Klim was the first to finish writing his dispatch. He rushed off to the censors’ office.

Kogan, a censor notorious for his tireless harassment of journalists, beckoned Klim over and asked for the dispatch.

“Now let’s see. What have we got here?” Kogan asked. “‘Unconfirmed information about foreign links’…. Let me tell you that all our information is confirmed—backed up by evidence.”

Rather than erasing the offending words, Kogan cut them out neatly with nail scissors, which took some time.

Seibert came rushing up to the next table, but he too did not get permission straight away.

“This has to be rewritten,” ordered his censor. “The tone is completely unacceptable.”

Kogan handed Klim his stamped dispatch, which now resembled a paper doily, and Klim rushed outside.

As luck would have it, there were no cabs to be seen, but a truck bearing the slogan “Live Poultry” was just coming around the corner.

Klim flagged down the truck. “Take me to the central telegraph office on Tverskaya Street, and I’ll give you three rubles.”

The driver opened the door of his cabin. “Jump in!”

They set off at top speed to the deafening sound of clattering cages and clucking chickens. A few minutes later, Klim, now covered in white feathers, had arrived at his destination.

Luckily, there was nobody at the window for Overseas Telegrams. But the next moment, a long line of journalists all panting for breath had formed there, Seibert right behind Klim.

“I should be the first in the queue!” Seibert grumbled. “But my car wouldn’t start.”

“Put your dispatches here, comrade foreigners,” ordered the telegraph operator. “We’ll send them right away.”

She gathered together the stamped forms and picked up the one at the top of the pile.

“That’s not fair!” the line exploded in indignant protests. “It’s a form of the last one who came!”

To Klim’s relief, the telegraph operator turned over the pile and took up his own form, which was now on top.

“Why do you have three addresses written here?” she asked in a stern voice.

Klim moved closer to the window. “The text has to be sent to London, New York, and Tokyo.”

“That’s not allowed.” She handed him back his form. “You’ll have to write it out three times.”

“Didn’t you know the rules had changed?” asked Seibert with feigned sympathy. “I was wondering how you managed to get here before me?”

The telegraph operator picked up Seibert’s form.

“Listen,” Klim pleaded with her, “yesterday, my courier brought you a form signed by the censor, and I called you and dictated seven addresses it had to be sent to. And there was no problem!”

“For the telephone, the rules are still the same,” the telegraph operator cut him off. “Go back to the censor’s office and write out your forms out again.”

The journalists patted Klim’s shoulder compassionately. “That’s a shame, really.”

Klim headed toward a nearby payphone on the wall, put a coin into the slot, and asked to speak to the operator at the window for Overseas Telegrams. He watched the woman picking up the phone.

“Hello,” she said. “It’s you, is it? Very well. Dictate the addresses to me.”

“They’re written on the form in front of you.”

“Dictate them anyway. That’s the rule.”

The journalists laughed at Seibert who had turned green with envy. “Sometimes you have to lose, man!”

“Just you wait,” he said, enraged. “I’ll show the lot of you!”

4

Klim got home after seven. As he opened the door to the stair, he stopped short in amazement. Tata and Kitty were coming backward down the stairs, dragging a heap of objects wrapped in a tablecloth.

“Now, look here, young ladies—” Klim stopped them. “What on earth is going on?”

Kitty pushed up her cap, which had fallen over her eyes. “Tata and I are trying to put a stop to your bourgeois lifestyle!”

A crystal glass slipped out of the bundle, hit the stairs, and smashed to pieces.

“Private property degrades and corrupts!” lectured Tata. “You need to throw out all this useless junk, or soon, you’ll be completely degenerate.”

Without a word, Klim grabbed the bundle and took it back up the stairs.

“Acquisition of material objects is like a swamp!” Tata cried. “It swallows you up! You live among all your vases and serviettes and don’t even notice how your own mind is in the grip of a hostile psychology!”

“Go home now, please,” Klim said to her over his shoulder. “And don’t dare show your face here again.”

“Daddy!” yelled Kitty, rushing after him.

Klim let her into the apartment and slammed the door.

