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Каверин, Вениамин - Каверин - Два капитана (engl)

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юЕКСВЙСК хВЮЕНСК. дЮВ ХВМСОВКВ (engl)

Veniamin Kaverin. Two captains


     Translation from the Russian

     Translated by Bernard Isaacs

     /Abridged by Author/

     ю. хвюенск

     дюв хвмсовкв

     /Ю ЗЛХНВЬЕКСС ВЮОЛНВ/

     кВ ВКФИСУЗХЛЙ ГЖЭХЕ


     First edition 1945

     сЖДВОЕИЫЗОЮЛ иСОЕНВОЪНЭ КВ сКЛЗОНВККЭЯ гЖЭХВЯ

     сЗОЛАКСХ: Russica Miscellanea http://home.freeuk.net/russica2/


     CONTENTS

     Author's Preface

     BOOK ONE

     PART ONE. Childhood

     CHAPTER ONE. The Letter. In Search of the Blue Crab

     CHAPTER TWO. Father

     CHAPTER THREE. ThePetition

     CHAPTER FOUR. The Village

     CHAPTER FIVE. Doctor Ivan Ivanovich. I Learn to Speak

     CHAPTER SIX. Father's Death. I Refuse to Speak

     CHAPTER SEVEN. Mother

     CHAPTER EIGHT. Pyotr Skovorodnikov

     CHAPTER NINE. Stroke, Stroke, Stroke, Five, Twenty, a Hundred

     CHAPTER TEN. Aunt Dasha

     CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Talk with Pyotr

     CHAPTER TWEL VE. Scaramouch Joins the Death Battalion

     CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Journey's End

     CHAPTER FOURTEEN. We Run Away. I Pretend to Be Asleep

     CHAPTER FIFTEEN. To Strive, to Seek, to Find and Not to Yield

     CHAPTER SIXTEEN. My First Flight

     CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. Clay Modelling

     CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. Nikolai Antonich

     PART TWO. Food for Thought

     CHAPTER ONE. I Listen to Fairy-Tales

     CHAPTER TWO. School

     CHAPTER THREE. The Old Lady From Ensk

     CHAPTER FOUR. More Food for Thought.

     CHAPTER FIVE. Is There Salt in Snow?

     CHAPTER SIX. I Go Visiting

     CHAPTER SEVEN. The Tatarinovs

     CHAPTER EIGHT. Korablev Proposes

     CHAPTER NINE. The Rejected Suito

     CHAPTER TEN. I Go Away

     CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Serious Talk

     CHAPTER TWELVE. I Start Thinking

     CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Silver Fifty-Kopeck Piece

     PART THREE. Old Letters

     CHAPTER ONE. Four Years

     CHAPTER TWO. The Trial of Eugene Onegin

     CHAPTER THREE. At the Skating-Rink

     CHAPTER FOUR. Changes

     CHAPTER FIVE. Katya's Father

     CHAPTER SIX. More Changes

     CHAPTER SEVEN. Marginal Notes

     CHAPTER EIGHT. The Ball

     CHAPTER NINE. My First Date. Insomnia

     CHAPTER TEN. Troubles

     CHAPTER ELEVEN. I Go to Ensk

     CHAPTER TWEL VE. Home Again

     CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Old Letters

     CHAPTER FOURTEEN. A Rendezvous in Cathedral Gardens. "Do Not Trust That Man"

     CHAPTER FIFTEEN. We Go for Walks. I Visit Mother's Grave. Day of Departure

     CHAPTER SIXTEEN. What Awaited Me in Moscow

     CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. I Burn My Boats

     CHAPTER EIGHTEEN. An Old Friend

     CHAPTER NINETEEN. It Could All Have Been Different

     CHAPTER TWENTY. Maria Vasilievna

     CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE. In the Dead of Night

     CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO. It Isn't Him

     CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE. Slander

     CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR. Our Last Meeting

     PART FOUR. The North

     HAPTER ONE. Flying School

     CHAPTER TWO. Sanyo's Wedding

     CHAPTER THREE. I Write to Doctor Ivan Ivanovich.

     CHAPTER FOUR. I Receive a Reply.

     CHAPTER FIVE. Three Years

     CHAPTER SIX. I Meet the Doctor

     CHAPTER SEVEN. I Read the Diaries.

     CHAPTER NINE. Good Night!.

