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reason ordinary people failed to pay this crucial activity the serious attention it deserved. They thought: If someone likes me, that's good; if they don't, then that's just too bad - you can't force anyone to like you. Oh yes, you can, Mitenka thought as he grew up, you certainly can. And once you've made someone like you, managed to find the key that fits him, that person is yours to do with as you like.
    It turned out that you could make anyone like you, and very little was required to do it - just to understand what kind of person they were, how they saw the world, what they were afraid of. And once you'd understood that, you could play them like a reed pipe, and choose your own melody. A serenade if you liked, or a polka.
    Nine out of ten people would tell you everything about themselves if you were just willing to listen. The astounding thing was that nobody listened to anybody else properly. In the best case, if people were well brought up, they would wait for a pause in the conversation before mounting their own hobbyhorse again. But you could find out so many important and interesting things if you just knew how to listen!
    Listening properly was a kind of art. You had to imagine that you were an empty bottle, a transparent vessel connected with the person you were talking to via an invisible tube, and let the contents of the other person flow into you a drop at a time, so that you were filled with liquid that was the same colour and strength, the same composition - to stop being yourself for a while and become him. And then you would come to understand that person's essential being, and you would know in advance what he was going to say and what he was going to do.
    Momos mastered his science gradually and in his early years he applied it in a small way, for limited gain, but mostly for purposes of checking and experimenting: to obtain a good mark at his grammar school without having learned the lesson; then later, at military school, to win the respect and affection of his comrades; to make a girl fall in love with him.
    Later, when he had joined the regiment and his skill and control had grown rather more sure, the benefits that it brought became more significant. For instance, you could clean out a man with money at cards, and he would sit there calmly and not take offence at this fine young chap, the Cornet Mitya Sawin. And he wouldn't stare at your hands any more than necessary. That was not bad, surely?
    But all this had only been gymnastic exercises for developing the muscles. His knowledge and talent had come in genuinely useful six years earlier, when destiny had offered the future Momos his first real Chance. He hadn't yet known at that time that a Chance ought not to be fished for, but created. He had kept waiting for good fortune to swim into his hands of its own accord, and the only thing he had been afraid of was that he might let it slip. He hadn't.
    At the time things in general were looking pretty mouldy for the young cornet. The regiment had been stationed in the provincial city of Smolensk for more than a year, and every opportunity to apply his talents had already been exhausted. He had won money at cards from everyone he could; everything he could borrow had been borrowed long ago; the colonel's wife loved Mitya with all her heart, but she was tight-fisted with money, and her jealousy exhausted him. And then there was his little slip with the remount money: Cornet Sawin had been sent to the horse fair at Torzhok, where he had got quite carried away and spent more than was permitted.
    The general outlook was that he could either be taken to court, or make a run for it, or marry the merchant Pochechuev's pimply daughter. The first option, of course, was out of the question, and the capable young man was hesitating between the second and the third.
    Then suddenly fortune had tossed him a trump widow card that might well be just enough for him to save his doomed hand. His great-aunt, a Vyatka