The apartment had been completely ransacked. Cinema posters were torn off the walls, curtains pulled away from the windows, and books lay all over the floor. It looked as if it there had been a raid by the police.

Klim felt himself shaking with fury at Tata. The girl needed to see a nerve doctor—there was clearly something wrong with her!

All the same, it occurred to him that a twelve-year-old girl should not be walking around Moscow on her own so late at night.

He went out to the stairs and called out to her, “Tata!”

But she was no longer on the stairs, and there was no sign of her in the yard either.

Klim went back to the apartment. Taking the sniveling Kitty in his arms, he sat down with her on the divan.

“I know you wanted the best for me,” he said. “But look around you: are things better now or worse than they were?”

Kitty put her arms around his neck and burst into loud sobs. “Do you want me to go and stand in the corner?”

“No, I want you to come and wash your face and then go to bed. You didn’t raid your own room, did you?

“No-o! I didn’t want to give away my horses.”

“Well, you see! You mustn’t take other people’s things without asking them.”

Kitty nodded. “I understand. We mustn’t take any of your things, but we can take Elkin’s things. He’s a Nepman and a criminal element.”

“Who told you that? Is this Tata again?”

“Ye-es…”

“Don’t listen to her.”

Klim did not know what to do. Kitty was surrounded on all sides by barbarism and stupidity. Whether she liked it or not, it was starting to affect her.

He had to put a stop to the friendship with Tata. The raiding of the apartment was the thin end of the wedge. The next thing he knew, there would be denunciations to the authorities or worse.

5

When Tata got home, her mother was already asleep, and she was able to climb unnoticed into her wardrobe. The next morning, she did not breathe a word about what had happened but ran off to school.

She was furious with Uncle Klim; he had no right to inflict such damage on Kitty’s young mind!

If Tata were an adult, she would have insisted on removing Kitty from her father’s care and having her brought up by the Young Pioneer organization. Then Kitty could grow up to be a true Bolshevik.

But what could Tata do now as a little girl who had not even been accepted into the Pioneers?

After classes, there was a meeting of the school editorial committee, and Tata was given the task of putting together a Stengazeta, a newspaper in the form of a poster, to mark thirty-five years of literary work by Maxim Gorky.

She was entrusted with a large piece of white paper and some watercolor paints—hugely precious items.

“Look after those,” Vadik warned her. “That’s the last we have. If you do the job well, I’ll give a good report on you to the Young Pioneers.”

Tata promised to be as careful as she could.

As soon as she got home, she set to work. She wrote out the title “To Gorky from the Young Pioneers,” and neatly pasted some articles by school reporters below it. It looked very good indeed.

There was a little room left in the bottom left-hand corner, and Tata decided to use it to make an important suggestion:

REFORM OF THE RASSIAN LANGUAGE

We, Pioneers and inovators, suggest that instead of greeting one another with the words “Good moning” we should use the greeting “Good Lenin.”

Comrade Tata Dorina is collecting signaturs in support of this reform.

The door opened, and Tata’s mother came in. She grabbed Tata by the collar, dragged her out from behind the table, and smacked her hard upside the head.

“What did you do that for?” wailed Tata.

“I’ll give you ‘what for,’ you little brat!” her mother yelled. “Tell me why you ransacked the Rogov’s apartment?”

Tata took a step back. “Uncle Klim is a class traitor…” she began in a trembling voice. “He’s supposed to be educated, but he has portraits of filthy bourgeois all over his walls—”

“I’ll give you ‘filthy bourgeois’!”

Her mother looked around her, eyes wild. Her gaze fell on the poster.

“No, Mother, please!” squealed Tata, but it was too late. Her mother tore the poster to pieces, threw them to the floor, and stamped on them.
“That’ll teach you to touch things that don’t belong to you! Out of my sight!”

Tata darted into the wardrobe. She heard her mother collapse onto the bench and weep bitterly.

“You fool!” her mother said in between sobs. “I hope you’re satisfied! He said to me he won’t let Kitty come to our house anymore because you’re a bad influence.”

“What?” Tata, in her astonishment, peeked out of the wardrobe.

“Shut that door this minute!” shouted her mother. “Or I swear, I’ll thrash the living daylights out of you!”