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Aunt Ninel was lost for an instant. She did not suspect that Tanya could fly into such a rage. Usually the girl suffered everything silently. Moreover, it came to the mind of Uncle Herman’s wife that if the girl would live at the station, the reporters would sniff this out and it would prevent further advancement of her spouse as deputy of the committee “Loving Aid to Children and Invalids.” And if one considers the elections in two months, a scandal is especially not needed.
“I’m very frightened… And you’ll live in the gutter if nothing else! Nevertheless, I’ll chuck the case, if not today, then tomorrow. There’s no need for such a fright to be in our apartment,” Aunt Ninel barked already not so furiously, more simply not to surrender immediately her position, and, turning heavily on her thick heels, made her way to the kitchen.
Tanya picked up her bag with textbooks – a nightmarishly tight bag on which was depicted a goggle-eyed doll and which more suited first grade, and went out onto the landing.
Waiting for the elevator, she heard how Pipa was squealing hysterically and Aunt Ninel, making excuses, prattled to her, “Well what can I do? Now we definitely mustn’t have a scandal. You know papa will have elections soon! He’s so worried, so nervous, and here these petitioners still constantly drag themselves along to him on appointment! Indeed isn’t it enough for them that yearly papa sacrifices two tons of expired canned food in favour of the poor, not counting old clothing? Well no matter, very soon we’ll discard all the dirty rubbish of this beggar, you’ll see!”
On the way and even afterwards, in the school itself, Tanya was constantly wondering whether she would see her case again. Aunt Ninel found an excellent way to spoil her entire day. And even a set of other days too.
* * *
Arriving at school, Tanya soon realized that Pipa was absent from the test for nothing. For nothing because they cancelled the test, and instead of it arranged an excursion to the Armoury, which should have been on the following Thursday.
After the first class, a terrible bustle broke out. A red bus with the sign “EXCURSION” drove into the schoolyard and began to signal. The class teacher Irina Vladimirovna was frantically swinging her arms – if these were not arms but wings, she would certainly take off – and shouting, “Children, are you listening to me? The test has been cancelled! Everyone who has paid get into the bus! The rest go to help the cleaning woman wash the stairs from the first to the fifth floor!”
Tanya sighed, sensing that this applied to her. The Durnevs paid only for Pipa. They never paid anything for Tanya – neither gifts for New Year, nor theatres, nothing. Even for school breakfasts or tickets, Uncle Herman always handed out the money with the greatest reluctance, and that was only because if he refused, it would immediately attract someone’s attention. As far as pocket money was concerned, it was not even worth mentioning. The only money that Tanya held in her hands in her entire life was a five-rouble coin she somehow found in winter, frozen in a puddle. She was so bewildered that she did not know how to spend it. The coin lay in her pocket for a long time, but later Aunt Ninel found it and stated that Tanya stole it from Pipa. By the way, for each five they paid Pipa fifty roubles, and forty for a four. However, more often Pipa got by with thirty roubles.
While her classmates got into the bus, Tanya continued to stand beside in embarrassment, estimating, whether she would be made to carry a rag along the steps or it would be possible to at least ask to bring water. She had already turned around in order to leave, but Irina Vladimirovna overtook her and, anxiously bobbing on the spot – she generally behaved exactly like a hen, clucked, “Grotter! Tatiana! Why are you not on the bus? You need a special invitation?”
“I don’t particularly want to… I can’t stand these museums,” Tanya said, trying not to look at her.
Irina Vladimirovna again bounced.
“Untrue, Grotter! You simply know that they didn’t pay for you! But they paid for Penelope. All the same, money will be wasted. March into the bus and don’t make me nervous!”
Not believing in such luck, Tanya quickly got into the bus. Of course, in three years the Durnevs will reproach her that the unfortunate Pipa, scalded by boiling water, was lying almost in a coma and not taken to the Armoury because of her, and so they will find something to sting her. But for the time being it is possible to sit in the bus, look out the window at the houses floating past, and be glad. And later there will still be the excursion and the same long road back to the school. A whole day of happiness! And everything that will happen later, and all matters, is possible to discard simply from the head.
