“But she said — Shelley said—” Mr. Browne spluttered as he tore at the shell of the metal bridegroom “— Shelley said she hid it in a book.”
“Bas-relief — meaning a flat back — attached to a marble base with a felt bottom — and they come in pairs. Poor Shelley passed out before she could finish her sentence. What your wife meant to say,” said Mr. Queen, grasping the roscoe more firmly as Cookie stirred, “was ‘In a bookend’ ”
The parrot
by Walter Duranty[3]
Walter Duranty needs no introduction these troubled times. You all remember him as the famous foreign correspondent of “The New York Times” who was stationed in Moscow for nearly twenty years, who won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting in 1932, and who was the author of two such different books as I WRITE AS I PLEASE and ONE LIFE, ONE KOPECK.
In 1928, Waite; Duranty won first prize for the best short story of the year — “The Parrot.” The award was made by the O. Henry Memorial Committee, three of whose Final Judges that year were Blanche Colton Williams, Chairman of the Committee and Head of the Department of English at Hunter College; Frances Gilchrist Wood, author; and Professor Franklin T. Baker of Columbia University. Actually, Miss Williams and Mrs. Wood both ranged “The Parrot” as the Number One short story of the year, while Professor Balder ranged it Number Six; but in the average ratings based on the combined appraisals of all five Final Judges, Mr. Duranty s story achieved first place.
Blanche Colton Williams was impressed by Mr. Duranty’s “realistic detail.” Mrs. Wood was gripped by the instant conviction that “here is a story of the actual Russia, neither guessed at nor faked” Professor Balder described “The Parrot” as “a grim, realistic bit of melodrama.”
Two further comments: first, this is a fascinating tale of a boy detective in Russia — twelve-year-old Sergey McTavish, orphan son of a Scottish soldier of fortune and a German farmers daughter; second, this story was first published in 1928 — which accounts for some of the anachronisms, including the amazing one in which Mr. Duranty says that “It is a habit the Russians have, to deprecate everything Russian.” Try and catch the Russians deprecating anything Russian now!
The boxcar rattled and swayed as the train jerked slowly out of the station, but the big sergeant standing at the open door balanced himself easily in his thick felt boots.
He held Sergey McTavish by the collar of his astrakhan tunic and the seat of his breeches, kicking and wriggling like a retriever pup. Then he swung the boy up level with his shoulder and threw him sprawling on a snowdrift.
“There,” he said, “you young devil, that will teach you to steal potatoes from the army and sell them to dirty food speculators. You have the red head of an imp from hell, and the black heart of a capitalist. We have done with you.”
So ended the six-months’ career of Sergey McTavish as mascot of the seventh battalion of Red Army Riflemen.
During those months he had tasted victory — in the swift advance to the gates of Warsaw — and defeat — in the hungry flight back across the frontier; he had come to swear like a Russian soldier, who swears with strength and zest; and he had looted gloriously — the astrakhan cloak on which the battalion tailor had worked all night, jolting cross-legged in a mule-cart, to make round cap, tunic, and breeches. But he had not learned discipline or honesty; neither over-current in the Red Army of those days; and so here he was, gasping for breath on a snowdrift in the outskirts of a little town in the Ural foothills.
When he got his breath back, Sergey scrambled to his feet and turned to curse the big sergeant as worst he knew how. But the tail of the train was blank and black in the December twilight, growing smaller every second, too small to be worth cursing.
Sergey Sergeyitch McTavish, twelve-year-old orphan, son of a Scottish soldier of fortune and a German farmer’s daughter from the old Volga “colonies,” was alone, friendless, penniless, and hungry in a windswept freight yard, with nothing in sight but the meager huts of the station and rows of roofless cars whose broken sides stuck out like jagged teeth. Sergey regretted now that he had been so smart and witty a few hours before at the expense of the station commandant, a thick-headed Lett. Mis comrades on the train had roared with laughter and kept off the angry Lett when Sergey dived among them for refuge. The light in the station hut meant warmth and food now, but Letts are a stubborn and unforgiving people. No, there was nothing for it but to tramp the three miles back to that dismal town.
Damn potatoes anyway, and speculators! If they had only left him the money! That brute of a sergeant had grabbed every kopeck.
But a veteran of the Polish war knows worse things than hunger or cold or darkness. The boy dragged his cap down over his ears and set off toward the town.
As he crept under the second of three lines of dismantled freight-cars, his nose caught full blast the smell of cooking food. Right before him in the third row, one car was intact, light shining behind the little window in the door, and smoke pouring from the stovepipe at the roof-corner.
Without hesitation Sergey banged his fist upon the door. It slid open, immediately, and a girl looked down at him.
“Come in, stranger,” she cried. “We are expecting you. But tell me quickly, is it to heaven or to hell that we owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“He who sent me here said I had the red head of an imp from hell,” replied Sergey, swinging up by her outstretched hand and slamming the door behind him. “So you can understand I find it cold here, and am hungry, after my journey.”
The girl brushed off his cap and pulled him forward under the kerosene lamp which hung from the middle of the roof.
“Red as hell’s flames,” she muttered admiringly. “That should keep you warm, and we will fill your belly. My father, here, just said it would take a saint or a devil to conquer my problem, and I told him as you knocked that even Saint Nicholas the Wonder-worker would never dare risk his wings in Russia today.”
A roar of laughter from a heap of straw in the corner near the stove.
“ ’Tis but a little imp for so great a task, Marfoosha, and I doubt if the Prince of Devils himself is a match for the Baba Papagai, who beyond doubt is his own grandmother.” There were three people in the car, the girl, comely and slim with a tangle of blonde hair, red shirt tucked into short blue kilt, and high black leather boots; the man, in khaki uniform, lying on the straw, fat brown cheeks, quick little black eyes in a bush of iron-gray hair, and whiskers; and a small bent figure by the stove, so wrapped in a service overcoat of the old Imperial army that nothing was visible but a white wisp of beard, a bald shining pate, and two pink pointed cars.
“Comrade imp,” said the girl, “I present my grandfather, who lives alone in this car, being wise and having money, but not wise enough to help me in my trouble; and my father, who is commandant of the prison, but unable to save my lover, his prisoner, from...”
“Don’t forget to present Comrade Soup also,” broke in the old man with a chuckle, “and little Comrade Vodka in his bottle, who is best of all.” And, plunging an iron ladle into the steaming pot, he filled an earthen bowl and passed it to the hungry boy.