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A tall man in a bright-colored shirt worn outside his trousers stood in the burning sun. He was staring into the heavens at a thick cloudy dark-blue sky piling up threateningly over beyond the Ukraina Hotel.

“In Fili it must be pouring already,” he thought to himself.

In Fili, of course, everything must have turned to mud. People on a Sunday outing are probably fleeing along ground torn up by bulldozers, hiding in temporary shacks, or beneath the trees, or underneath the kiosk awnings. At the Belorussian Station electric trains are arriving from out there to the West all wet, and dry electric trains from the station are traveling to the West and running into the shower and through it onward, to the further suburban stations-Zhavoronki, Golitsyno, and Zvenigorod where little streams flow down the gullies, where it smells of wet pines, where old white churches stand up on the hills. All of a sudden he wanted to be somewhere out there, to wrap up his little Olga in his jacket, to take her up in his arms and run beneath the rain to the station.

“I just hope it doesn’t get as far as the Luzhniki Stadium,” he thought to himself.

He himself loved to play soccer beneath the rain when, with the wet ball flying at you like a heavy cannonball, it was no joking matter. You can’t lead. You try to pass. You try to play exactly, precisely. The boys all around pant, heavy and wet. There is heavy, hurried work like on a ship in an emergency… But up in the stands you can just sit beneath the sun and make up a hat from a newspaper for yourself.

He looked behind him and called:

“Olga!”

The little six-year-old girl was playing hopscotch in the shade of a large apartment house. Hearing her father’s voice she ran up to him and took him by the hand. She was an obedient girl. They went under the awning of the summer refreshment parlor appropriately named “Summer.” The man studied the storm clouds once more.

“Maybe it will even go past the stadium,” he guessed.

The little girl was reading a sign and spelling it out letter by letter.

She said: “T, O, B, R, I, N, G.”

Beneath the awning it seemed even hotter than on the street. The flushed faces of the customers, sitting at the outside fence, gleamed in the sun. The little drops of sweat on their faces shone distinctly. It was awful to see people eating hot soup and even being brought crackling shashlyks.

“A,” the little girl continued to read, “and L, C, O, H… Papa, what does that spell?”

Her father looked at the sign and read it to himself:

TO BRING ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
TO THE RESTAURANT
IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.

“What does it say?” the little girl asked.

“Some nonsense,” he laughed.

“Do they really write nonsense with printed letters?” she expressed her doubt.

“It happens.”

He went to the distant shady corner where his friends were sitting. They were drinking cold beer. The little girl sat down next to them, a tow-haired little girl in a dark blue sailor’s blouse and a neatly pleated skirt, nylon ribbons in her braids, white socks on her feet. She was all in her Sunday best and clean, such an exemplary child, like those depicted on the walls of miniature auto buses in advertisements for canned goods: “Our children know that these canned goods are good.” He did not have to pull her along. She did not stare about but went calmly following her papa.

Her papa had been at one time an athlete and the hero of the three nearest streets. When of an evening in spring he returned from training, the children on all those nearby streets went out from gateways and greeted him, and the little girls cast looks full of excitement in his direction. Even the most inveterate skeptics raised their caps respectfully, and the retired lieutenant colonel, Kolomeitsev, who couldn’t even imagine life without soccer, dropped in and said:

“I heard you’re improving. Improve!”

And he went about in a little gray cap of the kind in which the entire team went around. The second team, replacements for the stars–walked around with that special, loose soccer walk derived not from anything but simply from fatigue. (Only the pijons intentionally work up for themselves such a walk.) And he smiled with a soft smile, and everything in him sang from youth and from athletic exhaustion.

This was still before Olga’s birth. And she, understandably, knew nothing about this. But for him these last six years had passed as if they were six days. By that time, by the time of her birth, he had already ceased to “improve” but was still playing. In summer he played soccer, and in winter hockey–that was it. From the field to the bench and then to the stands, but just the same–in summer soccer, in winter hockey–six summer seasons and six winter seasons…