Tanya found for herself a pretty good place by the window, where next to her sat sullen and silent Genka Bulonov, from whom it was not worthwhile to wait for any dirty tricks, and nestled her forehead close to the glass. Swaying with difficulty, the bus left the schoolyard.
Grey damp houses gleamed. The signboards of stores began to sparkle. Trees dazzling with vividness spread like multicoloured card packs. Traffic lights winked. Dirty puddles scattered merry drops in the air. Passers-by looked around at the bus, and it seemed to Tanya that each was looking precisely at her and thinking, “It’s carrying her, here she’ll go to the Armoury, but I have all kinds of boring business!”
When they passed along their district, several times large advertising panels flashed. Uncle Herman looked pink and merry from the billboards. The best deputy — your deputy! The inscription under his photograph said.
Uncle Herman really looked quite good on the billboards.
Only Tanya alone, perhaps Pipa and Aunt Ninel as well, knew how many hours the photographer wasted with Uncle Herman and how much cotton wool he told him to put under his cheeks so that Uncle Herman would look a little less like a vampire.
But now even the physiognomy of “the best deputy” seen everywhere could not poison Tanya’s happiness. She is going to the museum! For the first time in her life, something pleasant has come her way! It is indeed as if they have muddled up something in the sky and the horn of abundance, always spilling on Pipa, has spilled on her by mistake.
“You… this…” someone’s hoarse voice was heard beside her. Tanya turned around in wonder. Likely Bulonov uttered it, and she had completely forgotten about his existence. And that he generally knows how to talk.
“What’s with you, Bouillon?”
“Nothing…” Bulonov growled and again was immersed in silence. He had such a contented look as if he already knew the future of ten days ahead.
“If nothing, then hold your tongue! Got carried away here!” Tanya snorted and, instantly forgetting her neighbour, was again occupied with what was happening beyond the window.
And something interesting was actually taking place there. Suddenly a large Russian borzoi insisted on accompanying the bus and for a long time was running next to it. Still it startled the girl why this nice dog went for a walk without its owner. It was also strange that this borzoi was tearing along not in the manner of a normal dog, with confused barking attempting to grab hold of a wheel with its teeth. It was speeding along intelligently, all this time without turning its watchful eyes away from Tanya. It was even possible to think that the borzoi was perturbed by something and was attempting to communicate something to her.
Suddenly Genka Bulonov yawned with such a dreadful click of his jaws that half the bus turned to him. Tanya was also distracted for an instant, and when she again looked out the window, the Russian borzoi had already disappeared. There, where the bus had recently pulled up to the traffic light, stood a skinny red-haired woman with the dishevelled red hair moving so threateningly, as if… no, certainly these were not snakes. The skinny woman, it seemed, without special interest looked sideways at the bus and, turning, walked away. Her strange long raincoat was bespattered by mud in the same places as the fur of the borzoi rushing along the puddles. Tanya even leaped up, but the bus was already moving. An instant, and in the glass again flickered only grey houses, telephone booths, and transparent bus stops.
Several minutes passed before Tanya finally discarded this story from her head.
Yes, today was definitely a special day, resembling very little the previous three thousand two hundred and eighty-five days past since that evening when a worn double bass case appeared on the landing of a multi-storey house on Rublev Road…
The children were arranged in pairs in front of the entrance into the Armoury. Doing a recount of everyone, Irina Vladimirovna almost fainted from the responsibility. The potbellied gym teacher Prikhodkin, sent on the excursion as a second escort, behaved in a more even-tempered way: counted no one and only blinked despondently. Likely, he would doze with great pleasure in the bus.
“We’re visiting the museum in pairs! All exhibits we touch only with our eyes! With eyes, I said! Remember, everything is under surveillance! Just try to break a display case or stick chewing gum onto the tsar’s throne!” Irina Vladimirovna squeaked threateningly.
Genka Bulonov immediately came to life. It was evident that the idea of using chewing gum attracted him by its novelty.
When her turn arrived to hand over her jacket to the cloakroom, Tanya, as always, sensed awkwardness. Under the jacket, she had a dreadful jean shirt with a frayed collar, which was befitting perhaps to be tossed thievishly into the garbage bin at three in the morning. Although the Durnevs were rich, they always dressed the girl very badly – in the most worn and dirty junk, which Uncle Herman’s firm dealt in. And Aunt Ninel always picked such footwear, either too small for Tanya or big to such an extent that she had to shuffle with the soles on the floor so that her feet would not slip.