     CHAPTER TEN. The Flight

     CHAPTER ELEVEN. The Blizzard

     CHAPTER TWELVE. What Is a Primus-Stove?

     CHAPTER THIRTEEN. The Old Boat-Hook

     CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Vanokan


     PART FIVE. For the Heart

     CHAPTER ONE. I Meet Katya

     CHAPTER TWO. Korablev's Anniversary

     CHAPTER THREE. Without Title

     CHAPTER FOUR. News Galore

     CHAPTER FIVE. At the Theatre

     CHAPTER SIX. Still More Comes to Light

     CHAPTER SEVEN. "We Have a Visitor!"

     CHAPTER EIGHT. True to a Memory

     CHAPTER NINE. It Is Decided-She Goes Away.

     CHAPTER TEN. Sivtsev- Vrazhek

     CHAPTER ELEVEN. A Hectic Day

     CHAPTER TWEL VE. Romashka

     BOOK TWO

     PART SIX. From the Diary of Katya Tatarinova YOUTH CONTINUES

     PART SEVEN. From the Diary of Katya Tatarinova SEPARATION.

     PART EIGHT. Told by Sanya Grigoriev. To Strive, to Seek

     CHAPTER ONE. He

     CHAPTER TWO. All We Could

     CHAPTER THREE. "Is That You, Owl?"

     CHAPTER FOUR. Old Scores

     CHAPTER FIVE. In the Aspen Wood

     CHAPTER SIX. Nobody Will Know

     CHAPTER SEVEN. Alone

     CHAPTER EIGHT. The Boys

     CHAPTER NINE. Dealing with Love.

     CHAPTER TEN. The Verdict

     CHAPTER ELEVEN. I Look for Katya

     CHAPTER TWELVE. I Meet Hydrographer R.

     CHAPTER THIRTEEN. Decision.

     CHAPTER FOURTEEN. Friends Who Were Not at Home

     CHAPTER FIFTEEN. An Old Acquaintance. Katya's Portrait

     CHAPTER SIXTEEN. "You Won't Kill Me"

     CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. The Shadow


     PART NINE. To Find and Not to Yield

     CHAPTER ONE. This Is Not the End Yet.

     CHAPTER TWO. The Doctor Serves in the Arctic

     CHAPTER THREE. To Those at Sea

     CHAPTER FOUR. Ranging Wide

     CHAPTER FIVE. Back at Zapolarie

     CHAPTER SIX. Victory


     PART TEN. The Last Page


     CHAPTER ONE. The Riddle Is Solved

     CHAPTER TWO. The Unbelievable

     CHAPTER THREE. It Was Katya

     CHAPTER FOUR. The Farewell Letters

     CHAPTER FIVE. The Last Page

     CHAPTER SIX. The Homecoming

     CHAPTER SEVEN. Two Conversations

     CHAPTER EIGHT. My Paper

     CHAPTER NINE. And the Last.

     Epilogue


     AUTHOR 'S PREFACE

     I recall a spring day in 1921, when Maxim Gorky first invited to his home a group of young Leningrad writers, myself among them. He lived in Kronwerk Street and the windows of his flat overlooked Alexandrovsky Park. We trooped in, so many of us that we took quite a time getting seated, the bolder ones closer to the host, the more timid on the ottoman, from which it was a job getting up afterwards-it was so soft and sagged almost to the floor. I shall always remember that ottoman of Gorky's. When I lowered myself on to it I saw my outstretched feet encased in shabby soldier's boots. I couldn't hide them away. As for getting up-it was not to be thought of. Those boots worried me until I noticed a pair just as bad, if not worse, on Vsevolod Ivanov, who was sitting next to Gorky.

     Alice in her wonderland underwent strange transformations on almost every page of Carroll's book. At one moment she becomes so small that she freely goes down a rabbit's hole, the next so tall that she can speak only with birds living in the tree-tops. Something like that was happening to me at Gorky's place. At one moment I thought I ought to put in a word of my own in the conversation that had started between Gorky and my older companions, a word so profound that it would make them all sit up. The next minute I shrank so small on that low uncomfortable ottoman that I felt a sort of Tom Thumb, not that brave little fellow we all know, but a somewhat timorous Tom Thumb, at once timorous and proud.

