He Lover of Death

HOW SENKA LIVED IN LUXURY

Story One. The first step is the hardest

It turned out to be hard work.

On Lubyanka Square, where the cabbies water their horses at the fountain, Senka suddenly felt like having a drink too – some kvass, or spiced tea, or orangeade. And his belly started rumbling as well. How long could he carry on, walking around empty-bellied? He hadn’t had a bite to eat since yesterday morning. He wasn’t some kind of monk now, was he?

That was when Senka’s problems started.

An ordinary person has all sorts of money: roubles and ten-kopeck coins and fifty-kopeck coins. But Senka the rich man had nothing but five-hundred-rouble notes. What good was that in a tavern or for hiring a cab? Who could give you that much change? Especially if you were dressed up Khitrovka-style: with you shirt hanging outside your trousers, concertina boots and a bandit’s cap perched on the back of your head.

Ah, he should have taken at least one petrusha from the jeweller in small notes, he could die of hunger like this, like the king in that story, the one they told at college: whatever the king touched turned to gold, so even with all those riches, there was no way the poor beggar could eat or drink a thing.

Senka went back on to Maroseika Street. He tried the shop – it was locked. There was just the parrot, Levonchik, sitting behind the glass squealing something – you couldn’t make out what it was from outside.

But it was plain to see – Ashot Ashotovich had stopped trading and gone running after those . . . what-were-they-called?. . . numismatist collectioners, to get down to business.

Maybe he should drop in on Tashka? Take back some of the money he gave her?

Well, for starters, she was probably already out walking the street. And anyway, he’d be ashamed. He gave her the beads and took them back again. He gave her money, and now he wanted to take that back too. No, he had to wriggle out of this fix himself.

Maybe he could nick something at the market, before it closed?

Just that morning, Senka would have lifted some grub no problem, he wouldn’t have thought twice. But it’s easy to steal when you’ve got nothing to lose and your heart’s wild and brave. If you’re afraid, you’re bound to get caught. And how could he not be afraid, with all that crunch rustling away under his shirt?

He was so desperately hungry, he could have howled. Why did he have to suffer this kind of torment? Two thousand in his pocket, and he couldn’t even buy a kopeck bun!

Senka got so annoyed with the low cunning of life that he stamped his foot, tossed his cap down on the ground, and let the tears come pouring out – not in two streams (like in the stories) but in four!

He stood there by a street lamp, bawling like a cretin.

Suddenly a child’s voice said: ‘Glasha, Glasha, look – a big boy, and he’s crying!’

The little kid was walking out of the market in a sailor suit. He had a red-faced woman with him – his nanny or someone like that, carrying a basket. She’d obviously just been to market to do her shopping, and the master’s little boy had tagged along.

The woman said: ‘If he’s crying, he must have troubles. He wants to eat.’

And she dropped a coin into his cap on the ground – fifteen kopecks, plonk.

Senka looked at that coin and started wailing even louder. He felt really hard done by now.

Suddenly there was a clang – another coin, five kopecks this time. An old woman in a shawl had thrown it. She made the sign of the cross over Senka and walked on.

He picked up the alms, and was about to dash off and buy some pies or some buns, but then he changed his mind. So he’d stuff his belly with a couple of buns, and then what? If he could collect three or four roubles, he could buy himself a jacket, and then maybe he could change a petrusha.

He squatted down on his haunches and started rubbing his eyes with his fists, not real hard, just enough to give them a pitiful look. And what do you think? The Christian people took pity on the weeping beggar. Senka had sat there for less than an hour before he had collected a whole heap of coppers. A rouble and a quarter, to be precise.

He sat there, blubbing and reasoning philosophically: When I didn’t have half a kopeck to my name, I still didn’t go begging on the street, and now look at me. That’s what you get for being rich. And it says that in the gospels too, the people who have riches are the greatest paupers of all.

Suddenly Senka was whacked hard across the tailbone. It hurt. He turned round and there was a beggar with a crutch, who yelled: ‘Oh, the ravening beasts! Oh, the jackals! Stealing someone else’s bread! My place, since time out of mind! Can’t even go away to get some tea! Give it back, whatever you’ve taken, you little thief, or I’ll call our lot!’

And he bashed Senka with the crutch, again and again.

Senka grabbed the cap, almost spilled his booty, then ran off, out of harm’s way. He didn’t want to mess with beggars – they could easily beat you to death. They had their own council and laws.

He walked across Resurrection Square, trying to think of the smartest way to spend a rouble and a quarter.

And then he was shown the answer.

A messenger boy came darting out of the Grand Moscow Hotel, in a short little jacket with the gold letters ‘GMH’, and a cap with a gold cockade on it. The lad was clutching a three-rouble bill – one of the guests must have asked him to buy something.

Senka overtook the messenger and struck a deal to hire the tunic and cap for half an hour. As a deposit, he tipped out all the change he’d scrounged at the market. And he promised to pay twice as much again when he got back.

Then off he ran to the Russo-Asian Bank.

He stuck a five-hundred note through the little window and said the words as if he was in a rush: ‘Change this for four hundreds, and give me the other hundred in small notes. That’s what the guest asked for.’

The cashier shook his head respectfully. ‘Well, they certainly have trust in you over at the Grand Moscow.’

‘That’s because we’ve earned it,’ Senka replied with dignity.

The bank clerk checked the number of the note against a piece of paper – and handed back exactly what he’d been asked for.

Well, after that, when Senka had dressed up in clean clothes and got a fashionable haircut at the ‘Parisian’ salon, the rich life began to treat him better.

Story Two. About life in society, at home and at court

His means were quite adequate to allow him to move into the Grand Moscow Hotel, and Senka got as far as the doors, but then he looked at the electric lamps, the carpets, the lions’ faces over the windows, and he lost his nerve. Well, naturally, Senka was dolled up like a real gent now, and there were lots of other expensive duds, still unworn, folded in his brand-new suitcase, but hotel commissionaires and flunkeys were a fly lot, they’d spot a Khitrovka mongrel under his cheviot and silk straight off. Just look at that general with gold epaulettes they had behind the counter. What would Senka say to him? ‘The most excellent room that you’ve got, please’? And the general would say: ‘Where do you think you’re going, sticking your swinish snout in the bread bin?’ And what was the proper way to approach him? Should he say hello or what? Should he take his cap off? Maybe he should just tip it, the way gents did to each other in the street? And then, weren’t you supposed to tip them all in a hotel? How could you hand a tip to someone as grand as the general? And how much? What if he just flung Senka out and took no notice of the swish Parisian haircut?

