"But I'm not an old man, Uncle.
I'm only a boy, and I'm not сhilly either. My hands are just cold because I've been making snowballs."
Taking the half-empty rucksack off his back, the father sat down wavily beside me and said:
"This passenger of mine is a regular young nuisance, he's made me iured as well as himself.
If you take a long stride he breaks into a trot; just you try keeping in step with a footslogger like him.
Where I could take one pace, I have to take three iostead, and so we go on, like a horse and a tortoise.
And you need eyes in the back of your head to know what he's doing.
As soon as you turn your back, he's off paddling in a puddle or breaking off an icicle and sucking it like a lollipop.
No, it's no job for a man to be travelling with someone like him, not on foot anyway."
He was silent for a little, then asked: "And what about you, mate?
Waiting for your chief?" · By now I didn't want to tell him I was not a driver. I answered:
"Looks as if I'll have to."
"Is he coming over from the other side?"
"He will be."
"Do you know if the boat will be here soon?"
"In about two hours."
"That's quite a long time.
Well, let's take it easy, I'm in no hurry.
Just saw you as I was walking past, so I thought to myself there's one of us, drivers, enjoying a spot of sunshine.
I'll go over and have a smoke with him, I thought.
No fun in smoking alone, any more than in dying alone.
You're doing well, I see, smoking cigarettes.
Got them wet, eh?
Well, mate, wet tobacco's like a doctored horse, neither of them any good.
Let's have a go at my old shag instead."
He pulled a worn silk pouch out of the pocket of his thin khaki trousers, and as he unrolled it, I noticed the words embroidered on the corner:
"To one of our dear soldiers, from a pupil of Lebedyanskaya Secondary School."
We smoked the strong home-grown tobacco and for a long time neither of us spoke.
I was going to ask him where he was making for with the boy, and what brought him out on such bad roads, but he got his question in first:
"At it all through the war, were you?"
"Nearly all of it."
"Front line?"
"Yes."
"Well, I had a good bellyful of trouble out there too, mate. More than enough of it."
He rested his big dark hands on his knees and let his shoulders droop.
When I glanced at him sideways I felt strangely disturbed. Have you ever seen eyes that look as if they have been sprinkled with ash, eyes filled with such unabating pain and sadness that it is hard to look into them?
This chance acquaintance of mine had eyes like that.
He broke a dry twisted twig out of the fence and for a minute traced a curious pattern in the sand with it, then he spoke:
"Sometimes I can't sleep at night, I just stare into the darkness and I think:
'What did you do it for, life? Why did you maim me like this?
Why did you punish me?'
And I get no answer, either in darkness, or when the sun's shining bright .... No, I get no answer, and I'll never get one!"
And suddenly he recollected himself, nudged his little son affectionately and said: "Go on, laddie, go and play clown by the water, there's always something for little boys to do hy a big river.
Only mind you don't get your feet wet."
While we had heen smoking together in silence, I had taken a quick look at father and son and one thing about them had struck me as odd. The boy was dressed plainly but in good stout clothes. The way the long-skirted little coat with its soft lining of worn beaver lamb fitted him, the way his tiny boots had been made to fit snugly over the woollen socks, the very neat darn that joined an old tear on the sleeve of the coat, all these things spoke of a woman's hand, the skilful hand of a mother.
But the father's appearance was quite different. His quilted jacket was scorched in several places and roughly darned, the patch on his worn khaki trousers was not sewn on properly, it was tacked on with big, mannish stitches, he was wearing an almost new pair of army boots, but his thick woollen socks were full of holes. They had never known the touch of a woman's hand.
Either he's widower, I decided, or there's something wrong .between him and his wife.
He watched his son run down to the water, then coughed and again began to speak, and I listened with all my attention.
"To start with, my life was just ordinary.
I'm from the Voronezh Province, born there in 1900.