in the carriage. Senka recognised him straight off.
Vanka stuck his head out of the window and shouted as loud as he could:
‘Did you bring it? Did you bring it?’
The magistrate laughed and climbed down on to the ground. ‘I did,’ he said. ‘Can’t you see for yourself? What are we going to call her?’
That was when Senka spotted the horse tethered to the back of the carriage, a sorrel foal with plump round sides. It looked like a grown-up horse, only it was really small, not much bigger than a goat.
Vanka started chirruping away: ‘A pony! I’m going to have a real pony!’ And so, Senka turned back and trudged all the way to the Kaluga Gate. He left the wooden horse in the grass at the side of the road. Let it graze there. Vanka didn’t need it – maybe some other kid would get good use out of it.
As Senka walked along, he dreamed about how time would pass and his life would change miraculously, and he would come back here in a big shiny carriage. The servant would carry in a little card with gold letters, with everything about Senka written in the finest fancy style, and that young lady with the glasses would say to Vanka: ‘Ivan Trofimovich, your brother has come to visit’. And Senka would be wearing a cheviot wool suit and button-down spats, and carrying a cane with an ivory knob on it.
It was already dark when he finally staggered home. It would have been better if he hadn’t come back at all, just run off straight away.
Right there in the doorway Uncle Zot thumped him so hard he saw stars, and knocked out the front tooth that left such a handy gap for spitting. Then, when Senka fell down, his uncle gave his ribs a good kicking: ‘That’s just for starters, you’ll get what you deserve later. I went to the police about you,’ he yelled, ‘I wrote out a complaint for the local sergeant. You’ll go to jail for stealing, you little bastard, they’ll soon straighten you out in there.’ And he just kept on and on barking out his threats.
So Senka did run away. When his uncle got tired kicking and punching and went to take the yoke down off the wall – the one the women used to carry water – Senka darted out of the porch, spitting blood and smearing the tears across his face.
He shuddered through the night at the Sukharevka market, under a load of hay. He was feeling miserable and sorry for himself, his ribs ached, his battered face hurt, and he was really hungry too. He’d spent the half-rouble left over from the horse on food the day before, and now he had nothing but holes in his pockets.
Senka left Sukharevka at dawn, to get well out of harm’s way. If Uncle Zot had snitched on him to the coppers, the first constable who came along would grab him and stick him in the jug, and once you were in there, you didn’t get out in a hurry. He had to make for somewhere where no one knew his face.
He walked to another market, the one on Old Square and New Square, under the Kitaigorod wall, and hung about beside the row of food stalls, breathing in the smell of the pies and the baked goods, shooting quick glances this way and that in case any of the tradeswomen got careless. But he didn’t have the nerve to snitch anything – after all, he’d never stolen openly like that before. And what if he got caught? They’d kick him so hard, it would make Uncle Zot seem like a doting mother.
He wandered round the market, keeping well away from Solyanka Street. He knew that over there, behind that street, was Khitrovka, the most terrible place in all Moscow. Of course, there were plenty of con merchants and pickpockets in Sukharevka too, but they were no match for the thieves of Khitrovka. From what he’d heard, it was a terrifying place. Stick your nose in there, and they’d have you stripped naked before you could say knife, and you could be grateful if you managed to escape with your life. The flophouses there were really frightening, with lots of cellars and underground vaults. And there were runaway convicts there, and murderers, and all sorts of drunken riff-raff. And they said that if any youngsters happened to wander in there, they disappeared without a trace. They