Senka loitered in front of the door for a long time, but he couldn’t build up the courage.

Only this set him thinking. Wealth wasn’t a simple thing – that much was clear. It needed special study.

Of course, Senka found a place to live – this was Moscow after all, not Siberia. He took a cab at Theatre Square and asked after a handy place for a visitor from out of town to stay, somewhere decent and proper. And the cabby delivered him like the wind to Madam Borisenko’s on Trubnaya Street.

The room was wonderful, Senka had never lived in anything like it before. A great big room with white curtains, a bedstead with bright shiny knobs, and a feather mattress on the bed. In the morning he was promised a samovar with doughnuts and in the evening, dinner if required. Servants did all the cleaning, and in the collidor there was a washbasin and a privy – not quite like Death’s privy, of course, but it was clean, you could sit and read a newspaper in it. A right royal mansion, in other words. True, it cost a fair bit, thirty-five roubles a month. By Khitrovka standards that was crazy money –you could stay there for five kopecks a night. But if you had almost two thousand roubles in your pocket, it didn’t seem so bad.

Senka settled in, admired his new things, laid them out, hung them up, sat down by the window and looked out on the square. He had to do some thinking about his new life in this world.

It’s a well-known fact that every man turns his nose up at his own lot, and envies other people’s. Take Senka. He’d dreamt of riches all his life, though he knew in his heart he’d never have any. But the Lord above sees all things, He hears every prayer. Whether He’ll grant them all is a different matter altogether. The Almighty has His own reasons, beyond the ken of mortal men. One of the lame cripples who wander the earth once said: The most grievous test the Lord can set is to grant you all your wishes. There you go, dreamer, choke on that. Weren’t you coveting too much? And what are you going to covet now?

And that was how it happened with Senka. God was asking him: ‘Did you really want earthly treasures? Well, here’s some treasure for you – now what?’

Life without money is rotten – no two ways about it – but even with riches, it’s not all as sweet as honey.

So Senka had stuffed his paunch – he’d gobbled down eight pastries in the confectioner’s shop, and got belly cramps for his trouble. He’d dressed himself up and got beautiful lodgings, but what came next? What will you wish for now, Semyon Trofimovich?

But Senka’s state of philosophical melancholy (brought on by those pastries) didn’t last very long, because his dreams took shape of their own accord. He had two: one for earth and one for heaven.

The earthly dream was about turning riches into even greater riches. They named you Speedy, now show some nous, use your noggin.

Any fool could see that if you dragged all the silver sticks in that vault out into the open, no one would buy them except by weight. Where would you find enough numismatists to take them all, one stick each?

All right, let’s figure out how much that is, by weight. How many rods are there. . . God only knows. Five hundred at least. Five pounds of silver in each one, right? That makes . . . two and a half thousand pounds, right? Ashot Ashotovich said that a zolotnik of silver is twenty-four kopecks these days. One pound is ninety-six zolotniks . . . Multiply two and a half thousand by ninety-six zolotniks by twenty-four kopecks – that makes . . .

He groaned and started totting up figures on a piece of paper, like they’d taught him to do at commercial college. But they hadn’t had very long to teach him, and he’d forgotten a few things, he was rusty – so the sum didn’t work out.

He tried a different way, simpler. Samshitov said there was 155 roubles’ worth of pure silver in a bar. For five hundred bars that made . . . fifty thousand, right? Or was it five hundred thousand?

Hang on a minute, Senka thought. Ashot Ashotovich gave me four hundred for a rod, and I don’t suppose he was doing himself down. He might let those numismatists of his have them for a thousand each.

If the black sticks were worth that much, he’d be better off trading them himself, without Samshitov. Of course, it wasn’t an easy business. There were lots of things he’d have to figure out to get started. And the first thing of all was the real price. After that he could service all the Moscow buyers. Then the ones in Peter. And then, maybe, he could find a way to the foreign ones. He’d have to hang on to the rods and flog them one at a time, to the suckers willing to pay more than their weight in silver. Then later, when those fools had had their fill, he could sell the rest of the sticks for melting down.

Thinking like a merchant brought Senka out in a sweat. You needed real brains for a deal like this! For the first time he regretted he hadn’t done more studying. He couldn’t even work out the future takings properly.

So what did that mean?

Yes, it meant he had to catch up. Squeeze all that ignorance and bad manners out of himself, learn how to make fancy small talk, and it would be no bad thing if he could banter in foreign as well, so he could trade over in Europe.

The very thought of it took his breath away.

And that was only the earthly dream, not the most important one. The other dream, the heavenly one, set Senka’s head spinning good and proper.

Of course, if you thought about it, this was an earthly dream too, maybe even more earthly than the other, only it warmed his heart as well as his head, and the heart was where the soul was. Then again, it made Senka’s belly – and other parts of his body – feel hot too.

Before, he was a nobody, just a young pup, no kind of match for Death. But now, if he didn’t mess things up, he could be the richest man in Moscow. And then, Senka dreamed, he’d throw all those thousands and thousands at her feet and save her from the Prince and the Ghoul, cure her of the candy-cane sickness and carry her off to somewhere far, far away – to Tver (they said it was a fine town) or somewhere else. Maybe even all the way to Paris.

It didn’t matter that she was older. The fluff on his cheeks would sprout into a beard and moustache soon enough, and then he’d really come into his own. And he could touch up his temples with grey, like Erast Petrovich – and why not, it was very impressive.

Only when Senka and Death went to get married, it would have to be well away from any embankment where you could fall in and drown. God takes care of those as take care of themselves.

So there was Senka, already picturing the wedding, and the feast in the Hermitage dining hall, but he knew the money on its own wouldn’t be enough. Death had had beaus and lovers with huge fortunes before, that was nothing new for her. And he couldn’t win her over with presents. He had to turn himself from a grey sparrow into a white falcon and go soaring way up high before he could fly close to a swan like her.

His thoughts turned to education and cultured manners. He had no chance of being a falcon without them, even if he did have the riches.

There was a bookstall out on the square – Senka could see it from the window. He went out and bought a clever book that was called Life in Society, at Home and at Court – how to behave in decent society so you they wouldn’t boot you out.

When he started reading, he came out in a cold sweat. Holy saints, it was all so complicated! How to bow to who, how to kiss a woman’s hand – a lady’s, that is – how to give compliments, how to dress when and where, how to walk into a room and how to walk out. If he spent his whole life studying, he still wouldn’t remember it all!

