This repetition of the phrase so fresh in his memory broke the spell sufficiently for him to stammer out: “I’m only a little boy.”
“Whelp!” spat the Baba Papagai, and passed on through the door.
Running back to the prison as fast as he could, Sergey felt the movement of his legs in the sharp air send the blood tingling through his veins, and by the time he reached the house and paused to scrape the snow from his boots, he had shaken off his fears. He felt big with importance as he entered the hall and knew that he had news to tell. Marfoosha’s face brought back the unaccustomed sense of depression. She was sitting at the table between her father and the American soldier, her head sunk on her breast.
The two men looked up eagerly when Sergey appeared, but Marfoosha never stirred.
“Well, what happened?” cried the commandant.
“It bit, all right,” announced Sergey in a matter-of-fact tone.
The prison warden shoved his glass away from him, banged his fist on the table: “I knew it.”
Marfoosha lifted her head as if just awakened. Catching Sergey by the arm she drew him to her and whispered: “Tell us about it. All about it.”
Sergey began. They listened as though their lives depended upon every word.
“And then,” he went on, “she said she would hold court again tonight.”
“Tonight?” all three broke out. “Tonight? It was to be tomorrow.”
“You mean,” gasped Marfoosha, “that — that — he is to be tried tonight?”
“That’s what she said,” responded Sergey.
Marfoosha threw herself on the floor, clasping her lover round the knees. “They shan’t. They shan’t!” she screamed.
His face was white and his lip trembled a little as he patted her head, repeating tenderly: “Nichevo, nichevo, nichevo.” It was the only Russian word he could pronounce without a trace of accent, the universal “Never mind” or “What’s the use,” of Slavic fatalism.
But his caressing hand froze when the commandant mumbled thickly: “They shoot you through the back of the head.”
Marfoosha sobbed aloud.
“Yes, that’s how they do it,” insisted her father, tipsy with indignation. “They take you down to the cellar of the church and just as you pass the threshold they shoot you in the back of the head.”
A moan from his daughter checked him suddenly, diverting his anger. “And you! You damned imp!” he yelled at Sergey. “What are you going to do? I thought you could find something?”
Marfoosha’s weary “Let him alone” roused her father to a higher pitch.
“No, I won’t let him alone. What good has he done? You damned imp! It was Dedushka who swore you amounted to something. The old man is getting crazier every day. Suppose you get along over there and let him know how worthless you are. Get on. Get out of here.” Unable to vent his feelings otherwise, the commandant staggered to his feet and advanced with threatening fist toward the boy.
Sergey retreated sullenly. He was halfway down the steps when the commandant rushed out and yelled at him: “What time will it be?”
“Eleven o’clock tonight.”
It was already past five o’clock and pitch-dark. He found his way through the town by the glow from the windows and afterward by instinct, like a young wild animal, accurately retraced the path of the evening before. His thoughts were whirling about the awful eyes of the Baba Papagai. The longer he thought, the more convinced he became that she was a Kelpie. His father’s stories came back more vividly. Surely there was some detail he had forgotten. Yes, something about a charm or talisman against the monster. His father certainly had spoken of a charm. But that was all so long ago. To Sergey a whole lifetime seemed to have passed since then, and he groped back in his memory as an old man strives to recall his youth. He tried to concentrate his mind on the talisman, but each time it slipped away from him. “Like a watermelon seed slipping through your fingers,” thought Sergey.
The simile struck a vein of association. The talisman was some kind of seed. “Tree berries! The berries of the mountain ash! That’s what Father said was good for Kelpies. Woven in a cross.”
But something else too, when there were no ash berries. Something still better, he reflected. The feeling that the door was only halfway open persisted. He was walking head down, so absorbed in the effort to remember that he went past the old man’s boxcar without noticing it. Suddenly he stopped, sniffed the air like a hound on the trail, turned, saw the boxcar and ran toward it.
“I’ve found it!” shouted Sergey, leaping up and seizing the astonished old man by the hand. “I’ve found it!” he repeated, dancing in excitement. “We can save him now.”
“In the name of the Holy Saints Boris and Gleb!” ejaculated the grandfather. “What is it you’ve found to make you jump like a flea on a frog’s back?”
Sergey hardly heard him. His eyes were roving round the cabin.
“Ha! There, in the corner!” He heaved a deep sigh of relief. “The charm!” he exclaimed. “The charm, little grandfather, the charm to defeat the Kelpie.”
“And now perhaps you’ll tell me what a Kelpie is, and why you’re behaving like an idiot,” grunted the old man sarcastically as he dipped a bowl of stew and placed it smoking hot before the boy. How good it smelled! Sergey recollected his stomach so keenly that he forgot his excitement. Over the stew he related the day’s events, dwelling on his conviction that the Baba Papagai was a Kelpie.
“Very probable. Very probable.” The old man nodded affirmatively.
“Whew, I’m late, terribly late. Maybe he’s already gone.”
Sergey jumped for the door, pulling his fur cap over his ears, and with a shrill “Goodbye!” bolted into the night.
He took the steps at the prison door in one jump, landed on his heels, skidded and fell in a heap at the feet of the surprised sentry.
“Gangway! Lemme in.”
“Who, then, is holding you?” said the sentry as Sergey jerked open the door and rushed into the hall.
It was empty.
Sergey stopped, frozen with the fear that he had come too late to give his talisman to the American. His feet lagged as he crossed the hall, but voices in a room beyond quickened his step. He pushed his head cautiously through the door, entered quickly, closed it with a bang and jumped forward. Marfoosha and the American were sitting on the floor, talking so earnestly that they scarcely heeded Sergey’s presence.
Sergey brought his two hands down thwack on the backs of Marfoosha and her lover.
“Come! Quick! I’ve found it — the charm — to save you. Where’s the kitchen? Come with me.
“Quick! Here!” Sergey grabbed the American with his right hand and was digging in his pocket with the other when the Red Guard brusquely shoved him aside with: “Out of the way now, and enough of this monkey business. Can’t help it. Orders is orders. Come along.”
Marfoosha threw her arms around her lover’s neck. The Red Guard frowned with embarrassment but paused. Sergey turned his back as though in sympathy with the feelings of the lovers, but in the moment of their embrace he pulled from his pocket a little white object, and clenching it tightly in his fist whirled and cried:
“Well, comrade, shake hands. Come on, be a man — don’t stand there like a dummy.”
The American looked down at him, smiled, released Marfoosha and took Sergey’s small paw.
“Goodbye,” he said.
“A talisman. Keep it in your hand until the last minute,” whispered Sergey. “It’s magic. Hold it tight, dig your nails into it, and you can’t lose.” Then aloud: “Goodbye, comrade.”
The Baba Papagai believed in ceremony of a kind.
As eleven boomed from the tower, the Baba Papagai’s huge bulk moved down the aisle towards the altar. Behind her two soldiers, each carrying a lighted candle a yard long and thick as a man’s arm. Behind them a third, holding aloft the golden banner, with the parrot’s cage, wrapped in a white napkin, swinging beneath it like a censer. Then the clerk of the court with measured step. Then two guards with fixed bayonets. Then the prisoner, head high, shoulders squared, marching slow as a funeral parade. Finally, two more guards.