidewalks. We could see so far off I thought
that if I had better vision I’d probably be able to see dear old
Vasukovka.
When we chose a table and sat down a young waitress came
over. She was smiling and said hello to us. Actually, though,
she was smiling and saying hello to Oleg Ivanovich and Maxim
Valerianovich. You could see she knew them.
Oleg Ivanovich began ordering all sorts of things we’d never
tasted before. The order took up two pages of the waitress’
pad. A waiter hurried by, and he also smiled and greeted
Maxim Valerianovich and Oleg Ivanovich. He was carrying a
tray full of steaming dishes. Whatever it was smelled deli­
cious.
“What’s that smell?” Java whispered. (We hadn’t had a bite
to eat that day. We’d even forgotten our sandwiches at the
studio.)
The waitress overheard him. She turned her smile on Java
and said, “Wiener schnitzel. Would you like some?”
Java got red in the face, because it sounded like he was
wheedling.
“By all means. They’ll all have them. We’re as hungry as
bears. We’ve been shooting a film all morning,” Oleg Ivanovich
said, loudly enough for everyone to hear.
Now the four of us turned pink. We were awfully proud and
pleased.
20 *
299
 The waitress went off and soon came back with a trayful of
bottles and dishes. This was a real, grown-up party. First we
had sprats, sardines, ham, galantine (it’s a kind of sausage of
something), salad, caviare and crabmeat. Then there’d be
Wiener schnitzel. And there’d be pastries, candy and ice cream
for dessert. Maxim Valerianovich and Oleg Ivanovich had cog­
nac. We had lemonade. And Oleg Ivanovich made a little
speech.
“I want to toast your success, my young friends. Here’s to
your first step along the thorny road of the drama. There is
great suffering and great joy ahead for those who choose this
road. Here’s to your happiness!”
We kept glancing around at the other people in the restaur­
ant. Some young men and their dates at the nearby tables were
looking at us and whispering.
This was Fame. This was the fame we’d dreamed of for so
long. So this is what it was like! Fame was a restaurant,
small tables with white linen cloths and napkins, all of Kiev
below us, galantine, Wiener schnitzel and lemonade. It was
great.
After they’d toasted our success and future happiness Oleg
Ivanovich and Maxim Valerianovich began discussing some­
body named Stepan Stepanovich (who they said had no concep­
tion of art and interfered with the making of truly artistic
films). Even though Stepan Stepanovich was an awful man, we
were grateful to him, because now at last, when the grownups
had forgotten about us and were busy discussing him, we could
forget about fame for a moment and dig into all the delicious
things on our plates. They were all so good and we ate so much
we felt sick to our stomachs the next day.
* * *

Two days later we were feeling better again, but you’d think
we’d suddenly become two other people after our day at the
studio. We looked like we were asleep on our feet, like our
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thoughts were miles away. We weren’t the least bit interested in
the games Budka’s gang was playing near the foot of the for­
tress wall, even though those were good games, and Budka said
the gang’d be glad to have us. They weren’t bad kids at all, and
they were having a lot of fun. And we certainly weren’t in any
mood to go walking with Valya and her girlfriends. The temp­
tations of the amusement park didn’t interest us now, even
though we had enough money to go on all the rides.
We yearned for something else.
What we craved for were stage scenery, footlights, makeup,
fake beards and mustaches, movie cameras and ... applause,
applause, applause. (Too bad there’s no applause on a movie
set.)
We’d look up and down the street to see whether the assis­
tant director was coming to call for us. He wasn’t. The studio
didn’t phone. We had to face it: we weren’t going to be in any
more takes or retakes.
We’d go downtown, stopping outside the theatres, looking at
the playbills and heaving great sighs. Then we’d go off to
drown our sorrow in soda pop.
As we were sipping lemonade in a sidewalk cafe one after­
noon we... Naturally, it was all Java’s idea. Like all great ideas,
it was very simple. What amazed me was that we hadn’t
thought of it sooner.
We’d organize a theatre!
Our own theatre in Vasukovka. It wouldn’t be a little old
drama group that’d put on one play and then give up the ghost.
No! We’d have a theatre. A regular theatre with a regular
troupe and a regular repertory. And we’d have an emblem for
our theatre (the Moscow Art Theatre’s emblem was a seagull.
We might have a mallard, or a wild goose, or maybe a stork).
We’d have a cloakroom attendant (Grandpa Salivon’d be per­
fect for the job). Tickets would start at a ruble for the first row
of the orchestra, and balcony seats would be twenty kopecks.
We’d definitely charge admission. Only lousy little amateur
301
drama groups let you in for nothing. Anyway, we’d have a real
Art Theatre. Why not? If there were rural art galleries, why
couldn’t there be a Rural Art Theatre?
There was nothing to keep us in Kiev now, and though we
still had a week to go we said we were awfully homesick and
talked my aunt into going for our railroad tickets the very next
day. We began to pack.
Great things awaited us back home in Vasukovka.
 C h a p t e r 15