‘One should never pay a visit earlier than two o’clock or later than five or six,’ Senka read, moving his lips and ruffling up his French coiffure. ‘Before two o’clock, one risks finding the master and mistress of the house engaged in domestic activities or arranging their toilette; at a later hour, one may appear to be angling for an invitation to dinner.’

Or there was this: ‘On arriving to pay a visit and not finding the master and mistress of the house at home, a well-bred individual leaves a card, creased at the upper left side; if the visit is on the occasion of a death or other sad event, the card is creased at the lower right, with the fold slightly torn.’

Blimey!

But the most frightening thing of all was reading about clothes. If you were poor, it was easy: just one shirt and one pair of trousers –nothing to rack your brains over. But oh, the hassle if you were rich! When to wear a jacket, when to wear a frock coat, when to wear tails: when you should take your gloves off, when you shouldn’t; what should be check, what should be striped, and what should be flowery. And it seemed, for cultured people, not every colour matched every other one!

But the hardest part of all, though, was the hats – Senka even had to make notes.

The rules went like this. In an office, shop or hotel, you took your hat off only if the owners and countermen were bareheaded too (ah, if only he’d known that back at the Grand Moscow!). When leaving after a visit, you put your hat on outside the door, not in the doorway. In an omnibus or carriage, you didn’t take your hat off at all, even in the presence of ladies. When you paid a visit, you held your hat in your hand, and if you were in tails, your top hat had to be the kind with a spring to keep it straight, not the simple kind. When you sat down, you could put your hat on a vacant chair or on the floor but never, God forbid, on a table.

Senka felt sorry for the poor hat, it would get dirty on the floor. He looked at the handsome boater on his table (twelve and a half roubles, that cost). Put it on the floor? Not a chance.

When he was tired of studying society manners, he took another look at his new clothes. A frock coat of fine camlet (nineteen roubles ninety), two pique´ waistcoats, one white and one grey (ten roubles the pair), pantaloons with a black and grey stripe (fifteen roubles), trousers with foot straps (nine roubles ninety), button-down half-boots (twelve roubles), and another pair, patent leather (he shelled out twenty-five for them, but they were a real sight for sore eyes). And there was a little mirror with a silver handle, and pomade in a gilded jar – to grease his quiff, so it wouldn’t dangle. He spent longest of all admiring the mother-of-pearl penknife. Eight blades, an awl, even a toothpick and a nail file too!

When he’d had his fun, he read a bit more of the book.

Senka went down to dinner, dressed according to the requirements of etiquette, in his frock coat, because ‘a simple jacket is only permissible at table in the family circle’.

In the dining room he bowed respectfully, said ‘Bonsoir’, and put his hat on the floor – so be it, but he put a napkin he’d taken from the kitchen underneath.

There were about ten people dining at the widow Borisenko’s. They gaped at the well-bred young man, some of them said good evening, others simply nodded. Not one was wearing a frock coat, and the fat, curly-headed young man sitting beside Senka was dining in his shirt and braces. He turned out to be a student at the Institute of Land Surveyors, George by name. He lived up in the attic, where the rooms were twelve roubles apiece.

Their landlady introduced Senka as Mr Spidorov, a Moscow merchant-trader, although when they agreed terms for the room, he’d just called himself a trading man. Of course ‘merchant-trader’ sounded much better.

This George started pestering him straight away, asking what kind of commerce he was engaged in at such a young age, and about his old mum and dad. When they served the sweet (it was called ‘dessert’), the student asked in a whisper whether he could borrow three roubles.

Naturally, Senka didn’t give him three roubles just like that, and he answered his questions vaguely, but he had an idea for how George could be useful.

Senka couldn’t learn everything from just one book. A tutor, that was what he needed.

He took George aside and started lying, saying he was a merchant’s son who had worked in his father’s business, he’d never had time to study. Now his old dad had died and left all his riches to his heir, but what had he, Semyon Spidorov, ever seen of life, apart from a shop counter? If he could fine someone good-hearted to teach him a few things – proper manners, French and other bits and pieces –then he would pay good money for the privilege.

The student listened carefully and took the hint, and they fixed terms for classes straight off. As soon as George heard Senka was going to pay a rouble an hour, he announced that he wouldn’t go to the institute and was ready to put himself entirely at Semyon Trofimovich’s disposal all day long.

What they agreed was this: one hour a day studying spelling and fine handwriting; an hour for French, an hour for arithmetic; lunch and dinner were for studying good manners; and the evening class was proper behaviour in society. Seeing as it was a bulk-supply contract, Senka arranged a discount for himself: four roubles a day all told. They were both satisfied.

They lost no time, starting straight after dinner with a trip to the ballet. Senka’s tails were hired for two roubles from the musician in the next room.

At the theatre Senka sat up straight without fidgeting, though he soon got tired of watching men in tight underpants jumping about all over the stage. When the girls came running out in transparent skirts, things got a bit more lively, but the music had a really sour edge to it. It would have been deadly boring if George hadn’t taken the magnifying glasses from the cloakroom (‘binoculars’, they were called). Senka got a good look at everything. First the thighs of the dancing girls, then who was sitting in the boxes round the hall, and then he let his fancy wander – a wart on the bald patch of the leader of the musicians, who was waving a stick at the orchestra, so they would keep better order. When everyone applauded, Senka stuck the binoculars under his arm and clapped his hands, too, louder than anyone else.

Spending seven roubles to sit in a prickly collar for three hours couldn’t be anybody’s idea of fun. He asked George if rich people went to get sweaty at the theatre every night. George reassured him: he said you could go just once a week. Well, that wasn’t too bad, and Senka cheered up a bit. It was like standing through mass on a Sunday if you were God-fearing.

From the ballet, they went to the bordello (that was the cultured name for a bawdy house), to learn proper manners with ladies.

Senka was really embarrassed by the lamps with silk shades and the soft couches with bouncy springs. Mamselle Loretta, who was sat on his knee, was plump and springy herself, and she smelled of sweet powder. She called Senka ‘sweety’ and ‘kitten’, then she led him into a room and started getting up to all sorts of tricks that Senka had never heard of, even from Prokha.

But he felt ashamed because the lamp was lit, and anyway, there was no way this fat pussycat Loretta had anything on Death.

Phooey!

After that, they spent a long time learning how to drink champagne: you put a strawberry in it, let it settle in and get well soaked, then fished it out with your lips. Then you downed the bubbly booze in one and started all over again.

