VI

They reached Alupka in silence. All the way the old man groaned and sighed, while Sergei still wore his angry, determined look. They put up for the night at a dingy Turkish coffee-house that bore the splendid name of “Yildiz,” or “Star.” For night companions they had Greek stone-cutters, Turkish navvies, a few Russian workmen who kept body and soul together by doing odd jobs, and several of the shady tramps of whom there are so many in southern Russia. As soon as the coffee-house closed at the usual hour they all lay down on the benches which lined the walls, and also on the floor; the more experienced took the necessary precaution of putting their clothes, and anything else of value, under their heads.

It was well past midnight when Sergei, who had been lying on the floor beside the old man, rose quietly and began to dress. Pale moonlight poured in through the wide windows; it lay on the floor in a slanting pattern, and in it the faces of the sprawling men looked tormented and dead.

“Vere you koing at zis time of night, boy?” Ibrahim, the young Turk who owned the coffee-house, called sleepily to Sergei.

“Let me out, I must go!” Sergei replied in a stern, business-like tone. “Get up, now, you Turkish clod!”

Ibrahim unlocked the door, yawning, scratching himself and clicking his tongue reproachfully. The narrow streets of the Tatar section were sunk in an intense dark blue shade that covered the roadway and with its jagged edge reached the foot of the houses opposite, whose low walls showed very white in the moonlight. Dogs were barking on the far outskirts of the town. The resounding clatter of an ambling horse came from somewhere on the upper highway.

The boy walked past the white mosque with the green onion-shaped dome, surrounded by a silent group of dark cypresses, and went to the highway down a narrow, crooked lane. He wore nothing but his tights, so as to move more easily. The moon beat down on his back, and his shadow ran ahead of him in a black, strangely shortened silhouette. From the dark curly shrubs which crouched on both sides of the highway, a bird called monotonously at regular intervals, in a tenuous voice, “Sleep! Sleep!” It seemed as if the bird were obediently guarding some melancholy secret in the still night, trying in vain to overcome drowsiness and fatigue, and sending forth its hopeless plaint, “Sleep! Sleep!” And above the dark shrubs and the bluish tops of the distant forests, the Ai-Petri peak thrust its twin prongs skywards, looking as light and clearcut and airy as if it had been made from a giant piece of silvery cardboard.

Sergei was awed by the majestic silence, in which his steps rang so sharply and audaciously, but at the same time a kind of tickling, dizzy courage filled his heart. As the road curved the sea sprang into view. Immense and placid, it heaved with calm dignity. A narrow, shimmering silvery path stretched to the shore from the horizon; it was lost to sight out at sea, with only occasional spangles flashing here and there, but just short of the beach it spread out like a liquid, glittering metal band, running along the entire shore.

Noiselessly Sergei stole into the park through the wooden wicket. It was quite dark in there, under the dense trees. A restless brook murmured in the distance, and you could sense its damp, cool breath. The wooden floor of a bridge thudded loudly under the boy’s feet. The water beneath it was black and terrible. Here at last was the high iron gate, patterned like lacework and entwined by the creeping stalks of wistarias. Cutting through the foliage of the trees, the moonlight glided over the fretwork in feeble phosphorescent spots. Beyond was darkness and a timid, alert silence.

For a few seconds Sergei wavered, feeling almost afraid. But he overcame the sensation and whispered, “I’ll get in just the same! It’s all one!”

The gate was not difficult to climb. The elegant castiron scrolls of the pattern served as dependable supports for his tenacious hands and small muscular feet. A broad stone arch topped the gate at a great height. Sergei groped his way up on to it, then, lying flat on his belly, lowered his feet on the other side, and began to push down the whole of his body, at the same time feeling with his feet for some support. Then he was hanging from the arch, with only his fingers clinging to the edge, but still he found no foothold. It had not occurred to him that the arch over the gate projected much more deeply inside than it did outside, and terror gripped his heart as his hands grew numb and his weakening body heavier.

At last he could hold on no longer. His fingers let go the sharp edge and he hurtled down.

He heard the coarse gravel crunch under his weight and felt a sharp pain in his knees. Stunned by the fall, he stood for a few seconds on all fours. It seemed to him that all the people in the villa were going to wake up, the gloomy gate-keeper in the pink shirt would come running, and there would be a general turmoil. But the silence in the garden was as profound and solemn as before. He could hear only a low, monotonous hum filling the garden.

“Why, it’s the ringing in-my ears,” he guessed. He rose, to his feet; the garden, which seemed full of aromatic dreams, was terrible and mysterious and beautiful as in a fairy-tale. Flowers hardly visible in the dark swayed gently in the beds, bending to each other with vague anxiety, as if whispering among themselves and spying on him. The slender, fragrant cypresses slowly shook their pointed tops, with a pensive and reproachful air. And in the dense shrubs beyond the brook, the weary little bird kept on wrestling with drowsiness and repeating its submissive plaint, “Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!”

Sergei did not recognize the place at night, amid the tangle of shadows that lay on the walks. He wandered long on the crunching gravel until he came to the house.

Never before in his life had the boy felt so painfully, so completely helpless and forsaken. The house seemed full of merciless crouching enemies stealthily watching through the dark windows every movement of the small, weak boy, and smiling maliciously as they silently waited for some signal, for someone’s angry, thunderous command.

“Not in the house – it can’t be in the house,” the boy whispered, as in a dream. “It would howl in the house and bother everybody.”

He walked round the villa. In the wide courtyard behind it there were several buildings that were less elaborate than the house and were probably occupied by the servants. As in the big house, there was no light in any of the windows, except that the dark panes reflected the moon with a ghastly, uneven shine. “I’ll never get out of here, never!” Sergei thought in anguish. For an instant he recalled Lodizhkin and the old hurdy-gurdy, the nights spent in coffee-houses, the meals taken at cool springs. “There won’t be any more of that!” he said to himself sadly. But as his thoughts grew hopeless fear gave way in his heart to a dull, grim despair.