THE END OF JAVA STANISLAVSKY

AND PAVLIK NEMIROVICH-DANCHENKO.
WE CARRY ON!

We were lying in the grass, staring up at the sky. The stars

were twinkling. They were making fun of us. Oh, how we su­
ffered! Why’d we ever dreamt up the Vasukovka Art Theatre?
That was the cause of all our misery. How could we show our
faces again after such a disgrace? And this wasn’t the first time,
either. We’d had fair warning. Bad luck’d been lying in wait for
us.
We’d first felt something was wrong when the movie
“Artem” was playing at the Vasukovka community centre.
All of Vasukovka, as well as Peski, Yablonevka and Dedovka,
the three neighbouring villages, knew that Java Ren and Pavlik
Zavgorodny were starring in the picture.
Since it was playing in Vasukovka first, our impatient relatives
from Dedovka, Yablonevka and Peski came zooming in for the
first night’s showing on their motorcycles, bicycles and wagons.
The community centre was jam-packed with our relatives.
Java and I sat in the first row wearing clean white shirts and
shiny new shoes. The poster that’d been put up outside three
days before announced in large block letters that after the
showing there’d be a get-together with two members of the
cast.
We hadn’t played soccer at all that week, what with preparing
our speeches and being excited.
The lights went out, and the credits appeared on the screen.
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We sat there, craning our necks, waiting. The scenes began
flashing by, one after another. Soon the movie was half over,
but we still hadn’t appeared.
All of a sudden we were watching a scene in which our
acquaintance Oleg Ivanovich (the gendarme) was killed by revo­
lutionaries. My hands and feet turned to ice. How could that’ve
happened? Now could he try to arrest Artem on the bridge if
he was dead? And what about us?
We clutched our seats. We stared at the screen. We were still
hoping for a miracle: the gendarme would come to life again
(after all, this was a movie, and anything could happen in the
movies). But there was no miracle.
The gendarme didn’t come to life again. There was no lake, no
bridge, no Pow! no Splash! No raggedy children in a rowboat.
What I mean to say is that our scene was missing altogether.
It wasn’t even in the picture!
When the lights finally went on again we just sat there in our
clean white shirts and shiny new shoes feeling terrible. But our
relatives are fine, kind-hearted people, so instead of teasing us
and making jokes they tried to comfort us.
“Never mind. Something must’ve gone wrong at the studio,”
my uncle from Dedovka said.
“It was probably on account of some technical difficulty.
Didn’t you tell us what a time they had shooting the picture?”
m y th ird co u sin fro m V u b lo n e vka said.
“That’s the honest truth. They must’ve gotten the film wet or
something. We’ll never know now,” my aunt from Peski
chimed in.
My relatives were right about something having gone wrong
at the studio. A few days later we got a letter from Kiev. It was
from Valya. She said Evgeny Mikhailovich sent his regards
and apologies for having cut out the scene on the bridge,

304
because some last-minute changes had been made in the
script.
She said that he said that we’d done a great job, and he was
very grateful to us for our contribution to the film, and
that it had hurt him to cut us out. (Those were his exact
words.)
So we were a flop as movie actors.
Such a serious signal should’ve warned us about the kind of
blows we could expect from Art. But we were two stupid
clunks, even worse than Khlestakov. We weren’t going to pay any
attention to any old danger signals.
Well, we’d been asking for it. We deserved to be lying on the
ground in the dark, gritting our teeth and wishing we could
howl at the moon.
What really killed us, though, wasn’t our own disgrace.
We’d been in bad messes before and had gotten out of them.
Our own suffering wasn’t that important.
What was killing us was the thought that we’d ruined the play
and disgraced everybody else. Thanks to us, all those months of
hard work had been chucked out the window. We’d betrayed
everybody.
“We’re stupid idiots, that’s what,” Java said.
“We sure strutted around,” I muttered.
“We’re just a couple of plucked turkeys.”
“Bleating like sheep, forgetting our lines. We should’ve tried
to think of something, not run away.”
“Yes. We should have asked the prompter what came next,
even though they’d have laughed at us. So what? They’d have
laughed and stopped after a while. And the show would’ve gone
on. But we...”
We felt sick just trying to imagine what was happening at the
community centre. Galina Sidorovna was probably standing in