Well, of course, in the morning his head was killing him. It was even worse than after vodka. But only until George called in.

George looked at his pupil’s agony, clicked his tongue and sent one of the servants out for champagne and pâté at once. They spread the pâté on white bread rolls and drank the wine straight from the bottle.

Senka felt a bit better.

‘Now we’ll do a bit of French, and for lunch we’ll go to a French restaurant to reinforce our knowledge,’ George told him, and licked his thick lips.

Well, this isn’t too shabby, Senka thought, feeling more relaxed. Not nearly as hard as it looks. The life of luxury is all right by me.

Story three. About his little brother Vanka

Senka enjoyed thinking about his two great dreams, imagining how everything would work out – with love and countless riches. But even with his present riches, which weren’t so very great, he could already make one dream – which had seemed impossible before –come true. He could appear in all his glory before his brother Vanka.

Of course, he couldn’t turn up out of the blue just like that: Hello, I’m your big brother, dressed to the nines, but I’m a slum boy through and through, can’t speak a single cultured word. What if Vanka despised his ignorance?

But he could get by without all that much learning in front of a little kid.

Right from the off, Senka had asked George to correct any words he got wrong when they were talking. And to make sure the student made the effort, he was relieved of five kopecks for every word corrected.

Naturally, he was only too glad to try his best. Almost every other word got a: ‘No, Semyon Trofimovich, in cultured society they don’t say collidor, it should be corridor’ – and he jotted down another cross on his special piece of paper. Afterwards, in the arithmetic lesson, Senka himself multiplied those little crosses by five. On the first of September 1900, he was stung for eighteen roubles and seventy-five kopecks – and he’d tried to be stingy, not say a single word more than he needed to get by. He started off talking like a book: ‘But in this case it seems to me that. . .’ And then shut his mouth.

Senka groaned at the huge sum, and demanded a reduction –from five kopecks to one.

On the second of September he forked out, that is, he paid out, four roubles and thirty-five kopecks.

On the third of September, it was three roubles and twelve kopecks.

By the fourth of September he’d copped on a bit, that is got the feel of things, and it was down to one rouble and ten kopecks, and on the fifth he escaped only ninety kopecks poorer.

Senka decided that was good enough for Vanka, it was time to go. He could now expound his opinions for five minutes with perfect ease. After all, God had given him a perfectly good memory.

According to society etiquette, first he ought to send Justice Kuvsh-innikov a letter, saying this and that, and I would like to call on Your Grace with a view to visiting my adored little brother Vanya. But he didn’t have the patience for that.

First thing in the morning Senka went to the dentist to have a gold tooth put in, and he packed George off to Tyoply Stan to warn them that in the afternoon, if His Grace was agreeable, Semyon Trofimovich Spidorov, the well-to-do merchant-trader, would call in person, for a family visit, so to speak. George dressed up in his student uniform, bought his uniform cap out of hock and set off.

Senka was extremely nervous (that is, he was in a real lather) in case the judge said: What the hell does my adopted son want with scummy relatives like that?

But it went off all right. George came back delighted with himself and announced that they were expecting him at three. So not for lunch, Senka twigged, but he didn’t take offence; on the contrary, he was glad, because he still wasn’t too good with table knives and telling the meat forks from the ones for fish and salad.

It said in the book: ‘When paying a visit to children, one should give them a present of sweets in a bonbonnier’, and Senka didn’t play the tightwad, that is he didn’t penny-pinch – he bought the very finest tin of chocolate from Perlov’s on Myasnitskaya Street, in the shape of the little humpbacked horse from the fairy tales.

He hired a shiny lacquered carriage for a five-rouble note, but his nerves were so bad he set out way too early, and at first he walked along the street with the carriage driving behind him.

He tried to step out the way the textbook said you should: ‘In the street, the well-bred, refined individual is easily distinguished. His gait is always steady and measured, his stride is confident. He walks straight ahead, without looking round, and only occasionally stops for a moment in front of shops, usually stays on the right-hand side of the road and looks neither up nor down, but several paces straight ahead of himself.’

He walked that way down Myasnitskaya Street, Lyubanka Street and Theatre Lane. And when he got a stiff neck from looking ahead of him all the time, he got into the carriage.

They drove as far as the apple orchards in Konkovo, all unhurried, but just before Tyoply Stan the passenger told the driver to put on some speed so they would drive up to the judge’s house at a spanking pace, looking good, with real chic.

He walked into the house in fine old fashion, said bonjour and bowed.

Judge Kuvshinnikov replied: ‘Hello, Semyon Spidorov,’ and asked him to take a seat.

Senka sat there modestly and politely. He took off his right glove, but not the left, the way you’re supposed to at the start of a visit, and put his hat on the floor, only without any napkin. And when he’d managed all that, he took a proper look at the judge.

Ippolit Ivanovich had got old, you could see that from close up. His horseshoe moustache had turned grey. The long hair hanging down below his ears was all white too. But his gaze was the same as ever: black and piercing.

Senka’s old dad used to say that in the whole wide world you could never find anyone cleverer than Judge Kuvshinnikov, and so, when he gazed into Ippolit Ivanovich’s stern eyes, Senka decided he would forget the rules of etiquette and behave with genuine courtesy, as he had been taught, not by George, and not by a book, but by a certain individual (we’ll get to him later, we’ve got ahead of ourselves).

This individual had told him that genuine courtesy was founded not on polite words, but on sincere respect: Respect any person as far as that is possible, until that person has shown himself unworthy of your respect.

Senka had thought about this strange assertion for a long time, and eventually explained it to himself like this: It’s better to flatter a bad man than offend a good one – wasn’t that it?

So he didn’t try to make polite conversation with the judge about the pleasantly cool weather; he said in all honesty, with a bow: ‘Thank you for raising my brother, an orphan, as your own son and not offending him in any way. And Jesus Christ will show you even greater gratitude for it.’

The judge leaned forward and said there was no need for thanks, Vanya brought himself and his wife nothing but joy and delight in their old age. He was a lively boy, with a tender heart and great abilities.

Well, that was that. Then they said nothing for a while.

Senka racked his brains – how could he bring the conversation round to seeing his little brother? He started sniffing with the strain of it, but immediately remembered that ‘the loud sniffing in of nasal fluid in company is absolutely impermissible’, and quickly pulled out his handkerchief to blow his nose.

The judge said: That friend of yours who called this morning said you were a “well-to-do merchant-trader” . . .’