He conducted a two-way discussion with himself: “Well so what? What’s so bad about that! The in-between seasons, fall, spring are periods of training… And what else do you have?… Thank you, I have a wife… A wife? You mean you have a woman in bed… No, I say I have a wife. A family, you understand? A wife and daughter… Oh, even a daughter! You even remembered about your little daughter… Soccer, hockey, hockey, soccer… Aren’t you tired of it?… Good heavens, is it possible that sport could bore one? And beside that I have the factory… And hasn’t that bored you yet?… Stop, no one from outside is permitted to enter the factory… Well, all right… And so, the factory and football, yes? And besides that your wife and daughter… So what? I provide for my family well–one and a half thousand a month plus bonuses… Incidentally, I’ve made improvements in the production process. I am an innovator. And I have lots of friends too as a matter of fact. And there they sit. Petka Strukov and Ildar, Vladik, Zhenechka, Igor, Petka-Second also–all of them are here. They pushed together two tables. They’ve already got the place all littered up with crab claws, and there are already puddles on the table. A good gang. All my age… And how old are you?… Eh, eh, we’re all from 1929! And that means we’re all 32.”

“What’s that, Serega, your little one?” Petka-Second asked.

All looked at the little girl with curiosity. He sat down on the chair which was set out for him and seated the little girl on his knee. She was uncomfortable, but she sat quietly.

“Sit quietly, Olyus, now you’re going to get a candy.”

They shoved a mug of beer at him and a plate of crabs, and he ordered lemonade for the little girl and 200 grams of candy. His friends looked at him with enormous curiosity. They were seeing him for the first time with his daughter.

“You see, Alka had a meeting today,” he explained to Petka Strukov.

“Sunday?” Igor was surprised.

“They have conferences eternally, those helpers of death,” Sergei laughed and added almost guiltily: “And my mother-in-law went visiting–and so I had to…” He pointed with his eye at the head of the little girl. Her hair was divided in the middle by the thread of her part.

“Drink your beer,” said Ildar, “it’s cold…”

Sergei raised his mug, scanned the circle of his friends all the way around and laughed. He bent his head, concealing the warmth. He loved his whole good gang of companions and every one of them individually and knew they also loved him. They loved him somehow especially, probably because at one time among all of them he was the most “improving.” He had “improved” right in front of their eyes. He had played for the second team. He had had good physical resources and a strong kick and he was capable at sizing up the field. And he had married by rights the prettiest of their girls.

Sergei clung to his friends. Only among them did he feel himself as he had felt six years before. They all firmly clung to one another and did not admit outsiders. Just as if they were bound together by a secret oath they carried in their tight circle their youthful tastes and customs. They, all of them, dragged together into the unknown future the fragments of time already past… The forwards and the guards had married, gone into the reserve, become fans. They had had children, but their children, their wives, and all of their living surroundings were somewhere beyond the invisible boundary line of that male Moscow life in which those who are late run from the subway to the stadium, just as if they were attacking down the field, and there is excitement in the stands, and all of them are intoxicated by that enormous spring feeling of solidarity. They did not understand why their little girls (those very same women fans and women partners at dances) became such bores. Now they were playing on intramural teams, reminiscing over beer, remembering the time they played on the factory varsity teams and how one or another from among them had been invited to play on the second team for the all-stars, and Serega had already played as a replacement and might have become a regular on the all-stars, if it had not been for Alka, his wife. All of the wives–Olka, Ninka, Tamarka–were bores…

“Papa, don’t break off his head!” said the little girl on his knee. Sergei started and looked into her attentive and strict light-blue eyes, Alka’s eyes. He dropped his hand with the red beauty of a crab. This light-blue glance, attentive and strict. Eight years ago it had stopped him: “Take your hands off me and come to me when you are sober.” Such a glance. One might, of course, chatter with the boys about the fact of how much the “old woman” bored one, and, perhaps, she really had come to bore one, because of no-no, and all that. And all of a sudden you want to make the acquaintance of one or another of the younger girls born in 1940, some swimmer or gymnast, and you might get acquainted, it might happen, but that look…

“And don’t tear his legs off of him.”

“Why?” he muttered in embarrassment, just as he had then on that other remembered occasion.

“Because he looks like he is alive.”

He put the crab down on the table.

“And what should I do with him?”

“Give him to me.”

Olya took the crab and wrapped him in her handkerchief.

His friends all roared with laughter.

“Well, some girl you have, Sergei! That’s what!”

“Do you love the crab, Olenka?” asked Zyamka, who didn’t have any children.