     Gorky began to speak with approval about Ivanov's latest short story "The Brazier of Archangel Gabriel". It was this that started me on my transformations. Ivanov's story was far removed from anything that interested me in literature, and I took Gorky's high opinion of it as a harsh verdict on all my hopes and dreams. Gorky read the story out aloud. His face softened, his eyes grew tender and his gestures betrayed that benign mood so familiar to everyone who had seen Gorky in moments of pure rapture.

     He dabbed his eyes with his handkerchief and began to speak about the story. His admiration for it did not prevent him from seeing its shortcomings. Some of his remarks applied even to the choice of words.

     "What is the work of a writer?" he asked, and for the first time I heard some very curious things. The work of a writer, it appeared, was simply work, the daily, maybe hourly work of writing, writing on paper or in one's mind. It meant piles of rough copies, dozens of crossed-out versions. It meant patience, because talent imposed upon the writer a peculiar pattern of life in which patience was the most important thing of all. It was the life of Zola, who used to strap himself to his chair; of Goncharov, who took about twenty years writing his novel Obryv (Precipice); of Jack London, who died of fatigue, whatever his doctors may have said. It was hard life of self-dedication, full of trials and disappointments. "Don't you believe those who say that it is easy bread," Gorky said.

     To describe a writer's work in all its diversity is no light task. I may get nearest to doing this by simply answering the numerous letters I have received in connection with my novel Two Captains and thus telling the story of how this one novel at least came to be written.

     The questions my correspondents ask chiefly concern the two heroes of my novel-Sanya Grigoriev and Captain Tatarinov. Many of them ask whether it was my own life that I described in Two Captains. Some want to know whether the story of Captain Tatarinov was invented by me. Others search for the name in books of geography and encyclopedias and are surprised to find that the activities of Captain Tatarinov have left no visible traces in the history of Arctic exploration. Some want to know where Sanya Grigoriev and Katya Tatarinova are living at present and what rank Sanya was promoted to after the war. Others ask the author's advice as to what job they should devote their lives. The mother of a boy, known as the terror of the town, whose pranks often verged on hooliganism, wrote me that after reading my novel her son had become a different person, and shortly afterwards I received a letter from Alexander Rokotov himself which showed that the boy was intelligent and talented as well as mischievous. Some years have passed since then, and student Rokotov of the Aviation Institute has acquired expert knowledge in aircraft construction.

     It took me about five years to write this novel. When the first book was finished the war started, and it was not until 1944 that I returned to my work. The idea of writing this novel originated in 1937, after I had met a man whom I have portrayed in Two Captains under the name of Sanya Grigoriev. This man told me the story of his life-a life filled with hard work, self-dedication and love of his country.I made it a rule from the very first page not to invent anything, or hardly anything. In fact, even such a curious detail as the muteness of little Sanya has not been invented by me. His mother and father, his sister and friends have been described exactly as they first appeared to me in the narrative of my chance acquaintance, who afterwards became my friend. Of some of the personages of my future book I learned from him very little. Korablev, for example, was sketchily described in his narrative as a man with a quick searching eye, which invariably made the schoolchildren speak the truth; other characteristics were a moustache and a walking stick and a habit of sitting over a book late into the night. This outline had to be filled in by the author's imagination in order to create a character study of a Soviet schoolteacher.

     The story, as told to me, was really a very simple one. It was the story of a boy who had had a cheerless childhood and was brought up by Soviet society, by people who had taken the place of his dead parents and had sustained in him the dream he had cherished in his ardent and honest heart since early childhood.

     Nearly all the circumstances of this boy's life, and later of his youth and manhood, have been retained in the novel. His childhood years, however, were spent on the Volga and his school years in Tashkent-places with which I am not very familiar. I have therefore transferred the early scene of my book to my own hometown, which I have named Ensk. No wonder my fellow townsmen have so easily deciphered the town's real name. My school years (the senior forms) were spent in Moscow, and I have been able to describe in my book a Moscow school of the early twenties with greater authenticity than I could have achieved with a Tashkent school.

     I might mention another question which my correspondents ask me, namely, to what extent the novel Two Captains is autobiographical. To a considerable extent everything, from the first to the last page, that Sanya Grigoriev has seen has been seen by the author with his own eyes. Our two lives ran parallel, so to speak. But when Sanya Grigoriev's profession came into the book I had to drop the "personal" material and make a study of the life of pilots, of which I had known very little until then.

