the only Spidorovs who kept a tight grip on this world. And whether that was good or bad depended on which way you looked at it.
For Senka it was probably bad, because his life was altogether different after that. His dad worked behind the counter in a big tobacco shop. He got a good wage and free baccy. When he was little, Senka always had clothes to wear and shoes on his feet. A full belly and a clean face, as they say. He was taught reading, writing and arithmetic at the usual age, he even went to commercial college for half a year, only when he was orphaned, that put an end to his studies. But then never mind his studies, that wasn’t the reason he was so miserable.
His brother Vanka was lucky. He was taken in by Justice of the Peace Kuvshinnikov – the one who always used to buy English baccy from their dad. The magistrate had a wife, but no children, and he took Vanka, because he was small and chubby. But Senka was already big and bony, the magistrate wasn’t interested in someone like that. So Senka was taken in by his second uncle, Zot Larionovich, in Sukharevka. And that was where Senka ran wild.
Well, what else could he do but run wild?
His uncle, the fat-bellied bastard, starved him. Didn’t even give Senka a seat at the table, even though he was flesh and blood. On Saturdays he used to beat him, sometimes for a reason, but mostly just for the hell of it. He didn’t pay him a kopeck, although Senka slaved away in the shop just as hard as the other boys, and they were paid eight roubles each. And the most hurtful thing of all was that every morning he had to carry his second cousin Grishka’s satchel to the grammar school for him. Grishka walked on ahead, full of himself, sucking on a fancy boiled sweet, and Senka trudged along behind, like a serf from the olden days, lugging that unbelievably heavy satchel (sometimes Grishka put a brick in it out of sheer mischief). He’d have loved to squeeze all the pus out of that Grishka like a fat, ripe boil, so he’d stop putting on airs and share his sugar candy. Or smash him across the head with that brick – but he couldn’t, he just had to lump it.
Well, Senka lumped it for as long as he could. For three whole years, near enough.
Of course, he used to get his own back too, whenever he could. You have to find some way of letting off steam.
Once he put a mouse inside Grishka’s pillow. During the night it gnawed its way to freedom and got tangled in his second cousin’s hair. That was a fine ruckus in the middle of the night. But it went off all right, no one suspected Senka at all.
Or that last Shrovetide, when they baked and boiled and roasted all that food, and gave the orphan only two little pancakes with holes in them and a tiny scraping of vegetable oil. Senka flew into a fury and he splashed some of that oat ‘decoction’ they took for constipation into the big pot with the thick cabbage soup. That’ll make you run, you greaseballs, let’s see you twitch and heave! And he got away with that too – they blamed the sour cream for going off.
When he got the chance, he used to steal all sorts of small things from the shop: thread maybe, or a pair of scissors, or some buttons. He sold what he could at the Sukharevka flea-market and threw away the things that were no use. He got beaten for it sometimes, but only on suspicion – he was never caught in the act.
But when he finally did get his fingers burned, it was really bad, the smoke was thick and the fiery sparks flew. And it was Senka’s compassionate heart to blame for the whole thing, for making him forget his usual caution.
After he hadn’t heard anything about his brother for three whole years, he finally got word from him. He often used to comfort himself by thinking how lucky Vanka was, and how happy he must be, living with Justice of the Peace Kuvshinnikov, not like Senka. And then this letter came.
It was amazing it ever got there at all. On the envelope it said: ‘My brother Senka hoo lives with Uncle Zot in Sukharevka in Moscow’. It was lucky