“Yes,” said the girl, “He moves backwards.”

“Oh-ho-ho! Oh-ho-ho!” the neighboring table broke down in laughter. “That’s a smart girl! A smart girl!”

“All right, be quiet!” Petka Strukov shouted and the neighboring tables grew silent.

Ildar pulled out the championship schedule and put it on the table, and all bent over the schedule and began to discuss the team, that team, which, according to their calculations, must win the championship, but which for some reason was hovering in the middle of the league. They were fans of this particular team. But they were fans, not in the sense that unknowing fanatics ordinarily are fans selecting their favorite team according to some kind of incomprehensible considerations. No, it was simply their team–this was The Team with a capital letter, this was the one which according to their opinion corresponded most of all to the high concept of a “soccer team.” In the stands they did not stamp their feet, they did not whistle, and they did not shout “Less vodka!” at players who made errors. They knew how all of this might happen, after all, even the best goalkeeper might miss the ball: the ball was round and the team–it was not a machine, but eleven different lads.

Suddenly from the street, from the white hot day, there entered the restaurant a man in a light-colored jacket and a dark necktie–Vyacheslav Sorokin. He was greeted noisily:

“Greetings, Slava!”

“Welcome home, Slava!”

“Well how is Leningrad, Slava?”

“A city-museum,” Sorokin answered curtly and began to shake everyone’s hands, missing no one.

“Hello, Olyus!” he said to Sergei’s daughter and shook her hand.

“Hello, Uncle Vyacha!” she said.

Sergei thought to himself: “How does she know him? Yes, and she even calls him Vyacha.”

They pushed a mug of beer to Sorokin.

He drank and told about Leningrad, where he had been at a closely related factory–with a factory delegation–for the exchange of experience.

“Surprising architectural groups, the creations of Rastrelli, Rossi, Kazakov, Kvarengi…” he hurriedly set forth.

“He already has succeeded in grabbing off some culture for himself,” Sergei thought.

He had also been in Leningrad when he played for the second team, but then he had been a lad in training and hadn’t permitted himself very much, he hadn’t even succeeded in making anyone’s acquaintance.

“… Doric pillars, Gothic pillars, all kinds of other pillars…” Sorokin explained.

“I’m not saying a thing, not a thing,” said Sergei and everyone laughed.

Sorokin pretended that he was not offended. With flicks of his fingers he snapped the remains of the crab from the table onto the asphalt below and moved over to look at the schedule. He lit up from Zhenechka’s cigarette and said that, in his opinion, the team would lose today.

“It will win,” said Sergei.

“But no, Serezha,” Sorokin said softly and looked into his eyes. “They aren’t going to win today. There are laws of the game, theories, calculations…”

“You don’t understand the least little thing in the game, Vyacha,” Sergei laughed coldly.

“I don’t understand?” Sorokin immediately began. “I read books!”

“Books! Boys, listen, Vyacha, our Vyacha, reads books! That’s what kind he is, our Vyacha!”

Sorokin immediately took himself in hand and stroked his tender sparse hair. He smiled at Sergei just as if he were sorry for him.

“Yes, I don’t like it when they call me Vyacha,” his smile seemed to say. “But that’s what you’re calling me, Sergei, but you’re not going to get anywhere with that. The boys aren’t going to call me Vyacha, but will call me Slava, or Slavik, just as they used to. Yes, Sergei, you played on the second team, but after all right now you don’t play any more. Yes, you married the most beautiful of our girls, but…”

Sergei also restrained himself.

“Take it easy,” he thought to himself. “Don’t forget that you’re friends.”

Sergei raised his head. The canvas tent was shaking, just as if on top someone plump was lying and rolling from side to side. The refreshment hall was already full to the brim. A gloomy person in a cap sitting at the next table set his mug down heavily on the table, pushed his cap to the rear of his head and said, without addressing anyone:

“I’m here on a trip, you understand? I don’t belong here… I have a woman here in Moscow, a woman… In short, I’m living with her, that’s all!”

He knocked his fist on the table, pulled his cap forward and grew quiet, evidently for a long while.

Sergei wiped the sweat from his forehead–it had become unbearably hot here. Sorokin bent across the table and whispered to him:

“Serezha, take the girl away from here. Let her play out in the open.”

“It’s not your business,” Sergei whispered to him in answer.

