Fifty-Two Stories

BOYS

“VOLODYA’S HERE!” someone shouted outside.

“Volodechka’s here!” hollered Natalya, running into the dining room. “Oh, my God!”

The whole Korolyov family, who had been expecting their Volodya to come any moment, rushed to the windows. At the entrance stood a wide sledge, and from the troika of white horses a thick mist rose. The sledge was empty, because Volodya was already standing in the front hall and undoing his bashlyk with red, cold fingers.¹ His school coat, cap, galoshes, and the hair at his temples were covered with rime, and the whole of him from head to foot gave off such a tasty, frosty smell that, looking at him, you wanted to get chilled and say “Brrr!” His mother and aunt rushed to embrace and kiss him, Natalya fell at his feet and began pulling off his felt boots, his sisters let out squeals, doors creaked and slammed, and Volodya’s father, in his shirtsleeves and with scissors in his hand, ran to the front hall and cried out in alarm:

“We’ve been expecting you since yesterday! A good trip? All’s well? Lord God, let the boy greet his father! What, am I not his father?”

“Bow-wow!” bellowed the bass voice of Milord, a huge black dog, his tail knocking against the walls and furniture.

Everything merged into one general, joyful noise that went on for about two minutes. When the first impulse of joy passed, the Korolyovs noticed that, besides Volodya, there was another small person in the front hall, wrapped in kerchiefs, shawls, and bashlyks, and covered with rime. He stood motionless in the corner, in the shadow of a big fox-fur overcoat.

“Volodechka, who is this?” his mother asked in a whisper.

“Ah!” Volodya caught himself. “I have the honor of introducing my friend Lentilkin, a junior in my school…I’ve brought him for a visit.”

“How nice, you’re very welcome!” the father said joyfully. “Excuse me, I’m in my house clothes…Come in! Natalya, help Mr. Ventilkin out of his coat! My God, chase this dog away! What a punishment!”

A short time later Volodya and his friend Lentilkin, stunned by the noisy reception and still rosy from the cold, were sitting at the table having tea. The winter sun, passing through the snow and frosty patterns on the windows, glimmered on the samovar and bathed its pure rays in a rinsing bowl. The room was warm, and the boys felt how, unwilling to yield to each other, warmth and frost both tickled their chilled bodies.

“Well, soon it will be Christmas!” the father said in a singsong voice, rolling a cigarette of reddish-brown tobacco. “It feels like no time since it was summer, and your mother wept seeing you off! Yet here you are again! Time flies, lad! Before you can say ‘Ah!’ old age will be upon you. Mr. Mentilkin, help yourself, don’t be shy! We’re simple folk.”

Volodya’s three sisters, Katya, Sonya, and Masha—the eldest was eleven—sat at the table and did not take their eyes off the new acquaintance. Lentilkin was the same age and height as Volodya, but not so plump and white; he was thin, swarthy, and covered with freckles. His hair was bristly, his eyes narrow, his lips thick; generally he was quite unattractive, and if he had not been wearing a school jacket, by his appearance he might have been taken for a scullery maid’s son. He was sullen, silent all the time, and never once smiled. Looking at him, the girls immediately figured out that he must be a very intelligent and educated man. He was thinking about something all the time, and was so taken up with his thoughts that, when he was asked about something, he gave a start, shook his head, and asked them to repeat the question.

The girls noticed that Volodya, always cheerful and talkative, also spoke little this time, did not smile at all, and did not even seem glad that he had come home. While they sat over tea, he addressed his sisters only once, and that with somehow strange words. He pointed to the samovar and said:

“In California they drink gin instead of tea.”

He, too, was taken up with some thoughts, and, judging by the glances he exchanged with his friend Lentilkin, the boys’ thoughts were the same.

After tea they all went to the children’s room. The father and the girls sat down at the table and went on with the work interrupted by the boys’ arrival. They were making flowers and Christmas tree garlands from different colored papers. It was fascinating and noisy work. The girls met each newly made flower with rapturous cries, even cries of awe, as if the flower had fallen from the sky; Papa also went into raptures and occasionally threw the scissors on the floor, angry with them for being dull. The mother kept running into the children’s room with a very anxious look and asking:

“Who took my scissors? Ivan Nikolaich, did you take my scissors again?”

“Lord God, they won’t even give me scissors!” Ivan Nikolaich would reply in a tearful voice and, heaving himself against the back of his chair, would assume the pose of an insulted man, but a minute later he would again be in raptures.

During his previous visits, Volodya had also busied himself with preparing the Christmas tree or had run out to the yard to see the coachman and the shepherd piling up the snow, but this time he and Lentilkin paid no attention to the colored paper and did not go to the stable even once, but sat by the window and started whispering about something; then the two of them opened a geographical atlas and started studying some map.

“First to Perm…,” Lentilkin said in a low voice, “…from there to Tyumen…then Tomsk…then…to Kamchatka…From there the Samoyeds² will take us in a boat across the Bering Strait…And there’s America for you…They’ve got a lot of fur-bearing animals.”

“And California?” asked Volodya.

“California’s further down…Just get to America, and California’s right around the corner. We can provide for ourselves by hunting and robbery.”

Lentilkin avoided the girls all day and looked at them mistrustfully. After the evening tea it happened that he was left alone with them for five minutes. It was awkward to be silent. He cleared his throat sternly, rubbed his left arm with his right palm, glanced sullenly at Katya, and asked:

“Have you read Mayne Reid?”³

“No, I haven’t…Listen, do you know how to skate?”

