Anatoly Rybakov - THE BRONZE BIRD

"Let the troop decide," Misha replied, not without the secret hope that everybody was tired and would be glad to have the meeting closed.

But everybody except Kit, who was ravenously hungry and wanted his supper, was in favour of discussing him. Kit was afraid to speak openly of his hunger after having been criticized for gluttony and so he proposed that Misha should not be discussed. But the others were against that and Kit threw a sad glance at the mess-tins lying near the dead fire.

Zina asked for the floor first.

"I had not planned to speak about Misha," she said, "but his lack of modesty surprised me."

Misha turned an amazed look at the girl.

"He was asked whether he thought he should be discussed," she went on. "I expected him to say, 'Of course. I am no different from the others.' Instead, he said, 'Let the troop decide.' With those words, he put himself in a special position, detached himself from the collective. I call that immodest. Misha must realize that though he is the leader of our troop, he is a Komsomol like the rest of us. And there is no reason at all why he should put himself above us."

Misha gave a wry smile, but in his heart he knew that the accusation was just.

He knew he should have said unreservedly that everybody should be discussed. But he had tried to dodge criticism. That showed he had to weigh every word he said. You could not put anything over the troop.

The Bleater took the floor after Zina.

"We have known Misha for a long time," he said. "We know him well, both his good points and his drawbacks. We now see him in a role that is new for him-in the role of leader of our troop. On the whole, we must admit that he is coping with his duties quite satisfactorily. He neither puts on airs nor shows off. But he has one big shortcoming and that is that he likes to have secrets with Genka and Slava. This conspiring estranges him from the collective, places him above it. We all know that last year, Misha, Genka and Slava solved the riddle of the dirk, but that does not mean they have to have secrets now as well."

"They're always conspiring at meetings of the active," Kit grumbled. "And then he makes allowances for some people."

"Who, for instance?"

"Genka, that's who."

"Well..."

Misha got up and said:

"Now, look here. Kit is wrong about Genka. I never make exceptions, the more so in Genka's case. About the secrets-there is some truth in that. But to be frank, it's hard not to have secrets. Think back to that business over the dirk. If I had not kept it secret I'd never have discovered anything."

"That was different," Natasha Boitsova cut in. "At that time none of us were Young Pioneers or Komsomols. But now the situation has changed."

"That is true again," Misha agreed, "and that is why 1 shall let you all in on the secret the Bleater spoke about. My sole condition is that it must be treated as a secret." He looked round and lowered his voice. "You all know why Igor and Seva went to Peschanaya Kosa with the investigator. The fact is that we're trying to save Longshanks' brother. We believe that he is innocent," Misha's voice fell to a whisper. "We have grounds for suspecting the boatman. There must be a reason why he attacked us. But everything has to be checked. That is why you must not breathe a word of this to anyone. It is our secret. I repeat, it is now the secret of the whole troop and nobody else must know about it." Misha straightened up and continued in a normal tone of voice, "Now that the self-criticism meeting is over, we must all take account of what has been said about us and try to turn over a new leaf. Each of us must aim to be a real Communist, a real Bolshevik, and if we do not train ourselves for that now, we shall never attain our goal. Scientists say that a person's character takes final shape by the time he is eighteen. That leaves us with not much time to re-educate ourselves and we must hurry. At this meeting we criticized each other. But all of us are members of one Komsomol family, and those of us who have not yet joined the Y.C.L, will do so in the autumn."

Misha did not tell the troop everything. He only shared his suspicions about the boatman, saying nothing about the "countess," Serov and the bronze bird. But what he said was sufficient. Now everybody burned with the desire to help Nikolai and to expose the boatman. But at the moment there was nothing they could do for Nikolai, so they transferred their solicitude to his family-to Maria Ivanovna and Longshanks.

The troop helped them in every way they could. They worked in the field and in the vegetable plot and helped about the house. They spoke of clubbing together to buy a cow, but that proved to be beyond their means. They shared their meagre rations with Maria Ivanovna, while Longshanks began to take his meals regularly with the troop. The girls did most of all this work, but to make up for that the boys dogged the boatman's footsteps. They got to know everything he did. Significance was attached to wherever he went or whatever he did and Misha found himself receiving continuous reports about the man's movements. In the end Misha got so fed up with this that he forbade the boys to go anywhere near the boatman or the boat station. But try to stop youngsters! That was doubly impossible because soon the investigator arrived and that sent a thrill of excitement through the entire village.

The investigator went to the Village Soviet and summoned quite a few people for questioning: the boatman, Yerofeyev, some of the peasants and even the artist Stepan Kondratyevich. Then he went to the camp, allegedly to have a talk with Igor and Seva. Allegedly, because he hardly asked anything. His only question to Igor was: "How are you keeping?" To which Igor replied that he was keeping very well. Seva was feeling ill and was lying in one of the tents. The investigator looked in for a moment and walked away from the tent with the words: "Since he is ill, let him sleep," although Seva had no intention of going to sleep and had sat up when he saw the investigator.

The investigator stayed in the camp for a long time. Misha told him that its territory was confined to a small lawn, but he went round the whole park. He stayed around the camp for such a long time and asked for so many details about it that the thought crossed Misha's mind that he suspected some of the troop of murdering Kuzmin.

The investigator asked about the troop's routine: when they got up, when they went to sleep, when they went for their walks and games and who stayed behind 5 whether anybody was on duty at night and what the route of the rounds was. Misha took him over the route.

On the whole, this little man behaved very strangely: he carefully inspected all the paths, examined the bushes and, so it seemed to Misha, even sniffed at the trees. Misha could not understand what interested him here. The boatman was with his boats and those men were in the woods, but here he was nosing out goodness knew what.

"Perhaps you'll go over the woods as well?" Misha asked sarcastically.

"It's a big woods," the investigator replied calmly, "and you can't very well look it over."

"That is exactly why it is easier to hide there."

Continuing his inspection of the path, the investigator said:

"But they are only your suspicions."

"What do you mean?"

"Your suspicions about the boatman and the men in the woods."

"But you only suspect Nikolai Ribalin and yet you've arrested him."

"There is evidence against him but none against the people you suspect."

"All the same, Nikolai is not guilty," Misha declared.

"Nobody says he is. We have evidence and that is why we are holding him." Then he added mysteriously, "Perhaps it's better for him that we're holding him in town. Meanwhile, those men you're talking about are digging in the woods. Let them go on digging."