Sorokin sat back and again smiled as if he pitied him. Then he got up and buttoned his jacket.

“Pardon me, boys, I have to go.”

“Are you going to the stadium?” Petka asked.

“Unfortunately I can’t. I have to study.”

“On Sunday?” again Igor was surprised.

“Well what can I do about it? I have an examination coming up.”

“What year are you completing now, Slavka,” asked Zhenechka.

“The third,” answered Sorokin. “Well, so long,” he said. “Greetings to everyone!” He waved his clenched hands. “Olyus, take it!” he smiled and reached out a piece of chocolate to the little girl.

“Hey, wait a second,” Zhenechka called to him. “We’re all going. It’s too hot here.”

They all got up and went out in a crowd into the white-hot street. The asphalt was elastic beneath their feet, like a sheet of foam rubber. The clouds had not moved. Just as before the sky was dark and threatening over to the West beyond the Ukraina Hotel skyscraper.

“And are you going to the stadium?” Sorokin addressed Sergei in a conciliatory tone.

“What, do you think I’d miss such a soccer game?”

“I don’t think anything,” wearily said Sorokin.

“Well if you don’t think anything, then be silent.”

Sorokin ran across the street and got in a bus, and all the others slowly went along the shady side, talking quietly and laughing. Ordinarily they made their way out with noise and racket. Zyamka told jokes. Ildar played on the guitar. But right now there was a small girl among them, and they did not know how to conduct themselves.

“Where are we going?” asked Sergei.

“We’re going to walk along slowly to the stadium,” said Igor. “We’ll watch the basketball in the small arena a while, the women’s semi-finals.”

“Papa, can I talk to you for a minute?” said Olya.

Sergei stopped, surprised by the fact that she was talking quite like an adult. His friends went ahead.

“I thought we would be going to the park,” said the little girl.

“We are going to the stadium. It’s also a park there, you know, trees, kiosks…”

“And the merry-go-round?”

“No, they don’t have one of those there, but instead…”

“I want to go to the park.”

“You’re not right, Olga,” he said restraining himself.

“I don’t want to go with those men,” she became quite capricious.

“You’re not right,” he repeated obtusely.

“Mama promised to give me a ride on the merry-go-round.”

“Well let Mama give you a ride,” Sergei said with irritation and looked around. The fellows were standing on the corner.

Olya’s little face frowned.

“She’s not to blame she has a meeting.”

“Boys!” Sergei shouted. “Go along without me! I will come by game time!” He took Olya by the hand and jerked her: “Let’s walk more quickly.”

“Meetings, meetings,” he thought while walking along, “These eternal meetings. A happy Sunday! What’s good about it? Alka is going to get a doctor’s degree, then just try to hold on to her. Even now she doesn’t consider you worth a cent.”

He went along with rapid steps and the girl, hardly keeping up, ran alongside. In her right hand she held the crab wrapped up in the handkerchief. From her little fist, just like the antenna of a small radio receiver, the crab’s moustaches stuck out. She ran along merrily and read aloud the letters which she saw:

“C, L, O, T, H… Papa!”

“Cloth!” Sergei tossed through his teeth. “Meat!” “Haberdashery!”

“She will have her doctorate and he will be an unsuccessful soccer player whose name is remembered only by the oldest fans in the stands. One hundred people out of 100,000. ‘Yes, yes, there was such a person, uh-huh, I remember, he didn’t stay long…’ And who is to blame that he didn’t become such a star as, for example, Netto, that he didn’t make the trip then, that time, to Syria, that he… A respected doctor of philosophy, a learned woman, a beauty… Oh, you, beauty… For her there’s already nothing to talk with him about. But at night they find a common language, and daytimes let her talk with someone else, with Vyacha for example, he’ll tell her about Kvarengi and about all the rest and about pillars of different kinds there–he’ll tell her everything, set it forth in two seconds… You broke the fourth ten-ruble note… Ah, so you’ve begun to talk again? You’re now spending the fourth ten rubles. On what? Leave me alone! Sport came to an end, love comes to an end… Oh, love! Why shouldn’t I find a girl born in 1940, some swimmer or other… Oh, I’m not talking about that. Leave me alone! Listen, leave me alone!”

