Two Captains Read Online Free PDF Page A

huts were no longer visible at night when I woke up. There was emptiness on the river, emptiness in the yard and emptiness in the house.
    Mother did washing in the hospital. She left the house first thing in the morning while we were still asleep, and I went to the Skovorodnikovs and listened to the old man swearing to himself.
    Grey and unkempt, in steel-rimmed glasses, he sat on a low leather-covered stool in the little dark kitchen, stitching boots. When he was not stitching boots he was making nets or carving figures of birds and horses out of aspen wood. He had brought this trade with him from the Volga, where he had been born.
    He was fond of me, probably because I was the only person he could talk to without being answered back. He cursed doctors, officials, tradesmen, and, with especial virulence, priests.
    "If a man be dying, dare he murmur against it? The priests say no. But I say yes! What is murmuring?"
    I didn't know what murmuring meant.
    "Murmuring is discontent. And what is discontent? It's wanting more than's been allotted to you. The priests say you mustn't. Why?"
    I didn't know why.
    "Because 'dust thou art and to dust thou shalt return'. To the earth, that is."
    He gave a bitter laugh.
    "And what does the earth need? No more than is allotted to it."
    So it was autumn now, and even the crabs, which had lately become a staple item in our domestic fare, had hidden themselves away in their holes and refused to be enticed out by my frogs. We were going hungry, and Mother finally decided to send me and my sister to the village.
    I had never been in the country, but I knew that my father had a farm there. A farm! How disappointed I was on discovering that this was simply a cottage with a household plot, a little, overgrown vegetable garden in the middle of which stood a few aged apple trees.
    The house was a small one, which having once slumped on its side, remained leaning sideways. The roof was tilted, the window-panes were smashed and the base logs were bent. The Russian stove seemed to be all right until we started a fire in it. Smoke-blackened benches were ranged around the walls, and in one corner hung an icon, on whose grimy panels a face could just be made out.
    Whatever its faults, it was our house, and we undid our bundles, stuffed out mattresses with straw, glazed the windows and settled down to live in it.
    Mother stayed with us only about three weeks, then went back to town.
    Grandma Petrovna agreed to take her place. She was Father's aunt, and that made her a sort of grandmother to us. She was a kind-hearted old'woman, even though it was hard to get used to her grey beard and moustache. The only drawback was that she herself needed looking after. In fact, my sister and I looked after her all the winter, carrying water and heating her stove, since her cottage, which was little better than ours, was quite close.
    That winter I grew attached to my sister. She was getting on for eight.
    Everyone in our family was dark, but she was fair, with fuzzy little pigtails and blue eyes. We were all rather taciturn, especially Mother, but my sister would start off talking the moment she opened her eyes. I never saw her cry, and it was the easiest thing in the world to make her laugh.
    Her name was Sanya, too, the same as mine-1 being Alexander and she Alexandra. Aunt Dasha had taught her to sing, and every evening she sang long songs in such a serious, thin little voice that you couldn't help laughing.
    And how handy she was at housekeeping, and she only seven, mind you! Of course, running the house was a simple affair-in one corner of the attic lay potatoes, in another beets, cabbages, onions and salt. For bread we went to Petrovna's.
    So there we were, two children in an empty house, in a remote snowed-up village. Every morning we used to tread a path in the snow to Petrovna's cottage. Only in the evenings did we feel a bit scared. It was so quiet you could almost hear the soft sound of the falling snow, and