     Invaluable assistance in studying aeronautics was given me by Senior Lieutenant S. Y. Klebanov, who died the death of a hero in 1943. He was a talented pilot, a brave officer and a fine, upright man. I was proud of his friendship. During my work on the second volume I came across (among the materials of the War Study Commission) testimonials of Klebanov's brother-officers showing that my high opinion of him was shared by his comrades.

     It is difficult, well nigh impossible, to give any complete answer to the question of how one or another character of a literary work is created, especially if the narrative is in the first person. Apart from those observations, reminiscences, and impressions which I have mentioned, my book contains thousands of others which had no direct bearings on the story as told to me and which served as the groundwork for Two Captains. Imagination, as everyone knows, plays a tremendous role in a writer's work. And it is on this that one must speak before passing to the story of my second principal character Captain Tatarinov.

     Don't look for his name in encyclopedias or handbooks. Don't try to prove, as one pupil did at a geography lesson, that it was Tatarinov and not Vilkitsky who discovered Novaya Zemlya. For the older of my two captains I used the story of two brave explorers of the Arctic. One of them supplied me with the courageous character of a man pure in thought and clear in aim-qualities that bespeak a noble soul. This was Sedov. From the other I took the actual story of his voyage. This was Brusilov. The drift of my St. Maria repeats exactly the drift of Brusilov's St. Anne. The diaries of Navigating Officer Klimov quoted in my novel are based on the diary of Albanov, Navigating Officer of the St. Anne, one of the two surviving members of that tragic expedition. The historical material alone, however, did not seem enough to me. I knew that there lived in Leningrad a painter and writer by the name of Nikolai Pinegin, a friend of Sedov's and one of those who had brought his schooner the St. Phocas back to the mainland after the death of Sedov. We met, and Pinegin not only told me a lot more about Sedov and gave me a vivid picture of the man, but explained the tragedy of his life, the life of a great explorer slandered and refused recognition by reactionary circles of society in tsarist Russia. Incidentally, during one of my meetings with Pinegin the latter treated me to some tinned food which he had picked up at Cape Flora in 1914, and to my amazement I found it excellent. I mention this trivial detail because it is characteristic of Pinegin and of the range of interests into which I was drawn during my visits to this "Arctic home".

     Later, when the first volume had already appeared, Sedov's widow gave me a lot of interesting information. The summer of 1941 found me working hard on the second volume, in which I intended to make wide use of the story of the famous airman Levanevsky. My plan was thought out, the materials were studied and the first chapters written. V. Y. Vize, the well-known scientist and Arctic explorer, approved the contents of the future "Arctic" chapters and told me many interesting things about the work of search parties. But the war broke out and I had to dismiss for a long time the very idea of finishing the novel. I wrote front-line reportage, war sketches and short stories. However, the hope of being able to take up the novel again apparently did not leave me, otherwise I would not have found myself asking the editor of Izves-tia to send me to the Northern Front. It was there, among the airmen and submarines of the Northern Fleet that I realised that the characters of my book would appear blurred and sketchy if I did not describe how, together with all the Soviet people, they had borne the dreadful ordeals of the war and won it.

     I had known from books, reports and personal impressions what peacetime life was like among those people, who had worked to turn the Northern Country into a smiling hospitable land, who had tapped the incalculable resources that lay within the Arctic Circle, who had built towns, docks, mines and factories there. Now, during the war, I saw all this prodigious energy dedicated to the defence of this land and of these gains. I might be told that the same thing happened in every corner of our land. Of course it did, but the severe conditions of the North gave to it a special, expressive touch.

     I don't think I have been able to answer all the questions of my correspondents. Who served as the prototype of Nikolai Antonich? Where did I get Nina Kapitonovna? What truth is there in the story of Sanya's and Katya's love?

     To answer these questions I would have to ascertain, if only approximately, to what extent one or another figure was an actor in real life. As regards Nikolai Antonich, for instance, no such effort on my part would be needed. I have changed only a few outward features in my portrait of the real headmaster of the Moscow school which I finished in 1919. The same applies to Nina Kapitonovna, who could but recently be met in Sivtsev Vrazhek, wearing the same green jacket and carrying the same shopping bag. As for the love of Sanya and Katya, I had had only the youthful period of this story told to me. Exercising the prerogative of the novelist, I drew from this story my own conclusions, which seemed to me only natural for the hero of my book.

