In an instant, like lightning illuminating the night, I knew they were talking about Baldy. Inhaling the scent of their damp army coats, I could feel my pulse quicken. Yes, that’s what Baldy had sold his scarf for—to buy another knife! It was as though, walking onto the stage for a simple audition, I’d suddenly found myself in front of a packed house. If ever there was a chance to show myself to be the upright and courageous boy I wanted the world to know, it was this. I felt I had to knock on the door at once and tell these uniformed men all I knew.
I could hear Mark Pavlovich responding with his agreeable yet firm note of protest: “We do not allow knives or any weapons on the premises, and our children do not carry them.”
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I felt crippled, unable to make myself knock on the door. Even now it’s hard to explain, but somehow the presence of these militzioneri unmanned me. Something about their boots, their cold, damp smells inside that old tobaccoey cupboard of an office, but most of all their voices. I was haunted by the memory of my mother’s arrest. Even as I stood paralyzed, I feared that they would start hounding Mark Pavlovich to produce his secret ledger, in which my own name appeared beside the name of a woman imprisoned for treason. If I walked in now, I would lose my cover for good. They would want to know who I was, and Guchkov would have to tell them. Perhaps for the first time in my life I perceived what it meant to be a “hero” in the original, Greek sense of the word: one for whom any victory must be rewarded by some punishing irony from the jealous gods.
I did nothing. I listened to the rising and falling pitch of the trio inside, letting the minutes lapse. At last the voices resolved into a kind of tense agreement, with Mark Pavlovich allowing that all rooms would be made available for searching. I could tell this was not a satisfying answer for them. One of the policemen smiled sardonically. “You can be certain we’ll do that,” he said.
Mark Pavlovich escorted them out. Their heavy coats brushed against me, but they took no notice. Only the director’s eyebrow lifted as he passed me by. One of the policemen roughly kicked away the snow that was piled up on the back steps before closing the door. When the director turned, I saw the dark circles around his eyes. “How long have you been standing there?”
Something in his face made me too frightened to speak.
“What is it? Did you swallow your tongue?”
“I know something.”
He let me enter his office. “All right.”
I told him about the screaming woman at the bazaar and about Baldy’s missing scarf.
My confession seemed to make him more tired. “His name is Lyova, not Baldy. Is that what you came to tell me?”
“It was him.”
“You saw him sell his scarf and buy a knife.”
“No, but she said…”
“That’s enough. We don’t trade in empty accusations here. You’ve let your imagination carry you away. Who else have you shared this fantasy with?”
“No one…!”
“Then keep it to yourself. Understood? Now, go.”
—
THE FOLLOWING DAY MORE snow fell in large wet flakes. I watched it sift down as I walked, dejected, from the schoolhouse back to the children’s home. What good had come of being “good”? The clownish look of superiority still hovered over Baldy’s face. He was afraid of no one and recognized no authority. That was the insight underscoring his mockery: Mark Pavlovich wanted to boss us around like he was our father, but he wasn’t our father. And he was no hero. All the real heroes were dead. I removed my gloves and felt the stinging cold on my fingers. From the side of the road I scooped up a handful of sharp pebbles and sculpted it into a hard snowball. Without conscious effort I beamed it at a kid walking two meters ahead of me. To my surprise, it hit him in the back of his hat, pitching him facedown into the snow.
—
“SO NOW YOU’VE DECIDED to become a hooligan.” Mark Pavlovich locked the door behind him. “I can assure you that it’s a profession you won’t succeed in.”
On the director’s desk a glint of metal caught my eyes. Guchkov walked to his desk and picked up the knife by its hard celluloid handle. “I confiscated it several days ago.” His eyes were not impressed with me: Had I really believed he would let the police search here before doing his own sweep? “They wanted to call in different boys, one by one, and talk to them. Would you have told them what you told me?”
“They said if we didn’t help catch hooligans we’re as bad as them.” Even as I spoke these words I regretted them.
“So you would have fingered Lyova?”
“I don’t know,” I said challengingly.
He lifted his chin, but his eyes did not wander from my face. His gaze was like a piercing shaft of light, searching around for some object at the bottom of a murky pond. I didn’t know what the director was looking for, only that the object he sought had a dangerous power of its own.
“I know he did it,” I said.
“Let’s suppose he did. By our laws, a child of twelve can be imprisoned for ten years. Have you thought of what happens to someone when he’s shipped to a juvenile colony? They leave you in a dirty barracks with no heat or light and you huddle at night over a kerosene lamp like a dog. And the others will beat you—or worse—for a stale piece of bread. Lyova won’t get any better at a place like that.”
But I didn’t care about Lyova. I recognized this and knew that Guchkov knew it too. As though reading my mind, he said, “As for you, Yuliy Brink, you are a thinking boy. You can put two and two together. Your cleverness will make people want to use you. So let me give you some advice: Beware of your first impulse. It’s always the most noble and the most dangerous.”
No better counsel has ever been given to me.
However dimly, I sensed that the object Guchkov had been looking for in the murky pond of my being was that. My noble impulse, he called it. Until then, I’d never been aware of my power to hurt someone, only of being hurt myself.
Guchkov pulled back his gaze. He looked confident that I understood him. What made him so sure of me? I still can’t say.
The director let me out through the back door, the same way the militzia-men had gone the morning before. The brief winter day was rapidly turning dark. The smell of wood smoke hung in the icy air. A few winter birds made their sounds high up in the treetops. In between their distant squawks, I could hear another song. I followed the path that led from the back entrance to the animal sheds. There, behind a fence, I could see Baldy, wearing a hat with its earflaps pulled down, shoveling manure with a metal spade into a bucket. He was humming a melody, some jovial obscene tune about six burglars screwing an old lady to her great delight. Hearing someone come near, he stopped and rested the shovel under his elbow. His eyes met mine in a knowing, lewd grin. “Can’t get enough of that stink?” he said in an almost friendly voice. “Betcha wanna take a few swings at the slop yourself, eh?” And then, aware that he now had an audience, he sang his song with more gusto, letting his voice be carried up to the treetops.