Not surprising then that, seeing Tanya in these rags, even Aunt Ninel, as dry and tactless as an African rhino, now and then experienced some kind of pang of conscience and began to tell all the teachers indiscriminately, “Yes, I agree, we don’t dress her very well. However, she’ll rip everything all the same! But what do you want from the daughter of a thief and an alcoholic? My husband and I accomplished unpardonable stupidity taking her in, and now we bear the cross.”
The classmates, dressed much better, contemptuously looked askance at Grotter.
“Here’s an eyesore… She dressed herself up so that now they’ll give her a kopeck… Disgraces everyone!” they grimaced.
Tanya had not one friend among them, and if one even appeared temporarily, Pipa and all her toadies began to ridicule her right away. Therefore not one friend remained next to Tanya for a long time. A week would not pass when she would side with Tanya’s persecutors and gloatingly ridiculed her birthmark from the opposite corner of the class. And Tanya understood her perfectly: it was necessary to curry favours with Pipa, making amends for her friendship…
Accompanied by the small round-shouldered guide, who looked so decrepit as if he was much older than all local exhibits, they passed several halls. Tanya listened at first with interest, but gradually her interest disappeared because the guide was speaking approximately one and the same words, “Eh-eh-eh… Before you a signet r-ing, presented by Catherine II to Count Orlov… Selling this ring, it was possible to purchase 10,000 pea-sa-nts… And this is the diadem, presented to the tsarina by Prince Potemkin… It would be possible to ac-qu-ire 15,000 pea-sa-nts with it.”
The guide uttered all these numbers so indulgently and ordinarily as if off-duty, he was only occupied with trading peasants, on the sly bartering them with exhibits from his museum.
They were already in the sixth or seventh hall when suddenly something compelled Tanya to stop. At the same time, it was as if something light and weightless stirred in her chest.
Under the convex armoured glass, a gold sword lay on a high pedestal illuminated by several high-power lights. Its wide blade serrated a little along the edges was covered with intricate characters. All around there were so many pleasing priceless weapons, but for some reason they did not stick in her mind, yet here was this sword… It was possible to think that once she already held it… Some delirium… Uncle Herman never even bought her a plastic sabre, but here a gold sword… And he would sooner eat his necktie than imagine such a thing to himself. Nevertheless, it stubbornly continued to seem to Tanya that this sword was known to her.
A little more and Tanya would find the answer, in her consciousness a tiny little gold spark already began to appear, but here someone carelessly removed it from the display case.
Beside it loomed the guide, automatically repeating like an old record some text cut into the memory.
“Before us a sword found in the tomb of a Scythian leader. You will focus your attention on the signs covering its blade. They are interesting in that they have no analogy to any written languages known to us… They defy deciphering, so that most likely it is simply a design with which the master decorated the sword during its casting.”
“And how many peasants can be bought with it?” Pavlik Yazvochkin, the chief wit of the class, interrupted.
The guide looked sideways first at the sword, and then at the wit. It seemed he was evaluating them with his eyes, precisely an old man and a loan shark.
“How many pea-sa-nts, I don’t know. But a couple thousand of such as you, it is indeed possible…” he said sadly. “Now let us move on to the next exhibit… You see the two-pood ring from the golden gates, which, according to the legend, fell down on the crown of Julius Caesar the minute he triumphantly entered Rome as the head of his legions…”
The entire class following the guide spilled over to the adjacent display case. Only Tanya remained near the sword. Involuntarily, not realizing what she was doing, the girl stretched out her hand in order to touch the sword. Of course, her fingers hit on the armoured glass. Immediately a bell began to jingle, and in only a second the huge supervisor, resembling a gorilla rented from the zoo and on which were stretched haphazardly a skirt and a tight wig, clutched Tanya by the sleeve.
“Didn’t they tell you: don’t touch anything! Here I’ll call security now… Where’s the teacher?” she yelled louder than the siren.