Immersed in his thoughts, Lentilkin made no reply to this question, and only puffed his cheeks and sighed, as if he felt very hot. He raised his eyes to Katya and said:

“When a herd of bison runs across the pampas, the earth trembles, and then the mustangs get frightened, kick, and whinny…”

Lentilkin smiled sadly and added:

“And the Indians also attack trains. But worst of all are the mosquitoes and termites.”

“What are they?”

“They’re like ants, but with wings. They bite very painfully. Do you know who I am?”

“Mr. Lentilkin.”

“No. I’m Montigomo Hawk’s Claw, chief of the invincibles.”

Masha, the smallest of the girls, looked at him, then at the window, outside which evening was descending, and said pensively:

“And yesterday they cooked lentils for us.”

Lentilkin’s totally incomprehensible words, and that he constantly whispered with Volodya, and that Volodya did not play but kept thinking about something—all this was mysterious and strange. And the two older girls, Katya and Sonya, began to keep a sharp eye on the boys. In the evening, when the boys were going to bed, the girls crept up to the door and eavesdropped on their conversation. Oh, what they found out! The boys were going to run away to America somewhere to dig for gold; they had everything ready for the journey: a pistol, two knives, rusks, a magnifying glass to start a fire, a compass, and four roubles in cash. They learned that the boys were to go several thousand miles on foot, fighting tigers and savages on the way, then dig for gold and hunt for ivory, kill enemies, become sea robbers, drink gin, and finally marry beauties and cultivate plantations. Volodya and Lentilkin talked enthusiastically, interrupting each other. Lentilkin called himself “Montigomo Hawk’s Claw” and Volodya “my paleface brother.”

“Watch yourself, don’t tell Mama,” Katya said to Sonya as they were going to bed. “Volodya will bring us gold and ivory from America, and if you tell Mama, he won’t be allowed to go.”

Lentilkin spent the whole day before Christmas Eve studying the map of Asia and writing things down, while Volodya, languid, puffy, as if stung by a bee, sullenly paced the rooms and ate nothing. Once, in the children’s room, he even stopped in front of an icon, crossed himself, and said:

“Lord, forgive me, a sinner! Lord, watch over my poor, unhappy mama!”

In the evening he burst into tears. On going to bed, he spent a long time embracing his father, mother, and sisters. Katya and Sonya understood what it was all about, but the youngest, Masha, understood nothing, decidedly nothing, and, looking at Lentilkin, only pondered, and said with a sigh:

“When it’s Lent, nanny says, we should eat peas and lentils.”

Early in the morning of Christmas Eve, Katya and Sonya quietly got out of bed and went to see how the boys would run away to America. They crept up to the door.

“So you won’t go?” Lentilkin asked angrily. “Speak: you won’t go?”

“Lord!” Volodya wept quietly. “How can I go? I feel sorry for Mama.”

“My paleface brother, I beg you, let’s go! You assured me you’d go, you enticed me, and when the time comes to go you turn coward!”

“I…I haven’t turned coward, but I…I feel sorry for Mama.”

“Just tell me: will you go or not?”

“I’ll go, only…only wait. I want to live at home for a while.”

“In that case I’ll go by myself!” Lentilkin decided. “I’ll manage without you. And you, who wanted to hunt tigers, to fight! If that’s how it is, give me back my percussion caps.”

Volodya wept so bitterly that the sisters could not bear it and also quietly wept. Silence ensued.

“So you’re not going?” Lentilkin asked once more.

“I…I’m going.”

“Get dressed, then!”

And to persuade Volodya, Lentilkin praised America, roared like a tiger, imitated a steamboat, cursed, promised to give Volodya all the ivory and all the lion and tiger skins.

And to the girls this thin, swarthy boy with bristly hair and freckles seemed extraordinary, remarkable. He was a hero, a resolute, fearless man, and by the way he roared you might have thought, standing outside the door, that it was a real tiger or lion.

When the girls went back to their room and were getting dressed, Katya, her eyes filled with tears, said:

“Ah, I’m so frightened!”

Until two o’clock, when they sat down to dinner, everything was quiet, but at dinner it suddenly turned out that the boys were not at home. They were sent for to the servants’ quarters, the stables, the steward’s office—they were not there. They were sent for to the village—they were not found there either. The family had tea without the boys, and when they sat down to supper, Mama was very worried and even wept. During the night they went again to the village, searched, went with lanterns to the river. God, what turmoil arose!

The next day a policeman came; some sort of paper was written out in the dining room. Mama wept.

But then a wide sledge stopped at the porch, and steam billowed up from the troika of white horses.

“Volodya’s here!” someone shouted outside.

“Volodechka’s here!” hollered Natalya, running into the dining room.

And Milord barked “Bow-wow!” in his bass voice. It turned out that the boys had been detained in town, in the Shopping Arcade (where they had gone around asking everyone where to buy gunpowder). As soon as Volodya entered the front hall, he burst into tears and threw himself on his mother’s neck. The girls, trembling, thought with horror of what would happen now, listening as Papa took Volodya and Lentilkin to his study and talked with them for a long time; and Mama also talked and wept.

“How is it possible?” Papa admonished. “God help us, if they find out at school, you’ll be expelled. And shame on you, Mr. Lentilkin! It’s bad, sir! You’re the instigator, and I hope your parents will punish you. How is it possible? Where did you spend the night?”

“At the train station!” Lentilkin proudly replied.

Then Volodya lay down, and they put a towel soaked in vinegar to his head. A telegram was sent somewhere, and the next day a lady came, Lentilkin’s mother, and took her son away.

As Lentilkin was leaving, his face was stern, haughty, and, in parting with the girls, he did not say a single word; he only took Katya’s notebook and wrote as a memento:

“Montigomo Hawk’s Claw.”

1887