Senka thrust out his chest, but not for long, because Ippolit Ivanovich went on like this: ‘Where did the money come from, for the shiny carriage, the frock coat and the top hat? I correspond with your guardian, Zot Larionovich Puzyrev. All these years I’ve been sending him a hundred roubles every three months for your keep, I receive reports. Puzyrev wrote that you didn’t want to study at the grammar school, that you are wild and ungrateful and consort with all sorts of riff-raff. And in his last letter he informed me that you had become a thief and a bandit.’

Senka was so taken by surprise that he leapt to his feet and shouted – it was stupid of course, he should have kept his mouth shut: ‘Me, a thief? When did he ever catch me?’

‘When they do catch you, Senya, it will be too late!’

‘I didn’t want to go to the grammar school? He was getting a hundred roubles for me?’

Senka choked. What a skunk his Uncle Zot was! Smashing those windows was too good for him, he should have set the house on fire!

‘So where does your wealth come from?’ the judge asked. ‘I have to know before I can let you see Vanka. Perhaps your frock coat was cut from blood and sewn with tears.’

‘It’s not cut from any blood. I found a treasure, an old one,’ Senka muttered, realising as he said it that no one would ever believe that.

So much for driving up in grand style and presenting his little brother with the sweets! His old dad was right: the judge was a clever man.

But Kuvshinnikov turned out to be even cleverer than that. He didn’t smack his lips in disbelief, he didn’t shake his head. He asked calmly: ‘What kind of treasure? Where from?’

‘Where from? From the Khitrovka basements, that’s where from,’ Senka replied sullenly. ‘There were some silver rods there, with a stamp on them. Five of them. They’re worth a lot of money.’

‘What kind of stamp?’

‘How would I know? Two letters: “Y” and “M”.’

The judge looked at Senka for a long time, without saying a word. Then he got up. ‘Let’s go into the library.’

That was a room covered all over from top to bottom with books. If all the books Senka had ever seen in his life were put together, there still probably wouldn’t be as many.

Kuvshinnikov climbed up a ladder and took a thick volume down off a shelf. He started leafing through from his perch.

‘Aha,’ he said.

Then: ‘Hmmm. Yes, yes.’

He looked at Senka over the top of his specs and asked. ‘“YM”, you say? And where did you find the treasure? Not in the Serebryanniki district, was it?’

‘No, in Khitrovka, honest to God,’ said Senka, crossing himself.

Ippolit Ivanovich climbed down the ladder quickly, put the book on a table and went over to a picture that was hanging on the wall. It was a queer-looking picture, like a drawing of the way pork carcasses were butchered that Senka had once seen in a German meat shop.

‘Here, take a look. This is a map of Moscow. This is Khitrovka, and this is Serebryanniki, the lane and the embankment. It’s just a stone’s throw from Khitrovka.’

Senka went over and tried to take it in. Just to be on the safe side, he said: ‘Of course.’

But the judge wasn’t looking at Senka, he was muttering away to himself: ‘Why, yes! In the seventeenth century that’s where the Silversmiths’ Quarter used to be, the place where the master craftsmen from the Yauza Mint lived. What do your rods look like? Like this?’

He dragged Senka across to the table where the book was. In a picture Senka saw a rod exactly like the ones he’d sold to the jeweller. And a big picture of the end, with the letters ‘MM’.

‘The “MM” means “Moscow Mint”,’ Kuvshinnikov explained. It was also called the New Mint or the English Mint. In the olden days Russia didn’t have much silver of its own, so they used to buy European coins – joachimsthalers, or yefimoks. Senka nodded again at the familiar word, but this time in earnest. ‘They melted the thalers down and made silver rods like that, then they drew them out into wire, cut pieces off it, flattened them and minted kopecks –“scales”, they were called. A lot of kopecks have survived, and even more thalers, but there are no silver billets, or rods, left at all. Well, naturally – they all were all used up.’

‘What about this one?’ asked Senka, pointing to the picture.

‘Well done,’ the judge said approvingly. ‘You use your head. Quite right, Spidorov. Only one rod came down to our times, minted at the Moscow or New Mint.’

Senka thought about that.

‘Why would those silversmiths have dumped the billets and not stamped coins out of them?’

Kuvshinnikov shrugged. ‘It’s a mystery.’ His eyes weren’t narrow and piercing now, they were wide-open and glowing, as if the judge was really surprised or delighted. ‘Although it’s not that great a mystery, if you give it a little thought. A lot of stealing went on in the seventeenth century, even more so than now. Look here, it says in the encyclopedia . . .’ – and he ran his hand down the page; ‘“For so-called ‘smelting losses’ the craftsmen were beaten mercilessly with a knout, and some had their nostrils torn out, but they were not dismissed, because silversmiths were in short supply”. Clearly they didn’t beat them hard enough if someone made a secret hoard of silver “lost in smelting”. Or perhaps it wasn’t the craftsmen they should have beaten, but the clerks.’

The judge turned to his book. Suddenly he whistled. Senka was really surprised: a man like that, and him whistling.

‘Senya, how did much did you sell your rods for?’

Senka didn’t see the point in lying. Kuvshinnikov was a rich man himself, he wouldn’t be jealous.

‘Four hundred.’

‘It says here that fifty years ago, at an auction in London, this bar was acquired by a collector for seven hundred pounds sterling. That’s seven thousand roubles, and in today’s money probably a lot more.’

Senka’sjaw dropped. Why, that Ashot Ashotovich, what a snake!

‘You see, Spidorov, if you’d given your treasure to the state treasury

‘What joy would I get out of that?’ Senka snarled, still smarting at the jeweller’s treachery.

‘Well, the silver was stolen from the treasury. It may have been two hundred years ago, but it’s the same state, still Russia. For handing over a treasure trove to the authorities, according to the law, the finder is entitled to a third of its value. So for your five bars, you would have received a lot more than just two thousand. And in addition you would have been an honest man, helping your motherland.’

Senka was about to say that could be put right – but he bit his tongue just in time. He would have to think long and hard before he started blabbing. Kuvshinnikov was sharp-witted, he’d worm the whole thing out of him in a trice.

The looks the judge was giving Senka were knowing enough as it was.

‘All right,’ said Kuvshinnikov. ‘Just give a little thought to where you’d take the bars, if you happened to find any more: to a fence or to the treasury. If you decide to follow the law, I’ll tell you how to do it. The newspapers will write about your patriotism.’

‘About what?’