305
front of the audience, saying in a very unhappy voice that the
play would have to be called off, because, as everybody had
just seen, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky had fled like a couple of
traitors. People in the audience would start to shout. The things
they’d say about us. Why, our own mothers would disown us.
What could we do? How could we patch up what we’d done?
How could we find a way out of a mess that had no way out?
There was no way out. Even if we jumped off a bridge and
drowned ourselves nobody’d feel sorry for us. They’d pro­
bably say it served us right. There was no way out. None
at all.
The next day we would find out that we had too big an
opinion of ourselves. We weren’t as important as we thought
we were. The play wasn’t called off, because the mayor Stepan
Karafolka had the sense to say: “I knew those cowards Bob­
chinsky and Dobchinsky would get scared and run away. It’s
a lucky thing I met them this morning. They told me the news.”
And that smart aleck Karafolka just rattled off everything Java
and I were supposed to say. The play rolled on smoothly from
there. The rest of the cast caught on, and every time there was
a line that Java or I were supposed to deliver, one of them
would say it for us. The audience never noticed anything was
wrong. You’d’ve thought Gogol’d written “The Inspector
General” without putting Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky in the
cast.
The play was a great success. There was more applause for
the actors than there’d ever been for any visiting professional
troupe. As for Kolya Kagarlitsky, that shy, mousy boy whom
most of his neighbours didn’t even know and who played
Khlestakov, why he became famous. He became so famous in
fact that it’d only take a little bit more to have a street named
after him.

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 That’s when we suddenly understood that if you wanted to be
successful, you’d have to work long and hard at it. Like Kolya
did. This old and well-known truth (one our parents and
teachers, and the authors of children’s books we’d read had
been trying to knock into our heads all our lives) was some­
thing we’d always thought was for dopes, for kids who had no
brains at all.
Now this old truth had suddenly struck home, hitting us
right between the eyes. It was like some simple rule of
arithmetic that you suddenly understand, and then it stays with
you for the rest of your life. We’d think about this harsh truth,
but that would be later. This was still the night before. This was
the night of the play.
We still didn’t know any of this. We were busy lying in the
grass and moaning.
We saw a shooting star. A nightingale sang its song in
a bush. A pig grunted sleepily in a pigsty. It was probably
remembering some happy pig thing. Dogs were barking far off
in Dedovka. The air was full of the smell of fresh grass, flowers
and cows. The earth was continuing on its way, spinning
through space. Life all around us was beautiful.
Suddenly Java sat up and leaned his chin on his knees. I saw
sparks dancing in his eyes. “We’ll never be actors, that’s for
sure,” he said. “And I don’t want to be an actor anyhow. Not
even if I get paid a hundred rubles a day. I’ll be a nervous
wreck from all that worrying. It’ll make me sick. You know,
I’ve an idea, Pavel.”
“ Pavel?” I stared at him. He’d never called me by my full
name before. Something very important was up, or he’d
never’ve said that.
“We had an awful lot of adventures last summer, didn’t we,

307
Pavel? If they’d happened to somebody else and that somebody
else had told you about them, wouldn’t it have been interest­
ing? It would. Well, this is my idea: we sit down and write
a book about our adventures.
We’ll make a pile of money from the book, and then we can
go on a cruise around the world. We’ll take notes on the
cruise, and when we get back we’ll write another book. Then
we’ll make another pile of money, so we can go on another
trip.
And it’ll go on like that forever. And we’ll be famous writers.
How about it? You and me. We’ll be writers. We’ll sign
autographs for Styopa Karafolka, Kolya Kagarlitsky and
Ganya Grebeniuk. Huh? How about it? How come we never
thought of it before? Being writers is much better’n being
actors. There’s thousands of actors and just a couple of writers.
How many writers d’you know? Hardly any. There’s
Pushkin, and Shevchenko, Gorky and Dickens. They’re
classics. And there’s half a dozen living ones. Why, writers...
They’re special kind of people. And I’ll tell you something:
when they were kids I bet you they were just like us. As for
Gorky, why, he was even a tramp.”
I was amazed. Boy, Java sure was in a class by himself! How
lucky I was to have such a smart friend.
“The main thing is that there’s no risk in it,” my smart friend
Java was saying. “You’re never a flop. If anything goes wrong
they send the book back for further editing. You know, like
Andrei Kekalo.”
Andrei Kekalo, our village poet and the manager of the com­
munity centre, had been sending out his poems to all the news­
papers and magazines in the Ukraine for years. Nobody else in
the village got as much mail as he did.
If anybody ever asked him, “How’s the poetry coming

