R1 - Rusalka Read Free Page B

friend. Or Vasya Yegorov. I could take a message to them."
     
    He remembered 'Mitri shoving him away, and that recollection stung as much as it frightened him, "No," he said.
     
    "They're rich," Sasha objected. "They could help you."
     
    So, then,
there
was the explanation of why Sasha helped him: the boy said it—rich friends, maybe even a little favor for somebody like Sasha Misurov.
     
    Sasha was, since last night, wrong about the hope of rich friends, more the pity for them both.
     
    "Why?" he asked Sasha, between bites of the winter-withered apple. "Why risk the watch for me?"
     
    Sasha shook his head as if he was still thinking about that.
     
    "Not that I'm not grateful," Pyetr said.
     
    Sasha kept looking at him, till Pyetr wondered if his wits were altogether collected. Finally Sasha said: "What will you do if you don't go to your friends?"
     
    "Oh, of course they'll help," Pyetr said. "They'll know what's going on, don't doubt that. They just don't need to know where I am right now—in case somebody asks, so they can swear they don't know. But they'll settle it. They have influence. All I have to do is stay here, out of reach of the watch."
     
    "How long?"
     
    "I don't know how long, a few days. I can't walk, Sasha Vasilyevitch! If you did go to my friends and anything went wrong, if the watch should get word of it before they can do anything with the magistrates, they'll kill me on sight, no trial, no court, nothing of the sort. You know that's the truth. The safest thing is for me to stay here till my friends can work things out. I can stay hidden, I don't need anything, only a place to sleep, maybe a little to eat, but I don't even ask that—"
     
    Sasha was frowning more and more, and Pyetr found himself suddenly down to pleading with The Cockerel's stableboy, who owed him nothing, and who might, if greed got the better of him, go straight to 'Mitri and tell 'Mitri where he was hiding.
     
    And if 'Mitri rebuffed him… there were other places Sasha Vasilyevitch could go to sell his information.
     
    "I'll get you food," Sasha said with a very worried look. "But people come and go here. How long do you think it will take?"
     
    "Surely," Pyetr said, trying to bargain the most time he dared, "surely no more than four days."
     
    Sasha stared at him, not at all happy.
     
    "All right," Sasha said finally.
     
    After which Sasha moved a horse out of the endmost, darkest stall, and piled up forkfuls of straw in its corner. Then Sasha helped him up and helped him walk that far and sit down, all of which put him out of breath.
     
    "Pull the straw over you," Sasha said.
     
    It itched; but it offered some warmth, better than the drafts in the aisle. Sasha covered the pile with horse blankets, put his bread in his hand and set beside him a grain-measure of water he had saved from the horse pails. That was the comfort he had.
     
    He thought about 'Mitri when Sasha had done his chores and gone, and he grew angry, and angrier; and he thought about the boyarina Irina, who, like Dmitri, had her wealth and her reputation to save—
     
    He thought about Sasha, who probably was out for gain too. Who in this world was not?
     
    But at least one could understand a boy who simply wanted to better himself. Pyetr Illitch Kochevikov had started life that way, Ilya Kochevikov the gambler's son, Ilya Kochevikov the foreigner to Vojvoda, who had been all too well acquainted with the town watch in his life, and who had died, no one knew by whose hand, for reasons no one precisely knew but everyone in town was willing to speculate.
     
    One would have thought, Pyetr mused bitterly, that after twelve years or so one might have lived down his father's sins. One might have thought that one's friends were one's friends, to rely on in the bad times as well as the good.
     
    'Mitri and the rest of them had their fathers to fear, that was the way the world worked: they would save themselves, god forbid they risk anything for