‘About you not just filling your belly, but loving your homeland, that’s what.’

Senka wasn’t too sure about the homeland part. Where was his homeland, anyway? Sukharevka, was it, or Khitrovka? Why should he love those lousy dives?

Then Kuvshinnnikov surprised him again. He sighed. ‘So, Zot lied to me about the grammar school. And about everything else too, no doubt. . . Very well, he’ll answer to me for that.’

The judge turned sad and hung his grey head. ‘Forgive me, Senya, for buying off my conscience with a hundred roubles. I could have called to check how you were getting on at least once. When your father died, I wanted to take both of you in, but Puzyrev clung on to you like grim death – he’s my nephew, he said, my sister’s flesh and blood. But it would seem money was the only thing on his mind.’

Senka’s thoughts briefly turned away from money to something completely different: how would everything have turned out if he’d been taken in by Judge Kuvshinninkov instead of Uncle Zot?

But what point was there in eating his heart out now?

Senka asked sullenly: ‘Won’t you let me see Vanka?’

The judge paused for a moment before he answered. ‘Well now, you’ve spoken to me honestly, and you’re not an entirely hopeless case. So yes, you can see each other. Why shouldn’t you? Vanya’s French lesson has just finished. Go to the nursery. The maid will show you the way.’

And Senka needn’t have worried about his little brother.

When they told Vanka his big brother had arrived, he ran out to meet him, jumped right up and threw his arms round Senka’s neck.

‘Aha! I did it, I wrote him a letter! Senya, you look just the way I imagined you!’ Then he corrected himself. ‘Not imagined, remembered. You haven’t changed at all, even the tie’s still the same!’

What a brazen liar the little scamp was!

Senka gave him the bonbonnier and some other presents: binoculars and a penknife – the same one, with the nail file on it. Of course, Vanka immediately forgot all about his brother and started fiddling with the blades – but that was all right, kids will be kids.

Senka shook the judge’s hand when he said goodbye and promised to come again in a couple of days.

He walked back almost all the way to the Kaluga Gate, deep in thought.

Seven thousand a rod! If he didn’t force down the price, he could live like a king for a whole year – on just one rod.

He had to put his wits to work, use that noggin a bit.

As a certain individual, who has already been mentioned, had taught him: ‘He who think rittur, cry man’ tears.’

Story Four. About the Japanese man Masa

Meaning: ‘He who thinks little, cries many tears’. This individual could not pronounce the Russian ‘l’ because there was no such letter in the language where he was from. But apparently they managed somehow, they got by.

So now it is time to tell you about Senka’s other teacher, who wasn’t hired, but self-appointed.

It happened like this.

The day after the ballet, when Senka was feeling unwell first thing in the morning, and then was cured by champagne and pate, he had an unexpected visitor.

There was a knock on the door – a quiet, well-mannered knock. He thought it was the landlady.

But when he opened the door he saw the Japanese, from yesterday.

Senka got an awful fright. Now the Jap would start belting him and asking why he had scampered off before being called to account for his stealing.

The Japanese said hello and asked: ‘Why you trembur?’

Senka told him straight: ‘I’m trembling because I’m afraid for my life. Afraid you might do me in, mister.’

The Japanese was surprised: ‘You mean, Senka-kun, that you afrai’ of death?’

‘Who isn’t afraid of it?’ Senka answered. The question sounded like a threat, and Senka backed away towards the window. He’d thought maybe he could leap from the window. But it was a bit on the high side, otherwise he’d definitely have jumped.

The Japanese continued to put the wind up Senka – making out he was even more surprised. ‘Why be afrai’? You no’ afrai’ to sreep at nigh’, are you?’

After a dark hint like that, Senka stopped feeling afraid of the height. He backed off all the way to the window and opened the curtain, as if he needed some air. Now if anyone tried to kill him, he could jump up on the windowsill in a single bound.

‘But when you sleep,’ he said, ‘you know you’re going to wake up in the morning.’

‘An’ wake up afta death too. If you rive good rife, waking up wirr be good.’

So now he was playing the priest! That was a bit much, a heathen preaching to a baptised Christian about heaven and resurrection!

With the window so close now, Senka felt a bit bolder: ‘How did you find me?’ he asked. ‘Do you know some magic word?’

‘I know. It carred “roubur”. I gave boy roubur, an’ he forrow you.’

‘What boy?’ asked Senka, startled.

Masa pointed to a spot about two and a half feet off the floor. ‘Rittur boy. Snot face. But run fast.’

The Japanese glanced round the room and nodded approvingly. ‘Werr done, Senka-kun, for moving here. It crose to Asheurov Rane.’

Senka twigged – he meant Asheulov Lane, where he and Erast Petrovich had their lodgings. It really wasn’t far.

‘What do you want from me? I gave back the beads, didn’t I?’ he whined.

‘Master tord me to come,’ Masa explained sternly, almost solemnly, then sighed. ‘An’ you, Senka-kun, rike me. When I was rike you, I was rittur bandit too. If I not meet Master, I woul’ grow into big bandit. He is my teacher. And I wirr be your teacher.’

‘I’ve already got a teacher,’ Senka growled (he’d lost his fear of death).

‘What lessons he give you?’ Masa asked, livening up. (Well, actually, he said ‘ ressons’, but Senka had already learned to make out his queer way of talking.)

‘Well, there’s good manners . . .’

The short-ass was delighted at that. That was the most important thing, he said. And he explained about genuine politeness, which was based on sincere respect for every person.

At the very height of the explanation, a fly started buzzing about over Senka’s head. The rotten pest kept flying round and round, it just wouldn’t leave him alone. The Japanese jumped up in the air, waved his arm and caught the insect in his fist.

His agile speed made Senka squeal out loud and squat right down – he thought Masa was trying to kill him.

Masa looked down at Senka doubled up on the floor and asked what he was doing. ‘I was afraid you’d hit me.’

‘What for?’

Senka said with a sob in his voice: ‘Everyone wants to hurt a poor orphan.’

The Japanese raised one finger like a teacher. You need to know how to defend yourself, he said. Especially if you’re an orphan.

‘Yeah, but how do I learn?’

The Japanese laughed. Who was it, he asked, who said he didn’t need a teacher? Do you want me to teach you how to defend yourself?

Senka recalled the way the Oriental flung his arms and legs about, and he wanted to do that too. ‘That wouldn’t be bad,’ he said. ‘But I reckon nifty battering’s difficult, ain’t it?’

