'Ugh!' Nikolka grunted as he tore the web apart and sat up in one movement, dishevelled, shaken, his belt-buckle twisted round to one side. His fair hair stood on end as though someone had been tousling it for a long time.

'Who? Who? Who is it?' asked Nikolka in horror, utterly confused.

'Who. Who, who, who, who's it? Who's it? Tweet, tweet!' the web replied and the mournful voice, quivering with suppressed tears, said:

'Yes, with her lover!'

Horrified, Nikolka backed against the wall and stared at the apparition. The apparition was wearing a brown tunic, riding-breeches of the same color and yellow-topped jockey's boots. Its dull, sad eyes stared from the deepest of sockets set in an improbably large head with close-cropped hair. Undoubtedly the apparition was young, but the skin on its face was the grayish skin

of an old man, and its teeth were crooked and yellow. The apparition was holding a large birdcage covered with a black cloth andan unsealed blue letter . . .

'I must be still asleep', Nikolka thought, with a gesture trying to brush the apparition aside like a spider's web and knocking his fingers painfully against the wires of the cage. Immediately the bird in the cage screeched in fury, whistled and clattered.

'Nikolka!' cried Elena's voice anxiously somewhere far, far away.

'Jesus Christ', thought Nikolka. 'No, I'm awake all right, but I've gone mad, and I know why - combat fatigue. My God! And I'm seeing things too . . . and what's happening to my fingers? Lord! Alexei's not back yet . . . yes, now I remember . . . he's not back . . . he's been killed . . . Oh, God . . .'

'With her lover on the same divan,' said the apparition in a tragic voice, 'where I once read poetry to her.'

The apparition turned towards the door, obviously to someone who was listening, then turned round again and bore down on Nikolka:

'Yes, on the very same divan . . . They're sitting there now and kissing each other . . . after I signed those IOU's for seventy-five thousand roubles without thinking twice about it, like a gentleman, because I am and always shall be a gentleman. Let them kiss!'

'Oh, Lord!' thought Nikolka. His eyes stared and a shiver ran down his back.

'I'm sorry', said the apparition, gradually emerging from the shimmering fog of sleep and turning into a real live body. 'Perhaps you may not quite understand. Look, this letter will explain it all. Like a gentleman, I won't hide my shame from anyone.'

And with these words the stranger handed Nikolka the blue letter. Feeling he had gone quite insane, Nikolka took it and moving his lips, began to read the large sprawling, agitated handwriting. Undated, the letter on the thin sky-blue paper read thus:

'Lena darling, I know how good-hearted you are and I am sending him to you because you're one of the family. I did send a telegram, but he'll tell you all about it himself, poor boy. Lariosik has had a most terrible blow and for a long time Iwas afraid he

wouldn't get over it. You know he married Milochka Rubtsova a year ago. Well, she has turned out to be a snake in the grass! Take him in I beg you, and look after him as only you can. I will send you a regular allowance for his keep. He has come to hate Zhitomir and I can quite understand why. I won't write any more - I'm too upset. The hospital train is just leaving and he'll tell you all about it himself. A big, big kiss for you and Seryozha.'

This was followed by an indecipherable signature.

'I brought the bird with me', said the stranger, sighing. 'A bird is man's best friend. I know many people think they're a nuisance to keep, but all I can say is that at least a bird never does anyone any harm.'

Nikolka very much liked that last sentence. Making no effort to understand it, he shyly scratched his forehead with the incomprehensible letter and slowly swung his legs down from the bed, thinking: 'I can't ask him his name ... it would sound so rude . . . What an extraordinary thing to happen . . .'

'Is it a canary?' he asked.

'It certainly is', replied the stranger enthusiastically. 'Actually it's not a hen-canary as most of them are, but a real cock-canary. I have fifteen of them at home in Zhitomir. I took them to mother, so that she can look after them. I'm sure that beast would wring their necks. He hates birds. May I put him down on your desk for a moment?'

'Please do', Nikolka replied. 'Are you from Zhitomir?'

'Yes, I am', answered the stranger. 'And wasn't it a coincidence - I arrived here at the same time as your brother.'

'What brother?'

'What d'you mean - what brother? Your brother arrived here as I did', the stranger replied with astonishment.

'But what brother?' Nikolka exclaimed miserably. 'What brother? From Zhitomir!'

'Your elder brother . . .'

Elena's voice came piercingly from the drawing-room: 'Nikolka! Nikolka! Illarion - please! Wake him up!'

'Tweet, tweet, tweee-ee, tik, tik, tikki', screeched the bird.

Nikolka dropped the blue letter and shot like a bullet through the library and dining-room into the drawing-room, where he stopped in horror, his arms spread wide.

Wearing another man's black overcoat with a torn lining and a pair of strange black trousers Alexei Turbin lay motionless on the divan below the clock. His face was pale, with a bluish pallor, and his teeth were clenched. Elena was fussing around him, her dressing-gown untied and showing her black stockings and lace-trimmed underwear. She was tugging at her brother's arms and at the buttons on his chest and shouting: 'Nik! Nik!'

Within three minutes, a student's cap crammed on to the back of his head and his grey overcoat flapping open, Nikolka was running up St Alexei's Hill, panting hard and muttering: 'What if he's not at home? And this extraordinary creature in the jockey's boots has to turn up at a moment like this! It's out of the question to call on Dr Kuritsky after Alexei laughed at him for speaking Ukrainian . . .'

An hour later a bowl was standing on the dining-room floor, full of red-stained water, scraps of red bandage lay scattered among fragments of broken crockery which the stranger in the yellow-topped boots had knocked down from the sideboard while fetching a glass. Everybody walked back and forth on the broken pieces, crunching them underfoot. Still pale but no longer looking blue, Alexei still lay on his back, his head on a cushion. He had recovered consciousness and was trying to say something, but the doctor, a man with a pointed beard with rolled-up sleeves and a pince-nez said as he wiped his bloodstained hands:

'Be quiet, doctor . . .'

Anyuta, the color of chalk and wide-eyed, and Elena, her red hair dishevelled, were lifting Alexei to take off his wet, bloodstained shirt with a torn sleeve.

'Cut it off him, it's ruined anyway', said the bearded doctor.

They cut up Alexei's shirt with scissors and took it off in shreds, baring his thin yellowish body and his left arm freshly bandaged up to the shoulder. The ends of splints protruded above and

below the bandaging. Nikolka knelt down carefully undoing Alexei's buttons, and removed his trousers.

'Undress him completely and straight into bed', said the pointed beard in his bass voice. Anyuta poured water from a jug on to his hands and blobs of lather fell into the bowl as he washed. The stranger stood aside from the confusion and bustle, at one moment gazing unhappily at the broken plates, at the next blushing as he looked at the dishevelled Elena who had ceased to care that her dressing-gown was completely undone. The stranger's eyes were wet with tears.

They all helped to carry Alexei from the dining-room into his bedroom, and in this the stranger took part: he linked his hands under Alexei's knees and carried his legs.

In the drawing-room Elena offered the doctor money. He pushed it aside. 'No really, for heaven's sake,' he said, 'not from a colleague. But there's a much more serious problem. The fact is, he ought to go into hospital . . .'