In the park they rode on the merry-go-rounds, sitting next to each other on two dappled gray steeds. Sergei held on to his daughter. She roared, was completely shaken with laughter, put the crab on the horse between its ears.

“And the crab is riding too!” she cried, tossing back her head.

Sergei smiled gloomily. All of a sudden he noticed the chief technologist from his factory. He was standing in line at the merry-go-round and holding a little boy by the hand. He bowed to Sergei and raised his hat. Sergei was jarred by this community with the chief technologist, a man who had become fat and who was boring.

“Your daughter?” shouted the chief technologist.

Through the air floated the words of the song being played on the phonograph as the carousel whirled: “The little box is filled with things-satin and silk and diamond rings…”

“Your son?” shouted Sergei the next time around.

More words from the song: “Pity, oh sweetheart, oh lady love, the young…”

The chief technologist nodded several times.

And the song: “… Should… er!”

“Yes, yes, son!” shouted the chief technologist.

“Well, what records they play on the merry-go-round! No, nevertheless he’s a pleasant chap, the chief technologist,” Sergei thought to himself.

Olya could not forget for a long time the brilliant whirling on the merry-go-round.

“Papa, papa, let’s tell Mama how the crab took a ride!”

“Listen, Olga, how is it that you know Uncle Vyacha?” Sergei asked unexpectedly for himself.

“We meet him often with Mama when we go to work. He is very gay.”

“Ah, that’s how it is, he, it turns out, is even gay,” thought Sergei to himself. “Vyacha–a gay chap. And that means he has begun to play his tricks again. Oh, he’s asking for it from me.”

He left Olga on the bench and went himself to a telephone booth and began to phone the institute where that wise conference was supposed to be going on. He hoped that the conference was over and then he could take his daughter home, turn her over to Alka, and go himself to the stadium, and spend the whole evening with the boys.

In the receiver lengthy rings resounded for a long time, and finally they were interrupted, and an elderly voice said:

“Hello!”

“Has your wonderful meeting come to an end yet?” asked Sergei.

“What meeting are you talking about?” the receiver muttered indistinctly. “Today is Sunday…”

“Is this the Institute?” shouted Sergei.

“Well, of course it is the Institute.”

Sergei went out of the telephone booth. The air rose in streams, as if it was melting from the heat. A fat perspiring man in a silk shirt with broad sleeves came along the walk. He waved the flies away wearily. The flies flew stubbornly after him, circled about his head, they evidently liked him.

“Ssooo,” thought Sergei to himself. And all of a sudden his legs almost collapsed beneath him from the unexpected fright which was like a blow in the back. He would have run out of the park, but he remembered Olga. She was sitting in the shade on a bench and playing with the crab.

She was repeating to herself the words of a rhyme: “Even crabs, even crabs, are such squabblers. They also move backwards and wiggle their moustaches.”

“She’s a talented little girl,” thought Sergei to himself. “She gets it from her mother.”

He took her by the hand and dragged her along. She squealed and showed him the crab.

“Papa, he’s such a smart one. He has almost become alive!”

Sergei stopped, tore the crab from her hand, broke it in two and threw it into the bushes.

“You don’t play with crabs,” he said. “You eat them. They go with beer.”

The little girl immediately started to weep in three streams and refused to go further.

He picked her up in his arms and ran. He jumped out of the park. A taxi turned up right at that moment. In the hot airless quiet the Moscow River flashed below, looking like a broad ribbon of silver foil. There opened out ahead another river, of asphalt, a river which was named the Garden Ring along which he was flying, hurrying, pursuing his unhappiness. The little girl was sitting in his arms. She had stopped weeping and was smiling. She was entranced by the speed. In her face there flew letters from notices, signs, posters, advertisements. All the letters which she had learned, and 10,000 others-red, dark blue, green-flew to meet her, all the letters of the eleven planets of the solar system.

“P, J, O, P, J, L, R, J, U, E, J…Papa, what does it spell!” She was picking out letters at random as they flashed into her eyes.

“PJOPJLRJUEJ,” Sergei tried to pronounce to himself in his head. “Why are there so many J’s?” And then he began to think of all of the words which came to his mind which began with the letter J in Russian: thirst, cruelty, heat, women, giraffes, fat, life, yolk, gutter, horror…” ‘Papa, what does it spell!’ Just try to find out what it spells at such a speed.”