     One schoolboy, by the way, wrote telling me that exactly the same thing had happened to him-he had fallen in love with a girl and kissed her in the school grounds. "So that now that your book Two Captains is finished, you can write about me," the boy suggested.

     Here is another incident which, indirectly, answers the question as to what truth there is in the love of Sanya and Katya. One day I received a letter from Ordzhonikidze (Northern Caucasus) from a lady named Irina N. who wrote, "After reading your novel I feel certain that you are the man I have been looking for these last eighteen years. I am persuaded of this not only by the details of my life given in the novel, which could be known to you alone, but also by the places and even the dates of our meetings in Triumfalnaya Square and outside the Bolshoi Theatre..." I replied that I had never made any dates with my correspondent in Triumfalnaya Square or outside the Bolshoi Theatre, and that I would have to make inquiries of the Arctic pilot who had served as the prototype for my hero. But the war started and this strange correspondence broke off.

     Irina N.'s letter reminds me of another incident, which equated literature, as it were, with real life. During the blockade of Leningrad, in the grim, forever memorable days of late autumn of 1941, the Leningrad Radio Broadcasting Committee asked me to convey a message to the young Communists of the Baltic in the name of Sanya Grigoriev. I pointed out that although I had portrayed in Sanya Grigoriev a definite person, a bomber pilot, who was fighting at the time on the Central Front, he was nevertheless only a literary character.

     "So what of it," was the answer. "It makes no difference. Write as if the name of your literary hero could be found in the telephone book."

     I consented, of course. In the name of Sanya Grigoriev I wrote a message to the Komsomol boys and girls of Leningrad and the Baltic, and in response letters addressed to my literary hero came pouring in, expressing confidence in victory.

     I remember myself a boy of nine entering my first library; it was quite a small one, but seemed very big to me then. Behind a tall barrier, under a paraffin lamp, stood a smooth-haired woman in spectacles wearing a black dress with a white collar. The barrier was so high-at least to me-and the lady in black so forbidding that I all but turned tail. In a voice overioud through shyness I reported that I had already turned nine and was therefore entitled to become a card holder. The forbidding lady laughed and bending over the barrier the better to see the new reader retorted that she had heard of no such rule.

     In the end, though, I managed to join the library, and the time flew so quickly in reading that one day I discovered with surprise that the barrier was not all that high, nor the lady as forbidding as I had first thought.

     This was the first library in which I felt at home, and ever since then I have always had this feeling when coming into a house, large or small, in which there are bookshelves along the walls and people standing by them thinking only one thing-that these books were there to be read. So it was in childhood. And so it was in youth, with long hours spent in the vast Shchedrin public library in Leningrad. Working in the Archives Department, I penetrated into the very heart of the temple of temples. Raising my eyes-tired, because reading manuscripts makes them tire quickly-I watched the noiseless work of the librarians and experienced again and again a feeling of gratitude. That feeling has remained for a lifetime. Wherever I go, to whatever place fate brings me, I always ask first thing, "Is there a library here?" And when I am told, "There is," that town or township, farm or village, becomes closer, as if irradiating a warm, unexpected light.

     In Schwarz's play "The Snow Queen", the privy councillor, a dour individual who deals in ice, asks the storyteller whether there are any children in the house, and on learning that there are, he shudders, because at the sound of children's voices the ice of the blackest soul melts. So does a house in which there are books differ from those in which there are none.

     The best writers can be compared to scouts into the future, to those brave explorers of new and unknown spaces, of whom Fridt-jof Nansen, the famous Norwegian explorer, wrote: "Let us follow the narrow tracks of the sled runners and those little black dots laying a railway, as it were, into the heart of the unknown. The wind howls and sweeps across these tracks leading into the snowy wastes. Soon they will disappear, but a trail has been blazed, we have acquired a new banner, and this deed will shine forever through the ages."

     V. Kaverin


     PART ONE CHILDHOOD

     CHAPTER ONE

     THE LETTER. IN SEARCH OF THEBLUE CRAB

     I remember the big dirty yard and the squat little houses with the fence round them. The yard stood on the edge of the river, and in the spring, when the flood-water subsided, it was littered with bits of wood and shells, and sometimes with things far more interesting. On one occasion, for instance, we found a postman's bag full of letters, and afterwards the waters brought down the postman himself and deposited him carefully on the bank. He was lying on his back, quite a young man, fair-haired, in postman's uniform with shining buttons; he must have polished them up before setting out on this last round.