Suddenly a thin yelp that sounded like a groan caught his ear. The boy halted on tiptoe, with bated breath, his muscles taut. The sound was repeated. It seemed to come from a stone cellar near where he was standing. Treading on a flower parterre, the boy stepped up to the wall in which there were some crude rectangular glassless holes. He put his face against one of these and whistled. There was a slight noise somewhere below, but it died away at once.

“Arto! Arto!” Sergei called, in a tremulous whisper.

Instantly a frantic, broken barking filled the whole garden, echoing in its every corner. There was complaint and anger and physical pain in it, combined with a joyous welcome. The boy could hear the dog trying to break loose from something that held him in the dark cellar.

“Arto! Doggie! Arto dear!” the boy responded tearfully.

“Shut up, blast you!” came a harsh boom from below. “You damned nuisance!”

There was a thump in the cellar. The dog gave a long, broken howl.

“Don’t you dare to beat him! Don’t dare to beat the dog, you beast!” Sergei screamed in a frenzy, scratching the stone wall with his nails.

All that happened next Sergei could remember only dimly afterwards, as if he had been delirious. The cellar door crashed open, and the gate-keeper rushed out. Barefoot and with nothing on but his underwear, his bearded face livid in the bright moonlight, he appeared to Sergei as a giant, an enraged ogre.

“Who is there? I’ll shoot you down!” his voice thundered in the garden. “Catch the thief! Help!”

But just then Arto darted like a white bouncing ball out of the dark doorway, barking. A bit of cord dangled from his neck.

However, the boy had no time for the dog. The formidable appearance of the gate-keeper had gripped him with a supernatural terror, bound his feet, and paralyzed his small, slight body. Luckily the stupor did not last long. Almost unconsciously, Sergei gave a desperate shriek and, mad with fear, started to run blindly away from the cellar.

He sped on like a hare, his feet suddenly becoming as strong as two steel springs. Arto raced alongside him, barking happily. The gate-keeper, cursing furiously, tore along behind them.

Sergei ran into the gate but instantly sensed rather than realized that there was no way out there. There was a dark narrow pathway between the white stone wall and the cypresses growing along it. Without hesitating, and prompted by fear alone, he ducked, dashed into it, and ran along the wall. The sharp cypress needles, smelling pungently of resin, lashed him across the face. He tripped on roots and fell and bruised his hands more than once, but he rose again and sped on, unaware of the pain, almost doubled up, deaf to his own cries. Arto shot after him.

Thus, like a little animal caught in an endless, snare and mad with terror, he scampered along the narrow passage formed by the high wall on one side and the serried row of cypresses on the other. His mouth was dry and each gasping breath pricked his chest with a thousand needles. He heard the gate-keeper’s footsteps to the right and then to the left, and, losing his head completely, he now rushed forward, now turned back again, passing the gate repeatedly and plunging afresh into the dark, narrow pathway.

At last he was spent. A cold, mortal anguish, a dull indifference to all danger, took hold of him despite his wild terror. He sat down under a tree, leaned his exhausted body against its trunk, and shut his eyes. Closer and closer crunched the sand under his enemy’s heavy feet. Arto was whining softly, his nose on Sergei’s knees.

Boughs pushed apart rustled two yards from the boy. He looked up involuntarily, and suddenly bounded to his feet, beside himself with joy. He had not noticed until then that the wall opposite the place where he had been sitting was no more than three and a half feet high. Its top was studded with bits of bottle glass stuck into lime, but that did not stop Sergei. In the twinkling of an eye he seized Arto and stood him with his forefeet on the top of the wall. The clever dog understood perfectly what was wanted. He clambered up on the wall, wagged his tail, and started to bark triumphantly.

Sergei followed him just as a hulking dark figure emerged from the parted cypress boughs. Two lithe forms – the dog’s and the boy’s – jumped softly on to the road. Savage, foul curses came after them in a filthy torrent.

Whether because the gate-keeper was slower than the two friends or because he was tired chasing about the garden, or because he had lost hope of catching the fugitives; he gave up the pursuit. Nevertheless, the two ran for long without stopping to rest, both of them strong and agile, as if borne on wings by the joy of deliverance. The poodle soon regained his habitual playfulness. Sergei still glanced back fearfully now and then, but Arto leapt up at him in glee, shaking his ears and the bit of cord, and trying hard to lick the boy’s face.

Sergei did not recover his calm until they reached the spring where they had taken their meal the day before. Dog and boy put their mouths to the cool fountain and drank long and deeply of the fresh, delicious water. They would push each other aside, raise their heads momentarily to draw breath, the water trickling from their lips, and bend over the fountain with renewed thirst, unable to pull away from it. And when they finally tore themselves away and walked on, the water splashed and gurgled in their overfilled bellies. They were out of danger, all the terrors of the night were gone, and it was a pleasure to walk along the white road bright with moonshine, between dark shrubs that were already drenched with morning dew, their refreshed leaves smelling sweetly.

At the coffee-house Ibrahim greeted the boy with a reproachful whisper, “Vass ze idea of kadding about, boy? Vass ze idea? Iss a bad sing you did, very bad.”

Sergei did not want to wake up the old man, but Arto did it for him. Instantly he found the old man among the forms huddled on the floor, and before Lodizhkin knew what was happening the dog, yelping happily, had licked him all over the face. The old man woke up; he saw the cord round the poodle’s neck, and the boy lying covered with dust by his side, and he understood. He asked Sergei how it all had come about, but the boy was already asleep, his arms thrown apart and his mouth wide open.

1904