Anatoly Rybakov - THE BRONZE BIRD

That started a furious argument. The Komsomols argued that there was no Elijah the prophet and that in general there was no God. Longshanks and the Fly led the opposition. That was how it happened every time. Whatever they spoke about, they always brought the conversation round to God.

"Calm down," Misha said. "We're not talking about God, but about the rules and customs of the Young Pioneers. We'll talk about God some other time. Meanwhile, you have to understand the rules and customs. Otherwise how can you hope to become Young Pioneers?"

Just then Senka Yerofeyev and Akimka came in. Hearing Misha's last words, Senka said:

"Who wants to become a Young Pioneer?" He faced the children sitting on the benches and aggressively repeated, "Who? I'd like to see!"

Nobody moved. They were all afraid of Senka. Longshanks was the only one who was not in awe either of Senka or Akimka. Although he had no intention of joining the Young Pioneers because he believed in God (a belief that was badly shaken after the expedition to the Goligin Brushwood Road), he said:

"Suppose I do? What's that to you?"

"You just try!" Senka muttered threateningly.

"We'll try. We're not going to ask your permission," said the Fly, emboldened by Longshanks' example.

Misha did not intervene. He wanted the children to give Senka a rebuff themselves. Let them feel their strength, let them understand that together they could defy Senka and Akimka. Otherwise, the detachment that was being organized in the village would fall apart in the winter. Senka and Akimka would see to that.

Senka shook his fist at Longshanks and the Fly.

"You'll be sorry!"

The youngsters felt they could not let that threat go by. Genka went up to Senka and stopped in front of him.

"What are you shaking your fists at us for? Go on, get out of here!"

"Hey, hey, careful!" Senka replied, but there was no longer a sting in his voice. "Who are you telling to get out? Think you own the place, or what? Is this club yours? I'll bash your teeth in!" He raised his fist.

"I'd like to see you do it!" Genka said, advancing on Senka. "Go on, try!"

The children jumped up from their seats. Senka looked wildly about him. Akimka edged towards the exit and halted on the threshold, ready to slip away at the first sign of danger.

"Well, what's stopping you?" Genka said, still advancing on Senka.

He was getting excited and was now spoiling for a fight. At last he would settle the score for the egg that was smashed on his head!

But Misha could not allow a fight in the club. He stepped between the two boys.

"You know what, Yerofeyev? If you don't like it here, go away and don't bother the others. And bear in mind that nobody is afraid of you. We are many and you are one. You can't lick everybody."

Senka swept the hall with an angry glance, turned on his heel and strode to the door, followed by the merry laughter and jeers of the village children. The downfall of the omnipotent Yerofeyev was for them an unexpected and pleasant event.

At the door, Senka looked back and again shook his fist. That brought a fresh burst of laughter. The fist came down on Akimka's neck.

"What's that for?" Akimka asked plaintively.

"Next time you won't turn tail, that's your what for!"

The day after Senka and Akimka had been chased out of the club so ignominiously, somebody cut down four apple-trees in the manor orchard. None of the troop had ever so much as seen these trees, but the chairman and two peasants took Misha to the orchard and showed him the damage.

"The handiwork of your boys?" the chairman demanded darkly.

"No," Misha replied firmly, "none of the boys could have done it."

"Then who did?"

"I don't know."

"There's nobody else who could have done it. Were there any strangers around here?"

"No."

"Exactly," the chairman said. "There neither were nor could be any strangers here. That means one of you chopped the trees down." "No," Misha replied heatedly. "None of us would do such a thing."

The chairman shook his head. "But the fact is that the trees have been chopped down."

Misha called an emergency meeting of the troop. He told them about the trees and sternly demanded to know who had cut them down. The only reply he got was a bewildered silence. Misha closely scrutinized the faces around him, but in none of them did he see so much as a shadow of guilt. He knew perfectly well that none of his troop was capable of such a dastardly act.

But why were they being accused?

The answer came a few days later.

The uyezd newspaper printed three short articles in succession that were respectively titled Fine Club Organizers We Have, Stop Destroying Public Property and Is This How Elders Are Helped? They were signed by a person calling himself The Awl.

The gist of the articles was that a Komsomol named Misha Polyakov went about his duties irresponsibly, allowed discipline to slacken among the Young Pioneers and turned them into a gang of hooligans. Instead of helping the Karagayevo peasants to fit out a club, Misha had taken up with a local drunkard, threw public money to the winds and spoilt the club. The young people in his charge were cutting down trees in the estate which was the property of the people. Member of the Y.C.L. Misha Polyakov refused to help the local authorities, the example being the message for the chairman of the Borki Village Soviet. Moreover, he had suspicious connections with the family of a person charged with a crime.

That was a blow nobody expected. It virtually took the wind out of their sails. What humiliation to be reproached in public, in the press. It was all so unjust and untrue.

"We must send a denial," Slava said.

"Do you think the newspaper will print something against itself?" Zina Kruglova protested.

"We'll make them!" Genka shouted, rolling his eyes. "I'll go to the editorial office myself. Let them try not to print it!"

"You'll not scare anybody," Misha noted reasonably. "Besides, what are we going to deny? We can't deny that business about the club and about the message. The only thing that's not true is about the trees. Our denial will look flat. The club had to be repainted. We did not carry out the chairman's request. But we did not chop down the trees. After a denial like that people will laugh at us more than they're doing now."

But who was the man who signed himself The Awl? How could the editor allow things like that to be printed? Undoubtedly, he was a bad, ill-natured person. This formal disgracing of a whole collective and nullifying of their work without rhyme or reason was so unfair! Misha boiled with anger. Perhaps they ought to write a denial in spite of everything? Not to this but to a metropolitan newspaper. Pravda or Izvestia, for instance. After all, there was justice in the world.

Why had things like this never happened when Kolya Sevastyanov was in charge of the troop? There had never been any incidents. Everything had always been in order. While under him, Misha, things went wrong. Seva and Igor ran away from the camp, then a mess was made of the club. Perhaps he really was much too young to be the leader of the troop. But then what had he done that was wrong?

The youngsters trembled with shame. In the village they walked about with downcast eyes. They thought everybody had read the paper and was now censuring them. But the truth of the matter was that nobody censured them. Senka Yerofeyev alone maliciously declared:

"They made it hot for you in the papers! Wait, that's not the last of it."

What Senka threatened came to pass. A few days later, the chairman summoned Misha to the Village Soviet and handed him a paper from the Gubernia Department of Public Education, requesting the troop to quit the estate grounds forthwith "in view of systematic damage to the grounds." The paper was signed by Serov.