house owners lighted a primus-stove and exacted payment for
admission into their house at the rate of a couple of cigarettes or a piece
of bread. And gazing incuriously with the sightless white eyes upon all
this chaos there stood on tall pedestals plaster figures of Hercules, of
Apollo, Diana and other Greek gods.
The only human faces there were those of the gods. Waking up from
the cold towards morning with chattering teeth, I glanced at them
fearfully. They were probably thinking: "You poor mutt, you! What
made you run away from home? That orphanage? You'd be back in the
spring and find some job helping the old folks. And now what? Now
you're all alone. If you die no one will remember you. Only Pyotr will be
running around Moscow, looking for you, and Aunt Dasha will heave a
sigh. Ask for some clothes, my lad, and hotfoot it home!" They changed
your clothes at the Education Department, they burned your old ones
and gave you trousers and a shirt instead. Many waifs deliberately let
themselves be rounded up in order to change their ragged clothes.
All those three days I kept silent. For a boy who had only recently
learned to speak that was not at all difficult. Who was there to talk to
anyway! Every time they brought in a new batch of waifs I caught myself
looking to see if Pyotr was among them. But he wasn't, and that was just
as well. I sat apart and kept silent.
What with hunger, cold and misery, I started modelling. There were
lots of white sculptor's clay in this former art studio. I picked up a lump,
soaked it in hot water and started to knead it between my fingers.
Almost without realising what I was doing, I had made a toad. I gave it
big nostrils and goggle-eyes, then tried my hand on a hare. It was all
pretty poor, of course. But at the sight of the familiar features of Frisky
emerging from the shapeless lump of clay something stirred within me.
I was to remember that moment. Nobody had seen me modelling: an
old thief, who had by some miracle landed in the reception centre for
homeless children, was describing how they worked at the railway
stations in "two-men teams". I stood apart by the window, holding my
breath as I gazed at the little lump of clay with long ears sticking out of
it, and I couldn't make out why it stirred me so.
After that I modelled a horse with a thick-combed mane. Then it
struck me—why, old Skovorodnikov's horses—that's what it was! The
figures he used to carve out of wood!
47
I don't know why, but the discovery bucked me up. I fell asleep in a
cheerful mood. I had a feeling as though these figurines were going to be
my salvation. They would enable me to get out of this place, help me to
find Pyotr, help me to return home and him to reach Turkestan. They
would help my sister at the orphanage, Pyotr's uncle at the front, and
everybody who roamed the streets at night in cold and hungry Moscow.
That's how I prayed-not to God, no! to the toad, the horse and the hare,
which were drying on the window-sill, covered with scraps of
newspaper.
I daresay some other boy in my place would have become an idol
worshipper and I have had everlasting faith in the toad, the horse and
the hare. Because they did help me!
The next day a commission from the Education Department came to
the reception centre and that place was done away with from now on
and for aye. The thieves were packed off to jail, the waifs to orphanages,
and the beggars to their homes. All that remained in the spacious art
studio were the Greek gods Apollo and Diana and Hercules.
"What's this?" said one of the commission members, a tousled
unshaven youth, whom everybody called simply Alee. "Ivan
Andreyevich, look at this sculpture!"
Ivan Andreyevich, no less unkempt and unshaven, but older put on
his pince-nez and studied the figures.
"Typical Russian figure work from Sergiev Posad," he said.
"Interesting. Who did this? You?"
"Yes."
"What's your name?"
"Alexander Grigoriev."
"Would you like to study?"
I looked at him and said nothing. I must have had a pretty rough time
of it during those months of hungry street life, because all of a sudden
my face twisted and the floodgates opened everywhere— from eyes to
nose.
"He'd like to," said commissioner Alee. "Where shall we send him,
Ivan Andreyevich?"
"To Nikolai Antonich's, I think," the other answered, carefully
replacing my hare on the window-sill.
"Why, of course! Nikolai Antonich has just that bent in art. Well,
Alexander Grigoriev, do you want to go to Nikolai Antonich's?"
"He doesn't know him, Alee. Better write it down. Alexander
Grigoriev... How old are you?"
"Eleven."
I had added six months to my age.
"Eleven. Have you put that down? To Tatarinov, Commune School No.
4."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
NIKOLAI ANTONICH
The fat girl from the Education Department, who somehow resembled
Aunt Dasha, left me in a long dimly-lit corridor of a room, saying that
48
she would soon be back. It was in the cloakroom. Empty racks, looking
like skinny people with horns, stood in open cupboards. All along the
wall—doors and doors. One of them was of glass. I saw myself in it for
the first time since I had left home. What a sight! A pale-faced boy with
a round cropped head looked at me despondently; he was very small,
smaller than I thought. A peaked nose, down-drawn mouth.
The fat girl returned and we went to see Nikolai Antonich. He was a
stout pale man with scant hair combed back over his balding head. A
gold tooth gleamed in his mouth, and I, in my usual stupid way, stared
at that tooth and could not keep my eyes off it.
Nikolai Antonich was talking to a group of boys of about sixteen who
crowded round him arguing and interrupting each other. He heard them
out, twiddling his stubby fingers, which reminded me of hairy
caterpillars-cabbage-worms I believe they're called. He was unhurried,
condescending, dignified.
We came forward.
"A waif?"
"No."
"From the Education Department," the fat girl explained and placed a
paper on the desk.
"Where do you come from, Grigoriev?" Nikolai Antonich demanded
after reading the paper.
I told him.
"And what are you doing here, in Moscow?"
"Passing through," I said.
"Oh, I see. Where were you going?"
I took a deep breath and said nothing. I had been asked all these
questions a hundred times.
"All right, we'll discuss that some other time," Nikolai Antonich said.
He wrote something on the back of the paper. "You won't run away, will
you?"
I was quite sure that I would, but to be on the safe side I said, "No."
We went out. In the doorway I looked back. Nikolai Antonich was
gazing after me with a thoughtful air. What was he thinking? One thing
he was definitely not thinking was that Fate itself had appeared to him
that day in the shape of a half-starved ragamuffin in outsize boots and
regulation jacket from which protruded a skinny neck.
________