and opened the curtain, as if he needed some air. Now if anyone tried to kill him, he could jump up on the windowsill in a single bound.
‘But when you sleep,’ he said, ‘you know you’re going to wake up in the morning.’
‘An’ wake up afta death too. If you rive good rife, waking up wirr be good.’
So now he was playing the priest! That was a bit much, a heathen preaching to a baptised Christian about heaven and resurrection!
With the window so close now, Senka felt a bit bolder: ‘How did you find me?’ he asked. ‘Do you know some magic word?’
‘I know. It carred “roubur”. I gave boy roubur, an’ he forrow you.’
‘What boy?’ asked Senka, startled.
Masa pointed to a spot about two and a half feet off the floor. ‘Rittur boy. Snot face. But run fast.’
The Japanese glanced round the room and nodded approvingly. ‘Werr done, Senka-kun, for moving here. It crose to Asheurov Rane.’
Senka twigged – he meant Asheulov Lane, where he and Erast Petrovich had their lodgings. It really wasn’t far.
‘What do you want from me? I gave back the beads, didn’t I?’ he whined.
‘Master tord me to come,’ Masa explained sternly, almost solemnly, then sighed. ‘An’ you, Senka-kun, rike me. When I was rike you, I was rittur bandit too. If I not meet Master, I woul’ grow into big bandit. He is my teacher. And I wirr be your teacher.’
‘I’ve already got a teacher,’ Senka growled (he’d lost his fear of death).
‘What lessons he give you?’ Masa asked, livening up. (Well, actually, he said ‘ ressons’, but Senka had already learned to make out his queer way of talking.)
‘Well, there’s good manners . . .’
The short-ass was delighted at that. That was the most important thing, he said. And he explained about genuine politeness, which was based on sincere respect for every person.
At the very height of the explanation, a fly started buzzing about over Senka’s head. The rotten pest kept flying round and round, it just wouldn’t leave him alone. The Japanese jumped up in the air, waved his arm and caught the insect in his fist.
His agile speed made Senka squeal out loud and squat right down – he thought Masa was trying to kill him.
Masa looked down at Senka doubled up on the floor and asked what he was doing. ‘I was afraid you’d hit me.’
‘What for?’
Senka said with a sob in his voice: ‘Everyone wants to hurt a poor orphan.’
The Japanese raised one finger like a teacher. You need to know how to defend yourself, he said. Especially if you’re an orphan.
‘Yeah, but how do I learn?’
The Japanese laughed. Who was it, he asked, who said he didn’t need a teacher? Do you want me to teach you how to defend yourself?
Senka recalled the way the Oriental flung his arms and legs about, and he wanted to do that too. ‘That wouldn’t be bad,’ he said. ‘But I reckon nifty battering’s difficult, ain’t it?’
Masa walked over to the window and set the captured fly free. No, he said, battering people’s not difficult. Learning the Way, that’s what difficult.
(It was only later Senka realised he’d said the word ‘Way’ like it was written with a big letter, but at the time he didn’t twig.)
‘Eh?’ he asked. ‘Learning what?’
Masa started explaining the Way. He said life was a road from birth to death and you had to walk that road the right way, or else at the end of the journey you wouldn’t have got anywhere and afterwards it was too late to complain. If you crawled along the road like a fly, then in the next life you’d be born a fly, like the one that was just buzzing round the room. And if you crept along through the dust, you’d be born a snake.
Senka thought that was just fancy talk. He didn’t know then that Masa was serious when he talked about flies and snakes.
‘And what’s the right way to walk the road?’ asked Senka.
It turned out that doing it right was a kind of self-torture. First of all, when you woke up in the morning, you had to say to yourself: ‘Today death is waiting for me’ – and not feel afraid. And you had to think about it – death, that is – all the time. Because you never knew when your journey would come to an end, and you always had to be ready.
Senka closed his eyes and said the special words, and he wasn’t frightened