“Please don’t pay any attention! She’s with us, a character, a fool! Her papa is a convict,” Lena Mumrikova barged in, emaciated, a girl cast in unhealthy green, the chief among Pipa’s toadies.
“Shut up, green toad!” Tanya exclaimed, not recognizing her own voice.
She terribly wanted to attach Mumrikova’s nose to the glass so that the surveillance would snap to action once more, but it was not possible to do this because the supervisor continued to hold her tight.
Fortunately, instead of Irina Vladimirovna, who for sure would tell tales to the Durnevs, gym teacher Prikhodkin, falling over, approached them.
“You’re what? Her teacher?” the supervisor asked mistrustfully.
“Aha! It’s my teacher! Beloved, from the very first class,” Tanya immediately confirmed.
“And you keep quiet!” the supervisor bellowed. “I’m asking the man: are you the teacher?”
“Yes…” confirmed Prikhodkin.
“Eh-eh, if so…” the supervisor stupidly fixed her eyes on the stomach of the gym teacher. It was enormous, as if Prikhodkin swallowed a ball, and involuntarily inspired respect. “Then here’s what we’ll do: please hold this, your teenybopper, and don’t let go! Don’t dare let her touch anything!” she decided.
“I’m already taking her away.”
The huge fingers of Prikhodkin closed like a steel handcuff on the wrist of the girl. He dragged her like a kid after himself along the halls for a while, but then for some reason he needed his hand. He unclenched his fingers and released Tanya. She hurriedly ran off several steps and turned, checking whether he would remember about her. But the gym teacher only absent-mindedly fumbled with his fingers somewhere below as if vaguely recollecting that he was holding something, and began to stomp after the class.
Then he paused for a moment and – possibly, it only seemed to Tanya – in a friendly way winked at her. Tanya was grateful to this scattered-brained stout person. Furthermore, she recalled that in his classes Prikhodkin always treated her rather well and called her “Baby Grotter” as a joke: “If you would all run the hundred-metre like Baby Grotter!” Or: “Today we have the long jump. Baby Grotter will show us how it should be done…”
They passed more halls and, according to the internal placement of the museum having traced a semicircle, they again found themselves not far from the exit. Here the guide whispered something to the teacher, looked sourly at the children, and left.
“Attention! Everyone look at me! Now you can wander along the halls independently. We’re meeting here in ten minutes! And remember what I said: don’t touch anything, don’t grab, and don’t mark! Mumrikova, don’t you dare throw candy wrappers into the Chinese vase! It was not made for that five hundred years ago!” Irina Vladimirovna shouted.
The classmates wandered off in the Armoury, but the majority dashed into the gift shop to buy souvenirs and postcards. Tanya, willingly separating from the class, again set off for the hall where the sword was. After all, she wanted to look at it again, if the supervisor would not drive her away.
Unexpectedly, the birthmark on Tanya’s nose started to hurt, as if someone was scorching it with a match. Such a thing had never happened before. Grimacing, Tanya rushed to the nearest mirror in a heavy ancient frame. The birthmark seemed to her especially ugly at this moment, like a lump of buckwheat porridge sticking to the tip of her nose. How she hated it at this moment!
“Get off from my nose! I tell you – there!” she shouted to the birthmark.
Suddenly a terrible howl was heard, eardrums could burst from it. It seemed all the sirens in the Armoury simultaneously snapped into action. Lights began to blink. Running into the hall, Tanya saw that there was an enormous gap in the glass of the display case, the sword had disappeared, and the supervisor so like a gorilla was lying in a formless heap on the floor. At that moment when Tanya entered, the narrow little pane on the lattice window of the museum slammed shut. However, the hall, even without that, was full of noise.
Tanya froze fearfully. The stamping of many feet was already heard in the corridors. Remembering that they would find her here, the girl wanted to run out fast but she was too late. Into the hall ran the guards, the guide, workers of the museum, Prikhodkin and Irina Vladimirovna, and a good half of the class.
Rushing to the broken display case, they froze wonder-struck. Others attempted to switch off the siren and bring the supervisor round.
“Stolen! What was in this case?” someone shouted.
