"Anatoly Rybakov. The dirk (Кортик, англ.)" - читать интересную книгу автора

"Don't make a noise. Grandfather's sleeping," Grandmother said grumpily
when Misha passed her.
"I'll go quietly," he answered.
He hid the dirk in his room under the bed, intending to put it back
where he had found it as soon as Grandmother left the yard. At the worst, he
thought, he could take it back in the evening under cover of darkness.
It was so still in the house that Misha could hear the clock ticking on
the wall and a fly buzzing against a window-pane. Time hung heavily on his
hands.
He stopped at Uncle Senya's room and put his ear to the door. Uncle
Senya was coughing and rustling some papers.
"Uncle Senya, why do sailors carry dirks?" Misha asked as he walked in.
Uncle Senya was lying on a disarranged narrow bed and reading a book.
He looked at Misha over his pince-nez.
"What sailors? What dirks?" he said with a puzzled expression.
"Don't you know? Only sailors carry dirks. And I want to know why they
do." Misha sat on a chair firmly resolved not to get up until dinner.
"I don't know," Uncle Senya replied impatiently. "Part of their
uniform, I suppose. Is that all?"
That meant Misha had to leave the room right away. "Let me stay here a
little. I'll be very quiet," he pleaded. "Only don't disturb me," Uncle
Senya said, taking up his book again.
Misha sat with his hands under his thighs. Uncle Senya's small room
contained a bed, a bookcase, and a writing-desk with a pistol-shaped inkpot
on it. To open the inkpot you had to press the trigger. Misha wished it was
his; all the boys at school would envy him then.
Pictures and portraits covered the walls. One of them was a portrait of
Nekrasov Shura Bolshoi always recited from Nekrasov at school parties. "
'Who Can Be Happy and Free in Russia,' by Nekrasov," he would announce
before every recital as though everyone did not know the poem had been
written by Nekrasov.
The painting by Repin that hung next to Nekrasov's portrait had the
words "They did not expect him." It showed a political prisoner returning
home unexpectedly from exile and taking the whole family by surprise. The
eyes of his daughter, who had probably forgotten him, expressed surprise and
wonder, as she turned her head towards him. Misha thought of his own father
who would never return. He had died in a tsarist hard-labour camp, and Misha
did not remember him.
Uncle Senya had an astounding number of books; he kept them in the
bookcase, on top of it, under the bed, on the table.... But he never gave
Misha anything to read; as if Misha did not know how to handle books. Why,
in Moscow he had a library of his own; the World of Adventure magazine was
worth practically everything Uncle Senya had!
Uncle Senya went on reading without paying the slightest attention to
Misha. When he left the room Uncle did not even look up.
What a bore! He wished dinner-time would come round faster or that the
jam would be ready. Grandmother would be sure to let him have what she had
skimmed off.... Misha went to the window. A huge green fly with grey wings
was crawling up and down the window-pane, and every time it went down it
filled the room with a loud buzzing as it beat its wings and body against