Masa walked over to the window and set the captured fly free. No, he said, battering people’s not difficult. Learning the Way, that’s what difficult.

(It was only later Senka realised he’d said the word ‘Way’ like it was written with a big letter, but at the time he didn’t twig.)

‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘Learning what?’

Masa started explaining the Way. He said life was a road from birth to death and you had to walk that road the right way, or else at the end of the journey you wouldn’t have got anywhere and afterwards it was too late to complain. If you crawled along the road like a fly, then in the next life you’d be born a fly, like the one that was just buzzing round the room. And if you crept along through the dust, you’d be born a snake.

Senka thought that was just fancy talk. He didn’t know then that Masa was serious when he talked about flies and snakes.

‘And what’s the right way to walk the road?’ asked Senka.

It turned out that doing it right was a kind of self-torture. First of all, when you woke up in the morning, you had to say to yourself: ‘Today death is waiting for me’ – and not feel afraid. And you had to think about it – death, that is – all the time. Because you never knew when your journey would come to an end, and you always had to be ready.

Senka closed his eyes and said the special words, and he wasn’t frightened at all, because he saw Death in front of him, looking incredibly beautiful. (Why be afraid, if she was waiting for you?)

But the more he learnt, the worse it got.

You couldn’t tell lies, you couldn’t doss about doing nothing, you couldn’t sleep on a feather bed (no mollycoddling yourself at all!) and you had to torture and torment yourself, toughen yourself up and in general really put yourself through it.

Senka listened and listened, and decided he didn’t want to go through all that agony. He’d already seen more than enough poverty and hunger – in fact he’d only just got a whiff of real life.

‘Ain’t there any simpler way, without the Way? Just so you can fight?

Masa was upset by that question, he shook his head. There is, he said, but then you’ll never beat a tiger, only a jackal.

‘Never mind, a jackal’s good enough for me,’ Senka declared. ‘I can walk round a tiger, me legs won’t fall off.’

Well, that made the Japanese even more sorrowful. ‘Damn your lazy soul,’ he said. ‘But take off your jacket and you can have your first resson.’

And he started teaching Senka the right way to fall if someone smashed you hard in the face.

Senka learned the skill quickly: he fell correctly, tumbled right over backwards and back up on his feet, and all the time he was waiting for Masa to ask him where a Khitrovka ragamuffin got so much money.

He never did.

But before he left, Masa said: ‘The master asks if you want to tell him anything, Senka-kun? No? Then sayonara.’

That was how they said ‘see you later’.

And he got into the habit of coming to the boarding house, never missed a day.

If Senka went down to breakfast, Masa was already there, sitting by the samovar, all red from drinking tea, and the landlady was serving him more jam. When he was there, strict Madam Borisenko went all soppy and started blushing. How come he affected her like that?

Then afterwards the Japanese gymnastics lesson began. Truth be told, Masa spent more time jabbering away than teaching him anything useful. The wily Oriental was obviously still trying to drag Senka on to that Way of his.

For example, he was teaching Senka to leap down off the roof of the shed. Senka had climbed up all right, but he couldn’t jump, he was afraid. It was fifteen feet! He’d break his leg!

Masa stood beside him, preaching. It’s the fear that’s stopping you, he said. Drive it away, a man doesn’t need it. All it does is stop your head and your body doing their job. You know how to jump, don’t you? I showed you, I explained. So don’t be afraid, your head and your body will just do it if fear doesn’t stop them.

Easily said!

‘So isn’t there anything in the world you’re afraid of, Sensei?’ That was what Senka had to call him, ‘sensei’. It meant ‘teacher’. ‘I didn’t think there was anybody who didn’t have any fear.’

The answer was: There are some people, but not many. The master, for instance, he’s not afraid of anything. But there is one thing that I am very much afraid of.

Senka felt a bit better when he heard that. ‘What? Dead men?’

No, said Masa. I’m afraid the master will put his trust in me and I’ll disappoint him, let him down. Because of my stupidity or circumstances beyond my control. I’m terribly afraid of that, he said. All right, stupidity lessens as the years go by. But only the Buddha has power over circumstances.

‘Who does?’ Senka asked.

Masa pointed one finger towards the sky. ‘Buddha.’

‘Ah-ha, Jesus Christ.’

The Japanese nodded. That’s why, he said, I pray to him every day. Like this.

He closed his narrow eyes, folded his hands and started droning something through his nose. Then he translated it: ‘I trust in the Buddha and do everything I can.’ That was their prayer in Japan, he said.

‘That ain’t Japanese. Trust in God and do right yourself.’

They talked divine matters one other time too.

A lot of flies had appeared in Senka’s room. They’d obviously come in for crumbs – he’d become a real fiend for guzzling fancy pastries.

Masa didn’t like flies. He caught them, like a cat with its paw, but as for squashing or swatting them – not on your life. He always carried them to the window and let them fly away.

Senka asked him: ‘Why do you take all that trouble with them, Sensei? Just swat them, and the job’s done.’

And the answer was: You shouldn’t kill anyone if you don’t have to kill them.

‘Not even a fly?’

It makes no difference, Masa said. A soul is always a soul, no two ways about it. Now it’s a fly, but if it leads a good life as a fly, in the next it could be a man. Someone like you, for instance.

Senka took offence.

‘What’s that mean, like me? Maybe like you.’

What Masa said to that was: ‘If you go giving your teacher lip, you’ll definitely be a fly after you die. Come on now, he said, dodge. And he smacked Senka in the face so fast, there was no way you could dodge it. It fair set his ears ringing.’

That was how Senka learned Japanese wisdom.

And every day, at the end of the session, his strange teacher would ask the same thing: Didn’t he have a message for his master?

Senka batted his eyelids and kept mum. He couldn’t figure out what the master was getting at. Was it about the treasure? Or was it something else?

Masa didn’t pester him, though. He waited for about half a minute, nodded, said his ‘sayonara’ and went off home.

The days flew by fast. A lesson of gymnastics, a lesson of French, reinforced by a session in a French restaurant, then a stroll round the shops and another lesson, on elegant manners, with George, and then it was time for dinner and the practical class. ‘Practical class’ was what George called trips to the operetta, the dance hall, the bordello or some other society gathering place.

In the mornings Senka slept late, and by the time he had got up and washed, Masa was ready and waiting. And off he went again, just like a squirrel in a cage.

A couple of times, instead of his practical class, he dropped into Khitrovka to see Tashka – after dark, and not wearing any frock coat or tails, of course, but in his old clothes. Apache style, as George said.