“The gold sword!” the round-shouldered guide said with infinite despondency in his voice. “And what do you think: for forty years already I’ve been tormented by the pr-remonition that this would happen one day. About seventeen years ago I even shared my considerations with the now deceased director.”
“It’s that same sword that Grotter touched! She was the very first here!” Lena Mumrikova began to bawl suddenly.
“It wasn’t me!” Tanya shouted, but almost no one was listening to her. And even if they did, they did not believe her.
A ring of people surrounded Tanya, staring at her. No one walked up close to her, as if she was a leper. At this moment, the supervisor opened her eyes slightly. On seeing Tanya, she groaned, “Again this girl!” and fainted again.
Tanya sensed that she was blushing, moreover she was not simply blushing but had become crimson, exactly like a tomato. She attempted to justify herself, but no one was listening to her.
“Excellent! I don’t believe my eyes! Grotter swiped the gold sword!” Genka Bulonov exclaimed, almost choking from such enthusiasm and sticking chewing gum on the throne.
“It wasn’t me!” Tanya shouted.
“Shut up! There was no one else in the hall! Search her!” Lena Mumrikova shouted.
Tanya, sweaty and bewildered, moved back, flying with her back against Irina Vladimirovna.
“Grotter! Tatiana! What horror! What disgrace! How could you?” she clucked.
“Really, will no one stand up for me?” Tanya thought with horror, but then as if through a fog she heard the voice of the gym teacher Prikhodkin, “I’ll not allow her to be searched! She was with me all the time! And how could she knock down this hippo?” he said in a bass voice, nodding at the supervisor lying on the floor, who again began to raise her head.
“Oh-oh-oh… The hippo himself… I’m dying…” she groaned and carefully, in order not to hurt the back of her head, fainted anew.
Squeezing through the crowd, a mean confident person approached Tanya.
“Lieutenant Colonel Chuchundrikov. Security service,” he introduced himself. “Come with me!”
Tanya dejectedly trudged right behind, sensing how behind her the amazed and simultaneously enraptured classmates were dragging themselves along like a split herd. How do you like that – a demure Grotter and suddenly she did such a thing!
They turned to the right, once again to the right, and descended the short stairs going down. The mean person brought Tanya to the high plastic arch.
“Go through the detector!” he ordered.
Tanya, shrugging her shoulders, took a step through the arch. She knew that she had nothing. An instant – and the detector literally began to shake from ringing. The eyebrows of the mean little fellow predatorily went up.
“Take out keys and all metallic objects,” he ordered.
Tanya fearfully took out keys and again took a step into the arch. The detector again began to shake.
“Well, that’s it, Grotter, the end for you! The sky in a cell, friends in stripes! You will run errands for someone for apple cores and toothpaste tubes!” Mumrikova shouted.
“Quiet!” Prikhodkin ordered her. “This machine is most likely defective… Here I’ll go through now… There, it’s quiet! What a skunk! Really she could… no, I don’t believe it!”
“So… now we’ll find out… Come here! Not to me! To this screen!” The mean person dragged Tanya to the low screen, and he went up to the monitor. The girl heard as he muttered, “Hm… as if there is no sword… There is nothing… But why then does it ring? Some stupidity… Well and she didn’t swallow the sword…”
“May I leave?” Tanya asked.
“Yes,” Lieutenant Colonel Chuchundrikov allowed. Picking up the handset of the internal telephone, he shouted into it, “Did they rewind the film? Well who’s there? The girl?” They answered him something.
“You’re sure? Absolutely?”
Continuing to hold the handset in his hand, the mean person looked darkly at Tanya, then at the teacher.
It seemed to Tanya that her heart fell from a high, very high altitude. And it broke into smithereens. Her back got soaked, her palm were covered with sweat. Lieutenant Colonel stubbornly kept quiet. The girl blinked and, already standing with tightly closed eyes, heard the words. “It means this. Your student here has nothing to do with it. You can take her away. At the moment of the theft the tracking camera did not lock in on her.”
Lena Mumrikova squealed from disappointment.
“Well, here you see! But what was on the film?” Prikhodkin exclaimed. The nose of the tiny Lieutenant Colonel hardly reached the button on his stomach.
“None of your business,” the Lieutenant Colonel answered.