“Your back axle is knocking,” he said to the driver and left him a tip of thirty kopecks.

He ran into his apartment house, jumped up the stairway three steps at a time, opened the door and burst into his apartment. It was empty. It was hot. It was clean. Sergei looked about, lit up a cigarette, and this his own two-room apartment seemed to him to be alien, so alien that right this minute there might come out suddenly from another room a complete stranger who had no relationship to anyone in the world. He felt ill and shook his head.

“Maybe there’s some kind of a mix-up,” he thought with relief and turned on the television set to find out whether the game had begun.

The TV set whistled quietly, and the roar of the stands was heard and by the character of the roar he understood immediately that the warm-up was taking place.

“Maybe she is at Tamarka’s or Galina’s,” he thought to himself.

Descending the staircase, he kept trying to convince himself that she was at Tamarka’s or at Galina’s, and tried to persuade himself not to phone up. Nevertheless, he went to the pay telephone and phoned. She was not at either Tamarka’s nor at Galina’s. He came out of the telephone booth. The sun burned his shoulders. Olga was jumping right in the heat of the sun, playing hopscotch again.

She came up to him and took him by the hand.

“Papa, where are we going now?”

“Wherever you want,” he answered. “Let’s go somewhere.”

They went slowly along the sunny side, and then he figured out that they should cross to the other side.

“Why did you tear up the crab?” Olga asked strictly.

“Do you want ice cream?” he asked.

“And you?”

“I would like it.”

They went through side streets to the Arbat directly to the cafe.

In the cafe it was cold and half-dark. Above the tables along the entire wall there stretched a mirror. Sergei looked into the mirror as he went into the cafe and saw what a red face he had and how large already were the balding areas over his temples. Olga could not be seen in the mirror-she hadn’t grown up that far yet.

“You’ve already had enough, citizen,” said the waitress, going past their table.

“Give us ice cream!” he shouted after her.

She approached and saw that the man was by no means drunk. He simply had a red face and his eyes were wandering not from vodka, but from some other causes.

Olya ate her ice cream and dangled her legs. Sergei also ate his, without noticing its taste, feeling only the coldness in his mouth.

Next to them there sat a pair. The young man, who had a hairdo a little like one of those tall Caucasian hats, was trying to convince the girl of something or other, persuading her. The girl looked at him with big round eyes.

“Would you like a turtle, daughter?” asked Sergei.

Olya started and even stretched out her neck.

“What do you mean, a turtle?” she asked carefully.

“A real live turtle. There’s a pet store not far away from here. We can go there right now and pick out a first-class turtle.”

“Let’s go right away!”

They got up and went to the exit. In the hatcheck room they could hear the muffled squeal of the radio announcer and the distant roar from the stadium which sounded like a sea. Sergei wanted to go past without stopping, but he could not restrain himself, and he asked the hatcheck girl how things were going.

The first half had just finished. His team was losing.

They went out onto the Arbat. There weren’t many passersby and there weren’t even many cars. Everyone on such days was outside the city. Across the street walked a surprisingly tall schoolboy. In an unbuttoned gray tunic, narrow-shouldered, and very lean, handsome, and gay, he seemed to hold the promise of growing up to become an athlete, the center of the all-star basketball team of the whole country. Sergei followed him with his eyes for a long way. It was pleasant to watch how that tall chap walked along, how his handsome, stylishly trimmed head floated along high above the crowd.

In the pet store Olya at first was perplexed. There were birds, dogs–green parakeets, song sparrows, canaries. There were aquariums in which just like metal dust there shone silvery little bits of fish. And finally there was a glassed-in grotto in which there were turtles. The grotto was porous, made from plaster and painted gray. At its bottom, which was covered with grass, lay a multitude of little turtles. They lay crowded against each other and didn’t move. They were like a cobblestone pavement. They maintained silence and patiently waited their fate. Maybe they were lying, frigid with terror, having lost faith in their shells, not knowing that they would not be eaten, that they would not be served up with beer, that they would gradually be bought up by gay little children,and they would begin a fairly bearable, though lonely, life. Finally one stuck his little snout out from under his shell, climbed up on top of his neighbor, and moved along on the backs of his immobile sisters. Where he was crawling and why, he probably didn’t even know himself, but he kept crawling and crawling and by this token Olya came to like him more than the others.