     A policeman took the bag, but Aunt Dasha kept the letters-they were soaking wet and of no further use to anybody. Not all of them were soaked though. The bag had been a new one, made of leather, and was closed tight. Every evening Aunt Dasha used to read one of the letters out, sometimes to me alone, sometimes to the whole yard. It was so interesting that even the old women, who used to go to Skovorodnikov's to play cards, would drop the game and join us. There was one letter which Aunt Dasha used to read more often than any other, so often, in fact, that I soon got to know it by heart. Many years have passed since then, but I can still remember it from the first word to the last. "Dear Maria Vasilievna,

     "I hasten to inform you that Ivan Lvovich is alive and well. Four months ago, on his orders, I left the schooner along with thirteen of the crew. I hope to see you soon, so I shall not describe our difficult journey across the pack-ice to Franz Josef Land. We suffered terrible hardships and privations. I will only say that I was the only one of our party to reach Cape Flora safely (not counting a pair of frostbitten feet). I was picked up by the St. Phocas, of Lieutenant Sedov's Expedition, and taken to Archangel. Although I have survived, I have little reason to rejoice, as I shall soon be undergoing an operation, after which I can only trust in God's mercy, for God alone knows how I'm going to live without feet. What I have to tell you is this.

     The St. Maria became icebound in the Kara Sea and since October 1912 has been drifting steadily north with the Arctic icefields. When we left the schooner she was in latitude 82 5 5'. She is standing in the middle of an icefield, or rather that was where she was from the autumn of 1912 until the day I left her. She may be free of the ice this year, but I think this is more likely to happen next year, when she will be round about the spot where the Fram broke free. The men who have remained in her have enough victuals to last until October or November of next year. In any case, I hasten to assure you that we did not leave the ship because she was in a hopeless plight. I had to carry out Captain's orders, of course, but I must admit that they fell in with my own wishes. When I was leaving the ship with the thirteen men, Ivan Lvovich gave me a packet addressed to the Head of the Hydrographical Board-who has since died-and a letter for you. I dare not risk mailing them, because, being the only survivor, I am anxious to preserve all evidence of my honourable conduct. I therefore ask you to send for them or come to Archangel yourself, as I shall be spending at least three months in hospital.

     "Awaiting your reply, I remain your obedient servant.

     "/. Klimov, Navigating Officer."

     The address had been washed away, but had obviously been written in the same bold upright hand on the thick yellowed envelope.

     This letter must have become for me something in the nature of a prayer, for I used to repeat it every evening while waiting for my father to come home.

     He used to come in late from the wharf. The steamers arrived now every day and took on cargoes, not of flax and grain as they used to do, but of heavy cases containing cartridges and gun parts. Burly, thickset and moustached, he used to come in wearing a cloth cap and tarpaulin trousers. Mother would talk and talk, while he ate in silence, once in a while clearing his throat or wiping his moustache. Then he would take us children-my sister and me-and lie down to sleep. He smelt of hemp, sometimes of apples or grain, and sometimes of rancid machine-oil, and I remember what a depressing effect that smell had on me.

     It must have been on one such cheerless evening, as I lay beside my father, that I first became aware of my surroundings. The squalid little room With its low ceiling, its walls pasted over with newspapers, and a big crack under the window through which drew cold air and the tang of the river-such was our home. The dark, beautiful woman with her hair let down, sleeping on the floor on two sacks filled with straw, was my mother. The little feet sticking out from under the patchwork quilt belonged to my sister. The dark skinny boy in the outsize trousers who crept shivering out of bed and stole into the yard was me.

     A likely spot had been selected long ago, string had been prepared and even dry twigs piled up at the Gap; all I needed now to go out after the blue crabs was a piece of rotting meat. The bed of our river was all different colours, and so were the crabs in it-black, green, and yellow. These were baited with frogs and lured with a bonfire. But the blue crab, as all of us boys firmly believed, could only be taken with rotting meat. The day before I had had a stroke of luck at last: I had managed to steal a piece of meat from Mother and kept it in the sun all day. It was putrid now-one did not have to take it into one's hand to find that out.

    

... ... ...
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