Two Captains Read Online Free PDF

amidst this stillness the wind would suddenly start moaning in the chimney.

CHAPTER FIVE
DOCTOR IVAN IVANOVICH.
    I LEARN TO SPEAK
    Then one evening, when we had just gone to bed and my sister had just fallen silent, dropping off to sleep as she always did with the last uttered word, and that saddening hush fell upon the world, with the wind beginning to moan in the chimney, I heard a tap on the window.
    A tall bearded man in a sheepskin coat and cap with ear-flaps stood there; he was so stiff with cold that when I lit the lamp and let him in he could not even close the door behind him. Screening the light with my hand, I noticed that his nose was quite white-frost-nipped. He bent to take off his knapsack and suddenly sat down on the floor.
    That was how he first appeared before me, the man I am indebted to for being able to write this story-frozen almost to death, crawling towards me on all fours. He tried to put his trembling fingers into his mouth, and sat on the floor breathing heavily. I started to help him off with his coat. He muttered something and slumped over on his side in a dead faint.
    I had once seen Mother lying in a faint and Aunt Dasha had breathed into her mouth. I did exactly the same now. My visitor was lying by the warm stove and I don't know what it was in the end that brought him round; I only knew that I blew like mad till I felt dizzy. However that may be, he came to, sat up and began warming himself up vigorously. The colour returned to his nose. He even attempted a smile when I poured him out a mug of hot water.
    "Are you children alone here?"
    Before Sanya could answer "Yes," the man was asleep. He dropped off so suddenly that I was afraid he had died. But as though in answer to my thoughts he started to snore.
    He came round properly the next day. I woke up to find him sitting on the stove ledge with my sister and they were talking. She already knew that his name was Ivan Ivanovich, that he had lost his way, and that we were not to say a word about him to anyone, otherwise they'd put him in irons. I remember that my sister and I grasped at once that our visitor was in some sort of danger and we tacitly decided never to breathe a word about him to anyone. It was easier for me, of course, to keep quiet, than it was for Sanya.
    Ivan Ivanovich sat on the stove ledge with his hands tucked under him, listening while she chattered away. He had been told everything:
    that Father had been put in prison, that we handed in a petition, that Mother had brought us here and gone back to town, that I was dumb, that Grandma Petrovna lived here-second house from the well-and that she, too, had a beard, only it was smaller and grey.
    "Ah, you little darlings," said Ivan Ivanovich, jumping down from the stove.
    He had light-coloured eyes, but his beard was black and smooth. At first I thought it strange that he made so many unnecessary gestures; it seemed as if at any moment he would reach for his ear round the back of his head or scratch the sole of his foot. But I soon got used to him. When talking, he would suddenly pick something up and begin tossing it in the air or balancing it on his hand like a juggler.
    "I say, children, I'm a doctor, you know," he said one day. "You just tell me if there's anything wrong with you. I'll put you right in
    a tick."
    We were both well, but for some reason he refused to go and see the village elder, whose daughter was sick.
    But in such a position
    I'm in a terrible funk
    In case the Inquisition
    Is tipped off by the monk,
    he said with a laugh,
    It was from him that I first heard poetry. He often quoted verses, sometimes even sang them or muttered them, his eyebrows raised as he squatted before the fire Turkish fashion.
    At first he seemed pleased that I couldn't ask him anything, especially when he woke up in the night at the slightest sound of steps outside the window and lay for a long time leaning on his elbow, listening. Or when he hid himself in the attic and sat there