Papa actually bought this turtle. They pulled him out of the grotto, put him in a cardboard box with holes in it, and pushed some grass into it.

“What does it eat?” Papa asked the saleswoman.

“Grass,” said the saleswoman.

“And what should we feed her during the winter?” Papa asked further.

“Hay,” answered the clerk.

“That means that I have to go a haying,” Papa joked.

“What?” asked the saleswoman.

“That means, that I have to go a haying, I am saying,” Papa repeated his joke.

The saleswoman became offended and turned away. When they went out on the street the second half had already begun. They could hear the shouts from almost all of the windows–that was the radio announcer. Olya was carrying the box with the turtle and looking into the holes. It was dark in there. She could hear a weak little rustling.

“Will it live for a long time?” asked Olya.

“They say that they live 300 years,” said Sergei.

“And how old is ours, Papa?”

Sergei looked into the box.

“Ours is still young. He’s 80 years old. Almost a little boy.”

A roar from the nearest window announced the fact that Sergei’s team had evened the count.

“And how long will we live?” asked the little girl.

“Who we?”

“Well us–people…

“We live less,” laughed Sergei. “Seventy years or a hundred.”

Oh, what a fight was going on out there evidently! The radio announcer was shouting as if he were collapsing into a hundred different pieces.

“And what then?” asked Olya.

Sergei stopped and looked at her. She with her dark blue eyes looked at him questioningly, just like Alka. He bought cigarettes in the kiosk and answered her:

“After that, soup with the cat.”

Olya laughed. “With the cat! After that, soup with the cat! Papa, and where are we going now?”

“Let’s go up to the Lenin Hills,” he proposed.

“Let’s!”

The sun was sinking behind Moscow University building and in places was piercing it through with its rays. Sergei raised his daughter up and set her on the parapet.

“Oi, how beautiful!” exclaimed the little girl.

Down below an excursion steamer was moving down the river. The shadow of the Lenin Hills divided the river in half. One half of it was still gleaming in the sun. On the other shore of the river lay the bowl of the large Luzhniki Sports Stadium. The field could not be seen. There were just visible the upper rows of the eastern side, filled to the top with people. The voices of the announcers could be heard but their words could not be distinguished. Further were the park, the walks, and Moscow.

Moscow the boundless, with the sun gleaming on a million windows. There, in Moscow, was his apartment house, his apartment and its 35 square meters. There in Moscow were telephone booths on every corner, in each of which one might learn about danger, in each of which one’s heart might beat faster and one’s legs bend beneath one, in each of which one might at long last get reassuring news and be relieved. There in Moscow, all of his 32 years were quietly promenading along the streets, hallooing to each other, and not finding each other. There in Moscow, there were plenty of beauties, hundreds of thousands of beauties. There the wise institutes were conducting research work, there people were getting promotions. There lay his calm relaxation at his lathe, there was his factory. There were his relaxation and his alarms, his springtime love which had now come to an end. There lay his youth, which had walked past–like that gay, unbelievably tall schoolboy–in the training halls and stadiums, at school desks and in beer parlors, on dance floors, in entryways, in kisses, to the accompaniment of music in the park… And there lay everything which would still happen to him. And what then? After that, soup with the cat.

Sergei held the little girl by her hand and felt how her pulse was beating. He looked at her face from the side, at her turned-up nose, at her open mouth, in which, like pearls, shone her teeth, and all of a sudden it was as if something had happened to him. It became easier, because he thought about the fact that his daughter would grow up, he thought about how she would be eight years old, and then 14, and then 16, 18, 20, how she would go to the pioneer camps and would return from there, how he would teach her to swim, what a stylish young lady she would be, and how she would kiss some stilyaga or other in the entryway, how he would shout at her and how they would go together somewhere sometime, maybe to the seashore. Maybe to the sea.

Olya moved her finger in the air, writing letters.

“Papa, guess what I am writing.”

He watched how above the stadium and over all of Moscow the finger of the little girl was moving.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t understand.”

“Oh you! Papa! Look here!” And she began to write the letters on his hand: “0, L, Y, A, P, A, P, A…”

A powerful roar, like an explosion, flew up from out of the stadium. Sergei understood that his team had scored the goal.