'What's all this for?' he thinks, as he looks round.
Hesees a dark ceiling, anoven-prongwith curly horns, and a stove which looks like a big black hole . . .
'Ma-a-ma!' he wails.
'Now stop that!' shouts Nanny. 'You'll just have to wait!'
The cook places on the table a bottle, three glasses and a pie. The two women and the man with bright buttons clink their glasses and drink several times, and the man keeps embracing first Nanny, then the cook. And then all three of them start singing quietly.
Grisha stretches his hand out towards the pie and is given a small piece. As he eats it, he watches Nanny drinking . . . He feels like a drink, too.
'Me, Nanny, me!' he pleads.
The cook lets him have a sip from her glass. His eyes start, he frowns, coughs and for a long time afterwards waves his arms about, while the cook looks at him and laughs.
Back home again, Grisha starts tellmg Mamma, the walls and his bed about where he h.is been today and what he's seen. He talks more with his face and hands than with his tongue. He shows them the sun shining brightly and the horses trotting along, the horrible stove and the cook drinking.
That evening he just can't get to sleep. The soldiers with their birch twigs, the big cats, the horscs, the piece of glass, the tub of oranges, the bright buttons - all these are rolled into one and prcss on his brain. He turns from side to side, babbles away and cventually, unable to bear his state of excitement any longer, starts to cry.
'You've got a temperature,' says Mamma, placing the palm of her hand on his forehead. 'I wonder how that came about?'
"Stove!' howls Grisha. 'Go away, horrid stove!'
'It's probably something he's eaten . . .' Mamma decides.
And so Grisha, bursting with impressions of the new life he has just discovered, is given a teaspoonful ofcastor-oil by his Mamma.
Papa, Mamma and Aunt Nadya are all out. They've gone to a christening party at the house of that old officer who rides about on the little grey horse. Grisha, Anya, Alyosha, Sonya and the cook's son, Andrey, are sitting round the dining-room table playing lotto, waiting for them to return. To tell the truth, it's well past their bedtime; but how can you be expected to go to sleep without finding out from Mamma what the new baby was like, and what kind of supper they were given? The table, lit by a hanging lamp, is covered with a colourful assortment of numbers, nutshells, bits of paper and glass counters. In front of each player are two cards and a pile of counters for covering the numbers. In the middle of the table is a gleaming white saucer with five one-kopeck pieces, and next to it a half-eaten apple, a pair of scissors and a plate in which they are supposed to put the nutshells. The children are playing for money. The stake is one kopeck. If anybody cheats, the rule is they're out of the game at once. The players have the dining-room to themselves. Agafya lvanovna, the children's nanny, is downstairs in the kitchen teaching the cook how to cut out a dress pattern, while Vasya, their elder brother, who is in the fifth form at school, is reclining in a state of boredom on a sofa in the lounge.
They are passionately involved in thegame. Judging from his face, the most passionately involved is Grisha-a small nine-year-old with a completely shaven head, chubby cheeks and fleshy lips like a negro's. He's already in the preparatory class at school, so he's looked upon as the most grown-up and the cleverest. Grisha is playing purely and simply for the money. But for those kopecks in the saucer, he'd have been asleep long ago. He keeps darting anxious, jealous glances at the other players' cards with his hazel-coloured eyes. Envy, fear of losing, and the financial considerations that fill his shaven head, prevent him from sitting still and concentrating. He is like a cat on hot bricks. Once he has won, he scoops the money up greedily and shoves it straight into his pocket. His eight-year-old sister, Anya, with her sharp little chin and gleaming, intelligent eyes, is similarly afraid of losing. Flushed and pale by turns, she watches the other players' every move. The kopecks mean nothing to her. For Anya winning is a matter of personal prestige. For the other sister, six-year-old Sonya, who has a curly head of hair and the kind of complexion that you see only in very healthy children, expensive dolls and on the lids of sweet boxes, it is the actual process ofplaying that is absorbing. Her face is a picture of bliss. No matter who wins, she shrieks with laughter and claps her hands with equal abandon. Alyosha, a round, chubby little chap, keeps puffing and blowing and goggling at his cards. For him, self-interest and prestige do not enter into it. He hasn't been shooed away from the table or put to bed — and is thankful for that. He's a quiet type to look at, but inside he's a proper linle devil. It's not so much the lotto that interests him, as the misunderstandings that are bound to occur during the game. If one player hits another or calls him names, he's absolutely delighted. He should have popped out for a certain purpose long ago, but he won't leave the table for a moment in case someone steals his counters or his kopecks. Since he only knows numbers under ten and those ending in nought, Anya is covering his numbers for him. The fifth player, the cook's son, Andrey, a sickly dark-skinned boy wearing a calico shirt and with a bronze cross round his neck, stands there motionless and gazes dreamily at the numbers. He is quite uncon- cerned with who wins or loses, being completely absorbed in the mathematics of the game, in its simple logic: what a lot of different numbers there are in the world, and how extraordmary that they don't all get mixed up!
The children take it in tum to act as caller, except for Sonya and Alyosha. To avoid monotony, a great many special terms and funny nicknames have been worked out for the numbers. For instance, number seven is always called 'the poker', eleven 'two little sticks', seventy-seven is 'Semyon Semyonych', ninety - 'grandpa', and so on. The game proceeds at a lively pace.
'Thirty-two!' shouts Grisha, pulling the small yellow cylinders out of his father's hat. 'Seventeen! The poker! Twenty-eight - shut the gate!'
Anya notices that Andrey has missed number twenty-eight on his card. At any other time she would have pointed this out to him, but now that her personal prestige is lying there in the saucer with her kopeck, she is secretly triumphant.
'Twenty-three!' Grisha continues. 'Semyon Semyonych! Number nine!'
'A cockroach, a cockroach!' screams Sonya, pointing to an insect running across the table. 'Help!'
'Don't hurt him,' says Alyosha in his deep voice. 'Maybe he's got babies ...'
Sonya watches the cockroach and thinks: how tiny those cock- roach babies must be!
'Forty-three! Number one!' continues Grisha, suffering agonies because Anya already has two rows of four. 'Number six!'
'Lotto! Lotto!' shouts Sonya, flashing her eyes coquettishly and shrieking with laughter.
All the others' faces drop.
'Show us!' says Grisha, turning towards Sonya with a look of hatred.
As the most grown-up and the cleverest Grisha always has the last word. What he says, goes. A long time is spent thoroughly checking Sonya's numbers, and to the extreme disappointment of her fellow- players it turns out that she has not been cheating. They start a new game.
'You'll never guess what I saw yesterday!' says Anya, as if to herself. 'Old Philip pulled his eyelids right back and his eyes went all red and horrible, just like the Devil's.'