308
along?” he’d say, “They sent it back for further editing.”
That meant he had to fix it up some more and send it back
again. Sometimes he’d get something printed in the district
paper.
“Sure, we can always fix it up if we have to. Other people do.
It’s easy,” I said, feeling very confident.
We began discussing the idea. First of all we’d have to write
our books by hand, like Pushkin and Shevchenko did. Andrei
Kekalo had a typewriter, but he’d never lend it to us, because
he typed on it every day. And since we were going to be
writers, too, he’d be jealous.
No, he wouldn’t lend it to us. There was a typewriter at
the farm office, but nobody’d let us use it, that’s for sure.
Besides, we didn’t know how to type.
Should we write poetry or prose? We decided we’d write
prose. No poems. And we wouldn’t invent anything, we’d only
write the truth. It’d be in the first person singular, even though
we’d be writing together. One of us would be “I” and the oth-
er’d be “Java” or “Pavlik” . And we’d take turns. I’d be “I”
and he’d be “Java” in one book, and he’d be “I” and I’d be
“Pavlik” in another. The question was: who was going to be
“I” first?
We drew lots. I won. Java didn’t look very happy. He wanted
to be “I” first. After all, it was his idea, and besides, he was
always the leader. He was probably counting on me being
noble and saying, “You be first, Java.” But I wasn’t and
I didn’t. I wanted to be “I” this time. We’d drawn lots
fair and square. Nobody’d cheated. Java didn’t say any­
thing.
“You know what we’ll call the first book?” he said after
a while. ‘“ The Stranger from Apartment 13 or The Crooks
Track Down the Victim.’ How that? And then underneath
309
that we’ll have: ‘An Adventure Story’. It’ll be a best
seller.”
“That’s great,” I said, though I didn’t like the name of it at
all. It sounded like one of those detective stories. I wanted
something very fancy, but I couldn’t say no, not after the whole
thing was his idea to begin with and after I was going to be the
first “I” .
So the title remained. Then we began discussing what we’d
write about. We’d begin with us arriving in Kiev. Then
we’d write about the trough in the Metro, and Java’s ear,
and about Budka, and about the beach and the stranger
from apt. 13, and about his watch, and about the drowned
man.
We’d write all about our adventures. And we’d end up with
our flop as actors in “The Inspector General” . We’d tell
it all just like it happened, because writers should be
honest.
We stood up proudly. I felt our heads were touching the sky,
and Java even hit a star with his ear. There it was, shooting
across the sky.
We were launched and running.

* * *

Tomorrow we’ll buy a big notebook, three pens (an extra

one, just in case) and get down to work.
We’ll write, and write, and write.
Then we’ll send the book to the publishers.
Then we’ll edit it, and edit it, and edit it.
Then we’ll send the book to the publishers again.
We’ll show everybody!

310
Just you wait!
We’ll show the world what we can do!
Mankind’ll soon find out about Java and Pavlik
* * *

And after that, I’m going to be a pilot.

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This book by Vsevolod Nestaiko (b. 1930) includes two of his

many stories about boys. “Somehow, I seem always to be writing
of boys between the ages of ten and twelve,” the writer said.
“ Perhaps that is because childhood is such a truly wonderful and
unforgettable time.”
The two country boys of this book are of the restless, adventu­
re-seeking kind, and adventures seem to be awaiting them at
every turn.
The young reader will learn of a night spent all alone on a de­
sert island, of a trip to a big city and a search for a man they
have only seen once but must find at all cost.
“If the young reader laughs along with me as he reads the
book, I can say I am not living my life in vain,” said Vsevolod
Nestaiko.