Anatoly Rybakov - THE BRONZE BIRD

At the mention of Igor and Seva, everybody began to talk at once. Borya Baranov, nicknamed the Bleater, made himself heard above the din. In stature he was smaller than the others, but he was a fierce champion of justice. He thought that had it not been for him, falsehood and injustice would have reigned unchecked in the world. And he shouted the loudest of all:

"They ran away because of Genka!"

"That's a lie, you miserable Bleater!" Genka cried indignantly. But Misha ordered the Bleater to tell him what had happened. With his usual solemnity whenever he fought for justice, the Bleater began:

"I'll tell you the whole truth. I've got no reason to add or invent anything."

"Cut out the preliminaries," Misha hurried him; the Bleater's introduction could very well drag on for half an hour at least.

"Well," the Bleater went on, "when we went to bed we had a talk. That was after the play Death to Fascism. Igor and Seva said that instead of staging plays we should fight the fascists so that they would not kill Communists. Genka began to deride them, saying, 'You go and fight the fascists and we'll see what happens.' Igor got mad and said, 'If we make up our minds, we'll go.' Then Genka said, 'Start making up your minds, start making up your minds!' That's how it was. And in the morning when Genka woke up, he said, 'What, you still here? I thought you had run away to fight the fascists.' After that the first thing that Genka asked them every morning was, 'How many fascists have you killed today?' He went on teasing them until in the end they ran away. That's what happened. I've got no call to lie. I never lie."

"Genka, is that the truth?" Misha demanded.

"It's true, it's true!" cried the children of Genka's section.

"He's always teasing people," grumbled Filya Kitov, or Kit, (Kit-the Russian for whale.-Tr.) as he was called by his friends. He had a passion for food and was always chewing something.

"Genka, is that the truth?" Misha repeated.

Genka shrugged his shoulders.

"What relation does that have? All right, so it's true. I teased them a little. You know why? So that they would put that silliness out of their heads. But like fools they ran away. They couldn't take a joke. Makes me laugh."

"It makes you laugh, does it?" Misha shouted.

Flaring up, he suddenly tore the cap off his head and threw it on the ground.

All eyes were fixed on him.

He remembered that he was now the leader of the troop and had to control himself. He picked the cap up and put it on.

"All right. First we'll find them and then see who's to blame. Have your dinner quickly and we'll begin to look for them."

Genka brightened up.

"That's right. We'll find them in double-quick time. You'll see, Misha."

At dinner Misha questioned the boys who had been on duty, but they swore they did not see anything. Yet Igor and Seva had taken with them all their belongings, even their mugs and spoons. And nobody had noticed it!

They could have gone home. But before sending after them to Moscow, Misha decided to make a thorough search in the vicinity.

It struck Misha that the manor was the most probable place where the boys could have hidden themselves. He decided to go there with Korovin and send the rest of the troop to scour the woods.

"Comb the woods," he said. "Genka and his section-from the direction of the village, Slava's section-from the river, and Zina's-from the park. Form a chain and keep calling out to each other. Be back by seven o'clock."

Genka, Slava and Zina lined up their sections and marched them at the double to the areas assigned to them.

Misha and Korovin went to the manor.

Only Kit stayed behind in camp. He was always ready to take somebody's turn at kitchen duty. Licking his lips, he began to cook supper.

To avoid meeting the "countess," Misha chose not the central walk but took Korovin along one of the side avenues.

"First let's find out if she's in," he said.

"How will you know that?"

"You'll see," Misha replied mysteriously.

Reaching the central walk through the shrubbery, the boys stopped and drew aside the branches of a tree.

The old house was directly in front of them. The plastering had peeled off here and there, baring strips of splintered lath and pieces of tow. The broken windows were carelessly boarded up with plywood cut with an ordinary saw, which left the edges uneven. Some of the windows simply had planks of various thickness and size nailed to them.

"She's at home," Misha whispered in a disappointed tone of voice.

In reply to Korovin's inquiring glance, he indicated the loft with his eyes.

In the recess was a big bronze bird with outspread wings, an exceedingly long neck and a great hooked beak. With sharp claws it clung to a thick bough. The huge, round eyes with long, almost human-like eyebrows, gave the bird a strange, terrifying expression.

"See that?"

"Yes," Korovin whispered, overwhelmed by the sinister-looking bronze statue.

"It's an eagle."

"I don't think so," Korovin shook his head doubtfully. "I've seen eagles on the Volga."

"You get different kinds of eagles," Misha whispered. "On the Volga they're one kind, here another. But that's not the point. Look closely. See the shutters behind the bird? They're open, aren't they?"

"Yes."

"Well, whenever they're open, it means the countess is at home. She closes them when she goes to town. Understand? Remember this is a secret which I don't want anyone else to know."

"It's all the same to me," Korovin replied indifferently, "because we're going to take that house over anyway. It's got room for at least two hundred kids, while here she's occupying it all by herself. Is that just?"

"Of course, not," Misha agreed. "I hope you take the estate soon. Here's what! Let's look for Igor and Seva in the sheds. They're probably hiding there and laughing up their sleeves at us."

Keeping to the shrubbery, the boys skirted round the house, went up to the back wall of the stables and clambered into them through a small broken window.

There was a musty smell of rotting logs and boards and old manure. The partitions between the stalls had been taken down and there were holes in the ground where the supporting beams lay. The boys drew back in fright as a flock of sparrows rose suddenly and flew out of the stables on swishing wings. Stepping carefully across the broken floor, Misha and Korovin made their way through the stables to a shed.

It was darker there. There were no windows and although the gates had been taken off their hinges they had been leaned snugly into the gate frame without leaving any chink through which light could penetrate. It smelled of mice, fusty hay and stale flour-dust.

Misha seized hold of a rafter, pulled himself up and climbed into the hayloft. Then he helped his lumbering friend up. The decayed rafters bent beneath their weight. There were bumble-bee nests all over the underside of the roof. The blue sky could be seen through the slits.

The friends looked round the hayloft, then climbed into the next shed through the dormer. But there was no trace of the fugitives. As a matter of fact, only Misha was looking for them. Korovin was more concerned with the strength of the beams. He was smacking his lips to show his disappointment at finding everything so old and in disrepair. The boys returned by the same route, intending to look into the machine-shed, where formerly agricultural machines had been kept. It stood apart from the other sheds and to get to it the boys had to run across a piece of ground in full view of the house.

Misha was about to slip out of the shed when suddenly he jumped back, nearly knocking over Korovin, who was standing behind him. Korovin wanted to see what had alarmed his friend, but Misha grabbed him by his arm and nodded in the direction of the house.