This was how he did it.

He hired a steady, sober cabby on Trubnaya Street – the cabby had to have a number – and drove to Lubyanka Square with him. He got changed right there in the cab, with the leather hood pulled right down low.

Transformed from a merchant trader into an Apache, he left the driver to wait. Not a bad deal –just sit there, sleep if you like, for a rouble an hour. The only condition was, he mustn’t move from the box, or the clothes would be nicked off the seat in a flash.

Stubborn Tashka wouldn’t take any of the money Senka tried to give her. And she wouldn’t give up her whore’s trade, because she was proud. Who takes money from men, she said – not for working, but just like that? A moll or a wife. I can’t come and be your moll, because you and me, we’re mates. And I won’t be your wife, on account of the frenchies (not that Senka had asked her to marry him – Tashka thought that up all by herself). I’ll earn as much as I need. And if it’s not enough, then you can help me, as a mate.

But Senka’s tales of the high life had sparked Tashka’s ambition or, rather, her vanity. She’d decided she wanted to make a career as well – move up from a street mamselle to a ‘grammar school girl’, especially since she was the right age for it.

‘Grammar school girls’ didn’t walk the streets, a madame supplied their clients for them. Compared with a street whore’s work, it was much easier and the money was far better.

The first thing she had to do was buy a grammar school uniform, with a cape, but Tashka had money set aside for that.

She already knew a madame too. An honest woman, reliable, who took only a third as her cut. And there was no end of clients who set store by grammar school girls. All respectable men, getting on a bit, men with money.

She had only one problem, the same one as Senka had: not enough culture to conduct a classy conversation. After all, the client had to believe he’d been brought a genuine grammar school girl and not a dressed-up mamselle, didn’t he?

That was why Tashka had started learning French words and all sorts of elegant expressions. She’d made up her life story, and she started reciting it to Senka. She wasn’t sure of all the words yet, so she kept glancing at a piece of paper. Tashka was supposed to be in the fourth class at grammar school, and an inspector had seduced her and plucked the flower of her innocence, taught her all sorts of tricks, and now, behind Mama and Papa’s back, she was earning money for sweets and cakes with her female charms.

Senka listened to the story and, as a man with experience of society, suggested a few improvements. He advised her most ardently to take out the swear words.

Tashka was surprised by this advice. As a Khitrovka girl, she couldn’t tell the difference between decent expressions and obscene ones. Then he wrote down all the dirty words on a piece of paper for her, so she could remember them. Tashka took her head in her hands and started repeating *****, *****, *****, *****, *****. Senka’s ears had got used to cultured or, to put it even better, civilised conversation, and they fairly wilted on his head.

Tashka had bought herself a poodle with the last money Senka had given her. The dog was small and white, very frisky, and he sniffed at absolutely everything. He recognised Senka the second time he saw him and started jumping up at him in delight. He could tell all Tashka’s flowers apart and had a special way of yapping for each one. His name was Pomponius, or just plain Pomposhka.

When Senka called round to see Tashka the second time – to tell her about how he’d seen his little brother and show her his new tooth (and there was one other thing, a money matter), the working girl lashed out: ‘What have you shown up here for? Didn’t you see I’ve got a red poppy in the window? Have you forgot what that means? I taught you! Danger, that’s what! Don’t come to Khitrovka, the Prince is looking for you!’

Senka knew that already, but how could he not come? After his society studies, and especially George’s practical classes, he had barely a quarter of the two thousand roubles left. He’d blown fifteen hundred in a week – that was an absolute disaster for him. He needed to restore his financial status urgently.

So he went down underground and restored it.

He wanted to take two rods, but changed his mind and took only one. No point in flashing it about just for the sake of it. Money to spare needs good care. It was time he started following that principle.

The jeweller Ashot Ashotovich greeted Senka like his long-lost brother. He left the parrot to keep an eye on the shop, took his guest in behind the curtain and treated him to cognac and biscuits. Senka gnawed on his biscuits and sipped on his cognac in a most cultured fashion, then he showed the jeweller the rod, but he didn’t led him hold it. Instead of four hundred roubles, he asked for a thousand. Now, would this shark pay up or not?

Samshitov gave him a thousand, all right, didn’t even say a word.

So what it said in Judge Kuvshinnikov’s book, about the real price, was true.

The jeweller kept pouring the cognac. He thought the Khitrovka halfwit would get drunk and let something slip. He asked whether there would be more rods and when that might be.

Senka was cunning with him. ‘That’s the last rod for a thousand, there was only one. You put me in touch with the client, Mr Samshitov, perhaps then more will turn up.’

Ashot Ashotovich blinked his ink-black eyes and sniffed a bit. But he knew his days of taking Senka for a ride were over.

‘What about my commission?’ he asked.

‘The regular rate, twenty per cent.’

Ashot Ashotovich started getting agitated. Twenty’s not enough, he said. Only I know the real clients, you can’t find them without me. You have to give me thirty per cent.

They haggled and settled on twenty-five.

Senka left the jeweller his address, so he could send word when anything came up, and left feeling very pleased with himself.

Samshitov called after him: ‘So I can hope, Mr Spidorov?’

And the parrot Levonchik squawked: ‘Mr Spidorov! Mr Spidorov!’

He went back to the cab and changed into his decent clothes, but he didn’t ride home in the carriage, he walked. He was going to be prudent from now on. An extra half-rouble was no great expense, of course, but he had to stick to the principle.

On the corner of Tsvetnoi Boulevard he looked round – he had a strange feeling he was being watched.

And who was the figure under a street lamp but his old friend Prokha! Had he followed him from Khitrovka, then?

Senka went dashing over to Prokha and grabbed hold of him by the sides. ‘Give me back the timepiece, you louse!’

He’d been walking around for almost a week with a new timepiece, but Prokha wasn’t to know that. If you stole from your own, you had to answer for it.

‘You’re dolled up very handsome, Speedy.’ Prokha hissed, and pulled himself free with a jerk. ‘Looking for a poke in the mug, are you?’

He slipped his hand in his pocket – and Senka knew he had the lead bar in there, or something even worse.

Suddenly there was the sound of a whistle and tramping feet, and a constable came rushing towards them – to protect the decent young man from the urchin.

Prokha shot off up Zvonarny Lane, into the darkness.

That’s right, you ragged prole. This ain’t Khitrovka, this is a nice decent neighbourhood. He shuddered at the idea – ‘a poke in the mug’.